The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

There were several reasons why anarchism in the early days became the largest force within the Spanish working class. Its proposed structure of co-operative communities, associating freely, corresponded to deep-rooted traditions of mutual aid, and the federalist organization appealed to anti-centralist feelings. It also offered a strong moral alternative to a corrupt political system and hypocritical Church. Many observers have pointed to the naive optimism which anarchism inspired among the landless peasants of Andalucia. Much has also been made of the way in which the word was spread by ascetic, almost saint-like characters and how the converts gave up tobacco, alcohol and infidelity (while rejecting official marriage). As a result it was often described as a secular religion. Even so, the intensity of this early anarchism led converts to believe that everybody else must see that freedom and mutual aid were the only foundation of a naturally ordered society. An uprising was all that was needed to open people’s eyes, unfetter the vast potential of goodwill and set off what Bakunin called the ‘spontaneous creativity of the masses’.

Their frustration at being unable to ‘unlock the mechanism of history’, as the Russian writer Victor Serge described it, led to individual acts of political violence in the 1890s. The tigres solitarios, as their fellow anarchists called them, acted either in the hope of stirring up others to emulate them or in reprisal for the indiscriminate brutality of the Brigada Social, the secret police. The most famous example was the torturing to death in 1892 of several anarchists in the castle of Montjuich in Barcelona. This led to an international outcry and to the assassination of Cánovas del Castillo, the organizer of the restoration. A vicious circle of repression and revenge was to follow.

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Marxist wing of socialism, los autoritarios, as their opponents called them, developed much less rapidly. In late 1871 Karl Marx’s son-in-law Paul Lafargue arrived after the fall of the Paris Commune and within a year the basis of Spanish socialism was laid in Madrid. The Marxists’ comparative lack of success was partly due to the emphasis which they placed on the central state. The socialists under Pablo Iglesias, a typesetter who emerged as the leading Spanish Marxist, proceeded cautiously and concentrated on building an organization. Eventually in 1879 they founded the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and formed their General Union of Labour (UGT) in 1888. Iglesias still insisted that the class struggle should be waged in a moderate and evolutionary manner (the PSOE did not formally repudiate the monarchy until 1914). The socialists accused their anarchist rivals of ‘irresponsibility’, but they in turn were seen as heavily bureaucratic and received the nickname of ‘Spanish Prussians’.

Another reason for the socialists’ slow development in a predominantly agricultural society came from Marx’s contempt for the peasantry and what he called ‘the idiocy of rural life’. He believed that capitalism would be overthrown only by its own creation, the industrial proletariat. However, in Spain, the major part of industry was concentrated in Catalonia, which had become the stronghold of anarchism. As a result the ‘Castilian’ socialists had to look to Bilbao for support among industrial workers. The central mass of Spain and the northern coast were to be their main spheres of influence, while the anarchist following was greatest down the Mediterranean belt, especially in Catalonia and Andalucia.

From the 1890s until the early 1920s Spain experienced many turbulent years, especially those which coincided with the Russian and German revolutions at the end of the First World War. The main areas of strife were the large landed estates, the latifundia of Andalucia and Estremadura, the mining valleys of Asturias and Vizcaya, and industrial Catalonia. In fin de siècle Barcelona, nouveaux riches factory owners had indulged in triumphant ostentation, both architecturally and socially.