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

At the end of July the carabineros, which Negrín had built up when finance minister, were used to harass the collectives by confiscating their produce. Then, on 11 August, the central government dissolved the Council of Aragón by decree while its members were gathering in the last of the harvest. The anarchist 25th, 26th and 28th Divisions were kept occupied at the front and cut off from news of what was happening, so that Líster’s 11th Division, backed by the 27th and 30th Divisions, could be sent against the anarchist and joint CNT-UGT collectives. These ‘manoeuvres’, as they were officially described, involved mass arrests and the forcible disbandment of the Council of Aragón along with all its component organizations. CNT offices were seized and destroyed, and the collectives’ machinery, transport, tools and seed grain were given to the small proprietors whom the communists had encouraged to resist the co-operatives.¹

The anarchist members of the Council were the first to be arrested and they were fortunate not to have been shot out of hand. Around 100 of them were put in the prison of Caspe, and were still there when the nationalists occupied the town in March 1938.² The communists counted on arranging a show trial for Ascaso, but he had to be released on 18 September when they could produce no evidence. (La Pasionaria tried to revive the accusations in 1968, saying that Ascaso had fled to South America where he was living in luxury on his booty. He was, in fact, still working as a servant in a hotel in Venezuela.)

The justification for this operation (whose ‘very harsh measures’ shocked even some Party members) was that since all the collectives had been established by force, Líster was merely liberating the peasants. There had undoubtedly been pressure, and no doubt force was used on some occasions in the fervour after the rising. But the very fact that every village was a mixture of collectivists and individualists shows that peasants had not been forced into communal farming at the point of a gun.³ It is estimated that there were up to 200,000 people belonging to the collectives and 150,000 individualists.⁴ Perhaps the most eloquent testimony against the communists is the number of collectives that managed to re-establish themselves after Líster’s forces had left. Meanwhile, the degree to which food production was disrupted and permanently damaged became a matter for bitter debate. José Silva, the head of the Institute of Agrarian Reform, later embarrassed his communist colleagues considerably when he admitted that the operation had been ‘a very grave mistake, which produced a tremendous disorganization in the countryside’.⁵

The exact part in these events played by the non-communist members of Negrín’s government, especially Prieto, is the subject of dispute. Negrín himself backed the communist action without reservation, while the liberals and the other right socialists continued to support measures which destroyed ‘cantonalism’ and increased centralized power. Prieto, the minister of defence, and Zugazagoitia, the minister of the interior, certainly gave instructions for the dismantling of the Council of Aragón and were prepared to use force if necessary. But Prieto denied Líster’s claim that he was given carte blanche to destroy the collectives as well.⁶ In any case the libertarian revolt, which the authorities had feared, did not take place.

The events in Aragón also caused the rift between the CNT leadership and its mass membership to widen. The weakness of the CNT leaders in their refusal to condemn Líster’s action outright provoked much frustration and anger. The only attempt to restrain the communist action came from Mariano Vázquez, the CNT secretary-general, who asked Prieto to transfer Mera’s division to Aragón immediately. But he was satisfied by the minister of defence’s reply that he had already reprimanded Líster. (Vázquez, a ‘reformist’ syndicalist and the chief advocate within the CNT of complete obedience to government orders, was a great admirer of Negrín, who is said to have despised him.) The CNT leaders claimed that they had prevented death sentences from being carried out by the special communist military tribunals, but the prospect of three anarchist divisions turning their guns against Líster’s troops probably carried greater weight. In any case the whole episode represented a considerable increase in communist power and a corresponding blow to anarchist confidence.