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

Little headway was made outside the cities, although the greatest demonstration of the new equality was the fact of having militiawomen fighting in the front line. No figures are available, but there were probably not many more than 1,000 women at the front. There were, however, several thousand under arms in the rear areas and a women’s battalion took part in the defence of Madrid. (The German ambassador was shocked when, one day, Franco ordered the execution of some captured militiawomen and then calmly continued to eat his lunch.) This move towards equal participation was severely curtailed under the increasingly authoritarian direction of the war effort as the military situation deteriorated. By 1938 women had returned to a strictly auxiliary role.¹⁶

One observer in Barcelona commented on the attitude towards buildings. He wrote that the people were inclined to destroy symbols, but that they respected in a naive and sometimes exaggerated way everything which seemed useful. Religious buildings, patriotic monuments and the women’s prison were demolished or burned down, while hospitals and schools were respected almost with the reverence which the nationalists accorded to churches.

The most important achievement of the republican government of 1931–3 had been in education and reducing illiteracy. The measures limiting Church involvement in education created a great void in the system to begin with, but the school-building and teacher-training programmes were correspondingly ambitious. The Republic claimed to have built 7,000 schools as opposed to only 1,000 during the previous 22 years. An illiteracy rate of nearly 50 per cent in most areas under the monarchy was drastically reduced. Many imaginative projects, such as García Lorca’s travelling theatres, were part of an energetic attempt to help the rural mass free itself from the vulnerability of ignorance. All the time, independently of government-sponsored efforts, the casas del pueblo of the UGT and the ateneos libertarios of the anarchists continued their efforts in this direction.¹⁷ During the war it was above all the earnest study of uneducated militiamen in the trenches which so impressed foreign visitors like Saint-Exupéry.

The outward signs of working-class power were everywhere in Barcelona. Party banners hung from public buildings, especially the black and red diagonal flag of the CNT. The anarchists had installed their headquarters in the former premises of the Employers’ Federation, while the communist-controlled PSUC led by Joan Comorera had taken over the Hotel Colón. The POUM had seized the Hotel Falcón, though their main power base was in Lérida. The POUM was growing because it seemed to offer a middle course between the anarchists and the communists. But, as Andrés Nin, their leader, had once been closely associated with Trotsky, the Stalinists hated the POUM even more than the anarchists. They ignored the fact that Trotsky and his Fourth International frequently attacked the POUM.

Barcelona had always been a lively city and the July revolution hardly calmed it. Expropriated cars roared around at high speed, often causing accidents, but such antics were soon stopped when petrol was issued only for essential journeys. Loudspeakers attached to trees on the avenues relayed music and broadcast ludicrously optimistic news bulletins from time to time. These were seized on by groups discussing events such as the attack on Saragossa, whose fall they expected at any moment. It was a world of instant friendship, with the formal expression of address no longer used. Foreigners were welcomed and the anti-fascist cause was explained repeatedly. Workers possessed a simple faith that if everything was made clear, the democracies could not fail to help them against Franco, Hitler and Mussolini.

All around a heady atmosphere of excitement and optimism prevailed. Gerald Brenan said that visitors to Barcelona in the autumn of 1936 would never forget the moving and uplifting experience. Foreigners who gave a tip had it returned politely with an explanation of why the practice corrupted both the giver and the receiver. Probably the greatest contrast between Madrid and Barcelona was in the use of hotels. In the capital Gaylords was later taken over by the Communist Party as a luxurious billet for its senior functionaries and Russian advisers. In Barcelona the Ritz was used by the CNT and the UGT as Gastronomic Unit Number One–a public canteen for all those in need.