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

The social revolution in Catalonian industry was soon threatened in several ways. A sizeable part of the home market had been lost in the rising. The peseta had fallen sharply in value on the outbreak of the war, so imported raw materials cost nearly 50 per cent more in under five months. This was accompanied by an unofficial trade embargo which the pro-nationalist governors of the Bank of Spain had requested among the international business community. Meanwhile, the central government tried to exert control through withholding credits and foreign exchange. Largo Caballero, the arch-rival of the anarchists, was even to offer the government contract for uniforms to foreign companies, rather than give it to CNT textile factories.²⁰ Recent studies indicate that reductions in industrial output during the course of the war cannot really be attributed to ‘revolutionary disorder’.²¹

There were sometimes long discussions and wrangles within the worker committees, but when the issues were clear, little time was wasted. Services such as water, gas and electricity were working under their new management within hours of the storming of the Atarazanas barracks. Using the framework agreed at the Saragossa conference, a conversion of appropriate factories to war production meant that metallurgical concerns had started to produce armoured cars by 22 July. Although not sophisticated, they were not all crudely improvised contraptions. The industrial workers of Catalonia were the most skilled in Spain. The Austrian sociologist Franz Borkenau also pointed out the great difference it made not to have technicians obstructed, as occurred in Soviet Russia.²²

After defeating the attempted coup in Barcelona and reorganizing production so quickly, the anarchists were angry at the Madrid government’s attempt to regain control through the denial of credits. A plan for seizing part of the Spanish gold reserves so as to bypass the central government’s denial of foreign exchange was considered, but rejected, by the CNT regional committee. Apart from finance, the other main weakness was the lack of co-ordination between co-operatives within a particular industry. However, government performance on industrial matters was such that it is doubtful whether ministers in Madrid would have done much better.

At the same time as the transformation of industry, there was a mushroom growth of agricultural collectives in the southern part of Republican territory. They were organized by CNT members, either on their own or in conjunction with the UGT. The UGT became involved because it recognized that collectivization was the most practical method of farming the less fertile latifundia. It would perhaps also be true to say that in many places the socialists followed this course to avoid being usurped by the anarchists in what they regarded as their fiefs.

In Aragón some collectives were installed forcibly by anarchist militia, especially the Durruti column. Their impatience to get the harvest in to feed the cities, as well as the fervour of their beliefs, sometimes led to violence. Aragonese peasants resented being told what to do by overenthusiastic Catalan industrial workers and many of them had fears of Russian-style collectives. Borkenau showed in an example how much more effective other means could be. The anarchist nucleus achieved a ‘considerable improvement for the peasants and yet was wise enough not to try to force the conversion of the reluctant part of the village, but to wait till the example of the others should take effect’.²³ Not surprisingly, a collective begun in that way worked best. Overall, studies of the collectivization conclude that ‘the experiment was a success for the poor peasants of Aragón’.²⁴

There were some 600 collectives in Aragón but far from all villages were completely collectivized.²⁵ The individualists, consisting chiefly of smallholders who were afraid of losing what little they had, were allowed to keep as much land as a family could farm without hired labour. In regions where there had always been a tradition of smallholding little tended to change. The desire to work the land collectively was much stronger among the landless peasants, especially in less fertile areas where small plots were hardly viable.²⁶