'Against the state': A genealogy of the Barcelona May days (1937)

European History Quarterly

Volumn 29, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 485-542

  Graham, Helen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0345271745     PISSN: 02656914     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/a010099     Document Type: Article

References (143)

1. Gustav Landauer, Die Revolution (1908), translated quote from David Goodway, ed., For A narchism: History, Theory, Practice (London 1989), 16
2. Michael Richards, A Time of Silence. Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco's Spain, 1936-1945 (Cambridge 1998)
3. In 1930-1, Barcelona and Madrid were the only Spanish cities to have a population exceeding one million
4. For the debate, see Leandro Prados de La Escosura, De imperio a nación: crecimiento y atraso económico en España 1780-1930 (Madrid 1988)
5. A. Shubert, A Social History of Modern Spain (London 1990), 9-56
6. For Barcelona's industrial development, demographic growth, urbanization, and more complex sociological stratification compared to elsewhere in Spain, see C. Ealham, 'Policing the Recession: Unemployment, Social Protest and Law-and-Order in Barcelona 1930-1936', unpublished University of London PhD thesis (1995), 27-30
7. also E. Ucelay da Cal, 'Catalan Nationalism: Cultural Plurality and Political Ambiguity', in H. Graham and J. Labanyi, eds, Spanish Cultural Studies (Oxford 1995), 145-7
8. From outside Catalonia (but in side Spain). Most of these workers came from the impoverished rural South
9. Workers were released and then shot down on the street, ostensibly while 'trying to escape', F. J. Romero Salvadó, 'Spain and the First World War: the Structural Crisis of the Liberal Monarchy', European History Quarterly, Vol. 25, 1995, 529-54
10. A. Balcells, 'Violencia y terrorismo en la lucha de clases en Barcelona de 1913 a 1923', Estudios de Historia Social 42-3 (July-Dec.) 1987, 37-79 (partic. 44-7)
11. L. Ignacio, Los años del pistolerismo. Ensayo para una guerra civil (Madrid 1981), passim
12. C. Ealham, 'Policing the Recession', passim; 'Anarchism and Illegality in Barcelona 193 1-7', Contemporary European History, 4, 2 (1995) 133-51
13. Ealham, 'Policing the Recession', 28-34
14. Cf. Pamela B. Radcliff on the CNT's appeal through the politics of consumption, From Mobilization to Civil War. The Politics of Polarization in the Spanish City of Gijón, 1900-1937 (Cambridge 1996), 287-8
15. Radcliff, From M obilization to Civil War, passim
16. Radcliff, From Mobilization to Civil War, 128
17. A. Pestaña, Lo que aprendí en la vida, (Madrid 1972) Part 1, 88-9, 100-1; Part 2, 87
18. C. M. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas españoles y el poder (n.p, 1972), 44-5
19. In 1919 the CNT's Catalan regional federation, with a membership of over 400,000, represented half of the total CNT membership for Spain, J. Peirats, La CNT en la revalución española (Madrid 1978) Vol. 1, 27-8. Although the Catalan federation suffered a membership decline across 193 1-6, the fact that it retained its formidable mobilizing power in the streets and continued to provide the movement's most prominent leaders meant it retained its political dominance over the CNT nationally
20. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas españoles y el poder, 36-7
21. The Catalan federation's membership stood at c. 300,000 in 1930 but would drop to c. 150,000 by 1936. Estimates for the latter figure vary slightly, but none dispute the massive fall, Susana Tavera and Eulàlia Vega 'La afiliació sindical a la CRT de Catalunya', in (various authors), Revolució i Socialisme, Vol. 2 (Barcelona 1990)
22. B. Bolloten, The Spanish Civil War. Revolution and Counterrevolution (Hemel Hempstead 1991), 862 (n. 21)
23. M. Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists. The Heroic Years 1868-1936 (New York 1977), 234. By 1936
24. the next largest regional federations, Andalusia-Extremadura and the Levante had 120,000 and 50,000 respectively, S. Payne, The Spanish Revolution (London 1970) 199
25. The UGT already had a base among skilled sectors of telephone workers, Manuel Cruells, Mayo Sangriento. Barcelona 1937 (Barcelona 1970) 50
26. So-called because of its origins in the thirty signatories to a reformist CNT manifesto in August 1931, Peirats, La CNT en la revolución española (1) 59-63
27. J. Casanova, De la calle al frente. El anarcosindicalismo en España (1931-1939) (Barcelona 1997) 148-9. CNT congresses tended, in any case, to adopt decisions 'unanimously through acclamation'
28. Eulàlia Vega, Anarquistas y sindicalistas 1931-1936. La CNT y los Sindicatos de Oposición en el País Valenciano (Valencia 1987) 222-6
29. Payne, The Spanish Revolution, 284
30. C. Ealham, 'Frustrated Hopes. The 1931 Rent Strike and the Republic" (unpublished article)
31. N. Rider, 'The Practice of Direct Action: the Barcelona Rent Strike of 1931', in Go dway, ed., For Anarchism
32. '"Pimps", Politics and Protest: anti-vagrancy legislation in Republican Spain' (unpublished article), partic. 18, 29-31
33. For the overlap between male youth gangs and the FAI's direct action groups, Ealham '"Pimps", Politics and Protest', 4-5 and 'Policing the Recession', 17, 327-8 and 346-70
34. E. M oradiellos, 'British Political Strategy in the Face of the M ilitary R ising of 1936 in Spain', in Contemporary European History I, 2 (1992), 123-37
35. see also his two books, Neutralidad Benévolo (Oviedo 1990) and La perftdia de A lbión. El gobierno británico y la guerra civil española (Madrid 1996)
36. M, Alpert, A New International History of the Spanish Civil War (Basingstoke 1994)
37. J. Marichal, El Intelectual y la Político (Madrid 1990), 78
38. Javier Paniagua, introduction to Azaña's Discursos Parlamentarios (Madrid 1992)
39. It contained both urban professionals and white collar sectors as well as the Rabassaires (rural tenant and sharecroppers' union)
40. Bolloten, Spanish Civil War, 389
41. Solidaridad Obrera (Barcelona) 21 July 1936. It had fifteen members: CNT/FAI (5), UGT (3), POUM (1), PSUC (1), Rabassaires (1) ERC (3) Acció Catalana (small liberal Catalanist party) (1), P. Broué and E. Témime, The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain (London 1972) 131-2
42. Cruells, Mayo Sangriento, 12
43. '[The CNT] talked of the "new social economy and Companys was only too willing to talk as they did, for it blinded them and not him.' F, Morrow, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain (first pub. 1938, edn. used London 1976), 43
44. D. Abad de Santillán, Por qué perdimos la. guerra (Buenos Aires 1940), 53
45. The other two parties were the small Catalan section of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and the Partit Català Proletaria. Estimates of the precise membership levels of the four groups vary, with PCE sources tending to give a slightly higher figure for the Communists over the PSOE's Catalan section. But all figures indicate the minuscule size of the Proletarian Party and the USC's numerical dominance. The unified PSUC still only had somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 members at its creation (and almost certainly nearer 3,000), as compared to a POUM membership of some 8,000. For PSUC, see Joan Comorera, 'Catalonia, an Example for Unity', Communist International, April 1938, 376 and Bolloten, Spanish Civil War, 397 has selection of figures and sources
46. Morrow, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 45
47. See discussion of this below
48. Broué and Témime, The Revolution and the Civil War, 158-9
49. Fraser, Blood of Spain, 348-50
50. J. Casanova, Anarquismo y revolución en la sociedad rural aragonesa 1936-1938 (Madrid 1985) 119-29
51. Including all three provincial capitals, Teruel, Huesca and Zaragoza, the CNT's second 'capital', Casanova, Anarquismo y revoluci ́n, 99
52. Casanova, A narquismo y revolución, 128; Cruells, M ayo S angriento, 12
53. Pro- and anti-collectivist positions were part of a broader struggle for political power in Republican Aragon as Julián Casanova's study, A narquismo y revolución, makes clear
54. Contrary to the impression consistently given by Orwell in Homage to Catalonia (first pub, 1938, edn, used London 1977) see, for example, 61-2
55. A. C. Durgan, B.O.C. 1930-1936. El Bloque Obrero y Campesino (Barcelona 1996) (see partic. appendices 4-8)
56. Durgan, B.O.C. 1930-1936, 163-6. Barcelona capital remained the CNT's fief, Durgan, 'Trotsky, the POUM and the Spanish Revolution', Journal of Trotsky Studies, 2, 1994, 59
57. Some eight posts in all
58. Guerra y Revolución en España 1936-39, Vol. 2 (Moscow 1966), 18-19
59. Cf. Juan Peiró's radio talk of 23 October 1936, cited in Broué and Témime, The Revolution and the Civil War, 207. (Peiró was appointed industry minister in the central Republican cabinet of 4 N ovember.)
60. Peirats, La CNT en la revolución española (1) 200, 202; Lorenzo, Los anarquistas españoles y el poder, 184-5
61. Solidaridad Obrera, 4 N ovember 1936
62. Cf. the Catalan FAI's premier leader, Juan García Oliver, in Broué and Témime, The Revolution and the Civil War, 208
63. Full cabinet list in Bolloten, Spanish Civil War, 402-3. The PSUC had two portfolios - Public Services and Labour/Public Works
64. See discussion below
65. H.D. Freund, 'Dual Power in the Spanish evolution', in The Spanish Civil War. The View from the Left, special issue of Revolutionary History, Vol, 4, nos 1-2, winter 1991-2, 326-7
66. V. Alba, El marxismo en España 1919-1939: Historia del BOC y del POUM (Mexico 1973) 2 vols (1), 316 quoting POUM press (La Batalla [Barcelona]) criticism of 27 August; for POUM "s caution, V. Alba, Historia de la segunda república española (M exico 1960) 255 and El marxismo (1), 317
67. La Batalla, 14 and 18 November 1936 respectively, for two criticisms
68. 'It is one thing to attract the middle classes to the revolution and another to form a coalition giving them a decisive role as a governing force ... but we uphold their economic claims ... within the framework of the revolution', La Batalla, 23 February 1937
69. For example, POUM leader Andreu Nin accepted that, in the Spanish situation, unions not Soviets were the appropriate instrument of revolution
70. POUM Spanish and foreign press between July and December 1936 clearly attested to this, see examples/summary in Bolloten, Spanish Civil War, n. 48, 863
71. There is little to suggest the POUM's crucial political ambiguities in Homage to Catalonia - an omission which problematizes Orwell's explanation of later political developments
72. Solidaridad Obrera, 9 December 1936
73. Treball (Barcelona) 13 December 1936
74. The ostensible reason was libertarian prioritizing of the war portfolio in the Generalitat - so in the December crisis the CNT relinquished Supply in exchange for this, R. Fraser, Blood of Spain (Harmondsworth 1981), 375
75. Accordingly, during 1936 the Esquerra press was far less explicit in its antilibertarian stance than was the PSUC's, Bolloten Spanish Civil War, 410, 862 (n. 39)
76. J.M. Bricll, Política econòmica de la Generalitat (1936-1939) (Barcelona 1978), 33-40
77. Both the Generalitat and the central Republican authorities had decreed price controls after 18 July, but these had little effect, Bricall, Política econòmica, 106 (n, 14), 111; Rafael Abella, La vida cotidiana durante la guerra civil: la España republicana (Barcelona 1975), 192-3
78. Bricall, Política econòmica, 85 and ff
79. Widespread barter - properly-speaking - emerged during the second half of 1937, Bricall, Política econòmica, 141-2, But by the end of 1936 those with enough resources were using them to obtain agricultural produce direct - either with money or in exchange for other goods - often luxury/specialist or imported (such as coffee or tobacco). As Quaker reports indicate, city shops still had plenty of goods to sell in late 1936 and early 1937, but these were o ten tinned reserve stocks or luxury products which scarcely addressed the gathering staple food crisis, cf. E. Ucelay da Cal, La Catalunya Populista (Barcelona, 1982), 315-16
80. By decree of 7 January 1937
81. By autumn 1936 Generalitat publicity posters were issuing pleas against hoarding and speculation, for example, see Fontseré's November 1936 poster reproduced in Bricall, Política econòmica, 96 (no. 9)
82. Ucelay da Cal, Lo Catalunya Populista, 309-10
83. G. Howson, Arms for Spain (London 1998), passim
84. Prices rose another 13 per cent on top of a nearly two-thirds rise since July 1936, Fraser, Blood of Spain, 375-6
85. M. Seidman, Workers Against Work. Labor in Paris and Barcelona during the Popular Fronts (Berkeley 1991), 138
86. Ucelay da Cal, La Catalunya populista, 315, 316
87. C. Semprún-Maura, Revolución y contrarrevolución en Cataluña (1936-1937) (Barcelona 1978), 240 and ff.; Abella, La vida cotidiana, 196
88. Abella, La vida cotidiana, 188
89. C. Ealham, 'La lluita per al carrer: els vendedors ambulants durant la II República', (forthcoming article, L 'A venç)
90. The Quaker wartime reports (FSC (Spain), Friends House, London) contain much devastating evidence of this
91. Cf. P. Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley 1989), ch. 3, 103-33
92. Peirats, La CNT en la revolución española, (2) 137-8
93. Ucelay da Cal, La Catalunya populista, 303
94. H. Graham, Socialism and War. The Spanish Socialist Party in Power and Crisis 1936-1939 (Cambridge 1991), 64
95. Everywhere this brought the Communist Party into a bitter organizational competition with the Socialist party and union, PSOE/UGT, Graham, Socialism and War, especially 167-218
96. A popular cultural reflection of this in A bella, La vida cotidiana, 229
97. C. Vega, A. Monjo and M. Vilanova, 'Socialización y Hechos de Mayo", in Historiay Fuente Oral, no. 3 ('Esas Guerras.'), 1990, 95
98. Government officers would exploit internal differences in the assemblies between blue collar and administrative staff, or they would manoeuvre with UGT officials or, very occasionally, with pro-Popular Front members of the CNT. A summary of tactics in Vega, Monjo and Yilanova, 'Socialización y Hechos de Mayo", 97-8
99. Cf. 'Today we must begin the cleansing operation [neteja] to remove the dregs of the Revolution. Each organization will have a share in this task.', Manuel Cruells in Diari de Barcelona, 1 May 1937
100. Cruells, M ayo sangriento, 27-43
101. The committee also comprised UGT members and a government delegate
102. Freund, 'Dual Power in the Spanish Revolution', 326-7
103. M. Low and J. Breá, Red Spanish Notebook, (first pub. 1937, edn used, San Francisco 1979) 221-2
104. Peirats, La CNT en la revolutión española, (2) 192; Broué and Témime, The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain, 287
105. Fraser, Blood of Spain, 381, 382
106. cf. also Ealham's comments on the low public profile of pivotal branch activists, 'Policing the Recession', 148
107. M. Azaña, Memorias políticas y de guerra, (Barcelona 1981 [4th edn]) Vol. 2, 24.)
108. 'Hay grupos armados por la calle ... y no cabe más solución que escamparlos" Cruells, Mayo sangriento, 58
109. Bueso, Recuerdos de un cenetista, (2), 246
110. This was a splinter group formed by those from the Durruti militia column who refused to be incorporated to the Republican Army. For a summary, see Fraser, Blood of Spain, 381, (n. 1). Also Casanova, Anarquismo y revolución, 245-7; Semprún-Maura, Revolución v contrarrevolución en Cataluña, 249-50, 273; Durgan, 'Trotsky, the POUM and the Spanish Revolution', 59
111. Defensive resistance was the intent behind all the POUM's May manifestos, see the material cited by Semprún-Maura, Revolución y contrarrevolución en Cataluña, 275-6
112. Cruells, Mayo sangriento, 70; Broué and Témime, The Revolution and the Civil War, 284; Semprún Maura, Revolución y contrarrevolución en Cataluña, 281-2. According to Juan Andrade of the POUM executive, Spanish Trotskyists (i.e. the diminutive Bolshevik-Leninist group belonging to the Fourth International) who were present in Barcelona in May 1937 also agreed with the POUM's assessment of the situation - in spite of the triumphalism of their public manifestos, Fraser, Blood of Spain, 388 and Morrow, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain, 143-4
113. Semprún-M aura, Revolución y contrarrevolución en Cataluña, 242-52
114. 'No cultivéis en este momento el culto a los muertos'. The speech, broadcast on the night of 4 May, is cited by many authors, including Cruells, Mayo sangriento, 63;
115. Semprún-Maura, Revolución y contrarrevolución en Cataluña, 267
116. See the acute observations in Mary Low and Juan Breá, Red Spanish Notebook, 215, 216
117. K. Horna, Fotografiás de la guerra civil española (1937-1938), (M inisterio de Cultura exhibition catalogue, Salamanca 1992) 82, 87
118. Casanova, Anarquismo y revolución, 252
119. Semprún-M aura, Revolución y contrarrevolución en Cataluña, 277
120. Bolloten summarizes a number of contemporary press and other sour es, Spanish Civil War, 452, 875 (n. 19)
121. Semprún-Maura, Revolución y contrarrevolución en Cataluña, 284, 287-9
122. Souchy, The May Days. Barcelona 1937 (London 1987) 95-100
123. 138 Semprún-M aura, Revolucióny contrarrevolución en Cataluña, 287; Cruells, Mayo sangriento, 90
124. Bolloten, Spanish Civil War, 448-9; Cruells, Mayo sangriento, 71. Azaña's diary account of the May events in the 'Cuaderno de la Pobleta' (1937), Memorias políticasy de guerra, Vol. 2, 22-38
125. From October 1937 the central Republican government was also based in Barcelona
126. Solidaridad Obrera 9 M ay 1937; Bolloten, citing this and other contemporary press reports, calculates 12,000 arrived in total over a few days, Spanish Civil War, 460
127. Peirats, La CNT en la revolución española (2) 157-61
128. Souchy, The May Days, 98
129. J.M. Solé i Sabaté and J. Villarroya i Font, La repressió a la reraguarda de Catalunya (1936-1939) 2 vols (Barcelona 1989) (1) 212-16, partic. 213-14; Bolloten, Spanish Civil War, 452, 875 (n. 19)
130. By July 1937 the CNT estimated 800 of its members were in gaol in Barcelona alone, Morrow, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain, 144; Emma Goldman, 'Political Persecution in Republican Spain', Spain and the World, 10 December 1937
131. also cited in Souchy, The M ay Days. Barcelona 1937, 104-107
132. Solé i Sabaté and Villarroya i Font, La repressió a la reraguarda de Catalunya, (1) 217-24
133. 260 and 279-86 on Republican work camps
134. Later, imprisoned members of the POUM were caught between Stalinist revenge action and Francoist punishment as Francoist troops bore down on Barcelona in 1939, J. Gorkín, Caníbales políticos. Hitler y Stalin en España (Mexico 1941)
135. G. Regler, The Owl of Minerva (London 1959) 324-5
136. Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (Harmondsworth 1977), 876. On POUM and other left prisoners
137. E. Goldman, 'Political Persecution in Republican Spain', 105-7
138. Durgan, 'Trotsky, the POUM and the Spanish Revolution', n. 5, 69; H. Graham, 'War, Modernity and Reform: the Premiership of Juan Negrín', in P. Preston and A.L. Mackenzie, eds, The Republic Besieged (Edinburgh 1996), 191
139. Cf. Casanova's comments, Anarquismo y revolución, 247. Andrade's comments distancing the Spanish Communists from responsibility for the repression should be seen in the context of the postwar tendency of POUM survivors to construct the Comintern as the monolithic author of their political downfall, Andrade in Fraser, Blood of Spain, 388
140. By stressing Comintern protagonism in N in's disappearance and that of the Spanish Communist Party leadership in POUM repression, PSUC leaders in the main avoided the more problematic question of the involvement of PSUC members in anti-POUM violence both during and after the May Days - see for example Pere Ardiaca in Fraser, Blood of Spain, 390
141. Spain and the World press report, 22 September 1937, in Souchy, The May Days, 100; Cruells, Mayo sangriento, 82
142. Text of dissolution decree in Fraser, Blood of Spain, 390
143. Casanova, Anarquismo y revolución, 258-60. The Aragonese Council already contained representatives from all the Popular Front parties. Its dissolution meant the normalization of Aragonese government on the basis of the municipality