Revolution
On the 19th of July 1936, revolution broke out in Spain. Workers took up weapons and went into the streets and defeated the military and the Guardia Civil in many places. The military had revolted the day before in an attempt to overthrow the young republic. The people who had been oppressed for centuries finally took things into their own hands and they wanted everything to change.
The land, the factories, the streets, everything for everyone. The churches were plundered, their contents burnt, the valuables taken to the committees and distributed, buildings and cars were seized and immediately covered with CNT and FAI (the anarchist trade-unions), the judges thrown out, newspapers taken over, posters put up to inform the ordinary people (many of whom were illiterate), factories and property distributed and prisoners freed. It was an enormous outburst of enthusiasm with one main idea: breaking with the past. No churches, bosses, military and guardias, but peasants and workers who were in control of their own lives.
In the 30s, Spain was one of the poorest countries of Europe, with intense contradictions. The ruling class was a small, but very rich group of large landowners, supported by a very conservative Catholic Church, which was also extremely wealthy itself (since the Middle Ages, the interests of the state and the Roman-Catholic hierarchy were one and the same). Bishops and abbots were not only spiritual authorities but also large landowners, feudal barons who meted out their own form of justice. All this was protected by governments, army and Guardia Civil.
On the other side was the enormous poverty of the people, mostly day-laborers and peasants. The wages, if there was work, were very low. There were no social provisions and malnutrition was prevalent. No one owned their own piece of land. Many lived in slum swellings or sand-pits. Medical care hardly existed. Women lived only for making babies and everyone was supposed to accept their god-given lot. Illiteracy was intentionally maintained. Everybody had to keep their mouth shut.
Efforts to change this dictatorship were punished with cruel repression: the rounding up of revolutionaries, mass arrests and executions.
In this state of affairs, the peasant-organizations and the industrial unions formed an anarchist trade-union in 1911, called the CNT (Confederation Nacional del Trabajo). This trade union which came from the people grew very quickly . One year later there were already 30,000 members. Landownders took criminals into service to shoot down the anarchists. The CNT had to defend itself, and special groups called "solidarios" took up the fight against these "pistoleros" (from these special groups the FAI, Federacion Anarquista Iberica, was later founded. FAI was the core of anarchists within the CNT who dealt with ideological and political direction). They also carried out actions to free imprisioned comrades. What was once a series of local strikes and land-occupations grew now into a network of groups who supported each other.
The Spanish people felt at home in the CNT because of its clear politics:
- There was no bureaucratic apparatus with leaders. The members of the head committee were workers themselves and lived from their own wages.
- The CNT was never an organization requiring contributions and so never had financial reservers.
- The CNT never negotiated between bosses and workers, nor did they negotiate work and pay conditions, they didn't have any strike funds, in short they never allowed themselves to become "social partners" with the bosses.
The CNT wanted:
- direct ownership of each industry by the workers in that industry; the land for those who worked it.
- direction of the CNT through local committees, and resistance against any form of centralized authority.
- relentless hostility to bourgeoisie and church.
- the only way to make social revolution is through direct action: strikes, sabotage, expropriation, armed revolt.
In 1931 the 8-year-old military dictatorship was ended. The terror of Primo de Rivera made the resistance grow. The "left-wing" parties (from petty bourgeoisie party to communists, but not including the CNT) formed a coalition and were elected to power. Spain became a republic.
Political discord remained, however. Within a year, there was already an attempt at a coup d'état. Another year later, the government fell. New elections were announced. The anarchists called for a boycott. A monarchy or a republic made no difference for them. Many women, who acquired the right to vote under the republic, still seemed under the influence of the church and voted Right. And the Right won. All reforms were undone. Among all the left-wing workers-organizations (such as the communist PCF, the social-revolutionary POUM and the socialist UGT and PSUC) the CNT had the largest support, i.e. more than 1,000,000 members (in Barcelona more than 80% of the workers were anarchists). The anarchists organized one strike after another. In Asturia, 3000 striking miners were brutally murdered by general Franco. More than 30,000 people were imprisoned.
For the 1936 elections, all that was not Right united in a Popular Front. The anarchists also urged people to vote, not because they were for government, but to obtain the amnesty that was promised for their comrades in prison. The Popular Front barely won, the prisoners were released, but it didn't become peaceful. The right wanted to take power. Murder-attacks, economic sabotage and capital flight were intended to create the chaos that would justify a coup. On the 17th of June, the time was ripe: with the promised support of Hitler and Mussolini in mind, Franco took Spanish Morocco and then moved forward to Spain. But the people reacted overwhelmingly against Franco's action. The CNT knew immediately what was to be done: make revolution. The republican government hesitated in taking action against Franco, but the people took up arms, defeated the military in several places and took everything that should have been theirs in the first place: the land, the factories, schools, transportations, everything.
The social revolution went into its first days. Within the factories and the militias, and on the land, everywhere a revolutionary atmosphere prevailed: commandant and soldier, peasant and military man, they treated each other like equals. Everybody got the same wages, wore the same clothes, ate the same food, called each other by the familiar "you" or "comrade". Men and women were equal. There were no bosses or servants, no whores, no priests and no bootlickers. The people had the power and organized everything themselves, the government was swept aside.
The CNT saws this as the only way to beat Franco: not only to defeat the military, but above all carry on the revolution. Through the social revolution, no one would govern but the workers themselves.
