Chapter Eleven the Consequences of the May Events

Chapter Eleven The Consequences of the May Events

The May events in Catalonia had profound political repercussions both for Catalonia and for the Republic as a whole. Although the fighting was over, things did not return to how they were before the confrontations began, and there were clear winners and losers. The POUM lost the most: in an attack that represented the culmination of a defamation campaign initiated in January under the influence of the Soviet Union, it was depicted by the PCE and the PSUC as the sole organiser and provocateur of the clashes in Barcelona. The secretary general of the PCE gave the Stalinist line in a meeting that took place on 9 May in Valencia: In Spain, who but the Trotskyists has inspired the criminal putsch in Catalonia? La Batalla on 1 May is full of shameless incitements for the putsch-styled coup. Among other things, it says: ‘The politics of the Popular Front led Spain down the road to the military coup of July 1936’. That is the same thing that Franco says, that his military coup was provoked by the formation of the Popular Front.1 On 13 May, Treball, the PSUC’s daily newspaper, described the POUM as an ‘organisation entirely com- plicit with secret fascist agents, a fifth column’.2 On 15 May, in a regular meeting of the Republican Government, Communist ministers Vicente Uribe and

1. Díaz 1939, p. 481. 2. Treball, 13 May 1937. 118 • Chapter Eleven

Jesús Hernández demanded that President Largo Caballero dissolve the POUM. They offered copies of the POUM newspaper, La Batalla, as proof for their demands. Largo Caballero’s opposition to such an outlandish claim, described a few months later by the minister of industry, Joan Peiró of the CNT, was blunt: Caballero stated that any government that he presided over would not set the precedent of dissolving a political party for the motives that had been alleged. ‘If there is anything criminal’, he said, pointing to the copies of La Batalla on the table of the Council, ‘then let it be sent to the Attorney General ( fiscal) and let him dissolve the POUM and everything else proposed if there are suf- ficient reasons. But for me to ever let the Government do that . . .’3 Caballero’s response cost him his position. Uribe and Hernández provoked a new government crisis that was resolved two days later with the formation of a new cabinet presided over by the socialist Juan Negrín. The new government formed by Negrín (President, Treasury Minister, and Minister of the Economy) was José Giral (State), Indalecio Prieto (National Defence), Manuel Irujo ( Justice), Julián Zugazagoitia (Interior), Jesús Hernández (Public Education and Health), Vicente Uribe (Agriculture), B. Giner de los Ríos (Public Works and Communications), and Jaume Aiguader (Labour and Social Assistance). Significantly, the CNT held no portfolios in the new government, agreeing to participate only if Largo Caballero continued as President. This was the government that would lead the repression against the POUM. On 28 May 1937, La Batalla was suspended. The police confiscated the daily and the POUM press on charges of ‘incitement to rebel’, after criminal proceedings had begun in the Supreme Court. The next day, POUM leader Julián Gorkín testi- fied before court number 4 of Barcelona: he was charged with the same crime, a charge based on the publication of the article leading to the paper’s suspension.4 On 15 June, the government forbade all political action by the party, arrested its leaders, seized its offices, expelled its members from the city government and other committees, and suspended publication of the rest of its newspapers, of which there were several in Catalonia. On 16 June, the POUM’s executive com- mittee was arrested in Barcelona. Two days later, the offices of the chief of police announced the discovery of a spy network in Barcelona: Last night, in the offices of the chief of police, the following note was brought to our attention: For a few days, agents from Madrid have been working to uncover an important network of spies operating in Barcelona. After arriving

3. See Joan Peiró’s ‘La tragedia del POUM. El silenci seria una complicitat’, published in the Mataró daily Llibertat, 8 July 1937 (Peiró 1937). 4. La Vanguardia, 28 and 29 May 1937. [TN] Gorkín, a pseudonym for Julián Gómez (1902–87), was a member of the POUM and a writer for La Batalla.