Workers Power and the Spanish Revolution In Spain’s national elections in February Each sindicato unico had “sections” that of 1936, a repressive right-wing government had their own assemblies and elected shop was swept out of office and replaced by a stewards (delegados). In manufacturing coalition of liberals and socialists. Taking industries like textile or metalworking, advantage of a less repressive environment, there was a “section” for each firm or plant. Spain’s workers propelled the largest strike In the construction industry, the “sections” wave in Spanish history, with dozens of corresponded to the various crafts. All of the citywide general strikes and hundreds of autonomous industrial unions in a city or partial strikes. By the end of June a million county (comarca) were grouped together into workers were out on strike. a local labor council (federación local). Barely a month after the election, the Land The unions were part of a larger context of Workers Federation led 80,000 landless laborers movement institutions. The libertarian Left in Spain into a seizure of three thousand farms in the also organized alternative schools and an extensive “Spanish Siberia” — the poverty-stricken region of network of ateneos — storefront community Estremadura1. With the country at a high pitch of centers. The ateneos were centers for debates, debate over its future, political polarization was cultural events, literacy classes (between 30 and 50 punctuated by tit-for-tat killings of Right and Left percent of the population was illiterate in the ‘30s), activists. With right-wing politicians openly calling and so on. A characteristic idea of Spanish for an army takeover, the widely anticipated army anarchism was the empowerment of ordinary coup began in Spain on July 19th. people, preparing them for effective participation in For the first time in Spanish history, the people the struggle for social transformation. aggressively resisted an army takeover attempt. The libertarian syndicalism of the CNT The coup was defeated in two-thirds of the was a form of “prefigurative” politics. In country. The unions moved to confiscate vast developing a union based on participation in amounts of capitalist assets, putting most of decision-making through the assemblies and Spain’s economy under worker management. unpaid, elected delegados, CNT militants believed they were practicing a form of Unions built their own revolutionary labor army to organization that was a foretaste of a society fight the Spanish military. The military’s attempt where workers ran industry and the society to crush the country’s labor movement propelled was self-managed through the participatory the working class revolution that the Spanish elite democracy of assemblies. had long feared. The civil war itself was class The region of Spain along the struggle in its most extreme form. Mediterranean coast from Murcia north to Two of the key players in this drama Catalonia and Aragon corresponds roughly were the country’s main labor federations. to the territory of the medieval Kingdom of The National Confederation of Labor Aragon-Catalonia, which was merged with (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo — Castille in the 15th century to form the CNT) had 1.6 million members in early 1936 modern Spanish nation-state. This region (according to government statistics). The was the main stronghold of the CNT in the CNT was the result of nearly seven decades 1930s. In Aragon and Murcia 80 percent of of anarchist labor organizing in Spain. Since union members belonged to the CNT; in 1919 the CNT had been based on the Valencia it was 70 percent. In industrial sindicato unico (“single union”) — Catalonia 60 percent of the union members autonomous local industrial unions. In were in the CNT. “Union density” in Barcelona in 1936 the CNT construction and Catalonia in 1936 was quite high — 60 metallurgical sindicatos unicos each had percent of the region’s 900,000 wage-earners more than 30,000 members. belonged to a union. The second major labor organization in To deal with the growing threat of the Spain was the General Union of Workers CNT in Catalonia, the head of the police, (Union General de Trabajadores — UGT), Severiano Martinez Anido, began recruiting with 1.4 million members in early 1936. The gunmen to assassinate CNT officials and UGT was aligned with the Spanish Socialist activists, with the assistance of the police. Workers Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Employers and officials of the Roman Español — PSOE) although the Communist Catholic Church provided funding for the Party was also active within it. The UGT was death squads. During this period there were the majority union organization in the 440 attempted murders of workers in Castillian central regions of Spain, including Catalonia2. Workers were being forced to join Madrid, and in the coal-mining region of “yellow” trade unions, the Sindicatos Libres Asturias on the north Atlantic coast. The (“Free Unions”), at the point of a gun. A UGT Land Workers Federation (Federación small core of religious, Carlist skilled Nacional de Trabajadores de la Tierra — workers had formed the Sindicatos Libres. FNTT) had a half million members in the Carlism was a form of right-wing Catholic spring of 1936. With its campaign for politics in Spain. In response, some young agrarian reform through land seizures, the anarchists formed armed action groups, FNTT was a mass revolutionary movement which retaliated by assassinating employers in the countryside. and church leaders who were believed to be funding the death squads. The Boom and the Death Squads For years Spain had been trying to hold The mass mobilizations and the social onto its last scrap of empire in Morocco. In polarization leading up to the civil war were 1923 a military campaign in Morocco, the culmination of a social crisis that had promoted by King Alfonso, led to a disaster been brewing in Spain for decades. The crisis in which 10,000 Spanish soldiers were killed. began to manifest itself during the World The army clamped a dictatorship on Spain, War I era. Spain was neutral during the war headed by General Miguel Primo de Rivera, and was able to trade with both sides. A partly as a means to suppress outrage over massive industrialization and urbanization this incident. The CNT was banned boom got underway in Catalonia. This would throughout the country. Primo de Rivera continue during the world boom of the 1920s. introduced a scheme of incorporating the Barcelona was the fastest growing city in unions into the state via Arbitration Boards; western Europe in this period. Industrial he encouraged participation by the UGT as a suburbs grew up rapidly around new “responsible” alternative to the CNT. The factories. Barcelona had been a major Catholic “Free Unions,” preaching the trading center on the Mediterranean since harmony of labor and capital and a form of the middle ages, and was home to an proletarian clerical-fascism, competed with entrepreneurial business class. the UGT for representation on the The economic boom of the World War I Arbitration Boards. With state and employer years also led to growth for Spain’s two backing, the Free Unions had formed a major labor organizations. The Russian national organization by 1925 (Federación revolution of February 1917 also encouraged Nacional de Sindicatos Libres — FNSL) with a growing radical trend. The high point of 200,000 members3, nearly as large as the labor struggle during the war was a national UGT. general strike in 1917, supported by both the UGT and CNT. In Barcelona the CNT were Mass Rent Strike masters of the city until the army moved in In 1930 the king fled the country as the to suppress the strike. (Victor Serge’s novel dictatorship collapsed. Elections brought a Birth of Our Power is an impressionistic coalition of liberals and socialists to power, account of the 1917 Barcelona general to govern the new Republic. The CNT unions strike.) regained the legal right to organize. Faced with growing unemployment, and During the boom of the ‘20s, rents had a desire to rebuild their organization, the risen by 150 percent in Barcelona. Crowding, CNT sindicato unico of construction workers construction of shanties by unscrupulous in Barcelona began a campaign of invading landlords and housing without basic construction sites to sign up members and to amenities like running water had become demand that contractors hire 15 percent common. In early 1931 activists in the CNT more workers. The construction union began to discuss the possibility of a struggle argued that the housing sector in Catalonia around rents, and articles about the housing had made super-profits during the boom of crisis began appearing in the big daily paper the ‘20s — profits that were tied down in operated by the CNT in Barcelona, unproductive investments. Increasing the Solidaridad Obrera. number of people employed by the industry The rent struggle began with a mass would put more money into circulation, meeting of the CNT construction union in helping to counter the depression. With April of 1931. At that meeting Arturo Parera workers pouring into the CNT sindicato and Santiago Bilbao proposed the formation unico, the Catholic FNSL construction craft of an Economic Defense Commission, with unions collapsed. the participation of other unions. Parera and In the late ‘20s a broad debate had begun Bilbao were both prominent members of the in the CNT about the union’s future Iberian Anarchist Federation (Federación direction. One aspect of this debate was the Anarquista Iberica — FAI). The FAI was a proposal to group local unions into national loose amalgam of anarchist groups that industry unions for coordinated action worked mainly as caucuses within the CNT against employers in an industry throughout unions. the country. Joan Peiró — a self-educated After a series of neighborhood meetings, glass worker and an influential syndicalist the rent campaign settled on a demand for a theoretician — was able to persuade a CNT 40 percent rent rollback at a mass meeting at congress to allow national industry unions in the Palace of Fine Arts on July 5th.