Chapter Ten the May Events of 1937
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Chapter Ten The May Events of 1937 After the formation of the new ‘trade union’ govern- ment, Catalan society faced even more difficulties, and relations among those involved in the political process deteriorated further. The shortage of food was the most serious issue. The scarcity had been acute since the beginning of the war, especially in Barcelona, and it was so serious by the end of July 1936 that the Central Supplies Committee was urging Catalan farm- ers to inform their local governments of the livestock they had available for public consumption. The com- mittee also asked farmers to continue bringing their goods to the Barcelona markets so that citizens in the capital would not be without provisions.1 At the beginning of October, with the war an unde- niable reality, the Central Supplies Committee initi- ated a campaign to put an end to the daily food queues that were causing numerous confrontations.2 A few weeks later, the Supplies Ministry began to distribute ration cards to households for access to scarce goods.3 People were already making trips from Barcelona into Catalonia’s agricultural areas, such as Maresme, Baix Llobregat, and Garraf, in search of food. These trips became so frequent that at the beginning of December the Supplies Ministry decided to confiscate packages with meat, eggs, and chickens at the city’s entry points. The Crònica diària wrote that the Ministry considered the ability to leave the city in search of food ‘an unfair 1. Crònica diària, 31 July 1936. 2. Crònica diària, 3 October 1936. 3. Crònica diària, 20 October 1936. 106 • Chapter Ten advantage for those who had the means to travel. Furthermore, it was well- proven that 90 percent of the goods that were brought into the city were then sold at exorbitant prices and were not, naturally, being purchased by workers’.4 Tensions increasingly mounted as people began to look for politicians to blame for the scarcity. Soon after the formation of the new government, the CNT and the FAI accused the new minister of supplies and the secretary general of the PSUC, Joan Comorera, of being responsible for the bread shortage in Barce- lona. Meanwhile, the PSUC mobilised its members to organise a demonstration of support for Comorera and to blame instead the committees, particularly the ‘supplies committees’ controlled by the CNT, which were responsible for the dis- tribution of food in Barcelona. There were thirteen such committees, one in each district, and each was charged with running the warehouse for its respective district. The committees were in charge of doing everything possible to provide food for the sick and milk for children, and they were to ensure that everything else was sold in the most rational way possible. It did not take long for tensions to escalate. On the same day that the Supplies Ministry called publicly for calm (serenidad) in the face of the bread shortage and stated that enough wheat and flour would be arriving to feed the rearguard and the front in just a few days, the first protest was organised by women in Barcelona demanding ‘fewer com- mittees, more bread, and just one government, the Generalitat’.5 The day before, in the neighbouring city of Hospitalet de Llobregat, armed groups had stolen all the supplies and caused significant damage in an assault on two provisions co-operatives (L’Avenç and Respeto Mutuo).6 Protests by women against the food shortages continued into January and February 1937. There were two on 5 January. The first one took place in front of the Palace of the Generalitat and led to President Companys meeting with a commission of women who carried a banner saying: ‘Anti-fascist women demand the abolition of the Control Committees. We want the government of the Generalitat. U.H.P’.7 The second protest occurred in the early evening in front of the Supplies Ministry on Paseo de Pi i Margall street, and in this case women 4. Crònica diària, 9 December 1936. 5. Crònica diària, 26 December 1936 and La Vanguardia, 27 December 1936. 6. La Vanguardia, 27 December 1936. 7. [TN] The UHP, or Unión de Hermanos Proletarios (Proletarian Brothers’ Union), was a broad alliance of labour organisations and parties that formed during the 1934 revolu- tion in Asturias. The acronym became a popular battle cry on the Republican side during the Civil War. The UHP was seen as heroic among the Spanish and Catalan working class, and the PSUC women wanted, no doubt, to associate their activity with the revolutionary Asturian miners. .