Why We Lost the War – Diego Abad De Santillán
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Why We Lost the War – Diego Abad de Santillán The war in Spain, 1936-1939—The basic reasons for its outcome—Preaching in the desert—The judgment of Solomon This is the first time that we have been defeated in the long struggle for the economic and social progress of Spain as a modern revolutionary movement; in order to find another comparable defeat on this scale we have to go back to the battlefields of Villalar in the first third of the 16th century. Just like the Phoenix who rises from his ashes, we have always rebounded from all our disasters, overcoming terribly dramatic moments of political and religious inquisition, leaving shreds of bleeding flesh in the claws of the enemy. Hunger and persecution, jail and prison, torture and assassination, nothing could humble us, nothing could defeat us. Those who fell in battle were immediately replaced by new combatants. One generation followed another in a merciless struggle in which the best, the most generous and the most intelligent representatives of the Spanish people died with a smile on their lips, defying the powers of ignorance and slavery, trusting in the triumph of justice. This time, however, we feel defeated. Defeated! For whom, for what kind of men, for what race, for what people, does this word “defeated” have the meaning that it has for us? Happy are those who died in the struggle, because they did not have to suffer a fate that is a thousand times worse than death: a real defeat, a definitive defeat for our generation! Our generation pledged its blood to the triumph of a great cause and has been entangled for posterity in a net of complicities that we would like to clarify so that we will be judged for our merits or our defects, for our correct actions or our mistakes, but in all events as a historic Spanish force with the same resolve and the same fortitude as the Spanish people who fought against the Roman invasion, against the absolutism of the Habsburgs in the unforgettable feats of the comuneros and the brotherhoods, against Napoleon’s hosts under the command of the invincible General No Importa [“It Doesn’t Matter”—a favorite expression of Napoleon’s], and against absolutist and anti-Spanish Bourbonism from Philip V to Alfonso XIII. Say what you will of us.1 Say that we are pessimists. We are motivated by the intention of being sincere, of expressing our feelings, of giving faithful testimony 1 Note to the reader: the author uses the first person plural throughout this entire book, with a few exceptions, to refer to himself, his texts and his actions. I have concerning what we have done and what we have seen, and we think it is important to make it known that, betrayed, defeated and deceived, we failed, at the side of the Spanish people, on our own terms, without having either stricken or besmirched our flag. A sinister legend has been woven around us. Politicians on the left and on the right compete in bringing fuel to the fire of all the fantasies that have been imputed to us, and it is even possible that the left is worse in this regard than the right. Our organizations were originally formed and subsequently grew under clandestine conditions, because they were not allowed a public existence, and this prevented us from addressing and responding to our traducers, because doing so would have been tantamount to informing on ourselves. The literature of the monarchy is replete with alleged discoveries of our relations with the republicans; the literature of the republicans speaks insidiously of our relations with the monarchists. In addition to the old more or less terrifying legend, we now have the new legend and they want to turn us into scapegoats to console those who agree with them, despite all the apparent differences, in order to reconstruct false virginities at our expense. The vast literature published in foreign countries about our war and revolution is plagued with inaccuracies and malice, and paints a picture of us that borders on the ridiculous when not on the despicable, among the writers who supported the Republic as well as among those who supported Franco. There are some very honorable exceptions, but they are too few. It is almost a duty, after all the outrages that have been publicly attributed to the men of the Iberian Anarchist Federation, before and after July 1936, for the average citizen to attribute every defect to us and blame us for every misfortune. The military phase of the tragedy of Spain has concluded, the F.A.I. is no more. Isn’t it high time, now that we have been defeated, for someone who held high-level positions and performed functions of the greatest responsibility in that organization, both before and after the war, to open the curtain a little and tell the truth? We do not want to defend ourselves, because, despite all the slanders that have come to our attention from even a brief glance at a small sample of the literature about our war, we do not feel that we are the ones who are on trial. On many occasions in the past, we called attention to our own deficiencies and mistakes, whether personal or factional. Silence, however, when those who have plenty of retained this usage in this translation. The reader must discern from the context, however, when Santillán is talking about himself, and when he is talking about his close circle of friends, or the FAI, or the “libertarian movement”, or even the Spanish people (Translator’s note). reasons to keep quiet are doing all the talking, and when those few survivors who are in a position to shed some light on these questions are saying nothing, is in our view culpable.2 These pages are intended to serve as a contribution to the history of, and an homage to, the Spanish people, the only eternal value, worthy and pure, which must re-emerge despite the defeat, even if it takes years and years of martyrdom, unprecedented even in a country where martyrs are so abundant and come in so many varieties, when none of us who offered our tribute of labor and life to the great liberation movement of 1936-1939 are still standing. From the catastrophe we have suffered, we have only salvaged within ourselves our faith in the resurrection of Spain, by virtue of the same spirit and the same longing that inspired us and that inspired our ancestors for centuries. Governments, despotic regimes, tyrannies, and political systems based on privilege come and go, but a people like ours, which has not yet disappeared, is of such a unique vitality that it has been able to resist the attacks of those who have always sought to distort the meaning and direction of its history. In this resurrection it is very likely that the old parties and organizations will not survive at all; other men and other names will take up the positions on the battlefield that we have left vacant with our defeat and they will revive, with greater power and more experience, the project that was drowned in rivers of blood and terror during our generation. If the military uprising of the generals triggered a major war, this was entirely due to our violent intervention. The Republic did not know how to defend itself, nor was it even capable of defending itself, against the attack; we were the ones who, in defense of the people, made the survival of the Republic, and organizing for the war, possible. And we were not, nor were we ever, republicans. Just like the war for independence, which brought the despicable Bourbons back to the Spanish 2 Not to mention other works, we sincerely ask ourselves just what kind of opinion can be formed by the English readers of the Duchess of Atholl’s book, Searchlight on Spain (Katharine Marjory Stewart-Murray, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 364 p.), with a print run of hundreds of thousands of copies, which was written for the most part on the basis of information obtained from the communists and from the Negrín Government’s pro-communist staff members. The book often refers to us, but whereas the author had interviewed the leading figures of every party, she did not think it was necessary to get any first-hand information concerning our conduct and our aspirations. [This footnote and all the following footnotes are the author’s, unless otherwise indicated—Translator’s supplemental note.] Throne, the restoration of the Republic was not our goal; our goal was instead to recover the historical rhythm of our poor country, so we crushed the military revolt across a huge expanse of the Peninsula; our goal was not the consolidation of a Republic that did not deserve to live, either, but the defense of a great people, who returned to claim their rightful place and wanted to take the reins of their fate in their own hands. Has the Republic paid us back the way Ferdinand VII repaid those who restored him to his throne with his cowardly surrender to Napoleon? Even in this respect we see our identification with the cause of the real Spain verified. If we were to have remained idle in July 1936, if we had obeyed the directives of the republican government, the idiotic recommendations of someone like Casares Quiroga, the Minister of War, we would have handed ourselves over to the execution squads, along with the republican and socialist leaders of every variety, but the war would not have been possible, because the Republic did not have the forces to defend itself, and the military, clerical and monarchist revolt would have been totally successful throughout Spain and its colonies.