51 17 July 1936.
52 Statement from the CNT National Committee, 14 February 1936, as reprinted in Peirats, op. cit. Vol. 1. According to the review Noir & Rouge No. 41, p. 16, the statement was drafted by the CNT’s then national secretary, Horacio M. Prieto. It is interesting to compare this outlook with that of Pestaña, by then leader of the Syndicalist Party: “Q. Is the rightist menace—of a coup d’état—one to be reckoned with, for instance? A. No! They have missed the boat. As far as the Right is concerned, the period of instability—which was very worrying at times—is over. A purge of the army and machinery of state will strip them of any chance of acting. Their current modus operandi—assassinations and terrorist attacks—is proof of their weakness”. [Interview of 18 May 1936, published in La Révolution prolétarienne, 10 June 1936, p. 224]. There is anecdotal evidence in José Robuster’s testimony, as it appears in Víctor Alba’s Colectivizadores, to bear out just how shortsighted Pestaña was with regard to what happened in Barcelona on 18 July 1936.
Chapter Two: Catalonia as a Model: Self-Management Emerges in Barcelona; The First Contradictions
Catalonia was where anarcho-syndicalism organised best at grassroots levels, although there was a separation with the upper echelons of the CNT—a phenomenon that set the pattern for other regions.
The army was defeated mostly by the CNT-FAI and Civil Guard and Assault Guards, as well as by a number of Catalanist and POUM militants. Catalonia’s Generalitat government, headed by Companys, had shown itself incapable of fight, even though it had been behind an outbreak of insurrection back in October 1934. “The proletariat armed itself; we did not have enough arms to issue to the proletariat”.53
The Catalan CNT’s regional committee found itself with almost complete mastery of the situation by 20 July 1936. A regional plenum of local and comarcal committees was hurriedly convened for that afternoon! In the wake of the attempted revolutions in 1932, January and December 1933 and in Asturias in 1934, and the publicity given to libertarian communism and the resolution passed on the subject by the Zaragoza Congress a month and a half previously, the policy to be followed was obvious, but the decision making conformed to Horacio M. Prieto’s understanding of libertarian communism [see Appendix V].
Marianet (aka Mariano Vázquez, secretary of the regional committee of Catalonia) later wrote: “[The CNT-FAI] did not let itself be over-awed by the climate, nor was it intoxicated by the swift, emphatic, resounding victory it had achieved. And amid this utter mastery of the situation, the membership looked at the wider picture and exclaimed: The towns in fascist hands must be liberated! Libertarian communism is non-existent. We must first thrash the enemy wherever he may be”.54
At a gathering of some 2,000 militants on 21 or 22 July 1936, after Vázquez and García Oliver had announced that libertarian communism was being set aside, José Peirats made a highly critical riposte, which was cut short by Juanel who gave him a tongue-lashing.55 Faced with such closed minds, Peirats walked out, as did the comrades from Hospitalet de Llobregat, except for Xena. Federica Montseny threatened to have them ‘seen to’.56
Although the leadership sang the praises of alliance with the republican bourgeoisie and put their anarchist aspirations on hold, the rank and file, espousing Horacio M. Prieto’s rationale and following the Isaac Puente line, was not interested in such considerations. Which explains the emergence of self-management in spite of everything, and despite all the leaders.
The 21 July 1936 edition of Solidaridad Obrera, on its front page, carried the following statement from the regional committee:
In these grave times, it behooves each and every one of us to abide by the general watchwords emanating from this committee. We have a common foe [illegible] in fascism. We are taking it on. Our struggle is with it, and it is it that we must crush. Nothing more, nothing less. At the same time, cognizant of our responsibilities, we have determined that all essential supply services should remain in operation, as should communications, lest the people run short of basic foodstuffs, and lest priceless liaison be interrupted.
—Regional Committee, Barcelona, 20 July 1936
Note: This very morning we broadcast instructions over the radio for the bakers, milkmen, market employees, etc., to return to work so that vital necessities should not run short […]
This statement, then, asserted that they had reverted to an almost normal economy, something that sat uneasily alongside the repeated exhortations to libertarian communism associated with previous essays on revolution.
Two different watchwords very soon surfaced: Back to work57 and Against looting.58
At the same time, two campaigns were launched: 1) Alliances entered into with other sectors against the military, despite the notable earlier resentments that still simmered;59 and 2) Protection for foreign-owned assets, given the danger of intervention if this was not done.60
Meanwhile, with the military barely routed in Barcelona, the CNT-FAI decided to raise militias for the liberation of Zaragoza. Since the unions had taken over the lynchpins of the economy—metalworking, transport, energy services, communications, trade and provisions—from 24 July on it proved possible to outfit some 2,500 men and women.
Metalworking: On page two of its 22 July 1936 edition, Solidaridad Obrera announced that the CNT metalworking union was inviting “iron boilermakers and welders” to adapt production centres for “the armor-plating of trucks and other necessary tasks”.
On 12 August, a journalist writing in the Boletín de Información CNT-FAI wrote: “In metalworking firms, as a result of the events in July, two new forms of administration have surfaced. One, involving worker management without restrictions of any sort, by means of take-over. The other represents a greatly attenuated bourgeois mode of administration through monitoring activity carried out by workers’ factory committees”.
By way of an example of straightforward take-over, let us look at the Torrens Company, which employed 500 workers and which armor-plated six trucks during the fortnight after 20 July 1936. And if we are looking for examples of worker monitoring, it affected several factories, inclining us to the view that this was the most widespread arrangement.
Barret S.A., with a workforce of 2,000, was not taken over because: “The Belgian consulate brought it to our attention that 80 percent of its capital came from the country it represents”.61 The inference is that it was not turned over to armor plating. At the Girona Company—with its 1,500 workforce—4 armored trucks were produced between late July and 6 August; at the Vulcano Company, with its 520 workers and joint CNT-UGT committee, trucks were being armor-plated and it was “working around the clock”.
It should be said that, for blatantly ingratiating purposes, the Generalitat had passed laws decreeing the forty-hour working week and a 15 percent wage increase.62 The CNT spoke out against the cut in work hours in a time of war, and against wage increases at a time of economic straits.
As might have been expected, torn between the two schools of thought, quite a few workers and collectives took the course of least resistance, boosted by the all too reasonable impression that the war would be over in weeks, since two days had been enough to see off the right-wing coup across one half the country.
So, in the factories listed above, the Generalitat’s measures were, as a rule, implemented.
At the Vulcano plant, as well as at Maquinaria Terrestre y Marítima, the UGT also sat on the committee. The CNT made the running, but the UGT lent a hand after a while.63
Transportation: Catalonia had three railway companies: the Madrid-Zaragoza-Alicante (MZA) line, the Northern line and Catalan Railways.
The MZA line: In 1936 the company was operating at a loss, primarily due to the high salaries paid to directors. The line was taken over by the UGT and CNT. When Spain was divided by the war, there was a 70 percent decline in traffic. The same source