Unlike Hitler's victory in Germany, the fascist military rising in 1936 was a counter-strike by a ruling class facing the threat of a workers' revolution. Fascism in Spain was a response to a working class offensive which lacked the leadership to complete the struggle for power. The victory of Franco created conditions for a massive defeat of a working class which had been engaged in struggles, punctuated by pre-revolutionary crises, from 1932 onwards.
The radicalisation of 1930, the bloodless revolution of 1931, and the euphoria with which the working class had greeted the second Republic in 1932, had their roots not just in hatred of the monarchy, but in the brutal class divisions in Spanish society at that time. The most significant was the division between the mass of landless rural day labourers in the countryside and the wealth of the big landowners - a gulf further exaggerated by the great depression. In the eyes of Catholic and Monarchist reaction, the Republic was a communist conspiracy which had to be destroyed, and there was already talk of civil war. Under these conditions the reforms introduced by the SocialistRepublican coalition government helped to set the scene for a showdown with a ruling class that would not accept the reforms or the transfer of wealth they implied.
Of course not everything the new government did was progressive: it continued the colonial war in Morocco, for example: but the advent of the second Republic set in train a mix of political factors which would end either in social revolution or in the victory of reaction. The outcome depended largely on the quality of leadership available to the workers' movement. A pre-revolutionary situation continued, with intermittent potential revolutionary crises, for the next five years. Also unlike Germany was the response of the workers' movement inside the Spanish state to the fascist challenge. Not only did they mount a ferocious struggle, but they organised and armed themselves
and mounted a three-year war, fought under desperately difficult conditions, which came close to stopping the fascist advance. Nor was the lack of revolutionary leadership the only problem the workers faced. Behind Franco's challenge was a rising tide of fascism in Europe, which led to direct military intervention by Hitler and Mussolini to reinforce Franco's forces, encouraged by the policy of appeasement by key imperialist powers such as Britain. And though the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) - having been hopelessly isolated in the early 1930s by its adherence to the policies of the Comintern's ultra-left "Third Period' - played only a subordinate role, a victorious Spanish revolution ran counter to Joseph Stalin's reactionary attempts to promote the class collaborationist policy of the "Popular Front' and broker a deal between the USSR and imperialism.
Socialism and Anarchism in Spain
The unique political structure of the Spanish labour movement, with its deep division between the anarcho-syndicalists and the socialists, and their relationship to the national question (especially in Catalonia) shaped the course of the revolution and the war.
Anarchism was first established in the 1860s, in a minority current led by Bakunin within the First International founded by Marx. The Spanish section of the First International was heavily influenced by anarcho-syndicalism (building trade unions which pursue militant demands in the workplace, but jealously guard their 'autonomy' from outside political parties). By the time the Second International was launched, the anarchists had broken away and established themselves as a separate current. The socialist tradition, in the form of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) was established some 15 years later at the end of the 1880s, as part of the Second International. Both traditions organised their own trade union federations. The PSOE-led federation was the General Union of Workers (UGT), while the anarchists led the National Confederation of Labour (CNT). The political organisations were closely connected to the trade union federations: sometimes the same individuals led both. The CNT and the anarchists were based mainly in the industrial areas of Catalonia and the north, and among land workers in the south, particularly in the impoverished regions of Estramadura, Andalusia and New Castile, regions characterised by enormous class divisions. The PSOE had its origins in Madrid and established a much greater spread across the Spanish state.
During the 1920s the Socialist Party leadership had looked towards the British Labour Party, and when Labour was elected in 1923 they
sent leaders to Britain to study Fabianism. In the 1930s the Spanish party swung massively to the left, coming to regard itself as Marxist. The Spanish Communist Party was formed out of a split in the PSOE in 1922. When a resolution was put to join the Comintern, those who voted for it left when it was lost. The PCE remained weak until the civil war, when it grew mainly as a result of Soviet military aid. Trotskyism in Spain emerged from a split in the Communist Party following the expulsion of Andrés Nin and others in 1927. Nin became leader of the Spanish section of the International Left Opposition, but in 1935 he split with Trotsky and joined with Joaquín Maurín and the anarchist Workers and Peasants Block to form the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification).
The POUM was seen as semi-Trotskyist, and indeed it was Trotskyist- influenced and had a Trotskyist analysis of Stalinism. But it was not affiliated to the International Left Opposition: instead it aligned itself with the British ILP and was affiliated to the social democraticdominated 'Amsterdam International' (a federation of trade unions). The POUM was a mass organisation by the early stages of the civil war.
Background to the war
From 1923 to 1930 Spain had endured dictatorship under General Primo de Rivera, who had seized power in a military coup. He abolished political parties and ruled by decree, but he was not a fascist: (his son, Jose Antonio, however, founded the Falange Española, the political party of Spanish fascism, in Madrid in 1933, and its armed thugs began the grimly familiar systematic assassination of union leaders and left wing political leaders.)
General Primo de Rivera did not carry out mass repression or mobilise brownshirts on the streets. He even cooperated with the Socialist Party to some degree and tolerated the UGT. But he outlawed the anarchists and the CNT, and their leaders were repressed Towards the end of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship the UGT leader Largo Caballero took a ministerial position in the government. The dictatorship fell when de Rivera resigned, chiefly as a result of the economic crisis triggered by the impact of the depression. Local elections a year later brought a Republican landslide, reflecting a mushrooming of anti-monarchist sentiment since the late 1920s. The King abdicated and the second Republic came into being. Catalonia, which had voted overwhelmingly for the new Left Catalonian Republican Party, declared autonomy. The Socialist Party had four ministers in the new provisional government, and a leftward-moving Largo Caballero became Minister of Labour. He carried through a
number of major reforms including a minimum wage and the eight hour day - which were unacceptable to the bourgeoisie. At the same time working class militancy erupted, with insurrectionary general strikes, and mass movements on the land, bringing a big shift to the left in the Socialist Party, led by Caballero himself. He began arguing that the PSOE's aim should be the dictatorship of the proletariat, and was soon being [undeservedly, it should be said, in view of his capacity for vacillation] feted as the 'Spanish Lenin'. After Hitler's victory in Germany, the Caballero wing of the Socialist Party, now in bitter struggle with the right, moved further to the left. It was the extreme end of a more general shift to the left in European social democracy after 1933. Left wingers began arguing that the only way to avoid a repeat of the defeat in Germany was through social revolution. This was perfectly correct, provided it was argued by a party that really believed in such a strategy and was prepared to go all the way to achieve it. In Spain the Socialist Party left wing, fearing a right wing victory, which they saw as almost equalling fascism, began preparing arms caches in advance of the 1934 elections.
The far right, however, were themselves split over strategy. One section, headed by the military and known as the catastrophists, had been in favour of a military crackdown since 1931. The other section led by the CEDA (a huge new alliance of right wing parties led by Gil Robles), argued the Hitler strategy: win power by constitutional means, and then abolish the constitution.
Disastrously, the right won the elections, mainly because the Socialist Party adopted a sectarian leftist position and refused to enter an electoral alliance with the Left Republicans. The PSOE called for armed insurrection. This exercise in reformists calling for revolution could hardly have been more half-hearted.
There were insurrections in some regions, and revolution in the Asturias region, but they were short-lived. The leadership of the Socialist Party were rounded up and sent to jail. The new government, led by Lerroux, with Gil Robles at his back, was semi-fascist but did not command sufficient support to implement a fascist takeover. Their fear of a massive reaction from the working class was well- founded. This ushered in a period of anti-working class reaction known as the , which continued with an unstable government until 'two black years'.
the next elections in 1936.
The 1936 election was fought by both the PSOE and the PCE under the banner of the Popular Front - Stalin's idea of an 'anti- fascist' alliance between the workers' parties and those of'democratic' capital. Though Robles and the hard right put everything on winning an electoral victory, the Popular Front, linking the workers' parties with
the Republicans was victorious, and the Socialist Party leaders were released from jail.
This was a huge blow to the right, proving conclusively to the catastrophists that the CEDA line had been wrong. Immediately a group of army officers, amongst whom Franco was not very prominent at that time, began preparing for a military rising.
The response of the working class to the Popular Front victory, on the other hand, was enormous. A wave of strikes swept industry and on the land, and militancy reached revolutionary proportions. Class polarisation in the Spanish state was at breaking point.
The course of the rising
The rising was called for July 18 by a group of officers around General Mola, who had been head of security police under Primo de Rivera. Initially it had only patchy support, except for Morocco. Franco, who had been dispatched by the government to the Canary Islands, managed to get to Morocco, Spain's remaining colonial possession, and to take control of the Army of Africa which he had previously commanded. This move was decisive in the war to come.
The insurgents gained power quickly in the areas which had voted for the right in the February elections. The Republic was staunchly defended in the Basque country, in Asturias, in the anarcho-syndicalist bastion of Catalonia, and in the regions of the south with a militant rural working class. The Republic held five of the seven major cities, including Madrid. The Republican zone also held the larger part of the population. A section of the army stayed with the Republic, though much of the officer corps went with Franco or sympathised with him. All the major European powers responded to events in Spain. Within days Hitler and Mussolini were preparing direct military assistance to the nationalists. France, led by Britain, was already seeking to appease Hitler, and advocated 'non- intervention' - which meant tolerating fascist intervention against the Republic. Stalin played it cautiously: any support he might give the Republic had to be carefully measured so as not to alienate his would-be bourgeois allies.
Hitler and Mussolini had no such reservations. The biggest initial problem for the nationalists stages was that their most loyal and effective force - the Army of Africa - was on the wrong side of the Mediterranean, and the fleet remained loyal to the Republic. Hitler, in what was probably the key strategic move of the early stages of the war, supplied aircraft to move the fascist troops to the Spanish mainland. He was to say later that Franco (for whose military ability he had some
contempt) should erect a monument to the Junkers 52 - the aircraft used in the airlift.
The progress of the war
The civil war had its roots both in the contemporary politics of Europe and the history of the Spanish state - in particular the uncompleted nature of the Spanish bourgeois revolution. The loss of empire at the turn of the century also destabilised Spanish capitalism. By the 1930s features of feudalism still remained and stable bourgeois democracy had never been established.
The war was vital to Spain itself but also an international event of huge importance. It was a savage war, in which something like two million died. The entire Spanish labour movement, and every liberal tradition, were annihilated as a result of it. The dictatorship established after it lasted 36 years: as late as the mid 1970s people were still being shot because they were discovered to have played a role in the civil war or held some liberal views during the course of it.
The fascists used terror as a routine weapon of war. As towns were over-run, anyone with any connection to trade unions or political parties was slaughtered. One fascist general, Kempo, used the radio to broadcast terror against the Republic each night. In a typical broadcast, he said:
"I order and command that anyone caught inciting others to strike or striking themselves shall be immediately killed. Don't be frightened if someone tries to repel you, I authorise you to kill him like a dog and you will be freed from all responsibility."
Again, he broadcast:
"In various villages of which I have heard right wing people are being held prisoner and threatened with barbarous fates. I want to make known my system with regard to this. For every person killed I will kill ten or perhaps even exceed it to forty. The leaders of these village movements may believe they can flee, but they are wrong. Even if they hide beneath the earth I shall dig them out and if they are already dead I shall kill them again."
The fascists were immediately backed by the Catholic Church, which triggered a backlash in the Republican zone, during which almost every church was burned and most of the clergy shot or driven into exile. Later the Spanish bishops issued a declaration on the war: "The war is an armed plebiscite... between a people divided: on the one side, the spiritual is revealed by the insurgents who rose to defend law and order, social peace, traditional civilisation, the fatherland and very ostensibly, in a large sector of the population, religion. On the
other side there is materialism - call it Marxist, communist or anarchist - which wants to replace the old civilisation of Spain by the new "civilisation' of the Russian soviets."
The response of the working class to the uprising was a massive upsurge of revolutionary struggle. There were spontaneous take- overs of the land and of factories by both anarchist and socialist workers. The leaders of both traditions had been urging revolution, and the working class took their advice in a big way. In some regions 80 percent of the land was taken over immediately by the workers. All industry was taken over in Catalonia and most industry elsewhere. Every aspect of the state apparatus in the Republican zone collapsed - caught between a military uprising and a workers' revolution.
All this posed a big political problem in the Spanish civil war: what should be the objectives of the Republican side? Should it be revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat? Or the establishment of a stable bourgeois regime with a parliamentary majority?
Largo Caballero became Prime Minister of the Republic in August and - despite his reputation - promptly adopted the position that it was too soon for social revolution, and that the Republic should adopt a parliamentary government acceptable to Britain and France. In October he put this as clearly as he could:
"First we must win the war, and afterwards we can talk of revolution." Stalin himself had written to Caballero on the war in September 1936, arguing for an alliance with Azaña, the vacillating bourgeois President of the Republic, described by Trotsky as the 'Spanish Kerensky: Azaña had attempted to do deals with the Falange, refused to purge the Spanish officer corps of fascists, and refused to arm the workers against the looming threat of a fascist rising. Stalin insisted that:
"It is necessary above all to ensure the collaboration of Azaña and his group to help them overcome their hesitation. This is necessary to prevent the enemies of Spain considering her a communist republic and thus avert their open intervention which is the greatest danger for republican Spain."
The anarchists took the contrary position, the rank and file more firmly than their leaders. The POUM, which had scandalously backed the Popular Front, now called for social revolution. Andrés Nin said in a speech in September 1936:
"Has the working class in arms now to defend the democratic Republic? Is the working class of Catalonia and Spain sacrificing itself and shedding its blood to return to the Republic of Azaña? No [shouted the
audience] ... Comrades, all the concrete problems of the democratic revolution, which the bourgeoisie failed to carry out in five years, have been resolved by the proletariat in arms in as many days" (applause). Anarchist leader Buenaventura Durruti also said in September 1936: "We want the revolution here, in Spain, now, and not perhaps tomorrow after the next European war." And later: "We are carrying out the war and the revolution at the same time."
The anarchist CNT-FAI information bulletin in January 1937 said the following:
"It should be clearly understood that we are not fighting for the democratic republic. We are fighting for the triumph of the social revolution. The revolution and the war are inseparable. Everything that is said to the contrary is reformist counter- revolution."
Stalin's role
The Soviet Union began to send large quantities of aid to the Republic, and the Communist Party on the strength of this became increasingly dominant within the Republican zone. The aid, however, was conditional on there being no social revolution. The Communist Party backed Caballero's position, and began arguing that the Republic was a 'republic of a special type'. Mundo Obrero, the party's organ, set out their case in March 1937:
"What do the comrades of the CNT accuse us of? According to them we have diverged from the path of revolutionary Marxism. Why? Because we defend the democratic republic.... Well, this republic is of a special type. A parliamentary democratic republic with a profound social content such as has never before existed..."
Santiago Carrillo, at that time general secretary of the PCE youth (later to be the long-serving General Secretary of the PCE) told their conference in January 1937:
"There are some who say that at this stage we should fight for the socialist revolution, and there are others who say that we are practising deception, that we are manoeuvring to conceal our real policy when we declare that we are defending the democratic republic. Nevertheless, comrades, we are fighting for a democratic republic, and furthermore, for a democratic parliamentary republic."
This was a huge problem for the conduct of the war. It left the PCE calling for a conventional war, when what was needed was a revolutionary war fought around key political objectives that could mobilise all
sections of the working class and peasantry against the fascists on a socialist programme.
It was a central strategic issue to be resolved. In October 1936 it was 'resolved' when the government ended the independence of the militias and created the Popular Army. Initially the Republic had no centralised military command. Militia columns were allied to political parties (the POUM, PSOE, the anarchist federation FAI, CNT and UGT). Columns were formed, armed themselves, and fought the fascists: the war was fought spontaneously. The Republican government refused to give them arms, and even threatened reprisals against any who did so.
However the weight of the Republican government, and the influence of the Communist Party with its links to Kremlin aid shipments, eventually won the day: the militia columns were suppressed, and the Popular Army was formed to fight a conventional war.
Its objective however remained in dispute. Most of those fighting the war wanted socialism: those leading it wanted bourgeois parliamentary democracy.
The first International Brigades arrived in Spain at the end of 1936. Overall, 40,000 Brigade members came from 14-15 countries. This was essentially a Comintern operation: you did not have to be a Communist Party member to fight in the Brigades, but you could not join them if you were a Trotskyist - you would be shot.
The Brigades arrived in Spain as Franco reached Madrid. The Republican government had abandoned the capital, leaving its defence to the Communist Party and the masses. The International Brigades played a major role in the first defence of Madrid, if not in the war as a whole. They suffered huge casualties. The British contingent was almost wiped out in one day defending Madrid. Some of the best anarchist columns also went to the defence of the capital. Durutti, the best of the anarchist column leaders, was killed there. In June 1937 (just after the bombing of Guernica by the Nazi Condor Legion) the Republican government, with the support of the Communist Party, repressed the POUM and the CNT. The organisations were banned, and their leaders arrested. The repression damaged the war effort: but it was a political reflection of the Moscow Trials. It had become normal to say that Trotskyists were 'fascists' and should be treated accordingly. Andrés Nin was arrested by Stalin's GPU, which was now operating in Spain, brutally tortured and beaten to death. Although in the early stages of the war the Republic expected to reverse the tide, the nationalist advance, despite setbacks and stalemates, was inexorable. By March 1937, although the Republic had held
on to its northern enclaves of the Basque country and Asturias, the nationalist zone had expanded through military attrition. In September 1937 British Premier Chamberlain and French counterpart Daladier signed their pact with Hitler. A month later the northern Republican enclaves had fallen. In the spring of 1938 came the last offensive the Republic launched - the disastrous Ebro campatented. Citinend france Recognised ranco Spain with a third of the country still in Republican hands. Unconditional surrender soon followed.
The International Brigades were withdrawn before the end of the war. Their final battle was the Ebro campaign.
The other possibilities
Could the defeat have been avoided, and 36 years of fascism in Spain prevented? It would always have been difficult.
A major problem for the Republic was that Hitler and Mussolini were prepared to do whatever was necessary to ensure Franco's victory. As well as 70,000 Italian troops the fascists were reinforced by the Condor Legion.
In addition there was the duplicitous role of British and French governments, each seeking appeasement with Hitler. Perhaps even more significant was the treachery of Stalin and the Communist Party carrying the politics of the Moscow Trials and the class collaborationist IF the Spanish repulationary to a brutal conclusion in the repression The fate of the Republic was sealed however in the conduct of the war, and the refusal to conduct it as a revolutionary war for the establishment of socialism. The lack of any radical appeal from the Republic to the peasantry ceded large sections of the population to the advancing fascist armies; the repression of the revolutionary left strengthened the Stalinists and the right wing who had always wanted to do a deal with the fascists.
The Spanish far right had developed since 1931. The CEDA had been formed in 1934 from some 40 right wing groups, and was strongly backed by the Catholic Church. It was by far the biggest right wing organisation, with semi-fascist politics. The Falange was formed from the Carlists and Monarchists, with the support of Mussolini: it aspired to a Spanish version of the Third Reich. Falange membership mushroomed after the 1936 elections, with the demise of the CEDA project. By 1937 it had a million members.
With brownshirts on the streets, Franco gave the Falange the job of suppressing Republican sympathisers in the nationalist zone - a task it undertook with great relish and energy. Soon after that, Franco formed the Falange into the Movimiento, and banned all other political organisations in the nationalist zone. This became the political basis for his regime for the rest of his life.
Trotsky was stunningly prophetic in the analysis he developed of the Spanish struggle - not in hindsight, but as events progressed. He fought hard to keep Andrés Nin with the International Left Opposition, and also opposed the ultra-leftism of Nin and the Spanish section of the Opposition towards the Socialist Party, which he argued they should have entered. He pointed to the bizarre situation of Trotskyists refusing to join a mass party which was actually calling for the dictatorship of the proletariat. The refusal to carry the fight into the PSOE meant that the left of that party and its even more radical youth movement became prey to the Stalinists, who eventually merged their youth movement with that of the Socialist Party in 1936. Famously, and correctly, Trotsky argued that no matter how militant and active the spontaneous struggles of the working class, the political obstacles in the way on all sides meant there were three essential conditions for a successful Spanish revolution: first, a revolutionary party; second, a revolutionary party; and third.... a revolutionary party.