- @Keith. The Spanish Civil War and Revolution
Posted by Der
on May 22, 2020, 6:16 am
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Carrying on from earlier (link at bottom if anybody is interested) Keith: It isn't my field but I seem to remember that the central government tried to fold when the military coup began but was bounced by the workers and the unions. Yes that's roughly correct. Except that they did indeed fold. When the Spanish army rose up in North Africa (Morocco) on July 17th 1936 the entire government in Madrid resigned. They knew the revolt was coming yet they had not prepared. The new government which should surely have been organising a defence decided instead to try and bargain with the rebels. This played into their hands by both encouraging them and wasting valuable time. And like most governments it refused to arm the people. Though some say it didn't have sufficient arms. I subscribe to the former opinion - right throughout the civil war the various governments in power (whether in Madrid or Catalonia) gave the impression they would rather lose the war than allow the people to have arms. The anarcho-syndicalists (the CNT union) set about arming themselves and took over Radio Madrid in order to warn and organise the people. Some CNT activists broke into boats in Barcelona harbour and took away all the weapons. The CNT in Catalonia - stronghold of Spanish anarchism - called for a general strike as soon as the troops arrived on the streets. The rebels had hoped for a swift victory by taking over Madrid and Barcelona but the ordinary people fought back when the troops rose up throughout Spain in the early morning of July 19. In Barcelona the anarcho-syndicalists of the CNT together with their anarchist colleagues from the FAI set up barricades and organised such a fierce resistance that some of the local troops even changed sides. Thanks to the actions of the ordinary people the rebels were prevented from a swift takeover. Later would come the social revolution as the CNT/FAI seized the opportunity of this vacuum in government to collectivise large sections of agriculture and industry. The landlords and the bosses fled and in many cases money was eliminated. These collectives sent many of their own men and women to fight at the front. They also sent food. Later, the communists would destroy these anarchist collectives. Stalin feared the example of a social revolution more than he feared the fascists. Like his Bolshevik mates, Lenin, Trotsky and Bukharin, in the October 1917 Russian revolution, the very last thing he wanted was to see power in the hands of the ordinary people. The western democracies (France and Britain in particular, but also the US) were of a similar mindset. The Spanish people were on their own. -------------- The above is a follow-up to an earlier thread on the May Days in Barcelona, if anybody is interested: https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/msg/1589962284.html |