CHAPTER X. The insurrection in Alto Llobregat

While social conditions continued to deteriorate, deputies and ministers were busy drafting the constitution of the Second Republic. The discussion of article 26, which treated the separation of the church and state and limited the church’s activity in public life, shattered the political unity in the government. This article was approved on October 13 by 178 votes against fifty-nine, with the abstention of the Radical-Socialists (who supported an even stronger text). Miguel Maura and Alcalá Zamora saw this as a betrayal of the Pact of San Sebastián and resigned from the government. The Socialists and Republicans overcame the crisis by forming a new government without the Rightwing. Manuel Azaña continued to hold the purse strings of the Ministry of War and stood in for Alcalá Zamora as Prime Minister. Santiago Casares Quiroga replaced Maura in the Interior Ministry and José Giral (also from Azaña’s party) took on the Ministry of the Navy. This ministerial readjustment produced a Republican-Socialist government that could govern without the obstacle of the high bourgeoisie and the Church’s representatives. There was nothing to stop it from instituting sweeping reforms and addressing urgent problems such as unemployment and the agrarian crisis. That was what the people hoped it would do, but the Republican leaders disappointed them once again. Instead of tackling those issues, they simply aggravated things by approving the Law for the Defense of the Republic on October 20. They heavily strengthened the powers of the Interior Ministry, so much so that Miguel Maura couldn’t help by exclaim: “That would make being Interior Minister a pleasure!”

On December 9, 1931 the Parliament reached its maximum incongruence when 362 members voted to make Alcalá Zamora President of the Republic. Alcalá Zamora, who had resigned because he disagreed with article 26, only heightened the contradiction by agreeing to be the faithful guardian of the Constitution.

The President swore his fidelity to his post two days later and, to render the act more solemn, the government made the day a national holiday. This ostentation stood in frank contradiction to the situation on the street: there was a general strike in Zaragoza and workers had occupied factories in the Asturian mining region, only to be dislodged by the Civil Guard. It was not a peaceful affair; one was killed and eleven injured by gunfire that day in Gijón.

Significant events occurred on December 31 in Castilblanco, a small town in the Badajoz province. Peasants there had been on strike for several weeks and Casares Quiroga ordered the Civil Guard to impose order. The Civil Guard’s entrance into Castilblanco shook the locals and they, in reply, surrounded the Civil Guard’s post and killed those inside. The Civil Guard responded by unleashing a wave of terror in numerous villages, including Almarcha, Jeresa, Calzada de Calatrava, Puertollano, and Arnedo. There were six deaths and more than thirty injured in the last site alone, where authorities fired upon a peasant demonstration demanding bread and work. The FAI’s Tierra y Libertad published a lengthy article about the incident under the following headline: “Spain is kidnapped by the Civil Guard.” It printed a number of graphics depicting what had happened.

Circumstances were even worse in Catalonia. In the coalfields of Alto Llobregat and Cardoner, conditions for the potash miners had deteriorated sharply since June 1931. The mining company was English and treated the miners like they were colonial subjects. The Civil Guard was at the company’s beck and call and arrested those it considered disobedient. Unions were attacked, it was illegal to sell workers’ publications, and police constantly frisked laborers in the street. The workers, most of whom had migrated from the Cartagena mining region, began to reach the limits of their patience: some wanted to return to their home towns and others looked toward violence. Militant CNTistas and anarchists met to devise a plan that would to channel the popular discontent into positive acts of proletarian affirmation, raise the workers’ combative spirit, and encourage their confidence in their strength and revolutionary potential.

The idea of launching an insurrection and proclaiming libertarian communism took root. They decided to lay the foundation for the rebellion with a propagandistic speaking tour. Vicente Pérez, “Combina,” Arturo Parera, and Durruti began the tour in early 1932. Durruti was truly explosive at the rally in Sallent: “He told the workers that it was time to renew the revolution left hanging by the Republicans and Socialists, that bourgeois democracy had failed, and that the emancipation of the working class could only be achieved by expropriating the bourgeoisie and abolishing the state. He urged the Fígols miners to prepare themselves for the final struggle and showed them how to make bombs with tin cans and dynamite.” [340]

Durruti’s aggressive tone reflected the spirit of the moment. Felipe Alaiz urged the people to revolt in articles that he sent to Tierra y Libertad from prison in Barcelona:

It isn’t time to brandish pens in this country that shudders meekly before the big landowners and lacks the strength to truly react against the public affront.

No, it isn’t time for rhetorical protests or to call for vigorous demonstrations. We’ve done that more than enough already. Some are even saying that those who tolerate the abuse deserve it.

Conventional wisdom reaches tragic extremes when it states that a dictatorship is brewing in Spain, even though dictatorial forces have already been acting in full uncontested vigor for several weeks thanks to the Socialists and Republicans. What can you expect from the Socialists, who have justly been treated as traitors for fifteen or twenty years? And what do you expect from the Republicans, a group of halfwits who now raise arms and announce that democracy is bankrupt? Democracy has always been a poison, a whip, and a gag.

The Spanish people have never been as docile as now and never massacred as frequently as now. We don’t need to spell out the moral of the story; but it must be said that if there isn’t a real response to the ignominious absence of even the most elemental liberties and right to life; if the docility continues disguising itself with words, which are simply pages to the wind; if we fail to energetically attack the origin of these problems; then we will continue to build warehouses of smoke and perhaps write a page in the martyrology, but we won’t be anarchists.[341]

Several days after the Sallent rally, a rebellion erupted throughout the coalfields of Alto Llobregat and Cardoner and the villagers proclaimed libertarian communism (January 18, 1932). The rebellion spread to Manresa, where armed workers took over and abolished money, private property, and state authority. Fígols was the last town to surrender to the army. The revolutionaries held it for five days, during which they lived out a profound experiment in libertarian communism. The correspondent sent there by La Tierra wrote the following:

Men of all types work the coalfield where the rebellion triumphed. They are men who have always felt the weight of exploitation and it was against their demands—just as they were—that the regime was erected that always denies the workers the right to live. Revolutionaries, and union activists in their majority, these fighting workers were wholly rebels; eternally persecuted by all injustices, they are all too familiar with the mine and the prison, the ship, and the Civil Guard.

It seemed logical that these men, once victorious and thinking that they had overthrown the bourgeoisie, would avenge the years of oppression that they had suffered, that driven by hate they would throw themselves on the state’s representatives—guards, judges, and priests, etc.—and mercilessly tear them to shreds.

But after proclaiming the social revolution, these men—idealistic and generous beings—did not think of retaliation: they did not want to spill blood and didn’t even consider humiliating those who had humiliated them so many times before. They seized the weapons to prevent their adversaries from attacking. They secured the area to protect themselves against surprises.

And—leaving the whole world in absolute liberty—they continued working just like the day before, without imagining for an instant that their revolutionary victory freed them from the grueling task of tearing coal from the bowels of the earth.

And that is exactly what the anarchists did; men who are beyond all laws and who are constantly treated like murderers, thieves, and professional criminals. At their head, teaching by example, were the leaders of the rebellion, the revolutionaries who—according to the Muñoz Seca brothers, the Piesa, the Parliament, and even the government—had unspeakable motives and rebelled merely to fulfill their most turbid appetites. The revolutionaries controlled the situation for several days in Sallent, Súria, Berga, Fígols, and Cardona. There were no robberies, murders, or rapes anywhere. There was not even one death to suggest cruelty in those eternally persecuted men; not one robbery to demonstrate the desire for profit; not one rape to mark the urge to satisfy craven desires.

It was the same in all the towns. The workers greeted the victory of the social revolution with enthusiasm. They seized the town halls, flew red or black flags, abolished money, and made purchases with vouchers. But there was no looting or barbarities. Nowhere, not even in one small village, did the workers think that their victory liberated them from their hard daily labors...

That is how the revolutionaries of Cardoner and Llobregat thought and acted....

And that is why the rebellion is so significant. For the first time libertarian communism was a broad and lived reality. And utopian anarchism’s generous and noble ideas shined brightly in all those places, above all hatred, resentment, and conflict.

The events in those towns have such capital importance that they will surely have a decisive influence on the progress of the Spanish revolution and merit thorough study as a sociological phenomenon by our intellectuals, leaders, and politicians. For the workers there is no doubt, and they will know how to extract positive lessons from their brothers, the miners of Sallent and Fígols.[342]

How did the government respond to that bloodless worker uprising? In the Chamber of Deputies, Prime Minister Manuel Azaña spoke about a revolutionary movement that was led from abroad and said that it was imperative to crush it immediately. He requested and received a vote confidence from the chamber. Azaña ordered Catalonia’s General Captain to suppress the movement at once. Troops first occupied Manresa and later, after three days of struggle, the coalfields were pacified when Fígols finally surrendered. The libertarian communist dream had barely lasted a week. The dreamers, or those who did not pay with their lives, were imprisoned or deported to Spanish Guinea.

Counterrevolutionary forces seized the day and the government rigorously applied the Law for the Defense of the Republic. Authorities in Barcelona, Valencia, Sevilla and Cádiz received orders to launch a raid on anarchist circles that would ensnare leading CNT and FAI members.

The manhunt began at dawn on January 20 with assaults on the homes of pre-identified individuals in Barcelona. The libertarian professor Tomás Cano Ruiz was one of the first to be captured: “I was arrested and held incommunicado in the basements of Police Headquarters. I quickly came to appreciate the meaning of a raid in the style of Martínez Anido.” [343]

Authorities filled the prison cells with suspects, and then selected them either for deportation or incarceration.

Police arrested Durruti in the morning of January 21 and seized the Ascaso brothers (Francisco and Domingo) around noon that day. In the afternoon of January 22, those destined to be deported were transferred to the port and loaded onto the Buenos Aires, a steamship that the Transatlantic Company had freely put at the government’s disposal.

The Cánovas gunboat maneuvered its canons while the men were hauled onboard. The sailors on the Buenos Aires watched with their fingers on the trigger as the detainees were sent to the ship’s hold, where there was neither straw nor blankets nor anything even remotely resembling shelter or bedding. The men were constantly watched and had no freedom other than airing themselves under the ship’s skylights. There was very little water or food. This human cargo evoked the slave trade: the Republic had become a slaver. In addition to these already difficult conditions, there was a prohibition on receiving visitors, food packages, and correspondence. The detainees would have to live like this until February 11 when the government ordered the Buenos Aires to set sail.