CHAPTER XIII. Split in the CNT

The Spanish socio-political situation evolved during the six months that Durruti and his comrades spent in exile. Under pressure from the uprising launched by Sanjurjo and his friends, the Parliament ended up approving the Agrarian Reform Law and as well as the Catalan Autonomy Statute. The latter went into effect in mid-September 1932: from then on Catalonia would have an autonomous government called the Generalitat. It could approve its own laws, institute social reforms, modify educational statutes, and exercise control over public order. Although Madrid was still in change of military matters, there was an understanding between the Catalan and Madrid governments with respect to the appointment of the principle military leaders. When Madrid conferred responsibility for public order to the Generalitat, it also handed over the famous one thousand rifles bought by Los Solidarios in Eibar in 1923.

The situation within the CNT was still as confused as it had been when Durruti was arrested. In response to prodding from some unions, particularly those in Barcelona, a regional meeting of unions was called in April of that year. It took place in Sabadell and 188 unions participated, representing a total of 224,822 members. The CNT’s moderate and radical tendencies fought it out violently at the meeting and participants criticized the Catalan Regional Committee for failing to support the February general strike, which could have prevented the deportations. Attendees also denounced the Committee’s relations with politicians (of the Esquerra Catalana, in particular) and individual Committee members’ participation in rallies alongside parliamentarians. The harsh criticisms of the Regional Committee extended to the National Committee, especially to Pestaña and Francisco Arin, whom they accused of abusing their power in an effort to avoid a conflict with the Madrid government. Faced with these reproaches, Emiliano Mira, the secretary of the Catalan Regional Committee, resigned. Alejandro Gilabert, a noted FAI militant, replaced him. The Sabadell unions withdrew from the meeting to protest Gilabert’s nomination, a move that indicated their intention to leave the CNT.

There was a national CNT meeting in May and attendees decided to make May 29 a day of intense public protest. They also sanctioned Pestaña for abusing his powers and he, knowing perfectly well what such a rebuke meant within Confederal circles, resigned. Francisco Arin left the National Committee in solidarity with Pestaña. Manuel Rivas General, a delegate from the Andalusian region, provisionally became the CNT’s General Secretary. His nomination and a proposal about Confederal cadre, or groups of Confederal action, went to the unions for approval, modification, or rejection.

This meeting had both negative and positive consequences for the CNT. We will first consider the positive results. Pestaña and Arin’s resignations gave the National Committee a greater degree of internal coherence and the proposal on “Confederal defense cadre” created a defensive shield for the CNT. The “Confederal groups” idea was nothing new; they had more or less always existed within the Confederation, parallel to the anarchist groups. During the infamous years of terrorism, they were known as “syndicalist revolutionary action groups” and protected the Confederation with arms. Some militants had suggested creating “Confederal defense cadre” at a national CNT meeting held shortly after the proclamation of the Republic, but confusion caused by the battles between the “FAIistas” and “moderates” prevented the proposal from becoming a reality. The May meeting marked a positive step toward their creation. There was also talk of federating these groups nationally.

The downside of the meeting was that there was no way to avoid a split. It was concretized by Pestaña’s departure and Cultura Libertaria, the moderate faction’s newspaper, immediately heightened its attacks on the FAI, which they claimed wanted to “impose its dictatorship on the CNT.”

When Durruti and Ascaso arrived in Barcelona in September, the dispute between the two tendencies had already begun to transcend the limits of debate and devolve into slanderous propaganda. The actions of the “moderates” only encouraged the bourgeois press’s campaign against the FAI. Barcelona’s L’Opinió newspaper was particularly virulent in this respect.

After spending six months separated from his family, and with a little girl whose birth he had barely been able to witness, there was every reason for Durruti take a rest and dedicate himself to his child and compañera. It was not only a good idea, but also necessary for both he and Mimi. When the government deported Durruti, his compañera was penniless and had a two month old girl in her arms. The union had been unable to help out: everybody had a family member in prison or in hiding. There was pervasive suffering and simply no way that the CNT could attend to all its imprisoned or persecuted activists. The Union of Public Spectacles [trans.: entertainment workers] tried to lighten the burden of various female comrades, including Durruti’s compañera, by getting them jobs as box office employes in the cinemas. But that job was difficult for Mimi. She and her daughter lived alone: who would look after Colette from 2:00 pm until midnight? Teresa Margalef, an activist in the Industrial and Textile Workers’ Union, offered to take care of the girl, but she lived in Horta and thus Colette would have to sleep there. There was no other choice, so Mimi had to accept the solution, although it meant that she only saw her child once a week, on her day off. Durruti and Mimi talked a lot about all these familial challenges, although without being able to resolve them satisfactorily.

There was a rally at 9:00 pm on September 15 in Barcelona’s Palace of Decorative Arts, a building inserted in the circuit that makes up the Exposición.

The announced orators were: Victoriano Gracia, from the Aragón, La Rioja, and Navarre Regional; Félix Valero, from the Levante Regional; Benito Pabón, from the Andalusian Regional; and Durruti and García Oliver. Alejandro Gilabert presided over the event in the name of the CNT’s Catalan Regional Confederation.

We take a description of the rally from the press:

A motley crowd invaded the gardens of the Exposición. An audience of more than 80,000 demonstrated the CNT’s strength and showed that it represented the greater part of the Spanish working class, notwithstanding the oppressive actions of the social-fascist government.

The rally was extremely exciting and an unprecedented success. Thousands of workers were unable to hear the anarchist words of the CNT militants because the magnificent Palace of Decorative Arts was completely full. They waited outside in the Plaza de España, the gardens of the Exposición, and along the Paralelo.

A menacing army of Assault Guards, Civil Guards, and police occupied the area surrounding the Exposición and other strategic places. There was absolute order on the part of the workers, but the same cannot be said for the police, who constantly provoked conflicts with their rudeness and searches. They charged at groups of youths singing revolutionary hymns, etc.[357]

We extract a summary of García Oliver’s speech from the same newspaper:

For the CNT, for the anarchists, for all the militants, the Law of April 8 is like having gold offered by one hand while the other threatens violence. If someone benefits from that law, it won’t be the workers but the labor activists. The government wants to impose mixed commissions and, since there are 1,000 unions in Spain, there would be 5,000 men who—as members of these unions—would charge 150 pesetas or more per week, while the workers would continue receiving their miserable daily wages. The labor activists would forget their duty, betray their brothers, and the possibility of revolution would be lost.

Durruti spoke just before García Oliver. These were his words:

Your presence at this rally, like my presence on this platform, should enable the bourgeoisie to realize that the CNT and FAI are forces that grow when attacked and that adversity only enhances their cohesion.

Despite all the abuse heaped upon the CNT and FAI, these organizations haven’t budged an inch from their revolutionary goals. Tonight’s demonstration will be a warning to the bourgeoisie, to the government, and to the Socialists. They can see that the anarchists aren’t broken when they get out of prison or return from exile. On the contrary, we are firmer in our aims and more secure in our objectives.

The Republican and Socialist leaders thought that the men and women of the CNT and FAI were like a herd, like those that they govern and lead in their parties. And they thought that everything would be taken care of if they only imprisoned some “bosses” and deported some others. The CNT would stop functioning and they could continue calmly living off the trough of the state. But of course they were completely wrong and have once again revealed their ignorance of social reality and anarchism’s raison d’être.

The bourgeoisie and their journalists have tried to discredit us in the most absurd ways. Their accusations have been so outlandish—that we’ve been bought off by the monarchists, that we’re thieves and criminals—that the working class is going to be our best defender. The workers know perfectly well that thieves don’t get up at six in the morning to work their butts off in a factory. And your attendance at this rally dispels the myth of the “FAI bosses” and “anarchist thieves.” Real thieves don’t get up at dawn and their women don’t crawl around on the floors, taking out the rich’s shit just to support their own families, as our compañeras have to do when the bourgeoisie deports, imprisons, or forces us into hiding...

The real thieves are the bourgeoisie, who live by stealing the products of our labor; they are the traffickers of commerce, who speculate with our hunger; they are the great banking financiers who manipulate rates sprinkled with proletarian blood and sweat; they are the politicians who make promises and gorge themselves once they become deputies, accumulating salaries and forgetting everything they pledged as soon as they are in the stable of the state. But you, the workers who hear me, you already know them very well, just as I know them. Need I say more?

When our colleagues, the gentlemen Socialist deputies, voted to deport us they only confirmed what we’ve been saying about them all along; that they suffocate the working class with their parliamentarian socialism... However, they actually helped us by deporting us. For once the money that the state robs from the workers has been worth something; by paying for our trip to the Canaries, they enabled us to carry out anarchist propaganda on those islands...

If any workers believed the Socialists and government men when they said that we’d sold out to the monarchists, our Sevillian comrades’ response to Sanjurjo would have dispelled their doubts. But the Republican and Socialist leaders should pay attention to what happened in Sevilla. Sanjurjo said: “the anarchists will not pass,” and the anarchists, making him choke on his own words, have passed. The CNT said no to Sanjurjo, but it also says no to a Republic like the one that rules us.

The Republican-Socialists need to understand this and so we’ll say it very clearly: either the Republic resolves the peasants and industrial workers’ problems or the people will do so on their own. But can the Republic resolve those and other pressing problems? We don’t want to deceive anyone and will reply firmly, so that the entire working class hears us: neither the Republic nor any political regime of the sort—with or without the Socialists—will ever resolve the workers’ problems. A system based on private property and the authority of power cannot live without slaves. And if the workers want to be dignified, to live freely and control their own destinies, then they shouldn’t wait for the government to give them their liberty. Economic and political freedom is not something given; it has to be taken. It depends on you, the workers listening to me, whether you’ll continue being modern slaves or free men! You must decide![358]

A few days after this rally, the press published the news of Durruti’s arrest: “Terror brews in Barcelona’s Police Headquarters. Eighteen comrades from Tarrasa are still locked in cells. Ascaso and Durruti are being held incommunicado in Police dungeons.” These were the headlines that Tierra y Libertad printed above its report on the September 23 arrests. It also stated:

In the early morning hours on Saturday, police and Assault Guards burst into our editorial office. There were looking for comrade Ascaso. Afterwards, we read in the newspapers that police had arrested comrades Domingo Ascaso and Durruti and that they are being held incommunicado in the foul and humid dungeons on Vía Layetana. The terror is reborn. The offensive against the anarchists has intensified and savagery is on the agenda among the “gold-plated” riffraff. What do they hope to accomplish by detaining Ascaso and Durruti?[359]

Durruti’s new incarceration, justified simply by “motives of governmental order,” lasted for two months, which he spent in Barcelona’s Modelo prison. Mimi had been mistaken if she had thought that her life was going to get easier when Durruti returned to the Peninsula. Now, with him in prison once again, her time and their limited family savings became even more scarce. Coinciding with this new wave of repression, the Sabadell unions published a statement announcing that they were splitting from the CNT and forming an independent organization. While their public declaration created a serious problem for the CNT, particularly during a time of government crackdown, it was also somewhat of a relief: at least militants now knew where things stood and no longer had to watch every meeting descend into a bitter argument.

Tierra y Libertdad drew some conclusions from the statement, which it shared with its readers: “The manifesto from the Sabadell militants shows that anarchists should not be on the margin of the workers’ movement. On the contrary, they should be its vanguard. That is the only way to stop the servants of the bourgeoisie from taking over the workers’ organizations.” The newspaper also saw the “syndicalism” of the Sabadell activists as a creation of the bourgeoisie: “Considering the bankruptcy of Spanish socialism, the capitalist class needed a new syndical monster, not like the Sindicatos Libres [Free Unions] or Sindicatos Unicos [industrial union groups], but one that would restrain the Spanish proletariat’s pressing revolutionary demands. The politicians leading the Sabadell organization have now hatched such an ignominious monster. The Catalan bourgeoisie should be pleased with their new defenders. The right and left Republicans should also be pleased, just like Republican-police newspapers like L’Opinió surely welcome this species of syndicalism that expels anarchists from its heart and calls those who do not yield to injustice “extremists and disruptors.” [360] As a precaution against the now inevitable split, the FAI released an orienting statement to the anarchists, signed by the Peninsular Committee, the Commission of Anarchist Relations of the Groups of Catalonia, and the Local Federation of Groups of Barcelona. The Nosotros group’s perspective is clearly visible in the document, particularly in the paragraphs on the situation created by the Republic and the presence of certain individuals in prominent CNT positions who have obstructed the revolutionary process. This is not surprising, given that García Oliver was a member of the FAI’s Peninsular Committee. The document expresses the desire to limit the schism’s damage:

The CNT, which is the fruit of the creative spirit of the Spanish anarchists, is heading toward a painful and unprecedented split. Our valiant Confederación Nacional del Trabajo had experienced every type of difficulty, without its unity ever being compromised. But now the destructive action of a handful—very few fortunately—of its members means that a rupture will almost certainly occur. When the moment comes ... everyone—anarchists, revolutionary labor activists, and simple workers—must be aware of the hidden intentions inspiring those who plan to divide the organization. This will make the split as painless as possible when it happens. We are firmly convinced that many of those who still haven’t decided between the “extremists” and the “moderates” will remain faithful to the CNT’s revolutionary principles.[361]

The split will be consummated in March 1933 at a union conference held in the Meridiana Cinema. From November 1932 until then, the only thing that Cultura Libertaria criticized was the “FAI’s dictatorship over the CNT.” This reproach was entirely unjust: the FAI didn’t exercise a dictatorship, but simply had an influence within the unions. Didn’t anarchists have the right, as workers, to belong to the CNT? And if they belonged to it, should they conceal their views within it? Francisco Ascaso wrote an article addressing these two questions that he published in Solidaridad Obrera under the title “Union Independence?” He said the following on the topic:

One of the most pressing questions in our organization at the moment pertains to the anarchist’s influence in the unions. I remember past times when anarchists, who shunned rather than sought organizational posts, were seen as the best guarantee of revolutionary success, thanks to their moral solvency and especially their revolutionary intransigence. But apparently things have changed and now it is that very intransigence that is attacked most harshly. “We defend the CNT’s independence,” they tell us, but then carry on about the so-called dictatorship of the FAI. The debates in the last meeting on this topic show how foolish the idea is. A speech was made, there was talk, all in the most purely demagogic terms, but nothing was proved. While this demagogy may make an impression on those uninformed about these matters, when it is examined calmly, it does nothing more than incriminate those who employ it.

In the first place, no militant would participate in union meetings as a representative of the FAI. For example, I work in the textile industry and belong to the Manufacturing Union: I take part in union assemblies as someone exploited by the industry in question and as a member of the union. The same is true for the other militants, whether or not they belong to the FAI. If we acknowledge that the CNT was inspired and built by anarchists and that anarchists act inside it, with the rights accorded to any exploited worker, then the so-called campaign for “union independence” cannot be accepted without renouncing the anarchic origins of our organization, denying its ideological goals, and reducing its efforts to simple struggles for economic defense. But if one agrees with the CNT’s libertarian communist aims, then it is absurd to resist the presence of anarchism within our unions.

If we want to be consistent with our own aspirations and ideas, we should support and encourage any degree of anarchism that manifests itself in the Confederation.

“We accept,” they’ll tell us, “that anarchists belong to the organization, but we can’t permit the Iberian Anarchist Federation to shape the CNT from the outside.” Here the problem is proving that the FAI has ever attempted to influence the CNT from outside, although it would be easy to prove the damage done by the “independents.”

All organizations tow a great deal of dead weight behind them, and that is something that the CNT cannot avoid. That dead weight, due to its natural character, does not have the courage to express itself openly but simply lurks, waiting for the right moment to act.

That is why some CNT members have slipped towards those who raise the flag of independence. They are obstacles to and interfere with the organization’s revolutionary work. Indeed, they are reformist by nature and meekly hope to avoid the dangerous struggle implied by the anarchist influence in the unions. And those raising the flag of CNT independence do not really want independence, but to fight against anarchism inside and outside the CNT. This is undeniably a direct attack on the organization’s principles, which ironically even they claim to embrace at times. Union independence? Yes, but respecting the Confederation’s principles, tactics, and aims. The FAI’s field of action and propaganda is well defined and delimited. The anarchists’ activity within the unions is also well defined. But how can we accept organizations like the Libertarian Syndicalist Federation, which says that its goals are identical to the CNT’s goals and yet exists outside the Confederation, apart from it, and tries to exercise an external influence on it?[362] Clearly anyone who accepts the CNT’s principles and goals would insist on its independence, but it must be from within it, in the respective unions. It is totally unacceptable that those who protest against the so-called dictatorship of the FAI set themselves up as guides to the CNT or that they try, by creating another organization, to impose their dictatorship on it. We have to be logical and consistent, comrades. Otherwise, we will have to assume that anyone demanding union independence is only launching a concealed attack on anarchism and thus the CNT’s ideology. Neither the organization nor its militants will tolerate such affronts.[363]