Part 2, Chapter 21 : October 6 in Barcelona: Against Whom?

CHAPTER XXI. October 6 in Barcelona: against whom?

The Socialist Party feared that CEDA leader Gil Robles would try to install fascism in Spain. Paradoxically, those protesting the fascist threat in September had been inactive on December 8, 1933 when CNT workers rose up in arms to confront that very danger and were massacred as a result. That would have been a good time to intervene, but the good Republicans and legalistic Socialists preferred to stay in the comfort of their homes, hoping that the CNT would do their dirty work for them or disintegrate in the process. Instead of supporting the CNT revolutionaries when the time was right, the more extreme Socialist leaders undertook an adventure of their own nearly one year later. Its goals will always remain a mystery.

The pervasive nationalist propaganda and Madrid’s annulment of the law on agricultural contracts had inflamed the Catalanists. They jumped on the bandwagon and enrolled in the Socialist Party’s uprising without knowing exactly what they wanted or where they were headed.

The Catalanists tried to seize the state from within the state. What did they pursue? Without a doubt, they wanted to establish a regime in Catalonia that would be truly catastrophic for the CNT, the labor organization controlling the vast majority of the Catalan working class. And how could revolutionaries respond? The fate of the Catalan October 6 lay in the response to this question.

We will briefly analyze the context of the Catalan revolt.

According to the Catalan Autonomy Statute, the Generalitat was not an independent government per se, but a relatively autonomous government whose powers had been delegated to it by Madrid. In this sense, the Generalitat was actually part of the central government. So, then, how can we define their peculiar rebellion? For Marcelino Domingo, “the Generalitat did not make a revolution, but rather a coup d’etat from within the state.” [408]

Historian Carlos Rama says that it was a “rebellion of an organ of the state against the state itself,” and adds that “it was neither separatist nor regionalist, because it linked itself with events unfolding nationally at the time.” [409] Indeed, we must place this revolt in the context of the Socialist’s rebellion against the CEDA’s entry into the government, although the difference between the two is that the Socialists wanted to take power while the Catalanists already had it. If the Socialists intended to reform the state in the ways outlined in their program, what did the Catalanists seek? “The men of the Generalitat did not want to make a social revolution. They limited themselves to a Republican-Liberal rebellion from power.” [410] And that is why the Catalan revolt will always be somewhat incomprehensible as a “revolutionary” action.

The CEDA matter was not what motivated the Generalitat to rise up, but rather the central government’s attack on what it regarded as Catalan sovereignty, particularly the annulment of the law on agricultural contracts. The fact that it would ultimately link its rebellion with the Socialists is incidental. In essence, the Catalanists wanted to enhance their autonomy or better affirm themselves in power. And that explains the ultra-nationalist “nosaltres sols” [411]

campaign used to secure or extend their public support. Lluís Companys’s comment to Doctor Soler i Pla after his October 6 proclamation is sufficiently expressive in this sense: “We’ve already proclaimed the Catalan state. You can’t accuse me of not being Catalanist enough. We’ll see what happens.” [412]

The Generalitat rebelled against the Madrid government and proclaimed the Catalan state on October 5, 1934. The Catalanists must have thought that Madrid and the CEDA would accept their uprising without violence. Otherwise, they would have immediately detained the army leaders and neutralized the troops in the region, while making an effort to win the latter over to their cause. They would have also formed citizens’ militias to defend Catalan borders. Amazingly, they did none of this. Instead, the Generalitat took very different measures which, as we will see, turned it into Gil Robles’s objective ally. They instituted in Catalonia what he wanted to institute—but still didn’t dare—in Spain as a whole.

On October 4, on the eve of the Socialist’s general strike, the Generalitat’s police arrested all the well-known CNT militants that they could find in their homes, including Buenaventura Durruti. The police took them to Police Headquarters on Vía Layetana and held them incommunicado in the building’s foul basements.

On Friday, October 5, the Worker Alliance—a conglomerate of small, essentially bureaucratic, and petty bourgeois parties or groups with limited popular influence and zero revolutionary predisposition [413] —declared a general strike. [414] The Generalitat’s police tried to enforce the strike by forming pickets at factory gates and stopping the workers from entering. This strike was a surprise for the CNT: no one had consulted the Confederation about the action and thus it found itself before a consummated event. CNT workers had never been strikebreakers and were inclined to support this one, although that was not because of the coercion exercised by the Assault Guards and “escamots.”

One of the first absurdities of this Catalan revolt is that while the Generalitat knew that the CNT controlled the lion’s share of Barcelona’s workers, it used its appendage, the Worker Alliance, to declare the general strike. Another absurdity is that authorities did not arrest military leaders with clear fascist leanings, but rather the most outstanding CNT and FAI activists. Why was it necessary to prevent the CNT from engaging in the rebellion, whose aims were a mystery to everyone? “Josep Dencàs, responding to the general sentiment in his political party and the Generalitat, began to restrain the CNT from the [Catalan] Interior Ministry. They feared that the anarchists would overwhelm the revolt if they participated and cause the Generalitat to lose its control as well as the political advantages that it hoped to extract.” [415] Cruells’s explanation is persuasive, particularly if we consider that Dencàs had worked to “restrain the CNT” long before the rebellion erupted: the Generalitat has been clamping down since September 1932 and increasingly after May 1934. That was when the CNT offered Companys a “truce.” As we know, Companys not only rejected the “truce” but also increased the pressure and even undertook the October adventures while the CNT’s unions were still closed.

But we continue with the events. Solidaridad Obrera appeared several hours late on October 6 due to delays caused by censors. Because of that, the CNT Regional Committee printed an illegal leaflet to help orient the Confederal workers:

Catalan Regional Confederation And Barcelona’s Local Federation Of Unions. To All The Workers, To The People In General!:

During these intensely agitated moments, when every popular force is in play, the Catalan Regional has to take part in the struggle in a way that corresponds to its revolutionary anarchist principles. A conflict battle has erupted and we are in the first stages of events that could determine our people’s future. Our response cannot be contemplative. We need strong and forceful action that will end the present state of affairs. These are not times to theorize, but to work, to work hard. Action from the revolutionary proletariat, making its decisions for itself. Vindication of our libertarian principles without the slightest involvement with the official institutions that reduce the people’s action to their own interests.

We must turn this morning’s rebellion into a popular movement through proletarian action, without accepting police protection and shame on those who allow and call for it. Authorities have bitterly stifled the CNT for some time now and it can no longer continue in the reduced space they mark out for it. We demand the right to take part in this struggle and we take it. We are the best obstacle to fascism and those who try to stop us from acting only help the fascists. We thus concentrate our forces and prepare for the coming battles.

Immediate instructions of the Catalan Regional Confederation: 1. Open our union halls at once and assemble the workers in the premises. 2. Articulate our anti-fascist libertarian principles in opposition to all authoritarian principles.

3. Activate the District Committees, which will be entrusted with transmitting precise instructions as events unfold.

4. All unions in the region will have to strengthen ties with this Committee, which will guide the movement by coordinating the forces in struggle.

Today, more than ever, we must demonstrate the revolutionary anarchist spirit of our unions.

For the CNT! For libertarian communism!

The Regional and Local Committees of Barcelona.

Barcelona, October 6, 1934.[416]

José Peirats write: “Militants from the Woodworkers’ Union are the first to put the first of these instructions into practice. They tear the seals off the closed union halls and open their doors, but police respond immediately and violently. Shots are exchanged. The police force the workers to withdraw and close the buildings again. After these clashes, Interior Minister Dr. Dencàs releases a statement inciting the armed forces and citizens—who had begun to patrol the city—against the ‘anarchist provocateurs, bought off by the reactionaries.’ Uniformed forces from the Generalitat launch an armed attack on Solidaridad Obrera’s editorial office at 5:00 in the afternoon. Police go to suspend a regional meeting that is fortunately being held elsewhere. The newspaper’s administration and workshops are shut down.” [417]

Some well-known CNT and FAI militants stayed away from their homes, aware that police had already arrested other significant activists. In general, militants adopted an expectant attitude: they avoided clashes with the armed groups of “escamots” patrolling the city and waited attentively for the denouement of that crazy revolt, which could have very negative consequences for the workers.

Interior Minister Josep Dencàs spoke by radio at 12:30 on that October 6 and Lluís Companys addressed the Catalan people through Radio Barcelona. At 8:10, Companys’s comments were retransmitted at the Generalitat Palace to a crowd that a Catalanist newspaper described as very modest. Companys limited himself to proclaiming the “Catalan State within the Spanish Federal Republic.” Those present sung the Els Segadors hymn after his speech. [418] The Generalitat met after the proclamation of the Catalan State. Companys telephoned General Batet and informed him that he had declared the Catalan State and that Batet and his forces were under his command. The general stated that he could not reply immediately and told Companys to send him the order in writing. Deputy Tauler went to Captaincy to give Batet the directive. Following instructions from Madrid, Batet declared a state of emergency in response. From that moment on, the Generalitat and the central government were at war.

Barricades began to appear, in a disorganized way, and the city’s official buildings were protected with sandbags. “The leaders of the insurrection started distributing their armed groups at 8:30 pm, although it was clear that their troops had already diminished. By 9:30 defections from the Generalitat’s forces had increased greatly.” [419] There were one hundred people in the “Somatens” headquarters on the Rambla Santa Mónica but not all were armed, despite an abundance of weapons in the “casals” [local Catalanist centers]. Likewise, Jaume Compte was in the CADCI building with approximately thirty men and only seventeen rifles. [420] The same contradiction.

Here is a chronological account of the main events: 10:00 pm. Numerous armed groups wait for orders along the Ramblas up to Canaletas. There are approximate 1,500 concentrated on the Ramblas. Some four hundred men are in the Worker Alliance building. Apparently only the sentries have arms (there were ample weapons in the Novedades café on Caspe Street, which no one went to pick up, although they were only about three hundred meters away). After their defeat, Worker Alliance militants said that Dencàs had refused to arm them. One witness wrote: “In principle, a revolutionary force doesn’t wait to receive arms but takes them. It would have been extremely easy to do so that night.”

10:15 pm. An Infantry company leaves from the Buensuceso Street barracks, takes the Ramblas at Hospital Street, and ascends to the Plaza de Cataluña. The soldiers remained there until 6:00 in the morning, when they returned to their barracks, without having had any encounter.

10:40 pm. A company of the Thirty Fourth Infantry arrives at the CADCI building, where Compte and his roughly thirty men are. They come under fire from within the building when a Captain begins to read the state of emergency. A Sergeant dies and a lieutenant and five soldiers are injured. The soldiers begin to cannon the building at 11:00 pm.

12:30 am. A shell explosion kills Jaume Compte and Manuel González Alba.

1:30 am. The defenders in the CADCI building are abandoned to their fate, despite requesting reinforcements from Dencàs. They leave the building chaotically.

1:30 am. The Santa Mónica Police Station surrenders without firing a shot: there are sixty guards, more than one hundred civilians, and plentiful weapons (especially hand grenades).

6:00 am. Conversation between Companys and Dencàs:

Dencàs: “I will do what you command.”

Companys: “Put up the white flag.”

They hoist a white flag on the Catalan Interior Ministry building, while Dencàs shouts: “Viva free Catalonia.” There is a generalized and uncontrolled dispersion of troops. Dencàs escapes through the sewers.

6:00 am and minutes. The Generalitat gives up. Companys telephones General Batet, telling him that they surrender and to hold his fire.

The few remaining rebels then learn about what has happened. “They drop their weapons right there and go home, somewhat ashamed, somewhat disillusioned, and all with a profound sense of the ridiculous.”

Why hadn’t anyone coordinated these people? Why weren’t they given an order throughout the entire night? Why launch such a disorganized and poorly led revolt, with so little enthusiasm among its leaders?

It was the Libertarian Youth who made the most of things when the Catalanists discarded their weapons in Barcelona’s streets and sewers. They reaped a good harvest in the early hours of Sunday, October 7.

The government imposed Martial Law. When the army commander took over Police Headquarters, he found its cells full of anarchists arrested by the Generalitat’s police on October 4. The Generalitat was incapable of revolting successfully, but demonstrated its efficiency in persecuting the CNT. In its demise, it delivered a large group of militants to Gil Robles’s forces. Thanks to the Catalanist “revolutionaries,” Durruti added six months of prison time to his previous sentences.