Part 2, Chapter 7 : In the Middle of a Storm Without a Compass

CHAPTER VII. In the middle of a storm without a compass

Miguel Maura’s boasting was a challenge to the CNT. To take the blow without reacting would only encourage his authoritarianism, yet there was no point in protesting benignly with a long document in the workers’ press. What to do? The only solution was to continue the struggle in the street. The Nosotros group was destined to play an important role in the new period that the CNT was entering at this time. As we will see later, CNT “moderates” will derisively label them “Blanquists” and say that they had a “simplistic” analysis of the country’s social conditions. [305] History would determine the value of the respective theses in play.

Shortly after the proclamation of the Republic, the Nosotros group met to define its strategy: “They studied the political and social problem from every angle. A Republic based on individuals like Alcalá Zamora, Queipo de Llano (head of the President’s military staff), General Sanjurjo (leader of the Civil Guard), and Miguel Maura could not effect any important reform in the political—much less in the social—sphere, given that the Republic was held hostage by a team of men intimately linked to the Monarchy, who had been members of the dominant class before April 13 and still retained all their privileges.” [306] It was that perspective that framed the Nosotros group’s confrontation with the circumstances at hand.

Conditions were increasingly turbulent in the rural as well as urban areas. Indeed, the preconditions of a revolution seemed to be emerging quickly. There was practically no divide between the UGT workers and the CNT men, as Maura himself recognized. He wrote:

There was a series of attacks on large landowners’ estates and farms in the Córdoba mountain range, and they were beginning to become dangerous. With their mayors leading the way, the residents of eighteen towns burst in on the region’s large country estates and grabbed everything they found. They took the plunder to the town and the mayors divided it among the citizens in the respective City Halls.

I had to concentrate all the Civil Guardsmen at my disposal in the area... to put an end to that dangerous peasant orgy. I also urged Largo Caballero to restrain the revolutionism of his colleagues, given that fourteen of the eighteen towns in question had Socialist mayors, as well as a Socialist majority in the City Halls. My comrade in government was unable to accomplish this task and the attacks on the country estates became more frequent and more intense. It was necessary to intervene decisively.

I first suspended all the mayors and city councilmen in those towns and formed administrative committees made up by the largest local taxpayers. I also put as many Civil Guardsmen in them as I could and, after publishing and distributing a severe warning, imprisoned the first who committed any excess. The problem was cut at its root and peace returned to the Córdoba mountain range.[307]

Put bluntly, Maura’s solution was to imprison the Socialist mayors and the most well-known militants, put the large landowners and caciques in charge of local governments, and protect them with the Civil Guard.

The Nosotros group was well aware of the revolutionary workers’ agitation sweeping Spain. Its members were extraordinarily active; some traveled to speak at rallies, conferences, or informational meetings, and others on missions to organize groups and accumulate means of combat for the immediate future.

It was imperative to use time well, since the situation tended to get worse daily. On one occasion Francisco Ascaso and Ricardo Sanz had to go to Bilbao, where they took part in a rally with José María Martínez, a militant anarchist miner from Gijón. The event occurred in the Frontón Euskalduna. It was an unprecedented success in every sense and left the impression that the CNT was serious and responsible, which greatly benefited the organization, particularly in Vizcaya, where the Confederation was beginning to establish itself. The comrades also went to Eibar, where they visited the Gárate and Anitua manufacturer. They discussed delivering the arms—the thousand rifles—still being held by the company.[308]

The gunsmith knew the men and received them well. He also allowed them to inspect the rifles and see that they were in good condition, but he said that he could not supply the weapons without authorization from the governor.

The following day, Ascaso and Sanz went to the Civil Government to meet with Mr. Aldasoro, the provincial governor. They explained the matter to him and he responded by saying that he could not allow the weapons to be released without the express and written consent of Mr. Maura, the Minister of the Interior.

Ascaso left for Madrid and met with Maura, whom he asked to authorize the shipment of the arms to the unions. Maura responded that he could not do so, but would allow the rifles to be sent to the Catalan government once the Generalitat’s power was formalized in Catalonia.

The Nosotros group met to discuss the issue and decided that their only option was to cede the arms to the Generalitat. At least the rifles might someday get to the workers. The Generalitat created an un-uniformed, armed militia called the “Escamots,” which was an assault force that replaced the Somatén.[309] It armed the Escamots with rifles that the Nosotros group had purchased with money expropriated from the bank in Gijón. Ultimately, the workers—their rightful owners—did get control of those weapons.[310] The labor movement absorbed the Nosotros group. Its members were frequently asked to participate in public events throughout Spain. The majority of them were locked-out from their trades and obliged to concentrate themselves in the “Ramo del Agua”[311] of Barcelona’s Manufacturing and Textile Union, which had a job listing service recognized by employers. In other words, when an owner in that sector needed workers, he had to request them from the union through factory representatives. Under no circumstance were non-unionized workers admitted to the job.[312]

The long quote helps us grasp the Nosotros group’s strategy. The succession of events since the Republic was proclaimed had only confirmed their judgment about the essence of the new regime.

The unrest in those eighteen Cordobian towns described by Maura extended throughout Andalusia and even to the bordering provinces in New Castile, where latifundismo was also the norm. Driven by hunger and despair, the peasants launched consistent revolts, but desperation can only lead to rebellion, never revolution. The hopeless had to have an ideal, possess a program, and make their instinctive revolt a conscious, reflective undertaking. That is the only way that an insurrection can become a revolution. The Nosotros group patiently devoted itself to making that happen. It was not only a question of fomenting uprisings, but also of provoking uprisings that would lead to a collective expropriation of the means of production and the creation of new forms of human sociability. It was thus necessary to elaborate the general contours of the libertarian communist society. The Nosotros group articulated this idea within the FAI and at workers’ meetings and rallies. It was accepted broadly and Isaac Puente wrote a simple but comprehensible outline of libertarian communism.

The situation in Barcelona had deteriorated since Josep Oriol Anguera de Sojo became the governor. He and Barcelona’s Police Chief Arturo Menéndez faithfully carried out the orders of his boss Miguel Maura who, as noted, was fighting a bitter war against the CNT. His instructions were categorical: make the CNT “toe the line.” The Modelo prison began to fill with “governmental” prisoners. The authorities shut down unions and declared workers’ gatherings “clandestine meetings” at will. The proletariat replied by calling a general strike in August. However, this general strike, called specifically to demand the release of prisoners, was not genuinely supported by Solidaridad Obrera, whose editor was Juan Peiró, and was even ignored by the CNT National Committee, which was then under the control of men from the moderate faction. Upset with the results of the general strike, Barcelona’s 20,000 metalworkers continued striking independently. The 42,000 members of the Construction Workers’ Union (in which Ricardo Sanz was active) joined the metalworkers. These events put the CNT’s internal crisis into sharp relief. The situation seemed to grow more confused and desperate daily, thanks to pressures from the Esquerra Republicana and also the Catalan bourgeoisie, which was closing factories and cutting staff punitively. The work stoppage was spreading and circumstances in the city threatened to become explosive, as they had among the peasants. The FAI met in Barcelona to try to orient the discontent and transform it into a conscious force. They created an Economic Defense Commission to organize a rent and electricity strike and also called large popular meetings to mobilize the population. One of these occurred on August 2 in Barcelona’s Bellas Artes Hall. Durruti, García Oliver, Tomás Cano Ruiz, Vicente Corbi and Arturo Parera spoke at the event, all of whom were FAI activists.

Durruti sent the following note to his family around this time: “I’ll have to respond quickly to the letter that I received from you today. I understand your eagerness to embrace me; that’s something I want deeply too, but it’s impossible for me to leave Barcelona at the moment. I have a lot of work. I participate in rallies and meetings daily and must also attend to my union responsibilities. Unfortunately I’m not going to be able to visit León any time soon, but you can send me the railroad passes and I’ll use them the first chance that I get.” [313] These comments indicate the intensity of Durruti’s life in Barcelona. Indeed, he had returned to Spain on April 15 and still hadn’t been able to hug his mother.

The metalworkers went back to work, but the construction workers continued their strike, and there was a good deal of sabotage. Anguera de Sojo ordered to the Police Chief to seize the Construction Workers Union at 25 Mercaders Street, not far from Police Headquarters. This occurred on September 4, 1931. The brand-new Assault Guard[314] cordoned off the premises and a captain ordered his troops to attack the building. However, when he yelled “Forward,” a shot “rang out from within the union ... while a half dozen guards threw themselves against the building’s door. There was a shootout that lasted for several hours, although the intrepid libertarians finally exhausted their limited ammunition and had to surrender. Ninety- four comrades were arrested and many others risked their lives to escape the siege of the union hall. The champions of liberty wrote a heroic chapter in the annals of Spain’s revolutionary history that day.” There was a proud and arrogant young man among the detainees, who was convinced that he had done his duty. It was Marianet. [315] “Menaced by bayonets and machine-guns, authorities took our comrades to the holds of the Antonio López steamship, which in days bygone had been the site of innumerable crimes against black slaves brought from Africa to the New Continent.” [316]

The workers had been in the midst of a meeting when authorities attacked the union and the topic of discussion was the construction workers’ strike. The mood was impassioned: authorities had attacked other unions and dragged militants out of their homes and to prison in the middle of the night. The construction workers defended themselves with arms because they didn’t want to go to jail simply to satisfy one of Maura’s whims. In any case, when the entrenched construction workers finally agreed to surrender, they said that they would only turn themselves over to army soldiers. Authorities accepted this condition and sent a squad of troops under the command by Captain Medrano. As promised, the workers surrendered. However, the Assault Guards were not happy to see their prey escape them and used the pretext that they had to interview some of those involved at Police Headquarters to justify bringing a dozen detainees there. The Assault Guards machine-gunned the workers once they reached the building’s door.

In late August, in that climate of bloody class war, a manifesto appeared in the bourgeois press that was said to speak for the “sensible” side of the CNT. The document, signed by thirty well-known CNT activists, will always be known as the “Manifesto of the Thirty.” While it acknowledged that the situation in Spain was genuinely revolutionary, it argued that it was “necessary to consider that revolution scientifically” and therefore enjoy a period of social peace during which the working class could attract technicians and intellectuals to its cause, who would help it devise an economic structure (the Federations of Industry) capable of replacing the capitalist order. They also denounced—without mentioning it—the FAI’s strategy, which they said was “inspired by the Blanquist theory of the daring minority.” They accused the FAI of wanting to “bolshevize the CNT” and impose its dictatorship on the Confederation. Juan Peiró and Angel Pestaña were among the signers. [317] The bourgeois press took this document as a sign of division within the CNT and went on the attack against the “horrific FAI” led by the “three bandits” named Ascaso, Durruti, and García Oliver.

In the midst of this storm, when bourgeois newspapers spoke of Durruti in the same terms used by the press under the dictatorship, Durruti’s mother prompted his sister to visit him in Barcelona (given that he was unable to go to León). She noted her impressions of the trip in a letter to a friend: “My brother and sister-in-law live in conditions that make me ashamed. His house on Freser Street has been bereft of belongings since they moved in.

They barely have the basics: a couple of chairs, a table, and a bed without a mattress, on whose box springs my pregnant sister-in-law Mimi sleeps.... I shouted at him for not having told us about his situation, so that we could send him money and he could at least buy a mattress for Mimi. What do you think he did? He shrugged his shoulders. Treating me like a little girl, he said: ‘Look, Rosita, Mimi gets by very well and the pregnancy is going fine. You’ll see that she’ll have a beautiful child.’ What could I do? My brother will always be an incurable optimist.” [318]

The CNT had lost its direction in the storm. The National Committee actually restrained CNT militants instead of encouraging their spontaneous action. For its part, Solidaridad Obrera took a partisan stance and published an editorial defending the “sensible men” grouped around “the thirty.” Only the anarchist weekly El Luchador was willing to defend the “terrible FAI.” It published the following article by Federica Montseny titled “The Confederation’s Internal and External Crisis:”

A series of events have occurred between the publication of my article “A Circular and its Consequences” and the present. In the first place, a group of militants—which the bourgeois press, Macià, and Companys describe as the “sensible part” of the Confederation—published a manifesto. Second, there was the strike in Barcelona, which Governor Anguera de Sojo, a creature of Maura, caused with his unspeakable attitude toward the prisoners. Third, there is the editorial in Solidaridad Obrera, which is a historic document that will make its author blush some day, if he still has any virility and shame. These events have unfolded in the modest space of ten or twelve days, dizzying events that indicate the intensity our times. All of this has resulted in the beginning of a violent campaign against all well-known FAI members and the start of the disarticulation of the Confederation, a process that some hope will make the anarchists—those terrible “extremists”—into “responsibles,” when it is actually the “responsibles” who have caused the political actions of the Barcelona leaders and their attitude toward anarchist opinion in the CNT.

We must now speak of these same events in relation to the authorities, the bourgeoisie, and public opinion in general, all of whom gaze at and applaud the struggle between the CNT’s left and rightwing, between those inclined to make the Confederation an appendage of the Generalitat and the Esquerra Republicana, and those who represent the Confederation’s libertarian spirit, who aren’t the FAI, the gentlemen politicians, or union functionaries, but the “real Confederation.” It is the spirit that spoke at the Madrid Congress, articulated by all the delegates from the counties, towns, and unions. It is the authentic Confederation, that of the workers who labor, that of the men who believe, who feel, who struggle, who sacrifice, who die when necessary, who have never lived nor will live from liberalism or union professionalism.

This internal crisis occurs at a time when we need unity most, during these grave and dangerous moments. This divisionist crisis has undermined the Barcelona proletariat twice already and renders us defenseless against the public powers and the fishers in the rough seas of communism. It is an internal crisis, a process of decomposition, in which some have succumbed to the political disease, in a workers’ movement so strong and dynamic that it has intoxicated those put in the lead by circumstance.

We saw it coming long ago, as we now see the series of consequences that the National Committee circular, as well as its poor response to the Barcelona strike, will trigger. The events in Barcelona, the killings at the doorstep of Police Headquarters, the Governor’s intransigence and insanity, when he didn’t find the entire proletariat on combat footing in an unanimous protest (a protest that could have been made, responding to the masses); all of this gives ample space to the oppressive acts of the Republican authorities, who defend capitalist interests and are embodied in Maura, that despot and future dictator. This, after the tragedy of Andalusia, the repression that the Andalusian peasants are suffering, who did not hear an echo of protest or solidarity from the rest of Spain; all this eliminates any opposition to and hesitation in the government, which self-confidently believes that it isn’t facing a worthy opponent. Finally, the compromises that labor leaders have made with Maura, hoping to facilitate the approval of the famous Catalan Autonomy Statute; all of this ends the outline of our panorama. When Catalonia is self-governing, the government will have a tolerant policy towards the CNT’s “good boys,” but it will “tighten the screws”—Companys’ phrase—on the FAI, on the famous “extremists,” on those qualified as extremists because they are not ready to let the Confederation be in Barcelona what the UGT is in Madrid. And in relation to the Republican and Catalan governments, the Catalanized CNT, with its National Committee installed for life here, will feign ignorance of the rest of Spain, as it feigned ignorance of the strikes in Sevilla and Zaragoza, which were fought out with more honor and intelligence than one finds around here. The Spanish proletariat will be easy to control, as the persecution of anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists divides it, breaks it up, reduces it to sporadic rebellions, undermines its capacity for collective action, and bleeds it of its most active elements, bravery, and spiritual dynamism. It will be easy for the dog trainer that is the Interior Ministry to manage. Each meeting will be a scandal, each strike an embarrassing display of cowardice and incoherence; each day the consummation of a new shame for us and the imposition of a new governmental iniquity. The Republic, consolidated and organized; the Republic, shamelessly at the service of the bourgeoisie; the Republic, managed by the bullying hand imposed on all the ministers and the entire sheep-like Parliament; the Republic, the social-democracy, the owner and master of Spain, obstructing, as I said in my first article written after April 14, the social and political evolution of Iberia!

And here, in the oasis of the Catalan autonomy, in the paradise that Macià’s good faith promises—assuming he’s capable of good faith—there is a Confederation that has been converted into the “fourth hand” on the new Consell de Cent de Catalunya;[319] a domesticated Confederation, governmentalized, with a olive branch policy of “harmony” between capital and labor; a labor confederation in the English style. It will be a worker-democracy, manufactured in Barcelona but for export everywhere, to be used by the humanitarian governments underpinning totally worm-eaten, bourgeois orders. With respect to the FAI, to the frightening, terrible FAI; which that herd of ambitious idiots see personified in two men that, if nothing else, at least aren’t cowards; with respect to the FAI as envisioned by the donkeys of Mirador... Oh, people, citizens, brothers of the Iberian people! They will tighten the screws on everyone, even the last volunteer at Soli! There will be a harsh turn from Maura and Companys, not to mention the ineffable Lluhí i Vallescá and poor Mr. Macià!... They have turned the FAI into a mythological monster—a minotaur or dragon—against which neither Theseus nor Saint George are useful....[320]