La Confederación Nacional de Trabajo

In the first three decades of the 20^th century, Spanish workers and peasants struggled against a succession of governments — monarchy, dictatorship, and republic. On the cusp of modernization, Spain suffered the combined depravations of an entrenched feudalism and an emerging capitalism. A growing anarchist movement spread critiques of the current society, published newspapers, opened social centers, carried out assassinations, expropriations, and bombings of bourgeois targets, created libertarian communes in a few villages during short-lived insurrections, and launched massive strikes. The dominant forces in society — the church, the landowners, the royalists, the bourgeoisie, various nationalist parites — fought among themselves, though they often unified to wage bloody war against the anticapitalists. Amid this turmoil, the anarcho-syndicalist confederation of labor unions, the CNT, expanded to contain millions of affiliates. In the early 30s, anarchist activists within the CNT stopped an attempt by reformist syndicalists who held top positions to steer the organization towards parliamentary methods, and for the next several years the CNT played a pivotal role of subversion, supporting electoral boycotts, wildcat strikes, and insurrections. However, continuing power struggles often prevented coherent action. It might happen that a strike or insurrection was prepared and promoted and then abandoned on its very first day when part of the leadership decided conditions were inopportune.

Nonetheless, the CNT was perhaps the most effective revolutionary organization on a national scale in Spain; when they boycotted the elections, the leftists didn’t have a hope of winning; when they didn’t, the leftists won overwhelmingly; and when they launched a strike, it was not uncommon for it to spread across the country and result in major struggles and even small insurrections. In July, 1936, the Falangists and Carlists — fascists and monarchists, respectively — decided to launch a coup with the help of a large part of the military. In Catalunya and much of Andalucia it was anarchist militias, generally cenetistas — CNT people — who stormed the barracks and put down the putsch. Socialist militias and loyalist soldiers along with anarchists kept Madrid, Valencia, and Asturias out of the hands of the fascists. In many parts of Spain, the government had effectively ceased to exist. Workers and peasants militias were the only real social force, and they began to collectivize the fields and factories. In Aragon and Catalunya millions of workers and peasants lived in libertarian communes and worked in collectivized industries that lasted a year or longer, depending on the fortunes of war. Sometimes they organized independently of the CNT, and sometimes the CNT served as a coordinating structure. But the CNT leadership helped to neutralize this nascent revolution, joining the socialists and republicans in an antifascist unity government and directing the course of the struggle without putting these decisions to a general referendum. Although many people were organizing the revolution on their own initiative, influential people in the CNT decided the time was not right, and in the end the Republican government and their Communist backers destroyed many of these anarchist social experiments before the fascists got the chance.

Throughout the war, Hitler and Mussolini supported the fascists — and even the British gave covert support — but the antifascists only had the dubious aid of the Soviet Union. Stalin in fact wanted to prolong the war but not to win it. What was more important to the Comintern was that Hitler would be enticed to make a non-aggression treaty with the Soviets; that the Spanish government would send Moscow its gold reserves in exchange for armaments; and that Spain would become the graveyard of Stalin’s enemies, namely the Trotskyists and anarchists. He accomplished all three goals. For the latter, the Communist Party established secret police and political commissars that acted with impunity in Spain, supposedly in service of the Republic but under the full control of Moscow. The secret police liquidated Spain’s small Trotskyist party. The anarchists had too much support to confront directly, but the bureaucratic anarchists were brought into the government and thus neutralized, and the militants were incorporated into the army and sent off to the front. The famed International Brigades were an opportune tool for the Stalinists to execute hundreds of political opponents, accused of being fascist informants, who had come from all over Europe to give themselves into the service of the revolution. Ignorant of local conditions, they also helped suppress the peasant collectives in Aragon.

The fascists won the war, and their dictatorship reigned for forty years. During this time, the resistance never stopped. The communist guerrillas, betrayed by the Soviet Union, were quickly liquidated in Andalucia and elsewhere. Others were more successful. The Basque leftwing nationalist organization ETA began a guerrilla war that continues today. Numerous anarchist guerrilla cells formed after World War II and remained active for the duration of the dictatorship. From exile in France, the CNT coordinated weapons smuggling and numerous assassination attempts against Franco, although progressively the organization became more conservative, not wanting to upset the French government. And their security practices were woefully inadequate in a world of evolving police tactics and technologies. The French police passed names and plans to the Spanish police, who were able to catch and kill many of the guerrillas that associated with the CNT as they crossed into Catalunya. Many of the young militants broke with the CNT leadership in order to continue the guerrilla war.

From early on, the anarchists and groups like ETA were largely alone in their fight against the fascist dictatorship. In 1950 the United States restored diplomatic relationships with Spain, openly enlisting Franco in the Cold War and financially backing his regime. The United Nations followed suit shortly thereafter, even giving the fascist state a post in UNESCO. But solidarity was not lacking. The 1^st of May movement, active throughout Europe, and later the Angry Brigades in the UK, supported the antifascist struggle with bank robberies, forgeries, and attacks on Spanish embassies and other targets. This guerrilla movement was an important factor in reviving the anarchist movement across the continent, after it had died a protracted and violent death in the 30s under fascist and stalinist dictatorships.

After Franco died peacefully in his bed and ETA assassinated his successor, ending the possibility of a smooth continuation of the fascist government, anarchists began to act publicly again in Spain. The CNT played an important role in the “Transition,” though there is little information in English about this period. One day I walked into the CNT bookstore on Joaquin Costa street in Raval to interview Nacho, an elderly member of the organization who lived through these years. Sitting down at a table in the event room, Nacho told me about the development of workers’ movements after Franco’s death. Workers organized small demonstrations and strikes on a local level. In 1976, the anarchists and communists began presenting themselves publicly for the first time. The CNT had practically disappeared, but they began to organize protests and surprised themselves with the results. Evidently, the people still remembered the anarchists, and as many as 30,000 people came to early marches in Valencia and Madrid, even though the fascists were still in power, negotiating a transition to a democratic monarchy that left many of the same people in office.

The anarcho-syndicalist organization found its greatest support in the Catalan villages. Soon the CNT had two hundred unions and 100,000 members in Catalunya. Workers with the CNT launched major strikes in the Roca ceramics factory, and in the gas stations of Barcelona. The strikers had to defend themselves from fascist gangs and from socialist and communist attempts to break the strike. These early successes made an impression on the workers, and the movement kept growing. In July, 1977, the CNT held its first public meeting. 300,000 people crowded to the meeting at Montjuic, in Barcelona. Shortly thereafter the CNT helped convoke an international libertarian gathering, which attracted 600,000 people to the various meetings, debates, and activities. The police went on attacking and torturing dissidents, but people were talking of a new revolution.

The communists and socialists expected to be able to control the workers’ movement, but they were quickly becoming overshadowed. The Communist Party attempted to bring popular dissent within official channels: in exchange for legalization they changed their statutes to remove words like “Marxist-Leninist” and to erase their opposition to monarchy. The socialists, republicans, and communists entered the “Monclau Pact,” duly joining the monarchists and the fascists — renamed “conservatives” — in the new government, but the anarchists refused to cooperate. Spain’s Interior Minister said he was most worried by the anarchists, out of all the social movements.

The CNT organized a protest against the Monclau Pact. Over 20,000 people marched down Avinguda Parallel in Barcelona. After the march, around 1:00 in the afternoon, a young man threw a molotov cocktail at the Scala party hall, near Passeig de Sant Joan on the other side of the city. The building quickly went up in flames, killing four workers who had been working in the back. Three of them were CNT members. The evening papers, and all subsequent media coverage, accused the anarchists of setting the fire. Starting the very next day, police began arresting large numbers of anarchists, blaming them for the arson. An ex-cop working at a kiosk across the street said he saw several well dressed men enter and exit the building before the fire, but he was killed before the trial. The courts did not accept the testimony of CNT affiliates, nor did they allow evidence that the building had been rigged with phosphorous. Also, the government quickly paid about 200 million pesetas in indemnity to the owners of the Scala, even though they weren’t required to. Nacho pointed out dryly that if ETA kills a cop, the government doesn’t give the family money; they can only collect if the death is an accident. After the fire and the arrests, the CNT began to decline and the revolutionary atmosphere slipped away.

According to some critiques, the CNT’s mythic status made it the center of attention and the chief instigator, ultimately obstructing the revolution. When the organization was demonized and responded by distancing itself from violence and conflictivity, nothing more could happen as long as the masses were looking to the CNT to start the revolution. According to Nacho, many people were scared off by the wave of arrests, thinking that the dictatorship would return if they kept rocking the boat. Others had little information besides what they saw in the media, and thought that anarchists really did just want to burn everything down.

The CNT persisted as a major force, focusing on social problems as much as labor problems. CNT sections throughout the villages began printing bulletins and organizing to win the right to abortion and divorce, improve water quality and health care, stop highways from being built through their town, and other issues. As a whole the organization began mobilizing to bring the work week down from 48 hours to 35 hours. Soon, the government manufactured a new situation to weaken the anarchists.

The new labor laws declared that a company’s workers would vote for their union representatives, electing a labor council comprised of delegates from the different unions. These councils would then make decisions and negotiate benefits on behalf of the workers for the next four years. The delegates were not in danger of losing their jobs, they received 40 free hours a month, and other benefits. The unions, meanwhile, would receive tens of millions of pesetas in government subsidies. Nacho explained that the CNT refused to participate in these labor elections, because they would turn the union representatives into politicians. “The dog doesn’t bite the hand that feeds him,” he grumbled. But after these reforms, they were excluded from negotiations in labor conflicts. It became harder to make demands or organize a strike. A strong conflict spread through the organization as some members proposed that they change their principles and participate in the elections. They argued that becoming an integrated union would allow them to organize without fear of getting fired, and to spread CNT propaganda in the workplace, like the other unions were allowed to do. From 1979 to 1983 the members argued over this question at several national congresses but they reached no agreement. Many CNT locals began to participate in the elections on their own. In 1984 all the dissident unions assembled in Madrid. Nacho’s description of the event was almost Orwellian. The government lent them a palace for their meeting place, and police guarded the gathering, supposedly to protect them from an attack by orthodox cenetistas. At this congress, all the groups that wanted to integrate formed a second, parallel CNT.

From that point there began an argument about whether this second organization should be allowed to use the CNT initials. There were also fights over money. As part of the Transition, the government had to pay damages to entities that had lost assets to the fascists. The CNT fought for its inheritance, and in the end it only won a small sum, much smaller than what was given to the UGT, the socialist union, even though the two had been of a comparable size at the time of the fascist coup. Still, the CNT got payments worth several million euros, and the different sections fought over who got to keep this. Naturally, the press gave lots of ink to the dispute, reveling in the stereotype of infighting, disorganized anarchists, and the union lost more members. Nacho also said there were full page stories in all the papers featuring the unions that wanted to participate in the labor elections, portraying them as the responsible faction.

Some within the orthodox CNT wanted to fight for the name, while others thought it was a bad idea. Ultimately, a new CNT member who had previously been kicked out of a communist group, and was thought by some to be a provocateur, brought a lawsuit demanding that the second CNT not be allowed to use the name. After three or four years, they won, and the second group changed its initials to CGT — Confederación General de Trabajo.

Over the next decades, worker participation in the unions dropped sharply, as workers saw that the unions didn’t protect them any better than the political parties. The diminishing CNT had a few mixed victories in this period, though in general they could do little more than help workers in small conflicts and win good severance pay for those who got fired. In one case, ten years ago, people working in the transport of dangerous materials in Catalunya organized with the CNT to go on strike after their employers adopted changes that would allow them to fire the older workers. The socialist union was upset that the CNT had been able to organize the workers and sideline the official union, so they met with the bosses just before the strike was to start and took credit for the resulting victory.

A couple years ago, CNT workers in the Mercadona supermarket chain organized a strike against their short-term contracts and insecure employment. Nacho was critical: the workers were inexperienced, they wanted to conduct a peaceful, legal strike, few of the workers participated, and they gave up after an early setback. “The struggle doesn’t work if you don’t fight the company. You don’t have to go back to the 20s and 30s, shooting at the bosses, but it’s good to throw stink bombs or release rats in their offices. A little glue in the locks,” he smiled at me. After the failure of the Mercadona strike, many of the workers burned out and left the movement.

Currently, there were only thirty to forty CNT syndicates in Catalunya, and they could do little more than focus on local problems and maintain the organization. There was a further split, and now some of the CNT locals, including the group on Joaquin Costa, were no longer federated. Nacho chalked it up to internal tensions resulting from various problems and failures, which were exacerbated “because we are few people — you notice it more.” But lately they were trying to unify more with all the libertarian syndicates, including the CGT. In the meantime, the Joaquin Costa group continued to run the libertarian bookstore, hold anarchist events, support labor struggles where they cropped up, and publish Solidaridad Obrera — the century old anarchist paper.

I asked Nacho how the anarcho-syndicalist strategy had changed over the decades, with all the changes to the economy and society. Factories were closing down, there was little left of workers’ culture or common solidarity, so what role could labor organizing play? He thought a moment and said, “I would suggest that there is no adopted strategy. We do it while marching forward, confronting power.”

Why was the reclaiming of history important for the struggle? Because for forty years they said that the murderers were the reds, and all the reds were communists, and now that the fascists had fallen from grace, the communists became the heroes. But they were bigger traitors than the fascists, according to Nacho. Since the 60s, Marxism had been taught in Spanish universities, but anarchism was suppressed. Under the socialist Interior Minister of Catalunya, Saura, there were plenty of television programs about the Civil War and the resistance against Franco, but the anarchists always joined the fascists in playing the role of the bad guys. Even in Spain, many people didn’t realize that anarchy is possible, and that the anarchist movement played a crucial role in the struggle against capitalism and fascism. The socialists, Catalan left republicans, and right-wingers were united in erasing anarchism from history. Who controls the present controls the past. Who controls the past controls the future.

I remarked that English-speakers were lucky in this respect, because one of the most popular English books on the topic was George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, one of the few accounts by an outsider to portray the anarchists fairly. At the other extreme, Hemingway faithfully toed the party line, portraying the anarchists as drunkards, idiots, and fascist infiltrators, and glorifying the Stalinist secret police, even as the Party paid for his lodgings in a luxury hotel in Madrid. It’s sad: Hemingway was a much better writer than Orwell, but through the simple lack of honesty and courage, a talented genius could become a sordid hack.

Nacho fumed for a while about all the revisionism, and then said he was done; he had to get back to the bookstore. We had been talking an hour, though the conversation stretched over years. As Nacho led me out the door, I mentioned the squatters. He hadn’t understood that I was one of them. “They’re hard to work with,” he shrugged. “They don’t like us. They think we stop other people from taking action.” I knew immediately which critique of the syndicalists he was referring to. Many of the autonomous-minded squatters had little sympathy for formal organizations, representatives, and federalism. Some felt that they provided the state a means for recuperating the struggle, others thought they inevitably became bureaucratic and top-heavy — though few would deny solidarity to people in the CNT. “But I don’t want to stop anyone,” said Nacho. “I just do it this way.