Chapter 14 : ‘The Manifesto of the Thirty’

14: ‘The Manifesto of the Thirty’

The bitter conflicts between unionists and revolutionaries finally exploded in late August 1931 with the publication of what was to become known as the Treintista Manifesto. While unionist influence had been steadily eroded over the previous year by the polarized political situation and the failure of the reformist leadership to defend working-class interests, an increasingly radicalized rank and file had adopted the FAI as its voice. The violence of the strikes that summer and the increasingly revolutionary atmosphere appeared to presage disaster for the union leaders. Thirty CNT members, from the editorial group of Solidaridad Obrera and the National and Regional Committees of the CNT, many of them members of the Solidaridad group, [124] met during August to draw up a manifesto; it was a final gamble to force the issue to a head and isolate the revolutionaries. ‘With it’, said José Peirats, ‘they nailed their colors to the mast, and awaited the hostilities they provoked.’[125] At stake was their faction’s credibility and continued control of the positions of responsibility within the union:

‘To the comrades, to the unions, to everybody: A superficial analysis of the situation in which our country finds itself will lead us to pronounce that Spain finds herself in circumstances of intense revolutionary propensities from which deep-seated collective excitement is going to derive. There is no denying the magnitude of the moment, nor the dangers implicit in this revolutionary period, because, whether we like it or not, the force of circumstance alone must ensure that we all suffer the consequences of the upheaval. The advent of the Republic has opened a parenthesis in the normal history of our country. With the monarchy toppled, the king driven off his throne, the Republic proclaimed by the tacit concerted efforts of groups, parties, organizations and individuals who had suffered the attacks of the dictatorship and of the period of repression under Martínez Anido and Arlegui, it will be readily appreciated that this whole succession of events had to bring us to a new situation, to a state of affairs different from what the nation’s life had hitherto been over the past 50 years, from the Restoration onwards. But if the aforementioned facts were the mobilizing factor which induced us to destroy one political situation and to try to usher in a period different from the past, what has come to pass since has borne out our assertion that Spain is living in truly revolutionary times. With the way made easy for the flight of the king and with the expatriation of the whole gilded and “blue-blooded” rabble, capital has been exported on a huge scale and the country has been impoverished even beyond what it was. The flight of the plutocrats, bankers, financiers and the gentleman stock and bondholders of the State has been followed by shameful and brazen speculation which has given rise to formidable depreciation in the value of the peseta and a 50 per cent devaluation in the nation’s assets.

‘This assault upon economic interests, calculated to produce hunger and misery for the majority of Spaniards, has been followed up by the covert hypocritical conspiracy of all the cowl and soutane wearers, of all who, in order to ensure their victory, do not shrink from lighting one candle to God and another to the devil. The power to dominate, subjugate and live upon the exploitation of an entire people that is reduced to its knees is being given primacy over everything. The upshot of this conspiracy of criminal procedures is a deep-seated and intense blockage of public credits, and consequent collapse of all industries, leading to a fearful crisis such as our country has, perhaps, never before known. Workshops are shutting down; factories are laying off their workers; projects are coming to a standstill or no longer being launched: in commerce, there has been a fall in orders, and no outlet for natural produce; workers go week after week without finding work; countless industries have to cut back to two or three (and a very few to four) days working. Those workers who manage to find a whole week’s work and who can show up at the factory or the workshop six days, account for no more than 30 per cent of the workforce. The pauperization of the country is already an accepted fait accompli. Alongside all of these misadventures that have befallen the people, one notes the lethargy and exceedingly legalistic approach of the government. Though every one of the ministers owes his position to revolution, they have reneged upon it by clinging to legality the way a mollusk clings to a rock, and they show no signs of energy except when it comes to turning the machine guns on the people. According to them, it is in the name of the Republic and in order to defend that republic that the entire repressive apparatus of the State is deployed and the workers’ blood spilled daily. Now it is no longer a case of this or that village, but in every village that the dry bark of the Mausers has cut short lusty young lives. Meanwhile, the government has done nothing in the economic sphere, nor is it going to do anything. It has not expropriated the great landowners, the true bogeys of the Spanish peasant; it has not reduced, by as much as one single céntimo, the profits of those who speculate upon the public interest: no monopoly has been done away with: nothing has been done to limit the abuses of those who exploit and grow fat on the hunger, pain and misery of the people; it has struck a contemplative pose when what was needed was the crushing of privilege, the destruction of injustice and the prevention of thefts as infamous as they are vile. How should we wonder, then at what has happened? On the one hand, superciliousness, speculation, tinkering with public affairs and with collective values, with that which belongs to the common man, with society’s values. On the other hand, leniency, tolerance shown to oppressors and exploiters who victimize the people, whereas the people are imprisoned and harassed, threatened and exterminated.

And, down below, as a worthy counterpart to this, the people… suffering, languishing, undergoing hunger and misery and watching as they trifle with the revolution that the people have made. Still ensconced in public office, on the judicial bench… from where they may betray the revolution… are the ones who achieved those positions through the official bounty of the king or the influence of his ministers. This situation, after having brought destruction to one regime, demonstrates that the revolution left unmade is becoming inevitable and a necessity. We all acknowledge that… the ministers by recognizing the collapse of the economic system… the press, by recording the disaffection of the people, and the people by revolting against the offenses perpetrated against them. So everything appears to confirm the imminence of decisions that the country will have to make in order to save itself by saving the revolution.

One Interpretation

The position being one of thoroughgoing collective tragedy, the people’s wish being to shrug off the grief which torments and kills them, there being but one option, revolution… how are we to go about it? History tells us that revolutions have always been the work of daring minorities that have exhorted the people against the constituted authorities. Is it enough that these minorities should so desire and so scheme, that, in a similar context, the destruction of the prevailing regime and of the defensive forces that uphold it should become a fact? Let us see. One fine day, perhaps availing of the element of surprise, these minorities, complete with some aggressive elements, confront the security forces, stand up to them and spark the violent clash that may lead us to revolution. A little rudimentary training and a few shock elements are more than enough to begin with. They entrust the success of the revolution to the valor of a handful of individuals and to the problematical intervention of the multitudes who would rush to their aid once they were on the streets.

No need to make provision for anything, no need to make calculations, no need to think about anything other than taking to the streets to rout the mastodon: the State. Thoughts about its having formidable means of defense at its disposal, or about its being hard to destroy as long as its resources of power, its moral sway over the people, its economy, its courts, its moral and economic credit have not been smashed by its thievery and vileness, by the immorality and incompetence of its leaders and by the undermining of its institutions: it is a waste of time to think that the state cannot be destroyed. This is to turn a blind eye to history and to display ignorance of human psychology itself. And that blind eye may be turned at the present time. And so that this blind eye may be turned, a blind eye is turned also even to revolutionary morality itself. Everything is trusted to the serendipity factor, everything is expected of the unforeseen: there is belief in the miraculous feats of the blessed revolution, as if the revolution were a cure-all and not a painful, cruel event that has to forge men with bodily suffering and mental distress. This concept of revolution, the spawn of the sheerest demagogy peddled over decades by all men of the political parties which have tried, very often unsuccessfully, to storm into power, has — paradoxically though it may seem — advocates in our own ranks and it has reasserted itself in certain groups of militants. Without their realizing that they are falling into all the vices of political demagogy — vices which would induce us to hand over the revolution, were it to be made successful in those circumstances, to the first political party to come along, or even to become the government ourselves, to take power so as to govern as if we were just another political party. May we, must we… may the National Confederation of Labor (CNT), must the National Confederation of Labor (CNT)… rally to this disastrous concept of revolution, of the revolutionary act, the revolutionary feat?

Opposed to this simplistic, classical and somewhat cinematic concept of the revolution, which at the moment would lead us to a republican fascism disguised under the Cap of Liberty, but nonetheless for all that, stands another concept, the true, the only practical and universal concept which may bring us, which will ineluctably bring us, to the attainment of our ultimate objective.

The latter concept means that it is not merely the aggressive, fighting personnel which have to be trained, but these plus moral factors which today are the sturdiest, the most destructive, the hardest to overcome. It does not trust the revolution solely to the daring of the more or less daring minorities, but wants there to be an ongoing movement of the people en masse, of the working class en route towards its ultimate liberation, with the unions and Confederation determining the date, technique and precise timing of the revolution. It does not hold that revolution is only order, only method: this is a large factor in the training and in the revolution itself, but sufficient scope must also be left for individual initiative. Against the chaotic, incoherent concept of revolution entertained by the first group, stands the ordered, prescient, coherent concept of the second. The former is tantamount to playing at riot, ambush, and revolution: it amounts in fact to delaying the real revolution.

So the difference is very considerable. A moment’s deliberation will show up the advantage of one approach or the other. Let each person decide which of the two interpretations to make his own.

Last Words

It will be readily understood by anyone who reads this that we have not written and put our signature to the foregoing for pleasure’s sake, nor out of any whimsical desire to have our names feature at the bottom of a text which is of a public nature and which concerns doctrine. Our attitude is unwavering: we have espoused a course which we deem necessary in the interests of the Confederation and which is reflected in the second of the interpretations of revolution set out earlier.

Yes, we are revolutionaries; but no, we do not cultivate the myth of revolution. We seek an end to capitalism and to the state, be it red, white or black; but not so that we may erect another in its place, but so that, once the economic revolution has been made by the working class, that revolution may thwart the reintroduction of all power of whatever persuasion. We seek a revolution sprung from the innermost feelings of the people… a revolution along the lines of the one being forged today… and not a revolution which is offered to us, or which a few individuals seek to deliver to us… individuals who, were they to succeed in this would turn into dictators on the morrow of that success, regardless of how they call themselves. But we seek and desire that success. Is this what the bulk of the organization’s membership also desires? This is something worth exploring, something that needs clarification as soon as possible. The Confederation is a revolutionary organization, not one that has a hankering for ambush or riot, nor one which makes a cult of violence for its own sake, or of revolution for revolution’s sake. This being the case, we address ourselves to all members, to remind them that these are grave times and we remind each of them of the responsibility he assumes by virtue of his action or inaction. If today, tomorrow, the day after, or whenever… they are urged to participate in a revolutionary revolt, let them not forget that they have obligations towards the National Confederation of Labor (CNT), an organization which has a right to be its own master, to monitor its own movements, act upon its own initiative and determine its own fate. And let them not forget that the Confederation itself must be the one to determine, in accordance with its own reckonings, how, when and in what circumstances it should act; that it is possessed of an identity of its own and the wherewithal to do what must be done.

Let all be alive to the responsibilities imposed by the extraordinary times in which we live. Let them not forget that, though the act of revolution may bring success, one should go under with dignity in the event of failure to succeed, and that any reckless attempt at revolution may lead to reaction and to the triumph of the demagogues. Let each of them now adopt whatever stance he deems most suitable. Ours you already know. Steadfast in our purpose, we shall always and everywhere stand by our choice, even though others not of the same mind may overwhelm us.

Barcelona, August 1931

(Signed): Juan López, Agustín Gibanel, Ricardo Fornells, José Girona, Daniel Navarro, Jesús Rodríguez, Antonio Villabriga, Ángel Pestaña, Miguel Portolés, Joaquim Roura, Joaquim Lorente, Progreso Alfarache, Antonio Peñarroya, Camilo Piñón, Joaquín Cortes, Isidoro Gabín, Pedro Massoni, Francesc Arín, José Cristiá, Juan Dinarés, Roldán Cortada, Sebastiá Clara, Joan Peiró, Ramon Viñas, Federico Uleda, Pedro Cané, Mariano Peat, Espartaco Puig, Narciso Marcó, Jenaro Minguet.

Juan López of the Solidaridad group has left an account of the events immediately leading up to the Treintista Manifesto:

‘Shortly after the Conservatorio Congress a Regional Plenum of Syndicates of Catalonia was held in the Calle Cabana in Barcelona. At the time the Catalan Regional had 500,000 affiliates:

‘I took part as a delegate for my union. García Oliver and Durruti were delegates for the Fabric and Textile Union. At one of the sessions, the Fabric and Textile delegation proposed a session in camera. During this session Oliver and Durruti proposed that the Plenum agree to send a revolutionary plan to the Defense Committee — constituted by the FAI groups, without any connection with the superior organs of the CNT… the campaign for revolution (rejected by the Plenum) gathered momentum among the local groups… In response to this growing threat from the rank and file, the group around Solidaridad and the pro-unionists [i.e. the pure protection-and-progress unionists, the non- or anti-revolutionists – Author] who held positions of responsibility took the initiative at a meeting held in the Transport Union local in Barcelona.’[126]

Francisco Arín of the Solidaridad group had proposed the manifesto and Ángel Pestaña was delegated to write it. According to López and de Lera, his first draft provoked a long and heated discussion. It was virulently anti-revolutionary and obsessively anti-FAI. Pestaña justified his somewhat hysterical tone by claiming to have access to secret information about the real plans behind the FAI’s revolutionary proposals, plans that coincided with rightist and anti-republican conspiracies. After criticism, Pestaña made a second draft that stressed the positive aspects of the treintista line, but even this failed to satisfy the anti-revolutionary unionists. After a third unsatisfactory meeting, it was decided to nominate a three-man commission who, working on Pestaña’s last draft, would decide on the final text. These were Agustín Gibanel, Progreso Alfarache and Ricardo Fornells.

The final draft was, then, neither a hasty nor an improvised document. It had gone through at least three detailed readings and much heated discussion among those involved before publication. [127] It outlined what the signatories saw as a synthesis of confederal thought, upheld the ‘independence’ of the Confederation and denounced as naive the idea that the revolution could be achieved by the actions of an audacious minority — this could only be done through the constructive and co-ordinated labor of the masses.

The attacks on ‘adventurous excesses’ and “unrealizable objectives’ redounded against the treintistas. In the heated political atmosphere of the time the mood of the rank and file was hostile to the Republic. The attack on the FAI was seen for what it was — an attack on the union’s own militants, a political maneuver to reassert the waning authority of the union leadership. If successful, the treintistas would subvert the CNT’s independence by suborning it to an irresolute middle-class government. García Oliver later pointed out:

‘In reality it reflected nothing more than the disgust of a group of militants who could not come to terms with the fact that they had lost, in less than a year, prestige and leadership within the CNT. It is very easy to explain the war of faísmo and treintismo and the complete collapse of the later. When the Republic was introduced in Spain, some old confederal militants felt socially and politically satisfied with the mediocre bourgeois content of the new Republic and advocated the renunciation of the traditional social revolutionary spirit of the CNT and of adapting our organization to the republican situation.’[128]

The manifesto’s presentation of anarcho-syndicalist ideas contained nothing that directly conflicted with the traditional approach of the CNT. Where sharply conflicting differences did arise was with regard to the question of revolution. This was the key issue that provided the ‘Thirty’ or class-collaborationist faction with the justification it felt it required to launch its overt declaration of war against anarchist influence within the CNT. Although the FAI was nowhere referred to by name in the document it was implicitly accused of developing a ‘simplistic, classical and somewhat cinematic concept of the revolution’ and attacked for attempting to impose its ‘negative’, ‘adventurist’ and ‘putschist’ policies on the union by potential dictators with a predilection for ‘ambush’ and ‘riot’ and ‘violence for its own sake.’ In fact, as we have seen, the proposed plans for an insurrection, which Juan López claims led to the belligerent attack on the FAI, did not come from that body, or even FAI affiliates as it later emerges, but from the properly delegated representatives of the Fabric and Textile Workers union of the CNT. Durruti and Oliver, who proposed the plan, had been speaking as union, not FAI, delegates.

The manifesto provided useful grist for the mills of the political groups who wished either to control the Confederation or neutralize it. The bourgeois press who orchestrated a massively hyped blitzkrieg against the class-war anarchist position seized on the heated public debate. The State was being given carte blanche to repress and eliminate what were described as the ‘uncontrollable’ (incontrolados) elements within the CNT, presumably a reference to the Los Solidarios/Nosotros group. The bourgeois press, particularly in Catalonia, gave the manifesto maximum publicity, publishing the text in full with accompanying editorial articles emphasizing its constructive nature and the positive influence of the moderate leadership. Catalan politicians seized the opportunity to fan the smoldering embers of schism. Macià and Companys, in anticipation of the statute of autonomy that was to establish the independent Catalan Generalitat government, sensitive to the need for a responsive labor movement, encouraged what they described as ‘the level-headed portion of the Confederation’. [129]

For the anarchists the treintista document was not just an attempt to adapt the CNT unions to the circumstances of the moment; it signified not only the complete abandonment of the fundamental anarchist principles of social revolution as the only acceptable goal for libertarians, but a challenge to the wishes of the base of the union. It displayed an arrogant disregard for the creative capacity of the working class. Buenaventura Durruti launched the counter-offensive with a public defense of the position that the FAI represented to the broad mass of the movement:

‘In an energetic but high-minded way, we anarchists shall reply to the attack on us by some confederal leaders. I hope that note will have been taken of the fact that the attacks were aimed directly at García Olivares [sic] and myself. This is only to be expected, for as soon as I arrived in Barcelona I clashed with the Confederation’s leaders and, following a discussion that lasted for several hours, we clearly arrived at the two stances which have increasingly come to prominence.

‘We men of the FAI are not, by a long chalk, what many folk think we are. Around us there has grown up a sort of unwarranted aura that we must dispel as quickly as we can. Anarchism is not what many timid folk would suppose it to be. In point of fact, our idea is much more comprehensive that the privileged classes think and constitutes a serious threat to capital as well as to those phony defenders of the proletariat who occupy the highest offices. Of course, the manifesto recently published by Pestaña, Peiró, Arín, Clara, Alfarache and others was a source of much satisfaction to the bourgeois in government and to the Catalan unionists: but no way does the FAI associate itself with the mea culpa of the aforementioned gentlemen, and it will press on along the road upon which it has set out, believing it to be the best one. How can they want us to see eye to eye with the present government, which four days ago allowed the murder of four workers in the streets of Seville, lapsing back into the infamous system devised by Martínez Anido and now put into effect by the Interior Minister, Señor Maura? How do they expect us to see eye to eye with a government that fights shy of imposing sanctions on the stalwarts of the late dictatorship and leaves them completely free to go on with their plotting in Lasarte? How do they expect us to see eye-to-eye with a government partly made up of those who collaborated with the dictatorship?

‘We are absolutely apolitical because we are convinced that politics is an artificial system of government that flies in the face of nature, where many men back down in order to hold on to their positions, making a sacrifice of whatever they need to, especially the humble classes.

‘What is presently happening is only what necessarily had to come to pass by virtue of the fact that the revolution was not carried through on 14 April. We should have gone a lot further than we did, and now we workers are paying the price. We anarchists are the only ones who defend the principles of the confederation, libertarian principles that others apparently have forgotten. Proof of this claim is the fact that they quit the struggle precisely when they should have begun to escalate it. It is all too obvious that Pestaña and Peiró have assumed moral commitments that hinder their libertarian conduct.

‘The Spanish Republic, as presently constituted, is a great threat to libertarian ideas, and of necessity, unless anarchists act vigorously, we will inevitably lapse into social democracy. The revolution has to be made: and made as soon as possible, since this Republic has offered the people no guarantees, economic or political. No way can we wait until the Republic finishes consolidating itself in its present makeup. Even now, General Sanjurjo is asking for a further 8,000 Civil Guards. Naturally the Republicans have had the example of Russia in mind. They have seen that of necessity the same thing must happen as during the Kerensky government, which was merely an incubation period for the making of the real revolution, and this is what they seek to avert.

‘The Republic has not been able to resolve the question of the Church, for example. The bourgeois have not dared do battle with the workers: but they have taken up their positions. There are two courses to choose from: either social democracy, as in Germany and Belgium, or expropriation by the organized masses of labor. Of course they have opted for the former.

‘Macià, a man all goodness, a pure man of integrity, is one of those to be blamed for the dire straits in which the workers find themselves today. If, instead of stationing himself, as he has done, between capital and labor, he had inclined once and for all to the side of labor, the libertarian movement of Catalonia would have spread throughout Spain and throughout the whole of Europe and even in Latin America would have had its adepts. Macià has chosen to build a little Catalonia were we would have turned Barcelona into the spiritual capital of the world. All of Europe’s workers monitored the libertarian movement of Catalonia, awaiting the opportune moment when they too might achieve their claims. Now, after the false situation conjured up by Macia, he fears us and does not know what to do next.

‘Spanish industry cannot compete with foreign capitalism and on the other hand the worker is a lot more advanced. Industry being constituted as it is in Spain, if it were brought up to date and able to compete with industry abroad, the workers would have to take a step backwards and this we are not disposed to do.

‘It is necessary, vital, that a solution be found to the problem of unemployed workers whose numbers are growing daily and it is we workers who have come up with the solution. How? By means, necessarily, of the social revolution. The way must be made clear for the workers. Though it may seem a paradox, Spain’s wealth has to be defended by the workers and the workers only.

‘Turning to that manifesto again, I have to repeat that at one of our meetings I suggested to Pestaña and Peiró that they were the theorists, and we youngsters the dynamic portion of the organization. That is to say they follow in our wake, reconstructing. We of the FAI have only 2,000 members enrolled in the Confederation; but in all we can call upon 400,000 men in that, at the last meeting held, when it came to a vote, we took 63 votes as against 22. The issue was whether or not to reply with revolution to the first provocation offered by the present government.

‘On Sunday, the first meeting will take place of the local federation and at it we shall register our protest against the document made public. We anarchists are the ones who have in our hands the true leadership of the labor organization of Catalonia and of many another region in Spain. The Catalanist deputies who publicly expressed their fears with regard to the FAI’s organization have acknowledged this. We know that our organization strikes a lot of fear into the bourgeois and petty bourgeois of Catalonia; but we shall not take one step backwards where the claims of labor are concerned.

‘I do not believe that this unity which has seemingly come about in the Confederation because of the failures of recent times can be a lasting one. Similar responses have been forthcoming in other times in the bosom of the Confederation but have still, in the face of the opinion of the bulk of the unions, had to follow the route mapped out by the confederated workers.’ [130]

On 3 September the Barcelona CNT paper Solidaridad Obrera, flying in the face of the membership, published an editorial supporting the treintista line and denouncing aggressive and insurgent tactics. It proved to be ill timed and ill advised. The rank and file of the CNT, subjected to a sustained campaign of terror and intimidation by the employers and the state, were angry to find their leaders seeking an accommodation with their tormentors. Pestaña’s response had been to write what was seen as a servile letter to President Azaña asking him to intervene against the employers. Azaña, viewing the problems as a crisis of public order rather than reflecting genuine social grievances, ignored the union leader, leaving what little credibility he had left in ruins.

Unfortunately for the treintistas the day the Soli editorial appeared, the workers of Barcelona had taken to the streets in protest against the ill treatment of political prisoners. The Republican authorities met them with force. Barricades quickly appeared in the workers’ quarters: shops and bars were closed. The police attacked the Construction Union local with what was seen as unnecessary brutality. Three CNT members were murdered in cold blood under the infamous fugitives’ law during this attack.

Again the Republic had been unable to distinguish itself as an improvement on any other Spanish regime. Solidaridad Obrera referred to the disturbances dismissively as ‘an explosion of sentimentalism’ but did not go as far as to condemn them outright. The position of the editorial board of Solidaridad Obrera in the face of the bloody repression was now clearly untenable. On 22 September its editorial staff, under pressure from the union membership, resigned. [131] A new team replaced them with a faista majority that included Eusebio C. Carbó, T. Cano Ruiz, Liberto Callejas, E. Labrador and J. Robuste. Felipe Alaiz, a member of the old editorial staff and a FAI member, was appointed editor to replace Joan Peiró. The CNT daily was once again solidly under anarchist control.

A widely read and influential article by the anarchist writer and teacher Federica Montseny (at the time affiliated to neither the CNT nor the FAI) helped put the dispute in perspective for the broad mass of militants. The article, entitled ‘The Internal and External Crisis of the Confederation’ — which denounced the anti-anarchist repression of the Madrid and Catalan governments and the secret intrigues aimed at splitting the movement, as subsequent events proved — reflected the opinion of the rank and file.

‘Of late, the agreements with Macià, entered into by union leaders, with an eye to securing approval of the famous statute [of autonomy — Author], indicate what lie in store for us. Once Catalonia has her statute she will pursue a policy of tolerance with regard to the “good little boys” of the CNT, but “the screws” will be put on the FAI types (the phrase is Companys’s) and the celebrated “extremists”. “Extremist” will be the term for all those who refuse to see the CNT become in Barcelona what the UGT is in Madrid, vis-à-vis the Generalitat and Republican governments respectively. A Catalanised CNT, with its National Committee based here for life, will ignore the rest of Spain, just as it has already ignored the strikes in Seville and Zaragoza, which were lost and won with more honor and more intelligence than the strike here in Barcelona was pursued and lost.’[132]

Growing unemployment and general dissatisfaction led to a further wave of social unrest. The repression entered a new, sharper, phase. On 21 July Prime Minister Azaña introduced the Law of the Defense of the Republic (Ley de defensa de la República). Equally harsh was the Criminal Vagrancy Law (Ley de vagos y maleantes). The forces of public order were also empowered to fire on suspects without prior warning. For the new anarchist editorial board of Solidaridad Obrera there was little doubt who these laws were aimed at: ‘The Law of the Defense of the Republic is the pretext to intensify the persecution of the CNT and make the regular functioning of the unions impossible.’ In addition to repressive legislation, the bourgeois politicians turned to more subtle and sophisticated ways of manipulating opinion against the anarchist activists. The FAI, as the rallying point of uncompromising class-war anarchism within the largest labor union, became the focus of a massive disinformation and hate campaign at the hands of the bourgeois media and officialdom.

Not all its unionist opponents shared the view of the FAI as a conspiratorial, elitist, manipulative body. José Borrás Cascarosa, a member of the Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL) and the CNT from 1932, disliked the FAI, describing it as ‘the worst plague’ suffered by the union, but added:

‘One has to recognize that the FAI did not intervene in the CNT from above or in an authoritarian manner as did the other political parties in the unions. It did so from the base through militants who were prime examples of abnegation and heroism. But the decisions which determined the course taken by the CNT were taken under constant pressure from these militants and launched the union into premature defeats for which the rank and file were not prepared and had little enthusiasm.’[133]

José Campos, another CNT militant who was not a FAI member, points out the often-overlooked fact that relatively few anarchists in the CNT were affiliated to the FAI; they saw it essentially as a symbol.

‘I did not belong to the FAI, as did many others who considered themselves anarchists. The CNT was constitutionally anarchist because anarchists had created it… We can say that the FAI and faísmo always existed in the CNT, even before its birth in 1927. It was the spirit of the FAI which sustained the confederal cadres during the terror in Barcelona in the period 1919–1923, and which expelled the Bolsheviks from the National Committee of the CNT and which kept the union outside Moscow’s orbit.’

Campos added that the myth of the conspiratorial FAI arose with the treintistas.

‘Among the promoters of the FAI myth can be found the reformists who, born in the CNT, have little in common with it today.’

Asked how FAI militants operated within the unions he said that they ‘tended to reject control of confederal committees and only accepted them on specific occasions… I was in Gráficos and if someone proposed a motion in an assembly, the other FAI members would support it, usually successfully. It was the individual standing of the faista in open assembly… The attack on the FAI was, in essence, a conscious attack on the basic principles of the CNT, in its anti-governmentalism and anarchism. The attack began with Pestaña and others. The first imagined an aseptic CNT and, later, a unitary union in which the workers would leave behind their political opinions. This was postulated by the Charter of Amiens.’[134]

This view is supported by José Peirats, secretary of the Barcelona Anarchist Groups in 1933.

‘The FAI was a popular wave which adopted the name FAI because it needed a flag and there was a mythical concept of the FAI. Some personalities who spoke in the name of the FAI wielded greater influence than ourselves, who represented it officially. These had their own FAI in the Los Solidarios group that was only loosely controlled by the Local Federation, at least during my period as secretaries. There were other well-known personalities who had considerable weight in the battle: Felipe Alaiz, Eusebio Carbó, Dionysios and the very influential Revista Blanca. Properly speaking, the FAI exercised enormous influence through its publications and its journal Tierra y Libertad’. [135]

Well-known anarchist personalities, speaking in defense of the anarchist objectives of the union, were presumed to be doing so, ex cathedra, in the name of the FAI. Many of these were never members of FAI-affiliated groups or controlled in any way by the FAI. A good example of this is the case of García Oliver, who subsequently claimed never to have been a member of the FAI. Interviewed by anarchist journalist Eduardo de Guzmán in October 1931, Oliver described as ‘one of the most outstanding representatives of the FAI’, explained the concept of ‘revolutionary gymnastics’, the crisis within the CNT and the reasons behind the media hostility towards the FAI: [136]

‘The reason behind the attacks on the FAI escapes those who do not live in our circles. The reason for the indignation, which the signatories of the manifesto feel with regard to us, is that the anarchist groups have shrugged off the tutelage that they managed to saddle them with at a certain time. In point of fact, the struggle is not of recent vintage. It began in 1923 when anarchists saw that Pestaña and Peiró and the bulk of the manifesto’s signatories alike did not have the necessary capacity to face up to the difficult times Spain was passing through, an atmosphere in which the possibility of a military dictatorship was in the air. At one congress we went as far as to point out that an absolutist style coup d’état would be mounted before three months were up and indeed, regrettably, the dictatorship was set up, confirming our fears.

‘This, the mishandling of the transport strike and the manifest inability to discover a solution to the terrorism problem induced anarchists to launch a movement which, while not designed to split the CNT, sought to extract from that body a revolutionary solution to the problems with which Spain was confronted, ‘Anarchists then distanced themselves, not from the Confederation — for they have always been the most active elements of that — but from the men like Pestaña, Peiró, etc., who were influencing the organization along unrealistic lines.

‘The same thing is happening now as happened then. Some months ago Pestaña and Peiró were interpreting the reality of Republican Spain in terms of giving credence to the effectiveness of Parliament in respect of social legislation; we anarchists on the other hand, convinced that the dictatorship had been toppled, not by pressure from the political parties, but because the Spanish economy was stretched to breaking point, disagreed with them, affirming that social problems could only be solved through a revolutionary upheaval that would transform the economy as well as destroying bourgeois institutions.’

‘Without specifying a date [Oliver continued], we advocate the act of revolution, not trifling about whether we were or were not prepared to mount the revolution and introduce Libertarian Communism, in that we take the line that the revolution is not a question of preparation but of will, a question of wanting it made, when circumstances of social decomposition such as Spain is going through pave the way for any attempt at revolution.

‘Without in any way belittling revolutionary preparation, we relegate it to a secondary position because, following the Mussolini phenomenon in Italy and the rise of fascism in Germany, it has been shown that any ostensible preparation and propaganda for the act of revolution leads to a parallel fascist preparation and action.

‘Formerly, all revolutionaries accepted that the revolution, when it knocks upon the doors of a people, inevitably triumphs, whether those elements hostile to the prevailing system like it or not. This could be believed up until the fascist victory on Italy, for up to that point the bourgeoisie believed that the democratic state was its last line of defense. But after Mussolini’s coup d’état, capitalism is convinced that when the democratic state fails it can discover in its organization the forces to topple liberalism and crush the revolutionary movement.

‘The FAI has been labeled by the signatories of the manifesto as aspiring to carry out a Marxist-type revolution, in a deplorable confusion of revolutionary techniques (the same for everyone who intends to mount a revolt) with the basic principles (so very different) of anarchism and Marxism. The FAI, in these times in Spain, represents the revolutionary ferment, the factor of social decomposition needed by our country if she is to arrive at the revolution.

‘In ideological terms, the FAI, which is the enshrinement of anarchism, aspires to make a reality of Libertarian Communism. So much so that if, once the revolution has been made in Spain, there should be installed a regime along the lines of the Russian one or the dictatorial syndicalism advocated by Peiró, Arín and Piñón, the FAI would instantly enter the lists against those sorts of society, not so as to overthrow them in favor of reaction but in order to make the necessary progress beyond them to install Libertarian Communism.’

‘The signatories of the manifesto have never believed in the possibility of the Spanish revolution. In far-off days they made revolutionary propaganda but today, now that the time has come, the fiction that they peddled has fallen apart in their hearts. Nevertheless, the manifesto’s signatories, realizing that they had been overtaken by events, are now making revolutionary assertions, putting off the realization of the act to utterly absurd dates two years and more hence, as if this was an option given the general crisis in which the bourgeois economy finds itself. Also, within two years the revolution would not be needed by the workers because between Maura and Galarza, not to mention the fact that by that time, should any workers survive, they would be ground down by a military dictatorship (monarchist or republican) that will necessarily come about due to the failure of the Spanish parliament.’

Asked about the line the Confederation should take, Oliver continued:

‘The CNT need not waste time preparing the act of revolution in both its facets of, first, organizing destruction and, then, organizing construction. In the collective life of Spain the CNT is the only solid presence, for in a country where everything is pulverized, it represents a national reality that all political elements together would not be capable of overtaking. When it comes to revolutionary construction the CNT should not on any pretext postpone the social revolution for anything that can be prepared, in fact already is. Nobody will suppose that after the revolution the factories have to operate in reverse, nor will it be argued that the campesinos will have to operate the plow by using their feet.

‘After the revolutionary act, all workers have to do the same as they did the day before the upheaval. Essentially, a revolution boils down to a new concept of law and the law being effective as such. After the revolution the workers should be entitled to live according to their needs and society entitled to meet their needs as far as this is economically feasible.

‘None of this requires any preparation. All that is required is that today’s revolutionaries be sincere defenders of the toiling class and do not seek to set themselves up as petty tyrants under cover of a more of less proletarian dictatorship.’[137]

As the economic and political situation deteriorated, during the period between September and December 1931, Spain was swamped by a wave of general solidarity strikes. Barcelona was particularly affected. Governor General Anguero de Sojo suspended a number of meetings and closed the offices of the Transport Union. In Zaragoza an anarcho-syndicalist solidarity strike led to a confrontation with the police which left one anarchist dead, a number wounded and many imprisoned. Important strikes also took place in Bilbao, Huelva, Cádiz and a number of other cities. In December, Security Guards in Barcelona opened fire on a group of cenetistas on their way to a meeting to commemorate the Jaca uprising of the previous year. And as already mentioned in Chapter 13, the hostile policies being pursued by Largo Caballero at the Ministry of Labor were clearly intended to boost the his own socialist UGT at the CNT’s expense. ‘From now on we know that the Constituent Cortes are against the people’, commented the Catalan CNT paper Solidaridad Obrera. ‘Henceforth there can be no peace, nor one minute of truce between the Constituent Cortes and the CNT.’

El Luchador, a FAI paper, published horrifying photographs of the victims of the Republican security forces and took the national committee of the CNT to task for not offering more support to the strikers — particularly in Aragón, Asturias and Seville. The Pestañistas, now on the defensive, spent the final months of 1931 attacking Solidaridad Obrera and justifying the treintista position. At the beginning of December, during the Lérida Regional Plenum, the treintistas announced the publication of their own paper, Cultura Libertaria.