22: 19 July 1936

A rightist coup was imminent. Precise information as to the date of the military rising had been obtained as early as 13 July by CNT–FAI the CNT Regional Defense Committee of Catalonia from their informants in the barracks. The anti-fascist initiative was taken by the Defense Committee, who began to speed up their plans to resist the military, but their work was deliberately obstructed by a governmental decree on 14 July that ordered the closure of all CNT locals – a gesture intended primarily, no doubt, to appease the right, in the hope of defuzing the growing political tensions. [198]

On 16 July the Catalan CNT convened a Regional Plenum to finalize resistance plans. That same morning the Generalitat requested a meeting with representatives of the Regional Committees of the CNT and FAI to discuss collaboration against the approaching ‘fascist danger’. A special five-man committee was appointed to liaise with the Generalitat, now presided over by Lluís Companys: Santillán, Oliver and Ascaso representing the FAI; Durruti and Asens representing the CNT. [199] The anarchists again pressed Companys to keep his part of the bargain struck at the beginning of the year and give them at least enough arms for a thousand men. The reply was that the Generalitat had none to give. Throughout this period the armed CNT Defense Committee patrols on the streets were being arrested and charged with illegal possession of arms.

In spite of the sustained harassment of the anarchists by both the central and Catalan governments, the discussions with the Generalitat led to an agreement that the CNT and FAI would collaborate with the Catalan government and all other parties and organizations prepared to confront fascism. [200]

The fact of the matter was that in spite of the, by now, irrefutable evidence that advanced preparations for a military rising were under way, neither Companys nor Prime Minister Casares Quiroga trusted the anarcho-syndicalist CNT and refused to consider arming a mass labor union whose stated objective was social revolution. The prospect of unleashing a social revolution by arming the people was more catastrophic than the alternative scenario of a military coup and fascism. The slogan of reaction was, at least, the defense of tradition, family and property! The Barcelona police chief Federico Escofet was quite prepared to arm the socialist UGT but, as he explained:

‘To arm the CNT represented an immediate or later danger for the Republican regime in Catalonia – as much of a danger for its existence as the military rebellion… Companys and I agreed on the necessity of not distributing the arms…because the CNT–FAI was the dominant force. These armed elements, who undoubtedly would provide invaluable assistance in the struggle against the rebels, could also endanger the existence of the Republic and the government of the Generalitat.’[201]

The CNT Defense Committee, based in the working-class suburb of Pueblo Nuevo in Barcelona, knew full well it could expect no help from outside sources and had already begun to procure its own arms. On 17 July, militants from the transport workers section of the CNT (many of whom were later to form the core of what became known as the ‘Friends of Durruti’ group) stormed two ships anchored in the port and removed around 150 rifles and a dozen or so handguns. The Confederal Defense Committee organized raids on armories and gun shops while antique and dilapidated rifles and revolvers, as well as the more modern .300 Winchesters discarded by the defeated Esquerra in the wake of the October 1934 rising, appeared from their hiding places.

The Regional Defense Committee of the CNT and the Liaison Commission of the Anarchist Groups, which included all the members of the Nosotros group, Ascaso, Durruti, Oliver, Jover and Aurelio Fernández, were fully prepared for the struggle which they knew would soon take place in the streets of the cities. The theorists, on the other hand, were noticeable by their absence. [202] A detailed contingency plan was ready to go into operation immediately they received the signal that the military putsch had been launched. The Nosotros group were not revolutionary strategists who directed operations from behind, but anarchists who led by inspiration and example. To ensure ease of communication with the confederal defense cadres at their designated strategic locations around the city, they had prepared and fitted two trucks as mobile headquarters that could move with the fighting.

On the afternoon of Friday 17 July, the Peninsular Committee, the Regional Committee of Catalonia and the local Federation of Anarchist Groups (FAI) together with the Local Federation and Regional Committee of the Libertarian Youth Organization (JJ.LL. /FIJL) issued a statement which broke the first news to the public that the army had finally risen in Morocco:

‘The fascist danger is no longer a threat but a bloody reality… A section of the army has risen in arms against the people in an attempt to impose on us the most atrocious tyranny. This is no time for vacillation. Our agreements must now be put into practice. In each locality the anarchist and Libertarian Youth groups will operate in the closest possible contact with the responsible committees of the CNT. Confrontations with the anti-fascist forces must be avoided, whoever they may be: the categorical imperative of the hour is to defeat militaristic, clerical and aristocratic fascism. Do not lose contact, which has to be permanent, with the Specific organization (FAI), both regional and national. Long live the Revolution! Death to Fascism!’ [203]

At 9pm on Saturday evening, 18 July, the eve of the rebellion on the mainland, the CNT–FAI liaison committee met again with President Companys to discuss the situation. Again Companys insisted that the only arms at the disposal of the Generalitat were those of the Assault Guards and the Mossos de Esquadra, the defense groups of the Generalitat. An hour later the CNT and FAI held a joint meeting to brief the militants that the only arms they were likely to get would be those they seized themselves.

When the Barcelona garrison finally moved out of their barracks at 4.30am on the morning of 19 July they lacked an essential ingredient for success — surprise! Within minutes factory and ships’ sirens wailed their prearranged signal across the city to the 300 or so confederal defense cadres on the streets that the rising had started. The two mobile command centers rumbled off to their prearranged vantage points. The wailing sirens also signaled the passing of power from the backrooms of the Generalitat, the Captaincy General and the police headquarters to the union locals and local revolutionary committees.

Having successfully isolated and defeated the units from the various barracks, preventing them joining up, the principal strategic objective for the Regional Defense Committee, the coordinating body of the workers’ resistance, was the arsenal at the San Andrés barracks. Anarchist sympathizers in the barracks had informed them that 30,000 rifles and ammunition were stored there. If they managed to seize the San Andrés arsenal they could arm the people, the rebellion would be crushed and Barcelona would be theirs. Anarcho-syndicalist telephone workers already held and had successfully defended the main telephone exchange in the Plaza de Catalunya, an important strategic target for the would-be rebels. CNT–FAI control of the Telefónica, which they shared with the UGT, was to contribute much to the durability of the CNT–FAI predominance in Catalonia. As one of the real and symbolic centers of power it gave the workers’ organizations control over internal and external communications and inhibited the reassertion of state power. Following the bloody ‘May Days’ of 1937, the restoration of the Telefónica to the Catalan state on the instructions of the CNT–FAI leadership sealed the full restoration of state power and the final collapse of the revolution.

Police Chief Escofet did everything in his power to prevent the weapons in the San Andrés arsenal falling into the hands of the militants. He knew that once the people took possession of those arms the monopoly of coercion which gave the state its authority would be broken and state power would collapse. A company of loyal Civil Guards were sent to defend the building but they arrived too late — the barracks had already been invaded and ransacked by crowds of workers. This was the pivotal event that transformed a military coup into a social revolution, the brief moment when political power shifted from the Generalitat Palace to the union branches and the local revolutionary committees. Many of the security forces that had remained loyal to the Republic began throwing off their uniforms and joined the people in arms.

On the morning of 20 July, Escofet reported to President Companys that the rebellion had been put down, as he had promised. Companys replied acidly that that was all very well but the situation remained chaotic. Armed and uncontrollable mobs were rampaging through the streets. Escofet threw the ball back into the politician’s court:

‘President, I undertook to dominate the military revolt in Barcelona, and I have done this. But an authority requires the means of coercion to make itself obeyed and these means do not exist today. As a result, there is no authority. And I, my dear President, do not know how to perform miracles…for the moment we are all overcome by the situation, including the leaders of the CNT. The only solution, President, is to contain the situation politically, without minimizing our respective authorities.’[204]

The successful spontaneous insurrection of the Barcelona working class, under anarchist inspiration and leadership, had achieved that rarest of exceptions: ‘a real victory of insurrection over the military in street fighting.’[205] With the collapse of the military and rightist rebellion in the city, the regional committees of the CNT, FAI and FIJL called a meeting on the afternoon of 20 July in their new headquarters in the Casa Cambo building in the Via Layetana to assess the situation and to discuss the role they felt they were being called on to play.

Their position was ambiguous to say the least; the state apparatus had collapsed and political power now lay with the spontaneously created and independent revolutionary committees in the factories, neighborhoods and rural communities, but where did that leave the unions? This question had been debated at length at the Zaragoza Congress earlier that year. Federico Urales had argued, convincingly, that the great unions and the mammoth industrial federations would cease to exist ‘by reason of the sustained decentralization of the federal compact of solidarity’. In effect, the act of revolution spelt death for the old system — including the CNT and FAI as organizations. Urales argued that the producer was involved both in the economic sphere in the workplace and as an administrative-political consumer within the municipality. The assembly being sovereign in work as well as in the municipality there would be no room for anything separate from and outside these two aspects of daily life — including the CNT!

As the police chief had foreseen, the administrative leadership of the CNT, overtaken by events, had been as surprised as the politicians at the shift in power which had taken place overnight. Having extolled the virtues of the working class throughout their lives as militants, now that its chains were about to be broken and the dream transformed into a reality by a revolutionary process which threatened to make their role superfluous, they began to have second thoughts. In their hearts they doubted the ability of the people to administer their own lives in their own interests. In spite of all their earlier threats of social revolution in response to the rightist threat — to say nothing of de Santillán’s concern with advance planning and revolutionary preparedness — the ‘influential militants’ who met in the Casa Cambo on 20 July 1936 conclude, the objective conditions for social revolution were not right. The civil war, although it had triggered the revolutionary situation, would be the chief obstacle to the consolidation of the revolution and would ultimately destroy it.

The higher committees of the CNT–FAI–FIJL in Catalonia saw themselves caught on the horns of a dilemma: social revolution, fascism or bourgeois democracy. Either they committed themselves to the solutions offered by social revolution, regardless of the difficulties involved in fighting both fascism and international capitalism, or, through fear of fascism (or of the people), they sacrificed their anarchist principles and revolutionary objectives to bolster and become part of the bourgeois state in the hope it would undergo a transition after the defeat of fascism and become a genuinely humane organ of power, operating into the interests of the people. Faced with an imperfect state of affairs and preferring defeat to a possibly Pyrrhic victory, the Catalan anarchist leadership renounced anarchism in the name of expediency and removed the social transformation of Spain from their agenda.

But what the CNT–FAI leaders failed to grasp was that the decision whether or not to implement Libertarian Communism was not theirs to make. Anarchism was not something that could be transformed from theory into practice by organizational decree. The anarchists had performed their task as pathfinders and shock troops of the revolution. They had implanted the ideas and helped create the necessary environment in which those ideas and practices could be nourished and grow to flower, but it was beyond their brief or abilities to put anarchism into practice; that was a task only the people themselves could perform. The anarchists had reverted once again to their historical role of the ‘conscious minority’, the role they are destined to play in all societies — authoritarian, totalitarian and libertarian.

What the CNT–FAI leadership hadn’t taken on board was the fact that spontaneous defensive movement of 19 July had developed a political direction of its own. On their own initiative, without any intervention by the leadership of the unions or political parties, the rank-and-file militants of the CNT, representing the dominant force within the Barcelona working class, together with other union militants had, with the collapse of state power, superseded their individual partisan identities and had been welded — Catholics, communists, socialists, republicans and anarchists — into genuinely popular nonpartizan revolutionary committees wielding physical and moral power in their respective neighborhoods. They were the natural organisms of the revolution itself and the direct expression of popular power.

The assumption that political power in Catalonia had passed to the higher committees of the CNT–FAI was, probably, the principal blunder which was to undermine the revolutionary process. By failing to displace the ‘legitimate’ political element within the state, the military provoked the collapse of State power. It was the people, led by the militants of the defense committees, who had stood firm against the reactionaries while the government had failed to act. In doing so it lost any right to rule as the supposed protector of the people. It was the people themselves, led by the militants of the defense committees, who had stood firm against the reactionaries while the government had failed to act.. The people now wielded power -– in the working-class quarters and at the points of product and distribution – not the State or the union leaders who had now outlived their usefulness to the revolutionary process. A dual power situation existed -– diffused popular power against centralized political and union power.

From the first moment, therefore, the higher committees of the CNT-FAI set aside traditional anarcho-syndicalist reliance on the creative spirit of the people and their capacity for self-organization. They blindly disregarded Isaac Puente’s warning in Libertarian Communism that ‘there should be no superstructure above the local organization other than that with a specific function which cannot be carried out locally’, thereby becoming the unwitting agents in a tragically destructive process. By imposing their leadership from above, these partisan committees suffocated the mushrooming popular autonomous revolutionary centers — the grass-roots factory and local revolutionary committees, the identifying feature of all great revolutions — and prevented them from proving themselves as an efficient and viable means of coordinating communications, defense and provisioning. They also prevented the local revolutionary committees from integrating with each other to form a regional, provincial and national federal network that would facilitate the revolutionary task of social and economic reconstruction.

The process by which this occurred involved many complex factors, psychological as well as political. Particularly powerful were the close ties of loyalty and the moral imperatives of solidarity which bound the individual CNT rank-and-file militants to the organization and which made them hesitate to express public disagreement with the course of action being pursued by the leadership at a time of crisis. Equally, the sharp break with normal democratic union procedures due to the ‘circumstances’ of war, governmental collaboration and the need for ‘antifascist unity’ led to the higher committees ruling ‘in the ‘interests’ of the base. Their moral authority became transformed into coercive authority.

Militants from the barrio committees (which had led and coordinated the struggle throughout the city), who were sent on behalf of those local committees to the new CNT–FAI headquarters for information and instruction, were arbitrarily co-opted into the centralized union apparatus. Mariano R. Vázquez (‘Marianet’), the newly appointed CNT Catalan regional secretary (and FAI member) was one of the leaders principally responsible for this policy: ‘Your place is here, not in the ‘locals’ is how he greeted suitable local militants who came in search of news. [206]

Federica Montseny, sent by the revolutionary committee of San Martín district for instructions, was one of those ‘influential militants’ who were catapulted to organizational prominence without any democratic mandate from either her barrio committee or the union she had only recently joined. She was also co-opted into de Santillán’s Nervio group and onto the FAI Peninsular Committee by a similar process that same day.

Mariano Vazquez’s appointment as regional secretary of the Catalan CNT had been the result of the policy of the revolutionary anarchists refusing positions of responsibility within the union. In the tradition of the Bakuninist members of the ‘Alliance’ who refused all administrative positions in the First International, anarchists tended not to become involved in the administrative or intermediatory functions of the CNT. The reason for this was to avoid the inevitable friction between their role as revolutionaries and that as union officials. At the union elections earlier that year to appoint the Catalan regional secretary, Marcos Alcón had received the most votes but had turned it down. In second place came Germinal Esgleas, husband of Federica Montseny. He also turned it down. The third candidate was ‘Marianet’ whose name (according to García Oliver) had been put forward ‘as a ‘joke’ by comrades from the building workers’ union. He was elected to regional secretary on the basis of four votes, an indication of the amount of confidence he inspired among his fellow workers. [207]

If Marianet’s nomination was intended as a joke, it was one that was to have tragic consequences for the Confederation. His career as Catalan regional secretary and, later, national secretary of the CNT was, to say the least, damaging. Like Horacio Prieto, whose place he was to take as national secretary of the CNT later that year, Marianet, the building worker turned administrator, was an example of the lengths to which people in public life will go when they abandon principles for expediency. Like Prieto, he was putty in the hands of Negrín and the Stalinists; he was continually entering into pacts with the socialist UGT union and on the platform at pro-government rallies. By 1938, along with Prieto, he was arguing for the opening of negotiations with Franco.

Meanwhile, at the other confederal nerve center in the premises of the Transport and Metallurgical Union, a messenger arrived from President Companys requesting a meeting with the CNT–FAI Liaison Committee. Everyone had forgotten about Companys and the Generalitat. ‘Does it still exist?’ someone asked. Marianet, in line with the collaborationist policy formulated by the CNT-FAI leadership, agreed to the meeting. Instead of ordering the dispersal of these visible but politically ineffective remnants of the Catalan government, he tacitly admitted their symbolic legitimacy. Why the Catalan CNT-FAI agreed to this is a matter for conjecture: perhaps he and his advisers assumed the government was stronger than it actually was. What is clear is that owing to internal doubts and dissensions they failed to realize how powerful the popular movement was and that their position as union spokesmen was now inimical to the course of the revolution. Marianet insisted on dealing with the Catalan President as though he was negotiating a union contract:

‘This interview won’t be like previous ones. Before we begged a few pistols, now we will impose the will of the working people.’[208]

García Oliver, Santillán and Asens, the CNT–FAI Liaison Committee set up days before the rising, were ushered into Companys’s office on the first floor of the Generalitat Palace. They entered as victors: ‘armed to the teeth… shabby and soiled by dust and smoke’, to listen to Companys’s honeyed speech. The only surviving account of this speech is that given by García Oliver:

‘Before I begin’, stated Companys, ‘I must say that the CNT and FAI have not received the treatment which they merit by virtue of their true importance… I have found myself obliged to confront and persecute you. You are now masters of the city and Catalonia, for you alone have defeated the fascist soldiery…the fact is that today, you who were subject to harassment up until yesterday, have seen off the fascists and the military. Knowing, then, who and what you are, I can but address you in tones of utmost sincerity. You have won and everything lies at your feet; if you have any need of me, or no longer want me as President of Catalonia, just say the word and I shall become just another foot soldier in the struggle against fascism. I, along with the men of my party, my name and my prestige, may be of use in the struggle which has ended so felicitously in this city today... you may rely upon me and my loyalty as a man and a politician convinced that today has been the demise of a whole dishonorable past, as a man who honestly wishes to see Catalonia march in the van of the most socially progressive countries.’[209]

Companys was an artful and skillful politician. He knew the anarchist leadership of old and how to turn their political naivety to his own advantage to prevent the nascent revolution from consolidating itself. His objective was to recover political power, reassert the authority of the Generalitat on the streets of the capital, and restore economic normality. The only way to do this was to present his proposals to the anarchists in such a way that they stressed positive, generally held cultural and human values — democracy, social harmony and anti-fascism. He knew these would provide a basis for a provisional power-sharing arrangement with the CNT–FAI leaders. Acting on Rousseau’s dictum that ‘The agreement of two particular interests is formed by opposition to a third’, he appreciated the need for a military victory over the ‘common enemy’, fascism, which was in itself a sufficiently unifying principle to neutralize the revolutionary demands of the ‘conscious minority’. This would allow him to keep the state bureaucracy intact and provide the necessary breathing space until he could reintroduce the concept of hierarchy.

Anarchist dominance in the region also provided Companys with a useful lever for ensuring Catalan autonomy against possible encroachments on provincial sovereignty by the central government. He reproached Madrid obliquely: ‘Betrayed by the normal guardians of law and order, we have turned to the proletariat for protection.’ Coyly, he suggested to the CNT–FAI Liaison Committee that under his chairmanship the CNT and FAI, together with all the antifascist parties, should set up ‘an organ capable of pursuing the revolutionary struggle until victory is assured.’ This ad hoc body, a bourgeois government in embryo, was to become known as the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias (CCMA), was decreed into existence by the Generalitat government.

After preliminary discussions with the bourgeois and Marxist politicians thoughtfully assembled by Companys, García Oliver informed them they would relay the CCMA’s proposals to the Regional Committees of the CNT and FAI. They would have their reply in due course. To the CNT–FAI’s already compromised prominent leaders there was little doubt that Companys’s skillful maneuvering would have its desired effect. The battle-hardened militants, thrown off balance by the flattery and eulogies of their old enemies, had gone into the Generalitat Palace as victors; they emerged vanquished.

When the CNT–FAI Liaison Committee returned to report Companys’s proposals to Marianet, the latter informed them that in anticipation of such a move he had convened a ‘meeting of militants’ for that same afternoon. During the course of the discussion it was suggested that the options open to the ‘responsible committees’ were either to go all out for Libertarian Communism, which would be, according to Federica Montseny, tantamount to imposing an anarchist dictatorship.

Pending the decision of a plenum of local CNT unions and FAI groups that was to be convened as soon as possible, Marianet and the others agreed to continue negotiations with Companys. The wily Catalan president was contacted by telephone and informed of the Regional Committee’s acceptance, in principle, of the proposals concerning the Central Committee Antifascist Militias of Catalonia — pending, of course, ratification by a plenum of local CNT unions and FAI groups, which would be convened as soon as possible.

Companys’s heart must have soared when he heard the news. He knew that having permitted the Generalitat to remain intact and voluntarily committing themselves to collaborating with it, the CNT–FAI leaders, and the organizations they represented, would be obligated to the institution of government which they themselves sanctioned. It was only a matter of time. ‘The anarchist masses will not ‘ he observed, ‘oppose the common sense of their chiefs.’[210]

In the meantime, Durruti, García Oliver and Aurelio Fernández were empowered by the Regional Committee to continue their discussions as the official Liaison Committee to ensure that should the plenary meeting agree to the setting up of the Militias Committee, it would swing into operation promptly and smoothly. They returned to the Generalitat Palace that same evening of 20 July to begin provisional discussions with the Catalan politicians — Josep Tarradellas, Artemi Aiguadér and Jaume Miravitlles of the Esquerra, Ramón Peypoch of Catalan Action, Joan Comorera of the Socialist Union of Catalonia, Rafael Vidiella of the UGT and PSOE, and Julián Gorkin of the POUM. The Estat Català was disbarred from participating on the grounds that its leader, Dencas, was a fascist sympathizer who had fled to Italy, and that the Generalitat represented the interests of the region.

The following day, 21 July, the Regional Committee of the CNT held its hastily summoned ‘extraordinary’ assembly of Catalan (CNT) unions. José Peirats argues this was not, in fact, a properly constituted plenum of unions with a published agenda to be discussed in a regular way by mandated union representatives; it was, rather, an informal gathering of militants at Regional Committee level who, present in a personal capacity, had no mandate or authority to decide on the issues in question. [211] More than a month was to pass before a regular plenum of the Catalan CNT unions was held.

Marianet provided the ‘official’ account of the ‘extraordinary’ assembly later:

‘On 21 August, 1936, Barcelona was the venue for a Regional Plenum of the Local Federations and Sub-Regionals called by the Regional Committee of Catalonia. The situation was considered and it was unanimously decided not to mention Libertarian Communism until such time as we had captured that part of Spain that was in the hands of the rebels. Consequently, the Plenum resolved not to press on with totalitarian achievements, for we were facing a problem: imposing a dictatorship — wiping out all the guards and activists from the political parties who had played their part on the victory over the rebels on 19 and 20 July; a dictatorship which, in any event, would be crushed from without even if it succeeded within. The Plenum, with the exception of the Regional Federation of Bajo Llobregat, opted for collaboration with the other political parties and organizations in setting up the Antifascist Militias Committee. On the decision of this Plenum the CNT and FAI sent their representatives to it.’[212]

According to García Oliver, the delegate from Bajo Llobregat was the only one to point out that the creation of the Militias Committee would be an obstacle in the path of the revolutionary process. Because it was only a provisional agreement, pending the decision of the Plenum, they proposed that the CNT and FAI withdraw their representatives and press on with the revolution and the introduction of Libertarian Communism in line with the ideological objectives of the organization. They asked that one of the CNT–FAI representatives on the Militias Committee report to the Plenum as to its compatibility with the revolutionary aspirations of the CNT and FAI. [213]

García Oliver claims that, although a member of the Militias Committee, he agreed with the Bajo Llobregat analysis that ‘all we had really done was hamper the progress of the social revolution for which we had always campaigned.’ He likened the Committee to a ‘second-class police commissariat’ and urged that the provisional decision to collaborate with it should be reversed:

‘The time had come for us… to see through what we had begun on 18 July, dismantling the Militias Committee and forcing the pace in such a way that for the first time in history the anarcho-syndicalist unions would ‘go for broke’, that is, go for the maximum anarchist objective — the organization of a Libertarian Communist lifestyle throughout Spain.’’[214]

Montseny spoke next. She declared that her conscience as an anarchist would not permit her to countenance anarchists forcing the pace of events or ‘going for broke’. For her that implied the creation of what she described as ‘an anarchist dictatorship’. They should agree to remain inside the Militias Committee in the meantime, but should withdraw ‘just as soon as the rebel military were defeated, so as to devote ourselves once again to the task of anarchist organization and propaganda.’

Diego Abad de Santillán, peninsular secretary and FAI representative on the Militias Committee, also favored remaining within that body and continuing to collaborate with other political parties in the antifascist struggle. His argument showed even less faith in the constructive capacity of the workers than Montseny. Amazingly (for a self-styled revolutionary) it revolved around the fear that if the movement did decide to ‘go for broke’ it would pose a threat to all the vested interests of capitalism and, lacking legitimacy in the eyes of international law, would provoke immediate foreign intervention. British warships were already in the harbor ‘showing the flag’ in a cryptic demonstration of force that the Western democracies would not tolerate revolution. In the face of this threat he urged that in the meantime all mention of Libertarian Communism should be shelved.

Marianet claimed that membership of the Militias Committee would in no way prejudge ‘our governing from the streets’, and not commit the Organization ‘to dictatorial practices, as would be the case if the CNT were to go for broke.’

Winding up the debate, Oliver pointed out that Federica Montseny had raised the question of dictatorship. She had been the first to suggest that ‘going for broke’ was ‘tantamount to installing an anarchist dictatorship which would be as evil as any other’. ‘Since mention has been made of dictatorship’, Oliver added:

‘Let it be said that none of the ones we have known thus far shared the same character. Nor have tyrannies always had the same meaning. True, there have been tyrannies through imposition upon the people. But there have been tyrannies elected by the people.

‘Of all the varieties of dictatorship known, none has yet been enforced through the concerted action of labor unions. And if these labor unions are anarchist in outlook and their militants schooled, like us, in an anarchist ethic, to presuppose that we should resort to the same acts as the Marxists, for instance, is tantamount to saying that anarchism and Marxism are, basically, the same ideology, since they produce identical fruits. Such simplism I cannot accept. And let me say that syndicalism [i.e. anarcho-syndicalism — Author], in Spain and worldwide, arose out of an act of affirmation of its constructive values vis à vis the history of mankind, because without that demonstration of the ability to build a free socialism, the future would remain the playground of the political formulas thrown up by the French Revolution beginning with a plurality of parties and ending with just one’

The issue was put to the vote. García Oliver proposed Libertarian Communism as an immediate objective — ‘going for broke’. Santillán, for the FAI, moved that Libertarian Communism be waived as an immediate objective and participation in the Militias Committee be approved. With the exception of the district federation of Bajo Llobregat, who supported García Oliver, the decision to abandon Libertarian Communism was carried.

In spite of the overwhelming vote against the implementation of Libertarian Communism at this Plenum, García Oliver claims he refused to accept the decision. The delegates, summoned in haste and unaware of the business in hand, had rejected the fundamental principles of the CNT without reference back to the membership. He noted, wryly, that the people who had pushed the reformist line had been faístas, not treintistas as Broué and Témime pointed out. [215] In García Oliver’s own words:

‘The treintistas had certainly not taken part in the discussion, let alone adopted a stance… Faced with a choice between social revolution and the Militias Committee the organization had chosen the latter. Time alone would tell who was right…the majority at the Plenum, with de Santillán, Marianet and Federica and her group of anti-syndicalist anarchists such as Eusebio Carbó, Felipe Alaiz, García Birlán, Fidel Miró, José Peirats and others…or the Bajo Llobregat district which joined with me in arguing the need to press ahead with the social revolution, in a set of circumstances which had never seemed so promising. By their attitude, these self-styled anarchists had bankrupted the FAI as such, it having been set up for the specific purpose of neutralizing the reformist syndicalists inside the CNT.’[216]

The crucial nature of this decision which was to divert the course of the revolution cannot be stressed strongly enough. It was, in effect, an admission by the CNT–FAI leadership that the ideas they had held concerning the transition from a statist and capitalist society to a Libertarian Communist one were simply not practical owing to the ‘circumstances’ of war. Not only did they abandon anarchism, but also by negotiating with politicians and representatives of the state without the express consent of the membership they acted contrary to the union constitution. This reflected a long-standing weakness within the CNT–FAI. Because there was no paid union apparatus it was assumed that ‘leaderism’ was not a problem. This was not the case. The deference of the broad mass of the CNT to the ‘natural’ leaders who had won the workers’ trust by their personal sacrifice and commitment to the ‘idea’ led directly to the creation of the ‘fixed and constant authority’ that Bakunin had warned about and had turned well-meaning anarchists into charlatans.

That evening García Oliver convened a meeting of the Nosotros group together with a number of selected comrades to propose a seizure of the symbolic centers of government in the city by anarchist columns led by Durruti. Durruti, who had been unusually silent during the debate in the Plenum that afternoon, had not supported Oliver’s motion. For him the liberation of the 30,000 CNT militants believed captured in rebel-held Zaragoza had priority over everything else.

‘García Oliver’s argument, here and during the Plenum, strikes me as splendid’, stated Durruti. ‘His plan for a coup is perfect. But this does not seem to me the opportune moment. My feeling is that is should be put off until after the capture of Zaragoza, which cannot take more that 10 days. In the meantime I must insist that we shelve these plans until Zaragoza has been taken. At present, with only Catalonia as a base, we would be reduced to the most minimal geographic area.’[217]

A jubilant Joan Peiró later noted that anarchism, for the first time, had adapted itself ‘to history’:

‘Until July 1936, the tactics of anarchism consisted in remaining on the periphery of the State and from there harassing it and its institutions. The tactics of anarchism in the first half of the nineteenth century, however, consisted of the contrary. Proudhon, for example, fought the State and its institutions from his seat in the French Chamber of Deputies… Anarchism will have to contribute to the economic reconstruction of Spain… to win the war this will involve much closer collaboration than is presently the case.’[218]

García Oliver’s principled stand against collaboration with the bourgeois parties was short-lived. Working on the ‘realistic’ principle of joining those you have been unable to beat he accepted the nomination endorsing his membership of the Militias Committee along with the other anarchist representatives — Marcos Alcón, José Asens, Aurelio Fernández and Diego Abad de Santillán.

By its very nature the Militias Committee was a compromise, an artificial political solution, an officially sanctioned appendage of the Generalitat government, with each party pursuing divergent and contradictory objectives. Its legitimization of party politics led to a renewed power struggle among the factions in an attempt to boost membership and influence at the expense of the others. The only real area of agreement between the republican and socialist factions within the Militias Committee was the ultimate elimination of anarchist influence. It also drew the CNT–FAI leadership inexorably into the State apparatus, until then its principal enemy, and led to the steady erosion of anarchist influence and credibility.

Justifying the irrevocable consequences of his action in joining the artificial and hybrid creation which was the Militias Committee, Oliver later expressed his ambivalence toward the ‘extraordinary’ Plenum of local and district committees which had taken the decision to abandon anarchist principles and collaborate with the political parties:

‘The CNT and the FAI opted for collaboration and democracy, eschewing the revolutionary totalitarianism which simply had to have led to the revolution’s being strangled by the confederal and anarchist dictatorship. They trusted in the word and person of a Catalan democrat and retained and supported Companys in the office of President of the Generalitat; they accepted the Militias Committee and worked out a system of representation proportionate with numbers which, although not fair… (in that) the UGT and the Socialist Party, minority groups in Catalonia, were assigned an equal number of positions with the triumphant CNT and anarchists…implied sacrifice calculated to lure dictatorially inclined parties along the path of loyal collaboration which might otherwise be jeopardized by suicidal competition.’[219]

The Central Committee of Antifascist Militias, which was to concern itself almost exclusively with security and military matters, met for the first time that same night, 21 July, in the Maritime Museum where it established its permanent headquarters. The CNT agreed to parity with the other parties that were much less numerically strong. The socialist UGT, for example, was minuscule in Catalonia in July 1936 with only 12,000 members but it received the same number of seats as the CNT with its 350,000 members. Companys’s Esquerra Republicana also received parity with the two unions. García Oliver points out, however, that this decision had little to do with solidarity or generosity but pragmatic belief that a compromise of this nature in Catalonia would secure similar concessions in other regions such as Madrid where the CNT was in the minority. The Militias Committee was broken down as follows: CNT – 3; UGT – 3; Esquerra Republicana (Companys’s party) – 3; FAI – 2; Acció Catalana – 1; POUM – 1; PSOE (Socialist Party) –1; Unión de Rabassaires (the Catalan peasants’ party) – 1. A commissioner represented the Generalitat with a military adviser. [220]

Other important administrative organs such as the Supplies Committee, the Investigation Commission, the New Unified School Council, the Council of the Economy, the Revolutionary Tribunals, etc., were organized on a similar basis with union, party and FAI representation.

The CNT–FAI leaders saw the role of the Militias Committee as ‘establishing revolutionary order in the rearguard, the recruiting, organization and training of combat troops and officers…the provision of food and clothes, the organization of the economy, legislation, the administration of justice…the setting up of war industries, propaganda, relations with the Madrid government, land cultivation, health, and the defense of coasts and frontiers. We had to organize the payment of militias, their families and the widows of combatants, in fact to tens of thousands of people. We were faced with tasks that in any governmental system would require a massive bureaucracy. The Militias Committee was the war, interior and foreign ministries rolled into one… The Committee was the most legitimate expression of the power of the people.’[221]

President Azaña was horrified by Companys’s accommodation with the CNT–FAI. He described it, despairingly, as a plot to abolish the Spanish State. Companys had, however, no other option short of forming Generalitat militias, as the communist Joan Comorera had suggested, to challenge the CNT–FAI and POUM for control of the streets. [222] The Republic’s forces remaining in Catalonia amounted to no more than 5,000 men of the police and security forces — and in the revolutionary euphoria of those early days even these could not be relied upon to support the Generalitat. The Madrid government on the morning of 19 July had disbanded the regular army and the soldiers had dispersed, some fleeing to join the rebels, some returning home, while others joined the newly formed workers’ militias. The 40,000 or so anarcho-syndicalist militants, on the other hand were organized and well armed with the weapons taken from the San Andrés barracks and from the defeated soldiers; they also controlled the communications and transport infrastructure of the whole region.