The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  Though some new measures in social security were worked out—including accident and illness insurance, more rational pensions, and family allowances—the industrial syndicalism of Barcelona maintained, unlike the rural anarchists, individual wages, and did not experiment with family wages. These wages probably increased, it is true, in late 1936 by about a third over July. But the effect was ruined by the inflation.2 Later, anarchist ministers would complain bitterly that their ideas were rejected in the cabinet. Peiró, at the ministry of industry, said that the communists refused him money, opposed his decrees of collectivization, and thwarted him at every turn. On the other hand, they did prevent the return to private ownership of many enterprises already collectivized.3

  The problems of anarchism at war could not have been predicted. Consider energy: before the war, Barcelona’s coal came mostly from Asturias. Now Asturias was cut off. England was a major exporter of coal: but, after the launching in September of the new nationalist cruiser, the Canarias, the republic had no longer command of the sea. Shortage of coal necessitated a reconsideration of transport and other industrial policies. Was it necessary to run as many trains as before the war? The CNT thought that it was. Yet by November they had had to modify that programme severely.4 Similar problems affected the Catalan textile industry. Before the war, Catalonia had bought its cotton from Egypt, the US, and Brazil; its wool came partly from Castile. Now the US and Brazil were inaccessible, the other side of Gibraltar, while Castile was mostly in the hands of Franco. Ships, mainly British ships, could still come from Egypt but even the Mediterranean was becoming less and less safe for republican merchantmen.

  Catalonia had now three main types of management in industry; first, enterprises where the proprietor remained theoretically in his old place, but where the workers had elected a committee controlling the business. Most firms of this category were foreign-owned. Secondly, there were enterprises where the old proprietor had been replaced directly by an elected committee of workers. Thirdly, there were the ‘socialized’ enterprises, in which an effort had been made to rearrange the industry concerned. An example of this was the wood industry of Catalonia in which, under the aegis of the anarchist syndicate of wood workers, all the activities had been unified, from the cutting of the tree to the sale of the plank. But this instance gives a false impression of simplicity. In all large industries, and in industries important for the war, a state representative sat on the committee. He was responsible for controlling credit, and sometimes raw materials. His role became more and more important, so that, in some enterprises (particularly the munitions factories), something close to nationalization would soon be achieved. Then the Decree of 24 October had given its approval to the survival of those private enterprises which employed less than a hundred workers. That meant the vast majority of Catalan enterprises. Despite the part played by the anarchist Juan Fábregas in its authorship, the real consequences of the Decree were to confirm the role of the petty bourgeoisie in business and, more important, to give the state an increasing responsibility for industry.1

  The most important industry in Catalonia was, of course, the textile one (employing some 180,000 workers, over twice as many as any other single industry). Most factories were small. An effort was made to ‘socialize’ this undertaking under a single directorate, but many private firms survived, as well as some collectivized factories which refused to collaborate with any national, or regional, plan. Meantime, the shortage of raw materials and of markets caused a three- or even a two-day week to be sometimes adopted (though, if that happened, workers would receive a four-day wage). An effort was made to standardize wages, resulting in an all-round cut, for ordinary workers as well as technicians, though the CNT explained that was counter-balanced by the new forty-hour week, the establishment of fixed and permanent salaries, and the abolition of piecework.1 But no effort was made to equalize wages between men and women. The industry seems to have been run by a veritable fiesta of committees organized in the pyramidical form beloved of the CNT: committee of shop floor, of zone, region and marketing, all elected by plenary assemblies of workers. This industry at the beginning had no governmental representation and refused it. The Generalidad responded by going to the strange length of importing material from France for the uniforms of their new army.2 It was hardly surprising that the revolutionary textile industry should be producing less than half in January 1937 than it was in January 1936.3

  As for the shipping companies, the larger ones (the Transatlantic Company, the Mediterranean Company) were now managed by committees of both CNT and UGT. The Transatlantic Company had, in addition to three members each of these two unions on its committee, one representative each from the Generalidad and from the central government. The anarchist transport workers ran the trains, the underground and the bus services, though the UGT had representation on the committees of the two Catalan rail networks. On the other hand, the banks, after being directed for a while by socialist bank clerks, were taken over by the Generalidad, while the telephone company was controlled by a committee of workers in each exchange.

  Another important group of enterprises in Catalonia were the metallurgical plants. Some of these were foreign-owned, and, therefore, were run by workers’ committees without any long-term collectivization. Others were collectivized, but not socialized, that is, they remained isolated enterprises—except, admittedly, for those needed by the war—and were, therefore, subject to interference by, in succession, the committee of militias, the Generalidad and the central government. Thus, the government delegate played a determining part in the Hispano-Suiza works, where armoured lorries, ambulances, hand grenades and machine-gun rests, among other items, were produced.4 This was the only branch of industry which, in the winter of 1936, registered an increase in overall production in relation to the previous year.1 The manufacture of machinery showed the sharpest increase.

  Outside Catalonia, the central government also sought to bring all major factories under state supervision, whether nationalized or privately managed. To ensure this, credit was made difficult for anarchist factories, and many other difficulties were put in their way by the government. Some mills, therefore, had to stop production when cotton was exhausted. This occurred even though an anarchist, Peiró, was at the ministry of industry. Peiró’s plans for collectivization were rejected by Largo Caballero, and industry remained throughout the winter of 1936–7 unstandardized. Some factories were nationalized, some socialized and rationalized, some were in private hands, and some were in the hands of workers’ committees, while both of the latter two categories had state representatives within them. All were short of raw material, spare parts and, except for war industries, markets: while Peiró found 11,000 demands for credit on his acceptance of office.2

  At Valencia, arrangements in industry were more simple. Nearly all the factories and shops were managed by their workers. But the effect of the government’s move to Valencia had been to give them, nevertheless, more political control over the Levante, which, before November, had been almost independent. Ricardo Zabalza, who had led the socialist agrarian trade union (FNTT) in 1934, took over as civil governor and showed himself a decided centralist. The semi-independent committee of Valencia was stifled by the central government and it, and its most prominent member, the revolutionary Lieutenant Benedito, passed out of history after January 1937. Mayors began again, as in the past, to be nominated by the civil governor.

  In Madrid, hostility between the communists and anarchists had different implications. On the one hand, it was an aspect of the quarrel between Madrid and Valencia, and, on the other, of a dispute between the communists and Largo Caballero. After the battle of the Corunna road, General ‘Kléber’ argued that the republic should attack, the International Brigades leading the offensive. But here ‘Kléber’ came up against the distrust which he had inspired in Miaja and other Spanish commanders. Largo Caballero, jealous of the prestige of La Pasionaria and other communists who had remained in Madrid duri
ng the fighting, was said to have suspected that ‘Kléber’ wished to use the International Brigades to stage a communist coup d’état in the capital. The anarchists of Madrid supported Miaja, and indirectly, for the first time, Largo Caballero. Even so, ‘Kléber’s’ tactical ideas might have triumphed had he not incurred the suspicion of André Marty. As a result, ‘Kléber’ left his command and temporarily went to live in a small hotel in Valencia. Thereafter, Miaja’s reputation, whatever his real effect on the battles, grew daily. He was becoming extraordinarily popular in Madrid—and knew it. ‘When I am in my car,’ he told Zugazagoitia, ‘women shout to me: “Miaja! Miaja! There goes Miaja!” I greet them and they greet me. They are happy and so am I.’1 Miaja was not a political general. He did once tell Pietro Nenni that he liked the communists better than the socialists, because they were resolute: ‘The socialists talk first, then act. If the communists talk, they do so after acting. Militarily speaking, it is an advantage.’2 Later, it was suggested that he had become a party member. Actually, Miaja had the membership cards of all the political parties left in Madrid, including the joint youth movement, despite his sixty years;3 and Azaña recalled him saying that, though he was certainly a republican, he could not work with socialists: they should all be shot.4

  The ‘Spanish Lenin’, meantime, was changing his view of politics. As Prime Minister, Largo Caballero had restored the authority of the state and, with the conventional General Asensio as under-secretary of war, had begun the reorganization of the army. The communists and the united youth, dominated by the communists, had helped him into power, and he had profited from that party’s organizing skill. Still, he was disillusioned. This may have begun when the communists, like Miaja, profited so greatly from the defence of Madrid. It did not help certainly that, on 21 December, Stalin sent a letter to him full of patronizing advice: the parliamentary method might be more revolutionarily effective in Spain than in Russia; even so, the Russian experience might be useful—hence the dispatch of certain ‘military comrades’ who had received orders to follow Spanish instructions and act as advisers. Stalin begged Largo Caballero ‘as a friend’ to report how successful the advisers had been, and even to say whether he found the ambassador, Rosenberg, satisfactory. The letter ended with the advice that peasants’ and foreigners’ property should be respected, that partisan forces should be formed behind the nationalist lines, that the small bourgeoisie should not be attacked, and that Azaña and the republicans should not be cold-shouldered.1 But the culmination of Largo Caballero’s resentment against Russia came in January when the Russian ambassador, Rosenberg, tried to influence him to dismiss General Asensio and make a number of other appointments which the communists wanted. After two hours of animated conversation in which Alvarez del Vayo, as foreign minister, had also been present, Largo ex-postulated:

  Out you go, out! You must learn, Señor Ambassador, that the Spaniards may be poor and need aid from abroad, but we are sufficiently proud not to accept that a foreign ambassador should try and impose his will on the head of the Spanish government. And as for you, Vayo, you ought to remember that you are a Spaniard, and minister of foreign affairs of the republic, instead of arranging to agree with a foreign diplomat to exert pressure on your own Prime Minister.2

  How ironic that the old trade unionist should reach a watershed in his political life in order to defend an officer who, though able, was deeply conservative! There were also similar scenes between Largo and the two communist ministers in the cabinet.3

  Rosenberg in consequence soon left Spain (to be murdered in Russia, along with most of his colleagues in the Russian diplomatic service). He was succeeded by the meeker figure of his chargé d’affaires, Gaikins. But it was evident, in early 1937, that the communists were dissatisfied with the Prime Minister whom they had previously supported so strongly. He refused to merge the socialist and the communist parties as the two youth movements had been united, and as the communists were demanding all that winter. Marcelino Pascua, the Spanish ambassador in Moscow, even came to Spain with another message from Stalin, specially to press the idea of fusion. Largo still refused, though he was told that Stalin wanted him to continue as the leader of the united movement. Thus Largo was beginning to fight back against the communists in the winter of 1936–7, and they in turn to intrigue against him. Largo contemplated the dismissal of Alvarez del Vayo on grounds of disloyalty, obtained Azaña’s support for that course, but then withdrew at the last minute, though his words to Azaña had been strong: ‘One of my ministers has betrayed me. He is a socialist. He is the foreign minister.’1

  The trouble with complaining to Azaña was that the political moderation of the communist party in Spain had brought them a working alliance with the liberal republicans. The policy of Azaña and Giral, for example, insofar as one existed apart from the general aim of winning the war, was much the same as that of the communist party, in respect of both military strategy and economics. It was thus in language almost identical with that of La Pasionaria that Azaña, in one of his rare public appearances, at Valencia on 21 January, demanded ‘a war policy … with only one expression—discipline and obedience to the responsible government of the republic’. Equally, the Prietista socialists, including Prieto himself, and the finance minister, Negrín, looked to the communists as useful allies against not only Largo Caballero, whom they had so long disliked, but the whole policy of immoderate revolution, which they hated. They loathed the POUM and the anarchists as much as the communists did. Furthermore, Russian military aid, and the incomparable esprit of the International Brigades, sustained the myth of ‘Popular Frontism’, which they continued to uphold. This working alliance between Azaña, Prieto and the communists might not be profound, and it might not last long, but, as will be seen, it was enough to ruin Largo Caballero. At this time Prieto, to his subsequent embarrassment, even spoke in favour of the merger of the socialist and communist parties.1

  Social and other reforms, Azaña and the communists could now agree, should await victory. It was the adoption of that policy which gave the communist party much of its attraction. At a national youth congress in Valencia in January, the secretary-general of the socialist-communist youth, Santiago Carrillo (the ‘chrysalis in spectacles’, as his enemies called him: he was only twenty years old), said, ‘We are not Marxist youth. We fight for a democratic parliamentary republic.’ Solidaridad Obrera named this ‘reformist quackery’: ‘If the united socialist youth are neither socialist, communist, nor Marxist, what are they?’ In fact, the united youth had not realized that its leaders had gone over so wholeheartedly to communism, and when it did, there were complaints—the secretaries in both Valencia and Asturias declining seats on the movement’s national committee as a result.2

  Yet when all these quarrels are understood, and the increasing stranglehold exercised by the opportunistic communists, Spanish and foreign, is taken into account, there were many ways in which this government of Largo Caballero was fumbling towards a better Spain. The war might be taking up most of the republican resources, but attention was being paid to education as never before. The number of new schools opened in 1937 would approach 1,000, many in the confiscated houses of the rich, and church schools had been converted into state or national schools (‘New United Schools’). In 1937, there were to be 2,000 military schools, at which about 100,000 previously illiterate militiamen would learn to read.3 In the agrarian collectives, there were usually several more teachers than before July 1936. A serious effort was made to insist on education for all, and most observers noticed that there were fewer children loitering disconsolately round the home than before. Several vocational or technical schools were founded, such as the agricultural University of Moncada (Valencia), where some three hundred pupils learned better agricultural techniques.1 According to an anarchist account, there were 116,846 children in school in Barcelona in July 1937 compared with 34,431 in July 1936.2

  In health, the first steps towards the socialization of medicine were
also undertaken. The work of the anarchist councillor for health in Barcelona, García Birlán, and the director of health services whom he named, Dr Félix Martí Ibáñez, was outstanding. The 1,000 doctors of Barcelona, the 3,200 nurses, the 330 midwives, and the 600 dentists worked well and imaginatively.3 Furthermore, the services offered, including operations, were free. Despite the demand for medical services at the front, there were over a thousand more beds for tubercular patients in the republic than in 1936. Later in 1937, compulsory inoculation for smallpox, diphtheria, and typhoid was instituted. By the end of that year there were as many child-welfare centres in republican Spain as there had been before the war in all Spain.4 The devoted work of the foreign medical-aid organizations also radiated throughout the republic, setting new standards of hygiene. Though García Birlán soon left the Generalidad, Federica Montseny, another dedicated and well-informed anarchist, remained as minister of health until well into 1937. One further innovation was that abortions were legalized by decree on 13 January—although they remained forbidden after three months of pregnancy—and such operations were carried out with proper medical help.5

  Marriages were swift: in Solidaridad Obrera of 29 December 1936, the following paragraph appeared:

  On Sunday morning, in the presence of numerous comrades, a simple and emotional scene occurred in the transport union, more for its libertarian significance than its social aspect. Two young people came together by free and spontaneous decision … Juan Freixas and Tomasa Costa … This union had one bond: love … the voice of our director, Liberio Callejas, sealed the union when he told them, ‘In the name of liberty, stay united!’