by Hugh Thomas
The role of the ‘general assembly’ of the collectives varied. In some places, it was an active body, where the population was able, for a time, to guide the policy of the collective. At Ademuz (Valencia), for instance, a lovely town hung on a mountainside, the general assembly met every Saturday to discuss ‘future orientations’.3 In Alcolea de Cinca (Huesca), general assemblies were celebrated ‘when they were needed’.4 In Alcázar de Cervantes and in Granadella (Lérida), general assemblies elected the council of administration, but did little thereafter.5 The collective of Cervera del Maestre (Castellón) was set up by ‘agreement of an open assembly in the town square’.6 Gaston Leval, a French anarchist, described visits to such general assemblies in Aragon where the arrangements adopted
permitted the population to know, understand, and integrate themselves mentally in the society, to co-participate in the direction of public affairs, and responsibilities, so that recriminations and tensions—always produced when the power of decision is confined, without the possibility of reply, to certain individuals, however democratically elected—are absent.7
Considerable responsibility rested with secretaries to collectives, often chosen less for their political dedication than for their ability to read and write: thus, at one collective in upper Aragon, the secretary was for a time a university student and son of the local cacique, Vicente de Piniés, an ex-minister of the monarchy. (He later joined the army, crossed the lines in the middle of the battle, and became an ambassador under Franco.)1
There were so many different varieties of agriculture. In some villages, for example, peasant families left on Monday mornings to work all the week in the hills with their goats and sheep and only return on Saturday night. Such statistics as exist give an increase in the production of wheat from Aragon and the centre of Spain, the main centres of collectives, and a decrease from Catalonia and the Levante, the stronghold of the peasant proprietors. This fact was seized upon by the anarchists: ‘Peasants of Castile,’ wrote a certain N. González, ‘here you have conclusive proofs that the peasant collective is not a madness: it is the system where … production is greatest. This is the road, dear comrades, to follow …’2 Alas, the trouble was that, even if there was indeed an increase of wheat, as these figures suggest, the increased consumption at the place of production, the decay of systems of transport, the increase of refugees and the greater demand for food brought by the nationalist blockade caused a shortage of food in all the cities of the republic except for Valencia.
Sometimes, accounts of individual collectives are available. The table gives those of Almagro, a town in La Mancha, of about 8,000 inhabitants, not far from Ciudad Real, a centre for the wine industry.3
These figures show that the town of Almagro was scarcely keeping up with the inflation, which must have been, even in the country, approaching 30 per cent between the dates mentioned. The anarchist reporter who visited the town on behalf of the weekly Campo Libre also commented that, though evidently the collective was doing well, it ought to try and save—not for itself, but for others less prosperous in the region. The collective of Almagro seemed to have forgotten that it was part of a federation. The comrades who formed the administrative council in Almagro were too proud. Nevertheless—and this was something apparently which by then could be said of the directors of few collectives—none of them smoked or drank. In this town, there was an anomaly: an anarchist flour mill, run by the workers, which was nevertheless not a part of the collective. Its products were of three qualities, described, in order of work, as ‘FAI’, ‘CNT’, and ‘AIT’.1 The collective was composed of 300 families which, in the year from 1 September 1936 to 31 August 1937, each consumed 40 gallons of olive oil, 200 pounds of potatoes, and about 800 pounds of bread. About 430 litres of wine per family were drunk during the year—a modest amount, it might be thought, in the first year of revolutionary freedom. The church had been turned into a carpenter’s shop. The town was notable for its lack of ‘disorderly communists’. The old municipal council continued to exist, the anarchists holding six seats out of fifteen.2
Wages differed from collective to collective, the criterion being the richer the collective, the better paid the workers. This was an ironic conclusion to the libertarian dream. On the other hand, in many places, a little oil, wine, bread, even meat, were free, along with rent, electric light (where it existed), the use of a barber, medical advice and medicine. Wages usually varied according to the size, or needs, of the family. As has been seen, money was abolished altogether in many places, but, in most of them, after a few months, either a replacement for it was issued, in the form of vouchers (vales or bonos), or it reappeared as a ‘usual wage’, as elsewhere. For example, at Graus (Huesca), wages were first paid in vouchers: at the end of a month, these were replaced by tickets divided into points; then, because of the town’s importance in the locality, at a crossroads, the peseta was reintroduced; and finally, the committee issued a local currency for use within the village, varying payments according to needs.1
In a few places, especially remote ones where bad weather caused shortages in winter, collectivists were permitted to keep a few animals of their own: in Piedras Menares (Guadalajara), for example, this was eighteen chickens and three goats;1 in other places, communal dining-rooms were set up where bachelors could eat free, passers-by at the cost of a peseta.
Statistics sometimes point to a rise in production, as for example on the collective of Miralcampo, set up near Guadalajara on land previously belonging to the Conde de Romanones.2 There were also some radical improvements dictated or made possible by the demands of war and, perhaps, by the desire of the collectivists to prove the superiority of their system to all others. Time and again, there were reports of new model pig farms, new mills, and new roads. Land was often farmed in a more rational manner than before the war, irrigation extended, intelligent changes of production begun, hygiene improved, and sheds built. Many collectives bought new agricultural machinery. Schools increased, and the thirst for education by both young and adults was partially satisfied, in converted convents or palaces, by new schoolmasters, themselves finding learning difficult.
For innumerable workers, the absence, death, or, in some instances, mere retirement of the old master class, of the priest, of the whole apparatus of traditional living, and of all the things that went with it, such as the subordination of women, sustained a persistent exhilaration, making up for such shortages as were caused by the war. Life in the small towns of Castile or Aragon had been limited. Now windows seemed open. The conquest of power by the workers had created problems, but much of the tedium of the old life had vanished, in a wealth of slogans, encouragements to harder work, revolutionary songs, old songs rewritten with modern words, radio broadcasts, and committee meetings, which gave the illusion, at least, that there was a political life in which the participation of all was possible.
From the government’s point of view, the disadvantage of collectives was that they paid no taxes; and, though the anarchists said that they ‘judged it a sacred duty to take food directly to the front’,1 it arrived at irregular intervals, so that it could not be counted upon, and was often wasted. Nor, despite the presence of socialists in many councils of administration, could the collectives be counted upon to carry out governmental directives.
By December 1936, the chief officials of the ministry of agriculture, from the minister downwards, were communists. (Castro Delgado had moved from the Fifth Regiment to become director-general of agrarian reform, and the secretary-general was another communist—Morayta Núñez.)2 This had the effect of causing many rural workers to assume that, though the master class was new, it was virtually the same as it had been before in all really important respects.
The fate of the collectives if the country had been at peace is difficult to estimate. For the very existence of the war and of the other revolutionary parties—perplexing though both seemed to the anarchists—must have been responsible for some of the success that the collec
tives had. The war sustained the sense of communal service. At the same time, the government’s and the communists’ backing of the small farmer meant that such people were usually certain of an ally in need, from the autumn of 1936 onwards: the local council of administration could not go too far in bullying individuals to make them join or conform. (The communist minister of agriculture made a number of speeches promising the private farmer that his interests would be served by the party, and the message was heard.)
The only possible conclusion is that the collective experience would have been a success or a failure depending on whether its managers were able, in peace, to accept the permanent existence of, and collaborate with, the state and private proprietors; and whether the state and the private proprietor could have brought themselves permanently to accept such enterprises as these kibbutzim alongside conventional ventures. Some anarchists, such as Horacio Prieto, were beginning to see that the merger of, say, twenty-five or fifty grocers’ shops into one large collective store, as sometimes happened, was not necessarily a social advantage. The abolition of private locksmiths, shoemakers, furniture menders and cabinet makers often led to the disappearance of those crafts altogether. What would happen too to ensure that rich collectives handed over their excess produce for the benefit of poor ones, and how would the rural managements have secured the fertilizers, machinery, credit, and technical assistance which were needed by Spanish agriculture, whoever directed it? Thus, too many questions are unanswered to be able to say that these agrarian enterprises were successful. Yet it is evident that they articulated the enthusiasms of many poor, but dedicated, men and women. They deserved neither the contempt of the communists nor the brutality of the nationalists, even if the delusions of grandeur on the part of some of the anarchist leaders, such as Joaquín Ascaso, diminish the sympathy which might be otherwise felt for the idealistic autodidacts who worked in the system.
33
The battles around Madrid in the winter of 1936–7 were international events as much as they were Spanish. Yet diplomats spoke as if Non-Intervention could be made to work. Thus on 12 November, Maisky, the Russian ambassador in London (‘in a way a second loyalist ambassador in London’),1 had happily remarked, ‘after weeks of aimless wandering, our committee … has elaborated a scheme for the more or less effective control of the Non-Intervention Agreement’.2 For, on that day, a plan of Lord Plymouth’s to discover breaches of the pact by posting observers at Spanish frontiers and ports was approved. Portugal, Germany and Italy argued that, before the plan could be put to the two Spanish contestants, control by air should be included. The near-impossibility of that suggested that these countries were concerned to prolong negotiations, rather than reach agreement. All this time, the German consul at Odessa, and newspaper correspondents at Istanbul, were reporting the shipment of arms from Russia.
The shipment of Russian military aid was, of course, noticed by consuls other than the German. On 15 November, Eden, in the House of Commons, bluntly announced that there were countries ‘more to blame for the breach of non-intervention than Germany and Italy’. On 17 November, Eden was also faced with a new problem. The nationalists declared that they intended to prevent war material from reaching the republic and, to do so, would stop and search ships on the high seas. Now, under international law, British ships could carry arms to Spain from foreign ports, and demand aid from the Navy, if interfered with, unless the interference were to occur within Spanish territorial waters, where the Navy was not entitled to follow. The British government regarded the action of such merchant ships ‘contrary to the spirit, if not the letter’, of the Non-Intervention Agreement. The Navy did not want to protect merchant ships carrying on such a trade.1 If Franco were recognized as having belligerent rights in the civil war, interference would be legal. Though the British government would have liked to have made such an act of recognition (they believed that that would more easily keep Britain out of the conflict), the French opposed it. Eden wished neither to help Franco nor to offend France. But he would have liked ‘to show a tooth in the Mediterranean’. On 22 November, in the cabinet, most ministers argued for belligerent rights, while Eden opposed them. Eden won, and the cabinet decided to let the Navy protect British ships while carrying ordinary cargo, but to forbid British ships to carry arms.2 Actually, on 20 November, the Admiralty had told British warships that both Spanish navies could stop and search merchant ships for arms. Eden did not get that order cancelled till 25 November. It was fortunate for the British government that this did not leak to the press.3
Before this had been digested, Germany and Italy announced their recognition of the nationalists as the government of Spain. Franco received the news by describing Germany and Italy, with Portugal and nationalist Spain, as bulwarks of culture, civilization, and Christianity in Europe. ‘This moment’, he added with a, for him, unusual superlative, ‘marks the peak of life in the world.’4
But the situation was dangerous, for, on 21 November, an Italian submarine had entered the battle and torpedoed the republican cruiser Miguel de Cervantes off Cartagena.1 On 27 November, the Italian ambassador in Paris told his American colleague, the unpredictable Bill Bullitt, that Italy would not cease to support Franco, even if Russia were to abandon the republic—‘Franco’s effectives being insufficient to enable him to conquer the whole of Spain’.2 Mussolini was gambling all on a victory by Franco. He had just sent Filippo Anfuso, Ciano’s principal secretary, and the chief of military intelligence, Colonel Mario Roatta, to Franco, to suggest that Italy should send a division of Black Shirts to fight in Spain. In return, he wanted Franco to support Italy in her Mediterranean policy. Trade connections would be made as favourable as possible.3 On 28 November, Franco agreed with this arrangement, and the Black Shirts began to be fitted out. At that moment, Italy had sent to Franco altogether some 50 light Ansaldo-Fiat tanks, 50 pieces of artillery, about 24 Fiat fighters, 19 Savoia 81 bombers, and some Romeo 37 light bombers.4 The tank specialists, who had been in action from 21 October till 26 November, attached to the Legion, were now mostly withdrawn, leaving behind a rather demoralized group of Italian pilots under Captain Fagnani as the only Italians actually fighting for Franco, though what remained of the material was still there.5
Meantime, the first German chargé to the nationalist government arrived at Burgos. This was General von Faupel, a corps commander in the First World War, then an organizer of the Freikorps, who had spent much of the 1920s helping to reorganize the armies of Argentina and Peru. He was a strong Nazi, a fluent Spanish speaker, having, since 1934, been director of the German Ibero-American Institute, and was much disliked by his foreign ministry. Hitler had told him not to concern himself with military matters, and he took one man with him for propaganda, and one for the ‘organization of the Falange’. From the start, he and his wife—‘gross, intelligent, and maternal’—were unpopular with the Spanish leaders.1 Faupel, on the other hand, found Franco ‘likeable’, but ‘incapable of measuring up to the needs of the situation’.2 He was anti-religious, and hated the Spanish upper class—thinking that only a man of low birth could make a fascist revolution. Accordingly, his staff associated with, and encouraged, radical members of the Falange, particularly Manuel Hedilla.3 Faupel wanted Hitler to carry out an anti-bolshevik crusade, in Spain and elsewhere; but Hitler said that Spain was ‘a convenient side-show which occupied the great powers and left Germany free to pursue her aims in the east’.4
Faupel’s first report to Berlin (with General von Sperrle, the commander of the Condor Legion, agreeing) was to urge that Germany should either now leave Franco to himself, or send additional forces. One strong German and one Italian division were all that were needed.5 A concentrated combat force of 15,000–30,000 could, he said, break through the republican lines in overwhelming strength and so win the war. Dieckhoff at the foreign ministry warned against this, arguing that more than one German division would be needed and that, if such forces were sent, Germany and Italy would incur the same o
dium as the French had gathered in Spain in 1808. Shortly too, Germany and nationalist Spain would have to consider the question of payment. A protocol extending the existing commercial treaty to 31 March 1937, and undertaking new negotiations before then, was, in fact, signed on the last day of 1936 by Faupel and an official of the nationalist diplomatic office.
Before that, Delbos in France, fearing that Italy was about to attack Barcelona, and aware that German help to Franco might be paid for in minerals,1 proposed to Eden that they should ask Germany, Italy, and Russia for a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ to cease the sale of arms to, and then mediate in, Spain. Delbos also asked for support from Roosevelt. US Ambassador Bullitt, on receiving the request, took the opportunity to warn Delbos ‘not to base his foreign policy … on an expectation that the United States would ever again send troops or warships or floods of munitions and money to Europe’.2 The Non-Intervention Committee, meanwhile, agreed on 2 December (Portugal abstaining) to put Lord Plymouth’s control plan to the two Spanish parties.3
On 4 December, France and Britain approached Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Russia on the subject of mediation. Eden suggested that the ‘six powers most closely concerned’ might call an armistice, send a commission to Spain and, after a plebiscite, set up a government under men who had kept out of the civil war, such as Salvador de Madariaga, whom Eden had learned to respect at Geneva; Madariaga had been the Spanish representative during the last years of the republic and had been a permanent official of the League.4