Essays on the Spanish Civil War - Albert Weisbord by Les Weil

Author:Les Weil
Language: eng
Format: epub

BARRICADES IN BARCELONA

By Albert Weisbord

The barricade fighting that flared up from May 3rd to May 7th in Barcelona and throughout Catalonia marked one of the most important turning points of the Spanish Revolution.

Before May the governments of Catalonia and of Valencia had been generally considered the most radical the world had seen since the days of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath in Hungary and Bavaria. In the July, 1936, days, in answer to the attacks of Franco, the workers, in effect, had speedily taken over economic and political direction of the country while organizing their militia to fight Fascism.

Out of sheer magnanimity the workers' organizations of Spain did not attempt to exclude Republican bourgeois organizations from participation in the government. Neither did they take any steps to build Soviets on the Russian model as a step to the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the contrary, gradually the government assumed the form it had before the July upheaval, the anti-Fascist committees being voluntarily dissolved in favor of the governments of Companys and Azana. This action was taken not because the bourgeois radicals were strong enough to win such consideration, indeed, most of them had disappeared in the troubled July days. Rather, was it because the labor organizations had deliberately limited their own aspirations and demands to this halfway point.

What was first established in July, 1936, was an emergency government with an overwhelming domination of workers' representatives. The factories were collectivized by the unions. The old employers, those who were not in flight or reactionary, were given part of the direction of the enterprise or kept on as technical advisers. A fund was established for the payment of debts which might include compensation for the former owners, especially where the capital was of foreign origin.

Despite these concessions voluntarily granted, the Spanish workers labored under the belief that they had created a genuine workers' revolutionary government which could be induced gradually, and without the harsh necessity of a new upheaval, to usher a full form of Socialism into Spain. With such a belief the Anarchists abandoned the essence of their program and entered into the government; the Syndicalists talked of being able now to construct a new society; even the Workers Party of Marxists Unification (the P.O.U.M.) nourished similar fantasies.

The May Days toppled these "castles in Spain" to the ground. Within a few hours once more the workers' neighborhood became a seething hive of activity. Masses of men grouped behind barricades, thousands of them armed with rifles, revolvers and hand grenades, challenge all passers by and wait tensely for a threatened attack. Barricades sprang up everywhere, six or eight to a street, hundreds throughout the city, barricades made of paving blocks and sandbags hastily thrown together to the height of five feet, powerful barriers that guard all important corners and block the streets. All Catalonia is paralyzed with a general strike. In the center of the city firing continues steadily for several days. Ambulances rush hither and thither, the only vehicles allowed to pass except for the cars of the AnarchoªSyndicalist (C.

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