The Spanish Civil War (18 page)

The serious constitutional dispute thereby engendered was still simmering when the question of the separatist aspirations of the Basques also came to the fore. The Basques’ financial relations with the central government in Madrid had been dictated by the
concierto económico
of 1876. This gave the Basques an autonomous fiscal system, by which they taxed themselves and paid a single sum to the state. The municipal councils of the Basque provinces believed that certain laws introduced by Samper’s government threatened the
concierto,
and decided to hold municipal elections in the three provinces of Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa, and Alava, wherein the elected representatives would declare themselves publicly on the question of the
concierto.
The government forbade that. When, despite this prohibition, the elections were nevertheless held, the new councillors were arrested. A series of wild demonstrations in favour of Basque home rule followed throughout the three provinces. The Basque nationalist party, Catholic and middle-class bourgeois as they were almost to a man, began to embark upon an alliance with the socialists and the Left that was as bizarre as it was fateful. They were disillusioned with the CEDA and sought new sponsors.

While both separatist problems in Spain had become simultaneously acute, the nation was shocked by the news that several cases of arms had been landed in Asturias for the benefit of the socialists by the
hitherto ‘moderate’ Prieto, on the steamer
Turquesa.
¹
The government proclaimed a state of alarm; Gil Robles, in a great meeting of his youth movement (JAP), held at Covadonga, the sanctuary in Asturias commemorating where the Visigoth King Pelayo began the
Reconquista
of Spain from the Moors, announced: ‘We will no longer suffer this state of affairs to continue’. The CNT and UGT, acting together, for the first time for many years, proclaimed a general strike in Asturias, so making it difficult for the CEDA delegates to this meeting to return home to Madrid. A week later, Gil Robles declared that, when the Cortes met in October after the summer, he and his party would no longer support the government of Samper. The implication was that he would himself take power. At this, the UGT issued a statement denouncing Gil Robles, ‘the lay Jesuit’. If the CEDA should enter the government without declaring support for the republic, the UGT ‘would not answer for their future action’. The inference was that the UGT would regard such conduct by the CEDA as the first step towards the establishment of a fascist state in Spain. Largo Caballero then sought to form an
alianza obrera,
a workers’ alliance, which he hoped would bring together socialists, communists and anarchists; he outmanoeuvred Prieto and other reformists. Prieto told Besteiro that he would have liked to strangle Largo; Besteiro sensibly replied that it would be ‘better to resist him’.
²
But even Prieto, de los Ríos and all the moderate leaders were nevertheless soon swept along by a wave of optimistic militancy in which the youth movement played the main part.

Gil Robles’s reluctance to declare his adhesion to the republic derived from a fear of losing many right-wing supporters if he did so, since he would seem to be accepting the still unrevised anti-clerical clauses of the constitution; he needed the monarchists’ financial help
and also, perhaps, he had a genuine abhorrence of the republic. But this was the late summer of 1934. The Spanish socialists of the UGT had seen how the German and Austrian socialists had been overwhelmed by Hitler and Dollfuss respectively during the last eighteen months. Where lay the difference between Dollfuss and Gil Robles? Gil Robles did nothing to make it clear.

The time for the reassembly of the Cortes drew near. The atmosphere was worsened by several political murders. On 2 October, Gil Robles withdrew the support of the CEDA from Samper’s government, which resigned. Alcalá Zamora still did not ask Gil Robles to form an administration. Instead, Lerroux was again entrusted with this task. He included three members of the CEDA in his cabinet, though not Gil Robles himself. Alcalá Zamora still suspected him. Lerroux also had no intention, if he could help it, of letting in a young rival for leadership of Spain’s middle class.
¹
On the other hand, the President shrank from new elections such as the socialists had expected. Further, he had wanted only one CEDA minister. Gil Robles was strong enough to insist on three.

The reaction was swift and violent. Azaña’s Republican Left party,
²
Martínez Barrio and even Miguel Maura denounced the President’s action in handing over the republic to its enemies. In Madrid, the UGT proclaimed a general strike, and certain socialist militants advanced, firing, towards the ministry of the interior in the Puerta del Sol. But the CNT did not.
JAPista
youth members ensured essential services.
³
The countryside was inactive, exhausted by the strikes ear
lier in the year. The
alianza obrera
¹
only extended in Madrid to the socialists and some communists.
²
There was general confusion. Largo Caballero dithered. By the end of the day, the government were masters of the situation, and the socialist leaders had been arrested.

In Barcelona, the entry of the CEDA into the government caused Companys to proclaim ‘the Catalan state’ as part of a ‘federal Spanish republic’. Once again, Companys was stimulated to precipitate language by his counsellor of the interior, Dencás. He was also menaced on the Left by the
rabassaires,
the Catalan vineyard tenants, who threatened physically to take over the land which they held to be theirs under the now-suspended
Ley de Cultivos.
The burden of Company’s appeal to Catalonia was an attack on the fascism of the CEDA, despite the fascist colouring of Dencás’s ideas:

The monarchical and fascist powers which have been for some time attempting to betray the republic have attained their object [announced Companys]. In this solemn hour, in the name of the people and of parliament, the government over which I preside assumes all the functions of power in Catalonia, proclaims the Catalan state in the federal Spanish republic, and, strengthening its relations with those who direct this general protest against fascism, invites them to establish the provisional government of the republic in Catalonia.

This was at once a proclamation of a new relationship between Catalonia and the rest of Spain and also an encouragement to revolutionaries in Madrid to declare themselves the government, if necessary establishing themselves in Barcelona. A wave of nationalism, and hostility to all things Castilian, had been sweeping through Catalonia that summer, which Companys, who was weak, found impossible to withstand. Dencás, meantime, would probably have liked to have declared outright independence.

This Catalan rebellion was, however, crushed nearly as quickly as the general strike had been in Madrid. There was some fighting be
tween Dencás’s
escamots
and the
Mozos de Escuadra
(the security force established in Catalonia under the monarchy). Forty people were killed. The anarchists held aloof, saying that they would not collaborate with the socialists unless they abandoned their collaboration with the Esquerra. Dencás promptly arrested Durruti and other anarchist leaders. Companys sent for General Batet, commander of the division quartered in Barcelona, and asked him to transfer his allegiance to the new federal régime. Batet, himself a Catalan, however, placed himself at the orders of the central government, and declared a state of war. Acting deliberately slowly in order to save lives, and to allow escapes, he soon arrested Companys and his government—with the exception of Dencás, who fled down a sewer to freedom, and, ultimately, to Rome. All resistance was overcome in the rest of Barcelona, and Companys broadcast a dignified appeal to his followers to lay down their arms. Also held was Azaña, who was in Barcelona for the funeral of his finance minister Jaime Carner.

The ‘October revolution’ thus failed in Madrid and in Barcelona. There were other outbursts, but, with one exception, these were also crushed. The exception was Asturias.
¹
Here the rising—for such it undoubtedly was—was directed by the tough, well-paid miners of the region. Their action was politically, rather than economically, inspired. While, elsewhere in Spain, the working-class parties had been divided about the revolution, in Asturias, anarchists, socialists, communists, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Alliance, the UGT, and the Asturian regional CNT committee cooperated under the rallying cry UHP! (
¡Uníos, Hermanos Proletarios!
).
²
The ground for this collaboration had been prepared by a famous article the previous February by a young leader of the CNT, Valeriano Orobón Fernández, in the journal
La Tierra.
He had argued that the danger of fascism in Spain was such that a new working-class alliance was necessary. Only Asturias followed his advice.
³
The previously moderate socialist miners took up the cause of revolutionary violence.

3. The revolution in Asturias, 1934

The rising in Asturias was carefully prepared throughout the province, with its headquarters in Oviedo, the capital, and important actions organized in the nearby mining towns of Mieres and Sama. The signal as elsewhere was the entry of the CEDA into the government. But the miners were well organized against this eventuality. They had supplies of arms. They had dynamite. They already possessed joint workers’ committees to direct their activities. Their reaction to the ‘fascist’ conquest of power in Madrid was to launch, so far as was possible, a full-scale working-class revolution.

‘Towards half past eight in the morning [of 5 October],’ recorded Manuel Grossi, ‘a crowd of about two thousand persons gathered before the town hall of Mieres, already occupied by the rebel workers
[
obreros insurrectos
]. I proclaimed, from one of the balconies, the socialist republic. The enthusiasm was indescribable.
Vivas
for the revolution were followed by others for the socialist republic. When I managed to make myself heard again, I gave instructions to continue the action …’
¹

This signified attacks on the civil guard posts, churches, convents, town halls, and other buildings in the villages and towns of the province. Asturias had a strong, well-organized and disciplined labour force; the 26,000 miners were among the best-paid workers in Spain, but unemployment had been high since 1931. The accident rate was also high and safety was less assured than elsewhere in Europe. The UGT dominated the mines, but collaborated with the CNT. Many miners were young, and there had been innumerable strikes there since the coming of the republic. The communists were also well established in Asturias (particularly in Mieres) and their leadership competent.

Within three days of the start of the revolution, the centre of Asturias was in the hands of the miners. Each town or village which had been captured was controlled by a revolutionary committee which made itself responsible for the feeding and the security of the inhabitants. A radio station installed at Turón maintained morale. ‘Comrades,’ announced the revolutionary committee of Grado, ‘we are creating a new society … it is not surprising that the world which we are forging costs blood, grief and tears; everything on earth is fecund, soldiers of the Ideal! Put up your rifles! Women, eat little, only what is necessary! Long live the social revolution!’
²
The arms factories at Trubia and La Vega (Oviedo) were taken over by a committee of their workers and put to work night and day. Elsewhere, factories and mines were deserted. Recruitment offices demanded the services of all workers between the ages of eighteen and forty for the ‘Red Army’. Thirty thousand workers had been mobilized for battle within ten days.
³
The extent of cooperation between the parties surprised everyone. Even the anarchists recognized ‘the need for temporary dictatorship’, and
the limitation of this activity to a group of
pueblos
prevented questions of state organization from dividing them from the communists. The communists in some
pueblos
showed themselves keener on establishing their own dictatorship than sending men to ‘the front’. But, as a rule, the cry
¡UHP!
was in no way misleading.

While the miners of Asturias had thus successfully established a revolutionary soviet throughout their province, they were also engaged in fighting. This particularly occurred in Oviedo and in the mining valleys. The 1,500 regular troops based in Asturias and elsewhere on the north coast were too few in number to be able to do more than hold out in their garrison in Oviedo. In the meantime, there was pillage and unprovoked violence on the part of the revolutionaries. The local committees set out to maintain discipline, and there were instances of workers saving the lives of menaced members of the bourgeoisie. There were, however, a number of outrages. Several churches and convents were burned. The bishop’s palace, and much of the university at Oviedo, including the library, were destroyed during the attempts to capture the Pelayo barracks, which were held by the civil guard. A few businessmen and about twelve priests were shot, especially in Turón. At Sama, thirty civil guards and assault guards sustained a siege of a day and a half. When they surrendered, some were shot. These atrocities made matters more difficult for the two hitherto moderate socialist leaders, Ramón González Peña and Belarmino Tomás, who, somewhat to their own surprise, found themselves at the head of this revolution.