The Spanish Civil War (35 page)

After the end of the first wild rapture of victory over the rising, Madrid became warlike as well as revolutionary. The streets were full of militiamen in blue
monos
—the boiler-suits which became a kind of uniform in the republican armies on the Madrid front. Rifles were carried (wasted, rather) as symbols of revolution. Many found this invigorating; Azaña did not. He saw this combination of ‘frivolity and heroism, true battles and inoffensive parades’ as ‘menacing’. ‘The population showed off a new uniform of negligence, dirt and rags;’ he added, ‘the race seemed darker, because the young warriors let their beard grow, almost always a black beard, and the faces became dark too in the sun.’
¹
Middle-class people threw off hats, ties, collars in an effort to appear proletarian in a city where, in the past, it had been a solecism to walk about without a tie or jacket. Hundreds of working-class girls were seen in the streets collecting money, in particular for the Comintern’s International Red Help. All the time, optimistic loudspeakers announced victories on all fronts; ‘heroic’ colonels and ‘unconquered’ commanders briefly made their bows in the republican press, then vanished into oblivion. Cafés, cinemas, and theatres were full; there
were a few bull-fights,
alguacils
saluting with clenched fist, matadors wearing berets in place of three-cornered hats.
¹

The UGT really captured authority in Madrid, being responsible for food supply and essential services. The civil servants were in many cases unhappy about the cause for which they found themselves working, and lessened daily in importance, just as, indeed, Giral’s government did itself. There were purges in the ministries, but many persons potentially disloyal remained. The UGT worked in comparative harmony with the CNT, its old enemy, though the building strike, the cause of their most recent antagonism, was not settled until early August, and though there were some violent incidents: a young communist, Barzona, was murdered by the CNT in July.
²
A popular poster, however, showed two dead CNT and UGT militiamen with their blood mingling in a pool beneath. Yet the CNT, much expanded anyway in Madrid in early 1936, had many new recruits in these first days of the revolution: their daily press, such as
Castilla Libre, CNT,
and
Frente Libertario,
increased circulation.
³

Behind the UGT, there loomed the communist party. The propaganda and tactical skill of its leaders were the chief reasons for communist successes, though the hostility between Largo Caballero’s and Prieto’s wings of the socialist party played a part.
⁴
Communist publicity, directed by Jesús Hernández and Antonio Mije, concentrated on two themes—a moderate, non-revolutionary social policy, and the identification of the resistance to the rising with that of the Spanish people in 1808 to Napoleon. The communist newspaper,
Mundo Obrero,
spoke of the war as exclusively motivated by the desire to defend the democratic republic. Quite different was
Claridad,
the socialist paper, which, about the same time, announced that ‘the people were no longer fighting for the Spain of 16 July’.
⁵
The united socialist-communist youth led by Santiago Carrillo was, however, by now communized.
⁶
The divisions of the
socialists and the intellectual difficulties facing the anarchists opened the way to the increasing communist influence in the capital.

The revolution over which the UGT presided did not at first appear far-reaching. There was expropriation of those concerns or mansions whose owners were known to have sided with the nationalists. This meant, however, the forcing open of thousands of bank accounts and innumerable confiscations of residences, jewels, and articles of private wealth.
¹

The socialist-communist youth established itself in the Gran Peña, the well-known conservative club in the Gran Vía, the Ritz Hotel became a military hospital, the Palace Hotel a home for lost children. Right-wing newspaper-offices were taken over by their left-wing rivals.
²
All industry connected with the supply of war material was also requisitioned, nominally by the ministry of war, in fact by committees of workers. Managers of other firms later asked for the formation of such committees, to share their responsibilities, and so perhaps avoid a worse fate. But, by August, only a third of the industry in Madrid was, even in this way, controlled by the state. Banks were not requisitioned, though they functioned under the supervision of the ministry of finance. There was a moratorium on debts, and a limitation on withdrawals from current accounts, but banking otherwise continued normally. The only other financial policy was a reduction by 50 per cent of all rents.
³
Apart from the nightly assassinations, and the consequent bodies lying in the Casa de Campo, the most obvious outward signs of revolution in Madrid were the collective restaurants organized by the trade unions. To these was distributed the food which the unions seized on its arrival from the agricultural areas of the Levante. At these places, a cheap but lavish dish of rice and potatoes, boiled with meat, was served in unlimited quantities.
⁴
There was little bread, a reflection of the rebels’ capture of the wheat-growing plains of north Castile. At the collective restaurants, and increasingly in stores and
other shops, vouchers issued by the unions were exchanged. After a while, wages in Madrid began increasingly to be paid by these pieces of paper. Money began to die out, and traders only bought what they were certain to sell. This economic chaos was eventually ended by the Madrid municipality, which controlled the issue of vouchers, and supplied the families of militiamen in the republic’s defence forces, the unemployed, and the beggars of Madrid with the means for food. But many merchants lost money by accepting such promissory notes for which the equivalent in cash was never paid. Militiamen soon began to be paid 10 pesetas a day (raised in some cases from the factories in which they had been employed, in others paid by the government or the unions),
¹
a sum continued to be paid to their dependants in the event of their deaths. Three times what soldiers received before the war, this payment made them the richest privates in Europe. It also damaged the economy. Meantime, refugees thronged the foreign embassies in Madrid, particularly the Latin-American ones, and these diplomatic missions, in many cases, took houses to lodge their guests: sometimes, even, those who took refuge invented embassies for themselves. For example, a rich engineer, Alfonso Peña Boeuf, established an embassy of Paraguay, with three buildings holding three hundred persons, where there was none before.
²

The towns and countryside of New Castile, republican Estremadura, and La Mancha were, like the capital, dominated by the UGT and by the socialist-communist youth. Anarchists increased as the weeks went by and there were interesting projects of collectivization throughout New Castile. The old municipal authorities often continued alongside the Popular Front committees. Expropriation of industries and of small private businesses was exceptional. The shops and businesses of, for example, Talavera de la Reina, in the Tagus valley, might be covered with notices announcing ‘here one works collectively’. But the words indicated an agreement to distribute profits between owner and workers, not workers’ control. In the country, in La Mancha as in New Castile, large estates were confiscated, and were run by the local branch of the UGT. There were numerous collectives,
established in accord with the anarchist resolutions at their May congress, but they were not established everywhere, nor at once, and, even in
pueblos
where collectives were set up, it was unusual for the collective to be the sole economic unit: private persons were allowed (chiefly due to the support of the UGT or the communists) to continue to farm, and to carry on business, and, theoretically at least, anyone who had joined a collective could withdraw from it if he desired, taking with him goods to the value of those which he had when he entered. Both UGT and CNT (here, as in most places of revolutionary Spain) were, however, agreed on the superiority of collectivization to the distribution of land, both on economic and on social grounds.
¹

To the south, at Ciudad Real, the chief town of La Mancha, only one concern, an electricity plant, had been expropriated. Market, shops, and cafés carried on as before. The Austrian sociologist Franz Borkenau, visiting this area in August, noted that, at one collective farm, the cattle seemed in good health, and that the wheat was harvested on time, being stored in the chapel. Before collectivization, the labourers had lived in Ciudad Real, and had come out for harvesting. Now they were settled in the old farm house. Food, though not plentiful, was described as better than before. Before the war, these same labourers had wrecked machinery brought in by the landowner, since they supposed that he was trying to bring down wages. Now a threshing-machine from Bilbao was welcomed.
²
The general rule for collectivization was that land should not be held beyond the amount which could be cultivated without hired labour. Distribution of food could be only through the local committee. Three free litres of wine might be distributed a week; in other places, it might be double that.
³
In some places, collectivists and individualists could live peaceably side by side; in one
pueblo
there might be two cafés, one where the individual peasant-proprietors went, one for the workers of the collective.
⁴
The church might become a warehouse, occasionally a place for tranquil reflection.
⁵

The revolution in Barcelona in July 1936 differed from that in the centre of Spain in being primarily anarchist. With a radio station, eight daily newspapers, innumerable weeklies and periodicals dealing with every aspect of society and continuous public meetings, the anarchist movement had really captured power. In that capital alone, there were now 350,000 anarchists. The main executive organ in Barcelona, and, therefore, of Catalonia, was the Anti-Fascist Militias Committee, which had been formed on 21 July and upon which, as has been seen, the FAI and CNT were the most influential forces. Several representatives of the
Generalidad
were usually present at the meetings of this body.
¹
They sought to re-establish public order, organize production and food supply and, at the same time, put together an army to defend Barcelona and ‘liberate’ Saragossa. The committee’s meetings were usually at night, since the members were busy doing other things during the day.

Meanwhile, all the great industrial plant of Barcelona had passed to the CNT: the CAMPSA, the Ford Iberia Motor Company, the public works company known as El Fomento de Obras y Construcciones—all were anarchist directed. So too were the main services—water, gas and electricity. Barcelona thus became a proletarian town in a way that Madrid never did. Expropriation was the rule—hotels, stores, banks and factories were either requisitioned or closed. Those requisitioned were run by committees of technicians and workers.
²
Food distribution, milk-pasteurization, even small handicrafts, were all collectivized. Account books were examined by the new managers with fascination. What waste, what profits, what corruption they seemed to show! And then (as a workers’ committee on the Barcelona metro put
it), ‘we set out on the great adventure!’
¹
Since the large National Labour development building had been taken over by the FAI and CNT as headquarters, it seemed that nothing could go wrong.

Most industries were back at work ten days after the rising. Public services were maintained by the anarchist unions, the electricity workers assuring the continuity of supply by guarding the dams and hydro-electric plants of the Lower Pyrenees, which provided Barcelona’s power. Barcelona’s sixty tram lines were soon running much as they were before the rising. Even so, an extraordinary variety of solutions was reached. In some places, the old wages, with numerous differentials, were maintained, in others a new uniform wage was established. The tramworkers of Barcelona sought a compromise, reducing the number of
different
wages to four. Differentials continued, however, for technicians and specialized workers and while, in prosperous factories, workers were probably better paid than before, in poor ones, they were often as badly paid as before. If a factory had plenty of cash on hand at the time of the revolution, it would pay its way; if not, it soon declined. It seemed more difficult than people had assumed to organize a factory on anarchist lines if it required raw materials from sources outside anarchist control. If the raw materials came from abroad (and the cotton used in Barcelona factories was imported mainly from Egypt), the factories had to negotiate with the socialist dock workers and even with businessmen. Thus compromise, even centralization, began even in the first days of the revolution. Low stocks of raw materials and low funds also opened the way to state intervention. The Catalan government tried to regularize matters by, first, recognizing a workers’ control committee for each large factory and then nominating an official delegate to sit on each such body; the delegate was, however, to begin with, usually himself a worker who did little. Anarchist theory had envisaged gaining power in some factories, but not in all. The dictates of war also played a part: on 19 July, García Oliver instructed one of his anarchist comrades, Eugenio Vallejo, to create an armament industry in a city where no previous factories had made arms. The plan evidently required, from the start, collaboration between anarchists and
other political movements, even though the chemical and metallurgical factories which were to make the arms were in anarchist hands. Here, too, the Catalan government intervened. (By October 1936, the
Generalidad
controlled fifty such plants in Barcelona and some 75 outside it.) Innumerable questions had also to be resolved with technical advice: could a lipstick factory be reorganized to make shell cases? In addition, the anarchists had to collaborate with the banks, which were controlled by the UGT
¹
—in practice that meant the communists. Thus, from the start of the war, the supporters of the concept of government—from the Catalan Esquerra to republicans, socialists and communists—had control of credit, even in the anarchist stronghold of Barcelona. Because of all these difficulties, the textile industry in Barcelona soon only worked three days a week. In order to overcome this crisis, a national effort, organized by a vigorous government, was desirable. Thus, faced with an unprecedented situation, the anarchists of Catalonia improvised in the industries, of which they had become suddenly the masters, several different temporary solutions; though some worked adequately, the failure of those that did not pointed to unforeseen weaknesses in the anarchist ‘Idea’.