Spanish Revolution of 1936

The Spanish Revolution was a social revolution that began at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, following the attempted coup to overthrow the Second Spanish Republic and arming of the worker movements and formation of militias to fight the Nationalists. It featured takeover of power at local levels by the Spanish workers' organizations and social movements, seizure and reorganization of economic facilities directed by trade union groups and local committees, and widespread implementation of socialist, more narrowly, libertarian socialist and anarchist organizational principles throughout various portions of the Republican zone, primarily Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia, and parts of the Valencian Community.
Much of the economy of Spain was put under worker control; in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%. Factories were run through worker committees, and agrarian areas became collectivized and run as libertarian socialist communes. Many small businesses, such as hotels, barber shops, and restaurants, were also collectivized and managed by their former employees. The revolutionary principles implemented with the revolution continued to evolve as much as the Republican zone existed, until the end of the civil war with the victory of the Nationalists.
The character of the revolution has been described as collectivist and pluralist, carried out by a variety of distinct, often mutually competitive and hostile, political forces and parties; the main forces behind the socioeconomic and political changes were the anarcho-syndicalists of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT, National Confederation of Labor) and the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI, Iberian Anarchist Federation), the revolutionary socialists of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), and also the Marxist party Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM, Workers' Party of Marxist Unification).
The collectivization effort, which took place rather in agriculture than in industry, was primarily organized by the CNT and the UGT; the collectives could be organized wholly by one of the two trade unions, or by both of them as joint organizations, with the POUM, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and sometimes the Republican Left also participating in some areas. Along with collectivization, the revolution produced a variety of other changes, including socialization of industry, which meant workers' control over enterprises or, more broadly, over an entire branch of production; in order to achieve the latter, small production and trade plants were disestablished, and their personnel was concentrated in bigger plants, or grouped together and coordinated into cartels.
The late Second Spanish Republic and the Nationalists under Francisco Franco suppressed the revolution in their respective territories after its third phase in 1937.
On 17 July 1936, the Spanish Coup of July 1936 began. On 18 July, the ongoing military uprising led to a collapse of the republican state (four governments succeeded each other in a single day) and to the coercive structures of the state being dissolved or paralyzed in the places where the coup plotters did not seize power. By then, the CNT had approximately 1,577,000 members and the UGT had 1,447,000 members. On 19 July, the uprising reached Catalonia, where the workers took up arms, stormed the barracks, erected barricades, and eventually defeated the military.
The CNT and UGT unions called a general strike from 19 to 23 July, in response to both the military uprising and the apparent apathy of the state towards it. Despite the fact that there were specific records in previous days of the distribution of weapons among civilian sectors, it was during the General Strike when groups of trade unionists, linked to the convening unions and smaller groups, assaulted many of the weapons depots of the state forces, independently of whether they were in revolt against the government or not.
Already in these first weeks, two groups were established within the anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary sectors: the radical group, fundamentally linked to the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) and through it to the CNT, which understood the phenomenon in which it participated as a traditional revolution; and the possibilist group, made up of members of a more moderate sector of the CNT, which expressed the convenience of participating in a broader front, later called the Popular Antifascist Front (FPA), the result of adding the unions to the electoral coalition Popular Front.
At the same time, administrative structures were formed outside the state, most of a local or regional character, but exceeding such limits in specific cases; some of the most important were:
In a few days, the fronts of the Spanish Civil War were established, one of the main fronts, in the context of the revolution, being that of Aragon. On 24 July 1936, the first voluntary militia left Barcelona in the direction of Aragon. It was the Durruti Column, of around 3,000 people, mostly workers coordinated by Buenaventura Durruti, who first implemented libertarian communism in the municipalities through which they passed. In addition, other popular military structures were formed, such as the Iron Column and the Red and Black Column, the latter also departing for Aragon. All this movement gave rise to an extraordinary concentration of anarchists in parts not taken by the rebel military. The arrival, on the one hand, of the thousands of anarchist militiamen from Catalonia and Valencia, and the existence, on the other, of a large rural Aragonese popular base allowed for the progressive development of the largest collectivist experiment of the revolution.
During this first phase most of the Spanish economy was brought under the control of workers organized by the unions; mainly in anarchist areas such as Catalonia. This phenomenon extended to 75% of the total industrial sector, but in the areas of socialist influence, the rate wasn't so high. The factories were organized by workers' committees, the agricultural areas became collectivized and functioned as libertarian communes. Even places such as hotels, hairdressers, means of transport, and restaurants were collectivized and managed by their own workers.
The British author George Orwell, best known for his anti-authoritarian works Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, was a soldier in the Lenin Division of the CNT-allied Partido Obrero Unificación Marxista (POUM; Workers' Party of Marxist Unification). Orwell meticulously documented his first-hand observations of the civil war, and expressed admiration for the social revolution in his book Homage to Catalonia.
The communes were operated according to the basic principle of "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." In some places, money was eliminated, replaced by vouchers. Under this system, the cost of goods was often little more than a quarter of the previous cost. During the revolution, 70% of rural areas were expropriated in Catalonia, about 70% in Eastern Aragon, 91% in the republican sector of Extremadura, 58% in Castilla-La Mancha, 53% in republican Andalusia, 25% in Madrid, 24% in Murcia, and 13% in the Valencian Community. 54% of the expropriated area of republican Spain was collectivized, according to IRA data. The provinces where rural communes became most important were those of Ciudad Real – where 1,002,615 hectares (98.9% of cultivated lands) were collectivized in 1938 – and Jaén – where 685,000 hectares (76.3% of cultivated lands) were collectivized, leaving the rest of the republican provinces far behind. Many communes held out until the end of the war. Anarchist communes produced at a more efficient rate than before being collectivized, with productivity increasing by 20%. The newly liberated zones worked on entirely libertarian principles; decisions were made through councils of ordinary citizens without any bureaucracy.
In Aragon, where libertarian communism was proclaimed as the columns of libertarian militias passed, approximately 450 rural communes were formed, practically all of them in the hands of the CNT, with around 20 led by the UGT.
In the Valencian area, 353 communes were established, 264 led by the CNT, 69 by the UGT and 20 with mixed CNT-UGT leadership. One of its main developments was the Unified Levantine Council for Agricultural Export (Catalan: Consell Llevantí Unificat d'Exportació Agrícola, CLUEA) and the total socialization of the industries and services of the city of Alcoy.
In Catalan industry, the CNT workers' unions took over numerous textile factories, organized the trams and buses in Barcelona, established collective enterprises in fishing, in the footwear industry, and even in small retail stores and public shows. In a few days, 70% of industrial and commercial companies in Catalonia – in which, by itself, two-thirds of the industry of Spain was concentrated – had become the property of the workers.
Alongside the economic revolution, there was a spirit of cultural and moral revolution: the libertarian athenaeums became meeting places and authentic cultural centers of theoretical education, in which were organized literacy classes, talks on health, excursions to the countryside, public access libraries, theatrical performances, political gatherings, sewing workshops, etc. Numerous rationalist schools were founded, which expanded the existing offers of athenaeums and union centers and in which the educational postulates of Francesc Ferrer i Guardia, Ricardo Mella, Leo Tolstoy, and Maria Montessori were carried out. Similarly, in the social field, some traditions were considered as types of oppression, and bourgeois morality was also seen as dehumanizing and individualistic. Anarchist principles defended the conscious freedom of the individual and the natural duty of solidarity among human beings as an innate tool for the progress of societies. Thus, for example, during the revolution, women achieved the right to abortion in Catalonia, the idea of consensual free love became popular, and there was a rise in naturism.
However, the social effects of the revolution were less drastic than the economic ones; while there were some social changes in larger urban areas (Barcelona emphasised a "proletarian style" and Catalonia set up inexpensive abortion facilities), the attitudes of the lower classes remained fairly conservative and there was comparatively little emulation of Russian-style "revolutionary morality".
Public order also varied substantially, getting by without the classic forces of public order (the police, Civil Guard, courts, and the army), which were supplanted by the Control Patrols made up of volunteers, the popular militias, and the neighborhood assemblies that were intended to resolve problems that arose. The doors of many prisons were opened, freeing the prisoners, among whom there were many politicians but also common criminals, some prisons being demolished.
The anti-fascist Carlo Rosselli, who before Mussolini's accession to power was professor of economics in the University of Genoa, put his judgment in the following words:
But despite the de facto decomposition of state power, on 2 August the government took one of its first measures to regain control against the revolution, with the creation of the Volunteer Battalions, the embryo of the Spanish Republican Army. Overwhelmed by the revolutionary phenomenon, it also promulgated some symbolic decrees:
The first tensions also arose between the strategy of the anarchists and the policy of the Communist Party of Spain and its extension in Catalonia, the PSUC; and on 6 August members of the PSUC left the Catalan autonomous government because of anarcho-syndicalist pressures.
Both in this stage and in the previous one, the state was usually limited to legislating in accordance with the faits accomplis of the revolution. However, due to the need for military measures against the rebellious military, from October–November 1936 the unions began to cede control of the columns to the state for the Defense of Madrid, which was directed by a semi-independent body – the Madrid Defense Council, in which all the Popular Front parties were represented, in addition to the anarchists. The beginning of all this progressively greater agreement and rapprochement between the Popular Front parties and the unions was reflected in the formation of Largo Caballero's "first Government of Victory" on 4 September.
Among the measures aimed at legitimizing the activity of the revolutionaries were:
Despite this apparent concession to the revolutionaries, the government did not actively intervene in the development of the revolution, as its main objective was to promote and strengthen the army as the foundation stone of the centralized state. In addition to the repeated attempts at the dissolution of the popular war and defense committees, they decreed:
As the war dragged on, the spirit of the first days of the revolution lessened and friction between the diverse members of the Popular Front began, in part due to the policies of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), which were established by the foreign ministry of the Stalinist Soviet Union, the largest source of foreign aid to the republic.
The PCE defended the idea that the ongoing Civil War made it necessary to postpone the ongoing social revolution until the republicans won the war. The PCE advocated not to antagonize the middle classes, the grassroots of the republican parties, which could be harmed by the revolution and side with the enemy. In the Popular Front government, there were parties such as the Republican Left, Republican Union, and the Republican Left of Catalonia, supported by the votes and interests of the middle class (civil servants, liberal professionals, small merchants, and landowning peasants).
The anarchists and the POUMistas (left communists) disagreed with the PCE, understanding that the war and revolution were one and the same. They believed that the war was an extension of class struggle, and that the proletariat had defeated the military precisely because of this revolutionary impulse that they had been carrying for years and not because of defending a bourgeois republic. The nationalists represented precisely the class that these revolutionaries were fighting: the rich capitalists, the landowners, the Church, the Civil Guard, and the colonial army.
The militias of the parties and groups that were against the Popular Front government soon found government aid cut off, and their ability to act reduced. Consequently, republicans slowly began to reverse the recent changes made in most areas. During this period, some revolutionary structures approved new programs that subordinated them to the government, which gave rise to the dissolution or beginning of absorption, appropriation, and intervention of the revolutionary structures by the republican state government. The situation in most Republican-held areas slowly began to revert largely to its prewar conditions.
An exception was the consolidation of the collectivist process in Aragon, where thousands of libertarian militiamen from Valencia and Catalonia arrived, and where, before the start of the Civil War, there was the most important anarcho-syndicalist labor base affiliated with the CNT in all of Spain. In the final weeks of September 1936, the assembly called in Bujaraloz by the Regional Committee of the CNT of Aragon, with delegations of the towns and confederated columns, following the directives proposed on 15 September 1936, in Madrid by the National Plenary of Regional members of the CNT, proposed to all political and union sectors the formation of Regional Defense Councils confederated with a National Defense Council that would perform the functions of the central government, and agreed to the creation of the Regional Defense Council of Aragon, which celebrated its first assembly on 15 October of the same year.
Despite this, on 26 September the most radical and anarchist sectors of Catalonia, dominated by the possibilists, began a policy of collaboration with the state, integrating themselves into the autonomous government of the Generalitat de Catalunya, which was reborn in place of the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias of Catalonia, which dissolved itself on 1 October. On the other hand, on 6 October the Regional Defense Council of Aragon was legalized and regulated by decree. The proposed National Defense Council was regulated, aborting its development. Faced with this apparent tolerance, on 9 October a decree by the Generalitat outlawed all local committees in Catalonia, formally replacing them with the municipal councils of the FPA. All these concessions to the institutions were considered by some as a betrayal of the classical principles of anarchism, and received harsh criticism from colleagues.
On 2 November, the Popular Executive Committee of Valencia approved a new action program that subordinated it to the policy of Largo Caballero's republican government, which included the CNT members Juan García Oliver, Juan López Sánchez, Federica Montseny, and Juan Peiró. During this month, the Iron Column decided to briefly take Valencia, in protest at the shortage of supplies provided by the Popular Executive Committee, subsequently leading to clashes in the streets of the city between libertarian militias and communist groups, leaving more than 30 dead.
On 14 November, the Durruti Column arrived in Madrid, after giving in to the pressure of the possibilists, who demanded collaboration with the state. On 20 November, Buenaventura Durruti died under suspicious circumstances, fighting in the battle of Madrid, where he had arrived with more than a thousand militiamen from the Front of Aragon.
On 17 December, the Moscow daily Pravda published an editorial that read: "The purge of Trotskyists and anarcho-syndicalists has already begun in Catalonia; it has been carried out with the same energy as in the Soviet Union." The Stalinists had already begun the liquidation of any anti-fascists, collectivizations, and other revolutionary structures that did not submit to the directives of Moscow.
On 23 December, the Gijón War Committee was transformed by decree into the Interprovincial Council of Asturias and León, which was regulated by the republican government and was more moderate in its policies, at the same time as it officially recognized the formation of the National Defense Committee. On 8 January 1937, the Popular Executive Committee of Valencia was dissolved.
During this stage, the government definitely controlled the anarchist popular militias, dissolving them so that they were compulsorily integrated into the Spanish Republican Army, which was under the command of professional officers.
On 27 February 1937, the government banned the FAI's newspaper Nosotros, thus initiating the period during which most of the publications critical of the government began to suffer censorship. The next day it prohibited the police from belonging to political parties or unions, a measure adopted by the Catalan regional government on 2 March. On 12 March, the Generalitat approved an order demanding the seizure of all weapons and explosive materials from non-militarized groups. More confrontations began between the sectors of the FPA; and on 27 March the anarchist advisers of the Catalan autonomous government resigned. During the month of March, the "militarization" of the militias was completed, transforming them into a regular army subject to its disciplinary and hierarchal regimes, against which many anarchist voices rose up.
On 17 April, the day after the ministers of the CNT returned to the Generalitat, a force of Carabineros in Puigcerdá demanded the CNT workers' patrols hand over control of customs on the border with France. Simultaneously, the Civil Guard and Assault Guard were sent to Figueras, and other towns throughout the province of Girona, to remove control of the workers' organizations from the police, dissolving the autonomous Council of Cerdanya. Simultaneously, in Barcelona, the Assault Guard proceeded to disarm the workers in public view, in the streets.
During May 1937, confrontations between the supporters of the revolution and those opposed to it intensified. On 13 May, after the events of the Barcelona May Days, the two Communist ministers, Jesús Hernández Tomás and Vicente Uribe, proposed to the government that the National Labor Confederation (CNT) and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) be punished, bringing into practice repression against the latter party. On 16 May, Largo Caballero resigned, which was followed by the formation of a socialist government under Juan Negrín, but without support from anarchists or revolutionaries.
Fenner Brockway, Secretary of the ILP in England who traveled to Spain after the May events in Catalonia (1937), expressed his impressions in the following words:
On 25 May 1937, the FAI was excluded from the People's Courts. On 8 June, the government issued a decree by which it temporarily outlawed rural communes that had not yet been dissolved. On 14 June, a new government of the Generalitat was formed, also without the anarchists and revolutionaries. On 15 June, the POUM was outlawed and its executive committee was arrested. On the 16 June the 29th Division (formerly the POUM's Lenin Division) was dissolved.
In August 1937, criticism of the USSR was prohibited by means of a government circular. In this month, the central government also ordered the dissolution of the Aragón Defense Council, practically the last remaining body of revolutionary power, which was militarily occupied by republican army troops on 10 August. Joaquín Ascaso, its president, was arrested. Likewise, the eleventh communist division attacked various committees of the Aragonese people and dissolved collective agricultural production, which soon after was reorganized. On 7 September, the government reauthorized religious worship in private, one of its many measures to reestablish the power of the government in the republican zone, while in Barcelona there were demonstrations against the dissolution of the anarcho-syndicalist publication Solidaridad Obrera. On 16 September, political rallies were prohibited in Barcelona. On 26 September, the Asturian Council proclaimed itself the Sovereign Council of Asturias and León, independent from the Second Spanish Republic.
On 21 October, a demonstration by anarchist and socialist militants took place in front of the San Miguel de los Reyes prison in Valencia, threatening to break down the doors if the prisoners were not freed. On 12 November, the CNT withdrew from the FPA committees.
On 6 January 1938, the government published a decree prohibiting all new issuances of banknotes and coins by committees, municipalities, corporations, etc.; and a period of one month was given for them to be withdrawn from circulation, in an attempt to end the last remnants of the revolution.
During that year many of the large landowners returned and demanded the return of their property. Collectivization was progressively annulled despite its popular support.
Sam Dolgoff estimated that about eight million people participated directly or at least indirectly in the Spanish revolution, which he claimed "came closer to realizing the ideal of the free stateless society on a vast scale than any other revolution in history".
The most notable aspect of the social revolution was the establishment of a libertarian socialist economy based on coordination through decentralized and horizontal federations of participatory industrial collectives and agrarian communes. Andrea Oltmares, professor in the University of Geneva, in the course of an address of some length, said:
The key developments of the revolution were those related to the ownership and development of the economy in all its phases: management, production, and distribution. This was accomplished through widespread expropriation and collectivization of privately owned resources, in adherence to the anarchist belief that private property is authoritarian in nature.
Numerous experiments with management and control of workers and agrarian collectivizations were carried out throughout the republican territory. In some towns and cities, the transformations were spontaneous and took different paths. However, in a large number of cases the first steps were in imitation of those taken in Barcelona.
After the coup d'état and the beginning of the civil war, many owners in the republican zone were assassinated, imprisoned, or exiled, thus leaving a multitude of companies and factories without direction. This situation led to the takeover of such entities, sometimes amounting to entire industries, by the unions. Within the industrial sphere the revolution was carried out in different ways. These differences radiated from numerous factors: the disappearance of the owner, the strength and political orientation of the workers' organizations, the existence of foreign capital in the company itself, or even the destination of its products. Faced with this situation, there were three major orientations:
At the beginning of the war, 70% of all the industry in Spain was in Catalonia, which, as the nerve center of the CNT and Spanish anarchism, gave it a great importance within the revolutionary process, being one of the places where some of the most radical revolutionary experiments took place. In all the places where industrial measures were carried out, it is necessary to look at certain factors, such as the type of industry or the implantation of the different workers' organizations and political parties, especially at the beginning of the revolution, when the actions were more broad, when workers had greater freedom of movement and the state had no capacity to oppose them.
Socialization consisted of the management of the industry by the workers themselves. On the practical level, it resulted in the abolition of private property by collective management and property, based on the principles of direct action and the anti-authoritarianism of anarchism. In this case, management fell to a board of directors made up of less than fifteen people, in which all the productive and service levels of the company were involved, and in which the trade union centrals had to be proportionally represented. This council was elected in a workers' assembly to which they were responsible. The benefits were distributed among: workers, company, and for social purposes. Within each company was a reserve fund that the assembly could decide to use for social purposes, such as contributions to regional credit unions, the unemployed, or as investments in education and health.
Nationalization denoted the management of the industry by the state. It resulted in the abolition of private property and management. The boards of directors were controlled by the state, and the benefits were adduced to the state and the company itself. It was the choice that the Communist Party defended, since in this way it could weaken the economic power that the CNT held.
Worker control involved the creation of workers' committees that would be in charge of controlling working conditions, the cash movements of the companies, and the control of production of companies that remained in private hands, excepting only those that did not have enough personnel to meet the conditions of belonging to a committee. These committees were made up of between three and nine members, they were made up of representatives of the two unions, in a proportional manner, and of all the services and industries that the company dealt with. These representatives were elected in an assembly of the center, an assembly in which it was decided whether a committee also had the right to sign for the movements of funds, the frequency of meetings between the committee and the patron, and the frequency of meetings between them. Committee membership was not remunerated, a term lasted two years, with eligibility for reelection. Members were responsible, for their management of a company, to the assembly of the company and to the General Council of Industry. A committee approved the hours, salary increases and decreases, changes of categories or workplace, and notifications of absences to workers. A committee had to meet once a week to discuss the employer's proposals and to ensure compliance with the official provisions. The employer representation still had the power of the legal representation of the company, the power to contract, the custody of the box, and the signature and the fixing of their remuneration. If the company had a corporation or other commercial model as a legal entity, a member of the committee had to attend the council meetings with voice but without a vote.
Remuneration for work was one of the points of friction between the anarchist and Marxist views during the revolutionary stage. While the anarchist organizations defended a single family salary, the Marxist organizations defended a staggered salary according to the type of work that was carried out. These differences were motivated by the differing conceptions of the individual and by motivating the individual as a producer. In the first place, while anarchism understands the individual as a subject with needs that must be met, Marxism understands the individual as a producer. Secondly, anarchism holds to the concept that the worker will strive to produce and improve the process while controlling the productive activity. Marxism, on the other hand, understands that the worker will try harder in exchange for receiving a higher remuneration.
The CNT's Entertainment Union was a model of organization and operation in the confederated media. It was significant that, between 20 and 25 July, the cinemas and theaters of Barcelona were one of the first and most resoundingly successful occupations by the activists from Barcelona's CNT. On 26 July, a Technical Commission was put in charge of preparing a project that defined the new framework of work in cinemas and theaters. That same day, the Catalan Generalitat, overwhelmed by events, created the Comisaría d'Espectacles de Catalunya which was not successful; the production of workers organized through the CNT union completely took over production.
From 6 August to May 1937, revolutionary enthusiasm organized and energized all the cinematographic and theatrical activities in Barcelona. The project began by standardizing wages for all job types in the film industry. Sickness, disability, old age, and forced unemployment benefits were established permanently. This whole system employed about 6,000 people and supported 114 cinemas, 12 theaters, and 10 music halls during that period. An opera company was even created at the Tivoli theater, in an attempt to bring the genre closer to the general public.
It can be said that it was one of the sectors that functioned the best economically, even building some cinemas such as the Ascaso (today's Vergara). Others were reformed or were finished building, such as the Durruti cinema (now the Arenas cinema).
At the political level, the collectivization of cinema was a new way of understanding art radically opposed to the bourgeois and capitalist system. There was no unity of criteria in the creative process, dogmatism was not allowed behind the scenes, and the "seventh art" incorporated a new form of journalism by taking cameras out into the street, to film what was happening there. A popular mobilization emerged to tell what they saw, and the message emerged as counter-information. The information of the people thus replaced that of power.
Between 1936 and 1937, more than a hundred films were produced, promoted by the production company and the distributor created by the CNT. The documentary genre was undoubtedly the most accomplished, as war news inevitably pushed out any other activity. SIE Films (Syndicate of the Entertainment Industry) and Spartacus Films were created for the production of films. The Union had two large studios with three plateaux for filming, and the "Palace of Belgium" was set up on the premises of Montjuïc, for auxiliary services of sets and extras. However, the repression of May 1937 strangled the Social Revolution in the streets of Barcelona and, although films continued to be made, the previous production rate slowed considerably.
Anarchist film production was a large part of the creative life in Catalonia at the time; and it spread to Aragon, Madrid, and Levante through different models, adapting to the circumstances of towns and cities and the working people who made them possible. Although productive activity in Madrid was less important than in Barcelona, 24 films were shot, both documentaries and fictional.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 people worked in this industry during the Civil War. Shortly after the general strike, when workers returned to their companies and workshops, woodworkers began to socialize. They began by seizing the companies, and through a general plan to rationalize efforts and resources, they closed the workshops that did not meet sufficient health and safety conditions, regrouping them to have large and clear premises. Although at the beginning there were still small workshops, later they were also added to the socialization.
After a few months of spontaneity, efforts were coordinated until the 8-hour day, standardization of wages, improvement of working conditions, and the increase of production were achieved. Socialization was implemented throughout all phases of production: sawmill, joinery, and carpentry.
A professional school and libraries were created, there was even a Socialized Furniture Fair in 1937. Coordination was achieved with the socialized wood industry of the Levante, to manufacture different types of furniture and not to compete. Although some exchanges are carried out through barter (with other socialized branches, or with some agrarian communities), in most cases they had to use money.
The trend of latifundismo in the Spanish countryside led to widespread unrest among the peasantry. The confiscations of the 19th century had failed to substantially modify the structure of land ownership and the republic's agrarian reform process had not fulfilled the expectations for change. Thus, as a result of the coup d'état, a revolutionary process began in which the peasants expropriated from the landowners and organized self-managed communities based on collective ownership of the means of production. This phenomenon has been called "collectivization". The collectivities were created through different means. In regions that the nationalists had not seized, the municipalities and the peasants themselves initiated collectivization.
Thus was formed a collective labor regime in which the lands of the aristocrats and landowners were expropriated and joined with the lands of other collectives. Animals, tools, and work were all held and done collectively. Periodic assemblies were held to direct what the community was doing, as well as negotiate with other communities and encourage exchange. Most of these collectives were born in response to the lands that were left empty or were seized by committees after the coup d'état. The IRA counted between 1,500 and 2,500 communities throughout Spain. These collectives came to be territorially organized as was the case in Aragon, in Castile with the unification of the peasant federations, or in Levante with the creation of the CLUEA. Throughout the war they were present in the political and economic approaches of each faction, being in a way another of the ideological battlefields within the republican side.
The union or departure from the collective community was free. If a small owner wanted to continue working the land on their own, they could do so as long as they did not hire anyone. The UGT-organized National Federation of Land Workers (FNTT), which had more than half a million affiliates, was largely in favor of the collectives.
In Barcelona the communities exercised a management role similar to collectives, without employers, as everything was controlled by their own workers. City services such as urban transport were managed by collective communities. In the countryside of Aragon, the Valencian Community and Murcia, the agrarian communities acted as communes. The business role was joined to that of an institution that replaced the local powers of the municipalities in which they were created, in many cases abolishing money and private property (one of the principles of socialist anarchist society). Some of the most significant Aragonese communities were those of Alcañiz, Alcorisa, Barbastro, Calanda, Fraga, Monzón, and Valderrobres. In mid-February 1937, a congress was held in Caspe, the purpose of which was to create a federation of collectives attended by 500 delegates representing 80,000 Aragonese collectivists. Along the Aragon front, the Anarchist-influenced Council of Aragon, chaired by Joaquín Ascaso, had assumed control of the area. Both the Council of Aragon and these communities were not well regarded by the government of the republic; so, on 4 August the Minister of National Defense, Indalecio Prieto, issued orders to the 11th Division of Commander Enrique Líster to be sent on "maneuvers" to Aragon, and dissolving the Council of Aragon on 11 August.
In Aragon, agrarian collectives were formed that were structured by work groups of between five and ten members. To each work group, the community assigned a piece of land for which it was responsible. Each group elected a delegate who represented their views at community meetings. A management committee was responsible for the day-to-day running of the community. This committee was in charge of obtaining materials, carrying out exchanges with other areas, organizing the distribution of production, and the public works that were necessary. Its members were elected in general assemblies in which all the people who made up the community participated.
In many villages and towns money was even abolished and replaced by vouchers signed or stamped by committees. Although some communities had problems with the republican authorities (e.g. the dissolution in Aragon), others, such as those of Castilla, Region of Murcia, and Andalusia, could function with more or less success until 1939, when they were dissolved by Franco's troops.
Following libertarian practices, the collectives were governed by structures that can be described as "from the bottom up". That is, all decisions and appointments were made in assembly. In these assemblies all issues concerning the people were discussed. In these same assemblies the progress of the community and the actions to be taken were debated.
On a broader organizational level, the communities aspired to organize themselves into federations, following the example of Aragon. There were congresses in favor of the creation of federations of collectives, but in no case was a more elaborate body than in Aragon ever constituted. There were other cases of federalism, such as CLUEA, the managing body for citrus exports in the Levante.
Among the collectivities there was also exchange, either in the form of barter, with their own paper money or with official currency.
The Spanish Revolution undertook several environmental reforms that were possibly the largest in the world at the time. Daniel Guérin notes that anarchist territories would diversify crops, extend irrigation, initiate reforestation, and start tree nurseries. Once there was a link discovered between air pollution and tuberculosis, the CNT shut down several metal factories.
The collectives were formed in the villages as a result of the abandonment, expropriation, or accumulation of land and work tools by the peasants. They were made up of people who wanted to belong and the work to be done was divided among the different members. In places where money was not abolished, the salary became in most cases a family salary. Accordingly, it was set according to the number of family members, increasing according to whether they were a couple or had children.
The economic policies of the anarchist collectives were primarily operated according to the basic communist principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". One of the most outstanding aspects of the communities was the approach with which they faced the problem of money and the distribution of products. In the villages and towns where money was abolished, different solutions were sought; these ideas varied according to locality and town: vouchers signed or stamped by committees, account books, local coins, ration tables, or individual or family checkbooks. In the cases where money was abolished, it was used to acquire products or tools that the community could not obtain by itself.
The biggest problems that the communities faced were those consequential of the war itself: shortage of raw materials such as fertilizers, seeds, gear, and tools, or the lack of labor due to the mobilization. They also had great problems in their relationship with the state, as the collectives were an expression of power outside the state and also as ideological rivals of the communism that dominated the government. This is how they suffered discrimination in the financing of the IRA, the CLUEA's competition in the Levante, forced unionization in Catalonia, or their forced dissolution in Aragon.
Once the state was restructured at any of its levels, it tried to stop, direct or at least channel any revolutionary organism. Regarding the collectives, the Minister of Agriculture Uribe drew up a decree of agrarian collectivizations that only sought to channel them. With this decree an excessive importance was given to the individual farmer.
The figures are often fuzzy. Various numbers have been proposed. Gaston Leval says that there were 3 million people who participated. Vernon Richards talks about 1,500,000. Frank Mintz, in a 1970 study, says it was between 2,440,000 and 3,200,000; but by 1977 he had already revised these figures, placing it at a minimum of 1,838,000 collectivists. Its justification is the following:
Within the educational field there were also important experiments, although, as will be seen, these experiences had great drawbacks preventing carrying out more intense work. One of the most significant changes was due to the fact that education went from being a defensive and destructive field of capitalism to being understood as a fundamental pillar of the construction of the new revolutionary society.
The New Unified School Council (UNSC), created in Catalonia on 27 July 1936, was entrusted with the task of restructuring the educational system in Catalonia. This organization could be understood as a model of public management of education: free, co-educational, secular, use of the vernacular, and unification of the different educational levels. However, the CENU created a Regional Federation of Rationalist Schools that was outside the UNSC system.
In rural areas, the collectivist movement was forced to intervene more directly than in the cities. Either because there were no educational structures before or because there was greater autonomy, in many rural municipalities the community faced local, professional, or municipal expenses. It was also important obey the statutes of some communities that prohibited child labor.
Within the field of vocational and technical training, various initiatives were developed. In the industrial field, these were largely the result of the unions, which, knowing that they were lacking in technicians and distrusting them, tried to train members of their organizations. Among these initiatives were numerous schools of particular trades: railways, optics, transporters, metallurgists, and departments dedicated to professional training.
In the agricultural field, federations of trade unions carried out this type of initiative, among which we can find the school of secretaries of Levante, the agricultural university of Moncada, the regional institute of agriculture and livestock, and the school of militants of Monzón.
For informal education there were the libertarian athenaeums, or popular social centers in which different informative, cultural, or work tasks were developed. The athenaeums had a very strong tradition where anarchism was strong. However, in the war they even expanded into areas with few CNT roots. In some cases, such as Madrid, these athenaeums came to create schools, have health insurance, and promote other types of services.
Various communities also carried out other initiatives, such as the creation of libraries, artistic activities, a cinema forum, theater groups, athenaeums, the foundation of its own academies, or nursery schools.
The problems that had to be faced had two different roots: on the one hand, there were the problems typical of a war, to which others that had been dragging down the educational sphere can be added, and on the other, those typical of the rationalist school movement.
The coincidence of the revolution and the Spanish Civil War meant that in the military field various initiatives avre developed coordinated by the new administrations established by the revolutionary wave, most of which would be unsuccessful.
This was the first military initiative, developed on 24 July 1936, when the first voluntary militia, the Durruti Column, departed from Barcelona in the direction of Zaragoza. One of the last columns was the Los Aguiluchos Column, which left Barcelona on 28 August in the direction of Huesca. The columns of Barcelona and Lleida headed mainly towards Huesca and Zaragoza, and the Valencian ones towards Teruel, repeatedly besieging the three provincial capitals. At the beginning of September, the Carod-Ferrer Column arrived and was installed around Villanueva de Huerva.
This operation lasted until the end of September, when faced with the imperative of the imminent Battle of Madrid some of the columns gave up their independence, subordinating themselves to the requirements of the government.
The idea of an expedition to Mallorca had been present since 19 July, when it was taken by the nationalists, along with Ibiza and Formentera. Menorca was the only island in the Balearic archipelago that remained in republican hands. The republicans managed to take back the islands of Ibiza, Formentera, and Cabrera, landing on the island of Mallorca in the area of Punta Amer and Porto Cristo. On 5 September, Bayo's column began the withdrawal from Mallorca, which lasted until 12 September, returning to Barcelona.
The so-called "Mallorca landings" could be considered to have been definitively concluded when on 20 September Francoist troops from Mallorca occupied Formentera.
The last major operation of the confederal militias took place in November 1936. Buenaventura Durruti, one of the main protagonists of the Revolution, died on 20 November 1936. The resistance of the popular militias, together with the reinforcements of the International Brigades, allowed Madrid to resist the attack of the rebels. In the subsequent defense of the city, numerous anarcho-syndicalists intervened, such as the column led by the Madrilenian Cipriano Mera.
Nevertheless, the confederal militias were militarized into the Spanish Republican Army in 1937.
Criticism of the Spanish Revolution has primarily centered around allegations of coercion by anarchist participants (primarily in the rural collectives of Aragon), which critics charge ran contrary to libertarian organizational principles. Bolloten claims that CNT–FAI reports overplayed the voluntary nature of collectivization, and ignored the more widespread realities of coercion or outright force as the primary characteristic of anarchist organization.
He also emphasizes the generally coercive nature of the war climate and anarchist military organization and presence in many portions of the countryside as being an element in the establishment of collectivization, even if outright force or blatant coercion was not used to bind participants against their will.
This charge had previously been made by historian Ronald Fraser in his Blood of Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War, who commented that direct force was not necessary in the context of an otherwise coercive war climate.
Anarchist sympathizers counter that the presence of a "coercive climate" was an unavoidable aspect of the war that the anarchists cannot be fairly blamed for, and that the presence of deliberate coercion or direct force was minimal, as evidenced by a generally peaceful mixture of collectivists and individualist dissenters who had opted not to participate in collective organization. The latter sentiment is expressed by historian Antony Beevor in his Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939.
Historian Graham Kelsey also maintains that the anarchist collectives were primarily maintained through libertarian principles of voluntary association and organization, and that the decision to join and participate was generally based on a rational and balanced choice made after the destabilization and effective absence of capitalism as a powerful factor in the region.
There is also focus placed by pro-anarchist analysts on the many decades of organization and shorter period of CNT–FAI agitation that was to serve as a foundation for high membership levels throughout anarchist Spain, which is often referred to as a basis for the popularity of the anarchist collectives, rather than any presence of force or coercion that allegedly compelled unwilling persons to involuntarily participate.
Michael Seidman has suggested there were other contradictions with workers' self-management during the Spanish Revolution. He points out that the CNT decided both that workers could be sacked for "laziness or immorality" and that all workers should "have a file where the details of their professional and social personalities will be registered". He also notes that the CNT Justice Minister, García Oliver, initiated the setting up of "labour camps", and that even the most principled anarchists, the Friends of Durruti, advocated "forced labour". However, Garcia Oliver explained his idealistic vision of justice in Valencia on 31 December 1936; common criminals would find redemption in prison through libraries, sport, and theatre. Political prisoners would achieve rehabilitation by building fortifications and strategic roads, bridges, and railways, and would receive decent wages. Garcia Oliver believed it made more sense for fascist lives to be saved than for them to be sentenced to death. This is in contrast to the policy of mass annihilation of political opponents enacted in the rebel zone during the war.
Some radical commentators have incorporated their views on limitations of the Spanish Revolution into their theories of anti-capitalist revolution. Gilles Dauvé, for example, uses the Spanish experience to argue that to transcend capitalism, workers must completely abolish both wage labour and capital rather than just self-manage them.
In his writings on the Spanish Revolution, Leon Trotsky delivered a series of deprecatory criticisms of the various factions including the POUM and reformist left. He attributed the failures of the Spanish Republic to the oscillating position of the leadership, reformist programmes and organisational ineptitude in erecting mass revolutionary parties. He reserved his strongest condemnation for the Stalinist-allied Communist party for their repressive actions of other left-wing factions which ensured the ascendancy of Franco and the Comintern for abandoning the revolution in favour of maintaining diplomatic parity with the West.