page_title: Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
section_title: Symbols and culture
hierarchical_section_title: Confederación Nacional del Trabajo / Symbols and culture
caption_attribution_description: English: CNT flag Español: Bandera de la CNT
context_page_description: The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labour unions, which was long affiliated with the International Workers' Association. When working with the latter group it was also known as CNT-AIT. Historically, the CNT has also been affiliated with the Federación Anarquista Ibérica; thus, it has also been referred to as the CNT-FAI. Throughout its history, it has played a major role in the Spanish labor movement.
  Founded in 1910 in Barcelona from groups brought together by the trade union Solidaridad Obrera, it significantly expanded the role of anarchism in Spain, which can be traced to the creation of the Federación de Trabajadores de la Región Española, the successor organization to the Spanish chapter of the IWA.
  Despite several decades when the organization was illegal in Spain, today the CNT continues to participate in the Spanish worker's movement, focusing its efforts on the principles of workers' self-management, federalism, and mutual aid.
context_section_description: The CNT, owing to its interests in the radical transformation of society, has sought to make free knowledge and culture accessible to workers, a task which has been developed through the support of the anarchist academies. The School of Anarchist Militants was an institution which, by means of anarchist pedagogy, sought to ensure that "groups of teenagers could acquire the knowledge and the personal responsibility essential to work in collectives such as those of entertainers and accountants." Through the Anselmo Lorenzo Foundation, the CNT manages its cultural heritage, edits books, and organizes conferences and colloquies. Also, some sections of the CNT have supported and promoted Esperanto.
  The flag of the CNT is the traditional flag of anarcho-syndicalism, which joins diagonally the red color of the labour movement and the black color of anarchism, as a negation of nationalism and reaffirmation of internationalism.
  The anthem of the CNT is A las barricadas (To the Barricades), written by the Polish poet Wacław Święcicki with music by Józef Pławiński in 1883. Święcicki and Pławiński's work, called Warszawianka, was given Spanish lyrics by Valeriano Orobón Fernández and published with some musical arrangements for mixed choir by Ángel Miret in 1933.
  Several postage stamps were issued by the CNT during the Spanish Civil War. Other surviving artifacts of this period are posters,
  movie tickets, and other objects related to the companies which were collectivized during the Spanish Revolution of 1936.
  George Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War in the militia of Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), a revolutionary Trotskyist party (and therefore opposed to the Soviet Union line) whose militants were allied with the CNT during the revolution and to which Andrés Nin belonged. Orwell described in his book Homage to Catalonia the time during which Barcelona rose up with the CNT and anarchism. In the ninth chapter of his book, Orwell commented that "As far as my purely personal preferences went I would have liked to join the Anarchists."
  In Ernest Hemingway's 1940 book For Whom the Bell Tolls, Maria's fascist captors print U.H.P. on her forehead with iodine after cutting her hair.
  Robert Capa photographed the death of the Valencian Columna Alcoiana militiaman Federico Borrell García during the Spanish Civil War in the snapshot called "Death of a Loyalist Soldier". This photograph has become a famous image which shows the calamity of war.
  In 1936, the film industry was collectivized and produced short films such as En la brecha (In the Gap, 1937). The CNT has been portrayed in recent Spanish filmmaking by the Vicente Aranda's film Libertarias (1996), which shows a group of militiamen (and especially militiawomen) at the Aragon front during the Spanish Civil War.
caption: CNT flag waving in their Bilbao offices.
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