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Title: A Cry in the Dark
Author: CNT
Date: 16 April 1947
Language: en
Topics: Spain, may day
Source: Retrieved on 19th May 2021 from https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/4xgz3t
Notes: Published in Enrique Marco Nadal, Todos contra Franco (Madrid 1982). Translated by: Paul Sharkey.

CNT

A Cry in the Dark

The rapid passage of time has brought us once again to the symbolic,

evocative date of 1 May. Again we come to the evocation of the selfless

sacrifices of the Chicago martyrs, as thousands and millions of Spanish

workers serenely defy death itself from behind bars in the jails

jam-packed with antifascists or in the streets of cities where the

hundred-eyed fascist reaction is on the lookout for proletarian flesh

into which to plunge its leaden talons. Around the globe, this will be a

day of joyous celebration now that the dismal memories of Hitlerite

repression have dissipated and the road is wide open to the better world

of which we all dream. In Spain it will be a day of memories and sadness

when, thoughts turning to our fallen comrades and ears cocked for the

firing squads’ volleys, we forge yet again a solid determination to win

back, whenever and however we can, even should it cost us a lot of

blood, the freedom wrested from us through violence and treachery.

But when the workers of the world joyously celebrate their day, and

massive victory parades wend their way through the streets of Paris,

London, Brussels, Rome, New York, Moscow, etc., we should like them to

pause for a moment in their riotous celebrations and think of those

condemned to the slow agony of a living death, and remember that in

various places around Spain, the feast of labour may well be marked by

volleys of gunfire and the earth watered again by the blood of

revolutionary workers.

Prior to 1936, before German aircraft and Italian divisions briefly put

paid to our freedom as the world looked on in indifference, the whole of

Spain was a cry of triumph on May Day. For a day, the workers quit the

factories and left their labours in the fields, the fishermen left

behind the grey waters of the Cantabrian Sea, of the blue waters of the

Mediterranean and everywhere, from the tiniest hamlet in remotest

Andalusia through to the great cities like Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia,

Seville, Bilbao or Zaragoza, the producers showed off their potential

and resolve, their might and their expectation that through their own

exertions they might gather in the harvest whose seed had been watered

by the blood of the five anarchists lynched in Chicago.

Since 1939 and the fascist victory, the working class feast of 1 May has

continued to be marked. But marked in two different ways, two ways

utterly different from the style of celebration throughout the entire

civilised world. On the workers’ part, in defiance of the wrath of the

police and the Falangists, with a few minutes of downed tools and

silence in factory and workshop, with the distribution of underground

manifestos, with posters and graffiti boldly daubed everywhere,

reiterating that the spirit that moved Spies, Engels, Fichte [sic] and

other comrades neither has perished nor will it perish in us. On our

enemies’ part, in the bloodthirsty, brutal manner of which their German

Gestapo teachers were so fond, in strict obedience to the guidelines

laid down for them on his frequent visits to Spain by the monstrous

Himmler, the inventor of the most refined tortures, gas chambers and

mass extermination camps.

From the moment of its victory, Spanish fascism has been careful to mark

every feast day, Its own, ours and other people’s. During the World War

it also marked Germany’s successes. And even the Allied successes, in

order to mar our delight at these and hammer the point home that,

regardless of the victories scored by freedom’s armies, they were still

in charge in our country. Because inevitably the means of commemoration

was always the same: firing squads.

Not a 1 May, 14 April [Proclamation of the Spanish Republic, 1931], 18

July [military rising, 1936] or 7 November – the last being the date of

the glorious defence of Madrid – went by without the firing squads

springing into action in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville or some other

Spanish village or city. Fascism still takes care to ensure that its

jails are stocked with thousands of liberal-minded men under sentence of

death from one of those sham courts martial where the accused is denied

any defence and the basic norms of due process are ignored. They

languish under a death sentence for days, weeks, months, years on end.

Whole years with nerves eroded by the uncertainty of an execution that

could be carried out at any moment: subjected to the most refined

torture, to which the Spanish Inquisition owed its ghastliness: the

torture of hope. They are victims stockpiled for the commemoration of

feast days: hostages to serve as burnt offerings to the greater glory of

their ideals.

The condemned know when a date draws near what their fate will be. As do

those on the outside familiar with the bestial methods of Spanish

fascism. As that day breaks and the light of dawn joins battle against

the shades of night, a number of volleys break through the silent dawn –

and lead silences cries of ‘Long live freedom!’ forever.

This is how the Spanish regime has marked May Day since 1936: and how it

will mark it this year. In our memory and in our hearts we hold the

cherished names of the hundreds of comrades sacrificed on that date in

preceding years: and there will be a number of others to add in 1947.

On this day of triumph for workers around the world, we should like free

men everywhere to remember the dramatic reality in Spain. We should like

them not to think of it as some dim and distant past, but as a current

reality, as a tragedy replayed daily and claiming fresh, pained victims.

And reflect too that none of this is enough to break our morale or shake

our determination. The blood of martyrs is a seed that blossoms in a

harvest of heroism for those who are left behind. If our resolve was

unbreakable in 1936, it is a hundred times more so now in 1947. The

firing squads may keep up their efforts and water the generous soil of

Spain with blood. Calmly, determinedly, vigorously, we embrace as our

own the words uttered by Spies on the scaffold and, with him, we say:

‘A day is coming when the words that you seek to silence through death

will ring out louder that any shout.’

In Spain that day draws close. Because, like Seneca, we can look the

killer in the eye and on this May Day spit with contempt into his face:

Go on, kill. But no matter how much you kill, you will never kill that

which will see you dead.

Spain, 16 April 1947

The National Committee of the CNT