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Title: Anarchism in Spain Author: Pedro García Guirao Date: 2009 Language: en Topics: Spain, history, Spanish anarchists, Spanish Civil War, Spanish revolution Source: Guirao, Pedro García. “Anarchism, Spain.” In *The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to the Present*, edited by Immanuel Ness, 144–147. Vol. 1. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
It is commonly accepted that the history of Spanish anarchism started in
the early nineteenth century with the economist and social reformer
Ramón de la Sagra (1798–1871). In 1845, he launched the first anarchist
periodical, El Porvenir, which introduced to Spain the ideas of
Proudhon, Fourier, and Saint-Simon. Between 1848 and 1849, de la Sagra
and Proudhon founded the Banco Popular. Despite this, the Spanish
anarchist movement did not properly get underway until after the
International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) meeting in London in 1864,
when the supporters of Bakunin sent the Italian Giuseppe Fanelli to
Spain. His mission was to establish the Spanish section of the First
International (Sección Española de la Primera Internacional), which
occurred in 1869. The triumph of Bakunin’s anarchosyndicalist theories
was so great that when Pablo Lafargue arrived in Madrid in 1871 with the
intention of founding a workers’ political party, he was told by the
Catalan statesman Francisco Pi y Margall that a Marxist political party
would never succeed in Spain.
Francisco Pi y Margall (1824–1901) was one of the most influential
thinkers who contributed to the popularization of anarchism in Spain.
After emigrating to France in 1866, he came into irect contact with the
theories of Proudhon, which he translated and analyzed in various books.
He defended the principle of federalism against centralism and achieved
wide popularity among anarchists. After the declaration of the First
Spanish Republic in 1873 he became president, but resigned his position
after just a week.
After the restoration of the monarchy in 1874, IWA sympathizers were
suppressed and workers’ organizations were proscribed. In around 1882,
an apparently secret anarchist organization, La Mano Negra (The Black
Hand), dedicated to committing murder and robbery, was persecuted in
Andalucía. However, the principal anarchist organization of that time,
the Federación de Trabajadores de la Región Española (FTRE), denied any
connection with it, claiming that the organization did not exist and was
simply an invention of police and landowners who needed an excuse to
pursue a repressive campaign against peasant associations.
In 1892 in Cádiz, an insurrection took place at Jerez de la Frontera
which led to the split of anarchism into two groups: the Andaluz
fraction, characterized by primitivism, ruralism, violence, and
individualism, and the organized, syndicalist, and urban anarchism of
Cataluña, led by Rafael Farga Pellicer and José Llunas (founder of the
anarchist satirical periodical La Tramontana).
Following the assassination of ten people in the Corpus Christi
procession in Barcelona in 1896, during which another 24 were injured,
on May 4, 1897, 28 people were sentenced to death. During the so-called
Montjuic trial, the government of Cánovas del Castillo persecuted and
tortured the presumed leaders of the attack. They included Tárrida del
Mármol, Pere Coro-minas, Ramón Sempau, Teresa Mañé i Miravet (known as
Soledad Gustavo), and Joan Montseny (known as Federico Urales). In
August 1897, the Italian anarchist Michele Angiolillo assassinated
Cánovas in revenge for those murdered and tortured in Montjuic.
On August 3, 1907, the labor federation Solidaridad Obrera (Workers’
Solidarity) was created in Barcelona with the intention of uniting all
Spanish social-anarchist movements that refused to join the General
Workers’ Union (Unión General de Trabajadores, UGT), founded in 1888
under the political control of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party
(Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE). Solidaridad Obrera had a
profound influence on anarcho-syndicalism in Spain, especially through
its periodical, Solidaridad Obrera, which disseminated propaganda during
strikes. The organization also played a significant role in the Semana
Trágica in Barcelona from July 25 to August 1, 1909, which led to the
execution of the anarchist pedagogue Francisco Ferrer y Guardia, the
founder of the Escuela Moderna (Modern School), on October 13, 1909.
Finally, at its 1910 congress, Solidaridad Obrera created the National
Confederation of Labor (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, CNT).
At the beginning of February 1919, a strike began in Barcelona at the La
Canadiense company. The appointment of Governor Martínez Anido and his
chief of police Arlegui initiated an epoch during which anarchists and
trade unionists were severely persecuted, and pistolerismo
(“gunfighterism”) ruled Barcelona for several years. Using the chaos of
the era as a pretext, King Alfonso XIII allowed General José Antonio
Primo de Rivera to form a government that repressed the proletariat and
anarchist unions. During the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923–30),
all CNT activities were prohibited, although the organization continued
to exist illegally.
In 1927, an underground organization of Spanish and Portuguese
anarchists, called the Iberian Anarchist Federation (Federación
Anarquista Ibérica, FAI), emerged. FAI coordinated violent actions aimed
at the elimination of the dictatorship and the king. However, violence
was not necessary: on January 28, 1930, the dictator resigned and the
elections of April 12, 1931, which resulted in the proclamation of the
Second Republic, sent the king into exile. Three months later, Angel
Pestana, Juan Peiró, Horacio M. Prieto, and a large number of CNT
members signed the famous “Manifesto of the 30: To All Anarchists,” in
which they proposed that anarchism should play a part in professional
politics. In opposition to the FAI, which advocated the immediate
introduction of libertarian communism, the signatories believed in the
necessity of a transitional phase between capitalism and anarchist
society. They wanted to create anarchist political parties: the Partido
Sindicalista, Partido Libertario, and Sindicalismo Político. However,
they were eventually expelled from the CNT, which opened up a rift
between trade unionists and the FAI-ists. Those who distanced themselves
from reformist anarchism created the Iberian Federation of Libertarian
Youth (FIJL) in 1932, and Mujeres Libres in 1936.
During its early days, the Second Republic was euphorically considered
by many to be a panacea powerful enough to resolve the four great
problems that had dragged Spain down for over a century: latifundism,
religiosity of the state, exploitation of the proletariat, and
centralism. It soon became clear that the Republic was nothing more than
a reformist political regime perpetuating the same problems. A good
illustration of the gap that existed between the government and the
people is the crime that occurred in the village of Casas Viejas (Cádiz)
in January 1933, when 25 people, including coal merchant Francisco Cruz,
known as “Seisdedos,” were burned alive by the republican Civil Guards.
The motive for the attack was the proclamation of libertarian communism
in Andalucía. The Civil Guards produced an effect contrary to the one
they had desired: rather than silencing the anarchists, they elevated
the humble peasants to the status of martyrs, ignited libertarianism in
a number of areas (mostly in Asturias, Aragón, Barcelona, and Levante),
and aroused radical discontent toward the Second Republic.
On November 19, 1933, the elections were won by an alliance of religious
political parties sympathizing with Italian and German fascism, the
Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (Confederación Española de
Derechas Autónomas, CEDA), who proceeded to paralyze all progressive
reforms and projects that had been started. During the elections, the
CNT issued the slogan: “Do not vote, get ready for social revolution. If
the right wins, decisive struggles will have to be carried out in the
street.” The organization kept its word and ignited uprisings in Aragón
and Asturias, which resulted in 3,000 dead, 7,000 wounded, and around
30,000 arrested, almost all of whom were anarchosyndicalists.
During the next elections in 1936, the fear that the right might win
again led to the creation of the Popular Front coalition consisting of a
number of political parties and trade unions, including the Republican
Left (Izquierda Republicana), the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification
(Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, POUM), and the Republican Left
of Catalonia (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, ERC). The CNT, with
over 1,500,000 members, decided not to boycott the Popular Front, since
it promised amnesty for all political prisoners. The coalition won and
the amnesty occurred.
The unstable coalition fell apart, however, as each group began to
follow its own interests. The CNT tried to establish the libertarian
communism that it had defended since its congress in 1936 in Zaragoza.
In this volatile situation, a part of the army rebelled in July against
the Republic. The CNT declared a general strike in response and started
to implement revolutionary urban guerilla tactics. These events marked
the beginnings of the Spanish Civil War. The anarcho-syndicalists
controlled the main Spanish cities, including Barcelona – “the capital
of Spanish anarchism” – and collectivized factories, transport, and the
health system.
During the Civil War, the revolution was secondary: the priority was the
creation of a united front against fascism. Trade unionist Francisco
Largo Caballero hoped that with such political burdens, the anarchists
would abandon spontaneous struggles in the streets and follow the
discipline required to be given weapons. This implied the dissolution of
anarchist militias so that they could join the professional army, which
the CNT eventually refused to do. In May 1937, the communists betrayed
the revolution in Barcelona by directly attacking the libertarian
movement, assassinating their own comrades, and assaulting the
Telefónica building in which the anarchists had barricaded themselves.
The victory of Franco resulted in a dictatorship that lasted from 1939
until his death on November 20, 1975. Anarchism during this period was
characterized by illegality, exile, and decline. Nevertheless, anarchist
guerillas known as Maquis lived hidden in the mountains, boycotting and
sabotaging everything they could in the Francoist regime. Due to both
external repression and internal conflicts, however, the CNT continued
to deteriorate. History repeated itself: on the one hand were the
orthodox defenders of revolutionary syndicalism, direct action, and
libertarian communism, on the other were those who believed in
ideological change and considered political syndicalism, closer to
socialism. The CNT unified in 1961, but the unification was short-lived
and the subsequent separation was so severe that the anarchist movement
practically disappeared.
On March 2, 1974, as Franco was nearing death, the young anarchist
Salvador Puig Antich was executed by garrote. As a member of the
anti-capitalist Iberian Liberation Movement (Movimiento Ibérico de
Liberación, MIL), he had contacts with the French anarchist movement and
Spanish exiles living in Toulouse. His death was another example of the
atrocities carried out by the Francoist regime, recognized by western
democracies.
Even after Franco’s death, however, anarchism did not regain its former
popularity. Democratizing projects, while recognizing communists, did
not take anarchists into account, and neither did anarchists want to
repeat the mistake of participating in professional politics. At the
beginning of the twenty-first century, Spanish anarchism has experienced
a resurgence, primarily in two ways. The first is through the recovery
of historical memory. A number of foundations dedicated to research have
been founded, including the Fundación de Estudios Libertarios Anselmo
Lorenzo, Ateneo Virtual, Fundación Andreu Nin, Ateneu Enciclopédic
Popular, Centre d’Estudis Llibertaris Federica Montseny, and the
Fundación Casas Viejas 1933. The second is through practical anarchism,
in the context of which the CNT accommodates such divergent movements
and activities as libertarian syndicalism, feminism, anti-globalization
protests, environmentalism, the defense of homosexual rights, free love,
urban punks and squatters, and centers of free education. This is a
reminder that nowhere else in the world has anarchism been so
extensively assimilated into the masses as in Spain, where the echoes of
the decades-old slogan – Uníos Hermanos Proletarios: Proletarian
Brothers Unite – can still be heard.
SEE ALSO: Anarchosyndicalism ; Bakunin, Mikhail Alexandrovich
(1814–1876) ; Barcelona General Strike, 1919 ; Confederación Nacional
del Trabajo (CNT) ; Escuela Moderna Movement (The Modern School) ;
Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) ; Mujeres Libres ; POUM (Workers’
Party of Marxist Unification) ; Puig Antich, Salvador (1948–1974) ;
Spanish Revolution
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Princeton University Press.
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