By then, Ibárruri had been on a remarkable odyssey. She had lost her deep Roman Catholic faith on contact with the writings of Karl Marx, and in 1918 she started work on the miners’ newspaper El Minero Vizcaino. Her first piece, published during Holy Week, was heavily critical of the Catholic Church, so she disguised herself with the nom de plume that would attach to her for the rest of her life and beyond: La Pasionaria.
Throughout the 1920s La Pasionaria folded herself into radical politics. No story better illustrates her immersion than her revelation in her memoir that, ‘as I rocked my baby to sleep’, she thought of the recent 1917 revolution in Russia and what came to her lips were ‘not the old lullabies I had learned from my mother, but revolutionary songs which I had learned in my village and which had lain dormant in my memory’. She was a member of the founding provincial committee of the fledgling Spanish Communist Party and was elected a delegate to the first national communist congress, which led to the formation of the party proper in 1921. La Pasionaria soon became known as a brilliant agitator, organiser and orator of spellbinding capacity. In public, in pursuit of her official duties, she always dressed all in black. But it was her words, rather than her dress, on which her reputation rests.
In 1930, La Pasionaria was elected to the central committee of the party and she was soon placed in charge of its official organ, Mundo Obrero. She first visited the Soviet Union in 1933 and was elected to the Spanish Parliament as a deputy for Asturias in 1934. As the civil war intensified, she made numerous speeches in which she urged the country to resist the nationalist insurgents the way it had resisted Napoleon in 1808. As the republic’s voice to the world, she became the personification of the Spanish Civil War. Her face appeared, usually in an expression of anguish, in thousand of posters and her words adorned a million leaflets. She came to stand for the beleaguered but defiant Spain, the symbol of hope that democracy might prevail.
During the bitter siege of Madrid in October and November 1936, La Pasionaria had her greatest moments. The government had abandoned Madrid and the communists stepped in to take up its defence. They did so with heroic resolve, and none more so than La Pasionaria. There were reports that her eloquence had inspired retreating troops to turn around and continue the fight. Against all likelihood, the fascist forces were repelled and Madrid was saved. For the time being. The Republican front held in Madrid only until 1939, when it fell to Franco. By then La Pasionaria had fled Spain for Russia, where she spent the next thirty-eight years in exile. In her memoir she says sadly there was never a day when she did not think of home.
The speech that follows was delivered at a mass meeting organised by the People’s Front at the Mestal Stadium, Valencia, on 23 August 1936. Something in the order of 100,000 people were present. It is testament to the ability that made her one of the finest orators of her century, a woman with a gift of cadence to turn phrases that passed straight into the language and into legend. Her gift for political language gained Dolores Ibárruri a place in the canon of rhetoric and also immortality in fiction. In For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway describes a gathering of Republican leaders in the Hotel Gaylord in Madrid, one of whom recalls how the news travelled of the fighting near Segovia: ‘Dolores brought the news herself. She was here with the news and was in such a state of radiant exultation as I have never seen … Goodness and truth shine from her as from a true saint of the people. Not for nothing is she called La Pasionaria.’ Truth and goodness is rather much, given the beastly nature of the regime to which La Pasionaria gave her loyalty. The historical verdict is more complex than this fiction, but it must at least contain it.
Comrades, people of Valencia! You must not be surprised if at this deeply moving moment, when I see before me this huge mass of people filled with sacred enthusiasm and the determination to defend their national freedom, I may perhaps be unable to express the feelings that overwhelm me, that well up from the bottom of my heart, and clothe them in simple and convincing words. This is an occasion when I should like more than ever to possess the eloquence to express the full force of my convictions, so as to prove to you how necessary it is to unite our ranks more closely than ever – for the danger today, too, is greater than ever.
This is another self-refuting passage of solemn humility. Flatter the audience and mark the gravity of the occasion by suggesting that the chosen speaker is inadequate to the task. As it was all the way back to Pericles, and via Wilberforce, the real import of the moment is to say that ‘Such an occasion is this that not even one such as I can hope to rise to its full height.’ There is nothing in what she says in this speech that, if we did not know her gender, identifies La Pasionaria as a woman. She was and is, of course, a feminist hero, the woman who led the way in a society and a conflict for which the Spanish word machismo might have been invented. And La Pasionaria was indeed deeply concerned with the issues faced by Spanish women, but she was too smart to allow herself to be categorised as interested only in those things.
‘La Pasionaria’ is, of course, itself a rhetorical construction of identity. The idea of the passion flower suggests delicacy but also resilience and pathos. The sobriquet refers explicitly to the religious celebration of the suffering of Christ, a sense that reinforces her given name, Dolores, which itself means ‘suffering’. Throughout all her speeches, Dolores takes this symbolism to stand for the plight of the Spanish proletariat. In this way, just as Elizabeth did at Tilbury, she cleverly constructs a character out of her own life. Inevitably, she was seen at the time in cartoon style, either as an indomitable Mother Courage tending to the poor and the dispossessed or as an evil enchantress whose mysterious wiles were turned to malign effect. La Pasionaria always received notices that no man would. Like a Stalinist Elizabeth Tudor she was the ‘communist virgin’. Ransacking the treasure-house of female stereotype, she was a Spanish Joan of Arc, the Earth Mother of War, a Medusa, even, in the fascist newspaper Gringoire, a vampire. This latter image brings together her threat as a sexual and political predator with her apparent loathing of religion.
For all these reasons, it is important to insist that La Pasionaria is a political speaker and leader first, a revolutionary second and a Stalinist third, in order not to make a fetish of the other remarkable fact about her, which is that she was a woman taking on the men. In her memoir, she describes the life of a woman in the Spain of her youth: ‘Woman’s goal, her only aspiration, had to be matrimony and the continuation of the joyless, dismal, pain-ridden thralldom that was our mother’s lot; we were supposed to dedicate ourselves wholly to giving birth, to raising our children and to serving our husbands who, for the most part, treated us with complete disregard.’
The early days of the republic were days of progress. Divorce and abortion were both legalised, and after the lobbying of the feminist Clara Campoamor, a women’s suffrage law was passed in 1931. Conscious that all this was in peril from the thought-vandals of fascism, women came out onto the streets in support of the republican resistance. They were right to be concerned. When Franco triumphed in 1939, the liberal laws on divorce and abortion were repealed. The danger, as La Pasionaria says here, was greater than ever.
I have come to you in these tragic and gloomy hours, when the fate of Spain and especially the future of the working masses is being decided. I have come to you, my mouth filled with the acrid taste of gunpowder, my mind filled with the impressions of the difficulties facing our comrades who are fighting on the summits and slopes of the Guadarramas, who realise the importance of our struggle and who are prepared to die rather than fall into the clutches of fascism. I have come to you from the field of battle, from that great fight which is assuming the character of a heroic epic, for we entered battle armed only with enthusiasm, self-sacrifice and supreme devotion to the cause of the people in order to fight an enemy furnished with all the means of warfare, which he has stolen from the people …
These rather graphic images of violence refer to the civil strife between the fascists and the r
ebel forces. The republican side was riven with disputes between forces of different political persuasions. Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is the most famous account of the conflict between the anarchists and the communists. La Pasionaria was an uncompromising advocate of the party line, and so the echo of violence in these words does not only refer to the fascists.
La Pasionaria is not one of those national liberation fighters, like Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Aung San Suu Kyi, who eschewed the use of arms. She is not even in the company of Nelson Mandela, whose turn to armed struggle was weighed down with caveats. La Pasionaria could talk of the fight with an emotion that sounded rather too close to relish. As it always has been, the shocked reaction to this was all the more intense because it was thought an unbecoming attitude for a woman. The truth is that it is scary stuff whoever says it. On one occasion La Pasionaria told women to fight with knives and burning oil.
In the spring before this speech was delivered, La Pasionaria had helped to bring down the Socialist prime minister, Francisco Largo Caballero. In a dramatic parliamentary session on 11 July 1936, she had shouted at the finance minister and monarchist leader, José Calvo Sotelo: ‘This is your last speech!’ Two days later Mr Calvo Sotelo was kidnapped and slaughtered by left-wing terrorists. This was the murder that began the civil war. La Pasionaria was accused of having instigated the killing, a charge she always denied. Whatever she did or did not do, she was almost certainly acting on orders from Moscow. Rhetoric’s reputation for duplicity did not spring up from nowhere. La Pasionaria was a talent, but she wasn’t always the sole scriptwriter.
If, when entering the firing line to fight the enemy who is threatening our national liberty, we have such enthusiasm in the rear, then I say to you, the working people of Valencia, what I said when I saw the weapons in the hands of the militia, when I saw the rifles in the hands of the troops loyal to the government: Fascism shall not pass! Fascism shall not pass because the wall of bodies with which we have barred its way is today strengthened by weapons of defence we have captured from the enemy – a cowardly enemy, because he lacks the ideals that lead us into battle. The enemy therefore has no dash and impetuosity, whereas we are borne on the wings of our ideals, of our love, not for the Spain that is dying along with the enemy, but for the Spain we want to have – a democratic Spain. When we speak of Spain, we mean not only the name; we mean a democratic Spain, not the Spain that is clinging to her old traditions; we mean a Spain that will give the peasants land, that will socialise industry under the control of the workers, that will introduce social insurance so that the worker may not be condemned to a homeless old age; we mean a Spain that will completely and comprehensively, and in a revolutionary spirit, solve the economic problems that lie at the foundation of all revolutions.
It is always good to have a watchword, to embody the message in a single phrase. No Pasarán – They shall not pass – became La Pasionaria’s line and the rallying cry of the dying Republic, especially when a fine speech of hers in defence of the Second Spanish Republic in the Government Ministry building in Madrid on 19 July 1936 was broadcast on Madrid radio. These two words define the defiance and hope for which La Pasionaria was seen to stand.
When La Pasionaria speaks of Spain, hers is not the nation of tradition. It is a nation of socialised industry. There is also a clear political message in her final claim that the revolution will everywhere be driven by deprivation. There is a case to be made for that, but it does need to be made rather than asserted, as it is here. This is ideological thought which, transmuted into soaring rhetoric, is masquerading as analysis. This part of the speech was greeted with long and loud applause. La Pasionaria had the ability to rouse an audience and to command respect even from opponents. There were Franco supporters who regarded her as a great Spaniard. If you can look past the off-the-shelf politics there is, without question, heroism and courage in the assertion that they shall not pass. The speech has to be judged in its moment, not with the wisdom of retrospect, under whose light La Pasionaria’s politics have not worn well.
On all fronts communists, anarchists, socialists and republicans are fighting shoulder to shoulder. We have also been joined by non-party people from town and country, because they too have realised what a victory for fascism would mean to Spain. The struggle, started within the frontiers of our country, is already assuming an international character, because the working people of the whole world know that if fascism were to triumph in Spain, every democratic country in the world would be confronted with the fascist danger. The working people have realised this, as is borne out by the messages of solidarity we are constantly receiving from all parts of the world. International fascism, too, has realised the significance of the struggle of the Spanish people against the enemies who have violated their oath of loyalty to the country and to the country’s flag. These violators of their vows have broken their promises and have rebelled in vile alliance with seditionary priests and debauched sons of the aristocracy, and are committing endless crimes in all the inhabited places through which they pass. One needs the brush of Goya and the eloquent pen of Blasco Ibáñez to depict the horrors and revolting crimes committed by these elements led by arrogant fascist generals who have long ago revealed who they are and what they are capable of.
There is no doubting the passion with which La Pasionaria opposed fascism. She and Franco loathed one another and the mutual detestation lasted for forty years. She does not need the brush of Goya or the pen of Ibáñez to depict the horrors of fascism. She does it on her own, depicting Spain as the heroic workers minus the treacherous priests and the debauched aristocrats who are collaborating with the alien idea of fascism.
But this is where a leap in the argument prefigures what La Pasionaria gets horribly wrong. The first tip-off is the worrying praise for the ‘non-party people’ who, no doubt fleetingly, are complimented for joining the march towards historical destiny. The error is to suppose, as La Pasionaria says, that the working class of every nation will join up in international solidarity, assuming their chosen status as the agents of the revolution. This is the utopian moment of arrival. It was easy to believe the moment had come in 1936, especially as idealistic young volunteers from many nations were turning up in Spain to join the International Brigades.
It was an illusion, though, and behind it there lurks a major philosophical mistake, which has ramifications for the rest of the twentieth century, everywhere. It was such a common mistake on the left that even a writer of stature such as George Orwell, could make it. The error was to think that capitalism was the midwife to fascism. The craven behaviour of many capitalists, bending to the will of authority, convinced many on the left that their classical texts were correct to say that capitalism itself was always a fellow traveller with tyranny.
It is an axiom of La Pasionaria’s rhetoric, here, in every speech she gives and in her writings, that she is more vivid and alive when she decries the injustice done to women than she is when she adopts the revolutionary bromides of the Left. Because there is nothing in the socialist texts about feminism La Pasionaria sounds like every other socialist, except when she talks about women. Compare the passage above with this, one of many such examples from La Pasionaria’s memoirs: ‘Was life worth living? My companions in misery and I often asked this question as we discussed our situation, our wretchedness. They spoke with resignation; after all, what could we women do? I rebelled against the idea of the inevitability of such lives as ours; I rebelled against the idea that we were condemned to drag the shackles of poverty and submission through the centuries like beasts of burden – slapped, beaten, ground down by the men chosen to be our life companions’.
La Pasionaria’s autobiography is a largely tedious defence of a calamitous political vision which is redeemed by the few passages that strike the reader in the heart, where it hurts. Writing of the deaths of four of her six children in infancy, she recalls that ‘every day, when I took lunch to my husband at the mine, I had to pass the cemetery
where they were buried; each time my heart was torn with anguish’. After she left her husband, she often had to leave her children in the care of others and eventually made the painful decision to send them to live in Russia while she carried on the struggle in circumstances she did not feel were propitious for bringing up a family. Perhaps she made choices we might not make, but the question of the sacrifice is rarely mentioned when the man is the revolutionary absentee.
As she nears her conclusion, La Pasionaria’s voice falters. Despite calls from the audience that she should cease, she goes on, and the words that follow are audible only to the platform. There is, all the same, a storm of applause.
Dante’s inferno is but a pale reflection of what happens in places through which these modern vandals pass. The slaughtered children and old people, the raped and hacked bodies of women, the demolished monuments of art … Wherever they pass they sow death and desolation. And what is taking place in the districts captured by the fascists would have taken place all over Spain, if they had not been opposed by a people inspired by faith in its own strength. We shall very soon achieve victory and return to our children …
La Pasionaria was fond of a metaphor from hell. In her autobiography she describes the industrial history of the Basque country, where she was radicalised, in such terms: ‘At night, when the miners went to bed, the interior of their bunkhouses looked like a scene from Dante’. Hell was the appropriate location, but not in the way she ever thought. La Pasionaria could see right through the fascists but she was blind to the communists. In March 1938, shortly before the fall of Madrid, she left for the Soviet Union, where she spent the next thirty-eight years. In Moscow La Pasionaria met, among others, Mao and Ho Chi Minh. Asked in an interview in 1983 which of the leaders she had known had been the most impressive, she answered without hesitation but with sinister emphasis: ‘Logically, Stalin.’
When They Go Low, We Go High Page 29
