The Battle for Spain

by Antony Beevor

  The Communist PSUC stepped up the pressure over the following month. It issued a ‘victory plan’, which demanded the complete integration of Catalan forces in the People’s Army, the call-up of all classes between 1932 and 1936, the nationalization of war industries, the militarization of all transport and the government control of all weapons.18 The anarchists, although torn in two directions, felt that they had given up enough to their colleagues in the government. ‘We have made too many concessions and have reached the moment of turning off the tap,’ declared their newspaper, Solidarid Obrera.19

  Andreu Nin, the leader of the POUM, was exultant that the CNT had reached the end of its tether. He wanted the anarchists to join the POUM in an attack ‘on the counter-revolution’.20 The battle lines of the so-called ‘events of May’ were being drawn. The POUM could not be defined as ‘Trotskyist’, as Stalinist propaganda continually proclaimed, and certainly not as ‘Trotskyist-Fascist’, which was the usual Comintern epithet–a death sentence in Soviet terms. But Stalinists refused to acknowledge that Trotsky’s Fourth International had condemned the POUM for having joined the Popular Front in the elections, with Trotsky himself repudiating his former colleague in furious articles.21

  For Nin, everything that was not revolutionary was reactionary, which was why he despised republican institutions and called on the CNT to install a workers’ democracy. The POUM in its revolutionary fanaticism had even convinced itself that the government of the Popular Front was secretly hatching a plot with the nationalists, a curious mirror image of Stalinist suspicions. It was, however, on more rational ground in its belief that the communists were preparing a purge similar to those taking place in the Soviet Union.22

  23

  The Civil War within the Civil War

  In Barcelona towards the end of April a series of developments and incidents increased an already tense situation. On 16 April Companys reshuffled his government, giving the post of minister of justice to Joan Comorera, the leader of the communist PSUC. This caused deep unease, especially among the POUM, whom he had threatened with liquidation. On 24 April an unsuccessful assassination attempt was made against the Generalitat’s commissioner for public order, Eusebi Rodríguez Salas, another leading member of the PSUC.

  The next day, 25 April, carabineros sent by Juan Negrín took control of the Pyrenean frontier posts, which up until then had been in the hands of CNT militia. They clashed with anarchists in Bellver de Cerdanya and killed several, including Antonio Martín, president of the revolutionary committee of Puigcerdà.1 In Madrid, José Cazorla, infuriated by Melchor Rodríguez’s denunciation of his secret prisons, closed down the CNT newspaper Solidaridad Obrera. Also on that day, in Barcelona, the communist and UGT leader, Roldán Cortada, was killed in Molins de Rei, probably by an anarchist, but there have long been other theories.2 The PSUC organized a public funeral, which was to be used as a mass demonstration against the CNT. Meanwhile, Rodríguez Salas unleashed an aggressive sweep through the anarchist bastion of Hospitalet de Llobregat to search for the killers of Cortada.

  The fear of open conflict on the streets of Barcelona prompted the Generalitat, with the agreement of the UGT and the CNT, to cancel all May Day parades. On 2 May Solidaridad Obrera asked workers not to allow themselves to be disarmed under any circumstances: ‘The storm clouds are hanging, more and more threateningly, over Barcelona.’3

  The very next day the Generalitat, deciding to take back all the power lost since 19 July 1936, seized control of the Telefónica in the Plaza de Cataluña. Although this telephone exchange was directed by a mixed committee of CNT and UGT, together with a delegate from the Catalan government, the anarchists had considered it their own since capturing it the previous July. It allowed them to listen in on any conversations made to and from Barcelona, including those of Companys and Azaña.

  At three in the afternoon, the communist commissioner for public order, Rodríguez Salas, arrived at the Telefónica with three trucks full of assault guards. (It is assumed, but not certain, that he was acting on the orders of the councillor for internal security, Artemi Aiguader.) They surprised the sentries and disarmed them, but were then halted by a burst of machine-gun fire from the floor above. The anarchists fired shots out of the windows as an alarm call and within a matter of minutes news of the event had spread to all the working-class quarters of the city.

  Dionisio Eroles, director of the control patrols, went to the Telefónica and tried to persuade the assault guards to lift their siege of the building, but without success. During the next few hours, people began to tear up paving stones and cobbles to make barricades in Las Ramblas, the Paralelo, the old city, the Vía Layetana and also in the outlying barrios of Sants and Sant Andreu. Shops closed and trams ceased to circulate. On one side were arrayed government forces, the communist PSUC and the Unified Socialist Youth, as well as some people from Estat Català; on the other were the CNT and the FAI, the Libertarian Youth, the Friends of Durruti, the POUM and its youth affiliate, the Juventudes Comunistas Ibéricas.

  The leaders of the CNT went to the palace of the Generalitat to meet Companys and the chief councillor, Josep Tarradellas. They demanded the immediate resignation of Aiguader and Rodríguez Salas to calm things down, but after a marathon session, which lasted until the early hours of the morning, the negotiations reached a dead end. In the meantime the regional committee of the CNT had declared a general strike for the next day.

  The network of barricades which were erected on Tuesday, 4 April, reminded many of the Semana Trágica in 1909 and almost everyone of 19 July 1936. Groups of workers shared out arms on the barricades while others prepared buildings for defence. A German agent of the Comintern in Barcelona reported a week later to Moscow, ‘No vehicle which did not belong to the CNT was allowed to pass and more than 200 police and assault guards were disarmed.’4 Ambulances with large red crosses evacuated the first of the wounded and, because of the random firing, the CNT brought out some of the home-made armoured vehicles from the previous summer. There was fighting on the Paralelo, on the Paseo de Colón, in the Plaza de Palau, in the railway stations and around the building of the Generalitat. The paramilitary police fired from the Colón and Victoria Hotels. Government forces and the PSUC occupied only a few areas in the centre, while the anarcho-syndicalists and their allies controlled the greater part of the city as well as the heavy guns in the fortress of Montjuich.

  Whenever the assault guards attempted to seize a building, they were met by a hail of bullets. Firing echoed in the streets from rooftops and balconies, fortified by sandbags. ‘From time to time,’ Orwell recounted, ‘the bursts of rifle-fire and machine-guns were mixed with the explosion of grenades. And at longer intervals, we heard tremendous explosions which, at the time, nobody could explain. They sounded like bombs, but that was impossible because there were no aircraft to be seen. Later they told me–and perhaps it is true–that agents provocateurs had set off large amounts of explosive to increase the noise and sense of panic.’5

  In the middle of the afternoon, Juan García Oliver and Mariano Vázquez, the national secretary of the CNT, reached Barcelona with two leaders of the UGT. They had been sent by the government in Valencia to try to find a way out of the very dangerous situation which put the Republic in an extremely embarrassing position, especially vis-à-vis the European press. A meeting was held with the Generalitat, which continued to oppose the forced resignations of Aiguader and Rodríguez Salas. Companys told them that taking into account the turn of events, he saw no other option but to request the Valencia government to take matters in hand, even if this meant the end of the Generalitat’s Council of Defence.

  The anarchist leaders made an appeal over the radio for a ceasefire while Abad de Santillán talked to the control patrols.6 The council of ministers met that same evening in Valencia. They decided to appoint Colonel Escobar as government delegate in Catalonia, but he was unable to take up the position due to a serious injury. The communist General Pozas was given comm
and of all the forces on the Aragón front.

  While anarchist leaders were trying to calm the situation, La Batalla, the POUM’s newspaper, argued that the best method of defence was attack and called for the immediate establishment of committees for the defence of the revolution. On Wednesday, 5 May, the anarchist leaders had another meeting with Companys and agreed a compromise solution of a new Catalan government which excluded Aiguader. But the tension in the streets did not lessen. That day, at 1 p.m., the secretary general of the UGT in Catalonia, Antonio Sesé, was shot in his car on the way to the Generalitat to take up his new appointment as councillor of defence. Later, the corpses of the Italian anarchists Camillo Berneri, who had been professor of philosophy at Florence University, and Franco Barbieri were discovered, as well as that of Francisco Ferrer, nephew of the pedagogue executed at Montjuich after the Semana Trágica, and Domingo Ascaso, brother of the anarchist hero who had been killed the year before in the assault on the Atarazanas barracks.7

  The middle classes in Barcelona, exasperated by the disturbance and shooting in the streets, wanted governmental authority to be re-established. The central government asked Federica Montseny to go to Barcelona to make an appeal over the radio to beg her fellow anarchists to lay down their arms. She had no success and was forced to accept that order could be reimposed only by force. ‘They were the most terrible and bitter days of my life,’ she was to say many years later.8

  Largo Caballero found himself in a difficult position. He needed the CNT, yet events in Barcelona were giving ammunition to the communists. He felt there was no alternative but to agree to the transfer of Assault Guard reinforcements from the Jarama front. In addition Prieto despatched two destroyers packed with paramilitary forces from Valencia. Meanwhile, in other parts of Catalonia and Aragón the communists had taken advantage of events to broaden their offensive by seizing the telephone buildings in Tarragona, Tolosa and several smaller towns. All these attempts were resisted and developed into street fighting, causing the Assault Guard column, which was heading for Barcelona from the Jarama, to stop in Tarragona and crush resistance there.

  The same day a group of over 1,500 men from the Red and Black column, the 127th Brigade of the 28th Division and the Lenin Division of the POUM, left the front for Barcelona, but were halted at Binéfar by republican aircraft. They were finally persuaded to return to the front, but only after venting their fury on Barbastro and other Aragonese villages.9

  Hidalgo de Cisneros flew to the airfield of Reus with two squadrons of fighters and two of bombers ‘to undertake operations against the region in the event that the insurgents won’.10 The reinforcements which had meanwhile arrived in Barcelona on board the destroyers Lepanto and Sa

  ´nchez Barcáiztegui increased the government’s forces towards the level of the rebel troops the previous July, but they had even less hope of taking the city. The anarchists had an overwhelming numerical superiority, holding almost 90 per cent of Barcelona and its suburbs, as well as the heavy guns of Montjuich. These overwhelming advantages were not used because the CNT-FAI knew that further fighting would lead to a full civil war within the civil war, in which they would be cast as traitors, even if the nationalists were unable to take advantage of the situation.

  During the day the famous pamphlet of the Friends of Durruti was distributed on the barricades and published the next morning in La Batalla. It had been drafted with the POUM on the evening of 4 May and was addressed to the workers, demanding ‘A revolutionary Junta–execution of those responsible–the disarming of the paramilitary police–the socialization of the economy–the dissolution of the political parties which had attacked the working class’ and declared, ‘We do not give up the streets!–The revolution before everything!–Long live the social revolution!–Down with the counter-revolution!’ That afternoon, the CNT and the FAI disowned the pamphlet.

  At dawn on Thursday, 6 May, the CNT-FAI leadership proposed a pact with the government. They offered to take down the barricades and order a return to work on condition that the assault guards were withdrawn and did not carry out reprisals. The Generalitat replied positively at five the next morning. Solidaridad Obrera made a general appeal: ‘Comrades of the government forces, back to your barracks! Comrades of the CNT, back to your unions! Comrades of the UGT and the PSUC, also to your centres! Let there be peace.’ But the communist publication El Noticiero Universal, referring to the leaflet of the Friends of Durruti, attacked ‘the criminal Trotskyism’ which had encouraged the anti-fascists of Catalonia to fight among themselves. Other communist publications also raised the temperature with similar attacks.

  On Friday, 7 May 150 trucks, bringing 5,000 assault guards and carabineros, reached Barcelona. The regional committee of the CNT appealed over the radio for everyone to assist in the re-establishment of law and order. There were the odd shots, but the barricades began to be taken down. But the PSUC and the Assault Guard did not give up their positions and carried out violent reprisals against libertarians.

  The libertarians had not won even a pyrrhic victory. Companys had repudiated Rodríguez Salas’s attempted seizure of the telephone building and removed Aiguader from the government, but in fact both the libertarian movement and Companys suffered a defeat, while the communists had also gained the lever they wanted to force Largo Caballero from power.

  The moral outrage of the communist press knew no bounds when expressing the Party line of Trotskyist treason. This was also reflected in the reports to the Comintern in Moscow, which claimed that the disturbances had been planned well in advance. One Comintern representative claimed that the events in Barcelona were simply a ‘putsch’, and added that there were ‘very interesting documents proving the connection of the Spanish Trotskyists with Franco…The preparations for the putsch began even two months ago. This is also proved.’11

  ‘We have succeeded in revealing close connections’, wrote another, ‘between Gestapo agents, agents of OVRA, Franco’s agents living in Freiburg, Trotskyists and Catalonian fascists. It is known that they have systematically transported weapons and machine-guns over the frontier of Catalonia and that Spanish fascists have sent valuable objects from Catalonia abroad as a payment for these weapons…The fact that the rebellion in Catalonia was quickly suppressed is regarded by fascist organs as a great failure.’12 Another report stated, ‘There isn’t the slightest doubt that people from the POUM are working for Franco and Italian and German fascists.’13

  At times, the Stalinist delusion appears to have developed into wishful fantasy. ‘Some most repulsive looting has started in a number of places,’ another report said. ‘Gangs of Trotskyist-bandits took all the scarce supplies that the civilian population had, and all their more or less valuable belongings. Those Spanish people who had weapons in their hands replied to this immediately. The Trotskyist traitors were literally wiped out within a few hours.’14

  Orlov’s NKVD officers were sent to Barcelona to investigate and report back. They soon concocted an even more grandiose conspiracy theory of the sort which was already becoming the norm under the Stalinist terror, known in the Soviet Union as the yezhovschina, after the head of the NKVD. ‘While investigating the rebellion in Catalonia, organs of state security discovered a large organization committing espionage. In this organization Trotskyists were working in close cooperation with the fascist organization “Falange Española”. The network had its branches in army headquarters, at the war ministry, the National Republican Guard, etc. Using secret radio stations, this organization was passing to the enemy the information on the planned operations of the republican army, on the movements of troops, on the location of batteries, and directed air attacks using light signals. A plan was found on one of the members of this organization, with marked targets that fascists planned to bomb, and the following message was written in invisible ink on the reverse side of the map: “To the Generalissimo. We are able at the present time to inform you on all that we know about the situation and movements of red troops. The
latest information broadcast by our radio station shows a great improvement in our information service.”’15

  As many disillusioned communists later acknowledged, the greater the lie, the greater the effect, because only a committed anti-communist could disbelieve it. The Spanish Republic was infected by the grotesque Stalinist paranoia of the NKVD, yet some Russian historians have recently argued that events in Spain also served to accelerate the ‘mincing machine’ of the Great Terror back in the Soviet Union. In any case, faced with the barrage of communist lies, any question of republican unity was now dead, whatever the gains in central government control and the restoration of military discipline.

  Franco was, of course, delighted with the turn of events in Barcelona, even though the nationalists had not profited from it in military terms. He claimed in an empty boast to Faupel that ‘the street fighting had been started by his agents’, and Nicolás Franco also told the German ambassador that ‘they had in all some thirteen agents in Barcelona’.16

  The virtual collapse of CNT and POUM influence allowed the judicial system in Catalonia to be reorganized. Joan Comorera, the communist councillor of justice, introduced Special Popular Tribunals, which were more like military tribunals. The following month, under the authority of the central government, a Special Tribunal for Espionage and High Treason was set up. Of the many thousands accused of taking part in the ‘events of May’ and arrested, 94 per cent were freed by the ordinary popular tribunals, but only 57 per cent by Comorera’s variety.17 At the same time, there were many political prisoners locked up with the common prisoners. Others were detained by the communist-run counter-intelligence service, the DEDIDE, which became the Servicio de Investigación Militar. They were held in a number of secret prisons, including the Palacio de las Misiones, Preventorio C (the ‘Seminario’), Preventorio G (convent of the Damas Juanas), as well as the state prison on the Calle Déu i Mata. There were also labour camps holding 20,000 prisoners.18