by Paul Preston
PART THREE
The Consequence of the Coup: Spontaneous Violence in the Republican Zone
7
Far from the Front: Repression behind the Republican Lines
Once the military rebellion had provoked the collapse of many instruments of the state, in every city not conquered by the insurgents, power in the streets was assumed by the armed workers who had contributed to the defeat of the rising. Committees set up by working-class unions and parties created their own autonomous police forces and detention centres, known as checas (in a misuse of the name of the early Soviet security service). In the chaos created by the disappearance of most of the conventional structures of law and order, there was also an element of sheer criminality. This reflected long-standing resentments of years of social injustice, but it was also born of the unleashing of the worst instincts of those who took advantage of the removal of social restraints. The problem was exacerbated by the opening of the prisons and the release of thousands of common criminals.
In the first months, the application of justice was usurped by the committees and for a time ceased to be a function of the state. Moreover, there was a wave of killing which sprang from a variety of motives. The ‘justice’ of the committees against supporters of the coup, revenge by non-unionized workers for the brutality of labour relations and the activities of common criminals all combined in a tumultuous process that seemed to the rest of the world an orgy of violence. The targets included rebel army officers and the clergy, those prominent in the old establishment, landowners and businessmen, and those who had participated in the repression that followed the events of October 1934. Under the umbrella of ‘popular justice’ against those responsible for the coup, crimes with no political motive, of robbery, kidnapping, extortion, rape and murder, were also committed. As these were brought under control, there would be other acts of revenge for bombing raids and for the atrocities committed by the rebels transmitted in the bloodcurdling tales brought by refugees. Eventually too, there would be the legal violence carried out by the instruments of state organized to combat the ‘enemy within’, the supporters of the military rising who carried out acts of sabotage and espionage.
A new overarching revolutionary power never replaced the Republican authorities. However, for the first months, the central government and the Catalan Generalitat, the autonomous regional government, could do no more than maintain a veneer of institutional continuity. Their orders were often ignored. Rather, the first priority had to be to persuade the more moderate elements of the left-wing parties and unions to collaborate in putting an end to uncontrolled violence – an especially difficult task in the case of the anarchist movement. At the same time, it was necessary to create a legal framework to encompass the spontaneous, and often mutually contradictory, actions of the committees and checas. Eventually, it would be recognized by many on the left, though by far from all of the anarchists, that the conduct of a modern war required a central state. There would be no end to the internal violence until the Republican state had been rebuilt, and that would take time. Meanwhile, the Republican authorities were deeply embarrassed by the situation which undermined their efforts to secure diplomatic and material support from Britain and France.
The most damaging element of the violence, exploited to the full by supporters of the rebels abroad, was constituted by attacks on the clergy. Anti-clericalism was explicitly advocated by both the anarchist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo and the anti-Stalinist Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista. Andreu Nin, the POUM leader, told a meeting in Barcelona at the beginning of August that the working class had resolved the problem of religion by not leaving a single church standing.1 The anarchists were less confident and saw the Church as a powerful enemy still. At best, priests were suspected of persuading their female parishioners to vote for the right, at worst of using the confessional to seduce them. The hatred deriving from that perceived sexual power of the clergy was revealed in the statement that ‘the Church must disappear for ever. Churches will no longer be used for filthy pimping.’2 The loudly proclaimed Catholicism of the possessing classes was another trigger for anti-clericalism. There was little Christian charity about the attitude of industrialists to their workers or of landowners to their tenants and day-labourers. Inevitably, anarchists, Socialists and Communists were united in suspecting that the attraction of the Catholic Church for the wealthy was the fact that it preached patience and resignation to those struggling for better wages and working conditions. Thus the assassination of priests and the burning down of churches were given an idealistic veneer by anarchists as the prior purification necessary for the building of a new world, as if it was that easy to eliminate religion.
On 24 July, the Canadian journalist Pierre van Paassen interviewed the anarchist leader Buenaventura Durruti in the CNT metalworkers’ union headquarters in Barcelona. When Van Paassen remarked that ‘you will be sitting on top of a pile of ruins even if you are victorious’, Durruti replied, ‘We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall … We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. The bourgeoisie may blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here in our hearts.’3 The process of building a new world involved the liberation of common criminals perceived as victims of bourgeois society. Released into cities in which the instruments of public order had disappeared, these men, and others, committed crimes under the guise of revolutionary justice. A specific case which underlined the ambiguous relationship between anarchism and crime was that of the journalist Josep Maria Planes. He was murdered on 24 August by anarchists outraged by a series of articles that he had written under the title ‘Gangsters in Barcelona’, linking the activist wing of the anarchist movement, the Federación Anarquista Ibérica, with organized crime.4
In Barcelona, Lluís Companys, the President of the Generalitat, had refused to issue arms, but weapons depots were simply seized by workers. Over 50,000 guns were in the hands of anarchist militiamen. In the course of 19 July, the rebel troops were defeated by a curious alliance of predominantly anarchist workers and the local Civil Guard which, decisively, had stayed loyal. By the time General Manuel Goded had arrived by seaplane from the Balearic Islands to lead the rebellion, the coup was already defeated in Catalonia. He was arrested and obliged to broadcast an appeal to his followers to lay down their arms. The manner of the rebel defeat left a confused relationship between the institutions of the state and the power which had passed into the hands of the CNT–FAI. The immediate consequence was a breakdown of law and order. Barcelona was a port city with a large lumpenproletariat made up of dock labourers and many rootless immigrants subject to the insecurity of casual work. There is no doubt that theft, vandalism and common criminality found free rein behind a façade of revolutionary ideals, although the scale was exaggerated by both the foreign press and diplomats sympathetic to the rebels.
The Portuguese Consul in Barcelona reported ‘acts of pillage and barbarism committed by the hordes that do whatever they like, ignoring the orders of their respective political bosses’. Referring to ‘the indescribably refined cruelty of the assaults carried out by authentic cannibals on religious personnel of both sexes’, he claimed that nuns were raped and then dismembered, and that not a single church or convent in the entire region remained standing.5 Although the apocalyptic terms of this report can be discounted, it is certainly the case that in Barcelona shops, especially jewellers, and cafés were looted, money was extorted from merchants, the houses of the wealthy vandalized and churches desecrated. Religious and military personnel were the principal targets of left-wing anger.6
In the first days after the military coup, the events in Catalonia saw newspapermen flocking from around the world. Some of their initial reports were gratuitously lurid. A Reuters despatch alleged that bodies were piled in the underground stations and that ‘The victorious Government civilian forces, composed of Anarchists, Communists and Socialists, have
burned and sacked practically every church and convent in Barcelona.’ It went on: ‘The mob, drunk with victory, afterwards paraded the streets of the city attired in the robes of ecclesiastical authorities.’7 Over the next few days the stories became ever gorier. The reign of terror was described under the sub-heading ‘Priests Die Praying. The mob is uncontrollable and class hatred rules’. According to this account, ‘Priest are being dragged with a prayer on their lips from their monasteries to be shot – in the back – by firing squads. Some of them have had their heads and arms hacked off after death as a final vindictive act.’8
Journalists who knew Spain well wrote more sober accounts of what was happening. Lawrence Fernsworth, the experienced correspondent of both The Times of London and the New York Times, accepted the popular view that anti-clerical outrage had been provoked because some military rebels and their civilian sympathizers had been allowed to install machine-guns in church bell-towers to fire on the workers. This was denied by the Generalitat’s security chief, Federico Escofet Alsina, although it was widely believed by many on the streets of Barcelona. Certainly, Joan Pons Garlandí, a prominent member of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), claimed that there were isolated cases of snipers firing from church towers. On 23 and 24 July, La Humanitat, the newspaper of the ERC, claimed that machine-guns were firing from churches. However, Escofet’s contention is supported by the fact that no trial was ever held in Catalonia of any priest or monk accused of firing from church premises. In contrast, it has been alleged that anarchists would go into a church firing their guns in the air and then claim that the shots had been aimed at them, thereby seeking to justify the arrest of the priest and destruction of the church.9
Although probably not in response to sniper fire, there were numerous arson attacks on churches, but, as Fernsworth also noted, the Catalan government made every effort to save those that it could, such as the Cathedral. The Capuchin church in the central avenue, the Passeig de Gràcia, was saved because the Franciscan friars were noted for their close relation to the poor. In describing the terror, Fernsworth stressed that the Catalan Generalitat was not responsible and laboured incessantly to save property and lives: ‘Persons in official positions risked the anger of extremists, and consequently their lives, to save priests, nuns, bishops and certain other Spanish nationals by getting them aboard foreign ships or across the frontier.’10
On the evening of 19 July, the last rebels, the Cavalry Regiment No. 9 under Colonel Francisco Lacasa, had taken refuge in the Monastery of the Barefoot Carmelites in the great Avinguda Diagonal that divides the city in two from west to east. Persuaded that Lacasa’s wounded men were in desperate need of attention, the Prior let the monastery be used as a hospital, but the Colonel turned it into a fortress, placing machine-guns at strategic points. When an emissary arrived from the Generalitat’s public order chief, Federico Escofet, Lacasa said that he would surrender only to the Civil Guard. This condition was accepted by Escofet, but, in the consequent delay, the building was surrounded by a mass of people, the majority bearing arms captured the day before. Ever more nervous, the defenders opened fire on the crowd. When the commander of the Civil Guard, Colonel Antonio Escobar Huerta, arrived, the rebels began to file out. As he tried to supervise their detention, he was held down by elements from the crowd and was unable to intervene as the rebel officers and four of the monks were murdered. Despite Escobar’s heroic efforts to protect the monks and soldiers, he was executed by the Francoists in 1940.11
Escofet wrote later that the appearance on the streets of thousands of armed people posed an insuperable public order problem.12 This underlines the difference between the repression in the two war zones – repression from below in the Republican zone and repression from above in the rebel zone. Escofet also commented on the fact that, in the raids on the homes of the wealthy and the property of the Church, theft was confined to a criminal minority, acknowledging the honesty and romanticism of many anarchists who handed in money and jewels.13
The victory of the working-class forces posed a significant problem for President Companys, who was leader of the bourgeois party, the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya. He confronted it with considerable skill. On 20 July, in the immediate wake of the rebel defeat, he received in the Palace of the Generalitat a delegation from the CNT–FAI, consisting of Buenaventura Durruti, Juan García Oliver and Ricardo Sanz. According to García Oliver, Companys said:
Today you are masters of the city and of Catalonia because you alone have defeated the military fascists and I hope you will not mind if I remind you that you were not denied the help of the few or the many loyal men of my own party and of the Civil Guards and Mossos d’Esquadra [the local police] … You have won and everything is in your power; if you do not need or want me as President of Catalonia, tell me now and I will become just one more soldier in the struggle against fascism. If, on the other hand, you believe that, in my post, with the men of my party, my name and my prestige, I can be useful in the struggle that is over today in this city but which we do not know how and when it will end in the rest of Spain, then you can count on me and on my loyalty as a man and a politician.
Some doubt has been thrown on García Oliver’s accuracy by Federico Escofet. However, it is clear that with apparent candour and some cunning exaggeration, Companys disarmed the delegation. Taken by surprise, and with no practical plans, they agreed to Companys staying on.14
In another salon of the Palace, representatives of all the other Popular Front parties of Catalonia were waiting on the outcome of the meeting. When Companys brought in the CNT–FAI delegation, they were all persuaded to join in creating the Central Anti-Fascist Militia Committee. The CCMA’s ostensible task was to organize both the social revolution and its military defence. Its secretary general, Jaume Miravitlles, was charged with drawing up a set of rules defining the powers and responsibilities of each department. However, he never did so, a failure that contributed to the chaotic and conflictive record of the CCMA and to the eventual reassertion of the powers of the Generalitat. Indeed, within a matter of days, Companys had ordered the Interior Minister (Conseller de Governació), Josep Maria Espanya i Sirat, to re-establish public order in the towns and villages of Catalonia. On 2 August, Companys entrusted the government to Joan Casanovas, the President of the Catalan parliament. Unfortunately, Casanovas could not muster the necessary level of energy or authority that Companys had hoped for to put an early end to the duality of power.
On 20 July, the principal rebel officers arrested in Barcelona had been taken by Civil Guards and CNT militants to the castle of Montjuich. Six days later they were transferred to the abandoned ocean liner Uruguay, a rust bucket converted into a prison ship. At first, they were treated well, allowed to sit on deck and read novels from the ship’s library. This easy treatment was curtailed because of their adolescent behaviour. They insisted on greeting passing Italian naval vessels by standing to attention and giving the fascist salute. To boats full of leftists who had come to gawp and threaten them, they responded by sticking out their tongues and other more expressive gestures. Although they were prevented from going on deck, they were allowed to receive food parcels from family and friends. On 11 August, the leaders, Generals Manuel Goded and Álvaro Fernández Burriel, were tried by court martial on board the ship. They had as defence counsel a retired officer who was also a lawyer. Both were found guilty and sentenced to death and were shot by a firing squad the next day, at Montjuich. Over the following days, other rebels were tried and executed. Nevertheless, many survived, including Goded’s son, Manuel.15
The spontaneous decision of Durruti, Sanz and García Oliver to join in creating the Central Anti-Fascist Militia Committee was accepted after some discussion by the rest of the CNT leadership. They were ill prepared, both ideologically and temperamentally, to improvise state institutions capable of simultaneously organizing both a revolution and a war. Essentially, Companys had offered them a great face-saving device. For the moment, t
he workers seemed to be in control. At first, the Generalitat would give legal form to the wishes of the Central Anti-Fascist Militia Committee, but the lack of political expertise within the CNT saw the CCMA gradually reduced to being a sub-committee of the Generalitat and then dissolved altogether. Companys had effectively ensured the continuity of state power and, in the long term, the eventual taming of the revolution by manoeuvring the CNT into accepting responsibility without long-term institutionalized power.16
In the short term, however, the CNT was set on clearing the ground for the building of the new world. Its mouthpiece, Solidaridad Obrera, justified violence against priests and capitalists. The wave of criminality that had engulfed Barcelona was acknowledged and rationalized:
there is nothing like the whiff of gunpowder to unleash all the instincts lurking inside man. At the same time, the upheaval reached a point where control was lost over those people interested only in the satisfaction of their selfish and vengeful instincts. They and they alone are responsible this week for the things (and not as many as has been claimed) that have been perpetrated in Barcelona that the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo and, alongside it, all the organizations which have participated in the revolution, would rather had not happened. Nevertheless, we cannot join the chorus of those shedding crocodile tears who, when all is said and done, bear the responsibility, not just for the fascist uprising but also for having kept the people for years on end in a condition of permanent destitution and an even more lasting ignorance. Inevitably, the outcome could hardly have been different. What has happened to the exploiting bourgeoisie, to the obscurantist clergy and to the greedy shopkeepers is that they have had to reap the consequences of the seeds they themselves sowed.17
