[1] CNT National Committee declaration of 14 February 1936

[2] Federico Escofet, De una derrota a una victoria, Barcelona, 1984, p. 233.

[3] Ibid., p. 231

[4] B. Bolloten, The Spanish Revolution: The Left and the Struggle for Power during the Civil War, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1979.

[5] Juan Gómez Casas, Historia de la FAI, Montreal, p. 27.

[6] Reported by Diego Abad de Santill·n; quoted in Abel Paz, Durruti: The People Armed, Montreal, 1976.

[7] Gómez Casas, Historia de la FAI, p. 217.

[8] Escofet, De una derrota a una victoria, p. 231.

[9] Ibid., p. 348.

[10] Ibid., p. 352.

[11] Miguel GarcÌa, The Miguel GarcÌa Story, Sanday, Orkney, 1982.

[12] Juan GarcÌa Oliver, Solidaridad Obrera (Barcelona), 19 July 1937.

[13] Ibid.

[14] It seems unlikely that GarcÌa Oliver would have required much convincing even by the least artful of flatterers. Peirats mentions GarcÌa Oliver speaking of ‘taking power’ at a public meeting in the Barcelona Woodworkers Union in ‘January or February 1936’. He had also pressed this case during a restricted meeting of ‘notables’ held just before the CNT regional conference to discuss the February 1936 elections. The ‘restricted’ meeting, which took place ‘behind the back of the Organization’, was to forestall an anti-election campaign such as that which had cost the Left the elections in November 1933. As Peirats notes, ‘Out of it undoubtedly came the summoning of the conference, which did indeed recommend a low-key campaign against the elections. So low key that it was virtually non-existent.’ JosÈ Peirats, Presencia, Paris, 1967, p. 46.

[15] Noir et Rouge (Paris), No. 36, December 1967.

[16] Escofet, De una derrota a una victoria, p. 350.

[17] ‘El ComitÈ Central de Milicias Antifascistas de CataluÒa’, Solidaridad Obrera, 18 July 1937.

[18] Dante A. Puzzo, Spain and the Great Powers, New York, 1962, p.160 (quoted by Noam Chomsky in ‘Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship’, in American Power and the New Mandarins, New York, 1968).

[19] Juan GarcÌa Oliver, El eco de los pasos, Barcelona, 1979, p.190.

[20] José Peirats, La CNT en la revolución española, Paris, 1971, Ch. 8.

[21] Information on Zaragoza from Graham Kelsey, ‘Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State: The CNT in Zaragoza and Aragón 1930–1937’, PhD thesis, University of Lancaster, 1984.

[22] Paz, Durruti: The People Armed, p. 254.

[23] George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, London, 1962.

[24] Paz, Durruti: The People Armed, p. 225.

[25] Not to be confused with Horacio M. Prieto, later National Secretary of the CNT. Indalecio Prieto was a Basque socialist, although really a liberal-democrat and most bourgeoisified. This explains why he got the job of finance minister in the first Republican-Socialist government (1931–3). As a minister he was most unorthodox and pledged the Republic to make good all the debts accrued by past regimes. The CNT despised him (he did little or nothing for the jobless) and its members joked at the amazing resemblance he bore to Benito Mussolini.

[26] Toronto Daily Star, 18 August 1936.

[27] Durruti’s speech at Bujaraloz Town Hall was reconstructed from the recollections of two eyewitnesses, Liberto Roig and Pablo RuÌz. Quoted in Paz, Durruti: The People Armed, p.231.

[28] The July Revolution of 1936 allowed for the revolutionary independence of Catalonia; before it, Catalonia had autonomy within the Spanish state, but no responsibility for matters of war and peace. Between July 1936 and May 1937, however, it is possible to talk of Catalan control over the anti-fascist war effort.

[29] CNT (Madrid), 6 October 1936.

[30] Peirats, La CNT en la revoluciÛn espaÒola, vol. 1, pp. 144–5.

[31] Gaston Leval found only two lawyers among the organizers of the libertarian communist collectives in Aragón, but even they, he says, were not strictly intellectuals. ‘It was not by the work of our intellectuals — more literary than sociological, more agitators than practical guides — that the future has been illuminated. And the peasants — libertarian or not — of Aragón, Levante, Castile, Extremadura, Andalucia, the workers of Catalonia, understood this and acted alone. ‘The intellectuals, due to their ineptitude in practical work, were inferior to the peasants, who made no political speeches, but knew how to organize the new life. Not even the authors of the syndicalist health organization in Catalonia were intellectuals. A Basque doctor with a will of iron, and a few comrades working in hospitals, did everything. In other regions, talented professional men aided the movement. But there, too, the initiative came from below. Alcoy’s industries, so well organized, were all managed by the workers, as were those of Elda and Castillon. In Carcagente, in Elda, in Granollers, in Binefar, in Jativa, in land transport, in marine transport, in the collectives of Castile, or in the semi-socialization of Ripolls and Puigcerd· — the militants at the bottom did everything. As for the government, they were as inept in organizing the economy as in organizing the war.’ (Gaston Leval, Ne Franco ne Stalin, Milan, 1952.)

[32] Burnett Bolloten, The Grand Camouflage.

[33] The Primo de Rivera Dictatorship ran from his pronunciamiento (coup d’Ètat) in September 1923 to January 1930. There then followed a brief ‘Soft Dictatorship’, with limited civil liberties including the partial legalization of the CNT in April 1930, lasting till the birth of the Second Republic in April 1931.

[34] The PSOE-UGT collaborated shamelessly with the Dictatorship, attempting to exploit the difficulties of the banned CNT. Besides Largo Caballero’s presence in the government, members of the UGT sat in pseudo-fascist, state-run labor courts that tried and sentenced strikers of the CNT, the UGT and other affiliations (or none) for defending their own living standards and working conditions. However, under Primo de Rivera there was no single state ‘union’, nor was the UGT the only legal one, so his industrial policy was not a fascist one like those of Mussolini or Hitler, or indeed Franco.

[35] Peirats, La CNT en la revolución española. Vol. 1 pp167-8.

[36] Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists: the Heroic Years 1886–1936, NY: Free Life Editions, 1977.

[37] See Appendix: ‘Libertarian Communism’ (to be published in a later installment).

[38] Ibid., pp. 343–4.

[39] Ibid., pp. 168–9.

[40] Ibid., p. 154.

[41] Protesta davanti al libertari del presente e del futuro, sulle capitulazioni del 1937, di un ‘incontrolado’ della Colonna di Ferro, Turin, 1981.

[42] Linea del Fuego, 17 November 1936.

[43] Interview with Mika Etchebere, ANCR, Turin, 1967, pp. 16&endash;17.

[44] P. Broué and E. Témime, La Rivoluzione e la guerra di Spagna, Milan, 1962, p. 247.

[45] Peirats, La CNT en la revolución española, pp. 306–08.

[46] Courtot (ed.), Introduction to the Reading of Benjamin Peret.

[47] Largo Caballero became prime minister in September.

[48] Solidaridad Obrera, 5 August 1936.

[49] Peirats, La CNT en la revolución española, chapter 10.

[50] Frank Mintz, L’Autogestion dans l’Espagne revolutionnaire, Paris, 1970, p.90.

[51] Ibid., p.91.

[52] Although she had been a member of the CNT for at least a year, Montseny, a romantic story writer, was a recent recruit to the FAI. Following the workers’ victory, she was invited to join the Nosotros group on 21 July, the day the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias was formed. She appears to have been co-opted onto the Peninsular Committee of the FAI almost immediately.

[53] The PSUC was formed from socialist and Stalinist groups in July; before this, in the spring and early summer of 1936, the POUM, having existed as a vehemently anti-Stalinist party for some years before, already had 5,000 members, while even after its formation, the nascent, ‘united’ PSUC had in July no more than 2,000 or 3,000. See Peret’s letter to Breton quoted in the text above: ‘The Communists, who have fuzed with three or four small parties, are a negligible force.’

[54] Franz Borkenau, The Spanish Cockpit, London, 1987, p.183.

[55] The exact strength of the PCE at the outbreak of the Civil War is uncertain. Most commentators agree, however, that its membership was in excess of 100,000 (Gómez Casas). Compared with the CNT and the UGT, however, at this time the PCE was minuscule indeed, and had little influence among the workers. The PSUC eclipsed the POUM only after it won over the anti-revolutionary middle classes.

[56] Peirats, La CNT en la revolución española.

[57] Claudin.

[58] The principal difference between the wings was on the party’s relations with the CNT, the communists, etc. The left had a corresponding pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric, while the right was made up of bourgeois liberals like Indalecio Prieto.

[59] José Peirats, La CNT en la revolución española, op. cit., vol. 1, ch. 11.

[60] Ibid.

[61] ‘Yesterday, Saturday, the evening papers carried news that comrades Fabregas and Domenech had discussions with the President of the Generalidad, discussions that lasted 20 minutes. It has to be pointed out that the comrades in question talked, not with the President but had an audience with the Councilor for Culture. To clarify another point to the press and, may it serve as a warning É no government has been set up but rather a new body congruent with the circumstances in which we find ourselves and which goes by the name of the Council of the Generalidad.’ Quoted by Peirats, ibid.