CHAPTER XVI. From electoral strike to insurrection

The three “vagrants” released from El Puerto de Santa María arrived in Barcelona just as Alcalá Zamora threw the country into turmoil with the dissolution of the Parliament and call for legislative elections. This was a straightforward political opportunity for the parties, but the elections were a difficult issue for the CNT. Its position on the elections had to be consistent with its absentionist convictions, but also consonant with the new political situation created by the rise of the Rightwing after the failure of the leftwing government. In November 1933, for the first time in its history, the CNT would be the central force determining the political fate of the country. We will explore the CNT’s internal life, but must first place our protagonists in the onerous social conditions existing in Barcelona at the time. The bourgeoisie fired workers readily and often abusively. Although the middle class was struggling economically, in many cases it could have avoided or reduced the scope of such sackings. They were an attempt to create chaos and demoralize the workers, which the bourgeoisie hoped would predispose them to accept any political solution that might end their suffering. Specifically, it was a way to prepare the ground for Gil Robles, who, imitating Hitler, intended to impose a dictatorship through legal means and with worker support. The Barcelona CNT did not lose sight of either the bourgeoisie’s intentions or Gil Robles’s political game, although its militants also had to focus their attentions on short-term survival needs while not forgetting their long-term revolutionary goals.

Unemployed workers did not receive or ask for state subsidies (even if the state had been able to provide them—it was not—activists knew that such subsidies would have diminished the proletariat’s revolutionary militancy). The workers’ first response to the economic crises was the rent, gas, and electricity strike in mid-1933, which the CNT and FAI’s Economic Defense Commission had been laying the foundations for since 1931. Likewise, house, street, and neighborhood committees began to turn out en masse to stop evictions and other coercive acts ordered by the landlords (always with police support). The people were constantly mobilized. Women and youngsters were particularly active; it was they who challenged the police and stopped the endless evictions.

Groups of women and children made purchases on credit in the grocery stores. They bought only the basics, such as potatoes, pastas, oil, rice, and chickpeas. Their debt was recorded, which they would pay back once they began working again. The unions had listing services where workers could sign up for potential jobs, but since the employers were not hiring, the unemployed went to workplaces and occupied them. At first the bourgeoisie responded by saying that they hadn’t asked for workers and tossed them out. But, undeterred, the unemployed sat at the establishments’ entrances and remained there for the entire week, doing their eight hours of sitting daily. On Saturday, payday, they lined up with the firm’s employes and, under their protection, insisted that the company pay them their “weekly sitting wage.” The bourgeoisie ended up compensating them for the week, while telling them not to come back. If the same ones didn’t come back, it was others.

In addition to these actions, a “union of unemployed workers” urged the proletariat to go to restaurants in groups and eat at noon. This practice was quite extensive and always produced positive results.

The point of these actions was to encourage the generalized mobilization of the working class. Linked by solidarity, they were ways to confront the bourgeoisie while building a revolutionary consciousness among the workers (and among youngsters too, which is one of the reasons why so many adolescents played such an important role in the 1936 revolution).

There was a significant conflict with the Streetcar and Bus Company at the time. The company had created the dispute by refusing to recognize union representatives and firing workers known for their activism. The Transport Workers’ Union took on the strike and, when the Streetcar Company refused to meet its demands, it had no choice but to use sabotage. Streetcars and busses were set alight in the late night hours after they had gone to lock- up. There were also acts of sabotage in the central telephone offices, which the telephone workers union had been using defensively since their strike in June 1931.

All of this created an explosive climate in Barcelona. The practice of holdups, in which CNT or FAI workers were often implicated, made it even more volatile.

The arrest of a CNT worker on robbery charges was enough to prompt the bourgeois press to go on the offensive and accuse the FAI of encouraging “banditry.” Instigated by the Generalitat, Catalanist newspapers in Barcelona disseminated Manuel Azaña’s fiction that “anarchists are criminals with an ID card.”

Ascaso and Durruti had to confront the economic situation like the rest of the unemployed workers. They were turned away from the factory where they had worked before being locked up. Ascaso, drawing on his first experiences in the work world, found a waiter’s job in a Barcelona restaurant through García Oliver, who plied the same trade in a café popularly called “La Pansa” in the Plaza de España.

Durruti went to the Metalworkers’ Union and signed up in its job pool. A rare thing happened one day: one of the larger workshops in Barcelona requested three mechanic adjusters through a union representative. The union sent Durruti and two other men. The head of personnel showed some discomfort when they turned up and, after consulting with management, told Durruti that he was very sorry, but that there had been a misunderstanding: the company needed only two—not three—workers. Durruti knew perfectly well that he was being blacklisted. This infuriated his comrades, who were prepared to reject the job themselves and report the incident to the union. Once they left the premises, Durruti convinced them that doing so would be a serious mistake, since it would cause a strike in the workshop and, by extension, the whole industry.

“Don’t tell the union anything about what happened here,” he said. “Strikes are declared when the workers want them, not when the bourgeoisie provokes them. This strike wouldn’t benefit us and would actually be very detrimental. Come to work tomorrow as if nothing happened and wait for better times. The iron still isn’t hot, my friends.” [383]

Durruti met with Ascaso that evening and told him about the incident. His friend approved of his behavior; the truth was that the bourgeoisie was desperately trying to antagonize the workers. It was enough to consult the press—which was daily more venomous on the subject of the “holdups”—to convince oneself of this. One of the newspapers that most abused the topic was La Vanguardia, which was particularly inflammatory because it published graphic photographs of crime scenes. Sometimes it was a “blond” who had carried out the robbery and other times it was simply the “FAI.” Durruti and Ascaso talked about whether or not it might be a good idea to visit the editor of La Vanguardia in the name of the FAI and convince him to end its mistreatment of the acronym. The following day they showed up at the newspaper’s office and, after announcing themselves by their own names, told the editor that they were qualified representatives of the FAI and that the organization had selected his paper to make a public statement. The text of the statement was the following:

The FAI intends to organize a collective expropriation through social revolution in order to establish what we call libertarian communism. Our strategy is mass action and the revolutionary general strike. The FAI rejects and does not practice any other method, like robbing individuals (that is, “banditry”). Such things are in frank opposition to anarchism’s revolutionary approach and, consequently, the FAI denounces them as ineffective. This is the FAI’s statement. And we ask that you, the editor of this newspaper, limit La Vanguardia to presenting the news, without mixing up or mentioning the CNT or FAI when you have to publish an account of a robbery, holdup, or something similar in your “crime report” section. These organizations have nothing to do with acts of that sort. We hope that you will be good enough to censor your frivolous reporters if they introduce the letters in question into their “news.” We wouldn’t want to resurrect the “red censorship” of the Graphic Arts Union.[384]

La Vanguardia didn’t publish the FAI’s statement, but it no longer implicated the CNT and FAI in its reports on “diverse events,” as it had done daily until then. Clearly the “meeting” had been a success.

The CNT National Committee called a national meeting of regionals to establish the organization’s position on the elections. All the participants agreed that the political situation was dire. Led by Gil Robles, the Rightwing had entered the elections as a homogenous group under the CEDA banner. This bloc collected all the reaction into one bundle: aristocrats, soldiers, landowners, bankers, the high and low bourgeoisie, and the Church, with its Popular Action party. The Monarchists also supported this bloc, but without losing their independence, since they were busy conspiring with Mussolini to carry out a military coup in Spain.

The opposition, the left, was divided, thanks to the crisis in the Socialist Party. Azaña’s party was completely disarticulated. The Radical-Socialists had also split into two factions. The Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya was the only party that had a measure of internal unity at the time. It supported the petty bourgeoisie and liberal middle class of Catalonia, including the peasant faction of small and mid-sized landowners.

With a fractured Left standing in the elections, one would imagine that the results would benefit the CEDA. Even if the CNT urged its members to vote, their votes could only go to the Socialist Party and, if that happened, the left would still be a minority, given the diversity of Left candidates. There was something new in the November 19 elections: women voted for the first time. The influence of the Church on women suggested that they might support the Right, but they might just as well go for the Leftwing, particularly the Socialists.

The CNT discussed the situation at its meeting and, after considering the matter from many different perspectives, had to face two unavoidable realities: the division in the Left and Gil Robles’s fascist danger. Whether or not the CNT advised its members to vote, the ultimate political results would not change. Furthermore, the leftists had behaved so badly in power, and the CNT had criticized them so intensely, that even if they tried to tell the workers that a Leftwing government was better than a Rightwing one, the masses would not understand that tangled parliamentary argument in the face of the harsh reality of lived experience.

The CNT’s reply to the impasse that the Socialist-Republican government had forced on Spain and the threat of a “gilroblista” dictatorship was to tell the working class frankly that there was no solution but proletarian revolution. Yet it was not enough to simply announce this: they had to go into action immediately after the anticipated victory of the rightwing. This meant that the CNT had to prepare itself for revolutionary action. The experience in January of that year made it clear that the CNT and FAI could not be victorious alone and that they had to partner with the Socialist workers. It would be impractical to propose a revolutionary alliance to the UGT “from above”—given the extent to which their leaders had degenerated during their two years in government—but it was not utopian to think that the Socialist rank and file could be inspired to enter into action if CNT workers rose up. Socialist and anarchist militants had already carried out joint efforts in Andalusia. Why couldn’t this happen in the rest of Spain, particularly Asturias?

Those attending the meeting decided to carry out an intense agitation campaign that would ruthlessly criticize the parliamentary system and say clearly that revolution is the only reply to fascism.

They made significant plans for this proof of strength: the cadre or Confederal groups would federate at the national level through a secretariat of Defense (led by Antonio Ortiz) linked to the National Committee. They also created a National Revolutionary Committee that would immediately begin to organize the insurrection. Cipriano Mera, Buenaventura Durruti, Antonio Ejarque, and Isaac Puente formed the Committee.

The confederation’s publication, CNT, printed an editorial that summarized the decisions of the national meeting. It emphasized the practical foundations of Libertarian Communism:

The commune is the basic unit of libertarian communism. Four centuries of statist centralism have been unable to destroy the commune, which has deep historical roots in Spain. Our people’s revolutionary aspirations find their expression in the commune and, federated, it provides the basic structure of the new society in all its aspects: administrative, economic, and political. The first step in the social revolution is to take control of Town Hall and proclaim the free commune. Once this occurs, self-management spreads to all areas of life and the people exercise their sovereign executive power through the popular assembly.[385]

The Nosotros group met to discuss the national CNT meeting and the political challenges of the moment. It became clear at the gathering that there were serious differences within the group. García Oliver, drawing on the experience of the January rebellion, thought they should create a paramilitary organization. The FAI’s anarchist groups and the CNT’s Confederal Defense groups would make up the organization and a body dedicated to revolutionary defense would coordinate its actions nationally. However, since they didn’t have enough time or resources to immediately construct an organization of that type, he concluded that it wasn’t the right moment to rise up. The rest of the group, except for Ascaso and Durruti, shared his views.

Ascaso and Durruti weren’t utopians. They recognized the merit of García Oliver’s observations and were well aware of the CNT and FAI’s desperate state since the January rebellion. But they had to confront the situation in one way or another. Durruti believed that a defeat—which wouldn’t really be a defeat when seen as part of the movement’s “revolutionary gymnastics”—was better than being inactive or absent from the country’s political life during the electoral campaign. He also argued that this time they “wouldn’t be working in such cold” as in January and that the Socialist masses “could be inspired to act, given their frustration with their parliamentary leaders.” At the very least, he said, “the insurrection will be a warning to the incoming government and show it that the Spanish working class is not going to bow before a dictator.” There are times, he said, when “revolutionaries aren’t permitted to hesitate and this is one of them.”[386] The electoral campaign opened in an environment of tension and violence. CEDA propaganda had a distinctly fascist slant: “All power to the Chief,” was the slogan attached to the portrait of Gil Robles. The ecclesiastic bodies functioned at full speed and organized the purchase of votes. Rural caciques leaned heavily on the peasantry, promising jobs and distributing clothes and mattresses to the poorest.

The rightwing held its last rally before the election on November 18 in Madrid. They broadcast a speech that Calvo Sotelo had recorded in Paris, where he had lived in exile since the failed rightwing uprising on August 10 of the previous year.

The Socialists tried their best to incite their supporters with impassioned oratory, but the results were less than stellar. Those who spoke in revolutionary tones didn’t believe their own speeches and those who listened had little faith in that last-minute revolutionism.

The Republicans watched with sadness as half of their electorate went over to the ranks of Lerroux’s radicals, when not directly to the CEDA. The CNT organized large rallies in all the major Spanish cities, where it articulated its critique of parliamentarianism and stated that the people had to choose between fascism and revolution.

The CNT held a large rally in Barcelona on Sunday, November 12 in the Plaza de Toros Monumental. Approximately one hundred thousand people attended the event. The orators were Benito Pabón, Durruti, Francisco Isgleas, and Valeriano Orobón Fernández. This rally had the same focus as those held elsewhere, but there were two novelties. First, Francisco Isgleas spoke in Catalan, to demonstrate that not all CNT militants were “Murcianos” (as Esquerra politicians said so often). Second, Orobón Fernández offered a detailed account of Hitler’s rise in Germany and argued that the German Communist Party and Social Democrats were both causes of his victory. He urged the Spanish Socialists to take note and learn from the mistakes of the German colleagues.

The FAI held a rally under the auspices of Tierra y Libertad on the evening of Thursday, November 16. It took place in Barcelona’s Palace of Decorative Arts, which could hold an audience of forty-five thousand. According to the press, an immense crowd had gathered in the gardens and around the premises an hour before the event was to begin. The number of people grew by the minute and began to spill into Lérida Street. Less than half of the audience was able to enter when the building’s doors opened and the rest had to listen to the speeches through amplifiers placed on the street. We will reproduce the entirety of press’s account of the event, given the rally’s importance, and also Durruti and Ascaso’s participation in it.

Comrade Gilabert presided over and opened the event. He said that while Tierra y Libertad had called the meeting, it is the FAI that is appearing before the people and that will speak through the orators. He then read a list of the many adhesions and delegations from throughout Spain, which we have published in another part of the paper. The Orators:

Vicente Pérez (Combina): “Your presence at this event is an emphatic refutation of the politician’s insidious campaign and expresses clear support for the ideals of the Iberian Anarchist Federation.

“Our enemies say that this disinterested and dignified anti-electoral campaign is supported by money from the Monarchists.

“That’s a disgraceful lie that no one believes. We anarchists are as staunchly against the Rightwing as the Left. We won’t betray our principles or the revolution, like “the Thirty” and their supporters did on and before April 14. The only thing that political parties do, whether they’re from the Right or the Left, is make laws against the workers, like the law of April 8, Public Order, and Vagrants.

“We’re the only ones confronting Cambó. The scar tissue still hasn’t formed on the wound caused by that bird of prey in 1919, when he created mercenary bands to kill the most militant anarchists.

“To the Catalan people, we anarchists say that the Lliga and Esquerra’s claim that they’ll make the revolution if they’re defeated is nothing more than impotent bravado. The CNT and FAI will rise above them all. “Workers of all classes! If you want to destroy fascism, join to the ranks of the CNT and FAI, where real revolutionaries fight to create libertarian communism.”

Francisco Ascaso: “I reflected for a long time before taking part in this event. I feared that we would be confused with those shameless politicians who shout from the rooftops these days, asking for the people’s vote so that they can rise to power.

“And I figured that we’d already had enough rallies and that the time to act had arrived.

“But, in these circumstances, it’s imperative that the voice of the anarchists is heard. That’s what made up my mind.

“If one looks at the Republic’s work, one can immediately see that it has failed in every sense. “It passed three laws that are anti-democratic in the most fundamental way. They are a disgrace: the law of April 8, Public Order, and Vagrants. “The first was made exclusively against the CNT, to chain it to the cart of the State and encroach on the workers’ rights; the second, to suppress civil guarantees and legalize arbitrariness; and finally, the Vagrants law was passed specifically to attack the anarchists in an individual, cunning way. These are the Republic’s most outstanding accomplishments.

“The government tells to us about economic crises around the world. They’re simply trying to make excuses for Spain’s problems.

“But we already know all that, which is why we’re anarchists. The state has failed everywhere, and no party can resolve the social problem. The parties are nothing more than diverse forms of capitalism.

“How could the party called “Esquerra” resolve any problem, if before taking power it prostrated itself at the feet of capitalism?

“Some say that the CNT and the anarchists are making things easy for the Rightwing by advocating abstention. That’s not true. We’ve simply discovered the falsehood of all parties, and they, in their impotence, can only defend themselves with slander.

“We’ve made all the political experiments fail and capitalism withdraw into its last refuge, which is fascism.

“While Spain’s unique characteristics may prevent fascism from emerging here in the same way that it emerged in Italy and Germany, we have other dangers known as ‘pronunciamientos.’[387] “While the Right and Left fail, the military is lying in wait to replace them all.

“That’s the real danger. None of the parties are ready to confront the problems of the hour and yet the people, organized in the CNT, are capable F of everything. The military is on guard against the anarchist’s resolve and ‘pronunciamientos’ are a real threat.

“Militarism could be the ax blow that destroys all rights and liberties, but it could also arrive late. The CNT and FAI are prepared and will defeat them all.

“The Republic hasn’t provided a solution to the economic or social problem. It couldn’t and won’t. The choice is either fascism or revolution. Since fascism is impossible, revolution will prevail.

“Everything turns on the economy, and the economy is entirely in our hands. If capitalism has denied its support to the Republic, it won’t be able to deny it to us.

“Everyone threatens that they’re going to rise up. We don’t threaten. If they take to the street, they’ll find us there, fighting back.

“It’s necessary to accept the responsibility of the moment. We are a hope for the world proletariat, which anxiously watches us to see what we’ll do. We are liberty’s final redoubt. Everyone tells us the same thing: you can’t let yourself be crushed.

“Just as Spain carried the cross through the world in the past, today it must carry anarchy, saving the world by saving itself. That’s our mission, and we have to carry it out at any price, even at the cost of life itself. If we have to fall, then we’ll fall”.

Dolores Iturbe. We will extract some paragraphs from the pages read by comrade Dolores Iturbe: “Here is a magnificent and exciting event and, in its splendor and enthusiasm, the voice of anarchist working women had to be present.

“Their voice is one of fervent adherence to the ideals of the Iberian Anarchist Federation and one of energetic protest against all the outrages and crimes committed by the Republican government against our comrades and brothers.

“Comrades: we are living in extremely turbulent times. The bourgeois state is shattered and lost and wonders how it will recover its strength. It looks for the greatest threat to its existence among the various forces that surround it and discovers that threat in the FAI. That is its most powerful enemy and that’s why it puts so much effort into defaming it.

“When the bourgeoisie and the choir of hacks that grovel at their feet speak of the FAI, they do so as if it were an organization made up of wild- eyed murderers.

“Women: the FAI and the CNT are the only organizations fighting for your true and total emancipation. Amid the waves of authoritarian ideas extolled by the statist communists and fascists, who are competing for the right to dominate the people, the FAI represents the placid and crystalline stream of libertarian communism, in which liberty and mutual aid will prevail. In a libertarian communist society, there will be widespread and generous solidarity in all acts of human association.

“Fortunately, the workers already know what matters. Experience has taught them to listen disdainfully to the political charlatans, who always speculate with their miseries and hunger, those men who have never taken a step to end the working class’s suffering.

“Women of the Anarchist Youth: the ultra-reactionary parties put forward their women cadre, who are ready to support their terrible work. In response, we have to organize ourselves and defend our ideas gallantly. Above all, we must never forget the workers killed by the mercenary bullets of the social-azañists. We must also remember our thousands of imprisoned comrades and the hundreds who are beaten and martyred in the police’s dungeons. And we will always remember that a woman, almost a girl, died in that small village named Casas Viejas, burned to a cinder in that criminal blaze. The memory of Manuela Lago, the martyr of Andalusia, as well as that of the mother and boy killed in Arnedo, will inspire us and incite our avenging wrath on the day of revolutionary justice.”

Domingo Germinal: “Comrades, greetings. This immense rally is the death sentence and coffin of the state.

“I remember working in Bilbao thirty-five years ago for the same ideas that I embrace today. Then, when you’d go to a public event, people shouted: “Kill him!” And yet now, at the end of an anarchist rally in Alicante a few days ago, the children kissed me and called me ‘Father.’ The men and women hugged me.

“I remember the blacks of Cuba, who told me every time I exposed them to my ideas: ‘Don’t put forward so much science. We don’t understand you. Tell us where the rifles are and we’ll go get them!’

“We’re going to get straight to the point, if it’s possible to stick to a topic in a rally.” (He discusses the state, making a devastating critique of it). “Have you thought about what the state is? The state is the anti-thesis of the human; it puts itself before the individual; it’s a repugnant institution; it’s a monster that needs to sacrifice man to live; it stops the beacon of progress from enlightening the people and to exist, like King David, needs to go to bed with two maidens: capitalism and ignorance.

“The state is the vilest of institutions; it can neither teach, nor create, nor enlighten anyone.

“A friend of mine, a hero of the Mexican Revolution, said: ‘no one will obey anyone until we end with all the altars and idols.’ That’s what we have to do if we want to turn our ideals into reality.”

“Work is the only recognized value in the world and the producers are the true artisans and gods of life.

“All ideas that triumph need to be great and anarchism is the most perfect ideal existing today.

“Without right, there can be no liberty; without liberty, man is unhappy. Without liberty, thought stagnates and dies. That’s why the echo of the arts, the desire of the multitudes, tends to break down the chains of slavery. “The cult of the state is a lie, false, and deceitful.

“It’s election time now and they’ll promise you everything, even the moon.”

(With humorous detail, he describes a deputy that offered a bridge to the people. When they told him that there was no river, he promised them a river. Remember the propaganda that Companys made with Aiguader, when he told him that he had everything pawned and, despite that, began promising everything to the city of Rues. Remember Ibsen, who said that politicians promise people plenty of light but began by asking for oil.) “There are only two types of people in politics: the idiot and the rascal. “Man, to live in society, has to be whole to be a man,” he says, while explaining a drama by Grove. “If you want to be men, you have to make the revolution or else you’ll continue in slavery.”

(He sings a political song celebrating anarchist ideas. This elicits great enthusiasm in the audience and cheers for the FAI).

“The FAI is the hope of the world’s dispossessed and is always ready to confront all difficulties. It has cleaned out the degenerates and sanitized the confederal organization, which now doesn’t cower when the government attacks.”

(He says that the FAI isn’t vengeful and will call for universal fraternity when the revolution triumphs, because a drop of blood on the workers’ hands is a terrible stain. He sings a song celebrating the people. It has beautiful lyrics, which prompt the crowd to applaud and cheer.) Buenaventura Durruti. He begins by lamenting that the old master Sebastián Faure couldn’t be with us. Perhaps that comrade’s moral authority would have helped us refute the politicians who accuse us of being unfaithful to anarchist doctrines and shown how those doctrines are really conceived and realized:

“I don’t hope for the dialectic of a Castelar or the persuasiveness of a Kropotkin. I’m a man of the twentieth century. I live among the people and I’ve studied the masters. I know how to act.

“There has been talk of anarchy for many years now. We’ve created a chaotic situation and made life impossible for all the governments and caused all the political parties to fail. We’re going to make the social revolution. The rulers trust only in brute force and lack the people’s support. We saw how Azaña was unable to speak in Alicante, Sagunto, and other cities. We, by contrast, draw crowds that receive us enthusiastically. These audiences tell us that they’ll go with us to the revolution.

“We’ve talked enough already. Now it’s time for action. Lerroux says that we aren’t good for anything except votes, but we won’t cast any vote on November 19. No party represents the Spanish people. To Lerroux we say: forget the threats. The people have the right not to believe. How can one believe in politicians, after the bloody Republican experience?

“We won’t vote. The Catalan Confederation will not vote. More than 50 percent will abstain in the next elections. What good are threats? What good is it to say that we’ll be straightened out? Make all the threats you like, it’s useless: we won’t vote and we’re ready to confront any rash actions from the reactionaries.

“Workers: the socio-political moment in Spain is very dangerous. The whole world is at the ready, with weapons in hand. Many talk about the FAI and all the political parties try to use it as a scapegoat. The FAI that they libel so consistently says, in these decisive hours, that it’s present in the streets, factories, fields, and mines.

“They talk about the FAI; using the slander about the holdups to discredit and undermine it. The slanderers should try to prove that the FAI is responsible for the holdups! They should all take note of the following, especially any bourgeois journalists in the premises: the FAI supports the collective holdup, the expropriating revolution. To go for what belongs to us, to take the mines, the fields, the means of transport, and the factory. All that is ours. It’s the basis of life: our happiness comes from there, not parliament. Say in your papers, bourgeois journalists, that the FAI only supports collective expropriation.

“There’s talk of a dictatorship of the FAI in the Confederation. That is a complete myth: it’s the assemblies that rule in our labor movement. The syndicalists accuse us of such things to justify their own behavior. They say that they can’t accept this dictatorship, but what they don’t say is that they’ve lost faith in libertarian communism and don’t believe in anarchy. Why not have the courage to say so outright, if you don’t believe in anarchist ideas? They’d rather chatter about dictatorship and use slander.

“We tell the workers to stay calm. Each one should take his place in the productive system. The eyes of the world are upon us. The Spanish anarchist movement is the only anarchist movement that’s strong and capable of constructive transformations. The world expects the leveling revolution from us. If we don’t rise to the occasion, the reactionaries will break through the dams and extend across the world.

“Since the CNT controls the factories and the workplaces, the FAI tells the CNT workers not to abandon your posts; stay at the foot of the machines; respond as one, energetically, if there is an attempt at dictatorship or a military pronunciamiento. The technical and factory committees must be on the alert too. A piece of advice to the FAIists: your position is beyond the factory gates. Remember Italy. A complementary action is essential. In response to Gil Robles’s fascism, against any attempted military coup, the workers should immediately seize the factories. The FAI men will go to other sites and complete the revolution initiated with the seizure of the means of production. “Everyone at the ready, like one man. The moment has arrived. We have a concept of responsibility and we apply it in the daily struggle. This isn’t Bolshevik. This isn’t centralist. This is anarchy.

“Thus, as you come today like one man, if the revolution demands you at a given moment, you will respond as one man. Everyone united, if the fascists rise up. Everyone together in the struggle. We will carry out our duty, and no one will say that Spain is repeating the shameful events in Germany and Italy.”

Comrade Gilabert concluded the rally: “Workers: in the name of the Iberian Anarchist Federation, the Peninsular Committee submits the following resolutions to the audience:

“1) In the event of a fascist victory, unleash the social revolution throughout the Peninsula and implant libertarian communism.

“2) Everyone fights until we achieve the definitive disappearance of the state in all its authoritarian ramifications.” (Those present accepted these resolutions with acclaim. The event ended with thunderous shouts of “Viva Anarchy!”)[388]