2: The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) 1910–23

The founding of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo in Barcelona in 1910 was, for many, the most significant event in the history of organized labor in Spain after the formation of the Spanish section of the first International in 1869. Anarchist workers, inspired by the anti-authoritarian, anti-state and federalist principles of syndicalism as outlined in the 1906 Charter of Amiens and, in particular, the writings of French syndicalist Fernando Pelloutier, saw in the direct action and anti-parliamentarism of industrial unionism an ideal vehicle for introducing anarchist ideas to the workers and the means for overthrowing the State.

‘The school for the intellectual training of the workers aims to make them acquainted with the technical management of production and economic life in general, so that when a revolutionary situation arises they will be capable of taking the socio-economic organism into their own hands and remaking it according to socialist principles.’ [7]

The revolutionary syndicalists, on the other hand, saw the industrial unions not as a means to an end, but the end itself.

The Charter of Amiens was, however, an exclusive program that asserted that syndicalism was sufficient unto itself. It called on anarchist workers not to form specifically anarchist unions but, instead, to collaborate in a politically neutral and broad based working-class unionism. It laid down specific immediate economic demands aimed at improving working-class conditions but at the same time reaffirmed that the principal objective of revolutionary syndicalism was to prepare the working class for complete emancipation through the expropriatory general strike.

The anarchists agreed that they should play an active role in the unions. But they did have considerable differences with the revolutionary syndicalists. Their main argument (apart from what they felt was syndicalism’s unduly optimistic reliance on the expropriatory general strike as a revolutionary panacea and that post-revolutionary society should be based on the community, not just on the organs of production) was that unions were essentially reformist, conservative and self-seeking organs that helped sustain capitalism. It was in the nature of union organizations to stimulate elitism and encourage a utilitarian and hierarchical mentality in the interests of the greater good of the working classes.

‘Each time a group is formed’, wrote Emile Pouget in 1904 in Les bases du syndicalisme, ‘wherein conscious men come into contact with one another, they should disregard the apathy of the mass… The un-unionized, the unconscious ones, have thus no reason to object to the sort of moral tutelage which the “conscious” assume for themselves… Anyway, the dull-witted are in no position to offer recrimination, for they profit by the results achieved by conscious and activist comrades, and they enjoy them without having had to endure the struggle.’

The danger, foreseen by anarchists, was that the ‘conscious men’ would be tempted to accept positions of responsibility within the union. Once an anarchist accepted permanent office in a union or any similar legalitarian body, he or she would be under obligation to defend the corporate economic interests of their membership, most of whom would not be anarchists, even against their own moral principles. Faced with a choice between overthrowing or negotiating with capitalism, thereby perpetuating the status quo, the ‘conscious men’ would be obliged either to follow their conscience and resign, or abandon anarchism to become accessories of capitalism and statism.

In Spain the CNT, which had grown out of the anarchist and socialist inspired Solidaridad Obrera federation, founded in 1907, was to develop along different lines to the other major revolutionary syndicalist unions of the period. While anarchists inspired it, the CNT was not yet avowedly anarcho-syndicalist, although the French revolutionary syndicalists heavily influenced it. At its first proper Congress in Barcelona in October 1911 after the socialists had withdrawn, the representatives of 26,585 workers[8] adopted the revolutionary slogan that the goal of the new union (which could only be joined by the workers) would be the emancipation of the workers themselves. Committed to direct action and class war and opposed to political and class collaboration, the stated objective of the CNT was to attain sufficient numerical strength to permit it to mount the revolutionary general strike.

Following the collapse of a general solidarity strike in support of striking workers in Bilbao and in protest against the flare-up of the war in Morocco, the CNT was declared illegal by the Canalejas government and forced into clandestinity within a matter of weeks of its founding Congress. It managed to regain its legal status in Catalonia in July 1914, on the eve of World War I, but it was not until October 1915 when a new National Committee was elected, with its base in Catalonia, that the CNT began to reemerge as a genuinely national union. The CNT remained, however, Catalancentric with some 15,000 Catalan workers out of a national membership of around 30,000. [9]

The war provided a massive stimulus to industrial growth and the export market. The expansion of the export market meant, however, a surge of price rises at home and from 1916 onwards, as inflation and unemployment increased, the CNT began to attract more and more workers. The economic crisis caused by the ending of the war, which led to the collapse of the lucrative foreign markets for Spanish goods, gave the anarcho-syndicalist labor movement an even greater boost. The political climate was further radicalized by heightened tension between the industrial bourgeoisie and the agrarian power elite, who proposed taxing excess war profits in order to regenerate the failing agricultural industry.

By late 1917, horrified by the course events had taken in Russia with the overthrow of the Kerensky government, the bourgeoisie, in spite of the enormous leverage war profits had brought them, lost their taste for reform and their nerve in the struggle for political power. The threat of social revolution from a combative working class under anarchist leadership had displaced the landed interest as the main threat to the financial and political interests of the industrial bourgeoisie. The situation was described by Spanish historian Díaz del Moral as: ‘The imminence of a political revolution that worried even the most optimistic… The clear vision of these events and the examples of eastern Europe imbued all of the proletarian strata with hopes of victory. It was at this point that the most potent labor agitation in the history of the country was initiated.’ [10]

The socialist Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) led by Largo Caballero was at this time far larger than the CNT. In February 1916 it had 76,304 members rising to 99,530 by March 1917. Following the disastrous collapse of a political general strike in support of the middle class Assembly Movement in August 1917 and the subsequent vicious repression, the socialists had been traumatized and formally abandoned all pretense at radical political aspirations. By the end of 1917 the UGT had become an unashamedly reformist social-democrat union committed to working within the legal parameters laid down by the State. To the workers and peasants of Spain the liberal bourgeoisie, parliamentary socialists and class-collaborative unionists had lost all credibility. They had shown themselves incapable of resolving the social and economic problems that faced the Spanish people, particularly the crucial land question. The anarchist argument that these problems could not be resolved within the framework of the system acquired greater credibility. In such a polarized situation the only force capable of opposing such a cohesive and intransigent ruling class were the workers and peasants organized in the revolutionary anarcho-syndicalist CNT. The dispossessed masses began to flock to its black-and-red banners in large numbers.

In the winter of 1918 a National Conference of Anarchist Groups was organized in Barcelona to discuss their relationship with the CNT. Delegates attended from every region of Spain. The conference, addressed by a delegate from the National Committee of the CNT, stressed the need for greater anarchist involvement in the labor movement, particularly in the committees. Until that time many anarchists had remained outside the CNT and those who were active in the union deliberately avoided positions of responsibility within the union. After considerable debate the anarchist groups decided upon massive entry into the CNT, a decision that was to have a tremendous impact on the political development of the CNT.

The thrust toward anarcho-syndicalism had received a massive boost earlier that summer with the Regional Congress of the powerful Catalan CNT in Sants (28 June–1 July, 1918). It was here that the CNT began to come of age as an anarcho-syndicalist union. Congress, representing almost 74,000 workers (around 30 per cent of the Catalan workforce) decided to replace its traditional craft union structure with the Sindicato Único, the industrial union that brought together all the different trades within the same industry. These industrial unions were organized in local, district and regional federations. By organizing industrially they planned to build the foundations of the new society within the shell of the old. CNT committee rooms were not confined to union matters; they became community social and cultural centers where Ferrer-type free schools were set up to teach subjects as diverse as Esperanto, vegetarianism, herbal medicine, birth control and female emancipation.

The Sants Congress also resolved to abolish union dues on the grounds that it encouraged bureaucracy, caution and an overriding concern for minor matters. The only paid official of the Catalan Regional Committee of Labor, as the Catalan CNT was known, was to be the full-time secretary. It was also agreed to organize a nationwide anarcho-syndicalist propaganda and recruitment drive which, given the revolutionary atmosphere of the time was electrifyingly successful. In the agrarian south, industrial worker and peasant associations affiliated en bloc. By the end of the year the CNT boasted 345,000 members. The State responded by jailing the CNT propagandists and driving the union underground again.

It was, however, an important strike early in 1919 that provided the CNT with the industrial victory it needed to consolidate its reputation as the biggest and most combative union in Spain. In January 1919 the management of the Canadian-controlled electrical power company reduced the wages of a group of workers without notice. When eight workers who protested against this arbitrary action by the management were summarily dismissed, the CNT called its members out on strike on 4 February. The ‘La Canadiense’ strike, as the dispute became known, rapidly escalated from a series of sporadic solidarity strikes into an impressive citywide general strike by 21 February. With Barcelona without electricity the authorities declared a state of siege and called in the army and many union leaders were arrested. The dispute finally ended in victory for the union on 19 March when the employers relented and reinstated the sacked workers and agreed to pay a portion of lost wages. The Romanones government, for its part, released some of the CNT prisoners and, on April 3, introduced the eight-hour day. Sensing weakness, the CNT relaunched its strike to force the government to release the remaining prisoners. The authorities replied by forcing Romanones to resign and embarking on a massive campaign of repression against the CNT in Barcelona that was to last from April until August 1919. The poisonous tension in the city was not to abate until 1923–1924.

It was in the wake of the bloody repression in Barcelona that the CNT held its second National Congress at the La Comedia theater in Madrid in December 1919. Membership of the CNT stood at around 715,000, approximately three times the size of the UGT.[11] This figure broke down into 427,000 Catalan-based industrial workers, 132,000 from the Levante, 90,000 from Andalucia and Extremadura, 28,000 from Galicia, 24,000 from the Basque country, 26,000 from the two Castiles, and 15,000 from Aragón. It is possible that it was the influence of such large numbers of Andalusians and Extremadurans, workers who experienced the raw power of capitalism every day of their lives, living and working as they did in conditions of abject poverty, subject to the arbitrary class justice of the landlords and their agents, who swung the balance of influence within the CNT to the revolutionary anarchist position.

Whatever the source or the cause, the revolutionary and intransigent mood of the CNT rank and file in 1919, particularly that of the southern agricultural workers, was reflected in the key resolutions approved by the Congress. Resolutions which confirmed the CNT was a revolutionary anarcho-syndicalist union imbued with the spirit of the Alliance and which echoed the objectives of the Saint Imier and Cordoba Congresses of the First International 47 years earlier in 1872 — Libertarian Communism!:

To Congress: — The undersigned delegates, bearing in mind that the tendency most strongly manifested in the workers’ organizations in every country is the one aiming at the complete, utter and absolute liberation of mankind in moral, economic and political terms, and considering that this goal cannot be attained until such time as the land, means of production and exchange have been socialized and the overweening power of the State has vanished, suggest to Congress that, in accordance with the essential postulates of the First Workers’ International, it declares that the desired end of the CNT in Spain is Anarchist Communism’. [12]

The La Comedia National Congress also decided to adopt the structural reforms introduced by the Catalan CNT the previous year. As in Catalonia, sensitivity to the dangers of oligarchisation and a wish to ensure the minimum of tension between the leadership and the base of the organization, Congress resolved that only Secretaries of Regional Federations and the Secretary of the National Committee would receive salaries. All other members of the National and Regional Committees and those who held positions of responsibility within the movement would be obliged to continue to work at their trades in order to earn a living. To facilitate this, Congress decided that the entire National Committee should be recruited from among the confederal membership of one particular region. Invariably, with the exception of the early years of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, the National Committee was Barcelona-based. [13]

Ironically, the rapid growth of the CNT from 1919 onwards placed an enormous strain on it, calling into question its hostility to the State and constitutional commitment to class war and direct action. Could anarchists, enemies of all coercive power, compromise with capitalism and the State, maintain their principles within a mass labor union that was developing its own goals and vested interests? How could an instrument of anarchist revolution seek immediate short term economic gains for its members through tactical alliances and accommodations with whichever groups circumstances happened to dictate without seeing its principles distorted, its traditions abused and its ultimate objectives compromised out of all recognition?

Although the anarchist workers in the CNT were as enthusiastically committed to the struggle for immediate economic improvements and social justice as socialists or enlightened Conservative Republicans, they were equally convinced that any improvements won by the union would be illusory and short-lived so long as capitalism and the State remained. Because they were willing to accept that other political parties and unions might serve a useful purpose and were prepared to cooperate with them in those aims that they shared in common, it did not mean that they ceased to be anarchists. Where they parted company with the socialists was over the question of negotiating with the enemy, diverting class struggle into class collaboration by participating in the leadership functions of capitalism and the illusory representative functions of the bourgeois state.

Although the CNT was founded and, in the main, influenced by a minority of rank-and-file anarchist activists who were less concerned with economic demands than defending the union’s ideological position, the bulk of the members who came into the CNT between 1917 and 1923 would probably not have described themselves as anarchists in the sense that they were committed to an idea. The workers and peasants who flocked to the CNT during this period were, however, almost certainly heavily influenced by the polarized and radical political climate of the period and identified with the union’s anti-authoritarian, libertarian and revolutionary ethos. Their choice of union reflected the mood of the period and their individual views on the key issues that affected them in a brutal and unashamedly class-ridden society.

The leadership, on the other hand, either were not anarchists or merely paid lip service to anarchism as an abstract principle. For the conscious minority of militants this was an important reason to maintain their agitational pressure to ensure the union continued to express anarchist policies and that the reformist and administrative-minded leadership did not lapse too far from the anarchist inspired constitution. The leaders, for their part, needed the support of this ‘conscious minority’ of activists to retain their positions of responsibility and found themselves obliged to adopt artificially revolutionary positions which they never intended or believed possible to implement, and felt to be a hindrance to their negotiating position with employers and State functionaries. Attempts to change the revolutionary constitution of the CNT and neutralize the influence of the ‘conscious minority’ of anarchists inevitably met with the defeat of the leadership.

Apart from countering the class-collaborationist tendencies of the leadership, which was constantly attempting to turn the Confederation into a mirror image of the socialist UGT, and attempts by Marxist and pro-Bolshevik infiltrators such as Andreu Nin and Joaquín Maurín to suborn the union to the Moscow-based Third International, the ‘conscious minority’ of anarchists did not see themselves as seeking to impose ideological hegemony over the membership. It was, rather, to provide moral leadership to their fellow workers by example and inspiration, not the command-and-obey relationship which normally operated within authoritarian party and union structures; to protect and advance working-class interests; to educate the rank and file in the unity between the theory and practice of anarchism and to stress the difference between what is and what could be.

To the reformist leaders of the higher committees, the anarchist militants at the base were undoubtedly nuisances, particularly because they understood the realities of the world too well and knew precisely what the reformists were trying to do. To this latter group, the revolutionary objectives of the CNT were visions on the horizon of a far-distant future, visions that menaced their careerism, not something that could or should be on the daily agenda of a major union. If the unions were able to introduce Libertarian Communism, which after all was only the application of anarchist principles to the reconstruction of society, that made the unions organs of genuine democracy, with no place in them for a leadership structure. Which, of course, is why the reformists incessantly sought to play down the goals of anarchism and constantly emphasized the lack of interest in anarchism by the rank and file. Writing in 1922, Soledad Gustavo observed in the anarchist paper Redención that ‘the organized mass which we have called syndicalist (trade unionist) is not libertarian.’ [14]

‘The great triumphs achieved by means of organization and collective actions,’ observed Díaz del Moral, ‘the spread of the syndicalist press, which, though still directed in large measure by libertarians, is cultivated mainly through union themes; the habits of discipline with which conviviality in workers’ organizations and the heat of the battle infused the members; the structuring of the new ‘sindicatos ‘únicos’, which subordinated individual activity to that of the sections… to collective ends, restricting the liberty so sedulously defended by anarchism: [all] were slowly modifying the convictions of the leadership groups, who, without being aware of it, unconsciously moved toward pure unionism, radically opposed, at bottom, to fundamental anarchist principles.’ [15]

The rapid (but short-lived) growth in union membership accelerated the contradictions inherent in a revolutionary labor movement attempting to perform all the functions of a reformist labor movement and proved to be an increasing source of tension creating conflict between the anarchist militants with their immediate revolutionary objectives and the equally influential union-oriented elements with their immediate economic demands and work-based claims. For the anarchists, morals, i.e. principles, and reality were inseparable. If the principles were the right ones for dealing with reality then clearly they were the right ones for formulating goals.

For the reformists on the other hand, although they praised anarchist militancy and upheld anarchism as a positive moral influence they deplored its revolutionary goal of Libertarian Communism and sought to dissociate it from the struggle. As an ideal anarchism was commendable but naive, an ideal which was incapable of coping with the political and social realities of contemporary capitalist society; it was an abstract moral yardstick which could be discarded as and when circumstances demanded. The unionists felt it to be an embarrassment and an obstacle in their pursuit of realizable objectives, much as Clause 4 has been to the British Labor Party.

Inside the Catalan CNT new leaders began to emerge who had had little to do with the earlier working-class anarchist movement and whose main priority was the union struggle. CNT leaders like Salvador Seguí, Marti Barrera, Salvador Quemades, Josep Viadiu, Joan Peiró, Sebastian Clara and Ángel Pestaña began to displace the anarchist activists who had played a dominant role in the Solidaridad Obrera federation and in the early years of the CNT — men like Negre, Herreros, Andreu, Miranda, and so on.

In 1916 the CNT leader Salvador Seguí and Ángel Pestaña (a watchmaker by trade whose organizational career had taken him fairly rapidly from revolutionary to philosophical anarchism) had successfully engineered the first socialist–anarcho-syndicalist union agreement to coordinate a joint protest strike against the rising cost of living. The so-called ‘Pact of Zaragoza’, inspired mainly by Seguí and Pestaña, had been signed in November of that year. Earlier the CNT membership had balked at the proposal but finally the rank and file at the 1916 National Congress agreed to the alliance to force political concessions out of the Romanones government.

Much of the membership of the CNT showed little enthusiasm for collaborating with authoritarian socialists to replace the government of Count Romanones with a bourgeois liberal republic. The disastrous experiences with self-styled radical and bourgeois politicians during the Cantonalist movement in 1873 had shown the anarchist militants that political leaders of all hues, prompted by their urge to conquer power, only collaborate out of self interest. Their distrust of the socialist UGT and the republicans proved well-founded, as we have seen, but although the pact was short-lived, with unfortunate consequences for the labor movement, it did serve to highlight the unbridgeable differences between revolutionary and reformist unionism. (Although there is no proof that the leaders were reformists and the base revolutionary).

In 1920, in direct defiance of the decisions of the 1919 Congress and without any attempt to consult with the membership, Salvador Seguí demonstrated further disregard for the democratic process by negotiating another pact with the UGT. A CNT Plenum condemned this arbitrary and undemocratic move by the CNT leader later that same year. Faced with a fait accompli, however, the decision was made to give the socialist union the benefit of the doubt. The CNT tested the bona fides of their allies by declaring a general strike in solidarity with the miners of the Rio Tinto Company. The socialists, whether fearful of a confrontation with the State or unwilling to concede the initiative to the CNT, reneged on the agreement and the Rio Tinto strike collapsed after four months of struggle.

Pistolerismo, the shooting down of militant unionists by gangsters hired by the employers’ federation and right-wing killers of the ‘Sindicato Libre’, the so-called free union, first emerged on a small scale during World War I.[16] By 1920 the individual kills had escalated into the institutionalized slaughter of CNT militants. One estimate places the number of assassination attempts between 1917 and 1922 at 1,012, of which 753 were workers, 112 policemen, 95 employers and 52 foremen. The CNT Pro-Prisoners Committee in 1923 lists the number of CNT members killed as 104 with 33 wounded.[17] The Barcelona police chief, Arlegui, orchestrated this strategy of tension. The highest authorities in the region, including the captain general, Milans del Bosch, and the civil governor, Martínez Anido, supported him.

This parallel state terror was given the judicial seal of approval in December 1920 with the introduction of the notorious ley de fugas, a law that permitted the security forces to shoot dead any alleged suspect who attempted to ‘evade’ capture. The CNT again appealed to their pact allies, the UGT, to declare a revolutionary general strike in Catalonia in order to halt the cycle of violence, but the socialist union refused to lend its support and Seguí’s pact finally collapsed in ignominy. Frightened by the revolutionary threat to the fundamental institutions of their society — tradition, property and privilege the ruling elite turned to the only weapon it understood: violence.

The anarchist militants within the CNT unions were left with no alternative but to respond in kind. They organized paramilitary groups – grupos de defensa – that, hitherto, had been largely concerned with picketing and security at meetings. Because the scale of the anti-CNT offensive stretched the resources of these groups, exclusively anarchist affinity groups also entered the fray, protecting the unions and developing new contacts within the CNT. The defense committees identified, located and assassinated those responsible for the wave of semiofficial terrorism. Action-oriented, the defense committees became, understandably, the central focus for the younger, more dynamic and revolutionary elements who began to rise to prominence within the CNT, while the collaborationists such as Salvador Seguí, who sought to restore the emphasis on purely union matters, suffered a corresponding decrease in influence. During the repression there was a sense in which armed groups substituted the unions as the fundamental unit of the CNT. [18]

In October 1922 the Los Solidarios anarchist affinity group was formed in Barcelona.[19] It consisted of young working-class CNT defense group militants whose ideas and attitudes had been forged during the murderous period of governmental and employers’ terrorism. The group had particularly close links with the woodworkers’ union. It had evolved from the Zaragoza based Crisól group, itself in turn linked to the earlier Los Justicieros group. Its members included some of the most famous names in the history of Spanish anarchism — Buenaventura Durruti, a mechanic from León, Francisco Ascaso, a waiter from Zaragoza, and García Oliver, an apprentice chef, waiter and later French polisher from Tarragona — and its influence was to prove crucial in the development of the Spanish anarchist movement in the first half of the 1930s. [20]

According to Aurelio Fernández, a founder of Los Solidarios, the declared aims of the group were to resist pistolerismo, defend the anarchist objectives of the CNT and set up a ‘nationwide anarchist federation that would unite all the groups which were close to each other ideologically but were scattered throughout the peninsula.’ Having successfully turned the tables on the most prominent leaders and organizers of the anti-CNT terror campaign, they used the columns of their influential journal Crisól to press for a national anarchist conference. Their appeal was successful and both the CNT and the Federation of Anarchist Groups were represented. Durruti, Ascaso and Aurelio Fernández were elected on to the National Liaison Commission, a body that was to be the forerunner of the Iberian Anarchist Federation — the FAI.

Among the 50 delegates present at the conference was Seguí’s protégé, Ángel Pestaña, ex-editor of Solidaridad Obrera, now a union organizer of considerable standing within the CNT. Pestaña had been released from prison in April 1922, having been arrested on his return to Spain from Russia in 1921. It had been his report to the Zaragoza Conference earlier that same year which led to the CNT revoking its provisional adherence to the communist Third International.

The disastrous handling of the Moroccan War and scandals affecting the highest authorities in the land, including the king, led many anarchists to believe that the only remaining solution for the ruling elite was a military coup. One of the main tasks of the National Liaison Commission was, therefore to discuss plans how to prevent this occurring. Defense Committee activists ‘García Oliver, Gregorio Suberviela, and others, outlined proposals for an insurrection to preempt the expected military coup and speed up the revolutionary process throughout Spain.

Ángel Pestaña, recently appointed Catalan regional secretary of the CNT, was firmly against the proposed insurrectionary general strike. His direct experience of the revolutionary process in Russia had led him to the view that the reason for the Bolshevik success was the fact that the masses had not been adequately educated or prepared for revolution beforehand. Pestaña was convinced that a successful revolution depended on organization rather than spontaneity. He argued that because the union was weak and disorganized and the UGT was unlikely to resist a military coup they would be out on a limb; a revolutionary general strike, intended as a corollary to an armed insurrection to overthrow the state and undermine capitalism, at that time would only end in catastrophe.

With the murders of Seguí, ‘El Noi de Sucre’ (Sugar Boy), and his companion Francesc Comes on 10 March 1923 the credibility of the legalist unionists within the CNT collapsed completely. Even the most orthodox union members were outraged; how could they argue the case for peaceful negotiation with employers and officials who employed gunmen and terrorists to murder such firm opponents of revolutionary confrontation and champions of the negotiated settlement as Salvador Seguí?

The murders of Seguí and Comes proved the final straw for the Catalan Regional Committee of the CNT. Determined to confront and eliminate pistolerismo, a meeting of militants was convened to coordinate and fund the anarcho-syndicalist defense groups. The safe houses and meeting places of the pistoleros and the most reactionary employers, their paymasters, were located and raided by CNT defense groups and the killers and their employers shot.

The CNT militants of groups such as Los Solidarios, one of many anarchist affinity groups, targeted key counter-revolutionary figures such as General Severiano Martínez Anido, Colonel Arlegui, ex-ministers such as the ‘Conde de Coello’, José Reguerel, the former governor of Bilbao and Cardinal Archbishop Soldevilla of Zaragoza. Their first victim was Laguía, the most notorious of the pistoleros. The death of such a well-protected gangster frightened off many of the other gunmen, a number of whom fled to Zaragoza to seek the protection of their patron, Cardinal Soldevilla.

As the actions of the defense groups began to bite — the assassination of Prime Minister Eduardo Dato earlier that year by three anarchists had brought the battle into the streets of Madrid itself — the central government quickly stepped in to remove the instigators of the Catalan terrorism from office. An uneasy peace was restored to the northern capital, but it proved short-lived.

On 13 September 1923 General Miguel Primo de Rivera, the captain-general of Catalonia, issued a ‘Manifesto to the Country’ informing them that he had seized power ‘to free Spain from the professional politicians, misfortunes and immoralities that began in 1889 and threaten Spain with a tragic, dishonorable and speedy demise’. It was an ill-concealed move to protect the reputation of King Alfonso XIII from the consequences of an imminent parliamentary report on responsibilities for the disaster at Anual in the Spanish Moroccan War in 1921.

The CNT responded to the coup by calling a general strike. It met with little response. The political atmosphere was one of general despondency and the CNT was in a state of complete disarray. Although no figures exist for the Catalan CNT in this period of shrinkage of membership, it must have been similar to that undergone by the Levante Regional, which had dropped in membership from 130,000 at the end of 1919 to around 40,000 by December 1922. The Andalusians for their part had shrunk in numbers to around 30,000. [21]

The UGT and the Socialist Party, Seguí’s former allies, had thrown in their lot with the new regime. Largo Caballero, the socialist leader, was appointed a councilor of state and immediately ordered the party not to make any verbal or written act of protest against the new regime. The CNT, although not declared illegal, prepared for the worst. Many anarcho-syndicalist militants, particularly the members of the Defense Groups, went either underground or into exile to continue the struggle. The members of the Los Solidarios group, for example, played important parts in establishing the Committee for Revolutionary Co-ordination in France. This body organized the unsuccessful anti-dictatorship operations at Vera de Bidasoa and the Atarazanas barracks in Barcelona on 6 November 1924, but could also take credit for the spectacular springing of Francisco Ascaso from Zaragoza prison. With the death of many of its members in armed confrontations with the police and the army, the arrest of many others and the dispersal of others into exile, Los Solidarios ceased to exist as a cohesive group until 1931 when those comrades who survived were reunited under the Republic.

Pestaña’s opposition to armed resistance led to his expulsion from the Commission. Although he no longer belonged to the Commission, Pestaña was arrested and imprisoned by the dictatorship authorities for alleged involvement in the disastrous military invasion organized by the Commission in 1924 at Vera de Bidasoa in the Basque Navarrese Pyrenees and the unsuccessful rising at the Atarazanas barracks in Barcelona. He was to remain in jail until the end of 1926. According to his biographer Antonio Elerza:

‘Although he never ceased to be an anarchist’, the strategy of armed resistance proposed by Oliver led to a marked widening of the gulf between himself and militant anarchism: From now on all his energies became concentrated on union activity exclusively. He filled the position of Seguí. He began to reflect on the experiences of his life, revise tactics and objectives, and, as a consequence, to search for a new course to achieve his ends. [22]