Members of the International Brigade in the British cookhouse at Albacete, in southeastern Spain, during the Spanish Civil War (Photo: Picryl / Imperial War Museums UK)
Andy Brown: Why is the Spanish Civil War so significant to the left?
Héctor Puente Sierra: The 1930s was a decade with many similarities to today. It was a decade of crisis and social polarisation, a decade in which fascists came to power.
But that’s only one side of it. It was also a decade of workers’ struggle and revolution.
The outcome—the Second World War, the Holocaust, the terror of Stalinism, these were a result of the defeat of the left.
And crucially the defeat of the Spanish Revolution, which was the most profound social revolution since the Russian Revolution of 1917.
While counter-revolution in Russia had strangled the aspirations that had grown there, the Spanish Revolution raised the possibility of a new revolutionary upturn. It was incredibly significant.
AB: Why did the ruling class find the Republican government so threatening?
HSP: The first Republican government in 1931 was a coalition of the middle class, liberal Republicans and the Spanish Socialist Labour Party—a social democratic party. Its aim was not to establish socialism, it was to reform the state to make Spanish capitalism fit for purpose. Although it did bring in some left wing reforms.
The government hoped it could do this while reassuring the ruling class that it didn’t fundamentally threaten its interests.
Very quickly this coalition unravelled because the ruling class showed incredible hostility to it. It used all the economic weapons at its disposal to try to stop any reform.
AB: What were the political forces that staged the coup against the government in 1936?
HSP: The forces that rose up in July 1936—and the general that came to be their leader, Francisco Franco—are often referred to as fascists. In reality, this was a much more complex coalition.
The most important component was the far right element of the army—Franco and his generals.
The Catholic Church played a very important role in legitimising the military coup. This is because the Republic’s secularising agenda and rights for women posed a threat to the Church.
The third element of this coalition was the monarchists. The proclamation of the Republic in 1931 had led to the flight of the king and the monarchist right was intent on reestablishing the monarchy.
The final part was the Spanish Falange. This was the only genuinely fascist element. The important thing about this coalition is that because of the diversity of ideology and goals, it was not stable. Resistance could have exploited these differences.
AB: The right expected a quick victory. Why didn’t they get one?
HSP: What stopped them was resistance by workers, the landless and the rural poor.
They rose up, stormed army barracks, secured weapons and took to the streets to fight.
The Republican government was completely paralysed. It refused to act because it was more afraid of the workers’ militancy and revolution.
When the workers asked the government for weapons to defend the Republic, it refused. So, working class people took the initiative. As a result of this, in two-thirds of the country, the coup was stopped. This is what sent a failed coup into a long and bloody civil war.
AB: How did the resistance change between its early and later stages?
HSP: Where the coup was defeated, the Republican state was shattered. A process of social revolution got underway and working class people began to shape the new society.
In the Aragon countryside, they made huge advances because people believed they were fighting to establish and defend a new social order.
In the later stages, a popular front government was installed. The strategy of this popular front was dominated by reassuring international powers—particularly France, Britain and the US—that Republican Spain was not a threat to capitalism.
That meant toning down demands and suffocating the social revolution.
AB: What role did Stalin and the International Brigades play?
HSP: The International Brigades are an inspiring example of internationalism. But that’s not the whole story.
The International Brigades were established at the initiative of the Communist International, the Comintern.
Initially, Stalin’s Soviet Union reacted cautiously towards the Republican government and the Spanish Communist Party. Its priority was to secure a military alliance with French and British imperialism against Nazi Germany.
The Comintern decided to organise the Brigades only when it became clear that, without international support the Republic would be defeated very quickly.
But the Brigades were not an army of Soviet agents. The Brigades were primarily volunteers from workers movements in the name of internationalism and to fight fascism.
AB: What was the role of anarchists and of the Poum?
HSP: The anarchist movement in the Spanish state in the 1930s is the historical high point of anarchism.
It was the leadership of the CNT trade union federation. Workers joined it because they were drawn to its militant tactics.
The Poum—Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification—were revolutionary socialists. They were anti-Stalinists and were very influential in Catalonia. The Poum grew during the civil war, but it still had very limited influence. The Poum and the CNT in the revolution were allies, in that both these forces stood for social revolution. However, there was a big difference between the two on the question of power.
The Poum argued that to unleash the revolutionary warfare needed to win the war and deepen the social revolution, workers had to take state power.
The anarchists, because of their opposition to authority and the state, were completely paralysed by this question.
They decided not to take power when they were presented with their chance. Instead, they ended up collaborating in the reconstruction of bourgeois power in the rebuilt Republican state.
AB: Could the left have offered a viable alternative?
HSP: The only alternative was the one the Poum put forward. This was based on the idea of establishing a democratic worker’s state that could coordinate and centralise all the resources and use the methods of revolutionary warfare.
The militias were making advances during the early stages of the war. And that indicated that revolutionary methods could be effective. Unfortunately, those were not the methods did not spread.
By 1936, the Spanish state was caught between socialism and barbarism.
There was no middle road between the two—and those who tried to pursue that strategy, ultimately paved the way for the victory of barbarism.
- Revolution and Counter-Revolution in the Spanish Civil War by Héctor Puente Sierra is available from Bookmarks bookshop for £15
