A-Infos (en) Britain, Anarchist journal Direct Action #42 - Our history

The ‘May Days’ in Barcelona 1937 ---- May marks the anniversary of one of the 
most infamous events in the history of anarcho-syndicalism and the wider working 
class movement ---- The ‘May Days’ in Barcelona 1937 was the turning point of 
the Spanish Civil War and Spanish Revolution, when counter-revolutionary forces 
moved against the anarchists, imposing greater control over the Spanish working 
class and reintroducing capitalist modes of production.
Mainstream historians often remember the Spanish Civil War as a fight between a 
democratically elected government of Socialists and Liberals and the combined 
forces of fascist army generals and Catholic clergy. What is often forgotten, 
however, is the social revolution that shook capitalism and the Spanish state to 
its very foundation. The Spanish Revolution marked a high point, not only in the 
workers’ movement with the anarcho-syndicalist CNT (Confederación Nacional del 
Trabajo – National Confedera-tion of Labour) playing a major role in organising 
workers and leading armed opposition to the fascist military uprising.

Spain had been in a state of social and political flux for much of the 20th 
century, laying the basis for civil war. Being neutral during World War 1 Spain 
traded with both sides leading to the industrialisation of some regions like 
Catalonia. This economic boom saw the growth of the two main labour 
organisations, the UGT (historically linked with the Spanish Socialist Party) 
and the CNT.

general strikes

 From 1917 there was a wave of revolutionary unrest, with a nationwide general 
strike in 1917 seeing unified action between the two big labour unions, with the 
UGT much more willing to deal with the government and to return to work. A 
CNT-led general strike also broke out in 1919 in Barcelona, with 100,000 workers 
walking off the job forcing the Spanish government to pass the world’s first 
eight hour day law. By 1919 CNT membership had swelled to about 755,000, roughly 
10% of the active adult population, putting it far ahead of its Socialist rival.

This revolutionary activity gave way in 1923 to the military dictatorship of 
General Primo de Rivera. ‘Free Unions’, originally set up by right-wing 
Catholics, were introduced and the UGT and CNT were suppressed. The UGT came to 
terms with the dictatorship and continued to operate, being promoted as a 
‘responsible’ alternative to the CNT which refused to capitulate and thus faced 
repression from death squads recruited by the authorities and funded by the Church.

The dictatorship fell in 1931 and Spain returned to a republican system with the 
election of a Socialist/ Liberal alliance. The alliance didn’t last long, 
however, with attacks coming from insurrectionists on the left and military 
unrest on the right. Right wing parties won the 1933 elections and Spain entered 
another period of repression. At this time the Socialist Party began to move to 
the left with talk of the need for ‘proletarian revolution’ and ‘a workers’ 
government’. Meanwhile, at their Zaragoza congress, the CNT also looked ahead to 
the kind of world they wanted to create, a system they called ‘libertarian 
communism’.

the looming conflict

In February 1936 the Socialists were once again in power with the election of a 
Popular Front government of Socialists, Liberals and other left wing and 
regional nationalist parties. The Communist Party at this time was a small 
fringe group with little significance either in state politics or among the 
working class. The CNT, who had previously discouraged members from voting in 
elections, took only a nominal position on abstaining in return for the release 
of political prisoners and to prepare for the looming conflict.

On July 17th 1936 fascist military generals launched their coup. While a swift 
takeover was intended the nationalist forces met much resistance. The workers in 
Barcelona were well prepared and well armed after raids on army barracks, 
forcing the fascists to surrender after two days of fighting. Popular resistance 
spread quickly to Spain’s other major cities and anti-fascist militias were 
organised by each major political party and union. CNT militias fought alongside 
ones formed by the likes of the POUM (a small Marxist party to the left of the 
Socialist Party), the Communists and the UGT. The CNT militias were organised on 
a non-hierarchical basis. In Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell, who fought in a 
POUM militia, described the set up:
The essential point of the system was social equality between officers and men. 
Everyone from general to private drew the same pay, ate the same food, wore the 
same clothes, and mingled on terms of complete equality...In theory at any rate 
each militia was a democracy and not a hierarchy...They had attempted to produce 
within the militias a sort of temporary working model of the classless society.

Away from the front classless models of society were also constructed. The CNT, 
as the largest union, now held de facto power in Catalonia and other areas. The 
hated Civil Guard was replaced by Workers’ Patrols; industries came under 
workers control; hotels like the Ritz, once playgrounds of the rich and famous, 
were now open to all with affordable meals (free for families of militia 
fighters); big estates were collectivised by rural workers; churches were gutted 
and their contents burnt in the streets as a show of defiance against the 
powerful clergy.

Whilst the working class were taking over the means of production and the 
militias were marching to Aragon to liberate it from the fascists, the apparatus 
of the state, however, was not challenged. There was set up instead a Central 
Anti-Fascist Militias Committee (CAMC), which had representatives not only from 
the CNT but also from the POUM and bourgeois Catalan political parties. Within a 
few months the CAMC was dissolved, the ‘Generalitat’ (the Catalan government) 
was reconstituted and the CNT entered the Generalitat on September 28th, 1936, 
taking over the Department of Food Supplies. Thus concessions by the CNT 
leadership towards the state had started already. Whilst workers were 
instituting libertarian communism the CNT’s leading lights were rubbing 
shoulders with Catalan nationalists and the Communist Party.

communist influence

Political manoeuvrings within the government also became apparent and the 
dictatorial aims of the Communists soon manifested themselves in the new order. 
The Communists had always been an unimportant minority in Catalonia and the rest 
of Spain but, by a series of clever manoeuvres, including uniting with the 
Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC), their influence increased. To the 
Communists the POUM, due to its Trotskyite tendency, signified a rival party 
that had to be eliminated. The Soviet Union strongly supported these manoeuvres. 
Arms and shipments of food arrived from the USSR and the Communist propaganda 
machine started using this support for their political purposes.

Conflicts between the CNT and UGT arose. The Workers’ Patrols who had smashed 
the fascists in July acted were dominated by anarchists and syndicalists. The 
Communists of the UGT now demanded equal representation, something they were in 
no way entitled to due to their insignificant number. The UGT members left the 
patrols and devoted their attention to winning over the police to their side. 
Friction arose between the police and the Workers’ Patrols which, in some places 
resulted in fighting with a number of dead and wounded.

The following is an example of preparations being made for a conflict against 
the anarchists:

On Friday March 5th 1937, a few individuals presented an order, signed by 
Vallejo, director of the arms factories, to the arsenal in Barcelona, to hand 
over to them ten armoured cars. The director of the arsenal found the document 
in order and delivered the cars. At the last moment doubts arose as to the 
authenticity of the order, and the director telephoned to Vallejo for 
verification. The document proved to be forged, but in the meantime the 
armour-ed cars had been driven away. They were followed and observed to go into 
the Voroschilov Barracks, belonging to the PSUC, that is, the communists.

The purpose of stealing these armoured cars would become tragically clear in May.

the may days begin

May Day 1937, the traditional day of the workers’ movement, was not celebrated 
in the most revolutionary city in the world. The Generalitat announced that May 
1st was to be a day of work for the sake of war production. However, it was the 
ongoing conflicts between labour organisations that lay behind their decision. 
On Monday May 3rd the Communists made their decisive move. Truck-loads of 
assault guards drew up to the telephone exchange which, since July 19th the 
exchange had been controlled by the CNT, causing clashes with the Generalitat 
since the CNT controlled telephone links, border controls and the control 
patrols. The assault guards stormed the exchange taking the CNT militants on the 
lower floors by surprise and disarming them. On the upper floors, however, they 
met dogged resistance thanks to a strategically placed machine gun.

News of the attack spread like wildfire, workers threw up barricades all over 
the city and angry militants demanding weapons besieged union offices. The 
defence committees of the CNT, which had existed since the dark days of 
dictatorship, mobilised themselves. The POUM, also under fire from Communist 
attacks, took up arms at their own barricades. Orwell wrote that ‘the POUM 
leaders were furious at being dragged into this affair, but felt that they had 
got to stand by the CNT’. In other areas of Catalonia civil Guards were disarmed 
and PSUC offices were seized as a ‘preventive measure’. There was no firing on 
the first night and by the second day the workers were spreading the barricades 
further into the suburbs.

increasing tension

In the face of increasing tension the CNT Regional Committee sent 
representatives to the government to negotiate an end to the conflict. Premier, 
Tarradellas, and Minister of the Interior, Aiguade, were asked to remove the 
police in order to pacify the population. Tarradellas and Aiguade assured denied 
knowledge of the incident at the telephone exchange. But it was proved later 
that Aiguade had himself ordered the occupation. The Regional Committee asked 
workers to remain calm and everything would be done to compel the police to 
leave. But workers remained on guard, mistrustful of the apparent peace. In the 
solidly anarchist working class suburbs of Barcelona the police were disarmed by 
workers without resistance.

In the early hours of May 4th the shooting started. The police occupied the 
Palace of Justice and seized a number of CNT headquarters. In the face of such 
provocation the CNT officially called for calm in an address to the people of 
Barcelona:

Workers of the CNT! Workers of the UGT! Don’t be deceived by these manoeuvres. 
Above all else, Unity! Put down your arms. Only one slogan: We must work to beat 
fascism! Down with fascism!

Despite the CNT’s ‘responsibility’, PSUC agents provocateurs didn’t stop their 
attacks. Late in the afternoon, an exceptionally cruel and bloody incident 
occurred, not far from Casa CNT, headquarters of the Regional Committee. Two 
cars were approaching the Casa but were ordered to stop and surrender weapons at 
a barricade of Catalan city guards and PSUC members. As the occupants were 
getting out of the car they were shot down in the street.

provocation continues

As the days wore on provocation by the counter-revolutionary PSUC continued 
despite calls for calm from the anarchist leaders. Juan García Oliver and 
Federica Montseny, both well-known anarchists, and controversially ministers in 
the national government, called for the workers to leave the barricades and lay 
down their arms to preserve anti-fascist unity. A member of the POUM described 
what happened at a barricade in reaction to Montseny’s radio speech:

The CNT militants were so furious they pulled out their pistols and shot the 
radio. It sounds incredible but it happened in front of my eyes. They were 
absolutely furious, and yet they obeyed. They might be anarchists, but when it 
came to their own organisation they had tremendous discipline.

On May 6th workers began to dismantle the barricades. The PSUC immediately took 
advantage and seized the telephone exchange. The government, now in Valencia 
after fleeing fascist bombardment in Madrid, sent assault guards to maintain 
order in Barcelona. The revolution was now well and truly lost.
Political killings continued after the May events. For instance, on May 5th, 
Communists murdered the Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri, a philosophy 
professor and exile from Italian fascism. On May 11th, the mutilated bodies of 
twelve young anarchists were dumped at a cemetery. Andreu Nin, the POUM leader, 
was arrested, tortured and finally assassinated by Communist agents and his 
party was outlawed.

Political manoeuvrings also continued. Caballero, the Socialist leader, was 
ousted and replaced with Juan Negrín who was more sympathetic to the Communists. 
The CNT were also banished from both the national and Catalan governments. The 
Communists were victorious and the counter-revolution had set in. Spain was soon 
riddled with Soviet secret agents. Appeals were made to Stalin for weapons that 
often never came. The war was now to be presented as merely a conflict between 
democracy and fascism in a vain hope for international support. The 
revolutionary militias were absorbed into a regular army and their democratic, 
non-hierarchical practices lost. Land was returned to the landlords and 
factories handed back to the bourgeoisie. The CNT were now officially enemies of 
the state. Even at the Battle of the Ebro, the last major Republican offensive, 
Com-munist death squads wandered over the battlefields executing wounded 
anarcho-syndicalists.

No appeal was made on a class basis to workers in other countries because the 
Popular Front strategy did not portray the fight as essentially a struggle for 
working class power. As Orwell wrote:

Once the war had been narrowed down to a ‘war for democracy’ it became 
impossible to make any large-scale appeal for working class aid abroad…The way 
in which the working class in the democratic countries could really have helped 
Spanish comrades was by industrial action - strikes and boycotts. No such thing 
ever began to happen.

Whilst victory for the revolution was never a certainty, its doom was made 
certain in May 1937. The inability of the workers to take the offensive against 
counter-revolutionary forces damned their efforts entirely. They were not helped 
by their so-called leaders, anarcho-politicians like Montseny and García Oliver, 
who made concession after concession and continually called for calm whilst 
revolutionary workers were butchered in the street.

provocation continues

However, May 1937 offers important lessons to anarcho-syndicalists and all 
revolutionaries. The actions of the Communists show them for what they truly 
are, another ruling class in waiting. The actions of the anarchist ministers 
also serve as proof that the politics of the state are a dead end for the 
working class. The state is corrupt in itself and cannot be used to bring 
revolution just as a thorn bush cannot produce figs. Only the actions of the 
workers themselves can bring about revolution and a truly libertarian communist 
society.
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