May Days

The May Days (Catalan: Fets de Maig, Spanish: Jornadas de Mayo), sometimes also called May Events (Catalan: Fets de Maig, Spanish: Sucesos de Mayo, Hechos de Mayo), were a series of clashes between 3 and 8 May 1937 during which factions on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War engaged one another in street battles in various parts of Catalonia, centered on the city of Barcelona.

In those events, libertarian socialist supporters of the Spanish Revolution, such as the anarchist CNT and the anti-Stalinist POUM, which opposed a centralized government, faced others, such as the Republican government, Catalan government and the Communist Party of Spain, which believed in a strong central government.

The events were the culmination of the confrontation between prewar Republican legality and the Spanish Revolution, which had been in constant strife since the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

The Francoist military rebellion of July 1936 failed in Barcelona, and since then the city, as well as the rest of Catalonia, had been under the control of workers' militias, especially ones associated with the anarchist trade union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT-FAI) and the socialist trade union Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT). Just after taking the last rebelling barracks, the anarchist leaders met with the President of the Generalitat de Catalunya Lluís Companys. It resulted in the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias of Catalonia being established, the de facto government of Barcelona and Catalonia. It represented most parties from the Front d'Esquerres (the name of the Popular Front in Catalonia). The Generalitat and the central government had lost all freedom of action and assisted passively in the revolution that was taking place in Catalonia and extended to Aragon. The industries were collectivized, but there was always the same problem when the petitions of loans to the banks (collectivized but under control of communists and the government) were denied because those industries were not being supervised by the Generalitat. In October, the committee dissolved itself, and its members became councilors of the government of the Generalitat of Catalonia. However, the Patrullas de Control ("Control Patrols", a revolutionary body that had a repressive character and in which CNT-FAI had a relative majority) continued their activities freely because of the inability of the Catalan government to control them.

The climate of distrust and confrontation was present not only among republican institutions and workers' organizations but also between those organizations, especially of anarchists toward socialists, communists and Catalan nationalists. Even among the communists, there was much division. The Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC) followed the official doctrine of the Soviet Union and supported the separate handling of war and revolution and defending the Second Spanish Republic. The PCE was the major communist party in the country, but the PSUC was the main communist organization in Catalonia. At the other extreme, the anti-authoritarian Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) of former Right and Left Opposition radically opposed Joseph Stalin and supported carrying out the revolution while the war was raging; the anarchists agreed on that point with the POUM.

Tension was rising because a chain of events that took place during the winter that heated the political climate and paved the way for what would take place later. The PCE's campaign against the POUM had begun in March during a political conference in Valencia. The POUM leaders were vilified and accused of being covert Nazi agents under a false revolutionary propaganda of being enemy agents infiltrated in the country. The POUM had come to propose an invitation for Leon Trotsky to reside in Catalonia, despite its differences with him. The POUM leaders were becoming increasingly wary during the spring of 1937. Tension in the streets of Barcelona was becoming evident of the arrival of a hot spring: the Patrullas de Control were led by José Asens and continued arbitrarily arresting and murdering in their infamous paseos. Other anarchist patrols practiced expropriations. Josep Tarradellas, as Companys' right hand, was determined to unify the security forces in Catalonia under one command and to finish with the Patrullas de Control. On 26 March, Tarradellas banned members of the police from having political affiliation and demanded for all political organizations to hand over their weapons. Thus, anarchists withdrew from the government of the Generalitat of Catalonia. The open crisis forced Companys to give in to their demands, anarchists retained their weapons, and the Control Patrols remained in place.

On 25 April, a force of Carabineros forced patrols of CNT in Puigcerdà to hand over control of the customs house. Juan Negrín, the Finance Minister, had resolved to end the anomaly under which the CNT controlled that important border. Puigcerdá had become a center of espionage, falsification of passports and clandestine leakage. Its mayor, Antonio Martin, insisted on general collectivization but raised his own livestock. After a violent confrontation occurred, he and several of his men were killed. Negrín then found it easier to gain control over the other customs posts.

The Guardia Nacional Republicana and the Guardia de Asalto ("Assault Guards") were sent to Figueres and other cities in northern Catalonia to replace CNT patrols. In Barcelona, fear began of an outbreak of open warfare between the anarchists and the POUM against the government and the communists. Each side formed weapon caches and secretly fortified its buildings in for fear that its rivals would attack it first.