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Spanish Revolution of 1936
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Spanish Revolution of 1936
The Spanish Revolution was a social revolution that began at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, following the attempted coup to overthrow the Second Spanish Republic and arming of the worker movements and formation of militias to fight the Nationalists. It featured takeover of power at local levels by the Spanish workers' organizations and social movements, seizure and reorganization of economic facilities directed by trade union groups and local committees, and widespread implementation of socialist, more narrowly, libertarian socialist and anarchist organizational principles throughout various portions of the Republican zone, primarily Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia, and parts of the Valencian Community.
Much of the economy of Spain was put under worker control; in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%. Factories were run through worker committees, and agrarian areas became collectivized and run as libertarian socialist communes. Many small businesses, such as hotels, barber shops, and restaurants, were also collectivized and managed by their former employees. The revolutionary principles implemented with the revolution continued to evolve as much as the Republican zone existed, until the end of the civil war with the victory of the Nationalists.
The character of the revolution has been described as collectivist and pluralist, carried out by a variety of distinct, often mutually competitive and hostile, political forces and parties; the main forces behind the socioeconomic and political changes were the anarcho-syndicalists of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT, National Confederation of Labor) and the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI, Iberian Anarchist Federation), the revolutionary socialists of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), and also the Marxist party Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM, Workers' Party of Marxist Unification).
The collectivization effort, which took place rather in agriculture than in industry, was primarily organized by the CNT and the UGT; the collectives could be organized wholly by one of the two trade unions, or by both of them as joint organizations, with the POUM, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and sometimes the Republican Left also participating in some areas. Along with collectivization, the revolution produced a variety of other changes, including socialization of industry, which meant workers' control over enterprises or, more broadly, over an entire branch of production; in order to achieve the latter, small production and trade plants were disestablished, and their personnel was concentrated in bigger plants, or grouped together and coordinated into cartels.
The late Second Spanish Republic and the Nationalists under Francisco Franco suppressed the revolution in their respective territories after its third phase in 1937.
On 17 July 1936, the Spanish Coup of July 1936 began. On 18 July, the ongoing military uprising led to a collapse of the republican state (four governments succeeded each other in a single day) and to the coercive structures of the state being dissolved or paralyzed in the places where the coup plotters did not seize power. By then, the CNT had approximately 1,577,000 members and the UGT had 1,447,000 members. On 19 July, the uprising reached Catalonia, where the workers took up arms, stormed the barracks, erected barricades, and eventually defeated the military.
The CNT and UGT unions called a general strike from 19 to 23 July, in response to both the military uprising and the apparent apathy of the state towards it. Despite the fact that there were specific records in previous days of the distribution of weapons among civilian sectors, it was during the General Strike when groups of trade unionists, linked to the convening unions and smaller groups, assaulted many of the weapons depots of the state forces, independently of whether they were in revolt against the government or not.
Already in these first weeks, two groups were established within the anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary sectors: the radical group, fundamentally linked to the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) and through it to the CNT, which understood the phenomenon in which it participated as a traditional revolution; and the possibilist group, made up of members of a more moderate sector of the CNT, which expressed the convenience of participating in a broader front, later called the Popular Antifascist Front (FPA), the result of adding the unions to the electoral coalition Popular Front.
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Spanish Revolution of 1936
The Spanish Revolution was a social revolution that began at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, following the attempted coup to overthrow the Second Spanish Republic and arming of the worker movements and formation of militias to fight the Nationalists. It featured takeover of power at local levels by the Spanish workers' organizations and social movements, seizure and reorganization of economic facilities directed by trade union groups and local committees, and widespread implementation of socialist, more narrowly, libertarian socialist and anarchist organizational principles throughout various portions of the Republican zone, primarily Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia, and parts of the Valencian Community.
Much of the economy of Spain was put under worker control; in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%. Factories were run through worker committees, and agrarian areas became collectivized and run as libertarian socialist communes. Many small businesses, such as hotels, barber shops, and restaurants, were also collectivized and managed by their former employees. The revolutionary principles implemented with the revolution continued to evolve as much as the Republican zone existed, until the end of the civil war with the victory of the Nationalists.
The character of the revolution has been described as collectivist and pluralist, carried out by a variety of distinct, often mutually competitive and hostile, political forces and parties; the main forces behind the socioeconomic and political changes were the anarcho-syndicalists of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT, National Confederation of Labor) and the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI, Iberian Anarchist Federation), the revolutionary socialists of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), and also the Marxist party Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM, Workers' Party of Marxist Unification).
The collectivization effort, which took place rather in agriculture than in industry, was primarily organized by the CNT and the UGT; the collectives could be organized wholly by one of the two trade unions, or by both of them as joint organizations, with the POUM, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and sometimes the Republican Left also participating in some areas. Along with collectivization, the revolution produced a variety of other changes, including socialization of industry, which meant workers' control over enterprises or, more broadly, over an entire branch of production; in order to achieve the latter, small production and trade plants were disestablished, and their personnel was concentrated in bigger plants, or grouped together and coordinated into cartels.
The late Second Spanish Republic and the Nationalists under Francisco Franco suppressed the revolution in their respective territories after its third phase in 1937.
On 17 July 1936, the Spanish Coup of July 1936 began. On 18 July, the ongoing military uprising led to a collapse of the republican state (four governments succeeded each other in a single day) and to the coercive structures of the state being dissolved or paralyzed in the places where the coup plotters did not seize power. By then, the CNT had approximately 1,577,000 members and the UGT had 1,447,000 members. On 19 July, the uprising reached Catalonia, where the workers took up arms, stormed the barracks, erected barricades, and eventually defeated the military.
The CNT and UGT unions called a general strike from 19 to 23 July, in response to both the military uprising and the apparent apathy of the state towards it. Despite the fact that there were specific records in previous days of the distribution of weapons among civilian sectors, it was during the General Strike when groups of trade unionists, linked to the convening unions and smaller groups, assaulted many of the weapons depots of the state forces, independently of whether they were in revolt against the government or not.
Already in these first weeks, two groups were established within the anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary sectors: the radical group, fundamentally linked to the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) and through it to the CNT, which understood the phenomenon in which it participated as a traditional revolution; and the possibilist group, made up of members of a more moderate sector of the CNT, which expressed the convenience of participating in a broader front, later called the Popular Antifascist Front (FPA), the result of adding the unions to the electoral coalition Popular Front.
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