The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 Read Online Free PDF Page B

international outcry and to the assassination of Cánovas del Castillo, the organizer of the restoration. A vicious circle of repression and revenge was to follow.
    During the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Marxist wing of socialism, los autoritarios , as their opponents called them, developed much less rapidly. In late 1871 Karl Marx’s son-in-law Paul Lafargue arrived after the fall of the Paris Commune and within a year the basis of Spanish socialism was laid in Madrid. The Marxists’ comparative lack of success was partly due to the emphasis which they placed on the central state. The socialists under Pablo Iglesias, a typesetter who emerged as the leading Spanish Marxist, proceeded cautiously and concentrated on building an organization. Eventually in 1879 they founded the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and formed their General Union of Labour (UGT) in 1888. Iglesias still insisted that the class struggle should be waged in a moderate and evolutionary manner (the PSOE did not formally repudiate the monarchy until 1914). The socialists accused their anarchist rivals of ‘irresponsibility’, but they in turn were seen as heavily bureaucratic and received the nickname of ‘Spanish Prussians’.
    Another reason for the socialists’ slow development in a predominantly agricultural society came from Marx’s contempt for the peasantry and what he called ‘the idiocy of rural life’. He believed that capitalism would be overthrown only by its own creation, the industrial proletariat. However, in Spain, the major part of industry was concentrated in Catalonia, which had become the stronghold of anarchism. As a result the ‘Castilian’ socialists had to look to Bilbao for support among industrial workers. The central mass of Spain and the northern coast were to be their main spheres of influence, while the anarchist following was greatest down the Mediterranean belt, especially in Catalonia and Andalucia.
    From the 1890s until the early 1920s Spain experienced many turbulent years, especially those which coincided with the Russian and German revolutions at the end of the First World War. The main areas of strife were the large landed estates, the latifundia of Andalucia and Estremadura, the mining valleys of Asturias and Vizcaya, and industrial Catalonia. In fin de siècle Barcelona, nouveaux riches factory owners had indulged in triumphant ostentation, both architecturally and socially.
    The cycle of violence between industrial revolt and repression became chaotic at times. The Brigada Social, the secret police, interpreted its role as the guardian of public order in an extraordinary manner, often hiring gangsters to take on the anarchist ‘ pistoleros’ or strike leaders. The first explosion of urban unrest, the Semana Trágica, or ‘Tragic Week’, at the end of July 1909, was not, however, caused by industrial dispute in Barcelona. It was a by-product of the colonial war in Morocco. Riffian tribesmen had wiped out a column of soldiers sent to secure mining concessions bought by the Count de Romanones, one of Alfonso XIII’s advisers. The government called up the reserves; the poor could not afford to buy themselves out of military service and married workers were the most affected. 1 A strong anti-militarist mood had grown up in the years following the Cuban disaster, and the spontaneous reaction in Barcelona to the Morocco crisis was sudden and overwhelming.
    The ‘young barbarians’ who supported the Radical Party leader Alejandro Lerroux went wild and others followed, with church burning and forms of desecration such as the famous incident of a worker dancing with a disinterred nun. Such symbolic violence was the reaction of a people traumatized by intense superstition. Much of the teaching of the Spanish Catholic Church sounded appropriate to the Dark Ages and this mental repression, together with the political role played by ecclesiastical authorities, made the Church rank with the