The Spanish Civil War Read Online Free PDF Page B

aiming at revolution: their programme provided for the end of the monarchy; a seven-hour working day; the abolition of the army and its substitution by a militia; separation of church and state; nationalization of land; the closure of monasteries and nunneries; and, important in 1917, no declaration of war unless there were a plebiscite. 1
    Dato took a firm stand. He first defined a railway strike as a threat to the state and treated it accordingly (the government had encouraged the railway companies to take a hard line). Playing on the knowledge that the
junteros
also opposed any alteration of the social order, and that the Catalan progressive bourgeoisie, however truculent, desired anything rather than revolution, the government met the general strike with force.
    The socialists thought that for once they had made a satisfactory alliance with the anarchists, as with some politicians of the Centre. But their tactics had not been well coordinated, and the strike failed. The army directed the subsequent repression, the
junteros
being deaf to the appeals of socialists. Seventy people were killed (mostly in Barcelona,fighting to keep, or to prevent, the trams running), and the Catalan Lliga, shaken by the upheaval for which they had been partly responsible, agreed to participate in a coalition government, led by Maura, which bought off the
junteros
with promotions. The unofficial parliamentary assembly did meet again, in Madrid, but the mood was cautious: it called for a constituent Cortes to rewrite the constitution and was not heard of again. Cambó now entered the government as minister of development. It was his great opportunity and he showed himself as able a planner as he had been a money-maker. But the administration did not last. Nor did any other. For nearly five years, a series of conservative governments failed even to resolve quarrels in the conservative party. They were quite unable to deal with the consequences of a post-war economic recession accompanied by continuing setbacks in Morocco and working-class violence in both Andalusia and Barcelona. The wonder is not that the constitution was overthrown in the end, but that it lasted as long as it did in a country where military intervention had occurred so often. Perhaps it did not last really after 1917: a democracy can hardly be said to exist if several provinces are only kept from revolution by the brutality of the civil guard, 1 and the largest industrial city from civil war by counter-terrorism sponsored by industrialists, and winked at by the police.
    Perhaps the world economic situation was partly to blame. During the war, Spanish employers had expanded their enterprises, but had now to contract. They would fight labour now, since there was a glut of workers; in the war, there had been a shortage. But in the clash of labour and capital, between 1917 and 1923, a class war was to be seen which often came close to outright conflict, and over issues other than economic: employers believed themselves threatened by bankruptcy if not revolution, the anarchists believed that they were on the brink of the millennium. Since, whatever the views of the central government, the local military authorities usually agreed with the employers, and often arrested strikers, the character of the conflict became more and more violent. The rule of General Martínez Anido (previously known as a sanguinary governor in Melilla) as civil governor of Barcelona from 1920 to 1922 was ruthless: a type of repression not seen in Spain for generations. He gave support to the
sindicatos libres,
free syndicates,which seemed more and more an employers’ union of strike breakers, though they had some backing from Catholic social reformers. Gunmen infiltrated them, and terrorism flourished among the anarchists. In other parts of Spain, there were similar tragic events: in Andalusia, anarchist committees seized municipal governments, landowners left, increased wages were won; but the army overcame