Spains Popular Front 1934-37

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The Spanish Popular Front,

Gabriel Jackson

TheFrente

Popular which won the Spanish parliamentary elec-tions of February 1936 was a loose coalition of parties ranging incharacter from the liberal Republicans through the Socialistparty to the communists (both Stalinist and anti-Stalinist) on thefar left. From an international standpoint, the term 'PopularFront' was created and publicized by the Moscow convention ofthe world communist parties (the Third International) in thesummer of 1935. The policy aimed at grouping all democraticand left forces, both bourgeois and Marxist, in an alliance to stop

the spread of fascism; and the German disaster of 1933, in whichHitler had triumphed easily over a disunited left, was in the mindsof all those who embraced the idea of the Popular Front in westernEurope. But if the phrase, and the formal policy, date properlyfrom the year 1935, the actual development of the componentalliances began, in Spain, early in the year 1934; and an under-standing of the forces at work requires a brief glance at liberal andworking-class politics in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Most middle-class liberals had hoped for the progressiveevolution of the parliamentary monarchy. Until 1923 the greaterfreedom won by the press, increasing representation of left liberalsand socialists in the Cortes, heavier pressure for school buildingand for a measure of land reform, and a gradually rising standardof living, had given substance to those hopes. But the establish-ment in I923 of the quasi-fascist dictatorship of General MiguelPrirno de Rivera profoundly disillusioned the liberals, especially asthe General had come to power with the direct connivance of the

King. Between 1923 and 1931 a high proportion of professionalmen, and most notably of university intellectuals, became republi-cans; not out of great enthusiasm for the republican form ofgovernment, but out of disgust with the monarchy and outrage

2 I





T H E S P A N I S H P O P U L A R FRONT, 1934-7

Some anarchists voted for republican candidates in 1931, prin-cipally to reduce the relative influence of the socialists. But from

the early summer of 1931 the C N T was conducting both indus-trial and rural strikes clearly intended to harass the weak newregime.

For two and a half years, from April 1931 to October 1933, theSecond Spanish Republic was governed by a Republican-Socialistcoalition. Successive cabinets, under the leadership of ManuelAzaiia, initiated the separation of church and state, a massive

programme of school building, the g ranting of regional autonom yto the province of Catalonia, and the restructuring of the ineffi-cient and politically dangerous army. But the coalition was notab lyunable to make sufficient progress on land reform, and the anar-chist-sponsored strikes frequently provoked excessive policerepression. Hence the landless peasants rapidly lost their momen-tary faith in the Republic, and the socialists of both the middle-class and the trade-union variety became disillusioned with agovernm ent that seemed as hostile as any past government to the

desires of the Spanish worker. T h e Socialists therefore withdrewfrom the coalition before the parliamentary elections of Novem ber1933, and the anarchists boycotted the voting entirely. T h e severalsmall republican parties and the Socialists went down to separatedefeat, and governing power passed into the hands of a centre-right coalition led by Alejandro Lerroux: a coalition whoseannounced aim was to halt or reverse the reforms of the previoustwo years. I n addition, the largest and most militant single group

within the new coalition was a Confederation of AutonomousRight parties, the CEDA, whose leader, Gil Robles, was anadmirer of the Austrian dictator Dollfuss. T h u s it appeared to theliberal middle class and to the workers as though a variety ofclerical fascism might soon be established in Spain, and thespecific origins of the Popular Fron t are to be found in thereactions of the liberal and left parties to their defeat in Novem ber

1933.Ironically enough , the anarchists were the first to show that they

had realized the self-defeating nature of their abstention in theCortes election. Whereas the right-wing Lliga cafalana had wonthe majority of Catalan seats in the Cortes election of November1933, the moderately leftist Esquerra of Luis Companys won the

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CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

provincial elections of the following January for the parliament ofthe new autonomous government of Catalonia, the Generalitat.

Anarchist votes for the Esquerra spelled the difference betweenrightist victory in the one case and leftist victory in the other.January 1934 also witnessed the formation of the Aliunza Obrera(Workers Alliance) under the dual leadership of Largo Caballeroand Joaquin Maurin. The Alianza represented a rapprochementbetween the socialist trade union chief and former Minister ofLabour, and the militant, anti-Stalinist revolutionary leadersAndrCs Nin and Joaquin Maurin, whose small party was strong in

LCrida, and ideologically significant in the Asturias. During 1934Caballero evolved rapidly from a trade union official into a revo-lutionary Marxist, and for tactical reasons the minuscule Com-munist party also joined the Alianza despite the presence of Ninand Maurin.

For most of their history the C N T and the U G T had beenbitter rivals, but they now co-operated in a major Catalan powerplant of January 1934, and shortly thereafter in the CNT-ledgeneral strike which tied up the city of Saragossa in March.

During the Azaiia period the UG T had expanded rapidly its newFederation of Land Workers. Socialist organization of the instinc-tively anarchist rural proletariat inevitably brought about co-operation as well as rivalry between U G T and C N T elements.The peasants' strike of June 1934 was a practical failure, but itsorganization, its village demonstrations, and the severe governmentrepression created many cordial contacts among U G T func-tionaries, Socialist deputies, and local peasant leaders, thereby

foreshadowing the pattern of the Popular Front. Also, during1934, UGT-sponsored collectives were quietly established onuncultivated estates in the provinces of Ciudad Real, Toledo,JaCn, and Badajoz. The Lerroux government, anxious to avoid anyunnecessary exacerbation of the situation in the countryside,tolerated these collectives. Their success was publicized in 1935in Largo Caballero's newspaper Cluridad, and their example didmuch to promote socialist-anarchist co-operation during thePopular Front election and the Civil War.

A partial realignment of liberal republican groups also tookplace in early 1934. The party of Manuel Azaiia, strong among theintellectuals and civil servants of Madrid, fused with the somewhatsimilar party led by Marcelino Domingo in Barcelona. In May



THE SPANISH POPULAR FRONT, 1934-7

1934 the Sevillian republican and prominent freemason, DiegoMartinez Barrio, broke with Alejandro Lerroux because of the

latter's appeasement of the church and the monarchists, andformed a small party of his own. All these groups maintainedfriendly relations with the Esquerra, the left-liberal governingparty in autonomous Catalonia; in addition the former PrimeMinister, Azaiia, and the parliamentary socialist leader Prieto,began immediately after the November Cortes election to advocatea renewal of the Republican-Socialist coalition. Such a renewalwas not possible in 1934 because of the adamant opposition of

Largo Caballero, but parallel to the beginnings of UGT-CNTco-operation one can also discern in the politics of 1934 an in-creasing readiness for co-operation on the part of liberal republi-cans, the Catalan Esquerra, and the parliamentary Socialists.

The government crisis of I October 1934, and the ensuingrevolt of the Asturian miners, created in action almost preciselythat alliance of middle-class and working-class forces which waslater to be called the Popular Front. When the President of theRepublic, AlcalCZamora, announced his intention to permit the

militantly right-wing C E DA to enter the cabinet, republican andsocialist leaders responded unanimously that such a move couldonly lead to the establishment of fascism in Spain. Azafia andMartinez Barrio were joined by the conservative Catholic repub-lican Miguel Maura in issuing a solemn warning to the President.The parliamentary Socialists likewise indicated the unaccepta-bility of a government including Gil Robles. The U G T called fora general strike to put teeth into the verbal warnings of the parlia-

mentary leaders.For a variety of reasons the hastily planned general strike was a

failure everywhere except in the northern mining province ofAsturias. There the local strike committees included socialists ofboth the parliamentary and revolutionary factions, together withcommunists, anarchists, and left communists of the Nin-Maurinpersuasion. Chanting 'Unibn, Hermanos Proletarios', the U H Pslogan of later Civil War fame, the revolutionaries occupiedseveral mining towns, and a part of the provincial capital, Oviedo.For one memorable week, 5-12 October, the sterile ideological andpersonal squabbles of the left gave way to an atmosphere of com-radely co-operation in the cause of the revolution. The workersadministered municipal services with great care, rationed food and

25




medicines, and reassured the frightened m iddle class. For itswilling participants the A sturian 'commune' offered a brief fore-

taste of what revolutionary discipline would mean in the futuregeneral transformation of s0ciety.l The defeat of that communewas accomplished by Moors and Foreign Legionaries broughtover from Africa because the government feared that peninsularconscript troops might refuse to fire on the miners. T h e repressionwas accompanied by sadistic treatment of military prisoners, andwas extended to th e country as a whole in th e form of suspension ofSocialist municipal councils, press censorship, and the corralling

of some 30,000 political prisoners who had nothing whatever to dowith the events in Asturias. Inside the jails university students,liberal lawyers, and militant workers came to know each other andto develop a feeling of solidarity against their oppressors. In theminds of the European left generally the Asturian epic soon helda place of honour com parable to tha t of the Paris Com mune.

Events in Catalonia, although much less dramatic than those of theAsturias, contributed to the general mood of indignation and

political disaffection. For the government of Luis Companys, asfor the left all over Spain, the prospect of C E D A participation inthe cabinet seemed to portend fascism. On the night of 6 OctoberCompanys, acting in the framework of a presumed general strikethroughout the country, and fearful of being outflanked by theseparatist wing of his own party, declared the independence of'the Catalan state within the federal Spanish republicY.2 hro ugh-out the long debates preceding the passage of the 1932Statu te of

Autonomy, conservatives had been repeatedly assured that Spainwas a unitary, not a federal republic, and that regional autonomywould in no way infringe the sovereignty of the Spanish state.Companys' declaration, although intended to deflate the separatistmovement, represented a direct challenge to the constitution andto the conservative government of Madrid. On direct orders fromPrime Minister Lerroux, the Generalitat was surrounded by

1 For the Asturian revolt as seen by idealistic left participants, see Manuel

Grossi, L a insurreccidn de Asturias (Barcelona, 1935); Jose Cane1 (pseud.),

Octubre rojo en Asturias (Madrid, 1935); Fernando Solano Palacio, La tragediadel norte (Barcelona, 1 9 3 8 ) ; also the impressions of a liberal Catholic law pro-

fessor in Alfredo Mendizkbal, d u x origi~zesd'une trage'die (Paris, 1937), 200 ff.

2 Emique de Angulo, Diez horas de estat catald. (Barcelona, 1935), 253 for

the words of Companys, passim for entire 5-6 October episode; La Vanguardia ,28-9 May 1935, for trial testimony of the Generalitat leaders.




troops, and on the morning of 7 October, after brief street fighting,the entire Companys cabinet was imprisoned and the autonomous

government indefinitely suspended.The early months of 1935witnessed the political trials of both

the Generalitat and the Asturian leaders. In addition, the govern-ment attempted twice in the Cortes to pin the 'moral responsibility'for both the Catalan and Asturian events on the shoulders of theleft republican leader Manuel Azaiia. Thus Spanish public opinionof both the right and the left learned to identify under a singlefeared or admired heading the combined causes of proletarianrevolution, moderate socialism, Catalan autonomy, and left-of-centre republicanism. While the government managed throughpress censorship and police repression to maintain public order,public opinion became ever more polarized. Paramilitary youthorganizations affiliated with the Socialist party, the CEDA, andthe new, openly fascist Falange, all paraded on Sundays on the out-skirts of Spain's main cities, and conducted what we would nowcall urban guerrilla warfare in the working-class districts and nearthe universities. At the same time bitter personal quarrels within

the right, and several ludicrous financial scandals, made parlia-mentary government impossible. On 14 December the Presidentnamed the centrist leaderPortela Valladares Prime Minister for theexpress purpose of conducting new Cortes elections. Portela liftedpress censorship immediately, then on 7 January 1936 dissolvedthe Cortes, and announced 16 February as the date for the newelections.

By this time the Communist International had launched the

slogan of the Popular Front to fight fascism, and the idea had beenreceived enthusiastically by almost all sectors of anti-fascistopinion in western Europe and the Americas. The specific pactcreating the Spanish Popular Front was signed on 15 January.The parties thereto were the Republican Left, which fused theformer small groups led by Azaiia, Marcelino Domingo, and theGalician autonomist Santiago Casares Quiroga; the RepublicanUnion of Diego Martinez Barrio; the Esquerra of Luis Companys;the Socialist and Communist parties; the small Syndicalist party of

Angel Pestafia; and the small anti-Stalinist Communist party ofAndrCs Nin and Joaquin Maurin. The parties agreed in advanceon a single electoral list for each constituency, and likewise on theproportion of seats which would go to each in case of victory.

27




They also agreed on the following minimum programme: fullamnesty for the political prisoners of the Catalan and Asturian

revolts; resumption of the secular, educational, military, andregional policies of the Republican-Socialist governm ent of 1931-1933; immediate restoration of the Catalan autonomous govern-ment; and rapid land reform. Because of the new revolutionaryconvictions of Largo Caballero, the Socialist party refused toparticipate in the future government. T hu s the Popular F ront pactproposed , in effect, a sligh tly more rad ical set of policies (especiallyin the key matter of land reform) than had prevailed under the

Republican-Socialist coalition, and at the same time specified tha tbourgeois republicans alone would form th e government.

One of the major justifications offered for the military revoltof 18 July 1936, and repeated ever since by Franco's regime,has been the claim that the Popular Fro nt elections were fraudu-lent. It is therefore of particular importance to understand theconditions in which those elections took place, and the results theyyielded. By lifting censorship the government guaranteed full

freedom of debate for the six weeks campaign. The left Socialistand Communist newspapers all resumed publication. All sectorsof the press concentrated on the Asturian revolt and its aftermath,but every domestic issue of Spanish politics was discussed, as wellas the nature of both the fascist regimes in Italy, Austria, andGermany, and th e collective agriculture and th e five year plans ofthe Soviet Union. T h e provincial governors responsible for publicorder had all been appointed by the centre-right government;

left-wing municipal councils had been suspended; and the prin-cipal identifiable leftist agitators were still in jail. I n any event,police reports of the time suggest that there was somewhat lessviolence tha n during the elections of 1933.

Parliamentary government under the Spanish monarchy, as incontemporary France and Italy, had been made very difficult bythe large num ber of personalists splinter parties represented in theCortes. The republican electoral law of 1931 had been designedspecifically to encourage mass parties and coalition lists. Thus,in any given electoral district, the party gaining 50 + pe r cent of thevotes would win 80 per cent of the seats. The election of 1936was a contest between a conservative coalition whose mass basewas the CEDA and whose main leader was G il Robles; and a left

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coalition whose mass base was the Socialist party, and whose out-standing personal leaders were Manuel Azaiia and Francisco

Largo Caballero. In 52 out of Spain's 70 electoral districts, onlythe centre-right and the Popular Front coalition lists appeared onthe ballot. All parties were represented in the vote counting.Portela received telegrams of congratulation on the honesty andpeacefulness of the polling from persons of the most diversepolitical convictions; the left victory was quickly conceded, andwithin a few days the conservative press was interpreting itsdefeat in terms of issues and public feelings, not fraud.

The results were challenged in several provinces, but even if allthe contested seats had been awarded to the losers, the PopularFront victory was incontestable. Some 4,000,000 persons voted forthe centre-right list, some 4,800,ooo for the left, about 450,000 forthe independent centre led by Portela Valladares. Voter participa-tion was higher than in any previous election, with about 67 percent of the registered voters actually going to the polls. In absoluteterms, both right and left increased their vote in relation to the1933 election: the right moving up from 27 to 29 per cent of the

registered voters, the left from 20 to 35 per cent. The overallmargin of 800,ooo votes represents for the most part anarchistvotes. In 1933 the anarchists had abstained. In 1936 they did notjoin the Popular Front pact, but in the final days of the campaigntheir leaders urged them to vote in order to win amnesty for theircomrades in prison. Subtraction of the anarchist vote from theleft total also indicates that the Monarchist-CEDA forces and theRepublican-Socialist coalition were virtually equal in strength.

It was thus psychologically very difficult for the losers to acceptthe operation of the electoral law which gave the Popular Frontsome 270 out of 470 Cortes seats.

In accordance with the advance agreements as to proportion, theSocialist party received 89 seats, the Azaiia republicans 84, theparty of Martinez Barrio 37, and Esquerra 21, the Communistparty 16, the Pestaiia and Nin-Maurin parties one each. Relativeto their voting strength, the Azaiia and Martinez Barrio partiescertainly gained by this arrangement. On the other hand the smallrepublican groups contained a higher proportion of civil servantsand professional men than did the other Popular Front parties,and the co-operation of the liberal middle class was crucial to theanti-fascist cause. The geography of the results is also noteworthy.

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T h e left was strongest in th e peripheral areas: Catalonia, Galicia,an d Andalusia; an d it won in all cities of over 200,000 population.

T h e right was strongest in th e agricultural heartland: Le6n,Navarre, the two Castiles, and the meseta regions of Aragon.T h e Popular F ront w on in the Asturias, bu t by a margin of only20,000 out of 435,000 votes.3

O n I 8 Feb ruary M anue l Azaiia took office as Prim e M inister andproceeded, according to the terms of the Popular Front pact, toname an entirely republican cabinet. On 22 February th e 30,000political prisoners were amnestied, and on the following day

payment of rents was suspended in Extremadura and Andalusiaas a first step towards more rapid land reform. The suspendedSocialist municipal governments were restored to office, and theCompanys government in Catalonia resumed its functions. Thepresumably most dangerous generals were reassigned to presum-ably harmless posts: General Francisco Franco to the CanaryIslands, General Ma nuel Goded to the Balearics.

Thus the new government began rapidly to fulfil its mostim po rtan t pledges. But after noting these initial moves it becomes

difficult to say just what, in the hectic spring of 1936 and in thefirst year of the Civil War, should be attributed to the PopularFront. The disparate coalition of middle class and proletarian,democratic and authoritarian, Marxist and anarchist elementshad been united for electoral purposes only. By virtue of itspurely middle-class repub lican composition the cabinet could notrepresen t th e majority of its electors. T h e revolutionary (Caballero)wing of the Socialist party and the anarchists were equally deter-

mined to push far beyond the minimum reformist programmeto which th e Azaiia government was pledged. T h e left Socialists,echoed in this by the communists, were talking about Azaiia asth e 'Kerensky', and L argo Caballero as the 'Lenin' of th e Spanishrevolution. The anarchists hoped that regional autonomy andrapid land reform would very soon lead to the establishment of adecentralized, non-authoritarian form of society, the comz~nismo

libertario of which they had dreamed since the late nineteenth

century. Both large revolutionary groups were prepared to useextra-legal tactics. They held endless victory parades, fought

3 For the most detailed and accurate analyses of the election, see Jose Venegas,La s elecciones del frente popular (Buenos Aires, 1g4z), and Jean Bkcarud, L adeuxiime ripublique espagnole (Paris, 1962), 61-74.




street skirmishes with right-wing youth organizations, engaged inpolitically motivated strikes (sometimes directed against each

other), and their fringe elements took to sporadic church burning.The republican government was completely out of touch with, andunable to discipline, the left socialist and anarchist masses.

At the same time the right was preparing actively to overturn agovernment whose legitimacy it could not accept. The star of Gil

Robles, civilian-minded, and uncommitted as to whether Spaincould survive as a democratic republic, waned; and in its placerose that of Calvo Sotelo, royalist, authoritarian, and generallyflattering in his attitude towards the military. Monarchists andarmy officers plotted openly, and several dozen political assassina-tions, committed both by the right and the left, occurred duringthe spring. Amidst rumours of military coups and revolutionaryseizures of power Spain drifted towards civil war. The rising of 18July of course destroyed the Popular Front in the area won by themilitary, whereas in the republican zone its ideals and its organiza-tional components played a role until May 1937. The followingparagraphs attempt to distinguish as far as possible those events

which can be properly related to the Popular Front.

In April 1936 President Alcali-Zamora was dismissed from office,technically because he was judged to have exceeded his authorityin dissolving the Cortes in December 1935, actually because theentire left now hated him as a pettifogging Catholic ex-monarchist.The Popular Front deputies voted unanimously for his removal,and likewise they voted unanimously for Manuel Azaiia as the new

President. But the motives of the deputies were by no meansidentical. The Republicans and Socialists hoped to strengthen theRepublic by elevating Azaiia to the Presidency and having himthen name as Prime Minister the very able, energetic, and widelyadmired Indalecio Prieto. Such a combination might well havecalmed the fears of the middle class and won the grudging respectof the military. But the left Socialists had helped to elevate Azaiiato a largely ceremonial office in order to be rid of the only potentiallystrong republican prime minister, and they vetoed any plan where-

by Prieto might have stepped into Azaiia's place. Though manyof them later were to regret their action, it is hard to discern, inthe context of April 1936, any other real motive than to weaken theRepublic in order to make way for the eventual revolution. In any




case the dismissal of Alcali-Zamora was an action of the united

Popular Front, and the refusal of the Socialist party to allow

Prieto to become Prime Minister revealed the deep divergencebetween the moderate and revolutionary supporters of the Front.

The other acts of the spring of 1936 which can be properly

attributed to the Popular Front were the various strike settlements

favourable to the U G T and C N T unions, and the endorsement by

the government of the land seizures in Extremadura.4 In both

these instances the middle-class liberals in the government and

the proletarian leaders in city and countryside co-operated within

the general scope of the Popular Front programme, and in a spiritof great cordiality and spontaneity.

The left wing of the Popular Front played a considerable role in

the first days of the Civil War. The military had plotted simul-

taneous risings for all the main cities in Spain, and had these

risings succeeded, the transition from weak civilian to strong

military government might have occurred as smoothly as in 1923

or in the classic nineteenth century pronunciamientos. But in

Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia, the urban masses, led by a

handful of leftist officers, prevented the victory of the military

revolt. With few arms, and at the cost of heavy casualties, they

captured the barracks and forced the surrender of the rebel officers

in each of these key cities. I t is conceivable that some such

resistance to a military putsch would have taken place in any case,

but the organizational framework of the Popular Front, loose as it

was, and especially its moral klan, made for rapid, confident

co-operation and a spirit of common sacrifice. Similarly the

hastily organized militias which held the Sierra Guadarrama frontagainst the advance of General Mola, the units which marched

from Barcelona to the outskirts of Huesca and Saragossa, the

militias which defeated the rising in Toledo and then besieged the

Alcizar, and those which prevented General Queipo de Llano

from controlling eastern Andalusia, were all militias in which

ardent, politically conscious left republicans, socialists, com-

munists, and anarchists carried into the war a camaraderie and a

high morale which had been created during the aftermath of theAsturian revolt and the Popular Front campaign.

4 Econon~icaEspaFiola (March 1936), 323-7; El Sol, 3, 12, 24 June and

7 July 1936; The New York Times, 9 July 1936 for strike news. El Sol, 4March, 12, 18April, 16, 17 uly 1936 for land seizures; also the Ph.D. thesis

of Edward Malefakis on land reform in Spain, to be published shortly.



THE SPANISH POPU LA R FRONT, 1934-7

Although the republican government of Josi Giral had dis-tributed arms to the masses in late July, it was clear that no

purely bourgeois government would be able to prosecute the warvigorously against the generals. On 4 September Largo Caballerobecame Prime Minister. Six months earlier his followers had beenconfidently anticipating the eventual replacement of the bourgeoisrepublic by a proletarian dictatorship. But as wartime PrimeMinister Caballero personified as did no other single leader theSpanish Popular Front. His first cabinet included six socialists(of both the parliamentary and the revolutionary type), four

republicans, two communists, one member of the Catalan Esquerra,and one Basque nationalist. On 4 November he added to thisgovernment four anarcho-syndicalists.

Caballero was thus the only man to preside over a cabinet repre-senting all elements of the Popular Front: middle class, regional,Marxist, and anarchist. His revolutionary growlings of theprevious year had no bearing on his conduct as premier. He workedhard and successfully to end the leftist terrorism which had markedthe first three months of the Civil War in the republican zone.

Against the strong pressure of the Communist party and its Sovietadvisers, he defended the right to free expression and politicalactivity of all parties to the Popular Front. General Jose AsensioTorrado, whom he appointed to command the armies on theMadrid front, was responsible for the military training and even-handed political treatment which created that republican armythat was to give so fine an account of itself during the battles of theJarama and Guadalajara in early 1937. Largo gave his personal

backing to the efforts of the Basque Minister Manuel de Irujoto improve prison conditions and restore the rights of defendantsin the courts of the republican zone.

Thus Caballero, whatever his shortcomings as a war leader,represented the best of the Popular Front in both its bourgeois andproletarian aspects. He could not, however, bridge the wideninggap between the right socialists and the communists on the onehand, and the left socialists and anarchists on the other. The

former wished to reassure the middle class and hoped to gain thesupport of the Western democratic powers by restoring an en-tirely bourgeois state and avoiding even the mildest measure ofsocialization. The latter felt that the war could be won, and wouldonly be worth winning, if simultaneously there were a large

33 3



C O N T E M P O R A R Y H I S T O R Y

measure of collectivization and continuing freedom of revolu-tionary propaganda both in the army and behind the lines. The

issue came to a head in the Barcelona street fighting of May 1937,familiar to all readers of George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia,and in the cabinet crisis of the same month which resulted in thereplacement of Largo Caballero by Juan Negrin.5 Since the latter'sgovernment included neither left socialists nor anarchists, sinceit repealed the revolutionary anarchist measures which had beenintroduced in parts of Catalonia and Aragon, and since it wasdistinctly unfriendly to the regional government of Catalonia,May 1937 can be reasonably taken as the terminal date for themeaningful existence of the Popular Front. The Republic foughton for twenty-two long months, and its armies were composed ofmen who had supported the Popular Front. But political controlrested increasingly with the Communist party and those amongthe right socialists who backed Negrin personally. Neither thefollowers of Prieto, nor those of Largo Caballero, nor the anar-chists retained any leadership role. I t seems only logical, therefore,to say that the republican government was no longer a Popular

Front government.

Thus the Spanish Popular Front consisted of a broad, internallydisparate, morally fervent coalition of anti-fascist forces. Thetrend towards such a coalition was clear in both liberal republicanand socialist ranks during the year 1934. The emotional impetus,the militant commitment of the bourgeois democratic left, and theproletarian mystique all grew out of the Asturian revolution of

October 1934. When the Communist International launched theofficial Popular Front policy in the summer of 1935 it was, in theSpanish context, simply supplying an appropriate label for analready existing movement. At the same time there were alwayssevere tensions within the anti-fascist coalition: fundamentaldifferences of purpose between gradualists and revolutionaries,Marxists and anarchists, U G T unions and C N T unions. Whilethey were closely united in the struggle against Lerroux and GilRobles, and in their condemnation of Italian and German fascism,they were always openly disunited as to ideology, tactics, and long-

s For the best brief general account of the complex May crisis see PierreBrouk and Emile Tkmime, La rholution et la guerre d'Espagne (Paris, 1961),

239-68.



THE S P A N I S H P O P U L A R FRONT, 1934-7

range programmes. The electoral victory of February 1936 wasthe great reward of their anti-fascist unity, but their inner con-

flicts largely prevented Azaiia, and later Casares Quiroga, fromgoverning effectively between February and July. T h e m ilitaryrising of 18 July automatically recreated th e un ity of the PopularFront, and that unity played a significant part in saving the largecities, in providing the first militias to defend the Republic in thefield, and later in supplying men of high morale and politicalconsciousness to the new republican army. The exigencies ofinternational politics, and unresolved conflicts over the conduct

of both war and civilian government in the republican zone,destroyed the Popular Fron t as an effective political force by mid-

1937.Riven by ideological conflicts, the Popular Front could not

convert its successful electoral coalition into a workable governingcoalition, but through its ardent sense of commitment to a morehopeful future, and through its transcendence of the normal classlines of European politics, it created a powerful mystique whichstill survives. During the second world war Spanish refugees were

prominent in the French maquis, and veterans of the InternationalBrigades were among the p rincipal underground leaders in C entraland Eastern Europe. The ideals and the camaraderie of theSpanish Popular Front reappeared in the broad-based Yugoslavregime of Marshal Tito , in the spontaneous political agitation andprogrammes of the 'Polish October' of 1956, the ill-fated Hun-garian resistance of that same year, and the Czechoslovak reformprogramme sf 1968. In the West, a faint family resemblance to

the Spanish Popular Fro nt can be traced in the New Left, in theirstrong negative unity (against imperialism and racism), in theiraim to embrace both the liberal middle class and the workers, intheir moral ardour, and in their latent conflicts over Marxist andanarchist doctrines, and over 'confrontation' tactics. Perhaps inthe long run the spiritual example of the Popular Frost will bemore significant than its specific successes and failures in the years

1934-7-

Documents

Spains Popular Front 1934-37