The Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas Read Free Book Online Page B

radical socialists, and 27 members of Azaña’s Republican Action party; 89 radicals, following Lerroux; and 27 right republicans, following Alcalá Zamora. In addition, there were elected 33 members of the Catalan Esquerra and 16 Galician nationalists. All these could be expected to vote generally with the government. 1 Against these, the non-republican Right could muster only 57 members, despite evidence that the old
caciques
were still often strong enough to exercise an improper influence. The monarchist partyseemed ‘nothing but an incitement to riots’. 1 Many agricultural workers who might have been expected to have been indifferent to the republic had been won to it by the new land legislation. 2 The Catholics’ National Action won only six seats. The Right had been taken by surprise by the fall of the monarchy, the old leaders could not agree with each other as to what policy to follow, and such new right-wing leaders as were already in the wings of Spanish politics had as yet no following. Had it not been for the government’s minor anti-clerical decrees during the early summer, opposition might not have got under way for some years. But these included such things as a ban on showing images of saints in schoolrooms, on the ludicrous ground that the kissing of such objects was insanitary; and the minister of education was allowed to confiscate artistic objects from churches if there were danger of their deterioration. These pinpricks wounded, but did not injure. Meantime, the new constituent Assembly was in many ways a gathering of individuals, more than of parties. Only the socialists were an organized movement. The other republican groups were gatherings of friends. There were numerous independent members such as Ortega, Unamuno and Dr Marañón, the ‘founders’ of the republic.
    The government’s confidence was reduced by a series of strikes organized by the anarchists in July and August. In Barcelona, strikers, besieged in a house in the Calle de Mercaders, said they would not give in except to regular soldiers. A unit arrived and the men surrendered; they were shortly machine-gunned by the forces of order. 3 Three deaths also occurred during a general strike in San Sebastián. The government even called on the artillery to crush a general strike in Seville, arising from a telephone strike. No less than thirty anarchists, including some gunmen, were killed and two hundred wounded. If they had reacted too slowly to the burning of the
conventos,
the government had now reacted too strongly.
    Animosity between the anarchists and socialists was, however, stilled that summer by the former’s own dissensions. The opponents of the FAI’s aspirations to élite leadership published in August a manifesto, signed by thirty leading anarchists (thereafter known as the
treintistas
). The FAI were guilty, they said,
of developing an over-simplified concept of revolution … which would hand us over to republican fascism … The revolution does not trust exclusively in the audacity of a more or less courageous minority, but instead it seeks to be a movement of the whole working class marching towards its final liberation, which alone will decide the character and precise moment for the revolution. 1
    The FAI were strong enough to resist this criticism and even succeeded in expelling the
treintistas
from the CNT. This victory was one of youth against middle-age: most
FAIistas
were in their twenties or thirties, most
treintistas
older. Some of the
treintistas
never rejoined the movement; Angel Pestaña, for example, formed a small splinter party which never gathered any momentum. Others, such as Roldán Cortada in Barcelona, became communists.
    By the autumn of 1931, a committee of the Cortes had, meantime, prepared a draft constitution. Here the government (or, rather, the drafters) blundered. They identified the new régime with their own political views. Thus the draft constitution began by announcing, ‘Spain is a