Spanish Revolution reading recommendations
This tremendously creative insurgency gained its strength from seventy years of anarchist social and educational activities and organization building, in combination with rural agricultural communal traditions and the spontaneous creativity of ordinary people in their work places and neighborhoods in towns and cities.
In February 1936 leftist and republican candidates joined together to run on a Popular Front slate, and they won a small majority of the seats in the Spanish Republic's Parliament.
Because many urban and rural working class people had lost all faith that the government would help them, many agricultural workers and small landholders in the countryside were involved in massive occupations of the land from February on. Soon, workers in the cities and towns intensified strikes in the factories and workshops, until there were on average 10 to 20 each day by June and July. And this insurgency was not just an economic one; women also formed their own organizations to fight for full equality and social justice. These were the beginnings of a real revolution.
The right-wing military also began plotting a coup from February on. On July 19 they attempted to seize control, and the civil war started.
Thanks to the initiative of anarchists, the military rebels were defeated in many parts of the country, and a full scale social revolution flowered, with land and factory occupations and collectivization in agriculture and a number of industries.
So, in Spain in 1936 there was both a social revolution and a civil war against the military rebels led by Franco.
From the beginning, the anarchists played a major role in these events.
There are many articles and books on the subject. Here, below, are some suggested readings for those particularly interested in anarchist perspectives.
Some Suggested Short Readings about the Spanish Revolution
An article by an anarchist commemorating the 60th anniversary and summarizing events:
"Two weeks that shook Spain"
by Andrew Flood
Workers Solidarity Movement, July 1996
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ws/spain49.html
A second article commemorating the anniversary, this time the 69th, and summarizing events with a little different and equally valuable emphasis:
"A new world in their hearts: The Spanish Revolution (1936-1937)
by the Workers Solidarity Federation, South Africa, 2005
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/138
A third article commemorating the anniversary, this time the 70th, and summarizing events with a little different and equally valuable emphasis:
"A new world in our hearts"
Britain, Anarchist Federation, Organise #66 (2006)
http://www.ainfos.ca/en/ainfos18304.html
For Those Interested in More
and Longer Readings:
A book written by an anarchist and published by an anarchist press:
Collectives In The Spanish Revolution
by Gaston Leval
Freedom Press, London, 1975
http://libcom.org/library/collectives-spanish-revolution-gaston-leval
Another book written by an anarchist and published by an anarchist press:
Lessons of the Spanish Revolution
by Vernon Richards
Freedom Press, 1983 (ISBN: 0900384239)
An article written by a woman who is a feminist scholar very sympathetic to anarchism:
"Models of Revolution: Rural Women and Anarchist Collectivization in Civil War Spain"
by: Martha A. Ackelsberg
http://www.zinedistro.org/zine/135/text
distributed by: Kerspledbedeb, CP 63560, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3W 3H8
email: info@kersplebedeb.com
web: http://www.hersplebedeb.com
This version originally published by Red and Black in Australia at
http://www.geocities.com/loveandrage_2000/ email: landandrage_2000@yahoo.com
A book written by the same woman who is a feminist scholar very sympathetic to anarchism:
Free Women Of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women
by Martha A. Ackelsberg.
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indianopolis, 1991 (ISBN 0-253-30120-3 (alk. paper). - ISBN 0-253-20634-0 (pbk.)
A book written by a person sympathetic to and respectful of anarchists:
Homage to Catalonia
by George Orwell
Penguin: London, 1966.
HTML text at
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0201111.txt
ZIP download at
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011.zip
Another book written by an anarchist and published by an anarchist press:
Anarchists In The Spanish Revolution
by José Peirats
Freedom Press, 1990
ISBN: 0900384530
An article by an anarchist woman:
"The Question of Feminism,"
by Lucía Sánchez Saornil
Solidaridad Obrera, September-October 1935,
in Robert Graham, ed., Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume 1: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE-1939), (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2005).
Another article by an anarchist:
"Industrial Collectivisation during the Spanish Revolution"
by Deirdre Hogan
Ireland, Red & Black Revolution 7, of the Anarchist Workers Solidarity Movement
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/wsm/rbr/rbr7/spain.html
An article written by a well-known and respected scholar who identifies himself with anarchist ideas:
"Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship"
by Noam Chomsky
http://question-everything.mahost.org/Archive/chomskyspain.html
also in American Power and the New Mandarins and in The Chomsky Reader
Another article by an anarchist:
"A Reply to Bryan Caplan's Essay 'The Anarcho-Statists of Spain: An Historical, Economic, and Philosophical Analysis'"
by Iain McKay
Workers Solidarity Movement
Also titled: "Objectivity and Right-Libertarian Scholarship"
http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/spainrebut.html
An article by a feminist scholar sympathetic to anti-authoritarian ideas:
"Politics and protest in the Spanish Anarchist movement: Libertarian women in early twentieth-century Barcelona"
by Rachel Hadfield
Journal of Contemporary History, 3 (2001)
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/history/documents/3._hadfield_politics_and_protest.pdf
These are the people as one. They are the builders of a new Spain... See them as they stand up and stride toward their own redemption. Behold the cascade of possibilities in its splendor... These are freedom's pilgrims, the blood, soil and sweat of Spain. They are in search of the promised land.
-- Augusto Moises Alcrudo, in DdA, 10 May 1936. (Translation of Spanish text in G. Kelsey, Anarcho-syndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State: The CNT In Zaragoza and Aragon 1930-1937, p. vii by Robby Barnes)