“What so few of us knew outside of Spain, however, was that the ‘Spanish Civil War’ was in fact a sweeping social revolution by millions of workers and peasants… to reconstruct Spanish society along revolutionary lines” (Dolgoff xii).
The politics of Spain during the Republic and the role anarchism played in the recurring dramas of the fledgling government has been commented upon extensively. This paper will address factors which allowed anarchism to become a successful political force in Spain, and particularly Barcelona, as well as the power of anarcho-syndicalism and its unifying force in revolutionary Catalonia. Daily life in Barcelona during the period between the outbreak of war in 1936 and the fall of Catalonia in 1939 will be examined to demonstrate how anarchism functioned as a political reality for the people of Barcelona.
Spain is the only country in the world where anarchism developed into a major political force (Mintz 2). Catalonia and Barcelona were the epicenter of this Spanish social revolution. Other regions, notably Andalucía, had anarcho-syndicalism among other facets of the anarchist movement, yet the urban workers of Barcelona were able to change the social and political fabric of the city through continuous upheaval brought on by strikes and protests.
Barcelona in 1930 was a city of stark class contrasts. “…illegality was so deeply embedded in the property relations of 1930’s Barcelona that it is difficult to disguise its pronounced class character” (Ealham 104). Public spaces such as the Rambles became magnets for petty crime, mainly the robbery of wealthy appearing pedestrians. Ealham notes that little inter-working class crime was recorded, showing crime was primarily a worry of the bourgeoisie and a r...
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...Rajoy is stripping Spaniards of just that” (BBC web).
Works Cited
Bookchin, Murray. The Spanish anarchists: the heroic years, 1868-1936. New York: Free Life Editions, 1977. Print.
Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish labyrinth: an account of the social and political background of the civil war. 2. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Print.
Dolgoff, Sam. The anarchist collectives: worker's self-management in the Span. Revolution 1936-1939. 1. ed. New York, NY: Free Life Ed., 1974. Print.
Ealham, Chris. Anarchism and the City. ; Revolution and Counter Revolution in Barcelona, 1898-1937. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010. Print.
Mintz, Jerome R. The anarchists of Casas Viejas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Print.
"Spain austerity: Huge Madrid protest turns violent." BBC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. .
Teja, Jesus F. De La. A Revolution Remembered: The Memoirs and Selected Correspondence of Juan N. Seguin. Austin: State House Press, 1991.
Miguel Melendez’s book, “We Took the Streets” provides the reader with an insightful account into the activities of the Young Lords movement established in the latter years of the 1960s and remained active up until the early seventies. The book’s, which is essentially Melendez’s memoir, a recollection of the events, activities, and achievements of the Young Lords. The author effectively presents to the reader a fascinating account of the formation of the Young Lords which was a group of college students from Puerto Rico who came together in a bid to fight for some of the basic rights. As Melendez sums it up, “You either claim your history or lose authority over your future” (Melendez 23). The quote is in itself indicative of the book’s overall
The representation of Don Amador back in control of the mill and returning to his old ways of running the mill, ultimately, represented the end of the worker’s dreams that had been part of the various struggles and accomplishments that led throughout the push to Chile’s road for socialism. Works Cited Winn, Peter. The. Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Print.
As Rand refutes a principal concept of socialism, she illustrates multiple counts of insubordination and social class structures. Socialism’s attempt to remove class structure fails miserably. The most prominent demonstration of rebellion rises from Equality 7-2521 and his emotions and desire for knowledge. After being denied by the Council of Scholars, Equality 7-2521 rashly breaks a window and flees “in a ringing rain of glass” (Rand 75). Equality 7-2521’s actions illustrate the ‘working class’ rebelling against the ‘elitists’ though this society attempted to eliminate social structures. Furthermore, Equality 7-2521 was not alone in rebelling against ‘the brotherhood’, Liberty 5-3000 followed his example. Unsatisfied with her life and the suppression of emotion, she followed Equality 7-2521’s example and “on the night of the day when we heard it, we ran away from the Home of Peasants” (Rand 82). The rebellion of the two members reflects the means of a social rev...
...t Spanish historians of America” (7). People in modern day Argentina will relate with these works of literature because their government system is still under the same idealized form that the past was trying to create. The people living today will see how the conflicts they deal with today regarding social class emerged in the late eighteenth century to nineteenth century. They will realize that the same conflicts they deal with are the same conflicts previous generations dealt with. The vision of the nation these authors illustrate might provide current Argentine citizens with a vision of how the nation of Argentina should be in the twenty-first century and later generations.
The Andes had a legacy of resistance that was unseen in other Spanish occupied place during the colonial period. There were rebellions of various kinds as a continued resistance to conquest. In the “Letters of Insurrection”, an anthology of letters written amongst the indigenous Andean people, between January and March 1781 in what is now known as Bolivia, a statement is made about the power of community-based rebellion. The Letters of Insurrection displays effects of colonization and how the “lesser-known” revolutionaries that lived in reducción towns played a role in weakening colonial powers and creating a place of identification for indigenous people.
Max Gallo’s ‘Spain Under Franco’ is a comprehensive work that attempts to provide an overview of the living conditions and political dynamics in Franco’s Spain. Gallo makes extensive efforts to detail the brutal totalitarian nature of the state by saying that ‘the reprisals and executions which went on long after victory had been won [by Franco in the civil war] mark an undeniable retrogression for any civil society governed by traditional norms of law’.1 In addition, Gallo explains why Spain drifted towards an authoritarian form of government in the aftermath of World War Two instead of a democracy as Italy had done by arguing that ‘there was literally no social stratum capable of envisaging the replacement of Francoism by a democracy of
Petrou, Micheal. “Inside A Revolution.” Maclean’s 127.9 (2014): 20. MAS Ultra - School Edition. Web. 5 Mar. 2014
Birkett, Dea. "Children of the Revolution." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 17 Jan. 2001. Web. 26 May 2014.
On the 18 July 1936, leading Generals of the Spanish Army led a revolt against the democratically elected Popular Front government of Spain. Within days the country was plunged into civil war with the Republicans fighting the insurgent Nationalists for control of the country. The various democracies of the world turned their backs on Spain's plight and even hindered the Republicans by supporting non-intervention in the conflict. However, many people came to help the Republic. Las Brigades Internacionales, the International Brigades, would eventually include almost 40,000 men and women from 53 different countries, from all around the world.
...sted prior to the Mexican Revolution. Susana San Juan is Rulfo’s acknowledgement that the Revolution did provide an opportunity for the lower and middle classes to better them self through urbanization, but Juan Preciado details Rulfo’s insight towards those that chose to remain within the ghost towns that the conflict created. Rulfo uses these characters in combination to reveal the shortcomings of the Revolution, mainly its failures to lift the entire middle and lower class out of poverty. He believes that all that the Revolution accomplished was to provide an escape for these groups of people, not the redistribution of land that was initially envisioned.
This book can be given a measure of credibility based upon the education that Huffine brings to the table. Furthermore, Huffine’s military and devoted energy as an editor for Alamo de Parras show his dedication to providing accurate information. His military background perhaps explains the extensive tactical breakdown of both the Alamo and San Jacinto found in the book. Leading off from this book, one might be able to further research the motivating factors to why Santa Ana switched political roles so
In the Carpenter’s Pencil, Herbal, a Nationalist guard, narrates the traumatic story of the Civil War through the account of a Republican doctor, Daniel Da Barcas, to Maria Davisitaçåo, a Portuguese-speaking African prostitute. This narrative counteracts the Spanish collective memory of rebel Galicia (Hirsch, 109) by vindicating the memory of Galician resistance, it also fuels the collective memory of Republican values as progressive and enlightened and Nationalists ones as conservative and ruthless, while at the same time providing an alternative to the collective memory of the triumphant Rebels through illustrating some of the atrocities committed by the Nationalists against the Republicans in Galicia, and the consequent guilt that some Rebels
..., "Major Problems In Mexican American History" The Mexican Immigrant Experience, 1917-1928, Zaragosa Vargas (233)
Franco’s regime came to power during the Spanish Civil War, eliminating members that did not support the regime’s movement. The military rebellion and repression led by Franco and the Falangist “was not carried out directly by the army, but by the Civil Guard and