On Orwell, Anarchism and the Spanish Civil War

‘A jubilant atmosphere of revolution had taken hold everywhere, and it seemed like there would finally be a successful workers’ state.’

Recently, I read Orwell’s book, ‘A Homage to Catalonia’, about his experiences fighting in the left wing militias against Franco. The book itself is very well written and engaging, and not overly long either, but the most interesting thing about it is what it reveals about the war, Catalonia, the left and how it has changed from then to now.

I myself have been to Barcelona, if only briefly, and while I was there did spend a decent amount of time among the areas that are more left wing. Barcelona is a strange city and I wish I had known far more of its history and culture when I visited it.

Barcelona is one of the only, probably the only, cities in Europe where anarchist flags are openly flown above shops and houses (outnumbered incidentally only by the flag of Catalonia itself). Catalans seem to be a proud people, deeply concerned with liberty and hating the chafing influence of authority of any kind; they are a people naturally inclined towards anarchism, and very possibly still willing to die for that inclination.

Orwell describes the equality he experienced in Barcelona during the early part of the civil war when the militias and the anarchists were deeply entrenched and powerful, having managed to swiftly raise trade union militias and push back the Falangist forces from Catalonia. He says that deference was gone, no one called anyone ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’ and everyone wore the overalls of the worker. This can be seen even in the militias’ formal military structure, doing away with the officer class though interestingly maintaining the concept of commanding officers who had the unenviable job of convincing their men to follow their suggestions.

A jubilant atmosphere of revolution had taken hold everywhere, and it seemed like there would finally be a successful workers’ state.

Of course, this atmosphere barely covered up the massive divides between the anti-fascist forces, made up of communists, anarchists, democrats, socialists and Marxists of every hue. There were even some Trotskyists before Moscow demanded them removed, or as they liked to say, ‘liquidated’. These groups of course all hated each other to varying degrees and some of the best chapters of the book involve Orwell describing the street fighting between the anarchist militias and the Russian-backed ‘People's Army’ over differences in how the revolution should be run and when it should be continued. The individual soldiers had little stomach for killing what should have been their fellow soldiers, and so avoided shooting at each other if they could but ultimately the parties were all in conflict, making violence inevitable.

Moscow was the primary provider of arms to the Republicans, arms which they desperately needed, otherwise being stuck mostly with broken or hopelessly outdated equipment. Naturally, this gave Moscow and the Spanish communists a great deal of power which they naturally used to suppress and arrest the anarchist and Marxist factions.

All in all, it is rather obvious why Franco won that war: his men were better equipped, and far more united with a solid command structure. Even still, the mess that was often made on the anti-fascist side is an interesting thing to read about, and much of that mess still lives on in Catalonia today.