3. April 14th 1931

Although anecdotic, this true and testimonial event shows the disorientation of the Party and its leaders in view of the events of April 14th.

As a consequence of all this, the PCE isolated itself at that moment from the masses. In some places like Madrid, the communists that tried to hand out pamphlets or to address to the masses were booed and received with manifest hostility. Except in Seville, Bilbao and Barcelona, where its militants were able to drag some hundreds of workers to assault the jails forcing the liberation of the political prisoners, the activity of the Party hardly had any influence. It was in Seville, where the local organization kept the closest links with the working class, where its effective leadership was really felt, forcing the military authorities to proclaim during some days the state of war due to the violent demonstrations of the working masses and the assaults to monarchical centres and gunsmith's (57).

The fact that the Party was so disoriented, launched misguided slogans mixing them with other just ones and did not understand the deep sense of the events that took place on April 14th and the following days was, to a great extent, a consequence of the wrong positions that its leaders maintained about the economic and social structure of our country and, therefore, about the character of the revolution. Since the leaders of the Party considered -as we have already seen- that Spain was a developed capitalist country, losing sight of the semifeudal features that still predominated in its economic basis, in the politic regime and in other instances of the superstructure, they had established as an immediate objective to carry out the socialist revolution. Hence, they did not see in the substitution of the Monarchy by the Republic nothing but a mere change of governmental facade and they launched the slogan Down with the bourgeois republic! Long live the proletarian revolution!.

What did the Republic mean in the politic conditions of that time? Which should have been the conduct of the Party?

In Spain, an industrially backward country, it was still not possible to think about an immediate and complete emancipation of the working class. Before that, revolution should go through a previous period of development and eliminate a series of politic, economic and cultural obstacles proper of the old regime. The Republic, in which the bourgeois character of the revolution was expressed, meant a historic advance with regard to Monarchy and gave the occasion of removing those obstacles from the path and of shortening that process. As Lenin said, the republican regime was the best form of State for the proletariat under capitalism. A wider, freer and more open form of class struggle and class oppression -he insisted- makes easier in huge proportions the mission of the proletariat in the struggle for the destruction of the classes in general (58). At the same time, as Lenin also advised, it should not be forgotten that the State of the most democratic republic was nothing else but a machine for the oppression of one class by another.

The very establishment of the Republic was, mainly, the result of the revolutionary mass struggle headed by the proletariat that all throughout 1930 weakened the old regime making its fall unavoidable.

But, at that moment, the working class could not play the role of guide of the revolution. The politic and ideological influence that socialdemocracy and anarcho-syndicalism still had upon the working class impeded it. For this reason the leadership of the revolutionary process went to the hands of the bourgeoisie that, in this way, with the support of the repressive forces, was able to lead it according to its own interests and, finally, to stagnate it.

By means of the provisional Government of the Republic constituted on the basis of the San Sebastian Pact -as in the case of the following one, formed by the republican-socialist coalition-, the big bourgeoisie, the landowning aristocracy and imperialism proposed themselves to undertake some reforms in order to contain the ascending revolutionary tide, using for that purpose the petty-bourgeois politicians and the bosses of socialdemocracy.

For all those and other reasons it was evident then that the Monarchy and the Republic could not be equalled. The relations between the republican government and the masses were utterly different to those maintained with the previous monarchical governments that were hated by the people. The provisional Government, although fundamentally counter-revolutionary by all its political orientation -since it proposed itself to maintain and defend the interests and privileges of the oligarchic forces and reactionary castes-, was able to confound the masses to the point of being acclaimed by them as the government of the democratic revolution. This important difference between the Monarchy and the Republic had to be taken very much into account.

Besides, there was another much more essential difference, as the CI pointed out, which the Party did not understand and that impeded it to head the masses in the struggle against the bourgeoisie: the fact that, notwithstanding the hopes in the bourgeois republic, the workers pursued revolutionary objectives and the fact that under the Republic they found better political conditions to achieve them. The abolition of the privileges of the aristocracy, the Church and the high-ranking civil servants, the agrarian reform, the improvement of the living and working conditions, the self-determination of the oppressed nationalities, etc. were still at the order of the day. It was there where the Party had its main battlefield to dispute the bourgeoisie its influence among the masses, since it was clear that those aspirations of the people would not take long to enter into an open conflict with the counter-revolutionary policy of the provisional Government and the other republican governments that would follow it. As the Leadership of the CI stated in its criticisms, the whole policy of the Party should be based on this divorce and inevitable conflict between the revolutionary will of the masses and the reactionary policy of the republican government and tend to provoke them. The Party, not underlining the reactionary policy of the republican government and denying the beginning of the democratic revolution, has not understood the dialectic process of its development, already begun from before April 14th, but considerably favoured by the proclamation of the republic that, even sowing democratic illusions among the masses, prepares at the same time their disillusionment and the awakening of their revolutionary action (59).

Since the leaders of the Party did not take all this into account, this explains the fact that they underestimated the need of the agrarian revolution as an essential form of the democratico-bourgeois revolution and that they neither paid attention to such an important problem of the revolution in our country as that of the nationalities oppressed by Spanish imperialism or that they focused it misguidedly.

3.1 Pulling the plant does not make it grow faster

The fact that the PCE had still not overcome its propagandist stage could not be reduced to a question of number nor was it true that it was not linked to the masses. Neither could this stagnation be attributed, in this stage of development, to the sectarianism and the lack of previous organization, for which the Spanish communists were not the only responsible. Given its origin in two different groups, the great influence of the anarchist and socialdemocrat trends in the working class and the little time passed from its constitution, about which it cannot be said that the Leadership of the CI was not conscious -the CI itself pointed out that it was a young Party... that had come out of the anarcho-syndicalist and anarchist layers (61) (and also socialdemocrat ones, we could add to correct this slip)-, this stage could not be overcome from dust to dawn nor could the way out of it be forced.

As we are pointing out, the construction of the Party required a prolonged period of labour among the masses, of accumulation of experiences and, mainly, of theoretical elaboration. And the latter was decisive since the maturing of a communist party is essentially linked to the development of its politic line. Therefore, the incapability of the Party to understand its leading role was not a question of masses but of politic line or, to be more precise, of having a just politic line. But, apparently, the leaders of the International did not take this detail into account when looking for the causes of the immaturity of the Party. For them, everything was reduced in the end to a question of number, to the point of comparing its development with the growth of the CNT and the UGT! (62). Had the leaders of the CI already forgotten the leninist thesis in which precisely was combated that confusion between the character and the tasks of a syndical organization (in this case, to be more precise, anarchist the first of them, namely, ultra-spontaneous; and socialdemocrat the second one) and those of a revolutionary worker party?

Certainly, in these ideas was present the fear that the PCE became isolated from the masses but also the impatience for its quick development. This voluntariness, there is no doubt, answered partly to the fact that the leadership of the International took into account the possibility that in Spain a second edition of the October Revolution could take place; what was not completely dismissible by that time. But that impatience was leading the CI towards making serious mistakes as the one of inspiring a trade-unionist and socialdemocrat conception -which was in correspondence with other of its positions- as its repeated insistence on the electoral participation.

The same voluntariness could be perceived in its reproaches to the Party for its keeping aside from the majority of the demanding struggles of the masses, for not leading the revolutionary political struggles of the working class and the peasants and for not having established soviets yet (63). However, it became evident that, in spite of the mistakes that the PCE had been making, the Party was making developments although -and this is true- following its own rhythm.

Three months after the establishment of the Republic, in Seville the PCE was able to lead for the first time a revolutionary general strike of great importance, in which the unity of action upon the rank and file with the socialist and anarchist workers became effective, what was considered by the CI as a success (64). But this strike would not be the only one. From that moment on, the Party led important worker strikes, mainly in Vizcaya and Asturias, and it begun to have an outstanding participation in some peasant struggles.

All these progresses were highlighted in the IV Congress (March 1932). Hardly in one year the PCE ranks had gone from 1,500 militants to 11,756 which is a remarkable jump if we take into account that, by mid 1935, it counted with 19,200 militants. The same happened with the Communist Youth Union (UJCE) during the same period: it went from 400 militants to 6,000. The influence of the trade-unions linked to the Party also increased. The attendance to the Congress of 101 delegates of factories and trade-unions representing a sum of 100,000 workers was an evident proof of it. On the other hand, the social composition of the delegations attending to it was a clear sign of the class character of the Party and of its links with the masses and, in particular, with the working class: being 75% industrial and agricultural workers, 11.7% employees and 8.2% intellectuals and professionals (65).

To sum up, a very positive balance although it did not fit in with the calculations of the CI.

At the same time, the IV Congress made evident the weaknesses and lacks of the Party in all fields, especially in what concerned the elaboration of the politic line. As the International correctly pointed out, the PCE had not yet a just enough politic line (66). However, although this Congress did not represent the shift that the CI awaited for, it meant an advance in the clarification and comprehension of the tasks to be accomplished. In this way, when on August 10th 1932 the monarchical-fascist coup of general Sanjurjo takes place, the Party, independently of the mistakes committed, will play in Seville a first order role in its abortion, heading the masses and leading the armed resistance (67).

Of course the leaders of the CI could not be insensible to these progresses and more than once they had to recognize that the Party had achieved undeniable politic and organizational successes, that its influence has increased and is still increasing. But the CI underestimated them and sifted them through its impatience since apparently such progresses only meant a drop of water in a furious sea (68). The fact is that the International did not understand that the development of the Party could not be forced. Or, as Mao said referring to the same problem in the CP of China, pulling the plant does not make it grow faster since in that way its roots are hurt and its growth affected. Only in this way, on the basis of its direct experience which necessarily and unavoidably entailed making mistakes and learning from them, could the PCE extend its influence, elaborate a just politic line and, definitely, develop. This was precisely the fundamental problem that in one way or other underlaid in the divergencies and confrontations of the Spanish communist leaders with the Leadership of the CI.

Some of the criticisms made by the CI were on the right track but they were insufficient and even unilateral. It was not only necessary to frame the weaknesses, misunderstandings and mistakes of the Party within a stage of development but also, they could not be separated from some previous mistaken appreciations of the CI about the Spanish reality, from the disorienting task of some delegates as Humbert-Droz, nor of course, from the mistaken line that was followed in the construction of the Party. In any case, the responsibility for all these mistakes had to be shared.

This, of course, did not exempt the Party and its leaders in particular from their own responsibility in so serious mistakes. Due to this the struggle between the two lines that was taking place from 1927, between the Spanish leaders and the Leadership of the CI and within the Party will end up, after the establishment of the Republic, with a second big ideological and political battle.

3.2 Aggravation of the conflict with the Leadership of the CI

Undoubtedly, in that aim, more than the suspiciousness towards the goods of independence of the Spanish leaders, influenced mainly the fear that the Party became isolated from the masses. Hence, before the IV Congress in which Bullejos was re-elected as secretary general, the CI fomented and impelled the promotion and co-optation to the Central Committee of cadres of a well-known prestige among the masses as José Díaz, Dolores Ibarruri, Mije, Hurtado, Uribe and others on which it will lean to carry out the struggle against the Bullejos group later on.

To all this another worry was added: that the Spanish revolution, about which the CI did not stop underlining its great international importance (69), would not pass from being an attempt due to the lack of a mature party, since its defeat necessarily had to have an impact on the international communist movement.

These problems and worries, joined to its impatience, took the leadership of the CI to be more pendant of the activity of the Spanish communists and contributed to stress the tendency that its delegates had already manifested towards replacing the leaders of the national sections. This was one of the reasons for the more frequent conflicts and frictions with the leaders of the PCE during this period, especially after the arrival of Vitorio Codovila.

The crisis will break out immediately after the frustrated coup d'état of general Sanjurjo. The reason why this took place at that moment and not before or after has much to do with the context in which it developed, characterized by the increase of the revolutionary struggle and the worsening of the politic and economic crisis.

Both facts -the inner crisis of the Party and the coup- coincide with the start of a new wave of worker and peasant struggles, much stronger than the previous one that will not go unnoticed in Moscow: the XII Plenum of the EC of the CI (September 1932) will take very much into account that in Spain was taking place an impetuous advance of the mass movement with a tendency to develop in the form of people's insurrection (70). This tendency was much more pronounced in the countryside, where in the large estate areas were taking place each time more frequent mass occupations of lands and local insurrections. This explains the support given to the coup by the landowning aristocracy and a minority sector of the financial oligarchy which was more linked to the first one.

In fact, the revolutionary struggle of the masses on the one hand and the economic crisis on the other were sharpening the contradictions among the dominant classes. For this same reason the bourgeoisie, under the pressure of the peasantry and with the aim of containing in first place the revolution in the countryside, will take advantage of the failure of the coup to expropriate, through indemnifications, the Greatness of Spain (the landowning aristocracy) and to initiate an agrarian reform in a bourgeois way which was so necessary for the capitalist development at the expense of their allies; although, in reality the ones who will pay its cost in the end, getting into debt with the banks, would be the journeymen and poor peasants that had benefited from it.

All these circumstances will provoke the anti-republican military coup and will finally hasten the confrontation of the Bullejos group with the leadership of the CI.

What the PCE should do in such a situation had already been advised by the EC of the CI after April 14th, in view of the possibility of some monarchical putsch. Being inspired in the Bolshevik example in the struggle against Kornilof -the CI points out in its open Letter to the CC of the PCE in May 1931-, the communist party must, without ever supporting the government, fight with all the possible energies as an independent force but also as the revolutionary vanguard and guide of the masses against any counter-revolutionary plot, taking advantage of such occasions to arm the working masses and to conquer new positions for the proletariat and the peasant masses (71).

What did the leaders of the Party do? Instead of giving an impulse to the independent struggle of the proletariat, unmasking the republican-socialist Government as a tool of the bourgeois-landowner counter-revolution and calling the peasants to the seizure of the land, they merely launched the slogan in defence of the Republic. This slogan in that moment meant the same as calling the masses to support the Government of counter-revolution and to submit to bourgeoisie. They were led to this outcome by their misunderstanding of the character and development of the revolution and, of course, by their schematic interpretation of the banner of the worker and peasant government. Namely, in the same way as on April 14th that misunderstanding led them not to take into account the democratico-bourgeois phase and pose as an immediate objective the seizure of power by the proletariat, later, that same view led them to consider the democratico-bourgeois revolution as an objective in itself, separating it from the socialist revolution (72).

The danger of a possible isolation of the Party from the masses caused by these positions was more than evident. Hence, the immediate and forceful reaction of the Leadership of the CI and of its delegation in Spain.

In the first meeting of the Secretariat after the coup, the delegation, supported by two members of the Secretariat, accused Bullejos and his group of tyranny and of following a mistaken, opportunist and counter-revolutionary politic line, and required a self-criticism from them. On their part, Bullejos and other two members of the Secretariat accused the delegation of interference (73). They used as most recent examples of this the destitution of the responsible of the secretariat of agitation and propaganda without taking their opinion into account and the fact that the delegation deliberately did not inform the Leadership of the Party about the syndical and organization theses till the moment of being presented to the IV Congress. In view of these evidences the accusations of tyranny addressed against Bullejos and his group could deserve little credibility.

However, the criticism at the dirigiste methods of the delegation could not be compared with the criticism at the mistaken conceptions and their corresponding practices since it was opportunism what had to be mainly combated. Much less could it serve to cover the mistakes as Bullejos and his followers pretended. The posed problems demanded a discussion in depth, using for that an adequate method. But, far from this, the delegation not only did not make any self-critical assessment of its action but, since it did not take into account the tight relationship between unity and ideological struggle, it sharpened the confrontation with its defamatory remarks, impositions and new interferences. In this way, after a meeting of the Politic Bureau in which the majority of its members, in absence of the charged ones, had approved a resolution in which the delegation was made responsible for the situation of craziness in the leadership of the Party; and after reaching the agreement of calling the CC, in order to state all the process of the struggles that have taken place and the measures of any nature necessary to avoid their reappearance and make the labour of the leadership develop in the best conditions possible (74), the following day, the Politic Bureau -evidently under the pressure of the delegation- agreed to separate Adame, Bullejos and Vega from all their posts in the Party (75).

That same day the delegation also issued to the Party a declaration with the aim of framing the divergencies from a politic and ideological point of view. According to it, all its labour was destined to help the PCE to become a truly communist party, to secure the politic line drew by the CI and to create a collective and unified leadership. Finally, the declaration came to the conclusion that the three mentioned leaders were carrying out a struggle against the policy of the CI, a struggle that attacks the fundamental principles of the CI (76).

And, in fact, it was that way. However, it is dubious that it was a conscious struggle against the principles of the CI. Nor even can we deduce from that refusal to the interferences of the delegation, carried out to its last consequences, that they questioned the role of the CI as leading centre of the world revolution. This idea possibly never crossed the mind of Bullejos and his group although it is true that, given the confronted positions, it was easy to think that this could take place. Anyway, the fundamental problem that was then posed did not lie as much in the opportunism of the positions maintained by Bullejos and other leaders nor in that kind of judgement of intentions that appears in the aforementioned declaration, as in the kind of support that the delegation was giving. Although it was not its intention, this support led to eliminate any sign of collective and really unified leadership, of initiative and ideological struggle, cutting from its roots any possibility for the Spanish communists to think by themselves. Hence, they tried to submit anyone that disagreed with the criteria of the CI whether he was right or wrong. In the end the task that the delegates had assigned themselves was reduced to that.

For that reason and given the outstanding role that the delegation played in the conflict, and particularly, the one played by the Argentinian Vitorio Codovila, we are going to stop a little more in this problem and in what derived from it, since we think that it can contribute to clarify some aspects of the crisis a little more.

3.3 Something more than interferences

Undoubtedly, independently of the fact that the greatest part of the delegates were not opportunist as Humbert-Droz, hardly could they orientate the Party, no matter how resolute they were, when they knew nothing about our country, most of the times they did not even know our language. If, besides, they wanted to lead it without taking into consideration the opinion of the Leadership of the Party, the result could not be more harmful for the very development of the Party.

To that respect it is convenient to refer now to the considerations made by Togliatti in his reports to Moscow about the delegates of the CI that were in Spain during the National Revolutionary War; and, to be more precise, to the considerations referring to Vitorio Codovila. I do not want to hide you my impression about the fact -writes Togliatti- that the responsibility for the wrong work of the centre corresponds to our ‘advisors’. In particular, it is necessary to convince L. (Vitorio Codovila) of the convenience of changing his own working methods radically. The Spanish comrades have grown, it is necessary to understand this and to leave them walk on their own feet, limiting ourselves to the role of ‘advisors’... This would give the comrades a greater sense of responsibility and would help them to work better... (78).

For this reason Togliatti will ask the EC of the CI to call them to order so that they did not disorientate the comrades leading them through a wrong path and stop considering themselves the ‘masters’ of the party starting from the basis that the Spanish comrades are not worth at all and that they stop occupying their posts with the excuse of making things ‘faster’ and ‘better’ (79).

If this happened in 1937, when the Spanish leaders were -as Togliatti says- in conditions to lead the Party and even to lead it well, what would not have happened in 1932 with the leaders put on the spot and with Vitorio Codovila around; or even later during his permanence in our country till the war was highly developed.

Of course, Togliatti was neither alien to those methods nor to the mistakes that the PCE was making under his influence at the moment when he wrote his reports. For this reason his considerations about what was right or wrong do not deserve any credit for us. Now well, this does not invalidate the testimonial value of his observations since in them are made evident not only the interferences to which the leaders of the PCE opposed, but also the conceptions that inspired them and that led to cut the roots of the development of the Party.

The same was happening by that time within the CP of China, with the difference that Mao and his followers, contrary to Bullejos and his group, maintained a just line in front of the dogmatic conceptions of the Leadership of the CI. And they were proving it in practice, what allowed them to oppose these and other interferences with more authority and politic strength and enter into the roots of the problem. This, obviously, will not spare them from being called petty-bourgeois nationalists by the leaders of the CI and its delegates, label that, saving the distances, will be also applied to Bullejos and his followers (80).

Of course, the origin of the problem was not in the delegates nor in their methods but in the line of construction of the Party applied by the Leadership of the CI regarding its national sections. That this was a general problem, not limited to the PCE and the CP of China is proved by the fact that the XII Plenum of the EC of the CI, coinciding precisely in the struggle against the Bullejos group, approved a resolution which stated the necessity of ending with the excessive centralism (81). This was a sign that the Spanish communist leaders put on the spot were not very much on the wrong track in their opposition to the dirigiste methods of the delegation. These methods in the end were nothing but a flagrant infringement of the democratic centralism on which, according to the statutes, the relations among the leading organs of the International and the national sections should be based.

This question was tackled again, judging by the resolution in which the VII Congress (July/August 1935) -whose minutes were never published- pronounced in favour of a modification of the functions of the Executive Committee, in the sense of a greater decentralization and autonomy of the national sections, in order to solve the tasks posed to them. In that resolution it was underlined besides, the need that the Executive Committee of the CI, when solving all the problems of the international working movement, based itself on the particular conditions and peculiarities of each country avoiding, as a general rule, to interfere directly with the inner organizational matters of the communist parties (82). This measure was apparently justified by the adoption of the People's Front tactics which could the applied not only to the capitalist and semifeudal countries, but also to the colonial and semi-colonial ones. To this respect, the CI started to take more into account, contrary to what was happening with the old tactics of the worker and peasant government, the diversity of conditions in each country and anything that made impossible the unification of tactics and strategies. Besides, this was more necessary each day in an international situation characterized by the rise of fascism and the withdrawal of the revolutionary movement which implied a more or less prolonged period of accumulation of forces and to pay more attention to the national conditions. Namely, a reality that was very different to the one that had made necessary the constitution of the CI in the middle of the revolutionary rise.

However, all those resolutions were never applied, becoming mere good intentions and in the end the centralist inertia imposed. For this reason, since the problem was not faced from its roots and since more attention was not paid to the independent development of the national sections and to their respective revolutionary movements, the Leadership of the CI will have to resort to bureaucratic and overbearing measures more frequently each time in order not to see itself overwhelmed.

3.4 The expulsion of the Bullejos group

According to these methods, the overall of the Party will stay as mere spectator all throughout the conflict; although, it is true that they were convinced that the CI could not be wrong given its powerful reasons and the one-sidedness with which they were presented. That is to say, the prestige and the weight of the International were imposed instead of the very convincement and understanding of the mistakes that the Party had made. This reason, together with the fact that the accused ones -contrary to what they were accused of- did not propose themselves to carry out a fractional task, explains why a leadership that had been seven years as such did not drag a single militant with it.

It is very significant that the Secretariat of the CI, contrary to Codovila and other delegates, did not see in the Bullejos group a deliberate purpose of factioning the Party nor of questioning the International and even expected them to rectify their mistakes. Nothing else was it trying to achieve from some time ago through a patient labour since, although there were serious mistakes in their positions, there were also positive aspects in their labour that the CI should take into account. For this reason the Secretariat of the CI tried to recover them. Hence, the disparity of the methods applied by the delegation and the Leadership of the CI when dealing with the contradictions appeared and the attempt of the latter to look for an agreement or a solution of compromise. Besides, the danger of inner rupture of the Party -which was not dismissible given the influence of the positions of the leaders accused on the immense majority of the members of the CC- advised to resort more to convincement than to submission.

And that was the criterion that the Secretariat of the CI adopted at the beginning. After prolonged discussions in Moscow with Bullejos, Adame, Vega and Trilla -this latter being the representative of the PCE in the leading instances of the International-, the four of them accepted its proposals: Adame would incorporate to the Red Syndical International (Profintern); Trilla would continue to occupy its post of delegate; Vega would enter the High Military Academy in Moscow and Bullejos would reinstate to the Secretariat General, proposal that, at his request, was changed by the one of organizing the Party in Catalonia taking part of the Politic Bureau (84). But, after these agreements, the publication in Frente Rojo (Red Front) -voice of the Party- of the resolution of the Politic Bureau of October 5th, in which it was made effective the measure of separating them definitively from the leadership and of demanding them a public self-criticism in order to stay within the Party, was enough to make all the patient efforts of the Secretariat of the CI fall through. In view of such conditions -consented or known by the CI in order not to undermine the authority of its true inspirer, the delegation- the four rejected any agreement fully (85).

The expulsion then became unavoidable. Some days later the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the CI and the International Commission of Control adopted the decision of excluding Bullejos, Trilla, Adame and Vega from the International and from the PCE. This measure would be corroborated by the new leadership of the Party (86).

Could such an expeditious solution of the crisis have been avoided if they had gone to the bottom of the problems and they had adopted more just methods putting more emphasis in the ideological struggle and in a true criticism and self-criticism? We think so. But, even independently of the fact that it had not been that way, the Party would have been more strengthened in its unity and inner cohesion and, above all, much more clarified. The latter return of Trilla and Vega is a proof that, at least in some case, the expulsion could have been avoided.

After the expulsion of Bullejos and his group, José Díaz, a worker from Seville who was in prison at that moment, was elected as Secretary General. There is no doubt that his election was determined by the outstanding role that he was playing at the head of the organization of the Party in Seville and Andalusia. Together with him, Hurtado, Mije, Jesús Hernández, Dolores Ibarruri, Vicente Uribe and Pedro Checa were, among others, the ones to be in charge of the main responsibilities.

It starts in this way under his leadership a new stage in the life of the PCE and its true communist action (87). With this we can say that it culminates the initial period of the construction of the Party -eleven years in total- during which there were established links with the masses, marxism-leninism and the idea of the necessity of a worker revolutionary party were spread among the proletariat and in the difficulties of the struggle were forged the cadres that at that moment took the reins of the Party in their hands.

4. October 1934: a turn of the situation

Between the end of 1932 and the beginning of 1933, not a single region of the country was left aside from this revolutionary tide that in many cases ended in insurrectional actions. With these struggles the workers made evident that they were not willing to bear for a long time the conditions to which they were submitted. This fact fully confirmed the appreciation made by the XII Plenum of the EC of the CI that in Spain it was taking place an impetuous advance of the mass movement with a tendency towards developing in the form of people's insurrection (88).

Both the socialist and UGT leaders and the anarcho-syndicalist ones were each time more overwhelmed by their rank and file. All throughout the country, specially in the most combative working zones, the unity of action among workers of different tendencies was becoming a reality.

To this phenomenon of radicalization and polarization of forces, the urban petty bourgeoisie was not alien. Ample sectors of this petty bourgeoisie affected by the economic crisis and disillusioned with the republican parties for their policy of compliance with the most reactionary forces, became more radical and, although with hesitations, they tended to go over to the revolutionary field dragged by the proletariat. As the Party pointed out, the deepening of the revolutionary crisis was making a clearer delimitation between the revolutionary field and the counter-revolutionary one.

Apart from the world economic crisis, other international factors such as the raise of fascism after Hitler's coming to power in Germany and the sharpening of the inter-imperialist antagonisms also contributed to the development of this situation.

The fact that the inner crisis of the PCE coincided with the ascending course of revolution was not a coincidence, but it corresponded to the very requirements of the class struggle that could not postpone the construction of a true communist party to lead the revolutionary movement. To reach this objective was essential in a moment in which the most extreme reaction was being organized and won positions threatening with seizing power before the majority of the working class could entirely assume the communist programme.

According to the PB in order to place the Party in conditions of heading and leading the revolutionary movement it was necessary a shift of the Party towards the masses, which had been approved by the IV Congress (Seville) but had not been put into practice in and fields without exception (89). But, how to carry out the transformation of the PCE into a mass Bolshevik party? This had been the central issue of the leaders of the CI. How to give that shift which the Spanish communists hardly started to understand? Were the conscience of its need and the will to accomplish it enough to carry it out?

As the PB itself recognized at the beginning of 1933, the great sympathy with which the Party counted among the workers was not transformed into a strengthening of its organizations. Some of the most important ones as that of Vizcaya were even stepping backwards (90). It was clear then, that everything could not be attributed to sectarianism. Then, what could it be attributed to? To the sabotage, to the absence of self-criticism or to the survival of the influence of the expelled as it was said? Would it not be rather that, independently of the mistakes of Bullejos and the leaders of the CI, neither before nor then were given the general conditions for the transformation of the PCE into a big mass communist party?

Although this aspect was important, it was not the fundamental issue. Above all the problem of the elaboration of a just politic line was still posed and for that it was required, besides of accumulating experiences, to apply a line of masses. Namely, it was necessary to merge the conscious element, the Party, with the revolutionary movement of the working and peasant masses which required both a systematic study and an assimilation of marxism-leninism and to start from a deep knowledge of the actual conditions of the country, of the situation of the masses, their state of mind, their experiences of struggle, etc. in order to elaborate a just line and to be able to lead the revolutionary movement. Or in Mao's words, it was necessary to collect the (disperse and non-systematized) ideas of the masses, synthesize them [...] in order to take them back to the masses, spread and explain them so that the masses make them theirs, persevere with them, translate them into action and to check in the action of the masses the justness of those ideas [...] and this indefinitely so that these ideas turn juster, livelier and richer of content (91). This was the only way of linking the Party to the masses and of not falling into the followist and spontaneous conception nor into the mistakes of subjectivism. What in fact led to the isolation of the communists were precisely the calls of the Party to electoral participation and the constant criticisms at putschism and individual terror each time the workers and poor peasants spontaneously launched themselves to insurrection, following many times the anarchist slogans as it happened in Casas Viejas (92). In this way, the communists could hardly snatch the workers from the anarchist influence. In any case, it was necessary to call to boycott, to foment the spirit of revolt and to create organizations of combat, getting ready to head and lead the insurrectional movement and not to merely make calls upon the formation of working and peasant militias that were afterwards reduced to nothing.

4.1 The unity upon the rank and file and the tactics of united front

A clear sign of the socialdemocrat decline was the loss of affiliates on the part of the PSOE and the UGT. Only in one year (from 1932 to 1933) the PSOE had lost a quarter of its members, going from 80,000 to 60,000, whereas for the UGT the number of its members reduced, in that same period, to its half (from 800,000 to 400,000). Something similar was taking place in the Socialist Youth (93).

As a result of this loss of influence of socialdemocracy among the working class there was a rupture of the republican-socialist coalition; the PSOE withdrew from the Government and there was an inner division in several tendencies, one of which, the one headed by Largo Caballero will become more radical under the pressure of the rank and file following the path started by the Socialist Youth. The Communist Party was influencing decisively in all that.

By that time (March 3rd 1933), several days after the Nazis got to power in Germany, the CI issued its first call to the Socialist Working International (SWI) calling it to form a united front. In the aforementioned document, the Leadership of the CI advised its national sections to change the orientation of unity of action upon the rank and file that they were following from sometime before the VI Congress (August-September 1929) by that of the united front with the socialist working masses by the mediation of the socialist parties in order to boost the programme of struggle against the offensive of capital and fascism (94). Was this tactics just? Under which conditions should it be applied?

By the beginning of the 20s, under the ebb conditions of revolution, the weakness of the communist parties and the division of the working class, Lenin maintained, as we have seen, that in order to attract an each day greater mass of workers to the struggle against capital, we should not hesitate to make calls even upon the socialdemocrat leaders with the proposal of carrying out the struggle jointly. But Lenin did not submit the putting into practice of the united front with the socialist workers to an agreement with their leaders nor did he establish any compromise that entailed the renounce to the ideological struggle against socialdemocracy. That is why he firmly stated with regard to the united front that it was an intermediate formula subdued to a situation of ebb of the revolutionary movement and of division of the working class. Besides, Lenin did not lose sight, as it is going to happen from now on with the Leadership of the CI, of the fact that a front is established with one or several classes, not within one class even if it is applied only on the rank and file.

It is true that in 1933 the situation was somehow different. The communist parties were, in general, stronger than before, while on the other hand the mass movement was not in a phase of ebb but of rise. However, in some capitalist countries like Germany, the establishment of the Nazi regime had interrupted the development of the mass revolutionary movement and there was still a clear division of the working class. Besides, a new factor had to be taken into account: socialdemocracy, after having favoured the establishment of fascism, was also becoming one of its victims. Undoubtedly, all this advised to adopt the united front tactics whenever the need of maintaining within it the struggle against the reformist conceptions and practices and its transitory character were not lost of sight. It was necessary to bear in mind, according to the objective of giving a boost to the revolution and to achieve the unity of the working class, that socialdemocracy, given its nature and the class interests that it defends, was not and could not be in the future a firm and long-lasting ally and that it would wait for the occasion of going over the enemy ranks and betraying revolution once again. Hence the danger of relaxation of the ideological struggle that implied the recommendation of the leading instances of the CI to the communist parties of establishing the united front by the mediation of the socialdemocrat leaders and of renouncing to the attacks against the socialist organizations during the common action (95). It was not casual that Dimitrov, in his report to the VII Congress of the CI, advised against the tendencies that aim to reduce the role of the communist party within the united front and to reconcile with the socialdemocrat ideology (96).

In the situation of revolutionary crisis that Spain was undergoing in 1933, the unity of action between the socialist and communist workers will end up becoming a reality; for this reason, the application of the united front tactics in the sense proposed by the CI in its March 3rd call was more than debatable. Due to this we can consider that the Party made a mistake when it adopted it since it entailed to enter the opportunist game and in the end to tie its hands to develop an independent labour among the masses. This is what took place some time after with the ephemeral freak of the Working Alliance created by initiative of the socialdemocrats and trotskists which the PCE was compelled to enter (97). As for the rest, to suppose that the reformist leaders would be ready to make that united front easier could only confound the workers and rehabilitate them in their eyes, which will take place to a certain extent.

This mistaken conception about unity will bring about very negative consequences when coming to orientate correctly the People's Front tactics, so that the application of that united front (without struggle and from above) from socialdemocracy to the republican bourgeoisie will take the Party to make serious mistakes in its putting into practice.

At the same time that the work destined to achieve the unity and the independent organization of the working class, the Party, already at that time, undertook a labour destined to develop the politic struggle and to awake the conscience of the workers about the danger that the rise of fascism entailed. Already from its first call upon the working organizations to form a united front, the Party placed the struggle against fascism in the first place in all the mass struggles and demonstrations which it promoted. Parallel to this, it promoted the creation of an embryo of people's united front in which, together with the PCE, the Communist Youth Union (UJCE) and related trade-unions, the Radical-Socialist Left Youth and outstanding intellectuals and artists also participated (98).

The very fact that this initiative was not limited to the working class and was encouraged and supported by the CI, revealed that already from that moment the tactics of People's Front started to be shaped on the basis of the widening of the united front. Notwithstanding this early attempt and the intense activity displayed throughout the country to create anti-fascist committees that grouped the working class and other popular sectors, its putting into practice would be incipient at that moment. The conditions were still not mature for that. On the one hand, both the CI and the PCE were still clung to the old tactics and they had not a clear idea about the new one, mainly because it required experience and that the masses made it their own. Besides, an essential condition was still necessary: to strengthen in the struggle the unity and independence of the working class. This could only be achieved, at a basic level, with the culmination of the period of construction of the Party.

On the other hand, it was necessary to deepen even more the knowledge and characterization of the fascist phenomenon. In that sense the XIII Plenum of the EC of the CI (December 1933), in which the first call for the holding of the VII Congress was made, meant an important step: it defined fascism as the all-out terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, chauvinist and imperialist elements of the financial capital; it considered that its growth was a sign of the development of the revolutionary crisis and the discontent of the masses, and, at the same time, of the incapability of the old democratic parliamentarian forms to struggle against the proletariat and the working masses and of its need of preparing the imperialist war, and refuted the socialdemocrat theses on the inevitability of fascism and on the beginning of a fascist epoch. Regarding Spain, the Plenum pointed out that revolution and counter-revolution are face to face, getting ready for decisive combats (99), which will be fully confirmed.

Under this orientation and in front of the call to general elections in November 1933 with which the dominant classes planned to prepare the field for the establishment of a fascist government, the PCE proposed the Socialist Party and other worker organizations the formation of an electoral united front which would be extensible to some left republican parties, with the aim of establishing antifascist candidatures and impeding the triumph of the reactionary parties (100). But such proposal, contrary to the criterion of some socialist federations, as the one of Asturias, found no answer and little echo among the working class. This one, disillusioned with the socialist leaders, did not trust that the problems could be solved through the poll and decanted itself mainly for the abstention. The elections were won by the reactionary forces. The PCE achieved, according to its own estimations, 400,000 votes (in the previous elections in June 1931 it had only achieved 60,000), gaining a Member of Parliament for Malaga with a candidature supported by socialists and radical-socialists. With these results and given the high rates of abstention, it was made evident that the only just tactics to lead the masses to unity in the struggle against fascism, in a situation of revolutionary rise, was boycott. Under those conditions, the electoral participation could only favour the reactionary parties and demoralize the people's masses.

Its electoral triumph encouraged reaction. The Government presided by Lerroux, counting with the parliamentarian support of the CEDA, started immediately to eliminate the scarce economic and democratic conquests which had been snatched by the masses from the beginning of the Republic.

The working class answered this reactionary offensive with a wave of economic and political strikes and with spontaneous insurrectional struggles. All these mass actions culminated on 14th September 1934 in the big meeting at the Madrid Stadium, organized jointly for the first time by the PCE, the UJCE, the Socialist Youth and the left trend of the PSOE. To this concentration attended more than 70,000 workers, most of them young, to show their repulse to the law that impeded the youth associations -which was openly addressed against the workers associations- as well as to the recent assassinations of several communist and socialist militants perpetrated by the falangist gangs. In this multitudinous act in which for the first time the communist and socialist militias marched together, the wishes of unity of the working class became evident as well as its readiness to seize power before a regime of terror was established with impunity as it had happened in Germany and Austria.

At the same time, the contradictions among the financial-landowning oligarchy and other sectors of the bourgeoisie became sharpened under the people's pressure, in particular, the contradictions with the Basque and Catalonian nationalist bourgeoisies. The relations between the Generalitat and the central Government were each time tenser, to the point that it was foreseen a people's uprising in Catalonia.

These divisions in the field of the bourgeoisie, together with the fear that the proletariat would soon reach a real and effective concentration of its forces under the leadership of the Communist Party, pushed reaction towards grouping around the CEDA, a politic formation which was openly fascist. From the monarchists to the republican parties more linked to the big financial bourgeoisie like the Radical Party; to the clerical-fascists of the CEDA and nazi tiny formations as the JONS and the Falange, all of them shared the same immediate objective: to establish a harsh-hand government to combat the revolutionary forces before it was too late.

4.2 The insurrection of October 1934

The insurrection reached its maximum height in Asturias. After having taken by storm in a few hours more than half a hundred Civil Guard stations; having taken control of the Trubia armoury and of some stocks of weapons, the insurrected established the worker power for fifteen days. After that time and after bloody combats, the army, under the command of general Franco and other fascist military, took again control of the situation.

Some months after its crushing, José Díaz would acknowledge in his intervention in the VII Congress of the CI that, in the eve of the insurrection, the PCE was little prepared from the technic and organizational point of view to lead the insurrectional movement (101). How was it possible -we may ask- that the Party, who was appreciating since two years ago that the mass movement tended to develop into an armed people's insurrection (and who had participated in many peasant revolts and worker strikes of an insurrectional character) was not ready for the insurrection and that it was in the behind of the socialist manoeuvres, even waiting for the socialdemocrat leaders to supply the arms?

Naturally, this lack of foreseeing had much to do with the conceptions that the Party maintained about different tactical problems, as the electoral participation and the unity of the working class and, definitively, with the new via of development of the revolution that, in some way, the Party was looking for. To all this, the methods of struggle of the proletariat and, more specifically insurrection, could not be alien.

In this field, subjectivism was also exerting its influence. A clear example of this was the summary elaborated in 1928 by the Leadership of the CI in collaboration with Soviet military specialists under the pseudonym A. Neuberg to be used as a guide for the organization and leadership of the armed insurrections. In it the Bolshevik experience was not taken into account, and its positions, that were aside of any specific historic analysis, meant a turn back to the putschist positions, to the coup of a minority and to adventurism. With such a guide it is easy to understand the failure of all the insurrections organized and led after October 1917 by different communist parties with the backing of the CI (102).

The main cause of this backwardness in the revolutionary theory and practice resided in the fact that the leaders of the International did not understand that, under the conditions of the politic regime established by the bourgeoisie and imperialism after the Soviet revolution to confront the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, it was impossible to repeat an insurrection like that of October 1917. However, instead of searching in depth the causes of so many insurrectional failures and extract teachings to make advance the military theory and practice of the proletariat, the CI tended to favour their repetition advocating for following the old paths as parliamentarianism. The truth is that, as Mao pointed out, subjectivism could only unavoidably lead to opportunism or to putschism (103).

In view of these mistaken conceptions and due, mainly, to the fact that the insurrectional strategy was considered superseded in practice, without seeing any other alternative to it but the parliamentarian struggle, it is easy to understand that when a spontaneous mass insurrection like that of Asturias broke out, the PCE was not prepared, was in the behind of the socialist leaders and, finally, was compelled to take part in the insurrectional movement in the worst conditions: without any preparation, falling into adventurism, and knowing that the Socialist Party had not prepared anything seriously and that its purpose was not to carry out a people's insurrection for the seizure of power but a movement circumscribed to provoke a change of Government (104). Under these circumstances it was evident that if the PCE had not taken part in the insurrection when the workers were waiting for the moment to raise for the definite battle, this would have meant not only the consolidation of a semi-fascist or fascist government but also to have thrown on the ground in a single day and for a long time all the moral and politic prestige of the Party and the CI in the eyes of the working masses of our country. Due to this we think that, in view of such a context and independently of the mistakes and the lack of experience that had led the Party to that situation, it was correct -as José Díaz pointed out- to participate in the struggle ready to correct in the course of the battle all the initial mistakes with which the movement itself took place, purpose that was partially achieved there where the forces of the Party, like in Asturias, were important or were on a par with the ones of the Socialist Party. In this way, if in Asturias it was possible to wave the red flag victoriously for fifteen days, it was due to the initiative, courage and heroism of the communists that knew how to win the confidence of the working masses. They were the ones to assume all the responsibility for the October movement after the socialist leaders, following their traditional opportunist practice of leaving the workers at their own fate, decided to break any compromise with the insurrection and with the victims of its subsequent repression. With that, they tried to restart once more their compliant and collaborating policy with the dominant classes after the insurrectional movement had been defeated.

However, later on, neither the PCE nor the CI were able to learn in a consequent way the teachings of this experience, both in the politic and in the armed struggle fields, due to the positions that they were maintaining, what we can appreciate more clearly nowadays in the light of historic experience. This is the ultimate cause of their incapability to understand the bottom of the problem and of the fact that they attributed the responsibility for the defeat of the insurrectional movement of October to the fact that the united front with the Socialist Party and the CNT had not been secured (105).

To sum up, this movement was the last attempt at carrying out a working-class insurrection following the guidelines of the Soviet revolution. Its failure did not only reveal once more the inviability of the insurrectional strategy (the so-called October via), but also made evident that the tactics of the worker and peasant government and of the soviets was not the most adequate formula to carry out the revolution in Spain. Among other reasons, because the inner and international conditions did not allow a quick transformation of the democratico-bourgeois revolution of new type into a proletariat revolution, as the PCE and the CI pretended at that moment. No matter how much the Party had insisted on counting with the peasantry and on searching for the support of the urban petty-bourgeoisie, had it not tried to establish in Asturias and in other areas, as Vizcaya, a soviet power? Therefore, this was the most evident proof that Bullejos and his group had done nothing else but to try to follow the advices of the Leadership of the CI on April 14th but in an schematic way and without carrying them out to their last consequences like in Asturias. For this, if something came from this temporary defeat, it was the need of adopting a new tactics; and to a certain extent this will be the lesson that the leaders of the CI will learn.

4.3 The People's Bloc Pact

In factories, mines and works the dismissals for economic or politic reasons were multiplied, and the first strikes of solidarity with the dismissed and with those who had suffered reprisals took place. The army of unemployed reached almost a million people. Everywhere the employers prolonged the labour journey and lowered considerably the salaries. These were lowered in the cities from 12 and 11 pesetas to 4 and 5, being greater the fall of the day's pays in the countryside where they went from 6 or 9 pesetas to 1.5 for men and 0.6 cents for women for dust-to-down journeys.

Counter-revolution was felt in the countryside with a never seen rigor. The poor peasants who had benefited from Azaña's Agrarian Reform were dispossessed of their lands to give them back to the big landowners. In other cases, the big landowners left their states barren and dismissed the journeymen saying: Now, eat Republic!. On the other hand, as a consequence of the new Law of Agrarian Contracts, more than 100,000 contractors were headed towards eviction.

But reaction was far from consolidating its regime of terror. The unleashed repression sharpened even more the contradictions in its bosom. The governing coalition of the Radical Party and the CEDA showed itself incapable of overcoming its inner problems. This situation of crisis gave way to a new radical Cabinet in September 1935 presided by Chapaprieta which started to re-establish the constitutional guarantees. This step back of reaction which was added to other ones (as the indulge snatched for the twenty leaders of the Asturias insurrection sentenced to death), made more evident for the people's masses the weakness of reaction and encouraged them to redouble the struggle. In this way the idea of an ample antifascist front opened its way among the workers.

It was under these conditions, after the heroic October insurrection and as a result of its consequent action in it, when the Communist Party started to exert the leadership of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. The each time greater echo that its callings found among the rank and file of other syndical and workers organizations as the PSOE, the UGT and the CNT, forced the opportunist leaders to follow unwillingly the slogans and campaigns launched by the communists in favour of the united front, of the amnesty, etc. Our Communist Party of Spain -José Díaz pointed out by that time- although it develops and grows quickly, it is not yet, numerically and from an organizational point of view, the decisive force of the Spanish proletariat, but politic and ideologically it constitutes the guideline force of the whole revolutionary movement in our country (106).

Attending to the feeling of the masses and, with the aim of providing the movement with clear objectives of struggle, the PCE issued then a programme that summarised the main vindications of the democratic stage of the revolution: 1. Confiscation of the land of the big landowners, of the Church and of the State, without any indemnification to hand it immediately and freely to the poor peasants and agrarian workers. 2. Freedom for the peoples oppressed by the Spanish imperialism. Right to self-determination for Catalonia, the Basque Country and whatever nationalities feel oppressed. 3. General improvement of the working and living conditions of the working class [...] 4. Freedom for all the revolutionary prisoners. Total Amnesty for the prisoners and prosecuted of a politico-social character (107).

On 2nd June 1935 and for the first time in a public meeting, the Party called upon the formation of an ample front of all the working-class and antifascist forces to struggle against reaction and to demand the dissolution of the Houses. In his intervention, José Díaz defined clearly which were the immediate and future objectives of the Party: We, the Communist Party, struggle and will always struggle for the establishment of our maximum programme, for the establishment of the Worker and Peasant Government in Spain, for the establishment in our country of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But in these moments of great danger that threatens the workers, with fascism installed in the main resorts of the State, we declare that we are ready to struggle jointly with all antifascist forces on the basis of a minimum programme of compulsory fulfilment for all those who enter the People's Antifascist Concentration (108).

These positions were supported by the resolutions of the VII Congress of the Communist International (finally held in July/August 1935), in which there were synthesised the more advanced revolutionary experiences of the masses and of some communist parties like the PCE.

The VII Congress defended the necessity of extending the united front of the proletariat to the peasant masses and the urban petty-bourgeoisie with the aim of isolating the reactionary sectors, of ending with fascism and creating in this way the conditions for the seizure of power by the proletariat. It was then a defensive tactics, of accumulation of forces awaiting for a more favourable inner and international situation that would allow the working masses to take the initiative and the offensive. In the case of the colonial and semicolonial countries, the alliance of the proletariat with other people's forces took the form of an anti-imperialist people's front (109).

With the backing of the VII Congress, the action of the Party received a strong boost. The masses assumed the communist unitarian slogans as their own, forcing the Socialist Party to tide relations with the PCE and to reach an agreement to create an antifascist electoral pact with the left republican parties.

The call to elections for 16th February 1936 hastened the contacts that were taking place with the left bourgeois parties in order to form an electoral coalition. The talks were laborious (110). In order to make their culmination easier the PCE had to make important concessions both in the composition of the candidatures and in the programme, since, logically, the bourgeois parties would not support a programme that led to the hegemony of the proletariat in the democratic revolution. To this also contributed the misguided conception of the united front that the Party had adopted, which led it to underestimate its own force and influence. In spite of all this, in the electoral programme were listed some of the most expected vindications of the workers like the amnesty. Finally, on 15th January 1936, the People's Bloc Pact was officially signed; in Catalonia it was signed a few days later, adopting the name Front d'Esquerres (Left Front).

As José Díaz pointed out, the aforementioned Pact was not yet a really wide front of antifascist struggle [...] that has the working class as its guide-force and the proletarian united front as guarantee [...] but a kind of electoral coalition of the working-class and republican forces of the left (111). Except the communists, the other parties did not aim at anything else for obvious reasons. But with it, the basis were set to advance towards that Front. Hence the Communist Party insisted on the transcendence of the elections, declaring that it was not, like on other occasions, a simple electoral contest, but a key episode in the struggle between reaction and the revolutionary forces in the perspective of the struggle for power. For this reason, precisely at that moment it was necessary to participate in the elections and not to hesitate in establishing agreements or compromises with the socialist and left republican leaders.

On February 16th the candidatures of the People's Bloc won the elections in detriment of the National Bloc, dealing a harsh blow to the fascist forces that in this way saw their way to power through the parliamentarian way cut. This victory would not have been possible without the orientating task of the Communist Party and without the October 1934 insurrection that weakened reaction and forged in the struggle the unity and independence of the working class. For this reason the Party was the real architect of this people's victory with which a wide way for revolution was opened.

5. The fascist uprising and the People's Revolution

In view of these outbursts of the masses Portela Valladares' Government declared the state of alarm. But the people's pressure becomes so strong that the President of the Republic, Alcalá Zamora, supported by the Lliga Catalana, the Agrarian Party and other political formations of the bourgeois right, had no option but to carry out the transfer of powers a month before what was established in the Constitution: on February 19th, almost by surprise, it was established a left republican government presided by Azaña.

Although the change of Government had taken place, the revolutionary agitation of the masses does not stop. In many towns and villages where the working-class parties have a great influence and where local embryos of the People's Front have been established, they decide to destitute the reactionary elements from the city councils and put at their head the representatives of the left republican parties, the socialists and the communists. Even, in some places, the disarming of the fascists starts. At the same time, the demonstrations in favour of amnesty continue, compelling the Government to promulgate it before it was passed by the Courts, as it was its first intention. From March on, all over the country multiply the economic and politic strikes of a unitarian character in which, in some cases, the workers occupy the factories and mines, while, in the countryside, the first occupations of estates take place.

The leaders of the democratico-bourgeois parties could not agree with these and other people's initiatives. For them, since they did not want to go beyond a simple electoral coalition and since they were used to count with the people only for their votes, the masses should wait that each of the measures included in the People's Bloc programme was submitted to the current parliamentary procedures. This pretension, when the financial-landowning oligarchy gave free rein to the Falange gunmen and prepared the fascist coup openly, could be nothing else but a pretext to avoid their compromises and to favour the reactionary plans objectively.

On the other hand, the programme of the People's Bloc, since it was the result of a transaction, of some minimum agreements that made possible an electoral coalition, an understanding among parties with different and even opposed politic and ideological positions, was insufficient in itself. As José Díaz recognized, although its application could momentarily relieve the difficult situation of the working class and of the peasants and create conditions for the formation of a revolutionary people's government, except the amnesty and the re-employment of those who had suffered reprisals, that programme did not bring any real nor definitive solution to the fundamental problems of the democratic revolution (112). This could only be done by a revolutionary government. But a government of this nature was not possible since the PCE did not have a predominant influence among the working class yet. Besides, the socialdemocrat leaders opposed to the creation of a People's Front: some, like Prieto, because they maintained the same policy of class collaboration as the republican bourgeoisie; others, like Largo Caballero (who shared basically the same opportunist policy with the followers of Prieto), because they considered that in order to keep their influence among the workers and to counteract that of the Communist Party it was better to adopt a radical pose of apparent rejection of any alliance with the democratico-bourgeois parties. In fact, the followers of Caballero hoped that, after the failure of the People's Front policy and the subsequent loss of prestige of the communists, the time came for the Socialist Party to seize power, in order to continue rendering their services to the dominant classes. This explains the fact that the democratic bourgeoisie, notwithstanding the fact that the working class was the main support of the People's Bloc, formed at that moment a government according to its own interests.

What was the attitude of the PCE with regard to that government and the one subsequently formed by Casares Quiroga after the designation of Azaña as President of the Republic? Could the Party have acted otherwise without renouncing to the People's Front tactics?

From the beginning, the PCE, conscious of the bourgeois character of the Government and, therefore, of its hesitations, as well as of the need of keeping an alliance with the sectors of the democratic bourgeoisie that it represented, made very clear which was going to be its position. We -declared José Díaz- will honour our compromises and will loyally support the Government if it carries out the programme of the People's Bloc. But we will combat it if it doesn't (113). For this reason he insisted that it was a fundamental and indispensable condition to lean on the extra-parliamentary action and vigilance of the people's masses (114).

Under those circumstances, that was the only way of securing the hegemony and independence of the proletariat in the democratic revolution, of exerting the leadership of the ample popular masses, of compelling the Government to accomplish the pacts and of being able to constitute a real front of antifascist struggle. However, although the Party took all this into account and tried to follow that line of action, it did not always act in consequence in view of the hesitations of the Government. So, when it was necessary to combat it and to compel it to take certain measures, leaning on the revolutionary initiative of the masses, it limited itself to criticise it from the parliamentary tribune or from the press of the Party. This was what happened regarding the problem of the land and the struggle against the coup plans of reaction.

In the first case, although the Party was the only one to advocate for the confiscation without indemnification of the haciendas of the big landowners and the Church in order to share them among the journeymen and the poor peasants and although it supported the occupation of lands (provided that these were organized in agreement with the town councils), at any moment it refrained itself from launching as a general slogan the seizure and sharing of the land. And it kept this position despite the fact that in regions like Castile la Nueva, Extremadura and Andalusia the occupations of estates were becoming general. But the lack of organization (something quite current among the peasantry) nor the absence of support on the part of the town councils (with which they tried to give some legal backing to these occupations) could justify this attitude. Much less could it be justified with the argument that the spontaneous occupations of lands could end in collisions among the peasants and the State armed forces that, according to the propaganda of the Party, counter-revolution pretended to provoke (115). Were those State armed forces, as the hated Civil Guard, defending the interests of the workers? Were they not the same that killed the peasants, as it had just happened in Yeste (province of Albacete), where the deaths reached twenty? What was then the sense of the callings to form worker and peasant militias? Why was the Party afraid of promoting the revolutionary initiative of the peasantry?

Obviously, the PCE defended the need of the agrarian revolution in order to end with the politic power of the landowning aristocracy. But, instead of mobilizing the peasant masses and supporting them in their revolutionary initiatives, it oriented itself towards a legalist policy, a granting policy. In this way it tried to avoid that a possible outburst of the peasant movement endangered the fragile pact with the republican bourgeoisie. This position was inconsequent, apart from contradictory, since it led the Party to isolate itself from the peasants and to play the game in which the bourgeoisie was interested. This mistake, whose consequences will be revealed in the passivity of the poor peasantry in some regions in front of the fascist uprising, diminished the support of the peasantry to the People's Front and weakened the alliance of the proletariat with the workers of the countryside, its main and most secure allies. Basically, this mistake as well as the others were the result of the confusion existing in the Party about the character, the tasks and the methods of the revolution, and it was giving rise, from some time ago, to the entrance of a false, opportunist conception of the democratic revolution.

In spite of all this, these mistakes do not invalidate the policy of the People's Front adopted by the PCE nor question its determination to impulse the revolution and the struggle against fascism. That this was a just tactics is made evident by the fact that, with it, the revolutionary mass movement developed and the communist influence increased, which will allow to face the fascist military uprising. As for the rest, this brief period served the Party to establish many more links with the working class and to acquire a greater experience to confront the problems that appeared in front of it.

5.1 July 18th

From the moment when the uprising took place, the leaders of the democratico-bourgeois parties and outstanding socialdemocrat leaders, like Prieto, refuse to arm the people and try to pact with the supporters of the coup. But these attempts of capitulation are thrown down by the workers of Madrid that, following the slogan Fascism shall not pass launched by the Communist Party, demonstrate massively in front of the seat of the Government on 18th-19th July and impose the formation of a new Cabinet presided by Giral.

In Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and other cities, the workers are the first to confront the rebels with the scarce arms they had at hand; they are the ones that really crushed the uprising, although in some exceptional cases they count with the support of some contingents of the Assault forces, the Carabineros (police forces) and even of the Civil Guard, as it happened at the last hour in the Catalonian capital. Here, the anarchists, who had farsightedly hidden some small weapon storage, are the ones to play a relevant role. However, in Madrid, particularly in the assault to the Mountain Barracks, main redoubt of the rebels, that role corresponded to the communists. In other areas in which the working-class organizations were weaker, like in Galicia or West Andalusia, the working-class and popular resistance is quickly crushed. This was also the case of Seville, where the communist presence was important and where the indecision, joined to the lack of foresight, allowed the fascists to seize the city after having reduced several focuses of working resistance in some neighbourhoods. In general, that lack of foresight and preparation of the Party to confront the reactionary coup was made evident everywhere. And this was not precisely because it saw itself surprised by the uprising (since it was the first to alert the masses about it), but for not having prepared itself previously to confront it in an independent way and not being at the expenses of the Government.

Another harsh blow for the fascists was the rebellion of the navy seamen that, after having arrested and shot the majority of the officers, seized a great part of the fleet. Due to this, the troops that rose up in Morocco found important difficulties to cross the Straits of Gibraltar.

Once the military uprising was crushed in the main cities, a great part of Spain was kept in the hands of the people's forces. With this the confrontation took the character of a civil war.

With the army and the other repressive forces rose up or annihilated by the popular resistance, the State machinery sunk in the republican zone, starting in the course of the struggle a real people's revolution. The province and local civil authorities were substituted by Committees, Defence Juntas or Councils dominated by the working-class parties and trade unions in which the representatives of the democratico-bourgeois parties also participated. The Government and the Generalitat were the only two institutions that stood up, but without any real power, since it resided in the People's Committees and, to be more precise, in the working-class organizations and in their respective militias.

With the situation under control, the workers seized the factories, the mines and the services and transport companies, including the State enterprises, and in other cases, they established a system of control of the production and of the administration. On their part, the journeymen and poor peasants seized the haciendas of the big landowners establishing cooperatives or exploiting them jointly.

The revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses was particularly evident among the youth. From the first combats young workers, peasants and students are in the first line. The youth sustained on its shoulders, with abnegation and heroism, the heaviest weight of the war. To this contributed to a great extent the task developed by the Unified Socialist Youth (JSU), created in the days prior to July 18th on the basis of the union of the socialist and communist youth organizations.

To this wave of revolutionary enthusiasm the working-class women were not alien. Their active incorporation to the politic, social and economic life of the republican zone was a real revolutionary change since it represented a radical rupture with the prejudices and ancient habits of relegation and discrimination of women. Even many of them joined the militias and the regular army.

The popular resistance against fascism, together with the revolutionary transformations in course, generated an ample and deep cultural movement since they awoke the people's initiatives and energies accumulated and contained by centuries of oppression and obscurantism. Both in the fronts and in the rearguard great efforts were made to end up with illiteracy and to make culture and instruction accessible to the workers. With this aim were created, following the initiative of the Party, the Militias of Culture. These did not only teach the soldiers (most of them illiterate peasants) to write and read, organized theatre representations, etc. but they also spread all their activity to the most remote towns, hamlets and countryside estates. At the same time, more than 10,000 new schools were opened and the worker institutes were created in order to facilitate the workers the access to universities, which stopped being the closed reserves of the bourgeoisie (116).

To this task of instructing the working masses contributed with dedication and abnegation many students, artists and intellectuals. The latter, in their majority, were on the side of the Republic and many of them, joining the workers and participating in their problems, their struggles and hopes, reflected in their works the epic that the people was playing.

5.2 The confronted forces and their contradictions

Altogether, at the beginning, the republican territory had an extension of 270,000 square kilometres, counting with 21 capitals of province and a population of 14 million people, while the territory under fascist control covered 230,000 square kilometres, it included 29 capitals of province and had a population of 10 and a half million people if we except the African colonies.

Regarding the economic resources, the greatest part of the industry and of the mining richnesses were in the governmental area, while in the other area the agrarian sector was by far predominant. But, neither the first was devoid of agrarian resources with which to supply the population widely nor did the second lack industry. With regard to other economic resources, the Government counted with the gold reserve of the Bank of Spain that was quite important; this did not mean that reaction lacked financial means. In this sense, the bank deposits of the oligarchy abroad, the economic contribution of the Church and the international credits, apart from other important material aids, compensated quickly the relative initial republican advantage.

At the politic and social levels, the Republic had a great advantage upon the reactionary forces, since it counted with the support of the proletariat, the poor peasantry and of ample sectors of the petty and middle bourgeoisie and it represented a just cause, which altogether also meant a first order military factor. Precisely, due to this lack of popular support, reaction will have to resort to terror massively in order to impose its power since the systematic extermination of the cadres and rank-and-file members of the working-class and democratico-bourgeois parties was not enough. And that was its real Achilles' heel.

On the contrary, in the military field, in spite of the republicans' having the greatest part of the navy and a part of the air force, the enemy superiority was overwhelming.

The immense majority of the commanders and officials of the army -around 14,000 of 16,000- joined the rebellion (117). Several hundreds, among which we have to highlight more than a dozen of army generals who for varied reasons did not follow the rebels, were shot dead. The Republic paid in this way the consequences of the compliant military policy of Azaña, Prieto and company. Since the purging of the army was not carried out, as the PCE had been asking for, and since many key posts were left in the hands of the Africanist military (high-rank most reactionary military officers who had been promoted due to their participation in the colonial war of Morocco), the fascists could count with a well-united and organized army, whose most experienced operative nucleus was constituted by the mercenary troops of the Legion and the Moroccan Tercio. To this army, the Republic could only oppose at the beginning the militias, some regiments of recruit soldiers that had not been disbanded and some hundreds of career officers and, later on, a regular army in formation, always precariously organized and armed.

But these advantages and disadvantages of each side were soon sensibly modified by the correlation of forces unfavourable to the Republic in the international field, which allowed the fascists to cover their material lacks, to increase their military superiority and to win field.

From the very beginning reaction had the military and logistic support of the fascist governments of Portugal, Germany and Italy. Mussolini sent to Spain several divisions with their corresponding material, tanks and armoured cars, artillery and air force; about 160,000 men, altogether. The Hitlerian help although it was inferior in troops -around 50,000- it was qualitatively more important due to the sending of military advisors and technicians; to the participation of the Condor Legion; to its contributions with modern warfare material and with several weapons that were tested for the first time in Spain (for instance, the phosphor bombs); to their advice in mass destruction techniques supported by the Nazi military theories of the total war, etc. In exchange for all that, the German and Italian imperialists obtained many mining concessions in order to supply their war industry and other advantages. Regarding Portugal, the Dictatorship of Salazar, threw itself to help the fascists, giving them all kind of support and sending the Viriato Legion, formed by 20,000 men (118).

On the other hand, in the military field we also have to point out the levies carried out by the fascists among the Moroccan population in the Spanish and even in the French area which, according to several sources, could be numbered in almost 200,000 men all throughout the war (119). The aforementioned levies were made easier by the policy of the Governments of Giral and Largo Caballero towards Morocco, which was not only contrary to declare its independence but also opposed to granting a Statute of Autonomy like that of Catalonia, as the representatives of the bourgeoisie of Tetuan asked to give their support to the Republic (120). Thanks to this policy of colonist and imperialist bad habits of the democratic bourgeoisie and socialdemocracy, the fascists could count with a safe rearguard in the north of Africa and use the Moroccan people as cannon fodder. Under the promise of giving the autonomy and the independence to the Rif once the war was over, and of some concessions of economic type, the Moroccan nationalist bourgeoisie supported actively the Spanish reaction.

The fascists did not lack the politic and material support of the Vatican nor its blessings; the Vatican even described the war against the people as a crusade; they also had the support of the English, French, Yankee and other countries' financial means that had important interests in Spain. Just to give an example, this was the case of the US petrol company Standard Oil which supplied petrol to the fascists all throughout the war on credit, without any limit (121).

But, what most limited the capability of defence of the Republic was the neutrality and non-intervention policy of the democratic governments who, in view of the fear of the triumph of a people's revolution in Spain and of its consequences in their own countries, decided to drown the Republic blocking its coasts and borders and depriving it of the possibility of getting supplies of arms, oil, medicines and other products and raw materials of civil use in the international markets. Even at the end of the war they resorted to the direct military intervention, when the British navy, in connivance with the French government, compelled the republican bastion of Minorca to surrender (122). On the contrary, that same governments gave the fascists all kinds of facilities and turned a blind eye on the military intervention of the fascist powers. In this way, the French, English, and Yankee imperialist bourgeoisies mainly, tried not only to avoid frictions with the German and Italian imperialists but also to stimulate with these and other concessions their aggression to the USSR.

This non-intervention policy, which later on in September 1938, ended up in the Munich Pact, had, besides, the full support of the leaders of the international socialdemocracy, who proved once more their subordination to imperialism. They did not only boycott the solidarity of the workers that were under their influence with the Republic, but all throughout the war they encouraged the struggle of their Spanish mates against the Communist Party and made everything possible to push the people's forces to capitulation.

On its part, the Republic counted with the solidarity and sympathy of the antifascists and workers of all the world, conscious of the international transcendence of the conflict that was being carried out against fascism in our country. The most outstanding expression of the solidarity of the world proletariat were the International Brigades, formed by 35,000 volunteers of liberty -most of them communists- who belonged to more than half a hundred nationalities. Although from a military point of view the International Brigades were not a decisive factor, as reaction sometimes attributes to them, there is no doubt that they had a great symbolic and moral value since they revealed the identification of the international proletariat and of the oppressed peoples of the world with the struggle of the peoples of Spain against fascism and imperialism. In the battlefields more than 5,000 internationalists left their lives.

The progressive intellectuals of that time also gave their support to the Republic, being and example of that the II International Congress of Writers for the Defence of Culture, held in Valencia in July 1937.

Not forgetting the support of the Mexican government, which was more symbolic than real, there was only one state, the USSR, that gave an effective support to the people's forces. The Soviet Union supplied the Republic with the raw materials that it needed like oil and its derivatives, cotton, sanitary material, foodstuffs, machinery, equipment goods and arms. Some of the consignments like clothes, medicines and food were paid by collects organized by the Soviet workers who, during the war, collected more than 274 million rubles (123)At the request of the republican government the USSR sent about 3,000 voluntary civil and military advisors and technicians who played an important role in the preparation and instruction of the people's army, in the organization of the general staffs and rearguard services, in the creation of military schools and in the organization of a war industry. Even many of them, specially pilots and tank crews, participated directly in the combats (124).

It was also important the diplomatic activity of the Soviet Government in favour of the Republic, its denounces of the Italian-German military intervention and its labour of unmasking the non-intervention policy.

Although the Soviet help to the Republic was important, it was considerably inferior to the one proportioned by the imperialists to reaction. But, even if it had been greater, it could not have essentially changed the course of the events nor the correlation of forces so unfavourable to the people.

Regarding the contradictions of the forces in struggle, they were not only limited to the one confronting the financial-landowning oligarchy to the people, but, besides, in each field there were divergencies of interests or contradictions that, even if they were secondary, did not lack any importance.

In the fascist field, although the financial oligarchy -the dominant force- and the landowning aristocracy coincided in the need of crushing the revolution, they differed mainly, in the solution to the problem of the land, since the persistence of backward agrarian structures was a big obstacle for the capitalist development.

However, due to the fact that the problem could not be solved immediately and that in its solution the agrarian interests of the aristocracy will be affected to a certain extent, as we will see later on, its alliance with the big financial bourgeoise was not exempt of tensions from the beginning of the war. It is explained in this way that the imposition of Franco (the candidate designated by the most influent sectors of the oligarchy to be put at the head of the Movimiento -generic name given by the fascists to the diverse forces which participated in the rising-) was preceded by a harsh struggle with the parties that represented the different sectors of the aristocracy ready to impose military as Sanjurjo or Mola. And something similar happened with Falange, the politic group that due to its fascist and imperialist ideology better represented the aspirations and needs of the monopolist capital. In this way, from the supporters of Alfonso XIII to those of the Carlist pretender to the throne, going to the CEDA, Renovación Española (Spanish Renewal), the Agrarian Party, Cambó's Lliga, all of them -with or without concessions and willingly or unwillingly- had to integrate in Falange and bow to the rigid unity imposed by Franco. To the point that he did not doubt in repressing some falangist leaders contrary to the unification or in sending to exile others like the Carlist Fal Conde, Gil Robles or Cambó.

In the republican field, given the heterogeneity of the allied social and politic forces, the sharpening of the contradictions and the confrontation that it brought about were in a latent state. Hence the importance of preserving at all costs and in all fields the independence of the Party. Only in this way could it play an agglutinating role and the hegemony and leadership of the proletariat in the democratic revolution could become true. This hegemony, as José Díaz advised, did not mean a simple imposition, but a guarantee for the firmness of the policy of the People's Front, a guarantee for the firmness of the leadership of the war (125).

5.3 The PCE, main republican politic and military force

The democratico-bourgeois parties, overwhelmed by the revolutionary struggle of the masses and fearing a people's victory, fluctuated between capitulation and resistance. The socialdemocrat leaders were divided in several confronted factions: some followed the steps of the democratic bourgeoisie, others collaborated with the communists and there were even some who tried to imitate the anarchists, pretending to collectivize everything and neglecting the war. On their part, the members of the FAI, that controlled the CNT, considering that the war was a question of a few days, got ready to establish the libertarian communism. In Aragón and Catalonia, where their influence was greater, they had all the politic, economic and military power in their hands. And, as Comorera -secretary general of the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC)- points out, they did not know what to do with it. They did not know -he adds- how to make revolution. They did not know how to make war... They were anti-politicians and formed a government. They were anti-state and created a police and revenging State machinery. They were anti-authoritarian and they organized the control patrols [...] Imitating the republicans of the last century who said: ‘let's save the principles although we lose the Republic’, they proclaimed ‘let's win the Revolution although we lose the war’. And they pretended to 'win the Revolution' organizing the indiscipline (126).

A similar position, although from an allegedly marxist position, was maintained by the Marxist Unification Worker Party (POUM), which had some influence in Catalonia. This party, formed by trotskist groups split from the PCE at the beginning of the 30s, did not stop making calls to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat to win the war.

Only the communists, guiding themselves by the People's Front policy, kept a consequent and firm position, which explains that they became the first politic and military republican force. Contrary to the other working-class organizations and to the democratico-bourgeois parties, for the Communist Party the war and the revolution were indissolubly linked. To win the war did not only mean to impede the financial-landowning oligarchy to establish a fascist-monopolist regime and to secure the democratico-revolutionary conquests, but also to create the conditions to make the revolution advance towards socialism, which was not possible at that moment due to the economic backwardness of the country, to the weakness of the working class and to the unfavourable international situation. For that reason, the Party defined the war as revolutionary, adding to it the characterization of national, since it considered that both Mussolini and Hitler wanted to appropriate Spain to share it (127).

That danger became evident in view of the scale of the German-Italian military intervention, of the politic, strategic and economic interests of the Italian and German imperialists in our country and of the possibility that such intervention developed into a true occupation, above all in the case of a possible victory of the republican forces. On the other hand, there were justified motives to think that the English, French and other imperialists were not going to keep aside from a possible sharing given the importance of their interests in Spain and of its strategic position in the case of a probable inter-imperialist conflict in Europe. This was something that came from the non-intervention policy and that would be cleverly used before and after the war by the Spanish big financial bourgeoisie in order not to fall in the dependence of one or other powers and to take advantage of the help of all of them to crush the people's revolution. That is why it was not completely incorrect to use the national feeling tactically (without forgetting, at the same time, that Spain was a multinational State) in order to mobilize the masses, alert them to that danger, tighten the unity of all the Hispanic peoples in the struggle against fascism and imperialism and to unmask the propagandist usage that reaction was making of that feeling to hide the nazi-fascist military intervention. But never to the point of situating it at the same level as the revolutionary and antifascist character of the war or in a preeminent place, as if it were a national liberation war against a foreign occupant, as in fact happened. Since, in that way, while there was not a real occupation, they ran the risk of confounding the masses and deviating the Party from its revolutionary objectives. It was not casual that the carrillists, later on, based themselves on this characterization and on the consideration of Spain as a colony to change the line of resistance of the Party for that of national reconciliation and of claudication in front of fascism, till taking it finally to its liquidation.

However, although the Party was mistaken when it defined the war as national, from the beginning it did not lose sight of its revolutionary and antifascist character and acted in consequence. Under this guideline it mobilised the working class and the other popular sectors and started to organize the people's army, starting by creating the 5th Regiment. And on the basis of the same guideline it gave its support to the government of Giral, formed exclusively by the democratico-bourgeois parties, at the same time that it hastened it to legalize the revolutionary measures imposed by the masses or to take others addressed to end with the economic power of the financial-landowning oligarchy, to liquidate the remains of the old state machinery, to improve the living conditions of the workers and to organize the resistance.

The Government of Giral was, therefore, compelled to take some steps in this direction, trying at the same time to limit their revolutionary reach. Mainly, when it came to liquidate the remains of the old state machinery and, especially, regarding the remains of the army and other repressive forces, that were not purged at that moment. It did not even disband the Civil Guard, the repressive force which has the blackest history, but it maintained it under the name of Republican National Guard. Logically, the democratic bourgeoisie tried to preserve what remained of the old State to reconstruct it, allowing that in the sometimes important posts of the republican State machinery to be constructed, some reactionary and capitulationist elements remained hidden; in the course of the war they will act as fifth columnists. The same happened with the governmental measures adopted against the big financial bourgeoisie and the landowners.

Due to all this, to its incapability and lack of decision to confront the fascist military rebels, who took advantage of this to conquer Extremadura, Guipúzcoa and other places, the permanence of the Giral Government was unsustainable. Under the pressure of the Communist Party and the masses, the democratico-bourgeois parties resorted once more to socialdemocracy as their salvation.

On September 4th it was formed a new Cabinet presided by Largo Caballero, the socialdemocrat leader of greatest prestige among the workers and the most manipulating one. In that Cabinet took part Izquierda Republicana (Republican Left), Unión Republicana (Republican Union), Esquerra Republicana de Cataluña (Republican Left of Catalonia), the PSOE and the PCE, which was incorporated at the instances of Largo Caballero after having convinced Azaña and company. And this was not because he sympathized with the communists, since he was fiercely contrary to them, but because, as a good opportunist, he was enough perspicacious to be aware of the convenience of not leaving the main republican politic and military force outside the government. In latter restructurings were also included the PNV (Basque Nationalist Party) and the CNT-FAI, whose attitude of refusal to the People's Front started to change. With this we can say that for the first time it was constituted a representative government of all the politic and social forces that were confronting fascism.

5.4 Unity and independence

With regard to this, the experience of the Communist Party of China can help us to learn better the transcendence of the capital problem of independence.

As Mao points out, the Chinese national bourgeoisie, represented by the Kuomintang, adopted a double policy in front of the problems of the democratic revolution and of the war against the Japanese imperialism (1937-1945), like at that time the Spanish democratic bourgeoisie with regard to fascism: on the one hand, it pronounced in favour of unity and resistance, while on the other, it refused to take politic and economic measures favourable to the people, it exerted a constant politic and ideological pressure on the Communist Party and, if it did not succeed, it unleashed repression against the progressive forces at the same time that it tended to compromise and claudication in front of the Japanese imperialists.

To answer to this double attitude, after having learnt from the mistakes committed during the first revolutionary war (1924-1927), the CP of China also adopted a double position: at the same time that it called to unity with the Kuomintang in order to confront the Japanese, it confronted resolutely its reactionary and claudication policy in the ideological, politic and military fields, defending the need of solving the problems of the democratic revolution as the one of the land or the right of the proletariat to express and organize to defend its interests, since only in this way could all the people be mobilized in the struggle against the Japanese imperialism. This is -Mao said- the double revolutionary policy that we oppose to the double policy of the recalcitrants; this is our policy of unity by means of the struggle (128). Due to this, Mao defended also with intransigence the principle of the absolute leadership of the Communist Party (129) upon its armed forces, without refusing to cooperate military with the Kuomintang to combat against Japan.

Did the PCE adopt that policy of unity by means of the struggle which Mao referred to? Did it preserve its independence?

If the government of Largo Caballero, as later on that of Negrín, took stronger measures in the economic, politic, social and military fields that contributed to establish and develop a democratic Republic of new type, there is no doubt that it was mainly due to the pressure of the Communist Party that at any moment leaned on the masses. Among these political measures we have to highlight, apart from the passing of the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country, those orientated to end with the control exerted by the big bourgeoisie on the public and private bank, which meant almost a nationalization and, above all, the confiscation without indemnification of the lands of the landowners who supported the fascists, carried out by the State, and their sharing among the journeymen and poor peasants for their individual or collective farming. In fact, the decree on the land of October 7th meant the governmental recognition of the occupations carried out by the peasants from July 18th. In total, more than 4 million hectares which represented more than 20% of the cultivated land in Spain in 1935 were confiscated to the landowners and the Church (130). Besides, the government cancelled the debts of the peasants and provided them with economic support, loans, fertilizers, breeds and, in some cases, agricultural machinery.

Although the decree on the land was only limited to the landowners who supported the fascists, measure that under those circumstances should be taken into account, it did not affect its reach and importance, since practically all the lands and properties of the landowning aristocracy and of the Church were confiscated in the republican zone.

All those measures contributed to strengthen the people's unity and resistance, even if, as in the case of the latter, the democratico-bourgeois parties rejected to give them their support. And this even more in the case of the peasantry, which constituted the ample majority of the population and of the mass of combatants. Due to this we can say that the Republic started to have a new character. This is the reason why its President, Azaña, moaned in the middle of the war, long time before Casado's coup took place, about his incapability to avoid the development of this new character. The revolutionary work -he affirmed- started under a republican government that did not want nor could sponsor it. The excesses started to come out in front of the astonished eyes of the ministers. Reciprocally to the purpose of the revolution, that of the government could only be to adopt it or to repress it. It is dubious that it counted with forces to do so. I am sure that it did not count with those forces. Even if it had counted with them, its use would have broken out another civil war (131).

That would have probably been the attitude of the democratic bourgeoisie if the government had had enough force to repress the mass revolutionary movement and to be able to reach a compromise with the fascists, as in fact it tried to do when the military uprising had just started. So, if at the beginning the democratic bourgeoisie could not oppose frontally the masses and impose completely its purposes, this was due to the fact that the people -mainly formed by the peasantry and the proletariat- was armed and because, above all, it was impeded to do so by the existence of a strong Communist Party, linked to the masses and which had a revolutionary programme. Something different, of course, is why the democratic bourgeoisie will be able to get over that situation of weakness and maintain its hegemony to the point of daring to break out another civil war in the final stage of the war. But, we will tackle all this later, although it has much to do with the matter that we are now analysing. That is to say, with the risk of submitting the Party to the democratic bourgeoisie and to the Government as a consequence of the adoption and acceptance of positions that did not lead to the development of the democratic revolution of new type and to the people's victory over fascism. That risk threatened the action of the Party since it did not have a clear position about the character, tasks and methods of the revolution nor about how to undertake the dealing with the contradictions within the People's Front. That explains the fact that, from the beginning, the Party adopted an ambiguous and hesitant position regarding the problem of its independence, advocating for unity even in the moments in which it was necessary to develop a vigorous struggle against the reformist and bourgeois parties.

For that very reason it was important to guarantee also its military independence, but the Party did not do it since it gave its total support to the military measures adopted by Largo Caballero, losing control in this way of its armed forces.

The only serious operative military force existent in the republican field was the 5th Regiment that had been organized by the PCE in Madrid. In it were integrated the first militias formed by the Party as well as the ones formed by the Unified Socialist Youth, many socialist and UGT workers, some progressive professional military and other antifascists. Conceived as an embryo of a regular army, it counted with a general staff, schools of military training, quartermaster corps services, transports, liaisons, transmissions, medical services, etc. But, at the same time, it differed from a conventional army in the presence of politic officers, whose task consisted in supporting the military ranks and keeping high the revolutionary conscience and moral of the combatants, already proved from the first defensive and offensive combats in the mountains of Guadarrama, Somosierra and other places. More than 70,000 combatants were posted in its unities in the course of the war. From them and their leaders came out many capable military commanders of the people's army who will be at the head of divisions and of army corps.

Following the model of the 5th Regiment, the Party also organized its militias in other places. The same did the PSUC and the CP of the Basque Country.

On their part, the other worker parties and trade unions had their own militias, whereas the Government counted with several hundreds of commanders and officials and some regiments, apart from some police units, assault police forces and the Republican National Guard, as well as with the fleet and the air force.

With these disperse and badly organized forces it was evident that the Republic could not confront the fascist army. In view of that situation, faced to the mere militarization of the militia forces with which the democratico-bourgeois parties and soci