'World capital of anti-fascism'? The making --and breaking-- of a global left in Spain, 1936-39 (2020) (original) (raw)
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GUERRILLEROS AND NEIGHBOURS IN ARMS: Identities and Cultures of Anti-fascist Resistance in Spain
2016
The Spanish Civil War, fought between 1936 and 1939, was the first battle against fascism in Europe. Five months after the victory of dictator Francisco Franco in Spain the conflict moved to Europe with the outbreak of the Second World War. Fascism and anti-fascism again faced each other on the battlefield. Amid the heat of the Nazi invasions in Europe, anti-fascist resistance groups formed by ordinary citizens emerged in virtually all European countries. Although the Franco dictatorship was not directly involved in the Second World War, in Spain an anti-Franco resistance movement was organised in 1939 and lasted until 1952. Although the Spanish resistance constituted the first and last antifascist resistance movement in Europe, the Spanish case has been consistently overlooked by international studies. This book inserts the Spanish anti-Franco resistance into the European context, proposing a new narrative of anti-fascist resistances (plural and in lower case) in Europe. At the same time, the book offers a new interpretation of guerrilla phenomena with a strongly peasant character, as was the case of the resistance in Spain. The author underlines the Importance of primary groups (kinship, neighbourhood, friendship) and secondary groups (camaraderie and political loyalties) in the mobilization and organization of armed groups. For this study, the author established twelve variables that permitted him to distinguish between ‘neighbours in arms’ and ‘modern guerrilla’. Using all of these elements, the author shows the plurality of the identities and cultures of the antifascist resistance in Spain.
Anticlericalism: The Dilemma of Nationalist Revival in the Spanish Civil War (1931-1939)
For many years, the historical impact of national movements in Europe has caused a stir and continues to be an issue of major importance. Historiographically, nationalism poses a threat to one’s views and aspirations for the nation leading to a deeply rooted sense of radical patriotism. The Spanish Civil War was a fight between the left-leaning Republicans, allied with the Anarchists and Communists, and the conservatives fought by the Nationalists, the Carlists, the Catholics, and a group of aristocrats led by the Spanish general Francisco Franco. The authoritarian conflict caused by the Second Spanish Republic was a high period of political idealism and a struggle between democracy and fascism in Europe. Using Hobsbawm’s framework on nationalism can the reader get a true grasp of the context of historicizing anticlericalism. In the same way, by doing so, the perspective of the study doesn’t just intend to internalize anticlericalism. It also hopes to examine the external factors in Modern European history advocating for the liberal left-wing and the conservative right-wing parity to arise during the Spanish Civil War.
In Search of the Lost Narrative: Antifascism and Democracy in Present Day Spain
Hugo García, Mercedes Yusta, Xavier Tabet, and Cristina Clímaco (eds.), RETHINKING ANTIFASCISM History, Memory and Politics, 1922 to the Present, New York-Oxford, Berghahn, 2016, ISBN 978-1-78533-138-1
The transition from dictatorship to democracy in Spain after 1975 promoted a political discourse of reconciliation, and its success seemed to be based on the overcoming of the great narratives and forgetfulness of past divisions. Over time, however, this transition presented as a model has been refuted from positions that reclaim the Second Republic and its anti-fascist mobilization as a source of legitimacy of Spanish democracy. On these opposing narratives operate a number of ideological, generational, national identity and political cleavages, that give rise to public uses of memory largely unknown in Spain, which has not been immune professional historiography, and increasingly most controversial in a climate characterized by the economic crisis, the nationalism challenges, the political disaffection and institutional crisis.
Fascism and the Radical Right: Comparison and Entanglements - ComFas3, 2020
This paper aims to assemble a global analysis of fascism’s war experience during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Its starting point it’s the coup d’état of July 1936, which evolved into a modern, civil and total war waged not only at the fronts, but also in the rears, both the own and the enemy one. Therefore, the fascist war effort not only focused on the battlefield, the political violence in the rear, or the civil mobilization aimed to support this war effort. It also had a crucial dimension incarnated in those that were involved or supported the uprising in the territories where the coup failed and that ended up being controlled by the Republicans during part or the whole war. Thus, this paper compares the way Rebel troops waged war (typical of a modern conflict characterized by total mobilization and extreme levels of violence), with how this war was waged in the enemy rear by the supporters of the rebellion (the so called ‘Fifth Column’), tightly inked to irregular warfare such as espionage, sabotage or psychological war. Moreover, we will pay special attention to the links between the various right-wing and fascist groups in both sides of the front, reflection around if the shared war experience strengthened connections and made entanglements possible among them. Ultimately, our aim is to develop a more complex view of the Spanish Civil War in order to understand it from a ‘total’ perspective, by analyzing the idiosyncrasy of fascist war in both rears.
Scottish Journal of Labour History, 2021
Review of Giles Tremlett, The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and The Spanish Civil War (Bloomsbury, 2020), Fraser Raeburn, Scots and the Spanish Civil War: Solidarity, Activism and Humanitarianism (EUP, 2020)
Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions , 2008
This article challenges the traditionally accepted claims that in the early months of 1936, the anarcho-syndicalist labour union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo [National Confederation of Labour], or CNT, posed a revolutionary threat to the Spanish Second Republic. This argument has been used to explain the collapse of the Republican regime, and consequently the military coup that sparked the Spanish Civil War in July 1936. Though revolutionary insurrectionism was inherently characteristic of the CNT and the anarcho-syndicalist movement, in 1936, the organisation was neither prepared nor willing to incite a social revolution. This article analyses the reasons for the anarcho-syndicalists’ turn to moderation, paying special attention to the emergence of a perceived ‘fascist threat’ that heavily influenced the change in anarcho-syndicalist insurrectionary tactics which lasted into the Spanish Civil War. It also evaluates the impact of these findings on Civil War historiography, and proposes a reconsideration of the assessment of blame for beginning the conflict.
Contemporary European History
This article investigates how, during the Spanish Civil War (1936–9), left-wing British, Dutch and German-language newspapers ‘recruited’ their readers to the cause of the Spanish Republic. Recruitment could consist of donating time, money, social and political capital, or, in extreme cases, actually joining the fighting in Spain. It employs a double comparative approach, analysing recruitment messages attuned to readers in three different national political contexts and cultures produced on behalf of socialist and communist organisations. It argues that different ‘sketches of Spain’ co-existed, aligned to different domestic political and popular cultures and through different ideological lenses. These different sketches, in turn, were vital in shaping people's expectations of the Civil War, circumscribed the scope for and content of anti-fascist transnational connections made in Spain, and helped foster new understandings of social and political circumstances at home.
Identity and fascist discourse in the rebel propaganda during the Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War was a total war, framed in the context of development of a new type of conflict were the boundaries between civilians and military became totally blurred. A war in which soldiers needed the essential contribution of propaganda in order to reinforce their moral and willingness to fight. Something that was especially important regarding the sphere of violence in the rearguard that was implemented by the combatants over the civil population. In this sense, as historians like Omer Bartov have highlighted, propaganda played the crucial role of creating mental frameworks and survival strategies for these soldiers, so they were able to implement the eliminationist tasks the were ordered to, as it happened both in the Spanish Civil War and in the Second World War. Connected to this, fascism provide this sort of psychic tools through the permeation of the frontline propaganda, making the front and the war experience as ideal socializers of this ideology. On this basis, the aim of our paper is to analyze fascist discourse codified in frontline propaganda during the Spanish World War, focusing, as it cannot be in other way, in the rebel side. Thus, we have to start from the consideration of the low specific military frontline propaganda in the rebel side, as we can only identify few newspapers and newsletters that were focused on the combatants. Because of that, in our study we will work with rear press, mainly due to it was taken to the frontline and distributed among soldiers. Therefore, we are going to analyze the specific front press, like La Ametralladora or Boletín de Campaña de los Requetés, but also the rear press like ABC Sevilla, El Noticiero or Unidad. Diario de combate nacionalsindicalista, trying to explore the different points of view of falangists, carlists, and right wing catholics, considering all of them parts of the same project, the fascist one. In conclusion, we will tackle the issue of propaganda during the Spanish Civil War trying to determine if it worked as a socializer of the fascist discourse –of fascism itself-, analyzing how this propaganda was made and what were the main ideas in which it was based. Then, we will compare it with the main characteristics of Spanish fascism –mainly the same as Italian or German, but adapted to the Spanish context-, that it to say, Catholicism, myth of national palingenesis –for the Spanish fascism, resume and actualize the “glorious” times of the Spanish Empire- or the need of social prophylaxis to “heal” the nation, among others, taking always into account using a comparative and transnational perspective what happened in the other fascist experiences, and also what did the Spanish soldiers thought –studying memories, in this case- about the nature of their fight. Thus, we will analyze propaganda during the conflict of 1936-1939 as a mean of shedding light over the process of building of the fascist regime in Spain, in which we consider propaganda –linked with war experience itself- played an essential role.
Workers of the World. International Journal on Strikes and Social Conflicts, 6., 2015
This article focuses on how Spanish Civil War was experienced and understood by those who in the previous years declared themselves pacifist or antimilitarist, mainly the pacifist movement around War Resisters´ International (WRI) and the antimilitarist and anarchist trade union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). In the article we will deal with the different ways in which this men and women analysed war reality, starting with the use of violence and the attitude towards the creation of an army, following with recruitment and finishing with the ideological repression in the rear guard. These perspectives will help us understand the militarization process occurred in in the Republican Side, the way war culture was present there and the strategies that sometimes were carried out to prevent some of its consequences.