4. The Fight Against Fascism: November 1933 to February 1936¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter traces the political trajectory of Spain’s “bienio negro” (1933–1935), arguing that the Radical-led governments of Lerroux were a front for the clerical-fascist CEDA under Gil Robles, who deliberately avoided open seizure of power until he could build a mass base. The author contends that the Spanish proletariat, unlike its German and Austrian counterparts, successfully prevented fascist consolidation through militant resistance, and that this victory was made possible by the leftward turn of the Socialist Party under Largo Caballero. The chapter’s core narrative thrust is that the October 1934 insurrection, though defeated, broke the fascist momentum and paved the way for the Popular Front electoral victory of February 1936.
Key claims include: Gil Robles modelled himself on Hitler and Mussolini, but faced structural obstacles because Spain’s middle class was too small to provide a fascist mass base; his attempts to recruit the unemployed through welfare schemes and reforestation work camps failed because the socialist-led proletariat physically disrupted his mass rallies. The chapter provides detailed evidence of this disruption—general strikes, torn-up tramlines, barricades, and armed dispersal of clerical-fascist gatherings at Escurial, Covadongas, and in Catalonia. The author argues that the Spanish socialists broke decisively with the passivity of German and Austrian social democracy, citing Caballero’s purge of right-wingers from the UGT executive and public pledges of armed resistance in the Cortes.
The theoretical context is Marxist analysis of fascism and the united front. The chapter polemicises sharply against several targets: the “third-period” Stalinist line of social-fascism, which denounced Spanish socialists as fascist collaborators until September 1934, when the Comintern was forced to join the Workers’ Alliances; the anarchists of the CNT, whose refusal to strike on the railways fatally weakened the October insurrection; and the petty-bourgeois Catalan government of Companys, which capitulated rather than arm the workers. The Communist Left (Trotskyists) are presented as the only force correctly advocating for workers’ councils (Workers’ Alliances) as the instrument of insurrection, but the chapter criticises the socialist leaders for reducing these to liaison committees rather than mass elected bodies.
The chapter draws historical parallels to Austria (where clerical-fascism crushed the proletariat) and Germany, and uses the Asturian commune of October 1934 as its heroic counter-example—fifteen days of workers’ power, land confiscation, and revolutionary tribunals, crushed only by Foreign Legion and Moorish troops because the rebellion failed elsewhere. The author concludes that the February 1936 election victory was not a parliamentary normalcy but a mass mobilisation that swept away the semi-fascist regime, warning that Azaña’s return to the conciliatory policies of 1931–1933 was already repeating the errors that had led to the bienio negro.