Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
Encyclopedia
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT; "National Confederation of Labour") is a Spanish confederation
of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association
(IWA; Spanish: AIT – Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores). When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT. Historically, the CNT has also been affiliated with the Federación Anarquista Ibérica
(Iberian Anarchist Federation – FAI). In this capacity it was referred to as the CNT-FAI. Throughout its history, it has played a major role in the Spanish labor movement.
Founded in 1910 in Barcelona
from groups brought together by the trade union Solidaridad Obrera, it significantly expanded the role of anarchism in Spain
, which can be traced to the creation of the Federación de Trabajadores de la Región Española, the successor organization to the Spanish chapter of the IWA.
Despite several decades when the organization was illegal in Spain, today the CNT continues to participate in the Spanish worker's movement, focusing its efforts on the principles of workers' self-management
, federalism
, and mutual aid
.
. To achieve their goal of social revolution
the organisation has outlined a social-economic system through the confederal concept of anarchist communism
, which consists of a series of general ideas proposed for the organisation of an anarchist
society. The CNT draws inspiration from anarchist ideas, and also identifies with the struggles of different social movements. The CNT is internationalist
, but also supports communities'
right of self-determination
and their sovereignty
over the state
.
(sometimes referred to as "branch unions") form the base structure of the CNT. Each industrial union groups together workers of different crafts within an industry. When there are fewer than 25 people working in one particular industry, a various posts union
is formed for that industry, rather than multiple industry unions. A various posts union can include workers from different crafts and industries; it requires a minimum of five people. If this number cannot be reached, four or fewer workers can form a confederal group. Due to the small size of the CNT, a majority of its unions are various posts unions.
The decision-making power of the industry and various posts unions resides in the union assembly
: decisions are taken by all of the workers of the union in question via a system of direct democracy and consensus
. These assemblies may address any number of issues, whether "local, provincial, regional, national or international".
Union sections are assemblies of union workers who work in the same work centre or small business. The assembly of the union section chooses a delegation for the union section, which is usually rotated and which will represent the opinions of the union section in meetings with other entities, although it does not have decision-making powers.
The assembly chooses a committee
to carry out routine or administrative duties that do not require the discussion of all members; the committee does not have decision-making powers. Committees can organise themselves through different departments, including propaganda, culture and archives; press and information; treasury and economic affairs; legal and prisoner advocacy; union action; social action and general secretariat. The number of secretaryships can vary, sometimes two or more overlapping on a single one if considered necessary. Delegations from the union sections of the branch businesses are also part of the committee.
s, following the Principle of Federation. The reason for favoring this structure is intended to limit homogeneity in committees, and keep them from having politics or programs. It is also intended to minimize the power of individuals who may be more active in the organization.
The different industry and various posts unions of a particular municipality constitute the local federation of unions that are coordinated by means of a local committee which has the same characteristics and powers as the union committees. The local committee is selected in the local plenary
assembly to which every industry and various posts union can send delegations with written agreements previously adopted in their assembly. CNT has Local Federations in Madrid, Barcelona, Granada
, and Seville
. In turn, the unions of neighbouring municipalities can group together into a comarca
l federation.
A regional confederation brings together several local unions within a geographic regional zone. The structure is the same again: a regional committee with a Secretary General and the rest of the Secretariats in a regional plenary to which the local unions send delegations with written agreements previously made in the assembly. The regional division of the CNT has undergone changes through time.
The regional confederations send representative delegations—again on the same basis—to the national plenary
assembly, which constitutes the national confederation. The national plenary of regional confederations elects a national General Secretary, who moves the CNT headquarters to his/her place of residence. Hence, the CNT has no fixed headquarters.
The local plenary of the local federation chosen as headquarters gathers to designate the rest of the secretarial offices. The General Secretary and the rest of the secretaries form the Permanent Secretariat of the National Committee (SPCN, in Spanish) of the CNT, along with the General Secretariats of each of the regions. As in every committee in the CNT, their capacities are technical or administrative: they have no authority to make decisions for others.
.
The Congress is convoked by the National Committee a year beforehand when there is an imperative need or there are new issues to assess. The discussion subjects are presented after being confirmed in a national plenary session, and then seven months before the Congress each member union starts its own debate which culminates with the presentation of their ideas to the Congress.
. Plenarias cannot take decisions, only develop technical and administrative issues, as they are constituted by committees without decision-making powers.
Another method of decision-making is through local and regional plenaries (or plenary assemblies), and congresses, in which industry and various posts unions take active part sending delegations with previously reached and written agreements. The National Plenary does not follow this rule, as in this case the delegations with the written agreements come from the regional confederations.
CNT conferences are open meetings in which matters are discussed and themes proposed; they serve to take the pulse of general opinion within the organization at any given moment. The discussions are later passed on to the local unions for their perusal. Persons representing themselves or another group or trade union may attend, but they cannot pass resolutions.
Industry federations are organized by branch of production, not geographically. All CNT unions in a particular branch of production form the national industry federation of that branch, differing from the structure of branch unions organized by local and regional federations and confederations. Industry federations exist on a regional level as well. Industry federations are empowered to act regarding matters lying within their area of responsibility. They send representatives that can speak, but not vote, at the national and regional confederations.
The International Workers Association
(IWA, AIT in Spanish) is a transnational organization which consists of delegations from a number of countries. The national anarcho-syndicalist organizations, each of which operates only in its home country, are known as the sections of the IWA. As such, the CNT is the IWA's Spanish section.
The IWA has an international secretariat elected by the various sections and can be structured by continent through the industry federations' system.
The CNT journal CNT, or Periódico CNT (CNT Journal), operates autonomously. Its directorship and headquarters are chosen in a congress or national plenary. The directorship manages its distribution, printing, sales, and subscriptions, as well as selecting from among articles submitted. The chosen director attends the CNT National Committee's meetings on a non-voting basis. The Secretary General of the CNT is responsible for writing Periódico CNT's editorial page. Periódico CNT is published monthly, under a Creative Commons
copyleft
license and it is available in printed and online
format.
All organs and trade unions within the CNT may have their own media. Solidaridad Obrera
("Workers' Solidarity") is the journal of the Regional Confederation of Labour of Catalonia. It was established in 1907, being the oldest communication medium of the CNT. Other media are La tira de papel, the Graphic Arts, Media and Shows National Coordinator bulletin; the Cenit, newspaper of the Regional Committee of the Exterior; and BICEL, edited by the Anselmo Lorenzo Foundation, which was created in 1987. The Foundation works autonomously, and its directorship is elected in a national plenary congress. Some of its duties are to maintain, catalogue and publicly display historic properties of the CNT, to publish books and other media, including BICEL, the Internal Bulletin of Centers of Anarchist Studies, to prepare cultural events during CNT or AIT congresses: lectures, debates, conferences, videoforums, book presentations, etc., and to coordinate with other similar projects.
, which it considers to be more in tune with its anarchist principles. While pure consensus is plausible for individual base unions, higher levels of organizations cannot completely avoid the need for some type of vote, which is always done openly by a show of hands.
The CNT attempts to minimize this problem by a system of limited proportional voting. Even so, this system has some failures and may discriminate against unions with larger memberships. As an example, "ten unions with 25 adherents would total 250 members having 10 votes. This would be more votes than a union of 2,500, which with 10 times more members would only have the right to 7 votes." Within the CNT this isn't considered a major problem, because agreements tend to reach consensus after long discussions. However, due to the nature of consensus decision-making, the final agreements consensed to may bear little resemblance to the initial proposals brought to the table.
or autogestion, federalism
and mutual aid
, and considers that work conflicts must be settled between employers and employees without the action of such intemediaries as official state organisms or professional unionists. This is why the union criticizes union elections and works council
s as means of control for managers, preferring workers' assemblies, union sections and direct action
. Also, when possible, the CNT avoids taking legal action through the courts. Administrative positions in the union rotate and are unpaid. They prefer linear salary raises to increases that are percentage based, because the former increase equality of salaries. (That is, they prefer that all workers have their pay raised by the same absolute amount rather than the same percentage of their previous wage.)
The CNT's usual methods of action include exhibiting banners in front of the headquarters of companies with which the union has a conflict, and calls for consumer boycotts of their products and for social solidarity with the aggrieved workers. During strikes, resistance funds are created to help strikers and their families economically.
The CNT is organized around craft unions. This practice was adopted around 1918 in times of great class struggle
under the reign of Alfonso XIII
:
The Spanish anarchist movement
lacked a stable national organization during its early years. The anarchist Juan Gómez Casas described the evolution of the anarchist organization prior to the creation of the CNT:
At the beginning of the 20th century there was a consensus among anarchists that a new national labor organization was necessary, to bring coherence and strength to the movement. During the Bourbon restoration
(1874–1931), carried out by the traditional and dynastic parties represented by Cánovas del Castillo
and Mateo Sagasta, a large portion of the workers' movement united around the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
as a political force, and around the Unión General de Trabajadores
(UGT, "Workers' General Union") for collective bargaining purposes. There were also republican movements with a stronger parliamentary emphasis, which was supported by a portion of the new bourgeoisie
.
In 1910, in the middle of the restoration, the CNT was founded in Barcelona in a congress of the Catalonia
n trade union Solidaridad Obrera
(Workers' Solidarity) with the objective of constituting an opposing force to the then-majority trade union, the socialist UGT and "to speed up the economic emancipation of the working class through the revolutionary expropriation
of the bourgeoisie". The CNT started small, counting 26,571 members represented through several trade unions and other confederations.
In 1911, coinciding with its first congress, the CNT initiated a general strike that provoked a Barcelona judge to declare the union illegal until 1914. That same year of 1911, the trade union officially received its name.
In 1916 the CNT changed its strategy respecting the UGT, establishing new relations that allowed the two unions to initiate the general strike of 1917 jointly. The second congress of the CNT in 1919 studied the possibility of merging both organizations to unify the Spanish labor movement. That same congress approved linking the CNT to the Third International, but after Ángel Pestaña
's visit to the Soviet Union
, and on his advice, they broke definitively from the Third International in 1922.
(employing thugs to intimidate active unionists), causing a spiral of violence which significantly affected the trade union. These pistoleros are credited with killing 21 union leaders in 48 hours.
In 1922 the International Workingmen's Association
(later International Workers' Association) was founded in Berlin; the CNT joined immediately. However, the following year, with the rise of Miguel Primo de Rivera
's dictatorship, the labor union was outlawed, once again.
In 1927 with the "moderate" positioning of some cenetistas (CNT members) the Federación Anarquista Ibérica
(FAI), an association of anarchist affinity group
s, was created in Valencia. The FAI would play an important role during the following years through the so-called trabazón (connection) with the CNT, that is, the presence of FAI elements in the CNT, encouraging the labor union not to move away from its anarchist principles, an influence that continues today.
. This support decreased progressively during the years between 1931 and 1933 because of constant confrontations with the republican authorities in the successive general strikes. The end of that period was marked by so-called revolutions of January and December, both of which were swiftly suppressed by the government. In those days the CNT functioned primarily in Catalonia
, but was also gaining importance in other regions, such as Andalusia
and Aragon
(where it had a higher membership than the UGT).
Tensions between the radical faístas, or FAI members, and the moderate non-faístas were constant and difficult to analyze because of the decentralized and sectorial nature of the organization. Finally, in 1931 a group of moderates published the Manifesto
of the Thirty, which would give rise to treintism (from treinta, thirty in Spanish), and in 1932 Ángel Pestaña split from the CNT to create the Syndicalist Party
.
The two years governed by the coalition of the center-left Partido Republicano Radical and the center-right CEDA were marked by mostly clandestine CNT activity, in the face of severe government repression. During the socialist October Revolution of 1934 (at which point membership in the CNT reached 1.58 million) the CNT participated only from the background. However, the CNT's Regional Confederation of Labour of Asturias
, León
and Palencia
actively participated in the revolution because of its loyalty to workers' alliances, this time formalized through the Uníos Hermanos Proletarios (UHP; United Brothers of the Proletariat) in the pact with the UGT and the Asturian Socialist Federation. Thus, in La Felguera
and in El Llano district of Gijón
there were short periods when anarchist communism
was put into practice:
It is believed that 30,000 people were imprisoned during this period. The successful transportation strike in Zaragoza
, followed by a more-than-two-week general strike, was convoked in 1935 jointly with the UGT. However, this collaboration was not to be repeated in later actions.
After Lerroux
's government crumbled, the 1936 elections placed the CNT at a crossroads. Opinions inside the organization were split among the supporters of abstention
ism, those who wanted to allow the workers to choose whether or not to vote, or those directly advocating a vote for the Popular Front
. This coalition party promised amnesty for prisoners, and part of the growth of the Front appears to have been thanks to the anarchist vote.
The CNT held a congress in Saragossa on 1 May, ratifying the position that the union should make no pacts with any political party, despite UGT leader Largo Caballero's attempts to persuade the union to stand in unity with the UGT.
On 1 June, the CNT joined the UGT in declaring a strike of "building workers, mechanics, and lift operators." A demonstration was held, 70,000 workers strong. Members of the Falange
attacked the strikers. The strikers responded by looting shops, and the police reacted by attempting to suppress the strike. By the beginning of July, the CNT was still fighting, while the UGT had agreed to arbitration. In retaliation to the attacks by the Falangists, anarchists killed three bodyguards of the Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera
. The government then closed the CNT's centers in Madrid
, and arrested David Antona and Cipriano Mera, two CNT militants.
. During the war, the union collaborated with other republican groups opposed to the Nationalists
. As the war developed, members of the CNT came to form part of the government of the Republic, holding various ministries and high positions within the administration.
In Barcelona, the anarchists came to control the majority of the functions of society, collectivizing a large part of the activity of the city, as George Orwell
described:
Across the border from Catalonia in the nominally Republican eastern portion of the divided Aragon, the republican state was similarly powerless. The CNT militias
, which occupied Lower Teruel and Huesca, established defense committees that replaced the old city councils. In zones that had more anarchist presence before the war, collectivization of the land was carried out with great success. These first collectivizations were voluntary and were established from the lands that belonged to the members and those which had been requisitioned from those who were fugitive or missing. Those property-owners who wanted to keep possession of their land were not allowed to hire outside their families, and those lands they could not farm passed under community control.
George Orwell wrote of the nature of the new society that arose in the communities:
Some of the most important communities in this respect were those of Alcañiz
, Calanda, Alcorisa
, Valderrobres
, Fraga
or Alcampel. Not only were the lands collectivized, but collective labours were also undertaken, like the retirement home in Fraga, the collectivization of some hospitals (such as in Barbastro
or Binéfar
), and the founding of schools such as the School of Anarchist Militants. These institutions would be destroyed by the Nationalist troops during the war.
The Committee held an extraordinary regional plenary session to protect the new rural organization, gathering all the union representatives from the supporting villages and backed by Buenaventura Durruti
. Against the will of the mainly Catalonia
n CNT National Committee, the Regional Council for the Defense of Aragon was created.
The Civil War era also showed a spirit of sexual revolution
. The anarchist women's organization Mujeres Libres
established an equal opportunity for women in a society that traditionally had held women in lower regard. Women acquired power they had not previously had in Spanish society, fighting at the front and doing heavy jobs, things that had been forbidden to them until then. Free love
became popular, although some parents' distrust produced the creation of the revolutionary weddings, informal ceremonies where the couples declared their status, and that could be annulled if both parties didn't want to continue their relationship.
Following Largo Caballero
’s assumption of the position of Prime Minister
of the government, he invited the CNT to join in the coalition of groups making up the national government. The CNT proposed instead that a National Defense Council should be formed, led by Largo Caballero, and containing five members each from the CNT and UGT, and four “liberal republicans”. When this proposal was declined, the CNT decided not to join the government. However, in Catalonia, the CNT joined the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias, which joined the Generalitat
on 26 September. For the first time, three members of the CNT were also members of the government.
In November, Caballero once again asked the CNT to become part of the government. The leadership of the CNT requested the finance and war ministries, as well as three others, but were given four posts, the ministries of health, justice, industry, and commerce. With Federica Montseny
became Minister of Health, the first female minister in Spain. Juan García Oliver
, as minister of justice, abolished legal fees and destroyed all criminal files. Shortly afterwards, despite the disapproval of the anarchist ministers, the capital was moved from Madrid to Valencia.
On 23 December 1936, after receiving in Madrid a retinue formed by Joaquín Ascaso, Miguel Chueca and three republican and independent leaders, the government of Largo Caballero, which by then had four anarchists as ministers (García Oliver, Juan López, Federica Montseny and Joan Peiró
), approved the formation of the National Defense Committee. It was a revolutionary body which represented anarchists as much as socialists and republicans.
with the purpose of creating the Regional Federation of Collectives of Aragon. 456 delegates, representing more than 141,000 collective members, attended the congress. The congress was also attended by delegates of the National Committee of the CNT.
At a plenary session of the CNT in March 1937, the national committee asked for a motion of censure
to suppress the Aragonese Regional Council. The Aragonese regional committee threatened to resign, which thwarted the censure effort. Though there had always been disagreements, that spring also saw a great escalation in confrontations between the CNT-FAI and the Communists. In Madrid, Melchor Rodríguez
, who was then a member of the CNT, and director of prisons in Madrid, published accusations that the Communist José Cazorla, who was then overseeing public order, was maintaining secret prisons to hold anarchists, socialists, and other republicans, and either executing, or torturing them as "traitors". Soon after, on this pretext, Largo Caballero dissolved the Communist-controlled Junta de Defensa. Cazorla reacted by closing the offices of Solidaridad Obrera
.
In Catalonia, the Catalan Communists
in the Catalan government made several demands that provoked the ire of the anarchists, in particular the call for turning all weapons over to the control of the government. The 8 April 1937 issue of Solidaridad Obrera opined, "We have made too many concessions and have reached the moment of turning off the tap," while the 2 May issue urged workers to prevent the government from disarming them. On the 25th, Juan Negrín
sent security forces to take over posts on the French border in the Pyrenees that had until then been controlled by the CNT, anarchists in Bellver de Cerdanya fought with Negrín's carabineros, and Roldán Cortada, the Communist leader of the UGT was killed, allegedly by an anarchist. Cortada's funeral was used by the PSUC as an anti-CNT demonstration. Because of all the conflict, the UGT and CNT agreed with the Generalitat to cancel any celebrations on May Day. On 3 May, Assault Guards of the government attempted to take over the CNT-controlled telephone exchange
building in Barcelona, but were held off by gunfire. The assault guard laid siege to the building, and fighting between the anarchists and POUM on one side, and Communists and the government forces on the other began. Leaders of the CNT attempted to acquire the resignation of the Communists they felt were responsible for the conflict, but to no avail.
The next day CNT's regional committee declared a general strike
. The CNT controlled the majority of the city, including the heavy artillery on the hill of Montjuïc
overlooking the city. CNT militias disarmed more than 200 members of the security forces at their barricades, allowing only CNT vehicles to pass through. After unsuccessful appeals from the CNT leadership to end the fighting, the government began transferring Assault Guard from the front to Barcelona, and even destroyers from Valencia. On 5 May, the Friends of Durruti issued a pamphlet calling for "disarming of the paramilitary police… dissolution of the political parties…" and declared "Long live the social revolution! – Down with the counter-revolution!" The pamphlet was quickly denounced by the leadership of the CNT. The next day, the government agreed to a proposal by the leadership of the CNT-FAI, that called for the removal of the Assault Guards, and no reprisals against libertarians that had participated in the conflict, in exchange for the dismantling of barricades, and end of the general strike. However, neither the PSUC or the Assault Guards gave up their positions, and according to historian Anthony Beevor "carried out violent reprisals against libertarians" By 8 May, the fighting was over.
These events
, the fall of Largo Caballero's government, and the new prime ministership of Juan Negrín
soon led to the collapse of much that the CNT had achieved immediately following the rising the previous July. At the beginning of July, the Aragonese organizations of the Popular Front publicly declared their support for the alternative council in Aragon, led by their president, Joaquín Ascaso. Four weeks later the 11th Division, under Enrique Líster
, entered the region. On 11 August 1937, the Republican government, now situated in Valencia, dismissed the Regional Council for the Defense of Aragon. Líster's division was prepared for an offensive on the Aragonese front, but they were also sent to subdue the collectives run by the CNT-UGT and in dismantling the collective structures created the previous twelve months. The offices of the CNT were destroyed, and all the equipment belonging to its collectives was redistributed to landowners. The CNT leadership not only refused to allow the anarchist columns on the Aragon front to leave the front to defend the collectives, but they failed to condemn the government's actions against the collectives, causing much conflict between it and the rank and file membership of the union.
, a member of the CNT, as minister of education, and by this point, the only CNT member left in the cabinet. At this point, many in the CNT leadership were critical of participation in the government, seeing it as dominated by the Communists. Prominent CNT leaders went so far as to refer to Blanco as "sop of the libertarian movement" and "just one more Negrínist." On the other side, Blanco was responsible for installing other CNT members into the ministry of education, and stopping the spread of "Communist propaganda" by the ministry.
In March 1939, with the war nearly over, CNT leaders participated in the National Defense Council's coup overthrowing the government of the Socialist Juan Negrín. Those involved included the CNT's Eduardo Val and José Manuel González Marín serving on the council, while Cipriano Mera
's 70th Division provided military support, and Melechor Rodríquez became mayor of Madrid. The Council attempted to negotiate a peace with Franco, though he granted virtually none of their demands.
The CNT acted clandestinely inside Spain during the Franco years, as well as conducting activities from exile, and some members kept on fighting the regime of Francisco Franco
until 1948 through the guerrilla actions of maquis
. There was much disagreement amongst factions of the CNT during these years. There was a major split after the National Committee inside Spain chose to support members of the Republican government in exile, while members of the Libertarian Movement in Exile (MLE) (basically the CNT-in-exile) stood against further collaboration with the government. Even Federica Montseny, who had joined the Republic as Minister of Health changed her stance on collaboration, describing the "futility of...participation in the government."
In January 1960, the MLE was formed by the CNT, the FAI, and the FIJL. In September of the next year, a congress was held in Limoges
, at which the Sección Defensa Interior (DI) was created, to be partially funded by the CNT. By this point, a great majority of the CNT-in-exile had given up on political action as a tool, and one of the main goals of the DI was to assassinate Franco.
These divergent attitudes combined with Franco's repression to weaken the organization, and the CNT lost influence among the population inside Spain. In 1961 it began to regain strength, consolidating itself during the 1960s and 1970s thanks to penetration of anarcho-syndicalist ideology into Catholic anti-Francoist workers' organizations such as the Hermandad Obrera de Acción Católica (HOAC, "Worker Brethren of Catholic Action") or Juventud Obrera Católica (JOC, "Catholic Worker Youth").
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After Franco's death in November 1975 and the beginning of Spain's transition to democracy
, the CNT was the only social movement to refuse to sign the 1977 Moncloa Pact, an agreement amongst politicians, political parties, and trade unions to plan how to operate the economy during the transition. In 1979, the CNT held its first congress since 1936 as well as several mass meetings, the most remarkable one in Montjuïc
. Views put forward in this congress would set the pattern for the CNT's line of action for the following decades: no participation in union elections, no acceptance of state subsidies, no acknowledgment of works council
s, and support of union sections.
In this first congress, held in Madrid, a minority sector in favor of union elections split from the CNT, initially calling themselves CNT Valencia Congress (referring to the alternative congress held in this city), and later Confederación General del Trabajo
(CGT) after an April 1989 court decision determined that they could not use the CNT initials. In 1990, a group of CGT members left this union to be able to receive the same government subsidies that other unions receive, founding Solidaridad Obrera
.
One year before, the 1978 Scala Case affected the CNT. An explosion killed three people in a Barcelona night club. The authorities alleged that striking workers "blew themselves up", and arrested surviving strikers, implicating them in the crime. CNT members declared that the prosecution sought to criminalize their organization:
After its legalization, the CNT began efforts to recover the expropriations of 1939. The basis for such recovery would be established by Law 4/1986, which required the return of the seized properties, and the unions' right to use or yield the real estate. Since then the CNT has been claiming the return of these properties from the State.
In 1996, the Economic and Social Council facilities in Madrid were squatted by 105 CNT militants. This body is in charge of the repatriation of the accumulated union wealth. In 2004 an agreement was reached between the CNT and the District Attorney's Office, through which all charges were dropped against the hundred prosecuted for this occupation.
(CCOO) and about 840,000 in the socialist Workers' General Union
(UGT). The regions with the largest CNT membership are the Centre (Madrid and surrounding area), the North (Basque country), Andalucía and Catalonia (including the Balearic Islands).
The CNT opposes the model of union elections and workplace committees and is critical of labor reforms and the UGT and the CCOO, standing instead on a platform of reivindicación, that is, "return of what is due", or social revolution.
In 2005, the government of Spain continued the return of the union endowments seized during and after the Civil War
to the UGT and CNT. According to some social groups and media reports, this return was seen to be a show of favoritism to the UGT, because in 1936, the anarcho-syndicalist trade unions had about as many members as other unions, but the government returned about four million euros to the CNT while the UGT received a much larger amount. The CNT has continued to demand the full return of their seized historical endowment.
July 2006 marked the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Revolution
, and in commemoration the CNT and FAI organized commemorative celebrations, with speeches, debates, film screenings, exhibitions and musical performances.
and culture
accessible to workers, a task which has been developed through the support of the anarchist academies. The School of Anarchist Militants was an institution which, by means of anarchist pedagogy
, sought to ensure that "groups of teenagers could acquire the knowledge and the personal responsibility essential to work in collectives such as those of entertainers and accountants." Through the Anselmo Lorenzo Foundation, the CNT manages its cultural heritage, edits books, and organizes conferences and colloquies. Also, some sections of the CNT have supported and promoted Esperanto
.
The flag of the CNT is the traditional flag of anarcho-syndicalism, which joins diagonally the red color of the labour movement
and the black color of anarchism, as a negation of nationalism and reaffirmation of internationalism.
The anthem
of the CNT is A las barricadas
(To the Barricades), composed by the Polish poet Wacław Święcicki in 1883. Święcicki's work, called Warszawianka, was given Spanish lyrics by Valeriano Orobón Fernández
and published with some musical arrangements for mixed choir by Ángel Miret in 1933.
Several postage stamps were issued by the CNT during the Spanish Civil War
. Other surviving artifacts of this period are poster
s,
movie tickets, and other objects related to the companies which were collectivized during the Spanish Revolution
of 1936.
George Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War in the militia of Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM
), a revolutionary Trotskyst
party (though opposed to the Soviet Union line) whose militants were allied with the CNT during the revolution and to which Andrés Nin
belonged. Orwell described in his book Homage to Catalonia
the time during which Barcelona rose up with the CNT and anarchism. In the ninth chapter of his book, Orwell commented that "As far as my purely personal preferences went I would have liked to join the Anarchists."
In Ernest Hemmingway's 1940 book For Whom the Bell Tolls
, Maria's fascist captors print U.H.P. on her forehead with iodine after cutting her hair.
Robert Capa
photographed the death of the Valencian
Columna Alcoiana militiaman Federico Borrell García
during the Spanish Civil War in the snapshot called "Death of a Loyalist Soldier". This photograph has become a famous image which shows the calamity of war.
In 1936, the film industry was collectivized and produced short films such as En la brecha (In the Gap, 1937). The CNT has been portrayed in recent Spanish filmmaking
by the Vicente Aranda's
film Libertarias
(1996), which shows a group of militiamen (and especially militiawomen) at the Aragon front during the Spanish Civil War.
Confederation
A confederation in modern political terms is a permanent union of political units for common action in relation to other units. Usually created by treaty but often later adopting a common constitution, confederations tend to be established for dealing with critical issues such as defense, foreign...
of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association
International Workers Association
The International Workers' Association is an international federation of anarcho-syndicalist labour unions and initiatives based primarily in Europe and Latin America....
(IWA; Spanish: AIT – Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores). When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT. Historically, the CNT has also been affiliated with the Federación Anarquista Ibérica
Federación Anarquista Ibérica
The Federación Anarquista Ibérica is a Spanish organization of anarchist militants active within affinity groups inside the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo trade union. It is often abbreviated as CNT-FAI because of the close relationship between the two organizations...
(Iberian Anarchist Federation – FAI). In this capacity it was referred to as the CNT-FAI. Throughout its history, it has played a major role in the Spanish labor movement.
Founded in 1910 in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
from groups brought together by the trade union Solidaridad Obrera, it significantly expanded the role of anarchism in Spain
Anarchism in Spain
Anarchism has historically gained more support and influence in Spain than anywhere else, especially before Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939....
, which can be traced to the creation of the Federación de Trabajadores de la Región Española, the successor organization to the Spanish chapter of the IWA.
Despite several decades when the organization was illegal in Spain, today the CNT continues to participate in the Spanish worker's movement, focusing its efforts on the principles of workers' self-management
Workers' self-management
Worker self-management is a form of workplace decision-making in which the workers themselves agree on choices instead of an owner or traditional supervisor telling workers what to do, how to do it and where to do it...
, federalism
Federalism
Federalism is a political concept in which a group of members are bound together by covenant with a governing representative head. The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of the government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and...
, and mutual aid
Mutual aid (politics)
Mutual aid is a term in organization theory used to signify a voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit. Mutual aid is arguably as ancient as human culture; an intrinsic part of the small, communal societies universal to humanity's ancient past...
.
Membership
The CNT says of its membership, "We make no distinction at the time of admission, we require only that you are a worker, student or unemployed. The only people who cannot join are those belonging to repressive organisations (police, military, security guards), employers or other exploiters".Objectives
As a union organization, and in accordance with its bylaws, the aims of the CNT are to "develop a sense of solidarity among workers" hoping to improve their conditions under the current social system, and prepare them for future emancipation, when the means of production have been attained, to practice mutual aid amongst CNT collectives, and maintain relationships with other like-minded groups, hoping for emancipation of the entire working class. The CNT is also concerned with issues beyond the working class, desiring a radical transformation of society through revolutionary syndicalismSyndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
. To achieve their goal of social revolution
Social revolution
The term social revolution may have different connotations depending on the speaker.In the Trotskyist movement, the term "social revolution" refers to an upheaval in which existing property relations are smashed...
the organisation has outlined a social-economic system through the confederal concept of anarchist communism
Anarchist communism
Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, markets, money, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with...
, which consists of a series of general ideas proposed for the organisation of an anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
society. The CNT draws inspiration from anarchist ideas, and also identifies with the struggles of different social movements. The CNT is internationalist
Internationalism (politics)
Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation among nations for the theoretical benefit of all...
, but also supports communities'
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
right of self-determination
Self-determination
Self-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
and their sovereignty
Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
over the state
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...
.
Industrial union and various posts union
The industrial unionsIndustrial unionism
Industrial unionism is a labor union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union—regardless of skill or trade—thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations...
(sometimes referred to as "branch unions") form the base structure of the CNT. Each industrial union groups together workers of different crafts within an industry. When there are fewer than 25 people working in one particular industry, a various posts union
General union
A General Union is a trade union which represents workers from all industries and companies, rather than just one organization or a particular sector, as in a craft union or industrial union...
is formed for that industry, rather than multiple industry unions. A various posts union can include workers from different crafts and industries; it requires a minimum of five people. If this number cannot be reached, four or fewer workers can form a confederal group. Due to the small size of the CNT, a majority of its unions are various posts unions.
The decision-making power of the industry and various posts unions resides in the union assembly
Deliberative assembly
A deliberative assembly is an organization comprising members who use parliamentary procedure to make decisions. In a speech to the electorate at Bristol in 1774, Edmund Burke described the English Parliament as a "deliberative assembly," and the expression became the basic term for a body of...
: decisions are taken by all of the workers of the union in question via a system of direct democracy and consensus
Consensus decision-making
Consensus decision-making is a group decision making process that seeks the consent, not necessarily the agreement, of participants and the resolution of objections. Consensus is defined by Merriam-Webster as, first, general agreement, and second, group solidarity of belief or sentiment. It has its...
. These assemblies may address any number of issues, whether "local, provincial, regional, national or international".
Union sections
Union sections are assemblies of union workers who work in the same work centre or small business. The assembly of the union section chooses a delegation for the union section, which is usually rotated and which will represent the opinions of the union section in meetings with other entities, although it does not have decision-making powers.
Committees and secretaryships
The assembly chooses a committee
Committee
A committee is a type of small deliberative assembly that is usually intended to remain subordinate to another, larger deliberative assembly—which when organized so that action on committee requires a vote by all its entitled members, is called the "Committee of the Whole"...
to carry out routine or administrative duties that do not require the discussion of all members; the committee does not have decision-making powers. Committees can organise themselves through different departments, including propaganda, culture and archives; press and information; treasury and economic affairs; legal and prisoner advocacy; union action; social action and general secretariat. The number of secretaryships can vary, sometimes two or more overlapping on a single one if considered necessary. Delegations from the union sections of the branch businesses are also part of the committee.
Federations and confederations
Unlike organizations that are organized from the top down, the CNT organises itself in an anarchistic fashion, from the bottom up, through different levels of confederationConfederation
A confederation in modern political terms is a permanent union of political units for common action in relation to other units. Usually created by treaty but often later adopting a common constitution, confederations tend to be established for dealing with critical issues such as defense, foreign...
s, following the Principle of Federation. The reason for favoring this structure is intended to limit homogeneity in committees, and keep them from having politics or programs. It is also intended to minimize the power of individuals who may be more active in the organization.
Local and comarcal federations
The different industry and various posts unions of a particular municipality constitute the local federation of unions that are coordinated by means of a local committee which has the same characteristics and powers as the union committees. The local committee is selected in the local plenary
Plenary session
Plenary session is a term often used in conferences to define the part of the conference when all members of all parties are to attend.These sessions may contain a broad range of content from keynotes to panel discussions and are not necessarily related to a specific style of delivery.The term has...
assembly to which every industry and various posts union can send delegations with written agreements previously adopted in their assembly. CNT has Local Federations in Madrid, Barcelona, Granada
Granada
Granada is a city and the capital of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence of three rivers, the Beiro, the Darro and the Genil. It sits at an elevation of 738 metres above sea...
, and Seville
Seville
Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...
. In turn, the unions of neighbouring municipalities can group together into a comarca
Comarca
A comarca is a traditional region or local administrative division found in parts of Spain, Portugal, Panama, Nicaragua, and Brazil. The term is derived from the term marca, meaning a "march, mark", plus the prefix co- meaning "together, jointly".The comarca is known in Aragonese as redolada and...
l federation.
Regional confederations
A regional confederation brings together several local unions within a geographic regional zone. The structure is the same again: a regional committee with a Secretary General and the rest of the Secretariats in a regional plenary to which the local unions send delegations with written agreements previously made in the assembly. The regional division of the CNT has undergone changes through time.
National confederation
The regional confederations send representative delegations—again on the same basis—to the national plenary
Plenary session
Plenary session is a term often used in conferences to define the part of the conference when all members of all parties are to attend.These sessions may contain a broad range of content from keynotes to panel discussions and are not necessarily related to a specific style of delivery.The term has...
assembly, which constitutes the national confederation. The national plenary of regional confederations elects a national General Secretary, who moves the CNT headquarters to his/her place of residence. Hence, the CNT has no fixed headquarters.
The local plenary of the local federation chosen as headquarters gathers to designate the rest of the secretarial offices. The General Secretary and the rest of the secretaries form the Permanent Secretariat of the National Committee (SPCN, in Spanish) of the CNT, along with the General Secretariats of each of the regions. As in every committee in the CNT, their capacities are technical or administrative: they have no authority to make decisions for others.
Congress of the CNT
Direct representatives of the industry and various posts unions attend the CNT Congress with agreements from their own assemblies, independently from the local and regional levels. Among its duties, the Congress has to decide upon the CNT general line of action, and can appoint new National Committees. Since the foundation of the CNT in 1910 and the initial constitutional congress in September 1911, nine congresses have taken place, five prior to the Spanish Civil War, and four since the Spanish transition to democracySpanish transition to democracy
The Spanish transition to democracy was the era when Spain moved from the dictatorship of Francisco Franco to a liberal democratic state. The transition is usually said to have begun with Franco’s death on 20 November 1975, while its completion has been variously said to be marked by the Spanish...
.
The Congress is convoked by the National Committee a year beforehand when there is an imperative need or there are new issues to assess. The discussion subjects are presented after being confirmed in a national plenary session, and then seven months before the Congress each member union starts its own debate which culminates with the presentation of their ideas to the Congress.
Plenarias and plenary assemblies
The meetings of the various committees (local, regional, national) are called plenariasPlenary session
Plenary session is a term often used in conferences to define the part of the conference when all members of all parties are to attend.These sessions may contain a broad range of content from keynotes to panel discussions and are not necessarily related to a specific style of delivery.The term has...
. Plenarias cannot take decisions, only develop technical and administrative issues, as they are constituted by committees without decision-making powers.
Another method of decision-making is through local and regional plenaries (or plenary assemblies), and congresses, in which industry and various posts unions take active part sending delegations with previously reached and written agreements. The National Plenary does not follow this rule, as in this case the delegations with the written agreements come from the regional confederations.
Conferences
CNT conferences are open meetings in which matters are discussed and themes proposed; they serve to take the pulse of general opinion within the organization at any given moment. The discussions are later passed on to the local unions for their perusal. Persons representing themselves or another group or trade union may attend, but they cannot pass resolutions.
Industry federations
Industry federations are organized by branch of production, not geographically. All CNT unions in a particular branch of production form the national industry federation of that branch, differing from the structure of branch unions organized by local and regional federations and confederations. Industry federations exist on a regional level as well. Industry federations are empowered to act regarding matters lying within their area of responsibility. They send representatives that can speak, but not vote, at the national and regional confederations.
Relationship with the IWA
International Workers Association
The International Workers' Association is an international federation of anarcho-syndicalist labour unions and initiatives based primarily in Europe and Latin America....
(IWA, AIT in Spanish) is a transnational organization which consists of delegations from a number of countries. The national anarcho-syndicalist organizations, each of which operates only in its home country, are known as the sections of the IWA. As such, the CNT is the IWA's Spanish section.
The IWA has an international secretariat elected by the various sections and can be structured by continent through the industry federations' system.
Media
The CNT journal CNT, or Periódico CNT (CNT Journal), operates autonomously. Its directorship and headquarters are chosen in a congress or national plenary. The directorship manages its distribution, printing, sales, and subscriptions, as well as selecting from among articles submitted. The chosen director attends the CNT National Committee's meetings on a non-voting basis. The Secretary General of the CNT is responsible for writing Periódico CNT's editorial page. Periódico CNT is published monthly, under a Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
copyleft
Copyleft
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
license and it is available in printed and online
ONLINE
ONLINE is a magazine for information systems first published in 1977. The publisher Online, Inc. was founded the year before. In May 2002, Information Today, Inc. acquired the assets of Online Inc....
format.
All organs and trade unions within the CNT may have their own media. Solidaridad Obrera
Solidaridad Obrera (periodical)
Solidaridad Obrera is a newspaper, published by the Catalonian/Balearic regional section of the anarchist labor union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo , and mouthpiece of the CNT in Spain....
("Workers' Solidarity") is the journal of the Regional Confederation of Labour of Catalonia. It was established in 1907, being the oldest communication medium of the CNT. Other media are La tira de papel, the Graphic Arts, Media and Shows National Coordinator bulletin; the Cenit, newspaper of the Regional Committee of the Exterior; and BICEL, edited by the Anselmo Lorenzo Foundation, which was created in 1987. The Foundation works autonomously, and its directorship is elected in a national plenary congress. Some of its duties are to maintain, catalogue and publicly display historic properties of the CNT, to publish books and other media, including BICEL, the Internal Bulletin of Centers of Anarchist Studies, to prepare cultural events during CNT or AIT congresses: lectures, debates, conferences, videoforums, book presentations, etc., and to coordinate with other similar projects.
Voting
The CNT generally avoids bringing matters to a vote, preferring consensus decision-makingConsensus decision-making
Consensus decision-making is a group decision making process that seeks the consent, not necessarily the agreement, of participants and the resolution of objections. Consensus is defined by Merriam-Webster as, first, general agreement, and second, group solidarity of belief or sentiment. It has its...
, which it considers to be more in tune with its anarchist principles. While pure consensus is plausible for individual base unions, higher levels of organizations cannot completely avoid the need for some type of vote, which is always done openly by a show of hands.
| Size of union | Votes | |
|---|---|---|
| From | To | |
| 1 | 50 | 1 |
| 51 | 100 | 2 |
| 101 | 300 | 3 |
| 301 | 600 | 4 |
| 601 | 1,000 | 5 |
| 1,001 | 1,500 | 6 |
| 1,501 | 2,500 | 7 |
| 2,500 | more | 8 |
The CNT attempts to minimize this problem by a system of limited proportional voting. Even so, this system has some failures and may discriminate against unions with larger memberships. As an example, "ten unions with 25 adherents would total 250 members having 10 votes. This would be more votes than a union of 2,500, which with 10 times more members would only have the right to 7 votes." Within the CNT this isn't considered a major problem, because agreements tend to reach consensus after long discussions. However, due to the nature of consensus decision-making, the final agreements consensed to may bear little resemblance to the initial proposals brought to the table.
Methods
The CNT is rooted in three basic principles: workers' self-managementWorkers' self-management
Worker self-management is a form of workplace decision-making in which the workers themselves agree on choices instead of an owner or traditional supervisor telling workers what to do, how to do it and where to do it...
or autogestion, federalism
Federalism
Federalism is a political concept in which a group of members are bound together by covenant with a governing representative head. The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of the government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and...
and mutual aid
Mutual aid (politics)
Mutual aid is a term in organization theory used to signify a voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit. Mutual aid is arguably as ancient as human culture; an intrinsic part of the small, communal societies universal to humanity's ancient past...
, and considers that work conflicts must be settled between employers and employees without the action of such intemediaries as official state organisms or professional unionists. This is why the union criticizes union elections and works council
Works council
A works council is a "shop-floor" organization representing workers, which functions as local/firm-level complement to national labour negotiations...
s as means of control for managers, preferring workers' assemblies, union sections and direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
. Also, when possible, the CNT avoids taking legal action through the courts. Administrative positions in the union rotate and are unpaid. They prefer linear salary raises to increases that are percentage based, because the former increase equality of salaries. (That is, they prefer that all workers have their pay raised by the same absolute amount rather than the same percentage of their previous wage.)
The CNT's usual methods of action include exhibiting banners in front of the headquarters of companies with which the union has a conflict, and calls for consumer boycotts of their products and for social solidarity with the aggrieved workers. During strikes, resistance funds are created to help strikers and their families economically.
The CNT is organized around craft unions. This practice was adopted around 1918 in times of great class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
under the reign of Alfonso XIII
Alfonso XIII of Spain
Alfonso XIII was King of Spain from 1886 until 1931. His mother, Maria Christina of Austria, was appointed regent during his minority...
:
The early years
Anarchism in Spain
Anarchism has historically gained more support and influence in Spain than anywhere else, especially before Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939....
lacked a stable national organization during its early years. The anarchist Juan Gómez Casas described the evolution of the anarchist organization prior to the creation of the CNT:
At the beginning of the 20th century there was a consensus among anarchists that a new national labor organization was necessary, to bring coherence and strength to the movement. During the Bourbon restoration
Spain under the Restoration
The Restoration was the name given to the period that began on December 29, 1874 after the First Spanish Republic ended with the restoration of Alfonso XII to the throne after a coup d'état by Martinez Campos, and ended on April 14, 1931 with the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic.After...
(1874–1931), carried out by the traditional and dynastic parties represented by Cánovas del Castillo
Antonio Cánovas del Castillo
Antonio Cánovas del Castillo was a Spanish politician and historian known principally for his role in supporting the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy to the Spanish throne and for his death at the hands of an anarchist assassin, Michele Angiolillo.-Early career:Born in Málaga as the son of...
and Mateo Sagasta, a large portion of the workers' movement united around the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is a social-democratic political party in Spain. Its political position is Centre-left. The PSOE is the former ruling party of Spain, until beaten in the elections of November 2011 and the second oldest, exceeded only by the Partido Carlista, founded in...
as a political force, and around the Unión General de Trabajadores
Unión General de Trabajadores
The Unión General de Trabajadores is a major Spanish trade union, historically affiliated with the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party .-History:...
(UGT, "Workers' General Union") for collective bargaining purposes. There were also republican movements with a stronger parliamentary emphasis, which was supported by a portion of the new bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
.
In 1910, in the middle of the restoration, the CNT was founded in Barcelona in a congress of the Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
n trade union Solidaridad Obrera
Solidaridad Obrera (historical union)
Solidaridad Obrera was a labor federation in Spain...
(Workers' Solidarity) with the objective of constituting an opposing force to the then-majority trade union, the socialist UGT and "to speed up the economic emancipation of the working class through the revolutionary expropriation
Confiscation
Confiscation, from the Latin confiscatio 'joining to the fiscus, i.e. transfer to the treasury' is a legal seizure without compensation by a government or other public authority...
of the bourgeoisie". The CNT started small, counting 26,571 members represented through several trade unions and other confederations.
In 1911, coinciding with its first congress, the CNT initiated a general strike that provoked a Barcelona judge to declare the union illegal until 1914. That same year of 1911, the trade union officially received its name.
In 1916 the CNT changed its strategy respecting the UGT, establishing new relations that allowed the two unions to initiate the general strike of 1917 jointly. The second congress of the CNT in 1919 studied the possibility of merging both organizations to unify the Spanish labor movement. That same congress approved linking the CNT to the Third International, but after Ángel Pestaña
Ángel Pestaña
Ángel Pestaña Nuñez was a Spanish Anarcho-syndicalist and later Syndicalist leader.-Early life:...
's visit to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, and on his advice, they broke definitively from the Third International in 1922.
Peak of the CNT
From 1918 on the CNT grew stronger. The CNT had an outstanding role in the events of the La Canadiense general strike, which paralyzed 70% of industry in Catalonia in 1919, the year the CNT reached a membership of 700,000. Around that time, panic spread among employers, giving rise to the practice of pistolerismoPistolerismo
Pistolerismo refers to the practise, used by Spanish employers during Alfonso XIII’s reconstruction crisis, of hiring thugs to face syndicalists and notable workers...
(employing thugs to intimidate active unionists), causing a spiral of violence which significantly affected the trade union. These pistoleros are credited with killing 21 union leaders in 48 hours.
In 1922 the International Workingmen's Association
International Workingmen's Association
The International Workingmen's Association , sometimes called the First International, was an international organization which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist political groups and trade union organizations that were based on the working class...
(later International Workers' Association) was founded in Berlin; the CNT joined immediately. However, the following year, with the rise of Miguel Primo de Rivera
Miguel Primo de Rivera
Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, 2nd Marquis of Estella, 22nd Count of Sobremonte, Knight of Calatrava was a Spanish dictator, aristocrat, and a military official who was appointed Prime Minister by the King and who for seven years was a dictator, ending the turno system of alternating...
's dictatorship, the labor union was outlawed, once again.
In 1927 with the "moderate" positioning of some cenetistas (CNT members) the Federación Anarquista Ibérica
Federación Anarquista Ibérica
The Federación Anarquista Ibérica is a Spanish organization of anarchist militants active within affinity groups inside the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo trade union. It is often abbreviated as CNT-FAI because of the close relationship between the two organizations...
(FAI), an association of anarchist affinity group
Affinity group
An Affinity group is usually a small group of activists who work together on direct action.Affinity groups are organized in a non-hierarchical manner, usually using consensus decision making, and are often made up of trusted friends...
s, was created in Valencia. The FAI would play an important role during the following years through the so-called trabazón (connection) with the CNT, that is, the presence of FAI elements in the CNT, encouraging the labor union not to move away from its anarchist principles, an influence that continues today.
The Second Republic
After the fall of the monarchy in 1931, the CNT offered minimal support to the Second RepublicSecond Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
. This support decreased progressively during the years between 1931 and 1933 because of constant confrontations with the republican authorities in the successive general strikes. The end of that period was marked by so-called revolutions of January and December, both of which were swiftly suppressed by the government. In those days the CNT functioned primarily in Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
, but was also gaining importance in other regions, such as Andalusia
Andalusia
Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...
and Aragon
Aragon
Aragon is a modern autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. Located in northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces : Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. Its capital is Zaragoza...
(where it had a higher membership than the UGT).
Tensions between the radical faístas, or FAI members, and the moderate non-faístas were constant and difficult to analyze because of the decentralized and sectorial nature of the organization. Finally, in 1931 a group of moderates published the Manifesto
Manifesto
A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...
of the Thirty, which would give rise to treintism (from treinta, thirty in Spanish), and in 1932 Ángel Pestaña split from the CNT to create the Syndicalist Party
Syndicalist Party
Syndicalist Party was a left-wing political party in Spain, formed by Ángel Pestaña in 1932. Pestaña, a leading member of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo trade union, formed the party in response to the growing influence of the Iberian Anarchist Federation over the CNT...
.
The two years governed by the coalition of the center-left Partido Republicano Radical and the center-right CEDA were marked by mostly clandestine CNT activity, in the face of severe government repression. During the socialist October Revolution of 1934 (at which point membership in the CNT reached 1.58 million) the CNT participated only from the background. However, the CNT's Regional Confederation of Labour of Asturias
Asturias
The Principality of Asturias is an autonomous community of the Kingdom of Spain, coextensive with the former Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages...
, León
León (province)
León is a province of northwestern Spain, in the northwestern part of the autonomous community of Castile and León.About one quarter of its population of 500,200 lives in the capital, León. The weather is cold and dry during the winter....
and Palencia
Palencia (province)
Palencia is a province of northern Spain, in the northern part of the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is bordered by the provinces of León, Cantabria, Burgos, and Valladolid....
actively participated in the revolution because of its loyalty to workers' alliances, this time formalized through the Uníos Hermanos Proletarios (UHP; United Brothers of the Proletariat) in the pact with the UGT and the Asturian Socialist Federation. Thus, in La Felguera
La Felguera
La Felguera is the largest parish in the municipality of Langreo, Asturias, in the north of Spain, with 21.000 inhabitants. It is the fifth largest town in Asturias, after Gijón, Oviedo, Avilés and Mieres. It is an 18 minute drive by car to Oviedo, the capital of Asturias...
and in El Llano district of Gijón
Gijón
Gijón , officially Gijón / Xixón, is a coastal industrial city and a municipality in the autonomous community of Asturias in Spain. Early mediaeval texts mention it as "Gigia". It was an important regional Roman city, although the area has been settled since earliest history...
there were short periods when anarchist communism
Anarchist communism
Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, markets, money, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with...
was put into practice:
It is believed that 30,000 people were imprisoned during this period. The successful transportation strike in Zaragoza
Zaragoza
Zaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...
, followed by a more-than-two-week general strike, was convoked in 1935 jointly with the UGT. However, this collaboration was not to be repeated in later actions.
After Lerroux
Alejandro Lerroux
Alejandro Lerroux y García was a Spanish politician who was the leader of the Radical Republican Party during the Second Spanish Republic...
's government crumbled, the 1936 elections placed the CNT at a crossroads. Opinions inside the organization were split among the supporters of abstention
Abstention
Abstention is a term in election procedure for when a participant in a vote either does not go to vote or, in parliamentary procedure, is present during the vote, but does not cast a ballot. Abstention must be contrasted with "blank vote", in which a voter casts a ballot willfully made invalid by...
ism, those who wanted to allow the workers to choose whether or not to vote, or those directly advocating a vote for the Popular Front
Popular Front (Spain)
The Popular Front in Spain's Second Republic was an electoral coalition and pact signed in January 1936 by various left-wing political organisations, instigated by Manuel Azaña for the purpose of contesting that year's election....
. This coalition party promised amnesty for prisoners, and part of the growth of the Front appears to have been thanks to the anarchist vote.
The CNT held a congress in Saragossa on 1 May, ratifying the position that the union should make no pacts with any political party, despite UGT leader Largo Caballero's attempts to persuade the union to stand in unity with the UGT.
On 1 June, the CNT joined the UGT in declaring a strike of "building workers, mechanics, and lift operators." A demonstration was held, 70,000 workers strong. Members of the Falange
Falange
The Spanish Phalanx of the Assemblies of the National Syndicalist Offensive , known simply as the Falange, is the name assigned to several political movements and parties dating from the 1930s, most particularly the original fascist movement in Spain. The word means phalanx formation in Spanish....
attacked the strikers. The strikers responded by looting shops, and the police reacted by attempting to suppress the strike. By the beginning of July, the CNT was still fighting, while the UGT had agreed to arbitration. In retaliation to the attacks by the Falangists, anarchists killed three bodyguards of the Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera
José Antonio Primo de Rivera
José Antonio Primo de Rivera y Sáenz de Heredia, 1st Duke of Primo de Rivera, 3rd Marquis of Estella , was a Spanish lawyer, nobleman, politician, and founder of the Falange Española...
. The government then closed the CNT's centers in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, and arrested David Antona and Cipriano Mera, two CNT militants.
1936
After periods of clandestine operation followed by other shorter periods of legalization, in 1936 the CNT was finally legalized, and would remain legal until the end of the Civil WarSpanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. During the war, the union collaborated with other republican groups opposed to the Nationalists
Spanish State
Francoist Spain refers to a period of Spanish history between 1936 and 1975 when Spain was under the authoritarian dictatorship of Francisco Franco....
. As the war developed, members of the CNT came to form part of the government of the Republic, holding various ministries and high positions within the administration.
In Barcelona, the anarchists came to control the majority of the functions of society, collectivizing a large part of the activity of the city, as George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
described:
Across the border from Catalonia in the nominally Republican eastern portion of the divided Aragon, the republican state was similarly powerless. The CNT militias
Durruti Column
The Durruti Column was the largest anarchist column formed during the Spanish Civil War . During the first months of the war it has come to be the most recognized and popular military organisations fighting at the republican side...
, which occupied Lower Teruel and Huesca, established defense committees that replaced the old city councils. In zones that had more anarchist presence before the war, collectivization of the land was carried out with great success. These first collectivizations were voluntary and were established from the lands that belonged to the members and those which had been requisitioned from those who were fugitive or missing. Those property-owners who wanted to keep possession of their land were not allowed to hire outside their families, and those lands they could not farm passed under community control.
George Orwell wrote of the nature of the new society that arose in the communities:
Some of the most important communities in this respect were those of Alcañiz
Alcañiz
Alcañiz is a town and municipality in the province of Teruel, in the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. The town is located on the banks of the river Guadalope. Alcañiz is the unofficial capital of the Lower Aragon historical region...
, Calanda, Alcorisa
Alcorisa
Alcorisa is a municipality in the province of Teruel, Aragon, Spain. According to the 2010 census the municipality has a population of 3,642 inhabitants....
, Valderrobres
Valderrobres
Valderrobres or Vall-de-roures is a municipality and the major town of the comarca of Matarranya in the province of Teruel, Aragon . It is located in view of the landscape of the northwestern foothills of the Ports de Tortosa-Beseit, by the Matarranya River, a tributary to the right of the Ebro...
, Fraga
Fraga
Fraga is the major town of the comarca of Bajo Cinca in the province of Huesca, Aragon, Spain. It is located by the river Cinca.King Alfonso I of Aragon died at its walls in 1134 while trying to conquer it...
or Alcampel. Not only were the lands collectivized, but collective labours were also undertaken, like the retirement home in Fraga, the collectivization of some hospitals (such as in Barbastro
Barbastro
Barbastro is a city in the Somontano county, province of Huesca, Spain...
or Binéfar
Binéfar
Binéfar or Binèfar is a municipality located in the province of Huesca, Aragon, Spain. According to the 2008 census , the municipality has a population of 9,288 inhabitants....
), and the founding of schools such as the School of Anarchist Militants. These institutions would be destroyed by the Nationalist troops during the war.
The Committee held an extraordinary regional plenary session to protect the new rural organization, gathering all the union representatives from the supporting villages and backed by Buenaventura Durruti
Buenaventura Durruti
José Buenaventura Durruti Dumange was a central figure of Spanish anarchism during the period leading up to and including the Spanish Civil War.-Early life:...
. Against the will of the mainly Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
n CNT National Committee, the Regional Council for the Defense of Aragon was created.
The Civil War era also showed a spirit of sexual revolution
Sexual revolution
The sexual revolution was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the 1960s into the 1980s...
. The anarchist women's organization Mujeres Libres
Mujeres Libres
Mujeres Libres was an anarchist women's organization in Spain that aimed to empower working class women. It was founded in 1936 by Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Mercedes Comaposada and Amparo Poch y Gascón and had approximately 30,000 members...
established an equal opportunity for women in a society that traditionally had held women in lower regard. Women acquired power they had not previously had in Spanish society, fighting at the front and doing heavy jobs, things that had been forbidden to them until then. Free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
became popular, although some parents' distrust produced the creation of the revolutionary weddings, informal ceremonies where the couples declared their status, and that could be annulled if both parties didn't want to continue their relationship.
Following Largo Caballero
Francisco Largo Caballero
Francisco Largo Caballero was a Spanish politician and trade unionist. He was one of the historic leaders of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and of the Workers' General Union...
’s assumption of the position of Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Spain
The President of the Government of Spain , sometimes known in English as the Prime Minister of Spain, is the head of Government of Spain. The current office is established under the Constitution of 1978...
of the government, he invited the CNT to join in the coalition of groups making up the national government. The CNT proposed instead that a National Defense Council should be formed, led by Largo Caballero, and containing five members each from the CNT and UGT, and four “liberal republicans”. When this proposal was declined, the CNT decided not to join the government. However, in Catalonia, the CNT joined the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias, which joined the Generalitat
Generalitat
Generalitat is the name of the autonomous systems of government of two of the present Spanish autonomous communities: Catalonia and the Valencian Community. The term is also used for the government of the semi-autonomous comarca of Val d'Aran, the Generalitat a l'Aran.Generalitat refers to all...
on 26 September. For the first time, three members of the CNT were also members of the government.
In November, Caballero once again asked the CNT to become part of the government. The leadership of the CNT requested the finance and war ministries, as well as three others, but were given four posts, the ministries of health, justice, industry, and commerce. With Federica Montseny
Federica Montseny
Federica Montseny i Mañé was a Spanish anarchist, intellectual and Minister of Health during the social revolution that occurred in Spain parallel to the Civil War...
became Minister of Health, the first female minister in Spain. Juan García Oliver
Juan García Oliver
Juan García Oliver was a Spanish Anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary, and a leading figure of Anarchism in Spain....
, as minister of justice, abolished legal fees and destroyed all criminal files. Shortly afterwards, despite the disapproval of the anarchist ministers, the capital was moved from Madrid to Valencia.
On 23 December 1936, after receiving in Madrid a retinue formed by Joaquín Ascaso, Miguel Chueca and three republican and independent leaders, the government of Largo Caballero, which by then had four anarchists as ministers (García Oliver, Juan López, Federica Montseny and Joan Peiró
Joan Peiró
Joan Peiró i Belis was a Catalan anarchist activist, writer, editor of the anarchist newspaper Solidaridad Obrera, two-time Secretary General of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo and Minister of Industry of the Spanish government during the Spanish Civil War.-Life:Though he was born in the...
), approved the formation of the National Defense Committee. It was a revolutionary body which represented anarchists as much as socialists and republicans.
1937
Halfway through February 1937, a congress took place in CaspeCaspe
Caspe or Casp is a historic town and municipality in the province of Zaragoza, in the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It is situated some 100 km to the east of the provincial capital, Zaragoza.-History:...
with the purpose of creating the Regional Federation of Collectives of Aragon. 456 delegates, representing more than 141,000 collective members, attended the congress. The congress was also attended by delegates of the National Committee of the CNT.
At a plenary session of the CNT in March 1937, the national committee asked for a motion of censure
Censure
A censure is an expression of strong disapproval or harsh criticism. Among the forms that it can take are a stern rebuke by a legislature, a spiritual penalty imposed by a church, and a negative judgment pronounced on a theological proposition.-Politics:...
to suppress the Aragonese Regional Council. The Aragonese regional committee threatened to resign, which thwarted the censure effort. Though there had always been disagreements, that spring also saw a great escalation in confrontations between the CNT-FAI and the Communists. In Madrid, Melchor Rodríguez
Melchor Rodríguez García
Melchor Rodríguez García , was a Spanish politician and statesman, a notable anarcho-syndicalist, and the head of prison authorities in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War....
, who was then a member of the CNT, and director of prisons in Madrid, published accusations that the Communist José Cazorla, who was then overseeing public order, was maintaining secret prisons to hold anarchists, socialists, and other republicans, and either executing, or torturing them as "traitors". Soon after, on this pretext, Largo Caballero dissolved the Communist-controlled Junta de Defensa. Cazorla reacted by closing the offices of Solidaridad Obrera
Solidaridad Obrera (periodical)
Solidaridad Obrera is a newspaper, published by the Catalonian/Balearic regional section of the anarchist labor union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo , and mouthpiece of the CNT in Spain....
.
In Catalonia, the Catalan Communists
Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia
The Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia , was formed on July 23, 1936 through the unification of four left-wing groups; the Catalan Federation of Spanish Socialist Workers' Party , the Partit Comunista de Catalunya , the Unió Socialista de Catalunya and the...
in the Catalan government made several demands that provoked the ire of the anarchists, in particular the call for turning all weapons over to the control of the government. The 8 April 1937 issue of Solidaridad Obrera opined, "We have made too many concessions and have reached the moment of turning off the tap," while the 2 May issue urged workers to prevent the government from disarming them. On the 25th, Juan Negrín
Juan Negrín
Juan Negrín y López was a Spanish politician and physician.-Early years:Born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Negrín came from a religious middle-class family...
sent security forces to take over posts on the French border in the Pyrenees that had until then been controlled by the CNT, anarchists in Bellver de Cerdanya fought with Negrín's carabineros, and Roldán Cortada, the Communist leader of the UGT was killed, allegedly by an anarchist. Cortada's funeral was used by the PSUC as an anti-CNT demonstration. Because of all the conflict, the UGT and CNT agreed with the Generalitat to cancel any celebrations on May Day. On 3 May, Assault Guards of the government attempted to take over the CNT-controlled telephone exchange
Telephone exchange
In the field of telecommunications, a telephone exchange or telephone switch is a system of electronic components that connects telephone calls...
building in Barcelona, but were held off by gunfire. The assault guard laid siege to the building, and fighting between the anarchists and POUM on one side, and Communists and the government forces on the other began. Leaders of the CNT attempted to acquire the resignation of the Communists they felt were responsible for the conflict, but to no avail.
The next day CNT's regional committee declared a general strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
. The CNT controlled the majority of the city, including the heavy artillery on the hill of Montjuïc
Montjuïc
Montjuïc is a hill located in Barcelona, Catalonia.-Etymology:Montjuïc is translated as 'Jew Hill' in medieval Catalan, or is perhaps related to the Latin phrase Mons Jovicus . The name is found in several locations in the Catalan Countries: the Catalan cities of Girona and Barcelona both have a...
overlooking the city. CNT militias disarmed more than 200 members of the security forces at their barricades, allowing only CNT vehicles to pass through. After unsuccessful appeals from the CNT leadership to end the fighting, the government began transferring Assault Guard from the front to Barcelona, and even destroyers from Valencia. On 5 May, the Friends of Durruti issued a pamphlet calling for "disarming of the paramilitary police… dissolution of the political parties…" and declared "Long live the social revolution! – Down with the counter-revolution!" The pamphlet was quickly denounced by the leadership of the CNT. The next day, the government agreed to a proposal by the leadership of the CNT-FAI, that called for the removal of the Assault Guards, and no reprisals against libertarians that had participated in the conflict, in exchange for the dismantling of barricades, and end of the general strike. However, neither the PSUC or the Assault Guards gave up their positions, and according to historian Anthony Beevor "carried out violent reprisals against libertarians" By 8 May, the fighting was over.
These events
Barcelona May Days
Barcelona May Days were a period of civil violence in Catalonia, between May 3 and May 8, 1937, when factions on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War engaged each other in street battles in the city of Barcelona.Clashes began when units of the Assault Guard – under the...
, the fall of Largo Caballero's government, and the new prime ministership of Juan Negrín
Juan Negrín
Juan Negrín y López was a Spanish politician and physician.-Early years:Born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Negrín came from a religious middle-class family...
soon led to the collapse of much that the CNT had achieved immediately following the rising the previous July. At the beginning of July, the Aragonese organizations of the Popular Front publicly declared their support for the alternative council in Aragon, led by their president, Joaquín Ascaso. Four weeks later the 11th Division, under Enrique Líster
Enrique Líster
Enrique Líster Forján was a Spanish communist politician and military officer.-Early life:...
, entered the region. On 11 August 1937, the Republican government, now situated in Valencia, dismissed the Regional Council for the Defense of Aragon. Líster's division was prepared for an offensive on the Aragonese front, but they were also sent to subdue the collectives run by the CNT-UGT and in dismantling the collective structures created the previous twelve months. The offices of the CNT were destroyed, and all the equipment belonging to its collectives was redistributed to landowners. The CNT leadership not only refused to allow the anarchist columns on the Aragon front to leave the front to defend the collectives, but they failed to condemn the government's actions against the collectives, causing much conflict between it and the rank and file membership of the union.
1938–1939
In April 1938, Juan Negrín was asked to form a government, and included Segundo BlancoSegundo Blanco
Segundo Blanco González was a Spanish anarchist.He worked as a teacher, but, in his youth, he was persecuted, so he had to work in many different jobs, such as foreman builder. He was studying in night shifts at the same time...
, a member of the CNT, as minister of education, and by this point, the only CNT member left in the cabinet. At this point, many in the CNT leadership were critical of participation in the government, seeing it as dominated by the Communists. Prominent CNT leaders went so far as to refer to Blanco as "sop of the libertarian movement" and "just one more Negrínist." On the other side, Blanco was responsible for installing other CNT members into the ministry of education, and stopping the spread of "Communist propaganda" by the ministry.
In March 1939, with the war nearly over, CNT leaders participated in the National Defense Council's coup overthrowing the government of the Socialist Juan Negrín. Those involved included the CNT's Eduardo Val and José Manuel González Marín serving on the council, while Cipriano Mera
Cipriano Mera
Cipriano Mera Sanz was a Spanish military and political figure during the Second Spanish Republic.-Early life:...
's 70th Division provided military support, and Melechor Rodríquez became mayor of Madrid. The Council attempted to negotiate a peace with Franco, though he granted virtually none of their demands.
The CNT during the Franco dictatorship
In 1939 the Law of Political Responsibilities outlawed the CNT and expropriated its assets. At that time the organization had a million members and a large infrastructure. According to one estimate, roughly 160–180,000 members of the CNT were killed by the Franco government.The CNT acted clandestinely inside Spain during the Franco years, as well as conducting activities from exile, and some members kept on fighting the regime of Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
until 1948 through the guerrilla actions of maquis
Spanish Maquis
The Spanish Maquis were Spanish guerrillas exiled in France after the Spanish Civil War who continued to fight against the Franco regime until the early 1960s, carrying out sabotage, robberies , occupations of the Spanish Embassy in France and assassinations of Francoists, as well as contributing...
. There was much disagreement amongst factions of the CNT during these years. There was a major split after the National Committee inside Spain chose to support members of the Republican government in exile, while members of the Libertarian Movement in Exile (MLE) (basically the CNT-in-exile) stood against further collaboration with the government. Even Federica Montseny, who had joined the Republic as Minister of Health changed her stance on collaboration, describing the "futility of...participation in the government."
In January 1960, the MLE was formed by the CNT, the FAI, and the FIJL. In September of the next year, a congress was held in Limoges
Limoges
Limoges |Limousin]] dialect of Occitan) is a city and commune, the capital of the Haute-Vienne department and the administrative capital of the Limousin région in west-central France....
, at which the Sección Defensa Interior (DI) was created, to be partially funded by the CNT. By this point, a great majority of the CNT-in-exile had given up on political action as a tool, and one of the main goals of the DI was to assassinate Franco.
These divergent attitudes combined with Franco's repression to weaken the organization, and the CNT lost influence among the population inside Spain. In 1961 it began to regain strength, consolidating itself during the 1960s and 1970s thanks to penetration of anarcho-syndicalist ideology into Catholic anti-Francoist workers' organizations such as the Hermandad Obrera de Acción Católica (HOAC, "Worker Brethren of Catholic Action") or Juventud Obrera Católica (JOC, "Catholic Worker Youth").
During the "transition"
Spanish transition to democracy
The Spanish transition to democracy was the era when Spain moved from the dictatorship of Francisco Franco to a liberal democratic state. The transition is usually said to have begun with Franco’s death on 20 November 1975, while its completion has been variously said to be marked by the Spanish...
, the CNT was the only social movement to refuse to sign the 1977 Moncloa Pact, an agreement amongst politicians, political parties, and trade unions to plan how to operate the economy during the transition. In 1979, the CNT held its first congress since 1936 as well as several mass meetings, the most remarkable one in Montjuïc
Montjuïc
Montjuïc is a hill located in Barcelona, Catalonia.-Etymology:Montjuïc is translated as 'Jew Hill' in medieval Catalan, or is perhaps related to the Latin phrase Mons Jovicus . The name is found in several locations in the Catalan Countries: the Catalan cities of Girona and Barcelona both have a...
. Views put forward in this congress would set the pattern for the CNT's line of action for the following decades: no participation in union elections, no acceptance of state subsidies, no acknowledgment of works council
Works council
A works council is a "shop-floor" organization representing workers, which functions as local/firm-level complement to national labour negotiations...
s, and support of union sections.
In this first congress, held in Madrid, a minority sector in favor of union elections split from the CNT, initially calling themselves CNT Valencia Congress (referring to the alternative congress held in this city), and later Confederación General del Trabajo
Confederación General del Trabajo (Spain)
The General Confederation of Labour of Spain is an Anarcho-Syndicalist trade union, arisen from the 1979 split of CNT/AIT after the arrival of democracy and the following reorganization and restructuring process of the trade unions....
(CGT) after an April 1989 court decision determined that they could not use the CNT initials. In 1990, a group of CGT members left this union to be able to receive the same government subsidies that other unions receive, founding Solidaridad Obrera
Solidaridad Obrera (union)
Solidaridad Obrera is a small anarcho-syndicalist labour union federation that appeared in Madrid, Spain in 1990 as a split from the Confederación General del Trabajo , itself a split from the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo , the Spanish member of the International Workers Association ...
.
One year before, the 1978 Scala Case affected the CNT. An explosion killed three people in a Barcelona night club. The authorities alleged that striking workers "blew themselves up", and arrested surviving strikers, implicating them in the crime. CNT members declared that the prosecution sought to criminalize their organization:
After its legalization, the CNT began efforts to recover the expropriations of 1939. The basis for such recovery would be established by Law 4/1986, which required the return of the seized properties, and the unions' right to use or yield the real estate. Since then the CNT has been claiming the return of these properties from the State.
In 1996, the Economic and Social Council facilities in Madrid were squatted by 105 CNT militants. This body is in charge of the repatriation of the accumulated union wealth. In 2004 an agreement was reached between the CNT and the District Attorney's Office, through which all charges were dropped against the hundred prosecuted for this occupation.
Current status
Today the CNT has about 50,000 members, compared to about one million in the Workers' CommissionsWorkers' Commissions
The Workers' Commissions since the 1970s has become the largest trade union in Spain. It has more than one million members and is the most successful union in labor elections, competing with the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores , with the syndicalist Confederación General del Trabajo ...
(CCOO) and about 840,000 in the socialist Workers' General Union
Unión General de Trabajadores
The Unión General de Trabajadores is a major Spanish trade union, historically affiliated with the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party .-History:...
(UGT). The regions with the largest CNT membership are the Centre (Madrid and surrounding area), the North (Basque country), Andalucía and Catalonia (including the Balearic Islands).
The CNT opposes the model of union elections and workplace committees and is critical of labor reforms and the UGT and the CCOO, standing instead on a platform of reivindicación, that is, "return of what is due", or social revolution.
In 2005, the government of Spain continued the return of the union endowments seized during and after the Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
to the UGT and CNT. According to some social groups and media reports, this return was seen to be a show of favoritism to the UGT, because in 1936, the anarcho-syndicalist trade unions had about as many members as other unions, but the government returned about four million euros to the CNT while the UGT received a much larger amount. The CNT has continued to demand the full return of their seized historical endowment.
July 2006 marked the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Revolution
Spanish Revolution
The Spanish Revolution was a workers' social revolution that began during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly libertarian socialist organizational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to...
, and in commemoration the CNT and FAI organized commemorative celebrations, with speeches, debates, film screenings, exhibitions and musical performances.
Symbols and culture
The CNT, owing to its interests in the radical transformation of society, has sought to make free knowledgeLibre knowledge
Libre knowledge is knowledge which may be acquired, interpreted and applied freely. It can be re-formulated according to one's needs, and shared with others for community benefit....
and culture
Free Culture movement
The free culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works in the form of free content by using the Internet and other forms of media....
accessible to workers, a task which has been developed through the support of the anarchist academies. The School of Anarchist Militants was an institution which, by means of anarchist pedagogy
Educational progressivism
Progressive education is a pedagogical movement that began in the late nineteenth century and has persisted in various forms to the present. More recently, it has been viewed as an alternative to the test-oriented instruction legislated by the No Child Left Behind educational funding act...
, sought to ensure that "groups of teenagers could acquire the knowledge and the personal responsibility essential to work in collectives such as those of entertainers and accountants." Through the Anselmo Lorenzo Foundation, the CNT manages its cultural heritage, edits books, and organizes conferences and colloquies. Also, some sections of the CNT have supported and promoted Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
.
The flag of the CNT is the traditional flag of anarcho-syndicalism, which joins diagonally the red color of the labour movement
Labour movement
The term labour movement or labor movement is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and governments, in particular through the implementation of specific laws governing labour...
and the black color of anarchism, as a negation of nationalism and reaffirmation of internationalism.
The anthem
Anthem
The term anthem means either a specific form of Anglican church music , or more generally, a song of celebration, usually acting as a symbol for a distinct group of people, as in the term "national anthem" or "sports anthem".-Etymology:The word is derived from the Greek via Old English , a word...
of the CNT is A las barricadas
To The Barricades
A las Barricadas was one of the most popular songs of the Spanish anarchists during the Spanish Civil War. A las Barricadas is sung to the tune of Warszawianka 1905...
(To the Barricades), composed by the Polish poet Wacław Święcicki in 1883. Święcicki's work, called Warszawianka, was given Spanish lyrics by Valeriano Orobón Fernández
Valeriano Orobón Fernández
Valeriano Orobón Fernánez was a Spanish anarcho-syndicalist theoretician, trade-union activist, translator and poet, who wrote the lyrics of the revolutionary song A Las Barricadas....
and published with some musical arrangements for mixed choir by Ángel Miret in 1933.
Several postage stamps were issued by the CNT during the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. Other surviving artifacts of this period are poster
Poster
A poster is any piece of printed paper designed to be attached to a wall or vertical surface. Typically posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text. Posters are designed to be both eye-catching and informative. Posters may be...
s,
movie tickets, and other objects related to the companies which were collectivized during the Spanish Revolution
Spanish Revolution
The Spanish Revolution was a workers' social revolution that began during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly libertarian socialist organizational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to...
of 1936.
George Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War in the militia of Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM
Poum
Poum is a commune in the North Province of New Caledonia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean. The town of Poum is located in the far northwest, located on the southern part of Banare Bay, with Mouac Island just offshore....
), a revolutionary Trotskyst
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
party (though opposed to the Soviet Union line) whose militants were allied with the CNT during the revolution and to which Andrés Nin
Andrés Nin
Andreu Nin i Pérez was a Spanish Communist revolutionary.- Early life :...
belonged. Orwell described in his book Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia is political journalist and novelist George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. The first edition was published in 1938. The book was not published in the United States until February 1952. The American edition had a preface...
the time during which Barcelona rose up with the CNT and anarchism. In the ninth chapter of his book, Orwell commented that "As far as my purely personal preferences went I would have liked to join the Anarchists."
In Ernest Hemmingway's 1940 book For Whom the Bell Tolls
For Whom the Bell Tolls
For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to a republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As an expert in the use of explosives, he is assigned to blow up a...
, Maria's fascist captors print U.H.P. on her forehead with iodine after cutting her hair.
Robert Capa
Robert Capa
Robert Capa was a Hungarian combat photographer and photojournalist who covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War...
photographed the death of the Valencian
Valencian Community
The Valencian Community is an autonomous community of Spain located in central and south-eastern Iberian Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Valencia...
Columna Alcoiana militiaman Federico Borrell García
Federico Borrell García
Federico Borrell García was a Spanish Republican and anarchist soldier during the Spanish Civil War known for appearing in the famous Robert Capa photo The Falling Soldier.-Biography:...
during the Spanish Civil War in the snapshot called "Death of a Loyalist Soldier". This photograph has become a famous image which shows the calamity of war.
In 1936, the film industry was collectivized and produced short films such as En la brecha (In the Gap, 1937). The CNT has been portrayed in recent Spanish filmmaking
Cinema of Spain
The art of motion-picture making within the nation of Spain or by Spanish filmmakers abroad is collectively known as Spanish Cinema.In recent years, Spanish cinema has achieved high marks of recognition as a result of its creative and technical excellence...
by the Vicente Aranda's
Vicente Aranda
Vicente Aranda , is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer.Due to his refined and personal style, he is one of the most renowned Spanish filmmakers. He started as a founded member of the Barcelona School of Film and became known for bringing contemporary Spanish novels to life on the...
film Libertarias
Libertarias
Libertarias is a Spanish historical drama made in 1996. It was written and directed by Vicente Aranda.In 1936, Maria , a young nun is recruited by Pilar , a militant feminist, into an anarchist militia following the onset of the Spanish Civil War...
(1996), which shows a group of militiamen (and especially militiawomen) at the Aragon front during the Spanish Civil War.
Sources
-
- Excerpts from the 1998 edition of Anarcosindicalismo básico were translated by Jeff Stein and published first in the Anarcho-Syndicalist Review, then as a pamphlet (PDF linked). Direct quotations in this article follow Stein's wording for passages he has translated. Note that the pagination of the linked PDF places two pages of the pamphlet on each PDF page; cited page numbers follow the pamphlet itself.
- Fernández, Frank, Cuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement, See Sharp Press.
External links
CNT Official Website-
- Fundación de Estudios Libertarios Anselmo Lorenzo (FAL)
- Directorio de Sindicatos, Federaciones y Confederaciones de la CNT (Directory of unions, federations, and confederations of the CNT) Periódico CNT (CNT Journal) Asociation Internationales de los Trabajadores AIT-IWA-IAA
- Instituto de ciencias Económicas y de la Autogestion Libreria Libertaria La Malatesta, Madrid Vivir la Utopía. El anarquismo en España (Living the Utopia. Anarchism in Spain), documentary film by Juan A. Gamero. Arte-TVE, Spain, 1997. see the film via AgoraTV in Spanish:http://www.revolutionvideo.org/agoratv/secciones/memoria/vivir_lautopia1.html. Here a link to the film with English subtitels:http://en.anarchopedia.org/Vivir_la_utopia
- Articles on the CNT from the Kate Sharpley Libarry
Posters
Images of numerous CNT-related posters can be seen on the French-language site Increvables Anarchistes:- La révolution et la guerre en Espagne 1936–1939: Les affiches des colonnes et milices libertaires et les combats contre le fascisme ("Revolution and war in Spain 1936–1939: Posters of the libertarian columns and militias and fight against fascism")
- Affiches de la révolution espagnole 1936 – 1939: les collectivisations et la socialisation des transports "Posters of the Spanish Revolution 1936–1939: The collectivisations and socialisation of transport"
- Les affiches de la révolution espagnole 1936 – 1939: les collectivisations et le communisme libertaire à la campagne "Posters of the Spanish Revolution 1936–1939: The collectivisations and libertarian communism in the countryside"
- La révolution espagnole 1936 – 1939: Affiches sur l'éducation et la culture: "Posters of the Spanish Revolution 1936–1939: Posters on education and culture"
- Les affiches de la guerre et de la révolution espagnole 1936 – 1939: la CNT (Confederation National del Trabajo), FAI (Federation Anarquista Iberica), AIT (Associacion International de los Trabadores)
- Affiches de la révolution espagnole 1936 – 1939: Mujeres Libres (Femmes Libres): "Posters of the Spanish Revolution 1936–1939: Mujeres Libres (Free women)"
- Guerre et révolution en espagne libertaire 1936 – 1939: Affiches sur les usines et les industries socialisées: "Posters of the Spanish Revolution 1936–1939: Posters for socialized factories and industries"
- Excerpts from the 1998 edition of Anarcosindicalismo básico were translated by Jeff Stein and published first in the Anarcho-Syndicalist Review, then as a pamphlet (PDF linked). Direct quotations in this article follow Stein's wording for passages he has translated. Note that the pagination of the linked PDF places two pages of the pamphlet on each PDF page; cited page numbers follow the pamphlet itself.