The Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil war was a three-year conflict: between 1936 and 1939. The two opposing parties were the Nationalists and the Republicans. They received help from Fascist Italy, the Trouppe Volunteer and Hitler with the Condor Legion. The Spanish Civil War was seen as the front against Fascism. Many people believed that if it were not not stopped in Spain in would spread throughout Europe. In 1920 Spain was a constitutional Monarchy under Alfonso XIII. The Spanish armada failed to put down a rebellion in Morocco in 1921, which proved the corruption and inefficiency of the actual government. In 1923, Alfonso XIII willingly abdicated and transferred power to General Primo de Rivera who had a successful rule until the early 1930s when the depression hi Spain. The army withdrew its support from the dictatorship, elections were called in 1931. The Republicans emerged victorious. The problems they faced were various. First off all, Catalonia and the Basque regions wanted independence. Yet, if it was granted Spain would lose power if it were to be fragmented. The Roman Catholic Church whose influence had been greatly reduced since the abdication of Alfonso XIII was hostile towards the new Republic. The Jesuits, seen as hard-lined Catholics, were expelled from Spain, ironically, because the religious order had been founded there. Religion was forbidden to be taught in school. By 1934, Spain was in turmoil again. There were a number of social uprising in Valencia, Zaragoza, Madrid and Barcelona. General Franco took control of Spain from Morrocco.
The Spanish Civil War was a defining moment for the generation of young Leftist-leaning writers and intellectuals in England during the 1930s. Detached from the European continent, these writers and poets nevertheless watched the growth of Fascism in Germany and Italy with great interest. Most were decidedly against Fascism and saw it as stifling creativity and the artist while suppressing liberty. W.H. Auden thought Fascism’s rise could result in a world where “all who care for justice, liberty, and culture would find it impossible to work or even exist”.# Another commonly expressed opinion saw the Spanish Civil War as instrumental is halting the spread of Fascism; without Republican Spain, Fascism could continue unchecked.
In Journey to the Frontier, Peter Stansky and William Abrahams examine the lives of two poets, John Cornford and Julian Bell, who were emblematic of the English poet turned militia fighter. Stansky and Abrahams do make a key point, however, in noting that eighty percent of English volunteers for International Brigades were working class and often unemployed.# Still, the legend of the English poet going to Spain to fight persists.
John Conford was not very informed regarding the intricacies of Spanish politics or Spanish trade unions and as such believed (rather naively) in the ability of the Popular Front to fuses differences and unite resistance against General Franco. Until 1936 and the election of the Popular Front, Spain had remained on the peripheral of Cornford’s consciousness.# However, after Franco’s revolt, he was motivated to join the fight for Republican Spain and was one of the first Englishmen in Spain. He promptly joined the POUM and participated in fighting on the Saragossa front and near Huesca. While in Spain he composed three poems that he is known for: “Full Moon at Tierz”, “To Margot Heinemann”, and “A Letter From Aragorn”. Although “Margot Heinemann” achieved the greatest notoriety, the other two deal directly with the political issues surrounding the war. “Full Moon” expresses Cornford’s Communist sympathies while cautioning England that Fascism could well spread, and arguing that fighting for Spain’s freedom was worthwhile. Cornford also organized the ‘Cornford Group’ of volunteers which later evolved into the British Battalion. He participated in the Battle for Madrid and died in action during an offensive near the city.
Julian Bell was another English poet who was published along with the likes of W.H. Auden and Steven Spender (in New Signatures, 1932). He generally viewed his writing as dedicated to a purpose (rather than for art’s sake) and, despite his pacifist views, he found himself committed to going to Spain.# Due to the reticence of his family, he was convinced to join the Spainish Medical Aid and saw duty as an ambulance driver. Unfortunately, he was placed in the thick of the fighting during the Brunete Campaign, was wounded while driving his ambulance, and died of his wounds soon after. While seemingly minor, these two poets give the student of the Spanish Civil War insights into the motivations and experiences of Leftist English poets who rallied around Republican Spain.
Through his simple Orwellian style, Orwell describes his own very English interpretation of the Spanish’s startling hospitality and undying generosity, their rather frustrating lack of time-neurosis, the lack of disciplines and the lack of weapons. At the beginning of the war, nothing like he thought it would be upon arriving in Spain, he makes it clear that cold was more dreaded than the enemy, and that the revolutionary spirit surviving was far more important than killing the enemy. He saw the Fascists as the evil that must be stopped, and all opposing it as what was “right”, seeking a classless, equal society. Yet as it becomes an ideological war between those fighting Fascism, Orwell’s opinion, particularly following the events in Barcelona in May, changed his outlook on how the other militia and anti-fascist parties, backed by the power of Communist Soviet Russia, libeled P.O.U.M. into a place of complete elimination due to their revolutionary desire for a classless, Socialist society of collectivization.
Orwell compares journalism and political studies of the time with his own real experience – making him a true studier of culture, a point we made upon reading Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier. He admits openly that it is only one side, and that there are many who will disagree with them vehemently because of what they have been told is the truth was so convincing. Yet without Orwell on the side of the POUM, telling the story of the undeserved reputation and downfall of a party fighting for the rights of the working class against the democratic capitalist machine. His goal is to grant the opportunity to be heard to those who are so caught up in attempting to throw off their own miserable shackles that they cannot simultaneously defend themselves from oppressors.
Through his simple Orwellian style, Orwell describes his own very English interpretation of the Spanish’s startling hospitality and undying generosity, their rather frustrating lack of time-neurosis, the lack of disciplines and the lack of weapons. At the beginning of the war, nothing like he thought it would be upon arriving in Spain, he makes it clear that cold was more dreaded than the enemy, and that the revolutionary spirit surviving was far more important than killing the enemy. He saw the Fascists as the evil that must be stopped, and all opposing it as what was “right”, seeking a classless, equal society. Yet as it becomes an ideological war between those fighting Fascism, Orwell’s opinion, particularly following the events in Barcelona in May, changed his outlook on how the other militia and anti-fascist parties, backed by the power of Communist Soviet Russia, libeled P.O.U.M. into a place of complete elimination due to their revolutionary desire for a classless, Socialist society of collectivization.
Orwell compares journalism and political studies of the time with his own real experience – making him a true studier of culture, a point we made upon reading Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier. He admits openly that it is only one side, and that there are many who will disagree with them vehemently because of what they have been told is the truth was so convincing. Yet without Orwell on the side of the POUM, telling the story of the undeserved reputation and downfall of a party fighting for the rights of the working class against the democratic capitalist machine. His goal is to grant the opportunity to be heard to those who are so caught up in attempting to throw off their own miserable shackles that they cannot simultaneously defend themselves from oppressors.
As shown in Orwell’s description and subsequent analysis of the events of May 3-7, 1937 there is no consensus on what happened, however the effects are indisputable. Thought to be the culmination of civic tensions which are thought to predate the Spanish Civil War: the conflict between political advocates and opponents of a liberal capitalist order in Spain, the social war between the poor and the state, and finally the jockeying for power between Catalanists and centralist liberals (Graham, Helen, ‘Against the State’: A Genealogy of the Barcelona May Days (1937), European History Quarterly 1999 29: 487). Orwell makes a point to mention in Homage to Catalonia that there was also a great deal of economic stratification which jarred with the city’s generally progressive reputation (Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. Orlando: Harcourt. 1952. 111). These factors made military conflict inevitable in Barcelona.
The clash between the opposing parties seen in Barcelona was also echoed in provincial cities. In Robert J. Alexander’s “The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War,” he describes that “In Gerona and Lérida where the POUM was dominant, nothing happened. The PSUCistas were nowhere to be seen and the police remained in their barracks,” indicating the sense of the rebel’s power (Alexander, Robert J. Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. Janus Publishing Co Ltd. 1999. 913). The May Days conflict in Barcelona directly caused the POUM organization to be outlawed which led to a campaign of intimidation, censorship, persecution and sometimes murder against opponents of the Communists such as the anarchists or former members of POUM (Alexander, 901).The later significance is that this anti-Fascist in fighting ultimately weakened the Republicans as well as the Communists, allowing Franco to take over Catalonia and ultimately all of Spain