Conflicts between fellow sufferers

During these months of relative calm an incident occurred which affected our man a great deal. One day, amidst huge uproar, there was a fight between some of the young men from Alcampell. It was a clash of deeply felt ideologies; for among these young soldiers there were both supporters of the Democratic Republic and supporters of the fascists in arms. In fact, some of them and their families had suffered threats back in the village, and were accused by local anarchists of being members of right wing families. According to our man’s account tempers rose to a level where some of them told the others they would not rest “until you and your kind are razed from the face of the earth”.

Source: http://rayosycentellas.net/guerracivil/?p=39

Ever since that day the spirit of comradeship that had existed between the young soldiers was transformed. Despite having fought side by side in the bloody battle of Brunete, and regardless of belonging to the same battalion, as well as having shared the same hardships in their brief life as recruits, a gulf now existed between them that could not be bridged. A few days later some of these same young men bribed an official to obtain a pass to visit their village. Once there they decided to make a run for France, but were spotted at the border and detained.

The Gendarmerie told them they had to return to Spain, but let them choose either of the two sides. Curiously, most of them chose to go to the fascist controlled areas and were enlisted in Franco´s army.

These events hit our man hard, and were to have repercussions in his later life, as we will see later.

Relative calm around Madrid

After the battle of Brunete our man was based with his unit in Alcala de Henares. From here they were deployed around Madrid, fighting short actions against the fascists. They were sent two or three times to Casa de Campo, to Cuesta de la Reina, to Guadalajara, amongst other places. These were relatively quiet months, so at last he could learn the rudiments of military theory and practice.

Señor Enjuanes was billeted in Alcala de Henares together with other young soldiers who were from his village, Alcampell. At this time, almost twenty of Alcampell´s youth were mobilised by the republican government and enlisted in the popular army. They all ended up in the 46th Division commanded by the so-called El Campesino, where they were assigned to the 101st Brigade. The 101st was a kind of shock brigade; when opening a new front, or stopping the advance of the fascist troops, they were the first to go.

Our man also enjoyed the lively entertainment of war-time Madrid, which apparently was brilliant and the fun never ended. He used to hit the town with his village friends, and see the besieged and part destroyed capital that in their eyes was still full of charms. It was the first time they had been in such a big city, which despite its state of war was still pulsating with life. At least this is how José Enjuanes remembers it.

Communist commissar by accident

One unexpected result of the Battle of Brunete was that because so many officers of the 101st Brigade had died they had to be replaced. At this time José Enjuanes was appointed political commissar of his battalion. It seems he was chosen because, as he says, he was one of the few who could read and write perfectly, and was also one of the few soldiers who understood the true meaning behind the struggle, probably thanks to the Rationalist teachers of his childhood. Another reason was that he was a member of the Unified Socialist Youth (see post 22 below), which at that time was fully under the orbit of the Spanish Communist Party. So without actively seeking the position, our man had become a political commissar in a communist army fighting fascism.

In his own words: “When I became a commissar I had joined the army just three or four months beforehand and had already participated in the battle of Brunete. The position of commissar was created during the war in order to promote education and to control the military top brass, because the Republican People´s Army did not trust many senior officers. Many had reactionary ideas and were always thinking of ways to cross over to the fascist army, or how to help them from our side. Our role was to make especially certain that these officers were on the republican side the whole time, as well as to promote propaganda and literacy, because so many people were illiterate”.

Republican People's Army commisar's armpatches (source: http://www.intariamilitaria.com/CatEne12a.html)

From now on, our man must strive to instill courage in the troops, and make sure they do not lose hope. To succeed, sometimes he will have to believe his own lies

Our man goes to war

In the Spring of 1937 José Enjuanes was called up and sent to a military camp at Faura (Valencia), where he ended up in the 101st Brigade, part of a communist Division commanded by the so-called El Campesino. Our man did not have any military experience, and after a brief period of training he was sent to the Madrid front. Here the republican command had prepared a major offensive, intended to push back the rebel lines from the capital. His baptism of fire was the Battle of Brunete, which began on the 5th July 1937 and ended on the 27th of the month. Twenty three days of almost continuous fighting that caused thousands of deaths and injuries; twenty three days of suffering from thirst, heat, disease, little sleep and death.

El Campesino leading the troops into the battle in Brunete (source: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batalla_de_Brunete)

During the battle the 101st Brigade lost nearly a quarter of its troops (according to the memoirs of commander Pedro Mateo Merino). For the Republican Army as a whole there were some positives. On the one hand, for the first time since the war began it had mounted a major offensive, held the upper hand in a key sector of the front and defeated some of the best units of the rebel army. But conversely, what is clear is that the objective of the offensive was far from achieved. In this sense the attack was a failure, which contrasts with the version told by our man, who returned from the front with the conviction that they had triumphed. As he said, ” in the end we did well, we achieved our goals of conquering the ´Cerro de la Muerte` (Mountain of Death) and also Brunete City, and we got sixty thousand men fifty kilometres behind them before they even realised “. However, it is likely that reports of the true outcome of the battle did not reach  the front, in which case our man would have remained ignorant of the facts. Both republican and fascist propaganda prevented bad news from reaching their troops, in the belief that negative information would cause a loss of morale and mass desertion.

To be continued… soon!

Due to the fact that my English native neighbour (who was advising my poor grammar) decided to leave Spain, I have been a time without updating this blog. I hope that during this August I will find the way to continue until the end of the story. Coming soon…

Well, finally this February 2012 I have arranged a good agreement with another English neighbour (thank you Tom), and from now on we will continue with the story… We hope at least twice a week!

How the Agricultural Union members became socialists

From the perspective of our man, despite the promises of liberation of the libertarian project, its practical application was not easy and seemed to generate much social disruption and contributed to exacerbate the climate of tension at local level. Interestingly, our man felt himself belonging to a social movement alternative enough in his time, a movement that promoted the Agricultural Union and the construction of a more progressive, fair and equitable parallel society. In this sense, he may have shared many of the ideas that feed the libertarian project, but as we have seen, does not agree with the way it was carried out.

According to his account, the members of the Agricultural Union suffered a lot of harassment to force them to join the Collective, which led to growing friction between both sides. In this situation, members of the Agricultural Union sought refuge outside the village, and for this reason they tried to contact with the republican (legal) authorities located in Barbastro (since the provincial capital, Huesca, was occupied by the fascist rebels). They realised that to obtain protection they should be affiliated to some group or political party, so they decided to join the UGT (socialist Trade Union) and the Socialist Youth (youth wing of socialist party). In this way, they obtained assurances that they would be defended against possible abuses by the anarchist committee that managed the community.

Unified Socialist Youth - JSU de España. Secretariado de Propaganda. Gráficas Valencia (Author: José Bardasano, 1937)

Then our man became a member of the Young Socialists, which at that time in Spain had already merged with the Young Communists, giving rise to the Unified Socialist Youth (Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas).

From then on, the Collective and the Agricultural Union coexisted, not without tensions, but giving a remarkable vitality to the local life in every way. Not only were organizational innovations in agricultural production made, but they also promoted a remarkable cultural life in the village (as reflected in plays, reading groups, nudist and naturism groups, etc.). For example, both the Union and the Collective had respective group of amateur actors who staged plays, often with social content, and competed with each other to attract the publics attention.

A Collectivization little peaceful

Theoretically, the collectivization of lands and services was voluntary, but the collectivist committee  reserved for itself the right to decide in which cases it would be mandatory, which, according to the testimony of Josep Enjuanes, led to some arbitrary acts or driven by external motivations (such as old feuds between families, prior political positions, etc.). The lands of the families considered to be related to the fascist rebels were seized by the Collective, as well as certain services considered essential for there proper functioning (i.e. a truck). Our man shared many of the ideas of the collectivists, but shows his rejection of certain arrogant attitudes of the committee. As he says: “They could come at any time and seize a calf or two, or three or those needed. And then they gave you nothing.”

Substitute money distributed by the anarchist of the Collective of Binefar (source: http://www.spa.anarchopedia.org/Archivo:Mon1.gif)

José Enjuanes tended to attribute to the local anarchists and the process of collectivization began by them a series of negative consequences that later a lot of people had to pay very bitterly, even many people who did not participate in it. What he probably did not realize was that the Collective existed in a context of war (it probably would have been impossible in another context), and that much of food and products generated (or seized) were used to supply the war front. The army columns and militias of the Republican Army ate thanks to the efforts of these groups of collectivists, which inevitably affected their operations. Sources describe it in detail: Victor Blanco, the anarchist teacher of Alcampell, explains how they were sending goods to the Binéfar Luggage in order to be distributed to the front, while Augustín Souchy Bauer said that every day two trucks of food and supplies were sent to the front and to the cities in the rear (for example, they sent 32 wagons of food to Madrid).

Anarchist militia in Alcampell (1936). Photo provided by María Pilar Meler: her father is the serious man in the center of the photo, and was the owner of the truck (which at that time was collectivized). It is very interesting to observe the militia members' attitudes.

The collectivization of lands

Between 1936 and 1938 in La Llitera county, as elsewhere in the part of Aragon where the fascist rebellion failed, something very unusual happened: libertarian collectivism. In the case of Alcampell,  the anarchist revolutionary committee decided to manage together all the lands of the people that joined them, and also the lands seized belonging to the local fascist supporters, and organized its work collectively. In theory, everyone should have their needs covered, and everybody should work according to his abilities. If someone did not want to join the Collective nothing happened to them, nobody forced them, but, as Enjuanes said, they did not receive anything and also risked the expropriation of part of what they had.

Collectivist peasants of Aragon (Author: Robert Capa)

Interestingly, the people of the Agricultural Union decided not to collectivise their lands, which led to numerous conflicts between them and the anarchist commitee. As Jose Enjuanes said: “the members of Agricultural Union were pressured a lot to enter the Collective, we had many clashes with them, but wanted to continue as we were. We told them that our Union was a truly cooperative movement, which had worked for twenty years with an undeniable success, bringing progress to the village and so on… But they wanted a social revolution to end all that was in the past. They wanted to start from scratch, not to create inequalities”.

Revolution and death

According to the story of Josep Enjuanes, when the local anarchists fail to recognize the authority of Republican democratic institutions, they started the truly revolutionary phase (coordinated with the rest of Aragon not occupied by fascism). One of the first things they did was to call all the neighbors at a meeting in the Square (Plaza Mayor) in order to organize a “Collective”. This was already on 27 July 1936. They wanted to make a radical social revolution, to abolish private property, and to carry out the program of libertarian communism proclaimed that they had been promoting for some time.

Militians celebrating the victory (Author: Albero y Segovia) (Sorce: http://pare.mcu.es/)

Unfortunately, one of the things they also did was to shoot all the arrested local fascists. On the morning of  29 July, a platoon of the Revolutionary Committee of Alguaire came  into Alcampell, put the fascists into a truck and led them to a field near Coll de Foix, in lands belonging to the neighbouring village of Albelda. There all 9 were killed. A huge blunder that later led to many difficulties in local coexistence. Most of the members of the Agricultural Union, although they had nothing to do with these facts, later were to suffer serious negative consequences.

The Anarchists take power

Jose Enjuanes lived these events of July 1936 as a privileged observer. As he explains: “The war just exploded when Joaquin Blanco, who worked at a chemical factory in Flix, came to the village. He was a union leader in the factory, representing the FAI. He arrived with three cars full of militants, covered with mattresses and … they where going to the front, to join the anarchist columns which wanted to reconquer the city of Zaragoza.”

First moments of the Rebellion - Militias guarding the order in the villages (Author: Albero y Segovia) (Source: http://pares.mcu.es/

A few days later when the situation both in Madrid and Barcelona seemed controlled, local anarchists of the CNT broke the agreement with the village Council and with the Agricultural Union, and were established as a Revolutionary Committee. Then they stopped recognizing the authority of the previous committee and all the republican institutions. The local anarchist Committee arrested some people considered right-wing supporters, most of them involved in the repression of the events of 1933, and imprisoned them in the new barracks of the Guardia Civil, who had just barely opened. Paradoxically, the barracks were opened for those prisoners, those who had just promoted and paid it. Through threats the anarchists could learned that the detainees had a silo full of arms in Fountain street, with a hidden gallery connected to the sacristy of the church, where they had planned to blockade themselves in the bell tower. But they were caught.

The “red terror”

The Civil Guards and some supporters concentred in Tamarit blockaded  themselves in the barracks and in the bell tower of the church, to the point that the anarchists had to have a plane coming from Lleida to scare them. Once surrendered, they were taken prisoner and then almost all executed by a mob led by local anarchists and others coming from Catalonia. From that moment  a harsh crackdown began against any person suspected of having relations with fascist rebels in the region, starting with the members of the Guardia Civil and the priests, and continuing with  affiliates and supporters of the reactionary conservative parties.

Portada del volum de la Causa General relatiu a Alcampell

According to the data from the archive of the Causa General the amount of presumed victims of red terror produced during those days in the county was of 200 people killed outside of government control, including thirty priests and church officials and and forty policemen (civil guards). Take note that the Causa General only includes victims considered as being related to the fascist rebels, and says nothing of those hundreds caused a couple of years later when they seized power in the county.

The reception of the fascist coup in Alcampell

The military coup against the Spanish Republic, as elsewhere, was lived with great excitement in La Llitera county. The chronicles speak of crowds of people listening to the few existent radios and trying to figure out what happened, with all committees anarchists ready to seize power while supporters of the fascists plotting to join the rebellion. On July 18 in Alcampell the anarchists forced the establishment of a Committee with representatives of the Agricultural Union and the Village Council, to tackle the serious events that were expected. During the first nights the local fascists and supporters of the fascist rebels walked the streets armed and left the village without electricity, confident in the success of the uprising.

Soft construction with beans. Dali's premonition of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. (Source: Philadephia Museum of Art) (http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51315.html)

Meanwhile the Committee was installed in the building of the Agricultural Union and set up a permanent watch, as they feared an attack by local reactionaries, who were armed and were plotting with their county counterparts. A few days later, on 20 July, the local Civil Guard was evacuated and, together with the whole county, was concentrated in Tamarit de Llitera (the county capital) to the disappointment of local reactionaries, which they saw as the balance of forces largely leaning against them. Then the Committee put controls at entrances and exits of the village taking the effective power in the village.

The Guardia Civil concentrated in Tamarit de Llitera hoped the arrival of fascist rebel reinforcements, but they never arrived. It seems that the main factor that determined the failure of the fascist coup in the county was that the garrison army of Barbastro remained loyal to the Republic. So, the reactionaries of the region, although which began to coordinate among themselves, they could not receive the expected military support.

The fascist rebelion is here

In July 1936 Spanish people were petrified participants in a macabre game of dice which decided the inexorable fate of each one. The rebellion on July 17th of a sector of the army with the support of the more conservative classes and the Catholic Church was an earthquake that shook everything. The fate of each one depended on who was the winner in each regional area. According to the chronicles, the first days after the coup were full of uncertainty in most places: in some places the military rebels took power and began the extermination of people linked to leftist ideas (including elected Republican officials), in other places the revolutionary unions and Left parties seized power and started a tough crackdown on those suspected of supporting fascism. In the meanwhile, the republican Government remained virtually powerless and, with regard to Aragon which once resisted the rebels, it still took several months to acquire power and then only for a limited time, so in March 1939 the republican Government went into exile, while all the European powers recognized the fascist government of Franco as legitimate.

General map of the Spanish Civil War (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War)

Main rebel centres
Main Republican centres
Land battles
Naval battles
Bombed cities
Concentration camps
Massacres
Refugee camps

The Civil Guard barracks

Casserna de la Guàrdia Civil d'Alcampell durant la seua construcció l'any 1934-35 (Font: Mediateca rtve.es)

Following the events of December 1933 (see below), a detachment of the Guardia Civil was installed in Alcampell, initially housed in the homes of some conservative families unti later they built a permanent headquarters. José Enjuanes explains that the conservative sector demanded that the City Council must pay for the building of the headquarters, at first without much success, but later the pressure of local right got to the City Council to carry out a referendum to see if the people accepted it. It seems that the day before the date of the consultation, several of the Civil Guards who were already in the village had a dispute with one of the local anarchists, and two grandparents walking through the street were seeing how he was beaten and decided to intervene to prevent further damage, and consequently they were beaten too. Apparently, this fact led many people to vote against the construction of the Civil Guard barracks, so the result was negative. In these circumstances, those who asked for the headquarters decided to pay for it themselves, collecting money from the more conservative families and friends. Thus, in 1934 the construction of barracks began, which was completed around 1935. Later this headquarters would be the scene of repeated violent episodes.

The consequences of the revolt

The revolt of December 1933, despite having been agreed by the Revolutionary Committee of the CNT at national level, was only taken up in some rural areas of Galicia, Catalonia, Aragon and La Rioja. In Aragon it was followed in some municipalities of the province of Huesca (Alcampell, Albalate de Cinca, Alcalá de Gurrea, Calasanz, Lanaja and Villanueva de Sigena) and of the province of Teruel (Alcañiz, Alcorisa, Arenys de Lledó, Beceite, Calanda, Fórnols, La Freixneda, La Torre del Compte, Mas de las Matas, Mazaleón and Valderrobles). In the city of Zaragoza, even though the revolt did not occur, the workers called a general strike that lasted until December the 14th in solidarity with detainees of all those villages.

Detenció de revolucionaris (Astúries)

With regard to Alcampell, the testimony of Josep Enjuanes correlates well with other available sources (Victor Blanco, Angeles Blanco & Sixto Agudo, Hanneke Willemse) on the consequences of the rebellion. On December 11 the arrests began, not just of anarchists who led the revolt but also of many other people not involved at all, but considered ideologically left-wing or progressive, many of them members of the Agricultural Union. There were hundreds of detainees, some very high figures which indicate that a sector of the village decided to settle outstanding vendettas. On December 15th the detainees began to be moved towards Huesca prison, but as it was full of many prisoners from across the province, those of Alcampell were taken to the jail of Jaca. According to José Enjuanes, Jaca was covered with snow and they had to fight through by  themselves. Later, some thirty of Alcampell detainees were sent to the prison of Chinchilla (Albacete), one of the toughest in Spain, with sentences ranging from 10 to 24 years in prison.

Detinguts durant les revoltes republicanes (Font: http://madrid.cnt.es)

However, these were agitated times and things changed quickly. A few months later, in May 1934, the government proclaimed an amnesty and the majority of the Alcampell detainees were released and returned home, with the exception of those sentenced to 24 years of prison, who had to wait until April 1936 when a new amnesty by the new government of the Popular Front was proclaimed. The sources indicate that the local anarchist Committee prepared a great reception for the released, waiting for them at the Tamarit de Llitera train station and accompanying them all the way with a band playing the Marseillaise, the Riego anthem and other popular and revolutionary tunes.

The events of December 1933 in Alcampell

José Enjuanes, like other witnesses (such as Víctor Blanco), notes that in Alcampell the insurrection began at the time and date agreed: 12 pm on December 8, 1933. CNT members put controls on the entry and exit roads, and began night patrols. On one such patrol clashed with a former policeman from Barcelona who lived in the village, who was in the service of the conservative elements of the village. In the middle of shooting one of the anarchist militants was killed, presumably because of an accidental shot by his own comrades. On the morning of the 9th they occupied the Town Hall, dismissed the Mayor (who was a socialist), hung the red and black flag of the CNT on the facade, and proclaimed libertarian communism. Then in the main square they burned all the files and documents from the Town Hall and proclaimed the abolition of money and private property (they try to found a society from scratch). When the bus line coming from Benavarre and Graus passed through Alcampell, they seized it and demanded that the owner of the local inn take charge of the passengers. Later the former policeman, whom they accused of the death of the anarchist shot the previous night, was chased until he was cornered in a pig sty, where he was trapped for hours, until finally the crowd concentrated decided to add fuel and set fire to the sty, burning him to death.

Font: elecodelospasos.net

During the morning of 9 of December, the insurgents had no news from outside the village, and began to worry because they did not know if the revolution had triumphed everywhere or not. They therefore decided to send observers to the hills of the Sierra de la Gessa, from where they could overlook the plain of La Llitera. From there they saw the train passing through the station of Tamarit-Altorricó, and concluded that the planned rail strike had not been carried out, so they realized that the revolution had not been widespread. However, they decided not to tell to the others in order to not demoralize the movement. Throughtout the day of the 9th, they were lecturing people about how to live in libertarian communism, which was not as easy as they had imagined, and which they attributed to the lack of habit. At this point, they still did not understand why if the widespread insurrection had failed that the police had not already been sent to stop them.

On the  morning of the 10th they buried the two victims of the previous day. Later someone spread the rumor that a column of the Civil Guard coming from Graus was moving toward the village, so a group of anarchist rebels took the seized bus and went to the nearby Seganta bridge to dynamite it. Finally, during the afternoon of December 10th, a section of the Army and another of the Civil Guard coming from Tamarite surrounded the town, occupied it and re-established institutional order. It seems that only the president of the local committee of the CNT put up resistence by shooting with a shotgun, and managed to escape cross-country and later fled to Barcelona. Military patrols patrolled the streets of the town overnight.

“In front the political election, the social revolution”

During the election campaign of 1933 the CNT in the area was very active spreading its anti-politicism, while, paradoxically, the parties that were standing remained almost silent. In the region of La Llitera there were only a couple of meetings of candidates of Izquierda Republicana (a party representing the progressive petty bourgeoisie), which were boycotted by members of the CNT.

The CNT had held a congress in Madrid on 30 and 31 October 1933, which produced the slogan that would guide its actions in the upcoming elections “In front of the political election, the social revolution”. In that Congress they decided that if the Conservative victory lead to a “state of passion of the people”, the CNT would be responsible for giving an impulse and direct it toward the social revolution, with the ultimate goal of implementing “libertarian communism.” During November in Zaragoza a “Revolutionary Committee” was created to prepare the insurrection and coordinate it among all the Spanish regions (although representatives of various regions disagreed because they had not yet recovered from previous insurgencies, especially for the ones of January 1933). It was decided that the day of the social revolution would coincide with the open-day of the new Parliament, scheduled for December 8. So, the revolution would begin promptly at 12 midnight on that day. Thousands of workers in Spain were waiting for the call of the CNT to leave their work and take the streets. The authorities were aware of everything that was being prepared, and began to take precautionary measures (closing ironworks, confiscating weapons, closing Union newspapers, arresting labor leaders, etc.).

The anarchist Union CNT in Alcampell

Font: http://www.cnt.es

The National Confederation of Labour (CNT) was created from the First National Congress of Workers’ Organisations, held in Barcelona in 1910. At first it was a federation of labor organizations dedicated to fighting for improved working conditions and a better life, but after the National Congress in 1919 in Madrid, it moved its towards anarchist ideas as the best way to achieve a society organized according to the principles of so-called “libertarian communism”.

The sources (Victor Blanco) indicate that in Alcampell a labor organization attached to the CNT was created in 1918, with the help of a village worker, Brualla Ramon, who was part of the strike committee of the La Canadiense electric-power company during construction of the Camarassa dam (in the nearby county of Noguera). In 1923, the CNT was outlawed and its activity in the area was very low until new legalization in 1931, when it was reorganized again and promoted an intense political and cultural activity (lectures, plays, book clubs, political activity, etc. ), with increasing conflicts with the local powers.

CNT woman

During the same year of 1931, the County Federation of Trade Unions of the CNT was established in Alcampell, and following the events of December 1933 moved to Monzón, where it remained until its dissolution with the arrival of the fascist army in March 1938.

The advent of the Spanish Second Republic

Celebració de la II República a la "Puerta del Sol" de Madrid

The triumph of the Republican candidates in the municipal elections of April 12th, 1931 marked the fall of the already discredited monarchy (and resulted in the immediate exile of King Alfonso XIII), and on the 14th, the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed.  A paradox of history, after so many decades of social and political conflicts, the republic had come without warning and with the placidity of a wave on the beach. In Alcampell the crowd celebrated it by playing the “Marseillaise,” and some sources report a popular demonstration that, after going through the main streets of the town, addressed the City Council and the Public School, took down the portraits of the king and burned them in public. The arrival of the Second Republic led to the incorporation of the citizen masses to the Spanish public life as never seen before, which was not well received  by the more conservative sectors of society. In June 1931 elections were held to choose the courts that would draft the new Constitution, which was approved on 9th December 1931.

Proclamació de la II República a la Plaça de Sant Jaume de Barcelona (des de llavors Plaça de la Constitució). Font: Fototeca.cat; Arxiu Mas.

During the 1931-1933 biennium a republican and socialist coalition ruled, difficult to fit and poorly balanced, which faced strong opposition from the main labor union, the CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo – National Labour Confederation), dissatisfied with the slow and shallow depth of the reforms, and from the boycott of conservative and para-fascist groups which from within the state apparatus hindered any kind of structural reform. In addition, this first republican government evolved in the midst of an enormous international economic and financial crisis, resulting from the crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression, which hit all Western countries hard.

After two years of continuous conflicts and increasingly difficult to meet expectations, the government resigned and called elections for November 19th, 1933. These elections were a severe defeat of the leftist parties that were in the previous government, and resulted in the victory of conservative parties, especially the CEDA (Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights) and the Radical Party. As a result of these elections, Alejandro Lerroux was elected as president of the Government, with Niceto Alcala Zamora as president of the Republic. This election is what caused the change of the band in the Sunday dance in Alcampell (cited in a previous post) which, for José Enjuanes, was his first clear perception of the social division existing in the village.

More new influences

When, in 1926, the teacher Ramon Serrano left Alcampell (allegedly because of love disagreements), the Union School was temporarily closed. Then the father of our man put José Enjuanes to work as an unpaid assistant town clerk, just to keep learning. This was possible because the town clerk rented his house from Mr. Enjuanes senior. In this way, José Enjuanes went into the stormy world of the city bureaucracy, he discovered the most common administrative procedures and, above all, learned to type. His father felt that this would be good training for him. He was in this position until 1930, when he was 15 and his father decided that he could enter fully into the work on the family land. During his stay at City Hall he coincided with a man who mark him deeply, Mr. José María Abadía Garín. This is a young “foreigner” who married a girl from Alcampell, who was from one of the landowning families belonging to the traditional elites, nicknamed Cas del Secretari.

Vista d'Alcampell el 1928. Foto cedida per Guislena Cristóbal per al llibre Història Gràfica d'Alcampell

Shortly after his arrival in A lcampell there were municipal elections and José María Abadía was chosen as mayor. He was mayor between 1926 and 1929, and according to our man, undertook several initiatives to improve the quality of life in the village.

José María Abadía Garín, alcalde d'Alcampell entre 1925 i 1929. Foto cedida per Pilar Abadía per al llibre Història Gràfica d'Alcampell

He built the new municipal schools, with more space and architecture adapted for teaching, improved the drinking water supply by digging a new well and constructing a large water tank, bought a big Encyclopedia to make it available to the entire population (the Gran Enciclopedia Espasa, consisting of over 200 volumes), proposed  social security payments to employees in the municipality, etc. José Enjuanes, from his position as privileged observer within the municipality, describes how he had to deal harshly with the other members of the town council to carry out many of these initiatives. From his point of view, Mayor Jose Maria Abadía greatly dignified life in the village, producing a long series of advances asked for by the progressive sectors (of the rural bourgeoisie), which was reflected in his circle of friends in the population, mainly composed of members of the Agricultural Union. This earned him numerous problems with his own wife’s family, who looked askance at many of  his actions. José Enjuanes reports that the mayor became a member of the Agricultural Union, but later he left because he could not meet an obligation: to attend funerals. Because many of the burials of relatives of the Agricultural Union members were secular, and attendence of them generated problems with the local Church and with members of his own family, he decided not to attend and to be consistent, giving up membership of the Agricultural Union.

Early ideological influences

In his story, our man talks about some characters that influenced him in his youth, during the 20′s and 30′s of the past Century. One is Roberto Sarrate, a young man of the village who was interested in many social and intellectual issues, who had been a student of the rationalist school, a tireless organizer of popular cultural activities in Alcampell and in the county of La Llitera. José Enjuanes recalls that in his home, Roberto had a picture of Joaquin Costa, of whom he considered himself a disciple and follower, and with who he shared an ideology for social transformation (promoter of the cooperative, defense of economic individualism and of the federal state, of municipal autonomy and of the agrarian collectivism, of the uncompensated expropriation of large landowners, of improving communications between territories and of the expansion of irrigation). Costas’ radical ideas had a great influence among the republican bourgeoisie of the time, and later, were also a source of inspiration for the revolutionary anarchist principles.

Roberto Sarrate fotografiat a París l’any 1939. (Foto de l’arxiu de Cas de Buireta)

Roberto Sarrate led a small  local theatre group, and was the soul of many of the cultural initiatives of the population (music, dance, poetry, songs, theater, cinema, etc.), but it seems that he was always planning activities that confronted the traditional elites. Towards the end of the 20’s he decided to move to Madrid, where he had a brother, because of the pressure exerted by the local traditional elites. He became involved in various leftist social movements, and during a general strike he was arrested and jailed. To escape from the jail he agreed to spend three years in the Legion in North Africa. Upon his return, during the years of the Second Republic, he spent his time between Madrid and Alcampell, participating in the exalted social environment of the time. During the war he was the leader of a militia (a body of civil fighters), a column that later became part of the People’s Army of the Republic, where he became commander of a brigade that excelled in the defense of Madrid against the Fascists.

He was later seriously wounded and decided to convalescence in Alcampell. While he was there, the Aragon Front fell and he had to be evacuated with the XIII International Brigade that was stationed in Tamarit de Llitera, but passing Lleida the truck he was riding overturned and he broke both legs, and was sent to the military hospital in Barcelona (where, by chance, he coincided with José Enjuanes, who was also seriously injured). At that time Roberto Sarrate had a girlfriend who worked for the International Red Aid, both later went to France, like thousands of Republican exiles, and twere working for the French Resistance until they were arrested by the Nazis and sent to the Concentration Camps, where they finished their days.

During our interviews, José Enjuanes spoke with devotion of the times when, as a child and teenager, he was with Roberto Sarrate talking about life, ideas, the oppression of traditional rural elites, the future and so many things that contributed to shape their characters and  which in 2010 were still influential for him.

The rationalist school

At the time our man was a child, local public education was of poor quality, overcrowded and transmitting outdated knowledge or based on biased interpretations of the Holy Bible. The glaring inefficiency of public school experiences led to several secular private schools, of which, one in concrete, is regarded as particularly productive. This was the school of Manuel Núñez, a disciple of the promoter of the “Modern School” in Spain, Manuel Ferrer y Guardia, who, following the repression that followed the Tragic Week in Barcelona, took refuge in Alcampell and, upon the request several families (of the rural petty bourgeoisie), in 1909 opened a private school with a growing and undeniable success. It was a school that promoted the children’s education in a rational and scientific way, compassionate and without exams, and left a deep mark on all students and the general population. In 1919 Manuel Núñez committed suicide (leaving the population startled), allegedly for reasons of love (or better the loss of love). As many of its students belonged to families that had just founded the Agricultural Union of Alcampell, they had the need to give continuity to school. They would come in contact with the “Liceu Escolar de Lleida”, led by the pedagogue Frederic Godàs, and he provided a new teacher named Ramon Serrano, inspired also on the principles of modern pedagogy, rationalist and secular.

El mestre Ramon Serrano amb alumnes del curs escolar del 1919. (Fragment d’una foto cedida per Elena Enjuanes per al llibre Història Gràfica d’Alcampell)

He was to be the teacher of José Enjuanes from 5 to 11, a few years that our man would always remember as the best of his life. In 1926 the teacher Ramón Serrano left the village (also for reasons of an unrequited love) and was replaced by another similar master, to be followed by a couple more until the dissolution of the Agricultural Union by force of arms (the Fascists) in 1938.

Looking for a strongman

According to the sources (basically our man, José Enjuanes Pena), the moral and economic impetus to found the Agricultural Union of Alcampell was given by a lawyer and liberal politician named Josep Maria Espanya, who was at that time an important influence in the Pyrenees of Lleida and Huesca and surrounding areas.

Josep Maria Espanya i Sirat (Foto extreta de: memoriaesquerra.cat - Fundació Josep Irla)

Born in Vielha,  Josep Maria Espanya was elected to the Spanish Parliament in three consecutive general elections (1907, 1911 and 1915) representing different political parties (liberal, republican and regionalist), was president of the Diputación de Lleida (1913-1917) and civil governor of Palencia (1921), minister of the autonomous government of the Generalitat de Catalunya chaired by Lluís Companys (1936). He was exiled in France and in Colombia in 1939 until his death in 1953. While traditional elites had their permanent representatives in the organs of state power (typically people with family ties) engaged in defending their rights and privileges, the rural petty bourgeoisie also sought contacts in the Spanish Parliament and other state institutions. In the case of Alcampell, Mr. Espanya seems to be the strongman of the local petty bourgeoisie in its dealings with institutional power.

Do not act individually if you can do it with others

In 1918 some of the most active members of the rural petty bourgeoisie, a group increasingly economically vibrant but with little access to the local institutional power,  decide to stop waiting for solutions to their problems from the traditional elites and try to provide them themselves. To do this, aided by a strange and providential provincial deputy, they found an “Agricultural Union”. In fact, it was a kind of consumer cooperative with which the partners (who require a certain heritage to be accepted) established a set of basic services (bakery, doctor, pharmacist, school teacher, mutual support in case of disease, credit bank, oil mill, etc.) as well as some leisure facilities which contribute to enhancing people’s collective life (soccer field, coffee-bar, a venue for theater, dance, etc.).

Frontera de la Casa de Xan-Tomàs, seu del Sindicat Agrícola d’Alcampell (1918-1938). (Foto cedida per Sergio Ibarz per al llibre Història Gràfica d’Alcampell).

These Agricultural Unions have two main ideological sources: the first one, inspired by the Utopian English socialist Robert Owen and introduced into Spain by Joaquín Abreu and Fernando Garrido, and, secondly, the encyclical Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII, in which to cope with the social problems caused by capitalism, a sector of the Catholic Church seeks to promote social harmony through worker cooperatives. In Spain, the government tries to promote these kind of Unions to reduce the increasing social tension in rural areas and to enhance a possible economic development, and does so with certain specific rules and laws (from the laws of 1906 and 1908). The fact is that, paradoxically, in places with pre-existing social class conflicts,  such as Alcampell, the proper functioning of the Union Agricultural led to the division of the population into two increasingly distant and independent groups. For this reason, when our man said that the village was ideologically and politically divided, he was just stating a very old fact.

Be careful with the lovely people

Francisco de Goya: "Tú que no puedes"; Los Caprichos (1799)

The most obvious division between social groups in the town was between traditional elites and the rural petty bourgeoisie, two groups which had already been in at loggerheads for a long time. For example, during the Eighteenth century numerous conflicts over the distribution of communal lands of Alcampell (and the rest of the region) were observed, a distribution required by a state law and which the elites were reluctant to comply with, but actively demanded by the rural bourgeoisie (as described brilliantly by Josep M. Martínez París in his book Expansió Agrària i Conflicte Social al segle XVIII: El Litigi per les Terres Comunals de Tamarit de Llitera). Also during the nineteenth century there is evidence of conflicts between the two groups in the locality, for example when, after the promulgation of the Spanish Civil Code in 1889 (broadly speaking, still in force) which, among other things, allowed civil funerals, a sector of the population linked to the rural petty bourgeoisie demanded this possibility in front of the strong opposition from the more conservative classes and the local Catholic church. After some years of friction, finally the first group obtained a part of the cemetery for civil burials.

When interpreting these conflicts, we must bear in mind that the conservative elites were simply engaged in defending their ancient privileges, while the rural petty bourgeoisie claimed part of their growing rights linked to the emerging but still undeveloped Spanish liberal state. It was a continual struggle, ultimately, for the distribution of power between two relatively powerful social classes at the local level, but it should be noted that neither one nor the other thought to promote equality of resources among the whole population. Each one looked out for themselves.

Social structure of the village

The three social groups existing in Alcampell during these times can be characterized as follows:

On one side, the traditional elites and their circles of influence, those families and people defending the old social order (almost medieval). At this time the distribution of power in rural Aragon followed an oligarchic style, with a few “families” holding the power at local and regional level since the time of the ancient regime, in a context of extreme social inequalities. It was a very stable formula that remained in place during centuries, but which was rapidly changing in the first decades of the XXth century.

A 1911 Industrial Worker (IWW newspaper) publication advocating industrial unionism that shows the critique of capitalism. It is based on a flyer of the "Union of Russian Socialists" spread in 1900 and 1901.

On the other side, the rural petty bourgeoisie, without so many traditional ties to keep, with no coat of arms on the facade of their houses, but more and more economically vibrant. They are people of order, but who despair at the lack of structural reforms in the country and seeing how Spain is increasing distant from European modernity. Some sectors of these people feel increasingly influenced by the ideas proposed by some Regenerationist thinkers and politicians of the time. It is these sectors that time and again since the early Nineteenth century are trying to make the “bourgeois revolution” in Spain, and fail again and again against the powerful agricultural and financial oligarchy (which has the support of much of the army and the Catholic Church).

The third social group consisted of people influenced by anarchist thought, which was gradually gaining support in the region, especially among younger generations of the rural petty bourgeoisie, and among certain sectors of rural poor. The influences of these people can be found both in some of the intellectuals and liberal politicians as well as in the labor organizations of the time.

In the first third of the Twentieth century, these three social groups were living in the region and in the village, the friction was constant and growing to the point that they increasingly tended to resolve conflicts with violence. It was, however, a trend repeated across Europe (do not forget that this is the time of the emergence of revolutionary social movements, including the Soviet revolution and all that led to on a continental scale).

Dancing in the street

In November 1933 our man was a proud 18 year old with blood boiling under his skin and he was involved in a situation that, according to his perception, changed the course of his life in some ways. A general election was held in Spain and the conservative parties won. In order to celebrate that victory the conservative elites of Alcampell decided to organize a popular dance, but instead of hiring the usual local band that played every Sunday, they were looking for another, supposedly better (musically and higher standing), one in the neighboring town of Tamarit (the capital of La Llitera county). A group of youths protested against this decision, including José Enjuanes, our man, and they started a confrontation that finally led to the division of the Dance Society.

Orquestra La Principal Alcampellense, amb el seu director Emilio Santisteve al violí. (Foto cedida per María Pilar Meler per al llibre Història Gràfica d’Alcampell).

From this moment on there were two different Dance Societies in the village, that of the conservative elites and a new one made up by of young and more progressive people, both organizing a dance every Sunday and during the annual festivals. This was the first time that our man realized that the village was divided on political and ideological grounds, and believes some of his subsequent problems began because of his role in the creation of the new Dance Society. But, in fact, the village was already divided long ago. Not in two halves, but into three increasingly antagonistical groups.