An Anarchist Artist’s Disillusion with
Spanish Anarchism in the Civil War – Luis
George Orwell was an Old
Etonian socialist (rare but not unique) who, when the Spanish Civil War broke
out, went to Barcelona and found his way into service with a Trotskyist
militia, POUM. His account of his
experiences, Homage to Catalonia, is
a deserved classic. His story includes the civil-war-within-the civil war, the
clash in Barcelona between the Trotskyists and Anarchists and the Communist
backed Republican authorities. Orwell was on the side of the former, although
he himself later admitted that he had an unsure grasp of the “bigger picture”. Paul Preston, the most
distinguished living historian of the Civil War (probably in any language),
recently wrote a sympathetic but firm critique of Orwell’s account in The Guardian. Preston explains that the
beleaguered Republic had no friends in West (the US, Britain and France sat on
their hands at best); Franco had militarised Germany and Italy as active
allies, lending troops and airpower. The only state supporting the Republic was
the Soviet Union.
The Republic needed arms and
discipline to fight the war. The Soviets provide the former, and a nasty bit of
the latter; and the anarchists did their best to subvert the latter, many
elements holding that the creation of new revolutionary social, political and
industrial structures was more important, or just as important, than fighting
Franco.
During this vicious
ideological dispute, Anarchist militias left the front line to confront the
government in Barcelona. The government was left with little choice but to take
the Anarchists on. Preston suggests that this was the correct option at the
time, however unsavoury some of the implications of Soviet support proved (the
importation of Soviet secret service death squads being one).
Preston’s article freshly
read, it is indeed very interesting to read an extract of Luis Bunuel’s memoirs
of the War (My Last Breath, anthologised
in No Pasaran, published by Serpent’s
Tail 2016).
Bunuel is best known as the
leading surrealist film maker of the 1920s and 30s, although he also enjoyed a
long and distinguished career in exile (mostly in Mexico) after Franco came to
power. (I’ve sworn never again to watch his Chien
Andalou, because of the scene where a cloud sliding across the moon
suddenly turns into a razor slicing an eye.)
Bunuel’s narrative (published
in 1983, and perhaps benefiting much from the hindsight of years) gives a very
clear exposition of the tensions and divisions on the Republican side that
Preston claims Orwell didn’t grasp.
When the Francoist rebellion
broke out in the Summer of 1936, Bunuel was living in Madrid.
He describes the murderous
activities of anarchist extremists in the early months: “the mere presence of a religious icon in someone’s room led
automatically to Casa Campo, the public park on the outskirts of the city where
the executions took place”.
Bunuel was left wing and, as
a surrealist, something of an anarchist at heart. But he writes: “I nonetheless couldn’t stomach the summary
executions, the looting, the criminal acts. No sooner had the people risen and
seized power than they split into factions and began tearing on another to
pieces. This insane and indiscriminate settling of accounts made everyone
forget the essential reasons for the war”.
Bunuel puts his finger on the
point Preston seeks to make about Orwell:
“The main goal of both Communists
and Socialists was to win the war, while the anarchists, on the other hand,
considered the war already won and had begun to organise their ideal society”.
And: “Fascist repression was pitiless: anyone suspected of liberal
tendencies was summarily executed. But instead of trying to form an
organisation, we debated – while the anarchists persecuted priests”.
Bunuel writes movingly of
Garcia Lorca, one of his closest friends, who was murdered by the Francoists in
Granada in august 1936. Lorca was also
in Madrid in the early days of the war. As Franco’s troops approached Madrid
(where they were to encounter years of stalemate), Lorca decided to leave for
Granada, his native city, tense and
frightened.
“Lorca died because he was a poet. ‘Death to the intelligentsia
‘ was a favourite wartime slogan….Frederico was terrified of death and
suffering. I can imagine what he must have felt, in the middle of the night in
a truck that was taking him to an olive grove to be shot.”
“Federico was the finest. I don’t mean his plays or
poetry; I mean him personally. He was his own masterpiece….He transformed me,
introduced me to a wholly different world [of poetry and music]. He was
like a flame.”
Bunuel offers two epitaphs on
the Spanish Civil War. One is the brutal and lapidary:
“God and Country are an unbeatable team: they break all records for
oppression, and bloodshed.”
The other is more nuanced,
almost to the point of lameness:
“[Franco] wasn’t the devil personified… even in
Franco’s case there’s room for some ambiguity…..I tell myself that all the
wealth and culture on the Falangist side ought to have limited the horror. Yet
the worst excesses came from them; which is why… I have my doubts about the
benefits of money and culture.”
One may ask, since when in history
has wealth and culture ever been incompatible with cruelty and indifference to
suffering?
May 2017
