The May 1937 events in Barcelona

Win the war and then Make the revolution? Or make the revolution to win the war? Whether they were put so baldly, or in a more nuanced way, these were the questions that, after the political and ideological crises that accompanied the first government of Josep Tarradellas that was formed in September 1936, received harsh answers starting on 3 May 1937.

By the beginning of May 1937, the battle lines had been drawn. On one side were the defenders of “order”. There was the ERC and its habitual allies: Catalan Republican Action (ACR) and the Unió de Rabassaires farmers’ union. There were also the radical nationalists of Estat Català, the orthodox, strictly Stalinist communists of the POUM, and the Socialist union organization UGT. Following the first months of the war and revolution, this alliance of antifascist forces had established some clear priorities: re-establish the power of the Generalitat, especially with regard to law and order, defence and supply; centralize all armed forces to prosecute the war effectively; and defend the social conquests of the revolution of the summer and autumn of 1936 while ending revolutionary violence and collectivizations that took place outside the framework of the decrees of October 1936. On the other side was a heterogeneous coalition of anarchists in the CNT-FAI and related groups and the anti-Stalinist communists of the POUM who defended the formula “make the revolution in order to win the antifascist war”.  

The confrontations began on 3 May, when the Generalitat’s police tried to retake the main building of the telephone company in Barcelona that had been occupied by the anarchists since the start of the war. As the hub for communications within Catalonia, it had huge strategic importance. But both sides also understood that this was not an isolated initiative. Whoever lost would also lose the ability to control the war effort, and perhaps the revolution as well. Fighting continued for five days, claiming some 500 lives., and brought This small civil war within the Civil War came to an end after the government of the Republic transferred 3,000 members of the Assault Guard police force from Valencia. 

Now began the last great phase in the history of the Catalan and Spanish rearguards. Anarchists and members of the POUM now became the internal enemy. (The POUM was declared illegal and its militants persecuted.) In Catalonia, the coalition between the ERC and the PSUC took control although at the cost of the former ceding political and social control to the latter. Things changed in the government of the Republic too. The crisis of the Largo Caballero government and its substitution by one led by Juan Negrín brought increasing centralization. The new government took back control of public order in Catalonia, the Popular Army and the war effort, including war production, as well as recovering the areas of responsibility that the Generalitat had assumed in the early days of the conflict.