Freedom. Spain : information bulletin of the C.N.T. and F.A.I. No. 1

              FREEDOM
"SPAIN."
INFORMATION BULLETIN OF THE C.N.T. AND F.A.I.
Issued through the International Working Men's Association (I.W.M.A.).
C.N.T. - Confederation Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Labour). 
F.A.I. - Federación Anarquista Iberica (Anarchist Federation of Iberia).
No. 1
AUGUST, 1936
Price 1d.
THE  TRUTH  ABOUT SPAIN.
By MAX NETTLAU (The veteran revolutionary historian).
All progressive elements in Spain have risen in arms like one man to crush the treacherous attack of army officers, the mercenaries of an African legion, fascists, clericals, monarchists and their dupes.
Their success has been remarkable, and they were most successful in places where the ground had been prepared by generations of struggle for autonomy and federalism, association and solidarity, and for the highest cultural aims: free thought, a free social life; for what is now called in Spain, Libertarian Communism.
Fighting for these aims are the advanced revolutionaries of the F.A.I. (Federación Anarquista Iberica — the federation of the anarchist groups of Spain and Portugal, founded in 1927) and the members of the C.N.T. (Confederacion Nacional de Trabajo — National Labour Confederation, founded in 1910), workers organised in unions who aim at Libertarian Communism by direct action in the day-to-day labour struggle, and, of course, in the whole struggle for their very existence now forced upon them by the fascist attack.
CATALONIA is the region where the advanced political and social life of an anti-State, federalist type described above has its deepest roots.
ANDALUCIA is where workers, labourers and small peasants form a firm bond of solidarity.
The peasants and fishers in north-west GALICIA, miners of ASTURIAS and the BASQUE Country, the workers and peasants of ARAGON, the rapidly-increasing industrial population of MADRID, the lively workers and peasants of southern VALENCIA, all these are old national units, pursuing, each in their own way, but as their chief aim, independence and the solidarity of free association.
Local differences do not mean chaos. Autonomy indeed strengthens the movement, casting aside the centralisation which has for ages been a burden which the Spanish peoples have always desired to throw off, even by open rebellion, and a thing which in daily life they defy as far as they possibly can.
Spaniards have always considered central government, whether monarchist or republican, as the people's enemy and simply the support of big absentee landlords, merchant sharks, generals, a clergy whose highest achievement was the Inquisition, the present hotbed of militant clericalism, which turns religious buildings into arsenals and snipers' nests.
This may help to explain why the Spanish people has always hated and distrusted the State and all who, under its protection, prey upon it, fleece and coerce it and the clergy's main work - try to suppress its intellectual development.
It explains too why Spaniards fight so desperately for what they hold to be the cause of liberation; for it is always a supreme effort for real, complete emancipation from authority and exploitation.
Thus it is easy to see that authoritarian state Socialism met with no serious response in Spain while free federalist socialism was eagerly welcomed.
The Spanish Branch of the International Working Men's Association was formed under the inspiration of Fanelli and Bakunin in 1870. merging workers' associations widely developed since 1840, and at once adopted collectivist anarchism.
The State-socialist fraction was imported by Paul Lafargue, Marx's son in law, in 1871. From it derives the present Socialist Party, divided into a reformist and a more advanced wing.
The Communists, divided into several fractions, entirely failed to carry the workers with them in the years following the revolutionary strikes of 1917, and have remained insignificant fractions ever since.
But in reality all this party strife has been relegated to history since October, 1934, when Anarchist, Socialist and Communist workers fought side by side in ASTURIAS in a desperate protest against a reactionary regime, and were brutally crushed, murdered, tortured after an heroic resistance.
This brought the workers themselves together, and since then their best elements, especially the younger workers, have wanted to throw aside whatever divided them before. This means that they want to emancipate themselves from their political bosses, future deputies and ministers, and work solidly together in the spirit of the C.N.T., which at the May Saragossa Conference held out the hand of friendship to all workers.
The C.N.T. and F.A.I, and the Socialist and Communist militants were at their posts confronting