Workers' Liberty

Though Leon Trotsky’s writings on Spain fill a large volume, he wrote no concise overview of the Spanish revolution. Our “diary” is culled from the commentaries he produced all through the last decade of his life: the last item here is dated 20 August 1940, the day Trotsky was assassinated.

Second only to Russia in 1917, the Spanish Revolution of 1936-7 is the most important workers' revolution of the 20th Century. That aspect of the "Spanish Civil War" has almost been written out of history. Here we describe what the Spanish workers did, before they were crushed, first by the Stalinists, and then by the Francoite fascists. Read it here.

It is usually called the “Spanish civil war”, the thirty month struggle that began in July 1936, when the Spanish military, led by three generals, Franco, Mola and Sanjurgo — of whom one, Franco, would emerge as dictator — revolted against the Popular Front government which had been elected five months earlier.

By Miriam Gould*

In many respects there were very close parallels between the proletarian revolutions of [Russia] 1917 and [Spain] 1936. Spain and Russia were both gripped by profound economic crises rooted in their semi-feudal land systems. Both were agricultural economies based on a poverty-stricken peasantry.