Spain: Some Aspects of the New Workers’ Movement

[Note: see list of party and union abbreviations at the end of the article.]

In Spain today, an obsolete fascist regime, incapable of adapting to the dynamic of modern capitalism, is being dismantled, to be replaced by a modern parliamentary democracy. But this transformation of political institutions is not without its perils--the recent example of Portugal stands as a warning to the Spanish bourgeoisie. For several reasons, however, the risks of a complete social breakdown are less in Spain than in Portugal: the absence of a stalemated colonial war capable of demoralizing the military apparatus, the existence of real economic development since the world war, and most importantly the political ascendancy of a vigorous modern bourgeoisie determined to push forward with political reforms.

The object of the following text, however, is not to analyze this transformation of the Spanish state to meet the requirements of modern capital. Rather, we are concerned here with another consequence of these social developments: the formation of a proletarian mass whose growing militancy has become, in the 1970's, a new political factor, not only destructive of the fascist regime but also a serious obstacle to the plans of the bourgeois reformers and their occasional allies among the opposition parties. Not that it is a matter of indifference to the workers whether they live under a democratic or fascist state, but it seems increasingly unlikely that their aspirations can be reduced to the programs of the more or less ‘clandestine’ ‘oppositions.’ If they take account during their struggles of the political crisis, they do so not--as the Leninist theory of necessary stages has it--by fighting for the benefit of bourgeois democracy, but by conducting their strike movements in accord with the principles of direct workers’ democracy. For the organizations of the opposition, this poses a challenge: their ability to channel and restrain the workers’ movement is their passport to a secure position within the new political arrangement.

Coming out into the open after a decade of quiescence, the Spanish labor movement is regathering its forces and renewing its class consciousness through the ups and downs of the struggles that break out from time to time. The massive strike wave in the Madrid region in January 1976 was one of the most powerful of the post-war movements, remarkable for the forms of organization which arose in the course of the struggle and for the problems it raised concerning the relations between the workers and the political underground. Information on the political life of Spain is abundant; when it comes to the social movement, however, there has been very little news. It is no surprise, then, that it is only after a year of silence that one can begin to lift the veil a little. For this purpose, a small book, Trabajadores en huelga, published in Madrid by a group of journalists who seem close to the USO (Union Sindical Obrera),is of great interest. It offers an analysis of the causes of the movement, a fairly comprehensive chronology of a month of struggles and, the richest part of the book, a discussion between two rank and file union militants of different political tendencies who participated in the strikes. Starting with this book, and making use of other documents and information, we will discuss some of the issues raised by the new workers’ movement in Spain. The following is not, of course, a definitive analysis, but a contribution to what we hope will be an ongoing discussion.

Starting with the Madrid strikes, we will go on to examine some new organizational aspects of the recent struggles, the strategies of the opposition (focussing on the PCE [Partido Communista Espagnol]) and the difficulties they are currently encountering, and, finally, the rise of the new CNT (Confederacion Nacional de Traballadores).

1. Madrid, January 1976: The Vanguard Left Behind

The crisis of world capitalism struck the Spanish economy especially hard, for its new industries were completely tied to the foreign capital which had been attracted by the high post-war profit rate. By the end of 1975 the unemployment rate was 8% in Spain, and the rate of inflation was the highest in Europe. If we add to this the fact that labor contracts (signed every other year) were up for renewal, it's easy to see why the social situation appeared ‘strained,’ why the government continually repeated that ‘this is a grave moment,’ that ‘the country is living beyond its means.’

In mid-December 1975, the ‘clandestine organizations’ called for a ‘day of struggle’ for amnesty and against the wage freeze; in most of the country, there was little response (The “opposition organizations” group the CC.OO., USO, UGT, PCE, PSOE and PSUC, the Socialist and Commmnist parties and unions). Such calls had become commonplace, and served not so much to invigorate the social movement as to keep the apparatchiki occupied and to dissipate the workers’ sense of grievance harmlessly. But in the Madrid region, where strikes had already been going on for several days, the mobilization was extensive, amounting to some 70,000 strikers--too extensive, in fact: far from being absorbed by the ‘day of struggle,’ the movement took on a momentum of its own.

From January 4 on, strikes broke out everywhere, starting in the large metal-working enterprises of the Madrid region: Chrysler, Helvinator, Electromecanica, etc. On the 5th and 6th, the Métro was paralized, the stations occupied by thousands of workers. The police drove them out, but the meetings continued in the churches. The activity of the Métro workers was to be the barometer of the strike movement. The Métro is essential for the functioning of industry, since it transports the workforce: when it stops, the strike becomes an inescapable daily fact. It was here, and in other sectors where workers’ struggles have the most decisive consequences for social life (PTT = communications, Renfé = railroads), that the rulers of Spanish capital concentrated their efforts in attempting to halt the spread of the movement.

The strikes extended to the post office, the banks, ITT, and Standard Electric. On the 12th, the construction workers struck; they were at the forefront of autonomous organization. In Madrid alone there were, between the 12th and the 17th, 100,000 strikers in construction, 180,000 in metallurgy, 15,000 in banking and insurance, and 20,000 in public services. The initial demands, very egalitarian, were essentially salarial, “the defense of working-class purchasing power.”(1) However, political instability--the end of the Franco period--favored the widening of the struggles; it was the right moment to ‘take to the streets.’

“I've never seen anything like the capacity for struggle which I observed in this strike. . . . Concretely, on two occasions at Casa and I think several times at Standard, the vanguard was left behind. That demonstrated an impressive will to struggle, which frightened not only the employers but also the vanguard, who asked themselves at a certain point where all this was leading, for the workers themselves became the vanguard and, at a certain point, the strike escaped the control of the leaders.”(2) These words of a union militant sum up the situation. Just when the illegal organizations thought they had gotten control of the workers, the latter spontaneously set themselves into motion, took the initiative and carried out a course of actions independent of the plans of the organizations, and did so in a much more affirmative way than before. “The fundamental characteristic of this strike--one worker said--was that there was no general strike order, but that it was a process which spread little by little with the incorporation of new sectors and factories.”(3)

The industrial suburbs of Madrid--Getafe, Vallecas, Alcala, Torrejon--were totally paralized, and in these new workers’ towns the strike went from the factories to the streets, in demonstrations and confrontations with the police. Despite a boycott by the ‘clandestine’ organizations, the movement also reached other regions: Barcelona, Bajo Llobregat, the Asturias, the construction industry of Valencia, the Renault factories at Valladolid. The extent of the movement was new, as was the fact that it reached not only the large plants where the illegal organizations are entrenched and where there is a tradition of struggle, but also the small factories dominated by passivity and paternalism, which had always been untouched by the ‘days of action’ called by the illegal unions.

On January 12, when “in almost all sectors, the workers showed themselves ready to go on strike”(4) and a general strike seemed possible, the illegal union organizations persuaded the Métro workers to go back to work without any of their demands having been met. (The frustration and rebelliousness which such practices on the part of the reformist organizations have provoked among a significant number of workers will no doubt have its effects.) At the same time, repression came down hard and fast. The army intervened in the Métro, PTT and Renfé; eight PTT workers were brought before a military court, and there were mass arrests and about 1,300 firings. The earlier wage demands were replaced by new slogans: rehiring of the fired, an end to police pursuits, freeing of the imprisoned. The turning-point came around the 20th, when the return to work began, though it did not proceed perfectly smoothly. In many cases, penalties were revoked and firings restrained, but wage demands went unanswered. Only in the construction industry did the workers obtain wage increases (on the order of 38%) and improvements in working conditions. The militancy and unity demonstrated in this sector, and the forms of direct action employed by the workers, certainly had something to do with this outcome.

The Madrid strike wave was the first social upheaval on such a scale of the postwar period. Several months later the insurrectional strike at Vitoria, and more recently the struggle of the Roca workers in Barcelona, showed that Madrid was not an isolated case but a sign of a fundamental change in the relations between the Spanish workers’ movement and the illegal organizations, the latter being no longer able to contain the former.

2. Organization and Solidarity in the New Spanish Workers‘ Movement

For the reformists, the PCE, the political content of any struggle is measured above all by the response which its party slogans (amnesty, democracy) evoke among the workers. But the recent workers’ struggles, from the January strike movement in Madrid to the dock workers’ and Roca strikes in Barcelona, express a political content, a class consciousness, which goes well beyond party slogans and simple economism. This is especially evident in the area of organization. A new tendency is coming into view, a tendency to make the workers’ assemblies the deliberative and directing organ of the struggle, with control over all the actions and decisions of the “workers’ representatives.”

It has been said of the Madrid strikes: “In general, according to all the information we have received or directly observed, decisions were made in open and democratic General Assemblies (AGs), the union representatives or workers’ agents acting as emissaries and negotiators without any definitive decision-making power. Several leaders of union organizations (banks, construction, metallurgy and public sector) were in agreement in affirming that, ‘In every case, the assemblies had the prerogative of ratifying or refusing the final decisions.’”(5) A Métro delegate confirms the point: “For me, what was good about this struggle was that the rank and file made an important leap forward in understanding; it was always the masses who negotiated, and it was they who set the pace. We did nothing but negotiate in their name and according to their directives.”(6) In the Roca strike, which began in November 1976 and rapidly moved towards a violent confrontation with state power, the use of sovereign assemblies was the crux of the movement. The delegating of power was done exclusively through the AGs, and all the delegates were revocable by them.

“The strike committee was formed by the elected representatives; its function was to develop and apply all the agreements and decisions made by the workers in their periodic Assemblies. The Committee proposed initiatives which were then discussed in the Assemblies. This was scrupulously respected during the conflict, and more than once the Assembly limited, made precise, or disavowed the role and functions of the delegates.”(7)

One of the main consequences of this control of the struggle by the rank and file has been to short-circuit the vanguardist organizations which have habitually manipulated the delegates, who often are more their representatives than the workers’. “It is the assemblies which are the vanguard; they are the only real vanguard that I have known in this strike,” said a Madrid worker in January 1976. But the danger is far from over, for the traditionalistic groups are capable of adapting to the new situation, redirecting their manipulative activity towards the assemblies. It is important to avoid taking the tempting step of making a new fetish of the General Assemblies. In the most radical struggles, it is true, they have served as an organizational form which prefigures the emancipation of the working class under socialism. On the other hand, in those movements which proceed along the path marked out by traditional unionism, neither the bourgeoisie nor the ‘leftist’ parties has anything to fear from the GAs--a fact which has been recognized by the current government which in its newly-proposed law on union activity, institutionalizes the Assembly as a union organ.

Today, even a Stalinist leader of the CC.OO. isn't afraid to say, “Everyone accepts the principle that one must negotiate with the workers elected by the AGs . . . whether they hold union posts or not. . . .”(8) No organizational form, including the GA, can guarantee workers’ autonomy. What is essential is the application of certain principles--open discussion, democratic decision-making, revocability of delegates, direct responsibility of all representative bodies to the workers--and for these purposes, appropriate organizational forms such as the Assembly are a necessary but not sufficient condition.

Besides the assemblies, other organizational forms have appeared, always based on the same principles. These ‘unofficial representative organs,’ as they are called, are elected by the rank-and-file: the ‘Committee of Eight’ in the postal service, the ‘Committee of Seven’ for the hospital workers, the ‘Leading Committee’ in construction and in the banks, the strike committees of the dock workers and the Roca workers. Created in the struggle, these organizations exist only during the struggle. In January 1976, the bank workers were organized on a national scale. Each assembly elected a delegate: these in turn elected a regional committee (15-20 members, in Madrid). The delegates of the various regional committees constituted a national committee, which included “official [union] delegates as well as rank-and-file workers; that is, all those who were elected by the AGs.”(9) Similar organizations appeared in November, at Barcelona, with the United Workers’ Collectives (CUT). The Madrid construction workers organized for direct action. They elected ‘workshop delegates’ and formed mobile strike pickets, capable of spreading the strike, of opposing the scabs and the employers’ maneuvers at each building site.

At Vittoria, the situation was similar: “Vittoria, in these months from January to March 1976, was a great school of working class unity and solidarity, but above all Vittoria represented for the rest of the working class a movement which brought new ideas. . . . [T]he political structures which appeared here went beyond the orthodox projects of traditional syndicalism. The Workers’ Assembly elects its representatives and can revoke them. The Representative Committees are constituted exclusively by these delegates. . . . From the beginning many political militants were part of the committees, but one could see that, at any moment, no political organization had a sufficient following to impose its analysis and strategy. . . .Soon after the conflicts began, the strictly economist positions were already abandoned. . . .[The workers] went so far as to refuse individual solutions for the various factories.

“Factory assemblies met in the churches and working class neighborhoods; womens' and neighborhood assemblies also proliferated. At a certain point, a situation was reached where the entire population was organized in assemblies, in a type of democracy totally different from formal bourgeois democracy. It was this which Fraga Iribane, then a Minister, underlined when he declared to Le Monde, ‘What happened then at Vittoria was not simple demonstrations by the workers; it was an insurrection similar to that of May ‘68.’ “(10)

Solidarity between workers from different factories was frequently manifested on a local, and even national, level. In the Madrid movement, solidarity was demonstrated by the way the strikes spread in a chain reaction. Then it appeared in the streets of the working-class suburbs, where demonstrations, occupations, mutual aid and confrontations with the police became daily occurrences. Even in factories where the demands had been met, the workers went back on strike, realizing that more was at stake than their own immediate interests. Entire urban regions experienced moments of social revolt; the most extreme case occurred at Vittoria. Often, strikes broke out in solidarity with fired workers: “All or none,” said the strikers at the Roca factories. In this latter instance, the workers explicitly posed the problem of the powerlessness of an isolated struggle. Addressing themselves to their entire class, the Roca workers proposed in their strike bulletin an organizational model based on the assemblies and on coordinated strike action.*

Such political consciousness is limited, however, to a minority of the workers; the majority show no signs of wanting a revolution and remain in the final analysis amenable to the ‘reasonable’ arguments of the reformists. But it is one thing to acknowledge the minority character of the radical tendencies, and quite another to pretend that movements of such breadth, such thorough-going radicalism, are nothing more than economic conflicts, invested with political significance only by the parties’ slogans. For these were not struggles against individual bosses, but against an entire system of social relations, as is made clear in the vivid account of the January movement contained in Trabajadores en huelga. Likewise, in Barcelona at the time of the Roca strikes, an entire working-class suburb (Gafa) was thrown into turmoil. The significance of these events should not be minimized.

3. The Communists, the Workers’ Commissions and the Fascist Syndicate

The Spanish workers’ movement did not remain inactive for long after the end of the civil war. Already, in the immediate post-war years, powerful strike movements broke out in Catalonia--most notably, the CNT-led general strike of 1951--and the Asturias. But it was the development of Spanish capitalism in the 1950's and 1960's, the expansion of modern industry, which was to permit the opening up of a new phase of struggle and factory organization.

The first Workers‘ Commissions (CC.OO.) were created spontaneously during the 1962 strikes; they were strongest in Barcelona, Madrid, the Basque country, and the Seville construction trades. At first, they were a product of the workers’ autonomous activity.(11) However, they immediately became a battleground for inter-party struggles, with the PCE in the vanguard. “In 1965, the Party was the organization best prepared to take control of the Commissions and, through them, of the entire workers’ movement throughout the country. . . .The only group then organized on a national level was the PCE and as a result, the national coordination of this new organization was not able to escape its control.” (12)

The ease with which the Party took over the CC.OO. is explained in large part by the limitations of the movement itself. The Commissions existed only in the large-scale modern industries. In this sector, the employers had adopted the European system of collective agreements by plant.† The factory-level workers’ organizations were a response to this new policy; they arose out of unconnected struggles to win gains specific to a particular factory. Hence the CC.OO. often expressed purely localist demands, and suffered from a certain corporate egotism. They did not become a general movement of the type that exists in periods of all-out social struggle, like the Factory Council movement in Hungary 1956 or the Workers‘ Commission movement in Portugal after 25 April 1974. Instead, they were captured by the PCB and subordinated to its over-all strategy.

Little by little, the constant shifts in the Party's policy--shifts which were not responses to the immediate situation facing the workers, but to the political needs of the Party--destroyed the hopes which the workers had placed in the CC.OO. and deprived them of any mass base. At one point, the PCE suddenly adopted a legalist line: ‘The CC.OO. cannot be clandestine.’ The consequences were grave: “The contortions of the organizational nucleus caused the best cadres to fall into the hands of the police, facilitated repression and alienated the majority of the workers from that frantic activism which bore no fruits except a propaganda bluff whose sole objective was to serve a particular policy.” Then the policy was changed to total clandestinity, “making barren any possibility of action or development.” (13) And so forth...

Still, in each new period of struggle the CC.OO. were reborn, most of the time independently of the political organizations. As a result of a growing awareness of the PCE's manipulations, new political tendencies were able to find a response among the workers. Thus the USO was set up, led by cadres of the Catholic Juventude Obreros Catolicos (JOC). Later, around 1974, the social-democratic (UGT) reappeared (along with the Partido Socialista Obrera Espagnol [PSOE]); by that time the influence of the PCB “among the workers [had] diminished perceptibly by comparison with the period when the Commissions were born, when it enjoyed a near-total monopoly of the market.”(14) Two orthodox Maoist groups Organizacion Revolucionaria de Traballadores (ORT) and Partido del Trabajo de Espana (PTE) have also gained a foothold, the former even sharing power, for a time at least, in a few CC.OO. Finally, there is the new CNT--of which we will have more to say below.

From the start, the PCB strove to assimilate the CC.OO. to its own strategy. In 1948 the Communists adopted the tactic of infiltrating its militants into the fascist CNS, the ‘vertical syndicate,‘ as it is called.‡ In the aftermath of destalinization, Carillo launched the new slogan of ‘national reconciliation,’ and the Party threw itself into the task of forming ‘democratic fronts,’ of which today's is only the latest incarnation. Among the groups to whom the PCE extended its hand was a dissident ‘leftist’ minority of Falangists in the CNS; “Those who wear the blue shirt,” said La Pasionaria, “can defend openly, within the enemy camp, the interests of the working class.” When the fascist regime introduced the system of election of CNS delegates,§ it was only logical that the PCE seized upon the opportunity and put the CC.OO. to work in the syndical elections. After 1966, the activity of the Commissions was practically reduced to participating in these elections. The other clandestine organizations eventually followed suit, likewise presenting their candidates as ‘democratic delegates.’ The participation of these organizations helped to legitimate the syndicate, and in fact it was now their militants who made up the base of the CNS.

For the Party, then, control of the CC.OO. and “boring from within” were complementary. “The key positions obtained [in the elections] were the legal arm of the CC.OO.”(15) The objective behind both tactics was clear: to gain a dominant position in the syndical apparatus, making use of the CC.OO., in order to bargain later for the legalization of the Party [achieved since these words were written]. Once the ‘democratic regime’ is installed, it will then be easy for the PCB to maintain its grip on the unions. In pursuit of the same goal the Portuguese CP appeared in 1974 at the head of the Intersyndical. In Portugal, the relative weakness of the workers’ movement before the military putsch--there had never been a mass movement comparable to the CC.OO.--allowed the Party to appear immediately afterwards as the sole force operating within the fascist syndicate. In Spain, by contrast, the strength of the workers’ struggles during the last years of fascism has produced organizations outside the official syndicate, wherein diverse tendencies have grown up. The recent strikes favor the growth of opposition unionism and the end of the PCE's monopoly.

4. A Modern Unionism in an Obsolete Regime

Spanish unionism functions--despite the clandestine organizations’ claims that there is no ‘true unionism’ in Spain--just as in the capitalist democracies. (To be sure, it is restricted to the enterprise level--the syndical apparatus remaining, though not for long, in the hands of the Francoist old guard--and even more narrowly to the level of the modern enterprise, as the small employers are intransigently opposed to union negotiations. But these limitations apply equally to unionism elsewhere.) For years, the ‘democratic delegates’ have been playing the role of traditional unionists in the signing of collective agreements. At Siemens (Bajo Llobregat, Catalonia) in the early 1970's, “the delegates, who have considerable prestige, . . . can mobilise the workers whenever they choose. . . .They do so once a year, when the contract is being discussed, thanks to which they win the largest raises in the region. Then, during the rest of the year, they strike for ten or twelve hours in solidarity with the most important struggles. In exchange, the delegates guarantee to the enterprise that production will proceed as planned, that there will be no wildcats. If an unforeseen conflict breaks out, the Personnel Manager calls one of the delegates to resolve it. Each year the company enters on its books the acceptable hours of strikes and the raises to which it will consent in the next contract, as a result of ‘the great struggle conducted by the workers under the leadership of the militant delegates.’ These latter, of course, are worth their weight in gold to the directors, for thanks to them, Siemens has had fewer strikes than any other enterprise in Bajo Llobregat since 1962, despite the size of its workforce (2,000). The biggest problem for management consists in convincing the police to keep their hands off the delegates because for the cops an illegal meeting is illegal, and that's that. If they are arrested, the company intervenes in their behalf, and keeps their jobs open for them."(16)

The situation is the same in many other modern factories: the system of collective agreements has become the best means for maintaining ‘social peace.’ A delegate from Standard Electric in Madrid explains that the syndicate there had already signed five agreements before the January strike. Before signing the last one, the ‘democratic delegates’ made comprehensive studies on “the company's ability to yield to the workers’ demands without endangering its financial position.”(17) Even before being legalized, even while still distant from the centers of power, the Party already includes the interests of the bosses--baptized for the occasion ‘the general interest’--as a basic principle of its negotiations! Something to break us in for the future... And if the workers refuse the bargain and proceed resolutely to strike, as happened in this case, the delegates are astonished. “We thought that it was a good contract.”(18)

As the example suggests, the participation of the illegal organizations in the ‘vertical syndicate‘ has had contradictory effects. No doubt it helps, in periods of calm, to improve the image of the organizations, which can take credit for any improvements. But when a broadscale struggle breaks out, the representatives

are left behind by the workers; and when they place themselves on the side of the bosses and try to rein in the movement, as they often do, they can only suffer a loss of prestige. At such moments, their collusion with the employers, and even with the state, appears most clearly. What happened in Madrid is a good example. In the Métro, well before the January strike, the delegates forewarned the officials of the syndicate and even the Minister of Labor. “Something is going to happen in the Métro--we sindical representatives know it and we want you to know it--since the company refuses to negotiate.”(19) Once the movement started, it was these same ‘democratic' delegates, and not the syndicalists of the official apparatus, with whom the state and the employers conducted their talks. Unable to prevent the strike from occurring, the clandestine organizations continued to oppose it. On 25 January, when the movement was still growing, they met in Madrid. Representatives of the CC.OO., USO, UGT, PTE and ORT were present. “The majority preferred to negotiate, rather than push on with the struggle.” (20) Such a broad anti-strike coalition, extending from the Maoists to the social democrats, is no accident; it is to be explained in terms of the goals and tactics of the clandestine organizations.

5. The Political Opposition: Projects and Difficulties

For all of the opposition organizations, the development of democracy provides opportunities which they would like to see realized as quickly as possible. If capitalism is to grant them their place in the sun, they must establish control over the workforce; they must show themselves capable of containing workers’ struggles within the bounds of respect for capitalist institutions, emptying them of all political content and reducing them to simple and predictable unionism, with which the bosses can negotiate. On this point, the goals of the reformists and of the partisans of a modernized capitalism coincide--and both groups, in opposing spontaneous actions by the workers, invoke the same enemy: the Francoist right. For the ‘modernizers,’ the point is to avoid weakening their position relative to the forces supporting the ancien regime. The Party shares this concern, and also wishes to demonstrate to the entire bourgeoisie that it has retained its hold on the workers. In January 1976, the Minister of Labor pressed for a speedy resolution of the negotiations because the ‘bunker’ [Franco's entourage] is trying to profit from the strike.”(21) At the same time, the PCB claimed that “the intransigent right is trying to prolong the conflict” (22) and deplored the sad lot of the small employers, to whom the strike was doing an injustice.‖ A year later, with the events of Tocha Street in Madrid, the logic of these strategies created a new situation: faced with the ultra-Rights, the democratic opposition joined with the modernizing bourgeoisie in a new “Sacred Union.” ¶

While all of the oppositionists, and even a section of the bourgeoisie, are in agreement on the need to channel workers’ struggles within parliamentary-democratic institutions, they are at the same time in competition for control of these institutions. In this regard, the most important recent development is the resurrection (with the financial aid, as in Portugal, of the German social-democrats) of the social-democratic party, with which international capitalism hopes to counter the PCB. In a matter of months, the PSOE, once practically extinct, became a political force capable of competing with the Communists for control of the State apparatus.

On the local level, as well, the PCE's plans are running into obstacles--but in this case, from a quite different source. The Party would like to repeat its success with the CC.OO. by appropriating the function of coordinating the Neighborhood Committees, which have been developing (often in a spontaneous and politically independent manner) since 1976 in the working-class districts. The goal is to use these organizations as stepping stones to governmental posts at the local or municipal level. However, there is a strong federalist tendency within the Neighborhood Committees, which identifies itself with the CNT and is resisting the PCE's centralizing tactics.

In the field of unionism, too, the Party's successes have been partially cancelled by its failures. As we have seen above, the PCE has pursued the tactic of participation in the ‘vertical syndicate.’ In 1974, the PCE called for the formation of a ‘sindicato obrero unico’ (‘one big union,’ as it were) crystallized around the positions won in the vertical syndicate, in order to strengthen the working class. Needless to say, it would also serve to bolster the Party's hegemony, since it already has a head start in this direction. Wishing to preserve the system of the single union, it has opposed the legalization of a plurality of unions; this position is to be seen in the light of the Party's state-capitalist ambitions. Like a fascist regime, the state-capitalist project calls for centralized, planned control of the workforce.# For the social-democratic opposition, the goal is just the opposite--to dismantle the single-union system, as the Soares government is doing in Portugal.

On this terrain, the PCE has already been stalemated, despite its initial gains. The strategy of ‘entrism’ has, as we have seen, had its benefits for both the syndicate and the Party; the latter even succeeded in taking full command of a few syndicate locals, for instance, in the Madrid suburb of Getafe. But the CNS itself is now in crisis, and during the recent struggles the PCE's predominance in the syndicate was of no use in steering the strikes into acceptable channels. The movement set itself in motion and organized itself outside the syndicate, and the only role which the Party could play via the CNS was that of strikebreaker. As the USO and UGT pointed out, workers supported the opposition militants only when the latter acted outside the official organization; for example, the strike committees set up by the PCB in Getafe and elsewhere in January 1976 remained “totally inoperative” (23) because of their connection with the UTT. The workers’ attitude towards the ‘vertical syndicate’ was amply demonstrated by their repeated sacking of its offices. Its deterioration is so far advanced that even a CC.OO. leader has called it “practically destroyed” and has stated that “Neither the workers nor the bosses want to hear another word about the CNS; everything happens outside of this monster.” (24) Its local offices are no longer open, and opportunism and corruption have reached the point of selling off the office furniture.

Faced with the collapse of the CNS and the impossibility of preserving a single-union system, the Party decided in late 1976 to make of the CC.OO. its own union, in competition with the USO and UGT. The Party launched a membership drive for the CC.OO., federations of CC.OO. by branch of industry were set up, and the first Congress of the Syndical Confederation of Workers’ Commissions was held. “The democratic union organizations have entered, without doubt, upon a new phase of their history. The time of clandestinity and systematic repression is past. The virtual disappearance of the CNS, the relative tolerance which our organizations enjoy permit an enlargement of their field of action and an accelerated process of organization.”(25) While thus obliged to accept ‘union pluralism,’ the PCE has still refused to give up the ground it has gained within the syndicate; it prefers to hold on to its right of inheritance, for whatever it may be worth.

6. ‘Eurocommunism’ and the Working Class
The abandonment of the concept of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’--i.e., the promise to respect the rules of the parliamentary game--is the hallmark of the new phenomenon known as ‘Eurocommunism.’ This new line is often compared to Social-democracy; in both cases, we find a mass party claiming to be engaged in transforming capitalist society by using the bourgeois state apparatus, proposing a peaceful road to state socialism. Like their social-democratic counterparts, the Eurocommunist CPs accept private enterprise as an essential element of the ‘new society’ they wish to build. On this point, of course, the bourgeoisie has its suspicions, knowing well that the relationship between the private and state sectors is antagonistic. And they are right to doubt, for the CPs still ultimately hold to the state-capitalist project. Under pressure from growing leftist tendencies among the working class, the Eurocommunists find it difficult to openly adopt the corollary of social-democratic respect for capitalist private property, i.e., the co-management of wage exploitation. Their response to pressure from the left can only be the replacement of private employers by the state as employer.

For the working class, the turn to Eurocommunism brings nothing new. The PCE must periodically demonstrate its ‘responsibility’ by restraining the movement. It will encourage mobilization only in support of its own goals; aside from that, it will offer the workers only as much support as is needed to prevent mass defection from its ranks. All of this follows naturally from the political strategy which the PCB has chosen to adopt. In the preceeding pages we have frequently touched upon the demoralizing effect which Party policy has had upon the Spanish working class. In the next few pages, we will deal more specifically with this aspect of the situation, by examining two particular instances: La Roca and Sabadell.

The Roca strike, along with the Vitoria movement, marked the high point of last year's struggles. It was over the issue of election of representatives that the Roca conflict broke out: management refused to recognize the delegates chosen by the Workers’ Assembly. The Assembly also insisted that all delegates resign any positions they held in the official syndicate, a demand that clashed with the tactics of the union leadership. The unionists opposed the strike from the start; only the CNT lent its support. Given the influence that the party/union leaders wielded in Bajo Llobregat, their support could have been decisive in winning the strike.

The government, acting through the CNS, openly tried to force the strikers to accept the leadership of the ‘democratic unionists’ by refusing to begin negotiations until the workers accepted two conditions: election of delegates by secret ballot and the presence of leaders of the union opposition on the Representative Committee. To this the workers replied, “According to the CNS, members of the union headquarters must be included on the Committee, while these very unions never cease to criticize our delegate movement and our methods of struggle. This Committee would be something exterior to the workers, a totally bureaucratized organ would thus be created, eliminating the dynamic of self-organization....” They saw the proposed secret ballot as a ruse designed to undermine the more radical forms of organization already in use: “As far as the secret ballot goes, it will lead to the end of the principles of democratic election and of revocability, at all times, by the Assembly.”(26)

From November 1976 to February 1977, the regime and the democratic opposition were engaged in working out a modus vivendi; hence the government's enthusiastic promotion of the unions. Hence also the opposition's coolness to the strike, for any struggle “dissociated from union control, outside of its sphere of influence, could be an obstacle to the dialogue between government and opposition.” Legalization of the unions and parties was on the agenda, but in return the workers’ demands had to be set aside. This explains why “during the period between the last months of 1976 and the moment when the government and the opposition concluded the first formal accords, the response of the unions to the economic measures decreed by the government and to the provisions concerning the freedom to lay off workers was so indecisive, and even practically nonexistent.” There was nothing new or unsettling in this for the parties; they have always believed that the workers‘ movement ought to adapt itself to the requirements of their strategies in the waiting rooms of the bourgeois state. Nonetheless, in the face of worker militancy, the parties cannot go too far in placating the bourgeoisie, lest they lose their mass base. The two goals which they must pursue simultaneously, recruiting workers and gaining a foothold in the state, "have come into contradiction with each other more than once (at Sabadell, in the Madrid transport strike, and at the Ford plant in Valencia)."(27) Reconciling these conflicting goals has not always been easy.

After 95 days of strike, the Roca workers, unable to overcome the isolation contrived by the parties, had to give in and accept the settlement arranged for them by union and management. The role played by the unionists was expressed clearly in the bourgeois press: “We don't think--said a Bajo Llobregat employer--that the conflict at La Roca can degenerate into a general solidarity strike. The agreement obtained in the negotiations for the metalworkers' contract was the means to stop the extension of the movement. The good will of the labor leaders made this agreement possible.”(28)

The same pattern is evident in the Sabadell strike movement. In November and December 1976, 20,000 metal-workers from the Sabadell region of Barcelona went on strike. The movement united, for the first time, workers from both large and small enterprises. The CC.OO. had the largest following among the workers; the USO was also present, but only tagged along behind the CC.OO. Some of the most militant activists came from the Anti-Capitalist Workers’ Commissions, a predominantly Maoist opposition tendency which existed at that time within the CC.OO.

The struggle was characterized by a high level of solidarity between shops, attempts to spread the movement beyond the metal-working sector, and the use of General Assemblies as decision-making bodies. Through the Assemblies, a significant number of non-party radical workers were able to take an active part in the struggle. “It must be emphasized that, throughout the strike, many scrapping workers, independent of every existing organization, took part and played an important role in the struggle. . . . The rank-and-file workers, unorganized, ensured that the Assemblies were not just window-dressing: they insisted that their opinions, their voices be respected, so that the labor organizations were forced to respond to the workers’ determination. . . .”(29) While accepting the Assemblies, however, the organizations succeeded in getting the workers to accept the bureaucratic autonomy of the directing organ, the delegates’ assembly. In order for this committee to exercise real leadership, said one Sabadell worker, it “would have had to be transformed, enlarged with delegates elected in the shops and elsewhere; the mandates of the delegates already elected would have had to be revoked to allow us to reaffirm our confidence in them, or to dismiss them. . . . The main problem was the fact that the working rank-and-file did not really control the delegates’ assembly and the representative committee charged with negotiating.”(30)

The actions of the CC.OO. and the USO were determined by the same political calculations which guided them at La Roca. “The Sabadell strike is . . . the first to suffer the consequences of the policy of the ‘social contract’ proposed by the Suarez government.” Mass mobilization had to be blocked, for it not only “aggravated the crisis of the capitalist system,” but also “threatened to create a dangerous element of instability for the project of political reform.”(31) And so the unions opposed the workers’ attempts to spread the strike and condemned the formation of strike pickets.(32) At the same time, the Eurocommunists tried to safeguard their support among the bourgeoisie, especially the small businessmen. In an open letter to the Catalan bourgeoisie, the Partido Socialista Unificado de Catalonia (PSUC, under PCE control) reassured them that the strike was no threat to them, attributed worker dissatisfaction to “the absence of democratic liberties,” and asked the employers to be generous to the workers and accept negotiations. Given the behavior of the democratic opposition, and the workers’ ultimate dependence on them, it comes as no surprise that the Sabadell strike ended in total defeat: none of the demands were met, and about 500 strikers were fired.

As we have seen from these two examples, the consequences of the Eurocommunists’ strategy have been quite grim for the working class. But it is by no means certain that the PCE will succeed in carrying out its plans, for while its goals have remained constant throughout recent years, the environment in which it must act has changed. The deepening world economic crisis has made the technocratic dreams of the ‘Work of God’--dreams which the PCE shares--seem more and more utopian. And the smoldering militancy of the Spanish working class, expressed most powerfully in the rise of the new CNT, may prove too much for the PCE to handle. Faced with these new realities, however, the Spanish Communists (like their Italian counterparts) remain fixated on old strategies.

7. Revolutionary Tendencies Among the Workers: the ‘New CNT’

The CNT meeting in Madrid on 27 March 1977, which drew a crowd of more than 20,000, forced people's attention to this new element specific to the Spanish political scene. None can deny it, the CNT is once more a real presence in Spain; the most convincing proof of its existence is that the other opposition organizations are obliged to accept its participation in strike committees and unitary meetings. From Vigo to Ténérife, from Alicante to Santander, in the factories and in the offices, cells of militants spring up, proclaiming their fealty to the CNT. The local activities of these groups, their meetings and debates, attract large and excited crowds, made up mostly of young people. The movement is all the richer for the fact that its cells and organizations are not the creation of an apparatus but arise from the rank-and-file: as a member of the Catalonia committee stated apropos of the neighborhood groups, “we can't keep up with them.”(33) The publications of these groups, diverse and rich in discussion, can be found scattered everywhere, in the neighborhoods as well as places of work. Union branches are being organized--for the moment, in a not too centralized fashion--in metallurgy, graphic arts, the building trade, the banks, the entertainment industry, education and textiles; even among the agricultural proletariat of Andalusia, CNT cells are reappearing. It is here, among wage workers, that the libertarian mass movement has its firmest roots, and it is through their actions in this sphere that the militants are best known.

During the most important recent strikes, from Madrid in January to Barcelona in December, this revolutionary current has been in the forefront of the struggle. The rejuvenation of the CNT (as well as the rise of cells of revolutionaries linked to the USO and UGT) is the result of a new content of the workers’ struggles, in search of organizational forms permitting direct action and the refusal to delegate power. The militants of the CNT identify most readily with these principles. The CNTists' way of approaching workers’ struggles--and not the ‘correctness’ of sone program or platform--is the source of their appeal to the most militant workers. A few examples will suffice to illustrate the principles of action of the CNTists.

When the labor contracts for the building trades in Aragon were being discussed, the two CNT members elected to the Joint Labor/Management Committee refused to sign anything, demanding that all decisions be ratified by mass meetings of the workers concerned.(34) During the 2 November 1976 ‘day of strike’ against the government's economic policies, CNT members were part of the Committee of delegates in Barcelona which was to ‘direct’ the strike, side by side with representatives of the USO, UGT and CC.OO. The CNTists began by publicly declaring that they did not recognize the legitimacy of the Committee, and advocated its replacement by local strike committees elected by the rank-and-file. Moreover, they denounced the manoeuverings of the Committee and of the political organizations. In the long run, in a situation of acute social crisis, such practices will draw the most determined militants into the CNT. About 90% of the new members are young people, and according to the national secretary, “many of our best militants come from the PCE.”(35)

Is this renascent CNT a faithful copy of the CNT of the 1930's, the memory of which has been religiously embalmed by the clandestine cells within Spain and the nostalgics in exile? For the moment, it seems more accurate to see the CNT as “not a mass organization, but rather a large movement uniting libertarians.”(35) As one militant put it, “Most of the time, the CNT acts as an autonomous movement rather than a structured union.”(37)

The CNT movement is distinguished from the other political groupings by three essential characteristics: “Above all, this unifying dynamic [of the CNT] is not frontist, in the sense that the debate on the nature of the new organization is not closed. Anarchist, certainly, but of very diverse groups and origins: formerly autonomous anarchist groups, more or less councilist fractions, traditional anarcho-syndicalists, . . . groups formed during the students’ and workers’ struggles of 1968-72.” Secondly, “it is the only union organization which has refused any compromise not only with Francoism but even with its new monarchist variant, which has refused to play the game of collaboration with the bourgeoisie, refused to trade off its legalization against its entry into a united front government, refused to calmly prepare ‘the passage to democracy.’” Finally, the CNT has not fallen into the trap of parliamentarism, which conceals the problems raised by the social struggle and absorbs all of the energies of the political opposition. Against parliamentarism, the CNT proposes a subversive alternative: “What must be discussed today among the workers is the problem of workers’ autonomy.”(38)

This approach--the negation of the principles of unionism--cannot help but create contradictions for an organization which some members would like to transform into a union. It is precisely on this question that disagreements are arising within the CNT, between a traditionalist tendency supporting the immediate formation of a central mass union and a group which opposes this project and points to the errors of the past. And in fact, it's hard to see how the revolutionary principles of direct-action, class struggle, and refusal of permanent delegation of power can survive the requirements of the daily tasks imposed on unions by their role within the capitalist system. “We are practicing anti-syndicalism,” says one militant, justly noting that, “All unions are established according to capitalist structures.”(39) For the survivors of the old, pre-War directing bureaucracy, however, it is the syndicalist perspective which must prevail, and they are already on the offensive against a reluctant rank-and-file. “It is time to construct, seriously and in a responsible fashion, majority unions of laborers, whose strength and ability can obtain the best results. Let us not fall into the error of reducing the unions to minorities of theoreticians. . . . We must not be identified with separatist attitudes.”(40) Juan Casas, National Secretary of the CNT, puts the argument more strongly: “These young militants, through lack of experience and through ignorance of the nature of anarcho-syndicalism, because they have not lived through it, are creating problems. . . . The CNT cannot function in the same manner as an anarchist group. . . .[T]here has even been a certain revulsion against all representative organs such as the national or regional committees.”(41) Notice how political questions of representation and organizational forms are sidestepped--in purest bureaucratic style!--through a paternalistic appeal to 'experience'--as if it weren't precisely the experiences of the past which force the new militants to pose these issues.

A concrete example of the confrontation between the two currents within the CNT is provided by the recent debates in Valencia and Catalonia on the question of alliances between the CNT and UGT. On 5 December 1976 a proposal by the traditionalists on this issue was discussed in a regional meeting in Catalonia, in which more than 150 organizations were represented. The majority declared against the proposal. Without rejecting the principle of alliances, they stressed that it was up to the rank-and-file and not the leaders to decide, taking each particular situation into account, to create unitary ties between workers of different organizations.(42)

8. A New Kind of Unionism?

In the 1940's, Anton Pannekoek described the ambiguities of the workers’ movement in the following terms: "Whereas in their conscious thinking old watchwords and theories play a role in determining their arguments and opinions, at the moment of decision on which weal and woe depend, a strong intuition of real conditions breaks forth, determining their actions. . . .[T]wo forms of organization and struggle stand opposed, the old one of trade unions and regulated strikes, and the new one of spontaneous strikes and workers’ councils. This does not mean that the former at some time will simply be replaced by the latter. Intermediate forms may be conceived, attempts to correct the evils and weaknesses of trade unionism while preserving its valid principles. . . . An example of such a union may be found in the great American union, ‘Industrial Workers of the World’ . . . Similar forms of struggle and organization may arise elsewhere, when in big strikes the workers stand up, without as yet having the necessary self-confidence to take matters entirely into their hands. But only as temporary transitional forms.”(43)

Pannekoek might just as well be describing the current situation in Spain. The spontaneous action of the rank-and-file and their consistent refusal to submit to outside leadership permit us to see in today's movement the germs of a more radical future. In the Madrid region, in shops where there was no tradition of struggle and where the workforce was often young and female, the workers use the term ‘union’ to describe any organization which functions on the basis of rank-and-file democracy and revocability of delegates, in a sort of modern renaissance of revolutionary syndicalism.

But for those who believe in the potentially revolutionary character of those forms of organization which stand halfway between the union and the autonomous rank-and-file group, for those who believe in the possibility of ‘building a new unionism,’ failure is certain-just as certain as it was in Portugal, where the majority of the leftist political movement tried to set up non-reformist ‘class unions’ starting from the Workers’ Commissions. The new forms of organization could flourish only in the context of wide-scale social conflict; when this period came to a close, it was once again the problems of day-to-day survival which preoccupied the workers. Such daily issues can be handled most easily by a traditional union, whose functioning is based on class conciliation, permanent delegation of power, and absence of rank-and-file democracy: and the ‘new unions’ were forced to adapt themselves to these imperatives. In this game, the CP-controlled unions, with their tight organization and high degree of centralization, hold the winning hand. Those who would organize the CNT as a mass union should be aware that they can only create an insignificant miniature replica of the great reformist unions.

Perhaps for some the PCE'S success is appealing. But such ‘success’ has nothing to offer the revolutionary, for it is predicated on the workers’ defeat. Today in Spain, as yesterday in Portugal, Communist reformism develops only after the labor struggles have been smashed. The Party recruits on the basis of defeatism: ‘To be a revolutionary gets you nowhere, come to us....’ Lest the reader think this an exaggeration, I want to point out an incident that occurred during the December 1976 Renfé strikes: the Communists brought workers fired during other strikes to the mass meetings of the Madrid railroad men . . . to illustrate the consequences of ‘irresponsible’ and ‘thoughtless’ action! In the future, we can expect more of the same from the reformist organizations: they will try to keep ‘politics’ and ‘unionism’ strictly separated, placate revolutionary desires with reforms, and isolate the movements shop by shop, breaking that sentiment of class solidarity which was so evident in the recent struggles.

For the present, the reformists, whose strength derives from the material and ideological integration of the majority of the workers into capitalism, are in a strong position. The workers’ frustration and lack of confidence in their own power may open the way for the ‘social peace’ desired by the reform bourgeoisie and for the parliamentary democracy desired by the political opposition. Yet we should not write off the prospects for renewed revolutionary struggles. All observers agree that in the conflicts of the last few years the workers have demonstrated a strong capacity for autonomous action, going beyond the bounds of the oppositional apparatus. And there is a radical tendency, small but determined, with a rich tradition and clear anti-capitalist goals, which has firm roots in Spanish society and a significant impact on the workers’ struggles. The result of the conflict between this tendency and the reformists will have an importance which is not limited to Spain alone.

List of Abbreviations

Parties
ORT Organizacion Revolucionaria de Traballadores, Revolutionary workers Organization: orthodox Maoist.

PCE Partido Communists Espagnol, Spanish Communist Party.

PSOE Partido Socialista Obrera Espagnol, Spanish Socialist Workers Party: the social-democratic party, under strong control of the European social democrats.

PSUC Partido Socialista Unificado de Cataluna, Catalan United Socialist Party; the Carillo-tendency CP of Catalonia.

PTE Partido del Trabajo de Espafia, Labor Party of Spain: orthodox Maoist.

[b]Unions[/b]

CC.OO. Comissiones Obreras, Workers Comissions: now completely controlled by the PCE.

CNS Confederacion Nacional Sindical, National Syndical Federation: the official union under Franco, organized on a corporatist basis, i.e., bosses and workers in an industry belong to the same organization. The workers‘ dues were taken directly from their wages by the bosses or the state. At the end of the old regime, the apparatus was practically part of the state, while the lower levels were much controlled by the CC.O0. and the USO, which worked within the CNS, presenting candidates for stewards, during the fascist period. The CNS has now been dissolved by the new regime, and the bosses have had to create their own organizations. As the CNS was a powerful and rich bureaucracy, controlling banks, real estate, etc., there is now a big struggle going on among the left unions for control of the financial and material remains.

CNT Confederacion Nacional de Trabajo, National Federation of Labor: the anarcho-syndicalist union federation, founded in 1910.

COS Cordinacion Organisaciones Sindicales, Union Organizations Coordination: organized collaboration between the CC.OO., USO, and UGT in the period just after Franco died; now disintegrating.

JOC Juventude Obreros Catolicos, Catholic Worker Youth: socialist-influenced group during the Franco period, helped to create the USO.

SU Sindicatos Unitarios, Unity Unions: unions created by Maoists expelled from the CC.OO., strong in some areas and very active; they sometimes work with the CNT in strikes, as in last summer's hotel strike.

UGT Union Generale de Traballadores; General Union of Workers: the old socialist union from the Civil War, when it was controlled by the PCB; now under strong control of the PSOE; growing quickly.

USO Union Sindical Obrera, Workers Syndical Union: socialist, for "self-management," close to the French CFDT.

Notes

* The new CNT movement played an important role in spreading the news about the Roca strike, both inside Spain and outside; a meeting was held in Paris in January 1977, in which strikers participated. Such behavior is sufficiently rare to be worthy of special mention.

† The 1958 Law of Collective Contracts allowed each employer to negotiate directly with the workers in his factory; this measure was introduced on the initiative of the modernizing bourgeoisie. On the political plane, the modernizers were organized in a quasi-religious body known as the ‘Work of God.’ When the post-war economic quarantine was lifted and Spain was re-integrated into the ‘community of nations,’ Franco jilted the Falange and invited members of the ‘Work of God’ into the government. Collective bargaining was part of the program of limited reforms with which the modernizers hoped to meet the complementary goals of appeasing the gods of international finance and liberating the invisible hand from the shackles of Francoist economics. When the world economic crisis revealed the impracticability of their technocratic vision, the ‘Work of God’ ministers were thrown out of the government, one by one.

‡ Confederacion National Sindical: the ‘vertical syndicate’ is a corporative body on the usual fascist model; workers and employers both belong to it. Up to 1958 wages were set, at subsistence level, by state decree. Employers had autocratic powers within the plant, for while worker representatives were present on the lowest level of the syndical apparatus, the ‘plant council,’ they were bribed or coerced into submission. The higher levels of the CNS bureaucracy were staffed by Falangists; the syndicate was one of their last strongholds.

§ The first elections were held in 1963. The PCE led the way in participating in the 1966 round of elections, against the initial opposition of the other clandestine parties.

‖ Again, this is reminiscent of the situation in Portugal in 1974, when the PCP took up the defense of small capital and argued that strikes were against the general interest.

¶ This phrase was originally used by Maurice Thorez to describe the French Popular Front of the 1930's.

# In the same vein, the Maoist organizations also demand a single union. The ORT and PTE, which together broke with the CC.OO. late in 1976, split in March 1977, each creating its own single union. This parting of the ways was carried out with the usual Maoist-Stalinist folklore, with armed commando groups, headbreaking and reciprocal accusations.

(1) Trabajadores en huelga (Madrid: Editorial popular, 1976).

(2) Ibid., p. 127.

(3) Ibid., p. 121.

(4) Ibid., p. 32.

(5) Ibid., p. 37.

(6) Ibid., p. 113.

(7) Dionisio Giminez Plaza, Roca: organización obrera y desinformación (Madrid: Ediciones de la Torre, 1977), p. 22.

(8) N. Sartorius, "Panoramica Sindical," Triunfo, 18 December 1976.

(9) Trabajadores en huelga, p. 140.

(10) Giminez Plaza, op. cit., P. 6. See also, [Collective;] Informe Vitoria, Ed.
Alternative: Vitoria, 1976, a very complete work with analyses and documents.

(11) Senz Oller, one of the founders of the C.O. at the SEAT auto plants in Barcelona, describes this period in his book, Entre el frande y la esperanza (Paris: Ruedo Iberico, 1972)

(12) Oller, op. cit., p. 67.

(13) Ibid., pp. 77, 80.

(14) Ibid., p. 250.

(15) Ibid., p. 284.

(16) Ibid., p. 287.

(17) Trabajadores en huelga, p. 95.

(18) Ibid., p. 114.

(19) Ibid., p. 112.

(20) Ibid., p. 39.

(21) Ibid., p. 125.

(22) Ibid., p. 39.

(23) Ibid., p. 92.

(24) Sartorius, op. cit.

(25) Ibid.

(26) Manifesto of the Strike Committee, cited in Gimenez Plaza, op. cit.

(27) Gimenez Plaza, op. cit.

(28) El Correo Catalan, 11 December 1976, cited in Gimenez Plaza, op. cit.

(29) Diego Fábregas and Dionisio Giménez, La huelga y la reforma (Madrid: Ediciones de la Torre, 1977), p. 31.

(30) Ibid., p. 46.

(31) Ibid., p. 22.

(32) Ibid., p. 34.

(33) Luis Bddo, interview in Libération (Paris), 15 April 1977.

(34) Frente Libertario, December 1976.

(35) Juan G. Casas, interview in Sindicalismo, April 1977.

(36) Martin, "La reconstruction de la CNT," La Lanterne Noire, November 1977.

(37) Eddo, op. cit.

(39) Ibid.

(39) Ibid.

(40) Editorial, Solidaridad obrera, Catalonian Regional Committee of the CNT, November 1976.

(41) See the interview in this issue of Root & Branch.

(42) Frente Libertario, January 1977.

(43) Workers Councils, Root & Branch Pamphlet 1, pp. 70-71; in Root & Branch (Fawcett, 1975): pp. 458-460.