Blood Spain

As the 70th Anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War is approaching this writer is reviewing some important works that militants should read in order to draw the lessons of the defeat of the Spanish revolution. The writer has been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since he was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle. Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class-consciousness of the Spanish proletariat was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Mr. Fraser's oral history of the period, if only indirectly, gives some answers to the reasons for that failure. The format Mr. Fraser has chosen, an oral history by participants from all sections of Spanish society and virtually all political parties, is an interesting way to provide those answers. His decision to emphasize the rank and file and middle-level participants as they remembered those experiences in the mid-1970's rather than the big name leaders was also a wise decision. Lapses of memory and errors by the participants over time are obvious drawbacks to this format. As is the reinforced hardening of political lines due to the suppressions of political life under Franco. Additionally, from this partisan writer's political perspective too much space was given to secondary events at the expense of actions like the May Days in Barcelona, 1937. As was the attempt to be politically too all-inclusive and even-handed which sometimes confused the issues presented. Nevertheless, this is a book that militants should read in order to get the favor of the conflict. The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Mr. Fraser's work reaches down beyond those perspectives to look at the base that actually fought the war. What he finds is the furious nature of the struggle in Spanish society between the old agrarian- based economy and the newer capit

As the 70th Anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War is approaching this writer is reviewing some important works that militants should read in order to draw the lessons of the defeat of the Spanish revolution. The writer has been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since he was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle. Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class-consciousness of the Spanish proletariat was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Mr. Fraser's oral history of the period, if only indirectly, gives some answers to the reasons for that failure. The format Mr. Fraser has chosen, an oral history by participants from all sections of Spanish society and virtually all political parties, is an interesting way to provide those answers. His decision to emphasize the rank and file and middle-level participants as they remembered those experiences in the mid-1970's rather than the big name leaders was also a wise decision. Lapses of memory and errors by the participants over time are obvious drawbacks to this format. As is the reinforced hardening of political lines due to the suppressions of political life under Franco. Additionally, from this partisan writer's political perspective too much space was given to secondary events at the expense of actions like the May Days in Barcelona, 1937. As was the attempt to be politically too all-inclusive and even-handed which sometimes confused the issues presented. Nevertheless, this is a book that militants should read in order to get the favor of the conflict. The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Mr. Fraser's work reaches down beyond those perspectives to look at the base that actually fought the war. What he finds is the furious nature of the struggle in Spanish society between the old agrarian- based economy and the newer capita

For years I have searched for a history like this of the Spanish Civil War. For anarchists, this is one of the most important moments of history to understand, as it was the only occurance of a mass, anarchist-led social revolution. Considering the overwhelming quantity of books and film documentaries on WWII, and the fact that Franco's military coup in Spain in 1936 and the world's response to it set the stage for the world war, the paucity of scholarly and popular works on the Spanish Civil War should be startling... if it wasn't so typical of the biases of American media and scholarship. The neglect of the Spanish Civil War, and, moreover, the Spanish Revolution that this war precipitated, is all the more tragic in light of the absolute repression of its memory in Spain during the Franco years. A contemporary anarchist from Spain told me that almost everything he learned about the revolution came from foreign sources. He was hardly aware that there had even been a revolution until he saw Ken Lasche's film "Land and Freedom"--an excellent British drama produced in the early 1990s. And this is someone who grew up AFTER Franco... and in Barcelona!--the city at the center of the revolution, a city which in anarchist mythology looms like Jerusalem to Jews and Christians. It is in light of this egregious deficit that one fully appreciates "Blood of Spain", Ronald Frazer's outstanding collection of oral histories that has preserved the dying memories of this fascinating period.Frazer presents opinions and accounts of events from every side of the conflict. Frazer attempts to be unbiased in his presentation of the views of fascists side-by-side those of ultra-leftists--a helpful contrast to the histories written by anarchists, which are about the only accounts I have found of the collectives of Catalonia and Aragon. I imagine that most who have read this book were sympathizers of the revolutionaries and were, like I, eager to hear what life was like in revoltutionary Spain. I can't imagine this book disappointed them. The accounts of the rural collectives and of the collectization of industry in Barcelona and other cities are amoung the most vivid and moving that I have read. No one interested in this time and place--and I wish more people were!--should pass up this book.By the way, there is a fanastic documentary called "The Spanish Civil War" that is very hard to come by, but which would be an excellent companion to this book. Although I have not confirmed it, the person who loaned me "Blood of Spain" (which I am happily buying at the time of writing this review) thought that Ronald Frazer produced the documentary as well. This would not surprise me, because, like the book, it is filled with interviews of participants, and it was produced around the same time the book was written... both done just in time: many of the interviewed probably died soon-after, and very few are still alive to be interviewed again. How much irredeemably poor