The Spanish Revolution Part 3: What can the Left Learn from the defeat of 1939?

Anomie: Anarchy in the 21st Century

In the last of our three part narrative of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War we reach the tragic and bloody end of the conflict in March 1939. After crushing the Anarchist Revolution in 1937 the Republican government of centrists and Stalinist backed Spanish Communists attempt to create a professional army to fight Franco but failed. Offensives in Aragon and Catalonia went nowhere and lead to the fall of Barcelona and a crushing series of defeats along the Ebro river in 1938. Finally, the Juan Negrín government fell to a military coup in March 1939 only for the remaining military leaders of the Republic to surrender to Franco on 31st March. For the hundreds of thousands of socialists that survived the final fall concentration camps, mass torture and mass graves awaited them in the one party personality cult that Spain was to remain for the next 40 years.

In this episode we ask some fundamental questions about the entire conflict: could the revolution have been saved and the war won? Did the Anarchist movement alienate those on the fence by it's actions in 1936-1937? Should the war have been fought as a guerrilla war rather than a standard military conflict? Most importantly for the modern Anarchist movement we ask what can be learned from the failure of 1939? And how has the Spain of the 21st century come to terms with the legacy of the War and the Francoist dictatorship?

Please find the following links for information on the period:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqlwMmbpwek&ab_channel=MilitaryMan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zy-A-SMsbk&ab_channel=MilitaryMan

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/mortal-remains-spain-and-legacy-franco/

https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-03-18/shadow-franco-s-legacy-spain-faces-its-fascist-history