May events

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The May events of Barcelona (or May days , Catalan: Fets de maig , Spanish: Jornadas de Mayo, Sucesos de Mayo, Hechos de Barcelona ) lasted from May 4 to May 8, 1937, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War . This term is used to describe the civil war-like clashes within the republican zone between the communists of the PCE, allied with the Soviet Union, and (right) socialists (united in the PSUC ) on the one hand, parts of the anarcho-syndicalists of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), anarchists of the FAI and Left Marxists of the POUM on the other hand.

prehistory

The crushing of the Francoist uprising in Barcelona succeeded mainly through the unionized and armed workers. Anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists exerted great influence over the Central Committee of the anti-fascist militias in the first phase of the civil war in Barcelona and all of Catalonia , but did not join the Catalan government, the Generalitat de Catalunya , largely due to the contradiction with the anarchist ideology . Initially a powerless institution, however, the Generalitat soon regained some room for maneuver. This fact, as well as a certain naivety of their leaders, meant that the CNT and FAI soon lost ground to the combined socialists and communists of the PSUC. These endeavored to subordinate the self-administration of the factories to the requirements of the war economy and generally, in association with bourgeois forces, to prevent the social revolution .

Another area of ​​conflict was that between the communists with a Stalinist character and the left-wing Marxist POUM, which had one of its bastions in Catalonia. In a smear campaign, the POUM was defamed as Trotskyist , as was Franco's fifth column . The communists were just waiting for an opportunity to get rid of this competition.

course

The Telefónica building on the east corner of Plaça de Catalunya . In 1937 the corner building had a round dome.

On May 3, 1937, the communist police chief Eusebio Rodríguez Salas ordered the Guardia Civil and the Assault Guard in three personnel carriers to occupy the Telefónica in Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona, ​​which had been controlled by anarchists since the beginning of the civil war and which was crucial for telephone traffic abroad Meaning was. The anarchists and the POUM saw in this the beginning of an attack on themselves: the "war within the war" had begun. Its armed members in the Telefónica fought violently. When news of the shooting spread across the city, many workers in the city spontaneously went on strike, and barricades were erected across the city. Armed militias of the POUM and the CNT / FAI fought their way into the neighborhoods held by the Guardia Civil and the pro-Soviet communists and dominated Barcelona for the most part on May 4th. At the beginning of the fighting, on May 5th, 1,500 militiamen from the anarchist column Roja y Negra , the Lenin Division of the POUM and the 128th Brigade of the 28th Division set out from the Aragon Front for Barcelona. They were attacked by Republican planes near Binéfar . After negotiations, however, the unit returned to the front. At the same time, the central government withdrew units from the Jarama front and ordered them to Madrid. In addition, the Spanish government ordered two destroyers, the destroyers Lepanto and Sánchez Barcaiztegui , with paramilitary units from Valencia to Barcelona. The government of Francisco Largo Caballeros and the Generalitat of Catalonia then called for a ceasefire and sent the anarchist ministers Juan García Oliver and Federica Montseny of Valencia to broker a ceasefire in Barcelona. When it turned out that this was unsuccessful, Negrín asked Largo Caballero to use Republican troops. For his part, one of the leaders of the ERC , Lluís Companys , who also headed the Catalan Generalitat, put great pressure on Largo Caballero not to break the Catalan autonomy by using troops from the central government. On May 6, a number of prominent anarchists were murdered in their homes by death squads . The following day more than 6,000 men of the Assault Guard arrived with the two destroyers from Valencia and temporarily took control of Barcelona. The riots did not end completely until May 8th. It is estimated that 400 people died in these May riots.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Antony Beevor : The Spanish Civil War, ISBN 978-3-442-15492-0 , 2nd edition, p. 340.