Eyewitnesses to the Barcelona May Days, 1937

The street battles of 3-8 May 1937 in Barcelona - almost a civil war within the Republican side, in which as many as a thousand lives were lost - were confusing and shocking for foreign eyewitnesses. They were a turning point in the politics of the Republican side and a defeat for the revolutionary forces in Catalonia. A few weeks later the POUM (the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) was banned and its leaders arrested. The most famous account by a foreign observer is Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, who fought in the POUM militia and saw the May Days from their perspective. However, there were many other foreign activists in Barcelona, including two Scottish Anarchists, Jenny Patrick and Ethel MacDonald, whose reports were published soon after the events. 

Patrick (1884-1971) and MacDonald (1909-1960) were members of Guy Aldred’s Glasgow-based United Socialist Movement, and in Barcelona they worked closely with the CNT (National Confederation of Labour), the largest movement of revolutionary trade unionists. Their letters home were published in Aldred’s Barcelona Bulletin, and offer a corrective to the many false and hostile accounts published in the British press. 

Both women were aware that political tensions had been mounting in Barcelona but were still taken by surprise when police units seized the telephone exchange from the CNT on the afternoon of 3 May. Elements in the CNT immediately responded by erecting barricades. The women watched events unfold from the CNT headquarters, occasionally venturing out. Aware that the press in Britain were blaming the Anarchists, they were keen to make clear that the CNT had consistently sought compromise and had been the victims of provocation (which they blamed on the Spanish Communists). By this time the CNT was divided between those leaders who wanted to uphold the Popular Front alliance, even by serving in government, and the militants who favoured further revolutionary action. Both women were in the latter camp: Patrick argued that the only solution to the conflict was the “elimination” of the Communist Party and the small bourgeoisie, while MacDonald rued the CNT’s failure to seize the opportunity to take complete political and social control. 

The women observed a return to “normality” by 8 May, but this was deceptive. The crackdown on the POUM started in mid-June, and the party’s leader Andreu Nin was seized and murdered by the Soviet NKVD. MacDonald stayed in Barcelona, seeking to help jailed comrades (women could move far more freely under police surveillance) before returning home in November. 

In addition to marking a political transition on the Republican side, the May Days have continued to play a major role in debates about the Civil War on the left. Orwell’s experiences turned him against Communism (he would have agreed with Patrick’s view that the Communists were obsessed with power and a menace to workers in struggle) and helped to shape his “democratic Socialism” of the 1940s.