Luis
Companys
was
born in El Torros, Spain, on 21st June,
1883. He studied law in Barcelona and
while at university formed the Republican Student Association and
worked closely with the National Confederation
of Trabajo (CNT). In 1920 he was arrested for his political activities
and was imprisoned in the Castle of La Mola in Minorca.
After being released in
1921 he became involved in the Catalonian independence movement. He
joined the Esquerra Party and edited
the weekly journal La Terra.
Companys was elected to
Barcelona council. On the 14th April
1931, he joined other members of the party to occupy the city hall
where they proclaimed the establishment of a republic. In June he
was appointed speaker of the Catalan parliament.
On 1st January 1934, Companys
was elected president of an autonomous Catalonia. The following year
he declared Catalonia fully independent within the Spanish Republic.
This separatist revolt failed and Companys and the entire Catalan
government were arrested. Companys was found guilty and sentenced
to thirty years in jail.
Companys was released from
prison after the Popular Front victory
in February, 1936. On the outbreak of the Spanish
Civil War Companys organized the Worker's
Party (POUM) and the National Confederation
of Trabajo (CNT) to defeat the military uprising in Barcelona.
During the war Companys
attempted to maintain the unity of the coalition of parties in Barcelona.
However, after the Soviet cousul, Vladimir
Antonov-Ovseenko, threatened the suspension of Russian aid, he
agreed to sack Andrés
Nin as
minister of justice in
December 1936.
Companys attempted to protect
members of the Worker's Party (POUM) and
the National Confederation of Trabajo (CNT)
from the Communist dominated Partit Socialista
Unificat de Catalunya (PSUC). This was in vain and although he
remained president he was no more than a figurehead
After the victory of General
Francisco
Franco and the
Nationalist
Army Companys
fled to France but after the German
Army occupied
the country in 1940 he was arrested by the Gestapo
and sent back to Spain. General Francisco
Franco ordered
that he should be tried for treason. Found guilty on 14th October,
1940 he was executed the following day.
(1)
Ilya
Ehrenburg, letter
sent to Marcel Rosenberg (17th September,
1936)
To add to today's telephone
conversation, I report: Companys was in a very nervous state. I spoke
with him for more than two hours, while all he did the whole time
was complain about Madrid. His arguments: the new government has not
changed anything; slights Catalonia as if it were a province and this
is an autonomous republic; sends instructions like to the other governors
- refuses to turn over religious schools to the generalitat; demands
soldiers and does not give out any of the weapons bought abroad, not
one airplane and so on.
As yet, neither Caballero
nor Prieto has managed to find time to receive him. And so on. He
explained that if they did not receive cotton or hard currency for
cotton within three weeks there would be a hundred thousand out of
work. He very much wanted to trade with the Soviet Union. He believed
that any sign of attention being paid to Catalonia
by the Soviet Union was important. As for the internal situation,
he spoke rather optimistically;
the influence of the FAl was decreasing, the role of the government
growing.
I spoke with Garcia Oliver.
He was also in a frenzied state. Intransigent. At the same time that
Lopez, the leader of the Madrid syndicalists, was declaring to me
that they had not permitted and would not permit attacks on the Soviet
Union
in the CNT newspaper, Oliver declared that they had said that they
were "criticizing" the Soviet Union because it was not an
ally, since it had signed the non-interference pact, and so on. Durruti,
who has been at the front, has learned a lot, whereas Oliver, in Barcelona,
is still nine-tenths anarchist ravings. For instance, he is against
a unified command on the Aragon front; a unified command is necessary
only when a general offensive begins. Sandino, who was present during
this part of the conversation, spoke out for a unified command. They
touched on the question of mobilization and the transformation of
the militia into an army. Durruti made much of the mobilization plans
(I do not know why - there are volunteers but no guns). Oliver said
that he agreed with Durruti, since "Communists and Socialists
are hiding themselves in the rear and pushing the FAI-ists out of
the cities and villages." At this point he was almost raving.
I would not have been surprised if he had shot me.
I spoke with Trueba, the
PSUC (Communist) political commissar. He complained about the FAI-ists.
They are not giving our men ammunition. We have only thirty-six bullets
left per man. The anarchists have reserves of a million and a half.
Colonel Villalba's soldiers only have a hundred cartridges each. He
cited many instances of the petty tyrannies of FAI. People from the
CNT complained to me that Fronsosa, the leader of PSUC, gave a speech
at a demonstration in San Boi in which he said that the Catalans should
not be given even one gun, since the guns would just fall into the
hands of the anarchists. In general, during the ten days that I was
in Catalonia, relations between Madrid and the generalitat on the
one hand, and that between the Communists and the anarchists on the
other, became very much more strained. Companys is wavering; either
he gravitates toward the anarchists, who have agreed to recognize
the national and even nationalistic demands of the Esquerra, or he
depends on the PSUC in the struggle against FAI. His circle is divided
between supporters of the former and of the latter solutions. If the
situation on the Talavera front worsens, we can expect him to come
out on one or the other side. We must improve relations between the
PSUC and the CNT and then try to get closer to Companys.
In Valencia our party
is working well, and the influence of the UGT is growing. But the
CNT has free rein there. The governor takes their side completely.
This is what happened when I was there: sixty anarchists with two
machine-guns turned up from the front, as their commander had been
killed. In Valencia they burned the archives and then wanted to break
into the prison to free the criminals. The censor (this is under Lopez,
the leader of the CNT) prohibited our newspaper from reporting about
any of this outrage, and in the CNT paper
there was a note that the "free masses destroyed the law archives
as part of the accursed
past."
(2)
Ilya
Ehrenburg, letter
sent to Marcel Rosenberg (18th September,
1936)
Today I again had a long
conversation with Companys. He proposed to form a local government
in this way: half Esquerra, half CNT and UGT. He said that he would
reserve for himself finance and the police. After my words on the
fact that the anarchists' lack of personal responsibility would interfere
with manufacturing, he declared that he "agreed" to put
a Marxist at the head of industry. He called Oliver a fanatic. He
reproached the PSUC for not answering the terror of the anarchists
with the same. On the conduct of the Catalan militia in Madrid, he
said that that was the FAI-ists and that the national Guardia and
the Esquerrists would fight anyone. He said that Madrid itself wanted
the CNT militia, while not hiding the fact that the latter left to
"establish order in Madrid." He advised sending them back
from Madrid.
The whole time he cursed
the FAI. He knew that I was going from him to the CNT and was very
interested in how the FAI-ists would converse with me. He requested
that I communicate the results of the conversation with him. He complained
that the FAI-ists were against Russia were carrying out anti-Soviet
propaganda, or more accurately, carried out but that he was our friend,
and so on. A steamship, even if it held only sugar
would soften his heart.
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