Spain is sacred ground for anarchists. Three blessed years of freedom, democracy, and equality in the 1930s where most of Spain was under local self-rule. Tragically, the Fascists prevailed, due in large part to the treachery of the Stalinists, who were more concerned with defeating the anarchist/Trotskyist alliance than the counterrevolution.
Like most anarchists I have devoured everything on the subject of the Spanish Revolution, and my favorite anecdote involves an architect named Gomez Abril. When the wealthy land-owners returned to their fiefdoms after Franco's victory, many expected to find their estates, run for the previous three years by the peasants who worked them, in ruins. In fact the opposite had occurred. In very many places the collectives had made improvements and had increased yields. In one case, a land-owner returned to find that a few new buildings had been built and older ones renovated. So impressed as he with the work that he demanded to know who had constructed the new edifices. He was told that the collective had contracted with Gomez Abril and his co-workers. The baron tracked Abril down and found him, along with countless other anarchists, languishing in a Barcelona jail. He arranged to see Abril and told him how much he liked his work.
[From memory]"If you agree to work for me I will pay you twice what you made during the revolution, and I can pull a few strings and get you released from jail, what do you say?"
Abril: "I was a free man, who labored on behalf of other free men. I can't go back to being a slave again, no matter how much it pays. My work is done; my page in the book of history is complete. I will stay here [in jail]."
Dare I ask: Could it be happening again?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Spain-s-Tahrir-Square-by-Pablo-Ouziel-110518-419.html
