The First Days of the Spanish Civil War

James is joint by Margaret killjoy, Garrison And Robert to talk about when anarchists and cops joined forces to fight a coup in Barcelona.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, this is it could happen here? Oh boy? Yeah,
we can't rob it into being here for Civil War
Week no less. We're also joined by special guest Margaret
Killjoy uh and Sophi and get who are less special
were whole week. Yeah, that's we're here to start a

(00:25):
civil war, right, that's what I've read and read start
a civil war, Sophie. We we cleared that. We cleared
that with corporate right. Yeah, I officially backing the start
of a of a civil war. Yeah, essentially corporated you know,
go go go ahead, cool zone media, start a civil war,

(00:48):
start a civil war? Do we be civilly and criminally
liable for all violence that occurred? That's the I Heart
Radio guarantee. Yeah, and we've been listed the people on
this call who are Margaret kill Dry Heavens, Garrison Davis,
James Stout, and myself, Sophie. They are also all civil
and criminally liable. But do we get to collectivize a

(01:10):
huge maybe, like or so of all the industry obviously,
I mean some of us do. Okay, Okay, what it's
like any civil war. You're gonna find out who later, Okay,
We're going to find out who today, Robert, this is
my death guy into how to beat a coup, start
a civil war and win the first part of it. Well,

(01:34):
that's the only part of it you really need to win. Yeah,
it is. You don't want to get too bugged down
in the latest staff because it's just depressing. So we
we just want to focus on how to win the
first four year hours and from there you can taper it.
Take a week, take the weekend off, yeah, break off,
chill out, yeah fine, or just go down as a
hero and let everyone else sort everything else out afterwards.
And that's pretty the best option that's going to learn

(01:56):
about a guy who dies within twenty four hours at
the wars starting as a hero and gets a gun
named after him, which is all we can really want
for ourselves. Ah, that does sound like the dream. Yeah,
that's that's a that's the way Robert Evans needed to go,
not suggesting that anytime soon, of course. All right, I'm
sure to imagine would it be the Robert or would

(02:16):
it be there, Yeah, Robert, just give him a good
old bobbin. It would be named after my nick name,
my nickname, the Jesus Christ of podcasting, right, Sophie now. Yeah, no,
Sophie says, yes. If there's not already a gun named
after Jesus, I will be shocked. Yeah, it's probably not

(02:39):
a kind of company you want to. We've we've really
gotten off, and I think, in all fairness, it's not
my fault. I think it's Garrison's fault. Yeah, that's who
I was going to blame. I think we've all agreed
on that. What are we talking about, Jim talking about
the Spanish Civil War today will be be desecrating the
name of Jesus Christ a little bit later as well.

(03:00):
So desecrating the name of Jesus Christ, i'd gathered, Yeah,
we'll do. That's just some more for you today. I'll
send you some pictures afterwards that you will enjoy. All Right,
So we're talking about the Spanish Civil War. We're not
talking about all of it, because that's a lot, and
because I think it's important when we talk about the
Spanish Civil War to talk about like the moments when

(03:21):
revolutionary things happened, because they are as important as the
moments when terrible things happened and the moments when the
people in arms defeated the coup, because that's both instructive
and inspiring and interesting. Well, they have a question, Yeah,
what's the Spanish Civil War? That's a great question, and
when I've failed to address thus far. It is a

(03:43):
war that happened in Spain. It wasn't very civil, so
only two three remarkably uncivil. Actually, so we're looking at
nineteen thirty six today, we're looking at July twentieth ninety six. Right,
But you can see it as like the precursor to
the Second World War. You have people who are fascist
or fascist, a jacent you have people who are explicitly

(04:05):
anti fascist, and they are killing each other from nineteen
thirty nine, and the anti fascists win, right, not entirely, unfortunately, Yeah,
that they have some wins along the way, you know. Yeah,
there's some moments, the friends that you meet along the way. Yeah,
what is civil war if not the friends that you
make along the way. Don't answer that at home because

(04:29):
it's sad. But yeah, these these are some friendly times,
These are some good times. These are the first forty
year hours of the Spanish Civil War. We're going to
start with an anecdote about the popular Olympics, which you
probably have never heard of unless you're me because it's
a it's a thing that I've written about ship Ton,
but not many folks have read about. It's the anti Olympics.

(04:51):
It's the best way to understand the popular Olympics. It
was a gathering held in nineteen thirty six in Barcelona
in opposition to the Berlin Olympics. So the Olympics are
given to uh Weimar Germany, right, they're not given to
Nazi Germany. But when Germany, yeahsmar Germany is the pre
Nazi it's before Hitler takes power. Yeah, when they were

(05:13):
actually pretty cool in some ways. It's pretty pretty progressive
for the time period, right in lots of ways. And
it's woke Germans. Yes, it is the work Germans. It's
it's like if if if AOC was running nineteen thirties Germany,
that's what you get. I bet they had a whole
institute that trans people got to hang out at and

(05:33):
learn about themselves. I've heard that, Yeah, what happened to
the institute? I can't remember. The Nazis game and killed
the first woman to medically transition in the Western Hemisphere
and burned all of the books and then stole the
records that the people had been keeping about all the
gay people and then rounded up all the gay people

(05:54):
and murdered them in camps. That's that's what happened. Well,
it's disappointing. Well, good thing. That will good thing, that
will never happen again. Anyway, we've learned our lesson. Yeah,
there's absolutely no echoes of that in current political discourse.
So that's fine. Hey, let's learn how to kill fascists. Yeah,
buck them. Okay, So we're talking about the popul Olympics,

(06:15):
the anti for Olympics, the Olympics that happened because the
Nazis are ship and you shouldn't play games with ship
people to include the Olympics, even if you very much
want to win a medal. Uh take note, athletes doing
sports and dictatorships, and so a lot of people, about
twenty people instead decided to go to Barcelona where they're

(06:37):
going to host this alternative games. And the sebtext of
the popular Olympics it's not just that like shouldn't have
the Olympics, it's that gasp shouldn't exist, and the anti
fascism is strong and youthful and perfectly capable of fighting
a war and killing the fascists right. That that's sport
Georgia Will called sport war without the shooting, right, Uh,

(07:00):
this is a war with the shooting. It's a good quote.
George Orwell pops up a few times in this One's
not always right. Bad everything that he was read about
that we passed up at the wrong time. It's never
mind trying to make a George or Will gets shut
shut in the throat. Now I just feel bad about
it because at least that's the least. I mean, before podcasting,

(07:23):
the throat was the best place to get shot as
a writer. That's true, that's true. Yeah, it didn't go
well for him in the end. It sort of did
end his life prematurely, I guess. But he got some
bangers out in terms of books. First. Yeah, it can't
fault him. Alright. So we're talking about pot Olympics, talking
about the night before the Popular Olympics. You're gonna learn

(07:44):
why you haven't heard of the Popular Olympics. So I
guess keep listening, Okay. Eighty six years ago in Barcelona, Paucas,
the father of modern cello, was leading the final rehearsals
for the opening ceremony of the Popular Olympics. They had
already practiced him. Of the popular picks was a song
co written by a Catalan composer and an exiled Jewish
one who had fled oppression in Germany. Now they moved

(08:07):
to beethoven Tonight's symphony. You might know it as you
know too. Joy Cassals recounted what happened next in his memoirs.
I just called the chorus on stage to sing the korral.
When a man rushed into the hall. He handed me
an envelope, saying, breathlessly, this is from Minister Gasol. An
uprising is expected in the city at any moment. I

(08:29):
read Gasol's message. It said our rehearsal should be discontinued
immediately or the musicians should go straight home, and that
the concert schedule for the following day had been canceled.
The messenger told me that since the message was written,
an insurrection had started in Madrid and fascist troops were
now marching on Barcelona. I read the message aloud to
the orchestra and to the chorus, and then I said,

(08:49):
dear friends, I do not know when we shall meet again.
As a farewell to one another, shall we play the finale?
And they shouted yes. Let us finish it. Then the
orchestra play and the chorus sang that's never before I
could not see the notes because of my tears. So
that's how Powker South starts to civil war. They finished

(09:11):
that concert in sixteen. Incidentally, they came back to the
same place, and yeah, it was very the same people.
Uh no, no, well the same institutions. Right, these are
called or fails, Like I guess popular chorus is popular
kind of city orchestra kind of thing. So they finished
it in the same place because in the intervening eight

(09:37):
years there was a little issue with the Frank I dictatorship,
which there still is in Spain incidentally, But yeah, Barstilona
has very much reclaimed its memory as an anti fascial
city following the dictatorship. I could really, I can really
see myself in those musicians, you know, like it just
feels like a very possible thing. Unfortunately, to just be like, okay,

(10:01):
well we're going to do this thing and then well,
I guess I don't know, should we finish? Like yeah, yeah, right,
like at some point maybe not, like like all of
us were doing something else when we learned that a
bunch of Chud's had stormed Congress, right, and that the
the yak hatman was inside the Senate chamber. Um like

(10:25):
like it and some of us going. I was on
a bike ride. I kept riding my bike like there's
not there's not much I can do. Uh. Sometimes you
have to take the moments of joy because there might
be much joy available for the next little while. So yeah,
I think it's easy to see myself and a lot
of this stuff. Perhaps that's why I'm drawn to it
all right. The following morning, the city woke up before

(10:48):
dawn to the sound of gunfire. To most of the
Catalan working classes wasn't surprised. The cured begun two days
earlier in Morocco, and word traveled quickly among the anarchists.
By the time the men of the Fourth Division and
the General Fernandez Bodiel began their march to the central
Plataa Catalunia, the people of the Popular Front were ready.

(11:09):
The uprising had begun in Morocco on the seventeen an
all day tension a bit building Union radio had called
a general strike, and despite the refusal of the Republican
government to acknowledge how deep of trouble they are in
their union to render no allusion as to the stakes.
By entertime on the nineteen Spain had gone through three
prime ministers since breakfast, and Barcelona had defeated the coup.

(11:31):
So what happens to the other prime ministers, Like, okay,
you be prime minister and you're like, oh, funk, No,
I don't want to be prime minister. Or are they
getting killed by the fascists or no, no, Madrid is
is very it's not very safe. It's safe. They basically
your first guy. It's like, I've done funked up here.
I should have seen this one, counting given that I
was explicitly warned about it for weeks. He's like, peace,

(11:54):
I'm out. Second guy, Popsy and he's like, don't worry, guys,
we can fix this. We need to do is call
the call the General's talk it out. It's interesting, yeah,
give them just so, just like a reason with them.
And it's interesting because what happens is in that conversation
it's the fascist general. I think it's capable. The young know.

(12:16):
He calls I can't remember good d maybe maybe good head. Anyway,
it says like you have your people and I have mine,
and in that moment, what's happening is a fascist general
who is leading a coup is reminding an elected politician
that he has an obligation to serve the people who
elected him and and not just to make like unilateral

(12:38):
compromises with fascists, right, So that the what a country
at a time at that moment that second prime ministers
also doomed. Right. So then we move on to number three.
And at that point we opened up the armories to
the working class, right, which is what they should have
done earlier. In in every city where the working class

(13:00):
US is armed, the coup is defeated. In every city
where it's not armed, the coup succeeds. And that doesn't
have any ramifications for today, So keep going. No, absolutely none,
um know. And it's something that we can't learn from,
so we shouldn't We shouldn't try, um And obviously it's
some direct parallel. There are some really interesting moments in

(13:21):
this particular arming of the working class. One that I
to come back to is that the there are the soldiers, right.
It's obviously the weapons are in the hands of the military,
and obviously the military has just done a coup, but
not all the military has just done a coup. So
you have some generals or colonels who are in charge
of barracks, um, who are armories, and they will be like, yeah, okay,

(13:43):
I've got the order. That's what I'm going to do.
I think it's coup is kind of bullshit, like it
hasn't succeeded yet, it might not succeed. Here are the
rifles union members. But in Madrid you have another colonel
who's a die hard cou coup guy, big, big coup
person who is in control of the bolts are the rifles.
So like, the rifle doesn't work without the bolt, right.

(14:03):
The bolt is a bit like plugs a hole and
makes the bullet go bang. I've explained that properly, right, Robert.
That's a that's a technical terminology. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's just the piece that makes the gun go bang. Yeah.
So the about critical to the functing the rifle held
by another guy who turns out to be a fashion
and so he doesn't issue them the bolts. So you

(14:25):
have all these working class militiamen being like, how rifle
worked with no bolt? Just like entering the streets anyway, right,
slapping on the bayonet. Now you have a pike. You
have other people who have never operated a rifle before.
So like allegedly everyone's calling the Socialist Union headquarters in
Madrid being do this, do that, and they're like, I

(14:46):
can't hear ship. There's just hundreds of people behind me
trying to operate the bolt on, the bolt action rifle,
trying to learn how to do this, and like they're
taking their newsprint from their union newspaper, right and trying
to wipe the cosmoline off the rifles because they've been
in like deep storage. It's very evocative scene, like you
could smell it, you can hear it of these people
being like, well, we never used these before. They've been

(15:08):
a deep storage for a long time. They're covered in grease,
but fuck it, like it's now or never. Yeah, And
it was right. So if we go back to what
happened in Barcelona, they had radios in public places, right,
it's very common whole books about how Nazis use radios,
but it's common in the thirties parts of the city.
The paving stones had barely been relayed from October fighting.

(15:31):
Then they were quickly pulled up again. Barricades were constructed
old rifles and pistols, and the bombs that the anarchists
particularly love were dragged out of the bottom of drawers.
These people fucking love throwing bombs, like the just the Yeah,
there there's a there's a lady later on in the

(15:51):
world called rosal Ladina Mitra like Rows of the Dynamiter
who who just like it, becomes the legend right for
just throwing dynamite fascists. She us. Yeah, like, there's so
much awesome ship that happens, that gets lost because ultimately,
like Hitler and Mustelini win the Spanish Civil War basically,
right spoiler. Yeah, So, actually, that night before the before

(16:15):
the troops march on the city, the u g T
the socialist control the dock union, the dock workers union,
and they're like, hey, hang on, I'm pretty sure there's
a ship in the harbor that has dynamite on it.
Let's raid it. So they raid the ship, Okay, steal
the dynamite and drive through the city, distributing it to
union members who spend the entire night making bonds. I'm

(16:38):
sure that went badly for several of them, but yeah,
it went badly, so fascist too, but well, yeah, almost undoubtedly.
Like Robert and I have talked to some people in
some other contexts who have made homemade bonds and don't smoke.
It is what I will say, do not smoke if
you're in the process of making bombs, are explosives whatever.

(16:58):
That's the same people say that you can't smoke wire
fueling up your car. Yeah, cowards, Yeah, go down like
a chat. Yeah, that's my message to you. The other
thing they did was they put on like their mono,
so like a mono is like a like a onesie, right,
like an overall blue mono was kind of the militia
uniform because they weren't an army. They were just working

(17:20):
class people who worked at factories who are not taking
any ship from the army that day, and they put
on their little union hats, which you can see in
all the photos. They look very cool, very quaint. Um.
So to understand why the conflict they fought that day began,
it's probably beyond the scope of this podcast, and to
understand where ended the way it did will infuriate just

(17:40):
about everyone listening, which is fine, but we don't have
all day. Okay, If you want to know more about
some of the People Involved killeds podcast on his Banic
Anarchist is a great place to start. What. Yeah that
it was wonderful to check that out. Yeah I do. Yeah,
great podcast, great, I love it. If you listened to

(18:00):
look at that, Yeah, yep, you should like and subscribe.
Is that? Is that still the thing? Cool people who
did stuff? Yeah? I think I've heard of that. Yeah.
The host is brilliant. Yeah, she's amazing. I'm trying to

(18:22):
make the clever, but instead I'm probably blushing. You deserve
Oh okay, Yeah, if you want to read some books,
I'm going to list some books at the end, probably
far too many because this is my ship. But I
think there was more books written about the Spanish Civil
War than um, I guess war in general. But I
think anarchists have written more about the Spanish Civil War,

(18:44):
though maybe undoubtedly anything else combined. Yeah. The device we
are speaking on is currently propped up on a large
stack of them, actually most of my material possessions. It's yeah,
it's nice. It's the way your life should be. It's

(19:06):
I've written one to uh and it's heinously expensive, but
you know, I'm happy with it. If if you struggle
to obtain it materially. Please just shoot me a direct message,
unless you kind of have some kind of gross disagreement
because you're fascist or something, in which case please don't bother.
And Okay, I don't know how you got this far.

(19:29):
If you are a fascist, I guess yeah, yeah, yeah,
I probably have some uh funk off Nazis. I guess.
I think I think fewer people hate listen. I okay,
my theory. I know that we wanted to hear my
theory about why podcasting, um is because it's harder. People

(19:49):
don't have the attention span to hate listen the same
way that they can like hate skim or like hate
read tweets and reply. And so I've made a lot
of different media in a lot of different ways over
the past couple of decades, and I get less hate
mail about podcasts than most other forms. Um So, that's

(20:10):
my theory is that people podcast because no one wants
to sit there and like hate listen. I mean people
like hate listening to clips. That's why we all listen
to those like clip shows where they take the right
wing person and you know, yeah, show them saying something
that we all I think it's not an intelligent thing
to say and then we laugh or whatever. But so anyway,

(20:31):
if you're the person who has been put on this
earth to hate, listen to it could happen here in
order to I don't know, um, make fun of it
to your audience. Um, thanks for the listens. I guess
I don't know. Yeah, I'm weak getting that that sweet revenue.
I know, where does that revenue come from? It just appears.

(20:55):
It's like like liking it grows on the side of
a wet bill. Being it doesn't come from ads. I
think ads do. Organic could grow a lot, a lot
like like and they just start showing up um and
replicating we really have no choice. But yeah, anyway, yeah,
it's a fact of nature. If you have that person,
I would say that my messages stop being a Nazi. Uh,

(21:19):
that's that's me being polite. On the night of the eighteen,
some assault guards, members of elite paramilitary police force it
was founded by and sometimes mostly loyal to the Republic,
went against the order their officers has sneaked rifles out

(21:43):
to members of the c NT an anarchist union. And
that's pretty uh, that's pretty based. It's the one day,
as you will learn this is the one day all
cops took off from being bastards. Some of them, it
turns out, are capable of doing the right thing, or
were in I should say, yeah, of corps were handing
out rifles to anarchist. That would be not a parallel

(22:06):
that I can easily imagine in the modern context. Yes, yeah, yeah,
somewhat unique. Right. It doesn't mean that these people had
not spent the past decades killing each other. It does
not mean that they would not return to doing so
within less than a year. But just for a day,
everything was hunky dorry And it's leftist Christmas. Yes, this

(22:29):
pretty yeah, this more or less is leftist Christmas, like
because there's even like there's gifts. They call them proletarian
shopping trips um. But what they do is requisition merchandise
from stores and uh and distributed to people who need it.
Are you just are you referring to armed robbery? Is
that that's different thing? That was only armed robbery. If

(22:52):
somebody tries to fight back shopping with a gun, that's it.
And what if there is no law, is it really
a crime? M hm M. I don't know. No one,
No one can say. I will say that they only
it seems like they only robbed the shopkeepers who were turds,
people who like lent a lot of money at a

(23:14):
very high interest rate, things like that in these predetorian
shopping trips, which I'm not being against what happened. I'm
just I'm stripping away some of the nicelies. Yeah, if
people hadn't gathered, they weren't picking up when I was
putting down. Yes, it is going into a shop with
guns and taking things and giving them to people who
need them. Whether or not that's bad. Who can say,

(23:39):
Robin famous villain in history. Yeah that's right, Yeah, bad
bad dude. Sheriff of Nottingham, on the other hand, would
have been big into crypto, I'm sure, all around legend.
So when I said if there is no law, I
wasn't really joking. Like at this point, Luis compounds who's

(24:00):
Catalan leader. He's a liberal leftist politician and earlier that
evening he'd refused to open the armories. He realizes that
things are out of his control, and so he sets
off for a walk and he walks down the Rambler. Right,
if you've been to Barcelona, it's his big old street
now it's full of the kind of restaurants to have
photographs on their menus so that German people can understand

(24:21):
what they're going to eat. UM, which is much of
Barcelona and American people. But yeah, people who don't speak
Catalan or Spanish who go to Barcelona can eat very
well there for lots of money. If you've been on
hol Day, you've probably been there. I did not eat
very well in Barcelona. Really. I had almost no money
and was vegan, and my Spanish and my Cotys non existent,

(24:43):
so I mostly were hang out and cooked pasta. There
are not a lot of cities I've been to where
it's harder to eat vegan than Barcelona. That is, that
is a challenge. Maybe Belgrade, where then where the national
dishes thirty pounds of meat on a plate. Yeah, Sophia

(25:04):
knows Sophia, so I can't remember I pronounced the name
of the capital of Bulgaria. Um also a hard place
to eat vegan. That was hard for me. Yeah, that
does not surprise me. Yea, yeah, surprise me. It's a
big part of the cattle in cuisine. You'll be like, oh, yeah,
I'm having some lentils, and then they'll be like psych
there's a pig in here. We put a whole fucking

(25:26):
pig in this thing. We did reverse vegan. We made
lintels out of pig. I just ate everywhere I go,
you can crush and falafel. And one of the Catalan
national dishes is called kappi potta, which means head and
foot because those are the ingredients, and it's it's a

(25:47):
bit of a pig that no one else wanted. One
of the American national dishes, it's also the head and
feet of the face of a pig, but they call
it a hot dog. At least the Catalans are honest
about it, that's true. But yeah, if they's better now
to eat vegan, I'm vegan, and now was there in
have to move among the right circles. But yeah, on

(26:12):
the rambler it would be hard. And so that night, companies,
he's walking down the rambler. He's got his hat across
his face so no one could see him, and he's
pulled up his color kind of like an old timey
private eye. H and up and down the rambler. Anarchists
and socialists are stealing cars and welding armor plates to
the front of them. Yeah, yeah, yes, another time honored

(26:34):
anarchist tradition. Yeah. King of war is the improvised technical
and so what they do here is, well these steel plates, right,
and then they write the name of the union on top,
just so people can know who's killing them. Well, and
so they could keep track of their stolphin cars. Yeah, yeah,
that's right, Like, yeah, you don't want anyone stealing your

(26:55):
stolen car. Yeah yeah. There comes a point in the
next couple of weeks where some of the more ideologically
committed anarchists will stop or take down traffic signals because
they feel they're an unwarranted restriction on individual liberty. Those
Twitter discourse yeah yeah, get on that tank you Yes,

(27:18):
time was a flat circle. Yeah, it's it's very funny. Um.
I'll bet they. I bet there were was a contingent
of them that were taking down libraries to for gatekeeping knowledge. Libraries.
Libraries are big prisons, book pigs. Yeah yeah, they burned

(27:41):
just in a class of anarchist fashion. Or we all
know that libraries are better served under a free market
system like that. One guy tweeted, Yes, Amazon should run
the library and every book should cost you ten dollars. Yep,
that's uh. That's the only way we can grow as
a society. And if you don't like it, well something
in front of your truck. All So, if you have
an idea that's based on a book in Amazon owns

(28:03):
the copyright, they know own the idea, that's the only
thing that's fair. No thinking without proper copy right, Is
it okay to use words if Jeffrey Bezos already owned words? No?
Does that mean that we're going to be fighting the
next one of these situations with instead of spray painting CNT,
someone's going to come by and spray paint Amazon basics

(28:24):
onto them with a third chose I'm doing that tonight.
I would be upper armoring my truck as soon as
we're finished, yeah, and spray painting Amazon Basics and then
just going to the beach after that. And actually what
they spraints painted on the there was CNT, there was
u g T, there was PHI. These are CNT Confederal,

(28:45):
a nationalit TRABAJO right National Labor Confederation. This is an
Anarcho Syndicalist Union uh FI. Uh Federal Anarchist Barrier is
the Iberian Anarchist Federation. They're a group with in the
c NT that is more committed to a hardline, illogical
ideological anarchism, the hug Tier or Socialist Union. You have

(29:10):
other groups to the pom Is probably any other one
you need to know. They are not trotsky it's Trotskyites.
Anyone who tells you they are either doesn't know what
they're talking about or is consciously misleading you. And they
were in open beef with trotsky right like that they are.
They are writing letters to trotsky beefing about whether they
should exist, which trotsky Is is a no on that question. U. So, yeah,

(29:34):
they're not trotsky As. They just get called trotsky Is
by Stylinists because everyone who they didn't like is a Stylinist.
Right that they are anti Stylinist Marxists. Um, that's what
I will call them. What some folks do, though, is
they paint you HP on top of their cars. You
nedos armanos Protario. So I think it stands for United

(29:58):
Proletarian Siblings, I guess. And that's important, right, because these
groups had been fighting among themselves and with each other
for a very long time and having like what appeared
today to be kind of comical beefs about inconsequential things.
But they were important, and then you know, this ideological

(30:18):
commitment is what gets them through this period of time.
But the uh P comes from a studius where anarchists
and socialists had come together to fight against the state
rank to fight as part of a minor strike minors
particular love for dynamite, by the way, that's how they, yeah,
kings of the dynamite throw that. That's how they dealt

(30:41):
with the local garrison. Really, and actually the first use
of a combat helicopter was against the Popular Front, the
uh P in a studius, and that strike was eventually
put down by one Francisco Franco, who will learn about later.
Nice guy, No problems with him. That's a lie. Yeah, shocking,

(31:03):
I know it turns out to be a total turd
of a human being. But he was, wasn't he? Um?
Oh no, I'm going down a rabbit hole. Wasn't he
like some sort of vaguely wasn't he like a right
wing syndicalist for a while? Yeah, he had all kinds
of sort of. I don't think Franco had any convinced
political views other than like that he wanted to be
in charge. But yes, he was a radical syndicalist m

(31:26):
I said, right wing syndiclast but yeah, no, but so
a number of officers. I don't know if Franco was with,
but there were like a group called the Trial Party whoever, Okay,
I see, I'm not sure if Franco was one, now
that I think about it. I try not to learn
too much about the person of Francisco Franco, because he
is a turd. He he does pivot. He pivots when

(31:47):
he's in power, right from like a sort of more
totalitarian project to this national Catholic project to sort of yeah,
he's a problematic dude with yeah, with no clear ideology,
and then he should be in parent He doesn't care
who he has to roll over to get there. Um,
that's a common political ideology, it is. Yeah, it pops

(32:09):
up a lot on the right, something something there with
dudes on the right that maybe we should think about. No,
it's never happened again, and and never in this country
of course. Fortunately we're saying it could never happen right
where we are. Yeah, that's not in my backyard. That's
the real name. Yeah, America is different, I think is

(32:29):
the subtitle. Okay, so sorry, no, no, I'm just sad. Anyway,
the people in Barcelona that day were even more numerous
and diverse, and the already bustling city was used to
the n July was slater to be the start of

(32:51):
the largest anti fascist spectacle the world ever seen. That's
a direct quote from a publicity artical about the Popular Olympics, right, uh,
As I said, these games aim to show the strengths
of the popular front with a series of events. Some
of those events tore the ones you might expect, but
some of these events were designed to reward nations with
a healthy working class rather than nations with a few

(33:14):
exceptional athletes. Right. So we look at the Olympics today,
having one or two exceptional athletes, especially in certain areas,
can like vault you to the top of the medal table. Right.
Medal table, of course, invented by the Nazis to illustrate eugenics.
Uh wold really yeah yeah, Before most six there was

(33:35):
no Olympics table. Uh, not in the famble way that
we see it now. So much of the pageantry that
we associate with the Olympic Games was invented by Carl D.
M uh The torch relay, the parade, of flags in
the opening ceremony, Like, yeah, the the Olympics are fucking Nuremberg,

(33:56):
like with the rainbow rings. It's wild. Much of that
ship is cribs straight from Nazi pageantry. Oh um. The
book called The Nazi Game is pretty good on that
if you want to read it. Um. Lots of books
about the thirty six Olympics. But yeah, um, I should
just acknowledge that the the International Olympic Committee did fund
a lot of my research for reasons that mayde becoming

(34:21):
clear have since ceased. Also, Clays didn't think I was
very good, I guess. But anyway, institution that has some
ship to deal with that it hasn't dealt with, I
would say, um. And yet it was on its bullshit
heavily in X right. Um. So one of the things
they did at the Popular Olympics was they had a
ten by hundred meter relay. And it's just like, I

(34:45):
don't know if the Americans have school sports days. Yes,
I tried to, well, I I don't remember anything about
public school sporting events. Okay, at the risk of sort
of unveiling more trauma, what happened, Yeah, that's fine, Okay,
what happens here? Is that. Uh, you line up right

(35:05):
in groups of five and you just run back and forth,
passing a bat on to each other, and much like
school sport today, with the caveat being that the people
in this event had to already be entered in other
events at the games, and so like you just get
like weightlifters, and there was a chess event at the games, right,
so you get the chess athletes and they're just hauling

(35:27):
ass as fast as their chess playing legs can carry
them back and forth to prove the like superior health
of their nation's working class. Chess chess leads, chess chess leads,
chess leads. Yeah, thanks, Yeah, I really saved with that one. Yeah,
you pulled the back. Yeah, I'm proud of you. Yeah.

(35:50):
They didn't have any mathletes sadly. Yeah, they did have
people who built human castles. It's another event and really
wait wait wait wait a castle made out of humans?
Whoa wait, you are not familiar with Cashtel's the like
the the Great cathol And tradition of building human towers. No, okay,
like pivot. Uh it's fucked now. One of my friends

(36:14):
wrote her PhD on these uh about that they just
made up. Just now listen, okay, A you can write
your history PhD about literally anything, as long as no
one else has written it before that. The scene a
quand of history PhDs. And I wrote my PhD about

(36:35):
the anti for Olympics, right, I wrote my master's about
predatarian shopping trips. Uh that's cool, yeah, I thought so
um at the time. The yes, So Cashel's right. You
you get your people at the bottom, right, and they
sort of wrap a ribbon around their waist and then
they often bite the corners of their shirt. I'm aware

(36:55):
that I'm biting my shirt, and this is mainly an
audio medium. But they'll wrap their hands over the other people, right,
men and women, non binding people, I'm sure to form
a big old circle. And then the next layer climb
up them right and stand on top of them. It's
slightly fewer people, and the people get smaller, and the
layers have fewer people in them, like concentric circles. Right,

(37:16):
as you get higher and higher, and then a small
child wearing always a horse riding helmet for reasons that
are not entirely clear, as sends, and this ship is high,
like if you're standing on your balcony, like you are
eye to eye with this fucking toddler who climbs up
the top, get to the top like arm in the air,
and then climbs back down. And and these groups people

(37:39):
do people do this all the time. Yeah. Look, American's
national sport is is this thing where like young young
men give each other brain damage. So I'm not anti this,
and I'm just well, I'm actually impressed by it because
we do the human pyramid thing, which is the same thing.
All they're not nearly as impressive or interesting. No, checkout casts.

(38:02):
The cool thing about them as they exist within communities, right,
these colds, these groups of castodiers are groups of people
who do this from a neighborhood, right, so that they'll
all be from a certain town, like the Talagona group
was the one near me and my friends. Dissertation Ida
reports a name, you can probably look it up. It

(38:23):
was about like how this this practice has been integraling
into incorporating migrants into Catalan us, right, like Catalana identity
by being like yeah, come and come and stand on
us or be stood on by us, and you two
can be Catalan. Oh that seems like that would Yeah,
that would bring a community closer together into a heap

(38:44):
on the ground. Yeah, and it has all kinds of
other uses, right, catch stuck up a tree, just call
those guys water rubber house. Yeah, famously ladders a band
in Catalonia because there for cowards. Yeah yeah, just all
day pasts. But yeah, this was part of the popular Olympics, right,
human castles. I'm glad we went there for everyone who

(39:06):
didn't know. People googling that it's part of the u
n like United Nations Protected Human Patrimony or something like.
It's a it's it's a bit important. So do you
ever just like make up stuff to tell Americans about
and then we believe you because you have an accent?
I mean we have an accent too, sure, but like yeah, yeah, yeah,
luckily your accents are all neutral and vanilla, yeah exactly

(39:31):
voice yeah yeah, um uh no. I did I think
I've told this story on the internet before that. One
time I was giving a talk about diabetes in the
Bronx and I asked if this kid wanted to ask
These kids they wanted to ask any questions, and young
women itching to ask a question just goes, do you

(39:52):
guys really have pies? With meeting them, like as if
she hadn't misled her whole life. I was able to
confirm that what I savory pies like fucked me up.
When I was in France, I was completely unprepared for
the existence of these things. I volunteered to cook for
a bunch of um, a bunch of activists who are
busy having their meeting, and I was like, yeah, sure,

(40:12):
I'll come cook for you. And I figured I would
just like show up and make pasta burritos because I'm
an American. And they gave me a lemonnu and on
it was tarte legume and I was like, I know
what those words mean. That means pie, vegetables, and that
isn't that doesn't exist. I don't know what the funk
you're talking about. Um, this is not a very interesting

(40:35):
story and now everyone's heard it. But I learned how
to make a vegetable pie on no notice because that
was what the menu insisted upon. And yeah, I I
feel for this person in the Bronx who wasn't convinced
that you were telling the truth about meat pies. Yeah,
I'm if they're listening. I was a promise looking up.

(40:57):
Now they got Google. Yeah, the lesson we've learned there
is and cook for French people, so other games. One
of the cool things is that nations competing instead of states, right,

(41:18):
And we can fucking go off on the difference between
nations and states. The state is the entity the that
has political control and exercise of monopoly on the gitimate
violence in the geographic area. A nation is an imagined
community that exists across base and time. That's the shortest
I'm going to do that, and I'm not going to
say anything that what's a country between those country is

(41:40):
it's a geographical area that is state controls, but sometimes
it's mapped onto nation as well, right, like Catalonia being
a good example. But for most of the time people
use it synonymously with state. So countries aren't competing. Nations are, right.
The exiled Jews of Europe are competing, right, because if
you're Jewish and it's nineteen thirty six, don't want to

(42:01):
fucking like marching there with the German flag, I would
imagine doesn't feel good like negative vibes, so they don't
do that. There. They are the exiled Jews, right, and
the anti fascists who are exiled from Germany Italy. They
also come in with their own different flags. Right. Um.
Initially there was some rumblings about the U a CP

(42:23):
sort of competing in the end of the United States team,
which is made up of trade unionists, had black and
white folks on it. The organizers are actually so invested
in like um, the I guess including a pressed black
people from the United States within the remit of people

(42:44):
who sort of anti fascism wanted to advocate for that.
They threw this whole Olympics together in like three or
four months. It was shoestring budget. It's funded by the
French government, Spanish government, the Catalan government, individual donors, and
some trade unions from Norway. And they took their very
sparse money and we're like, we will pay your way

(43:06):
if you if you're black people from America want to
come over here, cause we understand its ship over there
if you want to come and play with us, and
that's fine, which is cool, Like fuck you to the
fact that because the whole Olympics is a fuck you
to to Nazi Germany, right, and so it's cool that
it also was like and fuck you too. Racism in
the United States also like I like that, Yeah, and

(43:27):
like it's also worth noting, actually, look, why are we
saying fuck you to the Nazis and that like the
people at the popular Olympics like ran faster, jumped higher,
worre stronger, like the Olympics are extremely gate kept by class.
We see that. We see that kind of crumbling like
with your with your man Jesse Owens and stuff like that. Right,
but at this point there were still workers sports and

(43:49):
bourgeois sports and bourgeois sports twins the Olympics, right, Like
the Olympics still had an amateurism rule. If you got
paid for exercising, you couldn't go. H So yeah, which
meant that like working class people, right, like if you
don't get paid time off, and one gets paid time
off it's six then they can't go and compete. Right
Like if even if you work full time and I say, hey, Margaret,

(44:10):
I'll pay for a couple of weeks, you know, I'll
make sure I take care of your rents so you
can go and do the Olympics, Nope, if you run
a benefit race after the Olympics, they will take your
medal away. Tom Longboat who they did that too. They
do that a whole lot to people who aren't white, shockingly. Um, so, yeah,
Olympics not great. Actually, maybe we'll do a whole left

(44:31):
bird and the Olympics do some bad ship. But yeah,
these people come from America right on the team. It's
Charlie Burley. Charlie Burley goes on to be kind of
a legendary boxer, right, he's biracial man from Pennsylvania. Uh.
And Dot Tucker she's a black woman. She ran her
union in the Bronx and she ran hardromiters as well. Yeah,

(44:55):
fucking planned that one out. Yeah, I love And they've
written into the script like planned out. It's good, don't
we It sounds sarcastic, but I actually mean it really honestly.
You can appreciate the joy I'm feeling right now. And
so that games brings twenty thou anti fascist to Barcelona, right,

(45:15):
and some of them are watching, some of them are competing,
some of them are staying in hotels. The Hotel Olympic
is where most of them stay. But they ran of space.
So about two weeks before the games, they went around
random houses and we're like, hey, can you have someone
to stay? So lots of the athletes are just like
crashing with people. It's kind of cool. If you go
to the archive in Barcelona, you can see the little

(45:35):
forms where they go up to a house and be like, okay,
this person has two beds and they can take care
of breakfast. And that's two athletes who can stay here.
They went door to door. Yeah, it's heartbreaking seeing that
ship and then knowing what happened. Um, I was thinking
it was like a better way to Um. Yeah, like
that's what Airbnb should be, you know, yes, yeah, I
think if the Airbnb, if we compare this to the

(45:58):
Berlin Olympic village where the Condor legions stayed before they
headed off to bomb people in Spain, we will see
that one side is better than the other side. And yeah,
so these people are staying all across Barcelona, right. They's
trained in the stadium the day before they distriputed all
around the city. So in the morning of the these

(46:20):
are kind of hardcore Catholic conservatives. Um, they report to
the stand Indario barracks outside of Barcelona. Meanwhile, at the
pedroal Bes barracks, officers get their troops up, but think
a four in the morning serve them a ration of
rum for breakfast and tell them that there's been an
anarchist uprising in the city that they have to put down,

(46:42):
and so they send them my right, this is a lie. Yeah,
the uprising is in fact what they are doing as
they march into the city. It's telling that they lie
because the troops are conscripts and are not really brought
into their nationalist crusade at this point. And it's worth
always remember, and they're like working class people get trapped
up in wars, often not by their own choosing. Well,

(47:04):
so it's kind of like how they're like, you have
to go out and fight Antifa, you have to go
out and do a coup against the United States because
otherwise Antifa, who are all Stalinists, are going to turn
the US into the uss are. Yes, yeah, yeah, that's yeah,
there are there's no parallel. No, that's that's not a parallel. Sorry, Okay,

(47:25):
it could never happen here, and that's that's our big
message for today. So these guys they start heading down
Abgnula Diagonal right towards Plastic Cataluniar at the heart of city,
the cavalry or on a different street, Kara Tarragona. There
are dragoons on a different street. They leave a little
later because the Spanish armies something of a clusterfuck, and
they all plan to join up, but they never did. Instead,

(47:48):
all across the city, sirens sound the alarm in factories
and where these troops have been planning to meet up
with one another. They met up with sniper fire and
those homemade bombs we talked about. Yeah, yeah, this is
where ship gets gets good. At the barricades, they met
men and women with everything from modern machine pistols to
blunderbusses and slingshots. Yeah, the blunderbusses are pretty cool. You

(48:12):
can find some pictures. Many troops were forced back into
their barracks. Some made it as far as a telephone
exchange and the hotel's riots and cologne in the middle
of the city. What the troops, who are incredibly poorly
trained consecuts with little or no combat experience and even
less willingness to fight, ran into it was the most

(48:32):
unlikely of alliances. Catalonia's Nationalists had governed the autonomous region
since the declaration of the Republic in nineteen thirty one.
They formed a broad leftist alliance called the ESCO Republic
Canada Catalonia. That means Catalan Republican Left. I was calling
the e r C to avoid that. It's a bit
of an alphabet soup, but I'll try and explain where
I need to. So before the Popular Front existed, they're

(48:55):
kind of a proto popular front. They could bind the
liberal and leftist parties who share agreement on autonomous and
progressive Catalonia. And they tend to be either aligned with
or to the left of the government in Madrid, most
often to the left of UM. They don't cover support
of the anarchists. Right, that's important, um luis compounds who's
the leader right there, the Catalan leader of the generality

(49:19):
that at that point has been a lawyer for the
anarchist before, so he may have more personal support than
the party as a whole, hands among the anarchists. UM.
For decades, right, the police in Barcelona have acted on
behalf of capital against labor. They do violence for the
people who aren't stuff against people who make stuff. And
even under the Republic, this has continued. Right they had

(49:39):
called it the Republic of order, and Margot, I think
you covered the like the pistosema right there. The years
of the pistol in the nineteen twenties. Yeah, yeah, but
um it was yeah, they like shooting the anarchists in
order to bring about order. They and they it wasn't
like a legal thing. They weren't like, oh, is there
a egal strategy. It was just like we're in charge,

(50:02):
so we will assassinate the anarchists. And then the other
thing that like, I feel like it's like we're thinking
about because if if someone's hearing, you might be like,
why does the government care if the anarchists are on
their side? And it's to my understanding and correct me
if I'm wrong. The anarchists are like a huge chunk
of the working class of Barcelona at this point, so
it's like they actually do care because it's a huge,

(50:24):
huge swaths of people. The anarchists by the end of
the night will own the city, right, and they have
always been the majority of the Catalan working class in
this period. They they control the way elections go. Right.
When the anarchists abstained, then the right winds when the
anarchists they don't say, don't vote, like they don't like

(50:44):
they're not like, yeah, I go vote, They're like they
don't maybe consider not abstaining, then the popular front winds. Right. Yeah,
it's very funny how they how they use words. But yeah,
the the anarchists are the working class for the most
of the most of the industries, most of the unions
are anarcho synicalist. Right, so you don't have support the anarchists,

(51:05):
you don't have support the working class. In the twenties,
the cops called the anarchists. The anarchists called the cops. Right.
This is how we get the famous affinity groups, right
Lost Darios, los Quixotes, Delidiale and being some famous ones. Right,
And we'll talk about them a little bit in the
next episode how that works and what they mean. Uh.

(51:28):
So ninety one, their declaration of Republic was a massive
boost for the anarchists. More people have joined anarchist unions.
They felt safe for doing so. Primo de Rivera, the
previous dictator had been very harsh an anarchists. They actually,
briefly in the out job the GAT secured like libertarian
socialists and they just took over some towns. Uh and

(51:50):
like they they see his weapons from the cops and
abolished currency for a week and it was just like
get it's on it's it's anarchism. And so for five
days for goals belonged to the people of the gold.
And this is before we're talking about, before the the
coup and all of that. Yeah, this is republic begins
in n So there's a number of these early on

(52:12):
in the Republic, when the state is less violently postured
towards anarchism, the anarchists really fucking send it um. You
see it in Casas via hearsts, you see in fig goals.
So yeah, they more people joining because they feel safe
for joining, and that leads to more open conflict with
the sort of civil order I guess. But with the

(52:33):
threat of fascism looming, the CNT establishes defense committees and
these become like a quick reaction force for the city. Right,
so by the time the troops leave their barracks, activists
within the CNT were ready for them. Barcelona's reval, the
densely populated district just off the more tourists friendly Rambler
have become known as a Bari Chines and that means Chinatown,

(52:54):
not because Chinese people are people of any Asian extraction
lived there. That's because they watched gangster movies about Chicago's Chinatown,
and they were like, oh yeah, we're we can go
that hard. Okay, they just called it that. Chris Elum
has a great book on the construction of Chinatown. Now,
people have been shooting each other in those streets for decades, right,
But for once everyone in the revol was pointing their

(53:17):
guns out every balcony, and the raval becomes a sniper's nest,
and by the time the sun came up, it was
an impenetible fortress of the working class. And at this
time the state would find itself begging the anarchist for
support and not the other way around. And I think
that's maybe where we'll end it today, so that people

(53:38):
can be sort of teetering on the edge of the
seat to know what happened next. Thank you very much
for joining me, Margaret. Would you like to plug anything?
Do you have any plug dobles? Well, I have a
book that's available for pre order. It's called We Won't
Be Here Tomorrow. And if you like um trans woman
who robs guys and then feeds them to her mermaid lover,

(54:02):
or you like the Um the Dead and Valhalla coming
back and joining in an American Civil War, to fight
against Nazis, then you might like this book. Um actually,
I think I read that story on this podcast. Um
fucking ruin the next episode, because that's what happened as well,

(54:22):
I know, I know. Well, actually there's a different story
that I didn't write. I think. Oh no, there's one
about um velociraptors in the Spanish Civil War. Um that
that anyway, that's completely unrelated. Okay, So that is where
you I am. The book is currently available for pre

(54:43):
order and if you get it from a k Press
or a couple other different independent bookstores, then it comes
with a free art print that comes from the book.
And so if you like that, you could consider getting
it or ask your library to get it. And you
can follow me on the internet at Magpie killed Joy
on Twitter and Margaret killed on Instagram. That's I have

(55:04):
a podcast, I do. I actually have two podcasts. I
have a podcast called Live Like the World Is Dying,
which is an individual and community preparedness podcast, and I
also have a podcast on this very network. Um I do. Yeah,
you all haven't noticed it yet. I've just been kind
of uploading my stuff without checking with you all called
cool people who did cool stuff, which is all about history,

(55:29):
but in a fun way about stuff that cool. Yes,
I'm exciting begin right now. Thank you very much, thanks
for having me. It could Happen Here as a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,

(55:49):
visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
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Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.