Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [12]
Recap notes on sides (city suffers from a plague of acronyms):
Nationalists – loose coalition of the Catholic church, the landed, the Carlists and about half the military. Attempted coup against elected gvt in Jul 36. Didn’t win everywhere but has maybe half the country.
Republicans – loose coalition of anarchists, unionists, socialists and communists. Elected to power, formed the 2nd Rep. of Spain. Unions etc. formed militia to defend against military uprising. 2nd Rep. issued civilians with weapons etc.
Barcelona is held by the Republicans, after fierce street fighting.
I arrived two nights ago and presented my papers at the Independent Labour Party’s offices. McNair – the local ILP head – read through the letter of introduction and looked up at me.
‘A novelist, eh? You’ve come to write about the struggle?’
‘No,’ I answered, ‘I’ve come to join it.’
He looked at me, a look that said the accent had been noted, a look that pitied this idealistic middle-class man come to fight fascists. Another one out to play soldiers, to create his own little version of the Great War in order to assuage the guilt at having been just too young before. To sate the bloodlust that had been beaten into him at prep school.
He took me to the Lenin barracks, signed me up with the POUM (Partido Obero de Unificación Marxista), the local equivalent of the ILP. Apparently, had I come with Communist Party papers I would have joined the new Internationale Brigades. As it is, I’m in barracks as the POUM get another centuria of fighters together to go up the line.
I spent the evening trying to talk to the other volunteers, with my fractured phrasebook Spanish. The majority speak Catalan, however, which shares much vocab with French. We drank, sang and slept.
The drill is appallingly bad. There is much marching about and shouting, but little real practise with weapons. Many do not have guns, even, and the uniform is ragged. We look rather more like a bunch of tramps. In the afternoon, I showed some of the others how to dismantle and clean the elderly Mauser rifle I have been issued with. I suspect it last saw service in the Boer War. McNair popped by with more recruits and to see how I was. He seemed surprised to find me still here, still more interested in fighting than writing.
Today, the centuria were not confined to their barracks, so I wandered the city. The buildings are draped in banners, gaudily splashed with the red and the black of the anarchist movement. Requisitioned transport, daubed with the initials of one of the many political groups that run the city, drive up the wide boulevards or through the squares at dangerous speed. See notes at the front of this diary for initial impressions.
Everyone is ‘comrade’. The staff at the collectivised cafés bring food or drink without the old subservience. This is a city freed of the obligations of class.
Still, there are bread queues.
I spent the first part of this evening sat at a café, having arranged to meet McNair there. He sauntered up the street towards me. He had two people with him, walking on either side. The woman had dark hair, pulled back from her serious eyes and tucked into a beret. Curls had escaped though, and she was tucking them behind her ear as she argued with McNair. The man was slim, almost wiry, glancing about as he walked and with one hand resting on something hanging on a leather strap from his shoulder. Both were dressed in the rough black work clothes of the anarchist militia, the Confederación Nacional de Trabajo