#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #FRANCE #SPAIN #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #France, UCL AL #330 - Culture, Read: Reyes Casado Gil "The transition in red and black CNT (1973-1980)" (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 How did Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, crowned with its 1936 glory, fail to

reinvent itself after Franco's death in 1975 and the ensuing "democratic
transition"? Let us recall the main stages of this story. ---- The CNT, which
came out of hiding in 1976, relied on around 3,000 activists; it experienced
exponential growth during 1977, probably reaching 300,000 members; 1978 was the
year of a brutal decline, under the effect of centrifugal dissension and police
repression; the Fifth Congress of December 1979 (the first since 1936), in
Madrid, turned into a bureaucratic nightmare, adopting only ideological
principles and no concrete orientation; in July 1980, 67 dissident unions held a
congress in Valence and formed a so-called "renovated" CNT, as opposed to the
"orthodox" CNT-AIT; in the following years, the balance of power is reversed, the
CNT-AIT declines while the renovated CNT successfully establishes itself in
companies; After years of lawsuits brought by the CNT-AIT, the renovated CNT
renounces keeping its acronym and renames itself CGT. It is the Spanish CGT that
we know today, the largest anarcho-syndicalist confederation in the world, with
80,000 members, while the CNT-AIT, which has become above all an ideological
group, has barely 3,000 members. .

The 1976-1980 sequence (rebirth, apogee and discomfiture) is at the center of
Reyes Casado Gil's little book which, as an essential prelude, studies the hippie
and sixty-eight counter-culture under the ending Francoism. And, unsurprisingly,
it draws from it a key explanation of the flash in the pan that was the CNT of
1977. While the competing trade union centrals, the CCOO (close to the
Communists) and the UGT (close to the Socialists) had already taken a one step
ahead, the resurgent CNT opened fire on everything. It certainly attracted to it
many combative workers' groups refusing the social peace announced by the
"democratic transition", but also a whole movement which sought above all a
counter-cultural "milieu" to "be anarchist"... with all the misunderstandings and
misunderstandings that such a melting pot would cause. But other factors came
into play. First there were destabilization enterprises, the best known example
of which was the tragedy at La Scala in Barcelona in January 1978. A petty
criminal, a police provocateur, dragged a group of romantic cenetists into this
stupid and bloody attack. (4 dead), which led to an intense media campaign
against the CNT and began the downsizing. Then there were the political maneuvers
of "guardians of the Temple" - certain circles of veterans in exile, but also the
"purists" of the FAI, relying on an inconsistent bureaucrat, José Bondía - which
culminated in the calamitous Fifth Congress of 1979 .

All of this will be found in detail in this book. Dates, figures, names:
everything is precise, sourced, unstoppable. On the other hand, the whole is
sorely lacking in colors, atmospheres, living testimonies, anecdotes, portraits
of characters, stories of struggle... Social history deserves to be more embodied.

Guillaume Davranche (UCL Montreuil)

Reyes Casado Gil, The Transition in Red and Black. CNT (1973-1980), The Poppy,
2022, 250 pages, 18 euros.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Reyes-Casado-Gil-La-transition-en-rouge-et-noir-CNT-1973-1980
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