Blog post by Lori Dedeyan.

A recent exhibit in Library Special Collections drew on our rich collections of material related to the Spanish Civil War to explore the conflict within the context of its early revolutionary promises in Catalonia. The premise of this exhibit was inspired by my observations during a recent summer trip to Barcelona. Now back in Los Angeles, what remains with me is a jumble of impressions, collectively charged by the electric feeling of the city - observing the presence of cooperatives and squats, spotting anarchist graffiti, or standing in front of the graves of anarchist heroes Durruti, Ferrer and Ascaso in the sprawling Cementerio de Montjuïc, as a Balearic breeze ruffled the faded tributary flags and plastic flowers. Beside the official efforts made by the city to memorialize the conflict, the more ephemeral memorials on the city walls and streets, sprayed or wheat-pasted, sought to readapt its essential messages to the current situation. Some photo/graphic mementos from these experiences are included here.

The region of Catalonia, with Barcelona as its pulsing heart, has always maintained an insistently individual identity, with a distinct language and culture. It is, in addition, the largest industrial center in Spain, with an accordingly developed workers' movement that was led, in the early twentieth century, by anarcho-syndicalists. These factors made it a natural epicenter of resistance prior to and during the Spanish Civil War and a subsequent target, in the years of the Franco regime, of suppression through a rigorous campaign of forced cultural assimilation. These memories can explain the questions of identity that today still seem to hang in the air.

As the event itself has receded in time and its historical narrative constructed and then reassessed, there have been efforts to reintroduce the seminal revolutionary influence of the anarchist movement and workers' trade-unionism to a historical discourse that has seen it overshadowed by the conflict between the Communists and Fascists. In Catalonia, the National Confederation of Labor (C.N.T.) and the Iberian Anarchist Federation (F.A.I.) were representatives of this movement.

Pamphlets and newspapers form a large part of the exhibit, as they have traditionally been the formats of choice for the dissemination of news and propaganda. They were used particularly in the decades of anarchist activity and outreach preceding the Spanish Civil War. As Diaz de Moral wrote in 1923, "Reading was unrelenting by night in the farmsteads; by day in the ploughed fields, during (smoking) breaks the spectacle was always the same: some worker reading and the rest listening very attentively...Farm laborers carried some pamphlet or newspaper in their knapsacks along with their lunches. Any one of the trade unionist villages received hundreds of copies of the like-minded press, purchased even by those who could not read." During the conflict itself, pamphlets were also used for critique or to rally support abroad. The pamphlets here are international in scope and varied in perspective, including commentary by notable anarchists such as Rudolph Rocker. They are primarily from the years 1936-1938.

This exhibit features a copy of George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia from the library of Susan Sontag. Orwell fought in Barcelona during the earlier stages of the war, as a member of the International Brigades. In an article for the New English Weekly in mid-1937, he wrote: "The fact which these papers have so carefully obscured is that the Spanish Government (including the semi-autonomous Catalan Government) is far more afraid of the revolution than of the Fascists...By January [1937] power had passed, though not so completely as later, from the Anarchists to the Communists, and the Communists were using every possible method, fair and foul, to stamp out what was left of the revolution. The Spanish Civil War was notable for its internationalism, which it still seems to inspire today. Below are stickers I photographed on the headstone of Buenaventura Durruti's grave, originating in Austria, Chile, France and Mexico.

The early stages of the Spanish Revolution, which saw the formation of workers' and peasants' cooperatives, along with the degree of success with which they administered their affairs, still maintain a hold on the popular spirit and imagination. Personally, handling these archival materials and recalling their contemporary analogues in Barcelona reinforced the notion of how we sift through the documents of history for the relevant lessons that will help us interpret where we find ourselves now. The past and present both are made in the image of the other.