Spain that voted for the Popular Front The workers and peasants, however, had other ideas. They without waiting for the promised amnesty for political prisoners. A great strike wave began. "Every city of any importance had at least one general strike during those five months," Felix Morrow wrote in his descrip tion of the period between the election of the Popular Front government and the.fascist revolt.
Land occupations involving tens of thousands of peasant families were mounted against the big estates; in the province of Malaga 125,000 peasant families engaged in a five-week strike.
The Popular Front regime did its best to stem the tide. Press censorship and the state of alarm decreed by the previous government were extended, Anarchist leaders were arrested, and Anarchist headquar ters were closed down.
FASCIST UPRISING On June 4, Minister Augusto Barcia announced that if the syndicalists persist in disobeying the orders of the Ministry of Labor, the government proposes to declare syndicalism outside the law."
But the Spanish ruling class had lost confidence in the ability of the reformist regime to hold the revolution in check. On July 17, 1936, the fascist rebellion began in Morocco. Within days almost all the fifty garrisons in Spain had joined in.
The republican government responded by assuring the masses that everything was under control, while it sought to make a deal with the fascist officers. For two days, with the rebellion advancing, the govern ment refused to arm the workers. Azaña's prime minister, Casares Quiroga, nounced that anyone giving arms to the workers would be shot.
The inability of capitalism to solve the problems facing Spain had been demonstrated during the failure of the reformist regime of 1931-33, and by the record of the Popular Front in power. It was proved once in Feb. 1936Valencia broke open the jails anNO PASARA A photomontage by the German artist/photograph Italian fascism, Franco's backers, threatening the b