ABSTRACT
After the events of May 1937, the space in which the oppositional currents of Spanish anarchism could operate was greatly circumscribed by a combination of violent police and military repression, the increasingly bureaucratised and hierarchical nature of the libertarian movement, and the extension of the draft in the Republican rear. Anarchists in Spain and abroad linked the 'error of participation' in government to a concomitant degeneration in the ideology professed by prominent activists. The twin measures of legalisation and restructuring had been brought forward by the Peninsular Committee for discussion as a last-minute addition to the agenda of the Regional Plenum of the Catalan Federacion Anarquista Iberica in July. In order to defend the integrity of their movement, radical anarchists in Spain had to defend the spaces in which they operated. The libertarian movement in Spain remained important to the administrative functioning of the Republican state.
