ABSTRACT
After the Civil War, Franco claimed that the Rising had been a pre-emptive strike to prevent a left-wing take-over. Except within Nationalist propaganda, no such communist conspiracy had ever existed, yet one of the many ironies of Spain’s Civil War was that the Army rebellion triggered off a Spanish revolution which was broadly anarchist rather than communist. Throughout Republican Spain, except in the Basque Provinces, the established authorities were swept aside and replaced by workers’ committees. This revolutionary change affected both towns, where councils gave way to political parties and industry was run by collectives, and the countryside, where agrarian collectives were formed to organise farming and local services [Doc. 3d].
