The Egalitarian Dream in Revolutionary Catalonia

Radical initiatives to collectivise the land were defining features of the social revolution at the start of the Spanish Civil War. This book examines these agrarian collectives as integral to the upheaval that disabled the functions of the state across Catalonia, the revolution’s epicentre. Using a range of original sources, it shows that the region’s collectives were more extensive and diverse than previously understood and investigates the varied experiences of those who joined them. While for some the collectives represented empowering experiments in popular sovereignty and socialised work, the book also explores cases in which the principles of egalitarianism and worker self-management were undermined by internal tensions and the external pressures of war. It traces how polarised responses to the collectives intersected with broader contestations over public order and the rural economy among the region’s anti-fascist organisations, deepening existing fractures within the anarchist movement. It also examines the violent rural conflicts between anarchists and rival local groups – most notably the bloody events at La Fatarella in January 1937 and the fierce suppression of the collectives after May 1937. This volume offers new perspectives on the complex dynamics of the Spanish Civil War for students and scholars of Spanish modern history.