Spain 1936 / 1939, what are the anarchist posters
during the civil war ?

Un grito pegado en la pared !
A shout posted on the wall ! (Josep Renau / Manuel Monleon)

With a quick glimpse of the eye we are able to date a poster edited : in 1968 by the Atelier des Beaux-Arts (Paris) ; during the Chinese cultural revolution, or during the Hippie era on the West Coast of the United-States.
As opposed to these examples (and to the myth), in Spain during the Civil war between 1936 and 1939, there was neither graphic unity nor the creation of a particular style despite being tied to a major cultural event of the 20 th century.
This is perhaps unfortunate, but the Spanish posters produced were deeply rooted in styles which were already predominant in the mid-1930's : advertising posters and Stalinist and fascist propaganda posters (1). Wally Rosell

For some sociologists, “we” learn much about the social context of a neighbourhood or city by paying close attention to what its walls have to say. What do the walls of red and black Spain have to tell ?
Even a superficial analysis of the anarchist posters edited in Spain between 1936 and 1939 reveal much more than the simple compilation of these “works” in a catalogue :

• they reveal the human values of the artists and the social aspirations of the commissioning organization ;
• they suggest the way in which the producers saw the audience and the degree of social and political awareness of the individuals (of the society) that they addressed. In this respect it is interesting to compare the posters produced by our comrades and those we see today in the form of advertisements and for candidates in the 2007 french presidential elections.

“The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from thes in clean reds and blues
that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud.”
Georges Orwell in Homage to Catalonia .

These posters bring with them a new element to understand this period: colour. It brings life and humanity to characters which up until then had been represented only in sepia.
Conversely, their dates are very imprecise. The main sources provide us only with the year in which they were printed (except those tied to a particular event: congresses, specific festivities, demonstrations, etc.). But as Carles Fontseré (2) has pointed out, the graphic design and texts cannot be removed from the political, social, and military contexts of the period in which each poster was created.
The anarchist posters cannot be distinguished by a particular graphic design or signature. Above all, it is the themes addressed and the total autonomy of the commissioning bodies which differentiated them.

Who commissions ?
Who signs the anarchist posters ?

Federalism is one of the basic pillars of anarchism. In looking into who was commissioning, we wanted to see if the propaganda of libertarian organisations became monopolised by the national libertarian authorities (National committee of the CNT or peninsular committees of the FAI and FIJL). To put it bluntly, did the anarchist ministers suppress the propaganda of libertarian organisations ?

Quantitatively, regardless of the year—1936, 1937, or 1938, the distribution between local, regional, and national levels remained practically the same :
•  slightly less than one third of the (drawn) posters were commissioned directly by trade unions or confederal columns (ex: the Iron column or the Barcelona union of bakers) ;
•  between 40% and 50% of the posters were edited by a Regional Federation of the CNT, FIJL, Mujeres Libres, etc.
•  and “only” 30% by national committees.
One does not have to be a professional historian to know that in Valencia (the government headquarters), Barcelona , Bilbao , or Madrid , subjects of dispute were not what lacked in the CNT or in the libertarian movement in general. In fact, if every designer keep his own style, they work, live, debate all together in their collective workshops.

Qualitatively, the anarchist posters were on the one hand opposed to communist positions and government strategy, without ever attacking the anarchist ministers: War and revolution are inseparable. Farmers, the revolution put the land in your hands. Don't let it be taken away from you! On the other hand, they fully revealed very different internal positions on numerous subjects :
•  For victory, unique command and discipline (CNT National Committee).
•  Our coasts are well guarded by our brave marines ( CNT NC ).
•  Ambition, militarism, and war are fascism.
•  Against military nationalism, the invincible strength of the proletariat (Levant CNT FAI).
•  Our wish list : arms and munitions (Iron Column which never agree with the militarization of the militia).
•  Freedom for the antifascist prisoners -in prison in the republican camp- SIA

On some, a brave soldier is glorified, looking straight ahead at the front line. Aside from the CNT FAI acronym, it is often difficult to distinguish them from communist or governmental military posters. On others, it is the militiaman/worker/farmer that remains the central figure right up to the defeat.

Spain 1936, continuity in the anarchist graphic tradition

The posters, postcards, and other graphic productions of this period for the most part belong to the tradition of “imagery” dating back to the late 19 th century. Three themes are recurrent both in drawings and texts :

• Anarchism is struggle. It is the destruction of capitalism, power, and of their representatives. Mason, navvy, metallurgist… it is most often a man with overly muscular forearms. A hand (present on over 50% of posters) exhibiting the tools of the revolution : a gun, a sickle, a hammer, a sledgehammer. Its goal : to crush fascism and build a new society.
  Female fighters were very present in 1936, but then the graphic mores of institutional morality took hold of anarchist production and women again found their “place” as nurses, “Madonna and child”, victims of fascism, etc. Men were at the front and women in the home.
• Anarchism is the liberation of the individual. Freedom is the most commonly used word on the libertarian posters (along with revolution). The anarchists break chains and free the people from oppression. Militias (represented both by men and women) lead the way to putting the revolution into action: Onward freedom fighters ! The body is also liberated from catholic morals. Nudity, which at this time had not yet become the stronghold of advertising, was a symbol of freedom : Woman, conjugal bliss is in your hands. On a few of the FIJL posters, it is an eagle -the symbol of the FAI- which is liberating “Man” from his chains. Culture is also a central element in awaking awareness of the people and hence in their liberation. For anarchists (in Spain and elsewhere) a self-managed libertarian revolution cannot be conceived if culturally the people are in the clutches of obscurantism. The work of the CENU and other teaching federations was regularly complimented : The New School (CENU) means the people are free. Anarchist books are weapons against fascism.
• A new world is being built, workers are implementing social revolution, and they are announcing it on red and black walls across Spain . Themes such as the birth of a new world, harmony, and of a new society, are recurrent from the Paris Commune onward. From the late 19th century these themes are very often present on the posters of Luce, Grandjouan, and Steinlen, in Seurat's paintings, and in the illustrations of libertarian periodicals in all countries. The sun rises on the socialised transport industries, behind a barricade held by the CNT-AIT-FAI, or announcing the congress of the construction industry.
  A new world is born on the posters : a naked man and woman symbolise rebirth and the purity of libertarian communism. Doves (of peace) are red and black ; talk is of “building tomorrow” and about work. The words “socialisation” and (new) “humanity” are often used.
  Workers are proud of what they have accomplished under particular conditions: Our masterpiece: the socialised transport industry. Farmers, the revolution gave you your land; it will give you the machines to work it.

19 or 18 July 1936.

The libertarian movement was the only one -from 1936 to 1939- to celebrate this day. On which the trade unions and popular forces pushed the military putschists away from Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid, Valencia, etc. The other republican organisations preferred to glorify the victory of the Popular Front (February 1936) or the advent of the fisrt Republic (1931). The communists chose 18 July (the day of the military uprising)... like Franco, who declared 18 July a public holiday.

If 19 July was to be glorified by libertarians through to the end of the conflict, the way the different posters (texts and graphic composition) addressed the subject depended on the particular context of each one. As such, one same artist would address different themes depending on the period during which he designed the posters :
•  Summer-automn of 1936, the proletariat had defeated the military. Victorious, man is upright (on a barricade) and brandishing his trophy : a gun. There is no need for a slogan as his smile and confidence say it all.
•  Winter of 1936-1937, the mobilisation. A character takes up most of the space, he (the anarchist organisations) is a barricade ; he is not alone, the people are behind him : is he still a militiaman or already a soldier ? To whom is the slogan addressed : to the fascists or the government and the stalinist party which had just opened secret jail (the checas) ?
•  1938, defeat is likely, the heroes (soldiers) and last defences must be exalted.

What colour was the Mono Azul ? (the blue overalls and the blue monkey)
Red, blue, brownish-orange, yellow. Black was used as an accessory colour and for “lines”. The red and black combination was rarely used. Blue was doubly associated with militiaman overalls and with workers (theme of social transformation). Yellow and brownish-orange was used on “farmer” posters, these one are the colours of the Spanish earth and workers face. The red and black flag was more prominent on governmental and communist posters than on libertarian posters, which preferred the symbol of a (red and black) scarf.

Representation of the enemy on antifascist posters

Civil war and revolution : with their posters, the libertarian (and other) organisations offered up their vision of events in Spain and a representation of the “enemy” for their propaganda needs.

For posters and propaganda, it was in the early 1930s that the first recognisable signs appeared on posters: the sickle and hammer, fascist symbols, the red star, logos and even the fascist salute (outstretched arm) and, inversely, the clenched fist. As for the anarchists, they had not yet invented the “circled A”. In the 30' for propagandists (and poster artists) these symbols have a double advantage, allowing both :
- a visible signature, easy to memorize and to identify (including for illiterate parts of the population). Easy to reproduce, this signature worked like a literary or cinematographic ellipse, minimal graphics (and text) and maximal sense for the reader ;
- a unique representation of the enemy through a drawing allowed for the masses to be mobilised by a simplified -for some even simplistic- objective.

Paradoxically, the libertarian and antifascist poster artists, well-known for their antireligious beliefs, very widely used religious symbols and iconography :
•  The hideous beast using dragons, snakes, octopi, monsters, and greenish gargoyles with a red or forked tongue ;
•  diabolical hands with long and crooked fingers ;
•  martyrs of fascism with “crucified” workers on a cross (swastika) ;
•  a bestiary was also used to represent the famous “fifth column”.

Manuel Monlèon was surely the most prolific of all graphic artists and the one who used this symbol most.

Why so many “swastikas” on the (libertarian and other) posters when this was not the emblem of the spanish Falange ?
The simplification of the representation of the “bad guy” using a single image does not explain the frequency of this emblem. Other hypotheses are possible :
•  those ordering the posters and the artists very quickly realised that the conflict largely extended beyond the Iberian borders in political, military, and social spheres. For republican and libertarian leaders, it was at least the future of Europe which was being played out from 19 July 1936 onward. First with the hope of finally seeing fascism fail and at the same time the triumph of a social revolution. And then because a new working class defeat would definitively open up the continent for the fascists and their exactions. With this in mind, the swastika imposed itself as the symbol of what was at stake politically and, as such, of the enemy, at the expense of the emblem of the Falange and even of the representation of the chief of seditious generals, F. Franco. 
•  Inversely, putting the swastika at the forefront allowed internal discord to be “hidden”. Indeed, which enemy should be denounced? The one holding the gun, in which case the swastika (or Falangist fasces) imposed itself or the one commanding the enemy soldier? In this case, State, Army, and Big Capital formed a trilogy which was “THE” traditional representation of the class enemy of anarchists and revolutionaries. However, this was not very visible on the antifascist posters and totally absent from the libertarian posters exactly because it was on this social class (property owners, industrials, rural priests, soldiers loyal to the Republic) that the other part of the republican camp relied: communists, Catalan and Basque nationalists, and the more right-wing socialists. Graphic unity in the republican camp could only be represented by the “smallest common denominator”: the symbol of an EXTERIOR enemy.

Franco -as the main enemy to be eliminated- appeared only on posters as of 1944 (after the nazi defeat).

Sliding from the simplification of graphic representation of the enemy to the use of scapegoats (sign of impending defeat), the fascist representation described above was hijacked by the communists and government in their fight against the POUM, adventurers, the uncontrolled, and all those opposed to the social (challenging revolutionary gains) and military (forced militarization, lack of weapons, etc.) policies of the government.

Unique representation of the enemy for all organisations splintered to pieces with the confrontation between revolutionaries and the government. Fascism (the swastika) disappeared in favour of a different graphic unity: the depiction of victims under bombs with the Madonna and child used as a symbolic figure and representation of the despair of the Spanish people abandoned by all.

From here onward, the republican posters lost their originality and simply mimicked wartime graphic production: notably due to the association in a single space (the poster) of soldiers on the front and the activity of women in the background (waiting sensibly in the home or at work).

Conclusion ?

Collective work in unions or Fine Arts schools and identical production techniques did not make design uniform, nor did they make uniform the message of the libertarian posters in revolutionary Spain.

The production of libertarian posters (republican until mid-1937) in the period from 1936 to 1939 did not come down to a “confrontation” of war-like and nationalist drawings, as was the case for other conflicts in the 20 th century. They were also intended to :
•  raise the conscience level of the people,
•  provoke emotion leading to reflection and adherence,
•  “think” with the eyes.

The posters (and their derivatives) addressed all human activity in this period…except for TWO topics ! Despite the scope of themes addressed, two subjects were left out : religion and a critique of the presence of anarchist ministers.
Indeed, we did not find any libertarian posters condemning the essential role played by the church at Franco's side. Nor did we find any posters critical of the comrade ministers or taking a frontal attack at the government (3).

With defeat, clandestinity, and exile, the production of posters abruptly regressed, both quantitatively and qualitatively. It was not before the death of Franco that period posters reappeared and that the culture of social posters in Spain was reborn. This is still not the case in France.

Wally Rosell

From the book : Espagne 36, les affiches des combattant-e-s de la liberté.
200 posters in 160 pages - Editions Libertaires (2006).

•  A lot of the designers worked before july 1936 for advertasing agency
•  Article by C. Fontserè: Considérations sur les affiches de la Guerre civile
•  I found a poster edited by the National Committee of CNT which claim for « national responsibilities in the upper level.

A few figures on the production of drawn posters in republican Spain (2) :

From a strictly quantitative perspective, with nearly 3 000 posters, over 800 postcards, heundred of stamps, book and periodical covers, mural paintings and decorated trains running through the republican zone, the Spanish Civil War was a major cultural and graphic event of the 20th century.
The Paris Commune (1871) edited about 400 “posters”, as did the Atelier des Beaux-arts in Paris in May and June 1968. Only the Russian revolution produced over 3 000 posters between 1917 and the mid-1920s.

Distribution by year (all organisations combined) :
1936 : 28% ; 1937 : 56% ; 1938 : 16% ; 1939 : less than 1%

Distribution by organisation :
- Communists 22% : PCE, PSUC, JSU, and friends of the USSR , communist regiments, the Secours Rouge International, etc.
- UGT 14%
- PSOE 1.5%
- Libertarian organisations 18% : CNT - FAI - FIJL, Mujeres Libres, SIA, libertarian militias 18%
- POUM : 1.5% (1 poster in 1938)
- Unionist Party : 1.5 %

The weak proportion of “socialist” posters is explained in part by the structural ties between the UGT and the PSOE (at least in 1936) and in part because the socialists could get their messages across with the governmental posters.
The remainder of graphic production is from different governmental authorities : government of Valencia , Generalitat de Catalunya, Levant region and Defence Junta of Madrid , etc.

Finally, 80% of what “we” commonly call Franquist posters of the civil war is actually more recent than 1 st April 1939.

Main themes addressed by the libertarian posters (some posters have two themes ) :

- War, battles, militias, etc. about 30%
- Social revolution, collectivisation of the economy, “ 35%
- Education, culture, women, etc. “ 30%
- (International) solidarity, repression, refugees, victims, “ 15%

The communist galaxy concentrated more than half of its graphic production to a single theme: the War, the popular army, battles, etc. and the social themes less 15% .

The anarchists posters galery :
* 19 juillet 1936 : riposte ouvrière et révolution sociale ; (about this day)
* les colonnes et milices anarchistes CNT - FAI (posters of anarchist milicias)
* les collectivisations et la socialisation des transports
* les collectivisations libertaires agricoles (paesans - farmers)
* l'éducation et la culture libertaire
* les affiches sur la CNT, la FAI, etc.
* Mujeres Libres (Femmes Libres)
* l'insdustrie et les usines socialisées ;
* la représentation de l'ennemi sur les affiches
* les affiches textes : révolution ou guerre civile
* les quotidiens anarchistes (anarchists news papers)
* les revues et hebdomadaires libertaires (news magazine)
* CNT - UGT les affiches unitaires (unity of Trade Unions)
* S.I.A. Solidarité Internationale Antifasciste ;
* propagande stalinienne, communiste, marxiste ;
* sur la militarisation des milices ouvrières et la discipline )
* les timbres édités par la CNT et par la FAI ; (stamps)
* le cinéma, la guerre et la révolution espagnole (Movies, and the civil war)
* les jeunesses libertaires (Youth organisation)
* Eléments biographiques sur ceux (les affichistes) qui ont donné des couleurs à l'Espagne entre 1936 et 1939 (some notes about the anarchists designer)
* le Syndicat des dessinateurs profesionnels de Barcelone (SDP UGT) ; (the history of the designer trade union)
* La lutte anti- franquiste de 1945 à 1978 (poster agins Franco after the WWII)