Socorro Rojo del P.O.U.M. ('POUM Red Aid') was a volunteer organization in Spain, active during the Spanish Civil War. The organization was set up by the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), modelled after the Communist Party-led International Red Aid. [1] All P.O.U.M. party members had to be members of the organization. [2]
The Central Committee of the organization issued the monthly publication Socorro Rojo P.O.U.M. from Barcelona 1936–1937. [3] [4]
The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification was a Spanish communist political party formed during the Second Republic and mainly active around the Spanish Civil War. It was formed by the fusion of the Trotskyist Communist Left of Spain and the Workers and Peasants' Bloc against the will of Leon Trotsky, with whom the former broke. The writer George Orwell served with the party's militia and witnessed the Stalinist repression of the movement, which would help form his anti-authoritarian ideas in later life, and motivated him to cooperate with the British Foreign Office in anti-communist propaganda activities.
Andreu Nin Pérez was a Spanish communist politician, translator and publicist. In 1937, Nin and the rest of the POUM leadership were arrested by the Moscow-oriented government of the Second Spanish Republic on trumped up charges of collaborating with Francisco Franco's Nationalists and were on tortured to death by Soviet NKVD agents. On 17 June 2013, 76 years after his death, the Parliament of Catalonia officially paid homage to him and his work on politics with special emphasis on his work as Justice Minister of Catalonia.
The May Days, sometimes also called May Events, refer to a series of clashes between 3 and 8 May 1937 during which factions on the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War engaged one another in street battles in various parts of Catalonia, centered on the city of Barcelona.
Indalecio Prieto Tuero was a Spanish politician, a minister and one of the leading figures of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in the years before and during the Second Spanish Republic.
Juan Guilloto León, usually referred to as Modesto or Juan Modesto, was a Republican army officer during the Spanish Civil War.
The Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista, frequently shortened to just "FET", was the sole legal party of the Francoist regime in Spain. It was created by General Francisco Franco in 1937 as a merger of the Carlist, monarchist, and ultracatholic Traditionalist Communion with the fascist Falange Española de las JONS. In addition to the resemblance of names, the party formally retained most of the platform of FE de las JONS and a similar inner structure. In force until April 1977, it was rebranded as Movimiento Nacional in 1958.
The Spanish Republican Army was the main branch of the Armed Forces of the Second Spanish Republic between 1931 and 1939.
International Red Aid was an international social service organization established by the Communist International. The organization was founded in 1922 to function as an "international political Red Cross", providing material and moral aid to radical "class war" political prisoners around the world.
Encarnación Fuyola Miret was a Spanish teacher and Communist activist who played a significant role as a propagandist in the period leading up to and during the Spanish Civil War. Later she went into exile in Mexico.
Joan Comorera i Soler was a Spanish Communist politician, journalist and writer from Catalonia who spent several years in Argentina before returning to Spain in 1931 at the start of the Second Spanish Republic. He was a Catalan nationalist, and was elected chairman of the Socialist Union of Catalonia in 1933. In 1936 he became Secretary General of the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC), in alliance with the Spanish Communist Party. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) he built up his party into a major political force during the struggles among the supporters of the Republic between Socialists, Stalinists, Trotskyists and Anarcho-syndicalists. After the Republicans were defeated by the right-wing forces led by Francisco Franco he went into exile, living in Mexico and then in France. In 1949 he was expelled from the Communist party for his Catalan nationalism, and survived an assassination attempt. In 1951 he moved back to Catalonia using a false name. He was arrested in 1954 and died in prison four years later.
Jesús Hernández Tomás was a Spanish communist leader. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) he was Minister of Education and Fine Arts, then Minister of Education and Health. After the war he went into exile in Oran, Moscow and then Mexico. He was expelled from the party in 1944 for disloyalty to the leadership, and purged from the official history of the party after writing a book in 1953 critical of the Stalinist role in the Civil War.
Antonio Mije García was a member of the Spanish Communist Party who became a deputy for Seville in the Second Spanish Republic. He served in various senior positions during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). After the war he lived in France, Mexico and Czechoslovakia. He managed to retain his position as a party executive during the internecine struggles of the long years of exile.
The Madrid Defense Council was an ad-hoc governing body that ran Madrid, Spain, for about six months during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). It was formed in November 1936 after the Spanish Republican government had fled to Valencia when General Francisco Franco's forces advanced on Madrid. It was expected that the city would fall within a few days, but the arrival of the International Brigades halted the rebel advance, and the situation settled into a stalemate. The council was dominated by communists, who had superior organization and propaganda to the other groups. Their policy was to organize the militias into regular troops and focus on defeating the enemy, rather than to undertake revolutionary activity. As time passed there was growing tension between the communists and more radical groups. The council was dissolved in April 1937 and replaced by a new city council.
José Cazorla Maure was a Spanish communist leader during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). He was one of the leaders of the Unified Socialist Youth. For several months in 1936–37 he was a member of the Madrid Defense Council in charge of public order. He was ruthless in weeding out sabotage or subversion, and earned the hostility of the anarchists and Trotskyites. Later he was made governor of the province of Albacete and then of Guadalajara. He remained in Spain after the war, and was arrested and executed by firing squad.
Women in the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM), in the Spanish Civil War were faced with many of the same problems as other Communist and Anarchist women in the 1930s, such as hypocrisy of the male leadership in their support of women's rights, while continuing their sexist and patriarchal behavior in private.
Women in exile during Francoist Spain were a result of their being on the wrong side during the Spanish Civil War. The repression behind nationalist lines during the war and the immediate years that followed left many politically active women with few choices but to leave or face death. The exact totals of women who were murdered, fled or disappeared is unknown, as it was only possible to make estimates.
Women in POUM in Francoist Spain were few as many, along with male dominated leadership, were forced into exile following the end of the Spanish Civil War. Those in exile often felt isolated and alone. Those who remained were sometimes sent to prison. POUM women participated in a hunger strike at Madrid's Las Ventas prison in 1946. The group fell by the wayside as Partido Comunista de España became the pre-dominant resistance organization in Spain. The organization finally dissolved during the 1950s in Toulouse, France with its memory kept alive by the wife of its last president, María Teresa Carbone, through the Fundació Andreu Nin.
Benito Pabón y Suárez de Urbina was an Andalusian lawyer, trade unionist and member of the Congress of Deputies of Spain for the city of Zaragoza during the last legislature of the republican period. He was a lawyer of the workers and peasants of the CNT, later becoming part of the trentista current - first joining the Federal Democratic Republican Party and later the Syndicalist Party.
The 29th Division was a military formation belonging to the Spanish Republican Army that fought during the Spanish Civil War. Originally created in 1937 from the militarization of the POUM militia column, it was dissolved and recreated again in early 1938, operating on the Extremadura front.
 | This Spain-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |