A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #23-26 - Singing the Spanish Revolution - Banned Notes: Resistance 13 (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Between July 16 and 17, 1936, General Francisco Franco mutinied among 
his military garrison in Morocco, leading a coup against the Republic. A 
few days later, the two main unions (CNT and UGT) called a general 
strike in response to the military uprising and state apathy. 
Simultaneously with the war, however, libertarians created popular, 
non-state administrative structures and developed collectivization. The 
International Brigades, fighters from around the world, flocked to 
support the Republic, counterbalancing the support Hitler and Mussolini 
gave to the Falangists.

At the height of the war, the Stalinists imposed the normalization of 
collectivization processes and repressed dissident anarchists and 
communists.

Songs accompanied the battles and victories of Iberian libertarians. 
Those words, 90 years later, allow us to relive the struggles, hopes, 
and blood shed by libertarian Spain in those years.

1 CHORALE DURRUTI - ¡A LAS BARRICADAS!

2 LUDD - THIS OUR LIFE

3 LETIZIA FUOCHI - BLANCA MARIPOSA

1 Chorale Durruti - ¡A las barricadas!

The most famous anarchist song of the Spanish Revolution translates as 
"To the barricades!" A song that has spanned eras and continents, 
reinventing itself across genres and generations, still sung and known 
today. " To the barricades! To the barricades! / by the triumph of the 
Confederation ." It is an anthem of the CNT (National Confederation of 
Labour), an anarcho-syndicalist organization founded in Spain in the 
1910s, which inherited the Bakuninist legacy from the times of the First 
International, which would play a fundamental role in 1936-39. With over 
a million members, this union would promote collectivization and block 
the advance of the coup plotters. " The most precious thing is freedom / 
you have to defend it with faith and valor ."

The tune to which these words are sung is that of Warsavianka (or 
Varshavjanka), a Polish fighting song born way back in 1879, which 
probably harks back to a song of the same name from 1831. The tune could 
come from a Russian folk song, and it is precisely in anti-tsarist 
Russia that the song, translated from Polish, became a symbol of the 
First Revolution of 1905.

It goes without saying that every revolution and every revolt always has 
a minimal dose of adventure in its narrative. Songs are born, accompany, 
and fuel these struggles, but it's not always easy or possible to 
reconstruct their exact origins. Until a few years ago, it was unclear 
how an Eastern European anthem had arrived in Spain, even before the 
International Brigades, but thanks to Riccardo Venturi, we now know a 
lot about " A las barricadas ." This anthem was in fact written in the 
early 1930s by Valeriano Orobón Fernández, a young anarcho-syndicalist 
who published the first lyrics of the song in the CNT-FAI weekly in 
November 1933. It was called Marcha Triunfal , and "To the barricades!" 
was only the subtitle, but subversive and sung memory would forever 
consecrate the latter as the "official" name of the piece. In the 
following years, Valeriano endured several prison terms and, having 
fallen ill, died in 1936, before Franco's coup. Anarcho-syndicalists 
named a battalion that fought on various fronts in his memory, as well 
as a subversive group active in 1968 under Franco. On the website "Songs 
Against War," " A las barricadas " is a fitting chapter on the huge 
Warsavianka page , where the song and its variations can be found in 
(almost) every language in the world. And it is there that Riccardo 
Venturi tells us how the anti-Tsar tune reached the ears of his Spanish 
comrades. It is all thanks to Alfred Schulte, a German 
anarcho-syndicalist who visited his Spanish comrades in 1932 and was 
hosted by Valeriano and his wife, Hildegart Taege, of German origins. 
Valeriano also spoke that language and had translated Rudolf Rocker's 
biography of Max Nettlau for the Iberians.

In reconstructions of popular and protest songs, attention is often paid 
to the harshest chants that subversives chanted in marches, or to the 
newspapers and pamphlets that circulated between strikes and workplaces, 
or to the complaints of law enforcement officers who intercepted rebel 
chants. Too often, however, we forget that every revolutionary carries 
his or her struggle songs in his heart, even singing them to himself in 
the shower or bathtub. And it was precisely there that " A las 
barricadas" was born; Valeriano Orobón Fernández heard it sung by Alfred 
Schulte while he was freshening up, and the anarcho-syndicalist 
interrupted him in his intimate moment to write the lyrics he sang. 
Together with his wife, the anarcho-syndicalist translated it into 
Spanish, giving us the lyrics we still know today. This song opens the 
album Chants anarchistes de la guerre d'Espagne , recorded in France by 
the Chorale Durruti (a libertarian youth group from Paris with French, 
Spanish, and Bulgarian men and women), which collected the movement's 
most famous songs, from those preceding the war to those written on the 
front against the Falangists. The album was reissued on CD in 2018 by 
stella*nera, Ateneo degli Imperfetti of Marghera, and the Centro Studi 
Libertari of Milan. The booklet contains the lyrics and the story of how 
it came into the hands of Italian comrades in the first assemblies of 
the CNT in the months following Franco's death.
" En pie el pueblo obrero, a la batalla / hay que derrocar a la 
reacción" (On the people of workers, to the battle / they must destroy 
the reaction ). A song that still resonates today with the Kurdish 
experience of Rojava in hip hop adaptations, or Scandinavian black metal 
covers, "Alle barricate!" It still makes us sing in very different ways, 
at all latitudes but always with the same rhythm.

2 Ludd - This Life of Ours

Immediately after the generals' coup against the Republic, the 
organization of military defense began. The anarchists, and all 
revolutionary forces, therefore had to fight to win the war and 
consolidate the revolution. The Iron Column, for example, operated on 
this basis and with this perspective, formed in early August 1936 by 
3,000 militiamen. As the months passed, the CNT and FAI also accepted 
the militarization of the militias requested by the Madrid government. 
The Iron Column would be the one that resisted this imperative the most, 
paying a very high price for it. " And time flew by / and fatigue did 
not enter my body / and my enthusiasm increased / and I became reckless 
/ and in the morning I went out to look for my enemy / and... all this 
to change life / to give another rhythm / to this life of ours ." These 
words come from "Protest before the libertarians of the present and 
future on the capitulations of 1937 ," which appeared in installments in 
the FAI newspaper "Nosotros" in March 1937, and became the lyrics to a 
song by Ludd. The poetic passage, without direct or explicit references 
to the Spanish events, is found on the first pages of the text signed by 
"Un «incontrolado» della Colonna di Ferro," published in Italian by 
Nautilus (second edition, 2006), with which the Turin publishing house 
inaugurated its editorial journey in the 1980s. Perhaps it is no 
coincidence that in the shadow of the Mole, between the 1990s and 2000s, 
an hard rock-straight edge band was active who chose precisely Columna 
de Hierro as their name . Ludd's old-school hardcore lyrics certainly 
don't lack important historical, political, and poetic references, and 
this song is no exception: " So that men can be brothers / so that joy, 
at least once / exploding in our chests / could explode on Earth / So 
that the revolution / could be a reality ." The song is included on 
their second album, "È tempo di partire," which opens with "Io li odio i 
nazisti dell'Illinois" by the Blues Brothers in Proteggimi , and 
continues with " 18 Marzo 1921," dedicated to the Kronstadt sailors' 
commune, with lyrics taken from news reports of the time, where we also 
find excerpts from poems by Montale and Ingeborg Bachmann. On the CD, 
they make it clear that their militant hard rock only plays in 
"self-managed situations: no political parties or unions, no sponsors or 
institutional funding." Their most recent album, "Un silenzio vivente ," 
features the famous photo of a Spanish militiawoman from 1936 smiling 
proudly with the city in the background, featured on the cover in a 
magnificent collage.

3 Letizia Fuochi - Blanca Mariposa

"La scelta" is a 2025 album released by singer-songwriter Letizia 
Fuochi. The title refers to the moment and decision that led men and 
women to fight fascism. The cover's gaze, featuring the colors of the 
Spanish flag (purple, yellow, and red), already hints that it won't just 
be about the 1943-45 Resistance in Italy. " Blanca Mariposa " is a song, 
also sung in Spanish, that recounts the Spanish Civil War and the 
violence of the Falangists. " Walls peeled by time from dreams / Smell 
of red-hot bullets / Dust on the mouth in memories / Rubble of the soul 
/ Shivers of fear, blood, and glory / And on the Rambla they shoot again 
." The work of the singer-songwriter (a historian by training), 
published by Materiali Sonori, is the result of research through books, 
archives, and testimonies. Letizia Fuochi, through song-theater, takes 
these stories where a school lesson couldn't reach, as she herself 
states. In Blanca Mariposa, we can hear the participation of Francesca 
Breschi, former singer in Giovanna Marini's vocal quartet. " History of 
Spain, bizarre creature / Intertwining of the sacred and the profane / 
You unsheath the cross, then kiss the sword / And bless your sins / 
Dirty hands, sated belly / While the earth dies of hunger ."
And after recalling the role of the Church in the oppression of the 
Spanish and its support for Franco, another verse sums up the bombing of 
Guernica and Picasso's iconic painting: " April 26, market square, / the 
Condor legion is arriving. / It darkens the skies, / demonstrates its 
strength by bombing, / and the faint cry of the horse / looks at us and 
speaks to us again ."

En.Ri-ot

https://umanitanova.org/cantare-la-rivoluzione-spagnola-note-bandite-resistenza-13/
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