The Catalan Balearic Communist Federation: origin, controversies and territorial implantation (1923-1932)

Abstract

This paper investigates the origins, development and disappearance of the Catalan Balearic Communist Federation (FCCB), emphasizing not only its political proposals and complex relationship with the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), but also the achievements and limits of its organizational deployment in the two territories where it was established. Organized in 1923 as a territorial section of the PCE that grouped the communists of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, from the autumn of 1924 the FCCB was essentially nucleated around the «Grupo de la Batalla» –the revolutionary trade unionism current of the CNT, led by Joaquín Maurín–, while the initial contribution of the pre-existing core of the PCE both in the Principality and in the islands was very diluted. The new organization, very marked by a political culture different from that of the bulk of Hispanic communism, soon began to collide with the central leadership of the PCE in a context characterized by the controversies that shook the international communist movement after Lenin's death. In 1930/31 the FCCB finally broke up with the PCE and promoted the formation of the Workers and Peasants Bloc (BOC), from which the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) would emerge four years later. The use of the periodical press and internal reports from the archive of the Communist Party of Spain allows us to inquire into the conflicts developed between the FCCB and the PCE in particular, as well as the relations –until now very little known– that were established between the Catalan communists and the Majorcan ones.