Anarchist Geopolitics of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939): Gonzalo de Reparaz and the ‘Iberian Tragedy’

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses an early case in critical and anarchist geopolitics by analysing a body of work from Spanish geographer Gonzalo de Reparaz Rodríguez-Báez (1860–1939). After reconstructing the complex and contradictory figure of Reparaz, a scholar and activist who oscillated between very different political positions in his especially long and productive career, we focus on the geostrategic writings he produced for the anarchist journals, CNT, Fragua Social and Solidaridad Obrera during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939. Our argument is twofold. First, in the ideological wanderings of Reparaz, it is possible to identify some elements of coherence around the principles of Iberism, Federalism and Africanism as produced by the Spanish culture of that time. Second, the works he produced for the anarchist press in the last part of his life can provide important insights for present-day scholarship on critical, radical and anarchist geopolitics, especially on what an ‘anarchist geopolitics’ might look like and which ways it can contribute to the largely debated problem of exiting the ‘territorial trap’. The case we present contributes to these debates by showing that an anarchist engagement with ‘geopolitics’, a term that Reparaz used some times at the end of his career, might draw on challenging clashes of civilization and ‘pure’ identities, on questioning statist and administrative frameworks of analysis and on focusing more on grassroots activism than on providing advice for state strategies.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Alfredo Gonzáles for his support in finding documents and to all the colleagues who discussed these topics with us, especially Fabrizio Eva and Marcella Schmidt di Friedberg. A great thanks to the anonymous referees for Geopolitics and to the editor, Virginie Mamadouh, for their work on our text and their useful suggestions.

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (Project CSO2015-65301-P).

Notes

^1. See, for example, Mitjana et al. (2015). The most complete inventory of Reparaz’s publications has been made by Soriano Jimenez (1999).

^2. It is the case with a series of six papers published in CNT and subtitled ‘The external causes of our war. Short essay if geo-politics’ (CNT, 27-11-1937, 29-11-1937, 1-12-1937, 10-12-1937, 8-1-1938 and 1-3-1938). However, in Reparaz’s works, there is no theoretical definition of the concept ‘geo-politics’.

^3. CNT, 8 January 1939. All quotations from texts in Spanish, Italian and French have been translated by the authors.

^4. International Institute of Social History (hereafter IISH), Ugo Fedeli Papers, folder 1017, Reparaz, Gonzalo de, 1959.

^5. More details on Reparaz’s biography can be found in: Soriano; Mitjana, Piñero and Ruiz (2015), and Anta-Ugarte (2016a).

^6. Ortega Cantero and García-Álvarez (2006). In 1890, Reparaz translated into Spanish the eighteenth volume of Nouvelle Géographie Universelle, devoted to the Andean regions (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chili) for El Progreso Editorial in Madrid.

^7. On Reparaz’s engagement with geographical societies and their ‘Africanist’ projects, see Anta-Ugarte (2016b).

^8. On Reparaz’s geographical thinking, see García-Álvarez (2016); and Anta-Ugarte (2016b).

^9. On Iberism, see Rocamora (1989); Rodríguez-Esteban (1998); Torre (2013).

^10. Reparaz (1929). See also the chapter reprinted by Geopolítica in 2015: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/GEOP/article/viewFile/51353/47652 .

^11. On Reparaz’s Africanism, see also Díez-Torre (2002); Gil-Novales (2006) and Nerín (2009).

^12. CNT, 26 February 1937; Fragua Social, 11 March 1937.

^13. Salamanca, Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica, Archivo Gonzalo de Reparaz (hereafter CDMH) 121/9, Orallo Sander to Reparaz, 6 November 1936. Reparaz’s archives were recently moved from Salamanca to Barcelona following his family’s wishes. At the time of this article’s writing, they were consultable in Salamanca in digital version.

^14. IISH, Ugo Fedeli Papers, folder 1017, Reparaz, Gonzalo de, 1959.

^15. Solidaridad Obrera, 12 May 1937.

^16. For the Spanish case, see Díez-Torre (2002), and Nerin (2009); for France, Lorcin (2005).

^17. Solidaridad Obrera, 10 November 1937.

^18. Especially, Mitjana, Piñero and Ruiz (2015).

^19. Early Reparaz’s elaborations on the pacific penetration can be found in his book Política de España en África (1907, 434–76). See also Díez-Torre (2002, 259–73); and Anta-Ugarte (2016a), 434–41.

^20. CNT, 29 August 1936.

^21. See, for example, CNT, 6 March 1937.

^22. CNT, 13 August 1936.

^23. CNT, 7 August 1937; (1937), 13; and (1938), 161.

^24. CNT, 11 August 1936.

^25. CNT, 15 and 21 September 1936.

^26. CNT, 15 September 1936.

^27. IISH, CNT Archive Folder 81, Reparaz’s lecture at the 1938 Barcelona Anarchist Book fair organised by the Juventudes Libertarias.

^28. CNT, 12 September 1936.

^29. Fragua Social, 1 August 1936.

^30. Solidaridad Obrera, 17 June 1937.

^31. CNT, 8 November 1938.

^32. CNT, 8 and 18 September 1936 and 27 October 1936.

^33. CNT, 7 August 1936. See also CNT 4 August 1936; 21 September 1936 and 15 October 1936.

^34. See map at http://www.gifex.com/detail-en/2009-12-08-11359/Evolution-of-the-Spanish-Civil-War-1936-1939.html.

^35. CNT, 15 October 1936.

^36. Solidaridad Obrera, 20 August 1937.

^37. In 1938, Reparaz even claimed amity with the hero of Filipino independence José Rizal (1861-1896), considered by Benedict Anderson to represent anarchist ‘anti-colonial imagination’. Solidaridad Obrera, 17 December 1938; Anderson (2007). To apparently confirm this claim, in Reparaz’s archives there is an 1890 correspondence from Manila addressed to Rizal, who was then accordingly in Spain and in touch with Reparaz (CDMH, PS Madrid, 1141/127).

^38. Fragua Social, 30 March 1937.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (Project CSO2015-65301-P).