The Electoral Pact

Full Text of the People’s Front Agreement
in Spain for the Elections to the Cortes

(January 1936)

From New Militant, Vol. II No. 14, 11 April 1936, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

Editor’s Note: In response to many requests for the full text of the Spanish electoral pact, we publish it below as translated from El Socialista (Jan. 16, 1936), organ of the Socialist Party of Spain. All remarks in parenthesis are editorial comment, not contained In the pact, but which will facilitate the understanding of the reader. Only material in quotation marks is directly quoted, but the rest is carefully summarized.

* * *

The pact begins with a few sentences that the undersigned organizations retain their own principles but agree on the following measures as necessary to “public peace”:

I.

Amnesty for all political offenses after November 1933, and “those of a similar character” not released by the April 1934 amnesty.
Public functionaries (municipal and provincial officials) fired or suspended for political reasons to be returned to their jobs; workers fired from public utilities, railroads (bank of Spain and other institutions and industries in which the government holds shares or has a voice), and from public services (refers notably to the post office where many were fired after a strike) shall be reinstated; and all those unjustly fired in private industries shall have their rights protected by the labor boards. (Though the clause referring to private industry is weaker than those preceding it, apparently private industry followed the rest in reinstating the workers.)
Laws to be passed, granting adequate reparations to families of victims of revolutionary events (those killed in October, 1934) or “victims of illegal acts of the public authority and the police.”

II.

The constitution to be re-established; all violations of it to be revised. The law governing elections to the tribunal of guarantees (the Supreme Court, which is elected by an intricate system which gives undue weight to universities and the upper classes) shall be revised so as to prevent that the defense of the constitution from falling into the hands of those contrary to the regime.
Laws necessary to implement the constitution shall be passed, especially the municipal and provincial regulations as provided for in the constitution (local government). Reform of the rules and regulations of the procedure of the Cortes (not clear for what purpose).
“The principle of authority is declared in all its vigor but its exercise is bound up with full recognition of the principles of liberty and justice.” Revision of the law of public order (the laws which empower the government to quickly institute state of alarm, state of siege, and martial law) to avoid “abusive uses” of it (i.e., don’t drag out martial law too long!).
Reorganization of the courts “to free them from the weights of social hierarchy, tradition and economic privilege.” “Justice, once reorganized, shall be given the independence that the constitution lays down. Civil procedure shall be simplified. Speed up the civil courts and increase their power; and greater protection for defendants in criminal cases; cut down special privileges” (such as freedom of guards from civil courts, prosecution of civilians assaulting guards in military courts, etc.). Prisons “shall be humanized and bad treatment done away with; no arbitrary solitary confinement.”
Police abuses under the reaction to be investigated to place responsibility; guilt shall be determined and punished. Commanding officers to be re-examined and all those guilty of abuse or political prejudice to be dismissed. Reorganization of the guards (vigilancia) with officials loyal to the regime. (This section deals with abuses from November 1933 to February 1936.)
In future, grave punishments for officials who abuse their power.

III.

“The Republicans do not accept the principle of the nationalization of the land and its free distribution to the peasants, solicited by the delegates of the Socialist Party. They (the Republicans) consider desirable the following measures which are aimed at the redemption of the peasant and the medium and small farmer, not only because it (the land program) is justice, but because it constitutes the strongest basis for national economic reconstruction” :

Measures to help the direct farmer (“cultivador directo,” apparently the farmer, peasant, or landworker indiscriminately, only differentiating them from the non-working landowner); lowering of taxes and tributes; special attention to the repression of usury; lowering of abusive rents; increase of agricultural credits; re-valorization of the products of the land, especially of wheat and other cereals (in Spain, the government fixes the price of wheat); adopting measures for the elimination of the middleman; doing away with the agreements (confabulaciones) among the millers; and stimulation of the export of agricultural products (this last is bait for the small landowning farmers of the Mediterranean coast, who depend on export of olives, grapes, etc.).
As measures to improve the condition of agricultural production: agricultural instruction and technical aid to be organized by the state; plans for rotation of crops; development of pasture lands, cattle industry and reforestation; water works and dams and irrigation works to reclaim land; roads and rural construction.
As measures to reform the property of the land: the law of tenantry (passed by the reaction) shall be immediately cancelled; all evictions shall be re-examined; old and small renters (sharecroppers) shall be aided to buy the laud they till on a plan of long-term liquidation ; pass a new tenantry law which shall guarantee tenure (stabilidad) on the land; rents subject to revision shall be made moderate; prohibition of sub-renting and its concealed forms; indemnification of useful and necessary improvements carried out by the renter; land cultivated for some time shall be available for acquisition by the cultivator. Cooperatives (consumers and agricultural) shall be stimulated. Colonization of peasant families with necessary technical and financial aid. Measures for recovery of the communal land (the commons). Laws to be cancelled which returned or paid for grandees’ land.

IV.

“Our industry cannot raise itself from the depression in which it now finds itself unless we revise the complicated system of protection by the state, according to a strict criterion of the coordinated subordination of the national economy to the general interest. As a consequence it is in order”:

To dictate law or system of laws which shall fix the basis of protection to industry, including tariff laws, tax exemption, methods of coordination, regulation of markets, and other methods of assistance which the state may conceive of interest to national production. To promote the national recovery of industries in order to lighten the load of simulation that has hampered industry.
Institutions to guide industry (dept. of commerce, labor, etc.)
“Adopt necessary measures to protect small industry and small commerce.”
“To elevate the activity of our fundamental industries by means of a plan of public works.” Organization and assistance to the rural population in the form of self-liquidating public works.

V.

The Republicans consider public works not only as a public service or an imperfect method of unemployment relief, but also as a potent means of developing sources of wealth not being developed by private entrepreneurs.

“Great plans” of construction of urban and rural housing, also cooperative and public services, ports, communications, irrigation works and other land improvements.
To carry these out, legislative and administrative arrangements to be made, which shall guarantee the usefulness of the work, its good administration and “its contribution of the same to the private industries directly favored.”

“The Republicans do not accept the subsidy to unemployment (dole) solicited by the workers’ delegation. They believe that the measures of agrarian policy and those which are to be carried out in industry, public works and, in sum, the whole plan of national reconstruction, will fulfill not only its own ends but also the essential task of absorbing unemployment.”

VI.

The Treasury and the banks shall be at the service of the effort of national reconstruction, without slurring over the fact that such subtle things as credit cannot be forced “outside of the sure field of profitable and remunerative effort.”

“The Republican parties do not accept the measures of nationalization of the banks proposed by the workers parties. They know, however, that our banking system requires certain perfectings if it is to fulfill the mission that is put in its hands for the economic reconstruction of Spain.”

As mere renumeration of examples, we point out the following measures:

Direct the Bank of Spain in such a way as that it shall fulfill its function of regulating the credit according as the interests “of our economy shall dictate,” losing its character of partner of the banks and liquidating its frozen assets.
Subjecting the private banking system to rules of organization which shall benefit its liquidity on the “basis of the classic principles which have been emphasized by the experience of the last crisis,” in order to guarantee depositors’ accounts, etc., etc.
Improve the functioning of the savings banks in order “to make them fulfill their role in the creation of capital,” dictating also those measures necessary to protect private savings and the responsibility of the initiators and promoters of them. Equalize taxes, and stop increasing the public debt.

Direct taxation to be completely revised and reorganized on a progressive basis;
Indirect taxation reformed “aiming at coordination” – (completely unclear) (yet the one point important to workers);
Fiscal administration perfected to serve as an efficient instrument.

VII.

“The Republic that the Republican parties conceive of is not a republic directed by social or economic class motives but a regime of democratic liberties impelled by considerations of public interest and social progress. But precisely because of this, the Republican policy has the duty of elevating the moral and material conditions of the workers to the maximum limit ‘that the general interest of production permits,’ without stopping at making all the sacrifices that may have to be imposed on economic and social privileges. The Republican parties do not accept the workers’ control solicited by the socialist delegation.”

They (Republicans) agree to:

Re-establish the social legislation “in the purity of its principles” for which they will dictate the necessary dispositions in order to cancel all the laws which detract from upright sense of justice, revising all the checks and punishments established ... (nothing more concrete than this).
Reorganize the jurisdiction of labor (labor boards) in conditions of independence, in order not only that the interested parties “may acquire a consciousness of the impartiality of their decisions” but also in order “that in no case shall the general interests be minimized.”
Rectify the process of the falling salaries of the land workers, truly starvation salaries, fixing minimum salaries in order to guarantee all the workers a worthy existence, and creating the offense of dragging down salaries, which shall be prosecutable before the courts. Although policy of economic reconstruction is aimed at the absorption of unemployed, it is also necessary to organize administratively and technically the struggle against it, establishing statistics, classification, employment agencies and workers’ exchanges, with special attention to the unemployment of youth and without forgetting the institutions of planning and insurance which, promised by the constitution, should be begun.

The Republicans shall dedicate to the public welfare and health the attention they deserve in any civilized land, without stopping at sacrifices. They will unify under the direction of the state private welfare and health institutions “without violating wills of the deceased” (this refers to church institutions).

VIII.

The Republic must consider education as the “inalienable attribute of the state”:

“shall impel with the same rhythm as in the first years of the Republic the creation of primary schools, canteens, clothing depots (for schoolchildren), school colonies. Private education shall be subject to vigilance in the interest of culture analogous to that of the public schools.”
develop intermediate and professional education.
Amalgamation of universities and superior schools to obtain more adequate ones.
The necessary methods to guarantee to the youth of the working class and in general to students of capacity, access to intermediate and superior education.

The signatories shall replace in all its vigor the autonomous legislation of the Constituent Cortes.

“International policies shall be oriented in the direction of adhesion to the principles and methods of the League of Nations.”

SIGNATURES ...

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Last updated on 9 May 2015

New Militant, 11 April 1936