5. “¡Resistir es vencer!”
(Resistance is Victory!): Negrín, isolated

“NEGRÍN’S THIRTEEN POINTS”

Negrín’s second Government, of 6 April 1938, was, undoubtedly, weaker than the first, although the parties and the organisations of the Popular Front gave him their confidence. Negrín was then able to set out some war aims; the celebrated “Thirteen Points” approved by the Council of Ministers on 30 April 1938 and published
in Barcelona on May 1. The Diputación de Cortes, in its14 May 1938 session, attended by Negrín, gave him their confidence, but, in fact, the Government’s cohesion was increasingly fragile, and within the government itself the discontent of republicans, Catalan nationalists and increasingly the socialists meant that to a great extent the possibilities of continuing the war were diminishing. The confrontations with the Generalitat reached crisis point with the resignation, on 11 August 1938, of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya Employment Minister, Jaime Aiguader, who was opposed to the militarization of the war industries and the creation of a Law Court in Barcelona that was part of the Ministry for Justice. The political divisions reached
into the PSOE itself, which was split between the supporters of Negrín’s policy of resistance and the followers of Indalecio Prieto, openly opposed to Negrín since his departure from Negrín’s Government on 6 April 1938, because of his belief that it was impossible to maintain its policy of resistance at any cost.
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““I have no doubt about the future of Catalonia. Catalonia has with all its great
qualities and its failings that are on the surface, such an individual personality
that it would be a Sisyphean task to try and get in its way. And only to attempt
to do so would be a fatal wound for Spain. (...) However, we are at war and in
a war the main thing is not the “modus vivendi” but the “modus operandi”. What
a shame that the war cannot be united with maintaining the integrity of the
statute of the individual, of the regions or towns. But if it were, would there be a war?”
Letter from Juan Negrín to Pedro Corominas, President of the Council of State, Barcelona, 24 October 1938.

THE “13 POINTS

The celebrated “Thirteen Points” approved by the Council of Ministers on 30 April 1938 and published in Barcelona on May 1.

1 1 The independence of Spain

2 A Spain free of foreign, invading soldiers

3 A democratic republic with a fully authorised Government

4 Plebiscite to determine the legal and social structure of the Spanish Republic

5 Regional liberty without undermining the unity of Spain

6 Civic consciousness guaranteed by the state.

7 Guarantee of legitimate property rights and the protection of the production sector

8 Agricultural democracy and the end of semi-feudal property ownership

9 Social legislation to guarantee workers’ rights

10 The physical, moral and cultural improvement of the Spanish race

11 An army at the service of the Nation, free of factions and political parties

12 The renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy

13 Wide-ranging amnesty for those Spaniards who wish to reconstruct and make Spain great

They were reduced to just three points in the final session of the republican parliament held at Figueres castle on 1 February 1939:

1 The independence of Spain with respect to any of the powers who have intervened in the conflict

2 The adoption of a consensual regime

3 The absence of reprisals

“Resist, he told us; but we asked ourselves: Resist? Why? Negrín had removed Catalan content from all the
politico-military actions of his Government, he had marginalised Catalonia, following a constant and permanent tendency towards assimilation and the centralisation of the peninsular, in the decisive positions
in the war and in the republican policy he was supposed to direct.”
Manuel Cruells, manager of the Catalan newspaper, Diari de Catalunya..

Photography: Juan Negrín, Luigi Longo and Lluís Companys.
National Library of Spain, Madrid.