A short article summarizing the history and transformation of the CNT’s Defense Committees in Barcelona during the 1930s from their origins as street fighting units to their reorganization as integrated combat/intelligence formations, to their suppression by the Republic after the working class defeat of May 1937.

From Defense Cadres to Popular Militias – Augustín Guillamón

The defense cadres were formed shortly after the proclamation of the Republic, and were a continuation of the armed defense groups of the years of pistolerismo.

From Shapiro’s report to the Presentation of October 1934

A confidential report distributed to a limited number of people, written by Alexander Shapiro, the secretary of the AIT, during his stay in Spain in 1932-1933, outlined the nature and function of the Defense Committees, organized exclusively for instances of insurrectionary combat,the fact that the repression had dismantled the clandestine military apparatus of the CNT, after the insurrections that took place in January and December 1933. In October 1934, when the conditions were ripe for a revolutionary proletarian insurrection on a national scale, the anarchosyndicalists were totally exhausted, disorganized and disarmed, with thousands of their militants in prison.

The determination to work to reinforce the Defense Committees, overcome their defects and correct their shortcomings, and especially to take advantage of the state repression as a spur to intensify the struggle, inspired the presentation of the CNCD in October 1934. The old tactic was abandoned in favor of serious and methodical revolutionary preparation: “There is no revolution without preparation; and the more intensive and intelligent this preparation is, the more effective