Editing Spanish Revolution of 1936 (section)

=== Second phase of the Revolution (September–November 1936): ''First Government of Victory'' ===
[[File: Coat of arms of the Regional Council of Defense of Aragon.svg | thumb | Coat of Arms of the [[Regional Defense Council of Aragon]].]]
Both in this stage and in the previous one, the state was usually limited to legislating in accordance with the {{lang|fr|faits accomplis}} of the revolution. However, due to the need for military measures against the rebellious military, from October–November 1936 the unions began to cede control of the columns to the state for the [[Defense of Madrid]], which was directed by a semi-independent body – the [[Madrid Defense Council]], in which all the Popular Front parties were represented, in addition to the anarchists. The beginning of all this progressively greater agreement and rapprochement between the Popular Front parties and the unions was reflected in the formation of Largo Caballero's "first Government of Victory" on 4 September.

Among the measures aimed at legitimizing the activity of the revolutionaries were:
* 17 September: Decree of seizure of convicts' estates by the People's Courts.
* 10 October: Decree creating Emergency Juries.
* 22 October (Catalonia): Decree on collectivisations and workers' control.

Despite this apparent concession to the revolutionaries, the government did not actively intervene in the development of the revolution, as its main objective was to promote and strengthen the army as the foundation stone of the centralized state. In addition to the repeated attempts at the dissolution of the popular war and defense committees, they decreed:

* 16 September: Decree taking government control of the Rearguard Vigilance Militia.
* 28 September: Decree for the voluntary transfer of heads and officers of the popular militias to the Army.
* 29 September: Decree of application of the Code of Military Justice to popular militias.

As the war dragged on, the spirit of the first days of the revolution lessened and friction between the diverse members of the Popular Front began, in part due to the policies of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), which were established by the foreign ministry of the [[Stalinist]] [[Soviet Union]],<ref>{{cite news |first=Lluís |last=Perarnau |title=España traicionada Stalin y la Guerra Civil |language=es |trans-title=Spain betrayed Stalin and the Civil War |publisher=Fundación Federico Engels |url=http://www.fundacionfedericoengels.org/index.php/marxismo-hoy/no11-antonio-gramsci-y-la-revolucion-italiana/153-espana-traicionada-stalin-y-la-guerra-civil |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160310224825/http://www.fundacionfedericoengels.org/index.php/marxismo-hoy/no11-antonio-gramsci-y-la-revolucion-italiana/153-espana-traicionada-stalin-y-la-guerra-civil |archive-date=2016-03-10}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |first=Juan |last=Manuel Vera |title=Estalinismo y antiestalinismo en España |trans-title=Stalinism and anti-Stalinism in Spain |date=1999-11-25 |publisher=Fundación Andreu Nin |url=http://www.fundanin.org/vera1.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110929102431/http://www.fundanin.org/vera1.htm |archive-date=2011-09-29 |language=es}}</ref> the largest source of [[foreign aid]] to the republic.

The PCE defended the idea that the ongoing Civil War made it necessary to postpone the ongoing social revolution until the [[Republican faction (Spanish Civil War)|republicans]] won the war. The PCE advocated not to antagonize the middle classes, the grassroots of the republican parties, which could be harmed by the revolution and side with the enemy. In the Popular Front government, there were parties such as the [[Izquierda Republicana|Republican Left]], [[Republican Union (Spain, 1934)|Republican Union]], and the [[Republican Left of Catalonia]], supported by the votes and interests of the middle class (civil servants, liberal professionals, small merchants, and landowning peasants).

The anarchists and the [[POUM]]istas ([[left communists]]) disagreed with the PCE, understanding that the war and revolution were one and the same. They believed that the war was an extension of class struggle, and that the proletariat had defeated the military precisely because of this revolutionary impulse that they had been carrying for years and not because of defending a bourgeois republic. The nationalists represented precisely the class that these revolutionaries were fighting: the rich capitalists, the landowners, the Church, the Civil Guard, and the colonial army.

The militias of the parties and groups that were against the Popular Front government soon found government aid cut off, and their ability to act reduced. Consequently, republicans slowly began to reverse the recent changes made in most areas. During this period, some revolutionary structures approved new programs that subordinated them to the government, which gave rise to the dissolution or beginning of absorption, appropriation, and intervention of the revolutionary structures by the republican state government. The situation in most Republican-held areas slowly began to revert largely to its prewar conditions.

An exception was the consolidation of the collectivist process in Aragon, where thousands of libertarian militiamen from Valencia and Catalonia arrived, and where, before the start of the Civil War, there was the most important anarcho-syndicalist labor base affiliated with the CNT in all of Spain. In the final weeks of September 1936, the assembly called in [[Bujaraloz]] by the Regional Committee of the CNT of Aragon, with delegations of the towns and confederated columns, following the directives proposed on 15 September 1936, in Madrid by the National Plenary of Regional members of the CNT, proposed to all political and union sectors the formation of Regional Defense Councils confederated with a National Defense Council that would perform the functions of the central government, and agreed to the creation of the [[Regional Defense Council of Aragon]], which celebrated its first assembly on 15 October of the same year.{{sfn|Peirats|2011|p=211}}

Despite this, on 26 September the most radical and anarchist sectors of Catalonia, dominated by the possibilists, began a policy of collaboration with the state, integrating themselves into the autonomous government of the {{lang|ca|[[Generalitat de Catalunya]]}}, which was reborn in place of the [[Central Committee of Antifascist Militias of Catalonia]], which dissolved itself on 1 October. On the other hand, on 6 October the Regional Defense Council of Aragon was legalized and regulated by decree. The proposed National Defense Council was regulated, aborting its development. Faced with this apparent tolerance, on 9 October a decree by the Generalitat outlawed all local committees in Catalonia, formally replacing them with the municipal councils of the FPA. All these concessions to the institutions were considered by some as a betrayal of the classical principles of anarchism, and received harsh criticism from colleagues.{{refn|group=lower-alpha|Federica Montseny, a well-known speaker and member of the CNT, entered the government and ended up being booed by her own colleagues at one of her rallies.{{sfn|Gallego|2008|p=367}}}}