Why Canadians should support the movement for a Republic in Spain

By Adrien Welsh

Poster from Young Communists in Spain:
"Monarchy & Capital: two sides of the same coin"

As the march organised on June 19th against the inauguration as King of Felipe V has been declared illegal by Spanish authorities, it is very important that progressive and democratic forces in Canada stand with Spanish communists and with all the thousands of people who took to the streets just after the former King Juan Carlos II abdicated on June 2nd.

A Republican State would be far from socialism, just like the American, French or German examples show. However, as Canada’s Head of State officially remains the representation of the British Crown, Canadians understand that Juan Carlos II and now his son’s role is more than a symbolic one. We also know that a popular and massive struggle to defeat this representative of Spanish imperialism is an important first step towards a new constitutional process in which communists and progressive people could, through a common struggle, strengthen their forces and overcome the anti-democratic political system, gather a massive movement that would be strong enough to nationalize key sectors of the economy such as banks, and to demand the withdraw from imperialist institutions such as NATO and European Union of Capital.

The fact that the June 19th rally has been declared illegal is a sign that Spanish oligarchy still counts on this rotten institution, led by a billionaire elephant-hunting fanatic, to maintain its hegemony.

Jules Paivio, last Mac Pap Veteran, dies

Jules Paivio

We reprint this story from the Ottawa Citizen because the celebration of the Mac Paps is part of the 90 year history of the Young Communist League of Canada, being celebrated this year.

Jules Paivio, cartographer, architect, teacher, and Canada’s last veteran of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), died last week at 97. No bands played. Unconscionable, but there you go. The official silence over the passing of this, the last member of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, was in keeping with the public shunning endured for 75 years.

Raised by Finnish parents in Sudbury to believe in justice, liberty and fair play for all, Jules sneaked out of Canada at 19 to join the Canadian Mac-Pap Battalion in Spain. Objective? Stop fascism in its tracks.

One has only to think of the great names of the 1930s — Hemingway, Bethune, Malraux — to understand that the Spanish Civil War turned the world on its end. In total, 1,700 Canadians joined 36,000 other foreign nationals to oppose Hitler’s and Mussolini’s efforts to prop up Generalissimo Franco, the new fascist dictator on the block.

Rumbo al Festival Mundial!!

This really tiny and really sweet video announces the 2nd International Preparatory Meeting for the World Festival of Youth and Students, to be held in Madrid, Spain from 27 to 29 June 2013, and features a speech by Hugo Chavez. ''Rumbo al 18º Festival Mundial de la Juventud y los Estudiantes'' means Towards the 18th World Festival of Youth and Students. You can visit the website of the All-Canada committee here: www.18wfys.tumblr.com

Greetings to the 12th Congress of the Union of Communist Youth of Spain

CONTRIBUTION OF THE YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE TO THE SEMINAR

“YOUTH STRUGGLE AGAINST CAPITALIST CRISIS AND IMPERIALISM”

Held at the Congress of the Communist Youth Union of Spain, Madrid.

Dear comrades, members of the presidium, delegates, and honored guests

It is with great pleasure that we greet the 12th Congress of the Communist Youth of Spain (UJCE) being held under the theme «Conquering the future, building socialism» and make a contribution to the seminar "Youth struggle against capitalist crisis and imperialism."

This is an important and very relevant question for today, and especially for the youth.

We are here to tell you that the aggressive, imperialist and pro-NATO policies of the Canadian government towards the peoples of Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya, Mali, Syria and Palestine, and its cavalier position on climate change, do not reflect the true sentiment of the Canadian peoples.

Instead we bring you greetings not just from the Young Communist League of Canada but the progressive youth of our country who continue to demand the opposite direction -- peace, friendship and international solidarity.

We stand with the UJCE and all the youth of Spain in your struggle to conquer the future and build a better world.

As the slogan of the Young Communist League of Canada says –

The Youth are the Future, the future is socialism!

CBC Radio One airs: "The Spanish Crucible"

An incredible story is being aired on CBC Radio One over the next few days and is now available online.

In the mid-to-late 1930s, about 1600 Canadian men and women left for Spain, to fight against the Fascist coup led by General Francisco Franco against the democratically elected Popular Front government.

Why did they go? How did they fight? How did they die? And when the survivors came home why were they harassed and spied on? These questions and more are addressed by the CBC interviews.

While Britian and the US declared 'neutrality' and quitely supported the fascists, the Soviet Union and countries like Mexico supported the Popular Front. Many forces were represented in the Popular Front government, and the disorganization of the army (including trying to organize units along the abstract principals of anarchism) helped contribute to the fascists making a rapid advance.

Although only a small part in the Popular Front government, the Communist Party of Spain worked together with the international communist movement to form a well organized and disciplined army of volunteers from around the world, know as the intentional brigades. The Communists and their allies earned tremendous respect.

The Canadian government of the day, however, made it illegal for any Canadian to join the war. Despite this, the Communist Party of Canada and the Young Communist League, grass-roots members of the CCF, progressive organizations, and Canadian trade unions facilitated the movement of hundreds of Canadian fighters to join the tens of thousands of international volunteers to fight in a civil-war that helped shape the entirety of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Many of them travelled officially as tourists to France and then made the hard trek through the mountains. Eventually so many Canadians arrived they formed their own battalion and named it after the leaders of the democratic uprising against British colonial domination in 1837, William Lyon Mackenzie and Louis-Joseph Papineau.

The first Canadian to die in Spain was a member of the Toronto YCL. While that young man's name is forgotten, history has remembered Dr. Norman Bethune who invented the MASH unit or mobile blood transfusion unit.

The MacPaps fought heroically but after several years of hard fighting the forces of fascism won -- with the help of fascist Italy and Germany. Germany sent the entire Condor Legion to Spain and spent over two hundred million US dollars (in 1939 currency) while Italy sent over 700 air planes, over a hundred tanks, four destroyers, submarines and put 90 additional naval ships into the ocean around Spain in a blockade.

Coming home, the battalion received a heros welcome in some parts of Canada, while fascist-sympathizers attacked them in other places. When war broke out with fascist Germany, many were interned in concentration camps as dangerous radicals and communists.

Never recognized officially as veterans of the just war to defend democracy in Spain, the Mac Paps sacrifice wakened millions of people to the danger of appeasement to fascism. This was perhaps epitomized by the 1938 non-aggression treaty between Chamberlain and Hitler (signed right after the Munich deal).

Years later, Jouranlist Mac Reynolds travelled Canada in 1964 and 1965, looking for Mac-Pap vets, and recording as many as he could. He made over 50 interviews and recorded 150 hours of tape. Reynolds himself had been a supporter of the cause at that time, in Britain and Canada, and a friend of the CPC.


CBC archives contain a letter from Reynolds to the legendary producer and CBC executive Robert Weaver, asking about airtime. But there was no reply on file, nor any evidence that the material had ever aired. Instead the tapes were mothballed.

A campaign in the late 1990s saw some small plaques erected for the Mac Paps in places like Victoria, Ottawa and Toronto. Several books, including by veterans, have been written about the Mac Paps although the total literature is relatively small.

In Spain, however, the Mac Paps are heros and have been awarded many honors -- even honorary citizenship.


As to the tapes, no one but the CBC archivists knew the material was there, or had paid it any mind, until CBC producer Steve Wadhams recently rediscovered the files. “Forty-plus years of doing radio, and I have never stumbled into a treasure trove like this,” Wadhams told the Globe and Mail newspaper.

The CBC Radio programme "Living Out Loud" aired these accounts in a two-part documentary titled " The Spanish Crucible".

These interviews are already available online - http://www.cbc.ca/livingoutloud/

This article combines reports, sources and articles by Kate Taylor, F. Ahmed, Joe Fiorito and D. Rankin

Norman Bethune - historic speech

In Spain, Bethune helped invent the modern MASH unit

In 1937, on the behest of the Spanish Republican cause and the Communist Party of Canada, Dr. Norman Bethune traveled across Canada telling Canadians the first-hand story about the war against fascism and for democracy. Rebel Youth reprint's an historic speech by Bethune here.

I went to Spain as a matter of honour. I have come back because there are some things that need to be said in reply to those outside of Spain who speak in the name of dishonour.

I am a doctor, a surgeon. My job is to sustain human life, in all its beauty and vigour. I am not a politician, but I went to Spain because the politicians betrayed Spain and tried to drag the rest of us into their betrayal. With varying accents, and with varying degrees of hypocrisy, the politicians ruled that democratic Spain must die. It was my belief, as it is now my conviction, that democratic Spain must live.

To the Spanish people, and to anyone who has seen Spain for himself, the position is clear. So clear, in fact, that Franco and his fascist backers urgently need a diversion to conceal their aggression, just as the Tory bleaters of non-intervention need a fig leaf to dress up the naked shanks of their miserable policy. They have found one, to their mutual relief. It is nothing more than the bastard child of the Austrian paperhanger and the Italian turncoat. It is "the menace of communism."