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Fernando Claudin Spain– The Untimely Revolution The Spanish revolution was the only revolution to take place in Europe during the existence of the Communist International, with the transient exception of the 1919 Hungarian soviet republic: but it took the leaders of the ‘world party’ unawares. In Manuilsky’s report to the Comintern Executive in February 1930, he dwelt on ‘the enormous prospects now opening up for transforming today’s revolutionary upsurge in the advanced capitalist and colonial countries into a revolutionary situation’. The ‘revolutionary upsurge’ in the ‘advanced capitalist countries’ at that moment existed only in the mind of Stalin’s representative in the Comintern, but shortly before the Executive meeting the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera had fallen, and some of those present raised the question of its significance. Manuilsky replied: ‘Spain is not where the fate of the world pro letarian revolution wil l be de cided . . . A si ngl e str ike i s of more i mpo rta nce to the international working class than this Spanish-style “revolution”, which has taken place without the communist party and the proletariat taking their historic, leading role.’ 1 The revolution nonetheless advanced stubbornly,
