Letter to Citizen Delegates of the Regional Spanish Congress Assembled at Saragossa

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This letter was written by Engels on the instruction of the General Council and read out at the congress of the Spanish Federation of the International on April 7, 1872.

The congress was held at Saragossa from April 4 to 11, 1872. It was attended by 45 delegates representing 31 local federations. The police, on government instructions, wrecked its public sittings.

A sharp struggle developed at the congress between the followers of the General Council of the International, whose mouthpiece was the newspaper La Emancipacion, and the adherents of the Bakuninist Alliance. The latter managed to have some of their anarchist resolutions adopted and secured seats for the Alliance members in a newly elected Spanish Federal Council which, after having moved from Madrid to Valencia, became wholly Bakuninist. Further sharpening of the contradictions among the Spanish organisations of the Inter”-uional resulted in a break of the Emancipacion group with the Bakuninists.

Apart from publications in La Emancipacion, No. 44, April 13, La Liberté, No. 17, April 28 and Der Volksstaat, No. 36, May 4, 1872 and also in the pamphlet Estracto Internacional de las actas del Segundo Congreso Obrero de la Federacion Regional Espanola, celebrado en Zaragoza en los dias 4 al 11 de Abril de 1872, segun las actas y las notas tornados por la comision nombrada al effecto en el mismo, Engels’ rough manuscript in French has also survived.

The letter was published in English for the first time in The General Council of the First International. 1871-1872. Minutes, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968.

London, April 3, 1872

Citizens,

The General Council of the International Working Men’s Association has asked me to congratulate you on its behalf on the occasion of the second congress of the Spanish sections. You are indeed to be congratulated for the results you have obtained in so short a time. The International, founded in Spain less than three years ago, now covers the whole country with its sections and federations, is established in all the towns and is penetrating into the countryside. Thanks to your efforts, and also to the senseless and ridiculous persecution by successive governments of your country, it has been possible to obtain these fine results and make the International a real force in Spain. We ought not to forget, at the same time, that these results are also due to the special constitution of our Association which leaves every national or local federation complete freedom of action, granting the central organs only such powers as are absolutely essential to enable them to safeguard the unity of the programme and common interests, and to prevent the Association from becoming a plaything of bourgeois intrigues and police machinations.

You have probably still to come in for further persecutions. Remember then that there are other countries, like France, Germany, and Austria and Hungary, where the members of the International suffer even harsher government repression and yet do not bow their heads, knowing, as you know, that persecution is the best means of propaganda for our Association, and that there is no force in the world strong enough to suppress the ever-growing revolutionary movement of the modern proletariat. In order to destroy the International it would be necessary to destroy the soil of which it is the natural product: modern society itself.

Greetings and fraternity,

On behalf of the General Council

Secretary for Spain,

Frederick Engels