Los anarquistas españoles ante el legado artístico 1936-1939

Abstract

At the beginning of the Spanish Civil W ar there appeared an iconoclastic fury which was directed chiefly against the properties of the Catholic church and its religious symbols. The chief, but not the only, protagonists of this violent reaction were the anarchists and communists belonging to the P.O. U .M. The purpose of the present study is to determine the progress of this phenomenon, to examine the motivations which underlay it and to study more closely three highly significant aspects of the situation in which the artistic treasures of the Church found themselves:
1. We analyze the theoretical justification given for the violent reactions as provided by the official organs of the CNT and the F Al.
2. We undertake a comparative study of the contrasting attitudes of communists and anarchists in connection with their cultural heritage and the possibility of saving it intact for the revolutionary future.
3. We describe the process followed by the anarchists in their attempt to recover the heritage of the past and assimilate it to a left-wing culture, which leads them to offer interesting and often strange re-interpretations of religious art and reassessments of the great Spanish artists of the past.