A revolutionary who pursued workers' unity across communist divisions
After his arrest in 1936, Maurín remained in prison throughout the war, leaving the POUM under Andreu Nin's leadership in his absence.
Joaquín Maurín was a Spanish communist politician and labor activist who sought a mass revolutionary politics rooted in Catalonia. He led the Workers' and Peasants' Bloc while breaking with the Communist Party's Stalinist line, then co-founded the POUM with Andreu Nin in 1935 and became its first general secretary. Trapped in the insurgent zone when the military uprising began in 1936, he was arrested and spent the Civil War in prison, leaving Nin to lead the party in his absence. After his release and exile, he worked in New York as a writer and news-agency organizer, documenting the experience of the Spanish revolution.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1914–1920Taught in Lleida and joined the CNT
- 1920–1922Lleida CNT secretary and editor of Lucha Social
- 1921–1922Provisional secretary of the CNT national executive
- 1924–1930Organizer of the Catalan-Balearic Communist Federation
- 1931–1935General secretary of the Workers' and Peasants' Bloc
- 1935–1936Co-founder and first general secretary of the POUM
- 1936Popular Front deputy for Barcelona
- 1949–1973Founder of the American Literary Agency and writer in New York
Related historical events
From revolutionary syndicalism to communism, 1920-1924
After studying law, Maurín practiced in Lleida in Catalonia and became affiliated with the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). In 1920 he was elected local secretary of the union and became editor of its weekly Lucha Social, and in 1921 he attended the Profintern congress in Moscow as a CNT delegate.
On his return he was elected general secretary of the CNT, only to be arrested and detained in February 1922. After his release he founded the Comités Sindicalistas Revolucionarios (Revolutionary Trade Union Committees) as a Bolshevik grouping inside the CNT, and in December of that year launched their press organ, La Batalla. In 1924 he merged La Batalla into the Communist Party of Spain and took charge of organizing the party's local wing, the Catalan-Balearic Communist Federation.
This phase shows how he moved from the practical experience of the trade-union movement into communist organizational politics. His insistence on centering mass workers' organization persisted later in the Workers' and Peasants' Bloc and the POUM. Amid the crackdown on opposition parties under the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, he was arrested and jailed again in January 1925, by which point he had worked as an organizer of the Catalan labor movement between Lleida and Barcelona.