Editing May Days (section)

== Opposing sides ==
Three main political forces were involved in the events that led to the May Days. Although all parties had  winning the war as their main objective, the CNT, the [[Libertarian Youth]], and the [[POUM]] and other minor groups like the anarchist [[Friends of Durruti Group]] or the Trotskyist [[Bolshevik-Leninist Section of Spain]] had a clear revolutionary motivation. The participation of these groups in the war, which was decisive in the opening events of the war, was motivated by the defense of the revolution and not the Republic. The [[Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia]] (PSUC) considered a revolutionary approach inappropriate without winning the war first.

There were also groups with other political affiliations that were inclined to return to the [[Second Spanish Republic|Republican legality]], the authorities of the Republican Government in [[Valencia]] and the Generalitat. They forged an alliance with the aforementioned PSUC and the [[Republican Left of Catalonia]]. A third sector was composed by the "possibilist" sector of the CNT, supporting an immediate termination of hostilities between both sides. Although the PSUC was not a bourgeois party, from the point of view of the Republican authorities it presented itself as an alternative to the revolutionary chaos, and it advocated for the strengthening of central government that would replace the local committees. To get this done, they proposed a centrally organized and instructed army, led by a single command. Orwell summarized the PSUC-party line as follows:

{{quote|Clinging on to the fragments of workers' control and parroting revolutionary aims is worse than useless: not only an obstacle but also [[counter-revolutionary]], because it leads to divisions that fascists can use against us. At this stage we do not fight for the [[proletarian dictatorship]] [...].<ref>George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938), Penguin Books, p. 59, {{ISBN|0-14-001699-6}}</ref>|[[George Orwell]]}}

On the position of the POUM, shared by most of the more radical anarchists, like the Friends of Durruti,<ref>Friends of Durruti, Towards a fresh revolution (1937)</ref> Orwell states:

{{quote|The workers' militias and police-forces must be preserved in their present form and every effort to "bourgeoisify" them must be resisted. If the workers do not control the armed forces, the armed forces will control the workers. The war and the revolution are inseparable.<ref>Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938), p. 59</ref>|[[George Orwell]]}}