After the Congress of the League of Peace held at Berne in 
September 1868,° Fanelli, one of the Alliance’s founders and a 
member of the Italian parliament, went to Madrid. He had been 
furnished with references by Bakunin for Garrido, deputy at 
Cortés, who put him in touch with republican circles, bourgeois 
and working-class alike. A short while after, in November of that 
year, Alliance membership cards were sent from Geneva to 
Morago, Cordova y Lopez (republican with ambitions of becoming 
a deputy and the editor of the Combate, a bourgeois newspaper), and 
to Rubau Donadeu (unsuccessful candidate for Barcelona, founder 
of a pseudo-socialist party). The knowledge of the arrival of these 
membership cards threw the young international section of 
Madrid into confusion. President Jalvo withdrew, not wanting to 
belong to an association which harboured a secret society com- 
posed of bourgeois and which allowed itself to be ruled by that 
society. 

As early as the Basle Congress, the Spanish International had 
been represented by two Alliance members, Farga Pellicer and 
Sentinon, the latter being featured on the official list of delegates 
as “delegate for the Alliance”.* After the Congress of the Spanish 
International in Barcelona (June* 1870),°” the Alliance established 
itself at Palma, Valencia, Malaga and Cadiz. In 1871, sections were 
founded at Seville and Cordoba. At the beginning of 1871, 
Morago and Vinas, delegates of the Barcelona Alliance, suggested 
to members of the Federal Council (Francisco Mora, Angel Mora, 
Anselmo Lorenzo, Borrell, etc.) ... the foundation of an Alliance 
section in Madrid; but the latter objected, saying that the Alliance 

a This assault took place on June 18, 1872.— Ed. 

was a dangerous society if it was secret, and useless if it was public. 
For the second time, the mere mention of the name was enough 
to sow the seeds of discord in the heart of the Federal Council; 
Borrell even uttered these prophetic words: 

“From now on, all trust between us is dead.” 2 

But when government persecution forced the members of the 
Federal Council to emigrate to Portugal, it was there that Morago 
succeeded in convincing them of the usefulness of this secret as- 
sociation, and it was there that the Alliance section of Madrid 
was founded at their initiative. At Lisbon, a few Portuguese, who 
were members of the International, were affiliated to the Alliance 
by Morago. Finding, however, that these newcomers did not offer 
him enough guarantees, he founded, without their knowledge, 
another Alliance group consisting of the worst elements among 
the bourgeois and the workers, recruited from the freemasons. 
This new group, which included an unfrocked curate named 
Bonanga, attempted to organise the International by sections of 
ten members who, under its direction, were to help carry out the 
schemes of the Comte de Péniche, and whom this political 
intriguer managed to drag into a dangerous venture of which the 
sole aim was to put him in power. In view of the Alliance intrigues 
in Portugal and Spain, the Portuguese members of the Interna- 
tional withdrew from this secret society and at the Hague 
Congress they pressed for its expulsion from the International as a 
public safety measure. 

At the Conference of the Spanish International at Valencia 
(September 1871),°** the Alliance delegates, also delegates of the 
International as always, gave their secret society a complete 
organisation for the Iberian peninsula. The majority of them, 
believing that the Alliance programme was identical to that of the 
International, that this secret organisation existed everywhere, that 
it was almost a duty to join it, and that the Alliance was striving to 
develop and not dominate the International, decided that all the 
members of the Federal Council should be initiated. As soon as 
Morago, who until then had not dared to return to Spain, heard 
about this fact, he came to Madrid in all haste and accused Mora 
of “wanting to subordinate the Alliance to the International’, 
which was contrary to the Alliance’s intentions. And to give weight 
to this opinion, he let Mesa read, the following January, a letter 

from Bakunin in which the latter evolved a Machiavellian plan for 
domination over the working class. This plan was as follows: 

“The Alliance must appear to exist within the International, but in reality at a 
certain distance from it, in order better to observe and control it. For this reason, 
members who belong to Councils and Committees of International sections must 
always be in the minority in the Alliance sections.” (Statement by José Mesa, dated 
September 1, 1872, addressed to the Hague Congress).345 

At a meeting of the Alliance, Morago accused Mesa of having 
betrayed Bakunin’s society by initiating all the members of the 
Federal Council, which gave them a majority in the Alliance 
section and established, in fact, the domination of the Internation- 
al over the Alliance. To avoid this domination, the secret 
instructions prescribed that only one or two Alliance members 
should infiltrate into the councils or committees of the Interna- 
tional and control them under the direction and with the support 
of the Alliance section where all resolutions were passed which the 
International ought to adopt.—From that moment, Morago 
declared war on the Federal Council and, as in Portugal, founded 
a new Alliance section which remained unknown to those under 
suspicion. The initiates at various points in Spain backed him up 
and began to accuse the Federal Council of neglecting its duties to 
the Alliance, as is proved by a circular from the Valencia Alliance 
section (January 30, 1872) signed “Damon”, Montoro’s Alliance 
pseudonym.*” 

When the Sonvillier circular arrived, the Spanish Alliance took 
care not to side with Jura. Even the mother section of Barcelona, 
in an official letter of November 14, 1871, treated pope Michael, 
whom it suspected of personal rivalry with Karl Marx,* very curtly 
and in an altogether heretic manner. 

* Copies of this letter, addressed by Alerini “on behalf of the Barcelona 
group” of the Alliance to “my dear Bastelica and dear friends”, were sent to all the 
sections of the Spanish Alliance. Here are some extracts: 

“The present General Council cannot last beyond next year’s Congress, and its 
baneful activities can only be temporary.... A public rupture, on the contrary, 
would deal our cause a blow from which it would only recover with difficulty, 
assuming it resisted. We cannot, then, encourage in any way your separatist 
tendencies... Some of us have wondered if, apart from the question of principle, 
there might not also be in it, or alongside it, personal problems — problems of rivalry, 
for instance, between our friend Michael and Karl Marx, between the members of the old A. 
and the General Council... We have been distressed to see, in La Révolution Sociale, 
the attacks on the General Council and Karl Marx? ... When we know the opinion 

The Federal Council supported this letter, which shows how 
little influence the Swiss centre had in Spain at the time. But 
afterwards it was noticeable that grace had fallen on the 
recalcitrant hearts. At a meeting of the Madrid Federation of the 
International (January 7, 1872), at which the Sonvillier circular 
was discussed, the new group, headed by Morago, prevented the 
reading of the Romance Federation’s counter-circular* and sup- 
pressed the discussion. On February 24, Rafar (Alliance 
pseudonym of Rafael Farga) wrote to the Alliance’s Madrid section: 

“It is essential to kill the reactionary influences and authoritarian tendencies of 
the General Council.” 

However, it was only at Palma in Majorca that the Alliance was 
able to achieve the public adherence of the International’s 
members to the Jura circular. It can be seen that ecclesiastical 
discipline was beginning to break the last attempts at resistance to 
the infallibility of the pope. 

Faced with all this underground work, the Spanish Federal 
Council realised that it must get rid of the Alliance as soon as 
possible. The government persecutions furnished it with a pretext. 
In the event of the International’s dissolution, it proposed to form 
secret groups of “defenders of the International’ into which the 
Alliance sections would imperceptibly merge. The introduction of 
numerous members was bound to change the character of the 
sections, and they would finally disappear with these groups on 
the day when the persecutions ceased. But the Alliance guessed at 
the hidden purpose of this plan and foiled it, although without 
this organisation, the International’s existence in Spain would have 
been in jeopardy if the government had carried out its threats. 
The Alliance, on the contrary, made the following proposal: 

“If we are outlawed, it would be useful to give the International an external 
form which could be allowed by the government; the local councils would be like secret 
cells which, under the Alliance’s influence, would impose on the sections a wholly 
revolutionary direction.” (Circular of the Alliance’s Seville section, October 25, 

P71) 

of our friends on the peninsula, who are influencing the local councils, then this might 
change our attitude towards a general decision, to which we shall conform in every 
respect, etc., etc.” 

The old A. is the public Alliance nipped in the bud by the General Council. The 
copy of the letter from which we have taken these passages is in Alerini’s 
handwriting. 

Cowardly in action, bold in words-—cuen was the Alliance in 
Spain, as elsewhere. 

The London Conference’s resolution on working-class politics * 
forced the Alliance into open hostilities with the International and 
gave the Federal Council an opportunity to state its perfect 
agreement with the great majority of the International’s member- 
ship. Furthermore, it suggested the idea of forming a big working 
men’s party in Spain. To achieve this aim, the working class would 
first have to be completely isolated from all the bourgeois parties, 
especially the Republican party which recruited most of its voters 
and active supporters from the workers. The Federal Council 
advised abstention in all elections of deputies, whether monarchist 
or republican. To rid the people of all illusions about the 
pseudo-socialist phraseology of the Republicans, the editors of La 
Emancipacion, who were also members of the Federal Council, sent 
a letter to the representatives of the Federalist Republican party, 
who were holding a congress in Madrid, in which they asked them 
for practical measures and called on them to state their attitude to 
the International’s programme.*“* This meant delivering a serious 
blow to the Republican party. The Alliance undertook to soften it, 
since it was, on the contrary, in league with the Republicans.* In 
Madrid, it founded a newspaper, El Condenado, which adopted as 
its programme the three cardinal virtues of the Alliance: Atheism, 
Anarchy, and Collectivism, but which preached to the workers that 
they should not demand a reduction in working hours. “Brother” 
Morago had a fellow contributor in Estévanez, one of the three 
members of the Republican party’s Directing Committee and lately 
governor of Madrid and Minister for War. At Malaga, Pino, a 
member of the Federal Commission of the pseudo-International, 
and, at Madrid, Felipe Martin, now the Alliance’s commercial 
traveller, were serving the Republican party as electoral agents. And 
in order to have its Fanelli in the Spanish Cortes, the Alliance 
proposed backing Morago’s candidature. 

The Alliance already had two serious grudges against the 
Federal Council: 1) the latter had abstained on the Jura question; 
2) it had also attempted to infringe its [the Alliance’s] inviolability. 
After the Council adopted a position over the Republican party 
which wrecked all the Alliance’s plans, the latter decided to 
destroy it. The letter to the Republican Congress was taken by the 
Alliance as a declaration of war. La Igualdad, the party’s most 

influential organ, violently attacked the editors of La Emancipacion 
and accused them of having sold themselves to Sagasta.* The 
Condenado encouraged this disgraceful charge by maintaining a 
stubborn silence. The Alliance did more for the Republican party. 
As a result of this letter, it had the editors of La Emancipacion 
expelled from the International’s Madrid Federation, which it 
dominated. 

In spite of government persecution, the Federal Council, during 
its six-month period of administration after the Conference of 
Valencia, had raised the number of local federations from 13 to 
70; it had, in 100 other localities, prepared the setting up of local 
federations and had organised eight trades into national resistance 
societies; moreover, the great association of Catalan factory 
workers was being formed under its auspices. These services had 
given the members of the Council such moral influence that 
Bakunin felt it necessary to bring them back on to the path of 
truth with a long fatherly admonition sent to Mora, the Council’s 
general secretary, on April 5, 1872 (see Documents, No. 3°). The 
Congress of Saragossa (April 4-11, 1872),°°° despite the efforts of 
the Alliance, which was represented by at least twelve delegates, 
annulled the expulsion and renominated two of the expelled 
members for the new Federal Council,° ignoring their repeated 
refusals to accept their candidatures. 

During the Congress of Saragossa, as always, the Alliance was 
holding secret meetings on the side. The members of the Federal 
Council proposed dissolving the Alliance. To prevent the proposal 
being rejected, it was neatly circumvented. Two months later, on 
June 2, those same citizens, in their capacity as leaders of the 
Spanish Alliance and on behalf of its Madrid section, sent the 
other sections a circular*’' in which they renewed their proposal, 
giving the following reason: 

“The Alliance has deviated from the path which it should, in our opinion, have 
taken in this region; it has falsified the idea which brought it into being and, 
instead of being an integral part of our great Association, an active element which 
would have given impetus to the different organisations of the International by 
helping and encouraging them in their development, it has broken away completely 
from the rest of the Association and has become an organisation apart and, as it 
were, superior, with tendencies towards domination, introducing mistrust, discord 

and division among us.... At Saragossa, instead of bringing solutions and ideas, it 
has, on the contrary, only put impediments and obstacles in the way of the 
important work of the Congress.” 3 

Of all the Spanish Alliance sections, only the one at Cadiz 
responded by announcing its dissolution. On the very next day, 
the Alliance again had the signatories of the June 2 circular 
expelled from the International’s Madrid Federation. It used as its 
pretext an article in La Emancipacion of June 1 which demanded 
an enquiry into 

“the sources of the wealth acquired by ministers, generals, magistrates, public 
officials, mayors, etc. ... and by all those in politics who, without having exercised 
any public functions, have lived under the wing of the governments, lending them 
their support in the Cortés and hiding their iniquities under a mask of false 
opposition ... and whose property should have been confiscated as a first measure 
on the day after a revolution”.> 

The Alliance saw this as a direct attack on its friends in the 
Republican party and accused the editors of La Emancipacion of 
having betrayed the cause of the proletariat under the pretext that 
in demanding the confiscation of property stolen from the State, 
they implicitly recognised private property. Nothing demonstrates 
more clearly the reactionary spirit which was hidden under the. 
Alliance’s revolutionary charlatanism and which it wanted to inject 
into the working class. Nothing proves more clearly the bad faith 
of the Alliance members than the expulsion, as defenders of 
private property, of the very men whom they had anathematised 
for their communist ideas. 

This new expulsion was made in violation of the rules in force 
prescribing the formation of a jury of honour for which the 
accused could nominate two out of the seven jurors, against whose 
verdict he could appeal to the section’s general assembly.“ Instead 
of all this, the Alliance, in order to avoid any restriction of its 
autonomy, had the expulsion decreed at the same sitting at which 
it made the accusation. Out of the section’s total membership of 
130, only 15 were present, and these were in league with one 
another. The expelled members appealed to the Federal Council. 

This Council, thanks to the Alliance’s intrigues, had been 
transferred to Valencia. Of the two members of the old Federal 

No. 59, July 27, 1872, p. 3.— Ed. 

Emancipacion, No. 59, July 27, 1872.— Ed. 

Council who were re-elected at the Congress of Saragossa, Mora 
had not accepted and Lorenzo had tendered his resignation 
shortly afterwards. From that moment, the Federal Council 
belonged body arid soul to the Alliance. And so it responded to 
the appeal of the expelled members with a declaration of its 
incompetence, although Article 7 of the Spanish Federation’s rules 
imposed on it the duty of suspending, with the right of appeal to 
the next Congress, any local federation which violated the statutes. 
The expelled members then formed a “new federation” and 
demanded recognition from the Council which, in deference to 
the autonomy of the sections, formally refused. The New Madrid 
Federation then approached the General Council, which accepted 
it in conformity with Articles II, 7 and IV, 4 of the Administrative 
Regulations.” The Hague General Congress approved this act and 
unanimously admitted the delegate from the New Madrid Federa- 
tion. 

The Alliance realised the full importance of this first rebellious 
move. It realised that, unless it were nipped in the bud, the 
Spanish International, so docile hitherto, would slip out of its 
hands; and so it set in motion all the means at its disposal, honest 
and otherwise. It began with defamation. It announced in the 
newspapers and posted up in the section halls the names of the 
expelled members: Angel and Francisco Mora, José Mesa, Victor 
Pagés, Iglesias, Saenz, Calleja, Pauly and Lafargue were dubbed 
traitors. Mora, who, to carry out his duties as general secretary, 
had given up his job and for long months had been maintained by 
his brother, since there were no funds out of which to pay him, 
was accused of having lived at the International’s expense. Mesa, 
who was editing a fashion magazine to earn his living and had just 
translated an article for an illustrated journal, was alleged to have 
sold himself to the bourgeoisie. Lafargue was charged with the 
mortal sin of having, by a gargantuan dinner, submitted to the 
temptations of St. Anthony the weak flesh of Martinez and 
Montoro, two members of the new Federal Council of the 
Alliance, as if they carried their consciences in their paunches. We 
are only mentioning here the public and published libels. These 
measures failing to yield the results desired, the next move was 
intimidation. In Valencia, Mora was lured into an ambush by 
members of the Federal Council who were waiting for him armed 
with clubs. He was rescued by the members of the loca] federation 

who knew the ways of these gentlemen and asserted that it was in 
the face of arguments equally striking that Lorenzo had tendered 
his resignation. At Madrid, a similar attempt was made shortly 
afterwards on Iglesias. The Alliance congregation of the Index 
marked out La Emancipacion for the censure of the faithful. At 
Cadiz, to instil a salutary fear into the hearts of the sinful, it was 
stated that any person selling La Emancipacion would be expelled 
from the International as a traitor. The Alliance’s anarchy takes 
the form of inquisitorial practice. 

As was its custom, the Alliance tried to have all the representa- 
tion of the Spanish International at the Hague Congress made up 
of its own members. To this end, the Federal Council passed 
round the sections a private circular* whose existence was carefully 
kept secret from the New Madrid Federation. It proposed to send to 
the Congress a collective representation elected by the votes of all 
members of the International, and to raise a general contribution of 
25 centimos per head to defray the expenses. Since the local 
federations had no time to arrive at an agreement on _ the 
candidatures, it was clear, as the facts proved, that the Alliance’s 
official candidates, delegated to the Congress at the International’s 
expense, would be elected. However, this circular fell into the 
hands of the New Madrid Federation and was forwarded to the 
General Council which, knowing that the Federal Council was 
subordinate to the Alliance, saw that the moment for action had 
arrived and sent a letter to the Spanish Federal Council, in which 
it was stated: 

“Citizens, 

“We hold proof that within the International, and particularly 
in Spain, there exists a secret society called the Alliance of Socialist 
Democracy. This society, whose centre is in Switzerland, considers 
it its special mission to guide our great Association in keeping with its 
own particular tendencies and lead it towards goals unknown to the 
vast majority of International members. Moreover, we know from 
the Seville Razon that at least three members of your Council belong 
to the Alliance... 

“If the organisation and character of this society were already 
contrary to the spirit and the letter of our Rules, when it was still 
public, its secret existence within the International, in spite of its 
promise, represents no less than treason against our Association. 

gran Asociacion...”, Valencia, July 7, 1872.— Ed. 

The International knows but one type of members, all with equal 
rights and duties; the Alliance divides them into two classes, the 
initiated and the uninitiated, the latter doomed to be led by the 
former by means of an organisation of whose very existence they 
are unaware. The International demands that its adherents should 
acknowledge Truth, Justice and Morality as the basis of their 
conduct; the Alliance obliges its supporters to hide from the 
uninitiated members of the International the existence of the 
secret organisation, the motives and even the aim of their words 
and deeds.” * 

The General Council also asked them to provide certain 
material for the inquiry into the Alliance which it intended to 
present to the Hague Congress, and an explanation of how they 
reconciled their duties to the International with the presence in 
the heart of the Federal Council of at least three notorious 
members of the Alliance. 

The Federal Council replied with an evasive letter in which, 
however, it recognised the Alliance’s existence. 

Since the manoeuvres which we have been discussing seemed 
inadequate to guarantee the success of the election, the Alliance 
went so far in its newspapers as to nominate Farga, Alerini, 
Soriano, Marselau, Mendez and Morago as official candidates. The 
result of the voting was: Marselau—3,568; Morago—3,442; 
Mendez—2,850; Soriano—2,751. Of the other candidates, Lostau 
obtained 2,430 votes in four Catalan towns which were clearly not 
yet properly disciplined; Fusté scored 1,053 votes at Sans in 
Catalonia. None of the other candidates gained more than 250 
votes. To ensure the election of Farga and Alerini, the Federal 
Council gave the city of Barcelona, where the Alliance predomi- 
nated, the privilege of nominating its own delegates, who were, 
naturally, Alerini and Farga.—The same official circular stated 
that the four Catalan towns which had nominated Lostau and 
Fusté, thus rejecting the Alliance’s official candidates, paid 2,654 
reales (663 frs. 50 c.) for the delegation’s expenses whereas the 
other Spanish cities, on which the Alliance had foisted its own 
candidates, since the workers were little accustomed to managing 
their own affairs, only paid a total of 2,799 reales (699 frs. 75 c.). 
The New Madrid Federation had good reason to say that the 
money of the International’s members was being used to send the 
Alliance’s delegates to the Hague.” Furthermore, the Alliance’s 

July 27, 1872.— Ed. 

Federal Council did not pay in full the subscriptions due to the 
General Council. 

All this was not enough for the Alliance. It had to have an 
Alliance imperative mandate for its delegates, and this is how it 
was wangled. Through its circular of July 7, the Federal Council 
demanded, and obtained, the authorisation to lump together in 
one collective mandate the imperative mandates issued by the local 
federations. This manoeuvre, worse than any Bonapartist plebis- 
cite,”"? allowed the Alliance to draw up for its delegation a 
mandate which it intended to impose on the Congress, while 
forbidding its own delegates to take part in the voting unless an 
immediate change was made in the manner of voting as prescribed 
to the International in its Administrative Regulations. That this 
was mere mystification is proved by the fact that the Spanish 
delegates at the Congress of Saint-Imier,*” despite their mandate, 
took part in the voting which was being carried out by federations, 
the manner so much praised by Castelar and practised by the 
League of Peace.* 

* Sentinon, a doctor of medicine in Barcelona, a personal friend of Bakunin, 
and one of the founders of the Spanish Alliance, advised members of the 
International well before the Hague Congress not to pay their subscriptions to the 
General Council because it would use them to buy rifles. He tried to prevent the 
Spanish International from defending the cause of the defeated Commune. 
Imprisoned for a press offence, he launched a manifesto in which he courageously 
renounced the International, which was being persecuted at the time. Shunned for 
this by the whole of the working class in Barcelona, he nevertheless continued to be 
one of the Alliance’s secret leaders, for in a letter of August 14, 1871, three months 
after the collapse of the Commune, Montoro, a member of the Alliance, referred 
an Alliance correspondent to Sentinon who, he said, could recommend him and 
confirm his Alliance membership. 

Vinas, a medical student, whom Sentifion, in a letter of January 26, 1872, 
recommended to Liebknecht as “the soul of the International in Barcelona”, left 
the International during the persecution so as not to compromise his family, 
although the police did not even bother to imprison him. 

Farga Pellicer, another Alliance leader, was accused in the same letter from 
Sentinon of having absconded during the persecution, leaving the others to take 
the legal responsibility for his articles. The rabbit-like courage of the Alliance 
members boldly asserts, at all times and in all places, their anti-authoritarian 
autonomy. Their way of protesting against the authority of the bourgeois state is to 
take flight. 

Soriano, another leader, and a professor of ... occult sciences, withdrew from 
the International at the height of the persecution. At the Congress of Saragossa, he 
opposed, with pathetic courage, the public holding of the Congress demanded by 
Lafargue and other delegates, because he considered it imprudent to provoke the 
anger of the authorities. Recently, under Amadeus, Soriano accepted a government 
post. 

Vv