Viki Criado via machine translation || Today, July 3, 2026, we feel the weight of 90 years and a thousand defeats. But the hope for freedom was never naive: it is as stubborn as we are.
Remembering is not enough: understanding is necessary to win.
Every July we return to the same scene: floral tributes, names on a plaque, speeches about “those who came before us.” It is only right. “Historical memory” is the first act of dignity against imposed oblivion.
But let’s be honest, what’s the point of remembering if we don’t understand why it happened, what logic allowed it, and how that same logic is still alive today?
Historical consciousness vs. historical memory
This is where the divide that concerns us arises. Historical memory remembers. Historical consciousness understands and acts. Confusing them leaves us trapped in mere homage. Differentiating them gives us tools for struggle.
They are two verbs, two paths…
“Historical memory.” It answers the question, “What happened?” It gathers facts, names victims, and reconstructs dates. Its verb is to remember. Its gesture is to repair. Its natural space is the monument, the archive, the testimony. Without memory there is no truth. Without truth there is no possible reparation.
“Historical consciousness” asks another, more uncomfortable question: Why did it happen?
It analyzes processes, dismantles structures, and traces economic, social, and cultural causes. Its verb is to understand. Its gesture is to connect. Its space is the assembly, the union, the street. Without awareness, memory becomes a museum that doesn’t bite.
In the context of the 90th anniversary of the 1936 Social Revolution, remembering means acknowledging that there were collectives in Aragon, that Mujeres Libres taught thousands of working women to read and write, that the CNT-AIT had a million members. We put faces to Durruti, to Lucía Sánchez Saornil. We are moved. It is legitimate and necessary.
Understanding the 1936 Revolution means asking ourselves why a working class without universities was able to seize factories and make them produce. What internal contradictions allowed the republican state and Stalinism to crush the Revolution? What role did the Church play as a power structure, not just a source of faith? Why didn’t the cry of “Neither God nor master” overthrow the masters many had in the factory and at home? And, above all, what aspects of all that still operate in 2026?
There is a trap in memory without conscience
Power learned long ago how to manage memory. It lets you keep the plaque if you don’t touch the property. It subsidizes the documentary if you don’t organize the union. It allows you to mourn the grandparents who were executed as long as the grandchildren don’t go on strike. Memory without conscience is folklore. It’s defeat tourism. It’s profitable because it doesn’t question the present. It washes away the system’s guilt without changing its foundations.
Walter Benjamin warned us: “To articulate the past historically does not mean to know it ‘as it truly was.’ It means to seize a memory that flashes in a moment of danger.” That moment of danger is today. And seizing memory requires awareness, not just emotion.
Historical awareness is dangerous for those in power because it draws straight lines. It says: the fascism of 1936 fed on misery, fear, and the division of the downtrodden. The neo-fascism of 2026 feeds on the same things, albeit with different marketing. It tells us that the employers who destroyed the collectives operate with the same logic that now exploits multinational corporations and denies collective bargaining agreements. It tells us that the patriarchy that silenced women in the assemblies of ’36 is the same one that today asks us if “we’re only going to talk about our own agenda.”
Having a historical awareness of the Social Revolution is not about reciting the collectivization decree by heart. It is about understanding that the emancipation of mind, body, and labor remains the central task.
Yesterday, we fought for bread and work, for affordable rents, and for not dying in a dead-end job. Yesterday, cultural centers were opened so that working-class women could think freely. Today, we defend an education that doesn’t indoctrinate us for the market. Yesterday, schools were created, and free love and bodily autonomy were championed. Today, we defend the right to choose without guardianship and to loudly proclaim that we all exist.
Our conscience tells us that these are not different struggles. They are the same struggle in different forms. Those who had class consciousness in 1936 collectivized the factories. Those who have class consciousness in 2026 will speak out, organize their neighborhood, and not ask permission to exist.
That’s why the Social Revolution wasn’t a closed event. It was a hypothesis: Is it possible to live without masters? That hypothesis remains open. And we, 90 years later, are the ones tasked with answering it.
The libertarian women of ’36 didn’t bequeath us a past to admire. They bequeathed us a tool to use: the idea that freedom is won through organization, solidarity, and the certainty that no power is eternal if those at the bottom say enough is enough.
Health, memory, and consciousness
“Historical consciousness” isn’t about remembering that there were barricades in 1936; it’s about understanding why the people erected them, what powers tore them down, and which of those mechanisms are still turning today in rent control, jobs, and parliaments. It’s about ceasing to view the past as a photograph of victims and instead using it as a battle plan. It shows us where the walls of power stand, where we failed, and where we must strike now. Memory mourns the dead; consciousness arms the living so that there are no more deaths.
We are heritage. “We are not going to start the Revolution. We are going to continue it.”
So many didn’t fail. They broke new ground. Mujeres Libres lasted three years and changed the lives of thousands. The collectives fell, but they proved that it’s possible to produce without a boss. We didn’t start from nothing; we started from their shoulders. Our task isn’t to “change the world” alone. It’s to take the next step.
Lucía Sánchez Saornil said: “The problem is not that we can’t. The problem is that we’ve been taught that we can’t.”
The system wants you small and alone. It tells you, “Look how many failed,” so you won’t even try. Awareness is about uncovering that lie. They didn’t fail: they were crushed by many others. But they left cracks. And through those cracks, the light shines.
Don’t look at us. Look at what we’ve accomplished. And dare to do it yourself. This phrase isn’t ours, nor is it recent; it belongs to the women textile workers of ’36. They knew they could lose. Even so, they sewed overalls, occupied factories, and taught people to read. They changed their world: the workshop, the neighborhood, the life of the woman next door. The big world is changed by adding up a thousand small worlds that refuse to give up.
If they, hungry and with rifles against them, dared to dream of a world without masters…
How can we not dare, we who have their memory and our rage?
We don’t have to change the whole world tomorrow. We have to ensure that, at the end of the conference that begins today, some young women in the audience think, “I can speak out too.” That in itself is a victory.
The new generations of female fighters will not judge us for not being heroines, they will judge us for having given up.
We are a living heritage and we are passing it on to others at this very moment.
Let the events begin! Let the struggle continue!
Cheers to Anarchy!
