Revolutionary Spain

</image> <image source="map"></image> <label>Type</label> <label>Level</label> <label>Location</label> <label>Inhabitants</label> </infobox>Revolutionary Spain refers to a period when of the Spanish Civil War where much of the eastern half of Spain began experimenting with libertarian socialist ideas with around 8,000,000 people from 1936 to 1939. Making it the largest experiment in libertarian socialist politics in the last 100 years, being most strongly influenced by anarcho-syndicalism. The extent, effectiveness, sustainability, economics, implications and lessons of the revolution have been heavily studied and debated since the 1930s.

Public Services

Healthcare

The Health Workers’ Union was founded in September, 1936 and 8,000 health-workers joined, including doctors, nurses, dentists, midwives, student doctors, pharmacists, veterinarians and specialized doctors. Catalonia was divided into nine zones for healthcare: Barcelona, Tarragona, Lerida, Reus, Borghida, Ripoll, and Haute Pyréenées. The anarchists made sure that everyone in the region received adequate, up-to-date medical care. The anarchists opened six new hospitals in Barcelona, and either new sanitariums were built have former luxury mansions across the forests and mountains of Catalonia. One of them, for the treatment of tuberculosis, was considered among the best installations anywhere.

Environmental Protection

Upon forming agricultural cooperatives and communes, peasants used methods that were similar to permaculture, using multiple plants to increase yields and improve soil health, such as putting shade-tolerant plants under orange trees. Various metal factories were shut down after doctors discovered links between factory pollution and tuberculosis. Daniel Guérin describes environmental protections further:

After the Revolution the land was brought together into rational units, cultivated on a large scale and according to the general plan and directives of agronomists. The studies of agricultural technicians brought about yields 30 to 50 percent higher than before. The cultivated areas increased, human, animal, and mechanical energy was used in a more rational way, and working methods perfected. Crops were diversified, irrigation extended, reforestation initiated, and tree nurseries started. Piggeries were constructed, rural technical schools built, and demonstration farms set up, selective cattle breeding was developed, and auxiliary agricultural industries put into operation. Socialized agriculture showed itself superior on the one hand to large-scale absentee ownership, which left part of the land fallow; and on the other to small farms cultivated by primitive techniques, with poor seed and no fertilizers.