May Days

Belligerents

• Spanish Republic
  • Guardia de Asalto
  • Generalitat of Catalonia
    
  • Communist Party of Spain
  • Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia

Supported by:
Soviet UnionCNT-FAI
FIJL
Friends of Durruti Group
POUMStrength VariableCasualties and losses 500–1,000 dead
1,500 wounded

The May Days, sometimes also called May Events, were a series of clashes between 3 and 8 May 1937 during which factions on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War engaged one another in street battles in various parts of Catalonia, centered on the city of Barcelona.

In those events, libertarian socialist supporters of the Spanish Revolution, such as the anarchistCNT and the anti-StalinistPOUM, which opposed a centralized government, faced others, such as the Republican government, Catalan government and the Communist Party of Spain, which believed in a strong central government.

The events were the culmination of the confrontation between prewar Republican legality and the Spanish Revolution, which had been in constant strife since the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.