Hernández and Haizea Gorai, students from the Basque city of San Sebastián, were among dozens of people who approached the Pathfinder stand at this year’s festival hosted September 12-15 by the Communist Party of Spain wanting to learn more about politics in the United States and the world. Teams of communist workers from the United Kingdom and other countries have maintained a regular presence of Pathfinder books at this large annual festival.

Six young people who came to the adjacent Young Communist League stand approached Pathfinder volunteer Linda Joyce from Atlanta, Georgia, and peppered her with questions: “Can you wear political T-shirts in the U.S.? Can you openly sell literature like this?”

“All we hear is about is Bush and the government,” Gorai said. “We need to know about the class struggle.” Hernández and Gorai took away with them two books that address that question—the Spanish language edition of Socialism on Trial by James P. Cannon, and Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, by Jack Barnes.

Books on the U.S. class struggle and broader world politics were among the top sellers from the Pathfinder stand at the two-and-a-half-day event. Many visitors to the booth said they were trying to understand why the pacifist demonstrations that were organized in many imperialist countries, including large ones in Spain, had not stopped the U.S-British invasion of Iraq, as their organizers had claimed they could.

Altogether 150 books were sold at the Pathfinder booth, among them 19 copies of the Marxist magazine New International, four copies of Capitalism’s World Disorder, eight of the pamphlet Washington’s 50-Year Domestic Contra Operation, and more than a dozen books by revolutionary leader Malcolm X. Books by James P. Cannon, a leader of the communist movement and a founder of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States, were in high demand, including 7 copies of History of American Trotskyism and the same number of Socialism on Trial.

Thousands of young people from around Spain were drawn to the festival. As usual, it was dominated by entertainment and cultural features, such as rock concerts and food and refreshment stands erected by Communist Party organizations from different regions and other countries. There were some political meetings and a couple of book launchings.

Pathfinder’s display of Marxist literature stood out. As is always the case at the annual event, books on the Cuban Revolution were in demand at the booth. The best selling title was Marianas in Combat: Teté Puebla and the Mariana Grajales Women’s Platoon in Cuba’s Revolutionary War, 1956-58, an interview with Brig. Gen. Teté Puebla of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. Dioni, a 15-year-old high school student, said she decided to buy the book after reading Fidel Castro’s comments printed on the back cover about how women like Puebla proved themselves as combatants in the Rebel Army during the revolutionary war that led to victory in 1959.

Antonio, a taxi driver, took advantage of a special Pathfinder Readers Club offer to pick up copies of Che Guevara’s 1965 Congo diary and Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs Washington’s First Military Defeat in the Americas by Fidel Castro and José Ramón Fernández. Like dozens of other festival-goers who browsed the Pathfinder stand, Antonio had visited this stand at previous festivals. Last year he bought the New International with the article “The rise and fall of the Nicaraguan revolution.”

Fabio, an 18-year-old student from the Canary Islands, was interested in how the Cuban Revolution has tackled the question of racism. Originally drawn to the stand by the Malcolm X titles, he decided to buy From the Escambray to the Congo by Víctor Dreke, which takes up this issue.  
 
Immigration a key question in Spain
Teresa Sáez, 35, currently living and working as a vet in north Wales, talked with Pathfinder volunteers about her disgust at the treatment of immigrant workers in capitalist countries. Wanting to learn more about why immigration is a central political question in all imperialist countries today, she bought Capitalism’s World Disorder by Jack Barnes.

The day before the festival began, the Popular Party government of José María Aznar had amended the anti-immigrant Law on Foreigners to grant undocumented immigrants who register with the government a permit to look for work for the first three months after their arrival.

Until the change immigrants were legally obliged to secure employment prior to their arrival in Spain. The change reflects the dependency of Spanish capitalism—as in virtually all imperialist countries—on immigration. The construction industry here, for example, employs thousands of Ecuadorians, the largest group of undocumented immigrants from a single country.

Meanwhile, anti-immigrant raids and arrests continue, as the country’s rulers seek to keep immigrant workers in low-wage work and intimidated against fighting back. Seventeen North African workers were arrested September 10 in Tarifa, Cádiz .

Many people who came to the Pathfinder booth listened with great interest to presentations on the successful fight against deportation by Róger Calero, a Militant staff writer and associate editor of Perspectiva Mundial. One couple took out a subscription to Perspectiva Mundial—one of five PM and Militant subscriptions sold during the festival—to find out more about Calero’s fight and U.S. politics today.

A conference on African immigration and Black communities in Spain was scheduled for the first weekend of October in Madrid. Twenty copies of Malcolm X Talks to Young People were on sale at the event on the initiative of conference organizer Abuy Mfubes, who visited Pathfinder’s stand at last year’s festival.  
 
Sales to bookstores
In the two days following the festival, the five members of Pathfinder’s volunteer team—from London and Manchester in the United Kingdom, and Atlanta and New York in the United States—stayed around to visit bookstores. As a result of their efforts, Pathfinder books are now on their way to Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Vigo (in Galicia), Gijón (in Asturias), and Bilbao, the main industrial city in the Basque country.

Altogether 286 books were sold. Cash sales totaled more $2,000 and the wholesale value of book orders obtained through bookstore visits was more than $1,000.  
 
 
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