congress was the Spanish Civil War which had erupted suddenly in the middle of July 1936. During the course of the congress it was determined that the Oslo IBRJ office should relocate to Barcelona. This was the context in which, in November 1936, as the Oslo IBRJ secretary, Peter Blachstein moved to Barcelona. Spanish Civil War In Barcelona he joined the Spanish Republican Army and the POUM ("Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista" - a Spanish Communist Party). He became a member of the executive committee of the POUM and also served a leading role in producing propaganda for the POUM and for the exiled SAPD. His was given the rank of lieutenant in a "shock battalion", but sources indicate that he was kept away from the actual fighting. Inside the SAPD, the first part of 1937 saw an intensification of differences over attitudes to a possible political party of the united left or a Popular front, and more precisely over the party's approach to the Soviet Union. The differences led to Peter Blachstein's exclusion from the SAPD. Others excluded at the same time included his political mentor Walter Fabian and Erwin Ackerknecht: the three became the focus of a short-lived political grouping known as "Neuer Weg" ("New Way"). Blachstein was also affected more directly by the intense political tensions radiating out from Moscow, based on Stalin's suspicions - not entirely unfounded - that there might be comrades in the Soviet Union and further west in Europe who favoured an alternative Soviet leader. The POUM, of which Blachstein was a member, backed a broadly Trotskyite vision for a communist future and its members therefore became targets for Soviet agents. In June 1937 Blachstein was arrested in Barcelona by communist secret police and accused of spying for Franco and working for the Gestapo. With approximately 100 other foreign detainees he was taken to a large garage which had been adapted for use as an ad hoc prison. Because of the appalling hygiene he soon fell ill with Tuberculosis, as a result of which he was transferred to a sanatorium controlled by anarchist comrades. Helped by Spanish friends, in January 1938 he succeeded in escaping back to France. Return to Scandinavia In France he met up with Walter Fabian and started working for Fabian's newspaper department. However, short of money and still in poor health, he quickly decided he would be better advised