In September 1930, [Andrés] Nin returned [from Moscow] to Barcelona… [Joaquín] Maurín hoped that he would enter the new party [Bloque Obrero y Campesino]. But Nin, with all the friendship that linked him to Maurín and the sympathy he felt for the new party, was too closely tied to Trotsky. The latter demanded that his Spanish followers preserver their identity and continue working within the official P.C.E., under the banner of the «Communist Opposition.»
On October 23 1930, Nin wrote to Trotsky his impressions following his return to Spain. Excerpts from their correspondence, as translated and circulated by Trotsky’s «secretariat,» included Nin’s observations:
Now we have: 1) the official [Communist] party [PCE], which has no effective force and no authority among the masses; 2) the Communist federations of Catalonia and Valencia, which have been excluded from the party and which, in reality, together with the most influential groups of [Asturias] and a few other places, constitute in fact an independent party; 3) the Catalan Communist Party [Partit Comunista Català], which has a good elite leadership, counts on a certain influence among the dock workers of Barcelona and dominates the workers’ movement in Lérida; and 4) the Left Opposition (Trotskyist) [Izquierda Comunista de España]. The latter has no force in Catalonia.
A week later (November 12), Nin wrote to Trotsky regarding Maurín, who, «notwithstanding his hesitations, is very intelligent, and above all, a very honest comrade.» «La Batalla» seemed to him to be «confusionist» and he hoped Maurín would soon become a Trotskyist…
At the end of December 1930, Nin also found himself in the Model Prison, arrested after the general strike in Barcelona…, and he wrote … an article for «L’Hora,» in which he defended the same point of view as Maurín on the necessity of the proletariat completing the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
Nin found himself … between a rock and a hard place: he wanted to enter the party that was being set up, and he knew that within it he would find a good place, but at the same time, out of loyalty to Trotsky, he felt this entry should be undertaken to conquer the new party and convert it into a Trotskyist organization.