The question of the origins of workers councils is not even very clear from history. The original workers councils in the Russian Revolution of 1905 arose from a real need practical inside the class to unify the strike committees of the various factories on strike. However it seems that it was the members of the Social Democratic Party (mensheviks its appears!) who suggested the council idea (although to me the very practical need for the organisations to come into being does not take a great deal of class consciousness. Indeed I would say that if workers are not already spontaneously pushing in that direction we cannot speak of significant class movement for anyone to relate to. I suppose that in 1905 and in 1917 the RSDLP was a real party with widespread links inside the working class so it was not a surprise that they took a lead in the initiative to form soviets.

As I recall Bordiga was in no doubt that the Party create the Soviets but as he thought that the Party was the only bit of the class that counted, then that was at least consistent.

And I am not sure that this issue is important since it is what the workers decide afterwards that really counts and if they are really on the road to revolution they wil have laready created an instrument to fight for socialism (i.e a party) which can only carry out this fight inside the class and its representative bodies. That seems to be more important than precisely who sets the ball rolling.

As to the Spanish comment I suppsoe it depends on his definition of "la vanguardia obrera".