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[1] Translator’s note: The Civil Guard was a paramilitary police force
created in 1844 to patrol rural areas.
[2] Translator’s note: Alfonso XIII (1885–1941) was born in 1886, six
months after the death of his father, Alfonso II. He assumed the throne in
1902 at age 16. The present King of Spain, Juan Carlos I, is his grandson.
[3] Translator’s note: The Mesta was an “association of Spanish sheep
farmers, formed to regulate sheep raising and to prevent cultivation of
pastureland. Its date of origin is uncertain, but by 1273 Alfonso X of
Castile formally recognized its long-established privileges, which were
confirmed and extended by his successors. The Mesta gradually escaped local
jurisdiction and came under direct supervision of the crown. It prospered,
especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, by exporting wool from
its highly prized Merino sheep. The Mesta yielded large revenues to the
crown, but its monopoly of large areas of land exhausted the soil and
contributed to the economic decline of Spain by preventing intensive
agriculture. Attacked by reforming ministers in the eighteenth century, it
was not abolished until 1837.” Mesta. (2005). Columbia Encyclopedia.
Retrieved September 1, 2005, from Columbia Encyclopedia Online
http://www.bartleby.com/65/me/mesta.html
[4] The name Durruti derives from the Basque language, in which the word
“Urruti” means “far.” Apparently Basque peoples who lived far from
the cities, in hamlets and mountains, received this name. Its roots
probably lay in the Basque-French province of Labourd (or Lapurdi in
Basque).
[5] Our account of Durruti’s family relies on notes that Anastasia
Dumange dictated to a grandson, who was kind enough to share them with us.
In them, she explained that her father-in-law, Lorenzo, arrived in León
speaking very poor Spanish. With respect to her father, Pedro Dumange, she
did not why he came to León but, after arriving there, he married a
Catalan named Rosa Soler. Anastasia, a product of this marriage, was born
in 1876. She married Santiago Durruti at age sixteen. Lorenzo Durruti
married a young Astrurian in León by the name of Josefa Malgo, who was the
daughter of a court employee. The last name Dumange was rendered more
Spanish by making it Domínguez, which is Durruti’s second last name, as
indicated by his birth certificate. The Dumanges were from the province of
Gerona and of Catalan origin.
[6] Translator’s note: Michele Angiolillo, an Italian anarchist,
assassinated Cánovas del Castillo on August 8, 1897.
[7] José Rizal was a Filipino doctor, writer, and poet active in the
island’s independence movement. He was born in Manila in 1861 and
executed by the Spaniards on December 30, 1896. He is best known as the
author of two novels protesting Spanish colonialism: Noli me tangere (1887)
and Los Filibusteros (1891). In 1970, Georges Fischer published a
well-documented work on Rizal entitled José Rizal, Philippin, 1861–1896;
un aspect du nationalisme moderne (Paris: Ediciones Maspero, 1970).
[8] Durruti mentions this in several letters. He expresses this sentiment
with particular clarity in a letter sent from prison in Paris on March 10,
1927.
[9] Francisco Monroi gave us this information. He and Durruti were
childhood friends.
[10] Comments by Anastasia.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Translator’s note: Pablo Iglesias (1850 — 1925) founded the
Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party and the Unión General de Trabajadores
(UGT).
[13] Statement by Francisco Monroi.
[14] Ibid.
[15] A private archive holds this card, letters from Durruti to his family,
and photographs published in this book for the first time.
[16] The workers’ publications released during the period in the
León-Asturias mining region also included Fraternidad and La Defensa del
Obrero, both anarchist and founded in Gijón in 1900, and El Cosmopolita,
from Valladolid, which was anarchist as well. The Socialist publications
were: El Bien del Obrero, which came out in El Ferrol, and Solidaridad, in
Vigo.
For publications see, Ernée Lamberet, Mouvements ouvriers et socialistes.
Espagne (1751–1936) (Paris: Les editions Ouvrières, 1953).
[17] Francisco Monroi, op. cit.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Manuel Buenacasa, in an unpublished text made available exclusively
for this work.
[20] CNT-UGT Pact.The UGT held its Seventh Congress in Madrid on March 12,
1916. Representatives from the Asturian unions proposed a national day of
protest against the high cost of living and, to make it more effective,
called for an alliance with the CNT. The congress approved the pact, which
both organizations signed in July (Largo Caballero and Julián Besteiro for
the UGT; Angel Pestaña and Salvador Seguí for the CNT). On December 18, a
general strike was declared for twenty-four hours, which was a resounding
success. The government remained recalcitrant and the signatory
organizations were obliged to prolong the unity agreement.
[21] Translator’s note: Chris Ealham explains that the “1917
‘Assembly’ movement sought to introduce a bourgeois democracy that
would enhance the influence of the regional and industrial elites over
governmental policy and break the power of the agrarian oligarchy over
national politics.” José Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, ed.
Chris Ealham (Hastings, UK: Meltzer Press, 2001), 9, note 9
[22] Manuel Buenacasa, Historia del movimiento obrero español (Paris: Los
Amigos de Buenacasa, 1966).
[23] Gerald Brenan, El laberinto español (Paris: Ediciones Ruedo Ibérico,
1962), 52.
[24] Manuel Buenacasa, op. cit.
[25] Valentín Roi (Valeriano Orobón Fernández), Durruti, Ascaso, Jover
(Buenos Aires: Ediciones Antorcha, 1927). Francisco Monroi also
corroborates this.
[26] Private archive.
[27] Letter sent from prison in Paris on March 25, 1927. Private archive.
[28] Unpublished manuscripts by Manuel Buenacasa, made available for this
biography. In the notes dictated by Anastasia one reads: “Sent by the CNT
to Asturias and León (La Robla) in 1919.”
[29] In the notes dictated by Anastasia one reads: “Sent by the CNT to
Asturias and León (La Robla) in 1919.”
[30] In letters in the National Archives in Paris, classified in F7 13.440,
there is talk of a French anarchist group in Marseilles called “Ni Dieu
ni Maître.” Some Catalans belonged to the group, who maintained contact
with Barcelona by mail at times but generally through “anarchist
sailors.” The archives also hold issue eight of La Bandera Roja, dated
December 7, 1919, which printed a call from the Spanish section of
Paris’s Anarchist Communist Federation. Finally, a letter from Madrid,
dated November 24, 1919, discusses the “organization of union forces and
Bolsheviks in Barcelona” and says that pistols were sent from Mieres to
the Barcelona militants. We cannot be certain that Durruti was in contact
with these exiled anarchists, but nothing permits us to deny it either.
[31] According to his son, Laureano Tejerina—who belonged to the
anarchist group in León at the time—maintained a correspondence with
Durruti during his exile. Laureano Tejerina had to bury their apparently
voluminous correspondence and other documents while hiding near León
during the civil war in 1936. Laureano died while hidden and his son buried
him in their garden. Unfortunately their correspondence is lost forever.
[32] H. E. Kaminski, Ceux de Barcelone (Paris: Edicions Denöel, 1938) 58.
[There is a Spanish translation of this book, with a prologue by José
Peirats; Los de Barcelona (Barcelona: Ediciones del Cotal, 1977)].
[33] Translator’s note: Paul Lafargue (1842–1911) settled in Spain
shortly after the Paris Commune of 1871 and became an active advocate for
Marxism in the country. He was married to Karl Marx’s daughter Laura.
[34] Andreu Nin was born in El Vendrell (Tarragona) in 1892 and
assassinated in June 1937 by the GPU (Soviet secret police). He was a
member of the CNT very briefly (1919–1921). He embraced Bolshevism during
his 1921 trip to Russia and later linked himself ideologically to Trotsky.
When Trotsky fell into disgrace, Stalin expelled Nin from Russia. In 1931,
he founded a group in Spain called Izquierda Comunista and in 1935 that
group merged with the BOC (Bloc Obrer i Camperol, Peasant and Worker
Block). The POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) was the result
of that amalgamation.
[35] This letter is in a private archive.
[36] See note 32.
[37] This refers to the national anarchist conference held in November
1918. Previously, most anarchists did not belong to the CNT and acted
independently. Although they became active in the CNT after this
conference, it should be said that they focused their efforts on the rank
and file and rarely accepted positions of union leadership. On this
conference, see Manuel Buenacasa, op. cit.
[38] He is referring to the gangs of gunman hired by the bourgeoisie, which
German spy Barón Von Koenig and Police Captain Bravo Portillo organized in
1918. Information about Bravo Portillo and his activities is available in
the French National Archives in Paris, F7 13.440. For a discussion of
pistoleroismo, see Albert Balcells, El Sindicalismo en Barcelona
(Barcelona: Nova Terra, 1968).
[39] Alejandro Gilabert, Durruti (Barcelona: Ediciones Tierra y Libertad,
1937), 64.
[40] One can see the anarchists’ understanding of the “dictatorship of
the proletariat” in El Comunista, a newspaper published by Zenón Canudo
in 1919 in Zaragoza.
[41] Malatesta’s letter appears as a prologue to Luigi Fabbri, Dictadura
y Revolución (Buenos Aires: Ediciones La Protesta, 1925)
[42] Clemente Mangado was a member of this group and he shared his
unpublished memoirs with us, which contain his recollections of the period.
We use his memoirs to reconstruct these events. Mangado died of
tuberculosis in 1968 while exiled in France. When citing his memoirs, we
will do so hereafter with the initials TCM.
[43] Unpublished manuscript by Manuel Buenacasa.
[44] “Governmental detention” consisted of the civil governor’s right
to send any individual suspected of subversive activity to prison for three
months. Militants spent years in prison thanks to this procedure, as
authorities routinely prolonged their confinements. Franco also used the
measure. As one example, see the case of Alejandro Zotter, the Austrian
consul in Madrid in 1935, who was arrested by Franco’s troops in 1939 and
held as a “governmental prisoner” until 1950, when he was released due
to pressure from the United States Embassy.
[45] Translator’s note: this refers to an execution carried out under the
pretense of an escape attempt.
[46] Manuel Buenacasa, op. cit.
[47] TCM.
[48] Unpublished manuscripts by Buenacasa.
[49] TCM.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Buenacasa’s unpublished manuscripts.
[52] Ibid.
[53] Ibid.
[54] Eleuterio Quintanilla was a founder of the CNT. He was a school
teacher, started Gijón’s Centro de Estudios Sociales, and published the
weekly Acción Social. At the CNT’s 1919 congress, he denounced the
authoritarianism in the Russian revolution and argued against the CNT’s
entrance into the Third International. He died in 1965 at age eighty in
Bordeaux.
[55] Prior to 1936, the CNT did not have any paid personnel except the
General Secretary, who received the equivalent of a skilled worker’s
salary. In local CNT offices there was generally a caretaker; an old
militant who would defray personal costs with income from newspaper and
book sales. Members carried out basic union tasks after work. The purpose
of these practices was to fight union bureaucracy.
[56] We use the testimony of an old militant from Aragón (CB) for the
quotations and our account of this meeting generally. Felipe Alaiz, who
lived in Zaragoza during the time, has consulted CB’s testimony and
certified its accuracy. Zenón Canudo and Alaiz founded Impulso, a
short-lived newspaper in which Francisco Ascaso first published his
writings in 1919. Alaiz later became a celebrated journalist. He died in
exile in 1965.
[57] Domingo Ascaso was responsible for the assassination and his brother
Francisco had nothing to do with it. Clemente Mangado explains:
“Gutiérrez used El Heraldo de Aragón for a slander campaign against the
anarchists, but that really had nothing to do with it. He was killed
because he told police about several of the soldiers that rose up in the
Carmen Barracks on the night of January 8, 1920.”
[58] Born to a well-off family in Huesca, Escartín was introduced to
anarchism by Professor Ramón Acín (who the fascists executed in 1936). He
left school, became a pastry cook, and was active in the Food Workers’
Union in 1919. Franco’s forces killed him in Barcelona in 1939.
[59] Clemente Mangado, a defendant in the trial, writes: “Any Zaragoza
worker could have killed Bernal. He was not only despotic in Química, S.
A., but also reported workers to the authorities who paid CNT dues. With
respect to us, none of the three had anything to do with the attack. At the
time, we were preparing one against the civil governor, the Count of
Coello, who, together with Cardinal Soldevila, had introduced pistolerismo
into Zaragoza as well as the methods that Martínez Anido used in
Barcelona.”
[60] TCM.
[61] El Comunista contains information on these strikes. The Lighting Union
secured union recognition, a 60 percent increase in daily wages, and the
provision of a raincoat to each worker. The streetcar workers imposed a
salary increase and union recognition on the Streetcar Company. Cfr. El
Comunista, Number 14 to Number 21 inclusive.
[62] See note 77.
[63] TCM and CB.
[64] Three members of Barcelona’s Metalúrgico anarchist group— Pedro
Mateu, Luis Nicolau, and Ramón Casanellas—were responsible for the
execution. Police arrested Mateu in Madrid. Nicolau fled to Germany, but
was arrested there and promptly handed over to Spanish authorities. Both
Mateu and Nicolau were sentenced to death, but pardoned and released in
1931. Police detained Casanellas as a suspect shortly after the incident,
but he convinced them that he was a “son of a good family, in Madrid with
a lady friend, and that it would be a grave trauma for his honorable family
if the nature of his trip were publicly divulged. His manners, elegant
bearing, foreign style, and natural congeniality persuaded the police
captain to let the rich heir and his loved one go free.”
[65] Casanellas escaped to the Soviet Union. He returned to Spain in 1931
and died in a motorcycle accident not long afterwards. Manuel Buenacasa,
unpublished manuscripts.
[66] Allende Salazar replaced Dato and urged his interior minister,
Bagallal, to try to stop Anido’s terrorism in Barcelona. Bagallal sent an
emissary to convince Marínez Anido of the need to do so, but the governor
of Barcelona replied that “things being what they are, progress can’t
be halted.” He also said that “the government is just as implicated as
I am in the repression and everyone needs to face up to their own
responsibilities.” On this matter, one can consult, José Peirats, Los
anarquistas y la crisis política española (Buenos Aires: editorial Alfa,
1964) and Albert Balcells, El sindicalismo en Barcelona (Barcelona: Nova
Terra, 1968). Manuel Buenacasa left an interesting sketch of Anido: “He
is someone better studied through psychiatry than politics. Crime for the
sake of crime, sadism toward the lower classes (which is not to imply that
he didn’t also disdain the higher classes) seems to be the sole purpose
of life, a pleasure or morbid ecstasy ... murder was one of his supreme
goals, if not the only one. The thrill of the ambush preceded each
crime.” It is fitting that General Franco put this sinister character in
charge of the Interior Ministry in the Council of Burgos in 1936. Domingo
Ascaso is referring to an attack on the pistoleros’ headquarters
organized by eight anarchist groups in Barcelona.
[67] For this meeting, TCM
[68] TCM. We use the same source for the rest of the story.
[69] Ibid.
[70] Ibid.
[71] Liberto Callejas says this period “was very beneficial for Durruti,
because it allowed him to read anarchist theory extensively.”
[72] Remember that Antonio Maura was Prime Minister during Barcelona’s
“Tragic Week” in July 1909 and one of those who bear responsibility for
the execution of Francisco Ferrer y Guardia on October 13, 1909.
[73] Numerous historians, including Alberto Balcells, note the use of this
expression [Trans.: “meter España en cintura”].
[74] During the period, convicts were marched from prison to prison while
tied to one another. The term “chain gain” [trans.: cuerda de presos]
comes from here.
[75] Clemente Mangado says that pistoleros had already begun to arrive from
Barcelona at the time and that authorities made them Streetcar Inspectors.
[76] TCM.
[77] Ibid.
[78] TCM. Clemente Mangado was one of the detained and thus his testimony
is particularly valuable.
[79] Valentín Roi, op. cit.
[80] Some anarchist newspapers were pro-Bolshevik at the time. For example,
in El Comunista there are articles dedicated to “Saint Rosa Luxemburg”
and the “great comrades Trotsky and Lenin.”
[81] The resolution from the 1919 CNT congress was unambiguous. It declared
its firm commitment to “the principles of the First International,
maintained by Bakunin.” It also stated that “the CNT adheres
provisionally to the Third International, given its revolutionary stance,
but will convene the Universal Workers’ Congress that will determine the
bases which will govern the true
[82] Workers’ International.” Text cited in José Peirats, La CNT en la
Revolución Española (Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1973).
[83] There was a good deal of controversy about this meeting. It is not
clear if it occurred in Lérida or Barcelona or if it happened at all. Nin
called it to discuss whether or not to heed Moscow’s request for a CNT
presence at the constitutive congress of the Red Labor International,
scheduled for June, 1921. The meeting was first to be held in Barcelona in
April, but then occurred in Lérida without the knowledge of most
delegates, with the result that four of the five present were
pro-Bolshevik. It was at this meeting that Nin, Maurín, and Hilario
Arlandis were nominated to represent the CNT at the congress in Moscow.
Gastón Leval, as a representative of the anarchist groups of Barcelona,
may also have been part of the group.
[84] Madrid’s Nueva Senda published Pestaña’s report in March 1922
under the title Informe de mi gestión en el II Congreso (agosto 1920) de
la IC as well as another text: Juicios sobre la III Internacional.
Madrid’s ZYX press reprinted these two useful documents in 1969. See
also, “El Informe de Gastón Leval” in Daniel Guerin, Ni Dieu ni
Maître (Paris: Editorial Delphes, 1966).
8 The CNT conference held in Logroño in August 1921 de-authorized the
Nin, Maurín, and Arlandis delegation.
[85] The “Twenty-one Conditions” are contained in the appendix of
Histoire du mouvement ouvrier français, vol. II (Paris: Les éditions
ouvrieres, 1970) and various Spanish works.
[86] A month after the conference, CNT members voted in a referendum to
withdraw the CNT’s membership in the Third International and join the
recently re-constituted AIT, whose main office was in Berlin.
[87] Pina was not the only one: a relatively large number of anarchists
were inclined to imitate certain Bolshevik practices. Angel Chueca was one
of those pro-Bolshevik militants in Zaragoza. In an article published in El
Comunista before his death, he expressed his admiration for Lenin and
Trotsky and harshly criticized Salvador Seguí.
[88] TCM. Claudio Mangado analyzes this discussion in his memoirs because
of the importance, he says, that it later had for Durruti. “He not only
rejected the idea of ‘professional revolutionaries,’ but also attacked
labor functionarism, which he saw as the beginning of bureaucratism.”
Mangado adds that Durruti maintained this position consistently and
repeatedly affirmed that the grassroots had a duty to criticize those in
leadership positions, in order to prevent them from undermining the
base’s initiative.
[89] La Voluntad was a short-lived periodical first published in Zaragoza
in 1918. The editorial team was made up by Felipe Alaiz, Zenón Canudo,
Torres Tribo, and Francisco Ascaso (who began to publish his writings in
this magazine). His “Party and Working Class” essay focused on the
general strike in August 1917. This paragraph is worth citing: “The daily
struggle is nothing but the revolutionary preparation of the working class.
Through that struggle, workers will acquire the experience necessary for
them to show that economic and political emancipation has to be
accomplished by the workers themselves. If the workers entrust themselves
to leaders or political parties, they will not only fail to reach their
goals, but will also forge new chains. Providential men do not exist. The
only actor is the proletariat in arms.”
[90] TCM.
[91] This attack took place on August 25, 1922 in a town called Manresa
near (Barcelona). The pistoleros shot Pestaña and wounded him, but a large
crowd intervened and stopped them from killing him. He was then taken to
the hospital, which the pistoleros immediately stormed in an attempt to
finish him off. Workers from the street and nurses deterred the assailants
and forced them to flee.
The incident outraged the public, particularly because the pistoleros had
attacked a hospital.
[92] José Peirats, Los anarquistas en la crisis política española
(Buenos Aires: Alfa, 1964), 35.
[93] Francesc Macià was born in Vilanova i la Geltrú in 1859. He became
an army colonel, but broke with the army and began his fight for Catalan
independence in 1905. He embodied the oppositional spirit of Catalanism. In
1926, at age 67, he organized a guerrilla expedition in Prats de Molló to
liberate Catalonia from Alfonso XIII’s monarchy. He died on Christmas
1933, as President of the Generalitat. He was affectionately known as Avi
(grandfather).
[94] Testimony from Aurelio Fernández. The members of this group were
Francisco Ascaso (waiter), Buenaventura Durruti (mechanic), Manuel Torres
Escartín (pastry cook), Juan García Oliver (waiter), Aurelio Fernández
(mechanic), Ricardo Sanz (builder), Alfonso Miguel (cabinetmaker), Gregorio
Suberviela (mine foreman), Eusebio Brau (foundry worker), Marcelino del
Campo (alias Tomás Arrarte, carpenter), Miguel García Vivancos
(automobile mechanic), and Gregorio Martínez (alias “el Toto,”
laborer).
[95] José Peirats. op. cit.
[96] Testimony by Aurelio Fernández.
[97] Ibid.
[98] Robert Lefranc. Article published in Le Libertaire, November 1937. In
an August 7, 1976 letter to the Reorganizing Council of Barcelona’s
Manufacturing and Textile Industry Union, from Guadalajara, Mexico, where
he was in exile.
[99] In an August 7, 1976 letter to the Reorganizing Council of
Barcelona’s Manufacturing and Textile Industry Union, from Guadalajara,
Mexico, where he was in exile.
[100] Ricardo Sanz, El Sindicalismo y la Política (Toulouse, France:
self-published, 1967).
[101] Ricardo Sanz. op. cit
[102] Testimony from Aurelio Fernández.
[103] For example, Teresa Margalef, who hid him in her house in 1933, said
that “at night, after exercising, he used to go to the garden to dig in
the ground with a mattock or cut wood with an ax.
[104] Manuel Buenacasa, cited manuscript.
[105] Mauro Bajatierra Morán was born in Madrid on July 8, 1884. He was a
baker by trade and a self-taught writer who became an excellent journalist.
He authored various plays as well as political novels. He wrote for all the
anarchist newspapers of his time and was a war reporter for Solidaridad
Obrera and CNT throughout the civil conflict. He died in a gunfight when
the Franco’s forces entered Madrid in March 1939.
[106] The painter García Tella told us that the following anecdote
circulated through the capital of Spain at the time. “One day a Count was
driving through the outskirts of Madrid with his four-year-old daughter.
Durruti and a group of ‘bandits’ stopped the car. Durruti began to
console the little girl when he saw that she was frightened and crying. He
said: ‘Child, don’t be afraid. We’re not going to do any harm. It’s
just that your father has a lot of money and we’re going to redistribute
it.’ Meanwhile, he cleared her tears.”
[107] Ricardo Sanz, op. cit. Aurelio Fernández ’s testimony corroborates
this. Letter from Durruti to his sister Rosa. It is undated, but headed
with “San Sebastián Prison” and its content permits no doubt that it
must be related to that circumstance. Private archive.
[108] Letter from Durruti to his sister Rosa. It is undated, but headed
with “San Sebastián Prison” and its content permits no doubt that it
must be related to that circumstance. Private archive.
[109] A musical drama by Ruperto Chapí.
[110] Account provided for this work by Tejerina’s son, who stated that
he heard it from his father.
[111] Ramón Liarte communicated this information.
[112] We use the account in Tiempos Nuevos 10 (Paris, April 2, 1925), in
which there is a description of the trial of Julia López, Escartín, and
Salamero. In 1971 an employee of the Zaragoza Municipal Library, who worked
in the Property Registry at the time of the murder, told us the following:
“After the cardinal died and they read his will, it emerged that he had
left a fortune (in property) to a nun who later gave up the cloth. This was
an enormous upset for local Catholics.” We are not providing the name of
the informant, in accordance with his wishes.
[113] Some nuns from the Order of St. Vicente de Paul ran this school. It
locked up girls from sixteen to eighteen years of age and was under the
direct protection of Cardinal Soldevila, who distinguished himself by his
daily visits.
[114] El Heraldo de Aragón, June 5, 1923.
[115] Manuel Buenacasa, unpublished manuscripts.
[116] Tiempos Nuevos, Paris, April 2, 1925.
[117] Ricardo Sanz, op. cit.
[118] From the press of the time.
[119] Tiempos Nuevos, previously cited issue.
[120] Ibid.
[121] Ricardo Sanz. op. cit.
[122] Translator’s note: the garrote was one of the Spanish
government’s favorite methods of execution. The victim was placed in an
iron collar attached to a post, which was tightened with a screw until he
or she died by strangulation.
[123] Manuel Buenacasa, unpublished manuscripts.
[124] Testimony of Aurelio Fernández.
[125] Miguel García Vivancos, who was the driver.
[126] Ibid.
[127] There was also a rumor that Durruti hid in the home of a Civil Guard
commander, where one of his aunts worked as a cook. In Burgos, some claimed
that he bought clothes from a juggler and, disguised as such, was able to
slip through the police dragnet.
[128] Comment provided by Liberto Callejas. It is also included in an
article in Solidaridad Obrera, Paris, No. 4, 1944.
[129] Translator’s note: General Juan Prim (1814–1870) was a Spanish
statesman and soldier.
[130] Stanley G. Payne, Los militares y la política en la España
contemporánea (Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1968).
[131] Manuel Tuñón de Lara, La España del siglo XX (Paris: Ediciones
Librería Española, 1966)
[132] Flores Magón, “El Ilegalismo.” This article appeared in
Regeneración and is included in his Obras Completas, published in Mexico.
[133] García Vivancos provided these details to the author.
[134] Manuel Buenacasa, unpublished manuscripts.
[135] This information comes from a letter that Virgilio Gozzoli donated to
Amsterdam’s International Institute of Social History.
[136] Eduardo Comín Colomer, Libro de Oro de la Policía Gubernativa, 111.
[137] See note 25.
[138] Translator’s note: This refers to the Confederation Generale du
Travail and Confédération Générale du Travail Unitaire, respectively.
[139] Translator’s note: constituted on April 6, 1914, the Mancomunidad
was a quasi-governmental body for the Catalan region. It had the support of
the Spanish government and although it was purely administrative in nature,
its establishment was a federal acknowledgment of Catalan distinctness.
[140] Aurelio Fernández provided this anecdote to the author.
[141] Ricardo Sanz. op. cit.
[142] Ibid.
[143] García Vivancos communicated these details.
[144] Ibid. Also mentioned by Valentín Roi, op. cit.
[145] Valentín Roi. op. cit.
[146] J.A. gave us the details that enable us to follow Ascaso and
Durruti’s steps in Cuba. He wishes to remain anonymous while living in
Latin America.
[147] This term is from J.A.’s account [trans.: “antojándoseles los
dedos huéspedes”].
[148] These details are contained in an article entitled “Durruti en
tierras de América” in issue 11 of the El Amigo del Pueblo newspaper
(November 20, 1937), which was the publication of “The Friends of
Durruti” group.
[149] Translator’s note: the CGT was an anti-authoritarian labor
federation founded in Mexico in 1921.
[150] Testimony from Atanasia Rojas, comrade Román Delgado’s widow.
Atanasia still lives in Mexico and is eighty years old.
[151] Ibid.
[152] Flores Magón. Article reprinted in the April 1970 issue of
Regeneración, the voice of the Mexican Anarchist Federation.
[153] We follow Atanasia Rojas’s testimony up to here, but things become
complicated afterwards, due to the use of false names. Durruti was known as
“Carlos” and “El Toto” was called “El Chino” or “Antonio
Rodríguez.” A Peruvian named Víctor Recoba also appears in the story,
who happened to be in Mexico at the time, but we lose track of him later.
This period is one of the most complex in Durruti and Ascaso’s lives and
we have researched it as thoroughly as possible. Gregorio Jover narrated
these adventures at Santillán’s request, and his account will be very
helpful if it is ever published. Santillán states that Gregorio Jover’s
chronicle was among his papers in Barcelona when the city fell to Franco on
January 26, 1939.
[154] El Amigo del Pueblo, cited issue, and an article by Víctor García
in issue 38 of Ruta from Caracas, Venezuela commenting on Durruti’s trip
through Mexico. José Peirats relates another story about their visit to
the homeland of Flores Magón, Emiliano Zapata, and Francisco Villa: “I
was able to get to know Ascaso better. It was from his lips that I heard an
anecdote about his adventures in the Americas. It happened when they were
hotfooting it out of Cuba for the Yucatán. Word of their fame soon
followed them after they disembarked in Mayan country. Someone organized a
rally at a ranch and Durruti gave an incendiary speech to the one hundred
peasants who attended. He constantly mentioned the revolution, but the
audience was completely impassive. Durruti raised his tone a bit, but
obtained the same result. Ascaso whispered to him: ‘Finish already!
Clearly they’re cool-headed.’ Durruti ended awkwardly and of course
there were no applause or acclamations. But one of the listeners broke his
silence and approached the orator. In a melodious voice, he said: “Buddy,
we’re going to make this revolution thing right now. We’re all
ready.” In Frente Libertario, the CNT—in exile—, Paris, November
1972, article titled: “Hipoteca sobre el heroísmo.”
[155] El Amigo del Pueblo, cited issue.
[156] Ruta, previously cited issue.
[157] El Amigo del Pueblo, op. cit.
[158] Osvaldo Bayer, Los anarquistas expropiadores (Buenos Aires: Editorial
Galerna, 1975). This book contains articles that Bayer published in the
Todo es Historia magazine between 1967 and 1971.
[159] For the events narrated in this chapter, we use Diego Abad de
Santillán, La FORA (Buenos Aires: Editorial Proyección, 1971). Quotations
come from this book, which was first published in 1931.
[160] The quotation is comes from Osvaldo Bayer, op. cit.
[161] Osvaldo Bayer op. cit. contains information about Boris
Wladimirovich.
[162] Osvaldo Bayer, Severino di Giovanni (Buenos Aires: Editorial Galerna,
1970).
[163] Translator’s note: Giacomo Matteotti was an Italian Socialist
leader murdered by Fascist supporters in 1924.
[164] Osvaldo Bayer, op. cit.
[165] Information from Roberto Cotelo, a Uruguayan anarchist and
participant in the Spanish Revolution. He died in Buenos Aires in 1971.
[166] Notes 741167 Osvaldo Bayer, Los anarquistas expropiadores (Buenos
Aires: Editorial Galerna, 1975).
[167] Ibid. The quotations are from the op. cit.
[168] Raúl González Tuñón wrote these lines after Durruti’s death and
in memory of his passage through Buenos Aires. He was one of the official
writers of the Argentine Communist Party.
[169] Osvaldo Bayer, Los anarquistas expropiadores (Buenos Aires: Editorial
Galerna, 1975).
[170] Nino Napolitano. Article titled “Ascaso e Durruti, nei ricordi
d’esilio” in Era Nuova, Torino año V. n. 1.
1, gennaio, 1948.
[171] Henry Torres, Accuses hors série (Paris: Ed. Gallimard, 1957).
[172] Le Libertaire, October 15, 1926.
[173] Letter from Durruti to his sister Rosa sent from the Conciergerie on
December 17, 1926. Private archive. Durruti was not aware of the intensity
of Spain’s pressure on France or that to justify its efforts it had
announced the discovery of an “international anarchist organization in
Spain that was planning to kill Primo de Rivera, Poincaré, and Mussolini.
The date of the attack on Primo de Rivera had been set for the funeral of
Mr. Tornos, President of the Supreme Court of Justice.” ( La Vanguardia,
Barcelona, December 2, 1926.) This conspiracy was known as the
“Vallecas” plot and Fernández and García Oliver were implicated in
it, despite the fact that the latter was imprisoned in the Burgos
penitentiary at the time.
[174] Le Libertaire, April 2, 1936.
[175] Luis Lecoin, Le cours d’une vie (Paris: Ed. Liberté, 1966).
[176] Luis Lecoin. op. cit.
[177] Le Libertaire, November 12, 1926.
[178] Ibid.
[179] Ibid, November 26, 1924.
[180] Ibid, November 26, 1924.
[181] The February 1, 1974 Le Monde reports a similar instance of a
“chaining.” Eight Flemish nationalists locked themselves to the
railings outside the French consulate in Brussels to protest the French
government’s repression of Basque peoples in its territory. The police
also had to wait for a locksmith to cut the chains.
[182] Osvaldo Bayer, Los anarquistas expropiadores (Buenos Aires: Editorial
Galerna, 1975).
[183] Luis Lecoin. op. cit.
[184] Le Libertaire, December 15, 1924. This law was not fully instituted
until March 11, 1927, when it appeared in Le Journal Oficiel. It was later
reprinted in Gazette des Tribunaux, No. 38, March 27, 1927.
[185] Le Libertaire, February 7, 1927.
[186] On February 25, 1927 Le Libertaire published and commented on the
communiqués that appeared in the French press.
[187] Le Libertaire, March 25, 1927.
[188] Letter from Durruti, sent from the Conciergerie, April 25, 1927.
Private archive.
[189] Osvaldo Bayer, op. cit.
[190] Ibid.
[191] Luis Lecoin. op. cit.
[192] Le Quotidien, July 9, 1927.
[193] This account comes from the following sources: an article by
Francisco Ascaso on Nestor Makhno’s death in the July 31, 1934 issue of
Solidaridad Obrera; comments about Durruti’s life in the November 22,
1936 Solidaridad Obrera; direct communication from Aurelio Fernández and
Liberto Callejas; and Rudolf Rocker’s comments in Revolución y
regression (Buenos Aires: Editorial Americana), where he wrote that “the
Spaniards had conceived of a revolutionary movement and Makhno promised to
work with them.” On Makhno and the Ukraine, one can consult Vsevolod
Voline, La revolución desconocida (Madrid: Campo Abierto Ediciones, 1977,
2 vols) and La historia del movimiento makhnovista by Pedro Archinof.
[194] Emile Bouchet provided this text.
[195] This was the Revolutionary Alliance Committee that had formed in 1924
and operated in the Vera de Bidasoa campaign. César M. Lorenzo claims that
“Alliance members were the first libertarians to desire governmental
participation” ( Los anarquistas españoles y el poder [Paris: Ed. Ruedo
Ibérico], 58). Whether in good faith or bad, Lorenzo confuses that
Committee with the Spanish revisionists known as “labor possiblists,”
with whom Los Solidarios had nothing in common. Lorenzo also says that a
secret meeting took place in Paris in late 1926 at which there was only one
speaker—García Oliver—and that he advanced the Bolshevik theory of the
seizure of power. Lorenzo does not cite any sources for this assertion.
According to our information, García Oliver was imprisoned at the time.
Durruti and Ascaso—as we have seen—were also incarcerated. Aurelio
Fernández, who was implicated in the plot of Vallecas, was in prison too.
Only Vivancos of Los Solidarios was in Paris then.
[196] National Archives, Paris, F7 13.443.
[197] Emilienne Morin told us the following: “Berthe and I went to see
them while they were jailed in Lyon. It was the first time that I saw a
prison from the inside.”
[198] We possess a letter from Durruti in which he wrote the following:
“My compañera told me that she sent you our photograph. I’m sending
another for Rosa in this letter.” The photograph shows Durruti and
Emilienne wearing heavy coats in a snow-covered landscape. He also says:
“Given that I’m not very fond of prison, I’ve decided to ask the
Soviet government to let me into Russia.” Although this letter is
undated, he clearly wrote it in the winter of 1927–1928, which suggests
that Ascaso and Durruti made their inquiries at the Russian Embassy during
their trip to Paris in January 1928.
[199] We have asked many of Durruti’s friends about this matter. All
acknowledge that they did request an entrance visa but found the conditions
imposed on them unacceptable.
[200] Rudolf Rocker, Revolución y regresión (Buenos Aires: Editorial
Americana). Alexander Granach was a stage and film actor whose real name
was Jessaja Szajko Gronach. He was born in Germany in 1890 and died during
surgery in New York in 1949. See, Maurice Bessy and Jean Louis Cherdans,
Dictionaire du Cinema, vol. II (Paris: Ed. Pauvert, 1960).
[201] Anecdote provided by Liberto Callejas, who was also exiled at the
time.
[202] Translator’s note: Emile Vandervelde (1866–1938) was a leader of
the Belgian Workers’ Party.
[203] Article by Liberto Callejas titled “Bruselas” which was published
in Tierra y Libertad, Mexico, June 1949.
[204] Leo Campion, Ascaso-Durruti (Brussels: Ediciones Emancipateur, 1930).
[205] Ida Mett was the compañera of Nicolás Lazarovich, a Russian
revolutionary exiled with Makhno.
[206] Acción Social Obrera, Sant Feliú de Guíxols, No. 91, April 5,
1930. Article “Nuestra posición en el momento actual.”
[207] Tierra y Libertad, no. 2, April 19, 1930, Barcelona.
[208] Bernardo Pou and J. R. Magriñá, Un año de conspiración
(Barcelona, 1931). We draw on this text to describe the CNT’s
re-organization.
[209] Ibid.
[210] Miguel Maura, Así cayó Alfonso XIII (Barcelona: Ed. Ariel, 1966).
[211] Ibid.
[212] Translator’s note: Ramón Franco (1893 — 1938) was Francisco
Franco’s brother. He actively supported leftwing causes prior to the 1936
Civil War, when he joined the nationals.
[213] Fermín Galán Rodríguez (October 4, 1899 — December 14, 1930). He
wrote an anarchist-inspired book while imprisoned in Montjuich
(1926–1930) titled Nueva creación. Barcelona’s Ediciones Cervantes
published the work in 1930. José Arderius wrote a biography of him that
was published in 1931 entitled Vida de Fermín Galán. Antonio Leal and
Juan Antonio Rodríguez reprinted some of his correspondence in Lo que se
ignoraba de Fermín Galán (Barcelona, 1931). The cited letter from Mola is
reproduced in Ricardo de la Cierva’s article “La sublevación de
Jaca...”, which was published in Historia y Vida 33 (December 1970).
[214] Ricardo de la Cierva. Cited article.
[215] Miguel Maura, op. cit.
[216] José Peirats, La CNT en la revolución española (Paris: Ruedo
Ibérico, 1971).
[217] Miguel Maura. op. cit.
[218] Ricardo de la Cierva. Cited article.
[219] Pou and Magriñá. op. cit.
[220] Ricardo de la Cierva. Cited article.
[221] Antonio Elorza “La CNT bajo la Dictadura (1923–1930),”
Ediciones Ministerio de Trabajo, Revista de Trabajo, No. 44–45, 1973.
[222] Ibid.
[223] Translator’s note: Although Monarchist candidates received more
votes than pro-Republic candidates, the elections’ results were an
indictment of the Monarchy as a whole. As Gerald Brenan explains, “Every
provincial capital in Spain except four voted Republican. In Madrid and
Barcelona the vote was overwhelming.... The fact that the country
districts, outnumbering towns, voted royalist was of no importance: their
votes were largely controlled by the caciques or else they were politically
indifferent, and in any case no king or dictator could hope to hold Spain
if the towns were against him.” Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth: The
Social and Political Background of the Spanish Civil War (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press), 85–86.
[224] Translator’s note: Chris Ealham explains that Casas del Pueblo
(houses of the people) “were the socialist equivalent of the anarchist
ateneos (atheneums), of which there was a network across Spain. Built by
union subscriptions, these centers provided a base for any combination of
the following: union offices, meeting halls, cooperative facilities,
libraries, canteens, workers’ educational programs, musical and
theatrical groups.” José Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, ed.
Chris Ealham, 68, note 25.
[225] Miguel Maura, op. cit.
[226] Translator’s note: Françesc Cambó, head of the Lliga Catalana,
was a conservative Catalan politician who supported King Alfonso XIII’s
attempt to restore a constitutional monarchy. Colonel Macià, leader of the
Esquerra at the time, was his leftwing rival.
[227] Ricardo Sanz, op. cit.
[228] Miguel Maura, op. cit.
[229] Ibid.
[230] Ibid.
[231] Ibid.
[232] Ibid.
[233] Ibid.
[234] We take the statistical from Salustiano del Campo, La Población de
España (1974) (Paris: CIDRED, 1975).
[235] Henri Rabasseire, España, crisol político (Buenos Aires: Ed.
Proyección, 1966). The author included a critical bibliographic essay in
this edition, which the 1938 French edition does not contain.
[236] Ibid., 99.
[237] Translator’s note: Colonos were peasants established on the land
under the Agrarian Reform Law.
[238] Ibid., 91.
[239] Cited by Rabasseire, op. cit., 85.
[240] Cited Altamira, Historia Económica de España.
[241] Joaquín Costa, Colectivismo agrario en España (Buenos Aires: Ed.
Americale, 1944).
[242] Cited by Diego Abad de Santillán, El organismo económico de la
Revolución (Barcelona: Ed. Tierra y Libertad, 1936–1938).
[243] Angel Marvaud, L’Espagne au XX Siecle (Paris: Ed. Armand Colin,
1913). This work is indispensable for the study of agrarian and industrial
questions in Spain.
[244] Translator’s note: Carlos III (1716 – 1788) was the King of Spain
between 1759 and 1788.
[245] Joaquín Maurín, Revolución y contrarrevolución en España (Paris:
Ed. Ruedo Ibérico, 1966).
[246] Henri Rabasseire, op. cit. We stress that these statistics come from
the 1931 period.
[247] Cited by Rabasseire, op. cit.
[248] On the origins of Spanish fascism, see Herbert R. Southworth,
Antifalange, estudio crítico (Paris: Ed. Ruedo Ibérico, 1967).
[249] Valeriano Orobón Fernández, Sturm uber Spanien (Berlin:
Secretariado de la Asociación Internacional de Trabajadores, 1931).
[250] Durruti jotted down this letter on stationary from the Bar-Restaurant
Las Delicias at 32 Nacional Avenue in Barceloneta. That restaurant offered
full board at eight pesetas. One can imagine that Durruti stayed there
immediately upon his return to Barcelona.
[251] Solidaridad Obrera, April 15, 1931.
[252] This letter is undated but was surely sent on May 2, since Durruti
writes: “Mimi has been in Barcelona for two weeks” and also conveys the
same rush as the previous letter (see note 17). This one was on stationary
from the “Sindicato de Industria de los obreros del Arte Fabril y Textil
de Barcelona y su Radio,” 12 Municipio Street, (Clot), telephone 51826.
And in a corner there is “CNT.” Private archive.
[253] Letter from May 11, 1931. Private archive.
[254] Translator’s note: Diego Martínez Barrio (1882 -1965) was a
politician who was Spain’s Prime Minister very briefly in 1936.
[255] Solidaridad Obrera, April 21, 1931.
[256] Ibid.
[257] Alejandro Gilabert, Durruti (Barcelona: Ed. Tierra y Libertad, 1937).
González Inestal also discusses this topic in an article called
“Durruti, the orator” in the November 19, 1938 issue of Umbral
magazine.
[258] García Oliver provided us with this information in 1973, in a letter
commenting on the French edition of our book.
[259] The Communist Party disseminated identical slogans at both the Madrid
and Barcelona demonstrations. According to José Robles, then a Bloc Obrer
i Camperol activist, one of these said “Long live the Chinese Soviets!”
CP members were called “Chinese” [chinos] from that moment on.
[260] Translator’s note: Paz is referring to the infamous 1886 massacre
in Chicago’s Haymarket Square.
[261] Luis Lecoin, op. cit.
[262] Durruti spoke on the second rostrum.
[263] Tierra y Libertad, no. 12, May 8, 1931.
[264] Since the publication of Acción magazine in 1925 in Paris, Spanish
anarchists had asserted that Spain would have to immediately withdraw from
Morocco once a Republic was proclaimed. Republicans asserted the same
thing, but simply replicated the Monarchy’s colonialist policy toward
Morocco when they came to power. By including Morocco among its demands,
the CNT was remaining faithful to its position and also reminding
Republicans of their promises.
[265] Ibid.
[266] Translator’s note: The Generalitat is the autonomous government in
Catalonia.
[267] Dolores Iturbe, who witnessed the event, tells us that Durruti
climbed a streetlamp at the height of the panic: “We were all impressed
by his courage. Large, disheveled, defying the bullets, he implored the
frightened crowd be calm with his powerful voice.” Likewise, Ida Mett
shared her memory of Ascaso’s behavior with us: “More than a third of a
century has passed, but I can still visualize him clearly ... ready to
throw himself into battle, because his idea of courage dictated that he not
give way.”
[268] Tierra y Libertad, op cit. In the French edition of our book, we drew
on the description of these events in the May 18, 1931 issue of Le
Libertaire. After comparing both versions and consulting eyewitnesses, we
determined that the Spanish account is more accurate.
[269] Ricardo Sanz, op. cit. notes that the group took on the name “
Nosotros” [trans.: we] in reply to that surprise.
[270] The arguments advanced at that meeting reflected the Nosotros
group’s views and also articles and editorials on the matter in Tierra y
Libertad, the FAI’s publication.
[271] Communicated to the author by Emilienne Morin and also Teresa
Margalef, a close friend of the Durruti family. Durruti always complained
about a lack of time in letters to his family.
[272] Miguel Maura, op. cit.
[273] Article by J. M. Gutiérrez Inclán, “El caso del cardenal
Segura,” Historia y Vida 69 (December 1973).
[274] Miguel Maura, op cit.
[275] According to Civil Guard ordinances, Guards had to sound their horns
three times before violently intervening in a disruption. Of course they
generally did not respect this rule.
[276] We emphasize that we are following the previously cited work by Maura
in this account. We are unaware of any protest made by the Socialists in
response to Maura’s demands.
[277] Miguel Maura, op cit.
[278] Translator’s note: the FAUD—Freie Arbeiter-Union
Deutschland—was a German anarcho-syndicalist federation.
[279] Rudolf Rocker, op. cit.
[280] Ibid.
[281] Tierra y Libertad, no. 17, June 13, 1931.
[282] Ibid.
[283] Tierra y Libertad, no. 18, June 20, 1931.
[284] The nature of “limited rights” is not clear. The FAI was present
at the CNT Congress only in an informational capacity and did not opine on
agenda items or issue any vote.
[285] In the previously cited work, Miguel Maura affirms that “there were
no deals with the CNT, either when we made the Pact of San Sebastián or
later, except to support the December 15, 1930 strike.”
[286] Translator’s note: The Rifi (or Rifians) are indigenous to the
central and eastern part of northern Morocco, particularly the area around
the Rif mountains. They are predominantly Berber in origin and culture.
Spain secured control over the area in 1904.
[287] García Oliver’s speech reflected his personal views—since
Pestaña’s proposal had not been discussed by the unions prior to the
Congress—and also the FAI’s assumptions, which were expressed in its
subversive activity in the Protectorate. Paulino Díez was one of the most
significant militants living in Melilla and he was active in Morocco as an
anarchist. The Moroccan police persecuted the CNT because it had supported
the Moroccan workers during their demonstrations and strikes in Tetuán.
Police imprisoned a number of CNT militants in May that year after seizing
a truck carrying anarchist propaganda directed to the Moroccan workers. We
obtained this information from Paulino Díez’s memoirs.
[288] We draw on issues 879 to 885 of Paris’s Le Combat Syndicaliste
(Spanish version) for our summary of the CNT’s Third Congress.
[289] Santiago Cánovas Cervantes, Apuntes históricos de Solidaridad
Obrera (Ed. C. R. T., 1937). This work was republished with the title
Proceso histórico de la revolución española. Apuntes de Solidaridad
Obrera (Madrid: Júcar, 1979). See also the cited work by José Peirats,
vol. I.
[290] Cánovas Cervantes, op. cit. The following quotations come from this
work.
[291] Translator’s note: The headquarters of the Left Republicans were
“in the Ateneo de Madrid, the famous literary and political club which
during the last hundred years had included all the more distinguished
figures of Spanish life among its members. The Ateneo had been closed by
Primo de Rivera—a thing which even the most reactionary governments of
Isabel II had not dared to do—and from that moment it became the focus of
the Republican movement. A few months before the Monarchy fell Manuel
Azaña was elected to be its President.” Gerald Brenan, The Spanish
Labyrinth, 234
[292] Mentioned by Cánovas Cervantes, op. cit.
[293] Ibid.
[294] Miguel Maura, op. cit.
[295] Ibid.
[296] Translator’s note: according to Maura, the “Tablada conspiracy”
was an insurrectionary plot organized by Ramón Franco, Blas Infante, the
CNT, and aviators from the Tablada airfield.
[297] Pedro Vallina, Mis Memorias, 2 vols (Mexico: Ed. Tierra y Libertad,
1968).
[298] Miguel Maura, op. cit.
[299] Pedro Vallina, op. cit.
[300] Ibid.
[301] Ibid.
[302] Miguel Maura, op. cit.
[303] Ibid.
[304] Ibid.
[305] Translator’s note: Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881) was a French
revolutionary known principally for his vanguardist strategy for social
change.
[306] Cited manuscripts by Aurelio Fernández.
[307] Miguel Maura, op. cit.
[308] This refers to the famous rifles bought in 1923 after the Gijón bank
robbery.
[309] Translator’s note: the Somatén were a Catalan militia.
[310] This is a reference to what occurred on October 6, 1934, when the
“Escamots” discarded these arms and CNT workers later recovered them.
[311] Translator’s note: The Ramo del Agua is a section of the textile
industry dedicated to dying, printing, and finishing.
[312] Ricardo Sanz, op. cit.
[313] The letter is dated Saturday, August 1 and contains a postscript
saying: “I’m in a hurry. As you can see from the newspaper clipping,
we’re going to hold a large rally tonight.” Private archive.
[314] Maura created the Assault Guard, with the help of the General
Director of Security and Lieutenant Colonel Muñoz Grandes. Basic
requirements: rigid obedience. Minimum height, 1.80 meters. Hefty.
Equipment: pistol and truncheon. Salary: fifteen pesetas daily. First
graduation: eight hundred men. First activity: August 1931.
[315] This “Marianet” was twenty-one years old at the time and had
recently joined the CNT. He will become the famous Mariano R. Vázquez, the
CNT’s General Secretary from November 1936 until the end of the civil war
in April 1939.
[316] Manuel Muñoz Díez, Marianet, semblanza de un hombre (Mexico: Ed.
CNT, 1960).
[317] The unabridged text of this document is available in vol. 1 of the
cited work by José Peirats.
[318] Letter from Rosa Durruti made available for this work.
[319] Translator’s note: literally, the “Council of One Hundred,”
which was formed in 1274 and provided for self-government in Barcelona.
[320] El Luchador, September 18, 1931.
[321] Liberto Callejas, testimony.
[322] La Tierra, September 2, 1931.
[323] Solidaridad Obrera, Editorial, September 2, 1931.
[324] La Tierra, October 3, 1931.
[325] This letter is undated, but its content leads us to situate it in
this period. Private archive.
[326] Umbral, July 19, 1938. Article by Felipe Alaiz, “Ascaso frente a
Atarazanas. Una vida corta, pero llena”.
[327] Translator’s note: About La Tranquilidad, Chris Ealham writes
“Run by a former CNT militant, this bar, where non-consumption was
tolerated and tap water provided for those unable to purchase drunks, was
extremely popular with workers and anarchists alike as a space for
discussion and debate. So, while Barcelona had long attracted anarchists
from across the Spanish state and beyond, the consolidation of an
exclusively anarchist network of sociability in the late 1920s and early
1930s made it possible for newly arrived anarchists to find out where
grupos met and integrate themselves quickly into the city.” Chris Ealham,
Class, Culture and Conflict in Barcelona, 1898–1937 (New York: Routledge,
2005), 87.
[328] We possess a letter that Durruti sent to his family (on October 26,
1931) that mentions this issue. Among other things, he says: “I don’t
know what you want me to say, because I don’t understand the thing with
“el Toto” and me in Gijón. What you should do is send me the Boletín
Oficial as soon as possible, or Monroi should find out about the matter and
explain it to me.” Private archive.
[329] Felipe Alaiz shared this anecdote with the author.
[330] Translator’s note: Murcia is a province in southeastern Spain.
Paz’s comments here must be understood in the context of the fierce
anti-migrant campaign launched by the Esquerra. Regarding this campaign,
Ealham notes that “Murcians were singled out in particular, even though
they accounted for only a small percentage of the overall migrant
population in Barcelona. According to the stereotype of ‘the illiterate
Murcian’, migrants were an inferior tribe of degenerates, like
‘backward’ and ‘savage’ African tribesmen, the source of crime,
disease, and conflict in much the same way that the Irish were vilified in
Victorian England.” Ealham, Class, Culture, and Conflict in Barcelona,
1898–1937, 68.
[331] Umbral, cited article by Alaiz.
[332] Alejandro Gilabert, op. cit.
[333] Letter from October 31, 1931. Private archive.
[334] Ibid., December 8, 1931.
[335] Ibid., December 14, 1931.
[336] Ibid., December 16, 1931.
[337] A native of León, who lived in Madrid in 1969 and prefers to remain
anonymous, shared this anecdote with us.
[338] Solidaridad Obrera, December 23, 1931.
[339] Sembrador, libertarian newspaper published in Puigcerdá (Gerona),
November 22, 1936. Article by Pablo Portas.
[340] Alejandro Gilabert, op. cit.
[341] Tierra y Libertad, January 16, 1931. Article by Felipe Alaiz titled
“Hojas al viento.”
[342] The February 6, 1932 issue of Tierra y Libertad reproduced this
article by Eduardo de Guzmán, which was first published in Madrid’s La
Tierra.
[343] Tomás Cano Ruiz was a founder of the FAI. He made this statement to
the author.
[344] Tierra y Libertad, April 8, 1932. It published this text under the
title “Por los fueros de la verdad.”
[345] Letter from Emilienne Morin, printed in Le Libertaire on February 14,
1937. Document reproduced in the cited work by José Peirats, Vol. I.
[346] Document reproduced in the cited work by José Peirats, Vol. I.
[347] Tierra y Libertad, April 8, 1932. Article “Desde la línea de
fuego” by García Oliver, Celular Prison March 27, 1932.
[348] Doctor G. Pittaluga, Las enfermedades del sueño y las condiciones
sanitarias en los territorios españoles de Guinea (Madrid: Sección
Colonial del Ministerio de Estado Español, Archivos de la Biblioteca del
Congreso). Prologue by Santiago Ramón y Cajal.
[349] Salvador de Madariaga, España (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana,
1974), 412.
[350] Manuel Tuñón de Lara, op. cit.
[351] Ibid.
[352] Testimony from Cano Ruiz: “Ramón Franco was active in the
revolutionary left at the time, throwing his fame as an aviator into the
balance.... He visited us to propose an escape, although none of us
accepted his plan. Instead, we urged him to explain our idea on the
Peninsula, which would be very helpful to us.”
[353] Letter from Durruti to his family. Cabras Port, April 18, 1932.
[354] Manuel Utrillo published a feature in Barcelona’s La Vanguardia
Española on June 24, 1971 titled “Tras las huellas de don Miguel de
Unamuno.” During his trip to Fuerteventura, Utrillo spoke with Ramón
Castañeira, who had had contact with the famous writer when he was
deported to that island in 1925. Utrillo mentioned Durruti’s name in
passing in the article, also as a resident of Fuerteventura. We wrote
Ramón Castañeira and received the letter quoted above in reply. He sent
it from Puerto del Rosario on July 12, 1971.
[355] Tierra y Libertad, May 12, 1932.
[356] Private archive.
[357] Tierra y Libertad,September 23, 1932.
[358] Ibid.
[359] Ibid.
[360] Ibid.
[361] Tierra y Libertad, November 4, 1932.
[362] Translator’s note: Disgruntled CNT members founded the Libertarian
Syndicalist Federation in 1933. The organization returned to the CNT in
1936.
[363] Solidaridad Obrera, March 19, 1933. Article by Francisco Ascaso
titled “¿Independencia sindical?”
[364] Translator’s note; Chris Ealham writes that “Jaume Aiguader, the
‘people’s physician,’ who became the first mayor of republican
Barcelona, had flirted with anarchism in the 1920s when he allowed his
Sants surgery to be used as a clandestine meeting place for republicans and
cenetistas alike.” Chris Ealham, Class, Culture and Conflict in
Barcelona, 1898–1937, 58
[365] Translator’s note: This is a “reference to the number of people
killed by security forces during Maura’s six-month spell in office.”
José Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, ed. Chris Ealham
(Hastings, UK: Meltzer Press, 2001), 56, note 55.
[366] Ricardo Sanz, op. cit.
[367] García Oliver articulated the same analysis in an article printed in
Tierra y Libertad on March 25, 1932 with the title “La baraja sin fin,”
which he had sent from prison on March 10, 1932. Our account of the meeting
also relies upon testimony from Francisco Isgleas.
[368] This was the Nosotros group’s position throughout the cited period.
[369] Testimony from Francisco Isgleas.
[370] Federica Montseny, María Silva, la Libertaria (Toulouse, France:
CNT, 1947).
[371] Information supplied by Tomás Pérez, a militant in Barcelona’s
Construction Workers’ Union.
[372] Ricardo Sanz, op. cit.
[373] Tierra y Libertad, November 1966, Mexico. Article by Benjamín Cano
Ruiz.
[374] José Peirats. op. cit., vol. I
[375] Witnessed by the author.
[376] José Peirats. op. cit., vol. I José Peirats, op. cit., vol I.
[377] Eduardo de Guzmán published a vivid account of these events in La
Tierra, January 1933. Peirats, op. cit., vol. I, reproduces the entire
text.
[378] Solidaridad Obrera, March 3, 1933. Article by Francisco Ascaso.
[379] Letter from Durruti to his family sent from El Puerto de Santa María
on June 3, 1933.
[380] Pío Baroja, Memorias, vol. VIII (Madrid: Ed. Minotauro, 1955), 651
and ss.
[381] Our account of this episode relies on comments about the event in El
Luchador, Solidaridad Obrera, various letters from Durruti, and Paulino
Díez’s unpublished memoirs.
[382] L’llustration, November 3, 1934. Gaetan Bernoville published an
article on “French Diplomacy and Spain” and mentions Herriot’s visit
as well as the situation in French Morocco at the time. We take the quote
from his article.
[383] Umbral, November 1938. Article by González Inestal, which provides
biographical information about Durruti.
[384] The typography workers used this strategy during the December 1919
general strike in Barcelona. It consisted of censoring all government
articles in the newspapers that were antagonistic to the strikers and the
strike. Liberto Callejas shared this anecdote with us.
[385] CNT, Madrid, November 3, 1933.
[386] In the cited pamphlet, Gilabert writes: “For the first time in
their long friendship, Durruti disagreed with García Oliver.”
[387] Translator’s note: a pronunciamiento is a military uprising.
[388] Tierra y Libertad, November 24, 1933.
[389] 8 de diciembre de 1933, pamphlet published by the FAI Peninsular
Committee, Sevilla, 1935.
[390] Manuel Salas, 20 de noviembre (CNT, 1936). Cipriano Mera also shared
this account with the author.
[391] La Voz de Aragón, January 25, 1934.
[392] See text by Peirats, op. cit., vol I.
[393] Ibid.
[394] Testimony from Liberto Callejas.
[395] El Liberal, January 11, 1936.
[396] Ramón Alvarez communicated this information to the author.
[397] FAI, órgano revolucionario de la Federación Anarquista Ibérica,
year 1, no. 1, Barcelona, April 1934. There is an incomplete collection of
this underground newspaper in Amsterdam’s Institute of Social History.
[398] Ibid., April 1934, no. 2.
[399] Recollections of the author, who witnessed the event.
[400] La Voz Confederal, June 2, 1934, no. 1 (underground).
[401] Translator’s note: Albert Balcells says that novecentismo (in
Catalan: noucentisme) was a “cultural movement which began to take the
place of Modernism from 1906 onwards. It was to some extent opposed to the
most vital and Romantic aspect of the latter movement. Both, however, were
closely linked to the construction of Catalonia as a European society and
to its overall modernization.
[402] Manuel Cruells, El 6 d’Octobre a Catalunya (Barcelona: Ed. Portic,
1970), 8.
[403] Translator’s note: Albert Balcells writes the following about this
law: “[T]he duration of the lease was to be six years, renewable unless
the owner himself decided to farm the land for six years. The owner’s
income was limited to 4 per cent of the value of the land. Tenants who had
farmed land for eighteen years were entitled to purchase it at a set price
in fifteen yearly installments while those who had planted their own vines
could acquire the land at its value prior to the planting of the vines.
This was the first social reform law passed by the Catalan parliament and
it would have enabled an estimated 70,000 farmers to become landowners
within a relatively short time.” (Albert Balcells, Catalan Nationalism:
Past and Present, 107.
[404] Teresa Margalef shared this anecdote with the author.
[405] Liberto Callejas’s testimony to the author.
[406] Ramón Alvarez shared this text with the author. He was a
representative for the Regional of León, Asturias, and Palencia at the
National Meeting in question.
[407] Translator’s note: the Basque country, like Catalonia, had secured
various degrees of autonomy from Madrid over the years, including the right
to collect and distribute taxes.
[408] Cited in Manuel Cruells, op. cit.
[409] Ibid.
[410] Ibid.
[411] Translator’s note: Nosaltres Sols was an ultra-nationalist group
that agitated for Catalan independence.
[412] Ibid.
[413] José Peirats. op. cit., vol. I.
[414] Translator’s note: The Worker Alliance was formed in 1933 at the
initiative of the Bloc Obrer I Camperol (Worker-Peasant Block).
[415] Manuel Cruells, op. cit.
[416] José Peirats, op. cit.
[417] Ibid.
[418] Translator’s note: this is the Catalan national anthem.
[419] This quote and those that follow are from Manuel Cruells, op. cit..
[420] Translator’s note: CADCI stands for the Center Autonomista de
Dependendts del Comerç i de la Indústria (Autonomous Center of Shop
Assistants and Industrial Employes). The CADCI was a Catalanist
organization formed in 1903 to provide moral and material support to the
Catalan working class and propagate autonomist views.
[421] José Peirats, op. cit.
[422] Ibid.
[423] For the revolution in Asturias, one can consult the following works:
Manuel Villar, El anarquismo en la revolución de Asturias (Barcelona: Ed.
Solidaridad Obrera, 1935 — Republished in Granada: Fundación de Estudios
Libertarios Anselmo Lorenzo, 1994]; Salvador de Madariaga, España (Buenos
Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1974); Antonio Ramos Oliveira (Socialist
author), Historia de España, siglos XIX y XX (Barcelona: Grijalbo, 3
vols.); Víctor Alba (POUM sympathizer), La Alianza Obrera. Historia y
análisis de una táctica de unidad en España (Madrid: Júcar, 1978);
Fernando Solano Palacio (anarchist), La revolución de Octubre. Quince
días de comunismo libertario (Barcelona: Editorial Tierra y Libertad, 1936
— Republished in Granada: Fundación de Estudios Libertarios Anselmo
Lorenzo, 1994] and Rodolfo Llopis (Socialist), Octubre 34. Estampas de la
revolución española (Mexico-Paris: Ediciones Tribuna, s.a).
[424] Francisco Largo Caballero, Mis recuerdos (Mexico: Editores Unidos S.
A., 1976), 128–129.
[425] Ibid., 147–148.
[426] Testimony from Liberto Callejas, who was incarcerated with Durruti.
[427] Ibid.
[428] Juan Manuel Molina told us this anecdote and Jacinto Toryho confirms
it in his No éramos tan malos (Madrid: Ed. G. del Toro, 1975). We use
Toryho’s account here because it is more expressive.
[429] As in the previous case, Juan Manuel Molina, who was a member of the
Germen anarchist group, told us about this event. The author cited in the
preceding note also confirms it.
[430] Ibid. Previous source, corroborated by Toryho.
[431] Ibid.
[432] Ibid.
[433] Translator’s note: José Díaz (1896–1942) was a leading Spanish
Communist.
[434] José Díaz, Tres años de lucha (Paris: Editorial Ebro, 1970).
[435] The defeated Germans and USSR signed the Treaty of Rapallo on April
16, 1922. This treaty renounced war compensations and established a
rapprochement between both states. One of the most interesting consequences
of this treaty was that Germany obtained the right to make and test
military technology on Russian soil (which the Versailles Treaty prevented
it from doing on its own land). In compensation, prototypes of planes,
tanks, and the results of other investigations would remain in Russia, thus
ensuring that the USSR was up-to-date on the status of its military
technology.
[436] Our discussion of Stalin in this chapter draws upon Fernando Claudin,
La crisis del movimiento comunista, vol. 1 (Paris: Ed. Ruedo Ibérico,
1970), Dominique Desanti, L’lnternationale Communiste, and J. Favert,
L’Histoire du Parti Communiste français, vol II..
[437] Translator’s note: Paz appears to be referring to the Pact for
Unity of Action singed between French Communists and Socialists in 1934.
They signed this accord on July 27, not July 14, as Paz states. See, C.L.R.
James, World Revolution 1917–1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist
Movement (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1993). 382.
[438] Translator’s note: Maurice Thorez (1900 — 1964) was a leader of
the French Communist Party.
[439] Jacques Duclos, Mémoirs (1935–1939) (Paris: Ed. Fayard, 1969),
107–110. Largo Caballero does not mention a meeting with Jacques Duclos
in his memoirs, but does cite a “Medina,” who also represented the
Communist International in Spain.
[440] Translator’s note: On the CGTU, Chris Ealham writes: “Established
in June 1932 from the old Comité para la Reconstrucción de la CNT
(Committee for the Reconstruction of the CNT), which, despite its name, was
a Stalinist front aimed at splitting the CNT. Although it claimed to have
280,000 members at the time of its creation, the actual figure probably
never exceeded 46,000, its influence remaining limited to Sevilla in the
south and the northern coast. At the end of 1935 it had around 45,000
members and was absorbed by the UGT.” Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish
Revolution, ed. Chris Ealham, 9, note 9
[441] Tierra y Libertad, February 7, 1936.
[442] José Mira’s son provided us with this letter when he learned that
we were preparing the Spanish edition of this book. We were previously
unaware of its existence (surely like others held in private archives).
[443] José Peirats, Frente Libertario, Paris, September and October 1972.
[444] Solidaridad Obrera, December 10, 1935.
[445] José Peirats, op. cit.
[446] Communication from Pablo Ruiz, who was a member of the “Friends of
Durruti.”
[447] José Peirats, op. cit.
[448] Tierra y Libertad, July 10, 1936. Article by Fontaura, “A
propósito de la Alianza. Planes socialistas para el futuro.”
[449] The statement from Joaquín Arrarás is from Manuel Tuñón de Lara
op. cit..
[450] Solidaridad Obrera, March 7, 1936.
[451] Burnet Bolloten, El Gran Engaño. Las izquierdas en la lucha por el
poder (Barcelona: Caralt, 1977).
[452] Ibid.
[453] Miguel Maura, op. cit.
[454] Testimony of Liberto Callejas.
[455] Actas del Congreso de Zaragoza, 1936 (Toulouse: CNT, 1954).
[456] Ibid.
[457] Ibid.
[458] Fernando Claudín, op. cit.
[459] Translator’s note: One commentator describes the revolutionary
effervescence as follows, “When French people cast their minds back fifty
years to the time of the Popular Front, their most vivid memories tend not
to be of Léon Blum or the first socialist-led government in French
history, but rather of the strikes of May and June 1936 that accompanied
Blum’s election. The scale of the strikes alone would have been
sufficient to make the time memorable. There were more strikes in the
single month of June than there had been during the previous fifteen years.
But the factory occupations which accompanied the strikes also contributed
to the festive atmosphere for which June 1936 is remembered.” David A. L.
Levy, “The French Popular Front, 1936–37,” in The Popular Front in
Europe, ed. Helen Graham and Paul Preston (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1987), 58.
[460] See Solidaridad Obrera from May to June 1936.
[461] Francisco Largo Caballero, Mis recuerdos (Mexico: Editores Unidos,
1976).
[462] See Tuñón de Lara, op. cit.
[463] Le Libertaire, Paris. Article by Juan García Oliver about July 19,
1936, in which he describes their military strategy and analyzes the
reasons for their victory.
[464] Testimony of Teresa Margalef.
[465] Diego Abad de Santillán, Por qué perdimos la guerra (Barcelona:
Plaza y Janés, 1977). In the French edition of this book we stated that a
CNT and FAI commission met with Lluis Companys. Other writers have claimed
that García Oliver and Durruti met with Escofet. Both our affirmation in
the French edition and the latter assertion are incorrect. Garcia Oliver
explained to us in a letter that they did not see Companys until he
summoned them on July 20. There was no direct contact with Escofet before
July 19.
[466] Benjamín Sánchez communicated this to the author. Santillán, in
op. cit., also comments on the episode.
[467] Ibid.
[468] We witnessed the distribution of the rifles, coming from the port, in
the Camp de l’Arpa (Horta-Guinardó). They were given to the Defense
Committee in the district.
[469] Diego Abad de Santillán, op. cit. We rely on Miguel García
Vivancos’s statements to describe Durruti and García Oliver’s
activities on the night of July 18.
[470] We use Francisco Lacruz’s El alzamiento, la revolución y el terror
en Barcelona to describe rebel troop movements, their resources, and
internal organization.
[471] Vicente Guarner, Cataluña en la guerra de España (Madrid: Ed. G.
del Toro, 1975), 89–90.
[472] Federico Escofet, Al servei de Catalunya i de la República.
[473] Aurelio Fernández and Miguel García Vivancos gave us the details of
that night. The general lines of our account coincide with Luis Romero’s
Tres días de julio.
[474] Various witnesses, including the old militant port worker from
Aragón named Lecha, communicated these facts to us.
[475] For this chapter, we draw on Tres días de julio by Luis Romero;
Diego Abad de Santillán, Por qué perdimos la guerra (Buenos Aires:
Editorial Iman, 1943); Francisco Lacruz, El alzamiento, la revolución y el
terror en Barcelona, and Abel Paz, Paradigma de una revolución (Paris: ed.
AIT, 1967), in addition to testimonies from participants.
[476] Francisco Lacruz, op. cit.
[477] Frederic Escofet, Al servei de Catalunya i de la República.
[478] Le Libertaire, August 18, 1938, Article by García Oliver titled
“Ce que fut le 19 de juillet.”
[479] Luis Romero, op. cit.
[480] CNT National Committee, De julio a julio: un año de lucha
(Barcelona: Ed. Tierra y Libertad, 1937).
[481] Information from Pablo Ruiz. (Pablo Ruiz and Jaime Balius were the
principal leaders of the “Los Amigos de Durruti” group.)
[482] Pablo Ruiz. See also Luis Romero, op. cit.
[483] Cited article by García Oliver.
[484] Francisco Lacruz, op. cit.
[485] Ibid.
[486] Diego Abad de Santillán, La revolución y la guerra en España
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Nervio, 1937). This work was published and
distributed illegally in Spain. See also Francisco Lacruz, op. cit.
[487] Francisco Lacruz, op. cit.
[488] Communicated by José Peirats.
[489] Diego Abad de Santillán. op. cit.
[490] Enrique Obregón Blanco was born in Veracruz, Mexico in 1900. He
arrived in Spain in 1931 and was active in the Germen anarchist group. He
was secretary of the Local Federation of Anarchist Groups of Barcelona on
the day of his death.
[491] There was another assault on the telephone exchange on May 3, 1937,
when the revolution was in retreat. This detonated a bloody, weeklong
conflict during which the workers confronted the Communist
counterrevolutionaries. About May, 1937, consult José Peirats, La CNT en
la revolución española (Paris: Ed. Ruedo Ibérico) and Carlos Semprún,
Revolución y contrarrevolución en Cataluña (Paris: Ed. Meme, 1974).
[492] Statements to the author by POUM militants José Rovira and Antonio
Robles.
[493] Francisco Lacruz, op. cit. and Diego Abad de Santillán, Por qué
perdimos la guerra, 68.
[494] Francisco Lacruz, op. cit.
[495] On the morning of July 20, the author witnessed numerous trucks
loaded with arms take off for villages near Barcelona. A curious detail:
the vast majority of the rifles did not have bolts and their pieces were in
crates. Several soldiers mounted the bolts and distributed the rifles to
the workers.
[496] Eduardo de Guzmán, Madrid rojo y negro (Madrid: Ed. CNT, 1937
[Reprinted in Caracas, Venezuela: Editorial Vértice, 1972]).
[497] Ibid. The following quotations on Madrid are from de Guzmán.
Francisco Lacruz, op. cit.
[498] Francisco Lacruz, op. cit.
[499] “Juanel” (Juan Manuel Molina) informed us that the Germen group
had mounted the machine-gun on the truck. He was a member of the group.
[500] Details provided by José Mira, Pablo Ruiz, and Liberto Ros, who were
present. Liberto Ros was one of the prisoners freed on the afternoon of
July 19.
[501] Luis Romero, op cit.
[502] Pablo Ruiz, direct testimony.
[503] “Juanel” gave these details to the author. He was one of the
impromptu editors.
[504] Federica Montseny, article published in La Revista Blanca on July 30,
1936. She witnessed numerous acts of this nature on the morning of July 20.
One that impressed her most was an attack on a bank on Mallorca Street. A
group of women smashed through its doors, took out the bank’s equipment,
set it all alight, and threw the bills that they found into the blaze. They
laughed with glee as they watched the money burn; a joy in the knowing that
the world of mercantilism and institutionalized usury was what they were
destroying.
[505] Jaume Miravitlles, Episodis de la guerra civil espanyola (Barcelona:
Ed. Portic, 1972).
[506] Central Committee of the PCE, Guerra y revolución en España, 3 vols
(Moscow: Ed. Progreso, 1966), vol 1.
[507] Vicente Guarner, Cataluña en la guerra de España (Madrid: Ed. G.
del Toro, 1975), 139–140.
[508] One of these “excesses” was the opening of the pawnshop and the
distribution of the clothes, mattresses, and sewing machines (etc) that
hunger had obliged the people to sell. The Revolutionary Committee in the
pawnshop’s area organized the expropriation.
[509] Frederic Escofet, op. cit.
[510] H. E. Kaminski, in Ceux de Barcelone (Paris: Ed. Denöel, 1937
[Barcelona’s Ediciones del Cotal released a Spanish version of this book
in 1977 ]) mentions a meeting with Companys on page 181 and ss. Kaminski:
“And the anarchists?” Companys: “We collaborate. Everything has gone
well so far. Why shouldn’t that be the same in the future? Naturally, our
collaboration could be threatened at some point. What point is that? I
can’t say. I have my secrets and the anarchists have theirs. The
important thing is that they accept the responsibility that is incumbent
upon them. My job is to direct those responsibilities along a good path,
and I hope the anarchist masses won’t oppose their leaders.”
[511] Luis Romero, op. cit.
[512] Agustin Souchy was in Barcelona with other anarcho-syndicalists of
various nationalities at the time. They founded a Boletín de información
CNT-FAI, which was to be published in four languages (Spanish, English,
German, and French). They released the first issue on July 24. We reprint
the text of the first issue in French, the only one that we have been able
to locate. (NOTE: THIS FOOTNOTE REFERS TO A GRAPHIC)
[513] García Oliver, in a letter to the author.
[514] Ibid
[515] The PSUC had not been formed yet. [Translator’s note: the Partit
Socialista Unificat de Catalunya or United Socialist Party of Catalonia was
founded on July 23, 1936.]
[516] Translator’s note: Juan Comorera (1895 — 1960) was a prominent
Catalan Communist.
[517] De julio a julio: un año de lucha, page 193 to 195, contains a full
account of this meeting. The account also appeared in Solidaridad Obrera on
July 19, 1937, although censors blacked out three lines toward the end of
the piece. In the censored section, García Oliver mentioned a speech that
he gave after the dissolution of the CCAMC in which he warned of conflicts
between anti-fascists.
[518] Manuel D. Benavides (PSUC intellectual), Guerra y revolución en
Cataluña (Mexico: 1946).
[519] Jaume Miravitlles, op. cit.
[520] Federica Montseny, letter to the author.
[521] José Peirats, op .cit.
[522] García Oliver, letter to the author.
[523] Informe del Comité Nacional de la CNT al Congreso Extraordinario de
la AIT, París diciembre de 1937 (Barcelona: Ed. CNT, Artes Gráficas).
[524] Article included by Daniel Guerin in Ni Dieu ni Maître (Paris:
Ediciones Maspero, 1973).
[525] Text by García Oliver, cited in De julio a julio: un año de lucha.
[526] Translator’s note: García Oliver presents a different account of
the CNT’s decision to join the CCAMC in his memoirs. He states that the
CNT Regional Committee agreed to join the CCAMC after a brief meeting on
July 20. Their provisional decision would be valid until its ratification
at a Local and County Plenary scheduled for July 23. Juan García Oliver,
El Eco de los Pasos: El Anarcosindicalismo en la calle, en el Comité de
Milicias, en el gobierno, en el exilio (Paris and Barcelona: Ruedo
Ibérico, 1978), 177.
[527] Jaume Miravitlles, op. cit.
[528] Miravitlles wrote his memoirs, or at least published them, in 1972.
Therefore, his reference to peronism (which arose in Argentina between 1944
and 1946) is a literary device used retrospectively and not a concrete
reference to events in 1936. Miravitlles could have also mentioned the
hungry masses of the Russian Revolution in 1917.
[529] Miravitlles, op. cit.
[530] Diego Abad de Santillán, letter to the author.
[531] Diego Abad de Santillán, Por qué perdimos la guerra (Buenos Aires:
Editorial Imán, 1943).
[532] Ibid.
[533] Manuel D. Benavides, op. cit.
[534] The Durruti Column was the first column to leave Barcelona (on July
24). The Antonio Ortiz Ramírez Column, which later changed its name to the
Sur-Ebro Column (CNT), departed immediately afterwards. The Ascaso Column
(CNT) took off for the Huesca front a few days later. It was led by Domingo
Ascaso, Gregorio Jover, and Cristóbal Aldabaldetrecu. Following these
columns were the so-called Trueba-Del Barrio Column (PSUC), that was
positioned in Tardienta (1,500 men) and the Rovira-Arquer Column (POUM),
that was divided between Grañen (Alcubierre) and Huesca. The Los
Aguiluchos Column (CNT) set off for Huesca on August 20, led by Miguel
García Vivancosas. In September, the Roja y Negra Column (CNT) left the
city, with García Pradas as its leader and, on the same day, the
Macià-Companys Column, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Jesús
Pérez Salas.
[535] J. Miravitlles, op. cit.
[536] Santillán, op. cit.
[537] Flier reproduced in the Boletín CNT-FAI on July 24, 1936.
[538] Vicente Guarner, op. cit., 145.
[539] Solidaridad Obrera, July 23, 1936.
[540] The author witnessed this phenomenon in Poblet, Barcelona. A militia
organizer in that district named Fuentes rejected many militants who wanted
to go to the front. “If everyone goes,” he asked, “who will defend
the revolution in the rearguard?”
[541] José Mira, Guerrilleros confederales (Sindicato Metalúrgico de la
CNT de Barcelona, 1937).
[542] Ibid. Aurelio Fernández notes similar comments in the communications
from him that we have utilized. Emma Goldman also cites Durruti’s use of
the expression “build itself in freedom” in her interview with him.
Freedom, London, April, 1937.
[543] Koltsov reproaches Durruti for his anarchist perseverance in his
Diario de la guerra de España (Paris: Ed. Ruedo Ibérico).
[544] José Manuel Martínez Bande, La invasión de Aragón y el desembarco
en Mallorca (Madrid: Ed. San Martín, 1970), 43–44.
[545] José Chueca, article in De julio a julio, op. cit., 52.
[546] José Manuel Martínez Bande, op. cit., 44–45.
[547] Testimony from Pablo Ruiz, and Solidaridad Obrera, July 25, 1936,
commenting on the population’s enthusiasm.
[548] Toronto Star, article by Van Paassen, titled “2,000,000 anarchists
fight for revolution, says Spanish leader,” August 18, 1936. We have
translated this piece directly from English. This article was published
many weeks after the interview took place: our investigations lead us to
conclude that it occurred in Barcelona on the morning of July 24 in the
CNT’s Metalworkers’ Union. In the piece, Van Paassen says that “from
the distance came the roll of the cannonade,” although we must regard
that statement as a literary device. It is important to identify the exact
or approximate date of the interview because otherwise some of Durruti’s
comments are incomprehensible, particularly those about the war and
operations against the rebel forces.
[549] Durruti recalls his 1927 meeting with Nestor Makhno in Paris, which
we recounted in the First Part of this work.
[550] Vicente Guarner, op. cit., 161.
[551] From an unpublished interview with Julio Alvarez del Vayo taped by
the author in 1972.
[552] In 1930, the elder Argila attracted the attention of some Spanish
intellectuals, including Fernando de los Ríos and Gonzalo de Reparaz, and
together they created the “Hispano-Islamic Association” in Madrid,
which had close links with the Tetuán dignitaries. Argila undertook the
effort on behalf of Emir Shakib Arslan (founder of the La Nation Arabe). He
was also a journalist and contributed to Maghreb magazine, which was
founded by J. R. Conguez (one of Karl Marx’s grandsons) in Paris. We do
not know if the elder Argila died or if his son simply succeeded him as he
grew older. Margeli was also of Arab origin. For information on this matter
and the Moroccan Action Committee (MAC), see Robert Rezette, Les Partis
Politiques Marrocains (Paris: Ediciones Armand Colin, 1955).
[553] Emir Shakib Arslan lived in Geneva, which functioned as a contact
point for Moroccan nationalists in the Spanish and French zones (that is,
Tetuán and Fez).
[554] García Oliver, in a letter to the author.
[555] Jaime Rosquillas Magriñá, in a letter to the author. Magriñá and
Bernardo Pou authored Un año de conspiración (Barcelona: Rojo y Negro,
1933), which describes all the activities of the CNT-FAI in that year.
[556] Our account of the Column’s formation and its early activities
relies on articles published by the two Paul brothers in the November 1963
issue of Espoir (CNT), from Toulouse. The elder brother’s name was Cosme
and the younger one became popular through chronicles of life on the front
that he wrote under the pseudonym “The Bandit.” Both departed from
Barcelona with the Column. We also draw on testimonies from Francisco
Subirats and Liberto Ros. For the Column’s internationals, one can
consult Ecrits historiques et politiques by Simone Weil. She was a
volunteer in the Durruti Column in August 1936.
[557] In his book on the invasion of Aragón, Martínez Bande writes: “In
the early hours of July 24, Durruti’s forces sweep away the bridge’s
defenders and, in a decisive and unstoppable advance, enter the town,
protected by aviation fire and several armored vehicles. The fighting in
the streets of Caspe is extremely intense and Captain Negrete dies there,
as does his second-in-command, Civil Guard Lieutenant Francisco
Castro....” (op cit., 85) He says that in Caspe the fascists had forty
Civil Guards, supported by two hundred citizens with weapons that Negrete
had brought from Zaragoza. But Martínez Bande confuses the dates. The
Durruti Column left Barcelona around midday on July 24 and, marching very
quickly, would arrive at dawn the following day. Caspe’s defenders
surrendered in the middle of the morning on July 25. Given this, we
conclude that those fighting on July 24 were a small group of militiamen
who had started the battle. The Durruti Column acted quickly once it
arrived and liquidated Caspe in two or three hours. None of those present
recall the planes that Martínez Bande mentions. With the respect to the
armored vehicles, they were trucks fitted with light metal plates,
fabricated between July 22 and the morning of July 24. The real armored
vehicle—which got to the Column much later—was the celebrated “King
Kong” (driven by Antonio Bonilla).
[558] Le Libertaire, July 7, 1938. Article by Emilienne Morin,
“Souvenirs: l’enfantement d’une révolution.”
[559] Liberto Ros, communication to the author.
[560] Comments from Liberto Ros and Pablo Ruiz enabled us to reconstruct
Durruti’s speech. Both state that they were “profoundly affected” by
his talk: “It wasn’t a propagandistic speech, but a lesson in
revolutionary combat.”
[561] Ibid.
[562] Vicente Guarner, op. cit., 162. We remind the reader that Guarner was
a military adviser for the CCAMC in Barcelona.
[563] José Mira, in op. cit., writes that it was thought “advisable,
before continuing forward, to wait for the South-Ebro Column to take Quinto
and Belchite, so it could position itself alongside the Durruti Column on
the banks of the Ebro.” According to José Alberola, who will later serve
as the cultural adviser in Aragón’s Defense Council, “establishing the
front in the middle of the plain and outside the walls of Huesca was a
serious error.” He thinks that they “should have exploited the victory
in Barcelona and fallen like a torrent on Zaragoza” which, he thinks,
“could not have resisted that avalanche.” (CNT, July 16, 1961,
Toulouse, France). Felipe Alaiz (in L’Espagne indomptable, August 1939,
Paris) believes that the Durruti Column’s ability to set roots in
Bujaraloz was an important success, because these fecund lands made the
success of Aragón’s collectives possible. For Alaiz, the Durruti
Column’s most important work was its support for these collectives.
[564] It is difficult to specify when the Del Barrio Column reached the
front. Martínez Bande writes: “It left Barcelona, went to Lérida, as we
know, but stayed for several days in this last city, perhaps prowling
around its outskirts. This would have enabled some of the remains of the
regular units of the Regiment located there to join it, as well as some
professional soldiers, groups that are more difficult to classify, and a
large number of foreigners.” Op cit., 81
[565] Like the Durruti Column, the Ascaso Column did not stop in Lérida
but continued to Barbastro, where Colonel Villalba and Lieutenant González
Morales led the parts of the Barbastro regiment that were loyal to the
Republic. Neither Villalba nor González Morales made great efforts to
establish a front. The Ascaso Column absorbed their forces and both
soldiers stayed on as military advisers. They immediately began the siege
of Huesca, taking Siétamo and later losing it again. The Roselli
brothers’ international group soon joined the Column. Its name was
“Giustizia e Libertá” and it was led by the two, closely-knit Italian
anarchists Camilo Berneri and Fausco Falschi. The fighting was very intense
in this sector and the failure to take Huesca has always been a mystery.
The reason lay in Villalba’s attitude, which was highly criticized by
anarcho-syndicalist as much as POUM forces, and only defended by the PSUC.
Barbastro was described as a “nest of intrigues” at the October
Military Conference in Sariñena, which was attended by Villalba, the
Column leaders, Lieutenant Colonel Díaz Sandino, and García Oliver, the
head of the Department of War.
[566] To describe the Column, we have used the cited book by José Mira, an
article on the Column published in Umbral magazine in November 1938, and
the cited book by Ricardo Sanz. We have also utilized testimonies from
José Esplugas (a centuria delegate) and Ricardo Rionda (a member of the
War Committee) as well as one hundred responses to a survey conducted among
former Column members.
[567] This description reflects the Column on August 15, 1936.
[568] Internal regulations governing POUM militias appear on page four of
the first issue of La Revolution Espagnole, the organization’s French
language informational bulletin. The organization adopted the following
rules in Grañel on August 2. “POUM militias on the Huesca front have
unanimously approved these POUM Column dictates: Article II: Anyone who is
insubordinate or incites other comrades to disobey the military command
will incur the gravest penalty and will be judged in accordance with his
act. He will suffer the appropriate punishment for the misdeed committed;
Article III. Quarrels and arguments between militiamen are rigorously
prohibited, as they can lead to the disintegration of our forces and
strengthen the enemy; Article IV. Any militiaman who deserts, either at the
front or in the rearguard, will be judged with maximum severity by the
Military Committee and four comrades appointed by the militiamen. Sentences
imposed by this popular tribunal will be carried out inexorably: Article
VI. Anyone, whether a member of the militia or otherwise, who commits
pillage, thievery, or similar crimes will be executed without trial. VII.
The struggle is centralized in all its forms and no one can make any
decision without prior authorization from the Military Committee; Article
VIII. This ordinance will be applied universally and if any complaint or
observation is thought necessary, it must be formulated in the following
way: complaints, suggestions, or observations will be passed to the leaders
of the group and he will pass them to his company leader, who will
communicate them to the Military Committee.” According to George Orwell,
these regulations did not exist when he joined the POUM Column and the
militiamen would not have put up with them. This indicates that Marxist
column leaders had to adapt themselves to the social relations established
in CNT columns.
[569] George Orwell, Cataluña 1937 [Spanish edition in Buenos Aires: Ed.
Proyección, 1963].
[570] Vicente Guarner, op. cit.
[571] In September 1936, a French journalist named Cécile Pierrot
published an article about the Aragón front in Paris’s Plues Loin. He
commented on the area occupied by the Durruti Column, where “the land has
been socialized.” “There is a War Committee that leads the militia
column. Village assemblies elect Popular Committees. I didn’t have enough
time to witness their operation, but I saw that the peasants and militiamen
blend into one another.... Everyone is convinced that they are making the
most complete and important revolution in history.”
[572] Militia members, including Teresa Margalef and Francisco Subirats,
communicated these anecdotes to the author.
[573] Ibid.
[574] Testimony from various Column members. Ilya Ehrenburg also mentions
the incident in La Nuit Tomba (Paris: Ed. Gallimard, 1968).
[575] Ricardo Sanz, Durruti (Toulouse, Ed. El Frente, 1946).
[576] A CNT militant from the town of Valderrobres (Aragón) communicated
this to the author.
[577] In his book Espagne! Espagne! (Paris: Ediciones Sociales, 1937),
Richard Bloch notes that militias provided road security at town entrances.
Bloch draws on the trip he made in August and September 1936 from Port-Bou
to Barcelona, from Barcelona to Valencia, and from there to Madrid.
[578] Frank Borkenau relates the following incident: “In Tosas.... The
burning of religious objects had been performed there, as in Sitges, on the
instigation of the anarchists from a neighboring village. One had the
impression that the peasant women disliked giving up their religious
objects, but that afterwards they went away convinced that now Catholicism
had come to an end; one heard things said like “Saint Joseph is dead.”
The next day the village itself abolished the greeting “A Dios” (with
God) ‘because now there is no more God in heaven.’ There were two
priests in the village, one fanatic and strict, the other lax in every
respect and especially with the village girls. The latter one the village
had hidden from arrest since the beginning of the revolution, while the
‘good’ priest, hated by the whole village as an ally of the
reactionaries, had tried to flee and broke his neck by falling from a
rock.” Frank Borkenau, El Reñidero Español, 90
[579] Any of the towns that Durruti passed on that side of Lérida would
have resembled the town described. The author lived in Cervià, one of the
twenty-two towns of Les Garrigues County, visited all of them, and spent
six months in an agricultural collective. We can verify that the mode of
life indicated in the above description was the norm. It was established
after July 19 and even continued after the loyalist retreat from Aragón,
when the front was established in the Lérida province.
[580] Testimony of the author, who saw the sign.
[581] This was the position of all CNT and FAI militants at that time,
which they articulated in union and anarchist group meetings.
[582] André Ulman, 20 de noviembre, pamphlet published by the CNT in 1937.
This pamphlet contains biographical information about Durruti.
[583] Diego Abad de Santillán, op. cit.
[584] Translator’s note: Paz is referring to Captain Bayo’s attempt to
seize the Balearic Islands for the Republic in August 1936. The expedition,
which the CCAMC had not authorized, threatened to open up another front in
the war and a particularly dangerous one as well, given the proximity of
the Balearic Islands to Barcelona. The campaign ended in complete failure,
with considerable human and material loses. Bayo, a Cuban born military
adventurer, briefly collaborated with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro many
years later. On the matter, see Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A
Revolutionary Life (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 184.
[585] See the chapter treating the July 20 meeting.
[586] See below for a discussion of relations between Soviet ambassador
Marcel Rosemberg and Largo Caballero.
[587] Most members of the International Group were French, although there
were also Belgians, Moroccans, and Italians. Notable militants included
Karl Einstein (German); Mathieu Corman (Belgian); Ridel, Charpentier, Emile
Cottin, Fortin, Georgette and Simone Weil (French); and the Italian
Ragazini.
[588] José Mira, op. cit.
[589] The Aragón War Committee was located in Sariña. It was made up by
Antonio Ortiz, Buenaventura Durruti, and Cristóbal Aldabaldetrecu for the
CNT Columns; José del Barrio for the UGT-PSUC Column; and Jorge Arquer for
the POUM. The military advisers were: Franco Quinza, Air force Commander
Reyes, Colonel Villalba, Lieutenant Colonel Joaquín Blanco, Captain
Medrano, and Captain Menéndez.
[590] Colonel Villalba was always at the center of disturbances within the
War Committee. He was obsessed with creating another Committee in
Huesca—which he ultimately did—that would divide Aragón into a
northern and southern sector. Durruti opposed that division. Durruti and
Ortiz were also displeased with the total inactivity on the Huesca front,
where Villalba led military activities.
[591] Mijail Koltsov, Diario de la guerra de España (Paris: Ediciones
Ruedo Ibérico, 1963), 15–16.
[592] Ilya Ehrenburg, op. cit.
[593] Koltsov, op. cit. Discussing the Russian support campaign, Dominique
Desanti writes: “July 26, new meeting of the Profintern in Prague; the
Russian unions offer nearly one thousand million to help Spain. Campaigns
are organized in the factories to finance the unions’ contribution.
Thorez and Togliatti are designated to administer that money.”
L’lnternationale Communiste (Paris, Editorial Payot, 1970).
[594] We submitted Koltsov’s account of his meeting with Durruti to
people who were present during the conversation. One of them, Francisco
Subirats, reconstructed Durruti’s responses, which Koltsov later
distorted.
[595] Noam Chomsky, L’Amerique et ses nouveaux mandarins (Paris:
Editorial Seuil, 1969).
[596] José Gabriel wrote a book on Aragón titled La vida y la muerte en
Aragón, which was published in Buenos Aires.
[597] Albert Souillon, “Combats sur l’Ebre. Souvenirs sur Durruti” in
La Montagne, August 1936. This article was reprinted in issue 31 of
L’Espagne Antifasciste.
[598] Emma Goldman, November 20, cited pamphlet.
[599] Translator’s note: Gustav Noske (1868–1946) was a Social
Democratic politician famed for suppressing the radical uprisings that took
place in Germany in 1919.
[600] Text cited by Miravitlles, op. cit.
[601] Translator’s note: Chris Ealham explains that the demand for a
single command (mando único) became a “republican-Stalinist mantra and
presupposed the subordination of the fragmented authority of the local
revolutionary committees, workers’ patrols, and militias to that of the
government.” José Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, ed. Chris
Ealham, 163, note 3.
[602] Comorera depreciatively used the term “tribes” to describe the
militias in Aragón when they were militarized in October 1936.
[603] José Mira, op. cit.
[604] Vicente Guarner, op. cit., 171–172.
[605] José Mira, op. cit.
[606] See the Socialist, Communist, and anarchist press of the period.
[607] Solidaridad Obrera, September 13, 1936.
[608] See the cited press from the period.
[609] The author witnessed this event. The Revolutionary Committee in
Barcelona’s Gracia district articulated this position most strongly.
[610] See Solidaridad Obrera from September 1936.
[611] Diego Abad de Santillán, op. cit. Several former Column members also
gave the author information about this matter.
[612] Abd el-Krim was a patriotic Rifi who declared war on Spain and
France. He founded the Republic of the Rif [in January, 1923]. Massive
French and Spanish military pressure on the Rifis, including air and naval
forces, ultimately caused the defeat of the valiant guerrilla, whom the
French captured on May 27, 1926. The government banished him to the distant
island of Reunión on August 21 of that year. Although they had promised
that this exile would be short, France prolonged it for twenty years. The
two decades of exile, and the treatment he received, made him exclaim that
if he had known what fate awaited him he “would have preferred to die
leading his brave fighters.” He also said: “A war is being incubating
in Islam that will explode like it did in the glorious times of the
Almoravides.” Cahiers d’Histoire, number 33, January 1964, Paris.
[613] The CNT delegation at AIT International Congress in December 1937
dismissed Pierre Besnard’s Moroccan project as “infantile.” The
CNT’s position rested on this logical objection: Why would French
politicians support an effort to get the Spanish government to grant
independence to its territory in Morocco when France did not support such
independence for its territory? However, there was some support among
French politicians. Not all the French Socialists shared Blum’s views on
nonintervention or on remaining aloof from the Moroccan matter. Le Monde
recently a published letter from Vincent Auriol to Léon Blum that
addressed the problems that Franco created in Morocco by rebelling against
a legitimate government. Auriol also expresses his discontent with Blum’s
nonintervention policy, which he described as a “ jeux de dupes” (game
of deceptions). (Le Monde, 26-XI-1975) Despite this, Besnard’s plan was
not realistic and García Oliver’s efforts were more feasible.
[614] They had to wait because Largo Caballero received a surprise visit
from the Soviet ambassador. That visit is curious, as is the fact that the
entries that Koltsov apparently made in his Diario on September 18 and 20
concern Morocco and Abd-el-Krim.
[615] Pierre Besnard, cited report.
[616] Ibid.
[617] David Rousset has kindly provided us with ample information on this
matter. In August 1936, he was in contact with the MAC as a member of the
Political Bureau of the Partido Obrero Internacional, in its colonial
affairs section specifically. He thought it would be very helpful for the
Spanish Republic if the MAC took a position in support of the Republic and
against Franco, and worked to make that happen. Meanwhile, Robert Louzon
was in Barcelona and learned through Simone Weil of the growing agitation
among the Bedouin tribes, which he thought should be encouraged to create
problems in Franco’s rearguard. Louzon met with CNT and FAI militants,
who asked him to go to Fez. David Rousset and Robert Louzon were both were
unaware of García Oliver’s negotiations with the MAC. It is
understandable that there is such confusion about this issue, since this is
the first time that it has been discussed at length. Pierre Broué and
Emile Témime hardly touch on it in their history of the Spanish revolution
and depict David Rousset and Jean Rus as the instigators of the dialogues
between the Spanish Republicans and the Moroccans.
[618] García Oliver, letter to the author.
[619] Testimony from Julián Gorkin, communicated to the author.
[620] David Rousset, from the cited testimony, recorded on tape.
[621] Allal el-Fassi, Les mouvements nationalistes au Maghreb (Tánger: Ed.
Abde-saalam Guessous, s. d., 1973), 179–82. Translation from Arabic for
this biography by Jakima K.
[622] Cited letter from Vincent Auriol to Léon Blum
[623] Francisco Largo Caballero stated his view of the nonintervention
policy after both the Spanish war and the Second World War had ended:
“What did Blum fear? A European conflagration? León Blum, blindly
fleeing the abyss, threw himself into it. He didn’t see what any
illiterate peasant could see.... The positive result of nonintervention:
limiting the Republic’s ability to arm itself for its defense and
enhancing the traitors’ likelihood of victory. I don’t know if it is
vain to hope that someday those responsible for such felonious action will
account for their conduct to the French people, to the Spanish Socialists
and Republicans, and to the Socialist International. If that doesn’t
happen, it will have to be admitted that international solidarity among
socialist parties and union organizations is only a phrase used to deceive
the working class. There are political errors that are too significant to
be pardoned.” Francisco Largo Caballero, Mis recuerdos (Mexico: Editores
Unidos, 1976), 185–186.
[624] Henri Rabasseire, op. cit.
[625] W. G. Krivitsky, La mano de Stalin sobre España (Toulouse: Claridad,
1945); Jesús Hernández, Yo fui ministro de Stalin (Madrid: Editorial G.
del Toro, 1974); Dominique Desanti. op. cit.; José Peirats. op. cit.;
Indalecio Prieto, Convulsiones de España, vol. II ( Mexico: Ed. Oasis,
1968).
[626] Ilya Ehrenburg, op. cit.
[627] Jaume Miravitlles, op. cit.
[628] Ibid.
[629] Translator’s note: Irún is along the French border and its loss
separated Republican controlled areas in northern Spain from the rest of
the country.
[630] Diego Abad de Santillán, op. cit., 137. [Translator’s note: Irún
fell on September 5, 1936)
[631] Moscardó’s sword and Durruti’s pistol. L’Echo de Paris
organized a campaign to buy Colonel Moscardó a silver sword. Le Merle
Blanc, a leftwing French magazine, responded by sponsoring one to purchase
a pistol for Durruti. The magazine sent Pierre Scize, the great French
pamphleteer, as well as other journalists to give Durruti the magnificent
11.5 caliber Colt revolver as a symbol of the French proletariat’s
revolutionary solidarity. Solidaridad Obrera, November 22.
[632] On this issue, we recommend Vernon Richards, Enseñanzas de la
revolución española (Paris: Ediciones Belibastos, 1971).
[633] The author was active in the Revolutionary Committees during the
period and can affirm that this was the attitude of the CNT and FAI rank
and file.
[634] We refer the reader to statements that Durruti made during his
interview with Emma Goldman.
[635] Diego Abad de Santillán, in op. cit., says that the CCAMC was
dissolved for the following reasons: “In response to our demands for
currency, the central government (Giral or Largo Caballero) constantly told
us that it wouldn’t help us while the CCAMC’s power was so visible. The
Russian consul in Barcelona said the same thing. We permitted its
dissolution to acquire arms for the front and raw materials for our
industry. In other words, we abandoned an important revolutionary
position.” Santillán expands on the matter, and offers new details, in
letters that he has sent to us.
[636] Ibid.
[637] Ibid., 140–141.
[638] Several former members from the Tierra y Libertad Column—which was
led by FAI Peninsular Committee member Germinal de Souza—told us about
the careful selection of its men. One witness states that all, or at least
the majority, belonged to the FAI.
[639] In a letter sent to us on October 22, 1970, André Malraux says the
following about the incident: “Durruti was in the Barcelona airfield,
looking to go to Madrid, but nobody dared take him. I accepted.
Unfortunately, that’s all I can tell you, other than the great admiration
I had for his character and courage. I never saw him again.”
(Translator’s note: Malraux [1901 — 1976] was a well-known French
writer at the time who actively supported the Republican cause. Among other
things, he organized a squadron of French pilots to fight for the
Republic.)
[640] Pierre Besnard, op. cit.
[641] Stalin intruded into Spain’s military, police, and financial
affairs. General Ivan Berzin’s mission was to control and lead the war;
Alexander Orlov, to spread police throughout Republican territory; and
Artur Stashevsky, to seize the Spanish gold. The latter was in Spain as a
trade envoy. Krivitsky (op cit) says that “Stalin ordered him
[Stashevsky] to manipulate the financial and political reins of loyalist
Spain.” “Stashevsky found that Treasury Minister Juan Negrín was a
collaborator who willingly lent himself to his financial plans.”
Stashevsky offered weapons and ammunition in exchange for the shipment of
Spain’s gold to Russia (but no armaments should land in Barcelona’s
ports). “An agreement was made with Largo Caballero’s government, with
Negrín’s mediation,” Krivitsky notes. “That is how the Spanish gold
was sent to Odessa on October 25, 1936.” Many unresolved questions
remained after the war ended, one of which has to do with the gold. Even
today, those implicated in this dirty business zealously still hope to
“make a fresh start,” taking the Spanish worker for a fool in the
process. Yes, of course, we Spaniards must not relive the battles of the
past, but it is another thing for the Communist Party and even the
Socialist Party to avoid explaining their counterrevolutionary actions
during the time. Whether Santiago Carrillo likes it or not, the Communist
Party has to account for itself and not wriggle away with the pretense of
“euro-communism,” which is nothing but disguised Stalinism. Who
participated in the embezzlement of the Spanish proletariat that occurred
when the gold was shipped to Moscow? If we read Largo Caballero, he was
only half-informed; if we turn to Indalecio Prieto, he knew nothing. The
central figure was Juan Negrín, the “link” between the Communist Party
and the Socialist Party.
[642] Diego Abad de Santillán, op. cit., 141. He expanded on these details
in a letter to the author.
[643] Pierre Besnard, op. cit.
[644] CNT, October 6, 1936.
[645] Pierre Besnard, op. cit.
[646] José Peirats. op. cit., vol. I, chapter on the collectives in
Aragón. See also op. cit. by Pierre Broué and Emile Témine, 120.
[647] For details about this assembly one can consult Alardo Prats,
Vanguardia y retaguardia en Aragón (Barcelona: Ed. CNT, 1937).
[648] The PSUC Column (Del Barrio) supported Villalba’s creation of a War
Committee in “Northern Aragón” because it gave them an official
framework in which to attack the collectives.
[649] We utilize the “Actas del Pleno Extraordinario de Sindicatos de
Aragón con representación de las Columnas Confederales que operan en el
frente, celebrado en Bujaraloz el día 6 de octubre de 1936. Circular de la
Confederación Regional del Trabajo de Aragón, Rioja y Navarra (CNT).
Comité Regional.” Archivo de Salamanca, Guerra Civil B-39/F 178/180/DSD
(Salas).
[650] Horacio M. Prieto, Posibilismo Libertario (Paris: self-published,
1967). On page 80, Prieto states that “the Generalitat’s political
relations with Aragón were colonialist in character.”
[651] The complete transcript of this military conference makes up
twenty-three typed sheets and is in the Burnet and Gladis Bolloten
collection at the Hoover Institution (USA). Bolloten and the
institution’s staff provided us with the text and gave us permission to
use it. We take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to
Bolloten and the Hoover Institution.
[652] The POUM had occupied Leciñena. At the cited military conference,
Rovira says that they had to give way after exhausting their ammunition.
Grossi states in his unpublished memoirs (which he provided to us) that
“We requested ammunition from Villalba for several days, but he did
nothing, since all his attention was focused on Del Barrio (PSUC).”
According to Martínez Bande, op. cit., when “the national forces
occupied Leciñena, after causing great damage to the enemy, they found 104
dead and a war booty that included twenty-three machine-guns, sixty-four
boxes of ammunition, two mortars, twenty-one cars and trucks, a large
quantity of rifles, machine-gun accessories, and military supplies and
stock.” Martínez Bande’s list of materiel seized contradicts Rovira
and Grossi and seems very exaggerated to us.
[653] José Mira, op. cit.
[654] Mathieu Corman, ¡Salud, camaradas! Paris: Ed. Tribord, June 29,
1937.
[655] We refer the reader to the earlier account of the conversation
between Besnard and Largo Caballero.
[656] José Díaz, Tres años de lucha (Paris: Ed. Ebro, 1969).
[657] Translator’s note: Rafael Vidiella Rubio (1890 — 1982) was a
founder of the PSUC.
[658] A and D. Prudhommeaux, Catalogne 1936–37, pamphlet, Ed. Spartacus,
March 1937.
[659] L’Espagne Nouvelle, November 1936
[660] A. and D. Prudhommeaux, op. cit.
[661] Camilo Berneri, Entre la revolución y las trincheras (Bordeaux: Ed.
Tierra y Libertad). This pamphlet contains articles published in Guerre di
Clase (1936–37).
[662] For relations between the Communist Party and Largo Caballero see:
Jesús Hernández, Yo fui ministro de Stalin, (Madrid: Editorial G. del
Toro, 1975) and Largo Caballero’s Mis recuerdos. The latter book is very
difficult to find and its republication would be quite valuable. Surely
Largo Caballero’s unpublished memoirs will also be useful when they are
released.
[663] Léon Blum, Le socialisme democratique (Paris: Ed. Albin Michel et
Denöel, 1972). This work contains the complete text of his speech.
[664] Statements made by Francisco Carreño during a lecture he delivered
in Barcelona’s Ateneo Faros after the events of May 1937. We were present
at the talk and heard his account of his trip to Russia.
[665] Madrid’s CNT published this text on November 2, 1936, as did almost
all the Republican newspapers. Francisco Carreño and Martín Gudell were
the CNT Column delegates. The latter was Lithuanian and spoke good Russian,
which the Soviet Embassy in Spain did not know. His knowledge of Russian
enabled him to write a particularly critical account of his trip after
returning to Spain. His Lo que vi en Rusia was published in Mexico in 1945.
[666] César M. Lorenzo, Les anarchistes espagnols et le pouvoir (Paris:
Editorial Seuil, 1969). Unfortunately Lorenzo wrote this work under the
guidance of Horacio M. Prieto. Had Lorenzo developed his arguments in a
slightly more impartial way, he could have improved the value of his
already praiseworthy and well-documented study.
[667] Various sources communicated this to the author.
[668] Buenacasa, cited manuscripts.
[669] Peirats has expressed this idea in multiple writings.
[670] Julián Zugazagoitia, Guerra y vicisitudes de los españoles (Paris:
Ed. Librería Española).
[671] Marcos Alcón, in a letter to the author.
[672] Solidaridad Obrera, November 5, 1936. Speech delivered on Radio
Barcelona.
[673] Solidaridad Obrera, November 5, 1936
[674] We use information supplied to us by Federica Montseny to describe
the government’s departure from Madrid and the attitude of the CNT
ministers.
[675] Translator’s note: José Miaja (1878–1958) received orders to
form the Junta de Defensa (Defense Council), which was to defend Madrid at
all costs. Parties belonging to the government would appoint the
council’s members in proportion to their representation in the
government. Largo Caballero dissolved the body on April 23, 1937.
[676] Eduardo de Guzmán, op. cit.
[677] One should not to confuse loyalist General José Asensio with the
General Asensio attacking Madrid.
[678] General Sebastián Pozas Perea led the Army of the Center. The
Minister of War had ordered him to establish his headquarters in Tarancón,
which Villanueva did not know. Pozas surely planned to go to Valencia
before installing himself in Tarancón, since otherwise he would have
presented himself to Feliciano Benito (CNT), the military commander in
Tarancón.
[679] Cipriano Mera, Guerra, exilio y cárcel de un anarcosindicalista
(Paris: Ed. Ruedo Ibérico, 1975), 74–75. In the French edition of this
book we used Cipriano Mera’s unpublished memoirs. His manuscript has been
published in the interim and in some cases the text was changed
stylistically.
[680] Vicente Rojo, Así fue la Defensa de Madrid (Mexico: Ed. Era, 1967).
This work contains details about the confusion with the envelopes.
[681] A. and D. Prudhommeaux, op. cit.
[682] Translator’s note: Burnett Bolloten says that Emilio Kleber’s
real name was Manfred Zalmanovich Stern. He later fell out of favor with
the Communists, who removed him from Madrid in January 1937. Soviet sources
claim that he died in a labor camp. See Burnet Bolloten, The Spanish Civil
War: Revolution and Counterrevolution (Chapel Hill and London: University
of North Carolina Press, 1991), 302–305.
[683] Manuel Tuñón de Lara, op. cit.
[684] Vicente Rojo, op. cit.
[685] Ibid.
[686] Colodny reproduces Koltsov’s text word for word.
[687] Robert G. Colodny, El Asedio de Madrid (Paris: Ed. Ruedo Ibérico,
1970). The italics are ours.
[688] The leader of the GPU in Barcelona was “Pedro,” who was also
known as Erno Geroe or Gero. He, Togliatti (Ercoli), and Codovila (Medina)
formed the “troika” that pulled the strings of the puppets on the
CP’s Political Bureau, particularly those controlling the other
“troika” made up by Hernández, La Pasionaria, and Uribe. CP General
Secretary José Díaz was not allowed to be the master puppeteer because he
had been an anarchist once and had to be punished for his “original
sin.” “Pedro,” a Hungarian, defined the PSUC’s policy in Spain at
the time and also laid the foundation for the Stalinist actions in May
1937. According to R. Cabrer Pallás, a member of the PSUC’s
Politico-Military Commission from July 19, 1936 to 1937, “Pedro” was
responsible for the assassination of Antonov Ovssenko in the USSR. Cabrer
claims that there were two tendencies in Russia then: members of Stalin’s
chorus and revolutionary internationalists. Cabrer says that the latter
wanted “useful and needed materiel sent to the men in Spain fighting on
the frontlines against Nazism.... Stalin and his chorus preferred that the
ships be sunk, so that no one in Barcelona, Valencia, or Cartagena would
find out about the scrap that the great Soviet power was sending them.”
So, “Pedro” denounced Ovssenko, because he had seen Stalin’s game in
Spain. Ovssenko died with many others during the trials of 1937. Jaume
Miravitlles, op. cit.
[689] Diego Abad de Santillán, op. cit. There was already talk of sending
Durruti to Madrid at the first meeting of the Generalitat’s Ministry of
Defense.
[690] Historia y Vida, No. 35. Francisco Hidalgo Madero, a professional
officer who had been a member of the Column, responds to an article by
Martínez Bande discussing the Libertad-López Tienda Column.
[691] Historia y Vida, No. 31, October 1970, article by Martínez Bande
about Durruti’s role in Madrid’s defense.
[692] Historia y Vida, No. 35.
[693] Ibid.
[694] Vicente Rojo, op. cit.
[695] J. L. Alcofar Nasses, Spansky. Los Extranjeros que lucharon en la
Guerra Civil Española (Barcelona: Ed. Dopesa, 1973).
[696] Nosotros, Valencia, 20-XI-1937, article by David Antona about Durruti
in Madrid. Diego Abad de Santillán, op. cit.
[697] Diego Abad de Santillán, op. cit.
[698] Mathieu Corman, op. cit.
[699] Joan Llarch, La muerte de Durruti (Barcelona: Ed. Aura, 1973).
[700] Diego Abad de Santillán, communicated by letter.
[701] Mathieu Corman, op. cit.
[702] Santi was a Red Army Colonel from the Caucasus region. His real name
was Mansurod Hajji-Umar, although he went by many others: Santi, Xanti,
Hajji, Faber, etc. Koltsov’s commentary about Santi is another one of the
jokes that he played on the historians who copy him word for word:
“Santi” never served as a military adviser to Durruti and never showed
him how to use a machine-gun.
[703] Koltsov, op. cit., 230.
[704] Guzmán, Madrid Rojo y Negro: milicias confederals (Barcelona:
Editorial Tierra y Libertad, 1938), 175
[705] J. L. Alcofar Nasses, op cit.
[706] We do not know why Durruti gives this number here. The error may be
Mera’s.
[707] Cipriano Mera, op. cit.
[708] José Mira, op. cit.
[709] José Mira, op. cit.
[710] Vicente Rojo, op. cit. See the letter from Rojo to Miaja in the
appendix of his book in which he asks that sanctions be imposed on General
Kebler for having lost the Casa de Velázquez and the Moncloa Palace (while
not taking responsibility for those losses) and also for disobeying orders.
[711] J. L. Alcofar Nasses, op. cit.
[712] José Mira, op. cit.
[713] We take the newspaper quotations from Vicente Rojo, op. cit
[714] José Mira, op. cit.
[715] Ibid.
[716] Solidaridad Obrera published Ariel’s war report on November 19.
Ariel sent his first communication about the Column on November 17 and it
appeared in the newspaper the following day. These two details, in addition
to everything else, clearly establish that the Column entered into action
in the early hours of November 16.
[717] Ariel, ¿Cómo murió Durruti (Toulouse: Ed. Comité de Relaciones de
la Regional del Centro de la CNT en el exilio, 1945).
[718] Communication from Liberto Ros.
[719] Manuel Buenacasa told us that Mimi complained about Durruti’s
response. Buenacasa called him later and Durruti excused himself, repeating
that “war makes man a jackal.”
[720] Vicente Rojo, op. cit. (Translator’s note: Rojo is alluding to
Madrid’s defiant response after the city’s fall was erroneously
announced and various governments sent congratulations to Franco.)
[721] Koltsov, op. cit., 239.
[722] Cipriano Mera, op. cit.
[723] Translator’s note: Enrique Líster (1907–1994) and “The
Peasant” (Valentín González, ? -1965) were prominent Communist military
leaders during the war.
[724] Translator’s note: for a discussion of the mutually opportunistic
relationship between General Miaja and the Communist Party, see Burnet
Bolloten, The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution,
291–295.
[725] Cipriano Mera, op. cit.
[726] Ibid.
[727] Ibid.
[728] José Mira, op. cit,
[729] Ibid.
[730] Posible magazine, Madrid, no. 80, July 1976, article by Pedro Costa
Muste containing statements by Antonio Bonilla.
[731] Ariel, op. cit.
[732] Joan Llarch, op. cit. This is an important detail, but Llarch does
not provide a source and thus its historical value is dubious.
[733] Manuel Bastos Ansart, De las guerras coloniales a la guerra civil.
Memorias de un cirujano (Barcelona: Ed. Ariel, 1969).
[734] Antonio Bonilla, cited statements.
[735] Cipriano Mera, op. cit.
[736] Joan Llarch, op. cit. Llarch includes Dr. Santamaría’s response to
a questionnaire of his.
[737] Ibid.
[738] Jesús Arnal, in a letter sent to the author on June 13, 1971.
[739] Ariel, op. cit.
[740] Cipriano Mera, op. cit.
[741] Ariel, op. cit.
[742] Ricardo Sanz, op. cit.
[743] Ariel, op. cit.
[744] Ricardo Sanz, op. cit.
[745] E. H. Kaminski, op. cit.
[746] Martínez Bande, La marcha sobre Madrid (Ed. San Martín, 1968).
[747] CNT, pamphlet, November 20, 1936.
[748] The November 24, 1936 issue of La Noche, an evening newspaper from
Barcelona, contains this letter.
[749] Cipriano Mera, op. cit.
[750] Surely Bonilla is referring to the sewer that emptied into the
Manzanares from the Clínico, which Mera mentions several times in his
memoirs.
[751] Antonio Bonilla made these statements to Pedro Costa Muste for
Posible, July 22–28, 1976. We use this quote as an opportunity to express
our displeasure with certain Spanish magazine editors’ tendency to
illustrate their articles by “looting” images from other publications
without bothering to indicate the source of their “plunder.” The photo
of Durruti at the León rally printed in Posible was extracted from the
French edition of our book, where it was published for the first time.
[752] Angel Montoto, article “La discutida muerte de Durruti,” from La
Actualidad Española, November 25, 1971. We should point out that the woman
in the photo published with this article is not Emilienne Morin, as
claimed, but María Ascaso, Francisco Ascaso’s sister.
[753] Antonio Bonilla made these comments when we interviewed him in his
home in Zaragoza on February 22, 1977.
[754] In this statement, Graves agrees with Bonilla about the number of
people in the car; which is to say, three, the driver included.
[755] Ariel, op. cit.
[756] Ibid.
[757] Cipriano Mera, op. cit.
[758] R. Diknanie Karmen, “La Respiración de Madrid. Bloc de Notas de un
Operador de Cinema,” article in Novy Mir, 12, 1947, 29–43. G. Balkanski
translated this piece from Russian for this work.
[759] Manuel Bastos Ansart, op. cit. We wrote Mr. Bastos on August 21,
1971. We asked him for information about Durruti’s injury and to explain
the apparent contradiction between his and Santamaría’s description of
the wound. He said this in reply: “I have resolved not to make any
statement about my activity during the war.” He mentions that someone
visited him (the priest Jesús Arnal, about whom we will speak later) to
acquire more details than he gave in his book. “I provided them, thinking
that it was a sentimental family matter. Now I see that the gentleman has
published what I shared with him in his own book, which causes me enormous
displeasure.” Letter sent from Barcelona on September 30, 1971.
[760] We take this statement from the cited book by Joan Llarch. He bears
complete responsibility for the authenticity of the quote, since we have
been unable to verify it.
[761] Ricardo Sanz, op. cit.
[762] Ibid.
[763] José Mira gave us the original of this document.
[764] Izvestia, November 23, 1936.
[765] Federico Bravo Morata, Historia de Madrid, vol. III (Madrid:
Editorial Fenicia, 1968), 282.
[766] Document contained in José Peirats, op. cit., vol. I.
[767] Vicente Rojo, op. cit.
[768] Mathieu Corman, op. cit.
[769] “J.M.” did not tell the author why he wanted to remain anonymous
in 1971, but it was probably due to the important role that he played in
Division 26’s espionage services during the war (Division 26 was the name
given to the Durruti Column after it was militarized in March 1937).
[770] Jaume Miravitlles, op. cit.
[771] Jacques Depierre de Bayac, Les Brigades Internationales (Paris: Ed.
Fayard, 1972), 123.
[772] Mikhail Koltsov, op. cit., 240.
[773] Dominique Desanti, op. cit., 225. We contacted Desanti after reading
her account. The only additional information she offered was that she had
met the anarchist at a peace congress in Varsovia and that he had joined
the Spanish Communist Party shortly after Durruti’s death. She did not
remember his name.
[774] Hugh Thomas, Histoire de la Guerre Civile Espagnole (Paris : Ed.
Lafont), 334. Pierre Broué and Emile Témime, La Revolution et la Guerre
Civile en Espagne (Paris: Ed. Minuit), 228. These authors simply follow
Koltsov’s account and offer nothing new on the matter. Broué and Témime
even give “November 21” as the date of Durruti’s death, as if to
better indicate the origin of their information.
[775] Times Literary Supplement, anonymous article, December 24, 1964. His
statement about the existence of the “Friends of Durruti” is a
journalistic fiction. Jaime Balius, a founder of the group who is alive and
in exile in France, told us that they organized the “Friends of
Durruti” in early January 1937 and published the first issue of the
group’s newspaper, El Amigo del Pueblo, shortly before the events of May
1937. One can confirm the final detail by consulting the collection of the
newspaper held in Amsterdam’s International Institute of Social History.
[776] Ibid., January 7, 1965.
[777] Antonia Stern, Hans Beimler Dachau-Madrid ein Dokument Unserer Zeit.
To our knowledge, this book is unpublished.
[778] Jesús Arnal, Por qué fui secretario de Durruti (Lérida: Ed.
Mirador del Pirineo, 1972). We also draw upon articles that Arnal published
in Barcelona’s La Prensa in July 1970 titled “Mis aventuras en la
Columna Durruti” and from two letters that he sent us in 1971.
[779] I. Ehrenburg, op. cit.
[780] La Gaceta. Diario Oficial de la República Española, April 27, 1938.
[781] Le Libertaire, article “Nuestra Victoria” by Emilienne Morin,
November 17, 1938.
[782] Georges Bernanos, Los grandes cementerios bajo la luna (Buenos Aires:
Siglo Veinte, 1964). Bernanos describes life in the island of Majorca under
Franco’s control in this book.
[783] Translator’s note: Fernando Claudín (1915–1990) was a leading
member of the Spanish Communist Party, from which he was expelled in 1964.
His most famous book is the massive La crisis del movimiento comunista. De
la Komintern al Kominform (Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1970).
[784] Jesús Hernández, op. cit.
[785] This document was in the archives of the Casa Antúnez Cemetery
(Montjuich) up to 1966, but later disappeared. A page is missing in the
registry book, which was torn out by superior order. Durruti’s tomb is in
the so-called protestant cemetery, the old civil cemetery in the San Carlos
Division.
[786] Article in El Periódico, Barcelona, May 18, 1980.
[787] Translator’s note: This essay was the introduction to the second,
Spanish edition of Durruti en la Revolución española, which was published
in 1996.
[788] The title of the first version of this work was Durruti. Le peuple en
armes (Paris: Téte de Feuilles, 1972). Four years later it appeared in
English [Durruti. The people armed, Montreal: Black Rose, 1976] and
Portuguese [Durruti. O povo en armas, Lisbon: Assirio-Alvim, 1976]. A new
translation was published in 1978, this time the Greek [Durruti, Athens:
Eleftheros Tipos], and the Spanish version was also released [Durruti. El
proletariado en armas], Bruguera, which contained various changes made by
the author after the publication of the first French edition. New
translations as well as shorter versions based on the French edition have
been produced in the succeeding years. Among the first group are the
Italian [Durruti. Cronaca della vita, Milan: La Salamandra, 1980], the
German [Durruti, Leben und Tode des spanischen Anarchisten, Hamburg:
Nautilus, 1994] and the Japanese, which will surely be released by the time
these lines are printed. Also, a new French edition came out in 1993 [Un
anarchiste espagnol: Durruti, Paris: Quai Voltaire] which was based on the
1978 Spanish edition. Of the second group, the 1986 Durruti en la
revolución española (Barcelona: Laia) stands out.
[789] In Manuel Azaña, Obras Completas 4 vols, vol. 4, (Mexico: Oasis,
1966–1968), 614. Cifr. in Graham Kelsey, Anarcosindicalismo y Estado en
Aragón, 1930–1938. ¿Orden público o paz pública? (Madrid, Gobierno de
Aragón-Institución Fernando el Católico-Fundación Salvador Seguí,
1995), 182, Note 200.
[790] The four volumes, in order of publication, are Al pie del muro
(1942–1954) (Barcelona: Editorial Hacer, 1991); Entre la niebla
(1939–1942) (Barcelona: self-published, 1993); Chumberas y alacranes
(1921–1936) (Barcelona: self-published, 1994); and Viaje al Pasado
(1936–1939) (Barcelona: self-published, 1995).
[791] Translator’s note: Chris Ealham describes the ateneo as “a
popular cultural and social center modeled on bourgeois clubs.... the
ateneos filled a genuine need in the working-class city and, between 1877
and 1914, seventy-five were formed in Barcelona. Each ateneo provided its
members with a range of urban services and facilities, and some of the
larger ones had a cooperative shop, offering foodstuffs at reduced prices.
During a time when there were very few affordable forms of leisure, the
ateneos organized a wide choice of leisure activities, such as theater,
choral and musical groups. Sociability and entertainment were always
combined with social agitation, and the plays performed in the ateneos were
normally of a radical, leftist, or anti-clerical persuasion.” Chris
Ealham, Class, Culture and Conflict in Barcelona, 1898–1937 (New York:
Routledge, 2005), 87.
[792] Translator’s note: Franco’s death on November 20, 1975 began
Spain’s transition from dictatorship to liberal democracy. This is often
referred to as the “Spanish transition.”
[793] On this question, see: Gonzalo Pasamar and Ignacio Peiró,
Historiografía y práctica social en España (Zaragoza: Secretariado de
Publicaciones de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 1987); Santos Juliá, Historia
social/Sociología histórica (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1989); and Julián
Casanova, La Historia Social y los historiadores (Barcelona: Crítica,
1991).
[794] The list of works would be endless. It is enough to cite Manuel
Tuñón de Lara, Josep Termes, Antoni Jutglar, Albert Balcells, Antonio
Elorza, Javier Tusell, or José Alvarez Junco among the Spaniards and
Gabriel Jackson, Hugh Thomas, Paul Preston, Stanley Payne, Vernon Richards,
Raymond Carr, Ronald Fraser, John Brademas, and Gerald Brenan among the
Anglo-Saxons. One must also not forget the contribution of French
historians such as Pierre Broué and Emile Témine, Jacques Maurice, Max
Gallo, and Gerard Brey.
[795] Julián Casanova, La historia social y los historiadores, 159–160.
[796] Translator’s note: this refers to authorities’ supposed discovery
of an anarchist bombing plot. One of the purported conspirators mistakenly
set off a large explosive, which led the police to intervene and allegedly
unearth multiple arms depots and widespread insurrectionary preparations.
[797] Antonio-Miguel Bernal, “Manuel Tuñón de Lara: Reforma Agraria y
Andalucía” in Manuel Tuñón de Lara. El compromiso con la historia, su
vida y su obra, ed José Luis de la Granja and Alberto Reig Tapia (Bilbao:
Servicio Editorial de la Universidad del País Vasco, 1993), 280.
Henceforth: Bernal (1993).
[798] Bernal (1993), 284.
[799] Ibid.
[800] Antonio Rosado, Tierra y Libertad. Memorias de un campesino
anarcosindicalista andaluz (Barcelona; Crítica, 1979), 89–100.
[801] José Manuel Macarro Vera, La Utopía revolucionaria. Sevilla en la
Segunda República (Sevilla: Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros, 1985),
227–238.
[802] Jacques Maurice, El anarquismo andaluz. Campesino y sindicalistas,
1868–1936 (Barcelona: Crítica, 1990), 186–195.
[803] El Liberal, Sevilla, May 24 and 25, 1932.
[804] El Duende de la Giralda, El caso Vallina y la CNT, undated, place of
publication unknown.
[805] El Sol, Madrid, May 21, 1932. Article: “El movimiento
anarcosindicalista iba a iniciarse en Madrid con atentados contra altos
políticos.”
[806] “El fantástico proceso de mayo de 1932”, CNT, Madrid, September
20, 1933.
Also El Noticiero Sevillana and ABC, Sevilla, May 21, 1932. The reports
about the possible attack against Maura and Casares Quiroga come from
police sources.
[807] The detention of the CNT members in Madrid was reported in ABC and El
Noticiero Sevillano, Sevilla, May 21, 22, and 24, 1932. In the May 22 issue
of El Noticiero, there is news of the arrest of José León García in
Sevilla, secretary of the Transportation union and one of Bernal’s
sources. He was accused of participating in the purchase and sale of the
Buick used by those arrested in Madrid.
[808] ABC, Sevilla, May 21, 1932.
[809] La Tierra, Madrid, May 27, 1932.
[810] ABC, Sevilla, June 10, 1932; El Sol, Madrid, June 22, 1932 and José
Manuel Macarro Vera, La Utopía revolucionaria. Sevilla en la Segunda
República, 231–238.
[811] Bernal (1993), 288.
[812] Santos Juliá, “De revolución popular a revolución burguesa”,
Historia Social 1, Alzira (Valencia), (Spring-Summer 1988): 29–43.
[813] In this context, the claims that English researcher Graham Kelsey
make in his work are very interesting. See, Anarcosindicalismo y estado en
Aragón, 1930–1938.
[814] ¿Orden público o paz pública? (Aragón: Gobierno de
Aragón–Institución Fernando el Católico/Madrid: Fundación Salvador
Seguí, 1994). 28. Pelai Pagés, “La guerra civil española a Catalunya
(1936–1939): balanç historiografic”, L’Avenç 109 (November 1987):
56–83. Also, La guerra civil espanyola a Catalunya (1936–1939)
(Barcelona: Els Llibres de la Frontera, 1987).
[815] Graham Kelsey, Anarcosindicalismo y estado en Aragón, 23–24.
[816] For studies on the revolutionary processes, especially the
collectivizations, one can cite the following, without being exhaustive,
Frank Mintz, La autogestión en la España revolucionaria (Madrid: La
Piqueta, 1977); Walther Bernecker, Colectividades y revolución social. El
anarquismo en la guerra civil española, 1936–1939 (Barcelona: Crítica,
1982); Julián Casanova, comp, El sueño igualitario: Campesinado y
colectivizaciones en la España republicana, (Zaragoza, 1988). Also, for
Catalonia, Enric Ucelay Da Cal, La Catalunya populista. Imatge, cultura i
política en l’etapa republicana (1931–1939) (Barcelona: Ediciones de
la Magrama, 1982); Josep Termes, De la revolució de setembre a la fín de
la Guerra Civil 1868–1939, vol. 6 of the Historia de Catalunya, under the
direction of Pierre Vilar (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1987); Gabriel Jackson,
Catalunya republicana i revolucionaria, 1931–1939 (Barcelona: Grijalbo,
1982). For Valencia, Albert Girona, Guerra i Revolució al Pais Valencia
(1936–1939) (Valencia: Biblioteca D’studis i Investigacions, Tres i
Quatre, 1986); Aurora Bosch, Ugetistas y Libertarios. Guerra Civil y
Revolución en el Pais Valenciano, 1936–1939 (Valencia: Diputación
Provincial, 1983). For the Basque region, Carmelo Garitaonaindia and José
Luis Granja, La Guerra Civil en el País Vasco, 50 años después (Bilbao:
Universidad del País Vasco, 1987) and Manuel González Portilla and José
M.a Garmendia, La Guerra Civil en el País Vasco. Política y Economía
(Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco, 1988). For the center area, José
Luis Gutiérrez Molina, Colectividades Libertarias en Castilla (Madrid:
Campo Abierto, 1977); Julio Aróstegui and Jesús A. Martínez, La Junta de
Defensa de Madrid. Noviembre 1936-Abril 1937 (Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid,
1984).
[817] Among them, one can cite those of Franz Borkenau, El reñidero
español (París: Ruedo Ibérico, 1971 [first edition: London 1937]); José
Gabriel, La vida y la muerte de Aragón (Buenos Aires, 1938); Bonifacio
Fernández Aldana, La Guerra en Aragón, cómo fue (Barcelona: Ediciones
Cómo fue, 1938); Juan M. Soler, La Guerra en el frente de Aragón
(Barcelona: 1937) and Alardo Prats and Beltrán, Vanguardia y retaguardia
de Aragón (Santiago de Chili: Ediciones Yunque, 1937).
[818] Alejandro Díez Torre, “Crisis regional y regionalización. El
Consejo de Aragón” (Ph.D. dis., Departamento de Historia Contemporánea
de la UNED, 1994). As for Graham Kelsey, in addition to the cited work, see
also “Aragón libertario, 1936–37: el desarrollo de las fuentes,
1936–1986,” Colloquium on Historia y Memoria de la Guerra Civil.
Encuentro en Castilla y León in Salamanca, September 24–26, 1986.
Unpublished communication. The organizers did not see fit to include this
piece in the later edition of the record of the conference [Valladolid,
1989, 3 vols.].
[819] This is the treatment that authors such as Agustín Souchy have
received; see his book Entre los campesinos de Aragón: el comunismo
libertario en las comarcas liberadas (Barcelona: Ediciones Tierra y
Libertad, 1937 [Reprinted in Barcelona: Tusquets, 1977]); Gastón Leval,
Né Franco né Stalin. La collettivitá anarchiche spagnole nella lotta
contro Franco e la reazione staliniana (Milan: 1952) and Colectividades
libertarias en España, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Proyección, 1972 [in Spain;
Madrid: Aguilera, 1977]. The term “anarchist historiography” appears
repeatedly in the works of Julián Casanova, which he characterizes, in the
best of cases, as “general works on the CNT, well-documented but that do
not surpass institutional history.” Works by Casanova are Anarquismo y
revolución en la sociedad rural aragonesa, 1936–1938 (Madrid: Siglo XXI,
1985); “Las colectividades campesinas turolenses: un panorama
bibliográfico demasiado restringido,” Actas del Encuentro sobre historia
contemporánea de las tierras turolenses, Villarluengo, June 8–10 1984,
Teruel, Instituto de Estudios Turolenses, 1986 or “La edad de oro del
anarquismo español,” Historia social 1, (spring-summer 1988). In
addition to the dissertion by Díez Torre, for a critique of this position
one can consult Ignacio Llorens, “De la historiografía anarquista y el
rigor mortis académico,” Anthropos 90 (1988). For the critique of
Casanova, see Alejandro Díez Torre, “Crisis regional y regionalización.
El Consejo de Aragón,” 19 and notes 10 to 13 of the introductory
chapter. The quote of Casanova is from Díez Torre in Anarquismo y
revolución en la sociedad rural aragonesa, 1936–1938 (Madrid: Siglo XXI,
1985), 142.
[820] The quotations are from Julián Casanova, “Guerra y revolución: La
edad de oro del anarquismo español”, Historia social 1 (spring-summer
1988).
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