CHAPTER VII. Los solidarios

There was enormous turmoil in Barcelona when Durruti and his friends arrived in August 1922. Pistoleros had just tried to kill the well-known anarchist Angel Pestaña [92] and there was a general strike throughout Catalonia. A group of Catalan intellectuals publicly denounced the authorities’ failure to stop the bourgeoisie’s intolerable aggressions and, in the Parliament, Socialist deputy Indalecio Prieto demanded that the government force Martínez Anido’s resignation. President Sánchez Guerra had to intervene. Although “Martínez Anido’s star began to pale,” [93] pistolerismo continued to operate through the so-called Free Unions [ Sindicatos Libres]. These were labor organizations created and manipulated by the bosses and protected by the church, which hoped to use them to implant a Catholic syndicalism. Ramón Sales, who founded these organizations as rivals to the CNT, was an old pistolero chieftain. The employers forcefully obliged the workers to join these unions and began to fire CNTistas, measures supported by pistolero terrorists in the streets and at the factory gates. It was a war without quarter. Furthermore, under the leadership of Francesc Macía, a significant part of the Catalan intelligentsia began again to demand independence. [94] Their agitation helped relieve some of the pressure on the cornered Confederación Nacional del Trabajo.

The CNT’s most active center was the Woodworkers’ Union on San Pablo Street, where the more radical militants gathered. It was here that Buenaventura and his comrades struck up a friendship with local activists, an association from which the famous Los Solidarios group would be born in October of that year. They organized around a tripartite plan: “Confront the pistoleros, support the CNT, and set up an anarchist Federation that would take all the anarchist groups scattered around the peninsula under its wing.” [95] Indeed, the problem of organization was a high priority for them: they saw it as an indispensable precondition of the revolution, perhaps even more important than the battle against the bourgeoisie and terrorism. They founded a weekly periodical named Crisol, which had the support of Barthe (a French exile), Felipe Alaiz, Liberto Callejas, Torres Tribo, and Francisco Ascaso (the magazine’s administrator).

The group had decided to kill the instigators of the anti-worker policy— Martínez Anido and Colonel José Arlegui—but halted preparations when they received some important news. They learned that both military men had been planning to stage a fake assassination attempt against themselves in order to justify their repressive practices to the Madrid government. An anonymous Catalan journalist spoiled their conspiracy when he telephoned the President and revealed their ploy. Sánchez Guerra, worried by the turn that things were taking in Barcelona, telephoned Martínez Anido in the early hours of October 24. He informed him that “Colonel Arlegui, after what occurred, cannot continue carrying out his duties,” and ordered Anido to remove him as Police Chief. Martínez Anido stated that he couldn’t fulfill those orders and thus Sánchez Guerra ordered him “to consider himself fired and hand over the provincial government to the President of the High Court.” [96] This change of authorities obliged Sánchez Guerra to make constitutional guarantees effective in Catalonia and, with it, normalize union and political life in the region.

Los Solidarios took advantage of this opening to call a conference of anarchist groups from the Catalan and Balearic Islands area. The event was well attended and showed that anarchists in the region were sympathetic to the organizational project that the Solidarios were advancing in Crisol. Conference participants formed a Regional Commission of Anarchist Relations, which was the embryo of what would later become the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (Iberian Anarchist Federation, FAI). They also discussed the new political situation and concluded that, “given the interests at play in Spain, especially in Catalonia, the calm cannot last for long. The persecution in Catalonia was not a mere caprice of Martínez Anido, but the natural consequence of class antagonisms. Martínez Anido was simply a tool of the bourgeoisie, and the fact that he has disappeared from the scene does not mean that the bourgeoisie will stop its abuse. Its figureheads may change, but the bourgeoisie—due its reactionary character—will continue using terrorist tactics.” [97]

They understood that the rightwing pressure groups accepted Sánchez Guerra’s policy of “social truce” only with reluctance. The army, supported by the landowners and the clergy, would try to seize state power and impose a military dictatorship if given the chance to do so. The monarchy would not be able to resist it, since its fate was indissolubly linked to the Armed Forces. Thus, faced with this imminent military coup, the anarchist groups decided to accelerate their revolutionary efforts and devote themselves to agitation campaigns in the industrial and rural areas, while the Commission of Anarchist Relations would coordinate action at the peninsular level. Libertarian publications in Catalonia— Crisol, Fragua Social, and Tierra y Libertad—would support all these initiatives.

The conference also revisited the anti-militaristic strategy pursued by anarchists until then, which had only produced a significant loss of militants, who were forced to go into exile once they rejected military service. They decided that it would be more effective for young people to join the army and form revolutionary action groups within it. These would be known as Anti-militarist Committees and they would link their actions to those of local anarchist groups. They created a special bulletin named Hijos del Pueblo to spread revolutionary ideas among the troops.

Three Solidarios were members of the Regional Commission of Anarchist Relations: Francisco Ascaso, Aurelio Fernández, and Buenaventura Durruti, all of whom took on important responsibilities. Francisco Ascaso was the Commission’s secretary, Aurelio Fernández was entrusted with putting the Anti-militarist Committees into operation, and Buenaventura Durruti’s task was to build an arsenal of guns and explosives.

Durruti and another metalworker by the name of Eusebio Brau set up an underground workshop for making hand grenades and also a foundry for the same purpose. They quickly amassed a stock of six thousand hand grenades and stored them in various parts of the city.

For his part, Aurelio Fernández infiltrated the army and won a number of corporals over to the revolution, as well as some sergeants and even several officers. Anti-militarist Committees began to proliferate in regiments outside the region.

Finally, Francisco Ascaso built alliances with comrades in other areas: specifically, with anarchist Regional Commissions that had been operating since Buenaventura’s trip the previous year.

All of these efforts demonstrated that conditions were ripe for undertakings of a greater magnitude, but great risks remained.

Salvador Seguí—one of the most well-balanced minds of the Spanish anarchist movement—was murdered on March 10, 1923. Angel Grauperá, president of the Employers’ Federation, paid a group of hit men a large sum to do the job. In the middle of the day on Cadena Street, in full view of residents terrorized by the gunman’s weapons, they coldly shot down the “Sugar Boy”—as Salvador Seguí was known—and his friend Padronas. This unleashed a wave of anger among workers, causing even the bourgeoisie to become frightened by its own deed, given the victim’s prestige in Barcelona’s proletarian and intellectual circles.

The CNT called a meeting of Catalan militants and they decided that they had to stop the repression definitively and finish off the pistoleros and their leaders once and for all. They also agreed to try to find the economic resources that they needed to confront their organizational problems: [98] union tills were empty thanks to the constant seizure of funds by authorities. For their part, Los Solidarios resolved to eliminate some of the leading reactionaries: Martínez Anido, Colonel Arlegui, ex-Minister Bagallal, ex-Minister Count of Coello, José Regueral (the governor of Bilbao), and Juan Soldevila, the Archbishop Cardinal of Zaragoza. These individuals bore direct responsibility for the terrorism exercised against the anarchists and workers. Several other anarchist groups decided to launch an attack on the Hunters’ Circle, a pistolero refuge and meeting place of the most vicious employers.

The raid had a devastating psychological effect. They never imagined that more than fifteen people would audaciously burst into their lounge and fire at them at point blank range. That is exactly what happened. The bourgeoisie asked for police protection and many pistoleros fled Barcelona.

There was tremendous confusion in the city. The poor supported the radical workers and greeted police invasions of their neighborhoods with gunfire. It was a bitter war, and Durruti and his friends were destined to live out one of the most dangerous and dramatic chapters of their lives. Years later a witness observed that “it had no precedent other than the period experienced by Russian revolutionaries between 1906 and 1913. These youths disregarded the adults’ prudent recommendations and became judges and avengers in Spain’s four corners. They were frequently persecuted by the state and had no support other than their own convictions and revolutionary faith.” [99]