CHAPTER III. Contradictions and fabrications in the presented versions

None of the above attempts to resolve the mystery of Durruti’s death are credible enough to be accepted as the “last word” on the topic. There are simple too many contradictions, omissions, or other inadequacies. While each account may have some positive element and perhaps all of those elements, taken together, could produce a narrative of Durruti’s death that is more consistent with the truth, that would involve pure speculation, which is hardly appropriate in historical research.

The Stalinist version first surfaced in Izvestia; it was reinforced by the journalist from London’s Times Literary Supplement, and was finally embraced by historian Federico Bravo Morata. It was the latter who wrote that Durruti “joined the Communists, on the condition that his membership be kept secret until the opportune moment.” The Stalinist account had two goals: to appropriate Durruti’s personality for their political ends and to incriminate the anarchists. That is also the purpose of the Russian cameraman’s assertion that most of the Column’s “adventurist members were capable of killing Durruti.” Of course all of these sources are deeply suspicious. While it is true that one can interpret some of Durruti’s published statements as sympathetic to the united front against fascism as advocated by the Communists, Durruti had clearly specified what he meant by the unity of action and his affirmations on the issue are unambiguous. His last public statement was his “letter to the Russian workers.” Although Durruti personally opposed sending a delegation to Russia, when the Column’s War Committee decided to do so, he drafted his declaration. There is not one mention of Stalin or the Bolsheviks or the Soviet government in the text. It is a statement from one worker to other workers, asking them to support the social revolution in Spain and asserting his determination to carry it forward. With this as Durruti’s final statement, one would have to make huge leaps of imagination to see Durruti’s “evolution” toward the Communist Party.

The Stalinists insinuated that one of Durruti’s own men could have killed him and Pierre Broué, Hugh Thomas, and Dominique Desanti repeat this claim. This is the greatest possible affront to the thousand Durruti Column fighters who lost their lives defending Madrid. The Durruti Column men who went from Aragón to the capital not only had faith in Durruti, but also followed him without hesitation, even to death. Any one of them was willing to die at his side. Durruti’s exemplary and constant engagement in the struggle, whether in Aragón or Madrid, backed up his influence over his men. There was no contradiction between Durruti the Column leader and Durruti the militant, and he fulfilled his leadership responsibilities not in his headquarters at 27 Miguel Angel Street or the Santa Lucía Inn, but on the frontlines. There is no way that a man from his Column could have shot him, unless the assassin was mentally unstable and it was an isolated act.

But this merits further commentary. We have already seen that General Vicente Rojo made Durruti responsible for the University City. We also noted that a Communist Party Column refused to take orders from Durruti the anarchist. But, nevertheless, since Rojo’s order is in the archives, historians have assumed that the Libertad-López Tienda Column was under Durruti’s command and have therefore denominated it the Durruti Column in their writings. It was this Column that was responsible for the nationalists’ passage across the Manzanares River.

That order prompted Martínez Bande to mistakenly describe the Libertad-López Tienda Column as anarcho-syndicalist, although he later corrected himself. Neither Hugh Thomas nor Pierre Broué nor others who assert that the Durruti Column was responsible for the crossing of the Manzanares have made such clarifications.

Vicente Rojo also put other troops in Madrid under Durruti’s orders, including some carabinero companies. Thus, in Durruti’s sector, there were survivors of the original Column that came from Aragón plus various others that are difficult to classify politically. If Durruti’s murderer was among them, he would have to be one of the troops added to the Column in Madrid, who neither knew nor loved Durruti and might have been ideologically hostile to him.

JAUME MIRAVITLLES’ FANTASTIC IMAGINATION

We also attended the exposition in Barcelona. A shirt was on display, but not the leather coat on which the famous “gunpowder stains” were visible. Miravitlles saw Durruti’s shirt in a display case, but it was not removed for analysis. Did the doctors that Miravitlles brought in determine that the bullet had been fired at “close range” by looking at the garment through the glass of the display case? Ricardo Sanz, who was responsible for the exposition, is still alive and can confirm whether or not Miravitlles was permitted to take the shirt to the laboratory for analysis.

We will now address Miravitlles’s second claim. Emilienne Morin, Durruti’s widow, left Barcelona with their daughter shortly after Durruti’s death to work with organizations supporting the Spanish revolution in France. We asked her if she attended an official banquet, at which she would have had the opportunity to speak with Miravitlles. She replied categorically that she did not and had never met him.

“SANTI,” DURRUTI’S MILITARY ADVISER

“Santi” is a strange figure and his role in Spain will always be somewhat mysterious. He used numerous names, although apparently his real one was Kh D. Mansurov. Ehrenburg, who frequently mentions him, calls him Hajji, although Koltsov designates him Santi. In any case, according to Ehrenburg, “Hajji was recklessly courageous, to the extreme of infiltrating the enemy’s rearguard (he was from the Caucasus region and could pass for a Spaniard).

A good deal of Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls comes from stories Hajji told to the American novelist.” [778] Ehrenburg also portrays Hajji as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Soviet Army and a member of the Russian General Staff in Spain, which General Ivan Berzin (Grichine) led.

We have asked many of those who were close to Durruti in Madrid (José Mira, Antonio Bonilla, Ricardo Rionda, Liberto Ros, and Mora among others) and none offer any support for the claim that Santi was a military adviser to Durruti. All agree that Manzana and Durruti’s own instincts were his only advisers. While Russian soldiers visited Durruti’s headquarters in Bujaraloz as well as Madrid, none remained. This suggests that in this instance—as in others—Koltsov confused history by inventing people or giving real people invented functions.

Karmen’s story is equally far-fetched, both his depiction of Hajji’s relationship to Durruti as well as his statement that four cars followed Durruti when he departed for the University City. There were no additional drivers in his Headquarters at Miguel Angel Street, other than Mora, who served Durruti as a messenger. Nevertheless, there is something intriguing in Karmen’s story. He situates the death between 2:30 and 3:00 pm and sites a statement from Hajji: “They’ve killed Durruti. They just killed him.”

Who were “they”? The succeeding paragraph is an attack on the anarchists: “A treacherous blow from behind took Durruti’s life, in the most critical moment of his struggle against himself and the ‘classical’ anarchists. Durruti tried hard to break with the clique of adventurers that surrounded him, and was beginning the real, unreserved struggle for the Spain’s freedom. He was an honest man, ready to draw the pertinent conclusions from everything that took place in his fatherland, but they killed him.” This “they” is ambiguous: “they” could be the “classical” anarchists, the fascists, or Orlov’s GPU men. In any case, it would be very suspicious if Hajji did in fact know about Durruti’s injury at the time that it occurred, particularly when Mera, Val, and the militants at the CNT meeting did not learn of it until 5:00 pm.

THE ACCOUNT OF THE JOURNALIST FROM THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

This outrageous version is fully consistent with the Stalinist manipulation pointed to above and Enrique Líster even embraces it today (1976). However, the information provided by the journalist is inconsistent with the actual circumstances (we are referring to the scene of the shooting) and only underscores the extravagance of his literary imagination.

The writer from The Times Literary Supplement does not mention the Column’s role in Madrid’s defense and implies that Durruti was in the capital solely to “work out a deal with the Communist Party and the Government.” He says “Durruti left his bodyguard.... made a deal with the communists.... fifteen minutes later he was shot in the street by agents of an anarchist organization called ‘The Friends of Durruti’” who were “waiting at a window from which they could cover the exits of the building [the Communist’s building?] where Durruti was known to be completing his negotiations. The window was on the same side of the street; hence the shot in the back as he came out of the door.”

He mentions a window, not a balcony. From a balcony one can survey an entire street, but not from a window. The window must have been very close to the door. Was it a window in the same building? Despite the wealth of detail that he provides, the writer has forgotten the essentials: the name of the street, the window’s location, and, finally, how did he know that the meeting lasted fifteen minutes?

Nothing in the English author’s statement about the scene of Durruti’s death conforms to reality. From start to finish, his story is pure invention. Even the assassins he calls “The Friends of Durruti” did not exist at the time, as Meltzer points out.

The journalist argues that the Communist Party had an interest in making the public believe that Durruti died in battle. But all the Stalinist sources spread the rumor that one of Durruti’s own men had killed him because he was “evolving” toward Bolshevism.

The author claims that Durruti was shot from behind and in the presence of numerous witnesses. What did the observers do and what did Durruti’s famous guard do? Apparently neither did anything to stop the killer and simply let him escape. Thus one has to conclude that everyone present was complicit, even the Communists, since the attack took place in the threshold of their building.

The writer from The Times Literary Supplement, who is unable to support his account with logic and facts, clings to the life raft that Hugh Thomas tosses him: that the killers could be “agents of the enemy masquerading as anarchists.” This, if Durruti was executed, is the only potentially valuable aspect of this fanciful British version of Durruti’s death.

CORMAN AND ANONYMOUS

Corman’s theory is supported by the anonymous Column member and corroborated by Solidaridad Obrera (a shot rang out when he emerged from the car, which was presumably fired from a window in a house near the Moncloa). This opens up a new track in the investigation. Unfortunately, we have not found anyone able to confirm this story. The CNT men that we questioned—who were members of the Bakers’ Union—do not recall these events.

FATHER JESÚS ARNAL

We still need to consider the theory of the accident circulated by Father Jesús Arnal.

Jesús Arnal claims that he wrote his “memoirs” to justify his presence in the Durruti Column, although his entire book focuses on demonstrating that Durruti’s death was the result of a stupid accident. Whether it was a stupid mishap or “carelessness,” as Ricardo Sanz claims, the implication is the same, and certainly stopping in a combat zone would be to court death. Ricardo Sanz’s version does not seem bereft of logic, particularly since the other accounts, such as Arnal’s, run into contradictions at every step.

Jesús Arnal’s theory of the accident rests on three claims: that Ricardo Rionda confessed it to him, that Federica Montseny acknowledged its truth, and that the mysterious gentleman known as “Ragar” reaffirmed it. We will set aside the discrepancies in the doctors’ statements (which do not seem to interest Jesús Arnal). We are also not interested in the make of the car (first a Hispano, then a Buick according to “Ragar,” and finally—which is more accurate—a Packard according to Bonilla). What is important is the claim made by “Ragar” that the machine-gun hit the car’s running board, which suggests that Durruti did not manage to get out of the automobile. “Ragar” says that he, Manzana, Bonilla, and the driver were in the car. “The accident occurred in the Moncloa Plaza at the corner of Rosales Avenue at 4:00 pm.... Federica Montseny and Mariano Vázquez swore us to secrecy.”

We will examine the site of the event. Fernández de los Ríos and Princesa Streets begin in the center of Madrid and let out in the Moncloa Plaza. Isaac Peral Avenue is to the right of the Plaza and Moret Street is to the left. The latter lets out into Rosales Avenue, in the middle of the theater of operations at the time. Moncloa Plaza and Rosales Avenue do not meet. “Ragar” could have stopped himself from making that blunder by looking at a map of Madrid: the scene that he depicts is simply impossible. With respect to the occupants of the car, neither Manzana nor Julio Graves nor Ricardo Sanz mentions “Ragar.” As for Bonilla, he asserts that he was in a separate car, which preceded Durruti’s. “Ragar” claims that the accident took place inside the automobile. Bonilla says that Durruti got out of the vehicle, spoke with some with militiamen, that he was not carrying a machine-gun, and that the shooting occurred when he returned to the car. “Ragar” is an utterly mysterious figure. This makes us suppose that he was not among Durruti’s guards, since Durruti would not entrust himself to a stranger. The only possible explanation is that all the witnesses want to conceal his presence. Of course, none of this does much to support the existence of the so-called “Ragar”...

Both Jesús Arnal and Angel Montoto bring Ricardo Rionda and Federica Montseny into the discussion.

We exchanged letters with Jesús Arnal in May and June 1971 after La Prensa published his story. We also asked the relevant parties to confirm his claims about Federica Montseny and Ricardo Rionda. Rionda answered us on July 21 and 26, 1971. He said:

I will now discuss the question of Durruti’s death. I wasn’t with him at the time. Only the driver, Manzana, and a Catalan that he always took as a guard were there. I was in Moncloa Plaza, which is where Manzana broke the news to me... I went to his side immediately.... The fascist radio first said “The Communists executed Durruti” and then “His guards killed him.” The CNT had to intercede to clarify things....

The driver and the guard told Jesús [the story of the accident]. Jesús didn’t know if I was alive, but one day a young man from Barcelona turned up at my house and told me that he knew how Durruti died.... All of this is a moral obligation for me, and I never considered saying anything about the issue. I think this is propaganda from a certain communist party.... Jesús, who had been my secretary, never asked about Durruti’s demise.... Jesús found my address and I later received some letters from him. I responded and then later he came to my home in Realville and told me “Durruti was wounded in the Moncloa Plaza.” I told him that was incorrect: I was in the Plaza and it was there that I found out what had happened. He said: “Did you know that the driver says that the machine-gun fired accidentally and that he died shortly afterwards?” I told Jesús that I couldn’t say anything, because I wasn’t there and didn’t have any information other than what Manzana gave me. In any case, there’s no doubt that Durruti died defending the social revolution.

For her part, Federica Montseny told us:

On the issue of Durruti’s death, I can tell you that I maintained, despite the German [Hans Magnus Enzersberger] and Montoto, the same version as always: that Durruti died after being shot while exiting the car. Montoto was the first person to advance the thesis of the accident, based on the famous priest’s story. Hans spoke with Montoto and Montoto began to circulate the idea of the accident after he returned from his first trip to Barcelona. They even made me vacillate, after sharing the doctors’ testimony with me [they only gave Federica the diagnosis of a close-range shot, not Bastos Ansart’s account]. But the worst is the claim made by Rionda, who Montoto and then the German went to see. Rionda says that Manzana told him what had happened and that everyone kept silent, because Marianet had instructed them to do so, since no one would believe that Durruti could die in such an absurd way. Everyone promised to keep quiet and have done so until today, thirty-five years later.

I don’t know if Rionda was in Madrid when Durruti died. I think you should write him... Ask him about it, so he can give you his version of the incident.

I didn’t admit anything to the priest. I’ve never laid eyes on him. I have always maintained the thesis of the stray bullet; if I vacillated and expressed some doubt, it was after Rionda’s comments. What I can affirm is that no one EVER, until now, gave me any version of Durruti’s death other than the one generally accepted....

I never made any comments supporting the theory of the priest in question who, I repeat, I’ve never seen in my entire life and didn’t know existed until Montoto told me about him. But, given the circumstances, my testimony can’t prove anything to the contrary because I WASN’T IN MADRID WHEN HE DIED. Mariano arrived [in Madrid] before me, and it would be relevant to know if Rionda was there. In any case, this secret has been held so well that no one, until today, has suspected its existence. There have been various theories—from Communist assassination to one of his guards shooting him—with the Communist account dueling it out against the other version. But no one has ever suggested to me that a bullet accidentally fired from his own submachine-gun might have killed him UNTIL NOW.

I’m as disconcerted and intrigued as you. Tell me what you find out. (July 28, 1971)

We should make a few comments about these letters. Rionda was very sick when he sent them to us and had recently undergone an eye operation. He was also ill when Montoto and then Jesús Arnal visited him. It is clear from Rionda’s letters that he didn’t say anything to Jesús Arnal about Durruti’s death and that it was Arnal who supplied Rionda with the accident theory. All Rionda said was that he had no version other than what Manzana gave him, since he was not present when the incident occurred. Arnal provided him with supporting evidence: the statements by “Ragar” and his conversation with Mario Pacheco. Rionda now had new information that he could neither deny nor affirm. That Arnal had to present such evidence further affirms our assertion that Rionda had not said anything to him about Durruti’s death when crossing the border. Where had Arnal gotten his theory? Arnal himself to tells us indirectly: “As a further confirmation of my account, a few years ago (in 1967 approximately) the movie Golpe de mano was filmed in my parish in Ballobar. During the filming, which lasted a long time, I struck up a friendship with its technical crew. One day, a member of the crew named Mario Pacheco, who lived in Madrid, said the following to me while drinking a few beers in my house:

“Jesús, I won’t leave your house until you tell me how Durruti died.”

“Why does this interest you?” I asked.

“Well, it does,” he said, “and I’m not leaving until you tell me.”

I gave him the version that I received from Rico, which I had already stated some other time.

“You’re right,” he said. “The driver, Julio, was my father’s assistant until he retired and he discussed it with us several times. It occurred in the Moncloa Plaza just as you describe. They even painted a black and red flag where he was shot, which was visible for a long time.”

I had always believed that I was among the few people who knew the truth about this momentous historical event. Without intending to or seeking to, I entered the public discussion in the following way... Before explaining how this became a public matter, we must note something: According to Arnal, Rionda’s disclosed his version as an act of trust and presumably, when dealing with a priest, such trust would be inviolable. If Rionda really confided a secret to him, shouldn’t Arnal have asked Rionda if he was permitted to reveal it? His failure to consult Rionda was a clear violation of trust. Nevertheless, since Rionda indicates that he did not say anything to Arnal at the border, we must place the question on another plane.

Durruti’s death was always a mystery to everyone. Arnal—“Durruti’s priest”—was living in Ballobar and it is not surprising that Pacheco would speak with him about the issue. We believe that the origins of Arnal’s story lay in his conversations with Pacheco. However, if the priest wanted a fuller confirmation, why not question Julio Graves, who was an eyewitness? Pacheco was friendly with Julio and therefore must have known how to reach him. The priest did not do this but instead traveled around querying people who were only indirectly involved, like the doctors and, later, Rionda. That oversight disconcerts us, and we are even more disconcerted when he writes “without intending to or seeking to, I entered the public discussion...”. This is unconvincing: no one, we assume, put a pistol to his chest and forced him to betray Rionda’s trust.

In November 1969, some journalists from the EFE Sub-Agency in Monzón came to my house, saying that they had learned that I was writing my memoirs and wanted the first fruits of the information. They begged me to agree to an interview. The result was an article that appeared in El Noticiero Universal on November 11.

It was a public issue now and the anticipated commotion followed. “In July 1970, someone from La Prensa turned up.... Of course the reporter, Mr. Angel Montoto, wanted to discuss Durruti’s death....”

The priest and the journalist became detectives from that moment on. “Ragar” enters the picture, they speak with the doctors, they visit Rionda and Federica, but forget to ask Pacheco how to contact Julio Graves and forget to confront Santamaría with Bastos’s diagnosis. Arnal says: “Mr. Angel Montoto visited Federica Montseny in France and told me this when he returned: ‘She said that we’re right, when I asserted that Durruti’s death was an accident.’”

Federica Montseny denies this categorically. She vacillated when presented with the statements from Rionda and “Ragar” as facts but did not admit anything, for the simple reason that she couldn’t confirm or deny the account, since she was not present when the shooting occurred (although she did reaffirm the version that she had maintained for thirty-five years). There is a lot of flippancy here. Mixed up with the version of the “priest in question” we see the EFE journalists, the La Prensa newspaper (whose editor was a falangist), and, if that wasn’t enough, the latter discord between Arnal and Montoto, which we will provide as an epilogue to their collaboration.

In a letter sent on June 13, 1971, Jesús Arnal said:

With respect to Montoto’s mailing address, I don’t want to give it to you, because I don’t want you to get entangled like I was, but it would be easy enough to find it in the telephone book. He doesn’t work for La Prensa now and no longer has journalist credentials. A mess was made for me with the German TV, which seems to be interested in this matter of Buenaventura. They had to film at the Santa Lucía Inn and in the Casilla, where they took me by car. The police had been informed about this and it turned out that they didn’t have permission to film. On the other hand, my memoirs are dormant: he promised to touch up the style a bit, but what he did was exploit the matter for his own benefit. I’m going to try to get back all the material of mine that he has. We’ll see if it’s published some day, which may not be easy.

But keep in mind that I’m not writing history, only justifying my presence in the Column and defending Buenaventura’s memory.

What could we call this account of Durruti’s death? The marketing of a secret—assuming there was a secret.