Part 1, Chapter 4 : Los Justicieros

CHAPTER IV. Los justicieros

When Buenaventura arrived in San Sebastián, the CNT was making inroads into an area that the Socialist Party and its union body, the UGT, had dominated until then. Prior to the CNT’s Second Congress in 1919, anarchist activity in the Basque region was limited to printed propaganda put out by the small number of groups there. But anarchists in San Sebastián and also Bilbao began to go into action and lay down solid organizational roots after the 1917 general strike and the dramatic increase in anarcho-syndicalist activity throughout the country.

Around this time, workers began building the Gran Kursaal casino at the mouth of the Urumea River and labors from Aragón and Logroño came to participate in the undertaking. The anarchist group in San Sebastian set out to organize this mass of immigrant workers, under the guidance of veteran militant Moisés Ruiz. Activists from Zaragoza and Logroño also helped out, including Marcelino del Campo, Gregorio Suberviela, Víctor Elizondo, José Ruiz, Inocencio Pina, Clemente Mangado, and Albadetrecu. [43] They were highly enthusiastic, but not particularly strategic and Ruiz soon realized that some of their tactics would elicit resistance from the locals, who were accustomed to the softer practice of the Socialists. To counteract and defeat the Socialist Party on the intellectual terrain, he turned to his good friend Buenacasa, who traveled from Barcelona to San Sebastián at his request. Buenacasa was a talented agitator and his influence was soon felt, as much in the education of militants as the creation of the first Construction Workers’ Union. As a propagandist, he participated in lectures and challenged the Socialists to public debates on numerous occasions. The Socialists immediately understood that their supremacy in the area was at risk and they, in turn, called in Socialist militants from other regions. A bitter conflict between the Socialists and anarchists thus began in the Basque country. For its part, the Basque bourgeoisie saw this discord as an opportunity to weaken the proletariat and sided with the Socialists.

“One day,” writes Buenacasa, “a tall and brawny young man with cheerful eyes turned up at the union. He greeted us warmly, like he’d known us all his life. He showed his CNT card and said without preamble that he had just arrived and needed work. Of course we occupied ourselves with him, as was customary, and found him a job in a mechanics’ workshop in Rentería. From then on, he regularly came to the union after work. He would take Los Justicieros the newspapers piled up on a table and sit in a corner and read.

He barely participated in discussions and, when it was late in the evening, retired to the inn in which we had found him accommodation.”

Durruti’s face made an impact on Buenacasa and, after reflecting for a moment, he recalled their previous encounter. He was the unpleasant youth that he had met in Gijón three years before.

I became curious about him and sought out his friendship. The only thing I could gather from our initial conversations was that he had been in France for a number of years, but he didn’t tell me why and didn’t say anything about Gijón. I felt certain that he recognized me and his silence about the episode intrigued me. Could it be that our first meeting left a bad taste with both of us? Whatever it was, neither of us ever referred to Gijón directly.

He enjoyed talking, but not arguing. He always avoided digressions and stuck to the heart of the matter. He was neither stubborn not fanatical, but open, always recognizing the possibility of his own error. He had the rare and uncommon virtue of knowing how to listen and to take into consideration the opposing argument, accepting it where he thought it was reasonable. His union work was quiet, but interesting. He and the other metalworkers that we had affiliated to our Sindicato de Oficios Varios [union of various trades] formed an opposition group within the UGT’s Metalworkers’ Union (in which they had also enrolled). He began to speak out at meetings of the Metalworkers’ Union and more than once a Socialist leader started to worry when Durruti took the floor. His speeches—just like at the rallies many years later—were short but incisive. He expressed himself with ease and when he called a spade a spade, he did it with such force and conviction that no one could contradict him.

His comrades nominated him for leadership positions in the Metalworkers’ Council, but he never accepted them. He told them that such positions were the least important thing and that what really mattered was rank and file vigilance, so the leaders don’t become bureaucratized and are forced to fulfill their responsibilities.

We became closer over the months and he told me about his life. For my part, I tried to put the best militants that we had in San Sebastián in his path (and always in such a way that he wouldn’t suspect it). They all quickly came to like that quiet fellow from León.[44]

These militants were: Gregorio Suberviela, mine foreman; Marcelino del Campo, builder and school teacher’s son; Ruiz, son of a stationmaster; and Albadetrecu, who had separated from his bourgeoisie family in Bilbao because of his anarchist convictions. In addition to becoming friends, these young men also formed an anarchist group called Los Justicieros, which operated simultaneously in Zaragoza and San Sebastián.

When they created this group, there was intense discontent among the miners and metalworkers; there were endless strikes and grassroots pressure was overwhelming the union leadership. In response to the growing turbulence, the government installed soldiers in the provincial governments and made Lieutenant Colonel José Regueral the governor of Vizcaya, who would do nothing to differentiate himself from General Martínez Anido or Arlegui, lieutenant colonel of the Civil Guard. His first official act was to declare at a press conference that he intended to “get the workers to toe the line.” As if to corroborate the claim, he immediately ordered numerous governmental detentions and personally beat inmates. [45]

Things were even worse in Barcelona. The systematic government repression was transforming the labor struggle into a social war. Prominent workers were literately hunted in the streets by groups of pistoleros hired by the bourgeoisie and the police regularly applied the infamous “ ley de fugas.” [46] The best Catalan activists ended up behind bars. It was only the young militants—still unknown to the police and pistoleros—who could survive the bitter conflict. Buenacasa explains:

The CNT National Committee was underground and overwhelmed. It asked militants throughout Spain to help them fight the bourgeois and police offensive taking place in Barcelona, but its efforts were in vain. An authoritarian, vicious, and perpetual clampdown complemented the street assassinations. Our most talented militants had to make a harrowing choice: kill, run, or go to prison. The violent ones defended themselves and killed; the stoic and brave were shot down from behind; the cowards fled or hid; and the most active and imprudent went to prison.[47]

This government and employer terror was one of the weapons—the most extreme and desperate—that the dominant classes used against the rise of the workers’ movement in Barcelona and the proletariat’s growing maturity. The bourgeoisie had locked out 200,000 workers in late 1919 and yet ultimately had to give in. To avoid a repetition of such a defeat, they could think of nothing better than shameless aggression.

Los Justicieros wanted to respond to the National Committee’s call for help. They thought that the “best way to help the comrades was by turning all of Spain into an immense Barcelona;” but that “required a strategic plan that was impossible to carry to out at the moment.” Nevertheless, they considered going to Barcelona “to occupy posts left vacant in the struggle.”[48] Buenacasa had to intercede to “restrain their juvenile impulses with his moral authority, urging them to stay in San Sebastián, where the social struggle was just as important as in Barcelona, only less spectacular.”[49]

Something occurred in Valencia on August 4, 1920 that would have a powerful impact on the Los Justicieros. It was the anarchist assassination of Barcelona’s ex-governor José Maestre de Laborde, Count of Salvatierra. During his term in office, he permitted the application of the “ley de fugas” to thirty-three militant workers. In response, anarchists in Valencia decided to execute him. The act shook the highest levels of the government. Although it had tried to restrain Barcelona authorities, it had failed to so and watched impotently as their savagery increased daily. Now it was paying the price. For Los Justicieros, the assassination was exemplary and they soon began to plan one of their own. Their target was José Regueral, the Governor of Bilbao, who bore responsibility for vast acts of brutality against the working class. However, while they were busy making their preparations, they learned that Alfonso XIII was planning to attend the inauguration of the Gran Kursaal casino. They ruled out the Regueral action: “Killing Alfonso XIII would be most positive for the proletarian cause,” they thought.[50] “The best way to do it was by constructing an underground tunnel that would take them directly to the parlor where the guest reception was going to occur. Under Suberviela’s direction, they began digging the passageway in a nearby house. Durruti was entrusted with acquiring and storing the explosives.”[51]

The work was grueling and their progress slowed considerably when they reached the building’s foundations. The dwelling from which the tunnel began had been disguised as a coal yard, but the large number of bags of dirt being removed from it must have made the police suspicious. The police executed a search and the team working then escaped after a quick gun battle. Durruti, who was in Gijón at the time, received some unpleasant news when he returned: the news media and police had decided that he, Gregorio Suberviela, and Marcelino del Campo were responsible for the plot. “Under these conditions,” Buenacasa told them, “you can’t remain in San Sebastián. I’ve got everything arranged so that you can go to Barcelona.”[52] But getting out of San Sebastián would not be easy. The police were searching aggressively for the “three dangerous anarchists.”[53] Fortunately, some railroad workers with whom Buenacasa had been in contact helped the three fugitives escape on a freight train heading to Zaragoza.[54]