CHAPTER V. Confronting government terror

Marcelino and Gregorio were well known in Zaragoza, but this was Buenaventura’s first time in the city. They arrived in the early morning and decided to go to the Centro de Estudios Sociales on Augustín Street, instead of to Inocencio Pina’s house (one of the local Justicieros). Durruti found himself in a different world when he crossed the building’s threshold. San Sebastián’s workers’ center was quite small and Gijón’s Centro de Estudios Sociales (led by Eleuterio Quintanilla) was unknown to him. [55] Now, for the first time, Buenaventura was in a workers’ center that was large enough to genuinely meet the movement’s needs. All the activities, even the intellectual ones, took place there. Various signs hung on the rooms: Food workers, Metalworkers, Electricity, Light and Gas, Waiters, etc. There was a well-stocked library and, nearby, the office of El Comunista, the “Publication of the Centro de Estudios Sociales, Voice of the Worker Unions of the Region and Defender of the International Proletariat.” Next to El Comunista was the office of Cultura y Acción, the magazine of the CNT unions in the region.

When the young men arrived, only three people were there: Santolaría, the Centro’s president; Zenón Canudo, the editor of El Comunista; and the caretaker. [56] After their initial surprise at the unexpected visit, Gregorio (who had met the first two before) introduced Marcelino and Buenaventura, whom he described as an Asturian comrade. Canudo and Santolaría filled the new arrivals in on the state of things in Zaragoza. [57] They spoke with particular concern about the young Francisco Ascaso, unknown to Durruti at the time, who had been locked up in the Predicadores prison since December 1920 on charges of killing Adolfo Gutiérrez, the editor in chief of the Heraldo de Aragón. Ascaso was looking at a probable a death sentence. [58] José Chueca, from El Comunista, then entered and anxiously shared some remarkable news: authorities had discovered a plot to assassinate Alfonso XIII in San Sebastián and everyone said three young anarchists were responsible. He then cited the names of the three visitors, which made everyone laugh. This irritated Chueca: he had never met them before and wouldn’t have imagined that they would be standing right there. Before Santolaría left, he told the three friends that “it would be better if you stayed away from the Centro, which could be or perhaps already is under surveillance.”

Buenaventura and his two friends found Inocencio Pina at nightfall and met Torres Escartín in Pina’s house on the outskirts of the city. [59] They received a detailed report on several comrades’ desperate circumstances. In addition to Francisco Ascaso, they found out that Manuel Sancho, Clemente Mangado, and Albadetrecu were also in prison. They were charged with trying to kill Hilario Bernal, who ran the Química, S.A. business and was essentially the leader of the Zaragoza bourgeoisie. [60] These four men later became members of Los Justicieros, after it fuzed with the Voluntad group.

“To save ourselves from death sentences and more prison sentences,” Pina told them, “we have to confront the bourgeoisie and the authorities, and mobilize public sentiment, particularly that of the proletariat. At the moment there are only two of us [Pina and Escartín] ready to do this and two people are hardly enough for such an undertaking. You’ll have to decide, given the circumstances, if you’d rather continue the trip or remain in Zaragoza.”

In reality, Buenaventura and his friends had already made up their minds: one didn’t abandon comrades in a time of need. From that moment on, the “young Asturian” (as Durruti was known at the time) and his friends were incorporated into the advance guard of Zaragoza’s revolutionaries.[61]

At the time, the bourgeoisie was retaliating for the concessions it had been forced to make after the previous year’s Light and Gas strike, as well the Waiters and Streetcar workers’ strike. [62] It fired workers for punitive reasons alone and often set the police on them, naturally with the full support of the Count of Coello, the provincial governor, and Cardinal Soldevila. It was difficult for the three outlaws to find work but Buenaventura, thanks to his skill in his trade, was able to get a job in the Escoriaza mechanic workshop. Pina had to help the other two, taking them into his modest fruit and vegetable business.

Despite everything, this was a period of relative social peace in Zaragoza. Notwithstanding the harassment suffered throughout 1920, the working class had rebuilt its ranks, and they were in good health. The unions functioned normally and had even grown. The workers’ press, although reduced by censors, was available on the street. Life, other than the torments caused by the increasing unemployment, seemed calm.

Zaragoza’s apparent tranquility stood in sharp contrast to the open struggle unfolding in Barcelona, where Martínez Anido, Barcelona’s civil governor, imposed his own form of terror. He conducted a vast operation of systematic assassinations, forced unions underground, and threw activists in jail (including Angel Pestaña, who had recently returned from the USSR). The youth, organized in anarchist groups and leading the underground unions and CNT groups, confronted the police. But the consistent loss of militants to the forces of repression meant that inexperienced or less reliable activists sometimes had to be prematurely promoted within the CNT. Indeed, police arrested the entire National Committee in March 1921 and the new committee formed to replace it was made up entirely of unsteady or last minute CNTistas, like Andreu Nin, who had only joined the CNT two years earlier.

When authorities arrested CNT General Secretary Eugenio Boal, he had the report that Angel Pestaña had sent from prison in his possession. In the document, Pestaña described his activities at and impressions of the Second Congress of the Communist International that had been held in Moscow in August 1920. He also argued that “the CNT, for various reasons but especially because of the imposition of the so-called twenty-one conditions, should ... reexamine its decision to join the Third International, which it made in the enthusiasm of 1919.” Boal did not have time to deliver this report to the unions and the new National Committee led by Nin received his text. However, the National Committee delayed its transmission on the basis of a strictly literal interpretation of the CNT’s statutes: they claimed that it was not the unions’ prerogative to reevaluate the 1919 Congress’s decision to join the Third International and, as long as another congress has not taken place, the 1919 decision remained valid. This new National Committee, with its pro-Bolshevik perspective, obstructed the CNT’s progress. [63]

At the time, militants in Zaragoza were focused on the need to set up a Peninsula-wide anarchist federation and, toward that end, the Vía Libre, El Comunista, Los Justicieros, Voluntad, and Impulso groups sponsored a conference. They decided at the event to send a group to the southern, central, and eastern parts of the country to meet with comrades and enlist them in the project. They delegated responsibility for this organizing trip to Buenaventura Durruti and Juliana López, who left Zaragoza for Andalusia in February 1921. This was the first time that Buenaventura assumed a responsibility of the type. He convinced the comrades in Andalusia to federate their diverse groups on a trial basis and allow a committee to coordinate their actions in the region. [64]

Durruti then went to Madrid, where he would receive an important surprise. On March 8, a day before his arrival, unknown assailants fired from a sidecar at the automobile carrying Eduardo Dato in the middle of the Paseo de la Independencia. Dato died instantly. The police put the capital under siege, cordoning off whole neighborhoods in their attempt to catch the perpetrators. [65] It was too risky to meet with Madrid’s anarchists under these circumstances, so Buenaventura and Juliana left the city immediately.

When they got to Barcelona, a rumor was circulating that Dato’s assassination had shaken the Madrid government deeply and that it had ordered Martínez Anido to stop persecuting the workers. [66] Buenaventura met with Domingo Ascaso for the first time in the small restaurant where he normally ate lunch. They spoke about Dato’s murder and its consequences, as well as Anido’s terror. Domingo and Durruti concluded that Anido was not likely to be restrained by the government’s demands. The two men continued talking in a home in the Pueblo Nuevo workers’ district. Durruti learned that the unions had been shut down and that many well-known activists as well as dozens of more obscure militants had been thrown in jail (Seguí, Pestaña, Boal, and Peiró were among the detained). The pistoleros were operating like a parallel police force and carried a green membership card to identify themselves. They stood at factory entrances to intimidate union leaders or simply shot them down if the management asked them to do so. There were also bands of informers. Some had been CNT members who decided to betray their comrades after the police threatened them with death. “Against these external and internal dangers, we anarchists have closed ranks,” said Domingo Ascaso. “We’ve distanced ourselves from those who are suspicious and devoted ourselves to dramatic actions, like the murder of Dato, who bore real responsibility for what Martínez Anido is doing. We’ve got other spectacular actions in the works.” [67] But, Ascaso told Durruti, his organizational idea was impossible for the time being, since they could not withdraw from the projects that were absorbing them. “Please tell all this to the comrades in Zaragoza,” he said, “and also that some well-known Barcelona pistoleros hide out there and surely intend to extend their activities to that city.” [68] Buenaventura made an assessment of his trip when he returned to Zaragoza. Although in some cases suspicions complicated matters, most of the comrades were ready to form lasting accords with one another and this would be the first step toward creating a peninsular anarchist federation. Indeed, Zaragoza militants got to work immediately: the Via Libre group began planning a national conference and, until it could take place, decided that its publication would serve as a forum for discussing the problem of anarchist organization. At Buenaventura’s behest, several members of Los Justicieros went to Bilbao to get pistols.

Buenaventura and Gregorio, who knew the Basque militants well, asked Zabarain to help them purchase arms. He was pessimistic at first, saying: “Since Regueral’s arrival in Bilbao, the CNT has been underground consistently. The unions’ tills are absolutely exhausted. The money has been used to help the families of arrestees or spent on trials. It’s impossible to consider this type of assistance.” [69] They tried to get some funds and weapons from local comrades, but only managed to acquire a little bit of cash and some small arms; the latter thanks to certain selfless Bilbao militants who handed over their pistols at “a time when a gun was the best membership card.” Gregorio, excited, declared that “for big problems, there are big remedies” and suggested that they rob some banks. After all, the state was taking what little the workers’ organizations had. Torres Escartín and Buenaventura expressed concern about their inexperience. They had participated in armed conflicts with the police and pistoleros, and carried out dynamite attacks, but had never held up a bank. Nonetheless, they accepted his proposal and Gregorio and Buenaventura began to plan a robbery of a Banco de Bilbao. But Buenaventura convinced his friend that the holdup was impossible, given the meager resources at their disposal. Zabarain suggested another target, which seemed much more feasible. They would clean out the paymaster of one of Eibar’s metallurgic businesses, who transported a large sum of money from the Banco de Bilbao and only in the company of a driver. They would do the job in the middle of the Bilbao-Eibar road.

Thus, on the designated day, they feigned a car accident, gagged the driver and paymaster, put them in the back of their own car, and took off with the money.

The local press reported on the daring theft of 300,000 pesetas the next day. Police said that they suspected that the heist was the work of a band of Catalan bank robbers. Los Justicieros hid in a house in the “las siete calles” neighborhood, while Zabarain started making efforts to acquire one hundred Star pistols (known as the “syndicalist pistol” at the time). They divided the money not used for the guns into two parts; they sent one half to Bilbao and Juliana took the other half to Zaragoza. The three friends left for Logroño several days later. [70]