Part 2, Chapter 14 : The Insurrectional Cycle

CHAPTER XIV. The insurrectional cycle

Durruti was released in early December 1932 after nearly three months of governmental detention and would never know why he had been incarcerated. He was again on the street and again with the same problems as always, although it was not difficult for him to get his job back at the textile factory that had employed him on May 11, 1931 (his first work since returning from France).

Mimi immediately worried about how long his freedom would last when, three days after his release, Durruti told her that the whole group would gather that night.

The meeting took place in García Oliver’s house in the Sants district.

The following were present at the designated hour: Antonio Ortiz, Gregorio Jover, Francisco Ascaso and his brother Domingo (who did not belong to the group but everyone trusted), Aurelio Fernández, María Luisa Tejedor (Aurelio’s compañera and a group member), Durruti, Ricardo Sanz, and García Vivancos. The last three arrived together, followed shortly afterwards by Pepita Not and Julia López Maimar.

The goal of the meeting? A CNT regional gathering had asked the Regional Committee to entrust García Oliver with devising an insurrectionary plan that could be put into motion at the right time. He had drafted the plan and the moment to act seemed to have arrived.

Social conditions have become more complicated since the establishment of the autonomous Catalan government (September 1932). An exaggerated nationalism characterizes the Catalan government. The former comrades Francesc Layret, Salvador Seguí, Companys (onetime lawyer for the CNT), Martí Barrera (once the administrator of Solidaridad Obrera), and Jaume Aiguader (ex-workers’ doctor)[364] lead the young party that dominates the regional government. This party cannot accept the existence of two powers in the region: that of the Esquerra Republicana and that of the CNT. Josep Dencàs, Miguel Badia, and Josep Oriol Anguera de Sojo, instruments of Catalan politics and puppets of Maura (of the “108 dead”[365]), hope to crush the CNT by systemically closing its unions, shutting down its press, using governmental detentions, and wielding the terrorism of the police and “escamots.” The Esquerra’s “Casals” [trans.: neighborhood houses] are used as underground dungeons in which kidnapped Confederal workers are held and beaten. These are the origins of the revolutionary movement of January 8, 1933.[366]

When García Oliver explained his revolutionary project, he linked it to the situation created by the Republican government:

As soon as the Republican state put itself at the service of national and foreign capitalists, it was no longer relevant to have partial strikes in the factories, workshops, and businesses. The power of the state can only be defeated by the power of revolution. This explains the revolutionary movements that we have just experienced. It also explains the revolutionary movements that we will doubtlessly see in the future, in which, bourgeois journalists say, Spanish anarchists will play the last card. Naturally bourgeois journalists must refer to the final card of a never-ending game of baraja.[367]

Everyone in the Nosotros group shared García Oliver’s views. But it was lamentable, said Durruti, that so much time had been wasted in internal debates, during which the Republican state had been able to strengthen itself and even create an auxiliary police body (the Assault Guard), which was highly trained and well-armed with modern combat equipment. The principle damage caused by “the Thirty” was precisely that: to delay the workers’ victory. They all agreed that it would have been exceedingly easy to trigger the social revolution during the Republic’s first nine months: the Assault Guard did not exist, the army was undisciplined and even leaned toward the people, and the Civil Guard was disdained by the public and in the midst of a morale crisis. The state’s coercive forces had been nearly annulled and it lacked the ligament of the authority necessary to give them coherence. It was now important for the anarchists to create a pre-revolutionary state that would prevent the government from affirming its authority still further. The miners of Fígols had done more than several tons of propaganda to make the revolution seem feasible to the workers. Psychologically, insurrections like the one in Fígols made the impossible appear possible. What was important was not victory per se, but more long-term gains. Rebellions like the one in Fígols had a profound impact on the working class: it drew strength and inspiration from them, and an increase in the working class’s strength meant a weakening of the power of the bourgeoisie and the state. [368]

It was in the context of this perspective that the Nosotros group accepted García Oliver’s insurrectional plan, although the Catalan CNT would have to adopt it as well.

In mid-December the CNT’s Catalan Regional Committee called a meeting and Garcia Oliver explained the project in detail there. Those assembled divided into two currents on the issue. Their positions were not completely contradictory, but there were differences, and these indicated the continued influence of “the Thirty.”

Some felt the CNT should not precipitate things. Given the turmoil caused in the organization by “the Thirty,” they should first clarify internal matters and then attack later, when conditions are better. Others thought that time was of the essence and that the CNT had to make a show of force in order to get the Catalan and Madrid authorities to understand that they could not govern against the CNT. Furthermore, an insurrection like the one planned could have a strong impact on the working class, including those in the UGT.

The CNT was in a difficult position. Nonetheless, meeting participants ultimately accepted the insurrectional plan. [369] They formed a Revolutionary Committee, which included Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver as members, and the CNT National Committee appointed a representative, which also happened to be Durruti. Durruti went to Cádiz, where the CNT’s Andalusian Regional Confederation had called a meeting to discuss how to carry out the revolt.

The meeting took place secretly in Jerez de la Frontera. Informers had told police about the gathering and they mobilized to arrest attendees, but fortunately police did not know the gathering’s exact location. While police patrolled Cádiz’s entrances and exists, the meeting occurred in Jerez de la Frontera without disruption.

Participants decided that Andalusia would go into action as soon as Radio Barcelona announced that revolutionaries had seized the radio station. If the rebellion failed in Barcelona, Andalusia and the rest of the country would not participate.

They formed an Andalusian Revolutionary Committee to lead the rebellion movement there. It consisted of Vicente Ballester (CNT), Rafael Peña (FAI) and Miguel Arcas (Libertarian Youth). The Committee’s principle mission was to orchestrate the revolt from Sevilla, where they would take over the radio transmitter and, with an agreed upon code, use it to maintain contact with the local and provincial committees formed by representatives of the same organizations elsewhere. [370] Barcelona would be the center of the insurrection and all the regions committed to the rebellion would join the struggle once revolutionaries seized the radio transmitter. The operational plan was the following: They divided Barcelona into three areas.

a) Terrassa-Hospitalet, Sants, Hostafrancs, and the Fifth District. Main targets: the Assault Guard barracks, the Plaza de España, the Prat de Llobregat airfield, the Pedralbes Infantry barracks, the Cavalry barracks on Tarragona Street, the Modelo prison, the Atarazanas barracks, and the border police barracks on San Pablo Street. The groups in Poble Sec would take over the main Gas and Electricity offices as well as those of Campsa (petroleum and gasoline warehouses). This sector was García Oliver’s responsibility.

b) Militants in the districts of Poble Nou, Sant Martí, and Sant Andreu were to prevent the departure of military forces from the Artillery Station and Infantry barracks in Sant Andreu and also the Artillery barracks on Icaria Avenue. They would also lay siege to the Infantry barracks of the Parque de la Ciudadela. Francisco Ascaso was in charge of this area.

c) Horta-Carmelo-Gracia sector. Here militants were to attack the Civil Guard barracks on Travessera de Gracia and Navas de Tolosa and the Cavalry barracks on Lepanto Street. This was Durruti’s zone of operation.[371]

The primary goal in these three sectors was to stop the Civil Guard from leaving its barracks and thus support the work of the guerrilla groups operating in the center of the city. Their mission was to occupy the Telephone building, radio transmitters, and official government offices (specifically, the Generalitat, Captaincy, and Police Headquarters).

At first there was no agreed upon date—the rebellion would break out at the moment deemed most opportune—but some undesirable developments changed that. There was an explosion in one of the workshops used to manufacture hand grenades in the El Clot district, which had been under the care of comrades Hilario Esteban and Meler. Alarmed residents called the police, who promptly discovered the armory. This made authorities suspect that the CNT must be preparing something and, as a preventative measure, ordered the arrest of several militants and an investigation into various suspicious places. What to do? Should they wait and let the police destroy their painstakingly developed plan? They opted instead for the most radical solution and set January 8 as the date of the insurrection.

The plan of attack included incapacitating the repressive forces concentrated in Police Headquarters on Vía Layetana and the Civil Guard in the Palacio Plaza (that is, the Civil Government).

The two official buildings would be blown up with dynamite between 9:00 and 10:00 pm. This would be a signal for the strategically placed groups, indicating that they should launch the attack on the previously designated sites.

A revolutionary patrol deployed in taxis. Its task was to confirm that each group was in its place. The arms used would be hand grenades and pistols.

The bombs that were going to explode in the mentioned buildings were made of two tubes of autogenous solder, each 1.20 meters in height and seventy centimeters in diameter.

On January 8, at exactly 8:00 am on Mercaders Street, “two bricklayers and one laborer stopped pulling a small handcart, which was loaded with bricks, cement, and plaster. This camouflaged the devices. They set out to complete the operation.”

Their mission was to slip the two tubes into the sewer, haul them through it, and install them where they would serve their final purpose.

It was difficult to carry the tubes through the sewer, because each one weighed ninety kilos. It was relative easy to place the first one under Police Headquarters, because the sewer vault was two meters high there; but the one that had to be put under the Civil Government was much more challenging. The sewer was only a meter and a half in height between Antonio López Plaza and the Palacio Plaza and the water was nearly sixty centimeters deep. It was very hard for the bomb carriers to cover the distance, and there were only two of them there, due to the limited space for movement. It took some eight hours to place the bombs. Once they did so, they split up to set off the devices at the appropriate time.

A serious problem occurred while the devices were being put in place: police arrested García Oliver and Gregorio Jover while they were driving in a car. They were armed and could have resisted, but decided against it, in order not to jeopardize the operation. They were taken to Police Headquarters, where there were other detainees.

García Oliver and Gregorio Jover must have been astounded by their bad luck, knowing that Police Headquarters was due to blow up at any moment... They accepted their fate, thinking that if they didn’t die in the blast, perhaps it would be useful to be at the center of the occupation of the building. The bomb exploded at 10:00 pm that evening under Police Headquarters, although the one under the Civil Government failed for technical reasons.

The Police building did not collapse, as hoped. The building was set back more than six meters from the others on the street. Although the men placing the bomb took that anomaly into consideration and tried to push the tube as much as possible into the drain’s turn-off, the explosion did not reach the structure’s foundations and the building remained standing. All the witnesses agreed that the eruption was absolutely terrifying. It felt like an earthquake to the detainees. Police raced into the street in pajamas or underwear, thinking that the building was under attack...[372]

As planned, the rebellion began after that blast, with greater or lesser intensity, in Barcelona and its province. However, the revolutionaries were soon convinced that police had taken measures that prevented them from carrying out their operation.

One person who collaborated with Durruti in the attempted assault on the Civil Guard barracks on Travessera de Gracia claimed that the police had mobilized not because they had been informed, but because such mobilization was almost permanent in Barcelona at the time, particularly after their discovery of the armory in El Clot.

Another participant, the student Benjamín Cano Ruiz, says that he went to the site where Durruti was distributing weapons and, swept up by enthusiasm, asked for one so that he could “die for the great cause of the proletariat.” Durruti refused and told him: “It isn’t the time to die but to live. Our struggle is long and we’ll have to do much more than just shoot. The active rearguard is equally or more important than the combatant vanguard. You place isn’t here, but in school.” [373]

The insurrection began at nightfall and was over by the early hours of January 9.

“The immediate arrest of the rebellion’s main leaders reduced it—as far as Barcelona was concerned—to isolated fighting on the Ramblas (Joaquín Blanco was killed in the Gastronomy Union), against some barracks, and in the workers’ districts. There was an attempt to assault the ‘La Panera’ barracks in Lérida. The Confederals Burillo, Gou, Oncinas, and Gesio died in that action. There were also shootouts in Tarrasa. Libertarian communism was proclaimed in Cerdanyola and Ripollet.” [374]

Given the insurrection’s failure in Barcelona, there was nothing to do but try to avoid arrest and save people and weapons (the few pistols and rudimentary hand grenades that some still possessed).

Barcelona residents, particularly those living in the workers’ districts, saw the results of the struggle when they left their homes on Monday. There were two dead Security Guard horses in El Clot and a half barricade raised in the Mercado Plaza. [375] There were similar scenes elsewhere and the city had been subject to police control since the government’s declaration of a state of emergency.

The police stations overflowed with detainees and those in Police Headquarters suffered savage beatings. García Oliver was marked as the ringleader of the revolt and took the worst of it.

José Peirats was both a protagonist and historian of the events. He offers the following assessment: “The January 8 rebellion was organized by the Defense Cadres, a shock group formed by CNT and FAI action groups. These poorly armed groups pinned their hopes on the possibility that some sympathetic troops would go into action and also on popular contagion. The railroad workers’ strike that was commended to the National Federation of railroad workers, a minority compared to the UGT’s National Railroad Workers’ Union, did not happen or even begin.” [376]

In Levante, the insurrection had an impact in rural areas such as Ribarroja, Bétera, Pedralba, and Bugarra. The rebels attacked the Town Halls, disarmed the Civil Guard, burned property registries, and proclaimed libertarian communism.

In Andalusia, the rebellion affected Arcos de la Frontera, Utrera, Málaga, La Rinconada, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz, Alcalá de los Gazules, Medina Sidonia, and other villages. The conflict took on horrifying dimensions in Casas Viejas, where Assault Guards set fire to peasants’ huts and burned their inhabitants alive on the orders of Captain Rojas. [377] When Captain Rojas was later asked why his forces had been so savage, he replied that Prime Minister Manuel Azaña had ordered him to “take no prisoners.” Francisco Ascaso, who was in hiding with Durruti, responded in an article titled “Not even if they order it, Captain!”

Captain, I’ve seen my comrades fall in slow death throes and then collapse on the ground, blood pouring out of their mouths, while life flees through small holes in their foreheads. These holes of death crush the skulls of their victims and comprehension in those who reflect upon them. Anido and Arlegui ordered it.

I’ve seen kicks destroy teeth, eyebrows, and lips; men fall unconscious only to be revived with pails of water so that the beating can begin again and then drop, shattered, once more. I’ve heard—this is worst—those being tortured shout out in pain. I remember a story that an old friend told me when I was in Chili. “We Spaniards,” he said, “who boast so much about bringing civilization to the Americas deserve the hate that these Latin Americans feel for us.”

Captain, I saw a painting in a museum when I was in Mexico. It was a representation of Hernán Cortés and his followers’ historic achievement: Montezuma and one of his chiefs were being tortured with fire so that they would reveal the location of the Aztec treasure. While Cortés’s bearded men burned those Indians’ feet, the latter smiled contemptuously, knowing that the Spaniards would discover nothing. Captain, in Tacuba [Mexico] I saw the giant and millennial “tree of the sad night,” where Hernán Cortés went to weep in impotence after his inquisitorial achievement. And I also saw in Villa Cisneros—this wasn’t long ago—how a poor black man, a friend of comrade Arcas, was tied to four stakes driven into the ground and given fifty whip lashings for stealing a plate of food from the local air force sergeant. I’ve seen so many things, Captain, that the wickedness of men no longer frightens me. I have suffered terrible things as well, but we don’t need to speak of that. I have seen many things, I repeat, but I never imagined that someone could embody them all. I always thought that each instance belonged to a time, to particular circumstances and latitudes. Never did I dream that you could incarnate them all, Captain!

Casas Viejas! Casas Viejas! You’ve shared out kicks, whippings that tear men’s limbs and elicit horrendous screams of pain and rage. You’ve burned human beings alive, even an eight year old girl.

You shackled them, since it wasn’t enough to rip them from their mothers’ arms, and later crowned them with macabre holes from which life flees, leaving little red flowers, a crown of torment. And all of this, you say, because ‘they were orders.’ Do you have no dignity, sensitivity, or manliness? Do you belong to race that isn’t human? Is that why the pain of others has no echo in you? Have you seen men slowly fall on the ground in death throes, as blood gushes from their mouths? You had the sadism to ask for, to order: “More! More!” Don’t you feel any of the cold steel that pierces the hearts of the tormented?

Because they ordered it... Because that is what they ordered... Not even if they order it, Captain!! Not even if they order it!!

Hernán Cortés found a tree to hear his cries in Tacuba. You, if some day you feel the need to cry, won’t even find a tree that will listen to you.[378]

At first, government pressure ensured that the public did not learn about its crimes in Casas Viejas. All the libertarian newspapers were banned and nothing but the bourgeoisie’s hacks and their Socialist choruses were free to publish. The government drew a veil of silence over that small village of anarchists. But public criticism of the FAI’s attempted putsch grew increasingly strident. Durruti replied to those critiques in the CNT’s underground newspaper, La Voz Confederal:

Our revolutionary attempt was necessary and we won’t cease in our efforts. It is the only way to stop the government from strengthening itself and for the working class to carry out the revolutionary struggle that will lead to its liberation.

Those who say that we wanted to take power and impose a dictatorship are liars. Our revolutionary convictions repudiate such a goal. We want a revolution for the people and by the people, because proletarian liberation is impossible otherwise.... We are neither Blanquists nor Trotskyists, but understand that the journey is long and that it has to be made by moving, by going forward.

Durruti drew his comrades’ attention to the peasantry’s situation in the article:

We must accord primary importance to the countryside, because the peasantry is ripe for revolution: they lacked nothing but an ideal to channel their desperation and now they have found it in libertarian communism. Our revolution will be a deeply human and peasant revolution.

García Oliver advanced the same argument from Barcelona’s Modelo prison. The January 8 rebellion had not been in vain. Had there been victims? Yes, but a Socialist-Republican government that commits atrocities like the one in Casas Viejas inevitably kills bourgeois democracy, even in the hearts of its most generous defenders.

In the street, “the Thirty” and their supporters took the January revolt as an example of the FAI’s dictatorship in the CNT and became even more virulent in their criticisms. The CNT Regional Committee had to confront the avalanche of complaints and called a regional meeting for March 5, 1933. The dispute finally came to an end there: “the Thirty” and their backers were either expelled or voluntarily withdrew from the CNT and formed separate so-called “Opposition Unions.”

What remained of the CNT in Catalonia were twenty counties and three provinces federated among themselves, with 278 unions totaling more than 300,000 members. The only defections from the CNT were in Sabadell and Levante, where the “reformists” had made an impact on the metalworker, woodworker, and transport worker unions. In Andalusia, they had an enclave in Huelva, but that was all. A total of some sixty thousand members had left, with whom Angel Pestaña would try to form the Syndicalist Party several months later.

The conflict with “the Thirty” was now over. In early April, the press broke the news that Ascaso and Durruti had been arrested in Sevilla.