CHAPTER XXIV. “Banditry, no; collective expropriation, yes!”

Durruti followed the country’s political and social evolution from Barcelona’s Modelo prison with great interest. The disposition of Lerroux’s government, the savagery in Asturias, and the Rightwing’s insatiable demand for “more heads” all presaged a bloody conflict. The inmates constantly discussed all these issues in the Modelo’s cells and courtyards. Durruti argued emphatically that they had to be careful not to squander their strength and patiently work to rebuild the unions. He saw organization as the key element in a revolutionary victory or a confrontation with the reactionaries. He also noted that “if the Right tries to take power, it won’t do so like Primo de Rivera. Asturias should be an example: the issue in Spain is not bourgeois democracy or fascism, but fascism or social revolution. Bourgeois democracy died after the elections on November 19, 1933.” [426]

The question of the revolutionary alliance came up as well, now with greater urgency than before. The CNT had shown that it could not make the revolution alone and, after the October experience, the Socialists clearly faced the same problem. Would the Socialists draw relevant conclusions from the revolt in Asturias? The libertarians were skeptical: the reformists had betrayed them so many times, there was no reason to expect them to confront the new situation with revolutionary decision. “The Socialists still haven’t demonstrated their revolutionary commitment,” they said. Durruti replied by saying: “Yes, that’s correct, but the coup won’t be delayed forever. We’ll have to deal with it one way or another. That, and also the fact that we’ll suffer the first blows, is why we should work harder for the workers’ alliance. We have to draw UGT workers into our camp or at least make them understand the seriousness of the times. Ultimately, the intensity of our propaganda will determine the number of workers swept along by the revolutionary avalanche.” [427] Months passed in discussions of this sort, as authorities continually admitted new guests into Barcelona’s Modelo. Some of them had been convicted of armed robbery and entered complaining about the CNT and even the FAI.

The proliferation of this crime—now known as the “holdup measles”— alarmed militant anarchists in the prison. And they became even more concerned when some of those charged with the offense demanded that the CNT’s Prisoner Support Committee procure defense lawyers for them. Durruti took a strong position on the issue at a prisoners’ meeting called to discuss the matter: “It isn’t time for individual expropriations, but to prepare the collective one.” Of course that didn’t sit well with those arrested for robbery, but it was impossible to resolve the question halfway. The Prisoner Support Committee ultimately embraced Durruti’s more radical stance. Durruti’s time as a “governmental prisoner” came to an end in early April 1935.

It is outrageous enough that Durruti had to spend six months in prison just to satisfy a governor’s whim, but his problems didn’t end there. Shortly after being released, Durruti read an article in La Publicidad authored by a “specialist” in armed robberies. His name was José María Planas and he had asserted in the paper that “Durruti and his gang are behind the latest holdups in Barcelona.” This absolutely infuriated Durruti. He took off in a rage to find the writer, whom he described as a “shameless hack.”

It was Sunday morning and the Ronda de San Pedro was completely empty. I suddenly saw someone coming in the opposite direction along the sidewalk. It was Durruti. He walked by without noticing me. He had a newspaper in his hand and a sour look on his face. As soon as he passed, I said loudly:

“Don’t friends at least say hello to one another?”

He stopped in his tracks, looked in my direction, and then approached as soon as he recognized me. “How could I miss you?”

“Why are you walking around so blindly? What’s going on?”

“Take it, read.” He gave me the newspaper that he was holding. It was La Publicidad and he had circled an article by José María Planas in red. “I’m going to beat the living daylights out of that shameless hack!” Durruti said irately.

“Where are you going?”

“To La Publicidad to kick that liar out of there!”

“But there’s no one at the newspaper now.”

“Let’s go right now!”

And so we went. As I’d said, there was no one there except the night watchman. Durruti pushed him aside and we entered. He walked through the editorial office, convinced himself that it was empty, and we left. Once we were back on the street, Durruti said:

“This irresponsible prick left me holding the bag for the holdups and yet yesterday I received an eviction notice because I couldn’t pay the rent while I was in prison. Tell me if that’s not enough reason to smash his face in!”[428]

The Spanish political situation was intensely conflicted in early 1935. There were nearly continuous governmental crises. Their secret probably lay in two complementary facts: first, one only had to be a minister for twenty-four hours to secure a lifetime salary (the Radical Party boasted that it had the most ministers “in reserve”). The second was Gil Robles’s methodological effort to seize power. The CEDA ministers provoked a crisis at the time of Durruti’s release from prison when they opposed commutating the eighteen death sentences handed down after the October rebellion. Alejandro Lerroux resolved the matter by replacing three CEDA ministers with three Radicals. There was another crisis fifteen days later, which was resolved in May when six CEDA ministers entered the government, including Gil Robles in the Ministry of War.

José María Gil Robles will always be an enigmatic figure in the political history of this period because none of his actions reflected his declared goal of assuming power legally. In fact, the complete opposite was the case. When he took charge of the Ministry of War, he made General Francisco Franco chief of the Central General Staff. He made General Fanjul sub-secretary of the Ministry of War, entrusted the General Office of the Air force to General Goded, and made General Mola responsible for the Army in Morocco. It was precisely with these generals that Calvo Sotelo planned to form a Directory after the coup d’etat.

Gil Robles postponed his dream of being dictator indefinitely by taking the aforementioned steps, but helped those conspiring to carry out the coup. None of them made a great effort to conceal their intentions. Gil Robles isolated generals and army leaders known for their Republican sympathies, stripping them of military command or relegating them to secondary positions without troops. He reorganized the Spanish Military Association, which was supposed to clean the army of suspicious figures, in such a way that it became a General Staff inside the General Staff.

Preparations for the coup included activities designed to convince the “silent majority” of the need for a “strong man” to impose order on civic life. This included the Falange’s terrorism against the Left; the bourgeoisie’s systematic lock-out of workers, closure of factories, and suspension of whole branches of production; and the deliberate prolongation of strikes, which pushed workers to use sabotage, arson, or bombs. Nonetheless, while a part of the population was impressed by this and ready to welcome a military man, most of the working class had recovered from the October crackdown and was active in the underground unions. Those intimidated at first now began to show up at meetings.

The Barcelona CNT was the center of activity for Durruti and the Nosotros group and, despite the injuries it had suffered in October, its ranks were growing quickly. Underground CNT publications like La Voz Confederal sold around forty thousand copies weekly. When workers couldn’t pay their dues in their workplaces, they did so in bars or through representatives that visited their homes. These contributions were always voluntary. Although it still wasn’t possible to hold large assemblies and rallies, there were many reasons for optimism.

But there were also reasons for concern among CNT and FAI militants: they were clearly heading toward a violent confrontation with the bourgeoisie. They had to work quickly to strengthen the CNT and build up its offensive reserves. When the Nosotros group finally managed to gather all its members for a meeting, it decided to labor intensively toward that goal. García Oliver believed that they should link CNT action groups and FAI groups through the Neighborhood Committees, which would federate from a local up to national level, while the CNT’s Secretariat of Defense would direct the revolutionary action. They even discussed forming guerrilla units, which would be composed of one hundred men and focused on pre-selected targets. García Oliver expounded this vision of the CNT and FAI’s military organization in meetings of militants and at workers’ assemblies, such as one held in the Woodworkers’ Union around the time.

Many militants opposed that coordinated vision of the revolutionary struggle; they had more confidence in the spontaneity of the masses than revolutionary organization. But workers had to decide quickly what they regarded as permissible forms of organization, given the immediacy of the dangers facing them. The Nosotros group set out to raise these issues among the working class, so that it could analyze them and thus confront the uncertainties of the future. To begin the discussion, the Nosotros group proposed that Barcelona’s Local Federation of Anarchist Groups call a meeting of groups. Other anarchist groups supported their proposal and the Local Federation scheduled a meeting in May on Escudillers Street. The Nosotros group placed this topic on the agenda: “Analysis of the political situation and strategies for making the FAI’s revolutionary action effective.” Another anarchist group asked for a discussion of the “FAI’s position on the ‘holdup measles.’”

Durruti spoke in his group’s name during the discussion of “individual expropriations” (i.e., holdups):

Comrades, I think I can address this issue with some authority. And I do so because I think it’s a duty. The group to which I belong, whose members you all know, believes that the recent eruption of robberies is a serious threat to our movement and could lead to our practical decomposition if it isn’t stopped in one way or another. The first thing that those who carry out holdups do when arrested is show their CNT membership cards and call the Prisoner Support Committee. That’s a serious problem, because it confuses people about our real motives. The CNT is a revolutionary workers’ organization that intends to radically transform Spain, particularly in its political and economic terrains. The unions are tools of the struggle and the Prisoner Support Committee exist to help workers who fall in the struggle, not to supply lawyers and other types of aid to petty thieves captured by police. No anarchist group, individual, or committee can deny this. As a revolutionary anarchist militant, I’m fundamentally opposed to holdups, which, in the present circumstances, can only discredit us. That’s why we propose that the FAI urge each of its members to try to get the union to which he belongs to distance itself from such actions and, also, that no practical support of any type be provided to individuals involved in the endeavors in question.[429]

This was a delicate question, and some of the meeting’s attendees held strange sociological theories about expropriation, particularly a youth named Ruano who had recently arrived from Buenos Aires and had been a member of di Giovanni’s group during the last period of its activity in Argentina. The Argentine government had executed di Giovanni, his comrade P. Scarfó, and other militants on February 1, 1931 during the country’s first military dictatorship of the twentieth century. Ruano “protested that Durruti once employed the very tactic that he now condemns.” Durruti responded calmly:

It’s true, my friend. Nosotros and I used those tactics in the past, but times have changed, due to the ascendant march of the CNT and FAI. There are more than one million workers unionized in the CNT—waiting for the right moment to make the great collective expropriation—and they demand a conduct from us that is consistent with the needs of the struggle. There’s no longer any place for individual actions. The only ones that matter are collective, mass actions. And tactics overcome by history must be left in the past, because they’re now counter-productive and outdated. Anyone who intends to remain outside the times must also place himself outside our ranks and accept responsibility for the lifestyle he has chosen. [430]

“Durruti’s intervention in the meeting was effective. A problem that threatened to become epidemic was promptly contained.” [431] Then they discussed the political situation. Durruti offered a summary of the Nosotros group’s thoughts on the matter:

Comrades, I don’t know if you realize how serious things are. In my opinion, the revolution could explode at any moment, and not because we provoke it... But we must be organized and ready to exploit the circumstances that arise, putting ourselves at the head of the revolutionary current that others are going to trigger. What form might that struggle take? I think there will be a civil war, a devastating and cruel civil war for which we must be well- prepared.... We will have to form worker’s militias and take to the countryside. It will demand discipline, our own type of discipline, but discipline nonetheless. Think about what I’m saying: if it’s just a hypothesis now, it will be a reality in the near future. [432]

In June, shortly after this meeting, police again arrested Durruti and incarcerated him as a “governmental prisoner.”