CHAPTER XV. The Libertarian Confederation of Aragón

Pierre Besnard reflected on the efforts that he and Durruti made to acquire arms in Madrid:

Largo Caballero—who really did not think very highly of our intervention—let himself be convinced (or Rosemberg knew how to convince him) that it was better to wait for Russian help.... Clearly Russia would never have played any role, either then or later, if Spain had used its gold to buy its own arms from abroad.... Rosemberg was able to persuade the stubborn Caballero and, from then on, it was obvious that the government would never purchase the 1,600 million worth of war materiel. And it didn’t: in part due to the sellers, largely due to the buyers, and mostly due the Russians, who portrayed the sellers as Franco’s agents.... That is why free Spain didn’t get the weapons it needed and how Russia could repay hard cash with materiel of dubious value, which arrived sparingly and on the condition that none would go to CNT columns and that all would be used to strengthen Communist Party’s position.[644]

The most committed anarchists focused on Aragón. The spread of the agricultural collectives and the presence of the armed militias, not to mention the revolution’s retreat in Barcelona, made Aragón seem like the beacon of the Spanish revolution.

That was Durruti’s view. From the beginning, he became not only the core of the anti-fascist resistance in the region, but also one of the most vigorous supporters of the collectives. And Durruti knew that if they did not organize themselves, they would be vulnerable to attacks from Marxist militias. Even POUM militias opposed them.

Peasants from all over Aragón came to the libertarian columns’ War Committees to complain about abuses that they suffered in areas controlled by Catalanist or Stalinist troops. Sometimes they forcibly dissolved the councils that the peasants had elected in assemblies. Other times, claiming the necessities of war, they robbed stored foodstuffs or farming machinery procured by CNT units. Durruti always told them that they had to build their own means of self-defense and not rely on the libertarian Columns, which would leave Aragón as the war evolved. They needed to coordinate themselves, although he also warned them against forming an anti-fascist political front like the type existing in other parts of Spain. They needn’t make the same error as their compatriots elsewhere. There were no political parties in Aragón nor should they be created just to please some of the actors in the struggle. The popular assembly must be sovereign. [645] Durruti returned from Madrid on October 5, 1936, a day before the CNT’s Regional Assembly in Bujaraloz. Militants would form the Aragón Defense Council and the Aragón Federation of Collectives at the meeting. [646] When its sessions began, there were 139 militants representing all the villages in Aragón. Delegates from the following confederal Columns were also present: Cultura y Acción, Roja y Negra, Fourth Group of Gelsa, the Malatesta Centuria (the Italian Group from Huesca), Sur-Ebro Column (Ortiz), the Confederal Columns of Huesca and Aldabaldetrecu, and the Durruti Column.

The secretary of the Aragón Regional Committee began the assembly by reporting on decisions made at the national meeting of regionals held in Madrid on September 15. Militants there had decided to propose the formation of a National Defense Council, made up primarily by the UGT and CNT. Their proposal stated that the body should have the following structure: “There will be local, provincial, regional, and national federalism in political and economic administration. Defense Councils will be implanted, abolishing the city councils, local, and civil governments. Regions will be empowered to establish the balance of anti-fascist forces within the Regional Defense Councils and make any local modifications that circumstances and the facilities of the environment require.”

“The UGT did not receive their proposal favorably,” the secretary said. “Given that, the meeting [he is referring to another national meeting held on September 30] decided to undermine the influence of the central government by forming the Aragón Defense Council.”

After the secretary’s report, the Barbastro delegation declared that “[it] considers the creation of this organism a pressing necessity, since it will reduce the influence of particular military forces that take advantage of the situation to try to oppose the people’s advance in the social order” All the subsequent speakers agreed that the body should be created, although some believed that it should only occupy itself with the region’s economic and administrative concerns and not get mixed up in the war, since the Columns are supposed to report to Catalonia. Others felt that the Council should intercede in military matters, since the Columns operate in Aragón, and it would be easy enough to resolve the Catalonia issue by sending a representative there. The groups arguing that the Council should take control of the war efforts were those that had to confront Stalinist militias or the War Committee created by Villalba. [647] Halfway through the assembly, Durruti spoke in the name of his Column.

It’s essential that we create the Aragón Defense Council. With it, we will achieve a unity of wills, finally confront the single command [mando único] question, and ultimately win the war.... You have to realize how things are going in Spain. I went to Madrid and told the Minister of War about our circumstances. I didn’t beat around the bush, and he had no choice but to surrender to the evidence. But that’s not enough. For things to follow their proper course, we must put the decisions of the CNT’s national meeting into practice. We risk losing everything if we don’t form the National Defense Council. That’s how we’ll defeat the fascists. So, to pressure Madrid to accept our proposal, we must create the Aragón Defense Council.

Durruti’s speech allows us to refute those who assert that he believed that the Aragón Defense Council should direct the war efforts.

To sum up the general opinion, the meeting issued the following statement:

In compliance with the revolutionary events triggered in this country by the battle against fascism, and to fulfill the most recent decisions made at the CNT’s meeting of regionals, we have decided to form the Aragón Defense Council, which will take charge of all political, economic, and social development in Aragón. The Council will be composed of the following departments: Justice, Public Works, Industry and Commerce, Agriculture, Information and Propaganda, Transport and Communications, Public Order, Health and Hygiene, Public Instruction, and Economy and Supplies. Each Department will develop plans that it will submit to the represented bodies for study and approval. Once approved, these plans will be carried out in all their aspects. Localities will carry out the general economic and social plan. This plan will contain short and long-term measures leading toward the new social structure. This is in contrast to the present state of affairs, in which there are many, often contradictory initiatives and activities. We believe it is better not to create a war department, which could provoke confusion, given the already existing bodies. Instead, to exert pressure and work more efficiently, we resolve:

1. To name two delegates, who will represent the Aragón Regional at the War Department in Barcelona.

2. To create a War Committee made up by forces operating in Aragón, which will bear sole responsibility for directing the movement of the Columns.

3. That representatives from the following forces make up the Committee: One from the Durruti Column, one from the Ortiz Column, three from the Huesca sector, and two for the Aragón Defense Council.

This composition will be provisional, until the Columns operating in the Teruel sector nominate a delegate, who will join the War Committee. This report, once approved by the delegates, will be subject to consideration by the Catalonia and Valencia Regionals.

The following people signed the document: Francisco Ponzán (County of Angües): Gil Gargallo (Union of Utrillas), Macario Royo (Mas de las Matas), Gregorio Villacampa (Huesca Provisional Committee); Francisco Muñoz (Regional Committee), P. Abril-Honorato Villanueva (Occupied Zone of Teruel Committee), and Francisco Carreño and Joaquín Ascaso (Aragón Front Columns).

The proposal was accepted unanimously and they established the office of the Aragón Defense Council in Alcañiz. [648]

During the Bujaraloz assembly, there was a discussion of Aragón’s problems as both a war zone and rearguard. They were so intimately connected that it was impossible to know where one ended and the other began. The diversity of political forces directing the Columns aggravated those difficulties, because each tendency hoped to structure the peasant’s economic life in its respective zone according to its own presuppositions. That was the primary source of the confusion in the area. Forming the Aragón Defense Council was an important step toward resolving that problem, but only if the function of the Columns, the powers of the Defense Council itself, and the Generalitat’s role in the region were clearly demarcated. But that would not be easy, given the deep conflicts of interest.

The CNT was the predominant force in the area. The UGT, where it existed, was so minuscule that it hardly mattered. The Confederals in Aragón did not want to make the same mistake as the Catalan CNT and thus did not give the UGT equal weight in the Aragón Defense Council. The village assembly was sovereign and elected the members of the local councils.

Residents selected those who were well-known among them and with the greatest revolutionary experience. The libertarian configuration of Aragón emerged from those assemblies.

There were few problems in the areas where CNT columns operated: the militiamen and peasants interpenetrated fully. But that was not the case for libertarian collectives in areas under PSUC or POUM control; those forces, although hostile to one another, concurred in their hatred of anarchism and the CNT. The area most affected by those conflicts included Huesca and Barbastro. Colonel Villalba operated like a typical soldier and the Del Barrio Column (PSUC) showed its commitment to the idea that it was “time for war not revolution” by protecting individuals who had reason to fear the revolutionary expropriations. Del Barrio tried to dissolve the libertarian collectives, but CNT peasants didn’t surrender passively and armed clashes occurred. These rearguard conflicts prevented loyalist forces from taking Huesca. The situation was untenable. This, as well as the existence of two War Committees, was what prompted the Bujaraloz assembly’s concern with the “single command” issue.

A War Committee was initially formed in Sariñena; all the Columns were represented there and a Military Council advised them. The CNT was the predominant force in that War Committee, which makes sense, given that it had some fifteen thousand men on war footing in the region whereas the PSUC and POUM barely had two thousand each. But of course that was a problem for the Stalinists and Colonel Villalba, who divided the War Committee and set up another one in “North Aragón.” Del Barrio joined his Committee and led it in Villalba’s absences, despite the smaller size of the PSUC forces. Del Barrio took advantage of his absences to attack villages and forcibly dissolve their collectives. Such things were occurring when the Bujaraloz assembly took place. The decision to create the Aragón Defense Council sounded like a gunshot in Barbastro and had immediate echoes in Barcelona. The PSUC press described it as “cantonalist and seditious.” The Generalitat also disproved. [649] Even the CNT National Committee opposed it: since Largo Caballero had refused to form the National Defense Council, it was working to negotiate the CNT’s entrance into the Madrid government. All these factors underscore the revolutionary boldness embodied in the formation of the Aragón Defense Council, which was only underscored by the fact that all the men who composed it belonged to the CNT. Now, for the first time in history, a region embarked on a revolutionary venture without political parties and took the assembly as the paramount body. That is why the regime emerging in Aragón was so close to libertarian communism. The audacity was immense: the revolution was on the retreat throughout Spain and Aragón became its most advanced pole. Was the same thing going to happen in Aragón that had happened in the Ukraine during the Russian Revolution? Durruti inevitably invoked comparisons with Nestor Makhno. Rebels launched an attack on October 4 while the Bujaraloz assembly was being held and their assault put the whole Perdiguera-Leciñena front in jeopardy. They immediately defeated the Durruti Column’s advance party there, which occupied an area contiguous with a POUM zone. We will deal with that attack and how the Column responded in the following chapter. Now we will examine the immediate consequences of the formation of the Aragón Defense Council in Barcelona.

Colonel Felipe Díaz Sandino took over the Generalitat’s Department of Defense on September 26. García Oliver was its Secretary.

When Díaz Sandino assumed his post, his primary concern was instituting Madrid’s decrees on the militarization of the militias. He knew that he could not accomplish that in Aragón immediately and had to proceed cautiously in order to avoid a confrontation with the CNT Columns. Tensions in Aragón between Confederation members and Villalba gave him the opportunity that he needed.

The problem in Aragón was not military but political. The CNT wanted to carry its revolutionary work forward and the PSUC wanted to stop it. The counterrevolutionary pressures were extremely clear there. Colonel Villalba, presenting himself as a Republican soldier who “doesn’t do politics,” helped the PSUC by creating conflicts on the front and forming an autonomous War Committee. The offensive against the collectives delayed the attack on Huesca. The CCAMC had set aside one million cartridges for the assault on Huesca, but it wasn’t taken and the cartridges were used in rearguard operations or sent to Barcelona. Given the situation, Díaz Sandino and García Oliver called a meeting of Column leaders in Sariñena to consider forming a General Staff in Aragón. This meeting occurred on October 8, as Colonel Gustavo Urrutia threw his 4,500 men, with air and artillery support, against the Durruti Column.

The meeting was attended by Díaz Sandino, Joan Moles, and García Oliver for the Department of Defense and, for the columns in Aragón, Colonel Villalba, Del Barrio, Antonio Ortiz, José Rovira, Durruti, and Pérez Salas. This list of names makes it clear that they would have to confront the dispute between Villalba-Del Barrio and Durruti-Ortiz.

Colonel Díaz Sandino began by commenting on the grave dangers threatening Madrid after the loss of San Martín de Valdeiglesias, Sigüenza, and Navas del Marqués. The rebel advance on the Spanish capital had compelled the government to mobilize the 1932 and 1933 conscripts and to militarize the militias, he said. Sandino felt that it was necessary to strengthen discipline on the front and unify military leadership by creating a General Staff. Air force Commander Reyes would lead the body and Columns leaders would join it as well. Del Barrio objected to this plan and said that “a certain sector of the militias is fighting Colonel Villalba.” He wasn’t interested in creating the General Staff, but in clarifying why Villalba was under attack. Colonel Díaz Sandino said that it wasn’t time to talk about old problems but rather to create an organization with which the militias could retake the positions that they had lost. Del Barrio persisted, claiming that he “couldn’t forget the past.”

“Your political differences,” Díaz Sandino said, “will be resolved after we win the war. What we have to do now is unify the commands.” Rovira, speaking for the POUM forces, stated that there are “various ways to interpret a unified command,” and so his party “withholds its opinion on the question.”

Del Barrio insisted that what they had to address was “not unifying the military leadership, but other things.”

Díaz Sandino replies: “We won’t achieve anything if we don’t all go arm in arm. They’ll beat us with things as they are. We don’t have materiel and we’re burdened by a series of problems. They’re organized and have materiel. If we don’t unify our forces, then we might as well as go home and let the fascists enter Barcelona.”

Del Barrio exclaimed: “We won’t argue any more. We’ll start this, but we’ll also express our opinion, because we’re the ones who’ll suffer the consequences. There has always been a split between Barcelona and the front.”

García Oliver stated: “We tried to be as impartial as possible in selecting the leader of the General Staff. You would have said that we were playing political games if we’d appointed Durruti and the same thing if we’d proposed Ortiz. He has to be a soldier who has distinguished himself on the front. It could have been Villalba, but all your quarreling disqualified him. So, we sought a man who seems to have all the moral and practical capacities.... But if he’s accepted with reservations, then I won’t shoulder the responsibility and I’ll resign.”

Del Barrio responded: “There is a hostile environment... Part of the front is fighting against Colonel Villalba.”

Ortiz: “I’ll be frank: I’m an anarchist and I think we’ll take things as far as we can. But, until then, we won’t argue and we’ll proceed honorably. Everything that is ordered of me I will do, do, and have done.

Durruti stated the following: “I’ve come to a conclusion. Barbastro is the worst of the Aragón front, where there are endless conflicts. It’s a nest of intrigues.... Think about the situation. They’ve already moved forces toward us from the north, just like they’re moving forces from other sectors on the Aragón front. I can see them almost one hundred meters in front of us. There are an enormous number of people there and we’re waiting for them to give us a push. If you were to ask me how we defended Farlete and Monegrillo the other day, I could only say that we did so as well as we could. I can see the moment that we took off running toward Fraga and lost those two positions. This has to end. It’s necessary to clarify the problems in Barbastro so that confidence on the front is restored.”

Then Del Barrio commented: “The other day, in the Colonel’s absence, I took the power that I believe I possess as a member of the War Committee to send twenty-five carabineros to Graus, with an order to arrest the whole village council. And if we hadn’t, the CNT men would have shot seventeen men that were not all Socialists, but Republicans in their majority. Unfortunately the carabineros didn’t carry out the order, but that was the order, which I signed. I didn’t send the Civil Guard because I didn’t want to hear talk about the Civil Guard fighting the people again....”

Colonel Villalba intervened: “Something remains in the air, a charge....”

Durruti stated: “The soldiers should be advisers, real advisers, and you shouldn’t mix yourself up with edicts. That should be the responsibility of the Column leaders.... ”

Del Barrio: “The people love the soldiers and they’re with us. They demonstrated this when I spoke about Colonel Villalba at the rally; the people rose up and cheered him.”

Durruti: “As far as decrees and edicts are concerned, the people never put up with soldiers. When a solider signs a decree or edict, it may be effective but it immediately raises suspicions. They’re loved because they’re fighting, nothing more.”

Del Barrio: “I’ve stated my reservations with respect to the unified command. I will state them to my party and do what it orders....”

Ortiz: “As far as I’m concerned, such reservations are dishonest.”

Durruti: “The reservation is inadmissible. We didn’t have any reservation. A government was formed in Madrid and we went to fight without worrying if it was socialist. And if you now come and tell us, ‘here, there’s a reservation,’ we won’t let you get away with it. Under these conditions, such reserves are a falsehood...”

García Oliver, speaking to Del Barrio: “What do think about unifying the commands?”

Del Barrio: “I’ve always supported a unified command but, due an earlier situation, the unified command being formed isn’t normal.”

García Oliver: “I’ve resisted the unified command on the front more than anyone and Sandino knows why. There’s always a problem with the unified command, which is that someone has to give the orders. Something is happening in this war and that’s that the fascists, when they’re attacked in the cities, put up with a lot. Our people don’t put up with anything. The rebels surround a city and take it after two days; we surround it and spend a lifetime there. Now a position has been abandoned, Leciñena, but that can’t happen again. No one can abandon an occupied position just like that. To abandon a trench when it’s attacked... ”

Rovira: “We abandoned the town because we didn’t have ammunition. We were incommunicado.”

García Oliver: “It’s not just a question of Leciñena. That’s an example. Of course a city or town defend themselves, because otherwise this would be like Madrid, and we’d find them in our homes after a series of pushes. Now, with a unified command, if a city is engaged, it doesn’t have to give up. They can send in reinforcements from wherever. All the commanders have to do is call other forces.”[650]

What stands out in the summary of this meeting is the conflict between the PSUC and the CNT, a rivalry that weakened the militias’ capacity to fight the war and largely explains the inactivity on the Aragón front. Villalba and the PSUC forces stood aloof from actions around Huesca and Del Barrio’s troops—although they were only a few kilometers away—even let the fascists take Leciñena, because it was the POUM’s responsibility. Del Barrio’s opposition to the creation of a unified General Staff that would take control of the entire Aragón front contrasted with the PSUC press’s vociferous advocacy for the army and a “single command.”

Given these events, the wisdom of the Bujaraloz assembly’s decision to form the Aragón Defense Council in order to end the “mexicanization” of the war becomes even more pronounced.