Part 3, Chapter 3 : The Death of Ascaso

CHAPTER III. The death of Ascaso

The Pedralbes barracks was the first to fall into workers’ hands. Then it was the Alcántara barracks at 5:30 pm; Lepanto at 6:00 pm; the Montesa barracks at 8:00 pm; the Docks shortly before midnight, and the Sant Andreu Central Artillery Barracks at midnight exactly. The mechanics on the naval base took over after arresting the officers there. The soldiers in the Montjuich fortress seized their seditious officers and liberated their loyalist commander, Gil Cabrera, who had been detained. Worker and Soldier Committees were formed immediately in all the barracks. What began as a movement to defend the Republic became a social revolution in a matter of hours. This confirmed Durruti’s assertion that the revolution would emerge in a reply to an attempted rightwing coup.

While Barcelona’s proletariat secured its control over the Catalan capital, everyone wondered what was happening in Madrid and throughout Spain. No one knew at the time, but that didn’t stop the workers implanting themselves solidly in Barcelona and throughout the region.

Workers shouldered arms and patrolled Barcelona’s streets that night, confronting snipers hidden in the darkness. They consolidated the barricades and established rigorous control over the city’s entrances and exits. The only slogan was “CNT, CNT, CNT.”

People surrounded the remaining groups of rebels and waited for the sun to rise so that they could finish them off.

The Neighborhood Defense Committees became Revolutionary Committees and formed what was called the “Federation of Barricades.” It was the committees that held power in Barcelona that evening. They also took responsibility for defending the Catalan region and sent emissaries as well as arms to support Revolutionary Committees created in the villages and, wherever necessary, help crush any rebels still fighting. [495]

There was encouraging news from other parts of Catalonia: the people were in control in Tarragona. The soldiers and reactionaries had taken over in Gerona and Seu d’Urgell, but the leaders and soldiers joined the people once they learned of the defeat of their forces in Barcelona. The situation in Lérida was confusing in the morning, but clarified in favor of the proletariat by midday. The POUM and the CNT formed a Revolutionary Committee there. The Catalan masses had overthrown the rebel army in less than twenty-four hours. But what was happening in the rest of the country?

On Saturday, July 18, people knew that Queipo de Llano had risen up in Sevilla and that there was fighting in the streets. The same was true in Córdoba, Cádiz, Las Palmas, and Morocco. Authorities had also told them that the government had the situation under control in Madrid. But what happened after Saturday? What was occurring in Valencia? And in Zaragoza, where fascist troops had apparently set off for Barcelona? In the North? The workers in Madrid did not trust the government. They gathered on Friday and spent the next twenty-four hours doing the same thing as their peers in Barcelona: asking for arms. The CNT was in a difficult situation there because it did not belong to the Popular Front, which the Socialists dominated and which controlled the few weapons that Socialists soldiers had taken from the barracks. They had distributed those arms to the Socialists and Communists, leaving almost nothing for the CNT. Given those circumstances, the CNT decided to act as an independent force. The CNT’s Center Regional Committee called a meeting, which people from Madrid and elsewhere attended. They decided to form Defense Committees, made up by members of the CNT, FAI, and Libertarian Youth. The Neighborhood Committees federated locally and Village Committees federated by county. The Center Region Defense Committee would link them all into a whole. Members of the CNT, FAI, and Libertarian Youth made up this last Committee, which took on diverse responsibilities, such as coordinating anarchist forces in Madrid, procuring arms, and pressing the government to release the prisoners. At first, the government only freed David Antona, secretary of the CNT National Committee (on Saturday, July 18), but not the other incarcerated militants. The CNT decided to attack the prison if the government continued to hold the rest.

For the moment, what seemed most important was to organize a force that could effectively resist the rebels. Militants formed groups of five, and each group received one pistol and one hand grenade. Using staggered street patrols, they provided nighttime security and stayed in close contact during the day.

July 18 was a day of meetings and fruitless visits to the ministries in search of weapons. Casares Quiroga’s government refused to arm the workers and the people were losing patience. As in all moments of great political turmoil, the Puerta del Sol became the central meeting place. News arrived there continuously and passed through the immense crowd gathered in the square:

Queipo de Llano was in control in Sevilla. In Cádiz and Granada, the rebels machine-gunned unarmed workers. The Republican Governor in Zaragoza and the CNT Regional Committee decided that the CNT should gather its members in the union hall and wait for orders. The Governor assured them that the army was loyal to the Republic, although this turned out to be untrue and the insurgents shot down the trapped workers. The rebels were victorious in Valladolid. And it seemed that they were going to ferry troops from Morocco to the Peninsula, unloading them in Algeciras.[496]

The tension increased a notch with this news from Zaragoza. No one wanted to fall into the same trap as the workers there. That night, after growing frustrated with Casares Quiroga’s continued inactivity, some Socialists soldiers decided to hand over weapons themselves, but only to the Socialists in their Casa del Pueblo. The situation was always the same for the CNT: no arms.

CNT groups seized one of the Socialist trucks when it passed through Cuatro Caminos Square on its way from the Artillery Station to the Casa del Pueblo. It was loaded with rifles. They quickly doled out the weapons to CNT militants from the Tetuán district. These arms were used to fight the fascists wherever they had concentrated: Campamento Militar and the Mountain Barracks, which was General Fanjul’s headquarters. [497]

Casares Quiroga submitted the resignation of his government around 4:00 in the morning on July 19, while port workers and Assault Guards were fraternizing in Barcelona’s Palacio Plaza. Azaña nominated Martínez Barrio to form a “compromise government,” which was to contact General Mola and offer him the Ministry of War. When news of this maneuver circulated among the people, they immediately began to call the new government the “treason government.” Martínez Barrio made the offer to Mola, who told him that a ministry wasn’t the issue and that no deal was possible. Martínez Barrio resigned three hours after becoming Prime Minister. Manuel Azaña entrusted José Giral with forming another government at 7:00 am. Things changed a bit with Giral’s nomination. He freed the most prominent CNT activists, including Mora and Cipriano Mera, although he left many others behind bars. David Antona gave Giral an ultimatum: “Either you open the prisons within three hours or the CNT will do so itself.” Giral released the rest of the prisoners and distributed some weapons (to Socialist and Communists, of course). Indalecio Prieto acted as though he were a member of the new government, when that was not in fact the case, given that it had no Socialist component. Largo Caballero had just returned from London, where he had represented the UGT at the International Syndical Federation’s Congress, and took his place as UGT General Secretary.

On July 20, the people of Madrid got ready to attack the Mountain Barracks and the Campamento Militar. Meanwhile, their counterparts in Barcelona hurried to finish off the remaining rebel nuclei and devote their energies to new revolutionary initiatives, like organizing workers’ militias to help the villages that had fallen to the rightwing soldiers.

The Carmelitas convent surrendered first. Rebel marksman inside the building had killed many during the siege and the people wanted to vent their anger on them. Loyal Civil Guardsmen also participated in the action and their commander, Colonel Escobar, wanted to personally take charge of the prisoners. This outraged the people on the street and, in reply, he sacrificially offered his chest to them. This was a needless gesture, because people had already imposed a certain moderation on themselves. They were not going to lynch the prisoners; they simply wanted to demonstrate their power to them. They needed to do that with more than just words, but a pride in treating the prisoners decently tempered their indignation. Escobar shared Goded’s very bourgeois idea of “the rabble” and simply could not grasp the nature of the workers’ rage, which didn’t go beyond wanting to show the arrogant military men that they—largely unarmed workers—had defeated them.

While the Carmelitas convent fell, there was a fierce battle at Atarazanas and Dependencias Militares. Ramón Mola, the brother and local representative of the national leader of the rebels, blew out his brains with a pistol that evening. The fascists concealed his suicide, so as not to demoralize those still fighting. [498]

García Oliver, Ascaso, Ortiz, Durruti, Pablo Ruiz, and several other militants spoke in the Plaza Arco del Teatro. Everyone thought the same thing: they had to finish off Dependencias Militares and Atarazanas at once. Someone proposed using the truck on which the Germen anarchist group had mounted a machine-gun the previous afternoon. Protected by mattresses, they could drive the vehicle toward those sites while using the machine-gun to clear the way for those following behind. It was good idea. Ricardo Sanz and Aurelio Fernández joined those already occupying the vehicle. [499]

The truck set off in lower Ramblas. The situation became very dangerous by the time they reached the esplanade of Rambla Santa Mónica, due to the gunfire coming from Atarazanas, Dependencias Militares, and the Transport Workers’ Union. The militants following the truck knew that they had to get out of the line of fire and took shelter behind a wall near the barracks. Ascaso, Durruti, García Oliver, and Baró were among them. They were extremely vulnerable: there was a rebel in a sentry box in the Atarazanas barracks that looked out onto Santa Madrona Street and he could calmly pick them off one by one. Ascaso ran forward and, followed by the others, reached the rear part of the wooden book sellers’ stalls there. He wanted to get as close as possible to that sentry box. He took off again, so quickly that none of his friends could stop him. From afar, they asked him what he was doing and he made a gesture with his hand indicating that he was going to kill the gunman in the sentry box. He surveyed the situation and calculated that he could take a position behind a truck between Montserrat and Mediodía streets. He started running toward the truck. However, the marksman in the sentry box was watching him and fired several times, but missed. Ascaso stopped for an instant and shot back at the soldier, who was now quite close. He finally made it to the truck but, as soon as he did, a bullet ripped through his forehead. This revolutionary’s life—a very full thirty-five years—came to an end at that moment. The marksman would never know that his tiny of piece of lead had deprived the Spanish revolution of one of its most well-balanced and tenacious leaders. No one checked the time, but it was 1:00 in the afternoon on July 20, 1936. [500]

Events unfolded rapidly after Ascaso’s death. Dependencias Militares stopped its firing and the men inside surrendered. Minutes later, rebels hoisted a white flag on Atarazanas. It was just past 1:00 pm. Barcelona’s workers had defeated the “professional” soldiers in thirty-three hours of fighting. The members of the Nosotros group were now face-to-face. Pablo Ruiz asked García Oliver what they should do with the captured officers. García Oliver looked at Ruiz and, without giving it much thought, said: “Take them to the Transport Workers’ Union. Keep the prisoners there.” Who had spoken these words? It wasn’t García Oliver, but the anonymous voice of an entire people, who had been persecuted and ridiculed thirty-three hours before and were now masters of proletarian Barcelona.

Durruti, standing nearby, knit his brow as he held back his tears. Ascaso meant a lot to all of them, particularly Durruti.

With a tired gesture, García Oliver said: “Let’s go! This is over. We’ve won. A new world begins today.” [501] They ascended the Ramblas toward the Transport Workers’ Union. When they reached the Plaza Arco del Teatro, one of those manning the barricade planted himself resolutely before Durruti and told him: “We’re not going to leave this barricade!”

Durruti gazed at the familiar face, at the man’s determined stare and the rifle in his calloused hands.

“It’s not the barricade but the rifle that you have to hold onto. We have to preserve our weapons, if the revolution is going to succeed. With them, we can go further, much further. We haven’t won yet; the revolution is still in progress and it will be at risk as long as there are rebels anywhere in Spain.” [502]