Durruti in the Spanish Revolution

Notes
Translator’s note: The Civil Guard was a paramilitary police force created in 1844 to patrol rural areas. Translator’s note: Alfonso XIII (1885–1941) was born in 1886, six months after the death of his father, Alfonso II. He assumed the throne in 1902 at age 16. The present King of Spain, Juan Carlos I, is his grandson. Translator’s note: The Mesta was an “association of Spanish sheep farmers, formed to regulate sheep raising and to prevent cultivation of pastureland. Its date of origin is uncertain, but by 1273 Alfonso X of Castile formally recognized its long-established privileges, which were confirmed and extended by his successors. The Mesta gradually escaped local jurisdiction and came under direct supervision of the crown. It prospered, especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, by exporting wool from its highly prized Merino sheep. The Mesta yielded large revenues to the crown, but its... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Appendix : The Jigsaw Puzzle of the Search for Durruti’s Body
APPENDIX. The jigsaw puzzle of the search for Durruti’s body When Antonio de Senillosa was a deputy for the Democratic Coalition, he submitted a motion in Congress to compel the government to give documents seized in Catalonia during the civil war to the Generalitat. At the time, the San Ambrosio Archive in Salamanca held these important historical resources. The Minister of Culture supported the motion and said the following: “I’m in a position to promise that this slice of Catalonia’s history will be housed in Catalonia shortly.” Today, fifteen years later, the archival material has been recovered. However, the history of Durruti and Ascaso’s lives is not only in the archives, but also scattered throughout Spain. Among other places, it is in Barcelona’s South-East Cemetery. ERASING HISTORY We will begin by identifying questions that must be asked to Barcelona’s city councilors and Mayor P... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Part 4, Chapter 5 : Conclusion
CHAPTER V. Conclusion Today, with the Red Army captive and disarmed, National troops have achieved their final military objectives. THE WAR HAS ENDED. Burgos, April 1, 1939. Year of the Victory. (Final war report of the National Army) Time was passing. The French and international proletariat did not rise up and Spanish revolutionaries lost their first battle. General Franco’s forces imposed the “white peace of the cemeteries” described by Georges Bernanos. More than 250,000 executed, 500,000 exiled in France, and a million dead or disappeared—that was the tragic balance of the military adventure initiated in Morocco on July 17, 1936. And Spain, the so-called “red” Spain that Socialist León Blum and Bolshevik Stalin abandoned to its fate, entered the tragic night of fascist domination that would last for nearly forty years. The... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Part 4, Chapter 4 : Durruti’s second Death, or his Political Assassination
CHAPTER IV. Durruti’s second death, or his political assassination There is no legitimate hypothesis about Durruti’s death that could diminish him or the organization to which he gave the best years of his life. The controversy over his death is not a consequence of his death per se, but rather the nature of the struggle in which the Spanish working people were engaged at the time and Durruti’s revolutionary role within it: specifically, the battle between the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces that began in late September of 1936. In the context of a revolution in retreat, Durruti evoked the possibility of a return to and renewal of the journey initiated on July 19, 1936. He was a beacon of hope whose presence suggested that not everything was lost and that peasants and workers, if they continued to fight, could truly re-conquer Spain. His death was a terrible blow to the revolutionaries. Indeed, there were already ominous signs on... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Part 4, Chapter 3 : Contradictions and Fabrications in the Presented Versions
CHAPTER III. Contradictions and fabrications in the presented versions None of the above attempts to resolve the mystery of Durruti’s death are credible enough to be accepted as the “last word” on the topic. There are simple too many contradictions, omissions, or other inadequacies. While each account may have some positive element and perhaps all of those elements, taken together, could produce a narrative of Durruti’s death that is more consistent with the truth, that would involve pure speculation, which is hardly appropriate in historical research. The Stalinist version first surfaced in Izvestia; it was reinforced by the journalist from London’s Times Literary Supplement, and was finally embraced by historian Federico Bravo Morata. It was the latter who wrote that Durruti “joined the Communists, on the condition that his membership be kept secret until the opportune moment.” The Stalinist... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

García Oliver, Largo Caballero, and the Problem of Morocco
CHAPTER XII. García Oliver, Largo Caballero, and the problem of Morocco When the press reported on Durruti’s speech, each paper interpreted it according to its political color. The Communists and Socialists focused exclusively on Durruti’s call to ship arms to the front. The PSUC newspaper used it as an opportunity to polemicize against the “uncontrollables,” who fled the battle fronts and kept weapons in the rearguard that were needed in the trenches. It also made veiled attacks on the Revolutionary Committees and openly criticized the unions and collectives. The paper inveighed against “utopian economic experiments” and told people to focus on producing with efficient structures of command and ob... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The FAI and the CNT Meet
CHAPTER V. The FAI and the CNT meet There was no doubt that the FAI had a significant influence on the CNT, but the relationship between the two organizations was unclear. That is why the FAI’s Tierra y Libertad emphasized disagreements in the brief article that it ran about the international rally that we discussed in the previous chapter. “The voice of the FAI was not heard there, which would have been the voice of Iberian anarchism. It was absent, and quite absent. In Spain, the anarchist voice has more right than any to be heard at these meetings of the CNT and AIT.” On June 10, one day before the CNT Congress was due to begin, the FAI held its first Peninsular Conference in Madrid. One hundred twenty county representa... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

“The Clandestine Revolution”
CHAPTER IX. “The clandestine revolution” Reserves of rifle ammunition on the Aragón front were essentially exhausted only two weeks into the war. They also had to send many of the old model 94 rifles to gunsmiths for repair and often discard them as unserviceable. The artillery had to fire with great economy due to the lack of shells and the modest Republican air force made only brief appearances, which did little more than annoy the fascists, who had Italian and German planes at their disposal. The Black and Red Column (led by Antonio Ortiz) tried unsuccessfully to take the fortified fascist positions in Belchite several times. The fascists received constant reinforcements and ammunition from Zaragoza and Calatayud, whic... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

November 19, 1936
CHAPTER XX. November 19, 1936 Durruti met with Vicente Rojo and General Miaja in the Ministry of War and told them about the state of his Column (or what remained of it). Durruti was neither the only one in the University City whose forces were in dreadful shape nor the only one to press the General Staff for a relief. But what could Miaja and Rojo do? The battle for Madrid didn’t unfold according to the classical patterns that they had studied in military school. In fact, these men had been reduced to little more than coordinators of information, which they retransmitted to those responsible for the various sectors at nightfall of each day. It was the fighters themselves who dictated the defensive strategy, by their own volition and ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Fact or Fiction?
CHAPTER II. Fact or fiction? Mathieu Corman (militiaman in the Column’s International Group) Durruti was killed by a blast of gunfire when he got out of his car. That was the only victory of the “fifth column” in Madrid. The militiamen surrounded the house from where the gunshots came and killed everyone inside. Another Column fighter, who prefers to remain anonymous, expanded on Corman’s version: J.M. When they left the Headquarters on Miguel Angel Street, Bonilla, Manzana, and a third person whose name I don’t recall took their seats in the car. Once they got to the Moncloa Plaza—the place closest to the Hospital Clínico—Durruti told the driver to stop near one of the cottages on the avenue... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)