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.)

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 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 asserti... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Antonov Ovssenko and García Oliver
CHAPTER XIII. Antonov Ovssenko and García Oliver From the very beginning, the Spanish civil war transcended the country’s national boundaries and had to be understood as an international affair. Italy (Mussolini) and Germany (Hitler) were the first countries to intervene. France (Popular Front) followed later, when it provided armaments to the Spanish Republican government. The French government was forced to determine its position on July 19 when it received a telegram from Prime Minister José Giral that reminded it of a 1932 agreement between the two nations on arms sales and that requested the rapid delivery of planes, trucks, and ammunition. Léon Blum consulted with the men of his party after receiving Giral&r... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Toward the “Popular Front”
CHAPTER XXV. Toward the “Popular Front” The time that Durruti spent going in and out of jail did not undermine his optimism or change the direction of his thought, but such prolonged “isolations” were hard on the CNT and FAI. The organizations suffered while some of its most valuable militants wasted away in prison. Durruti would start devouring magazines and newspapers as soon as he left prison, until a new incarceration again disrupted his access to information and ability to following the thread of events. It was only his intuitive capacity to grasp issues and developments that saved him. His last conversation with Ascaso before his arrest revolved around what looked like the Socialist Party’s new strategy o... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Lyon, and in Prison again
CHAPTER XX. Lyon, and in prison again Even though Lyon was a large city, police control was so lax there that it was hardly evident when Durruti and Ascaso arrived in early November 1927. Using false identity papers, it wouldn’t be hard for Durruti and his friend to find work and live tranquilly while waiting for the right moment to return to Spain. They would simply have to avoid hotels and be cautious. They found housing, work, a discreet daily routine, but not tranquility. These men of action, restless by temperament, could not sit on the sidelines and passively watch the days go by. They began to inform themselves about the state of the exiled anarchist movement in France and also about the movement’s development in Spain. D... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)