Buenaventura Durruti

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Durruti and the second or maternal family name is Dumange.

Buenaventura Durruti
Durruti in 1936
Birth name	José Buenaventura Durruti Dumange
Born	(1896-07-14)14 July 1896 León, Spain
Died	20 November 1936(1936-11-20) (aged 40) Madrid, Spain
Buried	Montjuïc Cemetery
Allegiance	CNT-FAI
Service	Los Justicieros (1920–1922) Los Solidarios (1922–1924) Los Errantes (1924–1926) Confederal militias (1936)
Years of service	1920–1936
Commands	Durruti Column
Known for	Anarcho-syndicalism, Anti-fascism
Battles / wars	Spanish Civil War Battle of Barcelona Battle of Ciudad Universitaria
Spouse(s)	Émilienne Morin
Children	Colette Durruti
Relations	Pedro Durruti (brother)
Signature

José Buenaventura Durruti Dumange (14 July 1896 – 20 November 1936) was a Spanish anarchist revolutionary involved with the CNT and the FAI in the periods before and during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939. Durruti played an influential role during the Spanish Revolution of 1936 and is remembered as a hero in and by the anarchist movement.

Early life

Childhood and education

José Buenaventura Durruti Dumange was born on 14 July 1896, in the Santa Ana neighbourhood of León; he was the second of eight children, born to Santiago Durruti and Anastasia Dumange. Durruti came into the world at a time when the Spanish colonial empire was collapsing, while the country itself was experiencing peasant revolts in Andalusia and a wave of industrial actions in Asturias, the Basque Country and Catalonia.

Durruti began his primary education at the age of five; his teacher described him as a mischievous but good-natured child. Durruti later remarked that he had been made into a rebel at an early age. At the age of six, in 1903, he witnessed the arrest of his father during a tanners' strike. Led by his uncle Ignacio, the strike lasted for nine months before it was finally defeated by the employers. Durruti's family was left destitute afterwards, as many of its members were boycotted or blacklisted for supporting the strike. Despite their limited means, Durruti's parents endeavoured to provide him and his siblings with an education. During his secondary education, although his teacher had seen intellectual potential in him, Durruti proved to be a below-average student. His grandfather Pedro had hoped he would continue his studies at the University of Valladolid, but at the age of fourteen, Durruti decided to train as a mechanic and move into the workforce.

Trade union activism

Durruti (centre-back) with his colleagues at the workshop of Antonio Mijé

In 1910, Durruti began his apprenticeship under the tutelage of Melchor Martínez, a master mechanic and a local leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). Martínez oversaw Durruti's development as both a mechanic and as a socialist; during this period, Durruti stopped attending church and other religious events, which earned him a bad reputation among the city's Catholic population. After two years, Martínez informed Durruti that he had nothing left to teach him and pressed him to move on. He spent the subsequent year at a workshop that assembled machines for mineral processing, after which he qualified as a lathe operator. In April 1913, Durruti joined the Metalworkers' Union of the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) and became a prominent local union organiser. Like other workers in his union, Durruti came under the tutelage of the Leonese socialist theoretician Iglesias Munís, but before long became impatient and dissilusioned with the socialist party leadership. Durruti came to reject electoral politics in favour of revolutionary socialism, which caused tension between him and the party leadership; during this time, he would often remark that "socialism is either active or isn't socialism".

Following the outbreak of World War I, Spanish neutrality enabled the country to experience an economic boom. As his workshop was unable to keep up with demand, Durruti was dispatched to Matallana, where he would oversee the installation of mineral processors on-site. A few days after arriving, the Asturian miners went on strike in protest against workplace bullying by one of the engineers, demanding he be dismissed. Durruti led his team of mechanics in a solidarity action, refusing to assemble any machinery until the miners' demands were met. This forced the management to concede to the workers demands. Impressed by his conduct, Durruti's name quickly spread among miners in Asturias, who referred to him as the "big one". After he finished his job and returned to León, he was reprimanded for joining the strike by both his boss and his union leaders; Martínez urged him to leave León or else face persecution by the Civil Guard. His father secured him a new job as a mechanic for the Northern Railway Company (CCHNE). Following a nationwide general strike by the UGT in August 1917, the CCHNE fired its entire workforce, breaking the power of the railroad workers' union. In an attempt to regain its position, the UGT expelled many of its more revolutionary young members, including Durruti, who was finally forced to leave León. Wanted for conscription evasion, Durruti fled to Xixón, where sympathetic Asturian miners facilitated his escape to France in December 1917.

Durruti (left) during his exile in Occitania

Throughout 1918, Durruti kept moving between the cities of Occitania, while keeping in touch with family and friends in León. During this time, he came into contact with the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), an anarcho-syndicalist trade union. Through the CNT, he adopted the political philosophy of anarchism, which he identified with his own revolutionary approach to socialism. In January 1919, he returned to Xixón and exchanged information about the CNT's activities in France with local activists that had overseen its growth in Asturias. He officially joined the CNT while working as a mechanic in La Felguera, before heading to La Robla, where Asturian mineworkers were on strike. He then attempted to meet up with some old Leonese friends in Santiago de Compostela, but was arrested by the Civil Guard, who discovered he had evaded conscription. He was brought before a Court Martial in Donostia, but with help from friends and his sister Rosa, he managed to escape back to France. By June 1919, he was working as a mechanic in Paris, while keeping up correspondence with Leonese anarchists. His friends kept him up to date with the development and growth of the CNT in Spain, prompting him to return to the country in early 1920.

Militant activism

Los Justicieros

King Alfonso XIII, who Durruti and Los Justicieros attempted to assassinate in 1920

When Durruti arrived back in Donostia, he found the local branch of the CNT, run by Manuel Buenacasa, which helped him find work as a mechanic in Errenteria. He frequented the union's branch office after he finished work, although he rarely took part in meetings and mostly sat by himself reading newspapers. Durruti and other metalworkers affiliated with the CNT formed an opposition group within the local branch of the UGT; Durruti's prominence within the organisation worried its socialist leadership, although he refused to accept any leadership positions that he was nominated for, as he considered rank-and-file militance more important. He also became close friends with the CNT leader Buenacasa, who introduced him to several of the union's militants. Durruti and a number of these new acquaintances formed a new anarchist group, Los Justicieros. In reaction to intensifying state terrorism against the trade union movement, the group decided to attempt to assassinate King Alfonso XIII; the group began constructing a tunnel under the location the King was expected to attend, while Durruti was set the task of acquiring explosives. However, before they could carry out their plan, it was uncovered by the police. Durruti, Marcelino del Campo and Gregorio Suberviola were publicly named by the media as the plotters. With the aid of sympathetic railway workers, Buenacasa arranged their escape from Donostia to Zaragoza by freight train.

Upon arriving in Zaragoza, the three went to the local self-managed social centre, where they were updated on the activities of the movement in Aragón; Durruti was immediately struck by how large and comprehensive the centre was, compared with the smaller centres he had been to in Donostia and Xixón. They then found refuge at the house of Inocencio Pina, who informed them of the repression against the local movement's activists and gave them a choice to remain in Zaragoza and join their struggle; Durruti, known to the group as the "young Asturian", agreed to stay. Despite the repression against the organised labour movement, Durruti was able to find work as a mechanic.

In February 1921, Durruti was delegated by a conference of Aragonese anarchist groups to travel around the country and contact other anarchist groups, with the intention of establishing an Iberian Anarchist Federation. He managed to convince several Andalusian anarchist groups to form a regional federation, but was prevented from contacting anarchist groups in Madrid after the assassination of Eduardo Dato. He then travelled to Barcelona and met Domingo Ascaso, who told him about the repressive conditions in the city, which prevented Catalan anarchist groups from participating in any wider coordination. Fearing the extension of the armed conflict with the pistoleros to Zaragoza, Durruti went to Bilbao to acquire weapons. Durruti, Gregorio Suberviola, and Rafael Torres Escartín robbed a paymaster in Eibar and used the money to acquire pistols and finance the CNT.

Back in Zaragoza, Durruti went to work as a locksmith and, other than attempting to support anarchist prisoners, lived a relatively secluded life. He spent much of his free time educating himself on anarchist philosophy in Inocencio Pina's library, where he read the works of Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, finding that their respective radicalism and practicality balanced each other out. When trials against the imprisoned anarchists were convened, Durruti convinced the CNT to support calls for a general strike, which brought together sufficient public support that the defendants were acquitted. Los Justicieros then began to discuss the role of the group in revolutionary politics, with Pina advocating for them to constitute a revolutionary vanguard, while Durruti argued against the proposal, which he believed would separate them from the working class. At this meeting, he met Francisco Ascaso, who agreed with his anti-bureaucratic arguments and soon became one of his closest friends. Ascaso, Durruti, and other members of the group decided to move to Barcelona to combat the rise of "yellow syndicalism".

Los Solidarios

CNT leader Salvador Seguí, whose assassination triggered the outbreak of open conflict between anarchists and the pistoleros

In Barcelona, Durruti formed friendships with trade union activists of the CNT, with whom he established a new anarchist group, Los Solidarios. From this group, Durruti participated in the establishment of a Regional Commission of Anarchist Relations, which coordinated anarchist groups in Catalonia. The Commission tasked him with acquiring weapons and explosives. Durruti and the Catalan metalworker Eusebi Brau manufactured 6,000 grenades in an underground workshop and stockpiled them in depots throughout Barcelona. After the assassination of Salvador Seguí by pistoleros on 10 March 1923, the city exploded into social conflict, with open gun fights between radicalised workers, police and pistoleros.

As members of Los Solidarios began carrying out armed robberies to sustain their insurgent campaign, in April 1923, Durruti travelled to Madrid, where he gave stolen money to the defense fund of Pere Mateu and Lluís Nicolau, who had been charged with murdering Eduardo Dato. He had planned to attend a conference called by a local anarchist group, but the meeting was postponed by a week. He instead took the time to visit Manuel Buenacasa, who initially didn't recognise Durruti, remarking that he had "dressed like an Englishman" and wore thick-rimmed glasses. Durruti said that he wanted to visit imprisoned assassins; Buenacasa attempted to dissuade him, but Durruti pressed forward, believing a visit would raise their morale. He was only able to visit one prisoner, Mauro Bajatierra, whose deafness prevented them from having a conversation. After leaving the prison, he was quickly arrested by Madrid police on Calle de Alcalá. His identity was confirmed, he was charged with armed robbery, attempted regicide and desertion, and he was transferred to Donostia for trial. The Spanish press praised his capture, declaring him one of the leading terrorists in Spain. Defended by the Catalan lawyer Joan Rusiñol, Durruti was acquitted of the charges of armed robbery and attempted regicide, but remained in prison for desertion.

Durruti after his arrest in Madrid in 1923

His release was delayed after members of Los Solidarios assassinated Fernando González Regueral in León; the police erroneously assumed local members of the CNT and Durruti's family had been involved, so launched an investigation into the possibility of his involvement. The Spanish press also blamed the "infamous gang led by the terrorist Durruti" for the assassination of Archbishop Juan Soldevila. While police carried out arrests and raids to apprehend Soldevila's assassins, Durruti was released from prison. He had promised his mother that he would immediately visit her in León after his release, but when he heard that Ascaso and other members of Los Solidarios had been arrested, he instead went to Barcelona. There he found Los Solidarios were discussing internal conflicts between revolutionary, moderate and Bolshevik factions of the CNT, as well as the political crisis in the national government over the ongoing Rif War. One of their members, who had infiltrated the armed forces, reported that a military coup was being prepared by general Miguel Primo de Rivera.

In order to procure weapons to resist the imminent coup, Durruti and Torres Escartín set off to Asturias, where they planned to rob a branch of the Bank of Spain. They briefly stopped in Zaragoza, where they learnt of the local movement's plans to break anarchists out of prison, before heading to Bilbao, where they found a weapons supplier. By August 1923, they had arrived in Xixón and were beginning preparations for the heist. Joined by other Solidarios, on 1 September, they stole 650,000 pesetas from the bank vault and escaped into the mountains in a hijacked car. During the heist, the bank manager had attempted to disarm Durruti, slapped him and even bit his finger. After some struggle, Durruti managed to throw him off and fired his gun, with the bullet grazing the manager's neck. After escaping, the Solidarios then split up, with one group taking the money to purchase the weapons, while Durruti and Torres Escartín hid out in a mountain cabin. On 3 September, the cabin was assaulted by Civil Guards. Torres Escartín was arrested, but Durruti managed to get away. In León, the press printed fantastical stories about his escape, with one story claiming he had stripped a clergyman of his cassock at gunpoint and fled in disguise as a priest. When his mother was asked about her son, she replied: "I don’t know if my son has millions. All I know is that every time he comes to León, I have to dress him from head to toe and pay for the return trip".

Exile in Paris

Alfonso XIII (left) and Miguel Primo de Rivera (right), the two leading figures of the dictatorship in Spain

By November 1923, Los Solidarios was facing harsh repression by the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, which had taken a close interest in liquidating the "Durruti gang". Fearing for their lives, Durruti and Ascaso were dispatched to Paris. They were given the remaining money from the Xixón heist, with which they were tasked with establishing a revolutionary centre in exile and publishing propaganda. In Paris, they provided the funds for the establishment of an International Anarchist Press, which published Sébastien Faure's Anarchist Encyclopedia. Having quickly spent most of their money, they were forced to live a frugal lifestyle and soon sought out jobs, although the Spanish press alleged they had gone to the city to carry out more robberies. By January 1924, Durruti was working as a mechanic for Renault and Ascaso was manufacturing tubes at a factory. The two lived together in the neighbourhood of Bellveille, where many other exiled anarchists had established themselves. Durruti and Ascaso constantly discussed the issue of revolution with their fellow exiles. They remained optimistic about the prospects of revolution, eschewing dogmatic debates over political theory in favour of encouraging their comrades to take direct action.

In mid-1924, Domingo Ascaso arrived in Paris and informed Durruti and Francisco of his plan to ignite an insurrection in Catalonia. Tired of constant meetings and anxious to finally take action, they jumped at the chance. By September 1924, plans for the operation were well underway, but difficulties acquiring weapons and supporters in Barcelona made many of the insurgents sceptical about their chances. Durruti gave a speech to his comrades, attempting to make points about revolutionary action, rather than to convince anybody. He admitted that the news from Barcelona was discouraging, but he still believed that a revolutionary situation existed in Catalonia, due to the repression of Catalan nationalists and intellectuals, the continuation of the Rif War and the deteriorating conditions of the working classes. He affirmed that they had the ability to spark a revolution, and that even if they failed, they would still bring Spain closer to revolution. By the time the day of action came, none of the revolutionaries who heard his speech had wavered.

In November 1924, Durruti set off to the France–Spain border. He was part of a group of revolutionaries that were to cross the Basque side of the border, between Hendaia and Bera. They managed to dispatch the first detachment of border guards they encountered and marched into the Pyrenees, where they were ambushed by another detachment of border guards. Outnumbered and exhausted, they were forced into a fighting retreat, during which two revolutionaries were killed and one gravely wounded. Two days later, others in the group were arrested and transferred to Iruña, where they were tried and executed. Defeated, Durruti returned to Paris and hid out in a suburban house provided by local anarchists. At the behest of the Spanish dictatorship, the French government moved to expel Spanish anarchists from the country. But Durruti refused to leave until he heard of the situation in Barcelona. Before long, Ricardo Sanz García had arrived in Paris. He told Durruti and Ascaso about the defeat of the insurrection in Barcelona, and that the Revolutionary Committee was now in urgent need of funds. Durruti and Ascaso decided to go to Latin America, where they could solicit support from Spanish emigrants. In December 1924, Durruti and Ascaso set off with false passports and disembarked from Le Havre.

Expropriations in Latin America

After arriving in Havana, Cuba, Durruti and Ascaso stayed at the home of a young Cuban anarchist. They had tactical disagreements with their host, who supported educational initiatives and rejected their agitation for direct action. Undeterred, the two found jobs as dockworkers and began agitating among their co-workers, who particularly appreciated Durruti's kind and helpful nature. Using plain language to communicate his ideas, Durruti called for the workers to form a trade union, based on a horizontal structure without union representatives, which could take collective action for the improvement of their living and working conditions. By the time the dockworkers established such a union, Durruti had caught the attention of the police and had to leave Havana. They moved to Santa Clara Province, where they found jobs harvesting sugarcane and were quickly caught up in a sitdown strike. After the violent repression of the strike, Ascaso and Durruti murdered their employer, leaving a note which attributed the attack to Los Errantes (English: The Wanderers). As police searched for them, they returned to Havana, where they hijacked a fishing vessel and took it to Mexico.

Durruti (bottom) with other members of Los Errantes in Mexico

While disembarking in Yucatán, they were caught by officers of the Mexican Treasury, but Durruti managed to bribe the agents into releasing them. They made their way to Mexico City, where they were hosted by the General Confederation of Workers (CGT) until reuniting with Alejandro Ascaso and Gregorio Jover in March 1925. They then moved to Tecomán, where they linked up with the local anarchist group. Together they robbed an office and donated the money to the CGT. Durruti continued to hand over large sums of money to the CGT, which aroused suspicion, forcing him to show a letter from Sébastian Faure confirming his own receipt of a large amount of money. As he was living under the assumed identity of a wealthy Peruvian mine-owner, Durruti treated his comrades in the CGT to expensive meals at restaurants, where he gave them money to support the establishment of schools for children. Mexican anarcho-syndicalists remembered Durruti as one of the strongest supporters of the CGT.

In May 1925, after briefly stopping in Cuba for a quick bank robbery, the group went to Valparaíso, Chile. There, on 16 July, they robbed a branch of the Bank of Chile. In August 1925, they finally travelled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, which they planned to make the centre of their operations. Durruti found a job as a dockworker and lived a rather unassuming life for a few months. But after a series of botched robberies against train stations by men with Spanish accents, the identities of Los Errantes were provided to the Argentine police by their counterparts in Chile and Spain. The Argentine police posted wanted posters for Durruti and his comrades throughout the city. One poster was seen by the poet Raúl González Tuñón, who was inspired by it to write a poem about Durruti's mugshot. In response to the posters, on 19 January 1926, Los Errantes carried out a bank robbery in San Martín and escaped with 64,085 pesos.

Police attempts to apprehend them were frustrated after ABC erroneously reported that Durruti had been arrested in the French city of Bordeaux. At the end of February 1926, Los Errantes left South America; they arrived back in France two months later. By June 1926, Durruti, Ascaso and Jover were plotting to attack Alfonso XIII, on the occasion of the king's visit to Paris. But before they could carry out their attempt, a police informant they hired as driver gave them up. They were arrested on 25 June and imprisoned in La Santé Prison.

Extradition proceedings

Durruti (centre), with Francisco Ascaso (left) and Gregorio Jover (right), after their release from prison in 1927

On 7 October 1926, the trial of Ascaso, Durruti and Jover began at the Palais de Justice; Durruti was charged with the use of a false passport, the criminal possession of a weapon and rebellion. As he was proficient in the French language, Durruti spoke for the group: he confessed to the charges against them, but justified their actions due to the political repression of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. The three were ultimately convicted for short prison sentences, which Durruti and Jover had already served in pre-trial detention. The French government then granted an extradition request by the Argentine government, but their lawyers appealed the decision, so Durruti and Jover were pre-emptively detained at the Conciergerie.

In letters to his family, Durruti assured them that he had not been forced into penal labour, despite the claims by Leonese newspapers. He told his family to ignore anything the Spanish press wrote about him, refuting every claim the "idiotic journalists" had made about his condition, and spoke about the support he had received from sympathisers in France and Argentina. He thanked his family for sending their good wishes and reassured them that his deep libertarian convictions had helped him endure every hardship. He signed off his letter to them with a declaration that "the revolution will put an end to this social disorder".

By November 1926, as campaigns against their extradition began to gain wider public support, Ascaso, Durruti and Jover were notified that they were to be handed over to the Argentine police. Durruti and Ascaso accepted their own extradition, but appealed for the French government to grant clemency for Jover, who had two young children. On 13 February 1927, as disputes over the extradition proceedings escalated into political demonstrations and legislative reforms, Durruti, Ascaso and Jover began a hunger strike in protest against the continued threat of extradition. On 25 April, he wrote to his family that his life was now in the hands of the French Justice Minister Louis Barthou. He nevertheless remained optimistic and expressed love for his mother, asking his siblings to take care of her. By the end of May, the Argentine government had retreated from the extradition order and the deadline for the extradition expired. On 8 July, after Louis Lecoin had secured a majority in the Chamber of Deputies and threatned to bring down the government of Raymond Poincaré, Durruti, Ascaso and Jover were released. When a journalist asked Durruti what he would do next, he responded "we're going to continue the struggle with even greater intensity than before".

Clandestinity

Nestor Makhno, the Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary who met with Ascaso and Durruti after their release from prison

Immediately after his release, the French government ordered Durruti's expulsion from the country, but he was unable to find a country that would grant him an exit visa. During this time, he frequented an anarchist bookshop in Ménilmontant, where he met and struck up a relationship with the French anarchist Émilienne Morin. He also met the Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary Nestor Makhno, who had been driven into exile by the Red Army after the defeat of his Makhnovist movement in Ukraine. Makhno agreed to meet Durruti and Ascaso, who paid homage to him and his struggle to realise anarchism in Ukraine. Makhno expressed optimism to them about the possibility of revolution in Spain, due to the organisational abilities of the Spanish anarchists, and expressed hope that he would live to participate in it.

On 23 July 1927, the French police smuggled Durruti and Ascaso into Belgium, where they were received by the Belgian anarchist Marcel Dieu. The following month, they were taken back to the border by Belgian police and forced back into France. Facing deportation back to Spain, they were given refuge by the pacifist Émile Bouchet at his home in Joigny. After some close calls with the Gendarmerie, on the advice of fellow members of Los Solidarios, they moved to Lyon. In early November 1927, Ascaso and Durruti arrived in Lyon. With false documents, they were able to find housing and jobs, and managed to stay covert in the city, which lacked thorough policing. There they found out about the recent formation of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), which had united anarchist groups throughout Spain and Portugal. They also became involved in debates over the relationship between the CNT and the Spanish anarchist movement. Durruti and Ascaso upheld the revolutionary potential of both the proletariat and the peasantry in Spain, and believed that anarchists ought to accelerate the revolutionary process by encouraging revolutionary initiatives and staying focused on long-term goals over short-term material improvements. Their ideas were rejected by more orthodox anarchists, who accused them of "anarcho-Bolshevism".

Durruti and Ascaso also aligned themselves against proposals to establish sections of the CNT in France, as they believed it would divert attention away from revolutionary initiatives in Spain. In January 1928, Durruti and Ascaso went to Paris, where they heard news from Ricardo Sanz and Joaquín Cortés about the Spanish and Argentine anarchist movements. Together they attended a meeting of exiled Spanish anarchist groups, where they opposed a proposal by Bruno Carreras to establish CNT sections in France. Shortly after the meeting, Durruti and Ascaso were arrested by French police. They were imprisoned from April to October 1928 and, after their release, were still unable to secure visas so they could leave France. They initially attempted to secure a visa from the Soviet Union, but when its embassy required them to pledge their loyalty to the socialist state, they refused. Instead they moved to Berlin, where the German anarchists Augustin Souchy and Rudolf Rocker hid them in a safe house, while they worked on regularising their situation. Despite interventions by members of the Social Democratic Party, they were unable to secure asylum, due to objections by the Catholic Centre Party.

Durruti and Ascaso subsequently decided to return to Mexico. With help from the actor Alexander Granach, Rocker was able to raise enough funds to cover their journey. However, when Durruti and Ascaso arrived in Belgium in early 1929, they discovered the country had relaxed its immigration laws and become a safe haven for Spanish exiles. Marcel Dieu helped secure them a residence permit. They decided to send most of the money back to Rocker and remain in Brussels, where Durruti found work as a metalworker. Ida Mett recalled that his skills as a mechanic meant that he could easily find work, even during the Great Depression. Mett recalled one occasion, when Durruti tested the best out of any applicants for a job position, the manager asked him for his nationality; he responded that he was a mechanic.

During their time in Brussels, Durruti and Ascaso were involved in numerous conspiracies. In January 1929, they collaborated in a plot by José Sánchez-Guerra to overthrow Primo de Rivera. The plot was unsuccessful, but it resulted in mobilisation of the CNT and the wider Spanish anarchist movement. In December 1929, Durruti and Ascaso were implicated in an alleged plot by Camilo Berneri to assassinate Belgian princess Marie-José and Italian prince Umberto, but the plot was eventually discovered to have been fabricated by the authorities of Fascist Italy. Berneri was deported, but Durruti and Ascaso were allowed to remain in the country. The following month, on 28 January 1930, Miguel Primo de Rivera was removed from power and his dictatorship in Spain collapsed. As the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement was revived, many anarchist exiles began to return to the country. Durruti and Ascaso were themselves tempted to return, but as many of the repressive structures of the dictatorship remained in place, Liberto Callejas cautioned them to wait for the right moment.

Insurrectionary leadership in the Republic

Return to Spain

Ascaso and Durruti (far-right) at the Poble Espanyol, with other Spanish and French anarchists

When the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931, Durruti and Ascaso were among the first anarchist exiles to return to Barcelona. The following day, Durruti and Ascaso reunited with Ricardo Sanz, who told them about the CNT's role in installing the republican government of Lluís Companys; Durruti and Ascaso regarded this to have been a mistake. They believed that the new Republican government would fail to make any radical reforms to existing socio-economic conditions, which would provoke popular discontent that anarchist revolutionaries could channel into a social revolution. For this position, they were denounced as "anarcho-Bolsheviks" by other members of the CNT and as "infantile revolutionaries" by Marxists.

Upon his arrival in Barcelona, Durruti initially stayed at Luis Riera's house in Sant Martí de Provençals. The Ascaso brothers later found him his own place in Poblenou, rented under the name of their mother Emilia Abadía. Durruti was unable to find work in the city and was kept busy by his political activism, which kept him from returning to see his family in León. As many former members of Los Solidarios remained in prison, Durruti and Ascaso had set about agitating for their immediate release. At a meeting of the CNT at Montjuïc, on 18 April, Durruti gave a speech about the new Republic. He declared that the regime change had marked the beginning of a process of democratisation and predicted that, if the new government disregarded the political and economic demands of the working class, it would bring the country towards civil war. According to one listener, his style of public speaking was to improvise short sentences, which formed a close connection with his audience; after his speech, he immediately left the stage to mingle with the crowd.

In preparation for International Workers' Day, Durruti was delegated to accompany foreign anarchists that would be visiting Barcelona, including the French anarchist Louis Lecoin. When Lecoin noticed that Barcelona was covered in posters from the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), but none from the CNT and FAI, Durruti reassured him that a few sentences in Solidaridad Obrera would be enough to mobilise their members; on the day, more than 100,000 people turned up to the anarchist rally. After the demonstration arrived at the Palace of the Generalitat of Catalonia, the Civil Guard began to shoot at the demonstrators. Amid the panicked crowd, Durruti climbed on top of a truck and addressed the demonstrators; he called for calm so that nobody was trampled and cautioned armed demonstrators from returning fire. Clashes with the police were only ended after the intervention of the army, which dispersed the police and the demonstrators.

When writing to his family on 6 May 1931, Durruti advised them not to come to Barcelona, as his life at the time was too busy. He welcomed them to come after his partner Emilienne Morin arrived in the city, when they would be able to get a house and spend time with them. On 11 May, he sent them another letter, informing them that Morin had arriving from Paris, that he had managed to find a job and that he was looking for a house. By June 1931, Durruti was constantly occupied with meetings, speaking at rallies and attending to other responsibilities. Between activism and his job, he was rarely able to see Morin. At the third congress of the CNT, hosted in Madrid, Durruti welcomed Rudolf Rocker, the secretary of the International Workers' Association (IWA), and discussed the political changes in Spain with him. At the welcome rally at the Palace of Communications, Rocker was overwhelmed by the more than 15,000 attendees. When he asked Durruti why none of the speakers at the rally were applauded, Durruti told him that, as anarchists wanted to prevent the formation of personality cults, they rejected applause as they believed it encouraged vanity and leaderism.

Political agitation and personal matters

By August 1931, strike actions in Barcelona had escalated into open conflict with the Catalan government and business owners, culminating in the 1931 Barcelona rent strike, during which Durruti spoke before a popular assembly at the Palau de les Belles Arts. He wrote again to his family that he was constantly occupied by rallies and union organising, which kept him from travelling to León to visit them. Durruti's mother then pressed his sister Rosa to travel to Barcelona and visit him. She reported that Durruti and Morin lived in squalid conditions with few possessions; Morin, who was pregnant at the time, slept on an empty bed base without a mattress. When Rosa chided her brother for not having told his family about his living situation and said they could have bought a mattress for Morin, he shrugged it off, saying Morin's pregnancy was going well. In a letter to a friend, she concluded "What could I do? My brother will always be an incurable optimist".

After the publication of the "Manifesto of the Thirty", in which moderate members of the CNT leadership called for the organisation to reign in its revolutionary initiatives, Durruti again came under attack from the right-wing press, which denounced his leadership of the FAI as banditry. Durruti never sought out journalists to publicly comment on the manifesto, as he instinctively disliked journalists, believing them to be lacking in class consciousness. It was only when Eduardo de Guzmán, editor of the independent anarchist newspaper La Tierra, approached Durruti for comment that his thoughts on the matter were publicised. Durruti rejected the manifesto's calls for peace with the Republican government; as the new government had not carried out any fundamental economic or political reforms, he considered it necessary for the Spanish working class to undertake a social revolution against the prevailing socio-economic order. In articles for Le Temps and La Nau, he wrote that he felt personally targetted by the manifesto and criticised its signatories for collaborating with politicians at a time of heightened political repression. Durruti was later expelled from the Food Workers' Union, after he accused the signatory Ricard Fornells of collaborating with political parties, without evidence.

The publication of the manifesto coincided with increased political repression against the CNT, as well as criticisms of the organisation by the PSOE and PCE. In a letter to his brother Manolín, Durruti denounced the PCE as "pawns" of the Soviet Union and advised his brother to ignore their "slander" against the CNT, which he said needed to focus its energies on clarifying its positions and combatting political repression. At the café La Tranquilidad, on the Ronda de Sant Pau, Durruti had a public debate over Bolshevism with the Soviet journalist Ilya Ehrenburg, during which Durruti criticised the Soviet Union for not providing him refuge during his period of clandestinity. There he was also informed by his sister that the Official Bulletin of Asturias (BOA) had printed an order to arrest him for the 1923 Xixón bank heist, and that police had searched her home in León, looking for him. The Spanish press branded Durruti, Ascaso and Joan Garcia Oliver as "public enemies", culminating with Ascaso's arrest in October 1931. Durruti frequently spoke at rallies protesting the arrest, during which he decried the Republic for maintaining the repressive apparatus of the dictatorship and called for social revolution against the political system. For one of these speeches, he was briefly arrested and cautioned for "insults against authority".

After receiving news of his arrest, his family urged him to quit the anarchist movement and return to León, where he could return to work as a mechanic. Durruti rebuffed their request, recalling the economic difficulties his family had faced and reaffirming his desire to continue fighting for social justice. Less than a week after he sent this letter, on 4 December 1931, Emilienne Morin gave birth to their daughter Colette Durruti. On 8 December, Durruti informed his sister Rosa that he no longer needed her money; he had charged the Northern Railroad Company an indemnity for his dismissal in August 1917, which gave him and Morin 2,600 pesetas to spend on essentials for their daughter and furniture for their house. Durruti continued to organise for the release of anarchist prisoners, causing enough of a political scandal that he predicted he would soon be imprisoned. A few days later, he went to Girona to speak at a rally and was arrested when he arrived at the railway station. Although he was charged for his attempt against Alfonso XIII in Paris, Durruti believed he had been arrested to prevent him from speaking at the rally. Under pressure from the city's workers, the civil governor quickly ordered his release and the police inspector apologised for the arrest. When he finally spoke at the rally, Durruti declared that his arrest for attempting to assassinate Alfonso XIII proved that Spain was still effectively ruled as a monarchy.

After the rally, Durruti received a letter from his sister, informing him that their father was gravely ill. Durruti, along with Morin and their daughter, finally returned to León for the first time in 14 years. His father died before he made it there; Satiago Durruti's funeral was co-organised by the UGT and CNT, who hoped to pay tribute to him and express support for his son. The local CNT branch asked him to stay so he could speak at a rally, but as pretext to prevent this, the Civil Guard arrested Durruti and charged him for the 1923 Xixón robbery. Durruti told the police chief that the money from the heist had been spent on bringing about the Republic and warned that, if he did not speak at the rally, the city would face an uprising. Durruti addressed the rally the following day, speaking before workers that had come from León, Asturias, Galicia and Castile. He declared that the Republic had failed to solve Spain's social and political issues and proclaimed that a social revolution against the existing order was inevitable; in order to bring about the revolution, he called for the working class to unite. Durruti's revolutionary optimism soon spread.

Alt Llobregat insurrection and deportation

Miners under arrest, after the insurrection

In January 1932, Durruti went on a speaking tour of central Catalonia, where mine workers were being repressed by the Civil Guard. At a rally in Sallent, he called for workers to rise up in revolution, expropriate the capitalists and overthrow the state. In Fígols, he showed mine workers how to make improvised explosive devices out of dynamite and scrap metal. On 18 January 1932, insurrection broke out in the region, as workers armed themselves and proclaimed libertarian communism. The insurrection lasted for less than a week before it was suppressed by the army. For his part in the insurrection, Durruti was arrested on 21 January. He was among the 110 anarchist militants who were packed onto the Buenos Aires steamship, where they were sentenced without trial to deportation. They were detained for three weeks while the ship was anchored in port. When Durruti and Ascaso started a hunger strike, they were separated from the other detainees. Before his deportation, Durruti was permitted a brief visit to say goodbye to his infant daughter. On the morning of 10 February, the ship left mainland Spain in the direction of Spanish Guinea.

On the way to Africa, the deportees were crammed into the cargo hold below deck. Malnourished and held in unsanitary conditions, many of the deportees fell gravely ill. In protest against the conditions, the deportees mutinied and forced their way onto the deck, forcing the captain to provide them with access to fresh air, as well as better food and bunks. The ship then rerouted to the Canary Islands to drop off the sick, before heading to Río de Oro. There the military governor Ramón Regueral Jove, the son of Fernando González Regueral, refused to accept the deportees if Durruti was among them. After consulting with Navy Minister José Giral, the ship returned to Fuerteventura, where it dropped off Durruti and a number of other deportees.

Durruti (second from left) during his exile on Fuerteventura

Upon arriving in the Canarian island in April 1932, he received letters from Morin, as well as other friends and family. In a letter to his family, he told them of the harsh conditions on the transport ship, including an armed confrontation with soldiers incited by a drunken officer, and chastised the government for subjecting him to social isolation. He reassured them that he was in good health before describing the squalid conditions on Fuerteventura, where he lived in a barracks on an allowance of 1.75 pesetas per day. He also mentioned how the islanders warmed up to his presence, having initially been under the assumption that the anarchists engaged in child cannibalism; he even met a woman from the province of León, who gave him books and offered him a place to stay at her home. He did not know how long he would be exiled or even what the reason was. He quipped about returning to León and asking the local deputies why they had supported his deportation and whether the government was "at war with geography", due to the confused journey the ship had taken. According to an acquaintance of Durruti, he lived an "orderly and contemplative life" in Fuerteventura, where he spent most of his time reading books, frequenting the breakwater and flirting with women. He also often quarrelled with his fellow exiles, who he perceived as idiotic and illiterate.

In mainland Spain, social conflict was progressively escalating even without the presence of the "provocateur" Durruti, with strike actions, occupations and violent attacks becoming commonplace. As the government attempted to crack down on the labour movement's activities, in August 1932, right-wing forces led by General José Sanjurjo attempted a coup, but a general strike by the CNT defeated the attempt. The coup plotters were exiled to the African colonies, forcing the government to allow the deported anarchists to return. Durruti was one of the last anarchists that was permitted to leave the Canary Islands, from which he was taken directly to Barcelona by steamship. By the time Durruti arrived back in Barcelona in September 1932, Catalonia had been granted a statue of autonomy and the CNT had definitively split, with its moderate and revolutionary factions falling into open conflict. After arriving, he immediately returned to his family, finding that Morin had struggled to financially support their daughter in his absence.

Barcelona uprising and prison sentence

On 15 September, Durruti spoke before a large anarchist rally at the Palau de les Belles Arts. He praised the CNT and FAI for sticking to their revolutionary objectives and warned the government that the anarchists were ungovernable, despite any attempts to control or repress them. He rejected claims from the press that the anarchists were "thieves and criminals", countering with his belief that business owners were the real thieves, as they lived off the exploitation of labour. Turning to his deportation, he said that the government had failed in its objectives to isolate him, as it had enabled him to spread anarchist propaganda in the Canary Islands. After praising the CNT for preventing Sanjurjo's coup, he declared that if the Republican government did not resolve the problems which faced the working class, as he believed they would not, then the working class would do it themselves. The following week, on 23 September, Durruti was arrested and held incommunicado at the Police Prefecture on Via Laietana. He was detained for two months on grounds of "governmental order", which again caused financial difficulties for his family.

After he was released in early December 1932, Durruti quickly returned to his job at the textile factory; Morin herself worried about when he would next be incarcerated. Three days after he was released, Durruti and other members of his affinity group Nosotros gathered at Joan Garcia Oliver's house to discuss plans for another insurrection. At the meeting, Durruti expressed regret that the CNT had wasted time on internal debates, while the state had strengthened itself with a new, well-equipped police force, the Assault Guard. The group resolved to bring about a social revolution and established a revolutionary committee, on which Durruti served as the official representative of the CNT's National Committee. Durruti was dispatched to Cádiz, where he met with the Andalusian Regional Confederation and discussed the planned insurrection. In the Catalan capital, Durruti was assigned to oversee operations in Horta and Gràcia, where he would lead an attack against the Civil Guard barracks at the Travessera de Gràcia and Navas, and against the Carabineros barracks at Carrer de Lepant.

When the insurrection broke out on the evening of 8 January 1933, Durruti led the assault against the Travessera de Gràcia barracks, where he found that the police had already mobilised. As he distributed weapons to the insurgents in Gràcia, the young student Benjamín Cano Ruiz asked him for one so he could die for the proletariat; Durruti refused to give him a weapon, saying it was better to live than die, and told him to return to school, as he could be more helpful in the rearguard. By the early hours of 9 January, the insurrection had failed. As public criticism of the insurrection soon followed, in the newspaper La Voz Confederal, Durruti attempted to defend his actions as a necessary effort to prevent the government from consolidating power. He rejected accusations that the insurgents had attempted to take power and establish a dictatorship, denied that they were Blanquists and Trotskyists, and reaffirmed his conviction to continue. He also drew attention to the peasantry, who he considered of primary importance for revolution.

For two months after the insurrection, Durruti and Ascaso hid out in Teresa Margalef's house in Horta, where Durruti was able to frequently see his partner Morin and his daughter Colette, despite the police searching for him. In late March 1933, the CNT dispatched Durruti and Ascaso to speak at a rally in Seville. Throughout Andalusia and Extremadura, local unions planned rallies when they found out that the two would be coming. After arriving and speaking at the rally, on 8 April, as they were planning a speaking tour of the province, they were arrested on charges of "insults to authority" and "incitement to rebellion". While in pre-trial detention, they received a visit from their judge, who told them that they would be released on bail. But even after their bail was paid, the provincial governor prevented them from being released. The Madrid newspaper La Voz claimed that Durruti had been arrested because he was planning another insurrection in Andalusia. Durruti was visited in prison by the writer Pío Baroja, who portrayed him as a romantic hero and described him as an "incarnation of the Spanish guerrilla". In contrast, Interior Minister Santiago Casares Quiroga denounced Durruti as an "idler and delinquent".

Durruti (second from right) in El Puerto de Santa María prison, with Paulino Díez (far left), Francisco Ascaso (second from left) and other anarchist prisoners

Durruti and Ascaso were incarcerated in El Puerto de Santa María prison for six months. They were held incomunicado and in unsanitary conditions, without ever being formally charged. Prison authorities censored their letters to their families, which they were only allowed to write once per week. Durruti protested, asserting that they still did not know the reason they had been incarcerated. Nevertheless, he was able to smuggle some of his letters out to the CNT and El Luchador newspapers, in which he publicised the conditions he was being held in. In June, he smuggled out a letter to Morin, in which he reported that the authorities had kept visitors from seeing him.

Following a meeting between the CNT lawyer Eduardo Barriobero and Casares Quiroga, prisoners began to receive word that the governor of Cádiz was considering their release, although Durruti was notified by the local court that his bail had been voided and that he was still charged with insults and incitement. As months went past, no prisoners were released. On 14 July 1933, Durruti sent a letter to his family, telling them of how, after the guards murdered a prisoner, he de-escalated an impending prison riot when he noticed the guards had machine guns pointed at them; he believed they intended to provoke a massacre. The prisoners subsequently announced their intention to carry out a hunger strike, in protest against their continued incarceration. After eight days of hunger strike, on 5 October 1933, Durruti and his fellow inmates were released. Two days later, he arrived at the CNT newspaper offices in Madrid, then the following day, he finally returned to Barcelona.

Zaragoza uprising and general strike

By the time Durruti arrived back in Barcelona, President Niceto Alcalá-Zamora had dissolved the Azaña government and called the 1933 Spanish general election, through which the right-wing was set to rise to power. Growing unemployment in Spain directly affected Durruti, who was unable to find a job at his former factory. He signed up to the job pool of the CNT Metalworkers' Union, which managed to find him and two other unemployed workers mechanical jobs at a large workshop. But when he showed up to the workshop, the management told him they only sought two workers; Durruti discovered that he had been blacklisted. In solidarity with him, his two colleagues rejected the jobs and threatened to report the incident to the CNT. Worried that it would cause a strike in the workshop, or even escalated to the entire industry, Durruti told them not to. He believed that strikes out to be declared when workers needed them, rather than in reaction to provocations from employers. He concluded that a strike, at that time, would be detrimental to the workers' cause and told his two companions to go to work the next day. When he told Ascaso about the incident, his friend approved of his response, agreeing that the employing class was attempting to antagonise the labour movement. The two saw right-wing newspapers, such as La Vanguardia, as part of the problem, due to their publication of sensationalist pieces about robberies by suspected anarchists. Durruti and Ascaso visited the office of La Vanguardia and gave the newspaper a statement, on behalf of the FAI, clarifying that the organisation did not approve of individual robberies and requesting the newspaper stop publishing its acronym in stories about them. Although La Vanguardia refused to publish the statement, it also stopped using the names of the CNT and FAI in its reports of such "diverse events".

In response to the apparent inevitability of a right-wing electoral victory, the CNT resolved to carry out another insurrection against the forthcoming government. Durruti was appointed to a National Revolutionary Committee (NRC), within which he was to organise the insurrection. Durruti believed that, although the CNT did not have sufficient time or resources to establish a strong paramilitary force, they ought to carry out an insurrection anyway. He said that a revolutionary defeat would be preferable to inactivity or absence from political life during an election, and that an insurrection could send a warning to the incoming government about their revolutionary potential. On 12 November, Durruti spoke before a crowd of 100,000 people, at a CNT rally at La Monumental. On 16 November, he spoke at a FAI rally at the Palau de les Belles Arts, which attracted more than twice as many attendees than the 45,000-capacity venue could hold. Durruti opened that, although he did not possess the oratory skills of Emilio Castelar or Peter Kropotkin, his life spent among working people had made him know how to act. He believed that the Republic was destabilised enough that the political system would soon collapse and that social revolution would therefore be inevitable. He described how political leaders such as Azaña lacked sufficient popular support to hold rallies, while anarchist rallies attracted numerous and enthusiastic audiences. He called for Catalan anarchists to abstain from voting in the election, as he believed no political party represented Spanish workers, and declared that anarchists would be ready to confront the actions of a reactionary government. He then rejected claims by bourgeois newspapers that the FAI had been involved in robberies, declaring that the FAI only supported the collective expropriation of property: workers seizing their means of production. He also rejected accusations of the FAI forming a dictatorship within the CNT, claiming that only popular assemblies governed the labour movement and accusing moderate syndicalists of abandoning their committment to anarchist communism. Durruti declared that the Spanish anarchist movement was the only anarchist movement in the world that was capable of carrying out revolutionary change, that revolutionaries around the globe expected Spanish workers to lead the start of a world revolution. He thus directed workers to stay in their workplaces, where they could respond to any attempt to form a fascist dictatorship by occupying factories and seizing the means of production. Durruti invoked a sense of collective responsibility, calling for workers to unite against fascism and struggle for an anarchist revolution.

Following the right-wing victory in the election, on 23 November 1933, Durruti moved to Zaragoza and began planning the insurrection. When local Aragonese militants expressed doubt about their region leading the insurrection, he pointed out that political repression had left Andalusia and Catalonia unable to initiate any insurrection, while the workers' movement in Aragon was still strong; he ultimately convinced them to be the ones to lead it. The insurrection broke out on 8 December 1933. A general strike broke out in Zaragoza, where revolutionaries took over parts of the city for a number of days. After a week, the insurrection was suppressed, the government declared a state of emergency in Zaragoza and Durruti was arrested. He was tortured by police and narrowly saved from being executed under the ley de fugas. In prison, he attempted to secure the release of as many detainees as possible. He suggested that they make the state's dossier about the insurrection disappear, which would force police to get new statements from prisoners and thus allow for the modification of numerous forced confessions. A group of young anarchists then broke into the Zaragoza Commerce Court and stole the dossier from the judges at gunpoint. With the dossier secured, Durruti and the other members of the NRC confessed to sole responsibility for the insurrection, while many prisoners that had given forced confessions were released. In February 1934, the government transferred Durruti to a prison in the province of Burgos. He was kept in solitary confinement and under constant surveillance, preventing him from communicating with other prisoners. From his cell, he was nevertheless able to publicise his thoughts on a proposed united front between the CNT and UGT. He called for the alliance to exclude political parties and constitute itself from the bottom-up, based on a federation of workers' councils, which could establish workers' control over the Spanish economy.

In April 1934, the government proclaimed a general amnesty, both for far-right figures of the 1932 coup attempt and anarchists involved in the December 1933 insurrection. Durruti was released and attempted to return to Barcelona, but he did not have money for the trip. The Asturian CNT leader Ramón Álvarez, who was also imprisoned for the insurrection, gave him what little money he had. When Durruti stopped in Zaragoza, he found the city in the middle of a general strike. The Catalan CNT had offered to provide child care for the duration of the strike, so Durruti continued on to Barcelona to prepare for the reception of the children. By the time he returned, Durruti's former ally, the Catalan president Francesc Macià, had overseen a wide-scale crackdown against the anarchist movement. His daughter Colette had also learned to walk and speak, without him being their to see it. The night he arrived, he was informed that his friend Bruno Alpini had been executed by police under the ley de fugas. The killing enraged Durruti, who privately wished death on the Catalan police chief Miquel Badia.

Durruti quickly sought to discuss the general strike in Zaragoza with the Catalan Regional Committee of the CNT, which had come under the leadership of Francisco Ascaso. Ascaso believed that the Catalan authorities intended to stop the Barcelona CNT from taking in the Aragonese children, but Durruti rejected the possibility, thinking it would cause a public outcry. Ascaso also helped him find work, putting Durruti in contact with the Food Workers' Union, which secured him a seasonal job at a beer factory. On 6 May, when people began to assemble on Carrer del Consell de Cent to collect the Aragonese children, they were attacked by the Urban Guard and Assault Guard. As he watched the violence unfold, Durruti regretted that he had dismissed Ascaso's worries about Catalan government repression. When they found out that the convoy of buses carrying the children had been diverted to Terrassa, Durruti and Ascaso took a taxi to the city. There they found the local anarchist movement had mobilised and was guarding the buses. They directed them on to Barcelona and finally united the children with their host families.

1934 Revolution

Durruti, with his partner Émilienne Morin and his daughter Colette Durruti

In May 1934, Durruti's job search was still being frustrated by him being blacklisted. With him out of a job, his partner became the family's breadwinner and Durruti himself stayed at home to care for their daughter. When his anarchist comrades joked about him doing "women's work", he criticised them for misogyny. During this period of his life, Durruti sank into a depression and grew increasingly frustrated with the CNT, convinced its members were not sufficiently educating themselves and worried that its activities were turning it towards reformism. He believed that a political crisis was imminent in Spain, which could create the conditions for a revolutionary situation, and called for actions to strengthen the working class and weaken the capitalists. In late May, the CNT food workers' union found Durruti temporary employment at the S.A. Damm beer factory, but when he arrived, the company said they would not hire him. Rather than going on strike, Durruti suggested that the CNT organise a boycott against the company, which would stifle the company's profits without affecting production. The boycott resulted in a victory for the CNT, which secured a stable contract for its workers.

In June, Durruti was nominated by the Catalan regional committee to attend a national meeting of the CNT, where the issue of an alliance with the UGT was to be discussed. Durruti sought to reiterate his position on the creation of a revolutionary workers' alliance, based on workers' councils, from the bottom-up. At the meeting, Durruti argued against the Asturian committee of the CNT, which had already signed a pact with the UGT. The meeting ultimately resolved to schedule a national conference to make a binding decision on the proposed alliance, but before it could be held, the Revolution of 1934 broke out. On 4 October, Durruti was arrested in his home by the Catalan police, who held him incommunicado in their prefecture on Via Laietana. While he was in his cell, on 6 October, the regional government proclaimed a Catalan State, although this was quickly suppressed by the Spanish Army. Martial law was imposed in Catalonia and the army took over the police prefecture. There they found Durruti, who they sentenced to 6 months in prison.

From his cell in La Model, Durruti kept up with the news of the revolution and its suppression. In discussions with other inmates, he argued that anarchists ought to be patient and rebuild their organisational strength, which he considered key to a revolutionary victory against the right-wing. He posited that liberal democracy had already been defeated by fascism in the 1933 election, and that now the choice facing the Spanish people was between fascism and social revolution. While he remained sceptical of the PSOE, he believed that a revolutionary alliance with the UGT would be necessary to resist a coming coup d'état. As increasing numbers of anarchists were imprisoned for armed robbery, Durruti also aligned himself against the practice, declaring that "it isn't time for individual expropriations, but to prepare the collective one". When Durruti was released from prison in April 1935, he discovered that he was being blamed for the rise in armed robberies by the journalist Josep Maria Planes i Martí. Enraged, he went looking for Planes and forced his way into the offices of La Publicitat, but did not find him. Jacinto Toryho recalled that Durruti was particularly upset because he had just received an eviction notice, as he had not been able to pay rent while he was in prison.

At a meeting of Barcelona's anarchist groups in May 1935, Durruti spoke on behalf of Nosotros. He denounced the recent rise in armed robberies, which he believed served only to discredit the CNT, and proposed that the FAI distance itself from individuals involved in armed robberies. A young Argentine anarchist objected, pointing out that Durruti was condemning a practice he once participated in. He admitted to this, but insisted that times had changed. He held that, as the CNT counted more than 1 million members, individual actions were no longer acceptable; conditions demanded only collective action. When discussing the political climate, he affirmed his belief that a civil war was imminent, and that anarchists ought to prepare for it by organising workers' militias under strict military discipline. He also discussed with Ascaso the new communist strategy of the popular front; the two believed that such an electoral alliance, as it was being proposed in Spain by Largo Caballero, would be used to isolate the CNT.

Preparations for Civil War

Durruti was arrested and imprisoned again in June 1935. His time in prison caused difficulties for the CNT-FAI, which was deprived of one of its most dedicated activists. In August 1935, he was transferred to La Model prison in Valencia. There he was surrounded by other anarchist inmates, who often debated the internal divisions in the CNT and FAI, particularly the recent establishment of the Syndicalist Party and the Opposition Unions by the treintistas. Durruti was disinterested in these debates, who was focused on other issues. On 11 September 1935, he wrote to José Mira, affirming his position that the CNT ought to organise towards a social revolution, rather than focusing on short-term gains and individual acts of sabotage. He commented that these acts had caused many prisoners in Valencia to lose faith in the CNT and place their hopes in an electoral victory for the left-wing. Durruti believed that such short-term struggles for better conditions were necessary, but that achieving libertarian communism ought to remain the main priority of the CNT.

Upon his release from prison in November 1935, Durruti found himself a focus of criticism by some sections of the CNT, including the Transport Workers' Union, which accused him of becoming a moderate. According to Josep Peirats, he convinced them of his arguments by beating his fists on the table as he spoke, which reified his reputation as a fighter. Some days later, he attended a rally in support of the Andalusian anarchist Jerónimo Misa, who was facing a death sentence for organising a prison break. When police attempted to arrest Ascaso for denouncing the government, Durruti helped him escape. The two were later charged for insulting the government and driven underground. Durruti subsequently travelled back to his home city of León and spoke at a local anarchist rally, where he warned the attendees to prepare for an imminent civil war. He was then arrested by the Civil Guard and transferred to Barcelona, where he was released from detention on 10 January 1936. By this time, individual attacks against business owners and the police had largely ceased, and anarchists were now discussing whether to vote in the upcoming 1936 Spanish general election. Durruti believed that a right-wing victory would result in a dictatorship, while a left-wing victory would lead to a reactionary coup d'état. In either case, Durruti believed that workers needed to prepare for open conflict with the right-wing. But unlike in 1933, in this election, Durruti refused to advise anarchists to abstain from voting, as he hoped anarchists as a voting bloc would be able to pressure the government to release their political prisoners. After the Popular Front won the election, Manuel Azaña's new left-wing government extended amnesty to right-wing military leaders, while limiting it for imprisoned members of the CNT. On 6 March, Durruti denounced the government's actions at a CNT meeting. He declared that the new government had been elected by workers and could just as easily be removed by those same workers.

By the time of the 4th National Congress of the CNT, held in Zaragoza on 1 May 1936, Durruti was looked up to as an informal leader within the organisation. Due to his anti-authoritarianism, he often expressed discomfort with this leadership position, which only increased his esteem among others. Differences of opinion with another leading anarchist, Joan Garcia Oliver, caused clashes between the two. Garcia Oliver considered the CNT-FAI to be the revolutionary vanguard, while Durruti wanted a wholely anarchist revolution, driven forward by all popular forces, not just the CNT-FAI. Durruti thought Garcia Oliver's conception of revolution resembled Bolshevism and he worried that it would create a dictatorship by the CNT-FAI. At a meeting of the Textile Workers' Union, Durruti resisted Garcia Oliver's proposals to create a paramilitary, which he believed would impose itself as a new authority and crush the revolutionary aspirations of the masses. Despite Durruti's protests, the union supported Garcia Oliver's motion and called for the creation of a workers' army, based on local groups.

By July 1936, open conflict was brewing between the Spanish working-class and bourgeoisie, as both were radicalised against each other. Strike actions and factory occupations spread throughout France and Spain, leading Durruti to conclude that a Europe-wide revolution was in the near future. That month, Durruti had an operation on his hernia. He checked out of the hospital on 14 July, before he had fully recovered, and met up with other members of Nosotros, who had already put contingency plans into place for the predicted outbreak of a military coup. The following day, he met with Enric Pérez Farràs, the commander of the Mossos d'Esquadra. He wanted to know what the anarchists were planning and admitted that the Catalan government would collapse, as it did in October 1934, without their help. When the police chief refused to give the anarchists weapons, Durruti concluded that the Catalan government was planning to use them as "cannon fodder". On 17 July, news began to circulate that the Spanish Army had rebelled in Morocco. CNT unions immediately responded by seizing weapons from the port of Barcelona, causing a standoff with the Assault Guards. Durruti swiftly intervened, telling the police commander Vicente Guarner to disobey his orders and allow the workers to take the weaponry. In order to save face, Guarner only confiscated rifles that were not in working order.

At 23:30 on 18 July, Durruti, Ascaso and Garcia Oliver met with the Catalan Interior Minister Josep Maria Espanya, who they attempted to convince to disarm the police and hand over their weapons to the workers. When Espanya objected to the CNT requisitioning cars and storming gunsmiths, Durruti reprimanded him, declaring that they represented "a working class that isn’t going to go to battle defenselessly". They left the meeting and went to speak with the dockworkers gathered outside. Durruti told them to stay put, continue to demand weapons and surveil the barracks in the city centre. In the early hours of 19 July, Durruti, Ascaso and Garcia Oliver went all over the city, coordinating with the different unions and defense committees. They then returned to Gregorio Jover's apartment on Carrer de Pujades, where the Nosotros group had gathered. Everyone else was exhausted, but Durruti remained in high spirits, joking that there would not be any battle that day. At 04:00, they received news that the Nationalists had risen up in Barcelona.

Military command in the Civil War

Battle of Barcelona

By 09:00 on 19 July, fighting had broken out throughout Barcelona. Durruti met with Ascaso and Garcia Oliver at the Teatre Principal, where they discussed how to gain control of the port and prevent reinforcements from being brought in by ship. When troops began shooting at them from a nearby hotel, Durruti led an attack against the hotel and cleared out the shooters. He was then directed to remain at the Teatre, where he would coordinate their forces for another assault, while Garcia Oliver and Ascaso led their own detachments elsewhere. At 10:00, Durruti arrived at the Pla de Palau, where workers' militias and Assault Guards overpowered the Spanish Army, in the first victory of the day. By 14:00, Durruti was leading an assault against the telephone exchange. Many anarchists died during the attack, but the forces of the CNT were victorious and the exchange was subsequently brought under workers' control. When General Manuel Goded surrendered later that day, Durruti's name was chanted by workers' militias throughout the city.

By the following day, a social revolution had swept Catalonia, confirming Durruti's prediction that workers would responded to a right-wing coup with revolution. Durruti, Ascaso and Garcia Oliver sought to finish off the right-wing mutiny with an attack against the Drassanes barracks. During the assault, around 13:00 on 20 July, Ascaso was killed. While Durruti fought back tears for his best friend, the rebel soldiers surrendered and the anarchist militias celebrated their victory. He warned one worker that they had not yet won, that the revolution would still be in progress until they defeated every remaining rebel soldier throughout Spain.

They made their way to the Casa Cambó on Via Laietana, where the CNT Regional Secretary Mariano R. Vázquez informed Durruti and Garcia Oliver that President Lluis Companys had requested a meeting with them. Together with Aurelio Fernández, Durruti and Garcia Oliver went to the Palace of the Generalitat and met with the Catalan President. Through meeting with Companys and the representatives of other anti-fascist parties, the anarchists moved to establish the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias of Catalonia (CCMA), which would oversee the reorganisation of the Catalan economy and the organisation of militias to fight against the Nationalist forces. At the plenary meeting of the CNT which established the CCMA, Durruti and Garcia Oliver attempted to push for the anarchists to seize power, but their motion was defeated by advocates of collaboration with other anti-fascist political groupings. They accepted the organisation's decision, but continued to push for the broadening of the revolution.

Durruti attended the inaugural meeting of the CCMA as one of the representatives for the CNT. At the meeting, Durruti confronted the Catalan nationalist Jaume Miravitlles over an article he had written comparing the FAI to fascists. The meeting appointed Durruti as an assistant to Garcia Oliver, who himself was appointed to oversee the Department of War. When the meeting concluded, Durruti and Garcia Oliver told the Stalinist politician Joan Comorera that they remembered how the Bolsheviks had repressed anarchism in Russia and that they would not allow the Spanish Communists to treat them the same way. Over the subsequent days, Durruti quickly came to regard the CCMA as a bureaucratic organisation, which he did not want to continue participating in. Seeking to continue the fight against the Nationalists, on 24 July, he put together the first militia column – the self-titled Durruti Column – which departed for the front lines in Aragon.

Aragon front

After a brief and bloody battle at Caspe (in Aragón), they also halted at Bujaraloz and at 'Venta de santa Lucia', Pina de Ebro. On the advice of a regular army officer, postponing an assault on Zaragoza.

The famous quote, "We renounce everything except victory", is associated with Durruti but this phrase was created by the CNT and never spoken by Durruti himself.

Death

In November, having been persuaded to leave Aragón by the anarchist leader Federica Montseny on behalf of the government, Durruti led his militia to Madrid to aid in the defence of the city. On 19 November, he was shot while leading a counterattack in the Casa de Campo area (see also Battle of Madrid).

Antony Beevor in The Spanish Civil War (1982) maintains that Durruti was killed when a companion's machine pistol went off by mistake. He assessed that, at the time, the anarchists lied and claimed he had been hit by an enemy sniper's bullet "for reasons of morale and propaganda". The first rumor of his death was that he was shot by his comrades because he enforced discipline.

Durruti died on 20 November 1936, at the age of 40, in a makeshift operating theatre set up in what was formerly the Ritz Hotel. The bullet was lodged in the heart; the diagnosis recorded was "death caused by pleural haemorrhage". In his later book Durruti in the Spanish Revolution, it was alleged that Durruti was killed by a 9mm bullet to the thorax. The autopsy reported:

"Durruti had a very developed chest. Given the topography of the thorax, I realized that the diagnosis that surgery was impossible had been mistaken. An operation could have produced positive results, although doubtlessly the patient would not have survived."

Following a large funeral procession, he was buried in Barcelona's Montjuïc Cemetery.

A few hours after Durruti's death, in reprisal, José Luzón Morales ordered the execution of 52 policemen who had been held captive in a monastery in Calle de Santa Engracia.

Personal life

On 14 July 1927, Durruti met French anarcho-syndicalist, writer and shorthand typist Émilienne Morin at the Librairie internationale anarchiste (International Anarchist Library) in Paris. They became life partners until his death. When Durutti was expelled from France in July 1927, Morin accompanied him into Belgium, and worked to feed them both when he was unemployed. The couple travelled to Spain in 1931 and on 4 December 1931, their daughter Colette Durruti was born in Barcelona. Morin brought Collette up virtually single-handedly, with the help of an anarchist friend, Teresa Margaleff due to Durutti's absences. In 1936 Morin ran the press office for the Durutti Column and wrote many articles for French anarchist publications on the situation in Spain. She returned to France after Durutti's death, remaining heavily involved in anarchist politics and writing, and worked to raise funds for Spanish refugees in France.

Legacy

At first, Durruti's death was not made public, for morale reasons. Durruti's body was transported across the country to Barcelona for his funeral. Over a half million people filled the streets to accompany the cortege during its route to the Montjuïc Cemetery. It was the last large-scale public demonstration of anarchist strength of numbers during the Spanish Civil War.

Hugh Thomas remark, "the death of Durruti marked the end of the classic age of Spanish anarchism. An anarchist poet proclaimed that Durruti’s nobility while living would cause ‘a legion of Durrutis’ to spring up behind him".

In 1937, as a response to the further participation of the CNT-FAI in the Republican government, and after the May Days in 1937 in Barcelona, the Friends of Durruti Group was founded, to try and save the anarchist principles of the revolution. The name of Durruti clearly taken because of the revolutionary commitment and the symbol that he still was for that in the anarchist camp. The Friends of Durruti group had a newspaper called El Amigo del Pueblo (The Friend of the People) and tried to make revolutionary propaganda among the rank and file of the CNT. The group was however fiercely repressed by the reformist wing of the CNT, in collaboration with the Republican government.

A Situationist group of Strasbourg University students spent their student union's budget on a giant flyposted comic strip in 1966. One of its panels, featuring two cowboys discussing philosophical reification, was called The Return of the Durutti Column [sic], in reference to Durruti's military unit. This, in turn, influenced Tony Wilson's naming of his English post-punk band, The Durutti Column.

Willem van Spronsen, an American anarchist who was killed in 2019 while trying to firebomb a fleet of buses operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for mass deportation, used Durruti's surname as a part of his alias.

Gallery

• 
  Photograph of Durruti
• 
  Funeral of Durruti, Barcelona, 23 November 1936
• 
  Durruti's grave full of flowers on the 69th anniversary of his death
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  Durruti's grave at Montjuïc Cemetery, Barcelona
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  "Hálito Durruti", monument to Buenaventura Durruti in his hometown of León

See also

• Anarchism in Spain
• Anarchist Catalonia

Bibliography

• Alexander, Robert J. (1999). The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. London: Janus Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1-85756-400-6.
• Bayer, Osvaldo (2015) [1975]. The Anarchist Expropriators: Buenaventura Durruti and Argentina's Working-Class Robin Hoods. Oakland, California: AK Press. ISBN 978-1-84935-223-9. OCLC 908088288.
• Bookchin, Murray (1978). The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868–1936. Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-090607-3.
• Beevor, Antony (2006) [1982]. The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-2978-4832-1.
• Comotto, Agustín (2022). The Weight of the Stars: The Life of Anarchist Octavio Alberola. AK Press. ISBN 978-1-84935-409-7.
• Enzensberger, Hans Magnus (2018) [1972]. Anarchy's Brief Summer: The Life and Death of Buenaventura Durruti. Translated by Mitchell, Mike. Seagull Books. ISBN 9780857426000. OCLC 1077270536.
• Fraser, Ronald (2001) [1984]. "The popular experience of war and revolution 1936–9". In Preston, Paul (ed.). Revolution and War in Spain 1931–1939. London: Routledge. pp. 225–242. ISBN 0-415-09894-7. OCLC 803661954.
• Graham, Helen (2002). The Spanish Republic at War, 1936–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-45932-X. OCLC 464890766.
• Herrerín, Ángel (2020). The Road to Anarchy: The CNT under the Spanish Second Republic (1931–1936). Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 9781789760316.
• Paz, Abel (2006) [1996]. Durruti in the Spanish Revolution. Translated by Morse, Chuck. Edinburgh: AK Press. ISBN 1-904859-50-X. LCCN 2006920974. OCLC 482919277.
• Preston, Paul (2006). The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-32987-9.
• Ruiz, Julius (2014). The 'Red Terror' and the Spanish Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107054547.
• Shantz, Jeff (2009). "Durruti, Buenaventura (1896–1936)". In Ness, Immanuel (ed.). The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 1–2. doi:10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp0482. ISBN 9781405198073.
• Thomas, Hugh (2001) [1961]. The Spanish Civil War. New York: Modern Library. ISBN 0-375-75515-2.

Further reading

• Acerete, Julio C. (1975). Durruti (in Spanish). Editorial Bruguera. ISBN 978-84-02-04322-1. OCLC 1977102.
• Amodia, Jose (1995). "Durruti Dominguez, Buenaventura". In Lane, A. Thomas (ed.). Biographical Dictionary of European Labor Leaders. Vol. 2. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 283–284. ISBN 978-0-313-26456-6.
• Goldman, Emma (1936). "Durruti is Dead, Yet Living".
• Guérin, Daniel, ed. (2005). "Durruti and Libertarian Warfare". No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism. Translated by Sharkey, Paul. Oakland: AK Press. pp. 619–652. ISBN 1-904859-25-9. LCCN 2005930956. OCLC 1156129943.