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. Together with a number of these new acquaintances, Durruti formed a new anarchist group which they called 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. Together with Gregorio Suberviola and Rafael Torres Escartín, he 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 and Durruti, together with 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; together with the Catalan metalworker Eusebi Brau, Durruti 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, together 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. Following a meeting of Catalan anarchist groups, which had been called to coordinate a response, former members of Los Solidarios reorganised into the group Nosotros and began to call for insurrection against the Republican government.

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.

The publication of the manifesto coincided with increase 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 García 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.

In the Civil War

Working closely with his comrades in the FAI and CNT Durruti helped to co-ordinate armed resistance to the military rising of the Nationalist faction, an effort which was to prove vital in preventing General Goded's attempt to seize control of Barcelona. During the battle for the Atarazanas Barracks, Durruti's long-time comrade and closest friend Ascaso was shot dead. Less than a week later, on 24 July 1936 Durruti led his armed militia, the Durruti Column, from Barcelona to Zaragoza. 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
• 
  Durruti's grave at Montjuïc Cemetery, Barcelona
• 
  "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.
• 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.