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Title: Facerias Author: Alfredo M. Bonanno Date: 1994 Language: en Topics: biography, anarchist biography Source: https://archive.elephanteditions.net/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-facerias. Proofread text source from http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=4916, retrieved on December 10, 2020. Notes: Introduction to Facerias: La guerriglia urbana in Spagna by Antonio Tellez, Edizioni La Fiaccola. Translated by Jean Weir
Facerias was one of those men that it almost comes naturally to write a
biography about. All the essential elements of the legendary anarchist
are to be found in his actions, his life as a whole and his death: the
vindicator who rises up in struggle against the class enemy and refuses
to accept any compromise. And this is certainly one way to read the
volume we are presenting here, the first and, if you like, the least
useful one.
Many anarchists have struggled and are still struggling today with the
same irreducible spirit of counter-position that characterised the life
of Facerias or Sabate or the thousand other guerrilla fighters who fell
while continuing the armed struggle against Francoism even after the
fall of the Republic. And for many of them other books could have been
written, dedicated not so much to a method or revolutionary position as
to the will of the individual who insurges when everyone else keeps
quiet fearfully awaiting signs of better days to come.
Yet this first aspect of the question does not seem enough to me. Or
rather, to tell the truth, it no longer seems to me to be enough. There
was a time, twenty years ago, when what we could call the primary,
essential analysis i.e. the analysis aimed at underlining the great
courage of the actions and proposing them as examples to be followed
seemed to me to be sufficient. I am now convinced that this preliminary
aspect is no longer enough. One would run the of risk of falling into
adulation.
We need to say more today. Not so much about the responsibility of those
who indirectly favoured repression by putting obstacles in the way of
the revolutionary work of comrades such as Facerias in favour of
political perspectives which defended the line of parties or the
remainders of the conventicles of resistance; so much as concerning the
very concept of antifascism and its retarding effect on the
revolutionary struggle, and which was open to interpretation in a way
that made it difficult to use clearly in an anarchist perspective of the
destruction of power.
The Spanish civil war and the inheritance that its tragedy left the
European and world political left, certainly did not create the ideal
atmosphere for clarifying such problems. Antifascism seemed, and
continued to seem for decades to come, the common ground upon which to
base revolutionary collaboration. The anarchist organisations which
supported the activity of Facerias or Sabate abroad — because the
problems were the same for these two comrades as for many others — also,
and I would say essentially, had an antifascist perspective, one that
was to give life to a counter-position capable of programming the return
of the Republic to Spain. So they could support the actions of comrades
who went into Spain to foment revolt, but they could not in any way
support the actions of these comrades when they took place in situations
such as those in France or Itay, where by definition fascism was not in
power.
Two kinds of problem derived from this strange concept of revolutionary
struggle as intended by the institutional organisations of Spanish
anarchism abroad and the considerable number of non Spanish
organisations with positions similar to those of anarcho-syndicalism,
both fraught with incomprehension and equivocation. In the first place
the call for a generic collaboration in the name of anti-fascism,
regardless of any proper analysis of the positions proposing
intervention in the struggle. In fact, the positions of Facerias and
Sabate were never object of serious examination, no discussion or debate
ever took place. And Facerias himself never went beyond a generic desire
to see all the groups that did not share the positions of the Spanish
FAI or the CNT organised federatively . Secondly, the same generic and
unclear agreement justified isolation and boycotting when their
initiatives threatened to extend beyond Spanish fascism labelled as
francoism, and strike any State structure, in that any State is an enemy
for the exploited, fascist or not as its constitution might be.
And if the struggle were to continue, this could count on the autonomous
decisions of the few comrades who wanted to carry on and who found
themselves obliged to face and resolve all the problems that arose
without any external support, when they did not find themselves faced
with an actual web of slander and obstacles put in their way.
In such cases there are two kinds of problem to be faced. Whoever finds
themselves fighting almost alone has to face the problem of
self-financing their struggle. And this can only be faced by going and
taking money from where it is to be found, usually in banks or in
jewellers’ shops. In order to resolve this let us say instrumental
aspect one must give oneself a technical apparatus which is the same as
that usually used in the struggle against objectives of a more
declaredly and easily identifiable political qualification. And there
are not a few cases where the two problems became intermingled like a
snake uselessly trying to bite its own tail. Self-financing was aimed at
supplying oneself with means for the struggle. But at times this became
so complicated as to run the risk of becoming the aim of the struggle
and no longer just one of the means. If to this we add the fact that,
isolated from a real mass movement one was obliged to think of
everything, up to the smallest move, safe houses, procuring arms, etc,
one can get an idea of the gigantic efforts made by these men each day
without the least hope of getting not only help but even understanding
by so many indoctrinated know-alls, devoted to nitpicking doubts from
the comfort of their armchairs.
For Facerias to rob banks in Spain was one thing, but for him to have
the nerve to do the same thing in Italy to the damage of the Vatican
Bank, for example, was different. Of course, one could always gloss over
it with the thought that his ultimate aim was always anti-fascism, but I
don’t believe that many saw this activity favourably in Italy apart from
a few comrades who have never shut their eyes to the real problems of
the revolutionary clash.
On the other hand, it does not appear there were many who saw no
difference between Spanish banks and Italian ones, concluding that the
struggle against Spanish fascism was to begin and carry on with the
struggle against all States and all national capital, in the name of
freedom, not in the name of the substitution of a fascist regime with a
democratic one.
The Spanish equivocation demonstrates with great clarity today so many
years later, how it was possible at that time to find comrades prepared
to involve themselves in armed struggle, but anything but prepared to
agree that this struggle spread in a truly anarchist sense, i.e. beyond
the immediate objective of first Spanish fascism, then the Greek form,
and so on. In recent times many of those so-called comrades in struggle
lost no time in declaring their unavailability to support any concept of
struggle which did not limit itself to being against this or that
fascism but tried to analyse and therefore strike the very expression of
power as it was changing and manifesting itself historically throughout
the years. In this case, there no longer being the alibi of fascism
which always sounded like a moral alibi, many let themselves be overcome
by doubt and often ended up asking themselves if there was really a time
to attack and if there was not another way to carry out the political
struggle against power, a struggle if which if not exactly reformist was
at least capable of taking account of the repressive degrees which a
democracy is basically always capable of proposing to its opposers.
And many of these doubters became and still are, the flag-wavers of the
struggle of Facerias, Sabate and many others precisely because they want
to wrap their struggle up in a nice book and relegate it to the long
list of those who knew how to sacrifice themselves in the war against
fascism, a lost war but one which could also have been won.
Our reading of this book dedicated to Facerias, just like the preceding
one which Tellez dedicated to Sabate, is different. These comrades were
anarchists and revolutionaries, not just generic antifascists. For them
the struggle against francoism was just a starting point, and the defeat
of fascism would have been anything but a conclusion of that struggle.
They would never stated that with democracy in power there was no reason
to continue the struggle, they would simply have singled out the new
enemies and continued to strike them.
And why be surprised? What other role could anarchists have?
Alfredo M. Bonanno
Catania 6 April, 1994