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Title: Buenaventura Durruti
Author: Joe King
Language: en
Topics: anti-fascist, biography, Buenaventura Durruti, Europe, history, Spain, Workers’ Solidarity Movement
Source: Retrieved on January 1, 2005 from http://www.cat.org.au

Joe King

Buenaventura Durruti

To reduce to a few hundred words the life story of an almost mythic

figure is not an easy task. It can be said, without fear of

exaggeration, that Buenventura Durruti symbolised in his person the

courageous struggle of workers and peasants in that country, and more

specifically symbolises the spirit of Spanish anarchism.

He was born the son of a railway worker on July 14^(th) 1896 in Leon, a

city in central Spain. Aged 14 he leaves school to become a trainee

mechanic in the railway yard. Like his father, he joins the socialist

UGT union. He takes an active part in the strike of August 1917 when the

government overturned an agreement between the union and the employers.

This soon became a general strike throughout the area. The government

brought in the army and within three days the strikers had been crushed.

The troops behaved with extreme brutality, killing 70 and wounding 500

workers. 2,000 strikers were jailed.

Durruti managed to escape to France, where he came into contact with

exiled anarchists, whose influence led to him joining the anarchist CNT

union upon his return in January 1919. He joins the fight against

dictatorial employers in the Asturian mines and is arrested for the

first time in March 1919; he escapes and over the next decade and a half

he throws himself into activity for the CNT and for the anarchist

movement.

These years see him involved in several strikes and being forced into

exile. Unwittingly the Spanish government ‘exported’ rebellion, as

Durruti and his close friend Francisco Ascaso happily joined the

struggle for freedom wherever they ended up, in both Europe and Latin

America.

The Spanish monarchy fell in 1931 and Durruti moved to Barcelona;

accompanied by his French companion Emilienne, pregnant with their

daughter Colette. He joined the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), a

specifically anarchist organization, and together with other militants

they form the ‘Nosotros’ group. These were members within the CNT of a

radical tendency that harboured no illusions with respect to the

recently proclaimed Republic, maintaining that the moment was ripe for

continued progress towards a social revolution.

With the electoral victory by the liberal/reformist Popular Front in

February 1936, Left and Right were on a collision course, initiated very

rapidly by Franco’s military rebellion on July 19^(th) 1936. The CNT and

the FAI confronted the army with courage, organization and mass

mobilizations.

They triumphed in much of Spain despite the fascist superiority in

weapons and resources. The anarchist contribution was decisive in

resisting the fascists throughout the country and in Catalonia defeated

the rebels singlehandedly, Durruti being one of the boldest fighters in

this battle. It was here that Francisco Ascaso lost his life.

On July 24^(th), from Barcelona where the anarchist goal of workers’

control, direct democracy and liberty was starting to be a reality,

Durruti left with an armed column towards Zaragossa, occupied by the

fascists. Through hard battles this workers’ militia, without officers

or other military trappings, advanced and saved the Aragon front against

much better equipped regular troops.

Parallel to this, the anarchist forces supported a social transformation

which meant the establishment of agricultural collectives in Aragon,

upsetting the authoritarians of the Communist and Socialist parties,

according to whom the war could not be won with the revolution going on.

War or no war these would-be rulers would never have liked a real

workers’ democracy.

After the liberation of Aragon, Durruti was interviewed by Pierre van

Passen of the Toronto ‘Star’. “For us,” said Durruti, “it is a matter of

crushing fascism once and for all. Yes, and in spite of the government.

No government in the world fights fascism to the death.

“When the bourgeoisie see power slipping from its grasp, it has recourse

to fascism to maintain itself. The Liberal government of Spain could

have rendered the fascist elements powerless long ago. Instead it

compromised and dallied. Even now at the moment there are men in this

government who want to go easy on the rebels.”

And here Durruti laughed. “You can never tell, you know, the present

government might yet need these rebellious forces to crush the workers’

movement....

“We know what we want. To us it means nothing that there is a Soviet

Union somewhere in the world, for the sake of whose peace and

tranquillity the workers of Germany and China were sacrificed to fascist

barbarians by Stalin. We want revolution here in Spain, right now, not

maybe after the next European war.

“We are giving Hitler and Mussolini far more worry with our revolution

than the whole Red Army of Russia. We are setting an example to the

German and Italian working class how to deal with fascism.”

But, interjected van Passen, even if you win “You will be sitting on a

pile of ruins.” Durruti answered “We have always lived in slums and

holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a

while. For, you must not forget, we also know how to build. It is we the

workers who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain and in

America, and everywhere.

“We, the workers, can build others to take their place, and better ones!

We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the

earth, there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie

might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of

history. We carry a new world, here, in our hearts. That world is

growing this minute”.

Durruti embodied the feelings and goals of the workers in arms, being a

peculiar “chief” whose main privilege was to fight in the first line and

whose only rank was the esteem his equals had for him. His courageous

life came to an end in November of that same year. On the 15^(th)

Durruti arrived with a force of 1,800 men to reinforce the defence of

Madrid, where they went immediately to the toughest section and on the

19^(th) he was struck by a bullet. He died at dawn on the 20^(th), being

buried two days later at Montjuich’s cemetery in Barcelona, accompanied

by 500,000 people carrying the red & black flags of anarchism. It was

the largest funeral cortege ever seen in that city.

Here was a man who fought for his union and anarchist ideals; who never

sought any special privileges for himself, who acted as much as he read

or thought, who loved, dreamed and was determined to leave this world a

better place than when he entered it.