Buenaventua
Durruti
was
born in Spain in 1896. He became a railway
worker and as a trade union activist took part in the General Strike
of 1917.
Durruti became an anarchist
and with Juan Garcia Oliver and Francisco
Ascaso helped establish the Solidarios
group in 1919. Two years later members of the group were involved
in the murder of Eduardo Dato, the Spanish prime minister. In 1923
the group assassinated Juan Soldevila Romero, the Archbishop of Sargossa,
in revenge for the murder by the police of Salvador Segui, a CNT
leader.
Durruti and Francisco
Ascaso fled to France in June 1923. In
protest against the dictatorship of Miguel
Primo de Rivera, Durruti took part in the border raid at Vera
del Bidosa on 6th November, 1924. Threatened with extradition to Spain,
Durruti moved to Cuba. Constantly on the run, he later lived in Mexico,
Chile and Argentina.
Durruti returned to France
in 1926. He was arrested but protests by the left resulted in him
being released. Durruti now moved to Belgium
where he lived until going
back to Spain in 1931. He settled in Barcelona
where he became involved in organizing strikes. In January 1932 he
was arrested and deported to Spanish Guinea.
Durruti returned to Spain
but was once again arrested in December 1933 for leading an uprising
in Saragossa. In the 1936 Elections
Durruti urged anarchists to support
the Popular Front in order to defeat the
extreme right-wing. After the victory of the Popular Front he joined
with Federica Montseny and Juan
Garcia Oliver to establish communes and workers' committees.
On
the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War Durruti
helped establish the Antifascist
Militias Committee in Barcelona.
The committee
immediately sent Durruti and 3,000 Anarchists
to Aragón in an attempt to take
the Nationalist held Saragossa.
At the beginning of November,
25,000 Nationalist troops under General Jose Varela had reached the
western and southern suburbs of Madrid.
Five days later he was joined by General Hugo
Sperrle and the
Condor
Legion.
This began the siege of Madrid that was to last for nearly three years.
On 14th November
Durruti arrived in Madrid from Aragón
with 5,000
men. He
immediately went to the frontline where the Manzanares River passed
through the University of Madrid.
On
19th November, 1936, Buenaventua
Durruti was
shot by a sniper from one of the upper stories of the Hospital Clinic.
Durruti died the following day. Durruti's supporters later claimed
that he had been killed by a member of the Communist
Party.
Members
of the Durruti Column in Aragón
(August, 1936)
(1)
Vladimir
Antonov-Ovseenko,
General
Consul of the Soviet Union in Barcelona
, top secret document sent to NKVD
(November,
1936)
The dispatch of aid to
Madrid is proceeding with difficulty. The question about it was put
before the military adviser on 5 November. The adviser thought it
possible to remove the entire Durruti detachment from the front.
This unit, along with the Karl Marx Division, is considered to have
the greatest fighting value. To put Durruti out of action, a statement
was issued by the commander of the Karl Marx Division, inspired by
us, about sending this division to Madrid (it was difficult to take
the division out of battle, and, besides, the PSUC did not want to
remove it from the Catalan front for political reasons). However,
Durruti refused point-blank to carry out the order for the entire
detachment, or part of it, to set out for Madrid. Immediately, it
was agreed with President Companys and the military adviser to secure
the dispatch of the mixed Catalan column (from detachments of various
parties). A meeting of the commanders with the detachments on the
Aragon front was called for 6 November, with our participation. After
a short report about the situation near Madrid, the commander of the
Karl Marx Division declared that his division was ready to be sent
to Madrid. Durruti was up in arms against sending reinforcements to
Madrid, sharply attacked the Madrid government, "which was preparing
for defeat," called Madrid's situation hopeless, and concluded
that Madrid had a purely political significance - and not a strategic
one. This kind of attitude on the part of Durruti, who enjoys exceptional
influence over all of anarcho syndicalist Catalonia that is at the
front, must be smashed at all costs. It was necessary to interfere
in a firm way. And Durruti gave in, declaring that he could give Madrid
a thousand select fighters. After a passionate speech by the anarchist
Santillan, he agreed to give two thousand and immediately issued an
order that his neighbour on the front Ortiz give another two thousand,
Ascaso another thousand, and the Karl Marx division a thousand. Durruti
was silent about the Left Republicans, although the chief of their
detachment declared that he could give a battalion. In all, sixty-eight
hundred bayonets are shaping up for dispatch no later than 8 November.
Durruti then and there put his deputy at the head of the mixed detachment
(Durruti agreed to form it as a "Catalan division"). He
declared that he would personally be with the detachment until the
appointment (of the new head). But Durruti unexpectedly pulled a stunt,
holding up the dispatch. Learning about the "discovery"
of a kind of supplementary weapon (Winchester), instead of sending
the units from the front on a direct route to Madrid, he sent these
units unarmed into Barcelona, leaving their weapons (Mauser system)
at their own place on the front and instead calling up reserves (without
weapons) from Barcelona. His anarchist neighbours did the same thing.
Thus Durruti got his own way - the Aragon front was not weakened.
About five thousand disarmed frontline soldiers were gathered in Barcelona,
and Durruti raised the question about immediately arming them at the
expense of the units of the Barcelona gendarmerie and police. Through
this, Durruti would achieve a continual striving by the CNT and the
FAI to undermine the armed support of the present government in Barcelona.
Since the weapons seized from the Garde d'Assaut and Garde Nationale
(about twenty-five hundred rifles) were still not enough, it was proposed
to get them from the "rear soldiers," and instead of weapons
of a different sort, the Garde d'Assaut and Garde Nationale would
also, according to Durruti, receive Winchesters in place of Mausers.
Here the government's decree on the handing over of weapons by the
soldiers at the rear has already been frustrated.
(2)
Edward
Knoblaugh,
Correspondent in Spain (1937)
It was common property in Madrid and Valencia,
but not in Barcelona, that the noted Catalonian Anarchist leader,
Buenaventura Durruti, one of the most valiant of the civilian commanders,
was killed by his own men on the Madrid front as reprisal for disciplinary
measures which they believed too severe. The autopsy, held secretly,
revealed he had been shot in the back at close range. His death was
rather a shock to me, for I had come to know him rather well. My first
conversation with him was in the Barcelona prison following the October,
1934, revolt. My last was during a luncheon in the Grand Via Restaurant
a few hours before he was killed.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
