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) 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

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.

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

In Barcelona, Durruti formed friendships with activists of the CNT Woodworkers' Union, 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 Benacasa, 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 anarchists; 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.

His release was delayed after members of Los Solidarios assassinated José 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 and return

After Miguel Primo de Rivera seized power in the 1923 Spanish coup d'état, Durruti and his comrades organised attacks on the military barracks in Barcelona and on the border stations near France. These attacks were unsuccessful and quite a few anarchists were killed. Following these defeats, Durruti, Ascaso and Oliver fled to Latin America. They subsequently travelled widely, visiting Cuba and carrying out bank robberies in Chile and Argentina.

Durruti and his companions returned to Spain and Barcelona, becoming an influential militant group within two of the largest anarchist organizations in Spain at the time, the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI), and of the anarcho-syndicalist trade union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). The influence Durruti's group gained inside the CNT caused a split, with a reformist faction under Ángel Pestaña leaving in 1931 and subsequently forming the Syndicalist Party.

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 disable 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

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  Photograph of Durruti
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  Funeral of Durruti, Barcelona, 23 November 1936
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  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.
• 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.