Durruti in the Spanish Revolution by Abel Paz

Durruti in the Spanish Revolution by Abel Paz

Author:Abel Paz [Abel Paz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anarchists, Spain, Biography, Soldiers, Spain -- Biography. Spain -- History -- Civil War, 1936-1939. Durruti, Buenaventura, 1896-1936 Spain, Ejército, Biography Anarchists
ISBN: 9781904859505
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 2006-07-22T22:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER XXV

Toward the “Popular Front”

The time that Durruti spent going in and out of jail did not undermine his optimism or change the direction of his thought, but such prolonged “isolations” were hard on the CNT and FAI. The organizations suffered while some of its most valuable militants wasted away in prison.

Durruti would start devouring magazines and newspapers as soon as he left prison, until a new incarceration again disrupted his access to information and ability to following the thread of events. It was only his intuitive capacity to grasp issues and developments that saved him. His last conversation with Ascaso before his arrest revolved around what looked like the Socialist Party’s new strategy of forming alliances and coalitions, in which the Communist Party would also play a role thanks to Largo Caballero’s Bolshevik “measles.” They agreed that the CNT would face problems if the Popular Front tactic being tested in France was introduced into Spain, because supporters of the electoral coalition would try to asphyxiate the CNT by any means possible. They had to respond to that threat immediately so that the working class wouldn’t be deceived like it had been on April 14, 1931. Durruti, who had plenty of intuition but an excess of prison time, began serving his new sentence shortly after their discussion.

Around this time, the Communist Party held a rally in Madrid’s Cine Monumental. José Díaz gave a long speech in which he proposed the formation of a Popular Anti-fascist Concentration. 200 It would have a four-point program: a) Confiscate the land held by large landowners . . . without compensation and its immediately delivery to poor peasants and agricultural workers.

b) Liberate peoples oppressed by Spanish imperialism. Grant the right to self- government to Catalans, Basques, Galicians, and other national groups oppressed by Spain.

c) Improve the working class’s living and working conditions.

d) Amnesty for the prisoners.201

The program was very short. Except for the point about the land, which was included for propagandistic reasons, it was an exact replica of the program that Manuel Azaña would set out in Mestalla (Valencia) and Comillas (Madrid), where he called upon Republican parties to form a coalition before the next elections. There was a section on Spanish imperialism in Díaz’s program indicating that the Spanish regions noted should have the right to self-determination, but there is no mention of Spain’s imperialist venture in Morocco. Why this oversight? The military forces operating in Asturias came from Morocco, because the government didn’t trust soldiers from the Peninsula. The Communist Party proposed an anti-fascist front and yet accepted Spain’s continued domination of the Moroccan people, on whose very soil the fascist threat denounced in José Díaz’s speech was brewing. A typical contradiction for the Moscow-led “communists.”

José Díaz’s speech had no political effect, but its general outlines reflected the direction that the PCE would follow within a few months. It is important to note that Moscow still hadn’t taken Spain into consideration in the new strategic orientation that it had been developing over the previous year.



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