The anarchist metalworker who broke the rising in Barcelona and led the column that carried his name
Reported from an interview with the Canadian journalist Pierre van Paassen in Barcelona in 1936: “We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. The bourgeoisie may blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world, here, in our hearts.” The words are famous, though the exact wording of the interview is disputed.
A metalworker born into a railwayman''s family in León. Sacked after the general strike of 1917, he fled to France and became an anarchist, and through Los Solidarios and Los Errantes he passed from bank expropriations and an attempt on the king''s life to prisons across Europe and Latin America. In July 1936 he led the workers who stormed the Atarazanas barracks and broke the military rising in Catalonia, losing his old comrade Francisco Ascaso in the fight. He then raised the six-thousand-strong Durruti Column, took it to the Aragon front and pressed the collectivization of land and factories in the liberated zone. In November he joined the defence of Madrid, was shot at the Casa de Campo front on the 19th and died the next day; whether the bullet came from the enemy, from his own side or from his own malfunctioning weapon is still argued. Hundreds of thousands followed his coffin through Barcelona.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1896Born in León, second of eight children of a railway worker
- 1913–1917Joined the metalworkers' union; sacked by the Northern Railway for the 1917 general strike and fled to France
- 1918–1919Became an anarchist in exile and joined the CNT on his return
- 1920–1922Formed Los Justicieros; the plot against Alfonso XIII was uncovered and he fled to Zaragoza
- 1922–1923Organized Los Solidarios with Ascaso and García Oliver; expropriated the Bank of Spain in Gijón
- 1924–1926Expropriation raids through Cuba, Mexico, Chile and Argentina; arrested in Paris and held in La Santé
- 1927–1931Released, lived in Belgium and worked with the FAI; returned to Barcelona when the Second Republic was proclaimed
- 1931–1936Founded the affinity group Nosotros; repeated arrests and deportations made him the face of the CNT left
- 1936.07.19–20Led the workers who took the Atarazanas barracks in Barcelona; his comrade Francisco Ascaso was killed
- 1936.07–11Raised the Durruti Column for the Aragon front and pressed collectivization in the liberated zone
- 1936.11.14Brought part of his column to the defence of Madrid
- 1936.11.19–20Shot at the Casa de Campo front and died the next day; the source of the bullet is still disputed
- 1936.11.22Buried in Barcelona, hundreds of thousands following the coffin
Related historical events
Underground years in France and Belgium
The underground phase opens in Paris in 1927. Tried in October 1926 with Ascaso and Jover on charges of using a false passport, illegal possession of a weapon and rebellion, he was convicted; when the French government moved to grant Argentina's extradition request, the three began a hunger strike against the threat of extradition on 13 February 1927. After Louis Lecoin secured a majority in the Chamber of Deputies and threatened to bring down Raymond Poincaré's government, they were released on 8 July, and Durruti told a journalist that they would continue the struggle with even greater intensity than before. The French authorities promptly ordered his expulsion, and while he looked for a country that would grant him an exit visa he met the French anarchist Émilienne Morin at an anarchist bookshop in Ménilmontant and the Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno, with whom he discussed the prospects of revolution in Spain.
In July 1927 the French police smuggled him and Ascaso into Belgium, only to have Belgian police force them back a month later; facing deportation to Spain, they took refuge with the pacifist Émile Bouchet at Joigny. Moving on with false documents, they settled in Lyon, where they learned of the formation of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI). Imprisoned in France from April to October 1928, they were unable to secure visas afterwards: they refused a Soviet visa when the embassy required them to pledge loyalty to the socialist state. They instead went to Berlin for a conference of the International Workers' Association and were expelled after objections from the Catholic Centre Party, despite interventions by Social Democrats. Reaching Belgium in early 1929, they remained in Brussels, where Durruti worked as a metalworker and, with Marcel Dieu, founded the newspaper La Voz de Libertaria and propagandised for the FAI.
When Primo de Rivera's dictatorship collapsed in January 1930 and anarchist exiles began to return, he held back because the repressive apparatus remained in place. After the Second Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931, he was among the first anarchist exiles to return to Barcelona; because he rejected electoral politics and argued for social revolution, fellow CNT members denounced him as an "anarcho-Bolshevik" and Marxists as an "infantile revolutionary".