{"id":464,"date":"2026-11-01T11:39:16","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T11:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/?p=464"},"modified":"2026-11-01T11:39:16","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T11:39:16","slug":"buenaventura-durruti-1896-1936","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/buenaventura-durruti-1896-1936\/","title":{"rendered":"Buenaventura Durruti (1896-1936)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An article to mark the death of Durruti in November 1936 at the Madrid front. Written for Freedom<\/em>, this is the long version – Freedom <\/em>will publish the short version later this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Buenaventura Durruti (1896-1936)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Anarchism, in spite of claims otherwise, has always stressed the importance of the masses in social struggle and change. This does not mean it ignores the individual and their need for self-expression and self-development, simply that social transformation \u2013 the foundation for individual freedom \u2013 can only be achieved by the masses. Given the weight of current institutions, attitudes and forces defending social hierarchies, this should be uncontroversial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, anarchists recognise that \u201cthe masses\u201d are marked by varying degrees of social and class consciousness \u2013 indeed, part of the need for mass struggle is precisely to develop both for we change ourselves as we change the world. This unevenness is why anarchists organise into groups and federations to influence the class struggle. In the mass struggle the role of individuals is clear \u2013 they can provide a lead, clarify ideas and push the struggle onwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As such, it is no surprise then that anarchists do have their outstanding comrades \u2013 individuals who are recognised as making a significant contribution to anarchism. Buenaventura Durruti is one of these \u2013 his role in the Spanish libertarian movement and the Revolution of 1936 was significant, indeed the stuff of legend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born into the working class on the 14th<\/sup> of July 1896 in Leon, he became a mechanic by trade and a prominent local union organiser of the socialist Uni\u00f3n General de Trabajadores<\/em> (UGT, General Union of Workers). Expelled from UGT after the August 1917 general strike for his militancy, he left Leon and joined the mass anarcho-syndicalist union, the Confederaci\u00f3n Nacional del Trabajo<\/em> (CNT, National Confederation of Labour), and became an anarchist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living in both Spain and France, he took an active part in the CNT and its struggles. In response to intensifying state terrorism against the labour movement, like many anarchists he met violence with violence (including robbing banks to acquire arms and finance the CNT). He helped form the Los Solidarios<\/em> group in Barcelona, taking a part in the anarchist movement and resistance to the wave of employer and state assassinations of union activists. With the establishment of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, Durruti went into exile in France as did many activists. There he and his fellow Los Solidarios<\/em> member Franciso Ascaso deepened their understand of anarchism before leaving for Latin America in December 1924, where they continued their union and anarchist activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Returning to France in 1926, they were arrested for plotting to assassinate the Spanish King. Released the same year due to public pressure, they returned to the movement and its debates and activities. While resisting attempts to expel him from France, he and Ascaso met with famed Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno. Eventually, he settled in Brussels and found employment as a metal worker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the fall of the Spanish monarchy in April 1931, Durruti and Ascaso where amongst the first anarchist exiles to return to Spain. They argued that the new Republican government would fail to make the pressing social reforms the country needed and instead provoke popular discontent while the role of anarchists was to encourage this discontent towards social revolution. Subsequent events confirmed this analysis, with the new regime repressing strikes and protests as had previous ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Los Solidarios <\/em>was reformed as the Nosotros <\/em>group. Durruti took at active part in the CNT, particularly the struggles against the more moderate members of its leadership. While rarely writing for the libertarian press, he participated in the movement\u2019s debates and was a popular public speaker. When a revolutionary general strike broke out in central Catalonia, Durruti was arrested as part of its suppression. Deported to the Carnary Islands, he returned to Barcelona in September 1932. Speaking at various anarchist rallies, he stressed that the emancipation of the working class could only be achieved by expropriating the bourgeoisie and abolishing the state. Seeking to achieve this, he took a leading role in the insurrection of January 1933. After its suppression, Durruti defended it against claims of Blanquism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe never believed that the revolution consisted of the seizure of power by a minority which would impose a dictatorship on the people… We want a revolution by and for the people. Without this no revolution is possible. It would be a Coup d\u2019Etat, nothing more. And we, from the factories, the mines and the countryside, are seeking to develop an effective social revolution. There is nothing in this of Blanquism or Trotskyism\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

With the election of a right-wing government in 1933, the libertarian movement resolved to organise another insurrection before fascism was imposed. Again, he took an active part in its organising. Again, he was arrested during its repression. Again, he took part in the movement whilst imprisoned (previously, his baby daughter played a part with messages written on her nappies during prison visits). He sided with those who rejected the top-down alliance suggested by the UGT in favour of a bottom-up one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe alliance, to be revolutionary, must be genuinely working class. It must be the result of an agreement between the workers\u2019 organisation, and those alone. No party, however, socialist it may be, can belong to a workers\u2019 alliance, which should be built from its foundations, in the enterprises where the workers struggle. Its representative bodies must be the workers\u2019 committee chosen in the shops, the factories, the mines and the villages. We must reject any agreement on a national level, between National Committees, but rather favour an alliance carried out at the base by the workers themselves. Then and only then, can the revolutionary drive come to life, develop and take root.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When released from prison in April 1934, he found himself blacklisted. This meant his partner became the family\u2019s breadwinner while Durruti stayed at home to care for the daughter. He criticised those anarchists who joked about this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWhen will you stop thinking like the bourgeoisie, that women are men\u2019s servants? It\u2019s enough that society is divided into classes. We\u2019re not going to make even more classes by creating differences between men and women in our own homes!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He was arrested during the failed October 1934 revolt organised by the UGT and then again in June 1935. Recognising that civil war was imminent, Durruti argued that the CNT had to build its strength in preparation and so anarchists had to avoid activities which could weaken or discredit it. When the military did revolt on the 17th<\/sup> of July 1936, Durruti took a leading part in organising the resistance in Barcelona amongst the various CNT unions and defence committees. A general strike was called, weapons seized and the 19th<\/sup> of July saw the army was defeated by the people armed \u2013 a feat repeated across two-thirds of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leading figures of the Catalan CNT met to discuss what to do next. Ignorant of the wider situation, fearing isolation and potential foreign intervention, the majority of the meeting decided to not speak of libertarian communism but rather of anti-fascist unity. This led to the formation of the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias based on representatives of various unions and parties. Rather than seek to create a federation of workers\u2019 organisations from below as long argued by anarchists, a top-down alliance was formed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Durruti appears not to have taken part in these discussions but seems to have supported cooperation until the anarchist stronghold of Zaragoza was freed, something he \u2013 like many \u2013 thought would be swift (in Zaragoza, unlike Barcelona and elsewhere, the CNT limited itself to a general strike in response to the military coup and did not arm its members, trusting the word of Republican politicians \u2013 unsurprisingly, the army quickly seized the city and started to systematically slaughter radicals).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later various justifications were provided for this compromise and the ignoring of anarchist theory and CNT policy, rationales which, at best, show an unlikely confusion in the ideas of leading militants such as the notion that creating a self-managed society equated to an \u201canarchist dictatorship\u201d (which, if taken at face value, made a mockery of all previous attempts at revolution made by these very same people). Regardless, this proved to be a critical mistake: ignoring the State allowed it the space and time needed for it to recover and start the counter-revolution against the gains of July 1936.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For, regardless of the wishes to the CNT leadership, the long desired social revolution swept the city and other parts of free Spain \u2013 as anarchists had long argued, workers seized the workplaces, peasants the land, popular assemblies and revolutionary committees were formed. The collectivised economy benefited all rather than the owning class while also providing weaponry to the militias (with workplaces refashioned to do so). Non-economic social relationships likewise began to transform, and anarchist women organised the Mujeres Libres<\/em> to empower women and fight the sexism that permeated Spanish society and, sadly, the anarchist movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anarchist theory, which had always argued that a social revolution could only be defended by the people armed, was also applied when the CNT organised militias to liberate those areas of Spain under military control. Other unions and parties did likewise, although unlike those the CNT militias were run by their members with elected officers and committees, all sharing the same living conditions. As Durruti argued:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI don\u2019t believe \u2013 and everything happening around us confirms this \u2013 that you can run a workers\u2019 militia according to classic military rules. I believe that discipline, co-ordination, and planning are indispensable, but we shouldn\u2019t define them in terms taken from the world that we\u2019re destroying. We have to build on new foundations. My comrades and I are convinced that solidarity is the best incentive for arousing an individual\u2019s sense of responsibility and a willingness to accept discipline as an act of self-discipline.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWar has been imposed upon us… but our goal is revolutionary victory. This means defeating the enemy, but also a radical change in men. For that change to occur, man must learn to live and conduct himself as a free man, an apprenticeship that develops his personality and sense of responsibility, his capacity to be master of his own acts. The workers on the job not only transforms the material on which he works, but also transforms himself through that work. The combatant is nothing more than a worker whose tool is a rifle \u2013 and he should strive toward the same objective as a worker. One can\u2019t behave like an obedient soldier but rather as a conscious man who understands the importance of what he\u2019s doing. I know that it\u2019s not easy to achieve this, but I also know that what can\u2019t be accomplished with reason will not be obtained by force. If we have to sustain our military apparatus by fear, then we won\u2019t have changed anything except the colour of the fear. It\u2019s only by freeing itself from fear that society can build itself in freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As the Durruti column marched towards Zaragoza, liberated villages and towns started the process of transforming society and the economy by forming collectives. These voluntary groups turned the land, machinery and other resources into common property, to be managed, worked and benefited by all rather than a few landlords or capitalists. Those outside the collectives had access to whatever land they could toil by their own efforts. For Durruti, the war and the revolution were inseparable:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur comrades on the front know for whom and for what they fight. They feel themselves revolutionaries and they fight, not in defence of more or less promised new laws, but for the conquest of the world, of the factories, the workshops, the means of transportation, their bread and the new culture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The militia columns, on the advice of their military advisors, decided to dig in before reaching Zaragoza. This proved to be a mistake, leading to stalemate. However, behind the lines the social revolution continued. What the CNT had refused to do in Catalonia in the name of anti-fascist unity, it did in Aragon and swept away the State by forming, in line with anarchist theory and CNT policy, the Aragon Defence Council. This body was formed by a congress of collectives, unions and militia columns, aiming to coordinate joint activities, equalise the conditions inherited by the collectives and supply the militia columns in a regular manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the Republican government preferring to arm the rearguard (against the revolution) than the CNT militias, Aragon Front stagnated. Yet the CNT militias were recognised as being the best fighters, as shown by part of the Durruti being sent to Madrid to help in its defence. Whilst there, he was killed at the front line on the 20th<\/sup> of November 1936. His funeral in Barcelona saw hundreds of thousands crowd the streets to commemorate the man who embodied the libertarian social revolution and the aspirations of millions for a better world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Durruti died before the full force of the Communist-led counter-revolution was imposed upon Republican Spain. That this was possible after the heady-days after the 19th<\/sup> of July was a product of many factors, not least the decision of the Catalan CNT to ignore anarchist theory in favour of a top-down, ultimately spurious, anti-fascist unity. The revolution was not complete, with some aspects of anarchism successfully applied (workers\u2019 self-management, the people armed, etc.) whilst others not (the State ignored rather than smashed, \u201cunity\u201d forged at the top rather than the bottom, etc.). With his death, a potential focus for those libertarians seeking to consistently apply anarchist theory was lost \u2013 unsurprising one such grouping called itself The Friends of Durruti<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trotskyist Felix Morrow proclaimed in his Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain<\/em> that Durruti was \u201cthe greatest military figure produced by the war\u201d while, of course, dismissing anarchism by suggesting he was\u201cno theoretician, but an activist leader of masses… his words express the revolutionary outlook of the class-conscious workers\u201d. This ignores that Durruti\u2019s words, activity and outlook did not spring out of thin air but rather were informed by and reflected his anarchist politics, history, activity and vision which in turn reflected his experiences and needs as a member of the CNT and the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suffice to say, this is but a summary of both Durruti\u2019s life and the libertarian social revolution he helped create. For more details, Abel Paz\u2019s Durruti in the Spanish Revolution<\/em> cannot be bettered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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