Buenaventura Durruti

Biography

Buenaventura Durruti was the embodiment of Spanish anarchism: charismatic, violent, principled, and utterly contemptuous of the state in all its forms. He had spent decades as a labor militant, bank robber, revolutionary agitator, and exile, evading police across Europe and Latin America, before the civil war gave his movement its great historic moment. When Franco's coup came, the anarchist trade union CNT had hundreds of thousands of members in Catalonia; Durruti organized the Durruti Column, a remarkable volunteer force that operated without ranks or salutes, with soldiers choosing their own officers. The Column fought on the Aragon front throughout the summer and autumn of 1936, advancing toward Zaragoza before bogging down on a static front. In November, as Madrid came under mortal threat, Durruti brought several thousand of his fighters to the capital's defense. He was shot through the chest on November 20, 1936 — the cause has never been definitively established, with theories ranging from Nationalist sniper fire to accidental discharge of his own pistol to possible Communist assassination. Half a million people attended his funeral in Barcelona. The anarchist movement never recovered from his loss, nor from the suppression that followed.

Key Battles