Friends of Durruti

An article published in July 1937 by The Friends of Durruti, large portions of which appeared in the pamphlet “The Revolutionary Message of the ‘Friends of Durruti’” (PDF) that was translated into English via French. Here it is translated in full directly from Spanish for the first time.

A vivid biographical sketch of Joaquín Pérez (1907-2006), based on a manuscript he wrote during the last few years of his life, who joined the CNT at the age of sixteen in the early 1920s, and was, successively, a specialist in the CNT’s Defense Committees in Barcelona during the 1930s, a militiaman in the Durruti Column during the first months of the Civil War, one of the original members of The Friends of Durruti, a fugitive, a prisoner in Montjuich, and then, after escaping from Montjuich as Franco’s forces closed in on the citadel, an exile, first in labor camps in France, and then, after stowing away on a British warship during the evacuation of Brest, in London.

A 2001 text summarizing the results of the research carried out by Agustín Guillamón for the Spanish journal, BALANCE, concerning the lessons of the Spanish Civil War in Catalonia, denying the existence of “dual power” in Catalonia in 1936, discussing the struggles of the CNT rank and file against militarization and in favor of socialization, emphasizing the revolutionary potential of the ubiquitous committees and their neutralization and eventual destruction due to a lack of coordination and centralization, and claiming that the proletarian revolution requires the destruction of the capitalist state and the creation of a centralized workers power based on workers councils.

Archive of posters from the Spanish Civil War and Revolution, 1936-39. Includes posters from the CNT, FAI, Mujeres Libres, Friends of Durruti, FIJL, the Iron Column, UHP (Uníos Hermanos Proletarios - Union of Proletarian Brothers) and some joint posters between the CNT and the reformist UGT.