1920s SOCIETY IN TURMOIL

(2nd DRAFT)

BARCELONA 1917-1923

.

Manel Aisa

Published by: Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular de Barcelona

Barcelona 1999

AEP/CDH-S

Passeig Sant Joan 26, 1er, 1°

08010 Barcelona

Tel./Fax: 93 265 05 8

INTRODUCTION

Ever since the rebuilding of the Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular de Barcelona we have been sensible throughout of the need to recover a memory that has almost always been muted, forgotten and misrepresented, and this is no easy undertaking, in that our tiny grains of sand are almost always swallowed up by the maw of a society that turns a deaf ear and blind eye to past histories that ought to echo still, at least in the memories of those who owe it to family tradition not to forget.

However, our enthusiasm for contemporary history has prompted us to reconstruct it, our intention being to share – with any willing to do so – the historical inheritance of a people that sometimes fought just to survive and sometimes on the basis of belief that a different world offering equal access to resources might be achievable.

And this should be seen as nothing more than the grateful, thankful recognition and tribute we owe to earlier generations of men and women who, keeping faith with their convictions, found the strength to say No! to the great injustices of their day.

The Barcelona of the first third of the 20th century was a city racked by a flurry of events that triggered a situation of ongoing confrontation between a tremendously buffeted labouring people with scarcely any rights but obligations aplenty and a bourgeoisie determined at any cost to protect its interests and which, turning to Church, army and whatever other weapons it found suited to the purpose (like the Somatén, Sindicato Libre, etc.), was hell bent on crushing a working class that was all but defenceless and which had no option but to organise itself as best it could, on a basis of mutual aid and solidarity.

The exhibition – L’efervescencia social dels anys 20. Barcelona 1917-1923 (Social Unrest in the 1920s. Barcelona 1917-1923) – is based on the text we offer below, a text that opens with the events of Tragic Week when the populace of Barcelona, opposed to defending the interests of the Spanish oligarchy in the war in Morocco, refused to stand idly by as its children were dispatched to their deaths in North Africa. The CNT was formed as a state-wide instrument of the workers in their refusal to embrace and determination to rectify the Madrid government’s wrong-headed approach in citing the events of Tragic Week in support of charges of separatism against Catalonia, an accusation that could not have been further from the truth. Ferrer i Guardia was unjustly executed as a scapegoat by a most atavistic, oligarchic Spain.

The Catalan bourgeoisie, which made enormous profits during the First World War and yet could not or would not countenance the workers having the opportunity to assuage their hunger – quite the opposite, in fact – surrounded itself with gangs of thugs that seized upon every development as a pretext upon which to give provocation and stain the fabric of society.

Bravo Portillo, the Lasarte File, the ley de fugas, the Baron de Koening, Arlegui and Anido, the Somatén, the Sindicato Libre, the police, the army, etc. were – all of them – mobilised to crush those who were, essentially, merely lathe-operators, printing workers, milling machine-operators, barbers, locksmiths, bricklayers or whatever. In what was, unquestionably, a repression too far for a people that was forced to defend itself as best it could, for the sake of the dignity of a juster cause.

Manel Aisa Pàmpols

EXHIBITION CREDITS

L’Efervescencia social dels anys 20. Barcelona 1917-1923

Organised by: The Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular

Documentation by: Centre de Documentació Histórico-Social

Opening: at the Centre Civic Fort Pienc, Barcelona, on 10 November 1999

Coordination and documentary support provided by: Manel Aisa

Design and staging by: Montse Jurnet

Photocopies provided by: Copy-Ros

Text by: Manel Aisa

Catalan translation by: Ramon Gabarrós

Contributors:

Assumpta Verdaguer

Juanjo Alcalde

Carles Sanz

Adolf Castaños

Andreu Aisa

Antonio Hidalgo

Victor Arellano

*****************************************************************************************************************

Revolutionary Syndicalism. The Years of The Shadow of the Gunman. Barcelona 1909-1923

Because of the unrelenting conflict into which the Spanish army was being drawn in the Moroccan Protectorate, it was not uncommon even for reservists to be summoned to the colours and July 1909 was one such occasion, after the Spanish army suffered a severe defeat usually referred to simply as Barranco del Lobo.

As it happens the drafting of recruits for the war in the Rif created great unease among the workers across Spain who looked upon the war in the Moroccan Protectorate as nothing more than a few Spanish aristocratic families clinging on to their privileges and economic interests in the protectorate – families like that of the Conde de Romanones or the Marqueses de Comillas and Castellflorite, which enjoyed the backing of the Jesuits.

The Marquesa de Comillas on the dockside in Barcelona handing out scapulars to soldiers about to take ship was not an uncommon sight. In addition to all of which workers had to endure the discrimination entailed in the 2,000 peseta charge for exemption of the sons of the bourgeoisie from military service (or, in this instance, war service). The sons of the bourgeoisie could well afford the exemption charge whereas working class families could never hope to raise that sum.

In the summer of 1909 the government deployed its army to dragoon Catalan reservists, many of whom had families to support, with the conscript often the sole bread-winner. This was the context from which there erupted what came to be known as Tragic Week, 26 July to 1 August 1909. [1]

From Madrid, however, the national government would strive to misrepresent these developments, portraying the events in Barcelona to the rest of Spain as an act of provocation and rebellion by Catalan separatists. Nothing could have been further from the true facts about the men who manned the barricades who were deserted even by radical republican politicians once the latter cottoned on to the magnitude of the conflict, whereupon they latter vacated the political stage, leaving the Catalan workers to their fate.

The confrontation and the repression of it would be harsh and very one-sided, with 104 civilian lives lost as against the lives of 4 military personnel, 4 Red Cross personnel and 3 priests, with 52 religious buildings torched and upwards of 2,000 people placed under arrest. 17 of the latter were sentenced to death, although only 5 of these sentences were carried out. 50 people were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Antonio Maura’s government needed a whipping boy, however, and was once again presented with a heaven-sent opportunity to implicate Francisco Ferrer i Guardia in the events of July 1909. Ferrer’s educational methods were unquestionably showing up the bourgeois system and the Catholic and regimented education on offer in ‘darkest Spain’ , the Spain still mourning the loss of her colonies.

In spite of everything, Ferrer i Guardia was able to show that at no time during July 1909 had he been present in Barcelona, but it was inevitable that the state would once again vent its spleen on the founder of the Modern School.

Ultimately, the motive was the fear inspired by the methods in use in secular schools and by Ferrer as their figure-head. The Modern School, with its questioning approach to (among other things) religion and such basic notions so vital to capitalism as selfishness, property, etc., plus its ongoing contact with nature and co-education of the sexes, was an irritant to a society anchored in the past and where the clergy exercised great sway.

And so it was that, after 2 August 1909, when the beaten workers returned to work, the repression continued in the shape of courts martial. The very first accused was to be the anarchist Ramón Baldera Aznar who would receive a life sentence.

On 6 August Evaristo Crespo Azorín was appointed civil governor of Barcelona, taking over from Ossorio y Gallardo.

Throughout August and September, drumhead court martials followed one upon another.

On 31 August Francisco Ferrer was arrested on his return from France. A drumhead court martial of Ferrer opened on 9 October in Barcelona’s Modelo Prison.

Within 4 days, by 13 October Ferrer had by been sentenced despite huge demonstrations in Europe and the Americas urging that he be freed. These were ignored and Francisco Ferrer i Guardia was executed in a ditch in the Montjuich fortress by the forces of the state.

A further four people – Ramón Clemente, Antonio Malet, Josep Miquel Baró and Eugenio del Hoyo – would suffer the same fate. Many others were banished or imprisoned.

On 18 October 1909, by which point Ferrer and the others who had been executed were beyond help, the Spanish Cortes held a political debate on the Ferrer case. Two days later, on 21 October 1909 this would prompt Alfonso XIII to accept the resignation of the Maura cabinet; Segismundo Moret was asked to form a new, liberal government.

In the meantime, many Modern School associates were banished to Aragon (to Huesca) where the female libertarians Teresa Claramunt, Antonia Trigo and Teresa Nogués pressed on with their struggle, denouncing the war and organising rallies and demonstrations against the Spanish army’s Moroccan campaign, for which reason they were to be arrested and put on trial in Zaragoza before being sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. [2]

Constitutional guarantees were not restored in Barcelona and Gerona until 7 November 1909: they had been suspended since day one of the revolt back in July 1909.

On 3 February 1910 the secular schools in Barcelona resumed normal operations, except for Ferrer’s Modern School which had been closed since 1906 and Mateo Morral’s attempt to assassinate Alfonso XIII on the king’s wedding day.

Six days later, on 9 February 1910, Segismundo Moret’s government fell and José Canalejas was called upon to form a new national government in Madrid.

At the opening of congress on 15 June 1910, Canalejas announced the introduction of the draft Ley de Candado (Padlock Law) which was not debated in the Cortes until some months later. This particular bill was an attempt to set down a fresh regulation governing clerical associations, the object being to take the ground out from under the radical parties, although the Church and the oligarchy who saw the bill as government intrusion into church affairs were not of the same mind.

On 22 June 1910, in retaliation, the 18 year old Manuel Possa attempted the life of Antonio Maura as the latter arrived in Barcelona en route to a holiday in Majorca. The assassination bid came at the Gracia railway halt, leaving Antonio Maura slightly injured in one leg and Manuel Possa was arrested.

Harking back to Tragic Week and following the misrepresentation to which Catalan labour had been subject in July 1909, the Solidaridad Obrera (Workers’ Solidarity) association, a provincial body set up in 1904, with a membership drawn from among republicans, socialists and anarchists, summoned a congress for 30 and 31 October and 1 November 1910, inviting a range of delegations and organisations from around Catalonia and Spain, the purpose being to launch a nationwide trade union organisation capable of close liaison for the plain purpose of grappling with established society in every corner of Spain. And so the CNT came into existence in November 1910, with Josep Negre (proposed by the republican Lostau)as its first ever general secretary. It would take the form of a Con-federation of trade unions.

Nearly a year later, on 8-10 September 1911, the CNT held its first congress in Barcelona. But the CNT was promptly driven underground for the first time on 16 September 1911. It was scheduled to hold a rally in the La Marina theatre – where, it was anticipated, it would throw its weight behind the general strike then under way in Bilbao – but the rally was banned, as was the organising agency, the CNT, by order of governor Portela Valladares. Leading militants of the CNT were rounded up and others were forced into exile in France. [3]

It was agreed at the first CNT congress that the national committee should relocate to Zaragoza but the new circumstances of clandestinity made implementation of that resolution unfeasible, so, once again it was the Barcelona anarchists who took charge of the overhaul of the Confederation. Francisco Jordán and Francisco Miranda took it upon themselves to reassume the responsibilities of secretaries to the underground CNT national committee.

29 December 1911 saw the return of assets impounded from the Modern School; Lorenzo Portet took charge of these and others were able to return from exile. One such was Anselmo Lorenzo who was to launch phase two of Modern School Publishing. [4]

By 1912 the subject of «free love» had been dealt with at some length in a number of libertarian reviews. Civil society, however, had been unable to take such an advance in free, mutual relationships on board and it was against this backdrop that the anarchist Rosario Dulcet caused widespread scandal by entering into a free union with her sweetheart.

On 12 November 1912, José Canalejas was assassinated by the libertarian Manuel Pardiñas. Two days later the Conde de Romanones formed a new government.

In early 1913 (23 January to be exact) legislation drafted by the Conde de Romanones allowed a small trickle of CNT prisoners to walk free from the prisons and to return to some measure of normal trade union activity. The new legislation triggered debate within the CNT as to whether the organisation should stay underground or embrace legality, which is why Catalonia was to hold a regional plenum on 23-25 January at the Centro Obrero in Barcelona, at which discussions were to result in the decision to resume operations within the law.[5]

April 1913 saw an attempt on the life of Alfonso XIII in Madrid; the anarchist Sancho Alegre was arrested on the spot, and condemned to death by a court martial, although sentence was commuted a short time later.

The First World War which erupted in August 1914 sparked debate in Spain between supporters of the Allies and supporters of the Germans, whilst within the libertarian movement across Europe as well as in Spain, the argument was chiefly between supporters of the Allies and (anti-war) peace-lovers of unmistakable pacifist and anti-violence leanings, the latter being a revulsion against the irrationality of all warfare. In neighbouring France the driving force behind the pacifists was the anarchist Louis Lecoin.

At the time, the anarchist Rosario Dolcet, living in exile in Paris as a result of a textile strike in Sabadell in 1913 mounted an anti-militarist campaign, as a result of which she was forced into hiding and then fled the capital with the gendarmerie hot on her heels.

The new circumstances within Spain, however, favoured the Spanish oligarchy and, largely, the Catalan bourgeoisie. Easy profits peaked thanks to Europe’s misfortunes as industries such as textiles and metalworking secured huge order-books and resultant profits, but at no point did this surge in work and capital bring benefit to the workers who were still earning wages that barely covered their most basic needs. And so the numbers of the ‘breadless’ swelled with every passing day.

In short, in a supposedly wealthier Spain the average or lower class Spaniard was growing more impoverished by the day.

As the war progressed, the Catalan workers were still seeing little economic benefit, although they were brazenly exploited and humiliated. Meanwhile they looked on as the Catalan bourgeoisie paraded its pomposity, conspicuous consumption and startling luxury, carousing and partying the night away in venues such as La Rabassada, American Lake in Gavà, the Lyon D’Or, the Edén, the Maison Dorée, etc.

Ángel Pestaña has left us a very fine description of the position during those years when he tells us: «Money flowed like water and alongside that inexhaustible flood, the insatiable craving to have some grew too. The indulgence of vanities and cravings was gradually pushing things in that direction and since there was no great effort required to make the few pesetas needed to indulge such vices and cravings, many people enlisted in the service of one or other of the warring camps.»[6]

Added to all this, for the duration of the world war, Barcelona became a haven for broad swathes of European society, folk ranging from labour activists and pacifists and deserters to men and women from Europe’s cultural and artistic movements, people such as Francis Picabia. But above all, complementing this motley crew there was the underworld of industrial and political espionnage, the ultimate exponent of which was the Baron de Koenning. Hardly surprising that Barcelona turned into the world capital of spying. Indeed the Catalan bourgeoisie accused the CNT of being in the hire of the German government which was trying at all costs to stir up trouble in the Catalan factories, the vast bulk of which were working for the Allies.

Meanwhile the ‘grand old man’ of Spanish anarchism, Anselmo Lorenzo, passed away (at No 32, 2° 2° of Barcelona’s Calle Casanovas) on 30 October 1914. This was a heart-rending event of some significance for the Catalan labour movement, since the disappearance of its ‘grand old man’ also robbed it of an apostle of tolerance, the noble figure who might have held all the strands of worker opinion together.

During 1914-1915, libertarian publications like Solidaridad Obrera, Tierra y Libertad, Bandera Roja, etc. began to resurface.

In 1915 Manuel Andreu was appointed secretary of the CNT national committee; he also produced the newspaper Solidaridad Obrera, virtually unaided.

In May 1916, José Borobio was to be appointed director of Solidaridad Obrera, a post he would fill for some time and resume again in 1917.

On 9 December 1916, the UGT and CNT signed a revolutionary compact in Zaragoza. Men like Salvador Seguí, supporters of trade union unity, tried to bring about an amalgamation of the two associations but to no avail.

18 December 1916 would signal the beginning of the «General subsistence strike» throughout Spain and in Barcelona most of the workers followed suit except for the tram-workers who were closely monitored by the Civil Guard. The strike committee had set up shop at No 25 in the Calle Mercaders, in the Centro Obrero. The strike lasted a day after an agreement was thrashed out between the governor and the CNT membership, entailing the release of all prisoners, including the director and editorial staff of Solidaridad Obrera who had been arrested a few days earlier for alleged incitement to strike. [7]

In 1917 Felipe Cortiella’s name was put forward for director of Solidaridad Obrera but he declined the position when the CNT refused to issue Solidaridad Obrera as a Spanish-Catalan bilingual newspaper, implicitly opening within the libertarian movement’s ranks a phony debate about linguistic «internationalism», a debate that we would argue has yet to be resolved.

On 5 March 1917, in a piece carried by Solidaridad Obrera, the CNT’s regional committee, with Salvador Seguí at its head, tendered its resignation.On 27 March 1917, as they left a rally held in the Casa del Pueblo in Barcelona, the speakers at the rally – Salvador Seguí, Ángel Pestaña and Ángel Lacort – would be detained for a number of days.

On 30 March 1917 Ángel Samblancat was put on trial for insulting the Catholic religion and holding it up to ridicule.

1917 was also to prove a turbulent one for the country. Around mid-March, the king’s government was headed by García Prieto, with General Aguilar holding the Defence portfolio. Meanwhile, within the ranks of the army there was a faction that included the bulk of the officers and whiçh clashed directly with the Defence ministry. The leading light of that faction was Colonel Benito Márquez, attached to the Barcelona garrison; on 25 May 1917 he was arrested along with some of his men and they were jailed in the Montjuich fortress. Five days later, on 1 June, a declaration from the «Defence Juntas» burst like a bombshell upon political circles, pressing as it did for the release of Márquez and his comrades and affirming the highest moral and patriotic standards vis à vis the country and declaring respect for the incumbent monarchy, but querying the waywardness of the government then headed by García Prieto.

The government had no option but to cave in to the pressure and free the detainees and it resigned en masse, its place being taken by a new cabinet headed by Eduardo Dato.

From Catalonia, Francesc Cambó’s Lliga party was to greet the «Defence Juntas» sympathetically even though, just a few years earlier, those very same officers had raided the editorial offices of the newspaper Cu-Cut and La Veu de Catalunya. However, as might have been expected, the republicans, socialists and anarchists of Barcelona were to prove a lot more wary in their response to anything emanating from the army.

On 9 July the president of the CNT’s chimneysweeps {fumistas?} and allied trades union, Josep Climent, died of a bullet wound to the abdomen, having been shot in the Calle La Luna very near to the union hall.

In a tense Spain, the Conde de Romanones asked the king to dissolve Congress and this made deputies (especially those from the left or nationalist factions) uneasy, so a meeting was convened in Barcelona that came to be known as the Assembly of Parliamentarians. After several attempts it managed to go ahead on 19 July at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Barcelona. The Assembly was dealt with by Eduardo Dato’s government as if it were lawful but it was to be banned by Barcelona’s civil governor, Matos, in the course of an audience that he had with the speaker of the assembly, Raimundo de Abadal.

A general strike erupted throughout Spain on 13 August 1917. In Madrid the strike committee was made up of Francisco Largo Caballero, Daniel Anguiano, Julián Besteiros and Ángel Saborit. In next to no time they had been rounded up. They were all members of the Socialist Party and of the UGT. [8]

In Barcelona CNT barricades were thrown up, especially throughout the Raval quarter, or so we are told by Adolfo Bueso. For instance there were barricades to be found at the intersections of the Calles Cadena and Hospital, Cadena and San Pablo, the Calle Hospital and the Pasaje San Bernardino, etc. The toll of those five days of strike in Barcelona would come to 17 lives lost, plus countless arrests.

That strike triggered a lot of sackings, especially of trade unionists who had been prominent in it. Thus we have the strange case of the CNT’s Elías García who had been dismissed by the MZA railways for which he was working, but still showed up on pay-day every month at the company works to claim – successfully! – his wages at gunpoint. As a result, come the third or fourth month, the company watchman and two police officers went for Elías and in the scuffle both officers died as did the watchman, whereupon Elías García had to flee to France.

Towards the end of 1917, the rationalist schools received an initial boost when Juan Roig Rodó took over the «La Luz» rationalist school in the Calle Alcolea in the Sans district. A year later, thanks to the efforts of the CNT’s textile union, Puig Elías would follow suit by opening the «Natura» rationalist school in the El Clot quarter.

As 1918 opened, at 7.30 p.m. on 8 January, the Catalan businessman Josep Albert Barret was murdered. A number of CNT personnel were arrested as a result, whereas in fact the murder had been cooked up in the lairs of German spies, with the connivance of Bravo Portillo, for it seems that Señor Barret’ s factory was churning out artillery shells for the French army. For the purposes of the murder, Bravo Portillo resorted to blackmail against Eduard Ferrer, the then president of the CNT’s metalworkers’ union. Ferrer was pressured into recruiting the actual gunman. And from that point on became a regular collaborator of Portillo’s. [9]

There followed an immediate crackdown on CNT circles, from which point on anarchists banded together into affinity groups, with no more than 5 or 6 people per group; these operated completely outside of the trade union and with great discretion, but looking to the union from time to time for its support.

Thus ex-comisario Manuel Bravo Portillo became the number one enemy of the affinity groups and of the CNT. A document soon came into Ángel Pestaña’s hands: written in Bravo Portillo’s own handwriting, it was addressed to Baron Von Rolland, briefing him on Spanish ships laden with cargo bound for the Allies, the obvious objective intention being for the German fleet to be able to intercept and torpedo them.

Later in 1918 Madrid was the scene for the National Anarchist Conference that was to plants the seeds for what would become the FAI. And in Barcelona, the Sans regional congress met on 28, 29 and 30 June and 1 July at the Ateneo Racionalista at No 12, Calle Vallespir in Sans. Out of the latter came the proposal for a One Big Industrial Union that would embrace all the trades in a given sector. [Hence the reference to the CNT’s sindicatos únicos.}

The concluding rally of this congress of the Catalan regional confederation of the CNT was addressed from the balcony of the CADCI building in the heart of Barcelona’s Ramblas and the speakers included Salvador Seguí, J. Mestre, Ángel Pestaña, Joan Peiró, Domingo Rueda, Enric Rueda López and Pablo Ullod.

A few days later, on 5 July to be precise, after the CNT’s Barcelona local federation gathered once more, Salvador Seguí was to be elected as the new secretary of the regional committee of the CNT in Catalonia.

One of the first rallies held to explain the resolutions passed at the Sans congress was organised by the Printing Trades Union in the Asiatic at No 33 Calle Rosal in the Pueblo Seco district.

To publicise the resolutions passed by the regional congress, a number of propaganda tours were mounted right across Spain towards the end of that year. [10]

In August 1918 there was a strike at the CROS factory based in Badalona. On 26 August, when the workers demonstrated to press for the release of three jailed trade unionists, the response was a police charge that cost the lives of CNT members Pius Bel, Josep Gatell aka ‘Jodepet’, Emilio Segarra and Francesc Terrades. Emilio Belmonte, Josep Poblet and Salvador Ruiz Pérez were arrested and charged with inciting violence against strike-breakers. .

By early 1919 Barcelona was awash with ongoing strikes, affecting either entire industries or confined to small workshops. Thus industries such as metalworking, printing trades and the carpentry were restless. In January, the carpenters signed an agreement with the bosses who agreed to raise their ages by a peseta. They also – finally – secured the 8 hour day for workers and an eight and a half hour working day for apprentices. Another of the gains was guaranteed pay in the event of sickness. However the companies placed difficulties in the way of implementation of these agreements .

On 2 January, with the printworkers’ strike at its height, Julián Sailan Zuzaya was murdered outside the Heinrich & Co. works. His CNT colleague were to open a fund for his widow and children.

On 4 January the CNT opened up a new premises at No 10, principal in the Calle del Olmo [11] where the Construction workers’ union set up shop.

On 13 January, the CNT held a show of strength at the Teatro del Bosque, at which Paulino Díez (secretary of the local CNT federation), Fernando Castany (metalworkers’ union), Calixto Garcia (manufacturing union), Ángel Pestaña (director of Solidaridad Obrera) and Salvador Seguí spoke. Both Pestaña and Seguí made a point in their speeches of rebutting Francesc Cambó’s remarks in Madrid concerning the situation in Barcelona. Seguí wound up the rally with a cry of Death to Cambó! Long live the [Paris] Commune!

Also early in January 1919, at the height of he Mancomunitat’s campaign for home rule for Catalonia, there were a number of incidents on the Ramblas and in the city centre between Catalanists and españolista gangs, prompting both the governor and the Captain-General Joaquín Milans del Bosch to lobby the premier, the Conde de Romanones, to suspend constitutional guarantees in Barcelona. Which he did, on 16 January 1919.

However, the crackdown was targeting mainly CNT workers rather than the Catalanist of españolista bourgeoisie and middle class who, in the end, had triggered the brawls.

And so 16 January saw all CNT premises shut down, with every trade unionist found on the premises arrested and with raids being mounted on the homes of the leading lights who were taken to the Plaza Antonio López where police headquarters was located at the time; they were then taken to the Modelo prison or to the ships ‘Pelayo’ or ‘Giralda’ which seved as floating prisons in Barcelona port. And the civil governor imposed censorship of all newspapers so that no one could speak out on behalf of the arrested men.

The CNT went undeground again albeit that this time its structures were practically intact, with Solidaridad Obrera resurfacing after a few days thanks to the efforts made by Daniel Rebull (aka David Rey) in Vilafranca del Penedés, with a print-run of 100,000 copies and distribution guaranteed.

16 January also witnessed the start of what would later come to be called the «La Canadiense strike», so-called because the majority share-holder was the Canadian Bank of Commerce of Toronto. The strike more or less came about when the board of directors in Canada demanded increased profits and cost-cutting, but wages were already very low. The dispute erupted when the plant’ staff started to organise an Independent Union that the La Canadiense’s managing director, Fraser Lawton never agreed to, so he adopted the ploy of taking eight casual employees on to the permanent pay-roll, thereby cutting the wages bill. The workers objected, arguing for equal pay for equal work. As it happened, those eight casuals had set up the Independent Union inside the company. They were promptly sacked by Lawton; five of those victimised worked in the billing section and on 5 February, in an act of solidarity, their workmates went on strike. Kicking over the traces, they refused to do any more work until such time as their sacked colleagues were rehired and did so at a rally in the Plaza Catalunya. The 117 employees from the billing section made for the Interior Ministry to speak with governor González Rothwas who undertook to put their case to the company, if they would go back to work. But once they got back to the Plaza Catalunya they found their way blocked by the police who denied them entry to the building. A number of incidents ensued and every last one of them was dismissed. The following day, the press barely reported the matter other than in a small item in the Diario de Barcelona. But the news spread through Barcelona like wildfire.

After 4 or 5 days the La Canadiense strikers turned to the CNT and it agreed to take charge of the handling of the dispute. A Strike Committee was set up, made up of a number of those dismissed and some CNT members, of whom the main one was the young Simó Piera.

The strike quickly spread to the white collar staff who read the power-meters. The refused to set foot on the premises or in offices or homes to read the meters. All except one employee by the name of Joaquín Baró.

The company resorted to hiring strike-breakers, but the latter were often intimidated and failed to show up for work again, so the company was forced to switch tactics and started bribing a number of staff into caving in and returning to work.

Meanwhile the affinity groups were convinced that this strike might well prove the trigger to revolution, so one affinity group made up its mind to settle the hash of Joaquín Baró. Meanwhile, quite coincidentally, another group was planning an attack on Lluis Más, a textile overseer who had years earlier been a member of a gang off provocateurs. Naturally, the CNT personnel had not forgotten.

On 24 January, as part of the Mancomunidad’s campaign – and with prior permission from the government – the latter held its Assembly for Catalan Home Rule; on that date, young nationalists demonstrated on the Ramblas, displaying Catalanist emblems and insignia. The Civil Guard to to come down heavily on the demonstrators. And gangs from the Liga Patriótica [Patriotic League] brawled with them in the vicinity of the Rambla, the Calle Pelayo, the Calle Tallers, the Calle Canuda, etc.

The next day, 25 January, there was a meeting in the Captaincy-General building between Captain-General Milans del Bosch, military governor Antonio de la Fuente and General Staff member General Manuel Toriné; they decide to put troops on the streets again.

28 January saw the issuing of a proclamation on the authority of governor González Rothwas and banning flags and emblems other than the official insignia of the Spanish state.

That very day Juan Canals Galle and Daniel Torrens Solà were arrested in the backroom of a dye-works in the Calle Conde del Asalto, accused of making Catalanist emblems.

Meanwhile, the La Canadiense dispute festered on, so the power company’s treasurer, a Señor Coulson, reported the strikers to the courts, arguing that the strikers had kept money to which they had no entitlement by refusing to hand in customer payments. This when the workers had already informed the company that the receipts would be handed in just as soon as normal work resumed. On 13 February attacks were mounted on textile overseer Lluis Más, felled in the Calle Juan de Malta in the El Clot quarter, and, as night fell, on the La Canadiense collector in the Calle Calabria.

The directors of La Canadiense exploited their chance to tighten the screw on the workers and they posted a 10,000 peseta reward for the capture of the killers and 5,000 pesetas for information leading to their capture.

In spite of everything, the La Canadiense strike had turned into a people’s strike with the entire populace of Barcelona involved. In a single week, the strike fund raised some 50,000 pesetas, an astronomical sum at that time.

In view of the strike’s popularity, the managing director of La Canadiense, Lawton, agreed to sit down and negotiate and this was arranged for 17 February 1919 on the La Canadiense premises. The meeting was attended by five delegates and Lawton, on discovering that one of them was from the CNT, refused to talk and walked out of the room before substantive discussions could start. The situation was the same with other disputes triggered by the La Canadiense dispute, for the employers exploited the situation to persist with their plans to strangle the CNT.

From that point on, the La Canadiense strikers began to turn off the power supply, which hitherto they had not done.

On 18 February, the civil governor and police inspector José Martorell were to give a press conference to announce that upwards of 70 trade unionists had been arrested since the suspension of constitutional guarantees.

At 4.00 p.m. on 21 February, the city was at a virtual stand-still, when the La Canadiense workers cut off the electricity, although another German-owned company, Energía Eléctrica de Cataluña managed to carry on supplying power to its customers. The walk-out by workers from La Canadiense’s sub-stations on the Paralelo and the ensuing black-out caused panic in society, especially among the Catalan bourgeoisie which curried home to hide, barricading themselves inside. That night the forces of public order patrolled by torchlight but for all that nothing of any significance happened during the hours of the black-out, except that building contractor Joan Vila was attacked in front of his home, emerging unscathed.

By the following morning, the strike was all but general. Lawton, the managing director of La Canadiense, had a letter published in the city’s newspapers in which he dared to claim that he had had any explicit demands from the workers.

Barcelona mayor Manuel Morales Pareja set up a small team in his office in an attempt to get the power back on in the Paralelo, whilst the commander of the Guardia Urbana and several of his men toured the main streets of the city trying to persuade businessmen not to shut up shop and promising them lighting for their establishments. The mayor also approached Madrid to get the nation’s government to take a hand in the dispute and at the eleventh hour he made for the Captaincy-General building where he met with Milans del Bosch.

From mid-afternoon on the meeting in the Captaincy building included not just Milans del Bosch but also representatives from the Lliga Regionalista (Cambó, Puig i Cadafalch), business figures from the Fomento and military advisors. Out of it came the suggestion that La Canadiense be taken over, but that required the Conde de Romanones to apply to the British Embassy or leave to do just that, which he did, from Madrid.

The next day Colonel Madrid took over the headquarters of the company in the Paralelo, deploying the 4th Sappers and a number of sailors from ships anchored in the port.

By 11.00 p.m., they had managed to reconnect a tiny part of the city and thanks to this a number of newspapers were able to publish editions, but not until the following morning was there anything resembling a normal power supply, although there was restricted voltage supply for a time.

Once the power was restored the trams reappeared on the streets and the the Calle Pelayo there was an altercation in which one tram was pelted with stones and sniped at, injuring the driver ho died a few days later.

The next day, Barcelona’s new military governor, Severiano Martínez Anido arrived in the city.

On 23 February the workforce of the other power company, Energía Eléctrica de Cataluña joined the strike, following while both power companies shut down completely.

On 26 February the workers from the water and gas companies (one of which, the Lebon company, was French-owned) also joined the dispute. At that point the bourgeois press was attacking the strikers, so the CNT’s Printing Tades Union, at the instigation of militant Salvador Caracena, at the end of a protracted rally and debate, introduced «red censorship», vetoing articles critical of the strikers. Acrata Vidal, a linotype operator on the newspaper La Publicidad was elected delegate in charge of the red censorship of that newspaper and he brought pressure to bear on the editor-in-chief, informing him that a series of articles were not to be seen in print, and they weren’t.

On 28 February some 30 army electricians were drafted in from Zaragoza to back up the troops already in place in the power stations.

On 1 March, after passing the censor, a statement from the Strike Committee was published, criticising the bourgeois press for misrepresenting the facts and offering an alternative version of developments to date; the communiqué also noted that a letter had already been forwarded to the civil governor and the strikers’ demands were fleshed out as follows:

Sealed union premises were to be reopened.

Those arrested since the suspension of constitutional guarantees were to be set free.

On 3 March the workers from the Sant Adrià de Besos power station joined the strike.

On 5 March Milans del Bosch issued an order drafting all men in the power industry aged between 21 and 38, but the edict, due to appear in all of the newspapers, appeared only in the Diario de Barcelona and in one or two other flyers, upon the publishers of which the CNT imposed a fine and which they paid.

After lengthy talks at the union, the CNT personnel affected by the call-up order strategically reported for induction on 7 March, only to refuse to follow orders laid down by the general, whereupon long files of prisoners were marched to the Montjuich fortress where upwards of three thousand prisoners were held.

On 13 March, troops occupied strategic positions in Barcelona whilst the Conde de Roanones’s appointees arrived to mediate in the dispute; these were José Morote (under-secretary to the prime minister), police officer Gerado Doval and Carlos Montañés (engineer), the incoming civil governor of the city who was well acquainted with La Canadiense, having had a hand in its launch.

On 14 March, Lawton and Montañés met and Montañés finally managed to talk the Briton into agreeing to negotiations with the Strike Committee which was underground at the time. Then, through the good offices of deputy and lawyer José Guerra del Río, the committee was run to ground and he finalised the details leading to a meeting. The chosen meeting place was the Social Reform Institute’s premises beside the Borne, at 3.00 p.m. on 15 March. But the Strike Committee arrived two hours late, which annoyed the employer side, although they eventually sat down to talks and the meeting dragged on for three long days.

From Madrid, Romanones urged Barcelona’s civil governor to clear up the dispute within 24 hours; Largo Caballero had threatened that, otherwise, a nationwide general strike would be called, unless the Barcelona dispute was resolved.

Within an hour, managing director Lawton (under some pressure himself) acceded to all of the La Canadiense strikers’ conditions, with no reprisals. An agreement was signed that very night. The dispute had lasted for 45 days.

Shortly after that, on 18 March, the committee met with the workers in the Teatro del Bosque where Simó Piera read out the agreement reached with the bosses; it was endorsed by acclamation. The following day there was a repeat of the meeting, this time in Las Arenas bullring, at which Simó Piera, Francisco Miranda and Salvador Seguí (freed from prison for the specific purpose of attending) spoke.

The CNT’s success in the La Canadiense strike meant that both sides were now girding their loins for further clashes.

But on 22 March there were five people still behind bars because of the La Canadiense strike, so militants from the anarchist affinity groups began to lobby the unions for their release, reminding Seguí of what he had said at the Las Arenas rally, urging him to honour his promise and call a further general strike, something Salvador Seguí was not keen to do; his view was that calling a fresh general strike would mean further sacrifices for the workers who, being weaker this time, might lose the cachet of success.

However the most radical groups managed to form a new Strike Committee and on the night of 23 March it decided to mount a strike.

Barcelona awake at dawn on 24 March to find itself under occupation by the army and by the recently formed Barcelona Somatén which citizens of Barcelona would refer to as the «White Guard». They set about frisking passers-by and a CNT membership card if found, was promptly torn to shreds.

These White Guards wore a red armband but within days this had turned to yellow and later to blue as they viciously harassed those riding bicycles, the belief being that CNT trade unionists favoured that form of transport in moving from barrio to barrio.

Meanwhile, Seguí and governor Montañés were trying to talk the military, led by Milans del Bosch, into freeing Manuel Buenacasa (the CNT’s general secretary)and another four comrades still being held in the Montjuich fortress.

On 27 March, the workers tried to return to work, that is, call off the failed strike, but at that point the civil governor Montañés, in cahoots with the employers, refused to mediate in the dispute, expecting the CNT workers to be defeated. At that point the army disappeared from the streets, leaving the Somatén in unchallenged control. Constitutional rights were suspended and again CNT personnel found themselves harassed and jailed in the Modelo prison.

By 28 March some food traders were reaping big profits from the strike in that the cost of basic items such as potatoes, sugar, etc., had soared by up to 200% in some parts of Barcelona.

Meanwhile, in Barcelona city centre, the banks, cafes and some businesses were reopening.

Moreover, the Somatén capitalised upon its impunity in order to hold a field Mass smack dab in the Plaza de Cataluña, wit rifles and revolvers at the ready throughout.

On 31 March 1919 the ley de fugas was employed for the very first time against the CNT’s Miguel Burgos, secretary of the CNT Tanners’ Union.

The last week of March 1919 saw the establishment of the Spanish Employers’ Federation (FPE) by a number of builders like Francesc Junoy, Feliu Graupera, Joan Miró i Trepat, Jaume Agustí, Tomàs Benet, etc., the plain intention being, yet again, to form a united front against the CNT.

Their first repressive step was that any worker seeking re-employment had to hand in his CNt membership card and then agree to a new pay-rate negotiated with the employer on a case-by-case basis. This measure, intended by the employers to turn up the pressure, was deeplyn offensive to the workers’ sense of dignity. They were disinclined to put up with it so the strike dragged on, even though the Strike Committee had given each sector carte blance to negotiate a return to work. However, there was a significant faction among the employers which did not agree with the had-ball measures adopted by the FPE and so they were willing to negotiate with the workers and again they reckoned that the governor, Montañés, might act as mediator. He put them on to the Roca brothers who, whilst not CNT members, enjoyed a certain standing among the workers. But even then that segment of the employers insisted that they had no wish to enter into negotiations with the CNT. So they sent for Ángel Pestaña who, the indication were, was in Tarragona at that point.

On 2 April, however, Inspector Roldán heard a whisper that Ángel Pestaña was hiding out at 162, Calle Conde del Asalto, with his family and so, at dawn on 3 April, inspectors Grimau and Más arrested him and took him to police headquarters where he would be interrogated by Inspector Doval.

On 6 April the Roca brothers were arrested by General Perales and taken to the Military Government building. On the advice of the civil governor, Inspector Dovalnegotiated with the army to get them to let him interrogate them and so they were moved to police HQ. On their arrival, Doval let them escape so that they could carry on negotiating a return to work with the employers.

By 7 April the strike was on its last legs, with the trams, cars and carts resuming normal services.10 April saw military commanders meeting under the chairmanship Milans del Bosch in the officers’ mess; they resolved to expel the civilian authorities from Barcelona. When Romanones got wind of the army’s position, he asked the Conde de Figols and deputy Antonio Sala to mediate, act as intermediaries and smooth out anty differences between Milans del Bosch and the civil governor who was at that point very much under the sway of one faction of the Catalan employers.

On 12 April the strike was all but finished, most of the workers having returned to work, althouh many CNT personnel had now been blacklisted and could no longer find work easily.

Although the strike had ended and Romanones’s envoys seemed to have ironed out differences of opinion between the civilian and the miitary authorities, they decided to put paid to Montañés and Doval, and so, on 14 April, Montañés had a visit from Martinez Anido and, later, from Civil Guard Colonel Aldir who suggested that he should step down and leave for Madrid. Since he ignored them, it was time for the evening train to leave when the Civilo Guard arrived in his office and escorted him to the railway station, bundling Montañés on board the express bound for Madrid. The same procedure was used to get rid of police inspectors Francisco Martorell and Ramón Carbonell. These incidents triggered a resignation by the Conde de Romanones and Antonio Maura was invited to form a new cabinet that very same day.

In spite of all the obstruction put in its way .. the Lasarte file, betrayals, harassment, arrests, tortures, etc., – remained underground, switching tactics and sparking off smaller scale disputes, but looking art all times to the strike weapon to sort out the problem of poverty wages.

Meanwhile, Bravo Portillo was raising a sort of shadow police force and thus set up an office at No 17, Calle Septembrina, run by a former Security Guard officer by the name of Fernández Terán and relying upon numerous informers, among them Luis Fernández, Jerónimo Botanero, Juan Rodríguez, Ángel Fernández, Antonio Soler, Paco El Rubio’, ‘Espejito’, Epifanio Casas and (one-time CNT members-turned-informers) Bernat Armengol and Eduard Ferrer organised into 10-man teams. Members of the gang earned 15 pesetas a day plus bonuses for their handiwork.

One of their first missions was the murder of Pedro Massoni, the secretary of the CNT Construction Union at the time, for which a bourgeois pay-master was asked for 3,000 pesetas; 23 April 1919 was the day chosen. On that day Antonio Soler aka El Mallorquín, along with Luis Fernández and Octavio Muñoz aka ‘El argentino’ turned up at Massoni’s home posing as police. He was supposed to follow them to the station whilst Epifanio Casas lay in wait en route to carry out the execution. The latter, his nerves on edge, did the job and on seeing Massoni felled did not go over to finish him off. As a result Massoni was very seriously wounded but they were able to save his life at the hospital, albeit that he was in a very bad way. Thereafter, Massoni eked out a living by acting as concierge at the CNT premises in the Calle del Olmo.

On 8 May came the response from the affinity groups when they fired shots at a foreman from the Can Girona firm; it seems, however, that the object was merely to scare him.

On 7 June the CNT’s Miguel Villalonga attacked and killed the carpentry employer Felipe Serrano in the calle Valencia where it meets the Calle Calabria. Years later it emerged that Serrano had fallen out with his partner and that the latter had encouraged Villalonga to mount the attack. However, at the time, it seemed plain that trade unionists had been behind Serrano’s death.

Bravo Portillo was still taking commissions and his next victim was to be ‘El Tero’, Pau Sabater, secretyary of the CNT Dyers’ Union. He was at home at No 274 bajos in the Calle Dos de Mayo in the early morning of 17 July when Portillo’s goons arrived, posing as police. ‘El Tero’was taken away in cars that made for the Camp de l’Arpa quarter which in those days was sparsely occupied. There, near a riera (?) they put six bullets into him. The names of two of Portillo’s gunmen, Luis Fernández and Joan Serra (a businessman’s son) are linked with this murder.

That very day Portillo’s goons were in action again in a barber shop in Sans, killing the CNT’s José Castillo; this was the work of Epifanio Casas who had two colleagues in tow.

In view of these attacks, the CNT and the affinity groups were outraged and of course they stepped up their security, but even then, coordination between them left a lot to be desired.

Then again, Seguí, fearing the worst, had fled top an apartment in the Calle Perot lo LLadre from where a number of get-togethers were organised at which Seguí strove to calm his comrades, lest they walk straight into the bosses’ trap.

A new cabinet was formed in Madrid at around this point; it was led by Joaquín Sánchez Toca and the Christian Democrat Manuel de Burgos y Mazo was minister of home affairs. Seguí thought of making contact with them and so turned to Francesc Layret to get him to act as go-between. Seguí’s intentions were to head off the obvious provocation from the employers and their hired guns.

Meanwhile, the CNT sent out delegates to a number of countries, seeking trade union alliances with other workers around Europe. Evelio Boal paid a visit to Portuugal, and Pere Foix to Russia, after first attending the International Trade Union Congress in Amsterdam.

On 20 August a new governor, Julio Amado, arrived in Barcelona.

Portillo’s hired gun, luis Fernández was to be arrested on 24 August by the Mozos de Escuadra along with judge Alberto Parera and lawyers Jesús Ulled and Guerra del Río. After a number of sessions of questioning, Fernándezacknowledged that he was a confidante of Bravo Poortillo and he also implicated police colonel Alvarez Caparrós in the murder of ‘El Tero’, his car having been used to mount that operation.

Due to the many strikes and lock-outs in Barcelona, the incoming civil governor Julio Amado tried to get negotiations going betweenworkers and employers so as to end the difficult situation in Barcelona, but at that point the CNT had 15,000 personnel on the run, in jail and its union premises had been shit down, so negotiations were problematical. So, on 21 September the ‘state of war’ conditions under which Barcelona had been living were lifted, although a request had gone out to Madrid from the (Interior ministry that same day for Civil Guard and under-cover police operatives reinforcements.

However, Luis Fernández was the only member of the Bravo Poortillo gang behind bars and Portillo carried on blithely orchestrating his henchmen, which irked the CNT and its anarchist affinity groups. For instance, the known gunman, ‘el argentino, Octavio Muñoz, was bodyguard to the Spanish Employers’ Federation chairman, Feliu Graupera.

So the Ródenas brothers’ group decided that Portillo had to be targeted. They sought out two comrades and throughout 5 September these waited for the erstwhile comisario, seeking an opportune moment to tackle him. It came in the Avenida de la Diagonal at the junction with the Calle Santa Tecla when Portillo was on his way to the home of one of his paramours. Even though rushed by taxi to the Clinical Hospital, he was to die a short time later.

That night Portillo’s goons decided to kill Ángel Pestaña, regarding him as having been the instigator of the killing. They also had had word from a plant within the CNT called Manuel, naming the actual killers. The informant laid an ambush for the CNT members in a bar in the Ronda de San Pablo at the junction with the Calle Aldana; they arrived as agreed whilst the bosses’ hired guns kept watch from cover, but the CNT personnel managed to escape from the trap and vanish into the night. The informer had doubtless blown his cover for he turned up dead a few days later.

With the death of Bravo Portillo, the gang now passed under the control of the Baron de Koening, real name Rudolf Stallmann, a sinister individual who had been a German spy during the First World War.

One of the tasks of the now former prime minister the Conde de Romanones was to encourage Mixed Commissions as bargaining tools. However, neither side would agree to them and it was only after a lot of pressure from both sides that they were accepted as a resource in labour disputes.

This was seen first on 8 September when the Mixed Commission met in the Civil Government building; it was chaired by the entrepreneur Pere Roselló and by the employers’ lawyer Tomás Benet.

On 16 September it looked as if the two sides had reached agreement and the actual drafting and signing of that agreement was postponed until the following day. However, the more radical factions on both sides, for one reason or another, were determined that the agreement would not be signed. That night a former CNT leader, Eduard Ferrer, who had been blackmailed by Bravo Portillo into turning informer, was killed in the Calle Montalegre while on his way home. And the son of businesman Agustí Sabater was also murdered in Pueblo Nuevo.

Next day, 17 September, te document was drawn up and waiting to be signed by both sides. Governor Julio Amado launched into a brief preamble. Then he was interrupted by employers’ counsel Tomás Benet who informed him that the employers were pulling out of the negotiations and could not negotiate with those behind the murder of Agustí Sabater. Salvador Seguí promptly retorted that they were in agreement with the arrangement and that the workers had had nothing to do with the events of the previous day. Governor Julio Amado, outraged, answered the employers’ representatives, warning them not to mess with him and ordering them to present themselves the next day to sign up to the agreement; otherwise, they would be arrested. However, the following day the employers failed to show up and Amado backed down from his threat to have them arrested.

21 October saw the inauguration of the Spanish Employers’ Federation’s 2nd Congress at the Catalana Music Hall under the chairmanship of Barcelona mayor Antonio Martínez Domingo (in office since May). Feliu Grapera was elected chairman for the coming term and Francesc Junoy appointed FPE agent in Madrid. The congress closed on 26 October and among its resolutions was the decision recognising the lock-out as the employers; most powerful weapon and to start laying the groundwork immediately.

On 23 October, even as the FPE’s 2nd congress was in progress, the employers imposed a complete shut-down of the cafes, bars and restaurants in Barcelona.

On 3 November the FPE imposed a lock-out that would last for 14 days and affect some 45,000 workers.

However, there was a large number of businessmen who were not interested in enforcing a lock-out and they had a special interest in the Mixed Commission which met in Barcelona city hall on 6 November under the chairmanship of the mayor and with lawyers Josep Roig i Bergada and Felp Rodés as consultants. The talks dagged on for several days and since the workers on thestreets could not be sure what was being discussed at meetings and since there were hints in the press of hitherto unprecedented friendly exchanges, they began to suspect treachery. One day, as Salvador Seguí was en route to one sitting of the Commission he had a gun drawn on him by one worker [12] who warned him of the consequences of possible treachery. Yet the Mixed Commission negotiated on and after a lot of toing and froing, it signed an accord on 11 November whereny all strikes and lock-outs were to end and a case-by-case approach adopted. Another accord was that in any negotiations where 50% of demands by workers were won, the resultant agreement should be taken as a precedent.

Yet as might have been foreseen, the employers failed to hoour all of the accords and in some plants such as the Eloy Detouche plant (even though it had been one of the signatories to the agreement) a number of leading CNT members were denied entry, whereupon they protested strenuously to the Coty Hall where Seguí, Piera, Duch and company were still working through the separate agreements. When Seguí heard what had happened he threatened to walk off the Commission, although it seems he was merely intending to travel up to Madrid.

Meanwhile, Feliu Graupera, the FPE chairman, did travel to Madrid for talks with government representatives and to lobby them to take a different tack with the workers, but what Graupera failed to realise was that the very same train was carrying a CNT commission headed by Seguí, its plan being to see the Interior Minister in order to rebut the arguments from the FPE chairman and to attend the forthcoming CNT congress.

But the key to the murky developments in Barcelona at that point was Baron de Koenning, whose lans were along the same lines as Graupera’s.

The Baron set the wheels in motion, his aim being clearly to destabilise things and to effect a change in the stance of the military governor Milans del Bosch and that of the Madrid government. To that end he instructed the gunman ‘El Mallorquím’ to plant a bomb at the Captaincy building, no doubt to create the impression that this was some act of provocation by CNT affinity groups. The bob went off on 24 November, injuring two soldiers and blowing out a window. An indignant Milans del Bosch seized control of public order in the city.

Graupera, back from Madrid and seething because Burgos y Mazo had cold-shouldered him, called a meeting for 30 November on the premises of the Spanisj Employers’ Federation in the Rambla Cataluña. That meeting agreed upon a lock-out (a general strike on the part of employers) as a gauntlet thrown down, not just to the Catalan workers, but also to the national government. Only small concerns would continue to operate, lest the bourgeoisie be left short or inconvenienced. The CNT promptly got wind of this and gathered its committees together in the premises in the Calle del Olmo where they were discreetly guarded by the affinity groups against potential provocation, whether from the police or from the Somatén. At that stormy gathering the CNT personnel drafted a note asking CNT militants and anarchists to offer passive resistance lest they play into the hands of the bosses’ provocation for the latter were brazenly seeking confrontation. That note would be published the following day in Solidaridad Obrera which at that tme was based in the Calle de la Tapias under director Salvador Quemades.

The lock-out in Barcelona began on 1 December 1919, affecting upwards of 150,000 workers and their families. Yet again its aim was clear, to break the labour and CNT movements in the city and to get them to obey the absolute lords and masters of the public good.

In Sant Martí de Provensals the workers holding out against the lock-out stormed the «Hijos de José Salva» plant and worked on as normal until the Civil Guard drove them off the premises. Similar developments were repeated around the Barcelona area, with the same outcomes each time.

On 7 December the CNt member José Álvarez Arnoldo was arrested in the vicinity of the Estación de Francia for distributing anti-lockout leaflets.

On 10 December the CNT’s 2nd congress opened in Madrid. It was to go down in the record as the La Comedia congress, being held in a theatre of that name. [The congress had previously been planned on the q.t. on the premises of the Ateneo Sindicalista at No 13, Calle Pizarro, Madrid and its architects were Manuel Buenacasa, Ángel Pestaña, Eusebio Carbó and Hilario Arlandis.

Even as the congress was under way in Madrid, in Barcelona the workers rendered jobless by the decision of the FPE had to survive by their wits. People’s canteens resurfaced and there were long queues at the alms houses in search of something to put on the plates of working class families.

Also on 10 December, Ramón Sales, a Carlist from the «Crit de Patria» political group met with other members of that group at No 32 Calle Tapineria, the premises of the (Carlist) Ateneo Obrero Legitimista and after protracted talks they launched the Corporación General de Trabajadores – Unión de Sindicatos Libres de España, Sales being elected its very first secretary. {Hereafter this new union will be referred to simply as the Sindicato Libre or Libre].

The following day a workerist-style manifesto was issued announcing the formation of the new union grouping and lashing out at the CNT.

Not that the CNT’s answer was long in coming. On 12 December a group of CNT activists burst into the Café Fornos in the Calle Tallers where a number of individuals from the Libre were gathered; these were taken at gunpoint to premises in the Calle del Olmo where they were warned off the dangerous notion of setting up a new trade union grouping.

On 14 December the ‘Acción’ affinity group attacked a gang of strike-breakers who were busy unloading foodstuffs in the docks. The injured included a member of the ‘Acción’ group itself, the young Francesc Glascar.

On 15 December the Baron’s gunmen picked up the CNT’s Francisco Enrich; Enrich was to be tortured by the Baron de Koenning in person.

At the time, the affinity groups could count on precious cooperation from a number of physicians with private consulting rooms: one was the physician R. Pla i Armengol, an ex-socialist, who, in March 1919, expressed sympathy with the general strike mounted by the CNT. And there was also Doctor Tussó’s consulting room in the Calle Tallers.

On 19 December, an attempt was made on the life of businessman Arturo Elizalde in the Paseo de San Joan where it meets the Calle Roselló; according to the police, the assailants were Pedro Matheu and Ramón Casanellas who worked at the industrialist’s factory. The supposed motive was that it was believed that Elizalde had been the financial backer behind the killing of ‘El Tero’. Elizalde emerged from the attack unscathed, but his driver, Florentí Prats lost his life.

On the same day Julio Amado was dismissed as governor of Barcelona by the incoming prime minister in Madrid, Manuel Allendesalazar, who was of like mind with the Catalan employers’ organisation. The replacement civil governor would be Francisco Maestre Laborde.

Meanwhile, Bertrán i Musitu, the man in charge of the Barcelona Somatén acted as go-between between the Baron de Koenning and military governor Milans del Bosch, to whom they were passing information from the Lasarte dossier.

Miguel Arlegui, the chief of police in Barcelona, who was at that point unaware of the figure of the Baron, was able to gauge from dealings with the military governor that the latter was better briefed on the situation in Barcelona than the police handling the matter.

Once Arlegui learnt the source of Milans del Bosch’s information, he availed on the substantial police files on the Baron de Koenning and ordered that a search be made of his mansion in the luxurious Casa de la Pedrera in Barcelona and there they apparently found enough evidence to warrant his being arrested or deported, but Arlegui opted instead to retain him in his service. From then on the link-man between them would be police inspector Luís de León.

On 25 December there was an attempted riot and break-out from the Modelo prison which was filled with CNT personnel. The civil governor, Francisco Maestre Laborde, Conde de Salvatierra, on being informed, arrived to handle things and oversee the crackdown on the rioters. The toll by the end of that tough day was 62 injured.

On 29 December the Civil Guard, for no apparent reason, opened fire on workers sitting with mates in the Plaza España.

Meanwhile, the CNT was abiding strictly by the law, in spite of which Arturo Beltrán was arrested for handing out leaflets and even though he was freed by a judge, Salvatierra sent him to the Modelo prison, employing a procedure that signalled a revival of the practice of preso gubernativo (preventive detention) so frequently resorted to during the 1930s.

1920 The «ley de fugas»

On 4 Jnuary 1920, Medí Martí and his comrades [15] loitered discreetly in the Calle de Pedro IV, awaiting the appearance of the car belonging to Libre gunmen Joan Serra and attempted his life. Altough he did not die straight away, he sustained serious wounds that resulted in his death a short time later. Joan Serra had been involved in and loaned his car for the assassination of ‘El Tero’, who had been a close friend of Martí’s.

That same day an attempt was made on Salvador Seguí’s life but Salvador was able to beat off his assailants who fled through the back streets of El Raval and Seguí was able to proceed to the Paralelo and join the animated clientele at the Café Español.

The next day, 5 January, saw retaliation for the attack on Seguí in the form of an attack on the president of the employers’ federation Feliu Graupera on the Via Layetana outside his home at 35, Baixa de Sant Pere. Graupera was wounded as were his driver and one of his police escort. Another member of his bodyguard, Ricado San Germán, died a few hours later.

By the following day Barcelona had been placed under siege again on the orders of Milans del Bosch. The atrtack on Graupera furished the necessary pretext for further legal action against the CNT; besides, the Interior ministry had been trying for days to get the CNT to hand in a list of its committee members, although the CNT naturally had refused.

That day two labour lawyers, Jesús Ulled and Guerra del Río were arrested, the aim being to intimidate them.

The lock-out had by now been in place for over five weeks and the bourgeoisie was also starting to fear for irs privileges, but of course the chief sufferers in this situation were the workers who were staring into the abyss and in hock to credit extended by a few local businesses. However, young anarchists reckoned that this was their chance to decapitate the capitalists so they lobbied within the CNT unions for the calling of a further general strike.

On 26 January 1920 the Conde de Salvatierra ordered the lifting of the lock-out at the strategic request of the employers’ federation.

It had lasted for 7 weeks but not one CNT worker had surrendered his union card to his boss, one of the main aims of the employer side.

Even so, the CNT looked to the bourgeoisie to be on its last legs, since this time the workers had not backed its calls for a General Strike, so essentially it looked as if the bourgeoisie had emerged the winner. The latter was at any rate aware of the existence of the affinity groups which at this point were very active, which was why Arlegui and the Somatén were standing by to put paid to them all.

At about this point, a sizable number of businessmen turned to making payments to building contractor Miró i Trepat to get him to find out the identities of any activists in their factories and Miró was often to be seen with the Baron de Koenning at No 80, Peseo de Gracia, pressing him for intelligence. The Baron had no hesitation in capitalising on the situation and the protection that Arlegui was able to offer him and was able to string all the authorities along, including the military governor who was obliged to resign his post as a result of the Baron’s scheming and was replaced as Captain-General of Catalonia by ValerianoWeyler who was under orders to stay out of social policy in Barcelona.

The CNT, as yet unaware of the existence of the Baron, was aware of the severe repression targeting it and indeed how hard it had become to collect monthly dues from members, that being the CNT’s sole source of funding. As a result, its collectors not only carried guns but were allowed to keep some of what they collected, for their trouble.

Against this backdrop, the «jobless», the people blacklisted by employers were the ones who lobbied most insistently for the affinity groups of the CNT to retaliate once again against the systematic repression from the bourgeoisie.

On 6 February, David Rey was arrested; he would be held incommunicado for a number of days in the Calle Numancia barracks before being removed to the prison ship ‘Giralda’.

On 22 February there was an attempt made in Sabadell on the life of businessman Theodore Genny (a Frenchman): while he was dining at home, he was stabbed. The police picked up Victorià Sabater aka ‘Bitxo’, Martí Martí and Josep Peiris who, it seems, had been paid 500 pesetas to carry out the crime. Brought to trial, they were sentenced to death and garrotted.

As a good policeman, Arlegui needed better intelligence and was forever pressing the Baron for more information and to this end placed another two detectives at his disposal – García Porrero and Salvador Más.

The Baron’s dirty work was thriving so much that he opened up a new office on the Rambla de las Flores and he boosted the size of his gang to 70 members, almost all of them from the underworld, swindlers and habitual criminals. Another service offer by the Baron de Koening was the provision of bodyguard to businessmen after he had presented them with a phoney report to the effect that the workforce in their factory were hatching a plot against their lives.

Despite the crackdown, in March 1920 the affinity groups detonated 14 bombs and carried out eight sabotage attacks on factories. But since the Baron de Koenning had not the foggiest notion who the activists might be and was continually being pressed by Arlegui for such information, he concocted intelligence and targeted a bar in the Ronda San Antonio called «El Rápido». And so on 27 March Inspector León and several officers and gunmen from the Baron’s gang burst into the bar. The gunmen saw to it that weapons were found on the premises and the anarchist Acrata Vidal who just happened to be in the bar at the time was placed under arrest.

On 1 April members of the Baron’s gang which was operating as pretty much a shadow police force, burst into an apartment at 5 Valle Parlamento where they found Juan Rovira, Antonio Aragay and Miguel San Juan who were accused of serving on a clandestine committee of the CNT’s Printing Trades Union. The captives were removed first to the office on the Ramblas and after being punched and clubbed were taken then to the police station and finally to the Modelo prison. In actuality, the trio had been waiting to meet in one of their apartments with a factory-owner who had work to offer them.

On 2 April an attempt was made on the life of the president of the Libre in Sant Andrés, one-time CNT member Tomás Vives who worked at the Fabra & Coats firm.

The powers that the Baron arrogated to himself or which were claimed by his men gave rise to his coming to the notice of CNT personnel and indeed of the press.

Progreso Ródenas’s group discovered that Miró i Trepat was the main channel for intelligence and they assumed that he was running he hired guns along with ex-CNT member-turned-informer Bernat Armegol, so they drew up a plan to assassinate them both.

On 20 April Miró i Trepat was attacked on the Paseo de Gracia opposite the building where he was due to meet the Baron; the intended victim was unscathed. Irked that the affinity groups should have dared attack his sponsor, the Baron de Koenning, through yet another informer by the name of Manuel Más, discovered the existence of the Ródenas brothers’ affinity group and laid a rap for them, using Bernat Armengol, an informer who had outlived his usefulness, as bait. The plan was put into effect on 23 April at the Café Gran Imperio bar at the corner of the Ronda San Pablo and Aldana. Police officers took up strategic positions as they lay in wait for the CNT personnel; the latter walked into the ambush and were surrounded and hostilities erupted once the Baron gave the signal. Most of the CNT personnel were able to get away, although one of the Ródenas brothers was not so lucky. Wounded, he was disarmed by police officer Tadeo Mateo.

Ródenas was hospitalised whilst the others captured were thrown into the Modelo prison alongside Bernat Armengol.

At the time, the press explained this incident away as an attempt on the life of the detective from León who had also been involved in the shoot-out. Then the Baron tried to get one over on the police by arresting the escapees, Armando, Francisco and Volney Ródenas who were in hiding in their sister Libertad Ródenas’s home.

Four days after that, on 27 April, the Baron de Koenning arrived in the flesh to arrest the fugitives, but failed, although something significant happened: his German accent gave him away to Libertad Ródenas.

Another anarchist affinity group made up of Joaquín Buigas aka Pescater, Alberto Manzano, Francisco Berro and Restituto Gómez discovered that the members of the Baron’s gang hung out at a bar in the Plaza del Peso de la Paja and they raided the place on 28 April, opening fire on them, leaving Marià Sans and Pere Torrens i Capdevila wounded. The rest scrambled to safety. The CNT side lost Restituto who was killed in the shoot-out, but the members of the Baron’s gang never again returned to the bar which from then on became a CNT hang-out.

On 29 April in the Calle Tamarit an attempt was made on the life of police inspector Pascual Mola. That very day, in Terrassa, an attack was mounted on lower court judge Francisco Ximénez who was involved in the sentencing of several CNT members. That same night, police picked up the alleged perpetrators of the Terrassa attack.

On 1 May, the Floral Games – boosted by the Catalan bourgeoisie as a demonstration of Catalan nationalism – opened in the Fine Arts Pavilion. The opening ceremony was chaired by Josep Joffre, the Mariscal of North Catalonia. There were several incidents that day after the audience sang ‘El Segadors’ and gave rousing cheers to «Free Catalonia!» At which the police charged the audience and the Guardia Municipal stepped in to fend off the attack.

In the belief that the order for the charge had come from the governor, the Conde de Salvatierra, the Catalan bourgeoisie decided to make life impossible for him.

On 2 May, members of the Koenning gang tailed Francisco Berro (one of those implicated in the Plaza del Peso de la Paja raid) who was working in the Calle Mitjana de Sant Pere as a watchman and tried to murder him, although he emerged unscathed and escaped.

On 2 May the CNT side discovered that Manuel Grau (aka ‘Mas’) – who had been given away by Armegol – was an informer for the Baron de Koenning, so they attempted his life.

Armengol, behind bars and terrified lest the CNT people might murder him, spilled everything he knew about the Koenning gang (out of gratitude, the CNT allowed him to live for a further three years). The news reached the local CNT committee and the latter had a leaflet printed up exposing the Baron. Antonio Amador, an editor on Solidaridad Obrera, saw to the drafting and printing of it in a secret location in Tarragona for later distribution in Barcelona.

The bourgeoisie seized upon this commotion in order to blame the Conde de Salvatierra for turning a blind eye to the Baron de Koenning and the situation he had created in Barcelona, whilst Miguel Arlegui got off scot free. In these changed circumstances, the Baron’s gunmen – Conrado Giménez, Emili Vidal Ribas, André Penon, etc., – were implicating one another.

In Madrid meanwhile, Eduardo Dato was leading a new government and was not inclined to cabe in to pressure from the Catalan bourgeoisie, in that Salvatierra was a member of his own party.

Then again, the affinity groups had improved their organisation greatly and now had the members of the Baron de Koenning’s gang in their sights. The first one to be ‘taken out’ was Pere Torrens i Capdevila who had earlier been wounded in the shoot-out in the Plaza del Peso de la Paja. On 12 May, two days after he was discharged from hospital, he was tailed almost as far as his home in La Sagrera and then attacked. The police pointed an accusing finger at the CNT’s Alfonso Miguel but arrested the activist Martorell.

On 17 May, under the leadership of Soler aka ‘El Mallarquín’, the members of the Koenning gang made a fresh attempt to recover their prestige and to oust the CNT from that bar in the PLaza del Peso de la Paja. The police had a hand in this, ensuring that the news spread like wildfire, with the press talking openly about the employers’ hired guns as a result. This prompted Eduardo Dato to step in and deport the Baron from Spain, in the belief that this would calm the social situation in Barcelona. De Koenning was deported in late May 1920, in spite of his efforts to avert this through lobbying by Miró i Trepat. (During the Second World War, the Baron de Koenning worked with Admiral Canaris’s secret service and for General de Gaulle, still playing the double agent. He died in old age in a car crash in Germany.)

Now leaderless, the Baron’s men were decimated; Epifani Casas and Ángel Fernández were behind bars, Soler aka ‘El Mallorquín’ decamped to the Americas and the remainder stayed to face the music. Thus, one San Vicente was executed in the Calle Santa Madrona, the crime being blamed – naturally! – on Ramón Casanellas and Pere Matheu.

The incoming minister of the Interior, meaning to bring peace to Barcelona, ordered the Conde de Salvatierra, the governor of the city, to free all CNT prisoners, who by that point numbered 920, but Salvatierra refused in that that would have amounted to an admission that his policy had been wrong, so he was forced to step down.

On 19 June the news broke in the government gazette that Salvatierra had stood down. There was a spectacular incident that day when Joaquín Arnal was murdered in Barcelona for working without a union card.

As of 22 June the new civil governor of Barcelona was Francisco de Carlos y Bas.

On 27 June king Alfonso XIII visited Barcelona and, among other engagements, laid the first stone of the «Quinto de la Salud La Alianza»; he stayed two days.

The Catalan businessmen used the king’s stay in Barcelona to ask him to put the screws on the CNT again, although on this occasion the king failed to heed the demands of the Catalan bourgeoisie.

On 1 July the prisoners started to emerge from the Modelo and the trade union premises began to reopen.

The priority of the new governor was to give a fresh boost to the establishment of Mixed Commissions that were to involve themselves in various agreements This policy had backing from a substantial faction of employers as well as from the workers led by Seguí, Piera and Pestaña, though not from the anarchist affinity groups. Nor did it enjoy support from the big extremist employers under Graupera who aimed to boycott the Commissions.

6 July saw the first really serious clash between the CNT affinity groups and the gunmen from the Libre. The Libre leader Juan Purcet was killed at the junction of the Calle del Carmen and the Calle Picalqués. Two days later, Libre personnel murdered Vicens Roig from the CNT’s water workers in the Plaza Urquinaona. On that occasion, two policemen who happened to be nearby gave chase to the attackers, arresting Carles Baldrich aka ‘El Oncle’, a Libre member and a Carlist. From that point on, the hostilities between the CNT and the LIbre escalated.

On 21 July there was a fracas in the Soler y Doménech factory which had members belonging to both unions: when they failed to agree over working hours, guns were drawn and 4 people were wounded. That same day the industrialist Antoni Pons was killed for refusing to permit CNT dues collectors entry to his factory.

On 24 July CNT personnel attempted the life of Joan Casanovas who was organising the Libre’s rubber workers’ union. The attack on him came in the Calle Milá i Fontanals in Gracia.

Meanwhile, following anonymous tip-offs, the Conde Salvatierra was leading a semi-clandestine lifestyle in Valencia when a letter reached him from Eduardo Dato asking him to travel up to San Sebastián, and another letter from the Marqués de Mascarell asking him to further tighten his security measures. However, trouble was in the offing. So, on 4 August, after watching a drive-past of carriages, Salvatierra boarded his «milord» carriage to head for home, at which point he was forced to stop at a level crossing; a number of men emerged with pistols drawn and fired into the carriage, resulting in the deaths of the Marquesa de Tejares and leaving the Conde Salvatierra and his wife gravely wounded. The Conde de Salvatierra was to die in hospital the next day. The police – just as they had done on previous occasions – pointed an accusing finger at Ramón Casanellas and Pere Matheu.

The killing of Salvatierra marked a qualitative change as far as the Spanish bourgeoisie was concerned, in that Salvatierra was a member of the nobility and of the ruling party; now it was not just a case of the killing of Catalan businessmen, so the bourgeoisie elsewhere in Spain took the assault much more to heart. They asked Eduardo Dato for a further crackdown on CNT personnel and warned that strikes were spreading throughout Spain. However, Eduardo Dato stuck to the same policy, initially at least.

At around this point the construction foreman Juan Coll, who treated his workers very coarsely, was in such fear for his life that he asked the Somatén t provide him with an escort for the journey between home and work. On 11 August, CNT personnel waited for Coll in the Sans quarter, at which point there was a skirmish between both factions, resulting in one death on each side – Manuel Figueras for the CNT and Pere Porta from the Somatén, Carlist and Libre camp. Juan Coll came through unscathed.

Then the CNT members discovered that two ex-members of the Koenning gang – Juio Laporta and Marià Sans – were trying to secure passports so as to quit Spain; they kept watch in the Calle Dos de Mayo where it meets the Carretera de Ribas up unto 19 August 1920 when they spotted the pair travelling in a tram, at which point CNT personnel Joaquín López and Joaquín Roura opened fire, wounding Mará Sans a second time. In the exchange of shots tram passenger Agustí Gay – uninvolved in the episode – was killed.

Meanwhile the all-Spain employers’ federation pulled out all the stops to pressurise Dato into cracking down on the CNT in Catalonia.

Then again, the Catalan employers’ federation was organising, building up its coffers so that less squeamish employers could stand up to strikes triggered by CNT personnel, or survive any lock-outs they might themselves impose, as well as hire staff from the Libre which made no bones about confronting the CNT.

The employers’ federation elsewhere in Spain finally discovered a trump card to use against Dato in Zaragoza when, on 23 August, with an electricians’ strike raging, the city architect José Yaza was assassinated. The employers’ seized on his death in order to bring fresh pressures to bear on Dato, arguing that the revolutionary syndicalism of the CNT of Catalonia was spreading to the rst of Spain.

In the wake of developments in the Aragonese capital, Eduardo Dato’s government stepped up the crackdown on the CNT.

Meanwhile the CNT had agreed a compact with the socialists. Recently appointed secretary of the CNT national committee Evelio Boal and Salvador Seguí set off for Madrid for talks with the UGT’s Largo Caballero.

At around the same time in Madrid Bergamín resigned his post as minister of the Interior on the Dato cabinet and was replaced by the Conde de Bugallal.

Early that September the Supreme Court approved a fresh measure against the CNT, ordaining that the CNT had no legal status and therefore was not entitled to collect union dues. Again the police and the Somatén stepped up the crackdown on collectors of CNT union dues.

On 3 September an agreement was signed in Madrid’s Casa del Pueblo between the UGT and the CNT and a manifesto was issued on 5 September.

However, the CNT the CNT had to refer the agreements reached with the UGT for the approval of union meetings of local plenums. Fotr that reason, Boal and Seguí toured several of the regional confederations to persuade comrades of the necessity for and appropriateness of the agreement, although initially they failed in these efforts. However, in Barcelona it was a different story and the most active groups did as they pleased, not unduly bothered about the accords of the Confederation (CNT), no matter whether those accords emanated from union gatherings or from local, regional or national committees.

8 September saw attacks on La Publicidad newspaper’s typesetters José Román and José Villalta as they left work in the Cale Provenza between the Calle Aribau and the Calle Muntaner. Román was killed outright and Villalta was left seriously wounded. According to police their assailant was José Saleta aka ‘El nano’. A stray bullet also injured the Modelo prison administrator Emilio Azorín who just happened to be passing at the time. Again, for the motive behind the attack, we must look to he rivalry between the unions. At the time the workforce of La Publicidad newspaper was drawn almost entirely from Libre members.

Two days later, on 10 September, Bruno Llorens, chief mechanic at La Publicidad – another Libre member – was murdered.

At which point personnel from the Libre decided upon some blood-letting in order to bring a further crackdown on the CNT. To this end they turned to Inocencio Feced to get him to plant a bomb in the Pompeya Music Hall in the Avenida del Paral.lel on 12 September. Resulting in the loss of 6 lives and leaving 18 people injured.

Withi days Inocencio Feced was to be picked up by Inspector Ronceño in the La Tranquilidad bar (a regular haunt of anarchists). However, even Feced’s arrest failed to shed light on what had really happened at the Pompeya Music Hall.

Inocencio Feced was yet another sinister figure from the 1920s, a man on familiar terms with all sorts of people in Barcelona ranging from police chief Arlegui to the Libre’s president, Ramón Sales, as well as the Libertarian Movement and, naturally, the city’s underworld.

In September 1920, General Millán Astray set up the Tercio – which is to say, the Legion – in Morocco; the first 500 legionnaires were Catalans on the run from the police and, according to the general’s account, the vast majority of them were anarchists.

With Evelio Boal and Salvador Seguí back in Barcelona to explain the agreement with the UGT to their CNT comrades, the CNT committees for whom they spoke launched a series of rallies across Catalonia.

On 7 October, gunmen from the Libre murdered Francesc Capistrón aka ‘Xiquet’, the president of the Cowherders’ Union and Victoriano Abarca from the Barcelona CNT’s metalworkers’ union.

That very day the CNT’s Pedro Antonio Carranza was picked up: three months would pass before the reason for his arrest was disclosed: «insulting the Civil Guard».

On 15 October Ernesto Queraltó aka ‘El pintor’, a former member of Baron de Koenning’s gang, was found dead.

On 19 October there was a clash between CNT personnel and gunmen from the Libre in the Calle Riera Alta. The police were called and arrested the CNT’s Jaime Martínez Palau and, in the course of a subsequent round-up in the Calle Hospital, also picked up the CNT members Juan López and Bartolomé Llabrés. The latter were to be implicated in a number of attacks, resulting in their serving six years in prison.

Towards the end of October the CNT held a regional plenum in Tarragona, at which the agreement with the UGT was ratified. It was also proposed to Salvador Seguí that he travel down to Río Tinto to make an on-the-spot inspection of the miniers’ strike that had been going on for the past seven months. It also agreed that Andreu Nin and Joaquín Maurín approach governor Bas for permission to resume publication of Solidaridad Obrera in Barcelona.

Bas refused Andreu Nin and Joaquín Maurín leave to resume publication of Solidaridad Obrera and warned them that if things carried on as they were he himself would be moved aside and a tougher general put in charge.

Meanwhile minister of Labour Carlos Cañal had arrived in Barcelona with under-secretary Vizconde de Altea, intent upon reaching some sort of social agreements backed by the government.

On 29 October, the metalwork sector gathered with its president José Pujol and Cañal in attendance, the idea being to boost the Mixed Commissions.

On the other side, Pere Foix from the CNT’s Manufacturing Union had been making overtures towards getting the metalworkers to come to some arrangement and on 30 October they assembled in the union local in the Calle Vistalegre. [16] There Foix and Seguí managed to persuade those attending to give the Mixed Commissions another go.

That same day Jaime Pujol from the employer side stepped out of his home on the Paralelo; he was followed as far as the Plaza Sepúlveda (today’s Plaza Goya) and there he was murdered. At the time the activists were unaware of their error. They were actually after his brother who was unbending in his opposition to the CNT.

On 31 October ‘El Noi de Sucre’ (Seguí) had his life attempted (shots were fired) in the Calle Carretas, and a passing businessman, Francisco Casals, was killed, although Seguí was unharmed.

Anyway, thanks to Seguí’s efforts the CNT (at a plenum) was successfully persuaded on 1 November to give the Mixed Commissions another go. CNT personnel passed the news on to governor Bas directly, although Bas appointed the Vizconde de Altea to represent the government side and from then one he was to chair the Commissions.

On 5 November there was a meeting at the town hall in Barcelona between politicians and bosses, the aim being to agree a concerted approach to the CNT and to strikes, especially the metalworkers’ strike that was on at the time and their response to the kid glove tactics of Bas and the central government.

Within days, Bas had been dismissed, making it easier for the Vizconde de Altea to engage the metalworkers in talks.

Following Bas’s dismissal, the Marqués de Foronda, director of the Barcelona tram company, insisted of Eduardo Dato that he appoint Severiano Martínez Anido civil governor of Barcelona. Dato decided to accede to this on account of Foronda’s friendship with the King and on 8 November he called upon Anido to accept the appointment, although the latter initially declined it, which Dato found odd. After a short talk with the King, Dato again made overtures to Martínez Anido although this time he conveyed an order that he take up the post of civil governor of Barcelona, so Anido had no option but to accept.

That very day Severiano Martínez Anido, with his adjutant, Lieutenant-Colonel Oller y Pinyol delivered his first speech in the presence of reporters. The following day he made the trip to Madrid to speak with the King, Dato and Interior minister Bugallal, asking them for extraordinary powers, which they granted him as well as placing him formally in charge of areas where the CNT had a strong union presence, areas like Valencia and Zaragoza.

On the night of 11 November, Anido returned to Barcelona. On reaching Zaragoza he had a meeting on his train with Zaragoza’s governor, the Conde Cuello de Portugal. The train was held over longer than usual and no explanation was offered to the other passengers.

A new team headed by Severiano Martínez Anido took shape, composed, more or less of councillor Espina as secretary, Martínez del Villar (a soldier cashiered from the army), Miguel Arlegui as chief of police, Inspector Antonio Espejo Aguilar and the Carlists Bertrán i Musitu and Salvador Anglada. They all set about working on their evil schemes and with help from the Lasarte dossier, drew up a first working list of leading CNT personnel.

On 16 November Valentín Otera, a member of the Libre and driver with La Publicidad was murdered in the Calle Blasco de Garay in the Poble Sec quarter.

By 19 November, Anido was in possession of a list and ready to embark upon his scheme for decapitating the CNT by rounding up leading trade unionists; this task was entrusted to Miguel Arlegui who arrested all CNT personnel sleeping in their own homes that same night. Only a few who happened to be away from home like Simó Piera escaped arrest.

The next day, 20 November, members of the Libre murdered Alfredo Cortina, CNT delegate as he was at work in the Calle Granados de Sarriá o a house being built for the banker Roses. As the killers escaped, Alfonso’s workmates had help from a passing army sergeant in arresting 21 year old Juan Teisla who produced a Somatén warrant card.

In Terrassa, CNT personnel attempted the life of businessman Juan Puigbó as he was returning with his son from a dinghy trip.

On 22 November Seguí was arrested whilst returning from Río Tinto and 3 November it was the turn of Francisco Arín, a member of the Prisoners’ Aid Committee.

In spite of a big round-up of CNT members, the CNT structures survived intact, responsibility devolving to Ramón Archs and Pedro Vandellós. At a number of clandestine meetings and plenaries held at 16, Calle Vistalegre, it was agreed that the priority was to keep up membership figures and maintain the links between unions and to this end they scheduled a new strike for 7 December, and this time, it would be a nationwide strike.

In light of the many arrests, the CNT asked Francisco Layret for legal assistance and he agreed, as usual. And the Prisoners’ Aid Committee, in view of the spiralling arrests and the problems collecting union dues, was obliged to look to some anarchist affinity groups to mount a number of «fund-raising» operations.

Even though the jails were full, attacks by both sides continued and on 23 November there was an attempt on the life of the owner of a cattle pound, Vicente Guitari in the Calle Cortinas. Next day, at warehouse No 6 in Barcelona docks six crates of pistol ammunition were stolen and in Reus on the same date the president of the Libre union in Reus, Antonio Capdevila, was assassinated.

On 26 November a team made up of Francisco García aka ‘El patillas’, Manuel Soler and Vicente Cervera attempted the life of the owner of the Hotel Continental on the Ramblas; he was a member of the Libre and the incident came as Albareda was leaving the hotel with a friend and heading towards the Boquería. As he neared the Calle Petxina, he sustained a stab wound and drawing his pistol, he tried to fight back, but his gun jammed. The CNT attackers were picked up by the police. That night, Libre members wounded Ramón Batalla from the CNT construction union who died a short while later. Also that day José Canela, former secretary of the CNT hotelworkers’ union and later of the metalworkers’ union (it was not uncommon for trade union posts to be held by persons from a different trade) would met the same fate. Canela was in the Ciclista bar in the Plaza Buensuceso at the junction with the Calle Sitjà. According to Inocencio Feced the killers were Libre gunmen Ramón Sales, José Cinca and the Alvarado brothers.

Among those caught up in the indiscrimnate wave of arrests carried out by the Anido-Arlegui duo was a young lawyer and city councillor by the name of Lluis Companys.

Then Layret, along with Companys’s wife, asked Barcelona mayor Antonio Martínez Domingo to come with them to visit the civil governor Martínez Anido. A rendezvous was arranged for 7.00 p.m. the following day.

On 29 November, Libre personnel made their way to the Vicens bar in the Calle Salmerón in the Gracia district looking for the CNT’s Carles Bort and murdered him right there in the bar before any of his comrades could do anything to prevent it.

Nexy day, 30 November, over 30 men were moved from the Modelo prison. Most of them were CNT members and they were bound for the prison ship ‘La Guiralda’ at anchor in the harbour. Among these deportees were Salvador Seguí, Camilo Piñón, David Rebull, Lluis Companys, Antonio Amador, Francesc and Viadiu. [17] They would later be taken to the La Mola fortress in Mahón.

When Companys’s wife learned that her husband had been moved to the ‘Guiralda’, she caught a taxi to No 26, Calle Balmes, the home of Francesc Layret. As they left together, Libre personnel who had been in position waiting for Layret opened fire at him, whilst sneeringly repeating Señora Companys’s words: («Poor Senyor Layret!). The authors of this murderous attack were Fulgencio Vera aka ‘Mirete’, Ángel Coll, Fulgencio Grisca and Carles Baldrich.

Layret was removed to the dispensary in the Plaza Goya and thence to the Corachón Clinic where he died within a few hours. Layret’s killers earned themselves 3,000 pesetas a head.

In light of these events, Evelio Boal, the secretary of the CNT national committee, summoned a clandestine meeting at which it was determined that a general strike should be called for 7 December. A courier was dispatched to Madrid to brief people there on what was going on in Barcelona.

The following day, with the strike under way, they buried Francesc Layret at three o’clock in the afternoon. The workers wanted the cortege to pass through the Ramblas but the Civil Guard was under orders to prevent this and charged the demonstrators, or rather, charged the funeral party. After intervention by Barcelona city councillor Luis Licolau d’Olwer, the Civil Guard backed off and the funeral was able to proceed along the Gran Vía to the cemetery. Layret was laid to rest in niche No 247.

The same day there was a gun battle on the Paralelo, ending in the arrest of the CNT’s Francesc Botella who was later locked up in Mahón.

Over the days that followed personnel from the LIbre tried to break the general strike and go back to work, but this was thwarted by the very active CNT personnel; not for nothing was there frequent skirmishing and clashes between the two unions either in Fabra i Puig or in Santa Eulalia.

On the night of 5 December a number of CNT members stationed at strategic points on the Camp del Arpa opened fire on the Civil Guard patrolling the area. The Civil Guards managed to apprehend Gregorio Daura who was being escorted, firmly handcuffed when he fell victim to the ley de fugas outside the Monumental bullring.

Martinez Anido was undoubtedly starting to feel confuse, especially when he had been hoping to get the situation under control following the deportations; yet the city was still under the sway of the CNT and the affinity groups.

On 7 December the officer board of the Libre issued a manifesto asking to cooperate with the CNT; this was doubtless a political strategem targeted at the workers. Also on 7 December, Martínez Anido asked the army to put troops back on the streets so tBarceklona found itself once more under occupation. The trams took to the streets, the first one driven by Paulino Pallás junior [18] who had become an informer and protegé of Anido, as had his mother who was cook to the governor; his sister was the governor’s secretary.

By 9 December the general strike was all but over. Naturally, the police rounded up numerous CNT members who were brutally clubbed, the aim being to extract further information from them.

Thanks to such brutal methods, the police found themselves new informants and, led by Inspector Espejo they managed to arrest all who took part in one meeting chaired by Joan Peiró in Castelldefels on 12 December. Only Jaime Maynac managed to escape the police round-up, although he was picked up within days in a bar in Castelldefels’s Cale Morales. From then on many CNT activists were forced to use aliases and work in the direst conditions, if at all, and sleep in tiny hovels, or to keep continually on the move.

That same day there was a meeting at the Interior department between Martínez Anido and Ramón Sales (president of the Sindicato Libre) from which emerged a concerted agreement to put paid to the CNT’s syndicalism; the approach would be nakedly confrontational. According to Inocencio Feced, the contacts established at this point between the Interior ministry and the Libre were made through police officers Agapito Martín and Alejo Pita.

On 16 December the CNT severed its agreement with the UGT in that the latter had at no point lifted a finger to support the general strike declared in Barcelona, nor backed the strike anywhere else in the country as had been agreed in principle. At the same meeting and on another matter, Ramón Archs suggested that the heads of the repression – Espejo, Arlegui, Anido and Dato – be decapitated. The aim was that once they were out of the way, a replacement government would introduce a new policy, one that could scarcely be any worse as far as the workers were concerned. The committee endorsed this plan but had no idea who might implement it. Archs undertook to make overtures to the affinity groups and recruit suitable personnel, although, obviously, those groups were at no time subject to the discipline of any committee.

On 17 December Ángel Pestaña was arrested following his trip to Russia. This was in the Italian city of Genoa. The Spanish consul in Milan had him shipped back to Spain on board the ‘Barceló’. On arrival in Barcelona and before detectives could take him in charge, Pestaña managed to embrace his partner and daughter, whilst slipping them his report on his stay in Russia, a report that his partner then passed on to Evelio Boal.

On 22 December, Libre personnel arrived at the Petit Colom bar in the Calle Pedro IV where some CNT dues collectors used to meet while posing as domino-players. There they murdered Juan Llovet and left Ramón Roca, Antonio Mallol and Jaime Parra seriously wounded. Parra was arrested by the police whilst being removed to the dispensary.

The next day, CNT personnel outside the Boquería market went for Juan Soler, a one-time CNT member who had defected to the Libre, felling him with gunshots.

Also on 23 December, with Christmas looming, the Banco de Barcelona, a long-established, sound business set up by Manuel Girona, suspended payments, leaving lots of bourgeois ruined.

Towards the end of December, Ramón Archs managed to arrange a get-together with comrades from the affinity groups from his hown Metalworkers’ Union, including Ramón Casanellas, Pere Matheu, Luis Nicolau, etc.

On Christmas night there was a riot in the little jail near the Plaza Sant Jaume where many CNT personnel were being held.

On 27 December came a further retaliation for the Petit Colom incident in Pueblo Nuevo. On this occasion, CNT personnel arrived at the Fernández y Malagreda ironworks and killed the Carlist Enric Aymerich who had defected from the CNT to the Libre.

On New Year’s Eve the CNT’s Antonio Rueda was to be arrested and charged with possessing explosives.

1921: Martínez Anido, Miguel Arlegui and Inspector Espejo. The «Ley de Fugas»

On 3 January 1921 gunmen from the Libre were to kill the CNT’s Josep Julià, the CNT delegate from a textile mill in the Calle Industria.

On 4 January, CNT personnel again attempted the life of Marià Sans (a former member of the Baron de Koenning’s gang) in the Calle Valencia where he had a street stall. An autopsy discovered a tattoo on his forearm reading «Long live anarchy!»

On 6 January a number of CNT personnel were gathered with their families at the Font del Quento in the El Clot quarter when lots of police vehicles swooped and rounded them all up. Suspicion then fell on Francisco Villena, president of the CNT Waterworkers’ Union, upon whom a watch was subsequently kept.

On the same day, Acrato Vidal and Pedro Álvarez Montaña were picked up on the Calle Viladomat and charged with membership of the CNT’s Printing Trades union.

On 8 January Libre personnel murdered the CNT’s Manuel Valero in a tavern in the Calle Jerusalem near the Ramblas.

That very same day the CNT’s Domingo Colominas would be arrested and charged in connection with incidents in Santa Eulalia in the course of which the CNT member C. Figuerola had died in a shoot-out with the police.

In Terrassa on 12 January Juan Abella, deputy mayor of Terrassa was murdered. This led to the arrest by police in Barcelona of the CNT’s Isidre Tomás on the very day when he was minding his son. His son spotted the police approaching and Isidre was able to get away and flee to his parents’ home village of La Garriga where he would be arrested within days. After a sound thrashing, an attempt was made to use the ‘ley de fugas’ against him, but Isidre was so weakened that he was unable to lift a finger or event attempt to run away.

On 15 January the CNT’s Juan Caballé was raising funds for CNT prisoners in and around the Arco de Triunfo when two policemen caught on to what he was doing and arrested him. Shooting immediately erupted between the police and CNT comrades who were covering Caballé’s back and in the course of the shoot-out the CNT’s Francisco Sabater was killed. Juan Caballé was able to make good his escape with the funds raised.

Around this time a number of CNT members (including Juan Villanueva, Juli Peris, Ramón Gómar and Antonio Parra) arrived in Barcelona from Valencia bringing funds for prisoners’ aid. Inspector Espejo got wind of the Valencians’ being in the Café Español and arrested them on 17 January, taking them to the station and charging them with having made an attempt on the life of ex-governor Salvatierra in Valencia.

Also on that day, police acting on a tip-off raided the home of Isidro Pons Calvo at No 69, 2°, 1°, Calle Carretas where the CNT Prisoners’ Aid Committee was based. Numerous documents were seized from the premises and everyone present was arrested – the cNT’s Pablo Martínez Casanova, María López, Juan Canales Moncax and Pablo Martín (using the alias José Ramón Cuartero). Among the papers found were a number of receipts signed by Companys, Arderius and the lawyer Lorogoyen. Police were also to discover receipts from lots of women, the partners in this instance of inmates of the Modelo prison whose families were being supported by the Prisoners’ Aid Committee.

There were other arrests too, including that of Juan Mata Fernández who was working as a pharmacy assistant; he was accused of possessing and reading anarchist books and pamphlets, as well as carrying a membership card from the CNT’s Water, Gas and Power Union.

Anyway Ramón Archs had been working on contacts with the affinity groups and in one last meeting in the Novelty, the had decided who should be assigned to put paid to the despicable Inspector Espejo.

And so on 18 January Antonio Espejo and Inspector Ferrer revisited the Café Español to make a few more enquiries before setting off via the Calle Conde de Asalto. On reaching the Rambla, they split up, Espejo making off along the Calle Ancha. Meanwhile a team of CNT personnel who had been discreetly following him chose the precise moment when Espejo paused to allow a rubbish truck to pass to put several bullets into him. Eye-witnesses testified that his assailant was wearing a grey raincoat, a garment that was to be seen again on other occasions after that.

In connection with the crime the police arrested Eusebio Conde and José Liciaga. But according to the Carlist weekly newspaper La Protesta, the actual assailants had been José Domingo aka ‘El Marino’ and Eusebio Liciaga who had noth fled to France.

In El Clot on 18 January, Francisco Villena, president of the CNT’s waterworkers’ union, having been confirmed as a police informer, became a target for the CNT affinity groups and as he was leaving the La Flor de Maig cooperative on the Calle Montaña to make his way home, he paused momentarily outside the Montaña cinema, which was their chance to riddle him. The murder was credited to Benjamín Telón and Albert Coll (aka ‘El pintor’)who were on the district trade union committee.

Another of the attacks that day came in the Calle de la Marina at a point known as the ‘Pont dels Angels’, where the metalworking businessman Francisco Fontcuberta was killed.

That night, by way of retaliation for the death of Inspector Espejo, Arlegui issued instructions for the ley de fugas to be used on every arrested CNT member. So, in the early morning, the Valencian CNT members Juan Villanueva, Antonio Parra, Juli Peis and Ramón Gomar were taken in handcuffs from the police station, supposedly bound for the Modelo, but on reaching the Calle Calabria, the guards stepped back a little before opening fire at the suspects on the grounds that they were trying to escape. Antonio Parra was wounded in the shoulder and the lifeless bodies of his comrades fell on top of him, so all he had to do was to play dead and wait for stretcher-bearers from the Clinical Hospital to show up.

Meanwhile, in the belief that all of the suspects were dead, a press statement was issued from the station offering a very queer version of events. But Parra was able to recount a very different story to the doctors at the Clinc, even though the authorities, upon learning that he was still alive, posted two guards at the entrance to his room. (Parra died in exile in Venezuela in 1970).

The following morning (19 January) the CNT’s José Pérez Espín was arrested, removed to police headquarters and subjected to the ley de fugas then and there, the press being informed that he was shot trying to escape. That same day, Agustín Flor, Hernández Silvestre, Francisco Bravo and Benito Mechano were arrested near the Arco de Triunfo. They were members of the ‘Internacional’ affinity group and they too suffered the ‘ley de fugas’. On this occasion Agustín Flor managed to survive, making it home in a very excited state, only to die from a heart attack shortly afterwards.

The ley de fugas became standard practice. On 22 January for instance some 36 corpses were checked in at the Clinical Hospital in Barcelona.

Meanwhile, Ramón Archs stuck to his plans to decapitate the repression and met with members of the metalworkers’ affinity group, resolving to have done with Martínez Anido. Domènech Rivas and Rocart Pi undertook to do the job. Obviously the ideal time was Inspector Espejo’s funeral on 23 January, but Anido was under close police protection and even though CNT personnel tried and got as close as they were able to the giant figure of the governor, they were spotted, arrested and taken to the station. That night their bullet-riddled bodies turned up on the Avenida de la Diagonal.

It was also during January 1921 that Ramón Archs held another meeting with members of the metalworkers’ affinity group, at which lots were drawn to decide who would take part in the assassination attempt on Eduardo Dato. First Ramón Casanellas set off for Madrid to lay the groundwork; then it was the turn of Pere Matheu and later Luis Nicolau and his partner Lucía (that being the nom de guerre of Joaquina Carlota).

On 22 January the brothers Ramón and Juan San Romà Poblet were arrested in Montblanc and accused of the attempted assassination of the Libre gunman Davila.

On 24 January the ley de fugas was used against the CNT members Manuel Fernández and Francisco Gil who had been arrested an accused of involvement in the death of an assault guard. On 9 February, Julián Besteiro raised the issue of the ley de fugas in Barcelona in parliament, asking the Interior minister, the Conde de Bugallal if he endorsed the methods being employed in Barcelona by Martínez Anido, to which the Conde replied that in every instance the prisoners had indeed been attempting to escape, although two deputies demonstrated that that was an impossibility. Those deputies were Guerra del Río and Lluis Companys who had taken over from Francesc Layret following the latter’s murder. However, Bugallal and Cambó, no less, had no hesitation in continuing to defend the actions of Martínez Anido and Arlegui in Barcelona.

There was some slight modification made to the ley de fugas after that: now the implementation of it would be left either to the Somatén or to the gunmen from the Libre, as CNT personnel were leaving prison or police headquarters.

And so a point was reached when CNT prisoners refused to be set free, especially at night, in that this spelled death. Lots of the partners of prisoners, fearing the worst, would spend the night standing guard outside the Modelo or police headquarters.

On 16 February Francisco Ródenas was mortally wounded in a clash with the police. The very same day an attempt was mounted on the life of businessman Juan Serra from the Serra y Balet plant, although, thanks to his driver, he made it back to the safety of his factory where his injuries were treated.

The crackdown on the CNT was so ferocious that panic seized the workers, obliging CNT militants to strip down their unions to simple skeletal structures or watch them perish. Every CNT member was obliged to arm himself, if only for the sake of self-defence, so there was a spectacular upsurge in arms dealing in Barcelona. The situation being what it was members of the Libre also grabbed their chance to arm themselves better.

On 26 February gunmen from the Libre showed up at the gates of the Fundición Alexandre works in the Calle Ginebra in Barceloneta where the entire staff was affiliated to the CNT; they opened fire, killing Ramón Lloveras and wounding Francisco Vizcaino, Emilio Fuentes and Emilio Cervantes. The children Elías Vidal and Francisco Marcos were also wounded. That same day the man in the grey raincoat was in action again at about 6.00 p.m., against the industrialist Antonio Pareto, that employer having replaced all of his staff with personnel from the Libre.

The next day, the CNT’s Sebastián Canal and Antonio Cruzat came under attack in the Plaza Real at the Tres Llits junction. According to Inocencio Feced, the perpetrators were from the Libre – Vera (Mirete), Pauli Pallàs, A. Oliveras and A. Coll .(However, Pallàs was under arrest in Tarragona at the time in connection with a murder bid carried out on 4 January so could not have been part of the gang. He was freed on 14 April thanks to support from Martínez Anido, his sponsor.)

That February, at 10 Calle Toledo in the Sans quarter, where Vicens Sales lived with his father, his young partner Roser Benavent set up a dressmaker’s as a front funded by Pedro Vandellós; the aim was to prepare and store explosives on the premises and later the arsenal amassed would be removed to the La Farinera farmhouse in Sant Feliu de Llobregat.

On 27 February tram-driver Ramón Esteve was murdered. Within days it emerged that he was a police plant. His killing occurred on the El Morro9t road and the police charged the CNt’s Vicens Sales with the crime.

On 1 March the «Calle Toledo» affinity group placed some explosives at the rear of the power station in the Calle Vila i Vilà, but the explosion barely shattered a few windows.

On 3 March, almost by accident, in a search of No 137 Calle Marina, the police arrested one Ángel Fernández (in actuality Evelio Boal). As a result of the arrest Andreu Nin stepped into the position of secretary of the CNT national committee and Ramón Acín that of secretary of the regional committee

On 8 March Eduardo Dato, the prime minister, granted an audience to Zaragoza governor the Conde Coello de Portugal before setting off for the senate where he attended the debate between the Marqués de Santa Cruz and General Luque, before heading for home in a vehicle driven by Sergeant Manuel Ros, travelling down the Calle de Alcalà. When it neared thePlaza de Independencia a motorcycle with sidecar, driven by CNT personnel, drew up near the vehicle and, shouting «Long live anarchy!» they opened fire. This was at 8.18 p.m. Eduardo Dato died a few minutes after arriving at the Calle Olózaga dispensary.

The police who arrived on the scene, ignorant of the political motive behind it, received an initial lead from the many eye-witnesses who reported a motorcycle-sidecar with a red headlight.

On 11 March a local woman informed the Civil Guard that she had spotted a motorcycle like the one described by the press in the Calle Andrés Soria. The trail led to the garage belonging to Fernández Oviedo, a converted butcher’s shop, where the motorcycle-sidecar had been hidden. After reading this reported in the press, Valeriana López, with whom the NT members had boarded, contacted the police to state that they well have been her lodgers, as indeed turned out later to be the case, after police kept discreet watch on her home.

On 13 March Pere (Pedro) Matheu called to Valeriana’s home to collect a suitcase in which he had stowed some documents, although the likelihood is that he was there to pick up a raincoat for protection against the foul weather. In fact the police were on the verge of calling off their surveillance when they saw a young man approach who turned out to be Pere Matheu.

On being placed under arrest, Matheu stated: «I killed, not Dato, but the minister who authorised the ley de fugas.» Not until months later, in the mid-summer was the identity of Ramón Casanellas established. He managed to flee across the Pyrenees, whilst Nocolau and Lucía went to ground in the environs of Barcelona until Amor Archs and Luisa Padrós saw to it that they were smuggled out to France.

Meanwhile, Manuel Allendesalazar took over as prime minister.

In spite of everything that had happened in Madrid, there was no let-up in the use of the ley de fugas in Barcelona; indeed, Martínez Anido and Miguel Arlegui stuck to the use of the ploy.

On 17 March CNT personnel Ferran Sánchez Roja aka ‘Negre de Gracia’ and Joan Baptista Ascher aka ‘El poeta’ attempted to assassinate Salvador Anglada and Josep Rofa, members of the Carlist Centre in Sans; Anglada was slightly injured in the tussle.

On 21 March Marcos Alcón was arrested, accused of the killing of Luis Vivó Tubau. The very same day saw the arrest of Progreso Ródenas who was once again on the run as a wanted man. The following day his sister Libertad Ródenas would report to the Assembly of the Banking and Savings Trades Association where she waited for the representative of the Libre to speak before rounding on him and cursing him, thereby disrupting the event before leaving surrounded by an escort of CNT comrades.

On 23 March, on learning of the incident at the Banking Trades Assembly and impressed by Libertad’s strength of character, Martínez Anido sent for her and they had a lengthy and intense conversation during which it seems that, assured by Libertad that she was sure that she and her brothers were marked for murder, Arlegui promised to guarantee the safety of Libertad and her loved ones. [Even though her brother Francisco was to die shortly after this in the Clinic on 21 March as a result of a clash with police on 16 February].

On 27 March the CNT’s Agustí Subirats stepped out of the prison and headed for his home in a little boarding house at No 27, Calle Mariano Agulló. He would be tailed by two gunmen from the Libre who murdered him as soon as he reached the boarding house.

Also on 27 March in Mataró, members of the Libre arrived at the Fonda Condal near the Moderno cinema at between 3 and 4 o’clock in the afternoon, just as CNT members were eating there. The CNT’s Buenaventura Roca and Joan Sans were killed on the spot and the restaurant owner Joan Clavería was wounded. With the aid of some soldiers, a number of carabineers managed to apprehend several of the assailants who were remanded to the courts, but in the end the matter was quietly forgotten about.

The CNT’s response was not long delayed: on 29 march the organiser of the Libre’s glassworkers’ union, Salvador Aguilar, was killed in the Calle Prim in Barcelona.

On 1 April, in the Calle Montaña in Barcelona, Francisco Celis, concierge at the Sant Martí quarter Landlords’ Union was murdered.

A regional CNT plenum was being organised for the month of April 1921 in Lérida where the CNT was of course rather more accepted, but the actual date had yet to be determined.

In early April the police passed police intelligence regarding CNT members to the Libre’s gunmen to afford the latter a free hand against them. This action left CNT personnell utterly vulnerable and made them sitting ducks, liable to be picked off at will by the Libre gunmen in the pay of the employers’ federation.

Also in early April Arlegui and Anido launched a campaign to discredit the labour lawyers, as a result of which some of the most threatened ones, such as Puig d’Asprer and José Ulled fled the city, albeit that they returned later.

On 6 April the CNT members Custodio Beltrán, Jacinto Borrás and María Sanahuja were arrested in the Calle Tamarit. Within days they were charged with arson at the Casa Lligé plant which was burned down two days after their arrest, at a time when they were in police custody.

On 12 April, Libre gunmen murdered Felipe Hilario, a CNT member from the construction union; this happened in the Calle Huerto de la Bomba very close to the Reina Amalía women’s prison.

On 14 April the first of the lawyers acting as defence counsel to trade unionists was murdered: this was José Lastra and the killing was carried out in his own office at 351 Calle Diputación. That same night, José Ulled was wounded in his home at 105 Paseo de Gracaia, but his clerk, Francisco Estrada was not quite so lucky and was killed.

But it was only in Barcelona that labour or social lawyers gfaced reprisals: it was also happening in Madrid where assassination attempts were made on the lives of the lawyers Fontana, Saragoyen and Guerra del Río.

In Barcelona an ambush was set for Eduardo Barriobero, but he spotted the would-be killers and, fearing for the worst, quit the city for Madrid that very night. In retaliation, they went after his usher in Barcelona, Joan Casanovas, who lived in the Calle Aragón, but Casanovas, who was armed, managed to beat off his assailants and came through the attack unscathed.

On 20 April Basilio Bardagi was arrested while handing out CNT news bulletins t the ‘Manufactureras Reunidas de la Industria Textil’ plant in La Verneda.

On 21 April, the police swooped at the junction of the Calle de Poniente and the Calle de la Creu. Ramón Estany, Josep Prat Roca, Antonio Sesé Arturo and Melchor Tarrida Alix were arrested when found in possession of CNT dues stamps as well as the addresses of libertarian groups in Europe and Spain.

On 24 April, a Somatén banner showing the Christ figure and embroidered by ladies from Madrid was handed over. Anarchist militants planned to toss a bomb at the platform party which was to have included Arlegui, Anido and the king (although the latter failed to show up). At th ame time another attack was being planned against the Distict VI Somatén commander Emili Vidal-Ribas, one of the most vicious persecutors of trade unionists. So, within a day of the handing-over of the banner, just as Vidal was about to enter his store in the Calle Mercaders, he was mown down and died a short time later in the dispensary.

On the morning of 24 April, activists Acher, José Pérez aka ‘Mula’, and Pedro Vandellós caught a taxi from the Plaza Cataluña and ordered the driver to take them to Esplugas. En route they picked up Roser Segarra and Juan Elías Saturnino before heading for the Masía de la Farinera to pick up a package containing bombs. Leter they disposed of the taxi driver, leaving him unconscious and carrying on with their journey. However, they found the Paseo de Gracia under occupation by the security forces and wee unable to proceed by car, so they had to find somewhere less closely watched. Seeing as they were not going to be able to hit the platform party, they decided to set the car in motion with the bombs attached to the engine and primed to explode, but failed to notice that they had left the car behind a garage; the mechanics there, on seeing the smoke billowing forth, rushed over to stop it. This series of misadventures prevented the carrying out of the bomb attack.

That day some 40,000 Somatén members paraded in front of Martínez Anido and those who attended cheered Martínez Anido to the skies as a genuine national hero.

Unaware of what had happened and in the belief that the king had been at the rally, the anarchists decided to undermine the railway tracks so as to derail the train due to ferry the king home to Madrid, but yet again, coincidence thwarted their plans, in that a line-man, irked by the lateness of his daughter, set off in search of her and discovered the damage and had time enough to raise the alarm and have it repaired.

As April drew to an end, the CNT’s Josep Montserrat was murdered beside his home in the Calle Cruz de los Canteros.

The plenum scheduled to be held in Lérida was finally held, clandestinely, in a comrade’s home in the Pueblo Seco quarter on 28 April 1921. It was chaired by Andreu Nin. Nin was the national committee secretary and at this plenum the CNT, after analysing the situation, decided that they had no option but to spark a popular uprising, but to accomplish this they needed the backing of the Russian soviets. Nin who had Pestaña’s unfavourable report on this occasion embellished the document in that he was bent on lobbying the Third International (to which the CNT was affiliated) for weapons, so it was agreed that Andreu Nin, Hilari Arlandis and Joaquín Maurín would be dispatched to Russia. They set off immediately from Barcelona with barely a penny, but the anarchists of the various countries through which they passed took them in and helped them slip across the various borders.

On arrival in Moscow they were greeted by Leon Trotsky who was at that point «People’s Commissar for Defence». In their audience with Trotsky, he sked them if they had troops for their uprising. The startled CNT delegates answered that they did not, at which Trotsky concluded that giving them weapons would be madness, so in this connection the delegation failed in its task.

Meanwhile in Barcelona one of the most active affinity groups, the one subsequently referred to as the «Calle Toledo» group, was hatching an attempt on the life of Juan de La Cierva, a former minister. The strategy would be to plant a bomb on the railway line out towards Falset.

In 2 May Roser Benavent shooed the seamstresses away early from the garment workshop that was being used as a cover and a short time later comrades began to arrive; in the little laboratory they set about preparing the bombs to be used for the assassination attempt on La Cierva. Something must have gone wrong , for there was an explosion of which Roser Benavent took the full brunt, being left seriously injured and scorched, whilst Acher was maimed in one hand. Juan Abrau was killed outright. Juan Bautista Cucha died a few days later. The others managed to escape on foot. Josefa Crespo, though injured, made it to a nearby pharmacy where she was arrested. [19] Neighbours watched as clouds of smoke and people with burnt clothing emerged from the fourth floor of No 10, Calle Toledo. The fire brigade, who initially reckoned that that they were dealing with an accidental fire, found that they were dealing with inflammable liquids, as they reported to the police who promptly dispatched their special squad to take charge of the situation.

On 4 May Roser Segarra, one of the Calle Toledo activists, who had been hospitalised in the Clinic managed to slip away and went into hiding in Vilanova i la Geltrú.

Around 9 May members of the Somatén used the ley de fugas on the CNT’s Gregori Fabre aka ‘El Brasileño’ as he was collecting union dues.

On 10 May, the police searched the home of Acher’s partner, Luisa Moreno, at No 10, Calle Bejar. In the course of the search they found a letter signed by Leonor Pujol who was actually Roser Segarra, on the run since the Calle Toledo explosion.

On 17 May, after questioning of the Calle Toledo detainees held in the Clinic, the block containing the Avenida Paral.lel and the Calles Olmo, San Beltrán and Santa Madrona as part of the search for two activists – Pedro Navarro and Josep Saleta aka ‘El Nano’. However they both made good their escape although Navarro was picked up after a short while in Montalbán, Teruel.

Also at about this time María Fernández and J. Castro were arrested whilst monitoring the movements of Miguel Arleguí, although the managed to talk the police into freeing them.

In the final week of that month of May so dark for the affinity groups they lost Ferran Rojas aka ‘Negre’, one of their best activists.

At about this point the police had lots of intelligence due to the many informants they had inside the CNT organisation, so they were able to establish that the leading lights of the CNT affinity groups were being coordinated by Ramón Archs and Pedro Vandellós, so they now became the chief targets of the police and of the Libre.

Within the CNT, nerves were on edge since anybody might fall under suspicion of being an informer. Thus, on 20 May there was a falling-out between comrades as they accused one another of being informers and a brawl erupted; in the course of an exchange of gunshots, Manuel Marcos, who had not managed to rebut the charges against him, was killed. Something much the same happened between Pere Bautista and Salvador Coll aka ‘Mallorca’ when the latter was accused of having sold out to the authorities. The pair were executed in Montjuich. Within days, though, the very comrades who had carried out the attack realised their mistake.

The strategy being to strike closer to Martínez Anido, an attack was planned on Barcelona’s mayor; Salvador Salsench, a one-time Carlist turned CNT member, had a hand in this. The killing was done on 17 June in the middle of the Plaza de Sant Jaume and mayor Martínez Domingo was left wounded before being removed to a private clinic. A number of activists took up strategic positions in the vicinity to await the appearance of Martínez Anido, but the latter never showed.

There was another attempt made to assassinate Anido, mounted in the doorway of the Santa Ana church where he had been a frequent visitor. That plan had been drawn up by Anibal Álvarez’s group and the Asdrúbal brothers, but, as if forewarned of something, Anido failed to show himself in the vicinity of the church over a number of days.

On the night of 17 June, the police response came when Evelio Boal was taken from prison and removed to police headquarters along with Antoni Feliu (treasurer of the CNT’s Catalan regional committee) and José Domínguez. After just over an hour they were freed. They were on their way home and arrived at the Calle Santa María del Mar where the Libre’s gunmen were laying in wait. Boal had barely separated from Domínguez when he was gunned down. Minutes later, even as some policemen were examining the corpses, a number of shots was heard, this time directed at Domínguez who was cut down in the Calle Sombrerers. Feliu managed to escape but within days he was hunted down by the Libre’s gunmen in the Paseo de Sant Juan near the Arco del Triunfo.

Thoose were undoubtedly very fraught times with nerves on edge on both sides. On the night of 23 June as Bertrán i Musitu was making his way by car along the Calle Salmerón with his son they spotted that they were being tailed by a motorcycle. Remembering what had befallen Eduardo Dato, they jumped out of the car and opened fire, although later they were able to establish that the ‘tail’ was made up of Somatén members who had decided to give their leader an escort. These, however, did not have time to explain themselves initially and made a run for it, whilst some police who happened to be in the area opened fire, wounding Musitu’s son.

On 24 June Pedro Vandellós was picked up in the Calle Bofarull in Sant Andrés on the basis of a tip-off from an informer.

Vandellós, a man much sought after by the police, normally laid low by day in out of the way places where he passed the time reading, waiting for the early evening hours before venturing out in search of workers from whom to collect union dues. That night they used the ley de fugas on him in La Verneda outside the ‘La Esperanza’ biscuit factory.

On 25 June Ramón Archs walked into a deadly trap laid for him by yet another informer whose identity was never established. They had both arranged a meeting in the Plaza Urquinaona and as Archs stepped off the tram a number of secret policemen arrested him and hauled him in front of Arlegui. Archs was to be tortured and his face disfigured and his corpse turned up the following day in the Calle Vila i Vilà.

Learning of the deaths of Archs and Vandellós, their comrades – Josep Saleta aka ‘El Nano’, Andreu Masdeu aka ‘El Llarch’, Llorens, Vicens Cervera, Francesc Garca aka ‘El Patillas’ and Joan Tarragó – reacted immediately by hatching a plan to attack the Asociación de Cazadores located in the Rambla- Plaza Cataluya, a place where, the word was, hired guns could recruited. The attack was carried out on 30 June. A car was used to take the bar’s terrace with gunfire and then th young Joan Tarragó threw a hand grenade at the window.

2 July saw Francisco Martínez Valls’s group rounded up.

On 19 July Roser Segarra was picked up in Puigcerdà, having been identified as a member of the Calle Toledo group.

Meanwhile, 1500 kilometers from Barcelona, in Morocco troops occupied and dug in in Anual and Monte Arruit on 7 July, but there positions came under fierce siege from the troops of Abd-El-Krim, resulting the the failure of a relief column to get through to Monte Arruit.

The desperate victims of the siege then thought to sally forth from their stronghold, having spent a number of days without water and with scarcely anything to eat. Meanwhile, fresh troops dispatched by Fernández Silvestre tried to come to their aid, but were halted in and around Annual by Rifs led by Abd-El-Krim who stopped them from getting through.

In which case the desperate troops holding Monte Arruit made up their minds to venture forth from their stronghold on 21 July 1921, under enemy crossfire, most of the garrison perishing in the attempt.

The disasters at Annual and Monte Arruit in Africa and the collapse of the Spanish lines commanded by generals Fernández Silvestre and Berenguer under the onslaught from the Rifs focussed press attention on the Moroccan issue, pushing the dirty war in Barcelona off the front pages and allowing Martínez Anido to launch a ferocious new onslaught on the CNT in Barcelona.

On 28 July the CNT’s Jacinto Vila was arrested while bathing in Barceloneta. He was accused of attempted murder of the Libre gunman ‘El Mallorquín’. As Vila refused to sign a concocted statement, he was savagely tortured.

2 August would see the arrest in the Ateneo La Farinera of Josep Saleta and Andreu Masdeu. On the night of the same day the police removed Juan López from the Modelo prison to get him to sign some papers; after he refused to comply, he was given a brutal beating and when he was returned to the Modelo his comrades did not recognise him, such was the physical condition in which he was left.

On 3 August it was the turn of Ángel Latorre to be arrested. He was tortured by none other than Arlegui and Anido themselves over a six day period before being removed to the Modelo where he was held incommunicado for 17 days.

On 5 August, a bomb being handled by Ángel Latorre and another comrade went off in their hands, killing them instantly. This happened in the Calle dels Metges in the Santa Catalinia quarter. Following the explosion the police managed to arrest Luis Dufur aka ‘Larrosa’ and Salvador Salsench in the district. These fresh arrests led on tio the uncovering of an entire arsenal held by the group on Montjuich mountain; at roughly the same time the landlords of Can Vidiella de Falset, which had frequently been used as a safe haven by CNT personnel, were arrested.

Antonio Pellicer was brought for trial on 11 August for an article that had appeared in Bandera Roja, an article he had not written.

On 12 August the CNT’s Victoriano Muñoz, accused of handing out anti-militarist leaflets, was arrested.

The CNT affinity groups had by then been decimated, in spite of which the CNT managed to keep its clandestine apparatus going and even tried to publish Solidaridad Obrera, although, on 10 September, Eugenio Martínez Fernández was arrested and later brought to book for publishing Solidaridad Obrera.

In Setember 1921 Antonio Maura formed a new cabinet that was joined by the Catalans Francesc Cambó and Josep Bertrán in Musitu. The bourgeoisie reckoned that a paradise of low pay and docile workers lay ahead once again. And the Libre, led by Ramón Sales, reckoned that the time had come for it to organise along trade union lines and so they embarked upon a campaign with a rally at the Boheme cinema in Hostafranchs and a number of trade union demands were articulated. The Catalan bourgeoisie was somewhat taken aback and asked Martínez Anido to take steps but he allowed the Libre to proceed with its new plans.

Lluis Nicolau and Lucía were arrested in Berlin, as was Andreu Nin, in a working class district of the city. The German authorities agreed to their extradition on condition that they would not face the death penalty. The extradition request was widened to include Pedro Matheu, the only one arrested with any direct link to the assassination of Eduardo Dato in Madrid, whereas Andreu Nin’s fellow communists saw to it that he was not extradited.

On 1 October, 90,000 men discharged from the army a year earlier were called to the colours once again and dispatched to North Africa.

20 October saw the arrest of Magí Marimón, a member of the Calle Toledo group. He was to be ferociously tortured with electric shock before being held incommunicado for 44 days in the Modelo prison in Barcelona. Also arrested was Rafael Sánchez Rex from the CNT construction union. His crime? He was a friend of Acher; he was to be sent away to the El Dueso prison from where he escaped albeit that his corpse turned up with a bullet through the forehead a few days later.

Towards the end of 1921 Libertad Ródenas and Rosario Dolcet set off for Madrid to give a lecture at the Ateneo Científico, where they gave an account of the social strife Barcelona was experiencing. Not a single intellectual dared to attend the talk.

On 8 December, the CNT’s Manuel Valero was murdered in the Calle Jerusalem.

1922: The Repression Continues

Early in 1922, at the suggestion of Martínez Anido, the Spanish government drew up a bill providing for compulsory unionisation and introduced a pilot scheme in Barcelona. The aim, of course, was to enforce political and trade union control over every worker.

On 19 February 1922, Labour minister Leopoldo Mateos met in Barcelona with the chairmen of 44 organisations , initially with an eye to their becoming a single organisation. However, the CNT was to publish a well thought out manifesto categorically rejecting the government’s proposals in that no trade union should be answerable to government agencies.

That February Anido distanced himself from the Lliga led by Cambó and Puig i Cadafalch and the rest by unilaterally abiding by the political directions emanating from the Madrid government rather than the autonomy for which the Lliga and the Mancomunitat of Catalunya were pressing. On which grounds city councillor Maybnes was to publish a piece in La Veu de Catalunya advising Martínez Anido not to stay out of the gae of politics and stick to the duties of a civil governor and maintain law and order.

Severiano Martínez Anido asked Barcelona mayor Martínez Domingo to get his councillor to retract his remarks, but the latter bluntly refused, arguing that Maybnes was fully entitled to air his opinions democratically.

At around this point Anido was interviewed by El Sol (Madrid) and told us pretty much that he had not been grappling with public order in Barcelona but with terrorism, since although the streets seemed to have become calmer of late, the fact was that labour disputes were still going on and indeed social offences and armed robberies were on the rise, so the only solution was to keep up the occupation of Barcelona, that is to say, maintain the ongoing state of siege.

March witnessed the downfall of Antonio Maura’s government and the advent of a new government headed by José Guerra Sánchez, the government which was to appoint Miguel Primo de Rivera as military governor of Barcelona as well as restoring constitutional guarantees, as a result of which thousands of prisoners were put back on the streets. Those who had been confined in the fortress of La Mola were hailed as real heroes when they reached Barcelona on 4 April 1922.

Despite the new relaxation, all of the workers freed from prison had their names added to the black list drawn up by the employers’ federation and still found it all but impossible to find work. This was especially true of the leading militants of the CNT.

From then on, CNT personnel recaptured the initiative and thus on 8 April 1922 a number of CNT members arrived at the Bertrán i Serra factory to insist of the Libre’s delegate that all of the workforce – including him – should join the CNT. (Bear in mind that during the Anido repression, many a CNT member had switched to the Libre and they were now flocking back to the CNT, as in the case of Adolfo Domingo Calanda, president of the Barcelona CNT’s painters’ union. In retaliation, Libre personnel murdered him a few days later, on 30 April to be precise. The actual killers were Miquel Serra, Leonardo García and Miguel Fernández.

On 9 April the CNT’s José Rivero was assassinated.

On 11 April a CNT commission chaired by Jesús Vallejo showed up at the Interior ministry for talks with Martínez Anido, aiming to have the CNT legalised as had happened elsewhere in Spain. Vallejo stood in front of Anido and said his piece. When he finished, Anido replied tat he alone was in charge in Barcelona and that they should therefore clear off immediately or he would arrest them there and then.

Also on 11 April, the CNT’s Juan Rius Albert was murdered.

In May 1922, Solidaridad Obrera newspaper was forced to publish in Valencia with Felipe Alaiz as director. Meanwhile the Libre was thriving and at a rally at the Montaña cinema Serra and the Roca brothers were introduced as new trade union recruits to the Libre, even though they all declined positions of responsibility, the Roca brothers were pressurised into taking up posts.

On 7 May Libre gunmen attempted the life of the CNT’s Juan Jaume Vicent and León Portet Avenosa.

At the start of May the incoming secretary of the CNT national committee, Salvador Seguí, travelled to Madrid where that national committee was based. Once in the Spanish capital, Seguí called for the organising of a plenum of regionals to discuss the new tactics the CNT should adopt. That plen was held in a Zaragoza theatre on 11 June 1922. The secretary of the regional committee of Aragon, La Rioja and Navarra at that point was Manuel Buenacasa. Using the alias Juan Beranza he sought permission from the governor of Zaragoza for a labour meeting and was granted leave with scarcely any provisos. The policeman who attended the meeting was perfectly well aware that it did not match the information h had received from the Interior ministry, but Buenacasa threatened him with a general strike, so the good fellow did not dare incur that blame. At that plenary and following Ángel Pestaña’s report (which did get a reading this time) the CNT broke once and for all with the Third International in order to affiliate to the International Workers’ Association recently launched in Berlin by Rudolf Rocker in 1922 with the redoubtable aid of others such as Valeriano Orobón Fernández from Valladolid. The plenum of regionals also endorsed a proposal from Salavador Seguí whereby the CNT would more or less dump its apoliticism and support the «lesser evil», the politicians. In any event, this latter point scarcely got a hearing from CNT militants and, for the same organisational reasons, was little implemented.On 8, 9 and 10 July there was a conference held in Blanes; item one on the agenda related to the figure of Martínez Anido and his refusal to legalise the CNT.

The lawyer-turned-informer Pedro Mártir Homs – whose office had long since stopped attracting CNT clients – along with his wife, ‘La Pagesa’, decided to set up a gang of hired guns whose recruitment office was in the L’Esquerra de l’Eixample bar in the Calle Aribau. Between Juy and August, that gang was involved in most of the shooting incidents over that period and there was a even an attempt to murder Inspector Honorio Inglés on 19 July in the Horta quarter while the intended victim was making his way to the police station in that area. (Years later the Libre gunman Ramírez aka ‘El pamplonés’ confessed to Inglés that the attempt on his life had been ordered by Arlegui.)

During this time Libre personnel underwent radicalisation; one indication of this being that they joined in the CNT miners’ strike in Figols.

On 2 August the CNT’s Jaime Casellas was murdered in Badalona.

On 12 August the CNT’s Juan Solanas was murdered.

The revenue from the CNT’s membership dues was unable to cover the expenses generated by the jails filled with comrades, or the numerous court cases or predicaments that forced comrades into going to ground or leaving for exile – in short, to fund counter-measures against the repression that was lashing out in every direction. So a meeting was held in a bar in Barceloneta. Marcelino da Silva proposed that they rob the MZA railway on the first Saturday of the month, pay day.

At the same time Libre personnel and the Employers’ Federation carried on planning attacks and this time the target was Ángel Pestaña.

On 17 August Pestaña had taken part in a rally denouncing the corruption of the Employers’ Federation and of the Libre in Barcelona, as well as the murky schemes of Severiano Martínez Anido.

Capitalising upon the fact that Pestaña had a public speaking engagement in Manresa, a team was put together to ‘rub him out’. CNT members got wind of this and so they too made their preparations for a confrontation. Pestaña did not go straight to Manresa but stopped off first in Sabadell where he was joined by Bruno Lladó. Once in Manresa and with two hours to kill before his meeting, Pestaña decided to venture out and get his bearings in the city and, despite the warnings from his comrades, insisted in strolling around the city. So, when they reached the bridge over the Cardoner river, their path was blocked by an individual who opened fire on Pestaña, leaving him gravely wounded. Pestaña was rushed to the city hospital.

On learning of the attempt on Pestaña’s life, the authorities made to ban the rally, but of course that, had it been judge, would have been ill-advised and would undoubtedly have triggered further street disturbances.

Meanwhile, gunmen from the Manresa branch of the Libre were determined that Pestaña would not be leaving the clinic alive and they roamed the area. Over the days that followed the police arrested several members of the Manresa Libre such as Joan Pladevilla aka ‘Joan de la manta’, Isidre Vinyals (the union’s president) and Vilajoana aka ‘El tramqui’.

On 1 September, Ramón Recasens, Antonio Jiménez aka ‘El señorito’, Manuel Ramos, Francisco Cunyat, Victor Quero and José Francés held up the MZA train carrying the railway payroll. In the raid one guard (José Mallofré) who reached for his weapon was killed and one MZA employee (Mariano Montarde) was killed by a stray bullet and Ramón Recasens was also felled when the sentry in an artillery depot located not far from the scene of the hold-up caught on to what was afoot. And a second shot dropped Quero. However, the CNT raiders managed to retrieve Recasens and the loot and fled towards the city centre. The comrades hid Recasens in the home of his girlfriend María Camarasa who lived in the Calle Botella and fetched a male nurse who gave him first aid there.

The stolen payroll was hidden in the home of Francisco Verdú, president of the ‘El adelantado Obrero’ ateneo at No 7, 5°, 3°, Calle Ferlandina. The loot amounted to 140,000 pesetas which were handed over to Francisco Arín, secretary of the Prisoners’ Aid Committee.

On 7 September José Francés was arrested and from 14 September on the arrests were made of Francisco Verdú, Segimón Sola (the male nurse), Marcelino da Silva and Francisco Peña (who ran a bar in the Calle Riereta where Recasens had been hiding out). Recasens managed to escape to France, thanks to the Prisoners’ Aid Committee of Francisco Arín which passed him 15,000 pesetas to assist his escape, through Antonio Más aka ‘El tartamut’. (According to Inocencio Feced, Recasens died in Bordeaux, France, guillotined following an expropriation.) In spite of the arrests, police were never able to recover the proceeds from the hold-up.

In the latter half of September, the ‘Crisol’ group in Catalonia – of which Juan García Oliver, Ricardo Sanz, Gregorio Jover, etc., were members, amalgamated with the Zaragoza-based ‘Los Justicieros’ group (including Francisco Ascaso, Buenaventura Durruti, Aurelio Fernández, etc.) to launch the ‘Los Solidarios’ group. The two groups had been brought into contact by Domingo Ascaso who lived in the Calle San Jerónimo in Barcelona; the meeting at which the two groups amalgamated was held on those premises.

On 22 September gunmen from the Libre attacked the CNT’s Juan Cusí and towards the end of the month they murdered the CNT’s Jaume Figueras as well.

In early October, a number of anarchist affinity groups gathered in a wood adjoining Llavaneres, at the invitation of ‘Los Solidarios’.

Through informants, Miguel Arlegui also got wind of the Llavaneres meeting and a few days before it set in train a plan whereby an attempt on Anido’s life would be faked as the pretext for a subsequent swoop on the Llavaneras gathering. In on this plan was the notorious informer Inocencio Feced and since there was less than implicit confidence in him he was accompanied by police officer Florentino Pellejero who passed himself off as an anarcho-syndicalist recently arrived from Bilbao. Feced contacted Genaro Tejedor’s affinity group; although Tejedor knew of Feced’s past, Feced managed to persuade him to join in the attack on Anido.

That October, the CNT’s Josep Rubinat, a first cousin of Seguí’s, was murdered.

On 19 October an attempt was made on the life of police officer Pedro de Lucía (who was wounded) as he was acting as bodyguard to businessman Esteve Agell. This was in the Plaza Málaga in the Sans quarter. Through its newspaper La Protesta, the Libre blamed the attack on the Manuel Talens aka ‘El valencianet’.

That night a police raid netted Ramón García and Juan Téllez, both CNT members, as they were walking along the Sans highway. However, carelessness by the police enabled Ramón to make a break for it and even though they shot after him and wounded him he made good his escape and fled to the Gracia district, where he visited the dispensary for treatment for his injuries. Which led to his being arrested.

On 21 October gunmen from the Libre attempted to murder the CNT’s Ramón Jaume Mateu.

On 23 October a number of CNT personnel – Joan Manent y Pesas, Guillermo Martí Texier and Vicens Soler Juan -were arrested in Badalona on arrival at the Estación del Norte.

On 23 October Martínez Anido and Arlegui gave the go-ahead for the staged assassination bid; the aim was doubtless to boost the governor’s prestige. That night Anido was due to visit the El Dorado theatre in the Plaza Catalunya and Feced was briefed about this so that he could pass word to all his fellow activists.

Put in the picture, Manuel Talens that night doled out the weapons in the Monumental bar in Gracia. Whilt CNT personnel [21] stationed themselves strategically around the scene of the action which was to have been the end of the Rambla Santa Monica, the police, under Inspector Agapito Martín made ready to counter the attack by the CNT people. The very nervous Agapito Martín jumped the gun and once the CNT personnel saw that they were surrounded, they sounded the alarm, scattring down the narrow streets adjacent to the Ramblas. The upshot was that the CNT’s Adolfo Bermejo aka ‘El Madriles’ [22] and Rafael Climent lost their lives, Claramonte and Talens were wounded and police officer Pellejero (posing as an anarcho-syndicalist) was killed in the doorway of No 21 Calle Nueva de San Francisco. Miguel Arlegui promptly ordered the arrest in Gracia of Amalio Cerdeño who lived at No 3, Calle Serra Xic; the ley de fugas was used on Cerdeño when he reached the Calle Espartería. (Cerdeño had issued the guns to the CNT personnel). The police, believing him to be dead, dumped the CNT member’s body. Some passersby could see that he was still alive and took him to the nearest dispensary. There, the duty doctor, on hearing Cerdeño’s story, summoned the public prosecutor Diego Medina who came immediately. On the basis of what he heard from Cerdeño and numerous eye-witnesses, Mediana had no hesitation in grabbing the phone and calling premier Sánchez Guerra in Madrid to tell him what was going on in Bacelona. (This was at four o’clock in the morning.) Guerra promptly called Martínez Anido who had just returned from his night out and told him that he had just dismissed Miguel Arlegui provisionally from his post as Barcelona police chief. An irked Martínez Anido then took issue with the prime minister and sided with Arlegui, which Sánchez Guerra capitalised upon in order to ask him to hand over command to the president of the Barcelona High Court and set out for Madrid without delay. After talking to Madrid, Severiano Martínez Anido promptly called Arlegui to get him to cancel this entire Macchiavellian scheme.

Also on he morning of 23 October, an attempt was made to murder Simó Piera.

On 26 October 1922, Barcelna’s new civil governor, General Ardanza, was sworn into office.

On 29 October, capitalising upon the new line-up, a delegation of CNT workers arrived at the Interior ministry to talk to General Ardanza. The general welcomed them and heard from the CNT delegation, headed by the lawyer Joan Casanovas. Their conversation centred on the CNT’s intention to seek legalisation. Ardanza made do with telling them that he would forward their message to Madrid. The national government took several days to reply, but naturally could do nothing other than accept the new situation.

On 31 October, Laguía, the president of the Libre, met with governor General Ardanza. Their conversation centred on the legalisation of the CNT and Laguía indicated acquiescence from the Libre which was by that point coming around to the CNT’s stance.

On 6 November Francisco Comas aka ‘Peronas’ and Libetad Ródenas, etc., addressed a rally at the Teratro del Bosque at which legalisation of the CNT was mooted. At which point a bunch of CNT hotheads rounded on the press for their connivance with Martínez Anido and Arlegui and were closing in on the journalists present when Libertad Ródenas stepped between them, arguing that the press could scarcely be held to blame for what had happened during Martínez Anido’s term in office.

At around this time there was an attempt to reach an agreement between the Libre and the CNT; this never bore fruit, although it does appear that a number of overtures were made.

For some days, calm prevailed in Barcelona.

On 22 November Fulgencio Seur Pérez, a CNT member from the metalworkers’ union, an employee at the Escorsa plant in Hospitalet, was murdered by gunmen from the Libre.

On 25 November, Salvador Seguí arrived back in Barcelona (he was secretary of the Madrid-based CNT national committee at this point) and within days held a meeting in his home with Laguía. Laguía again put the proposition of a pact between the CNT and the Libre, but Seguí’s response was that it was out of his hands in that the control of the Catalan CNT lay in the hands of the affinity groups and proposals would of course have to be handled through organisational channels, which is to say, by the union assemblies and local federations which ultimately would determine the outcome. In spite of this, Laguía insisted that there were many thord parties interested in seeing the two unions remaining at loggerheads.

At about this time Seguí was working out a theoetical basis for the creation of a parallel society, but apopoarently this was not looked at kindly by all CNT members, and a number of comrades drew up a dossier on possible treachery by Seguí as a result. One of those comrades was Estanislao Maqueda from the CNT coachbuilders’ union who was also a member of the ‘Tierra y Libertad’ group. Seguí, given the charges being levelled against him, was forced to respond at a rally held at the Ateneo Sindicalista in Barcelona’s Calle de la Paloma. Seguí listened patiently to all the charges and when they had all finished he stood up and began to reply and go through all of the pertinent issues. Salvador Seguí’s speech lasted for seven long hours, from 9.00 p.m. until 4.00 a.m. the next day.

That December there was further cooperation between the Libre and the CNT in relation to a strike in Calella where the employerws had declared a lock-out when faced with the workers’ pay demands.

On 13 December an affinity group (Josep Batlle, Ramón del Riu, José Picón aka ‘El Valladolid’ and Jaume Jiménez aka ‘Jaumet de la tienda’) gathered in an apartment in the Calle Calabria. As the meeting broke up the district wartchman, Pascual Porta, became embroiled in an argument with Jiménez and the squabble ended with both men drawing their guns and with Portas finishing up dead.

Within days of the collapse of Sánchez Guerra’s government and the appointment of incoming prime minister Manuel García Prieto, Salvador Raventós, a Catalan from the Partido Liberal was appointed as the new governor, and Hernández Malillos as chief of police. Malillos appointed Fernández Valdés and Julio Lasarte as his adjutants.

1923. From the Crisol group to Los Solidarios

On 2 January 1923 the CNT’s Catalan regional confederation held a regional plenum on the premises of La Naval. The meeting was chaired by Francisco Arín and out of the meeting came resolutions to establish a sort of cooperative whereby a single cooperative in each sector would look after production, demand and consumption. Another matter dealt with was the setting up of night classes in each of the unions so as to raise educational standards among the workers.

Although Salvador Seguí was not present at the regional plenum, the motions passed obviously adhered to the ‘Noi de Sucre»s thining vis à vis a parallel society. But the more radical groups were not in favour of the establishment of a parallel society; they were more concerned with ending the bourgeoisie’s class privileges and so their objective was to advance the revolution.

On 1 February the CNT’s Felipe Jiménez was killed in a brawl with his foreman; that foreman, Francisco Rabal, was a Libre member.

The first CNT union to set up its night school was the Woodworkers’ Union; that was on 16 February 1923.

On 23 February, delegates from a number of anarchist affinity groupsheld a meeting at the La Tranquilidad bar at which they agreed to go for revolution and attack the authorities – what Garcí Oliver termed the ‘Revolutionary Gymnasium’. In La Tranquilidad a coordinating committee was appointed, headed by Aurelio Fernández and Ricardo Sanz That committee set about publishing a review entitled Los hijos del pueblo, targeted mainly at soldiers doing their military service at the time.

On 24 February, Amadeo Campi, prsident of the Libre’s waterworkers’ union was murdered in the Apeadero bar in the Calle del Clot; a CNT member, Miguel Font was arrested in connection with the killing but neither the Libre nor a faction among the employers believed that the CNT had had a hand in the killing. Instead, it had been a provocation designed to trigger a fresh confrontation between the two union groupings. On account of the Libre’s new stance and following pressures brought to bear by a faction among the employers, Feliu Graupera, president of the employers’ federation, tendered his resignation.

It was late Feruary when it was leaked by masonic circles that a military coup was in the offing. CNT pesonnel had absolutely no interest in a dictatorship at that point and they (Seguí, Foix, Gregori Guerra, Pedro Massoni, etc.) gathered to discuss the matter. However no great decision was reached; they merely agreed that Foix would be charged with keeping in touch with the freemason who was passing them the intelligence and that Seguí should stay on as the organisation’s spokesman.

In March, the case againt Acher aka ‘El poeta’ opened: the prosecution was calling for the death penalty but at the same time a big campaign was launched through the libertarian press calling for the CNT member to be amnestied. The first rally in this campaign was held on 6 March at the Bohemia cinema in the Plaza España in Barcelona, with the participation of Alfedo González, Salvador Seguí, Ángel Pestaña and José Ros.

About this point the Catalan Employers’ Federation had discreetly met somewhere in the city and had concluded that Salvador Seguí was the most dangerous man in the CNT, even more so than the anarchist affinity groups, in that he had it in him to organise and structure the CNT, so they decided to kill him and to this end looked to Libre personnel such as Blas Marín.

The first attempt on the life of the ‘Noi de Sucre’ came in the Calle Mendizabal, although Seguí on that occasion managed to slip away from the killing ground chosen by the Libre’s gunmen.

After that failure, the Catalan employers’ federation looked to a more professional approach and turned to Pere Màrtir Homs and Homs went off in search of Inocencio Feced. So Inocencio Feced and his cohorts started to tail Seguí from the Tostadero bar to the Plaza Universidad and to the Café Español on the Paralelo.

Meanwhile, Foix was still being fed intelligence by his freemason source and so he discovered that on 8 March there had been a meeting of pro-coup military personnel and he sought a meeting with Seguí, but Seguí had to make a trip to Tarragona where he was to speak at a CNT rally, so a rendezvous was arranged for the followin day at the Calle del Olmo workers’ club at 7.30 p.m.

On the night of 9 March, Seguí went to the Cómico theatre on the Paraleo with his partner and their son, to attend a fund-raiser for political prisoners. When the show ended they took a taxi home to Safrada Familia where they were living at the time. It was on this occasion that Seguí spotted that there was a vehicle following them.

On 10 March the Seguí family, having had a sleepless night worrying and pacing the floor, got up at 1.00 p.m., had a bite to eat and then Salvador set off for the Tostadero bar in the Plaza Universidad where he was due to meet Lluis Companys who was due to pay him for some decorating he had done at his home. Later Salvador was due to pay for the paint and materials used in the job at the Companys home, pay a visit to his mother and then meet with Foix around 7.30 p.m.

When he showed up at the Tostadero, Saleri (the waiter-turned-informer) wasted no time in tipping off Homs and Homs tipped off Feced who, a short time later, with his confederates, mounted a watch outside the Tostadero. When Seguí left it was in the company of Peronas. As they reached the Calle Cadena – Calle San Rafael intersection, they popped into the La Trona bar and it was when they left the latter location that Feced and his mates sprang into action, catchng the CNT personnel on the hop. Seguí was shot down on the spot since they shot him in the back of the head (just to be sure) whereas the badly wounded Peronas managed to retreat into a butcher’s shop at 17, Calle San Rafael. The still breathing Peronas was removed to the dispensary in the Calle Marqués de Barberà. There the doctor refused to act, giving him up for dead. But when Simó Piera, brandishing a pistol, forced the duty dioctor to do his job, the latter had no option but to send Peronas on to the Santa Cruz hospital.

Foix was one of the last people to find out what had befallen Salvador Seguí, since he waited over an hour and a half for ‘el Noi de Sucre’ to keep his appointment.

At 4.00 p.m. on 12 March Salvador Seguí was buried in silence, unbeknownst to anyone. His body was taken from the Clinic and buried in a grave in Montjuich.

The CNT which found out immediately what had happened with Sslvador’s corpse, declared a general strike and tried rto stop the authorities doing ikewise with Peronas’s body. That night the police tried to stop a meeting at the Woodworkers’ Union premises at 85, Calle San Pablo, at which there was a fierce confrontation between the two sides, with some people even sustaining bullet wounds.

On 13 March gunmen from the Libre carried on with their attacks on CNT personnel at the Café Español; in this instance Martí Barrera and Pere Comas, a cousin of ‘Peronas’ were the targets. Comas was wounded whereas Barrera came through the attack unscathed.

On 14March the CNT mounted a demonstration in the Plaza de Catalunya to protest at the killings and to insist that Peronas was not going to have a secret burial. The demonstration then headed down the Rambla and the Paseo Colón as far as the Interior ministry building where a delegation (José Alberola and Pere Comas) spoke with civil governor Raventós. Raventós tried to explain away as best he could the government interference with the Noi de Sucre’s burial arrangements.

Peronas was buried on 18 March. His funeral attractes some 200,000 people who marshalled outside the Clinical Hospital before carrying the coffin on their shoulders as far as the cemetery in Hospitalet. There Joan Peiró, the newly appointed secretary of the CNT national committee, addressed those gathered.

On 27 March an attempt was mounted on the life of Juan Pey, bookkeeper with the CNT woodworkers’ union and a dogged critic of the anarcist affinity groups. According to Inocencio Feced the murder bid was carried out by Beltrán and Puente, Carlist members of the Somatén and the chosen location was the Puertaferrisa fountain, at the precise moment that Pey was stooping fto take a drink.

At that point, ‘Los Solidarios’ was the affinity group most raring to go and they seized the opportunity to plan operations in order to put paid to the Libre and persuade many comrades that,unless they did, the Libre personnel would wipe out the CNT.

In late March a number of activists from the affinity groups (with García Oliver representing ‘Los Solidarios’) met and resolved to look into what actual ties existed between the Libre, the authorities and the employers’ ederation.

On 31 March the CNT’s Moisés Bustamante and Rafael Guirach were murdered.

On 6 April an attempt was mounted on the life of the secretary of the Libre’s aterworkers’ union at the Marba bar in the Calle Villaroel and, two hours after that, against the president of the very same union and sector, Agustí Viladoms. The very same day, in Manresa, García Oliver and Ascaso from ‘Los Solidarios’ attacked Juan Laguía, one-time president of the Libre and instigator of the attack on Pestaña. This was in the La Alhambra bar in Manresa. In the course of this attack Libre members Eduard Folch, Lorenzo Martínez and Manuel Hernández were wounded, but Laguía escaped without as much as a scratch.

On 7 April, the Libre premises on the Calle Sagristans in Barcelona were raided. The CNT personnel held the Libre members at gunpoint from the street, at which point they were alerted that a sizable contingent of police was on its way, so they had to get out of there, shooting their way out. Miquel Palau and Juan López were wounded.

(There were 7 murder attempts in those two days).

On 12 April, siblings Luisa and Diego Barranca (age 16 and 18 respectively), members of the youth group at the Ateneo Racionalista in Sans, were taken to task within metres of their premises on the Calle Santo Cristo by members of the police force under Hernández Malillos. The outcome was that young Luisa was murdered and Diego left with serious injuries.

13 April saw the murder of CNT member Garrigós, and, the very next day, the CNT’s Ramón Gil was murdered in Barcelona.

The Libre was back in action the following day, 14 April, the target tis time being Badalona’s Ramón Salvador Monte, attacked in Barcelona’s Calle Sant Pablo. His lungs were damaged and he was admitted to the Santa Cruz hospital before being removed to the Modelo prison whilst still not recovered.

On 16 April the Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular launched a civic peace campaign with support from a range of cultural, political and trade union bodies, including the CNT.

On Sunday 22 April, CNT members Josep Ballart and Pere Martí, with their partners in tow, went to the Odeón cinema in the Calle San Andrés, only to be murdered at the doors of the cinema by gunmen from the Libre.

On 23 April there was a plenum of anarchist affinity groups held in Madrid. Naturally it was surrounded by a lot of secrecy and discretion and before it ended Durruti, participating as the delegate from Catalonia, handed over a black list of enemies of the working class marked for elimination. Right at the top of the list was Severiano Martínez Anido. Most of those listed were in hiding somewhere in the peninsula and Durruti asked the various delegates for news of any sighting or likely sightings anywhere. Capitalising upon his being in Madrid, Durruti donned a disguise and paid a prison visit to those detained in connection with the Dato assassination, thinking that no one would recognise him, but he was mistaken. He was arrested as he left the prison, being wanted at the time i connection with a hold up in San Sebastián.

On 25 April gunmen from the Libre attempted the life orf the CNT’s Juan Cervelló.

Also on 25 April, the president of the CNT’s garmentworkers’ union, 32 year old Felipe Manero Francés was murdered on the Calle Poniente in Barcelona. The perpetrators of his murder were members of Pedro Màrtir Homs’s gang.

On 28 April Josep María Foix, president of the CNT’s bank employees’ union, was murdrred on the Calle Tallers near his home while reading a newspaper. According to Inocencio Feced, the murder was planned by Ramón Sales and Jaume Fort but the actual killer was Fulgencio Vera aka ‘Mirete’ (the same man who killed Layret).

At the beginning of May, ‘Los Solidarios’ received reports that Martínez Anido was in hiding in San Sebastián, whilst Faustino González Regueral (fomer governor of San Sebastián) was keeping a low profile in León.

On 4 May the president of the Libre’s glassworkers’ union in Badalona, Josep Arqués, a one-time anarchist who had defected to the Libre, was assasionated. According to La Protesta, during the exchange one of the CNT personnel was wounded and hid in No 85, Calle San Pablo in Barcelona which is to say in the local of the CNT’s woodworkers’ union.

In May, police inspector Escartín was murdered as he emerged from his house.

At about this time Francisco Acaso, Aurelio Fernández and Torres Escartín journeyed to San Sebastián in search of Martínez Anido; after a few days they learnt that on 15 May he was due to take over as civil governor in La Coruña, so the trio travelled on to that city in Galicia; Escartín was to look after Martínez Anido whilst the other two would first see to a batch of weapons that they were to send on to Barcelona. Their meanderings through the port in search of arms eventually aroused police suspicions and Ascaso and Fernández were arrested; the belief was that drug-dealing was afoot, but they insisted that they were on the look-out for work to pay for their passages to the Americas. Since they had not been recognised, they were allowed to go on their way. But had to abandon their plans to eliminate Martínez Anido in La Coruña.

Francisco Ascaso promptly set off for Zaragoza where he could go to ground.

Meanwhile, Durruti had been arrested in San Sebastián and charged with a hold-up, but was not picked out of a line-up of prisoners and was set loose.

In Barcelona that May there were several srikes such as the bank or transport strikes. The latter began on 14 May.

Meanwhile Suberviela aka ‘Totinto’ and Antonio del Toto from ‘Los Solidarios’ trake down their target in León and claimed the life of Faustino González Regueral. That was on 17 May 1923 when Regueral visited the theatre to watch the zarzuela ‘El rey que rabió’.

On 18 May gumen from the Libre murdered the CNT’s Josep Guitart.

On 19 May attacks were mounted on two members of the ewrstwhile Baron de Koenning gang, Bernat Armengol and Luis Alberic. The attacks came in the Barceloneta district and according to the police one of the assailants was the Portuguese Antonio Matenza.

Meanwhile the transport strike was dragging on in Barcelona with only a few trucks emblazoned with the badge of the CNT (and therefore authorised by it) in circulation. And the employers’ federation was in no hurry nor interested in caving in to the workers’ demands.

Governor Raventós tried to encourage negotiations and gradually the points put by the workers won acceptance, except for one relating to changes to working hours.

On 20 May gunmen from the Libre murdered the CNT’s Alfredo Gómez.

On 22 May the LIbre was at its murderous work again, the target this time being the CNT’s Manuel Salvador Serrano.

On 27 May Somatén members Salvador Úbeda and Joaquín Oller, charge hand and staff member at the Figuerola Gili y Cia transport firm, were murdered. The killings came as they left the Atlètic Martinenc soccer ground in the Sant Martí quarter.

On 30 May Salvador Raventós stepped down as civil governor and was replaced the next day by Francisco Barber, a journalist and liberal deputy.

The Libre was progressing by leaps and bounds in Zaragoza at around this point and this was said to be due to the unconditional backing of Cardinal Soldevila for this queer sort of trade union body.

On 4 June, at 2.00 p.m., Ascaso and Escartín assassinated Cardinal Soldevila, his driver Luis Castreño and his secretary Luis Latre.

The very same day but in Barcelona, police inspector José Fernández Alegría and Somatén member Josep Franquesa were assassinated.

On 13 June, police officer López Solorzano was killed in a fracas: his death was credited ro the CNT’s Luis Muñoz.

On 18 June, Barber and Primo de Rivera set off for Madrid to report on the climate in Barcelona. Primo de Rivera used this opportunity to have talks with a number of high ranking military figures such as General Aguilera. In Madrid it became clear what Primo de Rivera was plotting and indded a number of deputies, including the republican Emiliano Iglesias denounced the plot, but given Primo’s tremendous standing in military circles, nobody wanted to know or acknowledge the evidence.

Meanwhile in Barcelona the murders carried on. This time, on 21 June businessman and Lliga councillor Joaquín Albiñana was murdered in the Plaza Urquinaona. A number of passersby apprehended Rafael Sánchez for this killing.

On his return from Madrid, Barber resigned as civil governor and Primo de Rivera became the number one authority in Barcelona and made to bring the transport strie to an immediate end, but managed only to provoke a tremendous argument with Camilo Piñón.

Against this violent backdrop, the anarchist affinity groups concluded that the time had come to take on the authorities, but they needed the backing of the entire organisation, so García Oliver summoned a meeting in Las Planas with the participation of lots of trade unionists such as Peiró, Piñón, Herreros, etc. However, the unionists were confused about the thinking of García Oliver and his colleagues and opted instead to stick to the course outlined earlier by Seguí. Which is to say, to the building of a parallel society.

On 28 June police, backed by the Civil Guard cordonned off the entire Atarazanas quarter. No one was able to enter or leave without first identifying himself and lots of CNT personnel were arrested; they included Martí Barrera, Antonio Amador, Ángel Pestaña, etc. In late June Esteban Salamero from the ‘Los Solidarios’ group was arrested in Zaragoza; within hours Francisco Ascaso and Juliana López (who was suffering from TB) were picked up too.

In early July, July 6 to be precise, Manuel Portela Valladares, Conde de Brias, was appointed as Barcelona’s new civil governor.

The transport dispute was still on and now the foodworkers sided with the strikers, so the streets of Barcelona were taken over by the Somatén and the army.

On 12 July an agreement in the transport sector was signed at last; it included those changes in working hours over which the strike had been prolonged.

On 14 July Tomás Hereros was seriously wounded at his bookseller’s stall. He was the director of Tierra y Libertad and according to Inocencio Feced the stab wounds that left Herreros gravely injured had been delivered by León Simón.

On 17 July, the lives of Libre personnel Dominguez and Cervera were attempted; an accusing finger was pointed at the CNT’s Josep Soler aka ‘El señorito’. [23]

At this point the CNT held a national plenum in Valencia at which a new national committee was appointed: its base was moved to Seville and the incoming secretary was the Andalusian Manuel Adame. [24]

At the Valencia plenum, the trade unionist faction lost support in the organisation and the points put forward by the more revolutionary elements gained ground.

As a result of this new situation inside the CNT, the anarchist affinity groups set about preparing to take on the authorities, seeking out arms and imprived coordination, so for the time being attacks all but stopped. Only one attack by the Libre was recorded, against José María Seseras on 21 July. Seseras was defence counsel to a number of CNT members and was seriously wounded.

Minor labour disputes in small workshops continued however, as in the one at No 1, Calle Petrixol where the CNT’s Celestino Garate worked as a cabinet-maker. After a series of squabbles, Garate attacked his boss.

But the affinity groups concentrated their attention on fund-raising raids so there was a flurry of hold-ups of banks in Manresa and Barcelona. ‘Los Solidarios’ attacked some Barcelona city employees just as they were on their way to bank revenue to the tune of 95,000 pesetas.

Faced with such ‘revolutionary gymnastics’ by the affinity groups, other factions within the CNT called a meeting at the Teatro Nuevo to work out a more coherent fighting strategy rather than let the affinity groups make all the running.

1 August 1923 saw the opening of the CNT’s Catalonian regional plenum. There, Manresa was suggested as the new seat of the regional committee. The serving committee was stood down and the new posts were up for election at a forthcoming meeting due to be held within a month.

Meanwhile, ‘Los Solidarios’ mounted further expropriations, at the Fonda de Francia opposite the railway station of the same name on 7 August. The next day, they did the same at the Calle Avinyó-Calle Escudillers junctions where the was a firm that collected council taxes; this raid netted 85,000 pesetas. On this occasion the police managed to arrest Juan Gusí, Juan Torralba and the Tarragó’s, father and son. The latter were identified both by the Calle Avinyó staff and those at the Fonda de Francia: Durruti, García Oliver, Alfonso Miguel and Alejandro Ascaso were also picked out, from photographs.

At around this time, in a set-up, police discovered an arms cache in the union hall in the Calle Santo Cristo.

Another of the ‘Los Solidarios’ ploys was to rent a foundry in Pueblo Nuevo: run by comrade Eusebio Brau, they used it to manufacture bomb casings.

In light of incidents in the city, Primo de Rivera ordered the army back on to the streets to reinforce the Somatén, with a special watch being kept on financial outlets.

Also during that first fortnight in August 1923, Primo de Rivera was to meet with Puig i Cadafalch from the Lliga; the latter agreed to his coup plans, provided that Catalan home rule could be guaranteed and as long as the only aim of the coup was to wipe out the CNT.

On 22 August a brawl broke out between the CNT’s Domènech Ventura and his boss Leopoldo Planell, as a result of which the businessman was wounded.

In any case, attacks were still be mounted to settle outstanding scores between gunmen from the Libre and those bosses who had commissioned some attack earlier but not coughed up the fee agreed warlier with the Libre’s gunmen. This led to incidents such as the one on 23 August on the outskirts of Barcelona when gunmen from the Libre attempted to murder businessman Miguel Crivillés, who still owed them for previous services rendered.

In Barcelona the body coordinating the anarchist affinity groups was still pressing for arms purchases to be made, so two members of ‘los Solidarios’ travelled up to Mondragón and contacted a certain Zulueta who was to furnish weaponry, albeit at a high price. So they decided, at Aurelio Fernández’s suggestion, to raid the Banco de España branch in Gijón. The team dispatched to Gijón was made up of Aurelio Fernández, Gregorio Suberviela, Antonio del Toto, Rafael Torres Escartín, Eusebio Brau, Buenaventura Durruti, Adolfo Ballano and García Vivancos.

The raid was mounted on 1 September, but after grabbing the loot, they ran into the Civil Guard as they were leaving the bank. The Civil Guard tried to prevent them from getting away but even so the activists made it as far as Oviedo where they rented an attic at No 52, Calle Covadonga.

On 8 September Civil Guard sergeant Antonio Rodríguez received a tip-off that ‘Los Solidarios’ were hiding out in that attic. With two other offices, the sergeant sought to check out the information and visited said accommodation, but did not dare swoop. Instead he waited for reinforcements, which gave the members of ‘Los Solidarios’ time to escape throuigh a window.

The police cordon around the city of Oviedo was tightened and on 9 September Eusebio Brau and Torres Escartín, who had taken the train to Llanes, were sighted by a Civil Guard. Even so, Escartín and Brau managed to jump from the moving train and took to their heels; gunfire was exchanged, in the course of which Brau was killed and Torres Escartín was captured. The others reached the Basque Country, linking up with Zulueta and acquiring those arms which they now had to get back to Barcelona.

On 11 September, Catalan National Day, the police made an unexpected charge against Catalan nationalists in front of the Casanovas statue, which placed the arrangement agreed just days before between Primo de Rivera and Puig i Cadafalch in jeopardy.

The next day, 12 September, Primo de Rivera summoned all the coones from the Barcelona garrison to a formal meeting only hours after announcing the imposition of a state of war and a dictatorship to the press.

In the meantime, the CNT was in Manresa holding its regional plenum, from which a new Catalonian CNT regional committee was to have emerged and the anarchist affinity groups were still carrying out expropriations, this time in the Sans quarter.

On 14 September, Primo de Rivera travelled to Madrid for talks with King Alfonso XIII who handed over the government to Primo de Rivera the following day.

In spite of the changed situation, the anarchist affinity groups carried on with their strategy of mounting expropriations, and on 18 September they raided the Terrassa savings bank. There was a clash with the Somatén as they were escaping and Somatén member Juan Castelló was killed. Later Josep Saleta aka ‘El nano’ and Jesús Pascual were later apprehended by the rest of the Somatén members who knew the area like the back of their hand. And Joaquín Marco was picked up as he stepped down off the train in Barcelona, although it was later established that Marco had had no part in the the affair and so he was set loose.

On 21 September a court martial sat in judgment of ‘El nano’ and Pascual and both were condemned to death.

And so at 5.30 a.m. on 23 September 1923, Jesús Aguirre Pascual (from the Barcelona foodworkers’ union) mounted the gallows and before they made him sit down and placed the black hood over his head he cried out: «Long live anarchy!»

A half an hour after that, it was the turn of Josep Saleta aka ‘El nano de Sans’ who cried out in Catalan: «This is how men die for anarchy! Long live anarchy!» They were the first victims of the recently established Primo de Rivera dictatorship.

Yet again the CNT went underground, whilst parties like the Socialist Party agreed to join Primo de Rivera’s cabinet within days, with Largo Caballero taking up the portfolio of minister of Labour.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

NOTES

1. María Monje was to be the first person arrested, in connection with the events in the Plaza Catalunya on the morning of 26 July 1909 during Tragic Week.

2. Leopoldina Bonnard (a teacher and administrator with the Modern School), Teresa Claramunt, Alba Ferrer, María Fontcuberta, Julia Ibarra, Teresa Nogués, Anselmo Lorenzo and relations.

3. Those arrested after the Congress were: Julio Anguera, Jaime Aragó, Antonio Arjo, Estanislao Asais, Rafael Avila, Vicente Belaste, Conrado Beltrán, Guillermo Benito, Roberto Bueso, Jaume Coll, José Dalmau, Ricardo Die, Román Espinal, Santiago Fernández, Arturo Fernández Maña, Pedro Fons, Pedro Galileo Fuentes, Pedro Gimeno Ballesteros, Pedro Gómez Brisach, Ricardo Gómez Brisach, Rafael Herrero Balaguer, Luis Laboria, Higinio López Carín, Marcelino Martín Rivero (arrested while trying to pick up 6,000 leaflets calling for support and solidarity for the strie in the Basque Country), Juan Mercader, J. Mestre, Alfredo Oltra, Antonio Pena Aseir, Emilio Prado Fernández, Luis Requesers Esteva, Benito Ribé Pinal, Vicente Salvador Costa, Jaime San Genis and Felipe Villalba Peinado.

4. Anselmo Lorenzo and others saw to the Modern School’s publishing ventures.

5. The Centro Obrero on the corner of the Calle Aragón and the Calle Casanovas.

6. See Ángel Pestaña: Terrorismo en Barcelona (84 pages), Planeta 1979.

7. The editors and director of Solidaridad Obera were: José Borovio, Antonio Amador, Martí Barrera, Jaime Roca, Enrique Tarrés, Alex Gil, Francisco Melero and José Arbós.

8. The Barcelona srike committee would be made up of the CNT personnel: Seguí, Pestaña, Minguet, Aragó, Viadiu, Miranda, Barrera, Valero and Hermes.

9. See Ángel Pestaña, op. cit. pp. 88 – 95

10. At that time tours undertaken in order to explain the accords reached at meetings were commonplace. Valencia and Andalusia were covered by Juan Almela, Juan Gallego Crespo, Roque García, Sebastiá Oiva, Joan Peiró, Constancio Romeo, José Ruiz and José Sánchez Rosas. Southern Catalonia was covered by Felip Barjou, Ángel Palleja, Camilo Piñón, Libertad Ródenas and Francisco Viadiu. The North, Galicia and the Centre region by Emilio Mira, Francisco Miranda, Félix Monteagudo Colas and Pedro Sierra Álvarez.

11. The CNT would retain those premises up until the end of the civil war as it was used as the seat of various trade unions and naturally suffered varying fortunes, closures, bans, etc.

12. According to Memorias de un terrorista by P. Calderón, this was ‘El nano de Sans’.

13. Moved away to the Ocaña penitentiary, it was not unti the advent of the Second Republic that he would regain his freedom.

14. R. Pla y Armengol: Impresions de la Huelga General de Barcelona del 24 marzo – 2 abril 1919 (published in 1930)

15. Antonio Campa, Ernesto Herrera, Vicente Molina and Soleras.

16. The lamp-makers’ trade union. This plenary was attended by Antonio Amador, Joan Manent, Carrilo Piñón, Enrique Rueda, Ramón Salvador, Francisco Vallés, etc.

17. Miguel Abós Serena, Emilio Albaricias Alorda, Segismundo Albaricias, Jaume Albaricias, Francisco Arín,, Antonio Calomadre, Agustín Castellà, Enric Rueda López, Manuel Salvador Serrano, José Santacana, Marcelino Silva, Antonio Soler Cuadrat, José vSoler Guillamet aka ‘El señorito’, etc., were also shipped out to Mahón.

18. His father, Paulino Pallás, was shot in Montjuich in 1894 for having attempted to assassinate General Martínez Campos.

19. Also on the premises at the time were Ángela Abrante, Roser Benavent’s aunt who was arrested in connection with the Calle Toledo events of 2 January 1921, and Josefa Castro who was sent to the reformatory in Alcalà de Henares.

20. The participants in this meeting included Emilio Albaricias, Ladislau Bellavista, Pere Bonet, Baronat, Sebastià Clarà, Juan Claramunt, Antonio Colomer, Pere Comas aka ‘Peronas’, Juan Costa, Galo Díez (national committee), Domínguez (from Blanes), Joan Espesa, Ramón Espinal, Francisco Inglesa, Juneda, Bruno Lladó, Enrique Lleonart, Narciso Marco, Teodoro Peña, Ángel Pestaña, Juan Pey, Antonio Puig, Marcelino Rico, Juan Salu, Jaime Segala, Manuel Sirvent, Antonio Soler Cuadrat, Sebastián Suñer, Guillermo Vages Bruguera and Acrato Vidal.

21. In addition to those name, José Gardenas and Ramón Martínez (an possibly others) were also involved.

22. He had another nick-name – ‘El Garbardina’ – so it is possible that he may have been the man in the raincoat mentioned earlier.

23. He was to be murdered during the Primo de Rivera dictatorship by Libre gunmen.

24. Within days of his appointment as secretary of the CNT national committee, he was arrested for a hold-up at the Banco de Sevilla.

CNT personnel murdered by the Libre, by police or through the use of the ley de fugas during this period (1919-1923) but not mentioned in the foregoing text:

Josep Aicart

Alegría (June 1921)

Juan Alemany

Eduard Alsina aka ‘Cinto de la palla’

Josep Artigas (from Sabadell)

Benito Bailo

Miguel Beltrán

Antonio Bober

Ramón Bonjom

Baudilio Burday

Josep Calduch

Casimir Canals (from Badalona)

José Canals

Josep Carbonell

Ángel Carboneras (murdered by the Civil Guard0

Emilio Cervera

José Claramunt

J. Cristóbal

Emilio Desplà

José Duch

Jaume Espina

José Espíritu

J. Estrada

Hilario Felipe, Andrés Giménez (from Badalona)

Rosendo Giménez

R, Gironés

Manuel Llopart Batlle

M. Mas

Meléndez

E, Miquel

José Monclús

Josep Pagés

Jesús Parrado

Molins Pellicer

Josep Planells

J. Prades

P. Pueyo

Francisco Rafols

Pedro Ramos

José Riera

Antonio Samper

José Solana

Diego Subirà Diez

Andrés Ventura Valls

CNT personnel whose lives were attempted and who were left wounded during the period (1919-1923) but not mentioned in the foregoing text:

Gregorio Ambrosio

Gonzalo Barcelona

Antonio Bargués

Juam Barachi

Jaume Bart

Boy Barday (the sketch artist)

Andrés Cabré

Remigio Climent

Juan Fabregat

Jaime Gras

Ramón llovera

Olegario Miró

Francisco Monturial Vidiella

Manuel Morey Blanch

Luis Oliveros

Julián de Pedro

Elías Quer

Juan Torres Cortés

Lluis Tubau

Joaquín Villausa

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This narrative has essentially been based on the files of Las Noticias newspaper, the weekly La Protesta and the book, Los años del pistolerismo by León Ignacio (Planeta 1978)

Other works consulted:

Abel Paz, Durruti, el proletariado militante (Bruguera 1978)

José Álvarez Junco, El emperador del Paralelo (Ed. Alianza Nacional, Madrid 1990)

Antonio Bar, La CNT en los años rojos (Akal 1981)

Adolfo Bueso, Recuerdos de un cenetista (Ed. Ariel, Barcelona 1976)

CNT, Comité pro-Presos: Ideas y tragedia. Remember (Ed. CNT, Manresa 1922)

F. deP. Calderón and Isaac Romero, Memorias de un terrorista (Barcelona, undated, 192?)

Fernando Díaz-Plaja, La España política del siglo XX (Ed. Plaza y Janés, Barcelona 1972)

Joaquín Ferrer, Simó Piera: Perfil d’un sindicalista (Ed. Pòrtic, Barcelona 1975)

Juan García Oliver, El eco de los pasos (Ed. Ruedo Ibérico 1978)

J. María Huertas Clavería, Obrers a Catalunya (Ed. L’Avenç 1982)

Joan Manent i Pesas, Records d’un sindicalista (Edicions catalanes de Paris 1970)

Federica Montseny, Mis primeros cuarenta años (Ed. Plaza y Janés 1987)

Ángel Pestaña, Terrorismo en Barcelona (Ed. Planeta 1979)

Miguel Ángel Serrano, La ciudad de las bombas (Ed. Temas de Hoy, Madrid 1997)

Susana Tavera, Solidaridad Obrera, 1907 – 1939 (Ed. Col.legi de periodistes, Barcelona)

Rafael Vidiella Los de ayer (Ed. Nuestro pueblo, Madrid 1936)

Newspaper sources:

La Publicidad

Solidaridad Obrera

Tierra y Libertad