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Mieczyslaw Bortenstein (M. Casanova)

Spain Betrayed

How the Popular Front Opened the Gates to Franco


14. Republican Order

We understand all too well the ill effects of the economic policy of the Popular Front, but the feeling that you were in the presence of a common enemy, that sword of Damocles, called Franco, suspended over the head of anti-Fascism which threatened to sweep all away – did not that bring the various currents closer? In the face of the danger that threatened it did not the government seek to create a real unity in struggle? The press of the Popular Front has represented the government of Dr Negrín as a government of national unity. Was the attitude of the Negrín government truly democratic?

You may laugh, but you do well to ask me that. It gives me the opportunity to talk about the repression, and about ‘Republican order’ in general.

As far as national unity is concerned, the Spanish workers know what that is: Poincaré and Doumerge [78] – the worker is cheated and the bourgeois profits from it. Unity between the bourgeois and the proletarian is impossible.

As you can see, I am incorrigible and repeat the same idea over and over again, because this is one idea that ought to be well implanted in the head of each of the exploited.

If it is a question of national unity of the Negrín variety, it obviously differs fundamentally from that of Poincaré. Socially, it was suspended in mid-air, and the Doctor was, so to speak, seated between two stools, which does not mean to say that whilst sitting there he has not bullied the proletariat, persecuted it, arrested and often murdered its best militants.

The exploits of Negrín and Comorera in this respect have already become partly known abroad. The blood of Andrés Nin, of that Angel of Anarchism who was Professor Berneri, of Domingo Ascaso, of our dear Erwin Wolf, of Moulin and thousands of others has stained the bloody hands of the Stalinists along with those who, like Pontius Pilate, wash their hands of the whole business and allow this to happen.

I will try briefly to describe how the Popular Front police worked, how the repressive measures of the government were directed and what they meant.

As I have already explained, the events of May 1937 marked a new turning point in the evolution of Republican Spain. The disarmament of the proletariat and the destruction of all the independent organs of the working class, the Control Patrols among others, occurred in May 1937.

The Control Patrols had been authentic working class organs, born in the fever of the burning days of July 1936. They were workers’ detachments under the control of the proletarian organisations that were given the job of maintaining public order. From the beginning all the anti-Fascist parties were represented in the Control Patrols, including the Communists and the PSUC. In conformity with the general policy of the Popular Front the latter quit the Control Patrols and ever after fought for their dissolution. They were mainly composed of members of the CNT-FAI. The POUM also took part. Even if we can criticise many faults of these organs (a flabbiness and decentralisation, resulting from Anarchist organisation) we must nonetheless state that they constituted an embryonic element of proletarian power. In any case, it was a 100 per cent reliable anti-Fascist organisation. Thanks to the joint efforts of the Republicans, Socialists, Stalinists, and Anarchist leaders as well, it was destroyed by the ‘realistic’ leaders of the Popular Front and replaced by the reconstructed bourgeois police.

Obviously the recreation of a ‘strong bourgeois power’ (in reality only strong against the revolutionary proletariat) just helped the Fascists and the real agents of the Fifth Column.

From this time onwards anybody in Barcelona could be arrested as a spy and a suspect, apart from true agents of Franco and real spies. This may appear paradoxical, but nonetheless that is what it was like. The few exceptions to this general rule only serve to confirm it.

The repression that followed May 1937 had a purely class meaning. Here were the Girondins [79] and behind them were the outright reactionary elements, who were lifting up their heads once more. They avenged themselves against the members of the Control Patrols, and against the accursed committees that had been born during the first days of struggle. It was the bourgeois who were once again lifting up their heads. It is true that they concealed themselves behind anti-Trotskyism and listened sympathetically to the litanies of the Stalinists, but that made no fundamental difference and only confirmed it.

Let us take one example among a thousand in order to illustrate the class character of the repression that followed May 1937. In the first half of August 1937 the POUM political commissar Mena [80] was shot in Lérida.

Who was Mena? He was a militant and a fighter for the proletariat in the best sense of the word. I cannot supply his biography, because I do not have sufficient facts. But I did have the honour of making his acquaintance in February 1937, when being in charge, he conducted me around the Castillo of Lérida. I saw his eyes full of fire, and I can remember that unforgettable scene when he took me into a room in this fortress, and said:

In the first weeks of July I locked up all the Fascists and bourgeois of Lérida here. And they had to do what I told them. If anybody complained he knew what was coming to him.

And he pointed to his revolver. Then using gestures he recounted the time when the imprisoned honourable bourgeois of Lérida had to form a queue at mealtimes with their mess tins. His eyes still reflected his satisfaction whilst he described this: it was that of a worker who had always been persecuted, who had passed through prisons and exile, and who now had the well-fed of Lérida in his hands.

He was one of the first political commissars of revolutionary Spain. He was one of the first to enter the Castillo of Lérida on 19 July. And it wasn’t easy! There were rebel soldiers in the Castillo. At the head of the workers Mena dashed forward to attack the fortress with a rifle to begin with, and then he went up the steps that led to the tower with a machine gun. He cleared out the staircase.

As political commissar of the fortress of Lérida after July he always defended the interests of the soldiers. This fighter knew how to hate. This explains that he was also hated, and that his enemies only awaited the occasion to avenge themselves.

I do not know the circumstances of his murder. The POUM comrades who knew him well, those of Lérida in particular, will one day describe this episode in detail. In the month of August at the front in the neighbourhood of Quinto I learned that he had been executed in that very Castillo. I found out about it whilst reading El Noticiero Universal. This is roughly how this Republican journal recalled Mena’s execution, in the petty crime section: “After the judgement, when he learned the verdict, Mena asked to be sent to the front so that he could die by a Fascist bullet. To support his request he advanced the fact that he was the first to have the honour of bearing the title of political commissar after July.” Such is the account of the Noticiero. Mena was well and truly murdered by a coalition of Stalinists and the Lérida bourgeoisie. When I passed through Lérida again in December 1937 I spoke with the workers about the fate of Mena, who had been my comrade in the Castillo only 10 months before. The workers of Lérida had not forgotten him. They explained his murder mainly by the fact that he took up the defence of the soldiers against the ‘Republican’ officers. A CNT militant who was, if anything, his enemy and political rival in the locality, told me: “Era un verdadero luchador!” (He was a true fighter.)

When you remember fighters like Mena you are sometimes ashamed not to have been killed alongside them. The sacred duty of avenging them surely remains with us. And if I remember the likes of Mena [81] it is not just to keep alive the memory of this hero of the proletariat, but rather to help the cause for which Mena climbed the steps of the Castillo in July, and for which he was murdered a year later. This cause, the cause of the world proletarian revolution, demands that the victims of the Stalino-bourgeois repression of May should be made known abroad. Multiply Mena by a hundred, a thousand, and by several thousands, substitute for him a militant of the CNT or the FAI, and you will understand against whom the repression after May was directed.

After May the POUM was made illegal. As for the CNT, and particularly the FAI and the Libertarian Youth, they were systematically bullied and persecuted. Many of their militants were murdered in a cowardly manner, and others imprisoned. According to a letter from Domenech [82], Secretary of the Regional Committee of the CNT, sent to his Excellency the President of the Republic Azaña around about November 1937, which was drawn up in a spineless and snivelling tone strangely reminiscent of the petition addressed by the workers to the Tsar while they were making their way to the Winter Palace with Gapon [83], there were as many anti-Fascist prisoners as in the time of Gil Robles. It is difficult to believe that Domenech, who was very patient and had the habit of calmly looking on when his organisation was being libelled, was exaggerating. This Anarchist was telling the truth, and was begging for the understanding and mercy of Monsieur Azaña, in other words, the bourgeoisie.

“Neither to laugh nor to cry, but to understand.” The terrible ‘Anarchist’, former councillor of the Generalitat and Secretary of the Regional Committee of the CNT was rather embarrassed.

But this ex-minister was not content with remaining ‘ex’, he wanted to become a minister again. The few months during which this ‘anti-statist’ had been able to enjoy a portfolio had not passed without leaving some trace. Saturated with a petit-bourgeois ideology, the necessary ‘realism’ of a man who has ministerial responsibilities imposed itself on him, he could no longer be satisfied with making demagogic speeches, but had to serve capital actively.

In addition the ideas of ‘unity’ and ‘reasons of state’ that the CNT shared, made it necessary to ‘hold out their hand’ and allow the members of the organisation to be persecuted with impunity. However, on the other hand, every day Domenech received messages from different localities about the arrest of militants. These libertarian militants were incorrigible: very simply they only wanted freedom, and they grumbled because they had been locked up for a few months. [84]

There was also a certain method in the persecution of the CNT by the government, the Stalino-bourgeois coalition, in other words. As always in such cases, the aim of this systematic persecution was to tame the CNT and suppress it. In this pedagogical method, kicks alternated with compliments. Negrín, Companys, and even Comorera realised that without the CNT (a mass organisation that contained the overwhelming majority of the Catalan proletariat, and the best of the combative elements) the anti-Fascist war was impossible. That is not to say that they desired and worked for an honest collaboration with the chief revolutionary trade union of Spain. A frank and loyal collaboration was impossible for Negrín-Comorera because of their general orientation – to win the heart of Chamberlain and of ‘democratic’ capitalism – for the CNT shamed them in the presence of the British Ambassador.

But to proceed to the finish against the CNT, as they had against the POUM, was also impossible, and would provoke an immediate collapse. The Stalinists did try to go down this path, and the GPU already had in its pocket a prosecution case against the CNT in which they were to be accused of collaboration with the Fifth Column.

About August-September 1937 (the months in which Stalinist gangsterism was at its height in Catalonia) a communiqué appeared from the Political Bureau of the Communist Party in which it talked about “certain extremist elements” who were preparing other movements of the May type in agreement with the Fifth Column. This was after the dissolution of the POUM, and it was thus aimed at the CNT. The ensuing polemic, an exchange of letters between the CNT and the Communist Party, was published in the press at the time.

But the Communist Party stopped short in its tracks. The CNT was therefore not consigned to illegality like the POUM, instead they spat in its face every minute of the day. The leadership of the CNT said “thank you”, now and then pulling out its handkerchief and shedding tears while invoking justice and its past services rendered to the anti-Fascist cause (“It was we who came out on 19 July”), as well as the services rendered to the bourgeoisie in May 1937 with its betrayal and its “Alto el Fuego!” But gratitude works rarely in life, and even less so with this political filth. The fact that the CNT “held its hand out” with such goodwill only served to encourage the Negrín-Comorera duo to continue to thrash the CNT.

As for the rank and file of the CNT, the National and Regional Committees wanted it to extend its patience by reminding it that, firstly, this is war, and everybody must support it. For many this meant saying: “Win the war first, and get out of jail afterwards.” Secondly, the Kingdom of God is not of this world, that is to say, we are living in a dirty atmosphere surrounded by politicians. In the Paradise of Libertarian Communism we will not be caught up in this. Thirdly, that was ever the fate of Anarchists: to suffer, be persecuted, and to lie in prison. This was touching, and even romantic, but it would never convince the prisoners.

The government persecuted the revolutionary elements of the CNT, its left wing, the Friends of Durruti [85] and the revolutionary elements of the Libertarian Youth and of the FAI, and they also arrested some reformists from the leading committees from time to time to teach them how to behave. At the end of a few months of this treatment they came out of prison wiser than they had gone in. At the same time the Communist and Republican leaders talked about ‘unity’, and occasionally even tenderly embraced CNT representatives at the public meetings whose aim was to prove to the masses that perfect harmony reigned between the two trade union centres, and that a sweet atmosphere existed in the marriage.

The pedagogical method of Negrín and Comorera had another purpose. The leadership of the CNT would become wiser, and would learn to control its impulses, to such an extent that by April 1938 it was already possible to offer it a portfolio again, since they were sure that it did not constitute an obstacle to the reactionary policy of the government. It agreed forthwith without murmuring, and went back as an integral part of the Popular Front.

This persecution by the Negrín government showed itself not only in assassinations and arrests, but also by the closure of trade union offices, searches, and a censorship that did not allow even the slightest criticism, particularly those that could be disagreeable to the diplomatic representatives of France and Britain, if by accident they should ever take the trouble to read the Popular Front press.

I said that the CNT practised the doctrine of non-resistance to evil, offering its right cheek when its left was struck. But I do not want to be misunderstood. Like the Stalinists and reformists in general, moreover, the leadership of the CNT showed this softness in its relations with the left bourgeoisie and the government, but on the other hand it was endowed with youthful energy when it was a question of fighting the revolutionaries. This is normal, and is in the order of things. Reformists are always flat on their bellies in the presence of capital, but on the other hand are very resolute against revolutionaries when the latter tell the truth and denounce their crimes.

Thus in spite of the Anarchist ultra-democracy which it loved to counterpose to Bolshevik methods of organisation, the Regional Committee decided in American fashion, that is to say in 24 hours, to expel from the CNT (a trade union organisation) all the members of the Friends of Durruti, old militants who had risked their lives on several occasions for the CNT and FAI, because they told the truth about the treachery of the CNT leadership and of the ‘anti-statist ministers’ like García Oliver during the May Days.

The fact that later on the measure of expulsion could not be carried out entirely was not the fault of either Mariano Vázquez or of Domenech [86], but the result of the existence of a revolutionary wing inside the CNT. The rank and file of the CNT literally hated the Anarchist leadership, and not only the rank and file, for even the middle cadres talked with contempt about the ‘Casa Grande’ (The Big House), the seat of the Regional Committee.

The leadership of the CNT reacted mildly to the persecution of the POUM. Belated regrets, like Santillán’s [87], for example made no difference to the fact that it had passively helped in the exploits and gangsterism of the Stalinists.

As far as we Spanish Bolshevik-Leninists are concerned, we recall that when the representative of our Spanish group applied to the Regional Committee to attempt to obtain its intervention in favour of our prisoners, at best they offered him their condolences, but otherwise they were astonished at our entreaties because at that time our comrades had been in prison only a few months.

To be quite truthful, we should recall that we found more understanding among some of the left bourgeois.

As we have said already the leadership of the CNT not only permitted the persecution of the Bolshevik-Leninists and the POUMists, that is to say “the politicians”, but even its own militants. Thus when Berneri was assassinated it created such strong pressure from the rank and file that Solidaridad Obrera published a note about his murder. Even Aurelio Fernández [88], a leading Anarchist functionary, who had been head of the Catalan police from July onwards, spent several months in prison without the CNT making a serious protest. What, therefore, could the leadership of the CNT do when a rank and file militant, who at times had criticised that leadership, was arrested?

Moreover, the CNT leaders were more at ease when several members of their organisation, particularly foreign oppositionists, stayed in the Modelo prison, rather than at the Via Durruti, the seat of the Regional Committee. The main argument of the CNT leadership, to justify this non-resistance to evil, was the same as that of the Stalinists, and indeed of the entire Popular Front: “First we must win the war.”

For to win the war, you see, we must walk on all fours in the presence of foreign capital, bow down and lick the boots of bourgeois democrats, allow all the July gains to be systematically destroyed, and among other things leave working class militants in jail. This would clearly give the workers the courage to ‘resist’.

When I was under arrest during the May Days I made the acquaintance of a young man 17 years old, practically a child, who was a member of the Libertarian Youth. He had been arrested during the May Days, and hand grenades had been found in his pockets. He was afraid of being shot, so he cried and called for his mother all the time. After his arrest he spent several months in prison.

I met him a year later on the Ramblas. My friend was very happy: he had obtained permission from his parents to volunteer and go to the front. Was this young May fighter then killed at the front by Fascist bullets? I know nothing more about him. At any rate, in spite of the persecution of the Negrín-Comorera duo, he knew what the duty of a proletarian was in the face of Fascism: despite the repression of the Popular Front, he did not allow himself to be guided by malice, and however weak he may have been in the sphere of sociological generalisation, he understood, and above all felt, that independently of the reactionary character of the Negrín government, he still had to fight, arms in hand, against Franco. [89]

But the overwhelming majority of the Catalan and Spanish workers did not, and could not, react like my young friend, who had begun his revolutionary career on the barricade “Con bombas de mano” (grenades in hand).

The repression against the proletariat on the part of the Popular Front government, at a time when so much was being said about the necessity for maintaining morale in the rear, and for recreating the enthusiasm of 19 July, systematically destroyed morale at the rear.

Almost every day Solidaridad Obrera published articles repeatedly asking the workers to be as enthusiastic and as heroic as on 19 July. The articles always evoked “the Spirit of 19 July”. The naive and sentimental idealists who published the articles did not understand the stupidity of their appeals. They did not understand that for there to be a spirit there must exist a body. To recreate the enthusiasm of 19 July the relationship of forces and the situation of 19 July had to be rebuilt, in other words, the situation in which the proletariat felt that it was master.

Is it possible to fight the Fascist enemy at the front enthusiastically if you do not know whether you will be spending your days on leave (a thing a militiaman was always waiting for) in Republican prisons as a suspect or as a Trotskyist? Can you fight tenaciously and with an absolutely necessary spirit of self sacrifice, when you have a brother or a cousin in prison who is a tested anti-Fascist, or when you have just come out of prison yourself? Few men are capable of reacting like my young libertarian friend described above.

I can still hear the remarks that reflected the morale of the working class that it was possible to hear practically everywhere. These remarks throw a little more light now on the reasons that determined why Barcelona surrendered without resistance, and why the city of barricades fell without barricades: “Now then, when the scrimmage comes, I will stay quietly at home! Let the upper classes go out on the street a bit!”, said one of the ex-fighters on the barricades of 19 July.

“Resistir” [90], the slogan of Doctor Negrín, was the occasion for jeers and anecdotes, not only from the Fascists and the Fifth Column, whom the Communists went on about while favouring them, but also from brave workers:

Should I ‘resist’ when all the time the others are mocking me? When others are as plump as a young woman or a baby, whereas every day I am tightening my belt a bit more? Me, must I ‘resist’ , when a convicted concealed Fascist, an ex-member of the CEDA [91], is fatter than me, I, who was in the attack on the Altarazanas [92] or some other barracks on 19 July? Must I ‘resist’ while my comrades are still in a Republican prison, isn’t that the truth? In the end, I was always one of the exploited. The worker is always shoved about, whether it be by Negrín or by Franco, and I will always be pushed around. Let Negrín or Comorera ‘resist’ a bit!

Even when you read the CNT-FAI appeals signed by García Oliver or Vázquez urging the workers to allow themselves to be killed on the spot rather than give up terrain to the enemy, appeals for “all their blood” from the workers, you have to laugh. The CNT militants laugh – so what, then, must the rank and file workers say?

“All their blood” – that is a quotation. In spite of their good intentions, of which you can only approve, the authors of these appeals imagine that the worker gives his blood all the time and more easily than a good cow gives milk. They do not suspect that for the worker to ‘give’ all his ‘blood’ he must be convinced, and firmly at that, that he is fighting to liberate his brethren. Perhaps it is a pity, ex-minister García Oliver, that the worker is not a tap that you can turn on the moment you want to draw off red liquid. To lead the workers to sacrifice there must be a revolutionary policy. Yes, a policy, even if this word is repellant to you. The spontaneity of 19 July only comes about in exceptional situations, and it needs more than appeals for enthusiasm to maintain it.

‘Resist’ – but with what perspective? Of being master of the factories, of instituting a regime with neither exploiters nor exploited? No – that would be criminal Trotskyism. ‘Resist’, ask Negrín and Comorera of the Barcelona workers, in order to have a Republican prison instead of a Francoist one, run in accordance with all the precepts of the penal code and the prison regime. Resist on behalf of the legal government, and the constitution, so that treaties should be respected. Resist in the hope that one day the frozen heart of Chamberlain will melt and he will come to help us! The views quoted above were not invented by me, I heard them in my factory, and I heard them spoken by the workers who had been on the barricades on 19 July.

To sum up, we are able to come to the same conclusion in our analysis of the policy of the Popular Front as in other domains. By their policy of ‘Republican order’ Negrín-Comorera and the Popular Front did a good job for Fascism.

But in spite of their platitudes, their flatteries and their obeisance, Chamberlain remained forever cold. Despite the repression which ensured that ‘order reigned in Barcelona’ for this gentleman, ‘governmental Spain’ was always ill-governed, and the Republicans remained ‘reds’ ...

But look, there are no Communists in the government, and even if there are any, there are only two of them, who are not evil, but good patriots, and there is even a Catholic in the government. Already mass is being celebrated in Barcelona. This may only be for the Basques at the moment, but the churches will soon be functioning normally. Listen to the radio stations of governmental Spain, Mr Chamberlain, you will not hear the Internationale any more, but simply patriotic hymns such as are sung in your country. No, Mr Chamberlain, we are not ‘reds’! We tremble at the very thought of bearing such a colour. Even if we did commit some excesses after 19 July, it was not our fault. We wanted these Anarchists and POUMists in prison as soon as we were able. Pardon us, if we have sinned, understand us and come to our help!

But yet again in vain ! This sinister courtship, for which the proletariat has paid dearly, was to no avail. Mr Chamberlain preferred Franco to Negrín, and Fascism to the rule of the Popular Front, but this tragi-comedy disarmed the proletariat, destroyed its energy, and annihilated its combativity.

The repression, ‘Republican order’ and the Stalinist gangsterism not only had the effect of killing a few thousand workers, and yet again ‘wiping out Trotskyism’: the repression opened the way for Franco.

 

Notes

78. Raymond Poincaré (1860-1934) was a Prime Minister in the French Third Republic, just as Gaston Doumergue (1863-1937) was its thirteenth President. Both of them supported the Bloc Nationale and were on the right of French politics, and whilst attacking working class organisations, frequently held forth on national unity.

79. The Girondins were the ‘moderate’ and right wing compromising deputies in the Convention during the French Revolution, who plotted with the monarch to halt the revolution halfway. They were so called because many of them came from the area of the Gironde, around Bordeaux.

80. Marciano Mena Perez was the hero of the defeat of the uprising in Lérida, and political commissar of the Castillo there. On his execution cf. V. Alba and S. Schwartz, Spanish Marxism vs Soviet Communism, New Brunswick 1988, p.236. He was shot on 6 August 1937. His final words were “Down with Fascism! Long live the POUM! Long live the revolution!”

81. Mena is well known to French comrades, and in particular to PSOP members, for when he emigrated after October 1934 he stayed in the Paris region of France for a while. [Author’s note]

82. Juan Domenech was the Secretary of the CNT in Catalonia, as well as being a Councillor in the Generalitat under President Companys. He was a well known windbag.

83. Father George Gapon (1870-1906) was a Tsarist agent who was involved in building state trade unions, and who led the demonstration to the Winter Palace that was suppressed by soldiers on Bloody Sunday, 9 January 1905, triggering off the failed revolution of that year. The crowd carried icons and addressed the Tsar in obsequious terms.

84. At a meeting of the CNT in the Olympia Hall in Barcelona, Mariano Vasquez, the National Secretary of the CNT, was greeted with cries of “Presos!” (Set the prisoners free!), which for a long time prevented him from speaking, but this ‘Anarchist’ turned a deaf ear and breathed not a word about the trivial matter of the Republican prisons. [Author’s note]

85. The Friends of Durruti were a left Anarchist grouping led by Jaime Balius which denounced the collaboration of the CNT-FAI with the Popular Front government, and collaborated with the Trotskyists during the Barcelona May Days. Their manifesto, written during 1938, is available in English as the Friends of Durruti Group (Barcelona 1938), Towards a Fresh Revolution, New Anarchist Library no.2, Cienfuegos Press, Sanday, Orkney Islands 1978. The group was named after the well-known Anarchist hero.

86. The former was Secretary of the National Committee, and the latter Secretary of the Catalan Regional Committee of the CNT. [Author’s note] Mariano Rodrigo Vázquez Ramón (1916-1939). [Translator’s note]

87. In his book, Guerra y Revolución en España, Santillán “regretted” that the CNT had allowed the Stalinist persecution against the POUM. [Author’s note] Diego Abad de Santillán (1897-  ) was the pseudonym of Bandilio García Hernández, the chief theoretician of the CNT. [Translator’s note]

88. Aurelio Fernández was a well known Anarchist terrorist and a councillor in the Generalitat who was jailed for alleged crimes during the military uprising. He was released when the state prosecutor fled after being threatened by García Oliver.

89. As an example of a contrary view I venture to recall the opinions held by certain “leftists” whom ignorant people sometimes confuse with the Fourth International: “What is the point of going to the front and risking your life for the democratic republic of Caballero or Negrín?” This ‘leftism’ all too often conceals pure and simple cowardice. Between these ‘leftists’ and ourselves there is a great gulf. [Author’s note]

90. “Resistir” – resist. For example, nuts were called “pills for resistance from Doctor Negrín”. Nuts were one of the rare foods that you could still find in Barcelona in autumn 1938. [Author’s note]

91. The CEDA (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas) was the clerical semi-Fascist party led by Gil Robles .

92. The Altarazanas Barracks in Madrid was stormed by the workers at great cost, including the life of Durruti’s comrade, Ascaso.

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