Los Amigos de Durruti

"La Agrupación de los Amigos de Durruti fue un grupo anarquista español, creado el 15 de marzo de 1937 por Jaime Balius, Félix Martínez y Pablo Ruiz, como reacción al decreto de militarización de las milicias dictado por el gobierno de la República, y que editará (a partir de mayo de 1937 y hasta febrero de 1938) el periódico El Amigo del Pueblo, ilegalizado tras la publicación de sus primeros números e inspirado en L'Ami du Peuple de Marat.La agrupación se formó a partir de la confluencia de una corriente que se pronunciaba, desde la misma prensa de la CNT, contra la colaboración con el gobierno, y otra corriente integrada por milicianos, que volvió a Barcelona para luchar contra la militarización de las milicias; así, la mayor parte de los integrantes de la nueva agrupación serán antiguos miembros de la Cuarta Agrupación de la Columna Durruti, al frente de la cual habían estado Pablo Ruiz, Progreso Ródenas y Eduardo Cerveró, entre otros.Desde su constitución formal, el 17 de marzo, hasta el 3 de mayo, la Agrupación efectuó diversos mítines (en el Teatro Poliorama el 19 de abril y en el Teatro Goya el 2 de mayo), lanzó diversos manifiestos y octavillas, saboteó la intervención de Federica Montseny en el mitin de la Monumental del 11 de abril, y llenó los muros de Barcelona con carteles que explicaban su programa.El 5 de mayo, durante las llamadas Jornadas de Mayo de 1937, publica una octavilla que declaraba que "Ha sido constituida una Junta Revolucionaria en Barcelona. Todo los responsables del golpe de estado, que maniobran bajo protección del gobierno, serán ejecutados. El POUM será miembro de la Junta Revolucionaria porque ellos apoyaron a los trabajadores". Tanto la CNT como la FIJL rechazan participar en la iniciativa de la Agrupación, pero su aproximación al POUM (partido comunista seguidor del trotskismo y antiestalinista), le acarrearía como consecuencia el que la sede de la Agrupación fuera clausurada y sus principales responsables encarcelados reiteradamente, aunque siempre por periodos breves. La Agrupación sobrevivirá de mejor o peor forma hasta mediados de 1938.En 1939 surgirá una reelaboración de la misma agrupación, el Grupo franco-español de "Los Amigos de Durruti", reconstituido y disuelto en varias ocasiones y que empezaría a editar en 1961 desde Francia una nueva serie del periódico de El Amigo del Pueblo, de mucha menor difusión.""In October 1936, the order militarizing the People's Militias provoked great discontent among the anarchist militians of the Durruti Column on the Aragon front. Following protracted and bitter arguments, in February 1937 around thirty out of the 1,000 volunteer militians based in the Gelsa sector decided to quit the front and return to the rearguard.1 The agreement was that militians opposed to militarization would be relieved over a fortnight. These then left the front, taking their weapons with them.Back in Barcelona, along with other anarchists (advocates of prosecuting and pursuing the July revolution, and opposed to the CNT's collaboration with the government), the militians from Gelsa decided to form an affinity group, like the many other affinity groups2 in existence in anarcho-syndicalist circles. And so, the Group was formally launched in March 1937,3 following a lengthy period of incubation that had lasted for several months, beginning in October 1936. The Steering Committee made the decision to adopt the name "Friends of Durruti Group," the name being, in part, an invocation of their common origins as former militians in the Durruti Column, and, as Balius was correct in saying, there was no reference intended to Durruti's thinking, but rather to his heroic death and mythic status in the eyes of the populace.The Group's central headquarters was located in the Ramblas, at the junction with the Calle Hospital. The membership of the Group grew remarkably quickly. Somewhere between four thousand and five thousand Group membership cards were issued. One of the essential requirements for Group membership was CNT membership. The growth of the Group was a consequence of anarchist unease with the CNT's policy of compromise.The Group was frenetically active and dynamic. Between its formal launch on March 17 and May 3, the Group mounted a number of rallies (in the Poliorama Theater on April 19 and the Goya Theater on May 2), issued several manifestoes and handbills and covered the walls of Barcelona with posters setting out its program.4 Two points stood out in that program: 1. All power to the working class; and, 2. Democratic workers', peasants' and combatants' organs as the expression of this workers' power,5 which was encapsulated in the term Revolutionary Junta.They also called for the trade unions to take over the economic and political governance of the country completely. And when they talked about trade unions, they meant the CNT unions, not the UGT unions. In fact, some of the members of the Group had quit the UGT in order to affiliate straight away to the CNT, thereby fulfilling the essential prerequisite for membership of the Friends of Durruti.In reality, although the working class provenance of the Group's members ensured that they were CNT members, most were members of the FAI, on which basis it can be stated that the Friends of Durruti Group was a group of anarchists which took a stand on purist anarchist doctrine and opposed the collaborationist State-centered policy of the leadership of the CNT and of the FAI proper.They had the upper hand inside the Foodstuffs Union, which had ramifications all over Catalonia, as well as in the mining areas of Sallent, Suria, Figols, and Cardona, in the Upper Llobregat comarca. They were influential in other unions too, where they were in the minority. Some members belonged to the Control Patrols. But at no time did they constitute a fraction or group, nor did they attempt to infiltrate the Patrols.We cannot characterize the Group as a comprehensively conscious, organized group that would undertake methodical activity. It was one of many more or less informal anarchist groups formed around certain characteristic affinities. Nor were they good propagandists or theorists, but instead a group of proletarians alive to an instinctive need to confront the CNT's policy of appeasement and the accelerating process of counterrevolution.Without question, their most outstanding spokesmen were Jaime Balius and Pablo Ruiz. From March 1937 to May 1937, the Libertarian Youth of Catalonia6 also set out in their wall newspaper7 demands similar to those of the Friends of Durruti.On April 14, 1937, the Group issued a Manifesto8 in which it set its face against the bourgeois commemoration of the anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic, on the grounds that it was merely a pretext for reinforcing bourgeois institutions and the counterrevolution. Instead of commemoration of the Republic and in opposition to the Generalidad and Luis Companys, which were the cutting edge of bourgeois counterrevolution, the Friends of Durruti proposed commemoration of July 19th and exhorted the CNT and the FAI to come up with a revolutionary escape route from the dead-end street of the Generalidad government's crisis. That crisis started on March 4th with a decree ordering dissolution of the Control Patrols: the CNT's failure to comply implied the exclusion of CNT personnel from the Generalidad government."