Christie Books

Laureano Cerrada Santos, Germinal Esgleas and Federica Montseny Notes from ¡Pistoleros! The Chronicles of Farquhar McHarg. 4: 1920-1924

Posted on December 19, 2016 at 6:19 pm. Written by Christie

Laureano Cerrada Santos (1900-1976) © Sûreté Nationale

“The big man from Govan [Farquhar McHarg] harboured no illusions about the extent to which Cerrada’s activities straddled conflicting and seemingly irreconcilable worlds. On the one hand there was the Cerrada he had known and respected as a comrade and friend for over fifty years; on the other was this distinct ‘Mr Hyde’ personality, one whose nature and behaviour functioned on a completely different macroscopic level.

“Things had started going wrong for Cerrada in the autumn of 1949. Political tensions resulting from the trauma of defeat and the subsequent post-1939 power struggle within the emigré community, particularly among the members of the Executive Council of the Spanish Libertarian Movement (MLE) in exile⁽¹⁾ — aggravated by Cerrada’s clandestine activities and his compromising criminal connections made during and after the Nazi occupation — led, in 1950, to his expulsion from the CNT. His black market activities cost him many friends in the movement, or people he thought were friends but who turned out to be opportunistic acquaintances.

“At the time of his murder in October 1976, Cerrada was a supporter, albeit on the periphery, of the anarchist Grupos de Acción Revolucionario Internacional (GARI), the successors to the First of May action groups (1966-1972). Even after his expulsion and imprisonment in 1950, he continued in the role of ‘facilitator’ and as a ‘wise head’, someone the younger militants, the ‘Apaches’, could turn to for advice, moral solidarity and, when required, logistical and financial support.

TO DIE IN MADRID. THE MAN WHO KILLED DURRUTI — José Manzana; the person responsible, Federica Montseny

Posted on December 19, 2016 at 12:13 am. Written by Christie

durrutikiller — **Above left**: Durruti’s Generalidad-appointed military adviser, Sergeant José Manzana (circled), a professional soldier, was a drill sergeant in the Corps of Artillery and an Olympic-standard pistol-shooting champion. On the morning of 19 July he escaped from the besieged Barcelona Dockyard to join the Confederal militias. From that time on he accompanied Durruti everywhere, and was at his side on the Aragón front where he became his military adviser following Captain Enrique Pérez-Farrás’s recall to Barcelona by the Generalitat to head up the Mossos d’Escuadra (Catalan police). After Durruti’s death Manzana returned to the Aragón front to reorganize the remainder of the Durruti Column and prepare it for militarisation while Ricardo Sanz assumed command of the column in Madrid. Militarisation of the column was finally completed on 28 April 1937, less than a week before the Stalinist coup of May 3-8. **Above right:** Sergeant José Manzana, wearing a militiaman’s cap, his wounded right arm in a sling, is in the first line of mourners. On his left is the grieving widow, Emilienne Morin, whose features bear all the emotion evoked by the death of her compañero. Holding her other arm is Miguel Yoldi’s wife.

Madrid, 20 November 1936: Today is the 80th anniversary of the mysterious death of the anarchist Buenaventura Durruti.

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November 1936 was a milestone in the civil war. Having surrounded Madrid, the mutinous fascist army was making a supreme effort to overrun the capital. On 4 November 1936 the ‘notable leaders’ [Horacio Prieto (CNT National Secretary before Vázquez), Mariano R. Vázquez (CNT National Secretary), Federica Montseny (Minister of Health), Diego Abad de Santillán (Secretary of the Peninsular Committee of the FAI), Joan Peiró (Minister for Industry), Juan López (Minister for Trade), García Oliver (Minister of Justice)] of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT and anarchist FAI Peninsular Committee finally and completely abandoned the Confederation’s apolitical stance by taking it upon themselves to accept four nominal ministries in the central government of Largo Caballero. Many believed this was a cynical move on the part of Caballero to facilitate the government’s flight to Valencia and to pre-empt any criticism, or, presumably, any revolutionary initiatives from the anarcho-syndicalist rank and file. Coincidentally (if you believe in coincidences!), two days later, on 6 November, Largo Caballero and his cabinet, including his newly appointed anarchist ministers, fled to Valencia — while the people of Madrid rallied to the city’s defence to cries of ‘Long Live Madrid Without Government!’

A NEW WORLD IN OUR HEARTS The Faces of Spanish Anarchism Edited by Albert Meltzer. eBook £1.50 (see eBookshelf)

Posted on December 18, 2016 at 6:13 pm. Written by Christie

A NEW WORLD IN OUR HEARTS, The Faces of Spanish Anarchism, Edited by Albert Meltzer. Contributors: Albert Meltzer; Frank Mintz; José Peirats; Gaston Leval; Andrew Giles Peters. Originally published 1978 by Cienfuegos Press, Sanday, Orkney. Over the course of 120 pages, through a series of interlinked essays, the contributors discuss the history of Spanish Anarchism, the Revolution in practice, the post-Revolution resistance and internal anarchist organization, and the reemergence of the CNT and Spanish Anarchism following the death of Franco. As enlightening, informative, and relevant as it was when it first appeared almost 30 years ago.

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MALATESTA — A Life by Luigi Fabbri. eBook £1.50 (see eBookshelf)

Posted on December 10, 2016 at 3:57 pm. Written by Christie

A biographical hommage to Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta (1853-1932) by his lifelong friend and fellow anarchist Luigi Fabbri (1877-1935). Errico Malatesta is, undoubtedly, one of the ” giants ” of the 19th century revolutionary movement— an agitator, man of action and a thought-provoking writer. Malatesta was active in the international anarchist movement both as activist and propagandist for nearly sixty years. As a glance through the archives of the anarchist press of the time will show, he was one of the movement’s most respected members, as well as one of its most controversial. He was active in many parts of the world, as well as the editor of a number of Italian anarchist journals, including the daily Umanità Nova. Half his life was spent in exile and the respect he was accorded by governments is insanely evidenced by the fact that he spent more than ten years in prison, mainly awaiting trial. Juries, by contrast, showed a different respect by almost always acquitting him, recognising that the only galantuomo, that the only honest man, was the one facing them in the prisoners’ cage!

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BOURGEOIS INFLUENCES ON ANARCHISM and REVOLUTION and DICTATORSHIP Luigi Fabbri. eBook £1.50 (see eBookshelf)

Posted on December 9, 2016 at 10:25 am. Written by Christie

Bourgeois Influences on Anarchism was written in 1914 by Italian anarchist communist Luigi Fabbri (1877-1935), around the time the opening shots of WWI were being fired. In it he addresses problems he sees as resulting from the stereotyping of anarchism both in bourgeois literature and the media, and the negative effect this was having on popular culture, and on the actual anarchist movement.

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“The minds of men, especially of the young, thirsting for the mysterious and extraordinary, allow themselves to be easily dragged by the passion for the new toward that which, when coolly examined in the calm which follows initial enthusiasm, is absolutely and definitively repudiated. This fever for new things, this audacious spirit, this zeal for the extraordinary has brought to the anarchist ranks the most exaggeratedly impressionable types, and at the same time, the most empty headed and frivolous types, persons who are not repelled by the absurd, but who, on the contrary, engage in it. They are attracted to projects and ideas precisely because they are absurd, and so anarchism comes to be known precisely for the illogical character and ridiculousness which ignorance and bourgeois calumny have attributed to anarchist doctrines.”

The first English translation of Fabbri’s classic dissection of problems which still plague anarchism today, such as the identification of anarchism in the capitalist press with disorganization, chaos, and terrorism, and the consequent embracement of such things by some “anarchists.”

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