Two trade unionists killed, 1,500 pesetas

Paco Ignacio Taibo II down to the detail of revolutionary Barcelona 1917-1923 with 'What the stars are fire, "a book of" narrative history "

Meetings of employers in Barcelona home of a nobleman of Spain in Barcelona and which was supposedly Francesc Cambo, where a collection is made and meet at a point 1,500 pesetas to pay for the death of union leaders Salvador Segui and Angel Pestana. Skip to export to Europe of 10.5 tons of blankets (1913) to 4,500 tonnes (1915), thanks to shifts in factories and workshops completed 24 hours, with days of 11 hours in the textile, ten chemical or nine in the cabinet. corrupt policemen who unscrupulously practiced dirty war syndicalists while also extorted without regard to employers; German intelligence service ordering murders to the Barcelona police attributed it to violent workers; anarchists who traveled to Russia (unsuccessfully) to see Trotsky to ask weapons. Potatoes or bread or coal (when he was), up 50% in price in less than a year; literally strikes that paralyzed a city like the one caused by electrical workers The Canadian (1919, 44 days); the side of the employer or the union, almost one attack per day (304) in 1920 ...

That was the hotbed of Barcelona from 1917 to 1923, germ of an ultimately failed revolution but "was among the largest in the history of mankind," according to the writer, historian and leftist activist Paco Ignacio Taibo II, subjugated small (and higher) by the revolutionary social movements, from his native 1934 the Mexican Zapatista movement Asturias. Coherent therefore there trepidantes 542 pages dedicated to hatching period of anarchism in Catalonia, the stars are fire (Review).

Employers were more bands which were fed with people from the underworld and the underworld that the anarchist movement

Just he lacked that as vibrant as haunting and hopeful period novelistic pulse Taibo II and his desire for the details of human factor to build "a book of narrative history" as híbridamente baptizes his rigorous proposal. "It's a story of crowds with face" are female, a project that dragged on for 30 years, when finalizing a story about the revolution of Asturias of 1934. "I did, and I did very well, but I wondered: 'Where is proletarian epic? ' And he was in the real birth of the CNT in 1917 and in Barcelona and went out there. " So he gathered a host of books and boxes and books documentation, but did not know how to write. Three decades later, she helped him to revisit the issue the controversy over the Catalan independence movement and reading a novel about the time of Andreu Martin, Cabaret Pompeii. "Yes, at that time I lost almost all oral sources but had a host of new files and open access to the collection of daily Solidaridad Obrera". And what did not go in three decades, he came in a year, but in 14-hour days as a proletarian enslaved of the time in Barcelona ...

If one thing is clear after reading is the unprecedented violence of the period. "The cult of the gun is a bastard issue in the CNT," says Mexican let Taibo II (Gijón, 1949), it is clear that it was the state and the Catalan employers who pushed the anarcosindicalismo to armed struggle, "they fell into their trap them away from the current to reach his target within the peaceful mass movement, although there was always a very violent splinter group, "he admits. The figures provided by the historian-novelist himself is irrefutable: In 1919 109 attacks were recorded in Barcelona; the following year, will be 304. In less than six months since the strike started by the Canadian, workers quantized 43,000 workers in Catalonia detained without trial in most cases and incommunicado detention of up to one month. The Madrid government, but lowered the figure to 15,000, even acknowledged that it was "very high". And yet, as the author, there were differences: "Unionists shot to kill; police, deliriously, tortured all night and then threw the bodies in the streets, no eyes ... ". The tocsin, the "white guard" of the bourgeoisie, as it was known in Barcelona, ​​went from 45,000 members in August 1919 to 60,000 in January 1920 ...

The name Manuel Bravo Portillo works for Taibo II as a paradigm of this institutional violence. De facto chief of police of Barcelona, ​​created a chilling network of informers in the periphery of unionism, but also gangland, charged protect gambling houses and brothels and, in his opinion, indirectly responsible for the death (50 disparaos revolver), in 1918, the metallurgical businessman Jose Antonio Barret, who dealt with France howitzers and artillery fuzes. Officially, Bravo Portillo accused the union of Metallurgy of the crime, but later judicial investigations pointed to his confidant: the police would have received 15,000 pesetas German espionage service to end Barret. Over the years, outside the official structure, Bravo Portillo end office riding a "social issues": beatings, bodyguard services, provocations, confident ... "It was the special police of the employer," he defines Taibo II.

The police Bravo Portillo, Arlegui or Severiano Martinez Anido military governor and his "Law of Flight" are, for the author, "something only comparable to the German SS"

The author, always attentive to detail, is particularly pleased also to have put a face to who planted the bomb in Pompeii cabaret Parallel (1919: six dead, 18 wounded, writes that it was Innocent Feced union member Free by order of Director General of Security Police Barcelona, ​​Miguel Arlegui) and document "episodes almost forgotten" as the mutiny of women by the prices of commodities or strike maids, coordinated by the tab leader, both in 1918 .

Bravo Portillo, Arlegui or Severiano Martinez Anido military governor (1920-1922 and its notorious "law of leaks") are, for the author, "something only comparable in history to the German SS: his idea scares order to a reactionary monarchist as Alfonso XIII ". Taibo II also breaks the mold to ensure that "employers were more bands which were fed with people from the underworld and the underworld that anarchist movement." And in that vein, it is also unhappy with the widespread theory that violence Catalan anarchism was the result of the influence of immigration arrival of the Andalusian countryside: "It is an ahistorical thesis: when you keep good track from the beginning you see that the flood farmers is much older than the boys 1917 and pistols were second and third generation, well integrated Catalan proletariat and in union structures. "

To top off the spiral of institutional violence, just missed the bloody work of Free Trade Unions, sponsored by employers and under the tacit orders of then Captain General of Catalonia, General Milans del Bosch, who devoted part of its strategy to torpedo the labor lawyers who collaborated with CNT (there were public defenders that to help defend trade unionists, came to pay a whopping thousand pesetas who wanted his position) and who murdered labor leaders as Francesc Layret or Salvador Segui, the Noi Sucre, precisely contrary to the armed struggle within anarchism.

The violence of Catalan anarchism was the result of the influence of immigration arrival of the Andalusian countryside is an ahistorical thesis

Does the process lived between 1917 and 1923 became actual revolutionary? "Certainly, if we mean by revolution profound changes in society and not only triumphant armed movements; you have to get out of the scheme that has only been four revolutions: Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese and Cuban; Barcelona anarchist is with India, the South African apartheid or human rights of Americans ... The Canadian Strike is a revolutionary process of the most powerful ever known Europe; ended in defeat, yes, but its ideological, underground, sediment reappeared in 1931 and his mind would recover in 1936 ". He cites as substrate "a model of political behavior, association, federalism and a proletarian honor and a brutal ethical purity that are there ... for whoever wants to see it, of course."

Among all this "epic time" it seems to be little in today's "apathy". "I think it's there but does not apply, for example in movements like Occupy Wall Street, but not recognized as such." And in the off Zapatista movement today? "Zapatismo has always been in the shadows of sounds and silences. Zapatismo, anarchism ... these movements always campanean ". So, they go ... and come back. Do not hesitate, then, as in Shakespeare's Hamlet, they are fire stars.