The Brief Summer of Anarchy: the Life and Death of Durruti - Hans Magnus Enzensberger

The Brief Summer of Anarchy: The Life and Death of Durruti - Hans Magnus Enzensberger Introduction: Funerals The coffin arrived in Barcelona late at night. It rained all day, and the cars in the funeral cortege were covered with mud. The black and red flag that draped the hearse was also filthy. At the anarchist headquarters, which had been the headquarters of the employers association before the war,1 preparations had already been underway since the previous day. The lobby had been transformed into a funeral chapel. Somehow, as if by magic, everything was finished in time. The decorations were simple, without pomp or artistic flourishes. Red and black tapestries covered the walls, a red and black canopy surmounted the coffin, and there were a few candelabras, and some flowers and wreaths: that was all. Over the side doors, through which the crowd of mourners would have to pass, signs were inscribed, in accordance with Spanish tradition, in bold letters reading: “Durruti bids you to enter”; and “Durruti bids you to leave”. A handful of militiamen guarded the coffin, with their rifles at rest. Then, the men who had accompanied the coffin from Madrid carried it to the anarchist headquarters. No one even thought about the fact that they would have to enlarge the doorway of the building for the coffin to be brought into the lobby, and the coffin-bearers had to squeeze through a narrow side door. It took some effort to clear a path through the crowd that had gathered in front of the building. From the galleries of the lobby, which had not been decorated, a few sightseers watched. The environment was charged with expectation, as in a theater. People were smoking. Some removed their hats, while others never even thought of doing so. It was very loud. Some militiamen who had come from the front were greeted by their friends. The guards tried to prevent the crowd from pressing too close. This also caused a lot of noise. The man in charge of the ceremony issued some directives. Someone tripped and fell on a wreath. One of the coffin-bearers carefully lit his pipe just as the lid of the coffin was being raised. Durruti’s head lay on a white silk lining, under glass. His head was wrapped in a white scarf that made him look like an Arab. It was a scene that was tragic and grotesque at the same time. It was like a Goya engraving. I am describing it just as I saw it, so that the reader may get a glimpse of what inspires the Spanish people. In Spain, death is like an old friend, a comrade, a worker that one knows in the fields or in the factory. No one is surprised when he comes calling. You want friends, but you don’t go around begging for them. You let them come and go as they please. Perhaps it is the age- 1 Known as the Fomento Nacional del Trabajo (Spanish translator’s note). old fatalism of the Moors that resurfaces here, after having been cloaked for so many years under the rituals of the Catholic Church. Durruti was a friend. He had many friends. He had become the idol of an entire people. He was very much beloved, from the heart. Everyone that was there at that time lamented his loss and offered him their respects. Apart from his French girlfriend, however, only one person shed tears: an old charwoman who had worked in the building when it was still occupied by industrialists, and she probably never knew Durruti personally. The others felt his death as a terrible and irreparable loss, but expressed their feelings modestly. Observing a moment of silence, doffing their hats or putting out their cigarettes were just as foreign to them as making the sign of the cross or sprinkling holy water. Thousands of people paid their respects to Durruti all through the night. They waited in the rain, in long lines. Their friend and leader was dead. I would not hazard a guess as to how many people in this crowd were there because of grief and how many out of curiosity. But I am certain that one feeling was completely alien to all of them: respect for death. The burial was scheduled to take place the next morning. From the very beginning it was evident that the bullet that killed Durruti had also grazed Barcelona’s heart. It was estimated that one out of every four of the city’s inhabitants attended his funeral procession, not to mention the masses of people who lined the streets, watched from windows and rooftops and even from the trees of the Ramblas. All the parties and trade union organizations, without exception, summoned their members. Alongside the flags of the anarchists, the colors of all the anti-fascist groups of Spain fluttered over the crowd. It was a magnificent, impressive and bizarre spectacle; no one drilled, organized or ordered these masses of people. Nothing went as planned. An unprecedented chaos reigned. The funeral ceremony was supposed to start at 10:00 a.m. By 9:00 a.m. it was impossible to get anywhere near the headquarters of the anarchist Regional Committee. No one had thought of blocking off traffic on the route that the funeral procession would take. The workers from all the factories of Barcelona had gathered in groups, the groups converged and got in each other’s way. The mounted police and the motorized escort that were supposed to lead the funeral procession were brought to a total standstill, pressed against a vast multitude of workers. On every nearby street one could see cars covered with wreaths, immobilized and incapable of moving either forward or backward. A herculean effort was required to clear the road so that the Cabinet Ministers could get near the coffin. At 10:30 a.m., Durruti’s coffin, draped in a red and black flag, was carried from the anarchist headquarters on the shoulders of militiamen from his column. The masses gave their final salute with their fists in the air. The anarchist hymn, “Sons of the People”, was performed. A great wave of emotion swept over the crowd. For some reason, or by mistake, two bands were invited to play at the ceremony; one played at a very low volume, the other very loudly. They were unable to keep the same measure. Motorcycles were roaring, car horns were sounding, the officers of the various militia units were blowing their whistles, and the coffin- bearers were brought to a halt. It was not possible to organize the free passage of a funeral cortege through this chaos. Both bands played the same song over and over again. And they had long since ceased to keep even near the same measure. You could hear the tones, but the melody was unrecognizable. Everyone’s fists were still raised in the air. The music finally stopped, the fists descended and then you could hear the noise of the crowd amidst which Durruti reposed on the shoulders of his comrades. It took at least half an hour for the street to be cleared enough to allow the passage of the funeral cortege. It took several hours for the coffin to reach the Plaza Cataluña, which was only a few hundred meters away. The mounted police cleared the way, two abreast. The musicians, who had been scattered among the crowd, tried to reunite. The drivers that had become trapped in traffic were slowly backing up to find a way out. The drivers of the cars transporting the wreaths took a detour through various side streets to rejoin the procession at other points along its route. Everyone was shouting at the top of their lungs. No, these were not the funeral rites of a king; this was a burial ceremony organized by the people. No one gave any orders, everything happened spontaneously. The unpredictable reigned. It was simply an anarchist funeral, and this was its greatness. It had its bizarre aspects, but at no time did it lose its strange and somber majesty. The funeral orations were delivered from the foot of the Column of Columbus, not far from where Durruti’s best friend had fought and died. García Oliver, the last survivor of the compañeros, spoke as a friend, as an anarchist, and as the Minister of Justice of the Spanish Republic. Then the Russian consul spoke. He concluded his speech, which he had delivered in Catalan, with the slogan, “Death to Fascism!” The President of the Generalitat, Companys, had the final word: “Comrades!”, he began, and he ended with the slogan, “Onward!” The funeral procession was supposed to disperse after the speeches. Only a few of Durruti’s friends were supposed to accompany the hearse to the cemetery. This plan had to be scrapped, however. The masses did not budge; they had already occupied the cemetery, and the road to the cemetery was blocked. It was hard to make headway, and, to top it all off, thousands of wreaths could not be delivered to the cemetery lawn. Night fell. It began to rain again. Soon the rain turned into a downpour and the cemetery became a swamp where the wreaths foundered. At the very last moment they decided to postpone the burial. The coffin-bearers turned back from the gravesite and carried their burden back to the funeral chapel. Durruti was buried the next day. [H. E. Kaminski] First Commentary: History as collective fiction “No writer has ever attempted to write the history of his life; it would seem too much like an adventure novel.” This is the conclusion that Ilya Ehrenburg had already arrived at in 1931 as a result of his personal acquaintance with Buenaventura Durruti, and it would not be long before he would himself attempt to write such a history.

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