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The column included people from all over the world. The Durruti Column was militarised in , becoming part of the 26th Division on 28 April.
The column was formed in Barcelona where, on 18 July , the anarchists started fighting against General Goded and his armies. The republican government had done nothing to protect the city from the rebellious army under the command of General Franco ; Barcelona was left undefended. Intending to take Catalonia back from the Francoists, Durruti and his column headed toward Zaragoza , which was controlled by General Emilio Mola. There they were joined by a small group of militiamen commanded by Captain Negrete from Guardia Civil.
The advance stopped near the city banks because Durruti became convinced by Colonel Villalba, the leader of all the republican forces, that if he reclaimed Zaragoza, he may become isolated from the rest of the fighters. Nowadays it is doubted if that was a good decision since the republican forces were greater in number; however, some state that in the event of open battle a lack of weapons and supplies could have led to total disaster.
Waiting for the more convenient moment to attack Zaragoza turned out to be a grave mistake because, in time, Franco's forces became more powerful there and made it impossible to reclaim the city. Most of the advances were small and were mostly initiated due to the actions of guerrillas. Durruti was concentrating himself on helping the collective. At the beginning of November Buenaventura Durruti with more than 3, people from the column directed themselves to Madrid.
At the time the capital of Spain was in grave danger of being overtaken by the fascists and Federica Montseny convinced Durruti to leave Catalonia. His arrival to Madrid strengthened the morale of the inhabitants. He was ordered to defend and then started the offensive at Casa del Campo. Efficient in street battles, the militants had neither enough power nor experience to stand a chance against the disciplined and well-armed army from Morocco. Having suffered huge casualties the Durruti column escaped the battlefield. On 19 November, Durruti was shot and died in a hospital some time later.
The origins of the bullet are unknown.
Some say it was an action taken by the responsibility of the Soviet special forces, other that it was failure of Durruti's gun. Applying a juridical term for this way of eliminating the political opponent, it would be correct to speak of crimes against humanity or, in the case of the military coup, of politicide, and not of genocide. If we have a look at the figures of Nationalist violence in the provinces of Andalusia and Ex- tremadura before the legalization of violence, we can see how the official demands were fulfilled by far more than 8, assassinations in Seville, nearly 10, in Cordoba and 5, in Granada, a minimum of 1, in —————— 24 See Francisco Espinosa, La columna de la muerte.
Visiones y balan- ces, Alicante , pp. But risking some answers would be precisely to solve the equation: It is an equation compounded, basically, by different motivations and contexts. On one side there is a climate of impunity, of ideologies nour- ished by a latent culture of violence, of political mobilization, of the de- struction of society as we know it. On the other side we have a climate of personal aspirations, of desires for revenge and of two elements that fre- quently go unnoticed: To kill before they kill you: From their point of view their actions seemed righteous and necessary.
Asymmetric violence However, that violence appeared in a sudden and ardent manner does not mean that all types of violence were equal, comparable or proportional.
On the contrary, the asymmetry of violence was proved by its territorial, tem- poral and quantitative extension. In both rearguards violence was the ulti- —————— 28 See Alfonso Braojos Garrido et al.
It would be more appro- priate to pay attention to the asymmetries of violence. The figures of the violence for the principal belligerent phase are still far from exact. Primar- ily this is because victims have never been registered, or only a posteriori. The analysis of figures on the national zone contains three problems that are difficult to resolve: Besides the difficulty that comes with applying the same percentage of violent activity to all the zones rapidly occupied by the rebelling troops, the collected data reveals that the great majority about 60— 80 percent of assassinations in western Andalusia Cadiz, Seville, Huelva and the occu- pied Cordoba , in Granada, Navarra and western Aragon, La Rioja, Soria, Segovia, Caceres or Galicia Ourense y Lugo took place during July and December of , and the majority of the victims were shot without be- ing sentenced first.
Los fusilados en Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Rivero, La ruptura de la paz civil. As a result of this we are speaking of 45,—52, victims murdered in the months of the military coup and the war of columns of the 65, computed for the provinces where the military coup triumphed. Burgos durante la Guerra Civil, Barcelona But this data cannot be verified by the author.
Most of the advances were small and were mostly initiated due to the actions of guerrillas. Paperback - Trade Pages: Availability can change throughout the month based on the library's budget. Several centuries contained foreigners:. Convictions and elimination were not only based on individual motives, connected to the concrete action of the defendant.
It seems to be certain that between July and December of persons were killed with death sentence and died between August and October after sacas from the central prison. Palomares, La guerra civil en la ciudad de Valladolid. Amaneceres ensangrentados, Valladolid ; he speaks of 61 percent that died after a court martial, victims between July and December of Furthermore 30 percent of the 1, victims in the whole province were executed legally while 70 percent died without judgement. Palomares, La Guerra Civil en Palencia. It can be affirmed with certainty that in the Republican rearguard nearly 38,—44, persons died by arms between summer and autumn of Not only are the total figures of violence higher on the side of the military uprising than on the Republican side.
The percent- age is also higher, if we take into consideration that when the major killing in the rearguard took place, 65 percent of the population was situated on Republican territory, and just 35 percent on the rebel side. I am grateful that he allowed me to consult the manuscript. But he does not take into account that the great majority of deaths occurred in the first months of the conflict, before the great territorial con- quests. This obviously reduces the figures of the repression; because these are considerably lower see pp.
Or we can take a look at the province of Caceres, where people died by revolutionary hands and 1, by the counterrevolution. From the end of and gradu- ally into , when the failure of the military coup made a long war fore- seeable, revolutionary and military violence were converted by degrees into regulated and institutionalized state violence. There were still sacas and paseos, but to a minor extent and generally in the zones conquered by the insurgent troops between and ; this violence was also supposedly sanctioned with legality and legitimacy.
After the Francoist victory a system of violence was established whose shape would not metamorphose until at least the mids. The repertoires of violence diversified, therefore, but in an asymmetric manner, answering to different needs and targets of the politics in the rearguard. Nevertheless, the most remarkable fact about this period is that the advances and withdrawals of two armies wrapped up in a total war had as a constant tragic corollary violence and the repression of actual or po- tential dissidences.
In fact, after the Francoist victory, the number of deaths might have decreased deaths ordered by court martials with more than dubious legal guarantees for the defendants, whose sentences had to —————— 35 On the Republican camps created by the decree of the Ministry of Justice of Oliver Garcia on The conquests bythe insurgents of Malaga, Bilbao, Santander and Asturias, as well as those of Teruel, western Aragon, Lleida and the entire region of Catalonia led to the exertion of the same logic of extermination, cleansing and purification of the rearguard.
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