Concept

Buenaventura Durruti

Summary
José Buenaventura Durruti Dumange (14 July 1896 – 20 November 1936) was a Spanish insurrectionary, anarcho-syndicalist militant involved with the CNT and the FAI in the periods before and during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. Durruti played an influential role during the 1936 Spanish Revolution and is remembered as a hero in and by the anarchist movement. José Buenaventura was born in León, Spain, son of Anastasia Dumange and Santiago Durruti, as the second of eight children. He started primary school when he was five and moved to the Calle Misericordia school four years later. In 1910, aged 14, Durruti left school to become a trainee mechanic in the railway yard in León. He started his first job at Matallana de Torio when he was 18. Like his father, he joined the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT). He took an active part in the strike of August 1917 called by the UGT when the government overturned an agreement between the union and the employers. The government brought in the Spanish Army to suppress the strike; they killed 70 people and injured more than 500 workers. 2,000 of the strikers were imprisoned without trial or legal process. Durruti managed to escape, but had to flee abroad to France where he came into contact with exiled anarchists. The brutality of the Spanish State against anarchism had a profound and lasting effect on the young Durruti. From the autumn of 1917 until the beginning of 1920, Durruti worked in Paris as a mechanic. He then decided to return to Spain and arrived at San Sebastian, Basque Country, just across the border. Here, he was introduced to local anarchists such as Suberviola, Ruiz, Aldabatrecu or Marcelino del Campo, with whom he formed the anarchist paramilitary group Los Justicieros ("The Avengers"). In 1921, during the inauguration of the Great Kursaal in San Sebastian, members of this group attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate King Alfonso XIII.
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