Los Solidarios
Los Solidarios was a Spanish anarchist militant group, established in 1922 to combat the rise of pistolerismo and yellow syndicalism, which represented the interests of business owners. At first, the group organised the Catalan anarchist movement, stockpiled weapons and infiltrated the Spanish Armed Forces. Following the assassination of Salvador Seguí, the general secretary of the anarchist trade union centre, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, the group initiated its own campaign of targeted assassinations against officials who they held responsible for state terrorism. In 1923, Los Solidarios assassinated pistolero leader Ramón Laguía, the former governor of Biscay Fernando González Regueral, and the Archbishop of Zaragoza Juan Soldevila. As news began to spread of an impending military coup in the country, Los Solidarios sought to acquire weapons in order to resist the coup. The group robbed a branch of the Bank of Spain in Xixón and used the money to buy rifles, but were ultimately unable to stop the 1923 Spanish coup d'état, which resulted in the establishment of the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera.
The group subsequently rushed to break its members out of prison and dispatched its most-wanted members to Paris, where they used money from the Xixón robbery to set up a publishing house. In exile, Spanish anarchists reorganised and began to prepare for an attempt to overthrow the dictatorship. In March 1924, the dictatorship carried out a series of raids against the weapons caches and safehouses of Los Solidarios. Several of the group's members were imprisoned or executed, but others escaped capture. As repression in Spain intensified, the group member Domingo Ascaso plotted an insurrection to overthrow the dictatorship. On 6 November 1924, anarchists in Barcelona attempted to storm the Drassanes barracks, while exiled anarchists attempted to launch an offensive from France across the Pyrenees in the Basque Country and Catalonia. The insurrection attempt was defeated on all fronts and many anarchists were imprisoned, exiled or killed. By the end of 1924, members of the Los Solidarios were either in prison, in exile or operating clandestinely in Spain. After the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931, Los Solidarios was reunited and reorganised into the Nosotros group.
Background
By the turn of the 20th century in Spain, the industrialised region of Catalonia was facing constant protests and strike actions. The Spanish government responded with political repression, imprisoning and executing many workers. During World War I, the economy of Spain experienced rapid growth due to the preservation of Spanish neutrality. This increased the influence of the organised working class in the Catalan capital of Barcelona, where many migrant workers were moving to participate in the industrial economy. The city soon gained a reputation for Bohemianism, which attracted many activists of the growing Spanish anarchist movement. At the time, Spanish politics was largely dominated by the clergy, aristocracy and military. To challenge this ruling elite, Catalan business owners sought to gain political influence by displacing the two-party system and stoking Catalan nationalist sentiments. During the war, business owners accumulated vast amounts of wealth, while the country at large fell into an economic crisis.To balance the budget, the Finance Minister Santiago Alba proposed the implementation of a corporation tax. This was staunchly opposed by Francesc Cambó, the leader of the Regionalist League of Catalonia, who prevented the proposal from passing through parliament and consequently caused the collapse of the government of Álvaro de Figueroa. But when imports were restricted by the subsequent government in 1917, Catalan business owners experienced a decline in their profits. Meanwhile, the working class faced a rising cost of living and political marginalisation, provoking the trade unions of the Unión General de Trabajadores and Confederación Nacional del Trabajo to call a general strike. In Barcelona, an was formed by the LRC to constitute a provisional government for Catalonia, but it dissolved itself in order to support the repression of Catalan workers by the Spanish government. Many Catalan anarchists fled to the French port city of Marseille, where they clandestinely organised Spanish workers under the banner of the CNT. By January 1919, the CNT had grown so large that half of all workers were affiliated to it; throughout the country, it counted 375,000 members at this time.
Predecessor
In 1919, one of the CNT's most prominent agitators, Manuel Buenacasa, travelled from Barcelona to the Basque city of Donostia, where he organised migrant workers who were constructing the Kursaal casino. There he met the young anarchist Buenaventura Durruti, who he put in touch with other anarchist militants, leading to the formation of Los Justicieros. The group was formed in response to an intensifying social conflict; in Barcelona, armed mercenary groups known as pistoleros hunted down and murdered union leaders, while the police applied to ley de fugas to imprisoned workers. State terrorism drove the CNT underground and many of its members were forced to either fight, flee or face imprisonment. Los Justicieros initially intended to join the fight in Barcelona, but Buenacasa dissuaded them, telling them they were still needed in Donostia. On 4 August 1920, Catalan anarchists assassinated, the civil governor of Barcelona, who had overseen the execution of 33 union leaders; inspired by the attack, Los Justicieros decided to attempt to assassinate the King of Spain, Alfonso XIII. Their plot was uncovered by the police and Buenacasa arranged their escape to Zaragoza.The new governor of Barcelona, Severiano Martínez Anido, intensified state terror against the workers' movement. He oversaw a mass campaign of assassinations of union leaders and imprisoned many prominent activists, including the CNT's Ángel Pestaña. Young and inexperienced activists were consequently promoted through the ranks of the CNT. In March 1921, after the entire National Committee of the CNT was arrested, it was replaced by a new committee led by the young Andreu Nin, a relatively new member of the organisation who sympathised with Bolshevism.
Seeking to establish an Iberian Anarchist Federation, Los Justiceros dispatched Durruti to Barcelona to contact Catalan anarchist groups. There he was greeted by Domingo Ascaso, who told him of the heavy political repression that the movement was facing: prominent CNT activists, including Salvador Seguí, Evelio Boal and Joan Peiró had been imprisoned; the pistoleros effectively operated as a private police force for factory owners and routinely executed union activists; the CNT had also been infiltrated by police informants, who had turned in many anarchist activists to the authorities. In this environment, Catalan anarchist groups had closed ranks, distancing themselves from others and concentrating on large actions, including the assassination of prime minister Eduardo Dato. Under these conditions, Ascaso informed Durruti that joining a wider anarchist federation was impossible.
Establishment
Founding
Following the defeat of the Spanish colonial forces by Abd el-Krim at the Battle of Annual in Spanish Morocco, mass protests broke out against the continuation of the Rif War. Alfonso XIII tasked the Conservative prime minister Antonio Maura with crushing working class resistance. Maura attempted to win over Catalan business owners by intensifying political repression against the workers' movement, but after he refused to hand the Ministry of Finance over to the LRC, his government collapsed in March 1922. Alfonso XIII hoped that a new government would be able to imitate the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, but instead, the government of José Sánchez-Guerra restored constitutional rights on 22 April 1922. Catalan trade unions immediately resumed their public activities, while many of their political prisoners were released.The CNT managed to recover, with its ranks even increasing in some cases. The Wood Workers' Union called an assembly at Barcelona's Victoria Theatre, which was opened by the anarchist journalist reading out the names of the 107 activists who had been murdered by the pistoleros. The assembly nominated a new union committee and elected the Aragonese carpenter Gregorio Jover as representative of the Barcelona Local Federation of the CNT. Ascaso wrote a letter to his brother, Francisco, who had recently been released from prison. He warned that the pistoleros had reorganised around yellow syndicalism, forming pro-corporate trade unions, and worried that a new offensive against the working class was being prepared by employers. In response to the letter, in August 1922, five members of Los Justicieros moved to Barcelona. There they reorganised into a new group, which they called Crisol.
By the time the Crisol group arrived in Barcelona, a general strike had been called in response to an assassination attempt against Pestaña. Catalan intellectuals denounced the continuation of attacks by the pistoleros, while socialist deputy Indalecio Prieto demanded the resignation of Martínez Anido, and Catalan nationalists led by Francesc Macià called for the independence of Catalonia. In response, the employers and clergy reorganised pistolerismo into the Sindicatos Libres, a company union which they forced their workers to join by firing any CNT affiliates. Members of Crisol formed an alliance with activists of the CNT Woodworkers' Union, with whom they established a new affinity group, Los Solidarios, in October 1922. They planned to confront the pistoleros and support the CNT, with the eventual goal of establishing an Iberian Anarchist Federation, which they saw as a necessary precondition for social revolution. According to Ricardo Sanz, Los Solidarios functioned as a leaderless, non-hierarchical organisation. Historian Murray Bookchin depicted them as having more closely resembled a community than a structured political organisation.
To propagate their ideas, they released a weekly newspaper titled Crisol. The paper was edited by Francisco Ascaso, who received contributions from Felipe Alaiz, Obdulio Barthe, Liberto Callejas and Torres Tribo. Crisol frequently cited the works of the Russian anarchist philosopher Mikhail Bakunin; the group followed Bakunin's tactic of forming a clandestine cell system within a large trade union organisation and believed his strategy could be applied in the struggle against a military dictatorship, which they believed would soon be established in Spain. Following the model of the Russian Revolution and the example of the Bolsheviks, Crisol believed that they could establish a dictatorship of the proletariat through the creation of revolutionary committees and workers' councils, which would be capable of uniting skilled and unskilled workers behind a common cause. Crisol also attacked King Alfonso XIII, who the paper called a "felon king", due to his continued prosecution of the Rif War.