Ramón Rufat
Ramón Rufat Llop was a Spanish anarcho-syndicalist, agent of the Republican secret services, and anti-Franco fighter.
Biography
Anarcho-syndicalist commitment
Son of an Aragonese mason, his mother died of the Spanish flu in 1918 when he was 20 months old. In 1926, he was sent to Calanda for free education. Shortly before the elections of February 1936, Ramon Rufat joined the Libertarian Youth.During the Fascist uprising, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, he went to Barcelona and joined the Durruti Column of Confederación Nacional del Trabajo militiamen in their attempt to liberate Zaragoza. In October 1936, he was a founder of The Children of the Night, a special group of the Servicio de Información Especial Periférico on the fronts of Aragon and Catalonia. Rufat was one of the 17 members of this most select group of the Intelligence service of the Second Spanish Republic.
Between October 1936 and December 1938, Rufat carried out more than 50 deep penetration missions behind the fascist lines of Aragon and Catalonia. He gathered intelligence by posing as a fascist officer, but always refusing to kill or wound anyone. He gradually built up a vast network of clandestine agents, couriers, smugglers, also exfiltrating militants and families trapped in the fascist zone. His intelligence contributed to the assassination attempts on Francisco Franco in Salamanca in January 1937 and then during the funeral of Emilio Mola in June 1937. On the Levant front, the information he provided to the Republican Army was crucial for the Zaragoza offensives, the Battle of Belchite, the Battle of Teruel, the Aragon Offensive and the Battle of the Ebro.
Knowing the war lost in the fall of 1938, Rufat nevertheless refused to give up the fight. He was denounced and then captured by the Francoist troops as he crossed the Guadalaviar in the Sierra de Albarracín on a mission at the beginning of the Catalonia Offensive on 18 December 1938.
Clandestinity and inner resistance
On 4 March 1939, Rufat was sentenced to two death sentences: one for "espionage" based on his actions, and one for "perversity" based on his political commitment. In September 1940, the Belgian Red Cross provided Spain with a food boat in exchange for a list of 100 people to be pardoned. Rufat was at the top of the list and his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. After several concentration camps, interrogations, torture and mock executions, he managed to falsify his prison record and was released on parole on 10 August 1944. On the very same day, he went to the National Committee of proscribed Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), with which he had remained in contact during his imprisonment. He was immediately appointed Vice-Secretary of the Spanish Libertarian Movement, a clandestine coordinating structure that brought together the CNT, the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) and the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth (FIJL).Rufat was also put in charge of propaganda, relaunching the clandestine publications of the internal resistance of the Libertarian Movement and CNT, in particular Solidaridad Obrera, Fragua Social, Tierra y Libertad, which had been banned. In July 1945, the CNT-ML (interior) clandestinely held its national congress in Carabaña with many regional delegates and reaffirmed the anti-fascist line of union. This resulted in its participation in the National Alliance of Democratic Forces and the appointment of Horacio Prieto and José Exposito Leiva as representatives of the CNT to the Republican government-in-exile of José Giral. This was the "golden age" of the anarchist resistance to Franco's regime, with a wide distribution of the underground press in the regions, the first major strikes in 1945 in Barcelona and then in Vizcaya, the first demonstrations, and then the resumption of urban guerrilla warfare, notably with attacks on banks.
After the arrest of Sigfrido Catalá Tineo, Rufat became general secretary of the CNT-ML (interior). He continued the underground revolutionary struggle until he was arrested alongside the whole clandestine Ninth CNT National Committee on 6 October 1945 in Madrid by the Francoist Political-Social Brigade.