The Anarchist Who Shared My Name

by PABLO MARTÍN SÁNCHEZ

  The pressure cooker had definitively exploded on Monday, July 26, when a spontaneous general strike devolved into street battles against the forces of order and the government decreed a state of war. The Strike Law, amended three months later, required unions to announce any work stoppage eight days in advance; and, if that weren’t enough, it also prohibited strikes for political reasons, which condemned to failure any attempt at a workers’ protest aiming for real change. But that sweltering July Monday dawned with the city captured by the workers, and the announcement of a twenty-four-hour general strike spread like a dust storm: months later, the civil governor of Barcelona, Don Angel Ossorio, would state that the strike “did not go off like a bomb, but ran like a string of fireworks,” a string that would last an entire week. The first day, they closed the factories and businesses, the taxicabs stopped running, and the trams—the last bastion against the general strike—had to be escorted by Civil Guard forces on horseback, and occupied by security guards armed with short rifles; and so, what had started as a peaceful strike ended up leading to a semblance of a revolution: the police patrols monitoring the streets and attending the trams were attacked by hordes of men and women who thought they saw an opportunity to avenge centuries of poverty and oppression. Governor Ossorio, overwhelmed by the events and unhappy with his superiors’ methods, submitted his resignation that same day and made a backstage exit for his summer home in Tibidabo. The next morning, the city had been cut off, the press muzzled, and telegraph services shut down, which merely fed the wrath of the protestors, who attacked the police stations, stole weapons, and tore up the cobblestones to build barricades; and, without really knowing how or why, what had started as an anti-military protest spiraled into an anticlerical revolt: the city filled with voices calling to burn churches, convents, refectories, any building that smelled of incense, and soon Barcelona turned into a sea of fires illuminating the starry sky at nightfall. From his summer residence in San Sebastián, King Alfonso XIII signed a decree suspending constitutional rights in Barcelona, while the city’s politicians, whether Catalanist, Republican, or socialist, ended up distancing themselves from this amorphous, acephalous workers’ revolution that had exploded in their hands. On the third day, the convents’ tombs were desecrated, and a protest led by women made its way toward the doors of City Hall, bearing as a flag the shrouds of fifteen dead nuns, supposedly tortured and buried by their own cloistermates for having hidden illegitimate fetuses from the world. One person had the audacity to pull one of these mummified nuns from the sepulchre, and proceeded to dance through the streets with her corpse in a grotesque, delirious spectacle that finally made the ruling classes understand that the workers were not toying around. The bourgeoisie locked themselves inside their homes, hoping the torment would subside, and the clerics left running, scattering like ants, tearing off their cassocks and collars. And thus, as if it couldn’t be any other way, on the twenty-ninth of July, ten thousand soldiers arrived in Barcelona from Zaragoza, Burgos, and Valencia, ready to reestablish law and order in the name of God and country. It was then that Pablo discovered himself cradling the blood-soaked head of a man in agony. And it was as though the contact with the hot viscous blood snapped him back to reality, and he looked around and took stock of what was happening.

  “Get me out of here,” said the injured man in a feeble voice, “for the love of God.”

  He was in a barricade made of paving stones, tramway rails, sewer lids, lampposts, gratings, mattresses, tables, and even straw chairs, protecting a group of men firing rifles and trying to stop the soldiers’ advance. He didn’t really know how he had gotten there, but that question would have to wait: the important thing just then was to save this poor bleeding man. A few yards down the street, an overturned streetcar was serving as a parapet for another group of workers struggling to resist the fury of the police. A bullet tore through the air and struck the bare earth of the torn-up street, with a surprising oblique trajectory that could hardly have come from the other side of the barricade.

  “Up there, on the terrace,” the injured man creaked, pointing his finger, as a stream of blood escaped his mouth.

  Then Pablo saw him: silhouetted against the sky, on top of a bell tower that had been spared the flames, there was the brick-red hat of a sniper priest, one of those pacos who in the last few hours had taken up posts on rooftops to help the military finish off the rebels. With no time to lose, he hoisted the dying man by the armpits and dragged him to the sidewalk as bullets whistled overhead. The first door he tried to open was immovable, as were the second and third, but finally the fourth door opened and they found refuge in a large, dark hallway. Pablo lay the man down on a tightly woven rug next to the windowed door. But it was too late: the dying man placed his hand on his shirt pocket, opened his mouth to say nothing, and exhaled his last breath. If he had been able to carry out the gesture, he would have taken from his pocket a sepia-toned photograph of a little girl with long braids and a mischievous smile, the back of which bore the inscription: “To my dear father on the day of my First Communion. Elena.” “Do me a favor, tell her I love her,” would have been his last words. But death took him away without time to say goodbye.

  “Requiescat in pace,” Pablo heard someone whisper behind him as he closed the dead man’s eyes. Spinning, he saw something moving in a corner of the hallway, shrouded in darkness.

  “Who’s there?” he asked.

  “Emilio Ferrer, sculptor and syndicalist,” the voice introduced itself, coming out of the darkness. It was a man of about thirty years of age, tall and thin, who moved with a certain affectation and wore a red handkerchief on his head, tied at the four corners, vaguely resembling a cardinal’s hat. “Sorry about your friend.”

  “He wasn’t my friend.”

  “Well, I’m sorry all the same.”

  A tense silence filled the hallway, while the gunshots and the howls of anger and pain continued outside.

  “And you? What are you doing here?” Pablo finally asked.

  “Nothing, my Mauser seized up and I hid in here to try to fix it.”

  Pablo looked at the man with distrust.

  “And who gave you fellows the rifles?”

  “Joan Castells, the janitor of the Centro Radical. He had a whole arsenal, that guy. But it seems like a lost cause now. Did you see the cannons?”

  Pablo shook his head.

  “And that smell?” said the man, twisting his face in disgust. “I think the dead guy took a shit on us, don’t you smell that?”

  Pablo didn’t have time to answer: a massive mortar shell exploded in the street, a few yards away, and the floor shook under his feet. Immediately, as if they were waiting for a sign, the neighbors started coming out of their apartments and running down into the cellar. Seeing the dead man in the hallway, some of them made the sign of the cross, others whispered, most averted their eyes and continued their way downstairs. Another shell exploded a bit farther away than the first.

  “Should we go?” Pablo asked, pointing at the door.

  “Are you crazy? It’s over, kid, if I were you I’d think about saving my skin,” said the sculptor. Laying his jammed rifle next to the cadaver, he added, “You’re young, you have a whole life ahead of you and a lot of things to discover. But never forget that the paths of discovery are more important than the discovery itself. If you’ll accept my advice, that is.”

  That said, the sculptor with airs of a philosopher made his way toward the cellar door; but then he thought better of it and ran upstairs instead. Pablo stood there, not knowing what to do. In the shadows of the hallway, he looked at his hands, where the dried blood had started to flake off. “What am I doing here?” he thought. “What happened to me?” Then he started to remember everything: the scene at the port, the vision of Angela, the confusion, the foul turn, the city in flames, the barricades … At least I’m still alive, he said to himself, looking at the dead man; and he sat down on the floor, his back against the wall, his arms o
n his knees, and the lucky amulet hanging against his chest. Only when the cannons went silent and the shouting subsided did Pablo dare to open the door a crack, and saw the barricade empty: except for two men strewn on the ground, immobile and covered in blood, the rest had disappeared. A few gunshots still rang out, intermittently now—maybe the sniper priest was still imparting divine justice from the rooftop, shooting at traitors trying to flee or hide in doorways. A voice was heard calling to cease fire, and soon came sounds of boots and rifle butts pounding frenetically against doors: they were probably searching houses to make sure no rebels were hiding inside. The knocks kept getting closer and closer, and a murmur of voices started up in the cellar, as though the neighbors were discussing the possibility of coming up from their refuge. Now or never, thought Pablo. And he made his way upstairs with catlike agility.

  When he reached the roof, the sun was beating down, and the sculptor had taken refuge in a small wooden shed.

  “Want some?” the man asked as Pablo entered, pointing to a small brown glass bottle labeled Merck. His face bore a strange look of happiness, and his turquoise blue eyes glowed intensely.

  “We have to leave, they’ll arrive any minute,” Pablo replied.

  “And how do you plan to get out of here? Fly? There’s nothing to be done, boy, so you might as well try this stuff, and really learn to fly.”

  Pablo looked at the vial attentively. Next to it, there was a cigar box containing a syringe with a bit of blood. It was the first time he ever saw such a thing, but he could deduce that it was an ampoule of morphine, or perhaps cocaine, the new drug that was starting to circulate, and which would lead the government to issue a royal order prohibiting the illicit trafficking of alkaloids in pharmacies, boutiques, bars, and brothels. Strange that a syndicalist can afford such vices, thought Pablo. And he observed him curiously. Despite his proletarian dress, his body appeared to have aristocratic aspirations: beneath the red handkerchief, he had smooth blond hair, a perfect match to his porcelain skin; and his hands, thin and bluish, were more those of a surgeon than of a sculptor.

  “Sure you don’t want any?” the man insisted, and in the silence that followed his question they heard military boots stomping up the stairs.

  “Let’s run across the rooftops,” Pablo proposed.

  “You go ahead and escape if you can. You’re young and have your life ahead of you …”

  Pablo shook his head, looked at the man one last time, and left the shack running, not knowing that he would meet those eyes again years later. When the soldiers reached the rooftop, they found only the dope fiend Emilio Ferrer, supposedly a sculptor with a union card, in reality a low-level informant working on the payroll of the Civil Guard.

  – 15 –

  The night of November 6, 1924, fifty men were struggling across the mountains of Vera del Bidasoa waiting for the dawn. They were fifty young, strong men; in isolation, each of them meant nothing, was nothing, could do nothing; together they constituted the soul of a faction: a faction which, when it drags more and more men along, can turn into an army of salvation for a people; but which, when it does not have such luck, is nothing but a horde of bandits, doomed to die on the gallows if not already killed by a hail of bullets from the defenders of order.

  EMILIO PALOMO,

  Two Essays on Revolution

  ALL ALONG THE PYRENEES MOUNTAIN RANGE, joining the Cantabrian Sea to the Mediterranean, numbered from west to east, there are a total of 602 markers (or mugas, as they are known locally) that delimit the border between Spain and France, from the Endarlatsa Bridge to Cape Cerbère. The squadron led by the former civil guardsman Julián Santillán has been assigned to cross the border at marker number 18, traveling along Inzola Creek and ascending Mount Larrún after leaving the neighborhood of Oleta. Anyone who knows the terrain (and the group’s guide, Martín Lacouza, knows it intimately) knows that the best route to get from the golf course La Nivelle to marker 18 is the old Camino de Vera, which some call the Camino de Napoleón, convinced that it was the path taken by Bonaparte’s army when they crossed the border in 1808 to conquer Spain. But most of the fifteen revolutionaries on their way to Oleta don’t know anything about all that, and the men take their first steps on the banks of the Nivelle River without suspecting that they might be retracing the steps of Napoleon’s troops a century before. More accurately, they know nothing of this until Lacouza, who is co-leader of the mission with Julián Santillán and proves to be particularly loquacious over the first few kilometers, starts to recount the historical failed incursion to the ex-civil guardsman, also reaching the ears of those walking just behind, but not the ears of the group formed by Pablo, Robinsón, Leandro, and Julianín (we can keep calling him that behind his back, to avoid confusion with the other Julián in the group), who trek at the rear of the squadron trying to convince Kropotkin to keep his barking down.

  “If that mongrel doesn’t shut the hell up,” Santillán threatens from the front of the pack, “we’re going to have to get rid of him.”

  And though the wiener dog has no commitment to the success of the revolution, when he hears the guard’s tone a sixth sense tells him to quiet down.

  Night has fallen completely when the men arrive at the neighborhood of Oleta, composed of a few scattered houses, although one can make out two main clusters. At the entry of the first there is a pelota court and a tavern with a letterbox proclaiming “Maison Landabururtia.” The rebels huddle up next to the pelota wall and decide to make a brief stop at the tavern to escape the cold and rekindle the revolutionary fire before they make their way up the mountain. But not all of them ask for wine or brandy—Robinsón and the vegetarians prefer a fruit juice.

  “We don’t have any,” says the barman in Spanish.

  And so they have to be satisfied with sugar water, which is hilarious to Perico Alarco and Manolito Monzón, who are in a rambunctious mood.

  “Water for the frogs, ribbit, ribbit!” jeers the toothless one, and Manolito follows the insult by puffing up his cheeks and opening his hands, imitating an amphibian.

  But the vegetarians pay no mind; Perico is on the offensive and moves on to a personal attack:

  “Hey Robinsón, you sure you’re going to be able to cross the mountain with that lame leg?”

  “You sure I won’t cross your ugly snout with a left hook?” the vegetarian threatens with sudden violence, destroying all remnants of a festive mood.

  “Hey, hey, don’t be like that,” says Perico Alarco, who as a barfly knows to keep his nose clean, so he changes tables to drink instead with Santillán, whom he tries to convince to give him one of the pistols he’s carrying, because he and Manolito missed the distribution.

  “After we cross the border,” the ex-civil guardsman replies dryly, distrustfully.

  The barman brings out some food, and the rebels start devouring it as if they had been starving for days (or, if you like, as if it were the last meal of their lives). It seems that the knots in their stomachs have loosened up with the walk and left them with an appetite. The owner recognizes the guide Martín Lacouza and asks him where he is headed at this hour, but someone from the group interjects and imprudently responds:

  “To behead the king of Spain!”

  When they get back out in the fresh air, clouds have obscured the moon, and it is starting to drizzle. Bad omen, more than one man thinks. The revolutionaries put on their berets and start walking again, following Martín Lacouza, whose usual loquaciousness seems to be dampened by the rain, as he says nothing until they reach a clearing at the foot of the mountain.

  “Now the hard part starts,” he warns, and he starts ascending, barely giving enough time for some of the men to cut some branches to use as walking sticks.

  The Camino de Napoleon follows the ancient Roman road, which leads to Vera along the bank of Inzola Creek, and some say that chariots passed here during the Roman Empire. The ancient road, though it disappears completely in some stretches, emerges here and there along t
he way, with larger stones at the shoulders and a line of long, narrow pebbles down the middle. But the revolutionaries, slogging along in wet clothes under uncomfortable backpacks, are not interested in an archeology lesson: all they see is a steep, dark, snaking path, full of stones good for nothing but rolling ankles and making Robinsón’s limp imperceptible among the whole group’s unsteady gait. Indeed, even to say they can see the path is an exaggeration, because the oaks and alders that populate Mount Larrún barely let through any light from the shrouded full moon, and Santillán has ordered them not to turn on their flashlights unless absolutely necessary.

  So, trudging through the darkness and ensconced in a silence disturbed only by the burbling of Inzola Creek and the twittering of the occasional sleepless bird, the revolutionary squad ascends the ancient Roman road. The initial enthusiasm has given way to a certain anxiety, and more than one man’s liberator spirit has started to wane, although no one wants to admit it. But, as though to clear the dark thoughts from the rebels’ minds, an unexpected event interrupts the ascent.

  “Shhhh!” Martín Lacouza hushes them, suddenly stopping at a bend in the path.

  The rest also halt, as though frozen by a magic spell. Even Kropotkin stills his tail and chokes back a bark. Over the noise of the water, they can just make out the sound of the footsteps of someone coming hastily down the path, in such a hurry that he nearly crashes into them when he comes around the bend. Seeing them, he drops the package he was carrying on his shoulder and runs back the way he came, as though he has seen a ghost. Only then does Kropotkin start barking, despite Robinsón and Pablo’s attempts to muzzle him.