The death of Abundio Riaño was especially controversial. After fleeing into the woods alone after the skirmish, El Maño wandered all night and part of the morning looking for refuge in the farmhouses he found along the way, where he offered money to anyone who would shelter and hide him. But they all turned him away, and some even refused to tell him what direction to go to get to France. Around noon he was found near marker 10 by the chief of the Civil Guard of Sunbilla, Trinidad Gastériz. Riaño tried to hide among the ferns, but when he heard them shout “Halt!” he had no choice but to raise his hands and surrender. However, the chief did not trust him and, thinking that it was a ruse (or maybe taking revenge for the death of his colleagues), he fired his Mauser rifle several times, with good aim, and the defenseless revolutionary took a bullet directly in the heart. Which does not explain why, to the forensic examiners’ surprise, the body also had several injuries from hunting pellets. In any case, the bullet that pierced his heart first passed through a letter that Abundio was carrying in his breast pocket, a short letter addressed to his mother but never sent. It read:
Dear Mother, how are you? I’m doing well, don’t worry about me. God willing, we will be able to see each other again soon, in a Spain that is new, different, free. Take care of yourself and my brothers, tell them that when I come to Zaragoza I will bring them lots of presents. With love and devotion, your son, Abundio.
The letter was written on the back of an advertisement for hair-restoring ointment.
For his part, Pablo was returned to the jail yesterday morning, after a night in the hospital that was much calmer than Dr. Gamallo had predicted, and he was placed back in cell number 6 with Julián Santillán. The day passed without incident until the arrival of the two new detainees, whom Splitface treated with the same disdain as all the others. The first to arrive was the carpenter Izaguirre, who was placed in the cell with Vázquez Bouzas, and then Anastasio was put in with Francisco Lluch, who lost his mind in the middle of the afternoon and started shouting that he was innocent, that he had done nothing, that he was being held in error. Splitface quieted him in his own manner, taking him out of the cell and giving him a thrashing that disburdened him of the desire to open his mouth, offering a perfect example of how problems are solved in this Spain of Primo de Rivera:
“Jesus Christ was innocent too, you son of a bitch, and he ended up on the cross kicking his feet!”
The sad thing is that if there is anyone innocent among the detained, it is precisely Francisco Lluch, the deserter who joined the revolutionary group with the sole aim of getting across the border in time to see his father’s last breath.
After the evening ration and the emptying of the latrines, the fourteen inmates try to sleep, but in the middle of the dark, cold night, surprising even the sleeping roosters, they are rousted from their cots and brought in pairs to the arches of the square in front of City Hall, where two Civil Guard trucks are waiting to transfer them to the Provincial Prison of Pamplona. It is then that Leandro and Julianín discover that Pablo is also among the detained. As they are arriving in the square, they are loaded into the two vehicles like pigs to slaughter, their feet shackled to the benches and their hands to the metal bars supporting the canvas top of the paddy wagon. Three civil guards get into the cabin of the first truck, while only two get into the second, because they are also transporting a box with the weapons seized from the seditionists and the destroyed rifle of guardsman Ortiz, as legal evidence for the pretrial hearing that will soon be held. A vehicle full of carabiniers brings up the rear of the caravan, which sets out for Pamplona in the darkness, allowing the prisoners to talk to each other for the first time since they were arrested, with their voices partially hidden by the rumbling of the engines. The first truck contains those who were in the odd cells, and the second those from the even cells, but at the last moment, to even out the groups, Julianín has been transferred to the second wagon, where he finds his friends Pablo and Leandro, as well as the former guardsman Santillán, the deserter Francisco Lluch, the scrawny Justo Val, and Anastasio Duarte, who as soon as the journey is underway begins to cuss and try to bend the metal bar to which he is cuffed.
“Don’t waste your energy,” warns Santillán, who knows these trucks well. “It would take the strength of fifty men to break it.”
Pablo and Leandro search for each other’s eyes in the darkness, but it is their voices that find each other, separated only by the gaunt frame of Justo Val.
“Che, Pablo, I had hoped that at least you …” the Argentine starts, but leaves the sentence unfinished. “And Robinsón?”
“I don’t know, I think he managed to escape, we were very close to the border when they caught me.”
“Yeah, we almost made it, too. How’s your leg?”
“Well, it could have been worse. And how are you, Julianín?” Pablo asks, unable to keep from feeling responsible for the boy in front of him.
“Fine,” is all that his former assistant can respond, not bothering to protest the diminutive name.
“Does anyone know where they’re taking us?” Justo Val chimes in, so emaciated that he looks like a ghost visiting from a two-dimensional world.
“I heard one of the guards saying that we’re going to Pamplona,” says Lluch.
“Then they’re taking us to the Provincial Prison,” Santillán deduces. “And not even God escapes from there.”
The silence falls again like a heavy weight on the inmates, with the background music of the truck engine. Freezing air comes in through the gaps in the canvas, causing more than one man’s teeth to chatter. Unexpectedly, it is Julianín who breaks the silence:
“If they are taking us to Pamplona it’s because they’re afraid someone will come to rescue us,” stammers the former erratum hunter, who ever since he shot at the guards in the quarry of Argaitza had been unable to recover the courage that made him leave Paris.
“No, if they’re transferring us to Pamplona it’s because we didn’t fit in that shithole anymore,” opines Leandro, ever the pragmatist.
“If they’re taking us to Pamplona,” Santillán clarifies, “it’s because they want to judge us as quickly as possible. And our only hope is that the revolution has been successful in Catalonia and is spreading throughout Spain.”
“Ah, but haven’t you heard?” pipes up Anastasio Duarte, who was the last detainee to arrive at the carabiniers’ barracks. “The Perpignan party didn’t even get across the border, and several of our boys were picked up in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, including Durruti.”
“But what kind of crazy talk is that?” Leandro gets excited, and if his hands and feet were not tied he probably would be leaping on Anastasio, as he did when he was a child in his neighborhood of General Rodríguez when one of his friends insulted his mother.
“Are you sure about that?” asks Santillán.
“It’s what I overheard from one of the officers who caught me yesterday in the woods.”
“Then we’re fucked.”
Hopelessness falls like a guillotine on the prisoners, cutting off their desire to speak for the rest of the journey, because what Anastasio said is not far from the truth, both with regard to Perpignan and to the arrests in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. He does not know any more details, but what is sure is that the attempted revolution has been a total failure. To start, when Durruti, Vivancos, and another eight anarchists got off the train on Friday at dawn, the news that something serious had just happened in Vera had already made its way across the border and the police of Saint-Jean-de-Luz were at the ready, so they had to abandon the box of rifles they had checked from Paris. Durruti got angry when Juan Riesgo told him about what had happened, because by jumping the gun they had violated the most sacred, most fundamental rule: maximum coordination between the different rebel groups. But he did not have much time to complain, because as he was talking with Juan Riesgo and the other fellows who had arrived from Paris, they were discovered and detained by the French police, giving up without a fight. That s
ame Friday, many of the rebels who fled after the skirmish and managed to cross the border before dawn were detained in the outskirts of Saint-Jean-de-Luz and other nearby settlements, such as Sarre, Ascain, and Hendaye. In all, more than twenty insurgents have fallen since then into the hands of the police and are waiting to be repatriated, although with a bit of luck they will convince the French authorities to deport them to Belgium before the Spanish government sends the extradition order. Among them is Robinsón, who was arrested tending to the ulcers on his feet at a spring near Ascain, but his greatest pain was having to be separated from his faithful Kropotkin, with whom he was already plotting another incursion into Spain to try to free Pablo. However, El Maestro is not to be found among the detainees; although he managed to cross the border with his bullet wound, he was discovered by the police next to a path between the stations of Urrugne and Saint-Jean-de-Luz; he lost his nerve, and tossed his life away beneath the rattling wheels of the express train from Paris.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the Pyrenees, in Perpignan, the news of what happened in Vera has come as a shock to Francisco Ascaso and the nearly two hundred men (and women) who were waiting for the definitive signal to cross the border to liberate the anarchists held in the penitentiary at Figueras. But it was probably them who acted too late, because that very Friday morning, while Pablo was being taken to the holding cell in Vera, there was a failed attempt to attack the Atarazanas barracks in Barcelona, perpetrated by Catalan anarchists, including Gregorio “El Chino” Jover. Various revolutionary groups met up around the fortress, waiting for some military men on the inside—men supposedly cooperating with the plot—to open the door for them. But no one opened the door, and the rebels started to get nervous, and then the police arrived and there was an intense firefight. The security guard Bruno López lost his life in the battle, and the anarchists Josep Llàcer and Juan Montejo were captured and are now waiting in the Modelo jail in Barcelona for their summary judgment scheduled for tomorrow, Monday the tenth of November, although we may as well skip ahead and mention that it will end with Llàcer and Montejo’s necks in the garrote right there in the jail courtyard, the first spitting on his executioner and shouting “¡Viva la revolución!” and the second clutching a crucifix.
All this being the case, with the French and Spanish police alerted to what has happened in Vera and Barcelona, the hundreds of revolutionaries who arrived in Perpignan have to disperse to keep from attracting attention. Most of them decide to stay in France, where a few dozen anarchists and syndicalists have been detained by the gendarmes, accused of illegal possession of firearms and falsification of personal documents. However, a group of about fifty brave ones go to the border and wait in the foothills of the Pyrenees for the contact who was supposed to guide them into Spain. But the comrade brought them bad news: several army regiments, with machine guns and artillery, were waiting for them along the border, in a show of rapid coordination never before seen in the Spanish armed forces. Unless, of course, they had prior information. In addition to Francisco Ascaso, among the fifty brave men who had to retreat with their tails between their legs was Valeriano Orobón, who apart from translating the “Song of Warsaw” into the anarchist anthem “A Las Barricadas,” will also leave the following heartfelt words for posterity: “That day, in the middle of the mountains, a thousand meters above sea level, I saw many of those fifty men weeping because they could not offer their lives to the revolution. Ascaso was one of them. Durruti with the Vera group. Jover was in the group who attacked the Atarazanas barracks in Barcelona. It was a naive, clumsy attempt, whatever you like. But there was a great revolutionary passion in these men. They deserve everyone’s respect for that. They failed, that’s all. We have failed so many times! But, in the end, we will triumph.” You win some, you lose some, Valeriano. After Primo’s dictatorship, the Republic will come, and then Franco’s dictatorship, which you will not live to see, and after that democracy, which you could not even imagine, though your song’s lyrics will outlive you.
XIX
(1914–1916)
WHEN PABLO DISEMBARKED IN THE HAGUE, one thing was on everyone’s lips: Jean Jaurès had been assassinated in Paris. A nationalist student aptly named Raoul Villain fired three rounds at him at the Café du Croissant, thereby eliminating one of the greatest proponents of French pacifism. But the news would not last long as the hot topic, because the following day Poincaré’s government decreed a general mobilization and all hell broke loose. Fortunately, the König Wilhelm II, under a German flag, had departed that very morning from The Hague and was now on its way to the port of Hamburg. That was a close one, thought Pablo when he heard the news. Because ever since leaving Buenos Aires, many passengers (especially the French) were afraid that armed conflict would break out during the trip and that they would not be able to reach their destination. In fact, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had declared war on Serbia the same day that the transatlantic of the Hamburg America Line berthed in the Port of Lisbon, producing a devastating domino effect of international alliances that would lead Russia to mobilize its troops, Germany to declare war, and France and Great Britain to do likewise. And to think that it all started when Gavrilo Princip, another young nationalist (Serbian, this time), dispatched the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand—along with his controversial wife Sophie Chotek—as they made their way through the multitudes of Sarajevo aboard their garish Gräf & Stift motorcar, bathing in adoration before being bathed in blood.
But even as the world at large raged with violence and war and destruction, in the personal sphere there was reason for joy: when the ship docked in Bilbao, Pablo learned that he had become an uncle. He approached Baracaldo with the imprudence of a man who feels that the happiness that awaits him merits the risk he is taking, which paid off when he arrived at his mother’s house to find Julia there nursing an adorable baby girl named Teresa. When he took the child into his arms, he held her by the ribs and rubbed his nose against hers, as Rocafú had told him the Eskimos kiss. And when the child started crying, Pablo unwrapped the present he had brought from Argentina, like a magician taking a rabbit from a hat: a tin rattle, which put the infant to sleep with its rhythmic sound. Only then did Pablo have a moment to speak with his mother and sister.
“And where is my brother-in-law?” Pablo asked. “Don’t I have the right to meet the father of this precious baby?”
“Oh,” Julia replied, “he’s working all day at the lawyer’s office. We’ll see, he might yet get us out of poverty!”
“Let me know when we’re rich, I’ll come back,” Pablo joked.
“Why don’t you stay in Baracaldo, son?” María interjected. “They say that France is going to war—”
“I can’t stay, Mama.”
“Why not? Are you still wanted by the police? They never come by asking about you anymore.”
“That’s a good sign, but you never know. They could come at any moment. And I don’t want to make you suffer for no reason.”
“Don’t you think we’re suffering as it is, knowing that you’re going to live in a country at war?” Julia snapped.
“France hasn’t entered the war yet,” Pablo clarified, “and if it does, it won’t mean anything for the Spanish, they can’t make us fight in their ranks. Unless Spain joins in on one side or the other, obviously. But in that case, things will get bad around here, too—”
“I don’t think so,” said Julia, who, ever since learning that she was bringing a new being into the world, had started to take an interest in politics. “Prime Minister Dato implied that in case of a conflict, Spain would remain neutral.”
“Well, that’s better for everyone,” Pablo replied with a certain vehemence. “Wars only serve to keep rich people rich and poor people poor. And to distract workers from the real struggle, of course.”
“Shhh,” went the recently promoted grandmother, “you’ll wake the baby.”
But the baby had already started crying again.
A few hours later, Pablo was again on the high sea, on his way to The Hague.
After Jaurès was assassinated and France entered the conflict, the hostilities erupted on an extraordinary scale: half of Europe was involved while the other half watched in horror, a conflict that would leave ten million dead. But it would be four long years before such a tally could be made. Spain, just as Julia had predicted, preferred to stay on the sidelines and proclaimed its neutrality from the very outset: the same day that France mobilized its troops, La Época (one of the newspapers closest to Prime Minister Dato’s government) ran the editorial section under the headline “Neutrales,” and made a staunch argument for noninvolvement in the conflict, inviting public opinion to stand behind this stance. Even former Prime Minister Maura decided to come out in favor of neutrality, with these words: “Spain cannot, will not, should not go to war.” And this is not surprising, because it would have been a nasty mess for Alfonso XIII, having a British wife and an Austrian mother.
The Anarchist Who Shared My Name Page 41