Nosotros (group)
Some of the group's members, such as Joan Garcia Oliver, were imprisoned by the regime; others, including Francisco Ascaso, Buenaventura Durruti, Miguel García Vivancos and Gregorio Jover, fled into exile in Europe and Latin America.
When the provisional government said it would review the encarcerations on a case-by-case basis, Solidaridad Obrera denounced the decision and demanded the immediate release of all anarchist prisoners.
[5] At a meeting of the CNT at Montjuïc, on 18 April, members of Los Solidarios spoke about the new Republic and their view that radical social and political reforms were needed.
Ascaso and Durruti gave similar well-received speeches,[7] with the latter warning that Spain would head towards civil war if the government did not meet the demands of the working classes.
[8] As the CNT began to prepare for the celebration of International Workers' Day, Ascaso and Durruti were delegated to accompany foreign anarchists that were coming to the event: Marcel Dieu from Belgium; Louis Lecoin and Pierre Odéon from France; Helmut Rüdiger and Augustin Souchy from Germany; Camillo Berneri from Italy; Albert de Jong from the Netherlands; and Ida Mett and Volin from Russia.
[17] Class conflict soon broke out, with peasants throughout the province of Córdoba carrying out attacks against haciendas and looting the premises, which local socialist mayors divided between their citizens.
Miguel Maura dispatched the Civil Guard to the area and begged Largo Caballero to rein in his radical colleagues, but attacks against haciendas only increased.
Maura reacted by imprisoning socialist mayors and militant activists, replacing the local governments with committees of large landowners and caciques, and placing the province under Civil Guard occupation.
[21] By this time, members of Nosotros were active in labour struggles throughout Spain; they attended meetings, organised militant groups and acquired weapons for future outbreaks of social conflict.
Francisco Ascaso and Ricardo Sanz attended a number of CNT rallies in the Basque Country, including one organised in Bilbao by the Asturian miner José María Martínez [es].
[23] In Barcelona, the new civil governor Josep Oriol Anguera de Sojo [ca] and police chief Arturo Menéndez López [es] had begun to carry out political repression against the CNT.
The majority of the members of Nosotros were blacklisted from their trades, requiring them to find jobs through the CNT, which had obliged owners in Barcelona's manufacturing and textiles industries to hire only unionised workers.
The FAI attempted to channel the discontent into a coherent force, establishing an Economic Defense Commission, which organised a rent strike and mobilised large popular assemblies.
On 2 August, a mass meting was held at the Palau de les Belles Arts, where the FAI activists Buenaventura Durruti, Joan Garcia Oliver, Tomás Cano Ruiz [es], Vicente Corbi and Arturo Perera gave speeches.
[32] In an attempt to further divide the CNT, right-wing newspapers began to attack the FAI, which they claimed was led by the "three bandits" Ascaso, Durruti and García Oliver.
[33] In El Luchador, Federica Montseny defended the FAI and criticised the CNT leadership for attempting to make the organisation an affiliate of the Catalan government and the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC).
[34] In interviews with Eduardo de Guzmán, Durruti and García Oliver rejected the manifesto and called for workers of the CNT to carry out a social revolution against the government of Spain.
[41] In January 1932, members of Nosotros organised the Alt Llobregat insurrection, during which anarchist miners and textile workers proclaimed libertarian communism throughout central Catalonia.
Among the attendees were Domingo and Francisco Ascaso, Buenaventura Durruti, Aurelio Fernández, Miguel García Vivancos, Gregorio Jover, Juliana López, Pepita Not, Antonio Ortiz, Ricardo Sanz and María Luisa Tejedor.
[55] Nosotros called for an immediate confrontation with the Catalan government under Macià, believing the conditions were right for an insurrection, due to the rising backlash against reforms such as the establishment of works councils by Santiago Casares Quiroga.
[59] In response to vocal public criticisms of their actions, Ascaso, Durruti and García Oliver defended the insurrection, which they believed would eventually lead to the fall of the Republican government.
Members such as Abelardo Iglesias, Ricard Mestre [ca] and Jacinto Toryho [es] believed that the revolutionary tactics advocated by the Nosotros group aligned closer with Bolshevism than anarchism, and proposed their expulsion.
[72] In the summer of 1934, the Catalan socialist politicians Rafael Vidiella and José Vila Cuenca [es] met with the Nosotros group members Ascaso, Durruti and Garcia Oliver.
[81] He then proclaimed his belief that civil war could break out at any moment, and that anarchists needed to organise militias in order to take a leading role in the conflict.
[88] When the three requested weapons in return for their support, Companys argued his belief that a military coup was unlikely and that the state would be able to deter a right-wing uprising, although he promised that he would provide arms after the Popular Front won the elections.
[100] Following the defeat of the coup, Catalan President Companys called a meeting of all the left-wing factions in the city, with the Nosotros group being represented by Joan Garcia Oliver.
[102] Garcia Oliver himself had proposed that the Nosotros group, led by Durruti, seize government buildings throughout Barcelona and assert anarchist control of Revolutionary Catalonia.
But Durruti opposed his proposal, believing that the priority was to liberate Zaragoza from the Nationalists; he insisted that the anarchist seizure of power be deferred until after they took Aragon, which would establish a more solid territory for a libertarian communist society.
[106] Inspired by Nestor Makhno's Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, Durruti organised his own militia column according to anarchist principles, eschewing rank, electing all officers and collectively deciding on strategy.
[111] But as the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) gained more power in the Republican government, some anarchists turned back towards insurrectionary anarchism and political sectarianism.
