"Durruti was the ultimate working-class hero: carrying the future in his heart and a gun in each pocket. Abel Paz's magnificent biography resurrects the very soul of Spanish anarchism." –Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums
In this new and unabridged translation of the definitive biography of Spanish revolutionary and military strategist, Buenaventura Durruti, Abel Paz has given us much more than an account of a single man's life. Durruti in the Spanish Revolution is as much the chronicle of an entire nation and of a tumultuous historical era. Paz seamlessly weaves intimate biographical details of Durruti's life—his progression from factory worker and father to bank robber, political exile and, eventually, revolutionary leader—with extensive historical background, behind-the-scenes governmental intrigue, and blow-by-blow accounts of major battles and urban guerrilla warfare. Written with a thorough and sympathetic understanding of the anarchist ideals that motivated Durruti, this is an amazing and exhaustive study of an incredible man and his life-long fight against totalitarianism in both its capitalist and Stalinist forms.
Includes an afterword by José Luis Gutierréz Molina's on Abel Paz's life and the historiography of the Spanish Revolution.
Abel Paz was born in 1921. He was fifteen when the Spanish Revolution began. After the revolution's defeat, he spent several years in exile, returning to Spain in 1942 as a guerilla fighter against the Franco regime. He spent most of the subsequent eleven years in prison. He currently lives in Barcelona, Spain.
Chuck Morse founded the Institute for Anarchist Studies, co-edited Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, and founded and edited The New Formulation: An Anti-Authoritarian Review of Books. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.