gone with the wind. Forever.”
The two friends look at each other, and take some time to build up another smile.
“Come on, let’s get something to drink and you can tell me what’s brought you to Paris,” Pablo finally says, “I’m up to my ears in work, this damned weekly is coming out tomorrow and I have to finish it today. But it’s not every day you get to see your blood brother … Hold on a second, Robin.”
Pablo goes down to the basement and finds Julianín snoring in peaceful slumber atop a few crates of books. He wakes him rudely and leaves him in charge of the print shop and Kropotkin, then heads out for a glass of wine with Robinsón at the Point du Jour, on the nearby Rue de Belleville. His friend Leandro works as a waiter there. Leandro is a tall, heavyset Argentinian from the city of General Rodríguez, always keen for a joke or a prank. Seeing them enter the bar, which is strangely empty at this hour, he exclaims:
“Check you out, buddy, you found Jesus Christ. I hope ya brought along a crowd of thirsty apostles.”
“Stop messing around, Leandro. We’ll have two glasses of wine. This is Robinsón, my childhood friend. Robin, this is Leandro, an old friend I met in Argentina when he was still a kid dreaming of becoming a soccer player.”
“Enchanté,” responds Robinsón, mimicking a perfect French accent, “but no wine for me, thanks. I’ll be happy with a glass of water.”
Robinsón is a teetotaler, in addition to being a vegetarian, environmentalist, and naturist. A rare breed, a man ahead of his time, a practitioner of a mystical, even pantheistic sort of anarchism, a special way of understanding the world and relating to his surroundings. He is one of those who believe, for example, that all of humanity’s ills come from wiping our asses with toilet paper rather than lettuce leaves. He has come to Paris on an assignment from the Spanish Syndicate of Lyon, with the aim of helping to organize a revolutionary plot to overthrow the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. But Pablo still knows nothing of all this.
“I see some things never change,” Pablo says. “You drink his wine, Leandro. We have to celebrate this reunion.”
“Nonsense. I’m not participating if he’s gonna toast with water.”
“Merde alors, so let’s not toast then, if you don’t want to, but drink the wine, for the love of God.”
“You mean for the love of our friend Jesus here,” says Leandro.
So it is that the strange trio of Pablo, Robinsón, and Leandro sip their respective glasses, while the abstemious anarchist starts to tell them what has brought him to Paris, after making sure the big lackadaisical Argentine can be trusted.
HOWEVER, IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND THE story Robinsón is now recounting, we need to know a little back story. The movements against the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera started shortly after the military uprising, both in France, where many syndicalists, communists, anarchists, and republicans of all stripes have immigrated, and in Spain—mainly Barcelona, where Catalan separatists have managed to foment a significant clandestine movement. At the end of 1923, various meetings took place on the French side of the Pyrenees and, shortly thereafter in Paris, the Consejo Nacional de Trabajo (CNT) and other syndicalist groups founded the Committee of Anarchist Relations, in charge of promoting and preparing an insurrection against Primo de Rivera’s Directory. At the start of May, the Committee appointed an executive commission comprising the so-called Group of Thirty, including former members of known anarchist groups such as El Crisol, Los Justicieros, and Los Solidarios, responsible for some of the most famous actions of Spanish anarchism in the last several years, including the assassination of the archbishop of Zaragoza in retaliation for the death of Salvador Seguí, known as “Sugar Boy,” who was riddled with bullets in Barcelona in a plot organized by the Machiavellian Martínez Anido, a proponent of the scandalous Ley de Fugas authorizing authorities to use a prisoner’s escape as a pretext for a summary execution. Other members of this Group of Thirty include the young Buenaventura Durruti, Francisco Ascaso, and Gregorio “Chino” Jover, whom the French police have taken to calling “the Three Musketeers,” and other, less well-known but equally enthusiastic members such as Juan Riesgo, Pedro Massoni, Miguel García Vivancos, Ramón Recasens, Mariano Pérez Jordán (known as “Teixidó”), the brothers Pedro and Valeriano Orobón, Augustín Gíbanel, Enrique Gil Galar, Luís Naveira, and Bonifacio Manzanedo, some of whom will end up departing for the border and playing a decisive role in the attempted revolution.
Contrary to what is happening in Spain, since last summer much of Europe (with the exception of Mussolini’s Italy) has been experiencing moments of leftist euphoria: the socialists are in charge in France, the communists in Russia; in Germany the Republican Democrats have put the young Adolf Hitler in jail, accusing him of high treason; and in England the Labour Party has taken power for the first time in its history. In Spain, on the other hand, the CNT is virtually banned, and its general secretary, Ángel Pestaña, has traveled to Paris to renew the dialogue with the Committee of Anarchist Relations, which has cooled in the last few months due to disagreements regarding the planning of the revolutionary attack, and to personally learn how the preparations are going. The committee has assured him that they will be able to mobilize up to twenty thousand men ready to enter Spain and participate in the overthrow of the regime, provided that they can count on the necessary organization and support on the Spanish side of the border. Pestaña does not seem to have been very convinced by these optimistic predictions, but he has nevertheless agreed that preparations should continue, with fundraising efforts and attempts to obtain weapons, as well as propaganda campaigns among the exiled population. He has even given his support to the International Group of Anarchist Editions, founded by Durruti and Ascaso with the idea of publishing the pamphlet Spain: One Year of Dictatorship, which claims that the country is prepared for regime change and that all that is needed is a trigger to set off the revolution. But the pamphlet still has not been printed, because that will require the involvement of a young typesetter named Pablo Martín Sánchez, the very man who is now listening attentively to what Robinsón is explaining at the Point du Jour:
“They sent me from the Spanish Syndicate of Lyon to serve as a liaison with the Committee. But the truth is that the comrades in Paris view us with suspicion.”
“Why is that?” asks Pablo.
“Because of Pascual Amorós.”
“Ah, that.”
As Leandro’s face indicates that he does not understand, they explain the matter to him. Pascual Amorós was a syndicalist from Barcelona who had to run away to France a few years ago, supposedly fleeing prosecution. He started living in Lyon with a few of his comrades in arms, and soon began collaborating with the Spanish Syndicate. But one day someone discovered that he was actually the right hand of Bernat Armengol, known as “the Red,” an infiltrator from the police who had worked in Barcelona on orders from the impostor Baron of Koenig and Bravo Portillo, the ringleaders of a band of gunmen on the bosses’ payroll. The slogan “Viva la anarquía” tattooed on his arm fooled no one: with his life threatened by his own comrades, he had no choice but to return to Spain, where a few months later he was condemned to death by garrote for robbing a bank in Valencia.
“And since some of his old friends are still members of the Syndicate of Lyon,” Robinsón concludes, “Durruti and company don’t trust us. All in all, it’s understandable; things being the way they are, you can’t take any risks.”
“But, then, why’d the guys here agree to have you come?” the Argentine asks, somewhat lost.
“For money.”
“For money?” Pablo and Leandro both wonder at once.
“Yes, for money. Even an anarchist revolution requires money, as much as it pains us. The Committee is not doing well in terms of financing. The French comrades are still recovering from the war and the Spanish expatriates have a hard enough time just trying to feed themselves, let alone contributing money to the cause. The Solidarios haven’t got a cent left from the robbery of the Bank of Gijón, even though that brought in more than a half-million