MLE Expropriator Groups and Their Activities in France, Instalment 1 of 2

Today a look at the mostly unfamiliar expropriator groups that operated in France after the Second World War

Today, gang, we continue our look at the libertarian underground in France. We began with the forgery team and moved on to those charged with procuring, shipment and storage of arms and then to the lawful and money-laundering set-up and now we turn our attention to the expropriator groups. And, given that I am in possession of quite a lot of information, I shall split it up into two instalments. Apologies to those eager for me to spill all the beans, and there are a few out there, but I have too much information to deal with it all in one go.
Now to delve into the expropriator groups. The first thing to say here is that anarchism has had a long tradition of expropriations. So it should not come as any surprise to discover that as early as January 1945, with France just recently liberated, the MLE was to issue a first circular opposing armed robbery and black-marketeering. Which must have been happening if such a decision was arrived at. Here are a few gems from that document: Every historical period, as the result of wars or revolutionary upheavals, has experienced widespread disorder in its institutions and at individual levels. The lack of discipline has been exploited by some minorities and individuals in order to move things along, seek solutions to the serious problems they faced and grapple with all manner of difficulties and dangers. But there have also been fishers in choppy waters who have seized upon such tragically confused situations in order to feather their own nests, careless of the widespread, straitened circumstances … Since these things have now reached dangerous proportions, the Libertarian Movement’s (MLE) National Committee hereby declares: that it condemns such methods (armed robbery and black marketeering) which, even though they may try to hide behind some sort of pretext, can quite simply be categorized as common criminality, and it states that persons of such antecedents will not be accepted into its ranks, let alone be spared the full weight of the courts. We therefore bring it to the attention of all Committees and members that steps be taken against such personnel as compromise our collective freedoms and personal safety. As enemies of parasitical behaviour, we must be unsparing of the unscrupulous types who make the grossest immorality their stock-in-trade. Work, and a dignified, honest life should, as they always have been, remain our preferred option. 

Let me add at this point the testimony of Manolo Huet, who was quite well versed in the area and which is quite illuminating: “In the summer of 1944, following the liberation of France, our people refused to appreciate that if we were to press on effectively with the fight, we needed a lot of resources, to which an organization like ours did not have access, legally at any rate. That the ‘Poor but honest’ canard was a thing of the past … Or did they imagine that the revolution could be made on the back of their membership dues?”

As mentioned in a previous entry regarding forgery, pretty well anything could be counterfeited, but not the French franc because of the heavy penalties that that risked. So francs had to be come by using some other means, easier means of course, meaning taking them from wherever they might be found, be it in banks, the safes of well-to-do folks, companies, etc. And since armed robbery was something that had helped out the meagre funds of the anarchist movement right from the start, armed robberies were carried out. Plenty of them. And other things were expropriated as well. Ration books, old paintings (what a pity Lucio Urtubia is no longer with us as we would have loved to ask him about the provenance of the cash used to buy those traveller’s cheques master-plates of his, although he might have told us something about a rather valuable painting), valuable things such as platinum, and of course, gems, lots of gems. Banks, mail vans, casinos, chateaux, museums, private homes, companies, café or cinemas were held up.  The targets covered a wide spectrum.

It is worth pointing out that inside the expropriation groups opinions varied widely about how cash was to be obtained. Huet made his own view clear, so let us look at a different opinion, that of the guerrilla Domingo Ibars: “He (Cerrada)  reckoned that with enough cash anything could be bought and that the CNT should not be so fussy when it came to corrupting the capitalist system by, say, churning out masses of counterfeit pesetas to bring about the collapse of the Bank of Spain. But his way of achieving his aims in no way fell short of the practices of the mafia … his people told us that we were asses, that instead of carrying out armed robberies, we could survive by counterfeiting currency.” I still find it odd that robbing a bank was looked upon as honourable but counterfeiting currency was not. In the end, to each his own. 

Let it be said that the groups we are going to look at did not all work for Cerrada, but they did work for the MLE’s “orthodox” faction. The Domingo Ibars-Juan Cazaorla group were Esgleistas [supporters of Germinal Esgleas] and, as we have seen, were opposed to Laureano’s approach. The groups of Huet, “el Quico”, the Bailo Mata brothers in Lyon or José Bañón’s group in Toulouse were Cerradistas (supporters of Cerrada) as was Villagrasa’s group in Paris. And then there were other groups on which we do not have a lot of information: groups like Miguel Añeto’s, Liberto Botey’s or Alfonso Alonso’s.

When speaking of these groups, we are going to focus mostly on three cities: Paris, Toulouse and Lyon. The members of these groups did not necessarily live in those cities, just as the ones from Lyon might carry out armed robberies in Paris, or vice versa. Among the Paris groups we find the groups of Manolo Huert, alongside that of the Soto brothers (Manuel and Ángel), José Villagrasa’s group, along with Vicente Servatón, Pierre Magne and Pierre Broche. There was also Manuel Soto’s son, José Soto, Sebastián Arjona, Joaquín Mendes and even Wenceslao Giménez aka Wences from the Los Maños group. 

In Lyon there was Miguel Añeto’s group; we know nothing about its make-up; there was also the Bailo Mata brothers (José and Francisco), flanked by Juan Sánchez aka Pelao, Secundino Fernández Álvarez, Francisco Pérez, Raymundo Bonías, Vidal Cantero, Antonio Puncel, the brothers Antonio and Valeriano Jiménez and up from Toulouse would come Antonio Guardia and Joan Catalá.

Finally, down in Toulouse there was José Bañón’s group and at various times he was flanked by Antonio Pérez, Miguel Maldonado, Amador Prada, Manuel Sola, Manuel Santos, Andrés Calpena, Julián Fernández, Francisco Castillo or Marcel Puech. Also in Toulouse, there were Alfonso Alonso, alongside Antonio Meriñán and Francisco Alemany. We saw Antonio Guardia in action in Lyon as well, but he actually lived in the “Ville Rose” [Toulouse]. Celestino Areny also deserves a mention here. 

When it comes to the Ibars-Cazorla group, we do not know the details of any hold-ups they carried out but we know they did some. Ibars lived in Nîmes and Cazorla in Paris. Jordi Pons was another one who lived and operated in Nimes. We can place Liberto Botey’s group in Marseilles. Alongside him were Rafael Satorres and Marcel Durando. Francisco Quico Sabate was active in the Grenoble area. And was flanked by his brother Jose, Carlos Vidal and Benitez.

It should be highlighted that inside the expropriator groups there were teams or individuals who specialized in stealing vehicles. Vehicles were badly needed so that subsequent raids of greater significance could be mounted, or illegal goods transported through France, goods such as weapons, counterfeit currency, stolen or forged ration cards, etc. All of these required a sizeable pool of vehicles and the drivers being identifiable from the licence plates or vehicles later was out of the question. We know that in Lyon Juan Sánchez was one of the people who handled this. In Toulouse his counterparts were Celestino Areny, Julián Fernández or Andrés Calpena and, later on, Antonio Guardia. In Paris, José Soto Suárez or Sebastián Arjona looked after that side of things, together with a gang of Italians.

They also had their jewellers and ‘fences’ who could melt down stolen goods and of these we know the name of the Catalan Martí Borrás aka ‘el Marras’, an extraordinary jeweller who was always ready to cannibalize and melt down jewellery in order to be of service to the prisoners and the organization. 

Now for a detailed look at the operations that we know were carried out by the action groups and the expropriation of assets, or were somehow linked with these.

8 June 1939: the earliest armed robbery we know of carried out in France by Spanish anarchists. The target was the famous Asturian Belarmino Tomás. A FAI group made up of Martín Orts, Nicolás Patelas, Pedro Fernández de la Rosa, Pedro Giralt Salinas, Manuel Gimeno and Pablo Muñoz, plus two French anarchists, seized 40,000 francs and various documents, although they were arrested as they fled the building. 

8 March 1944: In Béziers the Vichy police arrested two Spanish anarchists following a raid on the town hall in Villeneuve-les-Béziers. They had made off with a typewriter, various official seals and stamps and sundry documents. Francisco Marín and Josep Pujol were arrested in connection with the raid, tried on 26 April that year and given three year prison sentences.

Summer 1944: A US Army pay-master officer based on the outskirts of Paris was robbed. The robbery involved Laureano Cerrada, Manolo Huet, Manuel Soto and another unidentified comrade (Ángel Soto perhaps?) The tip-off regarding the officer had come from an NCO by the name of Pastor, the son of a Barcelona anarchist. The officer and his two-man escort were disarmed, bound and gagged and dumped in a wood. Their vehicle and cash were taken.

25 July 1944: A company making chemical products in Saint Gobin in Berre (Bouches-du-Rhône) was raided. The raiders – Liberto Botey Carreras, Rafael Satorres Domínguez, Maurice Durando and another two Spaniards – made off with 10 kilos of platinum, supposedly for the resistance. They hid it in José Serra’s home. In December 1949 they were apprehended and were subsequently tried and convicted in May 1951. 

18 December 1944: In Pau the home of a certain Sarthou was raided. The doormen were handcuffed and the press spoke of some 350 million francs’ having been seized. Thanks to a Spaniard by the name of Pedro Pérez who worked at the house, a gang of Spanish anarchists – José Banon, Antonio Pérez, Miguel Maldonado, Manuel Sola, Manuel Sánchez and Amador Prada (the alleged ring-leader) – made off with between 350 and 800 million francs’ worth of jewellery belonging to the Belgian royal family. Pedro Pérez, José Bañón, Miguel Maldonado and Antono Pérez were apprehended in 1949. Amador Prada had been arrested in Madrid in 1946 in the wake of a bank raid and had been tried, sentenced to death and shot. As for Miguel Sánchez, his whereabouts remained unknown. The proceeds from the robbery were never recovered. 

22 December 1944: The home of a certain Allegre in Villevaire (Aveyron) was raided and the owner was shot twice. It is not known if anything was taken.

1 October 1945: in the Lyon area the Union Industrielle Sechilienne was held up by raiders who made off with 14 million francs.

8 February 1946: In Paris a Crédit Lyonnais cash van was robbed in a raid orchestrated by Huet and Cerrada, netting upwards of 30 million francs (other sources mention 12 millions and finally the press mentioned 3 millions).

1946: Four vintage paintings stolen from Madam Grun’s Hotel in Neuilly.

15 September 1946: Farmhouse raided in Viam (Corrèze) and 150,000 francs netted. The raiders were José Bañón, Calpena, Julián Fernández, Francisco Castillo and Marcel Puech.

October 1946: A Peugeot car is stolen in Toulouse by Andrés Calpena and Julián Fernández.

21 October 1946: Andrés Calpena steals another Peugeot car in Toulouse.

31 October 1946: Julián Fernández arrested in Nice in the act of selling one of the vehicles stolen in Toulouse. 

9 November 1946: Attacks on the paper-mills in both Gorges and Domène (Isère department), the upshot being one worker injured. It is not known if anything was netted. Other sources give the date of these raids as 8 September. 

1 November 1946: The farmer François Villeser is attacked and killed in a raid in Capdrot (Dordogne) along with another two members of his family. The raiders made off with a significant consignment of gold.

22 November 1946: A raid on the Biscose plant in Grenoble nets 3,400,000 francs. The raiders made their escape from the plant in a stolen car which they dumped in Grenoble in the early hours of the morning.

1946 (date unspecified, which is why I have placed it at the end of the year). A mail van was held up in Lyon by Miguel Añeto’s group. Thus far, that is all the information I have.

10 June 1947: Ramón Fistner, Irma Machard and Saturnino Coma are arrested in Ivry (Paris) for selling ration cards and possessing weapons. 

3 August 1947: Five men brandishing handguns and sub-machineguns raid the casino in Valra (Hérault) making off with 900,000 francs.

30 September 1947: A fresh raid on the Union Industrielle Sechilienne.

October 1947: José Bañón from the Toulouse expropriator groups is arrested, only to be released on licence after a few days, upon which he seizes his chance to go to ground.

31 October 1947: The payroll officer of the Société des Grands Travaux du Sud-ouest is held up in Toulouse, losing 500,000 francs. The robbers were Alfonso Alonso and Antonio Meriñán. 

28 December 1947: A certain Azibert, manager of the ZigZag movie house, is held up in Toulouse. Alonso and Meriñán netted 72,000 francs this time.

3 February 1948: Failed hold-up and assault on Madame Noúgué, owner of the Café Albrighi. Alonso and Francisco Alemany aka Torrente were the raiders. 

February 1948: Three men hold up a mail van in Lyon, netting 5 million francs. According to David Wingate in his book Jours de gloire, jours de honte. The Parti Communiste d’Espagne en France depuis son arrivée en 1939 jusqu’à son départ en 1950, it was in the wake of this hold-up that the French gendarmes began to focus on the activities of the Spanish libertarians in the city.

6 May 1948: the Sabaté brothers raid the Rhône-Poulenc plant in Péage de Roussillon (Isère). On the night of 6-7 May, 4 masked and armed men who had arrived by car first cut the factory’s cables before climbing over the fence or wall, meaning to steal the staff pay-roll. They disarmed, tied up and gagged the guards Poncet and Hennelbaund, but a third guard who was making his rounds at the time – Maurice Monnot – stumbled upon them and made to arrest them. The hooded men responded with a burst of sub-machinegun fire, killing him. Although some versions claim that they escaped without the loot they were after, it seems that they netted a million and a half francs. The gunfire forced them to flee and they left behind a number of clues that the police were later to chase up. For one thing, they forgot to switch the original licence plates  (7263 FS 8) which they had forgotten and left on the car, which led to the gendarmes’ discovering that the car belonged to the anarchist Carlos Vidal Pasanau. We know that Carlos Vidal, Benítez and José Sabaté were involved and in all likelihood so was Quico and within days they had all – except for José Sabaté – taken off for Barcelona to operate there. The French police credited Sabaté and Vidal Pasanau with another two armed robberies, one in Prades and the other in Marseilles, in which three people had allegedly lost their lives.

28 May 1948: Car stolen from a garage on Lyon’s Rue Chevreul. Credited to Francisco Bailo. 

23 June 1948: Using the car stolen in the incident above, an educational group in Villeurbane in Lyon was raided, the raiders making off with between 1.5 and 2 million francs in meal vouchers. The perpetrators were Francisco Bailo who was the getaway driver and carried a sub-machinegun, José Bailo (the ringleader) with a sub-machinegun and Secundino Fernández Álvarez, who carried a revolver.

1 July 1948: Three SNCF employees robbed in the Rue du Bélier in Lyon, netting 4,800,000 francs.

31 December 1948: Failed armed robbery of the Evreux-Breteuil mail van. (This was credited to Villagrasa and another two comrades). They attempted to block the van in with their car which had been stolen from the American embassy earlier by Pierre Magne, who also took part in raids. 

And that ends the first instalment on the expropriator groups in France. The second will follow. 

El Salto, 22 April 2025 https://www.elsaltodiario.com/ni-cautivos-ni-desarmados/grupos-expropiadores-del-mle-actividades-francia