1977 Interview with Emilienne Morin. Durruti’s Widow Speaks for the First Time : The Love and Struggle of an Anarchist

“I never believed that his death was accidental”

Interview by Pedro Costa Muste (reporter) and Luis Artime (photographer)

Interviu magazine travelled to the westernmost part of France, to Finisterre, to interview an extremely intelligent and lively elderly woman. We had two reasons for doing so: she was the partner of the legendary anarcho-syndicalist militant Durruti, and she had never before been interviewed by the Spanish press. Our conversation was wide-ranging, covering everything including the man from León’s murky and enigmatic death: “We never believed he perished by accident”, Durruti’s partner and their daughter told us.

You came up from Madrid just for this? Durruti is a national hero these days, isn’t he? They have turned him into a legendary figure … I find the whole thing distasteful and I reject it. My daughter, Colette, was in Spain in 1948 during the repression then and some policemen told her: “Your father was quite a man.” Of course they could say that because he was dead; had he lived they would have been singing a different tune.

Emilienne Morin, aged 76, the moment she hears the Spanish for “chat” or “free women”, understands it all perfectly. We chat in her home and on a stroll through the medieval streets of Quimper: we pop into a “crêpe shop” and are greeted by the sort of reception due any old lady, albeit that we are somewhat surprised by a liveliness and sense of humour unsuited to her years. Forty-one years have passed since Durruti died mouthing the word “Mimi” (Or so Doctor Santamaria told me one day. Naturally, I am not sure that I believe him) and as we wend our way through this conservative city which would remind one of Galicia, the walls are daubed with graffiti calling for an “autonomous libertarian” Brittany. Emilienne talked of the years that Durruti and she had together, back when he was just Pepe and she Mimi.

I met him at the International Bookshop in Paris one day when I popped in there on my own to buy books and to see Berta, who was in charge and who later became Ascaso’s partner. That was in 1927. I was browsing through the shelves and those two came in: Durruti and Ascaso. He looked at me and I looked at him … and voilà!

She had been born 26 years earlier in Angers in western France, although she had spent her entire life in Paris where she worked as a secretary. Raised in the belief of her father (A romantic anarchist from the olden days) she frequented libertarian syndicalist circles and was particularly involved with two committees: the Sacco-Vanzetti Committee and the one that was set up to get Durruti and Ascaso out of jail: When we were helping his lawyer Henry Torres, it never even occurred to me that our lives would intersect. I had been married before, but only for a very short time.

By then Durruti was a very well known figure, and not just in anarcho-syndicalist circles: he was often the focus of the bourgeois press. He had run away to France in 1917 in the wake of the revolutionary strike and had worked in Paris as a mechanic. In 1919 he had escaped from a Spanish prison where he was serving time for desertion. He and his groups, Los Justicieros and Los Solidarios were well known: one of their main purposes was to assassinate Alfonso XIII. In 1922, the cardinal-archbishop of Zaragoza, Juan Soldevila had been killed and up in Gijón the Bank of Spain had been robbed of 675,000 pesetas. He had already been on his jaunt to Latin America with Ascaso and had both just been freed in France after having been held for planning to attempt Alfonso XIII’s life and the dictator Primo de Rivera when, on that day in 1927, he bumped into Emilienne at the bookshop that had been launched a few years before with money that Ascaso and he had contributed.

I bumped into him again at Berta’s house one night when I had been invited for dinner and that is where we first got to talking. We carried on seeing each other after that, up until he was banished to Lyon. After that he went to Germany and he wrote me lots from there. Later, Ascaso and he moved to Brussels where they were allowed to remain on condition that they used assumed names … Isn’t that weird? The law skirting the law … Then he asked me to go and live with him, something I had been hoping for for some time.

Emilienne had no misgivings but there were money problems at home. Once her parents’ mortgage on the house they were living in was paid off she packed her bags and left for Brussels under a phoney name. 

A girlfriend lent me her papers, photograph and all. Durruti  was understanding about what I had been telling him about my not being able to join him until my parents were in the black. 

The living was easy for the couple in Brussels. Durruti was unable to get involved in any trade union, ideological or political activity and, aside from his work as a mechanic, the entirety of his activity was confined to lengthy conversations with comrades at the Spanish Centre.

We used to refer to it as “Eight Hour House”. Our life was that of any ordinary couple. I had him reading the French classics. And, even though he drew a sort of a veil over his past and what he had done, he shared all of his dreams and aspirations with me. He had a very droll sense of humour and laughed internally: whenever he was introducing me to some other comrade, he used to say of me “She’s a syndicalist … cut and dried.” And he knew that I was nothing of the sort, but he enjoyed teasing everybody: without any malice, of course.

Even today, Emilienne is a feminist. She bridles at the sight of some TV “spot” urging housewives working outside the family home to use a certain pain-killer in order to ease their worries and tiredness. “Such advertising is contemptible!” she says. There were problems at home with Durruti too.

In that respect, he shared the mind-set of the times. All Spanish anarchists did nothing but talk about free love and anarchism  and were clueless about cookery or bathing the kids. At home he had seven siblings and Rosa was his only sister; up until she married, which she did quite late in life, since she was the oldest, all she ever did was do everything for them: keep house, look after the laundry, cook meals … she never even got to sit down herself to eat. And her mother, Granny, never saw anything wrong in that. Durruti knew that I was right, which is why he could not contradict me. On the odd occasion he might bathe our daughter or help me peel potatoes, but it was only very occasionally. I can remember one Sunday in Brussels: he had spent the entire morning chatting with some comrades and then meal-time arrived. I told him: “I haven’t cooked anything. I’m entitled to enjoy my Sundays too, right? Let’s go eat in a restaurant.” At the time he did not take to my attitude but he could not refuse me. That would have been a bit over the top for an anarchist, right?

They spent three and a half years in Brussels paying attention only to what was going on in Spain. Durruti’s bags were already packed when, on 14 April 1931, he heard over the wireless that the Republic was triumphant and it did not cost him a minute’s consideration before he was off to Barcelona where, upon arrival, he burned all his phoney papers:

I had to hang on until the end of the month to hand in my notice at work, pack everything up and ship it off to Barcelona: I remember how a crate of all my books went astray en route. Then, following that initial separation, I realized that something had come to an end: the happy years which, taking a selfish view, were the best days of my life. We still got along of course and we still loved each other but his life as a militant pushed us apart completely. I knew that it would when I first took up with him and he knew it too, which is why we decided not to have children; however, Colette was born in Barcelona on 4 December that year. 

The pregnant Emilienne arrived in Barcelona in May 1931, after which her life turned into a whirlwind: “Durruti spent more time in custody than at home and when he was at large there were meetings, talks, rallies and trips to be made …” Then Colette came along and the problems increased. 

It was the most wretched time in my entire life. After libertarian communism was proclaimed in Figols (in January 1932) he was banished to Fuerteventura and I ran into a problem with my command of Spanish when I went looking for secretarial work. Obviously when he was at home, the financial side of things was no better: it was as if such matters were beneath him. Solidarity coming from comrades and what little help my parents could send me, plus the few bits of work I found helped us stay afloat.

First she worked at the Cinzano company as a bottle-washer, then she was a cleaner in a few houses and finished up as the ticket clerk in a movie house. Was that at the Goya? “Yes the Goya.” We piece together the memories, the places, the dates … The issue seems to be with the places she lived in. ‘We moved house that often I cannot remember.’ They were in Horta and in Sants and El Clot, in a room at García Vivancos’s home, house-sharing with the Ascasos … She well remembers the last of these.

It was in the Calle Esprónceda. When I think back to those times all I can see is violence. The comrades were very hopeful and had great confidence in the people but I did not see things that way: at work or chatting with those around me, what I was hearing did not bear out those high hopes.

Durruti knew that there was an army coup attempt on the way. He was confident but I was not. It looked to me like the forces of reaction, headed by the Church, were still too strong and I thought the leap from a Republic that had no republicans and had barely begun to embed itself, into libertarian communism was impossible. But he seemed certain of success and I meant to stick with him to the end because that was what we had decided when we got together. My father passed away on 20 November 1935 – a magical date, right? 20 November – and my mother came down to Barcelona. That May Durruti told her to go back to Paris with the little one because the balloon was about to go up.

Which it did, in July. Emilienne recalls Ascaso’s death on 19 July perfectly: I was on the Ramblas in some union premises, the Woodworkers’ maybe. The heat was fierce and the comrades were peeling off their neckerchiefs and things and they were soaking in sweat. Ricardo Sanz showed up carrying the corpse in his arms. Ascaso had darted forwards on his own to attack the Atarazanas barracks, almost in an act of revolutionary fervour. He was always that way: fervent, edgy, with his romantic approach to everything. Although the death affected him like the death of a brother, Durruti could not dwell on feelings and set about making ready for his column’s march to the Aragon front.

The Durruti-Pérez Farrás Column set off from the Paseo de Gracia almost on the spur of the moment, lacking provisions and with just a few weapons. An appeal went out over the wireless and there was an extraordinary outpouring of solidarity. 

Food was brought in from everywhere, even by people who should have been sitting down to their own dinner, as it was meal-time. They brought paella, saucepans full of stew, soups … I climbed into a lorry loaded with provisions without saying a thing to him and I hid because I did not know whether or not he would be in agreement with that. On one of the hills whilst still inside Catalonia, he came up to the lorry, threw me a glance as if to say “What are you doing here?” and then moved on without saying a word.  Emilienne remembers Bujaraloz and Las Ventas … We were welcomed everywhere as victors but I was looking at the walls in the rooms inside the houses and I could make out the outlines of pictures that had just been taken down, the portraits of saints and Christ figures, most likely. She had scarcely any contact then with Durruti who refused to benefit from anything unless it was accessible to others too.

There is one thing about the column that I would like to clear up: there is no truth at all to the stories about Durruti having prostitutes shot. Indeed, some prostitutes made their own way there and he shooed them back to Barcelona lest they spread VD; that was all. The nonsense about shootings was concocted by a communist woman writer.

On one occasion, Emilienne and Durruti flew to Madrid together in Malraux’s light aircraft. He was on his way to request arms from Largo Caballero and he was hopping mad. You see? – I asked him – that’s where your notions about apoliticism get you: power in the hands of the socialists and you, for all your might, with no weapons.

That November the column set off for Madrid. It was goodbye. 

I went with him as far as the airfield and we said our farewells: I remember him telling me “See you soon”, but I never set eyes on him again. I had thought a hundred times that he might die in the course of a strike, or behind bars, or as a deportee … He could have died a thousand deaths and I was so used to danger like that that I no longer gave it any thought. When the time came, it hit very hard and the fact that I had considered it in advance did me no good at all and it hit me tremendously hard.

How did Durruti meet his death?

Accidentally. The rifle he was carrying went off.

Had you ever seen him carry a rifle?

Never. But since he was in the front lines …

Do you truly believe that his death was accidental?

No. I have never believed that, but the official CNT version was the only one I came across.

On 19 November 1936 in Madrid’s University City, outside of the firing zone, as he was climbing into a car that was also carrying Julio Graves, his driver and Sergeant Manzana, a professional soldier and Durruti’s No 2 in the Column, he was struck by a gunshot. The matter has never been clarified entirely.

There was talk of a stray enemy bullet …

Impossible. The shot had to have come from a few hundred centimetres range. His leather jerkin, which was given to me by Dr Santamaria, and which I held on to up until the German occupation, clearly showed the bullet-hole and powder burns …

Where did it come from, the bullet that fatally injured Durruti? He could hardly have shot himself with a rifle when he never carried one and theories about a long distance shot and a ricochetting bullet can be discounted.

But there was another weapon there: the one carried by Sergeant Manzana.

Antonio Bonilla, a member of the column and who had been travelling in the car that had stopped facing Durruti’s car stated in an interview that he gave last July: “There is no doubt but that the bullet that killed Durruti came from the naranjero that Manzana was carrying. It may have been accidental or deliberate. Today, given what happened later, I choose to believe that the shot was fired deliberately.”

I read that in Posible. But proof? Where is the proof?

Does it not strike you that that version seems more logical than the official version? 

Why did it take Bonilla so many years before claiming this? Why did he not come out with it immediately? Sergeant Manzana continued to enjoy the trust of the CNT, or so I have been told. How are we to make sense of that?

Did it never occur to you that Durruti might have been assassinated?

Sure, lots of times, but it struck me as being too serious … I always had my doubts. On the morning of 20 November I was with Juanel in the Captaincy-General building in Barcelona near the docks. Abad de Santillán called me to tell me that Durruti had been badly wounded, but I knew that he had died. Intuitively, I knew. I am not in a position to refute anything because I was not on the scene and all I know is what I was told.

But surely queries will have been raised down the years?

Lots. Yes, but at whom do we point the finger? Any hypothesis stands up. The question that I have always asked myself is this: How come the CNT never carried out an investigation and a deeper probe?

Did you ever put that query to anyone?

Yes, and no one could give me an answer. Maybe now it is too late and it ought to have been done at the very outset. 

His funeral was a stunning spectacle as the whole of Barcelona took to the streets. I was at the head of the cortège and did not dare glance behind me for a second. It was something fantastic. When my daughter grew up I told her about it and she could not believe it. I happened to see it in Rossif’s film To Die in Madrid, but there of course the funeral was linked into a speech by La Pasionaria …

Then a surprising bit of news: Durruti’s corpse is not in the much photographed gave in Montjuich.

Or at any rate so I have been told. Some comrades switched the corpse to a different location when Francoist troops were entering Barcelona. 

Our two-day stay in Quimper was drawing to an end; we had conversations stretching over several stints. A visit with Emilienne to the nearby home of Colette, her married daughter, mother of two children. Fresh recollections. 

On the day Daddy died I was in Paris and my mother was in Barcelona. I was five years old. I remember it very well: I was playing in the garden and a French female comrade came across the lawn and told my grandmother to go back inside the house. How come? I was wondering. I followed on behind them and from behind a door I heard: “Durruti is dead.” My grandmother took me in her arms, crying and smothering me with kisses. How come? What is this all about? I was saying to myself. Later, maybe due to some intuitive feeling, I had my doubts about the story about his death: I never believed that he could have died accidentally.

Later, when Colette went to school, she ran into a teacher with left-wing leanings: ‘Colette Durruti? Any relation to him? “Yes, I replied, I’m his daughter.” And that, it seemed to me, was something very important.’ Before marrying, Colette made a trip to Spain, just the once, in 1948, at the age of 17.

“I have the ugliest memories of that trip. When changing trains on the border I ran into two policemen who were waiting for me in my seat and they showered me with questions. In Madrid I had to report to the General Security Directorate on three occasions. They put a tail on me: it was a constant provocation.”

Emilienne was very edgy, but in her daughter’s home she smoked a lot less than when she was on her own. “Another cigarette, Mum?” Emilienne went to Spain, to León in 1961 but has never gone back since. Durruti was the only man in her life: “I had a few suitors but he was not an easy act to follow and there was something broken in my life after him.” After his death she returned to Paris, found work again as a secretary and had lots of issues to grapple with during the German occupation. She then retired and moved to Quimper about eleven years earlier. She spends much of her time on her own at home (it was obvious that our visit was not unwelcome to her) and she passes her time watching “TV mediocrities” until she falls asleep. These days she is not much of a reader and says that the best book on Durruti is the one by Joan Llarch. [1]

“Luckily, my daughter helps me out with the rent on this apartment. I have awful memories from those times, but wonderful ones too. It was a watershed moment for the century and, harsh though it was, it was worthwhile. I have now and again visited some exiled Spanish comrades, but I have not frequented such circles too much. By my reckoning, the past is the past and one cannot make the same revolution twice.” 

Note

1, Joan Llarch, (original published in Spanish in 1973) in English as The Death of Durruti, Christiebooks, 2013

This interview was first published in Spanish in Interviú and was then reprinted in French in the February and March 2024 editions of Le Monde libertaire (Paris) https://ml.ficedl.info/IMG/pdf/ml1858_2024-fevr.pdf and https://ml.ficedl.info/IMG/pdf/ml1859_2024-mars.pdf

Image of Emilienne Morin, Colette Durruti and Buenaventura Durruti from https://www.estelnegre.org/documents/morin/morin.html 

Translated by: Paul Sharkey.