The Durruti Column () was an anarchist militia column, led by Buenaventura Durruti, which fought on the side of the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. It was the first militia column established in Revolutionary Catalonia after the defeat of the July 1936 military uprising in Barcelona. It was dispatched to the Aragon front, with the aim of capturing the Aragonese capital of Zaragoza from the Nationalists. The Column captured several towns in the east of Zaragoza province, but was halted 20 kilometers outside the city and forced to wait for reinforcements.
The frontline through the province remained stagnant throughout August, while the Column involved itself in the organisation of agricultural collectives and mapped out a strategy to take Zaragoza. In September, the militia column participated in an offensive in the province of Huesca, forcing the Nationalist forces there to withdraw to the provincial capital. In October, the Nationalists launched a counteroffensive in Zaragoza province, but the Durruti Column was able to defend its positions at Osera. Amid skirmishes on the front, the column's International Group briefly captured Perdiguera from the Nationalists, but the town was quickly taken back and most of the militiamen were killed. The Column established the Regional Defense Council of Aragon, with which it aimed to coordinate the various Republican militias and eventually establish a unified command structure. However, the Catalan and Spanish national governments sought to militarise the militias and bring them under state control. The Durruti Column ignored the government's decree on militarisation and continued to operate as an independent unit.
With the outbreak of the siege of Madrid in November 1936, part of the Durruti Column was transferred to defend the Spanish capital. After arriving there, the Column took part in the Battle of Ciudad Universitaria, where it fought for days without relief. Durruti himself was shot and killed during the fighting. Many of the Durruti Column's members believed he had been assassinated, either by a Nationalist fifth column or their own political rivals within the Republican faction; Stalinist historiography has alleged that insubordinate members of the Column itself had assassinated Durruti. Ricardo Sanz replaced Durruti at the head of the Column, and after the Nationalists abandoned their Madrid offensive, the Column returned to Aragon. By mid-1937, it was reorganised into 26th Division of the Spanish Republican Army, which continued fighting until the very end of the war.
Zaragoza Offensive (July 1936) Establishment
Following the victory of the anarchist militias over the July 1936 military uprising in Barcelona, the various political parties and trade unions of the Republican faction came together to establish the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias of Catalonia (CCMA), which resolved to establish militia columns to fight against the Nationalists in Aragon. The anarchists of the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) and the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) took over the barracks in Pedralbes, Sant Andreu and the port of Barcelona, which they respectively renamed after Mikhail Bakunin, Fermin Salvochea and Spartacus, and began organising their own militias.
On 23 July 1936, CCMA member Joan Garcia Oliver gave a radio address to Aragonese workers, calling on them to rise up against fascism, with the promise that he and Buenaventura Durruti would soon lead an expeditionary column to join them in Aragon. The announcement received widespread support in Barcelona, where thousands of workers volunteered to serve in the militia, and received basic military training from local revolutionary committees. So many people volunteered that they had to be selected in order to make sure the column would be fully armed.
President Lluís Companys had insisted that the column be commanded by professional military officers, in order to command obedience and prevent it from maintaining an anarchic structure. But the militia column was instead established through a grassroots, self-organised mobilisation, without any hierarchy or chain of command, in which each military unit was coordinated by committees of elected representatives. The column's first military advisor, Enric Pérez Farràs, opposed this form of military organisation, as he believed it would not be feasible during combat. Durruti later replaced him with José Manzana, a non-commissioned officer who had a better understanding of the militia's anti-authoritarianism. Manzana and the schoolteacher Francisco Carreño were tasked with providing the column with ammunition, artillery and a field hospital. Durruti appointed Carreño as head of the Column's War Committee.
Departure While the Durruti Column was being established in Barcelona, the Aragonese capital of Zaragoza had fallen under the control of the Nationalist , commanded by General Miguel Cabanellas. This division consisted of: two infantry brigades, commanded by Eliseo Álvarez-Arenas and ; and an artillery brigade, commanded by Eduardo Martín González, among other units. The city's 30,000 trade unionists had proclaimed a general strike and attempted to beat back the military uprising, but by 22 July, they were defeated. Huesca and Teruel were also taken by the Nationalists, leaving only Barbastro under the control of loyalist troops led by Colonel .
At 08:00, on 24 July 1936, Durruti spoke over the radio to the workers of Barcelona, asking for them to provide the Column with food before they departed on their expedition. Although food distribution was usually handled by neighbourhood committees and the CNT food workers' union, Durruti hoped that such a direct appeal would help demonstrate the city's commitment to the war effort and workers' dedication to collective responsibility. At 10:00, crowds gathered on the Passeig de Gràcia to witness the departure of the Column. Durruti's biographer Abel Paz estimated that the Column initially consisted of 2,000 militiamen, although Diego Abad de Santillán put the number at 3,000, Joan Garcia Oliver put it at as many 5,000 and Soviet journalist Mikhail Koltsov put it as few as 1,200. The militiamen were drawn from every faction of left-wing politics. Abad de Santillán later said that, despite initial estimates predicting the Column would grow to 12,000 men before attacking Zaragoza, it never grew to the size they had hoped for. According to Belgian volunteer Louis Mercier, most of the militiamen had no military experience; the most experienced commanders had not fought in battle since the Rif War. Durruti had sought to recruit experienced soldiers from the infantry barracks, but they were ultimately not integrated into the Column.
At midday, the militiamen set off in a caravan of trucks, buses and cars. They were bid farewell with cheers, saluted with raised fists and sung the lyrics of the anarchist anthem A Las Barricadas!. At the head of the caravan was a truck, from which the anarchist José Hellín waved a red and black flag; behind it were centuries of metalworkers, miners from Alt Llobregat, sailors and textile workers. Between two of the buses, Durruti and Pérez Farràs rode together in a Hispano-Suiza car. The Durruti Column stopped at several villages along the way, directing the local inhabitants to form collectives, occupy agricultural land and organise themselves without bosses. The Column sometimes established the collectives by force, as they were anxious to bring in the harvest and feed industrial workers in the cities. This caused some resentment from the local Aragonese peasants, who feared the Catalan industrial workers who predominated the Column were following the model of collectivisation in the Soviet Union. Commenting on the coercive character of the collectivisation process in the areas they occupied, the Column's newspaper El Frente wrote that "it is a natural law that armies live off of the land they have conquered".
First clashes When the Durruti Column arrived at the Aragonese town of Caspe, they found it in the middle of a battle between the Civil Guards under the command of Captain Negrete and anarchist militiamen led by the Subirats brothers. The Durruti Column helped to capture the town from the rebels, leading to more militiamen joining the column. They passed through several more villages over the following days, before arriving in Burcharaloz on 27 July and establishing their headquarters there. A CNT newspaper declared that the Durruti Column had brought a "fresh impulse to the revolutionary atmosphere" already present in the town, where peasants were already carrying out radical changes. On 28 July, the Column set off along the Ebro river towards Zaragoza. Shortly after leaving Burcharaloz, they came under aerial bombardment, killing a dozen men and wounding 20 more, including the column's artillery commander. During the bombardment, a number of militiamen panicked and attempted to flee, but they were stopped and held in place by others, preventing the momentary panic from escalating into a general retreat. Durruti led the column back to Burcharaloz, where he hoped to carry out reconnaissance on enemy positions so that they could prevent another ambush. Pérez Farràs took the opportunity to push for the restructuring of the Column, but Durruti pushed back against this, insisting that the men who had fled earlier could be turned into brave fighters if they were treated properly. In a speech to the Column, Durruti reproached them for fleeing from the planes and reminded them why they were fighting. When he requested that anybody who did not want to continue fighting give up their rifle, none did.
Unlike other militia columns, the Durruti Column focused on capturing larger towns rather than securing larger, more rural areas. They soon captured the towns of Pina and Osera d'Ebro. In Pina, the Column established a defence committee, seized Nationalist-owned property and destroyed the local property register. There the Aragonese militiaman Adolfo Ballano organised a trade union, which grew to 600 members by September, and established a cultural centre and a revolutionary committee. The Column was halted by enemy lines roughly 20 kilometers outside of Zaragoza, where they then dug trenches and set up machine gun posts. The CCMA then ordered them to remain in their positions and stabilise the front, while waiting for reinforcements from Antonio Ortiz's South Ebro Column. The Communist Party of Spain (PCE) criticised the Durruti Column for failing to capture Zaragoza, claiming that the militiamen had insisted on working an eight-hour day rather than pushing on. Historian Robert J. Alexander disregarded this narrative, instead pinning the failure to capture Zaragoza on Durruti's inexperience as a military commander and the time the Nationalists had to build up their defensive lines outside the city. Military historian Antony Beevor argued that the spontaneous organisation of the militias had resulted in their dispersal into strategically unimportant areas, and that the militia columns would have been more effective had they concentrated their strength on a few large objectives.