Colette Durruti, the daughter of Buenaventura Durruti and Émilienne
Morin, passed away in mid-April. She was 93 years old, and with herpassed away a discreet witness to her parents' intense commitment to the
revolutionary struggles of the 1920s and 1930s. The story begins in
Paris in April 1926. The trio, composed of Gregorio Jover, Francisco
Ascaso, and Buenaventura Durruti, arrives in the capital after a
two-year exile in South America. There they meet up with their
colleagues from the Los Solidarios group, Juan García Oliver and Alfonso
Miguel Martorell, who had arrived in 1925. Émilienne Morin was an
activist in 1923 in the 15th Youth Syndicalists of the Seine. She was
also close to Louis Lecoin's Anarchist Union. And it so happened that
she would actively work with him for the release of Jover, Ascaso, and
Durruti, arrested on June 25, 1926. They were accused of plotting an
assassination attempt against the King of Spain, Alfonso XIII, who was
scheduled for an official visit to Paris. An intense solidarity campaign
led to their release in July 1927. They thus escaped extradition
requested by Spain and Argentina, where they were sentenced to death.
On July 14, 1927, his birthday, and having just been released,
Buenaventura met Émilienne, known as Mimi, at the International
Anarchist Bookstore on Rue des Prairies, in Paris's 20th arrondissement.
She confided to journalists Pedro Costa Muste and Luis Artime, who came
from Spain to meet her in 1977 in Quimper, where she and her daughter
lived, that this bookstore was founded thanks to money expropriated in
1923 from the Bank of Spain branch in Gijón by the Los Solidarios group.
Having fallen in love, Buenaventura and Émilienne decided to live
semi-clandestinely as a couple in Brussels, where many Spanish
anarchists had been expelled.
My Father Will Not Return
Colette was born on December 4, 1931, in Barcelona, where her parents
had moved with the advent of the Second Republic. But since his return,
Durruti had suffered the full brunt of police repression. Judicial
convictions rained down on him and his companions for their
revolutionary activities. The years 1933 to 1935 were very trying for
the family. Buenaventura was imprisoned and deported to several
penitentiaries located across the peninsula, and even to the Canary
Islands. For her part, Émilienne worked in a factory and then as an
usherette at the Goya cinema to support the couple and their daughter.
Teresa Margalef[note] often took care of little Colette, including
breastfeeding her, while her mother was at work.
Durruti would only enjoy brief periods of freedom outside the Republican
jails to live with his family. He would not be finally free until the
very end of 1935. At the age of four, Colette had barely known her
father. In May 1936, facing threats of a military coup and fearing for
her safety, Buenaventura asked Émilienne to take the girl back to Paris,
where she was entrusted to her grandmother.
Today we learned from Colette's son, Yvon, that his mother had a middle
name chosen by Émilienne: "I always heard my mother call herself Diana."
Buenaventura added Colette to make life easier for her in France.
Émilienne, for her part, remained in Spain. She joined the Durruti
column, then participated in CNT-FAI activities at the rear.
Colette learned of her father's death in Paris. Colette confided to two
Spanish journalists from the magazine Interviú: "The day Dad 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 friend
came through the gate and told my grandmother to come inside. Why, I
asked myself. I followed them and heard them talking behind a door:
'Durruti is dead.'" Grandmother took me in her arms, crying, and covered
me with kisses. Later, perhaps based on a sentimental intuition, I
doubted the version given of his death. I never believed he died
accidentally.
In May 1938, very busy with her work within the CNT-FAI delegation in
Paris, Émilienne proposed writing "a little piece" for Mujeres Libres,
which would appear in issue 12 of the magazine. She wrote: I'm also
thinking of doing a portrait of my Colette and dedicating the photo of
"little Durruti" to you. You'll be amazed at the extraordinary
resemblance between my baby and our departed great-grandson. The caption
beneath a drawing of Colette reads: My father will not return!
After the defeat
In early 1937, Émilienne returned to France for good, where she
continued to be active in the SIA (International Anti-Fascist
Solidarity) mutual aid networks.
That same year, the CNT produced the documentary 20 de noviembre
(November 20th) with a dedication: The CNT National Committee offers
Emiliana Morin and the little Colette Durruti. On November 21, 1938, at
the Mutualité in Paris, Émilienne chaired a meeting of the Anarchist
Union commemorating the death of her companion. Between December 1938
and June 1939, she also wrote several articles on the situation in Spain
in the SIA newspaper, under the name Émilienne Durruti.
In issue 13 of February 9, 1939, echoing the fall of Catalonia,
Émilienne wrote a premonitory article about the coming war, entitled:
"All is not lost!" Their example remains:
After these days of anguish and despair, we pull ourselves together and,
sad but not resigned, we take stock of our defeat. I say our defeat,
because we identify entirely with the vanquished there. Since the French
proletariat has done nothing to halt the catastrophe, it will suffer,
whether it likes it or not, the repercussions of its indifference.
Fascism, which has operated more or less openly in our country since
1934, is now showing a little more of its presence and will become more
insolent than ever after our government's recognition of Franco.
Further, she mentions the collectivities of Aragon, Catalonia, and the
Levant:
For the building of the international proletariat, the rugged peasants
of Aragon have built, in a few months, a command economy that could well
serve as a model for many an armchair theoretician.
The author of these lines contacted Luis Artime in September 2020 to
discuss specific aspects of his meeting with the two women in 1977. Luis
revisited a secret Émilienne shared with him. In 1940, with the imminent
arrival of the Germans in Paris, she and Colette were promised passage
from Marseille on a ship bound for Mexico. A sleight of hand on the
tickets favored two other, more influential individuals. They found
themselves stranded in the south of France with only a pair of
suitcases, one of which contained her husband's "meager inheritance."
Thus vanished their hopes of a new life far from war-torn Europe.
The Last Pages of History
After the Liberation, Émilienne remained close to the libertarian
movement and maintained close relationships with Spanish refugees from
the CNT, including Ricardo Sanz, Durruti's successor as head of the
column that became the 26th Division of the Republican Army. Colette,
for her part, worked as a stenographer. In 1953, she married Roger
Marlot, whom she had met at a post-war summer camp organized by the
Auberges de Jeunesse (Youth Hostels). She thus acquired French nationality.
[note]
The couple lived in Casablanca until 1956, then returned to France. Upon
her retirement in 1966, Mimi settled in Quimper, close to her daughter.
As for the Spanish branch, Manuel Durruti remains the last living
witness to this period. The son of Benedicto, one of Buenaventura's
younger brothers, Manuel is Colette's cousin. He told me he only met her
twice, once in Paris, in 1973-1974. In 1948, Colette, then 17, went to
Léon, where the Durruti family lived, including Durruti's sister Rosa,
whom Émilienne affectionately called her "little sister." Colette
remembers the circumstances of this trip very well:
I have bad memories of that trip. When I changed trains at the border, I
found two police officers waiting for me and who asked me a lot of
questions. In Madrid, I had to report three times to the General
Directorate of Security. They were following me. It was a constant
provocation.
Manuel's parents helped Colette obtain certain documents proving her
lineage. Manuel also remembers Mimi's visit to her parents' house in 1955.
[note]
Until recently, Colette regularly went to the Montjuic Cemetery in
Barcelona every November 20th, meeting friends and acquaintances there
to commemorate her father's passing.
To her friends Myrtille and Christophe, who came to visit her for the
first time in April 2023 in Maureillas in the Pyrénées-Orientales, her
son Yvon told her that she had often spoken of his father for some time,
with affection; but that she knew very little about him. She carefully
read all the books relating to Buenaventura, and particularly focused on
the photographs.
For several years now, a small team of aficionado historians, gathered
around the Giménologues, has been tenaciously pursuing research into the
circumstances of Durruti's death. Myrtille and Christophe were able to
discuss the subject with Colette and Yvon.
When Colette was asked: "Who killed him?", the answer was:
1) young libertarians
2) or others, and from behind.
Yvon clarified: "We always knew he was killed at close range. Colette
clearly leaned toward the murder theory, but she remained open to other
possibilities. That day, she helped us in our research by providing us
with photos and documents from the family." We will continue our
investigations in memory of Colette and the tender affection she had for
her father...
Juan Heredia
Sources
The Maitron entry on E. Morin: https://maitron.fr/spip.php?article154346
https://militants-anarchistes.info/spip.php?article4086
https://sobrelaanarquiayotrostemasii.wordpress.com/2018/06/17/emilienne-morin-la-companera-de-buenaventura-durruti-dumange-vida-y-obra/
The CNT documentary from November 1937:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX0hI6kM_k4
Émilienne Durruti's articles in the SIA newspaper:
https://archivesautonomies.org/spip.php?article5340
issues 7/13/17/21/29.
https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8380
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