THE CNT AT THE CROSSROADS — Extracts

Translated extracts from the memoirs of Luis Andrés Edo, an anarchist activist whose life was dedicated to the ‘Idea’ and the struggle for liberty. Throughout his life Luis Andrés Edo remained always both an untiring activist and an intellectual dynamo of the international libertarian movement, constantly provoking thought and developing new anti-authoritarian ideas. His was the voice — the conscience if you like — of what he was proud to call ‘the Apache sector’, defending the anarchist principles of the CNT and fighting untiringly for the restoration of the union’s property and assets seized by the Francoists in 1939, and for justice for the victims of Francoism, particularly the cases of Delgado and Granado the two young anarchists garrotted in 1963 for a crime of which they were innocent. And for at least two generations of young Spanish anarchists who came into contact with him, Luis Andrés Edo was undoubtedly the inspirational role model of the post-Francoist era. From the 1950s until his death in 2009, Edo was to the libertarian movement what Jean Moulin was to the French Resistance. We have only translated four chapters, but should our financial circumstance improve we’ll translate the whole book — a unique and compelling insight into the activities (and shortcomings) of the CNT-in-exile, and the wider Spanish Libertarian Movement (MLE).

Chapter 1 — Arrival in Barcelona

Can Comte, My Childhood Haunt.

From Can Comte to Los Campanarios.

Chapter 2 — The War/Revolution

The CENU

The Battle of Barcelona

The Barricade as Revolutionary Structure

May '37

Historical notes

The Iron Column

The "Ortiz Case"

The Fall of Barcelona

CHAPTER 4: — EXILE

My First Time Deserting from the Army

Sombernon: The Great Electrical Transformer

First Contact with José Cano Flores

On the Building Squad with Miguel 'Ferrer'

House-building in Épinal (Vosges)

Moscardó in Paris and the Big Crackdown in Barcelona (October 1949)

The Lyon Station Hold-up

I Join the Big 'Gillette-Thaon' Concern

First Clandestine Trip to Barcelona (1951)

Arrested on the Figueres to Gerona Leg (1952)

A Prisoner in Figueres Castle

Deserting the Army a Second Time (1954)

Chapter 5 — ARRIVAL IN PARIS

I Discover the Laureano Cerrada ‘Affair’

First Contacts with the Libertarian Youth and with Lucio Urtubia

Assemblyism: I Discover the Mediterranean in Paris

Launching the Clichy Local Libertarian Youth Federation

Contacts with Quico

Contacts with Laureano Cerrada

The End of Quico and his Group

Pascual Palacios: A “Fourth Dimension"

The ‘Sinking’ Operation Coordinated by Pascual Palacios.

The Congress of Limoges, 1960