Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did Cool Stuff, your
Speaker 1: weekly reminder that humans are capable of incredible things like
Speaker 1: shooting lots of fascists or whatever. I'm your host, Margaret
Speaker 1: Kiljoy with me today. Is the one and only, but
Speaker 1: possibly not the only. There might be other people with
Speaker 1: his name, but none of them are as good.
Speaker 2: James Stout. Hi, James, Hi, Hi, Yeah, fuck all the
Speaker 2: other James Stouts. They're actually very nice. I in the
Speaker 2: early days of social media I added all the James
Speaker 2: Stouts on Facebook. One of them has been kindly donating
Speaker 2: to like mutual aid work I've done for over, like,
Speaker 2: I know, fifteen years. It's like a really nice dude.
Speaker 2: Oh that's amazing. Okay, Well there's an almost as good
Speaker 2: James Stout. And if you're listening, good on you. Yeah, hi,
Speaker 2: ad the James Stout.
Speaker 1: James is probably most familiar, of course to listeners as
Speaker 1: a maker of sour dough bread, but in addition to that,
Speaker 1: he is a journalist, mostly for the podcast It Could
Speaker 1: Happen Here. Yeah, that's right, our producer of Sophie. Hi, Sophie,
Speaker 1: the only Sophie that's true that you don't even need
Speaker 1: a last name. If you were in the story, you
Speaker 1: would be l Sophie. There we go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess he might be lost Sophie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, uh.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, up to you. Our audio engineer is Ian Hi. Ian.
Speaker 1: Everyone to say hi to Ian, Hi, Ian Hi Ian.
Speaker 1: Everyone in the audience who's listening walking down the street
Speaker 1: with your headphones in, guess, say hi to Ian.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I hope somebody's walking by the actual Ian
Speaker 3: and does that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so cool. Ian.
Speaker 3: If that actually happens to.
Speaker 2: You, will you please tell us?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: If you see Ian at the show up with the gym,
Speaker 2: just greet him. Don't be worried about it, say hi.
Speaker 2: I in turn walk away because to.
Speaker 1: Do yeah exactly. Our theme music was written for us
Speaker 1: by Unwoman. So this week I promise you dead fascists
Speaker 1: right up at the top. You're going to get dead fascists.
Speaker 1: But not just before or during World War two, because
Speaker 1: fascism continued for decades in Europe after the end of
Speaker 1: the war. In Spain, that is true. Yeah, yeah, real
Speaker 1: long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also promised. I also promised James that a plumber
Speaker 1: and his brother were going to be off on a
Speaker 1: quest fighting evil, and that part is true. Also, so
Speaker 1: there's an awful lot of people who are firmly dedicated
Speaker 1: to stopping fascism in Spain, even though the great world
Speaker 1: leaders were no longer behind them. Right, it was easier
Speaker 1: to be an anti fascist when the US and the
Speaker 1: UK were like, here's a bunch of guns, please go
Speaker 1: kill the fascists, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even then they were very, very pretty tight with
Speaker 2: the guns in the nineteen thirty six to nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: nine era.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true that today we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: a band of brothers, if you will, three brothers. Mostly
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about one of them. I'm waiting
Speaker 1: to see when James is going to figure out we're
Speaker 1: talking about a plumber by trade who spent decades robbing
Speaker 1: and murdering fascists, raising gorilla bands and fighting for liberation,
Speaker 1: trade unionism and anarchist cyndicalism. Because today we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the Sabate Brothers.
Speaker 2: Oh hell yeah, this is going to be fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially we're gonna talk about Francisco Sabatae, also better
Speaker 1: known during his life as El Kiko. Yeah, so you've
Speaker 1: heard of the Sabota. Yeah, I have.
Speaker 2: This is not an area in which I like most,
Speaker 2: like resistance to Francoism stuff, I'm not as good on
Speaker 2: I do. Like I'm reading Abel Pass's book about de
Speaker 2: Ruti at the moment, which everyone should read, but one
Speaker 2: of the most like you know they do that like
Speaker 2: about the author section at the front.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so like the able Pass one is like able Paths,
Speaker 2: like you know, it wasn't anarchist in Spain and then
Speaker 2: like spent decades in jail after trying to assassinate a Francoist,
Speaker 2: the best thing ever. And I was just like recently
Speaker 2: reading about his personal history.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of anarchist historians who absolutely put me
Speaker 1: the shame.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I've got like I've really let let everyone
Speaker 2: down in that regard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I at some point I should just do an
Speaker 1: overview of anarchist historians who've like tried to kill Franco
Speaker 1: because there's at least two off the top of my head.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, there's definitely yeah, yeah, yeah. Stuart Christie
Speaker 2: was the other one I'm seeking. Yeah, yeah, there's more
Speaker 2: than that. There were a few. Yeah, I was very
Speaker 2: fortunate to be like the last generation of historians who
Speaker 2: got to do history with the people who had spent
Speaker 2: their formative years trying to blow up fascists.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well fortunately anyway, uh, that will never happen again, totally.
Speaker 1: The twentieth century doesn't. Just twenty first century doesn't look
Speaker 1: like a.
Speaker 2: Reno, stay sire. Yeah no, these twenties will be different. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: in the thirties way better. Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be cool.
Speaker 1: All right. So the Sabate family, yeah who I first
Speaker 1: heard about because my friend shout out to my friend
Speaker 1: whose cat is named Sabate. Yeah. Yeah, So they were
Speaker 1: born in a sleepy town whose name I have spent
Speaker 1: the last five minutes trying to pronounce James gin.
Speaker 2: You Yeah, I think it's hospitality ore Gat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I even in my mind I can pronounce okay,
Speaker 1: Spanish and not much Catalan. But anyway, so they're from
Speaker 1: the sleepy town, which is not actually a sleepy town
Speaker 1: at all. It was a decent sized city outside of
Speaker 1: Barcelona in Catalonia. There's a region in Spain that does
Speaker 1: not want to be a region in Spain. In this town,
Speaker 1: there was a cop and a housewife living together with
Speaker 1: their kids. Manuel Sabate and Madrona Yo part Manual Sabate
Speaker 1: worked for the Guardia Orbana de Barcelona de Barcelona, which
Speaker 1: was under control of the mayor.
Speaker 2: I don't have to that's a that's a castilianism. Ah.
Speaker 2: So you see that's when Americans do the Barthelona thing.
Speaker 2: They're actually wrong because no, no, that's great to know.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, it's a pretentious and being correct.
Speaker 1: So you can great, everyone can yell at me about that.
Speaker 1: But I learned, just like you all learned, that is great.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Barcelona is the only city in Spain I've spent any
Speaker 1: time in and I was like, I know a little
Speaker 1: bit of Spanish and people are like, that doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: we don't take Spanish here, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: well fuck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lovely city. People will be nice to you.
Speaker 1: Actually yeah, people kind of were. Actually it was actually
Speaker 1: very nice. Anyway, go ahead. The Guardia Orbana was under
Speaker 1: control of the mayor. They used to back in the
Speaker 1: day they went around with this is like the cops
Speaker 1: would go around to a saber, a pistol and a rifle.
Speaker 1: Until nineteen oh nine, when the quote tragic Week happened,
Speaker 1: which we talked about this in our episode about Francisco
Speaker 1: Fredare and the Modern School movement. Basically, there was a
Speaker 1: general strike anarchists cops murdered a ton of people. In
Speaker 1: the end, the cops demilitarized so they were allowed to
Speaker 1: keep their guns, but no more sword and rifle, which
Speaker 1: America could probably learn a lesson from.
Speaker 2: It's the swords that they've been doing it with. Yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe just a sword, like I'd be okay with that.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, it'd be progress. Yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 2: would be a step. What if everyone else gets like
Speaker 2: a pole arm?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well no, I don't ask it's guns.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, Cups are very brave, so
Speaker 2: they would be fine with swords. It's a big thing
Speaker 2: about is bravery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a big thing. And shooting people
Speaker 1: in the back, which is hard to do with the sword.
Speaker 1: So the father of our protagonists is a cup, Manual Sabote.
Speaker 1: They had five kids, four boys and a girl. Three
Speaker 1: of the boys that the people are gonna talk about today,
Speaker 1: and they remaining two I don't know anything about. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the oldest son was Jose Sabatetio part in Katalan naming
Speaker 1: I guess the patrolineal family name and the matrolineal family
Speaker 1: name or both part of the name, which is cool. Frankly, yeah,
Speaker 1: which just cool. He was born in nineteen ten, and
Speaker 1: he's gonna weave in and out of the story. The
Speaker 1: older brother Jose next is Francisco Sabato part who was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen fifteen, and he is our main protagonist today.
Speaker 1: He also went by the traditional Cotsalan nicknames for San Francisco,
Speaker 1: which at first I was like, man, there's so many
Speaker 1: nicknames for Francisco. But then as I've got further and
Speaker 1: further into the story, I realized that everybody in this
Speaker 1: story is named Jose or Francisco, so it makes sense
Speaker 1: that they have a lot of nicknames. Yeah, Like the
Speaker 1: reason there's a million nicknames for Margaret, he was Cisco
Speaker 1: or Ciskette, or as he became famous as shit Under,
Speaker 1: he was el Qiko. I have asked around and gotten
Speaker 1: a Cottalan anarchist telling me it's basically just another nickname
Speaker 1: for Francisco. But it's also a little bit of wordplay,
Speaker 1: maybe because Kiko means kid in Catalan, which makes him
Speaker 1: a badass. Robin hood with the name the kid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is cool.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if that was in t I'm
Speaker 1: sure or not, But I like people.
Speaker 2: Do enjoy a wordplay, especially if you're going for like
Speaker 2: a pseudonym to do crime under.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it's good to do a bit of word
Speaker 2: play in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes it gets translated as guy. Also like the guy. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm the guy. The dude. Pretty much, it's like it's
Speaker 1: just the dude. He's gonna go on a fucking Robbie here.
Speaker 1: They took different approaches to life. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: those are two of the brothers, and we have one
Speaker 1: final brother who comes into the story. He's born way
Speaker 1: the fuck later. He's born in nineteen twenty seven, which
Speaker 1: for anyone who's paying attention is going to be a
Speaker 1: big war in nineteen thirty six, nineteen thirty nine. And
Speaker 1: so Manuel Sabato part that I don't think they say
Speaker 1: the second, but you know, he's also named Manuel, was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen twenty seven, and he's going to come
Speaker 1: in and out. Al Kiko is our point of view character.
Speaker 1: So we're going to trace his life as a kid.
Speaker 1: He was willful. When he was seven, he was sent
Speaker 1: to a send your bad kids to this place kind
Speaker 1: of school, which was the Durround School run by Friars.
Speaker 1: So it was a Catholic school. It actually just churned
Speaker 1: out radicals, not because the Friars were cool, very specifically
Speaker 1: the opposite of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna say yet they traumatized kids into radicalism.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. The kids taught themselves to be cool and
Speaker 1: learned a lot of lessons about how shitty authority is
Speaker 1: because they kept getting beaten by the Friars all the time.
Speaker 1: Also didn't really like cement any love for the Catholic
Speaker 1: faith or church. So al Kiko sometime between the time
Speaker 1: he's seven and ten, he's not even ten when he
Speaker 1: pulls off his first prison break. He used quote an
Speaker 1: improvised rope. I like to imagine bed sheets and a
Speaker 1: tree to scale the wall and escape back to his parents.
Speaker 1: And he basically shows up and he's like, don't fucking
Speaker 1: send me back?
Speaker 2: What the fuck?
Speaker 1: Oh my god? And his parents are like, all right, fine,
Speaker 1: we're not going to send you back. And I don't
Speaker 1: know a ton about his family. The only thing I
Speaker 1: know is that before the Civil War and all this
Speaker 1: other shit, their father retires and is no longer a cop,
Speaker 1: so it's least it's not like he's not like fighting
Speaker 1: against his own kids at any point.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Someone else who went to this particular school, the Durand School,
Speaker 1: was later became the general secretary of the CNT, the
Speaker 1: anarchist union that did so much during the Spanish Civil War,
Speaker 1: and the ex students of this place, they liked it
Speaker 1: so much that during the Spanish Civil War they burned
Speaker 1: it to the ground and it was never.
Speaker 2: Rebuilt at standing. Good. Yeah, much that we can learn
Speaker 2: from these young people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So el Chico he went off and became an
Speaker 1: apprentice plumber when he was ten. This was not in
Speaker 1: any way abnormal for a working class kid to go
Speaker 1: off and apprentice at ten. There was not a lot
Speaker 1: of educational system available to the working class, except that
Speaker 1: when he was fifteen or sixteen, he signed up for
Speaker 1: the CNT, the Anarchist Union, which is biographer Antonio Teez
Speaker 1: says he remained faithful to for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: Quote in spirit, if not in discipline, because yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The CNT went through some moments in the twenties
Speaker 2: and thirties with its sort of like splits between I
Speaker 2: believe the CNT are the ones who are responsible for
Speaker 2: the Red and Black flag with the distinction between anaclysm
Speaker 2: and anarcosyndicalism.
Speaker 1: I knew more about this somewhat recently. Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: never mind. I knew more about the black flag. I
Speaker 1: didn't know as much about the Red and black. That
Speaker 1: would make a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 2: Because you had like the hardcore anarchist and the hardcore
Speaker 2: is around wood. Yeah, but we had the PI who
Speaker 2: were committed to like a more pure form of anarchism
Speaker 2: or yeah again purists are on word, right.
Speaker 1: But right, Well, the FII, the FI were they were like,
Speaker 1: this is about anarchism, and the rest of them narcosyndicus,
Speaker 1: were like sure, whatever whatever gets us there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my big There was some specifically, there was
Speaker 2: this manifesto at one point in these specific distinctions, which
Speaker 2: I think it's not worth getting into.
Speaker 1: Bit yeah, yeah, though the more hardcore and of course
Speaker 1: Elki goes gonna end up one of them soon enough.
Speaker 1: Around this time nineteen thirty one, Spain becomes a republic.
Speaker 1: We talked about this way more in the Spanish Civil
Speaker 1: War episodes from last summer. This was a step in
Speaker 1: the right direction. But one of the first things that
Speaker 1: the New Republican did. The New Republic did was they
Speaker 1: literally mortared an anarchist bar called Casa de con Cornelio
Speaker 1: on July twenty third, quote, three artillery pieces fired twenty
Speaker 1: two high explosive shells into the old bar, reducing it
Speaker 1: to ruins because anarchists met there, which is cool, because
Speaker 1: these anarchists are a huge reason as to why there
Speaker 1: ever became a republic, as far as they can tell
Speaker 1: in the first place. Anyway, in archosentdiclust in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: two in the Purities declared anarchist communism. Basically like no
Speaker 1: one's putting up with this shit, Like Spain is ready
Speaker 1: to go. Some Anarchosyndiclusts in nineteen thirty two declared anarchist communism.
Speaker 1: They abolished private property. For anyone who's listening, we've probably
Speaker 1: gone over this before, but private property doesn't mean your
Speaker 1: toothbrush or even your house. It means like larger scale
Speaker 1: things that someone owns and then leverages, like landlording or
Speaker 1: owning a factory or whatever. Anyway, this people are fucking starving,
Speaker 1: right and they're like, well, we want anarchist communism instead
Speaker 1: of to die, which is a I mean, makes less
Speaker 1: sense to me. The Republic crushed the rebellion. They started
Speaker 1: cracking down super hard. They deported a ton of anarchists
Speaker 1: to South America. They started passing a law that lets
Speaker 1: you murder anyone who runs from the cops, basically, which
Speaker 1: is funny because it's like this big deal. It keeps
Speaker 1: coming up over and over again Spanish history. They're like
Speaker 1: leada fuga.
Speaker 2: I thinkah, yeah, and it's like, holy shit. The cops
Speaker 2: were allowed to shoot people who ran, and to include
Speaker 2: people who they like released and were like run rue,
Speaker 2: it is a step further. Yeah, that's rue. They did that.
Speaker 2: That was how it was implemented on the ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Catalonia didn't actually just give up. Instead, they
Speaker 1: kept rebell and the CNTFAI flag flew over a city hall.
Speaker 1: So the state arrested and executed forty two people. And
Speaker 1: it was during this time that our anarchist plumber Hero
Speaker 1: the kid. I wish it was in Italy so I
Speaker 1: could just call him Mario, but I can't. He started
Speaker 1: really thrown down. The peasants in his town were on
Speaker 1: strike because they had no food. So el Kiko, he's
Speaker 1: like sixteen or seventeen, him and a friend just find
Speaker 1: one of the big landlords who's starving everyone, take all
Speaker 1: of his money by putting a gun in his face,
Speaker 1: and give the money to the strike committee to get
Speaker 1: distributed to the families who need it the most. And
Speaker 1: that this more or less sets his expectations for how
Speaker 1: to engage in struggle for the rest of his life. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for thirty more years or so. Yeah, this is what
Speaker 1: this man does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just again like I cainging back to that
Speaker 2: past book, like the shit that these people got up to.
Speaker 2: It's just like there's this one sentence paragraph in the
Speaker 2: past book which is still my favorite sentences been written,
Speaker 2: which is De Ruti had a great fondness to children,
Speaker 2: which is why he risked his life robbing banks to
Speaker 2: fund their education. Yeah, and they traveled all of like
Speaker 2: he like goes to Cuba, goes to Mexico, like I think,
Speaker 2: like the routine. Cuba tried to organize cane planters, and
Speaker 2: the cane planters, like the cops tried to crack down him.
Speaker 2: So he burnt down the house of the cane and
Speaker 2: murged two people and was like, I have to leave
Speaker 2: Cuba and never come back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's herty won a lot of places in exactly
Speaker 1: that fashion.
Speaker 2: Just Shenanigans are outstanding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and uprisings are going in both directions. Unfortunately
Speaker 1: during this time, the workers are like, let's have anarchist
Speaker 1: communism and take care of each other, and the right
Speaker 1: wing military is like, let's have a dictatorship. So with
Speaker 1: the Republican here in the middle being like, well, both
Speaker 1: sides have valid points.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Catalan Republicans did their own little uprising as well,
Speaker 2: and the anarchists stayed out and the military showed up
Speaker 2: and yeah, pretty much host him in the streets.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Lots of people died during protests and struggles. Apparently
Speaker 1: the anarchists kind of saved the republic along the way
Speaker 1: by stopping a military coup in Seville.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like a number yeah and again in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty six, right.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get to that one. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's this kind of tragic story, and they could
Speaker 2: have be the cat Lands would have been successful in
Speaker 2: October nineteen thirty four if the anarchists had not been
Speaker 2: like Nadog, Like, you guys haven't been there for us,
Speaker 2: going to be there for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which I I'll put that one on the Republic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is squarely on them for shooting us a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, have you heard about this this leftist ruby Ridge,
Speaker 1: this anarchist Ruby Ridge that happened in nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 2: Casas v Hus. Yeah, yeah, the say status is the
Speaker 2: guy right like six Yeah? Yeah, so great book, Anarchist
Speaker 2: of Castles vi Hus.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, no, I didn't. I only this I found
Speaker 1: like this is like really briefly mentioned in the biography
Speaker 1: I read, and so then I looked up to a
Speaker 1: couple other things about it too, But I have the
Speaker 1: version of it I have, and please fill in any
Speaker 1: details or any overall things that you think are missing.
Speaker 1: So there's a seventy year old anarchist named Sa Stato's
Speaker 1: six fingers, and he barricades himself inside of a farmhouse
Speaker 1: because the cops wanted to arrest them for having a
Speaker 1: protest where some cops had been injured. And when I
Speaker 1: say protest, they were trying to have a revolution, right yeah,
Speaker 1: And some cops got injured, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: people flee town and a bunch of anarchists go hide
Speaker 1: in Sea Statos's house, so the Republic bombs the building
Speaker 1: or sets fire to it, depending on which source I read, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and killed twenty four people. One source was like, killed
Speaker 1: the twenty four people who were hold up inside the house,
Speaker 1: and one source says after they killed a bunch of
Speaker 1: people inside the house, they went around and they found
Speaker 1: everyone in town who owned a gun and then murdered them,
Speaker 1: which really does make it the dar guess Ruby.
Speaker 2: Ridge, Yeah, wow, Yeah, that's what the nray have been
Speaker 2: freaking out about.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The only one. Only one anarchist is known to
Speaker 1: have survived this survived the farmhouse. She was an eighteen
Speaker 1: year old named Maria Silver Cruise, and she walked out
Speaker 1: with a child in her arms and was like, please
Speaker 1: don't murder us, And so she wasn't murdered by the
Speaker 1: state until three years later when she was murdered by
Speaker 1: the Fascist state for being an anarchist during the Spanish
Speaker 1: Civil War three years later. The whole incident, the farmhouse incident,
Speaker 1: was a major part of the left in Spain being like,
Speaker 1: you know what, fuck the government kind of the thing
Speaker 1: that you're talking about here where they're like we we're
Speaker 1: not on your side. You you ruby ridged us and
Speaker 1: that's not even a thing yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they'd pro to ruby read only.
Speaker 1: They were fighting for freedom for all people instead of
Speaker 1: white supremacy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah they were. They were guilty of you
Speaker 2: know what was the other guy? He cut down a
Speaker 2: shotgun barrel, right, yeah, and yeah and hung out with
Speaker 2: terrible hupils.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the fire stories of one. I've heard that they've
Speaker 2: set it on fireing a machineun any he tried to
Speaker 2: run out.
Speaker 1: Yeah that that makes sense. Cool, but you know what
Speaker 1: machine guns down prices?
Speaker 2: Oh no, is it? Chicha Chumbo? Said Ronald Reagan. I
Speaker 2: feel like we don't say enough, Like we do have
Speaker 2: the Ronald Reagan coin out of that, but we're also
Speaker 2: glad he's dead.
Speaker 1: Unless you're listening to this on coolers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no ads, then you just got to hear that
Speaker 3: fun ad pivot and no ads win when really, yeah.
Speaker 2: You got reminded that ron of Reagan is dead. So
Speaker 2: you still had a good day. You're welcome, Margaret, that
Speaker 2: you too. Fucking death comes first.
Speaker 1: Yeah soon, there's only one Margaret. No, that's not true.
Speaker 2: My mom's name is Margaret and my aunt's my family.
Speaker 1: Here's some ads, and now back to the regular show.
Speaker 1: While the people who hate listen are trying to dox
Speaker 1: me by using the fact that everyone in my family's
Speaker 1: named Margaret.
Speaker 2: Do you think they got that far? Do they get
Speaker 2: this deep? The hate listeners?
Speaker 1: That's one of the things that's so nice about podcasting
Speaker 1: is I feel like people don't hate listen to podcasts
Speaker 1: as much as they like hate. Hit control f to
Speaker 1: find out if you've said something that annoys them on
Speaker 1: a you know article.
Speaker 3: Remember like remember like when Twitter first came out with
Speaker 3: that button where it's like, maybe you want to read
Speaker 3: the article instead of just retweeting it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, apply to podcasting.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the two Sabata brothers, the older brother, Jose who's
Speaker 1: an old man now he's twenty two, and al Kiko.
Speaker 1: They in some other form los novatos, which it means
Speaker 1: the rookies or the apprentices, but it also sort of
Speaker 1: means the new or as Google wants to suggest, then newbies.
Speaker 2: I love that. Yes, the nubes, So.
Speaker 1: That's what we're going to use. They're the nubes because
Speaker 1: it's the funniest. They form an action group. This is
Speaker 1: like a thing that is a big part of a
Speaker 1: lot of anarchist resistance throughout time is action groups, essential
Speaker 1: affinity groups that people get together and are like, well,
Speaker 1: we have shared values and want to get some shit done.
Speaker 1: So they formed the Nubes, and they immediately throw themselves
Speaker 1: into the struggle. They join some of these uprisings. They
Speaker 1: keep trying to declare anarchist communism. They're in the Fia FAI,
Speaker 1: the Five, which is the more anarchist core, the larger
Speaker 1: anarchos Cinclist union, the C ANDT, and they are training
Speaker 1: in the woods. But how to fight and blow shit up?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's a way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And their first gun fight is actually when the
Speaker 1: cops try and break that up, they get away. I
Speaker 1: think no one's heard on either side.
Speaker 2: A lot of these gunfights just seemed to be like,
Speaker 2: h like a paintball tier kind of engagement. Why people
Speaker 2: just shoot at each other and no one gets hurt.
Speaker 1: Which I mean is kind of a like don't come
Speaker 1: any closer thing, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, a lot of people with really shit weapons
Speaker 2: firing at each other from a really long way away. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Whenever. Like some of the first pieces I ever did
Speaker 1: were about like the nineteenth century nihilist who's kept trying
Speaker 1: to kill this zar and all of the more bad shots.
Speaker 1: And I kept thinking to myself, by the time the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties roll around, anarchists are not bad shots anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've been practicing, Yeah they've some of these the Sabate
Speaker 1: Brothers in particular, pull off some ridiculous shooting at various points,
Speaker 1: but not during this particular engagement. So in nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: more villages declare for anarchist communism. The Nubes show up,
Speaker 1: they throw down, the revolt is crushed. The CNT leadership
Speaker 1: gets all arrested. This happens so many times during this story.
Speaker 1: Is all of the CNT leadership get arrested or whatever. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is one of the cool things about anarchism is
Speaker 1: I mean, it's sucks, but if you can arrest all
Speaker 1: other leaders, this kind of doesn't totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had a big thing. It's really interesting to
Speaker 2: like listen to speeches of that time because it's even
Speaker 2: distinct from like the anarchism we talk about today. And
Speaker 2: it went like they'll be likes because other anarchists would
Speaker 2: come to look at the Spanish anarchists and they'd be
Speaker 2: like that was a really good speech, Like he had
Speaker 2: a real bango. Why didn't everyone clap? And then they'd
Speaker 2: be like, well, we don't want to engage in leaderism here,
Speaker 2: and so by being here and paying attention, they're showing
Speaker 2: their support.
Speaker 3: Damn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but sure it has to be because these people
Speaker 2: knew that they would spend like fifty percent of their
Speaker 2: lives in prison.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, totally or just die the next day.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. They were being killed a lot too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. El Kiko got arrested for his first time just
Speaker 1: hanging out outside of an anarchist bar, but the charges
Speaker 1: didn't stick. Three days later he was out. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four, the Nubes ran around and they gathered up
Speaker 1: all the guns that were abandoned by retreating soldiers during
Speaker 1: a nationalist uprising. Like, yeah, this is the this is
Speaker 1: what this is what I'm talking to you about. This
Speaker 1: was the they when the Catalan Republicans A. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing no that that makes the most sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was like reading this and I'm like, man, there's
Speaker 1: so much that happened during these like six years that
Speaker 1: like anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's why he said they never cemented down
Speaker 2: the cobblestone to Barcelona because people were always just putting
Speaker 2: them up to make barricades. Again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and stock probably in all these guns does them
Speaker 1: a lot of good, because these are some of the
Speaker 1: guns that they use to stop a fascist coup. A
Speaker 1: few years later, in nineteen thirty five, al Kiko meets
Speaker 1: the woman he will marry, Leona and Casteez Marty, who
Speaker 1: frustratingly enough, is only mentioned occasionally in the biography that
Speaker 1: I read, But as far as I can tell, he
Speaker 1: seems good to her, trusts her, involves her in his
Speaker 1: life better than some of the historical anarchists men that
Speaker 1: I've read about. Frankly, I think that the person who
Speaker 1: wrote the biography, Sabote, does not think incredibly highly of women,
Speaker 1: and I had to do a lot of research to
Speaker 1: fill in the gaps in the history where women did things.
Speaker 2: It's disappointing Spanish anarchists have generally been much better in
Speaker 2: gender terms.
Speaker 1: No, totally. I was like, I was talking about this
Speaker 1: with someone earlier today, and we were talking about how, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you got to kind of grade on a
Speaker 1: curve when you talk about like feminism and history. But
Speaker 1: anarchists in Spain were ahead of that curve overall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties and forties, well, thirties, mostly in
Speaker 1: nineteen forties they're mostly dead or in France, as we'll
Speaker 1: talk about, or Mexico. Yeah, fair enough. And so then
Speaker 1: it's like particularly annoying that this biography is like Noddingrea.
Speaker 1: A lot of the women.
Speaker 2: Super disappointing, like even like I know, at points in
Speaker 2: his life to Ruchie was a house husband because his
Speaker 2: partner earned more than him. Yeah, so he stayed stayed
Speaker 2: home and looked after the kids, like yeah. And of
Speaker 2: course women for in the anarchists militia legally initially, and
Speaker 2: they had they loved, some rejected marriage even like Republican
Speaker 2: Catalonia had the right to abortion and yeah, divorce like yeah,
Speaker 2: which is relatively unusual with the Tony Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then h yeah good and frank good feminism and
Speaker 1: then and then fascism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bad history, I guess.
Speaker 1: And speaking of fascism. On July eighteenth, nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: Spain had a civil war. If you want to hear
Speaker 1: more about that, you can listen to James tell me
Speaker 1: about this particular part of it, and Jose and Alkiko
Speaker 1: are alight, all right, sign me up. Let's go. Let's
Speaker 1: go fucking fight the fascist only Actually, the Nubs started
Speaker 1: working a couple of days ahead of time, because anti
Speaker 1: fascist intelligence, I think is sometimes better than state intelligence
Speaker 1: attracking fascists. Yeah, the anarchist in Barcelona knew that this
Speaker 1: was this was happening, So a few days before the
Speaker 1: Sabate brothers, Sabate Brothers and others just went around and
Speaker 1: rated houses and stole all their guns and shit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which rules, thanks for the loot box.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The all the German anarchists who have been exiled
Speaker 2: living in Barcelona were like, you know, there are some
Speaker 2: Nazis in that house, and they guarantee they have a
Speaker 2: shit ton of guns. And they found a ship ton
Speaker 2: of guns. They got like a big machine gun that
Speaker 2: they put in the back of a truck and proceeded
Speaker 2: to use a technical and by the time the actual coupstar.
Speaker 1: Tube, which is a thing we're thinking about when we
Speaker 1: think about how disproportionately armed the right and the left
Speaker 1: doar in the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, Mark Boxes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the fascist stage a coup anyhow, or they tried.
Speaker 1: The fascist Franco invaded his own country. In Barcelona, anarchists
Speaker 1: and the cops stopped the together, sort of not together,
Speaker 1: but the two of them stopped the fascist coup. Yeah,
Speaker 1: see lots of episodes of that. We've done about that.
Speaker 1: Soon the Sabote brothers and the rest of the Nubes
Speaker 1: joined the anarchists militias and go off to the front.
Speaker 1: Olkiko decided that he was going to stop cutting his
Speaker 1: hair and his beard until Spain was free of fascists.
Speaker 1: Oh I can really get behind that. Yeah, because he's
Speaker 1: like twenty or what, remember his rules. I'm just so
Speaker 1: into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This led to a bunch of shit where people assumed
Speaker 1: he was one of the Russians who had come to help.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So people would come up and practice their Russian
Speaker 1: on him and he'd be like what.
Speaker 2: Look.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And because he's really cool, he stole some rich
Speaker 1: assholes super expensive fancy sports car then and he was
Speaker 1: like they were like, oh, we need we need cars
Speaker 1: to get to the front, but we need to steal
Speaker 1: them from rich people. So he goes and steals this
Speaker 1: like fancy sports car and then they're like, what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do with a sports car? So he cuts
Speaker 1: the back half of it off and welds it to
Speaker 1: a truck to make a van.
Speaker 2: Amazing, And this is his chad.
Speaker 1: For the rest of the war. This is what he's
Speaker 1: cruising around him on this thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, wouldn't we all?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Wow. This is what you get when you give
Speaker 2: people a prenticeship at the age of ten and a
Speaker 2: rifle and an address of rich people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, and they act and actually moral cause that
Speaker 1: is worth fighting for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's constant human Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he also and one of the things that comes
Speaker 1: up around this time too, is that al Kiko is
Speaker 1: not bloodthirsty. He kills a bunch of people in this story, right,
Speaker 1: but right away he's like the enemy is fascism and
Speaker 1: he is opposed to needless violence. He actually during the
Speaker 1: war hid some anti fascist members of the upper class
Speaker 1: from the non anarchist Republicans who are trying to kill
Speaker 1: them for being rich. This is the best I can
Speaker 1: parse out. Yeah, And basically it's like, this is about
Speaker 1: redistributing wealth, not murdering people. And there's something that I've
Speaker 1: always been trying to explain, like what do you do
Speaker 1: with the billionaires, Like, well, we just need them to
Speaker 1: stop being billionaires.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The method by.
Speaker 2: Which we do that up to that, yeah, we go, yeah,
Speaker 2: they go choices like yeah, there's I was reading about
Speaker 2: a village that collectivized because they when they went the
Speaker 2: anarchist militia columns went to the front, they collectivised the
Speaker 2: villages right on their way and they were like inspecting
Speaker 2: one village or something. And because they rotated, they rotated
Speaker 2: troops out of the front line, right, so they would
Speaker 2: go and work on the harvest and then come back
Speaker 2: to the front line, and then go work on the
Speaker 2: harvest and come back to the front line. So didn't
Speaker 2: have enough rifles for everyone. And they were like where
Speaker 2: is the priest And people like, oh, he just works
Speaker 2: in the fields now with everyone else. And then I
Speaker 2: didn't you kill him? And they were like no, there
Speaker 2: was no need, Like he just stopped being a priest. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they stopped working for the authority that's sucking everything up.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, and and I guess the priest had married
Speaker 2: a local girl. Was like oh, yeah, I've been looking
Speaker 2: for an out.
Speaker 1: Yeah totally yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, not everything went well during the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 1: As the war went on, communists started trying to kill
Speaker 1: all the anarchists and kept like sending the anarchist units
Speaker 1: to like run into machine gun nests and shit was
Speaker 1: you'll be shocked to know. Didn't help anyone win the war.
Speaker 1: And we've covered that bunch of times on the show.
Speaker 1: We probably will a bunch more times. Yeah, but after
Speaker 1: one unit, one anarchist unit suffered eighty percent casualties, El
Speaker 1: Kiko was like, you know what, fuck this guy. So
Speaker 1: he went and he shot the communist officer who sent
Speaker 1: all the anarchists to die. After leaving the asshole to
Speaker 1: die in the snow, Alkiko and three friends fucked off
Speaker 1: to Barcelona and his cool Frankenstein van.
Speaker 2: Very stealthy, which you've murdered your commander to take your
Speaker 2: legs signature vehicle?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, and then he goes and he shows up
Speaker 1: to the CNT and he's like, hey, I shot the
Speaker 1: communist guy kept murdering my friends. Can you transfer me
Speaker 1: to a different unit. I don't think that one's gonna
Speaker 1: work out for me. Amazing, But they don't transform to
Speaker 1: another unit. Instead, they say, well, how about you become
Speaker 1: a super cool anarchist spec ops guy who rescues anarchists
Speaker 1: from the Cheka, the Czech are the Russian secret police
Speaker 1: or fucking everything up in Spain, including killing all their
Speaker 1: own people. Yeah, it wasn't a good time to be
Speaker 1: a Soviet. The other Soviets kept murdering you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did like to murder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so Elkiko was like, well, you don't end
Speaker 1: up with a name like the guy without being willing
Speaker 1: to say I'm your guy. That's my joke. That only
Speaker 1: kind of holds up because Kiko might have also just
Speaker 1: been short for Francisco. But he did. He became a
Speaker 1: cool anarchist spec ops guy, along with another anarchist whose
Speaker 1: name was Elebsinio, which more or less means the Ethiopian. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he had that name because he had quote Afro
Speaker 1: type hair. I don't know whether that means he was
Speaker 1: a black Spanish anarchist or more likely a white guy
Speaker 1: with really curly hair and an unfortunate nickname.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's bad, That's that's how fortunated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know a lot of people were trying.
Speaker 2: To get to Ethiopia, like a lot of the black
Speaker 2: volunteers who fought, certainly their black Americans, like there was
Speaker 2: a one of them had it. He wrote something called
Speaker 2: this isn't Ethiopia, but they'll do. They were like, well,
Speaker 2: they specifically wanted to kill Italian fascists, right, which they
Speaker 2: even got the chance to do. But yeah, yeah, a
Speaker 2: lot of the black folks who fought it was like
Speaker 2: a kind of a rollback strategy, same as the Italians
Speaker 2: and Germans, right, like, well we'll beat them here and
Speaker 2: then we'll beat them in Italy and yeah, Ethiopia and
Speaker 2: Germany and everywhere else, now that this makes sense, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Sadly it didn't didn't work out.
Speaker 1: No, for a lot of reasons, most of which I
Speaker 1: think can be pointed at the Western world enforcing a
Speaker 1: blockade only on the Republican side and like not in
Speaker 1: a blockade like keep the Germans out from anyway whatever.
Speaker 1: And again I don't think get helped with the checker
Speaker 1: went around murdering everyone on their own side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, killing like way more anarchists than you did. Fascist.
Speaker 2: There was a fascist fuck what was his name? He
Speaker 2: was part of a French fascist group that was funded
Speaker 2: by the looreal like like because you're worth it, loreal right,
Speaker 2: like shit, yeah, yeah, fascism, because you're worth it, And
Speaker 2: like he was actively sabotaging. I forget what his name was.
Speaker 2: He was in a headquarters company of one of the
Speaker 2: international units and was actively sabotaging all their weapons. And
Speaker 2: like they were so busy looking for fucking anarchists that
Speaker 2: this guy just got to take a free run. Cool.
Speaker 2: People died because of it. Great, cool, Thank you Soviet communists.
Speaker 1: So fortunately the kid and el Absinio rescue and go
Speaker 1: and rescue an anarchists from check a hands And that's
Speaker 1: like his first new thing. Now that he does this,
Speaker 1: he has a new job. And then after some nonsense
Speaker 1: in May nineteen thirty seven where the Soviets tried to
Speaker 1: take the anarchist positions in Barcelona by force, Elki did
Speaker 1: some fast and furious shit and freed four anarchist prisoners
Speaker 1: while they were being transferred. Oh cool, Yeah, there's so
Speaker 1: much fast and furious shit in this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought you were going with air bomber or
Speaker 2: fast and furious shit. You know where you accidentally transfer
Speaker 2: thousands of machine guns to hotels in.
Speaker 1: Mexico, No, no, just the I don't remember which one
Speaker 1: it is, where they you know, stop a prisoner transport
Speaker 1: bus and then free their guy or whatever. So anarchist
Speaker 1: becops are doing their thing. A local fascist Alkiko's home
Speaker 1: village was trying to reinstate capitalism within the anarchist held areas.
Speaker 1: He just like was like, hey, I'm a fascis. It's
Speaker 1: like the area is under anarchist control. And he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm like a fascist and a capitalist. I've got all
Speaker 1: this stuff and you need it, so I'm gonna sell
Speaker 1: it really expensive. And everyone kept being like, my guy,
Speaker 1: this isn't gonna go well, you like really shouldn't do this,
Speaker 1: and he was like, nah, whatever. So then Alqico shows
Speaker 1: up lets himself in the guy's house and suddenly the
Speaker 1: guy isn't around anymore. The Soviets keep doing their thing.
Speaker 1: They're fucking everything up, and soon al Kiko is in
Speaker 1: prison in the hands of the quote new quote unquote
Speaker 1: revolutionary police. And the reason that he's in prison is
Speaker 1: he helped a man forge papers to get out of
Speaker 1: conscription into the Soviet run army. Okay, Yeah, and one
Speaker 1: of Alkiko's friends was actually murdered by the Republican police
Speaker 1: over this. Alkiko only survived because the CNT was able
Speaker 1: to get him transferred out of the hands of the cheka.
Speaker 1: But they couldn't free him. They couldn't ge him out
Speaker 1: of prison entirely. So he just accepted his fate and
Speaker 1: resigned himself to prison, where he still is today. No,
Speaker 1: he he's set about to free himself because tunnels are back.
Speaker 1: It's been too long since we've had a tunnel.
Speaker 2: Love a tunnel.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, so long. I know, I know, we
Speaker 1: came out strong, yeah, but this one, Okay, the story,
Speaker 1: this part of the story is a happy ending, but
Speaker 1: the tunnel doesn't. He spends weeks digging a tunnel under
Speaker 1: his cell, and when he finally breaks free into daylight,
Speaker 1: after like so many like wrong turns and like all
Speaker 1: this wild shit, he's like, all right, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: back to my cell and wait until nighttime and then
Speaker 1: I'm going to sneak out during nighttime. But they nabbed him.
Speaker 1: They figured it out before he went back out again,
Speaker 1: and so he went. He got taken to a maximum security. So, however,
Speaker 1: he was getting a ton of movement support because the
Speaker 1: anarchists with the largest chunk of the Spanish working class,
Speaker 1: and he was already kind of a hero. They just
Speaker 1: don't have as much systemic power as the communists, so
Speaker 1: he bribes the guards to let him have conjugal visits
Speaker 1: with Leonor. His wife smuggles him a hand grenade and
Speaker 1: a sorry, a grenade and a handgun. A hand grenade
Speaker 1: and a gun. Whatever hand can be in either of
Speaker 1: those doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now that he has those things, he sets about to
Speaker 1: escaping to whether anarchists come with him. Some of the
Speaker 1: other prisoners chose not to come, and so they made
Speaker 1: sure in order to keep the other prisoner from getting implicated.
Speaker 1: They were like, all right, we're gonna lock you up,
Speaker 1: but just so that people don't think you were with us,
Speaker 1: And so they like lock up the other prisoners. They
Speaker 1: make their way to the warden's office. They're just like
Speaker 1: disarming and threatening everyone on their way, you know, and
Speaker 1: tying everyone up, not hurting anyone. Actually, they do this
Speaker 1: whole thing with hurting anyone. It's kind of impressive. They
Speaker 1: point a gun at the warden and say sign papers
Speaker 1: to say that we can go free, and the Warden's like, ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could do that.
Speaker 2: You know, to the other ocean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so they escaped. His two commids, his two companions.
Speaker 1: They get sent back to the front or they go
Speaker 1: back to the front and they fight fascists for a while,
Speaker 1: but then they leave, so then the communists execute them.
Speaker 1: Sabote and his brother in law tried to walk forty
Speaker 1: miles to safety, but some guards were like, who the
Speaker 1: fuck are you? Show me your papers, and Sabote is like,
Speaker 1: if I show them my papers, I'm going to die
Speaker 1: that they just killed my friends. So he's like, oh, yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: let me get my papers out of my coat. But
Speaker 1: instead of his papers, he pulled out a gun, and
Speaker 1: instead of giving them his papers, he killed all four
Speaker 1: of them. So you do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a universal passport, right, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: But they were waiting for him in Barcelona, the cops
Speaker 1: were so a chase scene happens. This guy's fucking life.
Speaker 1: The cops spot him at the station, so he takes
Speaker 1: off running across and through trains like amazing, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: like this yeah, And then in order to get out there,
Speaker 1: they're bringing a cordon around the area around the station,
Speaker 1: so he hijacks a horse drawn carriage because petrol is
Speaker 1: getting around. Yeah, yeah, amazing, and he like basically sticks
Speaker 1: a gun in the guy's side. It's like, hey, could
Speaker 1: you drive me through the police court and the guy's like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: And this actually happens a lot in this guy's life
Speaker 1: where he ends up in these very civil conversations with
Speaker 1: people that he's robbing or like, because they actually kind
Speaker 1: of most of them like him.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, he's waste on trying to hurt
Speaker 2: them or take anything from them necessary, right, like, at
Speaker 2: least in this case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And in some ways it's like the gun is
Speaker 1: almost like plausible deniability. It's like, well, you weren't in
Speaker 1: on it. I had a gun on you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Yeah, he's a win win feet Yeah, and
Speaker 2: that's going to come up more later, So I'm not
Speaker 2: just pulling that out of nowhere. But did he leave
Speaker 2: the war just because large chunks of his own side
Speaker 2: were trying to kill him?
Speaker 1: Of course not. There were fascists to fight and a
Speaker 1: revolution to defend, so he signed up with the Drudi Column,
Speaker 1: an anarchist unit. He won the Medal for valor, and
Speaker 1: a desperate struggle to hold back the fascists all the while.
Speaker 1: At this point the high command of the Republican Army
Speaker 1: they already fled into France, and Sabote's unit was the
Speaker 1: last to leave Barcelona as the fascist rolled through the country.
Speaker 1: Just like these low, low prices will roll through your
Speaker 1: head or you press forward fifteen seconds approximately six times.
Speaker 2: It's your choice.
Speaker 1: None, yeah, and we're back okay. Meanwhile, his older brother Jose,
Speaker 1: he's been leading anarchist battalion at this point, but when
Speaker 1: the war is over, he's captured by the fascists and
Speaker 1: he spends a while in prison, but he does survive
Speaker 1: the war. And then Franco came through and was like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm a fascist and I've just taken over the country,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna be really nice to everyone when the
Speaker 1: hearts and minds. Yeah, yeah, buying killing everyone. He just
Speaker 1: killed a fuck ton of people. This is the guy
Speaker 1: who at the beginning he has like a quote that
Speaker 1: I don't have directly in front of me, but he
Speaker 1: has a quote that's something like, I am willing to
Speaker 1: murder half of Spain to rule the other half. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he was pretty consistent on that. That wasn't
Speaker 2: a one off kind of vibe for him. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was more or less his defining principal italy. He's only
Speaker 2: moral stunes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So hundreds of thousands of people were put
Speaker 1: to death, mostly legally, of course, because you know law man.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, that made it okay. It's just the
Speaker 2: important thing about laws is that it's fine. I've just
Speaker 2: spent a week on the border watching like the little
Speaker 2: children being concentrated in in in what one might call
Speaker 2: camps in the desert, and that was legal, So it's okay.
Speaker 1: It's just the opposite of dispersed camping.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good. It's easier to clean
Speaker 2: up afterwards.
Speaker 1: Hip hop, I can't. Okay, that's the end of my
Speaker 1: sad jokes about that. It's fucking awful. Yeah, it's fucking horrific.
Speaker 1: Yeah what it boorders are bad. Yeah, speaking of concentration camps,
Speaker 1: Sabata and his family fleet of France where the fate
Speaker 1: of the anti fascists awaited them, which is their friends
Speaker 1: put them on concentration camps.
Speaker 2: Now love that for France.
Speaker 1: This didn't have the same meaning yet the word concentration camp.
Speaker 1: It's not nice fun times, but it's not.
Speaker 3: Whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a death camp like it's it's it's
Speaker 2: distinct from that. It's just an extremely shitty situation which
Speaker 2: you can't leat out of him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unless you're al Kiko, in which case you can escape.
Speaker 1: He did fair enough, but he escaped and he like
Speaker 1: spent a while like wandering the Pyrenees mountains, and then
Speaker 1: he was like, man, fuck this, and he went back
Speaker 1: to the concentration camp. And no specific reason is given
Speaker 1: for this, But then by doing more research about it, One,
Speaker 1: I don't know because the biographer didn't bother to tell
Speaker 1: me what Leoner is doing at the time, right, so
Speaker 1: maybe his wife is still there or maybe she came
Speaker 1: with him, I'm not sure. And two, all of the
Speaker 1: anarchists are all in one place, so they're organizing, and
Speaker 1: he's like probably He's like, all right, well I should
Speaker 1: go be where the anarchists are organized. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: heads on back. And then I remember, you knew about
Speaker 1: this like little known sequel to the Spanish Civil War,
Speaker 1: Spanish Civil War two electric boogloo. Yeah only it was,
Speaker 1: but you know, like each time they have to make
Speaker 1: it bigger. So this was called World War two.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, fascinating, Well went down in that one.
Speaker 1: A lot of stuff that I feel weird making jokes about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The famously anti fascist segregated the
Speaker 2: United State Toommy came to Save the Day.
Speaker 1: I Love No No. We talked about this in the
Speaker 1: Josephine Baker episode that she like refused to play. She
Speaker 1: was a black woman from the US who became a
Speaker 1: French spy and did all this amazing shit, and at
Speaker 1: some point she was like playing for the troops. She
Speaker 1: was one of the most famous women in the world,
Speaker 1: and she was like, I won't play for the US
Speaker 1: troops while they're segregated. They better desegregate at least for
Speaker 1: my fucking show.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is like Paul Robeson refuse to do a
Speaker 2: concert when he heard out that they the purges were
Speaker 2: happening in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, right,
Speaker 2: and they one of the old Bolshevik trials of the
Speaker 2: sort of old bolsh Fixes happening, and he heard about
Speaker 2: it and he was like, this, this fucked up. I
Speaker 2: can't go sink. Yeah, I got whited. They're doing basically
Speaker 2: that's cool. Yeah, cool guy.
Speaker 1: So maybe you know this part better than I do.
Speaker 1: I've run across two sources that say conflicting things, and
Speaker 1: it is a big difference. The concentration camps were opened
Speaker 1: up and the surviving Republicans from Spain were conscripted into
Speaker 1: mostly labor and some to go be cannon fodder. I
Speaker 1: don't know whether this was the French government before the
Speaker 1: Vicci government, or whether it was the Nazi controlled French government.
Speaker 2: So the I guess to use like a militaristic term.
Speaker 2: Military aged men were required to conscript in the free
Speaker 2: French shand.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought. Okay, I've run across both and
Speaker 1: it confused me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just wrote a long thing about this kind
Speaker 2: of they called their like so that they're not in
Speaker 2: the French over. France has a different relationship to journalism
Speaker 2: than other European powers, so like, there's a very famous
Speaker 2: unit called Lan Nueve write the people who liberated Paris,
Speaker 2: who were mostly Spanish anarchists. They wanted to call their
Speaker 2: half tracked vehicles de ruti and us casso, but they
Speaker 2: weren't allowed to that called.
Speaker 1: Okay sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Relatively notable anarchists and they had to call them like
Speaker 2: don Quixote instead, but they named other ones after battles
Speaker 2: in Spain. Yeah, but yeah, they end up in the
Speaker 2: the Army of Chad, the Army of Chad Zura as well,
Speaker 2: but Chad like the country as well as as well
Speaker 2: as the name. So they were the marching regiments of Chad.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so the so Sabat and the other anarchists,
Speaker 1: they're basically being told like, yeah, go fight at the
Speaker 1: front or a lot of them were conscripted to do
Speaker 1: labor and build factories and ship and so Sabate wound
Speaker 1: up building helping build a gunpowder factory, which turns out
Speaker 1: useful later. Yeah, it's just great, yeah, serendipity. Yeah, France
Speaker 1: didn't last too long in World War Two, so soon
Speaker 1: he's in hiding and having a kid. His daughter Poquita
Speaker 1: is born in nineteen forty one, the only one of
Speaker 1: his children that at least the biographer I read was
Speaker 1: able to provide me the information about, and he joins
Speaker 1: the French resistance with the Spanish marquy. Yep, who are
Speaker 1: the Spanish monkey, you might ask? Well, you wouldn't ask you.
Speaker 1: Probably no books worth of information about them that I
Speaker 1: will probably try and convince you to tell me at
Speaker 1: some point soon. But to tell the audience real quick, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you asked. Maquis is the Corsican course goes
Speaker 1: a small island of the Mediterranean that France pretends is French.
Speaker 1: And the Corskin word for the shrubby woods on Mediterranean
Speaker 1: is my key basically, And so it's like saying the bush.
Speaker 1: So the fighters are retreating into the bush and kind
Speaker 1: of in the same way that the Irish were, like
Speaker 1: the Bog soldiers or whatever. And that's where that ship.
Speaker 1: The name of your right wing people in the UK,
Speaker 1: yours if you live in the UK.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Tories conceived, Yeah right, conservative?
Speaker 1: Isn't the tour I'm going to get this completely embarrassingly wrong.
Speaker 1: Isn't that the word that comes from the Irish Bog fighters?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it comes I believe it does come from. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a reference to Yeah, something from island. I can't remember.
Speaker 1: I believe it's the the the Irish radicals who were
Speaker 1: fighting against Cromwell when giside Ireland. Anyway, Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: forgot the way. So the Spanish Monkey are the Spanish
Speaker 1: ones of these gorilla fighters. That's the name, the Spanish Monkey.
Speaker 1: And these are the name that the Spanish gorillas who
Speaker 1: keep up the fight against fascism, including most direct in
Speaker 1: France during the Nazi occupation, but also the Spanish occupation,
Speaker 1: which no longer is being called an occupation, even though
Speaker 1: it's still literally someone invaded and took over Spain and
Speaker 1: declared it fascist. They might be more familiar to the
Speaker 1: modern audience as the guerrilla fighters in Pans Labyrinth, since
Speaker 1: that movie is set in nineteen forty four, and I
Speaker 1: think the McKee in Pans Labyrinth were anarchists, But it
Speaker 1: is worth noting that the McKee were of all sorts
Speaker 1: of different politics. Communists and monarchists were involved in some
Speaker 1: of this stuff. In Madrid apparently as mostly communists, and
Speaker 1: Barcelona's mostly anarchists, at least according to one particular source,
Speaker 1: Every source about all of this stuff is really biased
Speaker 1: either communist or anarchist, and wants to completely write the
Speaker 1: other one out of history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1: The source that I read was more biased in the
Speaker 1: communist direction about this particular part of the Maquis before
Speaker 1: the Spanish Maquie got back into Spain. While they're in France,
Speaker 1: they functioned up against the Nazis. Ten thousand of them fought,
Speaker 1: and that's not the focus of this particular episode. But
Speaker 1: to quote a nineteen forty five book, The Undefeated, by
Speaker 1: Martha Gellhorn. During the German occupation of France, the Spanish
Speaker 1: Maquie engineered more than four hundred railway sabotages, destroyed fifty
Speaker 1: eight locomotives, dynamated thirty five railway bridges, cut one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty telephone lines, attacked twenty factories, destroying some factories totally,
Speaker 1: and sabotaged fifteen coal mines. They took several thousand German prisoners,
Speaker 1: and most miraculous considering their arms, they captured three tanks
Speaker 1: in the southwest part. Yeah right, fuck can they do
Speaker 1: it with them?
Speaker 2: Afterwards?
Speaker 1: In the southwest part of France, where no Allied armies
Speaker 1: have ever fought, they liberated more than seventeen towns, so
Speaker 1: they're fucking cool. And then we actually don't really know
Speaker 1: what al Qiko was up to personally during all this period,
Speaker 1: besides the fact that he was fighting the Nazis. And
Speaker 1: we also know that the gunpowder factory that he built
Speaker 1: in December nineteen forty two suddenly blew up.
Speaker 2: Yeah some dots, it will never be joined.
Speaker 1: And someone who was caught for it had a photo
Speaker 1: in his pocket of a group that included him, And
Speaker 1: this is yeah, this comes up a bunch that they
Speaker 1: keep catching people with like photos of their friends in
Speaker 1: their pockets, and I like, don't get me wrong, I
Speaker 1: like that I can look pictures of my friends by
Speaker 1: pulling something out of my pocket that is my phone.
Speaker 1: But I'm also not in the middle of a gorilla war.
Speaker 2: Yeah upstake fail yeah in that, but wow.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, El Chico has set himself up as a plumber
Speaker 1: and a small town with his wife and daughter and
Speaker 1: immediately starts guiding French refugees across the border into Spain.
Speaker 1: Like this is befo. He's going to do the opposite
Speaker 1: a little bit, you know. Yeah, yeah, and all the
Speaker 1: while are straight at Chiro does not drink or smoke.
Speaker 1: There's a long history, a kind of weird history of
Speaker 1: anarchists being either sober or vegetarian or both.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have no evidence about him being vegetarian, but
Speaker 1: he was sober.
Speaker 2: He's Yeah. They were definitely they were like they were.
Speaker 2: They were like anarchists at atheneums as the English were,
Speaker 2: where like they weld. They were very committed to ongoing education,
Speaker 2: and part of that was health education. The anarchists were
Speaker 2: really early on in like healthy diet and exercises a
Speaker 2: way to combat like the ills of modernity and factory labor.
Speaker 1: I mean, makes sense.
Speaker 2: They were not wrong, they were Yeah, they were very right.
Speaker 2: They like they would get people down from Switzerland to
Speaker 2: talk about like Swiss gymnastics and shit, it's wild.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 2: And yeah, you can still find good anarchist vegan food
Speaker 2: in Barcelona.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah. So after the war, the Spanish anarchists in
Speaker 1: France had a big meeting. They managed to sort of
Speaker 1: get over a lot of their differences because joining the
Speaker 1: Republican government had been really divisive among the anarchists. But
Speaker 1: they had a meeting and they were like, all right,
Speaker 1: we should probably just get together, stop fighting and go
Speaker 1: fuck up Franco, shouldn't we And they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what we should do. But they wanted to send
Speaker 1: some some delegates down into Spain to talk with all
Speaker 1: of the anarchists who were still hold up in the
Speaker 1: mountains and stuff, because a lot of anarchists never left
Speaker 1: right nineteen thirty nine, a lot of anarchists just took
Speaker 1: to the mountains and fucking lived there. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of our pants Labyrinth care heroes. They needed some super
Speaker 1: cool elite spec OP anarchists to guide some delegates into France.
Speaker 1: Why not turn to El Qico and L Ebsinio, as
Speaker 1: well as L Rosette, which literally means the rosette, It's
Speaker 1: just spelled different. They all had cool names. Giving yourself
Speaker 1: a cool name with your friends is cool and good.
Speaker 1: So al Qiko and his friends just went right back
Speaker 1: to doing what they do. They meet up with the
Speaker 1: anarchists in Barcelona, they learn which fascists have killed which anarchists.
Speaker 1: They set about raising the money to fight back. And
Speaker 1: can you guess how they said about raising the money
Speaker 1: to fight start a grill warriors the fascist.
Speaker 2: Did they go fund me?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like a combination of like gofundmes and
Speaker 1: then like a couple like benefit shows, they did a yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they rob rich people. Most of it actually
Speaker 1: came from the robbery. Yeah, oh interesting, not the punk
Speaker 1: cake with a vegan meal before, No, weirdly yeah huh.
Speaker 2: Yeah nice strength.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One time they robbed the guy in his house
Speaker 1: and they left him a note. We are not robbers,
Speaker 1: we are libertarian resistance fighters. What we have just taken
Speaker 1: will help in a small way to feed the orphaned
Speaker 1: and starving children of those anti fascists that you and
Speaker 1: your kind have shot. We are people who have never
Speaker 1: and will never beg for what is ours. So long
Speaker 1: as we have the strength to do to do so,
Speaker 1: we will fight for the freedom of the Spanish working class.
Speaker 1: As for you, Gariga, that's the guy's name. Although you
Speaker 1: are a murderer and a thief, we have spared you
Speaker 1: because we, as libertarians appreciate the value of human life,
Speaker 1: something in which you have never nor likely to understand.
Speaker 2: That's phenomenal. We were talking about cringe email signature quotes before,
Speaker 2: but if you could just put that one in the
Speaker 2: email signature total, that would let people know you weren't
Speaker 2: fucking around.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We are people who have never and will never
Speaker 1: beg for what it's ours. So long as we have
Speaker 1: the strength to do so, we will fight for the
Speaker 1: freedom of the Spanish working class.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Phenomenally based.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so, if you're curious, how do you become
Speaker 1: a folk hero? The fastest way if you're trying to
Speaker 1: like speed run folk hero robin hood, this is how you.
Speaker 1: People fucking loved these people, now, not the fascist. The
Speaker 1: fascist didn't like them very much. But regular people. He
Speaker 1: didn't hide his identity. He was robbing people in his
Speaker 1: hometown where everyone knew him. He mostly rolled up and
Speaker 1: said soy el Gico, I am elk Eco and people
Speaker 1: would be like, oh shit, I give up. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know how to say. Which is a really good
Speaker 1: reason to have a reputation for not hurting the people
Speaker 1: you rob, because if you have a reputation for not
Speaker 1: hurting the people you rob, then there's no reason to
Speaker 1: fight back.
Speaker 2: Right, You're just gonna give them some stuff and then
Speaker 2: they're gonna leave.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And he's also very clearly capable of killing people, so
Speaker 2: you don't you don't want to create they create any
Speaker 2: stress for him.
Speaker 1: Yeh, exactly. And this is the story of one guy.
Speaker 1: He's absolutely one of many. He's not robin Hood, he's
Speaker 1: one of He's one of the merry men with no
Speaker 1: robin Hood to speak of. Apparently his friends don't clap
Speaker 1: when he gives speeches. They are all robin Hoods. For
Speaker 1: the sake of brevity and narrative, I'm leaving out an
Speaker 1: endless string of heroic people who fought Franco. But this man,
Speaker 1: he's just getting started. Like literally, this is the preamble
Speaker 1: to the stuff he's famous for. We have not gotten
Speaker 1: to what he is famous for yet. He is not
Speaker 1: famous for, let's see, escaping prison twice, killing four cops
Speaker 1: who tried to arrest him, fighting against the Nazis for years,
Speaker 1: fixing people's toilets, stopping a fascist coup maybe twice, fighting
Speaker 1: on the last unit of Flee Barcelona. No, he's famous
Speaker 1: for what comes next, which we'll talk about on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: That's my best cliffhanger I think I've ever done.
Speaker 2: That was banging. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I know you aren't going to clap, but you know,
Speaker 1: just I don't want to be guilty of legalists leaderism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we show our support by being.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. And if people want to show support
Speaker 1: for you, James and what you do or whatever you
Speaker 1: want to plug.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they can participate in mutual eight. That would be
Speaker 2: very nice. That would make me happy. They can be
Speaker 2: nice to animals, that will make me happy. And if
Speaker 2: when they've done those things, then they're allowed to follow
Speaker 2: me on Twitter dot com. But if you have to
Speaker 2: submit like a couple of photos, yeah, yeah, get like
Speaker 2: get a selfie where you're like like, you know, battery chickens, right,
Speaker 2: they don't want to be there. Take a selfie if
Speaker 2: you've let them run free, and you can follow me.
Speaker 2: It's at James Stout. Don't do crimes now, I'm only
Speaker 2: legal crimes mm hmm yeah, or like in times of
Speaker 2: war then you know all bets. Yeah yeah yeah, until then,
Speaker 2: keep it legal. Yeah. Be nice to animals. Yeah, Feed
Speaker 2: a bird. Feed a fucking bird that's just flying around.
Speaker 2: Just give it some feed and then then you can
Speaker 2: follow me.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, m And the thing I want to plug
Speaker 1: is that if you like mutual aid and revolution, but
Speaker 1: you kind of sometimes prefer to just sit around with
Speaker 1: your friends and imagine it at a table rolling dice
Speaker 1: that I'm working on a role playing game called The
Speaker 1: Number City that as of right now, maybe not when
Speaker 1: you're listening to it, but when it's being released, is
Speaker 1: being kickstarted and it's called the Number City. And if
Speaker 1: you google a Number City kickstarter you'll find it. And
Speaker 1: it's about gangs and the occult and fighting the Immortal
Speaker 1: God King and there's no money in it and it's amazing.
Speaker 2: I will believe that's fun. Yeah, I am writing a book.
Speaker 2: I should have mentioned. I should know if you like
Speaker 2: anarchist killing people, then I am writing a book about
Speaker 2: anarchists at war with ak Press, and it will be
Speaker 2: out when I finished writing it, and then they finished
Speaker 2: see it, and when I have been to some different
Speaker 2: places where anarchists are currently engaged in conflict against fascism
Speaker 2: in the state.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, and we're excited to tell you that very
Speaker 3: soon or currently, depending on when you're listening to this.
Speaker 3: All cool Zone Media shows will be available one hundred
Speaker 3: percent ad free through the cooler Zone Media subscription, available
Speaker 3: exclusively on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2: Whoo Absolutely Professional Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Cool People Who Did Call Stuff is a production of
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