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such as the more union-centred ­anarcho-syndicalist approach of the treintistas, smacked of reformism that distracted workers from their revolutionary vocation.

      Tensions between the two factions grew during the ‘hot’ summer of 1931, when a wave of CNT economic strikes met with accelerating state repression, which sealed the radicalisation of workplace activists and members of the Comité pro Presos, who were most sensitive to the repression. The turning point in relations between the two factions and between the Barcelona CNT and the authorities came after a general strike on 4 September. The stoppage, in support of a hunger strike by social prisoners, many of whom were interned without trial, lasted seventy-two hours and affected around 300,000 workers in the Barcelona area. The authorities responded with a show of strength that included soldiers on the streets, martial law, and the deployment of warships in the port, leaving sixteen workers dead, three of whom might have been summarily executed in police detention.54

      As the CNT was further radicalised, so too was Peirats, who attended clandestine activist meetings. His disposition and youth placed him closer to the maximalists, as did his activism in the Construction Union, which followed or, perhaps more correctly, advanced, the radical line. Nevertheless, in La Torrassa, Peirats was at loggerheads with prominent radical Francisco Tomás, who typified the insurrectionists’ maximalism. Some eight years older than Peirats, Tomás was a true militant, a born speaker. Yet he was cunning and bent on proselytising, and bore no respect for any other influence than his own. He had earlier encouraged his small band of followers to boycott the ‘reformist’ Rationalist Athenaeum, as they abhorred cultural initiatives and preferred violent street actions. Meanwhile, the supporters of the athenaeum saw Tomás’s group as ‘a handful of demagogues’, for whom the revolution was ‘just around the corner’; practitioners of what Peirats mocked as ‘tavern communism’ and ‘ballsy anarchism’.55

      As far as the CNT’s internal division is concerned, therefore, Peirats and his group occupied an uncomfortable position between the two factions. While Peirats was an anarchist in the streets and in the athen­aeum, he was very much an anarcho-syndicalist in the workplace, and this convinced him that the revolution would come through a combination of cultural awareness and revolutionary strikes as opposed to simply firing pistols, like the radicals appeared to believe.

      With the breach between the two factions heading towards a split in the unions, Peirats remained unwavering in his commitment towards the CNT. He played a decisive role in the December 1931 brickworkers’ strike.56 The strikers sought to achieve their long-­standing goals – the abolition of piecework and the disappearance of the contractors who exploited the day labourers. This, they hoped, would result in a stable wage structure and would allow them to deal directly with their employers, not the contractors, who were seen as a parasitic strata benefitting from the system of payment by results. José was part of the four-strong strike committee and, when the employers refused to negotiate, he joined armed teams that went out to ‘hunt “scabs”’ – an activity that was not without risks since strike-breakers often benefitted from a police escort. Given the strength of the CNT locally, persuasion alone was often enough to encourage workers to join the strike. Employers were less easily convinced. As the strike dragged on, the CNT relied more heavily on its traditional direct action tactics and Peirats became involved in more audacious activities, including arson attacks on several brickworks. Although he never commented on this issue, it is likely that Peirats was now a member of the CNT’s defence groups (grupos de defensa).57 In one incident, he led a group that disarmed a security guard before burning a workshop. Curiously, despite addressing the guard face-to-face, Peirats did not wear a mask, which can be interpreted either as recklessness or as a measure of the confidence felt by cenetistas in a neighbourhood where they held considerable power.58 Perhaps, however, it was felt they could rely on fear alone, since a guard at another local factory had recently been assassinated.59 Finally, the employers returned to the negotiating table, at which Peirats was also present. The brickmakers achieved a partial victory: the employers agreed to dispense with the contractors but the system of piecework would remain. It was an outcome, nonetheless, that was seen as a considerable advance by most brickmakers.60

      After the conclusion of the strike, Peirats started working as a baker – a change of profession occasioned by continuing leg pains. In some cases, the consequences of Perthes disease lead to an explosion of severe pain in the early to mid-twenties. For Peirats, this pain seemed unbearable at times, and his condition was further aggravated by the freezing cold of the brickworks. Worsening unemployment, however, meant his new job as a baker drew him into new social struggles. In response to the economic crisis, the CNT practised ‘union impositions’ (imposiciones sindicales), whereby it sent the unemployed into those workplaces that offered overtime to employees or those which the union deemed were in need of more workers to cover production. This policy was part of an ongoing trial of strength with the employers and periodically led to confrontations and arrests. At his union centre, José was directed to a bakery whose owner had a reputation for hostility towards the CNT. He duly entered the bakery and casually set to work, explaining to the employer and his wife, to their consternation, that the CNT had sent him. Tellingly, the couple were impressed by Peirats’s good humour and hard work and invited him back. This work experience proved invaluable and, ironically, he ended up getting some more baking work in the kitchen of the Modelo prison.61 Peirats could just as easily have been a detainee there, for just a few weeks after becoming a baker, he initiated what he later described sanguinely as ‘a chapter in my life as a terrorist’.62 This was part of a struggle by CNT bakers to achieve their historic demand: the abolition of night work and a 5 a.m. start that would allow them to spend the night at home and shake off their ‘death’s heads’ (caps de mort) nickname.63

      The bakers also had health and safety demands, since ‘90 per cent of the bakeries were disgusting underground rooms, humid and replete with cockroaches and rats.’ When employers resisted, the union established a ‘war committee’ (comité de guerra). José duly volunteered and, along with other younger bakers, was at the forefront of the conflict. There followed a series of small bomb attacks on bakeries before the employers’ association accepted the CNT’s demands, excluding the need for a strike. Yet some employers refused to accept the deal and victimised the activists. When the union boycotts of these bakeries proved unsuccessful, militants resolved to give them a ‘fright’ (susto). Armed with pistols, Peirats and a comrade visited one employer who had victimised CNT bakers to ‘persuade’ him to change tack. On another occasion, he and a couple of comrades bombed a bakery, making their escape after a brief exchange of gunfire with security guards from a nearby factory.64 Such was the aggressive stance of L’Hospitalet bakers that local employers complained to the authorities about the spiral of violence.65

      Peirats’s activism also centred on his new affinity group, known simply as Afinidad. Formed around the time the Rationalist Athenaeum opened in 1931, this ‘propapaganda and action group’ included his brickmaker friend Canela, as well as other like-minded young an­archists, male and female, who had met in local athenaeums and rationalist schools. Totalling around fifteen members, Afinidad, like all such groups, was rooted in strong neighbourhood and personal relationships; for instance, there were three couples in the group. Among the group was Pérez, a pistol-wielding youth, not ‘one to mess with’, who was a close friend of Peirats and his family, for whom he was ‘like another son’. In terms of orientation, the group conjoined a variety of activist approaches: some members were more anarcho-­syndicalist and others dedicated themselves to cultural activities through the athen­aeum; some rejected violence entirely, while a subgroup – which included Canela, Pérez, and José – ‘accepted everything’. As we will see, this was not always the case, and they mainly dedicated themselves to acts of sabotage during strikes. While it is understandable that José was somewhat guarded about the group’s specific actions, he did refer to what was perhaps its most spectacular action, the collapse of electricity lines outside L’Hospitalet during a general strike.66

      By 1932, José was, as he subsequently described himself, ‘a kind of wannabe intellectual [intelectualillo] and premature terrorist [terrorista en agraz]’. His activism shifted according to the changing fortunes of the movement, operating publicly when possible, yet ready to step forward to defend the CNT using all necessary means. In his case, this was made easier since at this time he was yet unknown

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