Part One: Francisco Sabaté: Franco’s Public Enemy #1

Margaret talks with James Stout about the anarchist spec ops guy who became a guerilla Robin Hood and spent decades terrifying fascists.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did Cool Stuff, your
weekly reminder that humans are capable of incredible things like
shooting lots of fascists or whatever. I'm your host, Margaret
Kiljoy with me today. Is the one and only, but
possibly not the only. There might be other people with
his name, but none of them are as good.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
James Stout. Hi, James, Hi, Hi, Yeah, fuck all the
other James Stouts. They're actually very nice. I in the
early days of social media I added all the James
Stouts on Facebook. One of them has been kindly donating
to like mutual aid work I've done for over, like,
I know, fifteen years. It's like a really nice dude.

(00:37):
Oh that's amazing. Okay, Well there's an almost as good
James Stout. And if you're listening, good on you. Yeah, hi,
ad the James Stout.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
James is probably most familiar, of course to listeners as
a maker of sour dough bread, but in addition to that,
he is a journalist, mostly for the podcast It Could
Happen Here. Yeah, that's right, our producer of Sophie. Hi, Sophie,
the only Sophie that's true that you don't even need
a last name. If you were in the story, you
would be l Sophie. There we go.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, I guess he might be lost Sophie.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, I was gonna say.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
I was going to say, uh.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Sure, yeah, up to you. Our audio engineer is Ian Hi. Ian.
Everyone to say hi to Ian, Hi, Ian Hi Ian.
Everyone in the audience who's listening walking down the street
with your headphones in, guess, say hi to Ian.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Oh man, I hope somebody's walking by the actual Ian
and does that.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yeah, so cool. Ian.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
If that actually happens to.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
You, will you please tell us?

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
If you see Ian at the show up with the gym,
just greet him. Don't be worried about it, say hi.
I in turn walk away because to.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Do yeah exactly. Our theme music was written for us
by Unwoman. So this week I promise you dead fascists
right up at the top. You're going to get dead fascists.
But not just before or during World War two, because
fascism continued for decades in Europe after the end of
the war. In Spain, that is true. Yeah, yeah, real

(02:11):
long time.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
I also promised. I also promised James that a plumber
and his brother were going to be off on a
quest fighting evil, and that part is true. Also, so
there's an awful lot of people who are firmly dedicated
to stopping fascism in Spain, even though the great world
leaders were no longer behind them. Right, it was easier
to be an anti fascist when the US and the

(02:35):
UK were like, here's a bunch of guns, please go
kill the fascists, you know.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, even then they were very, very pretty tight with
the guns in the nineteen thirty six to nineteen thirty
nine era.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yeah, that's true that today we're going to talk about
a band of brothers, if you will, three brothers. Mostly
we're going to talk about one of them. I'm waiting
to see when James is going to figure out we're
talking about a plumber by trade who spent decades robbing
and murdering fascists, raising gorilla bands and fighting for liberation,
trade unionism and anarchist cyndicalism. Because today we're going to

(03:11):
talk about the Sabate Brothers.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Oh hell yeah, this is going to be fun.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, especially we're gonna talk about Francisco Sabatae, also better
known during his life as El Kiko. Yeah, so you've
heard of the Sabota. Yeah, I have.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
This is not an area in which I like most,
like resistance to Francoism stuff, I'm not as good on
I do. Like I'm reading Abel Pass's book about de
Ruti at the moment, which everyone should read, but one
of the most like you know they do that like
about the author section at the front.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, so like the able Pass one is like able Paths,
like you know, it wasn't anarchist in Spain and then
like spent decades in jail after trying to assassinate a Francoist,
the best thing ever. And I was just like recently
reading about his personal history.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
There's a lot of anarchist historians who absolutely put me
the shame.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah. Yeah, I've got like I've really let let everyone
down in that regard.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, I at some point I should just do an
overview of anarchist historians who've like tried to kill Franco
because there's at least two off the top of my head.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah yeah, yeah, there's definitely yeah, yeah, yeah. Stuart Christie
was the other one I'm seeking. Yeah, yeah, there's more
than that. There were a few. Yeah, I was very
fortunate to be like the last generation of historians who
got to do history with the people who had spent
their formative years trying to blow up fascists.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah yeah, well fortunately anyway, uh, that will never happen again, totally.
The twentieth century doesn't. Just twenty first century doesn't look
like a.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Reno, stay sire. Yeah no, these twenties will be different. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
in the thirties way better. Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be cool.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
All right. So the Sabate family, yeah who I first
heard about because my friend shout out to my friend
whose cat is named Sabate. Yeah. Yeah, So they were
born in a sleepy town whose name I have spent
the last five minutes trying to pronounce James gin.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
You Yeah, I think it's hospitality ore Gat.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, I even in my mind I can pronounce okay,
Spanish and not much Catalan. But anyway, so they're from
the sleepy town, which is not actually a sleepy town
at all. It was a decent sized city outside of
Barcelona in Catalonia. There's a region in Spain that does
not want to be a region in Spain. In this town,
there was a cop and a housewife living together with

(05:42):
their kids. Manuel Sabate and Madrona Yo part Manual Sabate
worked for the Guardia Orbana de Barcelona de Barcelona, which
was under control of the mayor.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
I don't have to that's a that's a castilianism. Ah.
So you see that's when Americans do the Barthelona thing.
They're actually wrong because no, no, that's great to know.
Yeah yeah, yeah, it's a pretentious and being correct.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
So you can great, everyone can yell at me about that.
But I learned, just like you all learned, that is great.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Barcelona is the only city in Spain I've spent any
time in and I was like, I know a little
bit of Spanish and people are like, that doesn't matter,
we don't take Spanish here, and I was like, yeah,
well fuck.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, it's a lovely city. People will be nice to you.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
Actually yeah, people kind of were. Actually it was actually
very nice. Anyway, go ahead. The Guardia Orbana was under
control of the mayor. They used to back in the
day they went around with this is like the cops
would go around to a saber, a pistol and a rifle.
Until nineteen oh nine, when the quote tragic Week happened,

(06:49):
which we talked about this in our episode about Francisco
Fredare and the Modern School movement. Basically, there was a
general strike anarchists cops murdered a ton of people. In
the end, the cops demilitarized so they were allowed to
keep their guns, but no more sword and rifle, which
America could probably learn a lesson from.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
It's the swords that they've been doing it with. Yeah,
maybe just a sword, like I'd be okay with that.
I think, you know, it'd be progress. Yeah, yeah, it
would be a step. What if everyone else gets like
a pole arm?

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah yeah, well no, I don't ask it's guns.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Okay, Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, Cups are very brave, so
they would be fine with swords. It's a big thing
about is bravery.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yeah, I think that's a big thing. And shooting people
in the back, which is hard to do with the sword.
So the father of our protagonists is a cup, Manual Sabote.
They had five kids, four boys and a girl. Three
of the boys that the people are gonna talk about today,
and they remaining two I don't know anything about. Unfortunately,
the oldest son was Jose Sabatetio part in Katalan naming

(07:57):
I guess the patrolineal family name and the matrolineal family
name or both part of the name, which is cool. Frankly, yeah,
which just cool. He was born in nineteen ten, and
he's gonna weave in and out of the story. The
older brother Jose next is Francisco Sabato part who was
born in nineteen fifteen, and he is our main protagonist today.
He also went by the traditional Cotsalan nicknames for San Francisco,

(08:20):
which at first I was like, man, there's so many
nicknames for Francisco. But then as I've got further and
further into the story, I realized that everybody in this
story is named Jose or Francisco, so it makes sense
that they have a lot of nicknames. Yeah, Like the
reason there's a million nicknames for Margaret, he was Cisco
or Ciskette, or as he became famous as shit Under,
he was el Qiko. I have asked around and gotten

(08:44):
a Cottalan anarchist telling me it's basically just another nickname
for Francisco. But it's also a little bit of wordplay,
maybe because Kiko means kid in Catalan, which makes him
a badass. Robin hood with the name the kid.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, which is cool.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
But I don't know if that was in t I'm
sure or not, But I like people.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Do enjoy a wordplay, especially if you're going for like
a pseudonym to do crime under.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
I think it's good to do a bit of word
play in there.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yeah, sometimes it gets translated as guy. Also like the guy. Hey,
I'm the guy. The dude. Pretty much, it's like it's
just the dude. He's gonna go on a fucking Robbie here.
They took different approaches to life. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, So
those are two of the brothers, and we have one

(09:32):
final brother who comes into the story. He's born way
the fuck later. He's born in nineteen twenty seven, which
for anyone who's paying attention is going to be a
big war in nineteen thirty six, nineteen thirty nine. And
so Manuel Sabato part that I don't think they say
the second, but you know, he's also named Manuel, was
born in nineteen twenty seven, and he's going to come
in and out. Al Kiko is our point of view character.

(09:54):
So we're going to trace his life as a kid.
He was willful. When he was seven, he was sent
to a send your bad kids to this place kind
of school, which was the Durround School run by Friars.
So it was a Catholic school. It actually just churned
out radicals, not because the Friars were cool, very specifically
the opposite of this.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, it's gonna say yet they traumatized kids into radicalism.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yes, exactly. The kids taught themselves to be cool and
learned a lot of lessons about how shitty authority is
because they kept getting beaten by the Friars all the time.
Also didn't really like cement any love for the Catholic
faith or church. So al Kiko sometime between the time
he's seven and ten, he's not even ten when he
pulls off his first prison break. He used quote an

(10:39):
improvised rope. I like to imagine bed sheets and a
tree to scale the wall and escape back to his parents.
And he basically shows up and he's like, don't fucking
send me back?

Speaker 2 (10:49):
What the fuck?

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Oh my god? And his parents are like, all right, fine,
we're not going to send you back. And I don't
know a ton about his family. The only thing I
know is that before the Civil War and all this
other shit, their father retires and is no longer a cop,
so it's least it's not like he's not like fighting
against his own kids at any point.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Someone else who went to this particular school, the Durand School,
was later became the general secretary of the CNT, the
anarchist union that did so much during the Spanish Civil War,
and the ex students of this place, they liked it
so much that during the Spanish Civil War they burned
it to the ground and it was never.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
Rebuilt at standing. Good. Yeah, much that we can learn
from these young people.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, So el Chico he went off and became an
apprentice plumber when he was ten. This was not in
any way abnormal for a working class kid to go
off and apprentice at ten. There was not a lot
of educational system available to the working class, except that
when he was fifteen or sixteen, he signed up for
the CNT, the Anarchist Union, which is biographer Antonio Teez

(11:55):
says he remained faithful to for the rest of his life.
Quote in spirit, if not in discipline, because yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah. The CNT went through some moments in the twenties
and thirties with its sort of like splits between I
believe the CNT are the ones who are responsible for
the Red and Black flag with the distinction between anaclysm
and anarcosyndicalism.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
I knew more about this somewhat recently. Oh no, no, no,
never mind. I knew more about the black flag. I
didn't know as much about the Red and black. That
would make a lot of sense to me.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Because you had like the hardcore anarchist and the hardcore
is around wood. Yeah, but we had the PI who
were committed to like a more pure form of anarchism
or yeah again purists are on word, right.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
But right, Well, the FII, the FI were they were like,
this is about anarchism, and the rest of them narcosyndicus,
were like sure, whatever whatever gets us there.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, that's my big There was some specifically, there was
this manifesto at one point in these specific distinctions, which
I think it's not worth getting into.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Bit yeah, yeah, though the more hardcore and of course
Elki goes gonna end up one of them soon enough.
Around this time nineteen thirty one, Spain becomes a republic.
We talked about this way more in the Spanish Civil
War episodes from last summer. This was a step in
the right direction. But one of the first things that
the New Republican did. The New Republic did was they

(13:16):
literally mortared an anarchist bar called Casa de con Cornelio
on July twenty third, quote, three artillery pieces fired twenty
two high explosive shells into the old bar, reducing it
to ruins because anarchists met there, which is cool, because
these anarchists are a huge reason as to why there

(13:36):
ever became a republic, as far as they can tell
in the first place. Anyway, in archosentdiclust in nineteen thirty
two in the Purities declared anarchist communism. Basically like no
one's putting up with this shit, Like Spain is ready
to go. Some Anarchosyndiclusts in nineteen thirty two declared anarchist communism.
They abolished private property. For anyone who's listening, we've probably

(13:58):
gone over this before, but private property doesn't mean your
toothbrush or even your house. It means like larger scale
things that someone owns and then leverages, like landlording or
owning a factory or whatever. Anyway, this people are fucking starving,
right and they're like, well, we want anarchist communism instead
of to die, which is a I mean, makes less
sense to me. The Republic crushed the rebellion. They started

(14:20):
cracking down super hard. They deported a ton of anarchists
to South America. They started passing a law that lets
you murder anyone who runs from the cops, basically, which
is funny because it's like this big deal. It keeps
coming up over and over again Spanish history. They're like
leada fuga.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
I thinkah, yeah, and it's like, holy shit. The cops
were allowed to shoot people who ran, and to include
people who they like released and were like run rue,
it is a step further. Yeah, that's rue. They did that.
That was how it was implemented on the ground.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah. Yeah. Catalonia didn't actually just give up. Instead, they
kept rebell and the CNTFAI flag flew over a city hall.
So the state arrested and executed forty two people. And
it was during this time that our anarchist plumber Hero
the kid. I wish it was in Italy so I
could just call him Mario, but I can't. He started

(15:16):
really thrown down. The peasants in his town were on
strike because they had no food. So el Kiko, he's
like sixteen or seventeen, him and a friend just find
one of the big landlords who's starving everyone, take all
of his money by putting a gun in his face,
and give the money to the strike committee to get
distributed to the families who need it the most. And
that this more or less sets his expectations for how

(15:38):
to engage in struggle for the rest of his life. Yeah, yeah,
for thirty more years or so. Yeah, this is what
this man does.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, it's just again like I cainging back to that
past book, like the shit that these people got up to.
It's just like there's this one sentence paragraph in the
past book which is still my favorite sentences been written,
which is De Ruti had a great fondness to children,
which is why he risked his life robbing banks to
fund their education. Yeah, and they traveled all of like

(16:09):
he like goes to Cuba, goes to Mexico, like I think,
like the routine. Cuba tried to organize cane planters, and
the cane planters, like the cops tried to crack down him.
So he burnt down the house of the cane and
murged two people and was like, I have to leave
Cuba and never come back.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
Yeah, it's herty won a lot of places in exactly
that fashion.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
Just Shenanigans are outstanding.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah, yeah, and uprisings are going in both directions. Unfortunately
during this time, the workers are like, let's have anarchist
communism and take care of each other, and the right
wing military is like, let's have a dictatorship. So with
the Republican here in the middle being like, well, both
sides have valid points.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, the Catalan Republicans did their own little uprising as well,
and the anarchists stayed out and the military showed up
and yeah, pretty much host him in the streets.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah. Lots of people died during protests and struggles. Apparently
the anarchists kind of saved the republic along the way
by stopping a military coup in Seville.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, and like a number yeah and again in nineteen
thirty six, right.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Like yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get to that one. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah. It's this kind of tragic story, and they could
have be the cat Lands would have been successful in
October nineteen thirty four if the anarchists had not been
like Nadog, Like, you guys haven't been there for us,
going to be there for you.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, which I I'll put that one on the Republic. Yeah,
that is squarely on them for shooting us a lot.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Okay, have you heard about this this leftist ruby Ridge,
this anarchist Ruby Ridge that happened in nineteen thirty three.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
Casas v Hus. Yeah, yeah, the say status is the
guy right like six Yeah? Yeah, so great book, Anarchist
of Castles vi Hus.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Oh okay, no, I didn't. I only this I found
like this is like really briefly mentioned in the biography
I read, and so then I looked up to a
couple other things about it too, But I have the
version of it I have, and please fill in any
details or any overall things that you think are missing.
So there's a seventy year old anarchist named Sa Stato's
six fingers, and he barricades himself inside of a farmhouse

(18:19):
because the cops wanted to arrest them for having a
protest where some cops had been injured. And when I
say protest, they were trying to have a revolution, right yeah,
And some cops got injured, and so a lot of
people flee town and a bunch of anarchists go hide
in Sea Statos's house, so the Republic bombs the building
or sets fire to it, depending on which source I read, Yeah,
and killed twenty four people. One source was like, killed

(18:41):
the twenty four people who were hold up inside the house,
and one source says after they killed a bunch of
people inside the house, they went around and they found
everyone in town who owned a gun and then murdered them,
which really does make it the dar guess Ruby.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Ridge, Yeah, wow, Yeah, that's what the nray have been
freaking out about.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah. The only one. Only one anarchist is known to
have survived this survived the farmhouse. She was an eighteen
year old named Maria Silver Cruise, and she walked out
with a child in her arms and was like, please
don't murder us, And so she wasn't murdered by the
state until three years later when she was murdered by

(19:20):
the Fascist state for being an anarchist during the Spanish
Civil War three years later. The whole incident, the farmhouse incident,
was a major part of the left in Spain being like,
you know what, fuck the government kind of the thing
that you're talking about here where they're like we we're
not on your side. You you ruby ridged us and
that's not even a thing yet.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah, yeah, they'd pro to ruby read only.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
They were fighting for freedom for all people instead of
white supremacy.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah they were. They were guilty of you
know what was the other guy? He cut down a
shotgun barrel, right, yeah, and yeah and hung out with
terrible hupils.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, the fire stories of one. I've heard that they've
set it on fireing a machineun any he tried to
run out.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah that that makes sense. Cool, but you know what
machine guns down prices?

Speaker 2 (20:12):
Oh no, is it? Chicha Chumbo? Said Ronald Reagan. I
feel like we don't say enough, Like we do have
the Ronald Reagan coin out of that, but we're also
glad he's dead.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
Unless you're listening to this on coolers.

Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, no ads, then you just got to hear that
fun ad pivot and no ads win when really, yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
You got reminded that ron of Reagan is dead. So
you still had a good day. You're welcome, Margaret, that
you too. Fucking death comes first.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah soon, there's only one Margaret. No, that's not true.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
My mom's name is Margaret and my aunt's my family.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
Here's some ads, and now back to the regular show.
While the people who hate listen are trying to dox
me by using the fact that everyone in my family's
named Margaret.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Do you think they got that far? Do they get
this deep? The hate listeners?

Speaker 1 (21:19):
That's one of the things that's so nice about podcasting
is I feel like people don't hate listen to podcasts
as much as they like hate. Hit control f to
find out if you've said something that annoys them on
a you know article.

Speaker 3 (21:32):
Remember like remember like when Twitter first came out with
that button where it's like, maybe you want to read
the article instead of just retweeting it.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, apply to podcasting.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
So the two Sabata brothers, the older brother, Jose who's
an old man now he's twenty two, and al Kiko.
They in some other form los novatos, which it means
the rookies or the apprentices, but it also sort of
means the new or as Google wants to suggest, then newbies.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
I love that. Yes, the nubes, So.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
That's what we're going to use. They're the nubes because
it's the funniest. They form an action group. This is
like a thing that is a big part of a
lot of anarchist resistance throughout time is action groups, essential
affinity groups that people get together and are like, well,
we have shared values and want to get some shit done.
So they formed the Nubes, and they immediately throw themselves

(22:31):
into the struggle. They join some of these uprisings. They
keep trying to declare anarchist communism. They're in the Fia FAI,
the Five, which is the more anarchist core, the larger
anarchos Cinclist union, the C ANDT, and they are training
in the woods. But how to fight and blow shit up?

Speaker 2 (22:49):
Oh yeah, it's a way.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah. And their first gun fight is actually when the
cops try and break that up, they get away. I
think no one's heard on either side.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
A lot of these gunfights just seemed to be like,
h like a paintball tier kind of engagement. Why people
just shoot at each other and no one gets hurt.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Which I mean is kind of a like don't come
any closer thing, right.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, yeah, a lot of people with really shit weapons
firing at each other from a really long way away. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Whenever. Like some of the first pieces I ever did
were about like the nineteenth century nihilist who's kept trying
to kill this zar and all of the more bad shots.
And I kept thinking to myself, by the time the
nineteen thirties roll around, anarchists are not bad shots anymore. Yeah,
they've been practicing, Yeah they've some of these the Sabate
Brothers in particular, pull off some ridiculous shooting at various points,

(23:38):
but not during this particular engagement. So in nineteen thirty three,
more villages declare for anarchist communism. The Nubes show up,
they throw down, the revolt is crushed. The CNT leadership
gets all arrested. This happens so many times during this story.
Is all of the CNT leadership get arrested or whatever. Yeah, yeah,
which is one of the cool things about anarchism is

(23:59):
I mean, it's sucks, but if you can arrest all
other leaders, this kind of doesn't totally.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yeah, they had a big thing. It's really interesting to
like listen to speeches of that time because it's even
distinct from like the anarchism we talk about today. And
it went like they'll be likes because other anarchists would
come to look at the Spanish anarchists and they'd be
like that was a really good speech, Like he had
a real bango. Why didn't everyone clap? And then they'd
be like, well, we don't want to engage in leaderism here,

(24:25):
and so by being here and paying attention, they're showing
their support.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
Damn.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah, but sure it has to be because these people
knew that they would spend like fifty percent of their
lives in prison.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
Yeah yeah, totally or just die the next day.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yeah. Yeah. They were being killed a lot too.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah. El Kiko got arrested for his first time just
hanging out outside of an anarchist bar, but the charges
didn't stick. Three days later he was out. In nineteen
thirty four, the Nubes ran around and they gathered up
all the guns that were abandoned by retreating soldiers during
a nationalist uprising. Like, yeah, this is the this is

(25:04):
what this is what I'm talking to you about. This
was the they when the Catalan Republicans A. Yeah, okay,
I'm guessing no that that makes the most sense.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
I was like reading this and I'm like, man, there's
so much that happened during these like six years that
like anyway.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, yeah, that's why he said they never cemented down
the cobblestone to Barcelona because people were always just putting
them up to make barricades. Again.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
Yeah, and stock probably in all these guns does them
a lot of good, because these are some of the
guns that they use to stop a fascist coup. A
few years later, in nineteen thirty five, al Kiko meets
the woman he will marry, Leona and Casteez Marty, who
frustratingly enough, is only mentioned occasionally in the biography that
I read, But as far as I can tell, he

(25:50):
seems good to her, trusts her, involves her in his
life better than some of the historical anarchists men that
I've read about. Frankly, I think that the person who
wrote the biography, Sabote, does not think incredibly highly of women,
and I had to do a lot of research to
fill in the gaps in the history where women did things.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
It's disappointing Spanish anarchists have generally been much better in
gender terms.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
No, totally. I was like, I was talking about this
with someone earlier today, and we were talking about how, like,
you know, you got to kind of grade on a
curve when you talk about like feminism and history. But
anarchists in Spain were ahead of that curve overall. Yeah,
in the nineteen thirties and forties, well, thirties, mostly in
nineteen forties they're mostly dead or in France, as we'll
talk about, or Mexico. Yeah, fair enough. And so then

(26:41):
it's like particularly annoying that this biography is like Noddingrea.
A lot of the women.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
Super disappointing, like even like I know, at points in
his life to Ruchie was a house husband because his
partner earned more than him. Yeah, so he stayed stayed
home and looked after the kids, like yeah. And of
course women for in the anarchists militia legally initially, and
they had they loved, some rejected marriage even like Republican
Catalonia had the right to abortion and yeah, divorce like yeah,

(27:10):
which is relatively unusual with the Tony Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
And then h yeah good and frank good feminism and
then and then fascism.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
Yeah, bad history, I guess.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
And speaking of fascism. On July eighteenth, nineteen thirty six,
Spain had a civil war. If you want to hear
more about that, you can listen to James tell me
about this particular part of it, and Jose and Alkiko
are alight, all right, sign me up. Let's go. Let's
go fucking fight the fascist only Actually, the Nubs started
working a couple of days ahead of time, because anti

(27:44):
fascist intelligence, I think is sometimes better than state intelligence
attracking fascists. Yeah, the anarchist in Barcelona knew that this
was this was happening, So a few days before the
Sabate brothers, Sabate Brothers and others just went around and
rated houses and stole all their guns and shit. Yeah,
which rules, thanks for the loot box.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah. The all the German anarchists who have been exiled
living in Barcelona were like, you know, there are some
Nazis in that house, and they guarantee they have a
shit ton of guns. And they found a ship ton
of guns. They got like a big machine gun that
they put in the back of a truck and proceeded
to use a technical and by the time the actual coupstar.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Tube, which is a thing we're thinking about when we
think about how disproportionately armed the right and the left
doar in the United States.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Mark Boxes.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah. So the fascist stage a coup anyhow, or they tried.
The fascist Franco invaded his own country. In Barcelona, anarchists
and the cops stopped the together, sort of not together,
but the two of them stopped the fascist coup. Yeah,
see lots of episodes of that. We've done about that.
Soon the Sabote brothers and the rest of the Nubes

(28:58):
joined the anarchists militias and go off to the front.
Olkiko decided that he was going to stop cutting his
hair and his beard until Spain was free of fascists.
Oh I can really get behind that. Yeah, because he's
like twenty or what, remember his rules. I'm just so
into it.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
This led to a bunch of shit where people assumed
he was one of the Russians who had come to help.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
Amazing.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah, So people would come up and practice their Russian
on him and he'd be like what.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Look.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yeah, And because he's really cool, he stole some rich
assholes super expensive fancy sports car then and he was
like they were like, oh, we need we need cars
to get to the front, but we need to steal
them from rich people. So he goes and steals this
like fancy sports car and then they're like, what are
you gonna do with a sports car? So he cuts

(29:52):
the back half of it off and welds it to
a truck to make a van.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
Amazing, And this is his chad.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
For the rest of the war. This is what he's
cruising around him on this thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
I mean, wouldn't we all?

Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yeah? Wow. This is what you get when you give
people a prenticeship at the age of ten and a
rifle and an address of rich people.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, totally, and they act and actually moral cause that
is worth fighting for.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Yeah, it's constant human Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
And he also and one of the things that comes
up around this time too, is that al Kiko is
not bloodthirsty. He kills a bunch of people in this story, right,
but right away he's like the enemy is fascism and
he is opposed to needless violence. He actually during the
war hid some anti fascist members of the upper class

(30:51):
from the non anarchist Republicans who are trying to kill
them for being rich. This is the best I can
parse out. Yeah, And basically it's like, this is about
redistributing wealth, not murdering people. And there's something that I've
always been trying to explain, like what do you do
with the billionaires, Like, well, we just need them to
stop being billionaires.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
The method by.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
Which we do that up to that, yeah, we go, yeah,
they go choices like yeah, there's I was reading about
a village that collectivized because they when they went the
anarchist militia columns went to the front, they collectivised the
villages right on their way and they were like inspecting
one village or something. And because they rotated, they rotated
troops out of the front line, right, so they would
go and work on the harvest and then come back

(31:30):
to the front line, and then go work on the
harvest and come back to the front line. So didn't
have enough rifles for everyone. And they were like where
is the priest And people like, oh, he just works
in the fields now with everyone else. And then I
didn't you kill him? And they were like no, there
was no need, Like he just stopped being a priest. Yeah,
they stopped working for the authority that's sucking everything up.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah. Now, and and I guess the priest had married
a local girl. Was like oh, yeah, I've been looking
for an out.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah totally yeah, hell yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
Unfortunately, not everything went well during the Spanish Civil War.
As the war went on, communists started trying to kill
all the anarchists and kept like sending the anarchist units
to like run into machine gun nests and shit was
you'll be shocked to know. Didn't help anyone win the war.
And we've covered that bunch of times on the show.

(32:20):
We probably will a bunch more times. Yeah, but after
one unit, one anarchist unit suffered eighty percent casualties, El
Kiko was like, you know what, fuck this guy. So
he went and he shot the communist officer who sent
all the anarchists to die. After leaving the asshole to
die in the snow, Alkiko and three friends fucked off
to Barcelona and his cool Frankenstein van.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Very stealthy, which you've murdered your commander to take your
legs signature vehicle?

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yeah, Well, and then he goes and he shows up
to the CNT and he's like, hey, I shot the
communist guy kept murdering my friends. Can you transfer me
to a different unit. I don't think that one's gonna
work out for me. Amazing, But they don't transform to
another unit. Instead, they say, well, how about you become
a super cool anarchist spec ops guy who rescues anarchists

(33:07):
from the Cheka, the Czech are the Russian secret police
or fucking everything up in Spain, including killing all their
own people. Yeah, it wasn't a good time to be
a Soviet. The other Soviets kept murdering you.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
Yeah, I did like to murder.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
Yeah, and so Elkiko was like, well, you don't end
up with a name like the guy without being willing
to say I'm your guy. That's my joke. That only
kind of holds up because Kiko might have also just
been short for Francisco. But he did. He became a
cool anarchist spec ops guy, along with another anarchist whose
name was Elebsinio, which more or less means the Ethiopian. Yeah,

(33:45):
and he had that name because he had quote Afro
type hair. I don't know whether that means he was
a black Spanish anarchist or more likely a white guy
with really curly hair and an unfortunate nickname.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, that's bad, That's that's how fortunated.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, I know a lot of people were trying.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
To get to Ethiopia, like a lot of the black
volunteers who fought, certainly their black Americans, like there was
a one of them had it. He wrote something called
this isn't Ethiopia, but they'll do. They were like, well,
they specifically wanted to kill Italian fascists, right, which they
even got the chance to do. But yeah, yeah, a
lot of the black folks who fought it was like

(34:22):
a kind of a rollback strategy, same as the Italians
and Germans, right, like, well we'll beat them here and
then we'll beat them in Italy and yeah, Ethiopia and
Germany and everywhere else, now that this makes sense, Yeah,
Sadly it didn't didn't work out.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
No, for a lot of reasons, most of which I
think can be pointed at the Western world enforcing a
blockade only on the Republican side and like not in
a blockade like keep the Germans out from anyway whatever.
And again I don't think get helped with the checker

(34:57):
went around murdering everyone on their own side.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah, yeah, killing like way more anarchists than you did. Fascist.
There was a fascist fuck what was his name? He
was part of a French fascist group that was funded
by the looreal like like because you're worth it, loreal right,
like shit, yeah, yeah, fascism, because you're worth it, And
like he was actively sabotaging. I forget what his name was.

(35:20):
He was in a headquarters company of one of the
international units and was actively sabotaging all their weapons. And
like they were so busy looking for fucking anarchists that
this guy just got to take a free run. Cool.
People died because of it. Great, cool, Thank you Soviet communists.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
So fortunately the kid and el Absinio rescue and go
and rescue an anarchists from check a hands And that's
like his first new thing. Now that he does this,
he has a new job. And then after some nonsense
in May nineteen thirty seven where the Soviets tried to
take the anarchist positions in Barcelona by force, Elki did

(36:00):
some fast and furious shit and freed four anarchist prisoners
while they were being transferred. Oh cool, Yeah, there's so
much fast and furious shit in this.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Yeah, I thought you were going with air bomber or
fast and furious shit. You know where you accidentally transfer
thousands of machine guns to hotels in.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
Mexico, No, no, just the I don't remember which one
it is, where they you know, stop a prisoner transport
bus and then free their guy or whatever. So anarchist
becops are doing their thing. A local fascist Alkiko's home
village was trying to reinstate capitalism within the anarchist held areas.
He just like was like, hey, I'm a fascis. It's

(36:37):
like the area is under anarchist control. And he's like, hey,
I'm like a fascist and a capitalist. I've got all
this stuff and you need it, so I'm gonna sell
it really expensive. And everyone kept being like, my guy,
this isn't gonna go well, you like really shouldn't do this,
and he was like, nah, whatever. So then Alqico shows

(36:59):
up lets himself in the guy's house and suddenly the
guy isn't around anymore. The Soviets keep doing their thing.
They're fucking everything up, and soon al Kiko is in
prison in the hands of the quote new quote unquote
revolutionary police. And the reason that he's in prison is
he helped a man forge papers to get out of
conscription into the Soviet run army. Okay, Yeah, and one

(37:20):
of Alkiko's friends was actually murdered by the Republican police
over this. Alkiko only survived because the CNT was able
to get him transferred out of the hands of the cheka.
But they couldn't free him. They couldn't ge him out
of prison entirely. So he just accepted his fate and
resigned himself to prison, where he still is today. No,
he he's set about to free himself because tunnels are back.

(37:45):
It's been too long since we've had a tunnel.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
Love a tunnel.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
Oh my god, so long. I know, I know, we
came out strong, yeah, but this one, Okay, the story,
this part of the story is a happy ending, but
the tunnel doesn't. He spends weeks digging a tunnel under
his cell, and when he finally breaks free into daylight,
after like so many like wrong turns and like all

(38:10):
this wild shit, he's like, all right, I'm gonna go
back to my cell and wait until nighttime and then
I'm going to sneak out during nighttime. But they nabbed him.
They figured it out before he went back out again,
and so he went. He got taken to a maximum security. So, however,
he was getting a ton of movement support because the
anarchists with the largest chunk of the Spanish working class,

(38:31):
and he was already kind of a hero. They just
don't have as much systemic power as the communists, so
he bribes the guards to let him have conjugal visits
with Leonor. His wife smuggles him a hand grenade and
a sorry, a grenade and a handgun. A hand grenade
and a gun. Whatever hand can be in either of
those doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
Now that he has those things, he sets about to
escaping to whether anarchists come with him. Some of the
other prisoners chose not to come, and so they made
sure in order to keep the other prisoner from getting implicated.
They were like, all right, we're gonna lock you up,
but just so that people don't think you were with us,
And so they like lock up the other prisoners. They
make their way to the warden's office. They're just like

(39:11):
disarming and threatening everyone on their way, you know, and
tying everyone up, not hurting anyone. Actually, they do this
whole thing with hurting anyone. It's kind of impressive. They
point a gun at the warden and say sign papers
to say that we can go free, and the Warden's like, ah, yeah,
I could do that.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
You know, to the other ocean.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Yeah, And so they escaped. His two commids, his two companions.
They get sent back to the front or they go
back to the front and they fight fascists for a while,
but then they leave, so then the communists execute them.
Sabote and his brother in law tried to walk forty
miles to safety, but some guards were like, who the
fuck are you? Show me your papers, and Sabote is like,

(39:55):
if I show them my papers, I'm going to die
that they just killed my friends. So he's like, oh, yeah, totally,
let me get my papers out of my coat. But
instead of his papers, he pulled out a gun, and
instead of giving them his papers, he killed all four
of them. So you do it.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, it's a universal passport, right, Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
But they were waiting for him in Barcelona, the cops
were so a chase scene happens. This guy's fucking life.
The cops spot him at the station, so he takes
off running across and through trains like amazing, yeah, no,
like this yeah, And then in order to get out there,
they're bringing a cordon around the area around the station,

(40:41):
so he hijacks a horse drawn carriage because petrol is
getting around. Yeah, yeah, amazing, and he like basically sticks
a gun in the guy's side. It's like, hey, could
you drive me through the police court and the guy's like, yeah, okay,
And this actually happens a lot in this guy's life
where he ends up in these very civil conversations with
people that he's robbing or like, because they actually kind
of most of them like him.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, he's waste on trying to hurt
them or take anything from them necessary, right, like, at
least in this case.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah, And in some ways it's like the gun is
almost like plausible deniability. It's like, well, you weren't in
on it. I had a gun on you.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yeah, right, Yeah, he's a win win feet Yeah, and
that's going to come up more later, So I'm not
just pulling that out of nowhere. But did he leave
the war just because large chunks of his own side
were trying to kill him?

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Of course not. There were fascists to fight and a
revolution to defend, so he signed up with the Drudi Column,
an anarchist unit. He won the Medal for valor, and
a desperate struggle to hold back the fascists all the while.
At this point the high command of the Republican Army
they already fled into France, and Sabote's unit was the

(41:48):
last to leave Barcelona as the fascist rolled through the country.
Just like these low, low prices will roll through your
head or you press forward fifteen seconds approximately six times.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
It's your choice.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
None, yeah, and we're back okay. Meanwhile, his older brother Jose,
he's been leading anarchist battalion at this point, but when
the war is over, he's captured by the fascists and
he spends a while in prison, but he does survive
the war. And then Franco came through and was like, well,

(42:30):
I'm a fascist and I've just taken over the country,
so I'm gonna be really nice to everyone when the
hearts and minds. Yeah, yeah, buying killing everyone. He just
killed a fuck ton of people. This is the guy
who at the beginning he has like a quote that
I don't have directly in front of me, but he
has a quote that's something like, I am willing to
murder half of Spain to rule the other half. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
Yeah, And he was pretty consistent on that. That wasn't
a one off kind of vibe for him. Yeah, it
was more or less his defining principal italy. He's only
moral stunes.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, yeah, So hundreds of thousands of people were put
to death, mostly legally, of course, because you know law man.

Speaker 2 (43:11):
Yeah yeah, yeah, that made it okay. It's just the
important thing about laws is that it's fine. I've just
spent a week on the border watching like the little
children being concentrated in in in what one might call
camps in the desert, and that was legal, So it's okay.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
It's just the opposite of dispersed camping.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good. It's easier to clean
up afterwards.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
Hip hop, I can't. Okay, that's the end of my
sad jokes about that. It's fucking awful. Yeah, it's fucking horrific.
Yeah what it boorders are bad. Yeah, speaking of concentration camps,
Sabata and his family fleet of France where the fate
of the anti fascists awaited them, which is their friends
put them on concentration camps.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
Now love that for France.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
This didn't have the same meaning yet the word concentration camp.
It's not nice fun times, but it's not.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
Whatever.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Yeah, it's not a death camp like it's it's it's
distinct from that. It's just an extremely shitty situation which
you can't leat out of him.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, unless you're al Kiko, in which case you can escape.
He did fair enough, but he escaped and he like
spent a while like wandering the Pyrenees mountains, and then
he was like, man, fuck this, and he went back
to the concentration camp. And no specific reason is given
for this, But then by doing more research about it, One,

(44:38):
I don't know because the biographer didn't bother to tell
me what Leoner is doing at the time, right, so
maybe his wife is still there or maybe she came
with him, I'm not sure. And two, all of the
anarchists are all in one place, so they're organizing, and
he's like probably He's like, all right, well I should

(44:58):
go be where the anarchists are organized. Yeah, and he
heads on back. And then I remember, you knew about
this like little known sequel to the Spanish Civil War,
Spanish Civil War two electric boogloo. Yeah only it was,
but you know, like each time they have to make
it bigger. So this was called World War two.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
Oh okay, fascinating, Well went down in that one.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
A lot of stuff that I feel weird making jokes about.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The famously anti fascist segregated the
United State Toommy came to Save the Day.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
I Love No No. We talked about this in the
Josephine Baker episode that she like refused to play. She
was a black woman from the US who became a
French spy and did all this amazing shit, and at
some point she was like playing for the troops. She
was one of the most famous women in the world,
and she was like, I won't play for the US
troops while they're segregated. They better desegregate at least for

(45:56):
my fucking show.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
Yeah. This is like Paul Robeson refuse to do a
concert when he heard out that they the purges were
happening in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, right,
and they one of the old Bolshevik trials of the
sort of old bolsh Fixes happening, and he heard about
it and he was like, this, this fucked up. I
can't go sink. Yeah, I got whited. They're doing basically
that's cool. Yeah, cool guy.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
So maybe you know this part better than I do.
I've run across two sources that say conflicting things, and
it is a big difference. The concentration camps were opened
up and the surviving Republicans from Spain were conscripted into
mostly labor and some to go be cannon fodder. I
don't know whether this was the French government before the
Vicci government, or whether it was the Nazi controlled French government.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
So the I guess to use like a militaristic term.
Military aged men were required to conscript in the free
French shand.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
That's what I thought. Okay, I've run across both and
it confused me.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
Yeah, I just wrote a long thing about this kind
of they called their like so that they're not in
the French over. France has a different relationship to journalism
than other European powers, so like, there's a very famous
unit called Lan Nueve write the people who liberated Paris,
who were mostly Spanish anarchists. They wanted to call their
half tracked vehicles de ruti and us casso, but they

(47:17):
weren't allowed to that called.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
Okay sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Relatively notable anarchists and they had to call them like
don Quixote instead, but they named other ones after battles
in Spain. Yeah, but yeah, they end up in the
the Army of Chad, the Army of Chad Zura as well,
but Chad like the country as well as as well
as the name. So they were the marching regiments of Chad.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
So yeah, so the so Sabat and the other anarchists,
they're basically being told like, yeah, go fight at the
front or a lot of them were conscripted to do
labor and build factories and ship and so Sabate wound
up building helping build a gunpowder factory, which turns out

(48:08):
useful later. Yeah, it's just great, yeah, serendipity. Yeah, France
didn't last too long in World War Two, so soon
he's in hiding and having a kid. His daughter Poquita
is born in nineteen forty one, the only one of
his children that at least the biographer I read was
able to provide me the information about, and he joins

(48:30):
the French resistance with the Spanish marquy. Yep, who are
the Spanish monkey, you might ask? Well, you wouldn't ask you.
Probably no books worth of information about them that I
will probably try and convince you to tell me at
some point soon. But to tell the audience real quick, yeah,
I'm glad you asked. Maquis is the Corsican course goes

(48:53):
a small island of the Mediterranean that France pretends is French.
And the Corskin word for the shrubby woods on Mediterranean
is my key basically, And so it's like saying the bush.
So the fighters are retreating into the bush and kind
of in the same way that the Irish were, like
the Bog soldiers or whatever. And that's where that ship.

(49:16):
The name of your right wing people in the UK,
yours if you live in the UK.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Yeah, the Tories conceived, Yeah right, conservative?

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Isn't the tour I'm going to get this completely embarrassingly wrong.
Isn't that the word that comes from the Irish Bog fighters?

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Yeah, it comes I believe it does come from. Yeah,
it's a reference to Yeah, something from island. I can't remember.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
I believe it's the the the Irish radicals who were
fighting against Cromwell when giside Ireland. Anyway, Yeah, I just
forgot the way. So the Spanish Monkey are the Spanish
ones of these gorilla fighters. That's the name, the Spanish Monkey.
And these are the name that the Spanish gorillas who

(49:57):
keep up the fight against fascism, including most direct in
France during the Nazi occupation, but also the Spanish occupation,
which no longer is being called an occupation, even though
it's still literally someone invaded and took over Spain and
declared it fascist. They might be more familiar to the
modern audience as the guerrilla fighters in Pans Labyrinth, since

(50:18):
that movie is set in nineteen forty four, and I
think the McKee in Pans Labyrinth were anarchists, But it
is worth noting that the McKee were of all sorts
of different politics. Communists and monarchists were involved in some
of this stuff. In Madrid apparently as mostly communists, and
Barcelona's mostly anarchists, at least according to one particular source,

(50:39):
Every source about all of this stuff is really biased
either communist or anarchist, and wants to completely write the
other one out of history.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
The source that I read was more biased in the
communist direction about this particular part of the Maquis before
the Spanish Maquie got back into Spain. While they're in France,
they functioned up against the Nazis. Ten thousand of them fought,
and that's not the focus of this particular episode. But
to quote a nineteen forty five book, The Undefeated, by
Martha Gellhorn. During the German occupation of France, the Spanish

(51:14):
Maquie engineered more than four hundred railway sabotages, destroyed fifty
eight locomotives, dynamated thirty five railway bridges, cut one hundred
and fifty telephone lines, attacked twenty factories, destroying some factories totally,
and sabotaged fifteen coal mines. They took several thousand German prisoners,
and most miraculous considering their arms, they captured three tanks
in the southwest part. Yeah right, fuck can they do

(51:36):
it with them?

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Afterwards?

Speaker 1 (51:40):
In the southwest part of France, where no Allied armies
have ever fought, they liberated more than seventeen towns, so
they're fucking cool. And then we actually don't really know
what al Qiko was up to personally during all this period,
besides the fact that he was fighting the Nazis. And
we also know that the gunpowder factory that he built
in December nineteen forty two suddenly blew up.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
Yeah some dots, it will never be joined.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
And someone who was caught for it had a photo
in his pocket of a group that included him, And
this is yeah, this comes up a bunch that they
keep catching people with like photos of their friends in
their pockets, and I like, don't get me wrong, I
like that I can look pictures of my friends by
pulling something out of my pocket that is my phone.

(52:28):
But I'm also not in the middle of a gorilla war.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
Yeah upstake fail yeah in that, but wow.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Meanwhile, El Chico has set himself up as a plumber
and a small town with his wife and daughter and
immediately starts guiding French refugees across the border into Spain.
Like this is befo. He's going to do the opposite
a little bit, you know. Yeah, yeah, and all the
while are straight at Chiro does not drink or smoke.

(52:56):
There's a long history, a kind of weird history of
anarchists being either sober or vegetarian or both.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Yeah, I have no evidence about him being vegetarian, but
he was sober.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
He's Yeah. They were definitely they were like they were.
They were like anarchists at atheneums as the English were,
where like they weld. They were very committed to ongoing education,
and part of that was health education. The anarchists were
really early on in like healthy diet and exercises a
way to combat like the ills of modernity and factory labor.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
I mean, makes sense.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
They were not wrong, they were Yeah, they were very right.
They like they would get people down from Switzerland to
talk about like Swiss gymnastics and shit, it's wild.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
Hell yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
And yeah, you can still find good anarchist vegan food
in Barcelona.

Speaker 1 (53:43):
Hell yeah. So after the war, the Spanish anarchists in
France had a big meeting. They managed to sort of
get over a lot of their differences because joining the
Republican government had been really divisive among the anarchists. But
they had a meeting and they were like, all right,
we should probably just get together, stop fighting and go
fuck up Franco, shouldn't we And they were like, yeah,

(54:07):
that's what we should do. But they wanted to send
some some delegates down into Spain to talk with all
of the anarchists who were still hold up in the
mountains and stuff, because a lot of anarchists never left
right nineteen thirty nine, a lot of anarchists just took
to the mountains and fucking lived there. And that's kind
of our pants Labyrinth care heroes. They needed some super

(54:27):
cool elite spec OP anarchists to guide some delegates into France.
Why not turn to El Qico and L Ebsinio, as
well as L Rosette, which literally means the rosette, It's
just spelled different. They all had cool names. Giving yourself
a cool name with your friends is cool and good.
So al Qiko and his friends just went right back

(54:49):
to doing what they do. They meet up with the
anarchists in Barcelona, they learn which fascists have killed which anarchists.
They set about raising the money to fight back. And
can you guess how they said about raising the money
to fight start a grill warriors the fascist.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Did they go fund me?

Speaker 1 (55:09):
Yeah, it was like a combination of like gofundmes and
then like a couple like benefit shows, they did a yeah,
and then they rob rich people. Most of it actually
came from the robbery. Yeah, oh interesting, not the punk
cake with a vegan meal before, No, weirdly yeah huh.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Yeah nice strength.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Yeah. One time they robbed the guy in his house
and they left him a note. We are not robbers,
we are libertarian resistance fighters. What we have just taken
will help in a small way to feed the orphaned
and starving children of those anti fascists that you and
your kind have shot. We are people who have never
and will never beg for what is ours. So long
as we have the strength to do to do so,

(55:50):
we will fight for the freedom of the Spanish working class.
As for you, Gariga, that's the guy's name. Although you
are a murderer and a thief, we have spared you
because we, as libertarians appreciate the value of human life,
something in which you have never nor likely to understand.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
That's phenomenal. We were talking about cringe email signature quotes before,
but if you could just put that one in the
email signature total, that would let people know you weren't
fucking around.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
Yeah. We are people who have never and will never
beg for what it's ours. So long as we have
the strength to do so, we will fight for the
freedom of the Spanish working class.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
Yeah. Phenomenally based.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
Yeah. And so, if you're curious, how do you become
a folk hero? The fastest way if you're trying to
like speed run folk hero robin hood, this is how you.
People fucking loved these people, now, not the fascist. The
fascist didn't like them very much. But regular people. He
didn't hide his identity. He was robbing people in his

(56:52):
hometown where everyone knew him. He mostly rolled up and
said soy el Gico, I am elk Eco and people
would be like, oh shit, I give up. Yeah, yeah,
I know how to say. Which is a really good
reason to have a reputation for not hurting the people
you rob, because if you have a reputation for not

(57:14):
hurting the people you rob, then there's no reason to
fight back.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
Right, You're just gonna give them some stuff and then
they're gonna leave.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
And he's also very clearly capable of killing people, so
you don't you don't want to create they create any
stress for him.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
Yeh, exactly. And this is the story of one guy.
He's absolutely one of many. He's not robin Hood, he's
one of He's one of the merry men with no
robin Hood to speak of. Apparently his friends don't clap
when he gives speeches. They are all robin Hoods. For
the sake of brevity and narrative, I'm leaving out an
endless string of heroic people who fought Franco. But this man,

(57:50):
he's just getting started. Like literally, this is the preamble
to the stuff he's famous for. We have not gotten
to what he is famous for yet. He is not
famous for, let's see, escaping prison twice, killing four cops
who tried to arrest him, fighting against the Nazis for years,
fixing people's toilets, stopping a fascist coup maybe twice, fighting
on the last unit of Flee Barcelona. No, he's famous

(58:12):
for what comes next, which we'll talk about on Wednesday.
That's my best cliffhanger I think I've ever done.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
That was banging. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
I know you aren't going to clap, but you know,
just I don't want to be guilty of legalists leaderism.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we show our support by being.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
Yeah, that's right. And if people want to show support
for you, James and what you do or whatever you
want to plug.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
Yeah, they can participate in mutual eight. That would be
very nice. That would make me happy. They can be
nice to animals, that will make me happy. And if
when they've done those things, then they're allowed to follow
me on Twitter dot com. But if you have to
submit like a couple of photos, yeah, yeah, get like

(59:05):
get a selfie where you're like like, you know, battery chickens, right,
they don't want to be there. Take a selfie if
you've let them run free, and you can follow me.
It's at James Stout. Don't do crimes now, I'm only
legal crimes mm hmm yeah, or like in times of
war then you know all bets. Yeah yeah yeah, until then,
keep it legal. Yeah. Be nice to animals. Yeah, Feed

(59:28):
a bird. Feed a fucking bird that's just flying around.
Just give it some feed and then then you can
follow me.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
Okay, okay, m And the thing I want to plug
is that if you like mutual aid and revolution, but
you kind of sometimes prefer to just sit around with
your friends and imagine it at a table rolling dice
that I'm working on a role playing game called The
Number City that as of right now, maybe not when
you're listening to it, but when it's being released, is
being kickstarted and it's called the Number City. And if

(59:55):
you google a Number City kickstarter you'll find it. And
it's about gangs and the occult and fighting the Immortal
God King and there's no money in it and it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
I will believe that's fun. Yeah, I am writing a book.
I should have mentioned. I should know if you like
anarchist killing people, then I am writing a book about
anarchists at war with ak Press, and it will be
out when I finished writing it, and then they finished
see it, and when I have been to some different
places where anarchists are currently engaged in conflict against fascism

(01:00:32):
in the state.

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
Hell yeah, and we're excited to tell you that very
soon or currently, depending on when you're listening to this.
All cool Zone Media shows will be available one hundred
percent ad free through the cooler Zone Media subscription, available
exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
Whoo Absolutely Professional Wednesday.

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
Cool People Who Did Call Stuff is a production of
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