6 'From the Summit to the Abyss': The Contradictions of Individualism and Collectivism in Spanish Anarchism

The Anarchist in Uniform: The Militarisation of Anarchist Culture during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

“…17 These grupistas were largely young, unmarried, unskilled workers with deep familial and social roots in the movement who had been hardened into anti-state violence during the campaign of pistolero violence provoked by the economic hardships which followed the end of the First World War. 18 Within these, it was the Nosotros Group (Grupo Nosotros) (whose notable members included Buenaventura Durruti, Juan García Oliver, Francisco and Domingo Ascaso, Miguel García Vivancos, and Ricardo Sanz) which possessed the most radical insurrectionary ideology. Described by Chris Ealham as having an 'essentially military' conception of revolutionary strategy, Nosotrosto the chagrin of the intellectual grandees within the movement's ideological body, the Iberian Anarchist Federation (Federación Anarquista Ibérica; FAI)discarded the need for an organised mass movement as a prerequisite to revolution, calling for power to be seized by a cohesive force of experienced fighters.…”