August 22, 1937

1937Pedro Durruti, Spanish anarchist and Falangist revolutionary (born 1911)^[†]

Marciano Pedro Durruti Domingo was a Spanish anarchist and Falangist revolutionary. The younger brother of Buenaventura Durruti, he followed him into the Spanish anarchist movement, becoming a local leader of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) in the Leonese country. After a series of arrests for his anarchist activism, he moved to Madrid, where he came under the influence of Falangism. He attempted to create a synthesis of anarchism and Falangism, and encourage the merger of anarchist and Falangist organisations. In 1936, he joined the Falange Española de las JONS and attempted to set up a meeting between his brother and the Falange's leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera, but his brother rejected his overtures. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he was briefly imprisoned by the Republicans in the Cárcel Modelo, but he was released following an appeal and managed to make his way to the Nationalist zone. There he was implicated in an anti-Francoist conspiracy by Falangist leader Manuel Hedilla, and Durruti himself attempted to organise a coup d'état to overthrow Francisco Franco's military junta and seize power for the Falange. After being found guilty of rebellion by a military tribunal, he was executed by a firing squad made up of other Falangists. The motivations for Durruti's execution have been questioned by historians, who largely conclude that he was executed because of his relation to his brother.