Spanish anarchist Germinal García Campo in front of an old CNT 'safehouse', Rue de Lancry, Paris (1997)

Spanish anarchist Germinal García Campo in front of an old CNT 'safehouse', Rue de Lancry, Paris (1997)

Stuart Christie (2011): 'The entrance to Germinal’s apartment building in the 10th arrondissement. This Paris safehouse was used by fugitives and anti-Francoist guerrillas of the CNT’s Defence Commission such as José Lluis Facerias, ‘Face’, (killed in a guardia civil ambush in 1957) and Francisco Sabaté Llopart (‘el Quico’ ambushed in January 1960 by the guardia civil – from which he escaped, hijacking a train in the process – only to be gunned down in a San Celoni street by a Falangist sometent, a standing fascist posse comitatus). It was here that Lucio Urtubia, the bank robber who almost brought down Citibank with his forged travellers’ cheques in 1977, met Sabaté for the first time. In the 1960s 12 Rue de Lancry was used as a safehouse by the anarchist Defensa Interior (D.I.), a clandestine section of the MLE/CNT-in-exile (Spanish Libertarian Movement) which, from 1962 until 1964, organised a number of international actions and three assassination attempts on the dictator. Subsequently the D.I.’s role was taken over by the ‘First of May’ affinity group

At the end of the Spanish Civil War, 13-year old Germinal was interned in Argeles-sur-Mer concentration camp where he was cared for by an unknown English woman, to whom he was ever grateful. Stowing away on a Danish freighter, the Kitty Skov, from the port of Barcelona, he escaped to the United States, where he remained for a time in New York, passing himself off as a French citizen, returning later to France to became active in the anti-Francoist struggle. Shunning the limelight, but always active in the background, Germinal was secretary of the Paris Local Federation of the MLE; as an employee of Aerolíneas Argentinas he travelled freely and frequently, maintaining close links with the international Spanish anarchist diaspora, especially in Central and South America.

In 1960, prior to the state visit to France of Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev, President De Gaulle’s security services knocked on his door early one morning and ordered him to pack a bag as he was leaving the country.* Escorted to a military airfield on the outskirts of Paris along with other Spanish and French anarchists, they were put on board a French air force plane and flown to Corsica for the duration of Khruschev’s visit where the French government put them up in first class hotels, paid all their expenses and salaries — and apologised to their employers for the inconvenience caused by their temporary deportation.

* In 1976, following the death of Franco and the accession of his annointed successor, Juan Carlos, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing’s government sent ex-Falangist prime minister Adolfo Suárez a formal invitation for a state visit to France. Prior to the Spanish king’s arrival, French Interior Minister Michel Poniatowski repeated the 1960 expulsion and ordered the arrest and temporary deportation of the most prominent, mainly Spanish, anti-fascist activists. The Basques he dispatched to the Île de Ré, and the anarchists, around 20 perhaps, including Octavio Alberola and Ariane Gransac, Lucio Urtubia, Vicente Martí, José Morato, Juan Busquets, Alicia Mur, Gonzalo Sánchez and Carlos Andreu, to the luxurious three star Le Grand Large Goulphar Hotel on Belle-Île-en-Mer, an island off the Britanny coast, where they were guarded for five days by 130 CRS and officers of the Renseignements généraux. Gabriel Auer made a feature-dopcumentary about this farce — ‘Vacance royales’ —in 1980'

Stuart Christie

1997