Memorial mural for Lucio Urtubia in Aluche, Madrid.
The life of Lucio Urtubia Jiménez (1931 - 2020), an anarchist from
Navarre in northern Spain, is the stuff of legend. As an activist in
1950s Paris he counted André Breton and
Albert Camus among his friends, worked with the legendary anarchist
urban guerrilla Francisco Sabate (El Quico) in attempting to bring down
Franco’s fascist regime, and carried out numerous bank robberies to fund
the struggle to free Spain. But it was in 1977, after having his
earlier scheme to destabilise the US economy by forging US dollars
rejected by Che Guevara, he put his most infamous plan into action,
successfully forging and circulating 20 million dollars of Citibank
travellers cheques with the goal of funding urban guerrilla groups in
Europe and Latin America, and bringing the bank to its knees in the
process. In between he was involved in the kidnapping of Nazi war
criminal Klaus Barbie from his hideout in Bolivia, aided the escape of
Black Panthers from the US and not surprisingly was targeted by the CIA.
Lucio defends his life’s work thus: ‘we are bricklayers, painters,
electricians - we do not need the state for anything. The banks are the
real crooks. They exploit you, take your money and cause all the wars.”
Lucio, therefore, had no moral scruples about forging Citybank
travellers’ cheques. His motivation was not personal gain, but to dent
confidence in this powerful financial institution.
Lucio is — and has been — many things to different people, of which I can give three good examples:
The first is the opinion of the noted Spanish theatre director, Albert
Boadella, the founder of the Els Jonglars theatrical group whose escape
from Spain in the late 1970s was organised by Lucio. Boadella famously
described him as ‘A Quijote who tilted, not at windmills, but at real
giants..
The second is that of Chief Superintendent Paul Barril
of the French police nationale who described Lucio as a criminal
mastermind pulling the strings of an international criminal organisation
of anarchists, like some latter-day Montecristo — a Moriarty of global
terrorism with access to infinite funds from the international anarchist
war chest and dedicated to promoting and funding terrorism and
agitation against the established order around the world…
A third
opinion is that the examining magistrate in the last and biggest of the
criminal cases against Lucio – Louis Joinet – who scandalised police
comissaire Barril by praising Lucio saying he represented everything the
magistrate would have loved to have been – Joinot, incidentally became
the first Advocate General with the French Court of cassation – and has
had Lucio round to dinner twice, first in Matignon, which is the French
equivalent of 10 Downing Street, and more recently at the Elysee, the
French equivalent of Buckingham palace..
None of these opinions
accurately capture the man, certainly not commissaire Barril’s, which is
bollocks — he was clearly grossly exaggerating Lucio’s role as the most
dangerous criminal he has ever met in order to enhance his own
professional standing. As for Boadella’s comparison of Lucio and Don
Quijote, Quijote was a fruitcake and a loner who refused to recognise
that the golden age of his dreams had passed — and failed. Lucio,
however, is not crazy, nor is he a loner and has always been able to
tailor his actions to whatever the technological level of society
required — and he was successful, for a time anyway.
Joinet’s
opinion of Lucio is, I would say, probably closest to recognising the
essence of Lucio inasmuch as in him he sees a man of generous spirit who
values freedom and justice above all else, even above his own life.
“In conditions of private property… “life-activity” stands in the service of property instead of property standing the service of free life-activity.”
— Herbert Marcuse, “The Foundations of Historical Materialism”, Studies in Critical Philosophy (via philosophybits)
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