Lucio Urtubia

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Lucio Urtubia (2010)

Lucio Urtubia Jiménez (born February 18, 1931 in Cascante , Navarra , Spain , †  July 18, 2020 in Paris , France ) was a bricklayer and anarchist . He became known through direct actions of individual expropriation through actions such as robbery , bank robbery or forgeries .

Life

Lucio Urtubia was born into a poor family of five siblings in Carlist Navarre. His father went to prison as Carlist and out as a communist . At the age of nineteen, Urtubia heard the sentence: “If I could start again, I would become an anarchist.” During military service, he soon discovered smuggling opportunities on the Spanish-French border. Together with others, he robbed a business. Discovered, he deserted and fled to France in 1954 because he was facing the death penalty. In Paris he started working as a bricklayer. There he came into contact with young people from the Anarchist Federation and later with greats like André Breton and Albert Camus . Soon he was asked to hide the anti-French Maquis member Quico Sabaté with him.

Through El Quico contacts arose with anarcho-syndicalists of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) all over France. Sabaté cared for families and libertarians in exile in Toulouse, Perpignan, Paris as well as remaining active members of the former Spanish CNT in Barcelona, ​​Zaragoza, Madrid and Pamplona. After Quico's arrest and detention, Urtubia began to expand its "incursions" into Spanish territory. Eventually he carried out a series of robberies and raids in Europe to raise funds for the revolutionary cause, accompanied by a Thompson submachine gun , bequeathed from Sabaté's legacy. He later stopped doing it for fear of injuring bank employees.

Urtubia had also started to operate as a forger, so that guerrillas or political exiles who had no documents were supplied from his hands. He teamed up with other libertarians in the 60s to counterfeit money. Its aim was to destabilize economies. When Cuba's ambassador to France, Rosa Simeon, suggested blowing up US properties in France after the Bay of Pigs invasion , he refused. However, the proposal to undertake massive counterfeiting of US dollars was examined. However, this was rejected by Che Guevara , Cuban's Minister of Industry in 1962.

His "masterpiece" that changed his life were counterfeit checks from Citibank , the proceeds of which, as always, were used to support guerrilla movements in Latin America (Tupamaros, Montoneros etc.) and Europe. Despite the spectacular nature of the counterfeit, convicted and arrested, he was sentenced to only six months in prison - thanks to legal help in France and an admission from Citibank, which was forced to costly change its printing plates.

Urtubia's life, in the course of which five international arrest warrants were issued against him, reflected some of the political upheavals of the century. With the CIA , he prepared the kidnapping of Nazi Klaus Barbie in Bolivia and is said to have helped a Black Panther leader escape . He participated in the kidnapping of Javier Ruperez and mediated the Albert Boadella case . Urtubia sympathized with the autonomous groups of the Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación and the Groupes d'action révolutionnaire internationalistes (Gari), especially with one of its members, the French Jean-Marc Rouillan.

Lucio Urtubia in front of the Espace Louise Michel social center

Urtubia always defended the work: “We are bricklayers, painters, electricians, we don't need the state, for nothing.” Most recently, he lived in Paris, where he went into exile in 1954, and continued his work as a bricklayer, founded and operated the socio-cultural center Espace Louise Michel in the Belleville district, where he lived until the end. In 2007 the 93-minute documentary Lucio by Jose Mari Goenaga and Aitor Arreg was shot in the Basque Country .

Lucio Urtubia died on July 18, 2020 at the age of 89 in Paris.

literature

  • Lucio Urtubia: Construction Site Revolution. Memories of an anarchist. Association A, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-935936-84-2 .

Web links

Commons : Lucio Urtubia  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The historic Navarrese anarchist Lucio Urtubia dies at 89 in Paris. In: time24.news. July 18, 2020, accessed on July 18, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Urtubia, Lucio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Urtubia Jiménez, Lucio (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish anarchist
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Cascante
DATE OF DEATH 18th July 2020
Place of death Paris