In memory of our comrade Enrique

It is with deep regret that we inform our sympathisers and readers of the death, at the age of 74, of our comrade Enrique. His unexpected death has put a sudden end to more than 50 years of dedication and contribution to the struggle of the world proletariat. His comrades and friends have certainly suffered a very painful blow. For our organisation and for the whole of the tradition and presence of the Communist Left, it is a deeply-felt loss that we will have to assimilate and return to together.

Recalling the militant career of a comrade like Enrique evokes for all of us who knew him on a personal and political level thousands of memories of his enthusiasm, his solidarity and comradeship. His sense of humour was infectious, not that disbelieving cynicism so common among so-called "intellectuals" and "critics", but the energy and vitality of someone who encourages people to fight, to give the best of themselves in the struggle for the liberation of humanity. This was a comrade for whom, as Marx said, "my ideal of happiness is to fight". For this reason, he was patient and understanding in discussions, knowing how to understand the concerns of those who disagreed with what he defended. But he was also firm in his arguments. It was, as he said, his way of being honest in a fight for clarification that benefits the whole working class. And although he had an enormous theoretical and creative capacity for writing articles and contributions to discussions, Enrique was not what you would call a "theoretician". He participated enthusiastically in sales interventions, leafleting, demonstrations, rallies, etc. He was part of a generation educated to occupy the posts of the democratic state and to take over from Franco's old fogeys, from which Felipe González, Guerra, Albors, etc. emerged. And he had more than enough intellectual, political and personal qualities to have "made a career" in the state as others did; but from the beginning he took the side of the working class in its fight against the bourgeois state for the perspective of communism.

Enrique was one of many young workers driven into the workers' struggle by the numerous strikes in Spain in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which were in fact the expression of the international resurgence of the class struggle that put an end to the counter-revolution after World War II. This was one of the first reasons for Enrique's break with the tangle of leftist groups of all stripes that abounded in that period. While the latter presented the workers' struggles in Asturias, Vigo, Pamplona, Bajo Llobregat, Vitoria, etc. as expressions of the "anti-Franco" struggle and wanted to divert them towards the conquest of "democracy", Enrique understood that they were an indivisible part of a movement of struggles (May 68, Italian Hot Autumn, Cordobazo in Argentina, Poland 70, ...) that confronted the capitalist state in both its "dictatorial" and "democratic" and even "socialist" versions. This internationalist perspective of the class struggle was one of the sources of the enthusiasm that accompanied Enrique all his life. While a large majority of the workers' militants of the 1970s ended up demoralised and frustrated by this misrepresentation of the workers' struggle as a "struggle for liberties", Enrique saw his conviction in the struggle of the world proletariat strengthened. He was an émigré in France, and nothing was more stimulating for him than to go and take part in struggles anywhere in the world (as he had recently had the opportunity to do in the summer of anger in Britain) or to take part in discussions on five continents with comrades who were coming to take part in the historic and international struggle of the working class. He always showed an energy which impressed the younger ones, and this came from his confidence and conviction in the historical perspective of the struggle of the proletariat, the struggle for communism.

Because of this true and consistent internationalism, Enrique ended up breaking with organisations which, with an apparently more radical discourse than that of the "reformists", advocated that the proletariat should take sides in the inter-imperialist conflicts which at that time took the form of so-called "national liberation" struggles. As is the case today, for example, with Gaza, the leftists of the time called for workers to support the guerrillas in Vietnam, or in Latin America, etc. But this false "internationalism" was the exact opposite of what revolutionaries had always advocated in the face of the First and Second World Wars. It was the search for this continuity of true internationalism that led Enrique to seek out the historical tradition of the Communist Left.

The same was true for the task of denouncing the trade unions as organs of the capitalist state. Transcending the disgust produced by trade union sabotage of struggles all over the world, the alternative was not to become disillusioned in the working class or to disavow its struggles against exploitation, but to reappropriate the contributions of the Communist Left (Italian, German-Dutch and then French) to defend the self-organisation of struggles, the workers' assemblies, the embryos of the Workers' Councils.

It was this search for continuity with revolutionary positions that led Enrique to make contact with Révolution Internationale[1] (RI) in France in October 1974, after having found in a bookshop in the city of Montpellier (where he worked) the publication Acción Proletaria[2]; Enrique always said that he was surprised by the speed with which RI responded to his correspondence and came to discuss with him. From that moment on, a rigorous and patient process of discussion took place which led to the constitution of the Spanish section of the ICC in 1976, with a group of young elements also emerging from the struggles. Enrique worked hard to bring these comrades together and stimulate their militant conviction in the international revolution; but he was also able to count on the support and orientation of an international and centralised revolutionary organisation, which transmitted and gave continuity to the historical struggle of the Communist Left. Enrique, who had had to make an initial part of this militant journey almost alone, insisted again and again on taking advantage of this "treasure", of this continuity represented by the International Communist Current. He himself became an active and persevering factor in this transmission of the revolutionary legacy.

With the honesty and critical capacity (including self-criticism) that always characterised him, Enrique recognised that this question of the vanguard organisation was one of those that he found difficult to assimilate. The underestimation and even rejection of the necessity and function of the organisation of revolutionaries was relatively common at that time in the milieu of young people in search of a political orientation, given the "display of strength" that a very young proletariat had shown in the great struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, and which made the activity of revolutionary organisations seem "superfluous". It was also understandable because of the traumatic experiences of the betrayal of the "Socialist", "Communist", Trotskyist, etc. parties, which had left a trail of trauma and mistrust in the working class, and also because of the demoralising action of the alienated militancy in the leftism of the 1970s and 1980s. Enrique in particular acknowledged having been influenced by anarchism[3] and at university he took part in a situationist group. Within the ICC itself, the underestimation of the need for organisation was expressed in councilist tendencies, for which Enrique himself was initially a spokesman, and more dangerously in the refusal to fight such tendencies, in a centrism towards councilism. The fight against these tendencies was decisive in Enrique’s evolution on the organisational question. He did not let himself be carried away by frustration or a feeling of disillusionment, but strove to understand the indispensable necessity of revolutionary organisation and gave himself body and soul to the defence of organisation, which is inseparable from the relentless struggle against opportunism, against the pressure of the ideology of the bourgeoisie in the ranks of the working class.

Enrique was always a patient polemicist, capable of explaining the origin of the confusions and errors that expressed that ideological influence alien to the proletariat and at the same time of pointing out the theoretical and political contributions of the workers' movement that helped to overcome them. This spirit of permanent combat was another of his contributions, reacting to every error, every misunderstanding, going to their roots, drawing lessons for the future.
What he always revolted against, energetically and intransigently, was the contamination of political debates by hypocrisy, duplicity, slander, slanderousness and manoeuvring, in other words, by the behaviour and morals of the enemy class, the bourgeoisie. There too Enrique was always a bulwark for the defence of the dignity of the proletariat.

The militant trajectory of our comrade Enrique, all his contribution, all that militant passion, all that energy and capacity for work deployed throughout more than 50 years of consistent struggle for the world revolution are not only characteristic manifestations of Enrique's personality. They correspond to the revolutionary nature of the class he so generously served. Bilan, the publication of the Italian Communist Left in the 1930s, which sought to distance itself from all forms of personalisation, advocated that "each militant should recognise himself in the organisation and in turn the organisation should recognise itself in each militant". Enrique represented the essence of the ICC like few others. We will always miss you comrade and we will strive to live up to your example. Let us continue your fight!

ICC, June 2024.

 

 

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[1] Révolution Internationale was the group in France that pushed for the formation of the ICC (which was formed in 1975) after the regroupment of several organisations such as World Revolution in Britain, Internationalisme in Belgium or Revoluzione Internazionale in Italy.

 

[2] Acción Proletaria was - before 1974 - the publication of a group in Barcelona which RI had contacted and which initially moved towards the positions of the Communist Left. The group edited the first two issues of the publication and ended up dispersing under the weight of nationalism and leftism. After that, AP continued to be published in Toulouse and militants of Révolution Internationale smuggled it clandestinely into Spain (still under Francoism); from 1976 with the formation of a section of the ICC in Spain, the ICC took over its publication.

 

[3] In the 1970s, anarchism had an important weight in Spain. To give an example, on July 2, 1977, 300,000 people came to Montjuic for a meeting of Federica Montseny.