Lucio Urtubia
Encyclopedia
Expropriative anarchism
Expropriative anarchism is the name given to an anarchist practice carried out by certain anarchist affinity groups in Argentina and Spain which involved theft, robbery, scams and counterfeiting currency. The robberies done were called "expropriations on the bourgoisie"...
. At times compared to Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
, Urtubia carried out bank robberies and forgeries throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In the words of Albert Boadella
Albert Boadella
Albert Boadella Oncins is a Spanish actor and director, one of the founders of the well-known theatre company Els Joglars.- References :...
, "Lucio is a Quijote that did not fight against wind mills, but against a true giant".
Biography
Lucio Urtubia was born in CascanteCascante
Cascante is a town and municipality located in the province and autonomous community of Navarre, northern Spain.During the Roman period, Cascante was known as Cascantum.-External links:**...
, the fifth child in a very poor family. His father, a Carlist
Carlism
Carlism is a traditionalist and legitimist political movement in Spain seeking the establishment of a separate line of the Bourbon family on the Spanish throne. This line descended from Infante Carlos, Count of Molina , and was founded due to dispute over the succession laws and widespread...
was imprisoned and, while in jail, experienced a conversion to communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
.
Recruited for military service
Military service
Military service, in its simplest sense, is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, whether as a chosen job or as a result of an involuntary draft . Some nations require a specific amount of military service from every citizen...
, Urtubia and his companions ransacked a warehouse belonging to their company and deserted, fleeing to France in 1954. In Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
he began to work as a bricklayer
Bricklayer
A bricklayer or mason is a craftsman who lays bricks to construct brickwork. The term also refers to personnel who use blocks to construct blockwork walls and other forms of masonry. In British and Australian English, a bricklayer is colloquially known as a "brickie".The training of a trade in...
, an occupation he continued with throughout his life. Additionally, he became involved with the Young Libertarians of the Fédération Anarchiste and befriended André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
and Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
.
Soon after moving to Paris, Urtubia was asked to hide a member of the Maquis
Spanish Maquis
The Spanish Maquis were Spanish guerrillas exiled in France after the Spanish Civil War who continued to fight against the Franco regime until the early 1960s, carrying out sabotage, robberies , occupations of the Spanish Embassy in France and assassinations of Francoists, as well as contributing...
, Spanish guerrillas who opposed Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
from exile, in his house. The refugee turned out to be the fabled Francesc Sabaté Llopart. Sabaté stayed on with Urtubia for several years, until his death.
Sabaté guided families and libertarians exiled in Toulouse, Perpignan and Paris and members of the old Spanish CNT
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...
in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
, Saragossa, Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
and Pamplona
Pamplona
Pamplona is the historial capital city of Navarre, in Spain, and of the former kingdom of Navarre.The city is famous worldwide for the San Fermín festival, from July 6 to 14, in which the running of the bulls is one of the main attractions...
. Before the imprisonment of Sabaté halted these activities, Urtubia began to emulate his incursions into Spanish territory. Later he undertook a series of robberies and holdups to obtain funds for the revolutionary cause. Accompanied by his inseparable Thompson machine gun
Thompson submachine gun
The Thompson is an American submachine gun, invented by John T. Thompson in 1919, that became infamous during the Prohibition era. It was a common sight in the media of the time, being used by both law enforcement officers and criminals...
which he inherited after Sabaté's death.
By this time, Urtubia's falsification of documents had begun and no guerrilla or exile left him without false papers. He united with other libertarian companions to forge currency in the 1960s. With this strategy they financed numerous groups while attempting to destabilize the capitalist economy. With these activities, in the heat of the Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
, Urtubia proposed to Simeón Rose, the ambassador of Cuba in France, to destroy American interests in France using explosives. This offer was refused, nevertheless. He then presented Ernesto Che Guevara, the Cuban Minister of the Interior, with a plan for the massive forgery
Forgery
Forgery is the process of making, adapting, or imitating objects, statistics, or documents with the intent to deceive. Copies, studio replicas, and reproductions are not considered forgeries, though they may later become forgeries through knowing and willful misrepresentations. Forging money or...
of American dollars. This proposal was likewise rejected and Urtubia left the meeting disillusioned.
The masterful blow that changed his life was the forgery of Citibank
Citibank
Citibank, a major international bank, is the consumer banking arm of financial services giant Citigroup. Citibank was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, later First National City Bank of New York...
travellers' checks
Traveler's cheque
A traveler's cheque is a preprinted, fixed-amount cheque designed to allow the person signing it to make an unconditional payment to someone else as a result of having paid the issuer for that privilege.- Usage :As traveler's cheques can usually be replaced if lost or stolen A traveler's cheque...
in 1977. This criminal undertaking included 8,000 copies of 25 checks worth 100 dollars each and damaged the bank so severely that its stock price fell. The stolen money was used, as always, in the aid of guerrilla movements in Latin America (Tupamaros
Tupamaros
Tupamaros, also known as the MLN-T , was an urban guerrilla organization in Uruguay in the 1960s and 1970s. The MLN-T is inextricably linked to its most important leader, Raúl Sendic, and his brand of social politics...
, Montoneros
Montoneros
Montoneros was an Argentine Peronist urban guerrilla group, active during the 1960s and 1970s. The name is an allusion to 19th century Argentinian history. After Juan Perón's return from 18 years of exile and the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, which marked the definitive split between left and right-wing...
, etc.) and Europe. In spite of the specularity of the forgery, Urtubia was only sentenced to 6 months in jail thanks to an extrajudicial agreement with Citibank, which dropped the charges in exchange for Urtubia's printing plates.
His life has been a continuous adventure: targeted by five international orders, including the CIA; he prepared the kidnapping of the Nazi Klaus Barbie
Klaus Barbie
Nikolaus 'Klaus' Barbie was an SS-Hauptsturmführer , Gestapo member and war criminal. He was known as the Butcher of Lyon.- Early life :...
in Bolivia; collaborated in the flight of the leader of the Black Panthers; interceded in the kidnapping of Javier Rupérez
Javier Rupérez
Francisco Javier Rupérez Rubio, a Spanish politician, diplomat and writer, was born in Madrid on April 24, 1941. He holds degrees in law and journalism from the Complutense University of Madrid...
; mediated in the case of Albert Boadella
Albert Boadella
Albert Boadella Oncins is a Spanish actor and director, one of the founders of the well-known theatre company Els Joglars.- References :...
; and worked with the Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación
Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación
The Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación was a Catalan ultra-left armed group between 1971 and 1973, based mainly in Barcelona, Spain, and in Toulouse, France. It became famous after its dissolving because of the execution by the Francoist regime of one of its members, Salvador Puig Antich, in March...
and later with the Groupes d'action révolutionnaire internationalistes
Groupes d'action révolutionnaire internationalistes
The Groupes d'action révolutionnaire internationalistes were an anti-imperialist group in France in the 1970s. Based mainly in the south, around Toulouse, it formed after the execution by the Francoist regime of the Catalan anarchist Salvador Puig Antich and was close to Spanish anti-fascists...
. He always defended his work, saying "we are bricklayers, painters, electricians - we do not need the state for anything"; "if unemployment and the marginalization created revolutionaries, the governments would already have ended unemployment and the marginalization". Urtubia continues to live in Paris and is now retired.
Popular culture
A documentary on Urtubia's life, directed by the BasqueBasque people
The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...
film directors José María Goenaga and Aitor Arregi has been released in 2009.
See also
- Expropriative anarchismExpropriative anarchismExpropriative anarchism is the name given to an anarchist practice carried out by certain anarchist affinity groups in Argentina and Spain which involved theft, robbery, scams and counterfeiting currency. The robberies done were called "expropriations on the bourgoisie"...
- Miguel GarcíaMiguel García (anarchist)Miguel García was a Spanish anarchist activist, forger, and writer, and was a political prisoner under the regime of Francisco Franco. Born in Barcelona, García worked first as a newspaper seller, then a printer...
- Adolfo KaminskyAdolfo KaminskyAdolfo Kaminsky or Adolphe Kaminsky is a former French Resistance, specializing in the forgery of identity documents, who later went on to assist Jewish emigration to Israel and then to forge identity documents for the National Liberation Front and French draft dodgers during the Algerian War...
(1925-), forger who made false ID for Jewish children during WWII and then for various groups, including Jews emigrating to British Palestine and then the Algerian National Liberation Front
External links
- Official site for the film Lucio, featuring trailer
- Lucio, The Good Bandit: Reflections of an Anarchist
- Interview with Lucio Urtubia: Robbing banks is an honour for me (EuskaraBasque languageBasque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
) - An anarchist in the Paris of the resistance (SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
) - Interview with Lucio: A bricklayer of anarchy (SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
)