"Liberals, Stalinists, marxists and libertarians have vied with one another in their condemnation and misrepresentation of the group and its message. Italian Stalinists accounted association with the group grounds enough upon which to execute political opponents. On May 29, 1937, the Italian Communist Party paper Il Grido del Popolo carried an item which referred to Camillo Berneri as "one of the leaders of the 'Friends of Durruti' Group, which (…) provoked the bloody insurrection against the Popular Front Government in Catalonia [and] was given his just desserts during that revolt at the hands of the Democratic Revolution, whose legitimate right of self-defense no antifascist can deny." There is no evidence at all to connect Berneri with the Friends of Durruti. On behalf of the "Errico Malatesta" group, Domenico Ludovici, an Italian anarchist, retorted that "The unfortunate comrade Berneri was not a member of the 'Friends of Durruti' Group, not that there would be anything wrong in that and it would never excuse the cowardly murder of which he was the victim. No doubt the democratic 'journalist' from Il Grido del Popolo must be a co-religionist of the perpetrators of the barbarous act hence the concern to represent the 'Friends of Durruti' as the provocateurs of the bloodshed, which everybody, the whole world, save ll Grido del Popolo, knows were of 'democratic' derivation."[1] Curious that the Italian anarchists of the Ascaso Column, whose scrupulous commitment to principle over pragmatism frequently set them at odds with their Spanish colleagues, seem to have found little if anything to criticize in the performance of the Friends of Durruti. Even with the benefit of ten years of hindsight, Ernesto Bonomini could speak approvingly of the group.[2]"
[1] Writing in Ideas (Bajo Llobregat) No 24, June 17, 1937, p. 4.
[2] Ernesto Bonomini wrote an eyewitness account of the May events in Barcelona for Volonta No 11, May 1, 1947.
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