Excerpts from ANARCHISTS IN THE SPANISH REVOLUTION by José Pierats #13

For the beginnings of pistolerismo, one must go back to the time of the First World War. As indicated previously, the industries of Catalonia supplied the Allied troops, although they also traded with the other side. The German high command wasted no time and spared no effort setting up espionage networks in ports and industrial centres. In Barcelona one such team worked fairly openly, reporting port traffic and shipping destinations to submarines on the high seas. The head of this team was known as the Baron de Koenig. One of the subordinates of "the Baron" was a police inspector named Bravo Portillo. The rest were recruited from the underworld of the city, armed with pistols, and sent to intimidate industrialists and other speculators who supplied the Allies. If their warnings had no effect, the gang used violence. To disguise their activities, they shot workers and owners alternately, giving the impression that a violent social struggle was underway and further irritating class antagonisms. One of the best known of Koenig's victims was the manager of a large factory that manufactured artillery shells.

In 1918, Solidaridad Obrera, the CNT organ, published irrefutable proof that Bravo Portillo was a spy. He was fired from the police force and jailed. Although he was subsequently freed and readmitted to the force, he always held a grudge against the CNT and its principal activists. From then 9n he directed his gangsters against the workers' movement.

When the war was over all this human flotsam was left unemployed. Miró y Trepat, Barcelona industrialist, with the goodwill of the Captain General of the garrison, Miláns del Bosch, offered his services to the Federación Patronal. The result was soon evident. One of the first victims of the new cycle of terror was an activist from the Dyer's section of the union, Pablo Sabater, murdered in July, 1919. Within two months Bravo Portillo was killed in revenge.