Lucio Urtubia Jiménez (1931) is a Spanish anarchist famous
for his practice of expropriative anarchism. At times compared to Robin Hood,
Urtubia carried out bank robberies and forgeries throughout the 1960s and
1970s.
Lucio Urtubia was born in Cascante, the fifth child in a
very poor family. His father, a Carlist was imprisoned and, while in jail,
experienced a conversion to communism.
Recruited for military service, Urtubia and his companions
ransacked a warehouse belonging to their company and deserted, fleeing to
France in 1954. In Paris he began to work as a bricklayer, an occupation he
continued with throughout his life. Additionally, he became involved with the
Young Libertarians of the Fédération Anarchiste and befriended André Breton and
Albert Camus.
Soon after moving to Paris, Urtubia was asked to hide a
member of the Maquis, Spanish guerrillas who opposed Franco from exile, in his
house. The refugee turned out to be the fabled Francesco 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 in Barcelona, Saragossa,
Madrid and Pamplona. 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 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,
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 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 travellers' checks 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, Montoneros, etc.) and Europe.
In spite of the audacity 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 in Bolivia; collaborated in the flight of the leader of the Black
Panthers; interceded in the kidnapping of Javier Rupérez; mediated in the case
of Albert Boadella; and worked with the Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación and
later with the Groupes d'action révolutionnaire internationalistes. 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.
WOW! What a hero!!! Not too many sheeple around that could do 1/18th what this gentleman did! I salute you brother :)
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