Hi all, welcome to my new blog. Here you will find photos of dioramas and miniatures of revolutionary movements. For the last two years, I have focused on the Spanish Revolution, an effort by Spanish workers--and in particular those of the anarchist union CNT and political organization FAI--to remake the world around them within the Republican Zone, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).
For my first post, I'd like to share the vehicles of the
Durruti Column I have made. A few of these are bought plastic models assembled (though modified), some are paper models printed out, and others still scratch-built from spare parts, clay, index cards and more. I hand-painted each of these. I hope you enjoy looking at them, and perhaps learn something about an interesting time in history, when workers, armed with little more than ingenuity and a vision for a new world of freedom and equality, faced down a professional army led by generals and aided by Europe's fascist armies.
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| Vehicles of the Durruti Column headed to the Aragon front. In front, the Hispano-Suizo which led the column out of Barcelona on July 24, 1936, carries Durruti (gray mono), and the advisor and Mozos de Escuadra (Catalan police) Captain Enrique Perez Farras. Behind the Hispano are a couple of civilian vehicles, painted with the anarchist workers' slogans and acronyms, carrying militia fighters. |
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| Behind the expropriated civilian vehicles are the first of the Tiznaos: improvised armor built by revolutionary workers after they took over their factories. Workers built Tiznao's in many shapes and sizes, makes and models, often by merely wielding metal plates onto trucks. Sometimes workers assembled one-off creations, though some collectivized factories produced dozens of the same model. The first two tiznaos here in line are Vulcano 1s, numbered 3 and 5. I printed these models out on cardstock, assembled and painted them. Directly behind the Vulcanos is the shadowy Piojo Movil (Mobile Louse), a Durruti Column command vehicle photographed during the defense of Madrid in November, 1936. This model I envisioned and built by glueing together plastic sprues and scraps, adding index cards and painting it. |
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| Behind the Piojo Movil come the two MTM-1s, numbered 4 and 6. Like the Vulcanos, I found these online as print-out models. |
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| Here, one of my early and rougher models, of the famous Torras 2 "King Kong" tiznao of the Durruti Column. This I built by adding clay to a toy truck....Here's hoping a professional company comes out with a better model, perhaps Minairons (vote for it at this link)! |
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| The two Tiznaos pictured here in the back are my own inventions. The one in front, another print-out paper model. |
Thanks for reading my first post! More to come!
