EXTRACTS from A HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA of SPANISH ANARCHISM by Miguel Iñiguez (Translated by Paul Sharkey) http://www.christiebooks.com 1. CARBÓ CARBÓ, Eusebio. Palamós 1883-Mexico 1958. Coming from a family of federalists and anti-clericals, he was active in the Federalist Youth before going over to anarchism following his reading of Godwin, Proudhon, Kropotkin and Bakunin and observation of the world around him. A bit of a globe-trotter (even in his prison experience, seeing the inside of nearly sixty prisons from the age of 18 onwards) he lived for a long time in Valencia and travelled Europe and the Americas (he was especially familiar with Italy and knew many of the Italian anarchists, like Malatesta, Borghi and Fabbri, being much impressed by Malatesta). Early in the century (1905) he was close to the Avenir group and by the time the First World War came around he was an anarchist of some prestige. In 1915 he attended the congress in El Ferrol (representing Solidaridad Obrera), in 1918 he was at the Anarchist Conference in Barcelona, was present at the International Labour Congress in Geneva and the sixth congress of the F.N.A. in Valencia (where he was outstanding for his vehemence and hard line). His presence at the La Comedia congress in 1919 has been described as crucial: he drafted the anarchist manifesto, was on the working party on propaganda and opposed the line taken by Quintanilla. In the ensuing years he was a leading representative of the most anarchist tendency (and from 1921 stood out on account of his condemnation of the dictatorship of the proletariat). He plotted against Primo de Rivera and acted as go-between for the anarchists and syndicalists in Valencia, intervened in the controversy about anarchist organisation in Italy, and was also caught up in the polemic that pitted Peiró against Pestaña. In 1933 he opposed the FAI uprising; three years later at the congress in Zaragoza he came under severe criticism for non-completion of his mission to Paris. Come the 1936 war, his ideological surefootedness went to pieces ( a short time before that he had reaffirmed anarcho-syndicalist orthodoxy from the secretaryship of the IWA) and like many another he took up political posts (as a member of the economic council in Catalonia, plus posts with the Generalitat’s propaganda commission and at the Education and Training Ministry). Once it had become apparent that the war was lost he left for France and thence on to Santo Domingo (1940), winding up in Mexico where he settled until his death. In Mexico he held the secretaryship of the CNT (1942) and resisted the García Oliver line from the ranks of the Nueva FAI; these were years when he was returning to his ideological roots (turning down the offer of a ministerial post in the Giral government-in-exile in 1945); later, as the prospects of returning to Spain faded, Carbó the journalist came to the fore. But his gifts as a journalist were always in the service of his beliefs. A great public speaker and a writer of excellence possessed of a punchy style, his output is strewn throughout countless publications: as a journalist, his writings may be found in El Corsario, Regeneración, Acción Social Obrera, Estudios, etc. In addition, he was an editor on Solidaridad Obrera (in 1930, in 1934-35) and director of the Valencia edition of Solidaridad Obrera, wrote for Reivindicación, La Guerra social, Más Lejos and Cultura y Acción .. as well as the leading CNT titles in Europe and the Americas. He used a number of noms de plume (Negresco, Mario Negro, Gustavo, Simplicio, Romano, Rodrigo..) and was the author of El la línea recta. El naturismo y el problema social (Barcelona 1930), La bancarrota fraudulenta del marxismo (Mexico 1941), Reconstrucción de España, sus problemas económicos, políticos y morales (Mexico 1949) and Interviú con el gran revolucionario Enrique Malatesta (1921, location not given). 2. CANÉ BARCELÓ, Pedro. Barcelona 1896-Mexico 1973. Although born in the Barcelona district of Pueblo Nuevo, he lived from early on in Badalona where he worked in the glass industry; a staunch friend of Peiró, he was secretary of the glassworkers’ union and of the Badalona local federation for whose mouthpiece La Colmena Obrera he wrote articles. In 1919 he was living in Seville and two years after that he was in Villaviciosa, only to return to Badalona prior to the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, joining the CNT’s revolutionary national committee and the underground anarchist groups opposed to the dictator; in May 1929 he fled to France only to return after a short while and was jailed. During the Republic he was a prominent representative of the moderate line (and signed the Manifesto of the Thirty), not that this spared him the hatred of the employers (he was seriously injured in 1932); he was general secretary of the National Glass Industrial Federation and during the civil war he was mayor of Badalona (having been a member of the city’s public safety committee a short while before) and held the under-secretaryship for industry in Peiró’s ministry. In the post-war years he stuck to his circumstancialist line and collaboration with other antifascists; in exile in Mexico he backed the García Oliver platform and held an under- secretaryship in Leiva’s republican government-in-exile. 3. CERVANTES DEL CASTILLO VALERO, Agustín. Llerena 1840-Badajoz 1874. Son of a Murcian lawyer, he studied law and philosophy successfully at Madrid University and took a doctorate in law in 1864. Strapped for cash, he would attend any debates that were going (this helped him broaden his knowledge); he was substitute teacher of law in Cáceres, an officer of the civil government in that province, teacher of Latin and Castilian in Córdoba and, from 1870 to 1874, teacher of law at the recently founded University of Córdoba. It was in Córdoba that he joined the International to the stupefaction of the conservatives who declared outright war on him following publication of his Tres discursos socialistas sobre la propiedad y la herencia (Three Socialist Speeches against Property and Inheritance) (Córdoba 1872), which venom obliged him to quit the city (1874) for the Instituto in Badajoz, in which city he died. A member of the Alliance from 1871, he became a go-between between the Alliance and the F.R.E. in the south, doing very valuable work, especially on the organising of the 1872- 1873 congress, which he attended as an active delegate. 4. ACRACIA Title of a number of periodicals of libertarian content. 1. Monthly publication sub-titled Revista sociológica. Barcelona January 1886-June 1888, 30 issues. Initially 8 pages in size it grew to 16 (from No 6) and then to 32 (from No 19); No 5 also carried a 20 page supplement. Salvador Peris(and later Bienvenido Rius) looked after the administration, and the running and editing was in the hands of Farga Pellicer, Anselmo Lorenzo and Tárrida del Mármol. An article in the first issue spelled out its objective as “illustrating militant socialism”. Its line was unmistakably anarchist and collectivist, not that pro-communist articles were not included too. It serialised important works such as The Social Question in the Light of Science (Tárrida del Mármol), The Social Question (Drury), Capital (Tárrida), The Individual (by Lorenzo), The Reaction in the Revolution (Mella), The Lies (Nordau), Scientific Bases of Anarchy (Kropotkin), etc., as well as numerous articles on anarchy, the individual versus the State, the workers’ party, collectivism and communism, the eight hour day, the death penalty, dynamite, the categorical imperative, capitalism in agriculture, bourgeois and worker science, the militant proletariat, the liquidation of society, the family, poverty, etc., over the signatures of Nieva, Lorenzo, Halliday, Alvarez, Canibell, Gomis, Mella, Cuadrado and others. A high quality review. 2. Mouthpiece of the Libertarian Youth in Asturias, published in Gijón, 1937. 3. Supplement to Tierra y Libertad, Barcelona, September 1908-1910. Run by Cardenal and Boix, it carried texts by Lorenzo, Lanza, Vallina and Kropotkin. 4. Newspaper run by H. Plaja, Reus, 1923, 5 issues. 5. Sociological review, Barcelona 1922-23. 6. Anarchist publication from Tarragona, run by H. Plaja, 1918, 28 issues. 7. Lérida 1933-34 and 1936-37. In its first phase it was run by F. Lorenzo Páramo; in its second, (when publication was weekly or even daily) by Manuel Magro and it could count upon contributions from Alaiz, Peirats, Amador Franco, Lamolla and V. Rodriguez. It pushed a line opposed to the CNT’s governmentalism at a time when the Confederation had a share in the government. 8. Organ of the Libertarian Youth of Lérida, 1981, 3 issues. 5. ACÍN, Ramón. Huesca 1887? - 1936, murdered by the fascists. Bakuninist Aragonese anarchist, who studied at the Instituto in Huesca where he struck up an enduring friendship with Felipe Alaiz (who would later be his biographer); in his native city in 1915-1920 he was a member of an anti-reactionary group (Bel, Alaiz, Samblancat and Maurín) and around 1920 he secured a post as a sketch artist in Huesca, the city where he spent much of his life and where he gained considerable prestige as a forward- thinking person and lover of culture. A member of the CNT, he experienced banishment, imprisonment and exile, represented the unions of Upper Aragon art numerous plenums and congresses (being on the propaganda working party at the La Comedia congress) and his disciples included Encuenta, Viñuales and Ponzán. A friend of Galán, he did his best to prevent the uprising in Jaca, but failed and was thus indirectly obliged to flee to exile in France (December 1930-April 1931).