Number 65 50 pence or one dollar Feb. 2011 Remembering Miguel Garcia My first meeting with Miguel García García took place Released in 1969, after serving twenty years of a in the mid•1960s in la primera galleria of Madrid’s thirty•year sentence (commuted from death), Miguel Carabanchel Prison. He was in transit to another came to live with me in London. It took him a little penitentiary and was in what was known as ‘periodo’ – time to acclimatise to the profound social and techno• a fortnight of sanitary isolation, ostensibly to prevent logical changes that had taken place in the world since or limit the spread of disease. I was the practice nurse his arrest as a young man in the Barcelona of 1949, (practicante) for the 7th Gallery, a position that gave changes that were even more profound in the ‘tolerant’ me the run of most of the prison and allowed me to and ‘permissive’ London society of 1969. In fact, so liaise with comrades in different wings, especially with great was the trauma that he literally was unable to isolated transit prisoners or prisoners in solitary speak for some months. The shock of his release had confinement. Miguel passed through Carabanchel on a triggered a paralysis in some of the muscles in his number of occasions over the years, going backwards throat, and, through Octavio Alberola then living under and forwards between penitentiaries and Yeserias, effective house arrest in Liege, we arranged for him to Spain’s main prison hospital in Madrid. see a consultant in Belgium about his condition. The Miguel and I struck up a close relationship, one that time with Octavio was well•spent and brought him was to endure for a decade and a half until his death in up•to•date with what was happening within the 1981. What particularly impressed me about him on European movement and the role of the International our first meeting was his undoubted strength of charac• Revolutionary Solidarity Movement, which operated ter – forged by his experiences in the Resistance as an under the banner of the Grupo Primero de Mayo, a urban guerrilla and ‘falsificador’ [forger], and in continuation of the clandestine anarchist Defensa Franco’s prisons – and the extraordinary quality of his Interior (DI), which had been tasked with the assassi• spoken English, a language he had acquired entirely nation of Franco. from English•speaking prisoners. No other political The First of May Group had recently emerged from prisoners I came across during my three years impris• the sabotaged (by Germinal Esgleas and Vicente onment in Franco’s jails had Miguel’s mastery of Llansola) ruins of Defensa Interior (DI) as an interna• language, or his skills as a communicator. Our conver• tional, anti•capitalist, anti•imperialist revolutionary sations centred on how to expose the repressive nature organisation, structured to carry out spectacular direct of the Francoist regime and raise the profile of actions. It took its name from the first operation carried Franco’s political prisoners in the international media, out on 1 May 1966 when members of the group something I was in a position to do given my relatively kidnapped the ecclesiastic adviser to the Spanish privileged position as a foreign political prisoner and Embassy to the Vatican, Monsignor Marcos Ussia. the access I had to the outside world through my by Soon the group began taking in a much broader area of then extensive network of friendly functionaries in attack targeting, in particular, the US and European Carabanchel itself. governments for their complicity in the imperialist war In 1967, following receipt of a personal pardon in Vietnam. from Franco, I was released from prison and, on my return to Great Britain, I became involved with the BACK IN London, mainly with the moral and resuscitated Anarchist Black Cross, an anarchist financial support of comrade Albert Meltzer, my prisoners’ aid organisation. The focus of our activities co•editor of Black Flag and the driving force behind was international, but Franco’s prisoners were, the revived Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), Miguel naturally, because of my history and the continuing and entered into a dynamic new phase of his life as the intensifying repression in Spain, top of our agenda. The International Secretary of the ABC and a pivotal figure case of Miguel García García, one of the Anarchist in the libertarian resistance to the Franco regime. With Black Cross’s most prominent correspondents, was one Albert he embarked on lengthy speaking tours of that we regularly pursued with the international press England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, West and and through diplomatic channels. East Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark and [pto] Inside: Augustin Remiro; Deported anarchists Miguel Garcia Italy, talking to a new genera• innumerable political upheavals. tion of radicalised young Visitors included the Spanish Europeans about anarchism, militant and historian José Peirats international solidarity and, of and Emilienne Durruti, partner of course, the need to confront Buenaventura Durruti. Another tyranny with practical coopera• regular at the Centro Ibérico was tion and direct action. ETA leader Pedro Ignacio Pérez It could be said that the Beotegui, also known as result of one of Miguel’s early ‘Wilson’, who was involved in talks – in a crowded meeting the planning of the December room at the offices of Freedom 1973 assassination of Franco’s Press in London’s Whitechapel protégé and deputy, prime Minis• High Street in February 1970, ter Carrero Blanco. shortly after his arrival in The new Centro was entirely Britain – was to give rise to the Miguel’s creation and he spent so•called Angry Brigade, Miguel at Centro Ibérico by Phil Ruff his whole time nurturing it, Britain’s first urban guerrilla cutting himself off from any paid group. Miguel’s voice was still weak so I had to do employment, even though he was well past what much of the talking for him, but as the evening wore should have been retiring age anyway. Through on and the story of his adventures and deprivations at Albert, however, he did extract a small pension from the hands of the Francoist authorities unfolded, that the British government. and the fact that his revolutionary spirit and determi• Phil Ruff, the Black Flag cartoonist who shared nation remained clearly undiminished, it was clear he Miguel’s Upper Tollington Park flat after Albert had made a deep emotional impression on the fifty or moved to Lewisham, remembers accompanying so young people in the audience. Here, in front of Miguel on endless trips from Finsbury Park to Haver• them, in person, was someone who had been in direct stock Hill, almost every night throughout the 1970s, to confrontation with a fascist state, who had been totally open up the Centro so that someone would be thereif involved in resistance struggles, and who had paid a anyone dropped in. Often it was just Phil and Miguel heavy penalty. Nor was it a purely historical struggle. looking at the paint peel off the walls and having a Franco remained in power and a new internationally drink, but if someone did drop by Miguel would coordinated anarchist action group, the First of May immediately make them welcome, cook up a paella, Group, was carrying on that struggle. and start weaving his magic. He was without doubt a At Freedom Press that February night in 1970, the great communicator and would have made a wonder• significance, the importance of the First of May ful hostage negotiator. Everybody left the Centro Group, and the tradition it – and Miguel – sprang feeling they were Miguel’s best friend, and ready to from, was not lost on the people crammed into the slay dragons. He had a way of making you think that. small room to hear Miguel Garcia’s story. Among He turned the basement into an internationally known those present were some of the core activists later place to go if you needed help in London; somewhere convicted in the historic ‘Angry Brigade’ trial: John to find a welcome, food, a bed for the night, or a place Barker, Hilary Creek, Jim Greenfield and Anna to squat. He also brought people together from all Mendelson. over the world, becoming the birthplace for many Miguel’s flat in Upper Tollington Park, near North affinity groups that were active in Central and South London’s Finsbury Park, soon drew visiting America, and Europe. anarchists from all over the world. It also began to In 1970•71 Albert was working in Fleet Street as a attract police attention once Miguel launched (with telephone reporter/copy•taker for The Daily Sketch, a Albert’s help) the Centro Ibérico and International right•wing British national tabloid newspaper, and Libertarian Centre in London, a cosmopolitan venue after much discussion and argument – and believe me that became a magnet for anarchists everywhere; it Miguel could be extremely argumentative and pugna• had been many years since there was such a thing as cious – Albert finally convinced Miguel to write his an international anarchist club in London, and its memoirs. And so it was that the typescript of what success was entirely due to Miguel’s powerful person• was to become Franco’s Prisoner was hammered out ality. between Miguel and Albert and typed up in a disused In 1971 the Centro Ibérico moved to a large back room of one of Britain’s foremost Conservative basement in Haverstock Hill to which came many populist newspapers – and paid for on the time of extraordinary people, including survivors from Associated Newspapers. The book, Franco’s Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library www.katesharpleylibrary.net Page 2 Miguel Garcia Prisoner, was published in 1972 by the Rupert Hart• important meeting place for the anarchist activist Davis publishing house, which had originally commis• groups of the so•called ‘Apache sector’ centred sioned my book The Christie File, but reneged on the around Luis Andres Edo in Barcelona.