Federico Arcos

Germinal Gracia (Victor Garcia) August 24, 1919-May 10, 1991

Among Germinal Gracia’s many pseudonyms (Germen, Julio Fuentes, Quipo Amauta), Victor Garcia was the most common. Born in Barcelona, Spain on August 24, 1919, he spent his infancy and boyhood in Mequinenza, a village in Aragon, a fact that he always mentioned with pride. But it was in Barcelona, at the age of 14, that he started working in a textile plant and became a member of the anarcho-syndicalist union, the C.N.T.

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José Peirats Valls (1908–1989)

José Peirats Valls 1908–1989

José Peirats Valls was born March 15, 1908 in the village of Vall d’Uxo, in the province of Castellon, Spain, and he died at the beach near Burriana, a few kilometers south of this village on August 20 of this year. He was 81.

The son of humble parents, Peirats’ family emigrated to Barcelona in search of a better life. At eight years of age, he started working as an apprentice, making thumbtacks for coffins. He then worked other jobs and attended school occasionally until he discovered the Rationalist Ferrer School where a gifted libertarian teacher awoke in him the desire to learn. At fourteen, he started work as a bricklayer’s apprentice, a job he was always very proud to mention, and at that time, he joined the CNT (Confederacion Nacional de Trabajadores), the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union.

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Like the stars, the night

Like the sun, the day

The dawn, the morning

The flower, the petal

The bee, the nectar

The beehive, the honey

The lover, the beloved

So one carries the Ideal In one’s thoughts

You ask me if I can define anarchism. It’s very difficult for me to do concretely. Personally, I don’t consider myself good enough to call myself an anarchist because I have always believed that to be one it would be necessary to reach the extreme point of sacrifice and to devote oneself without reservation to doing good, without limit and without cease. I can say that I still find myself tied to those endless commodities that contemporary society has created, and even though I try to limit them as much as I can, it will never be enough. The Tolstoyan spirit that commends the freedom of the isolated individual, I will never be able to attain.

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With the hope of leaving a fruitful seed, the bodies of the Spanish libertarians are sowing the earth in various continents of the planet. In Montreal, it is our dear Cisco Rebordosa. He was preceded by Enrique Castillos, who dedicated many years of his life to militancy, Alfred Munrós (see Fall 1996 FE), whose illustrations are well known to readers of our publications, and Alfred Ruiz, a veteran of the anti-Franco struggle in Spain, where he was imprisoned.

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