Diego Abad de Santillan

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Diego Abad de Santillán, on a blurred photograph

Diego Abad de Santillán (born May 20, 1897 as Sinesio Vaudilio García Fernández in Reyero ( León province ), † October 18, 1983 in Barcelona ) was a Spanish publisher, journalist, translator, historian, economist, and a leading figure in Spanish and the Argentine anarchist and syndicalist movement.

Life

Santillán was born on May 20, 1897 in Reyero in the Spanish province of Léon. At the age of eight he emigrated to Argentina with his parents . At a young age he worked there building railways . In 1912 Santillán returned to Spain, where he completed his school education before studying literature and philosophy in Madrid from 1915 . After a general strike in 1917, he was imprisoned in Madrid. In prison he came into contact with the anarchist movement in the person of Tomás Herreros Miguel (1877-1937).

After his amnesty release in 1918, he traveled to Argentina with a forged passport to avoid military service in Spain. There he worked for the anarcho-syndicalist Federación Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA V.) and worked as an editor for the weekly newspaper La Protesta, which is related to this organization .

In 1922, Diego Abad de Santillán represented the FORA at the founding of the International Workers' Association (IAA) in Berlin , where he was studying medicine at the same time . He met Elise Kater (born May 26, 1902), the daughter of Fritz Kater ( FAUD , ASY Verlag, Der Syndikalist ), who became his wife. In 1925 he published his first historical works, Ricardo Flores Magón: el apóstol de la revolución social mexicana (Ricardo Flores Magón: The Apostle of the Mexican Social Revolution) and El anarquismo en el movimiento obrero (Anarchism in the labor movement) .

In 1926 he returned to Argentina, where he ran the newspaper La Protesta together with Emilio López Arango and devoted himself to the translation of the biography of Bakunin written by Max Nettlau . Since he opposed the coup d'état led by General José Félix Uriburu (September 6, 1930), he was sentenced to death. He fled to Uruguay , from where he traveled to Spain when the Second Republic was established there in 1931 . After another clandestine stay in Argentina, he settled in Barcelona in 1933.

From 1934 Santillán worked for the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) and in 1935 became secretary in its committee for the Iberian Peninsula (Comité Peninsular). He was editor of the FAI newspaper Tierra y Libertad and editor of the newspaper of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) Solidaridad Obrera ; he also founded three new magazines: Tiempos Nuevos , Butlletí de la Conselleria d'Economia and Timón . At the same time he dealt with economic theory in the revolutionary process and wrote The Economic Organism of the Revolution , published in 1936 by the CNT in the run-up to its Congress in Zaragoza (May 1-15).

In the course of the social revolution after the military coup of July 17, 1936, he sat for the FAI in the Comité de Milícies Antifeixistes de Catalunya (Antifascist Committee of the Militias of Catalonia), which de facto initially took over the business of government. There Santillán was responsible for organizing the militias. Between December 1936 and April 1937 Santillán was State Councilor for Economics (Conseller de Economía) in the Generalitat de Catalunya , trying to maintain the anarchist principles of free participation in politics and the economy. He was extremely critical of the Spanish republican central government under Manuel Azaña (President) and Juan Negrín (Prime Minister) and denounced the crimes of the Comintern- loyal Partido Comunista de España (PCE) in the Spanish Civil War . Two other books appeared at the time: Revolution and War in Spain (1938) and a bibliography of his Argentine writings (1938). In April 1938 Santillán was delegated to the National Committee of the Anti-Fascist Popular Front , which was formed from the trade unions CNT and Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT). After the defeat of the republic in 1939, he returned to Argentina via France. There he published many other books in the following decades, in which, among other things, he critically dealt with the labor movement and Peronism .

In 1977, after the end of the Franco dictatorship , he returned to Spain, where he settled in Barcelona. In the same year a Spanish translation of Nationalism and Culture , Rudolf Rocker's main work , was published by Santillán . He waived the payment of a pension that he was entitled to as the former State Councilor of Catalonia . Diego Abad de Santillán died on October 18, 1983.

The newspaper “La Protesta” № 220 from 1926

His son was the film director and screenwriter Diego Santillán (1925-1992).

Think

In the 1920s, Diego Abad de Santillán devoted his theoretical writings to the connections between the trade union movement and the anarchist world of ideas. He distinguished himself from positions that advocated ideological neutrality and independence of the syndicalist organizations, such as those advocated in Spain by Ángel Pestaña . Santillán argued against it that the syndicalist organization should have a clear ideological - anarchist - self-definition, but without denying legitimacy to unions with another definition. Inspired by the program of the Bakuninist alliance, he emphasized the role of a conscious minority in the trade unions, who defend collective interests in the forefront in order to drag the other workers along with their example and to give them an anarchist orientation.

In the 1930s his theoretical thinking resulted in work on economic theory in the revolutionary process. Here Santillán was inspired, among others, by the councilor communist Anton Pannekoek . In this context, the text El organismo económico de la revolución (The economic organism of the revolution) can be emphasized . Some of the ideas contained therein were put into practice in 1936 in the collectivization processes that took place in the context of the social revolution in Spain.

Quotes

“This little peninsula could be the cradle of a new era or the grave of a great hope. In the not very distant future we will receive an answer to it. ”- The economic organism of the revolution , 1936 (In: Peiró / Santillán: Ökonomie und Revolution, Vienna 1986, p. 153).

“We knew that it was not possible to win the revolution without having won the war first, so we sacrificed everything for the war. We even sacrificed the revolution without realizing that this sacrifice also included the sacrifice of the war aims themselves. ”- Por qué perdimos la guerra , 1940 (quoted from: Saña: The libertarian revolution. The anarchists in the Spanish civil war , Hamburg 2001, p 114).

Works

  • Rudolf Rocker: From the memoirs of a German anarchist (afterword by Santillán). Frankfurt am Main 1974.
  • The daily revolution from below. In: Erich Mühsam / Rudolf Rocker / Helmut Rüdiger / Diego Abad de Santillán: Essays in memory of Gustav Landauer , Frankfurt am Main 1978.
  • The economic organism of the revolution. Organization of work. In: Helmut Ahrens / Hans-Jürgen Degen / Ch. Geist: "Do what you want." Anarchism. Basic texts for theory and practice , Berlin 1980, pp. 142–145.
  • Shipwreck of the labor movement / For a constructive labor movement. In: Max Nettlau / José G. Pradas / Diego Abad de Santillán: New Socialist Ways , Hanover 1980, pp. 11-17.
  • Economy and Revolution (with Juan Peiró ; Ed. Thomas Kleinspehn). Vienna 1986.

Works in Spanish (selection)

  • Ricardo Flores Magón; el apóstol de la revolución social Mexicana . México: 1925. Reeditado en México: Antorcha, 1988.
  • El anarquismo en el movimiento obrero (con E. López Arango). Barcelona: Cosmos, 1925.
  • El movimiento anarquista en la Argentina. Desde sus comienzos hasta el año 1910 . Buenos Aires: Argonauta, 1930
  • La bancarrota del sistema económico y político del capitalismo , 1932.
  • La FORA: ideología y trayectoria del movimiento obrero revolucionario en la Argentina . Buenos Aires: Nervio, 1933
  • Reconstrucción social: bases para una nueva edificación económica argentina , con Juan Lazarte , 1933
  • Las cargas tributarias: apuntes sobre las finanzas estatales contemporáneas . Barcelona: Mundial, 1934
  • The economic organization of the revolution . Barcelona: 1936.
  • La revolución y la guerra de España . La Habana: 1938
  • Bibliografía anarquista argentina . Barcelona: Timón, 1938.
  • Por qué perdimos la guerra . Buenos Aires, 1940.
    • Esplugues de Llobregat (Barcelona): Plaza y Janés, 1977. El texto fue llevado al cine por su hijo.
  • El movimiento obrero. Anarquismo y socialismo . Buenos Aires: 1965.
  • Historia argentina , enciclopedia en 5 volúmenes. Buenos Aires: 1965.
  • Contribuciones a la historia del movimiento obrero español (1962–1971).
  • La FORA. Ideología y trayectoria del movimiento obrero revolucionario en la Argentina (1933), revisada y ampliada por el autor en 1971.
  • De Alfonso XII a Franco: apuntes de historia política de la España moderna . Buenos Aires: TEA, 1974
  • Estrategia y táctica: ayer, hoy y mañana . Prólogo de Carlos Díaz . Madrid: Júcar, 1976.
  • Memorias 1897-1936 . Barcelona: Planeta, 1977.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ José María Sans Puig: 1580-1588 Abad de Santillán, Diego: Por qué perdimos la guerra. Una contribución a la historia de la tragedia española. Prólogo de Heleno Saña. - G. del Toro Editor. - Madrid, 1975. Índice Histórico Español (Universitat de Barcelona) 22 (1980) (87-89): 302. ISSN  0537-3522 .
personal data
SURNAME Santillan, Diego Abad de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sinesio Vaudilio García Fernández
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish author and figure in the Spanish and Argentine anarchist movements
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Reyero
DATE OF DEATH October 18, 1983
Place of death Barcelona