Ramón Acín Aquilué

A painter, sculptor, anarchist and Spanish journalist.

Ramón Acín Aquilué was the son of Santos Acín Mulier, a surveying engineer, and María Aquilué Royán. Ramón was the Benjamin of the family and had two brothers: Santos and Enriqueta.

From very early on he was fond of painting and with just ten years he received drawing classes from the Oscense painter Félix Lafuente. At the age of twelve he entered the Institute of Secondary Education of Huesca where he studied. In 1907 he enrolled in Chemical Sciences in the Faculty of Sciences of Zaragoza.

At the end of 1908 he left the career of Chemical Sciences and returned to Huesca. In 1909 he had to join ranks but was freed from military service because he was the son of six-year-old parents. This same year he went to Madrid to make oppositions of delineant of Public Works, he does not manage to overcome them and returns to his city where he takes drawing classes again in the particular academy of the painter Anselmo Gascón de Gotor.

Ramón Acín decided to devote himself exclusively to drawing and painting and it was in August 1910 when El Diario de Avisos de Zaragoza published his first illustrations in the press. In August 1911 he illustrated the cover of the program of the festivities of San Lorenzo in Huesca and at the end of this same year a drawing of his will occupy the cover of the Madrid humorous magazine Don Pepito.

In January 1912, coinciding with the remodeling of El Diario de Huesca, directed from now on by Luis López Allué, he takes over the section of Humorous Notes, where he signs with the pseudonym "fray Acín". During this year he also collaborates with other more progressive newspapers where he publishes politically more committed cartoons (El Pueblo, Vida Socialista,...)

In July 1913 he settled in Barcelona, at the request of his friend Ángel Samblancat, to found the weekly newspaper La Ira (Organ of expression of disgust and cholera of the people), in whose first issue he published a cartoon and what will be his first collaboration written in the press entitled Id you, aggressive writing against the war with Morocco. For the second issue, No Riais writes, a harsh criticism of the Church’s representatives. On the occasion of this second issue, the editors of La Ira are imprisoned and the newspaper is closed.

At the end of 1913 the Provincial Council of Huesca agreed to grant Ramón Acín a pension to expand his artistic studies. Thanks to this pension Ramón will alternate his residence, during 1914 and 1915, between Madrid, Toledo and Granada.

In January 1916 Ramón Acín occupied the position of interim special teacher of Drawing of the Normal Schools of Teachers and Teachers of Huesca. In October of this year he went to Madrid to prepare oppositions for his place. During his stay in Madrid he will reside in a tower of Velázquez Street, a tower that years later will occupy Ramón Gómez de la Serna.

In May 1917 he approved the oppositions and obtained the place of professor of the Drawing of the Normals of Huesca. On May 28 he returned to Huesca, where his father, who is very ill, died the next day.

In February 1919, together with other colleagues of the Free Group of Huesca, he founded the decennial magazine Floreal, which will be published until 1920. Also from the end of 1919 to 1922 Acín collaborates with the weekly unionist Leridano Lucha social, led by his friend Joaquín Maurín.

In December 1919 the II Congress of the CNT is held in Madrid, to which Acín attends as union delegate of the Alto Aragón.

In the summer of 1920, together with Maurín and Andrés Nin, he developed an intense campaign of propaganda and trade union organization for the Lleidan and Oscense peoples.

On June 29, 1921, at the Teatro Principal de Huesca, he gave a conference in which he projected 32 drawings of him made in glass and alluding to how bullfights will be in 1970.

In 1922 he made his first relief in mud, it is a bust of Luis López Allué that years later, in 1928, will melt in bronze and will be part of the monument installed in the park of Buenavista de Zaragoza.

On December 22, 1922, his mother died. Days later, on January 6, 1923, he married Conchita Monrás. In April of this year he published his book The Bullfights in 1970 and October 15 his first daughter, Katia, was born.

On April 11, 1924 he published in El Diario de Huesca the article entitled For aesthetics and for humanity, in which he claims the pardon for his friend Juan Bautista Acher “Shum”, writer and cartoonist condemned to death by the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. On the occasion of this article Ramón Acín will be imprisoned for a few days. This same year, commissioned by the City of Huesca, he works on a sculptural project for the Common Grave, a monument that would never become erected and that in 2007, part of it, is placed in the tomb of Acín.

In May 1925 a monument dedicated to the geologist Lucas Mallada by Acín was inaugurated in Huesca. On July 23 of this year, his second daughter, Sol, was born.

From June to September 1926 he travels to Paris where he contacts the artistic avant-gardes.

In May 1927 Ramón Gómez de la Serna gave a conference in Huesca under the title Goya and El Manzanares and in which Ramón Acín, in addition to the poster announcer, made the presentation of the speaker.

In 1928 he made the sculpture Fuente de Las Pajaritas installed in the park of Huesca.

In December 1929 Ramón Acín exhibited for the first time his work at the Dalmau Galleries in Barcelona. A few months later, in May 1930, he will again exhibit at the Rincón de Goya in Zaragoza.

On December 12, 1930, the Jaca uprising took place. This one fails and Ramón Acín, who is involved, has to go into exile in France. With the advent of the Second Republic he returned to Spain and again occupied his chair in the Normal of Masters of Huesca.

In June 1931 he attended the III Congress of the CNT in Madrid and took the opportunity to exhibit his works in the Athenaeum.

In June 1932 he exhibited in the Oscense Circle, causing some confusion among his countrymen who for the first time contemplate his work. In December of this year he obtained, along with numerous Oscenses, the big prize of the Christmas lottery. With part of that award he will finance the following year the film of Luis Buñuel Las Hurdes, land without bread.

In 1933 he was imprisoned several times for his revolutionary activity.

In July 1935 he participated in the celebration in Huesca of the Second Congress of the Technique of the Printing in the School.

On June 11, 1936 his sister Enriqueta died and with this motif Acín published in the press an emotional article.

On the night of July 18, 1936, a crowd of Oscenses addresses the civilian government in demand for weapons to face the military uprising, the governor of Huesca meets with Acin and other anti-fascist leaders assuring them that everything is under control. The next day Huesca is taken by the rebels. Acín hides himself in his home until August 6, when he hears his wife being abused, he leaves his hiding place voluntarily and surrenders. That same day he will be shot in the walls of the cemetery of Huesca.

His wife Conchita Monrás will be killed, seventeen days later, along with a hundred Oscense Republicans.

Since the 90’s, the libertarian Athenaeum of the city of Oscense bears his name.

In 2005, the CNT of Huesca honors him, during which a commemorative plaque is inaugurated in his home.