Celestino Alvarado Quirós

Andalusian anarchist, anarcho-syndicalist, secretary of the Sindicat del Metall of the CNT, member of the Germinal group of the FAI and Freemason, murdered by Falangists.

Celestino lived in Calle Sopranis number 9 in Cádiz, a city that saw him born on December 28, 1903, the son of Antonio and Carmen; married to Isabel Galván Moriano, a native of Chiclana de la Frontera, my maternal grandparents had two daughters, my mother Isabel and Antonia, my tata. My grandfather was a master turner in Matagorda, Republican and trade unionist, secretary of the Metal of the province of Cádiz of the CNT, member of the Germinal Group, friend of Vicente Ballester, Emilo López and Manuel Lápiz among many others.

On August 18, 1936, he and his brother José were in the rod of Puntales waiting for a ship to flee a certain death, but to their disgrace some whistleblowers, informed the Falangistas and they arrested them. The next day, family friends saw my grandfather’s body, lying in a gutter in Cortadura. His brother was locked in the Miraflores vapor-prison. My mother told me how her grandmother took off her mourning clothes for her son Celestino and along with her granddaughters, dressed in their best clothes, they went to the dock and in a boat they approached the Miraflores to be able to see their son, and that his uncle Joseph, seeing his mother and nieces without mourning, believed that his brother was also a prisoner. Twenty days after his arrest, José Alvarado Quirós, 27 years old and unionist of the CNT, disappeared and never heard from him.