Alfons Vila i Franquesa

Spanish cartoonist, anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist. Better known as 'Joan Baptista Acher' or 'Shum', how he signed his paintings and drawings, and by his friends as 'el Poeta'. His cartoons regularly appeared in the Barcelona press including 'Papitu', 'L’Esquella de la Torratxa', 'L’Opinió' and 'La Humanitat'.

He was imprisoned for participating in an attempted attack on General Severiano Martínez Anido in 1922, and was amnested in 1931, being Victoria Kent director general of prisons of the Second Republic.

He published in Solidaridad Obrera, Justícia Social, La Campana de Gràcia, L'Opinió, La Humanitat, Rambla, L'Esquella de la Torratxa and Papitu, among others. He was part of the Grup dels Sis together with the artists Helios Gómez, Alfred Pascual Benigani, Marcel·lí Porta i Fernanda, Lluís Elias i Bracons and Josep Bartolí i Guiu. 

He fought on the front during the Civil War. He married in 1938 to Montserrat Ventós Roff, a Republican activist, and all three were part of the withdrawal to France. After passing through Chartres, Toulouse, Perpignan and Paris, the marriage and the sons of it – Antoni Prats Ventós and Ramón Prats Ventós – managed to embark on the boat of exile to Cuba and arrive in Santo Domingo in January 1940. They remained in the Dominican Republic until 1942, when they arrived in Havana. Subsequently, he lived in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, United States and finally in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died. His two stepchildren became renowned artists.