Juan Andrés Álvarez Ferreras

Juan Andrés Álvarez Ferreras aka Íbero Galo (b. 1916), Catalan anarchist, anarcho-syndicalist, Civil War and Résistance fighter, dies in Los Angeles. Born in France, the son of an emigrant anarchist who, in 1931, with the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic, returned with his family to Spain and settled in Tolosa in the Basque Country. In this city he worked as a hairdresser and various members of his family were active libertarians and during the Republican years he actively participated in anarchist agitation. Following the revolutionary events of October 1934, it was imprisoned for a few months in Ondarreta and Irun. Also as a result of the transport strike in the Basque Country, he was jailed for three months in Ondarreta prison. Following the fascist uprising in July 1936, he fought in San Sebastian, Bilbao, Irun and Santander in the Batalló Malatesta, until he was captured by Italian forces when they occupied Santander. After passing through several workers battalions (working on the reconstruction of Belchite, etc.), in 1941 he was repatriated to France, where he was born and imprisoned in Fort Montluc in Lyon on charges of deserting from the French Army. Then he was sent as a forced labourer to Germany, where he remained until the end of WWII. Once freed in 1945, he collaborated in the reorganisation of the Local Federation of the CNT in Exile in Montlucon (Aquitaine) and was an activist in the Cultura y Acción group of the FAI, with his brother Félix and Salvador Fernández Canto. From 1952 he lived in Canada, first in Quebec, where he worked at Lake St. John, and then in Calgary. In 1962, he moved to Los Angeles and remained active in the American libertarian movement. He also collaborated, under his pseudonym, on numerous anarchist periodicals, such as 'Centi', 'Le Combat Syndicaliste', 'La Escuela Moderna', 'L'Espoir', etc..