Juan Montseny i Carret

Catalan teacher, novelist, publisher, anarchist militant, companion of Teresa Mañé (Soledad Gustavo) and father of Federica Montseny, who was better known by the pseudonym Federico Urales, born. A lather worker, he joined the Partido Socialista Obrero Español in 1885 and quickly became an active labour militant. In 1887, he organised protest demonstrations against the execution of the Chicago anarchists and joined the Federació Comarcal Catalana (Catalan Regional Federation), which was affiliated to the Federación Regional Española de la AIT. The following year he was appointed general secretary of the Federación Nacional de Obreros de Tornos (National Federation of Lathe Workers). Following the 1890 May Day demonstrations and strikes, he faced arrest for the first time. On March 19, 1891, he and Soledad Gustavo, a well-known anarchist and secular teacher from Vilanova i Geltrú, were married in a civil ceremony.

The two would go on to become local figures within anarchist circles in Montseny's home town of Reus, where the pair ran the local secular school. Following the repression sparked by the June 7, 1896 attack on the Corpus Christi procession in the carrer Canvis Nous in Barcelona, the authorities closed down the school, and Joan Montseny was detained along with hundreds of activists in Barcelona's Montjuïc prison. After a year in prison he was expelled from Spain and, after a few months exile in England, returned clandestinely to Spain under the name of Federico Urales, publishing 'La Revista Blanca' in Madrid in 1898, which was later re-launched as 'Tierra y Libertad' in 1902. Montseny eventually managed to get his the decree of expulsion quashed but he remained a target for the state and in 1905 'Tierra y Libertad', by then one of the most influential anarchist newspapers of the period, was forced to close. By this stage of his life, Montseny had been prosecuted 95 times (none of which had resulted in prison time) and imprisoned five times (none of which being the result of a successful prosecution), and he took the opportunity of the closure of 'Tierra y Libertad' to step back from active propaganda work in order to devote his time to agriculture at his home outside Madrid and – splitting his time between Madrid and Barcelona – to journalism (mostly in the liberal press), and to the writing books of and plays, including the novels 'La Novela Ideal' (1925), 'La Novela Libre' (1929) and 'El Luchador' (The Wrestler; 1931). Like many other anarchists, he was swept up in the wave of arrests that followed Mateo Morral's attack on the wedding procession of Alfonso XIII on May 31, 1906. Released a few days later, he went to visit Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia in prison and, from then onwards, he remained a steadfast supporter of the imprisoned anarchist pedagogue, finding him a lawyer and acting as a witness in his trial; Ferrer in turn commissioned Montseny to write several books on the Escuela Moderna. In 1909 he took an active part in the July Revolution (Revolució de Juliol (Cat.) / Revolución de Julio (Sp.) aka the Glorious Week (Setmana Gloriosa / Semana Gloriosa)*, in the wake of which the State executed his friend Ferrer in Montjuïc prison on October 13, 1909, and following the founding of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, a serious rift erupted between the old-school philosophical anarchist Montseny and the anarcho-syndicalist leadership of the CNT, a rift that grew worse following his signing of the 'Manifeste des Seize' (Manifesto of the Sixteen) in support of the Allies during WWI. During the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, Montseny, Soledad Gustavo and their daughter Federica set up home in Barcelona, where the three started publishing a new version of 'La Revista Blanca' beginning in June 1923. In its pages he continued his criticism of the CNT, whist expressing at the same time his support of the Federación Anarquista Ibérica following its clandestine founding in 1927 – though he never became a member of the FAI. In 1935, he was a victim of typhoid fever that severely weakened him, but continued to write novels and propaganda material and, despite the rift with the CNT, he was able to help persuade the union to support the Frente Popular in February 1936.

In October that year, he advised his daughter to accept the Ministerio de Sanidad (Ministry of Health) and he remained by her side throughout the Spanish Civil War until they were forced to flee for France in 1939 following the fall of Barcelona. In exile, he was interned in the St. Laurens concentration camp in Montpellier. During his internment, his partner Soldedad Gustavo died in hospital in Perpignan on February 5, 1939. Upon his release, he was reunited with the rest of his family in Paris, but they had to flee from the French capital when the Nazis occupied it. The Vichy government forced him to settle in the French town of Salon in the Dordogne where, suffering great hardship, he died on March 12, 1942. Amongst Montseny's many other pseudonyms were Mario del Pilar, Siemens, Doctor Boudín, Remigio Olivares, Un profesor de la normal, Rudolf Sharfenstein, Ángel Cunillera, Antonio Galcerán, Ricardo Andrés, Un Trimardier, Charles Money, Ricos de Andes, etc. Amongst his works are: 'El Sindicalismo Español y su Orientación' (Spanish Syndicalism and Its Orientation; 1923); 'El Hombre y la Locura Humana' (Man and Human Madness; 1925); 'La anarquía al alcance de todos' (Anarchism is available to everyone; 1928); 'Los Municipios Libres' (The Free Municipalities; 1932); 'El Ideal y la Revolución' (The Ideal and the Revolution; 1932); 'La Barbarie Gubernamental en Barcelona, Tarrasa, Sardañola, etc.' (Government Barbarism in Barcelona, Tarrasa, Sardañola, etc.; 1933); and 'La Evolución de la Filosofía en España' (The Evolution of Philosophy in Spain; 1934) in two volumes. The novels 'Sembrando Flores' (Planting Flowers; 1906); 'Los Hijos del Amor' (The Children of Love; 1922); and, 'Los Grandes Delincuentes' (The Big Vriminals; 1923); plus his autobiography 'Mi Vida' (1932), in three volumes.

* More commonly known by the name given to it by the Catalan bourgeoisie, Setmana Tràgica (Semana Trágica (Sp.) / Tragic Week).