Maximino Nardo Imbernón Cano

Nardo was born in Barcelona on May 29, 1937, around the same time his father had been wounded in clashes with the Stalinists. Shortly after, his father returned to the front and at the end of the war he went into exile in France, leaving Nardo and his mother in Barcelona. After the release of Paris, his father participated in the constitution of the Local Federation of the CNT in this city.

Nardo and his mother had to survive during the post-war period in Spain, where the Francoist authorities forced her to put Nardo a name of the Catholic sanctuary, hence in all the official documents she is listed as Maximino Nardo Imbernón Cano. It was not until 1948 that they were able to leave Spain and reunite with their father in Paris.

Like his father had done in Spain, Nardo began to frequent the exiled libertarian media very young and joined the Libertarian Youth in Paris and then the CNT in the late 1950s. After the reunification of the Spanish Libertarian Movement and the constitution in 1962 of the conspiratorial body Interior Defense (DI), Nardo did not spare his support and participation in the implementation of this body to fight Francoism and his home in Paris served on numerous occasions as a base for clandestine members of the DI.

In 1963, after the execution in Madrid of comrades Francisco Granado and Joaquín Delgado, Nardo was arrested along with several dozen young Spanish libertarians resident in France and the confederal militants Cipriano Mera and José Pascual. The French authorities could not hold any precise accusation against them, except to be sympathetic to the ID and the Libertarian Youth, and in the case of Nardo for being secretary of the Local Federation of the FIJL of Paris. Nardo was imprisoned for almost a month and was among the first to be released along with Cipriano Mera, which he took advantage of to participate in the mobilizations in solidarity with the comrades who were still imprisoned.

After the rupture caused by the Sglee sector in the Congress of the CNT in exile carried out in 1965 in the French city of Montpellier, Nardo continued to militate in the Libertarian Youth and in the Confederal groups that in the late sixties began to group around the newspaper Frente Libertario and that ended up constituting, in a meeting held in the French city of Narbonne, the Confederal and Libertarian Groups of exile. From that moment, Nardo, who was one of the youngest militants of these Groups, dedicated all his efforts to consolidate them to provide the support of all the groups scattered throughout the French territory to the reconstitution of the CNT in Spain.

After the death of Franco, Nardo and the other comrades of these Groups were made available to the reconstituted CNT in Spain to provide the Confederal Organization with the help of the old Confederal militants residing in France who continued to serve in the Confederal and Libertarian Groups. When the rupture occurred within the reconstituted CNT and after the sector most related to these Groups was forced to legally renounce the acronym CNT and adopt those of CGT, Nardo and the other colleagues of the Confederal and Libertarian Groups dedicated all their activity to enhance the anarcho-syndicalist action of the CGT.

From the years 1997-98 he was appointed secretary of the Confederal Groups of the CNT/CGT. After obtaining retirement, Nardo chose address in Mazarrón, the town where his father had been born and in which he now spent long periods while still maintaining contact with the groups of France through circulars and by phone, while in the displacements to France he did not stop going to see some companion-a without means of mobility. He attended almost all the Congresses of CGT and gave some conferences, including one on Vivancos, while contributing his participation to the different activities that were taking place in Valencia organized by the Salvador Seguí Foundation.

Lately he was the coordinator of CGT-Emigration and a member of the Confederal Committee of CGT. Nardo was buried in the Père-Lachaisse cemetery in Paris on 22 August 2008 along with the red and black flag.