Pere Massoni Vives

Catalan roofer and anarcho-syndicalist, born. In 1915 he joined the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and became a delegate of the Sindicat d'Obrers Rajolers del Ram de la Construcció (Tilers Branch of the Construction Workers Union). This was an era where gunmen hired by employers regualrly attacked unionist and union organisers and, on 23 April 1919, he suffered an attack at the hands of a squad of pistolers and was seriously injured. He failed to recover from all his injuries and a progressive paralysis in the leg limited his abilty to worker as a tile, and he ended up as the caretaker at the Tilers Union offices in the Carrer de l'Om in Barcelona. He continued to work within the CNT, helping organise strikes, was a member of the defence committee for fellow tiler Enric Guiot i Climent, sentenced to death for robbery, and helped reorganise the sindicats de Treballadores de l'agulla (Needleworkers union), de Construcció (Construction) and de Constructors de Persianes (Blindmakers).

 

During this period, he also became a good friend of Josep Peirats Valls. In 1924, he was jailed for taking part in the conspiracy against the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, accused of being one of the organisers of the December 1924 Bera insurgency. In 1928, he joined the Solidaridad group and published a pamphlet 'Los ladrilleros a través de las luchas sociales' (Bricklayers across the social struggle). In April 1928, he attended the Assemblea de Cooperatives Catalanes and, in June, represented the CNT on the first Comitè Revolucionari de Catalunya, which plotted against the dictatorship.