Abel Paz

Abel Paz (1921–2009) was a Spanish anarchist and historian who fought in the Spanish Civil War. He is considered one of the noted Spanish anarchist historians, writing multiple volumes on anarchist history, including a biography of Buenaventura Durruti, an influential anarchist during the war. He kept the anarchist tradition throughout his life, including a decade in Francoist Spain's jails and multiple decades in exile in France.

Background 

Abel Paz was born Diego Camacho Escámez on August 12, 1921, in Almería, southeastern Andalusia, Spain. When he was six years old, he moved in with his Barcelonan uncle, who was a member of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), a Spanish anarcho-syndicalist labor union. Before his teens, Paz had joined the libertarian Ferrerist school Escuela Natura in Barcelona's El Clot working class district. He moved back briefly to Almería, where his mother was, too, a CNT member and subscribed to the Libertarian Youth in 1935.

Career

Spanish Civil War 

By February 1936, Paz had returned to Barcelona just before the start of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War. He participated in the resistance after Francisco Franco's 1936 pronunciamento. He joined the CNT-FAI (allied with the Federación Anarquista Ibérica, founded as a group that fought the CNT-FAI's moderate policies, and fought for the working class and anarchists. Following his 1937 arrest in a clash with Stalinists, he worked in a farm collective, wrote for the FAI's Tierra y Libertad periodical, and fought on the Catalan front.

Post-war

As the war approached its end in early 1939, when Franco's Nationalists retook Catalonia, Paz and hundreds of thousands of anarchists sought asylum in France.  In 1942, he returned to Catalonia and attempted to restart the CNT. He was jailed and passed between prisons for five years. Shortly after his release, he was jailed again for another five years for participating in the Libertarian Youth.

Exile 

After his release in 1952, Paz returned to the resistance and became the underground organization's delegate to the 1953 International Congress.

Paz remained exiled in France, where he traveled and participated in anti-Francoist, CNT, and Libertarian Youth groups. His partner Antònia Fontanillas (also of anarchist lineage) traveled with him through 1958. Over the next decade, Paz wrote multiple history books, including a biography of CNT figure Buenaventura Durruti, known as the most comprehensive account as of the late 2000s. His work covering Durruti covered an explanation of the failure of Durruti's militia to take Zaragoza after the capture of Bujaraloz.

Return 

In 1975, Francisco Franco died.  In 1979, Paz returned to Spain and its anarchist movement.  He wrote a four-volume memoir and spoke with young libertarians about his experiences. In the mid-1990s, Paz toured Italian public meetings following interest in Ken Loach's 1995 film about the Spanish Civil War, Land and Freedom. He participated in media accounts of the war through his physical decline and death.

Personal and death

Paz's life partner was Antònia Fontanillas.

He died age 87 on April 13, 2009, in Barcelona.

Selected works 

La Barcelona Rebelde: Guía De Una Ciudad Silenciada Octaedro, 2003. 
Durruti en la Revolución Española. Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo, 1996.
Durruti in the Spanish Revolution. AK Press, 2006. . Translated by Chuck W. Morse.
Durruti: the people armed. Black Rose, 1976.  (pbk.)  (hbk.)
The Spanish civil war. Hazan, 1997. 
The Story of the Iron Column: Militant Anarchism in the Spanish Civil War. AK Press and Kate Sharpley Library, 2011. . Translated by Paul Sharkey.

References

Further reading 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1921 births
2009 deaths
People from Almería
Historians of anarchism
Spanish anarchists
Spanish people of the Spanish Civil War
20th-century  Spanish historians