Juan Peiro, My Father, an Exemplary Life

My own interest in the life and thought of Juan Peiro was sparked in the 1980s by a reading of Joan Peiró, Escrits 1917-1939 by the historian Pere Gabriel. That splendid and detailed book afforded me a deep insight into one of the most outstanding anarcho-syndicalists of the first four decades of the 20th century. I have to admit that the book has stuck with me ever since and I repeatedly revisit the contents.

My link with the preservation of the memory of Peiró and with his family has been a consistent one ever since July 1989 when, on behalf of the CGT of Catalonia, I spoke at an act of homage at the Caputxins cemetery in Mataró. In accordance with his own wishes and the wishes of his family, his mortal remains were relocated from Paterna (when he was shot in 1942) for reinterment alongside the remains of his partner, Mercè Olives.

The family in Mataró and especially his daughter Guillermina were and still are exemplary in terms of their persistence when it comes to reclaiming, commemorating and vindicating Peiró. Many other people and local associations have joined with them to keep the flame alive through fresh research, acts of tribute, acts of thanksgiving and through the Peiró Commission (on which the CGT in Maresme and the Salvador Seguí Foundation serve); every 24 July – that being the anniversary of his shooting – they put on some sort of act in his memory and that of the others shot with him. Sometimes, as on his 75th anniversary, the commemoration and reclaiming have gone past the date and activities have been mounted annually.

On the subject of Peiró I have and have read other books too: such as Juan Peiró. Teórico y militante del anarcosindicalismo español, written by his son, José (aka Pepito) and published in Barcelona in 1978 by the Foil publishing house. Whenever Amapola Peiró (José’s own daughter, Juan Peiró’s grand-daughter) got in touch with me through Pedro Puig Pla a year and a half back, to propose that the Salvador Seguí Foundation might publish a lengthy biography of Peiró written by her late father, we were more aware that family members in Narbonne (France) had also been keeping the spark of memory alive. At the Salvador Seguí Foundation’s premises in Valencia and Barcelona we had a text that fitted that bill but we had no way of knowing for sure whether it was the finalized version.

Amapola was able to pass on the text held on an old floppy disk, thanks to a conversion application, in a format compatible with current digital technology and we at the Foundation set about giving it an analytical reading. We realized that some sections (the ones with the weightiest trade union and ideological content) made up part of the 1978 book. But there were another two telling points: this “extensive biography” held a lot more material about the lived experiences of Peiró and CNT folk and touched upon other male and female anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists of his day: besides, Foil publishers were no longer around and the 1978 book was out of print. 

This was all sorted out at Amapola’s insistence by e-mail, involving even a visit to Madrid to meet with Foundation members there and this made us put our shoulders to the wheel over the last quarter of 2024.

The final product is not just a life written by a son in praise of his highly regarded father. As we retrace the life of Joan Peiró, we come across the trajectory of the CNT, because Joan Peiró’s life cannot be dissevered from the ups and downs of that organization over its early decades and because he never declined any of the tasks allotted to him by the Confederation (like its general secretaryship, the management of Solidaridad Obrera or of Catalunya, a portfolio as a minister of the Republic, general secretary for Electricity, its agent on the JARE/Aid to Spanish Republicans Council, etc.) 

José Peiró, the son, was in a privileged position (having been his father’s driver while he held public office, being exiled along with his father up until the latter was arrested) when it came to narrating not just his father’s activities but also his thought processes and aims. But, more than that, in the text he discernibly carries out a surgical and discriminating effort of investigation into his father’s writings and those of his contemporaries, delving even into French archives in order to shore up the architecture of his father’s life as a trade unionist, cooperativist, social and political thinker. 

But he does this with all of the legitimacy afforded him by blood relationship, his activism with the CNT inside Spain and in exile in France, his volunteer service on the battle-fronts of the civil war and his status as an exile. But José did not stop there and he decided to offer his opinion about some of the most controversial aspects in the evolution of the anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism of those times: the Bolshevik phase between 1920 and 1922; the role of the Urales family (Joan Montseny, Teresa Mañé and Federica Montseny) within the Catalonian libertarian movement; the debate between Peiró and Pestaña during the Primo de Rivera dictatorship; the ‘Manifesto of the Thirty’ and frictions with the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI); the ‘working relationship’ between the FAI and the CNT and the Confederation’s own autonomy; entry into the Republican government; the charges of reformism levelled at certain CNT personnel; revolutionary violence and its limitations, etc. Bent over his typewriter, José left none of these controversial subjects out.

As a counter-point, maybe, I should also like to highlight the pages that Jose wrote about the family’s day-to-day life; his father’s childhood and early employment and enthusiasms; his introduction to trade unionism; the first encounters between Mercè Olives and Joan Peiró; their family life; the everyday dealings of Peiró and his closest comrades; the pal de pallar (keystone) role played by his mother; and, above all, his description of exile life, of his father’s arrest, the attempt made by the regime to ‘turn’ Peiró and the subsequent ‘court proceedings’ mounted against him by the Franco regime and these bring us closer, not just to Peiró, but also to the hundreds of thousands of men and women who suffered fascist barbarism.

We made a few corrections and amendments to the text (which José had started working on in the 1970s) in order to adapt it to current times, whilst not trespassing against José Peiró’s writing style.  My thanks to Ángela Navarro for her proofreading for publication; to Rafa Maestre, Joaquín Ortín and Ricardo Burgos for reading and re-reading and their contribution to publication; to Amapola Peiró for her generosity and constancy; to the Standing Secretariat, Confederal Committee, territorial Confederations, sectional federations and unions of the General Labour Confederation (CGT) for their vital support in the publication and distribution of this book.

Emili Cortavitarte Carral, Salvador Seguí Foundation

Jose’s book is “Joan Peiro mi padre. Una vida ejemplar” (FSS Ediciones) ISBN 9788487218378

From Rojo y Negro  No 402, July-August 2025 https://cgt.es/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/402-ryn-julio-agosto.pdf cc-by-nc-sa licence

Translated by: Paul Sharkey.