Vladimiro Muñoz 1920-2004

Vladimiro Muñoz (b. Gijon, Spain, 12 November 1920). Educated at the Arts & Crafts School in San Sebastian, he fled to France in 1936 after the fall of the city of Irún. He then returned after a time to Tarragona and in 1937 was conscripted for service on the Aragon front (at the age of 17). In the meantime he had become an anarchist pacifist and individualist, a follower of the philosophy of the Frenchman Han Ryner. In 1938 when the civil war ended he finished up in concentration camps in France in Argelès-sur-mer and Bram. After he was released he was drafted as a slave labourer for the Germans, working on the La Rochelle submarine base. In 1947 he moved to Uruguay (where he had relatives living) and became a regular contributor to the Uruguayan anarchist press. He was also an associate of Eugen Relgis, the Rumanian anarchist and wrote a History of the Rumanian Anarchists (leading individuals rather than movements). Developing an interest in Rafael Barrett he tracked down his family and researched the man and his works, his findings appearing in several books. One was a Bibliography of Rafael Barrett: Uruguay 1908-1911 (1982). He died in Montevideo in 2004, but not before publishing Barrett (Asunción-Montevideo 1995), a chronology of Barrett’s life and writings.