Octavio Alberola (4-3-1928 – 24-7-2025): A Lifelong Commitment to Anarchist Revolutionary Activity

Over the past 40 years I have known many prominent anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist militants. Two of them had a particular impact on my own thinking and acting – Luis Andrés Edo and Octavio Alberola. Alberola left us on 27 July 2025 at the age of 97.

Octavio may well have made the deepest impact in terms of analysis and libertarian thinking. His favourite topic was repression in all its guises, and the legitimacy of revolutionary violence. Edo and Alberola alike spoke and wrote a lot about the phenomenon of the dissident “a phenomenon that bridled at the left’s own structures and which was the forerunner, not just of the DI (Defensa Interior), but also of a countless spectrum of discourses and it is in such diversity that the richness of the phenomenon and of direct action is rooted …”[1]

Octavio Alberola, nicknamed Juan el Largo, is known to most people in relation to three things: his frantic activity as head of the DI (1961-1965), his role alongside the GARI in the abduction of Baltasar Suárez in Paris (1974) and the book he wrote in prison with his partner Ariane Gransac aka La Pelos – Spanish Anarchism and Revolutionary Action (1961-1974). But there was a lot more to Octavio’s life and activity than those three activities. Almost entirely from underground he was the protagonist and battler within the anarchist ranks as well as on the various front lines of revolutionary social struggles worldwide.

The dealings between us were authentically personal friendship and, over the past thirty years, they afforded me an insight into a thinker, activist and philosopher, in relation to topics such as repression around the world, the issue of violence and the contradictions within anarchism. But most significant of all there was his own critique of the actions that he had spearheaded, to the extent where they had “impacted upon his life in the most dramatic manner”.

Chatting with Octavio granted admission to a magical sense of well-being in which, initially, one listened before he would guide you into reflections upon a flood of ideas that he was tossing out for debate. His knowledge extended into economics, art, physics and philosophy and this enabled him to deal with any aspect in a broad sense, whilst at the same time critiquing authoritarianism, no matter where it came from, of the State, the democratic system or anarchism per se.

In order to make deep dive into Octavio’s thinking, one simply has to read Agustín Comotto’s book,[2] a splendid tool for getting to grips with the life experience of a man that thought and acted as an anarchist. No less interesting are his conversations with Agustín Guillamón,[3] albeit that the latter focus upon more concrete matters. One of the most outstanding themes in Octavio’s life was the part he played in the DI, an agency of the CNT in exile, run in concert with the FAI and FIJL. But the stick-in-the-mud attitude of the CNT and FAI in exile – for which Germinal Esgleas bore the main responsibility – put paid to that project. Regardless, the young people affiliated to the FIJL carried on, but outside of official channels. According to Octavio “there was a split with anarchism that dogged me my entire life; we were two irreconcilable camps in terms of our thinking and practice where libertarian ethics were concerned.”[4]

After 1965 the FIJL took it upon itself to re-launch actions, starting from their denunciation of the Cincopuntistas’ negotiations. Later, Octavio carried on with his activism through the First of May Group which was structured along the same lines as the DI, alongside FIJL comrades and some CNT members. In one such operation they attempted to kidnap Spain’s ambassador, Alberto Ullastres, in Brussels in February 1968, but that failed, and Octavio and his partner Ariane were arrested.

Another of Octavio’s important operations was the kidnapping of the manager of the Bank of Bilbao in Paris, Baltasar Suárez. In the wake of the murder of Salvador Puig Antich, this operation was designed to deter the Francoist government from subjecting members of the MIL held in prison to the same fate.

Alberola’s life-long struggle was made up of mounting concrete actions designed to highlight the circumstances of prisoners as well as those suffering reprisals inside Spain. Octavio was insistent that anarchism is not so much an ideology as an approach to life, whereby the human being can find expression in many forms, which is to say, as a free being but one that is neither dogmatic nor sectarian.

During the mis-named Transition in Spain he refused to join the CNT because, by his reckoning, the Transition was a fraud, a trap designed to rein in and wipe out any revolutionary movement, so as to steer the country on to the path of a democratic capitalism such as applied in the rest of the countries of western Europe. It was at this point that he crossed swords with Luis Andrés Edo, the two having been great friends up to that point. Octavio explained to me that he was aware that the CNT was facing internal squabbles and that this had to be averted “…and Edo was up to his neck in those squabbles … he had established a faction out to bring influence to bear in a given direction … Edo also finished up as a sectarian, something that he himself had been against for many years.”[5] Octavio explained that setting up an organization with varying libertarian sensibilities was chasing after a dream. “There was no way of setting up a coherent ideological proposition … any convergence between the factions laying claim to the CNT was very fragile.” I remember asking Octavio at the time: what could we do? “Nothing. The coexistence of differing outlooks and ways of understanding organizational life led to an ideological contest that rendered the project impossible and, in my view, the most serious point was that debate between libertarians was rendered impossible.”[6]

My own fairly intense connection with Octavio started after 1995, when Edo called Alberola to let him know that Xavier Montanya and Lala Gomà wanted to make a documentary[7] about the Delgado-Granado Affair. The first meetings were held on the premises on the Ronda Sant Antoni, the then premises of Solidaridad Obrera, and then at the FELLA in the Calle Joaquín Costa.[8] I was there as an observer, but they invited me to take a position and there were discussions between everyone as to how it could be laid out in the documentary that Delgado and Granado had not been behind the bombing in Madrid. At some point they called in Salvador Gurucharri, a comrade whom Octavio held in the highest regard. I was learning and listening that these were two veterans with plenty of experience in the fight against the dictatorship – they had both known imprisonment, exile and repression. The issue was whether the actual bombers should appear in the documentary and explain things.

One important issue at the meetings was that the CNT and the CGT should stand shoulder to shoulder when the time came to spread the message that they wanted to send out to society about opposing historical amnesia and the murder of Delgado and Granado looked like presenting a good opening for that. Edo took charge on behalf of the CNT and Octavio spoke for the CGT. The documentary reconstructed the facts with interviews with family members and comrades of the men who had been executed; and members of the court that had sat in judgment of them were also heard from, and so were their executioners. Court proceedings were set in motion that proved to be very involved and time-consuming.

In 2002, Joan Zambrana, acting for the CGT and myself in the name of the CNT held a joint meeting at the Espai Obert with both Edo and Octavio.  This was the start of many meetings held across Spain to vindicate the memory of the murdered comrades and lobby for moral and financial acknowledgment for their respective families. Some of those meetings had the participation on Antonio Martín and Sergio Hernández, the men who had actually planted the bomb in Madrid.

Edo and Octavio resurrected their friendship and were working together once again. I dwell upon this because they both had open sores and needed to make apologies of their own for the bombing in Madrid. Octavio spent many years trying to having the Francoist convictions set aside and to see Delgado and Granado rehabilitated. Eventually, in 2016, Granado was formally recognized as a victim of Francoism.[9]

On foot of these matters I embarked upon a very personal relationship with Octavio and we e-mailed each other fairly frequently. It was a privilege, having that connection with him, as he was a philosopher-thinker and his probing analyses of revolutionary activism caused me many a re-think. Alberola never made a song-and-dance about his knowledge and never overruled anyone. I got the plainest example of that when we were working together on a few books.

Actually, some of the pieces I had written for a range of books had been written on foot of Octavio’s advice and assistance.[10] We would consult with each other and talk about this or that aspect of the recent bibliography. Every time I sought his opinion regarding leading anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist militants, essentially exiles, his advice was that I should use the “conditional” tense; he was very respectful even though he might have had issues with certain significant actions.[11]

The book on which we worked most closely was the one about Facerías. We had been asked to produce two pieces on similar topics, to wit “CNT do-nothingness”. We swapped texts and came up with criticisms and made amendments. Octavio always made whatever alterations I suggested to him: he was an unbelievable comrade, very knowledgeable but he knew how to listen and how to take advice. The two pieces ended up reflective of the comments we had traded and were also complementary.[12]

Let me turn now to the meetings we had in his home in the Rue Jean Bart in Perpignan, meetings that proved very useful and advantageous to us both. Ariane would always be observing from the settee with a cigarette between her fingers. Sometimes, Octavio would get me to bring him books of all sorts, mostly essays and philosophy. I recall that on one occasion, in 2021, he asked me to bring him a copy of David Graeber’s The Democracy Project. The book was out of print and I toured all the bookshops in Barcelona but was only able to acquire a copy thanks to a friend of mine. At the time I was not familiar with Graeber the anarchist anthropologist and it was thanks to him that I learned to see history through different eyes, from an angle that I think came close to Octavio’s own.[13]

The last time we put our heads together was in relation to his still unpublished memoirs. Sometimes he would ask my opinion of comrades who were contacting him in order to suggest certain projects to him. In more recent years the deaths of some of his comrades/friends – Luis Andrés Edo, Salvador Gurucharri, and (in 2020) Stuart Christie, with whom he was great friends – hit him quite hard. He was quite something – activist and reconciler, his books and articles and his talks – they have left a gap to be filled. His humanism brought him to an ethical mode of behaviour that enhanced his ideals. His mind was constantly on how to improve on our thinking and on libertarian ethics. With Octavio, lots of us learned the true meaning of anarchist revolutionary activism.

Solidaridad Obrera, No 390 (Barcelona) 10 December 2025

Notes

1, Luis Andres Edo, foreword to El anarquismo español y la acción revolucionaria (1961-1974) Editorial Virus, Barcelona 2004, p. 11
2, Agustín Comotto, El peso de las estrellas. Vida del anarquista Octavio Alberola (Editorial Rayo Verde, Barcelona 2019. In English as The Weight of the Stars (AK Press, 2022)
3, Debate entre Agustín Guillamón y Octavio Alberola (on the proletariat and social emancipation). Biblioteca Subversiva Crimental, www.bscrimental.org. See also Entrevista, Barcelona, 11-11-2016 [see https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/c5b1t1] and Perpignan 16-11-2016. Published by FELLA, March 2017
4, A. Comotto, op. cit. p. 190
5, A. Comotto, op. cit., p. 296
6, A. Comotto, op. cit., p. 296
7, The documentary was entitled Delgado y Granado, un crimen legal. It was first broadcast in France and then, in November 1997, in Spain. 
8, [Fundació D’Estudis Llibertaris I Anarcosindicalistes (Libertarian and Anarcho-Syndicalist Studies Foundation) set up by the CNT in Catalonia in 1990. KSL note]
9, [Granado, who was suffering from fatal leukaemia (and knew it) when he imported guns and explosives into Spain seems to have qualified as a “resister”. Delgado’s petition was refused on foot of some nice legal definition. He was only in Madrid to fetch Granado back to France again. KSL note.]
10, As in the case of the chapter I wrote for the book entitled El hilo rojinegro e la prensa confederal 1932-2012 (FAL, Madrid, 2012)
11, As evident in the chapter I wrote for the book Quico Sabaté, la guerrilla urbana, with Ricardo de Vargas Golarons as supervising editor (Editorial Descontrol, Barcelona, 2015)
12, “Activisme i immobilisme a l’exili Espanyol” was written by Octavio and “La relació entre Josep Lluis Facerías i els comités de de l’MLE-CNT a l’exil” was mine. Both appeared in Josep Lluis Facerías i els seus grups d’acció (Editorial Descontrol, Barcelona, 2020)
13, Like Octavio, Graeber argued that democracy was not a by-product of power systems, states and governments but derived from practices in fringe communities such as Iceland, Chiapas and native American confederations.

Translated by: Paul Sharkey.