Miguel García García

Miguel García García (1908–1981) was a Spanish anarchist and writer. He was a political prisoner during the Franco era.

For the anarchist and painter, see Miguel García Vivancos.
Not to be confused with Miguel García.
In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is García and the second or maternal family name is García.

In his youth, García became affiliated with anarchism and his family were members of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), the anarchist trades union. As a young newsboy, after being injured at a rally for better pay, he left Barcelona for France, where he learned the French language. During the Spanish Civil War, he delivered arms across the French border into Republican Spain. While his fellow Barcelonans confronted a government building, García led a cohort to raid gunshops in the wealthier part of the city. During the war, he fought on the Saragossa and Madrid fronts and, after the anarchists' defeat, spent two and a half years in a concentration camp where he befriended Josep Lluís i Facerias and El Quico. Upon their release, they together joined the Spanish Resistance in which they re-organized the CNT, smuggled guns and people across borders and sabotaged Franco and the Axis powers. García was among the few who survived.[1][2]

García was captured in 1949 and sentenced to death but international pressure led his sentence to be reduced to 20 years in prison.[1] He met Stuart Christie in the Carabanchel Prison.[3] After his release and exile in 1969 García wrote about his incarceration in Franco's Prisoner (1971). García's book was translated into German. García became fluent in Italian and learned rudimentary English in prison so as to read the English-language press. He decided to travel across Western Europe to speak against Francoist Spain and organize wider resistance.

In London, in the mid-1970s Garcia was running the Centro Iberico at Chalk Farm (later in Holborn and, after his death, on the Harrow Road, Notting Hill), a meeting place for sympathetic exiles and anarchist exiles. Through the Anarchist Black Cross, which published the news sheet Black Flag, Miguel helped raise funds for Spanish prisoners and their families. He worked with Albert Meltzer who wrote of García's influence on The Angry Brigade, the First of May Group, and the Iberian Liberation Movement, among other groups internationally. García died of tuberculosis.[1]

References
  1. Meltzer, Albert (1982). Introduction. Miguel Garcia's Story. By García, Miguel. Meltzer, Albert (ed.). Sanday, Inner Hebrides: Cienfuegos Press. pp. 5–6. OCLC 937134016.
  2. García, Miguel (1972). Franco's Prisoner. Hart-Davis. ISBN 978-0-246-64070-3.
  3. Carr, Gordon (2010). The Angry Brigade: A History of Britain's First Urban Guerilla Group. PM Press. p. 45. ISBN 978-1-60486-365-9.

Selected works
  • Franco's Prisoner ISBN 0-246-64070-7
    • Prisionero de Franco. Los anarquistas en la lucha contra la dictadura. Traducción y notas José Ignacio Alvarez Fernández ISBN 978-84-7658-979-3
  • Looking Back After Twenty Years of Jail: Questions and Answers on the Spanish Anarchist Resistance ISBN 1-873605-03-X
  • Unknown heroes: biographies of Anarchist resistance fighters ISBN 1-873605-83-8

Further reading
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