Octavio Alberola has spent over eighty years thinking, living, and formulating his life from an anarchist perspective. He belongs to a generation of protagonists in some of the twentieth century’s most notable events: the Spanish Revolution, the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, the internal conflicts of the international anarchist movement, and the great social struggles around the world. He was exiled to Mexico as a youth, and knows the precariousness of a life lived underground. His acquaintances include García Oliver, Che Guevara, Cipriano Mera, Federica Montseny, Félix Guattari, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Régis Debray, Stuart Christie, Rigoberta Menchú, and Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.
In this remarkable, layered biography, Agustín Comotto sits you at the feet of a veteran militant, as content to recall dramatic exploits as to discuss art, physics, family life, or political history. Born in 1928 and active in social struggles since he was a teenager, Alberola conveys hard-earned lessons. Most important of all: never countenance pessimism.
Table of Content
Preface: History’s Accidents, by Octavio Alberola
Introduction: Stowaway in a long train, by Agustín Comotto
MISTY MEMORIES
From apprentice to teacher
Backwater in Cinca
Sometime in the future
A boy’s eye view of the Retirada
EXILE IN MEXICO
There are no Indians in America
Scorpions in the convent
Tragedy in Xalapa
Draughtsmen on an hourly rate
Getting a handle on entropy
Willing theodolites
A stroll through the sewers
Interval
The great doubt
The ‘beardies’
Planned coincidences
Reporter Vaca Vilchis’s Adventures
Irene
Between the official and the clandestine
García Oliver
Reconstructing what remained
Farewells
FRANCE
Arrival in France
Slogging through the mud
On “delegated mission”
Clandestine and in action 24 hours a day
The DI’s short span
A brand-new day-to-day
An artist up for a fight
Contact in Rome
And the fight goes on
You never desert a comrade in danger
Remembering José
The state of affairs
Detained
BELGIUM
May ’68 seen through a hole
Educator in the abbey
Changes
Europe in flames
French farce
A done deal
NORMAL LIFE
Paris is an island
Looking for a life
Anarchist particles
Student
South America in flames
The Trial
The ‘normality’ of the normal guys
Trips and Expositions
Memory
Perpignan-bound
AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD
The world viewed from Perpignan railway station
On the move, forever on the move
Facing the imponderable and the inescapable
About the author
Paul Sharkey is one of the most well-known and highly respected translators of anarchist writings of the past thirty years. His other translations include Alexander Skirda’s Nestor Makhno: Anarchy’s Cossack and Frank Mintz’s Anarchism and Workers’ Self-Management in Revolutionary Spain.More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
45,715 Ebooks in this category
