A-Infos (en) France, Monde Libertaire - Like a libertarian athenaeum throughout the pages (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Son of a libertarian exile, Freddy Gomez has been immersed since 
childhood in the memories of this terrible war and this ideal. "I nursed 
libertarian Spain from its cradle, in the 1950s, in a furnished hotel 
room in the then-working-class 18th arrondissement of Paris. It was 
located at the foot of Montmartre." On Sundays, he accompanied his 
father to meet the exiles, the companeros. Thanks to his father, he was 
able to preserve a memory and cast a critical eye. "Today, this history 
remains, in my eyes, fundamental. Through the strength it represented 
and the contradictions it had to face throughout its troubled existence, 
the anarcho-syndicalist movement beyond the Pyrenees remains a 
laboratory from which to draw lessons for the present day."

Is this libertarian Spain a myth? It seems to be mired in "the 
prevailing oblivion of a Spain where the peaceful "transition" from 
Francoism to representative democracy was built on the deliberate 
negation of the revolutionary project of which its workers' movement was 
the bearer and architect." Who carries the ideal of utopia today? Should 
we have forgotten this "brief summer of anarchy" and classified it among 
the "follies of Spain"?

Creating a debate

In this book published by L'Echappée, Freddy Gomez bears witness to the 
"shadows and lights of an anarchism," entitled "Follies of Spain." It 
brings together numerous articles written under his own name or the 
pseudonym José Fergo for the journal A contretemps between 2001 and 
2017. These reviews evoke works devoted to the revolution, exile, and 
the anti-Franco libertarian resistance with sometimes harsh lucidity. 
Over time, some texts sometimes repeat themselves, but also revisit 
events with in-depth insights. The controversy is sometimes underlying, 
but healthy because it creates debate.

The author has three objectives:

- To keep at bay the myths that wove the anarchist dream;
- To explore the contradictions of the movement and its actions in times 
of total war;
- To avoid assigning good or bad points based on the prejudices of our time.

What's the point? All of this is about the past? Yes, of course, but not 
only that. For Freddy Gomez, "it remains for us to reweave this thread, 
to perpetuate it as an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the many 
wild uprisings of our times of apparent agony. For we are what we are 
because we seek, again and again, to breathe new life into what happened 
in the realm of emancipation."

Who were they?

Some articles bring leaders like Buenaventura Durruti back to life, 
notably through the books of Abel Paz, while avoiding the aforementioned 
myth, the romantic vision. What lesson? To realize that the failure was 
collective and not attributable to the top, to the "leaders." What 
happened in Zaragoza? How to assume one's relationship to power, to the 
leader in times of war?

Other activists, men of action, reappear throughout the pages, such as 
Valeriano Oronbo Fernandez, Jaime Balius, Horacio Pietro, Camillo 
Berneri, and André Prudhommeaux. Antonio Ortiz, the last of the 
"Nosostros," is moving. More recent: Salvador Puig Antich, Jean-Marc 
Rouillan, and Lucio Urtubia.

Lucidity, as I wrote above, is found in the testimony in Aragon, Los 
Monegros, of more than questionable behavior.

On a more positive note, the collectivization of land and then the role 
of women, with a review of a book devoted to Mujeres Libres (Free 
Women), their involvement in action, the distribution of tasks, and 
daily life.

Did the end of the war mark the disappearance of the libertarian 
movement? What kind of end, anyway? The CNT continued its fight under 
Franco, and the books reviewed describe its actions.

In Folies d'Espagne, Freddy Gomez offers a rich library, capable of 
inviting us to discover these years of hope but also to draw lessons for 
current and future struggles. It's like a libertarian athenaeum 
throughout the pages.

* Freddy Gomez
Folies of Spain
Lights and Shadows of an Anarchism
Published by L'Echappée, 2025

Meeting and presentation of the book at the initiative of the Salvador 
Segui group of the Anarchist Federation, in the presence of Freddy Gomez

Saturday, October 25, 2025, at 4 p.m. at Publico, the bookstore of Le 
Monde libertaire
145, rue Amelot, 75011 Paris
Free admission

https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=8631
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