Ramón Álvarez Palomo Papers
Period 1916-2002
Total size 10 m.
ConsultationNot restricted
Biography
Born in Gijón, Spain 1913, died in Gijón 2003; known as Ramonín; grew up in anarcho-syndicalist circles; visited the ‘escuela neutra’ headed by Eleuterio Quintanilla, supporter of cooperation between socialists and anarcho-syndicalists 1922-1928; had to work from his twelfth on; visited from his early youth labour union meetings; member of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI); regional secretary general of the CNT in Asturia, León and Palencia in 1933; played an important role as secretary of the revolutionary committee in Gijón during the Asturian autumn revolution and later during the Spanish Civil War; in exile in France from 1939; secretary of the regional CNT of Asturia, León and Palencia in exile 1945; in that year a rift occurred within the libertarian movement in exile between the orthodox majority and a minority that wanted to entrust leadership of the resistance against Franco to the clandestine Comité Nacional of the CNT in Spain, a group not averse to political compromise; this minority formed the Sub-Comité Nacional, on which Álvarez served as the secretary from 1947 to 1949; returned to Spain 1976, living in Gijón; after the split up of the CNT in 1979 member of the Confederación General del Trabajo; he published biographies, his memoirs and essays about politics and syndicalism.
Content
Correspondence with Acracio Bartholomé, Avelino García Entrialgo, Onofré García Tirador, José Peirats and others; minutes of meetings of and other documents on the regional sub-committee of the CNT in Asturia, León and Palencia in exile; documents on the national sub-committee in exile; circulars from and correspondence with the internal national committee in Spain; documents on the ‘Comisión pro-unidad’ 1961; file by Enrique Marco Nadal on the ‘Conversaciones de Madrid’; documentation on the plenaries and other meetings of the Asturian CNT in the period 1916-1939; documentation collected by Álvarez Palomo for his publications.
Arrangement
Álvarez himself made a series of general correspondence that is alphabetically arranged. There also was a file containing "correspondence with comrades", that we have integrated in the general correspondence. Álvarez collected a lot of material about various persons; respecting his arrangement we have classed these files in the chapter 'Documents on persons'; there the researcher will also find a lot of correspondence, that sometimes cannot be found in the general correspondence, as is the case with a.o. Acracio Bartolomé, Avelino González Entrialgo and Rafael Tomás.
In the underground movement in Spain militants often used various pseudonyms; and a lot of letters written from prison in Spain were frequently signed only by a first name or by a pseudonym. It was the widow Aurora Molina in Gijón who helped us resolving these problems and finding out the real persons behind the pseudonyms or first names; we owe her a great debt of gratitude. We also are grateful to Eduardo Romanos for helping us with the final arrangement. During the arrangement a large quantity of photographs and posters was transferred to the audiovisual section of the IISH. The periodicals were transferred to the library of the institute.
Literature: La C.N.T. en la historia española del siglo XX. Homenaje a Ramón Álvarez Palomo, Oviedo, 2002. Miguel Íñiguez, Esbozo de una enciclopedia histórica del anarquismo español, Madrid, 2001. Ángel Herrerín López, La CNT durante el franquismo. Clandestinidad y exilio (1939-1975), Madrid, 2004. Eduardo Romanos Fraile, Ideología libertaria y movilización clandestina. El anarquismo español durante el franquismo (1939-1975), PhD dissertation, Florence, 2007.
Processing information
Inventory made by Nico Jassies in 2008