Juan García Oliver | |
|---|---|
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| Minister of Justice | |
| In office 4 November 1936 – 17 May 1937 | |
| President | Manuel Azaña |
| Prime Minister | Francisco Largo Caballero |
| Preceded by | Mariano Ruiz-Funes García |
| Succeeded by | Manuel de Irujo y Ollo |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1901-01-20)20 January 1901 |
| Died | 13 July 1980(1980-07-13) (aged 79) |
| Party | CNT |
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Juan García Oliver (1901–1980) was a Spanishanarcho-syndicalist revolutionary andMinister of Justice of theSecond Spanish Republic. He was a leading figure ofanarchism in Spain and is said to have invented thered and black flag.
Juan García Oliver was born on 20 January 1901 inReus,[1] into aworking class family. He was the son of Antònia Oliver Figueras, a native of Reus, and José Garcia Alba, a native ofXàtiva. At that time, the family lived at 32 Carrer Sant Elias in the old town of Reus. Juan was the son of his father's second marriage, after being widowed, and he had four siblings, Elvira, Mercè, Pere and Antònia, and three half-siblings, Josep, Dídac and Lluïsa; but their step-siblings did not live with them, instead they lived inCambrils.[2]
His brother Pere died ofmeningitis at the age of 7, when Juan was still very young. As a result the family had to go into debt and their mother had to start working on the street. When he was 7 years old, he was able to receiveprimary education for a few months. But, as a result of the birth of his sister Antònia and the beginning of a strike at the Vapor Nou where his father worked, he was forced to temporarily leave his studies and start working. He worked as a boy, earning onereal a day in a small bag factory.[2] In spite of everything, Juan was able to resume his primary studies at the age of 8 in the school of the republican teacher Grau, after passing an entrance exam. His primary schooling finished when he turned 11 years old.[2]
As a young man, Juan García worked in the wine trading house of Lluís Quer's widow, earning 5pesetas a month, for three years. In the autumn of 1914, at the age of only thirteen and tired of routine work, he decided to escape toFrance in search of work; he had only a basic knowledge ofFrench which he had learnedself-taught. When he was near the border and without money, he realized that this had not been a good idea and returned to Reus. Later, he worked temporarily in several restaurants. First, at the La Nacional inn for 20 pesetas a month, then at the Sport Bar restaurant for a peseta a day and finally, at the Hotel Nacional de Tarragona for 50 pesetas a month. At the age of fifteen, he decided to move toBarcelona to find work and began working as a waiter at La Ibérica del Padre and later at the second-class inn Hotel Jardín.[2]
In Barcelona, the young García Oliver was in a time of great social unrest and intense union struggle. García Oliver experienced the general strike of 1917 as an observer; it was his second experience in asocial conflict. Tired of his job as a waiter at the Hotel Jardín, he left and started working at the Las Palmeras bar-restaurant in the Boqueria market. He took a seasonal job as a waiter at the Colònia Puig de Montserrat in the spring of 1918 and, after completing it, at the Hotel Restaurant La Española in Carrer de la Boqueria, where he apprenticed as a cook. In this last job he began to attend the conferences of the Society of Waiters Alliance, that took place in the Cabanyes street.[3]
In 1919 he first joined the Society of Waiters L'Aliança, a member of theUGT, but later participated in the formation of the Union of the Hospitality Industry, Restaurants, Cafes and Annexes which was integrated into theConfederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). García Oliver later organized workers inReus, led the CNT's provincial committee and was jailed during astrike action.
In 1922, he took part in the formation of theLos Solidariosdirect action group which, in 1923, assassinated CardinalJuan Soldevila y Romero inZaragoza and General Secretary of theSindicatos Libres Joan Laguía Lliteras inManresa. García Oliver subsequently worked as a polisher in France, where he unsuccessfully plotted to killAlfonso XIII andBenito Mussolini. Upon his reentry to Catalunya in 1924, he was arrested in Manresa and imprisoned inBurgos, before being moved toPamplona in 1926. He was released when theSecond Spanish Republic was proclaimed and returned to Barcelona, where he joined theIberian Anarchist Federation (Spanish:Federación Anarquista Ibérica, FAI). He is said to have invented thered and black flag of the CNT, which was first exhibited on 1 May 1931. He was secretary of the FAI and attended the third confederal congress of the CNT in Madrid from 10 to 16 June 1931, where he declared that it was necessary to launch into the revolution without waiting.
In 1932 he took part in theAlt Llobregat insurrection and was imprisoned again. He promoted the formation of the National Revolutionary Committee (which was based inBadalona) and led theJanuary 1933 insurrection, which landed him back in prison. He was released after the electoral victory of the left inFebruary 1936 elections. He participated in the IV Congress of the CNT inZaragoza in May 1936, and anticipating the military uprising, he was part of the group that sought the supply of weapons. However, this project was not adopted because of the attitude ofFederica Montseny andDiego Abad de Santillán, among others. After the July days of fighting in Barcelona, a plenary session of local and regional groups took place on 23 July. García Oliver and the district ofBaix Llobregat proposed the proclamation oflibertarian communism, but there was unanimity against it. He promoted the formation of theCommittee of Antifascist Militias of Catalonia and organized theHarriers Column, which he marched with to theAragon front. But he was called back to Barcelona to act as a representative of the CNT in the Committee, as the head of the War Department.[4]
On 4 November 1936, the CNT decided to join the war government ofFrancisco Largo Caballero, with García Oliver acting as theMinister of Justice. He began organizing the "People's War Schools" and set up work camps for political detainees. In his tenure as minister, court fees were abolished and criminal records destroyed. In Barcelona there were a series of confrontations between revolutionary groups and the republican government, known as theMay Days. García Oliver urged the Barcelona CNT to abandon the struggle that had broken out in the streets, and called for a ceasefire. With the end of theSpanish Civil War in 1939, he settled inSweden,Venezuela and finallyMexico. In 1978, two years before his death, García Oliver published his autobiography,El eco de los pasos.[5]
His remains were discovered in the same tomb where those of his son (Juan García Álvarez, who died in an accident in January 1964) are located, inZapopan, state ofJalisco, Mexico.[6][7]
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