Melchor Rodríguez García page; from the Daily Bleed's Anarchist Encyclopedia

Melchor Rodríguez was an advocate of a pacifist & very humanistic anarchism, & he was a man equal to the circumstances he encountered.

Appointed director of prisons in Madrid, he stood out for his decent treatment of inmates, bringing a halt to irregularities, the Communist terror, facing down an anarchist militia seeking revenge after a fascist air raid, & also exposing the existence of Stalinist Chekas (see the Cazorla case).

"El Ángel Rojo" (The Red Angel), was a true prison connoisseur, having graced many a cell with his continuous entrances & exits under both the Republic & the dictatorship prior to that.

After the fascists took over Spain the majority of his colleagues were either exiled or executed, but thanks to favorable testimonies of many of former prisoners, Rodríguez was only imprisoned, & managed eventually to live out his life in Madrid.

A member of the FAI (in the same group as Celedonio Pérez), Rodríguez was very active during the years leading up to the civil war, & was outstanding in the Madrid construction strike of 1936.

After the civil war he was one of the mainstays of the clandestine C.N.T. (arrested in 1946-47 & tried the following year on charges of smuggling propaganda into Alcalá prison).

At a time when disenchantment was taking its toll of anti-Francoists he kept the CNT torch aloft & opposed Cincopuntista activity in 1965.

Source: This text, with some modifications, primarily from Miguel Iñiguez's A Historical Encyclopedia of Spanish Anarchism, posted on the Internet by Christie Books (but no longer online as of March 2008)
See also the Wikipedia
&, in Spanish, http://monclovitas.com/foro/showthread.php?t=31011 is of interest.

page created August 2007, minor edits March 2008