In the late 1980s I attended a film show in London on the achievements of anarchism during the Spanish Civil War. At one point an elderly Spanish anarchist sitting next to me began weeping quietly. The passion and conviction of Spanish anarchism had suddenly ˙been made manifest.
Later on I learnt that he was Joaquin Perez and was one of the last surviving members of the heroic band of anarchist fighters, the Friends of Durruti.
Joaquin Perez Navarro was born into a poor peasant family at Calpes de Arenso near Castillon on 4th August 1907, the eldest of three children - a sister and brother. He lost his father at the age of 11. He emigrated with his mother to Barcelona in 1918. There he worked as a hodcarrier's mate before becoming a waiter, a profession which he remained in for the rest of his working life.
In 1919 at the age of 12, he joined the mass anarchosyndicalist union the CNT.
He took part in the fighting in Barcelona against the Francoist uprising and then immediately went to fight on the Aragon front in one of the anarchist militia columns. He worked in the anarchist collectives of Gelsa and Pina de Ebro. ˙In 1937 he joined Los Amigos de Durruti (Friends of Durruti) a group of anarchists pledged to fight militarization and the betrayals of the Communist Party and named after the legendary anarchist fighter and militia commander Buenaventura Durruti. He fought with the Friends on the barricades in Barcelona in May 1937 (these events are depicted at the end of Ken Loach's film Land and Freedom). Later he fought with the Iron Column, an anarchist militia that had initially been constituted from prisoners released from the jails of the Republic. At the end of 1938 he was imprisoned and tortured by the Stalinists, who condemned him to death and put him in Montjuic prison.
He escaped from there with the fall of Barcelona to the Francoists and reached France. There he was imprisoned in the French concentration camps at Argeles and Barcares. Later on he wa