As told in the C.N.T. “Boletin de Informacion”

At every turning point in history supermen appear—fighting leaders and heroes. Francisco Ascaso was the stormy petrel, the fighting leader and hero of the present Spanish Revolution. The admiration with which the world looks today at the Spanish people, their self-sacrifice, their undaunted courage and determination, their valiant struggle for human ideals, must be attributed, to a great extent, to the example set by Ascaso.

Who was Francisco Ascaso? The third son of humble baker, Francisco was born in 1901 in the small market town of Almudevar, in the province of Huesca, which is at present witnessing severe fighting. While still a youth he displayed unusual observation and was endowed with a talent for drawing which caused the village schoolmaster to entertain hopes of making an artist of the baker’s son.

When Francisco was eleven years old his father died and the family were to compelled to give up their business and move to Saragossa. The two eldest sons, Domingo and Alejandre, helped their mother and young sister Marie, but Francisco became and odd-job boy in a bar, where he spent four years working from 16 to 18 hours a day. Here in the hard and practical school of life the young man learned to understand social evils and injustices, and the needs and misery of his own people.

At the age of fifteen, Francisco was apprenticed to a baker, with the intention of following in his fathers footsteps. He had just started his apprenticeship when a baker’s strike broke out in Saragossa. The fifteen year old boy had already so mulch class knowledge that he immediately joined the strikers. One day, meeting a strike breaker in the street carrying bread, the lad urged him to quit work. The strike-breaker refused and in no time the bread basket was rolling in the middle of the road and the loaves in a nearby brook. As a result of this “political act” Francisco spent two weeks in jail.

After his release he found he was finished with the baking trade as no baker in Saragossa would employ this “rebel”. He obtained work as a waiter, however, and spent his leisure hours studying the writings of the great social and revolutionary thinkers.

In 1920, the editor of the Herald De Aragon was killed by an avenging bullet. This man was said to have been responsible for the shooting of seven soldiers during a military uprising in Saragossa. The Government accused the Ascaso brothers of this killing of the editor. His two brothers escaped, but Francisco fell into the hands of the police. Although all the accused could furnish undeniable proof of their innocence, the reactionaries wanted their heads, and the death sentence was pronounced. In view of the energetic protests of the mass of the people, the authorities did not dare to carry out the verdict but contented themselves with condemning Francisco to four years imprisonment, thinking to cure him of his revolutionary ideas.

Ascaso came out of jail bearing on his body the evidence of wounds, blows and lashes. The reactionaries had shown him what was customary in the days of Torquemada. All those tortures to which can be added thirst and hunger had weakened Francisco’s body but strengthened his mind and fighting spirit. As soon as he recovered his liberty, Ascaso became active in a circle called VOLUNTAD (will) which was also the name of a weekly newspaper published by this circle in defense of the first International.

In 1922, Ascaso went to Barcelona, where he got in touch with Juan Garcia Oliver, Rafols, Boix, Vidal, Montserrat, Durruti and others. He was working as a waiter and his spare time was devoted to the movement. He founded the CNT Waiters Syndicate.

Ascaso later left the Catalan Capital to go to La Coruna where he, intended embarking for Bolivia. There he hoped to realize the dream of his youth—to go around wandering as Jack London had done. But in Galacia, Francisco, remembering his true mission and the sad situation of the Spanish proletariat, returned to Saragossa. Here he met again his old friends and opponents of the “Free Syndicates.” In Saragossa, the church, in the person of the Cardinal Soldevile intrigued against the proletariat. The Cardinal was executed by some despairing workers, and again Ascaso along with a few other comrades was put in jail. He remained here from June to December 8th, 1923, when he escaped with 23 friends. Only Ascaso and one of his companions reached France, the other 21 were caught and punished for an offence they had never committed.

Ascaso found new friends, comrades and fighters in Paris. There also he made the acquaintance of his wife Berta. In June, 1924, he embarked with Durruti for Buenos Aires and spread his ideas over almost the whole of South America, at the same time broadening his horizon and acquiring a knowledge of human nature.

Thirteen months later, in July 1925, we see our fighter again in Paris. Here he remained until April 14, 1931, when the monarchy fell. Ascaso’s first thought was to return from his banishment though he realized that the king had gone but the generals remained. Back again in Barcelona he found fertile soil for his ideas. Spain was now a kind of camouflaged democracy, so long as the church and the army retained their old privileges. But July 19th was to be the hour of liberation for Spain. At the head of his fellow comrades and workers, by the side his dear friend Durruti, Ascaso fought on the barricades. He had already conquered half of Barcelona, by July 20th he would have liberated the whole city. In Atarazanas, in the new city of the harbor, Ascaso advanced in spite of the fascist machine guns. A rebel bullet struck him.

Comrade Ascaso is dead. But his work still lives and like lava has spread over Spain. The war front is the place where the fire of his lava burns most fiercely, the front of civil war and social Revolution fed by the living soul and spirit of this man of action—Ascaso!

Transcribed by Revolution's Newsstand