Montes, Jose Perez 'Pepin', 1915-1947

Jose Perez Montes
Nicknamed 'Pepin', born 2nd October 1915 - Santander, Spain, died October 1947 - Spain

Jose Perez Montes ('Pepin') was born in Santander on the 2nd October 1915. From his youth he frequented the Santander Workers’ Centre. He was an excellent orator and a fearsome debater, a born agitator and was outstanding during the days leading up to the insurrectional movement of the 16th October 1934.

In 1936 with the onset of the Spanish Civil War and Revolution he left for the front with the first confederal column - a column of the anarcho-syndicalist union the CNT. Afterwards he was a member of the Libertarian Youth Committee of Santander.

In 1937 he joined a combat unit again. The demands of the Organisation (the CNT) took him yet again to the rear where he was a member first of the Local Federation, then of the Regional Committee and finally of the International Committee (Euzkadi-Asturias) of the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth (FIJL). In exile after the war he was in French concentration camps.

Afterwards, he had various responsibilities, many related to the resistance to Franco, amongst which was being a member of the Committee of Relations of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) in 1945. In 1946 he joined the clandestine organisation in Spain and was a member of the Peninsular Committee of the FAI which had its base in Valencia.

In October 1947, while en route to France on a mission for the Organisation; he disappeared at the frontier. Some days later he was found drowned close to the mouth of the Bidasoa. He had been robbed and only the rubber seal of the Peninsular Committee of the FAI had been left in his pocket. He was 32.

Edited by libcom the pamphlet The Anarchist Resistance to Franco - Biographical notes, by Antonio Tellez. £2, published by the Kate Sharpley Library