Juan García Oliver


Juan García Oliver was a Spanish anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary and Minister of Justice of the Second Spanish Republic. He was a leading figure of anarchism in Spain.

Career

Juan García Oliver was born in 1901. He apprenticed as a cook and in 1919, assisted in the formation of the waiters' union, affiliated with the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo. García Oliver later organized workers in Reus, led the CNT's provincial committee, was jailed during a strike action, and joined the armed-struggle group Los Solidarios. During the Spanish Restoration, García Oliver worked as a polisher in France, where he unsuccessfully plotted to kill King Alfonso XIII and Benito Mussolini. He was jailed upon his reentry to Spain in 1926 but was released with the coming of the Second Spanish Republic. As a leading insurrectionist in the period, he joined the Federación Anarquista Ibérica, advocated for full revolution with the CNT, and fought in the streets of Barcelona. García Oliver came to lead the militias and in 1936, subsequently became the defense minister of the Generalitat de Catalunya and the justice minister in the Francisco Largo Caballero administration. García Oliver destroyed the archives of convicts and worked to curtail terrorism. During the May Days, he encouraged the CNT fighters to disarm. García Oliver reluctantly subordinated the goal of revolution to win the civil war, but after Catalonia fell in 1939, he would remain in exile for the rest of his life, first in France, then Sweden, and finally Mexico. He continued to argue for unity for the rest of his life. In 1978, two years before his death, García Oliver published his autobiography, El eco de los pasos.