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CNT Cantabria after Franco

In 2012 the IISH received the intesting archive of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) Federación Regional Cantabria. Since 1939 the IISH keeps the archives of the anarcho-syndicalist trades union federation CNT. Cantabria is an autonomous region and province in the north of Spain, with Santander as its capital.

The  CNT existed underground in the Franco era. After the death of Franco in 1975 the CNT became legal and had to reorganize from the beginning. The archives now at the IISH provide a good picture of the restructuring of the organization in the region Cantabria.

The archive contains correspondence from the national CNT, the Partido Socialista Obrera Español (PSOE), and the trade union Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT)as well as documents on the first regional congress of the CNT in Cantabria from April 1980.

Remarkable are also the scrapbooks on the “Ateneo Libertario de Santander” and another “Ateneos”. These Ateneos are cultural centers where like-minded people, for example, anarchists, meet one another. They also contain documents on demonstrations on behalf of CNT activists José Ramon Cotera Diez and Fidel Manrique. Manrique was secretary-general of the CNT (from 2007 until 2010).

Photos: Ateneao Libertario, 5 October 1979, course ‘Anarquismo y Sindicalísmo’, Francesc Boldu

 

Posted: 
12 June 2013