The lifelong CNT militant was part of the Cuban revolution and participated in physical resistance to Franco

Octavio Alberola Suriñach, who died last week in southern France, was the son of rationalist teachers and libertarian militants. His father, José Alberola Navarro, served as Education Councillor of the Council of Aragon during the Spanish Revolution of 1936–1937, and his mother, Carmen Suriñach, was a teacher from Olot.

In 1939, the family went into exile in Mexico. There, Alberola studied civil engineering in Mexico City and became a prominent figure in the Libertarian Youth. Arrested in 1946, he helped found the Mexican Libertarian Youth, its media arm Alba Roja, and the Spanish Anti-Franco Youth.

By 1957, he was organizing rallies in Mexico and establishing European contacts. He became involved in the “Spanish Movement 59” (ME/59), preparing guerrilla actions alongside Juan García Oliver. He also supported Cuba’s “July 26 Movement,” aiding the Castro brothers’ guerrilla struggle against the Batista regime with help from the anarchist diaspora in Mexico. Disillusionment followed when the new Cuban regime aligned with Soviet interests, abandoning promises to support Iberian liberation.

In 1960, he became Secretary of Defense for the National Confederation of Labor (CNT) in the Americas and represented the Mexican CNT at the 1961 Congress of Limoges, where the clandestine Defensa Interior (DI) was formed to combat the Franco regime. DI’s militant section attempted several unsuccessful assassinations of Franco. From 1962 to 1965, Alberola operated clandestinely in France alongside García Oliver and Cipriano Mera.

From 1965 onward, Alberola was linked to numerous anti-Franco actions. He favored direct propaganda actions without casualties, publicly clashing with Gaston Leval on this point. In 1966, he opposed the five-point movement that weakened the CNT and encouraged the rise of autonomous anarchist groups, especially in Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia, and Madrid.

That year, he joined the Libertarian Youth Federation (FIJL) and the magazine Presencia, and was a member of the action group Primero de Mayo, responsible for high-profile actions like the kidnapping of Franco’s ambassador to the Vatican in Rome (April 1966) and the attempted kidnapping of Spain’s EEC ambassador in Belgium (1968). Arrested in Belgium in 1968, he spent five months in prison.

In the mid-1970s, Alberola worked as an educator in Liège and returned to France in 1974. Arrested in Avignon for his role in the kidnapping of Spanish banker Baltasar Suárez and for membership in the GARI (Internationalist Revolutionary Action Groups), he was imprisoned for nine months.

From 1975 until retirement in 1994, he worked as a newspaper layout artist and lived in Perpignan, lecturing across Spain and continuing to write. He contributed to both CGT and CNT publications without sectarianism. He also participated in COJRA (Committee for Anti-Authoritarian Reflection Days) and hosted Tribuna Latinoamericana on Radio Libertaire (1980–2000).

In the 2000s, he co-founded efforts to reopen the trial of anarchists Joaquín Delgado and Francisco Granado, executed in 1963, and in 2003 helped launch GALSIC (Support Groups for Libertarians and Independent Trade Unionists in Cuba).

He contributed to numerous publications including Cenit, El Viejo Topo, Tierra y Libertad, El Topo Avizor, and others. His books include The Problems of Science: Determinism and Freedom (1951), Spanish Anarchism and Revolutionary Action (1961–1974), and The Libertarian Opposition to the Franco Regime (1993).