Germinal Esgleas

He was born in Malgrat de Mar and lived during his childhood in the Spanish protectorate in Morocco, where his father and brother died, the result of a raid by the Kabyle against the most remote neighborhoods of Melilla, in retaliation against the military campaigns of the Spanish army in Morocco.

In 1919 he settled in Calella, Malgrat de Mar and Mataró, where he campaigned for the CNT. At the age of 17 he was appointed secretary of a trade union in Calella, and from that moment he was arrested frequently. He began collaborating as a CNT propagandist with Joan García Oliver and in 1923 became secretary of the Catalan CNT and began to hold meetings. Three years later he was arrested alongside Joan Montseny, founder of La Revista Blanca. Between 1928 and 1929 he worked as a teacher in a rationalist school of the glass union of Mataró. In 1930 he became romantically involved with Federica Montseny, with whom he had three children: Vida (1933), Germinal (1938) and Blanca (1942). He was a representative of the Local Federation of Calella, and with other unions he participated in the third Congress of the CNT in Madrid from 11 June to 16 June 1931. From La Revista Blanca he defended the apoliticalism of the CNT.

During the last years of the Spanish Civil War he represented the CNT in the economy department of the Generalitat de Catalunya. In 1937 he was a member of the executive committee of the Catalan Libertarian Movement and was delegated by the CNT to the congress of the International Workers' Association (AIT) in 1938.

On 9 February 1939 he crossed the border into France. He was intercepted by French police and interned in the camp de concentration d'Argelès-sur-Mer, and from 1942 in Combs-la-Ville, Toulouse, Mansac and Notron. In 1944 a group of maquis released him from the concentration camp.

During his time in exile he collaborated in the formation of the Spanish Libertarian Movement (MLE). In May 1945, he became General Secretary of the CNT during his exile in Paris after facing off with the previous General Secretary, Juan Manuel Molina Mateo. In those years a split took place between the orthodox faction and the possibilist faction, the latter of which was in favor of collaboration with the Spanish Republican government in exile. Esgleas was general secretary of the Orthodox faction until 1947, and again he was general secretary between 1952 and 1957. From 1958 to 1963 he was secretary general of the AIT. Later, when the two factions of the CNT reunited, he was general secretary between 1963 and 1967 and between 1969 and 1973. His appointment was answered by Cipriano Mera in 1964, who accused him, among other things, of appropriation of the running of the organization.[2] His opinion was dominant within the CNT during the 1960s, which is why many of his detractors have accused him of immobility.[3]