Wilebaldo Solano
Encyclopedia
Wilebaldo Solano Alonso is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
– September 7, 2010, Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
) was a Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
activist during the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, especially noted for his work with Socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
youth organizations as a member of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification
Workers' Party of Marxist Unification
The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification was a Spanish communist political party formed during the Second Republic and mainly active around the Spanish Civil War...
(POUM). Most of his activities before and during the Second Spanish Republic
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
were centered in Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
.
Youth
Solano completed his secondary studies at the Institut Balmes, in BarcelonaBarcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
. He distinguished himself as a leader of the student movement, organizing his institute's first student group during the fall from power of General Miguel Primo de Rivera
Miguel Primo de Rivera
Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, 2nd Marquis of Estella, 22nd Count of Sobremonte, Knight of Calatrava was a Spanish dictator, aristocrat, and a military official who was appointed Prime Minister by the King and who for seven years was a dictator, ending the turno system of alternating...
, and later founding the Catalan National Student Federation. Solano went on to study medicine at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
In 1932 he joined the youth wing of the Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
Bloque Obrero y Campesino (BOC – Workers' and Peasants' Bloc) —a major workers' organization, at the time under the influence of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
's Right Opposition
Right Opposition
The Right Opposition was the name given to the tendency made up of Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky and their supporters within the Soviet Union in the late 1920s...
, that would later fuse into the POUM— and began organizing the Association of Revolutionary Students of Barcelona. Solano became a member of the Executive Committee of the BOC Youth and initiated his journalistic career as a contributor to Adelante ("Forward"), a journal headed by Joaquín Maurín
Joaquín Maurín
Joaquín Maurín Juliá was a Spanish Communist politician and revolutionary, leader of the Workers and Peasants Bloc and of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification...
—a renowned Spanish communist who would go on to found the POUM with Andreu Nin.
Civil War
Solano became secretary general of the JCI (Iberian Communist YouthIberian Communist Youth
Iberian Communist Youth was the youth wing of the Iberian Communist Federation, and later of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification . JCI had its main strength in Catalonia and the Llevant . The 1934 conference of JCI elected Germinal Vidal as the general secretary of JCI...
) in September 1935, after having joined the POUM and spent time in Valencia
Valencia (city in Spain)
Valencia or València is the capital and most populous city of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third largest city in Spain, with a population of 809,267 in 2010. It is the 15th-most populous municipality in the European Union...
as a delegate of the POUM's Executive Committee, where he helped found the weekly El Comunista (The Communist). After the eruption of the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
in 1936 Solano represented the JCI in the Executive Committee of the POUM and headed the weekly Juventud Comunista (Communist Youth). In November 1936 he was elected secretary general of the International Bureau of Revolutionary Socialist Youth.
Solano managed to escape from the clashes between the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia
Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia
The Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia , was formed on July 23, 1936 through the unification of four left-wing groups; the Catalan Federation of Spanish Socialist Workers' Party , the Partit Comunista de Catalunya , the Unió Socialista de Catalunya and the...
and POUM on June 16, 1937. He helped found the second Executive Committee of the POUM with other fugitive poumistas. In harshly repressive conditions, this committee organized a resistance to the persecution of the POUM and an international campaign supporting Nin and other jailed leaders. During this period he edited the underground journal, Juventud Obrera (Working Youth).
In April 1938 he was detained along with other POUM leaders and placed in Barcelona State Prison by Communist-directed government authorities. He was to be included in the second trial of the POUM, which never occurred thanks to the fall of Barcelona to Francoist
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
forces. In February 1939, Solano entered France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
Exile
Solano spent several months living in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and Chartres
Chartres
Chartres is a commune and capital of the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France. It is located southwest of Paris.-Geography:Chartres is built on the left bank of the Eure River, on a hill crowned by its famous cathedral, the spires of which are a landmark in the surrounding country...
, and along with other poumistas attempted to reconstitute the Party, with an exile wing and one active inside Spain, and also maintain links with other organizations. In 1941, after Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
conquered and occupied France, Solano was detained in Montauban
Montauban
Montauban is a commune in the Tarn-et-Garonne department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in southern France. It is the capital of the department and lies north of Toulouse....
and condemned to twenty years of forced labor by a Vichy regime
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
tribunal. He was freed on July 19, 1944 by the Maquis
Maquis (World War II)
The Maquis were the predominantly rural guerrilla bands of the French Resistance. Initially they were composed of men who had escaped into the mountains to avoid conscription into Vichy France's Service du travail obligatoire to provide forced labour for Germany...
. He joined the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
and, along with POUM and Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...
and militants founded a Spanish guerrilla unit, the Liberty Battalion. In 1945 he left the Battalion to rededicate himself to organizing the POUM and reestablishing its newspaper, La Batalla ("The Battle").
In 1947, after a clandestine voyage to Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
and Catalonia, Solano was elected secretary general of the POUM at the party's general conference in Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
, attended by representatives of the illegal Spanish organization as well as exile groups from France, North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
, and Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
.
During his exile, aside from editing La Batalla, considered one of the best Spanish émigré publications, Solano founded Tribuno Socialista ("Socialist Tribune"), a magazine that secured a notable following in Spain in an epoch when the resistance to the Franco dictatorship (see Spanish State
Spanish State
Francoist Spain refers to a period of Spanish history between 1936 and 1975 when Spain was under the authoritarian dictatorship of Francisco Franco....
) reached hopeful peaks. Moreover, Solano participated in numerous international activities and, in particular, in the creation of the Movement for the United States of Europe
United States of Europe
Since the 1950s, European integration has seen the development of a supranational system of governance, as its institutions move further from the concept of simple intergovernmentalism. However, with the Maastricht Treaty of 1993, new intergovernmental elements have been introduced alongside the...
, one of the first postwar Pan-European organizations, and that of the Anti-Imperialist
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
People's Congress, which brought together many of the African and Asian national liberation movements
Decolonization
Decolonization refers to the undoing of colonialism, the unequal relation of polities whereby one people or nation establishes and maintains dependent Territory over another...
.
Professionally, Solano worked for Agence France Presse between 1953 and 1981. In 1975-76, when the POUM found itself in the midst of a crisis, he stood in opposition to the dissolution of the Party and its entrance into the camp of Social Democracy
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
(the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is a social-democratic political party in Spain. Its political position is Centre-left. The PSOE is the former ruling party of Spain, until beaten in the elections of November 2011 and the second oldest, exceeded only by the Partido Carlista, founded in...
). He pushed for Tribuno Socialista to become the POUM's magazine, and expressed his support for the regroupment of revolutionary Marxist organizations.
Later years
In the 1980s, he was one of the founders of the Fundació Andreu Nin, which focused on the total rectification of the prestige of that eminent revolutionary and the clarification of the mystery of his death at the hands of the NKVDNKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
, and at the same time the defense of revolutionary Marxism and dialogue with all the tendencies of the socialist labor movement. Solano is the author of a biography of Nin, a history of the JCI, and numerous essays on the POUM, the exile of Spanish revolutionaries in France, and the problems posed by the fall of the USSR and the collapse of Stalinism. He was a major advisor to and collaborator on films such as Ken Loach
Ken Loach
Kenneth "Ken" Loach is a Palme D'Or winning English film and television director.He is known for his naturalistic, social realist directing style and for his socialist beliefs, which are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as homelessness , labour rights and child abuse at the...
's Land and Freedom
Land and Freedom
Land and Freedom is a 1995 film directed by Ken Loach and written by Jim Allen. The film narrates the story of David Carr, an unemployed worker and member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, who decides to fight for the republican side in the Spanish Civil War...
and the documentary Operación Nikolai.
1999 saw the release of Solano's book-length study of the POUM and Nin's role in the Spanish revolution, El POUM in la Historia. Andreu Nin y la revolución española. It was published jointly by Libros de la Catarata and the Fundació Andreu Nin, and is a personal and observed discussion of the poorly understood time period and political movement – some have called it one of the two most important works about the POUM, the other being Andrew Durgan's study of the Bloque Obrero y Campesino, BOC 1930-1936. As yet neither work is available in English.