During the Franco regime, Manuel Zaguirre, who was the state leader of the Unión Sindical Obrera, locked himself in his room at the age of 15, so that his parents would not see him reading historical and political texts that challenged the repression of the time. I also listened to Raimon vinyl. “It was a naive act to think that my parents did not know that I was a member of a union, when they thought the same as me,” he reflects in conversation with elDiario.es.
Zaguirre is one of the unionists retaliated by the Franco regime to whom the University of Barcelona (UB) has paid tribute this Thursday, in an act of recognition of five key figures of the union movement held in the Auditorium of the Historical Building of the university.
“I was already born a feminist, a trade unionist, a communist and a fighter for all rights,” says Maruja Ruiz, from the Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) union, former leader of the neighborhood movement in Nou Barris and active activist in the PSUC. “It was risking one’s military life in that time of repression,” he adds.
During Franco’s dictatorship, independent unions were banned, and only union organization controlled by the regime was permitted. Any attempt to organize or demand labor rights outside the control of the State was harshly repressed through dismissals, imprisonment, torture, exile or even executions.
The journalist Neus Bonet has been in charge of conducting and presenting this event, which is part of an initiative called Memory Daylaunched by the UB two years ago with the aim of keeping alive the memory of the victims of Franco’s regime.
In the first edition, in 2023, tribute was paid to retaliated students and teachers, and in the second, the occupation of Barcelona by Franco’s troops was remembered. This year, the event focused on the crucial role of the union movement in the fight against the dictatorship.
The celebration coincides with the anniversary of the Franco occupation of the city and the UB on January 26, 1939. None of the union members honored—José Luis López Bulla, Camilo Rueda, Manuel Zaguirre, Maruja Ruiz or Josep Riera—lived that moment, but all of them suffered the repression of the following years, when the underground became their only ally.
After the presentation of Neus Bonet, the historian and professor at the University of Barcelona, Andreu Mayayo, has opened his historical gloss with a quote from the thinker Walter Benjamin: “It is a more arduous task to honor the memory of anonymous human beings than that of famous people. The historical construction is dedicated to the memory of those who have no name.” From these words, Mayayo has highlighted the fundamental role of trade unionists, whom he has defined as “the DNA of the welfare state.”
Repression and assembly
“They are not victims, but fighters,” said Mayayo, who has recounted the stories of each of the union members, reviewing their careers.
“We held the meetings clandestinely, in the mountains, here in Badalona, near the Can Ruti hospital. There was a very large carob tree, and we went under it, because from a distance you couldn’t see that we were gathered,” remembers Camilo Rueda, a member of the UGT and the PSC. “Up to 15 or 20 people would meet there, first thing in the morning, on Saturdays, Sundays or in the evening,” he explains.
In April 1975, while they were distributing leaflets by hand in Badalona to ask for freedom of association and the celebration of May 1 as Workers’ Day, Rueda and his group from the UGT were surprised by a plainclothes police officer.
“He put a gun to the back of a colleague’s head and took him away,” explains Rueda. Three of them decided to follow them to alert the UGT lawyer, but the agent turned and started shooting. “He hit me with two shots,” he adds.
The bullets damaged his liver, spleen and colon, forcing him to remain admitted to the Sant Pau Hospital for almost five months. “The first 45 days I was sequestered in my own room, with a couple of police officers guarding the door 24 hours a day. They didn’t even let my brothers in; Every visit was an ordeal,” he recalls.
Josep Riera, a key figure in the Unió de Pagesos, who led the union for more than two decades, recalls how the first meeting in which the farmers of Mataró, a city near Barcelona, decided to get involved in the Unió de Pagesos was held cold February night at home.
Riera defines himself as a “farmer by day and trade unionist by night,” but not even clandestinity prevented him from being arrested in a raid by the regime, sent to the emblematic La Modelo prison and held without trial for years.
“We met in the countryside, in the church, even the nuns helped us find places,” adds Maruja Ruiz. “Despite the organization we had, we were very persecuted,” he concludes.
The union struggle
“We had no choice but to fight. Today it seems that there is a crisis of values, now only oneself matters and the neighbor does not matter,” Ruiz laments. “Before we even struggled to have daycare, when the only place we could go was prison,” he admits.
Ruiz still remembers how the wives of the union workers organized a 28-day confinement in the church of Sant Andreu de Palomar to defend the employment of the workers of Motor Ibérica, which was the Spanish subsidiary of the Japanese multinational Nissan.
In the Cirera neighborhood, in Mataró, in the middle of the Andalusian migrant neighborhood, Riera recovers the years in which he attended a night school for young workers, organized along with other political activities prohibited by Franco’s regime. Workers’ Commissions was one of the main promoters of the initiative.
“We even had a multicopier to print clandestine documents,” he points out. It was in those years when José Luis López Bulla, another of those honored by the UB, arrived from Andalusia, who would end up becoming the leader of the Workers’ Commissions in Catalonia.
“We fought hard to get justice. Hundreds of militants ended up in the ditches and are still missing,” he says. “We always have to defend the rights we have won because depending on who governs, they could be taken away from us tomorrow,” he adds.
“Look what will happen in the United States, a man who has already annulled a whole series of political, union and democratic rights will govern,” he concludes, referring to the new president of the United States, Donald Trump, who took office this Monday.
Zaguirre vindicates everything that is, according to him, the working class. “It is conscience, dignity, meaning of life and aspirations. A unionism that calls itself democratic, with a vocation for progress and social transformation, must assume and defend these values. And I think that is being lost,” he laments.
“For an Andalusian migrant worker of that time like me, university was an unattainable world,” admits Zaguirre. “For this reason, stepping into the University of Barcelona for the first time to receive recognition is, without a doubt, the greatest honor I could imagine,” he emphasizes.
“This is not an act of nostalgia, but of vindication, because the University wants to be a critical witness to the past,” said the rector of the UB, Joan Guàrdia, before presenting a plaque to the honorees together with the general secretary of the university.
“This recognition is not just mine, it is for all those who fought with me,” said Zaguirre, referring to those fellow militants who, despite the Democratic Memory Law, are still forgotten.
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