Salvador Puig Antich
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Salvador Puig Antich (1948 – March 2, 1974) was a Catalan anarchist, born in Barcelona, and active during the 1960s. After being tried by a military tribunal and found guilty of the death of a Guardia Civil soldier, he was executed by the authorities of Spain, then under control of dictator Francisco Franco.
Child of a middle-class working family, Salvador was the third of six brothers. His father, Joaquim Puig, had been a militant of the Acció Catalana, a Catalan political movement, during the times of the Second Spanish Republic. After being exiled in France in a refugee camp in Argelès-sur-Mer, he was condemned to death upon his return to Spain and pardoned at the last moment.
Salvador began studying in the religious school La Salle Bonanova until he was expelled for indiscipline. From the age of 16, Salvador combined office work with night studies at the Maragall Institute, where he made friends with Xavier Garriga and the Solé Sugranyes brothers, who would be future comrades of his in the Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación, an anarchist group fighting against the Francisco Franco regime.
The events of May 1968 in France were decisive in Puig Antich deciding to involve himself in the fight against the Franco dictatorship. His first involvement was in the Workers' Commissions ("Comisiones Obreras" CCOO), formed partly by the Student Commission of the Maragall Institute. Ideologically, he quickly became attracted to anarchist positions, that reject any type of hierarchy and coercion within political organizations and unions in the fight for the emancipation of the working classes. After beginning university studies in Economics, Puig Antich did military service in Ibiza, working in the barrack's clinic. Upon completing his service, Puig Antich became part of the MIL, as a part of its military branch. Puig Antich participated in the group's actions, which mostly meant being a driver during bank robberies. The money gained went to promote the group's clandestine publications, and to support strikers and detained workers.
Puig Antich and his comrades moved around easily in clandestine circles and often travelled to the south of France, where they linked up with the old militants of the CNT-F.
They congregated in August 1973 in France to celebrate an MIL conference. The following month, after an attack on an office of the Savings and Pension Bank of Barcelona, a strong offensive against the MIL began.
First to fall to this offense were Oriol Sole Sugranyes and Josep Lluis Pons Llobet, and then Santi Soler, who was detained, interrogated, and tortured, finally confessing the secret meeting places of his comrades. Soler was used as a trap by plainclothes officers to detain Xaviuer Garriga and Puig Antich. The meticulously prepared operation happened on September 25, 1973 in Barcelona. The two anarchists were detained, and immediately afterwards, a shootout occurred from which Puig Antich was badly injured and a young Guardia Civil Francisco Anguas Barragán was killed.
Puig Antich was jailed, accused of the being the shooter of the bullets that killed Anguas Barragan, and afterwards judged by a war council, condemned to death by the regime. In some parts of Europe, and as far away as Argentina, there were demonstrations demanding the commutation of the execution, but Franco stayed firm and did not concede. Puig Antich, then 25 years old, was executed by garrote in a cell of the Central Barcelona Jail, March 2 at 9:40 am.
