José Fondevila García

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José Fondevila García (1884 - 1973) was born in 1884 in the small village of Bermés, province of Pontevedra, in the Spanish north-west region of Galicia. At the age of seventeen, he emigrated to Buenos Aires, Argentina where he first began with Union activities. In his trips through some American countries, such as Brasil, Chile, Peru and Mexico, he took part part in several struggles related with problems in the working environment. He finished his voyage in New York, when he established himself as a mechanic.

When the Spanish Second Republic was proclaimed, he went back to Bermés, becoming quickly the leader of the area's working movement, a very well-developed one because of the presence of several rail-workers of the Spanish railway network stretch Ourense -Santiago. He became a member of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) in 1936.

Few days after the Spanish Coup d'etat of 1936, a group of members of the Spanish far-right movement of Falange tried to arrest him, but Fondevila managed to run away, although he was eventually hurt. He kept hidden until he managed to cross the bordier to Portugal, where he boarded to France, and from there, passed to the Spanish Republican territory.

Within the Spanish Civil War he took part, as a Commissioner of War, in both bloody battles of Brunete and Teruel. In 1939, he tried to pass to France, but he was arrested and confined in a Concentration Camp, from where he ran away and, disguised, returned to Galicia in 1942, relying on a supposed amnesty. But that did not happen, so he decided to go into exile, going to Mexico. On that country, he tried to be able to make a better living as a mechanic, with some attempts to introduce a "bomb-throw-machine" of his invention to the United States Army.

After being admitted in a hospital for several years, he finally died in Choula, Mexico in 1973.

This article is a translation from the original article previously registered in the Wikipedia in Galician