Paulino Díez Martín

The son of untrained workers, he was expelled from various schools for indiscipline and at the age of 12 he began working as an apprentice tailor.[1] In 1906, at the age of 14, he joined the Society of Carpenters and Cabinetmakers of Burgos,[2] of which he was elected a member in 1908.[1][3]

In 1910, he emigrated to Melilla[2] to look for work in the construction of barracks for the army.[1][3] There he contacted anarchist and socialist trade union organizers, participating in the carpenters' strike of 1910 and the construction strike of 1911.[1][3] In 1912 he managed to legalize an anarchist trade union society[2] and from 1914 was in charge of distributing libertarian press among the soldiers.[1][3] He was arrested following Alfonso XIII's visit to Melilla on April 2, 1915 and again in July 1916 during the subsistence strike.[1][3] He was one of those who denounced the smuggling scandal that led to the removal of military governor Federico de Monteverde, for which he suffered an attack in October 1916.[1][3] He was arrested several times in 1917 and finally in October 1918 was expelled from Melilla[2] due to his participation in the Rif miners' strike.[1][3]

Shortly afterwards, he settled in Barcelona, where he joined the CNT's Sindicat de la Fusta, which in January 1919 elected him as Secretary of its Local Committee.[1][2][3] He took part in the La Canadenca strike committee and in the rally in Plaça de Les Arenes.[1][2][3] He was imprisoned in the Barcelona Model Prison from April 3 to September 5, 1919, accused of various crimes.[1][2][3]

Advised by the management of the CNT, he moved to Málaga in order to continue his union work.[1][2][3] He organized a strike in the port of Malaga and again went to Melilla to organize a bakers' strike in November 1919.[1][3] In December 1919 he participated in the Second Confederal Congress of the CNT in Madrid as a representative of the Sindicato Único del Arte Fabril y textil de Málaga,[1][3] in which he was one of the 24 signatories of the opinion on the ideological definition of the CNT, that declared that its purpose was the pursuit of libertarian communism.[2]

In February 1920, he was also expelled from Malaga by the civilian governor and moved to Seville under a false name.[1][2][3] There he participated in the organization of the different CNT unions in construction and the carpentry.[1][3] He was arrested and tried along with other leaders on October 16, 1920, but was defended by Francesc Layret and was acquitted.[1][3] He was arrested again on January 4, 1921 and taken prisoner to Las Torres,[2] and then El Viso, before being imprisoned in a punishment cell in Córdoba prison for refusing to go to Mass.[1][3] He was later confined to La Torre de San Juan Abad, from where on September 7, 1921 he managed to escape[2] to Puertollano and Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo, where he participated in the Rationalist School of Aquilino Medina, teaching young miners.[1][3]

In 1922, he fell ill with a stomach ulcer and moved again to Melilla.[1][3] In June 1922 he represented the unions of Melilla and Málaga at the Zaragoza Conference and in February 1923 at the Plenary Session of the CNT in Mataró.[1][2][3] In August 1923 he was appointed Secretary General of the CNT but in December of that same year he was arrested again in Malaga.[2] After six months in prison he was released[2] and met on behalf of the CNT with Francesc Macià in Perpignan.[3]

Due to the pressure of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera on July 7, 1924, he left for Havana,[3] where he worked in a brewery and in 1925 participated in the constitution of the Cuban National Workers' Confederation (Spanish: Confederación Nacional Obrera de Cuba, CNOC).[1] Persecuted by the dictator Gerardo Machado,[1] in July 1927 he left for the United States.[3] In New York he took part in events in support of Sacco and Vanzetti and in 1928 founded the magazine Solidaridad.[1]

He returned to Barcelona when the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed in 1931,[2] and after meeting with the national committee of the CNT he settled in Melilla in order to organize the union sections.[1][3] He was arrested and tried on charges of insulting the civilian governor, but his lawyer Eduardo Barriobero y Herrán saw him acquitted.[1][3] In February 1932 he was arrested again accused of participating in the anarchist insurrection of Alt Llobregat;[2] he was deported to Almeria and then confined to Burgos on probation.[1][3]

The coup d'état of July 18, 1936 surprised him in Melilla.[1][3] After living in hiding for a while, in April 1937 he managed to escape to French Morocco, from where he went to Barcelona.[1][3] He was in charge of reorganizing the Andalusian Regional Committee of the CNT, but could not go because of his ulcer, which was finally operated on in November 1938.[1][3] He went to Perpignan to recover from the operation but was not able to return to Barcelona following the Catalonia Offensive.[1][2][3] He was interned in the concentration camp of Saint-Cyprien[2] until he managed to go by boat to Santo Domingo with his companion Áurea Cuadrado Castillón.[1][3] He then returned to Havana, where he worked as a carpenter and construction worker, and then to Panama, where he died.[1][2][3]