In today's Spain, unless one has been interested in studying the history of the social and labour conditions of the southern countries, it is difficult to conceive of how rural and factory workers in the second half of the past century and the first of this one used to live. At the best of times the only education obtained were life's lessons. The workday was almost double that of today. The rights of the workers were none, and labor rights were earned only with much bloodshed. The libraries, the few open to the public, were visited by a small, regular group of people. The few attempts to create popular libraries were failures, even before getting started. They failed not only due to the duration of the attempts or low budgets, but also due to the paternalistic character supporting such projects. In 1864, in his book Estudios sociales sobre la educación de los pueblos, Dominguo Fernandez Arrea, refering to the public libraries of the provincial capitals, pointed out how books could be found there "full of instructions written for the poor people, but who do not read them; firstly because they do not fully understand them and second because they would not consider entering the beautiful, palacial rooms of the libraries in torn and sweaty clothing, to sit side by side with those cities' well-dressed and educated gentlemen. Ignorance, fear, shyness, everything stops them...That is why the big libraries - good and beautiful for people in the middle and upper classes, for the students and the erudite - are of no help to the poor people."

Four years later, 1868, Giuseppe Fanelli (1827-1877), an Italian engineer sent by Bakunin and the International Workingmen's Association, found upon arrival in Madrid anxious workers, mostly printers, gathering in coffee shops trying to create the Spanish section of the First International. There is nothing amazing about it except the speed with which Fanelli's ideas spread through the Spanish regions. (Four years after his visit, in 1872, the Anarchist Federation convened with 465,000 active members at its Cordova Congress). Without much economic help, against the power of the state (in 1896 the courts gave the right to authorities "to abolish all of the newspapers, centers and places of recreation of the anarchists"), in a world where illiteracy was widespread (in 1877 the most optimistic figures point to 45.3% of the men older than 7 years of age and 64.7% of women having been illiterate), the Congress gathered a group of thousands of workers. To do so, the publication and diffusion of popular materials was, among other things, basic and something that until that time was a distinctive sign of anarchist groups. Most of the time, collective and public readings would be the best way to get people to know the anarchist Idea, along with the creation and extension of the libertarian reading groups and their libraries.

But who were these men and women who, despite starting work at the age of 10 or 12 years, were determined to educate themselves throughout their lives, without economic help or academic credentials, who kept editing pamphlets, magazines and books, building up libraries and, as one of them said, were skillful artists able to control their impatience and their fears, and control their ambition for power? One of these people was Ricardo Mestre. Throughout his life, Mestre (who died at the age of almost 91 years of age) published newspapers, edited books and magazines, helped diffuse ideas, and in his last years created an anarchist library, despite never having finished elementary school. However we have not brought him to these pages as a model, nor as an example or an exception. In the anarchist movement it is not difficult to find comrades who took similar paths. Vital routes where the library has been a central place: anarchists in libraries.

Several entities (libraries, foundations, reading circles) with an anarchist character, and consequently, with a common pattern, namely economic independance regarding any state organization, have carried out the interesting task of collecting and diffusing documents concerning freedom and social change. For example, we bring to the following pages the Biblioteca Social Reconstruir of Mexico City, founded by Mestre; the Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo, within the sphere of the CNT [Confederación Nacional del Trabajo]; and with the imporant job of publishing, the Fundacion Salvador Segui, within the sphere of CGT [Confederación General del Trabajo], with a considerable center of documentation center; and in Barcelona's Centro de Documentación Históric-Social/Ateneu Enciclopédic Popular which since its foundation in 1903 has been doing a great job in Barcelonean cultural life. Remarkable characteristics, because it is exeptional in today's world of all of them to be self-financing and volunteer-based.

We didn't want to limit this introduction to the topic of libraries and anarchists to the past alone. It would be false. The anarchist movement is still alive and, in many cases, is trying more or less successfully to adapt itself to actual social developments. For the past decade in some countries (Germany, Italy and the United States, mainly) alternative reading rooms, call Infoshops, have been springing-up, supported by anarchist groups following the tradition of volunteer work and self-financing. These give people who are interested radical literature, magazines, or 'zines that are edited by similar groups from different cities or countries, as well as tools to access electronic information. At the same time, they create materials supporting the cause and coordinate common tasks among different centers.

[...] Nobody can deny anarchist libraries and librarians their anticipation of many topics of current concern (like ecology, sexual politics, etc) Anarchists merge revolution with life, open new vital paths for the emancipation of human beings, through mutual aid, volunteer work and by using publishing and the library as tools for liberation, setting a real example of concrete alternatives society has vainly tried to bury with the label of "utopian."

The intentions of this dossier are modest. A first approach to the huge topic of what anarchist libraries were and are to the anarchist movement as a tool for individual intellectual formation (which doesn't mean, compulsory schooling) and as an instrument to spread revolutionary ideas throughout society. Thanks to all those who helped us in producing this material.

Translated by Carlos Mauricio Cely & Valerie Ann Patrick

 

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Copyright Progressive Librarian, 1999