Joaquín Ascaso

Joaquín Ascaso Budria (Zaragoza, aproximately. 1906 or 1907 – Caracas, March 1977) was an anarcho syndicalist and President of the Regional Council for Aragon’s Defense between 1936 and 1937. Francisco Ascaso was his cousin.

He worked as a building worker, and, in his youth, he entered CNT, taking part in the anarchist association known as Los Indomables (“The Indomitable Ones”), and helping as well another one known as Los Solidarios (“Solidarity”).

He was arrested in Zaragoza because of his anarchist activities in 1924. According to the police report, he was seventeen then. After that, he fled to France until the advent of the Spanish Second Republic, having been influenced by the Jaca Uprising. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, he was in Barcelona, and during the 1936 Spanish Revolution he set out to the Aragons’s Front, first in the Durruti Column, and afterwards in the Ortiz’s Column. He was appointed a Government’s delegate in 19 January 1937, by the Regional Council for Aragon’s Defense.

When the Council was dissolved, he was arrested, following Second Republic Government’s instructions, in 19 August 1937, and he was kept in the San Miguel de los Reyes prison (near Valencia) for 38 days. Finally, he set out to France, through Andorra, with Antonio Ortiz. From there, he set out to Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and finally settled down in Venezuela, where, in the 1960s, he founded, together with Antonio Ortiz and other libertarian exiles, an anarchist group called Fuerza Única (“Unique Force”).

Historian Alejandro Díez Torre recovered and published in 2006 a book written by Ascaso himself, “Memorias, 1936-1938: Hacia un nuevo Aragón” (“Memoirs, 1936-1938: Towards a new Aragon”), which was edited by the University of Zaragoza. Writer Francisco Carrasquer published that same year “Ascaso y Zaragoza, dos pérdidas: la pérdida” (“Ascaso and Zaragoza. Two losses: one loss”), a research paper about Ascaso and the Council.

References

• Ascaso, J. (2006), Memorias(1936-1938):Hacia un nuevo Aragón, Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza.
• Carrasquer, F. (2003), Ascaso y Zaragoza, dos pérdidas: La pérdida, Alcaraván Ediciones.
• Gómez, J. (1977), Los anarquistas en el gobierno, 1936-1939, Editorial Brugera.