Los Maños, the lads from Aragon, the story of an anti-Franco action group

Description

Mariano Aguayo Morán (1922-1994) was one of the members of the ‘Los Maños’ group. This group of friends from Zaragoza joined together to fight the Francoist regime in the optimistic days after the second world war. Originally active with the Socialist Youth, they soon joined the anarchist resistance alongside militants like Francisco ‘Quico’ Sabaté and José Lluís Facerías. Betrayed by one of the group members, Wenceslao Jiménez Orive was seriously wounded in a police ambush in Barcelona on 9 January 1950. Rather than be captured, he took cyanide. Simón Gracia Fleringán, Plácido Ortiz Gratal and Victoriano Muñoz Treserras were arrested the same day, and executed on 24 December 1950.
These interviews throw light not only on the story of the ‘Los Maños’ group, but the nature, motivations and difficulties of the anarchist resistance to Francoism.

Mariano Aguayo Morán (1922-1994) was one of the members of the ‘Los Maños’ group. This group of friends from Zaragoza joined together to fight the Francoist regime in the optimistic days after the second world war. Originally active with the Socialist Youth, they soon joined the anarchist resistance alongside militants like Francisco ‘Quico’ Sabaté and José Lluís Facerías. Betrayed by one of the group members, Wenceslao Jiménez Orive was seriously wounded in a police ambush in Barcelona on 9 January 1950. Rather than be captured, he took cyanide. Simón Gracia Fleringán, Plácido Ortiz Gratal and Victoriano Muñoz Treserras were arrested the same day, and executed on 24 December 1950.
These interviews throw light not only on the story of the ‘Los Maños’ group, but the nature, motivations and difficulties of the anarchist resistance to Francoism.

About the authors
Mariano Aguayo Morán (1922-1994)
A professional photographer, Aguayo started out as an anti-Franco activist before joining the Los Maños group. In France he worked on the anarchist publications Solidaridad Obrera, Atalaya, Frente Libertario and Confrontación.

Fredy Gómez
Son of a leading CNT exile, and anarchist writer and publisher in his own right.

Antonio Téllez Sola
As a veteran of the 1930s FIJL, the Spanish civil war, the camps and labour battalions in France, the French Resistance, the Val d’Aran incursion in 1944 and the underground struggle against Franco, Téllez was especially well-placed to undertake his lifetime’s work of reconstructing the lives of the anti-Franco libertarian guerrillas, many of them personal friends and acquaintances of his.

This translation first published as an ebook by Christiebook