Anselmo Lorenzo Asperilla (21 April 1841, in

Toledo, Spain Toledo ( , ) is a city and municipality of Spain, capital of the province of Toledo and the ''de jure'' seat of the government and parliament of the autonomous community of Castilla–La Mancha. Toledo was declared a World Heritage Site by UN ...

– 30 November 1914) was a defining figure in the early Spanish Anarchist movement, earning the often quoted sobriquet "the grandfather of Spanish anarchism," in the words of

Murray Bookchin Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006) was an American social theorist, author, orator, historian, and political philosopher. A pioneer in the environmental movement, Bookchin formulated and developed the theory of social ...

: "his contribution to the spread of Anarchist ideas in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

and

Andalusia Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a "historical nationality". The ...

over the decades was enormous". His activity in the movement and adherence to Anarchist ideals can be rooted to his meeting and befriending of

Giuseppe Fanelli Giuseppe Fanelli (13 October 1827 – 5 January 1877) was an Italian revolutionary anarchist, best known for his tour of Spain 1868, introducing the anarchist ideas of Mikhail Bakunin. Life and revolutionary path Fanelli was born in Naples, ...

in 1868, a disciple of

Mikhail Bakunin Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (; 1814–1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the revolutionary s ...

recruiting for the

International Workingmen's Association The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), often called the First International (1864–1876), was an international organisation which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist groups and trad ...

. He would later become the subject of Lorenzo's works, along with

Tomás González Morago Tomás González Morago (n/a-1885) was a notable Spanish anarchist. Morago, who was an engraver, was also a prominent member of the labor organization Primera Internacional in Spain. Accounts cite him as the first and greatest of the Spanish an ...

, who an account considered the first Spanish Anarchist.

Paul Lafargue Paul Lafargue (; 15 January 1842 – 25 November 1911) was a Cuban- Haitian revolutionary Marxist socialist, political writer, economist, journalist, literary critic, and activist; he was Karl Marx's son-in-law having married his second dau ...

recruited Lorenzo and other Madrilenian printers (such as Pablo Iglesias and Jose Mesa) for the Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA. This association with Lafargue, a son-in-law of

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

, led to the founding of the Madrid Internationalist paper called ''La Emancipacion'', which promoted

Marxist Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...

ideology. Lorenzo was listed as one of the delegates representing the Spanish Marxists in the International Workingmen's Association (IWMA) London Congress in 1864. Lorenzo edited the anarchist syndicalist newspaper ''La Huelga General'' from 1901 to 1902 with

Francisco Ferrer Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia (; January 14, 1859 – October 13, 1909), widely known as Francisco Ferrer (), was a Spanish radical freethinker, anarchist, and educationist behind a network of secular, private, libertarian schools in and aroun ...

. He died on 30 November 1914 and was laid to rest on the

Cemetery of Montjuïc A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are burial, buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek language, Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifical ...

References

Further reading