José Peirats


José Peirats Valls was a Spanish anarchist, activist, journalist and historian.
Peirats was born in the Province of Castellón. He had a limited schooling in one of the working class rationalist schools which offered an alternative to mainstream education controlled by the clergy and state. Thus he developed a thirst for learning which never left him. For many years he worked as a tile-maker, and devoted himself to the anarchist movement.
Peirats came to anarchism after moving in his early years to Barcelona. He was a long-standing member of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo and at one point edited its newspaper, Solidaridad Obrera. He was also a member of the federation of anarchist affinity groups, the Federación Anarquista Ibérica.
As a historian of the Spanish anarchist movement, Peirats produced an important three volume study of the libertarian movement in the Spanish Civil War, La CNT en la revolución española. A one volume abridgement, Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution was printed by Black and Red. An English translation of the full three-volume work was published by Stuart Christie, edited by Chris Ealham. The first two volumes were published in 2001 and 2005 respectively; the third volume was published in 2006.
Peirats papers are held by the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.

Works