Evelio Boal was born in
Valladolid on 11 May 1884. At a very young age he went to live in Barcelona, where he worked as a typographer. By 1908 he was already a member of the board of the Union of the Art of Printing and launched the strike against
El Progreso, an organ of
Alejandro Lerroux's
Radical Republican Party. He later joined the
National Confederation of Labor (, CNT) and collaborated in the weekly
Tierra y Libertad under the pseudonym
Chispazos. He was also an amateur actor, with which he directed the Grupo Artístico Teatral del Centro Obrero. He took part in the organization of the
1917 general strike and was the one who drafted the minutes of the joint meetings with the
General Union of Workers (, UGT). In August 1918 he was elected a member of the CNT Committee and in February 1919 he provisionally replaced
Manuel Buenacasa Tomeo as the CNT's
General Secretary. In January 1919 he was arrested during the
La Canadenca strike, being released shortly thereafter by popular request. In the December of that same year, he was confirmed in office at the CNT congress that was held at the
Madrid Comedy Theatre. There he was one of the 24 signatories of the opinion on the ideological definition of the CNT, which declared its purpose to be the pursuit of
libertarian communism. He was also delegated to meet with union leaders in
Portugal. In August 1920, together with
Salvador Seguí and
Salvador Quemades, he traveled to
Madrid to rebuild the alliance between the CNT and the UGT for future mobilizations. He was secretary of the CNT Committee until March 1921, when he was arrested and imprisoned in the
Barcelona Model Prison, where he was beaten and tortured. When he was released on the morning of 17 June 1921, he was assassinated at the prison gate, along with , then treasurer of the CNT, in application of the
escape law. ==References==