Josep Llunas i Pujals was born in the
province of Tarragona in 1852. He worked as a
typographer and moved to the Catalan capital of
Barcelona, where he worked in the
printing industry. Llunas began his political career as a member of the
Federal Democratic Republican Party, before gravitating towards
anarchism and a
progressive approach to
Catalan nationalism. In the early 1870s, he joined a printers'
trade union and became secretary of a Catalan workers'
social centre. Through these organisations, in 1872, he joined the
Spanish Regional Federation of the
International Workingmen's Association (FRE-AIT) and was elected as
general secretary of its local federation in Barcelona. At this time, he came under the influence of the Russian anarchist
Mikhail Bakunin. By the 1880s, Llunas had become one the leading figures of the Spanish labour movement, alongside
Rafael Farga Pellicer and
Anselmo Lorenzo. From Barcelona, Llunas and Farga headed the
syndicalist faction of the FRE-AIT. They upheld the central role of
trade unions in creating a
post-capitalist society and believed that the FRE ought to operate legally, rather than clandestinely, which put them in opposition to
insurrectionary anarchist tendencies. Llunas himself became the main advocate of
anarcho-syndicalism during the late 19th century in Spain. In 1881, Llunas and Farga disbanded the rump FRE and established the
Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region (FTRE) in its place. Under the leadership of the Catalan syndicalists, the FTRE was set up to be a specifically anarchist organisation. Llunas and Farga, along with their fellow syndicalists
Antonio Pellicer Paraire,
Francisco Tomás and
Eudaldo Canibell, established a five-person commission to lead the new FTRE. The establishment of the FTRE provoked a fierce debate between
communist and
collectivist anarchists over both strategy and ideological goals. Llunas took the side of the collectivists, aligned with the newspaper
El Productor. In September 1882, Llunas gave the
keynote speech at the
Second Congress of the FTRE in
Seville. He convinced the congress to adopt a collectivist economic programme, despite vocal criticisms from the
Andalusian communist
Miguel Rubio. By the time of the organisation's Third Congress, held in
Valencia the following year, many Andalusian communists had already broken away from the FTRE, causing it to lose 20% of its members. The federal commission was moved to
Valladolid and all of its members, including Llunas himself, were replaced. He subsequently turned his attention away from the FTRE and towards his new publication, ''
, a Catalan language periodical which became famous for its anti-clerical and anarchist satire. He also contributed to a number of Spanish language anarchist publications, including Acracia
and El Productor''. In these publications he developed his collectivist theory on the role of the trade union in the establishment of a
classless society, which he believed would be based on
collective ownership,
federalism and
workers' self-management. He centred the FTRE in this analysis, holding it up as an example of an anarchist trade union, organised from the bottom-up, which brought together workers of different crafts into
industrial unions and regional federations. Internal antagonisms within the anarchist movement were exacerbated by the
Mano Negra affair. Llunas travelled to
Madrid to express his support for the syndicalist faction around
Juan Serrano Oteiza, but they eventually succumbed to pressure and lost ground to the anti-syndicalists. In July 1885, he participated in the First Socialist Gathering in
Reus. By the 1890s, communist anarchism and insurrectionary anarchism had supplanted collectivism as the leading tendencies of the Spanish anarchist movement. In 1893, Llunas attempted to protest the anarchist adoption of
terrorism, writing critical articles on the issue in
La Tramontana, but he was unable to stop it. In August 1895, Llunas joined the organising committee of the Catalan General Association of Freethinkers, which sought to defend nascent Spanish democracy against
reactionary attacks. In 1896, Llunas was arrested and imprisoned as part of the
Montjuïc trials. He was forced to close down
La Tramontana and cease his political activism. By the turn of the 20th century, Llunas had lost his influence over the labour movement and turned instead towards
sports journalism, contributing to
Los Deportes and
Barcelona Sport. He died in 1905. ==Selected works==