En busca de la vida en Acracia: un anarquista catalán en Australia

Abstract

In search of life in Acracia: a Catalan anarchist in Australia

Salvador Torrents was a Catalan anarchist autodidact who was forced to quit Catalonia in the repressive aftermath of the Tragic Week, 1909. He arrived in Australia in 1915 and until his death in 1951 wrote commentaries, novellas and articles in libertarian newspapers in Spain, France and the United States. With the exception of the years of the Spanish Civil War, Torrents remained outside the Australian labour movement. He propounded the transformative potential of anarchism which could be achieved only through the revolutionary role of the autodidact. In this analysis Torrents was applying the political understandings that he had acquired in the turbulent politics of Catalonia at the turn of the century to what he saw as the similar conditions in the New World.