Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia

Who was Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia?

Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia was a Spanish free-thinker and anarchist.

He was born in Alella to Roman Catholic parents. He was sent to work on a Barcelona firm at the age of 15. The owner of the firm was an anti-cleric and is said to have had a great influence on Ferrer. A follower of Spanish republican leader Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla, Ferrer was exiled to Paris with his wife and children in 1885. Divorcing in 1899, he remarried a wealthy Parisian teacher shortly thereafter.

In 1901 he returned to Spain and opened the Escuela Moderna to teach middle-class children radical social values. In 1906 he was arrested on suspicion of involvement with Mateu Morral's attack on King Alfonso XIII and released uncharged over a year later. His school failed and closed while he was incarcerated.

Early in the summer of 1908, after his release from jail, he wrote the story of the Modern School. The work was entitled The Origins and Ideals of the Modern School and was translated into English by Joseph McCabe and published by the Knickerbocker Press in 1913.