Antonio Téllez

Who was Antonio Téllez?

Antonio Téllez Solá was a Spanish anarchist, journalist and historian.

He fought on the Republican side against Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. At the war's end in 1939, he went into exile in France. After being interned in French camps and seeing the Nazi Germany occupation of France, he escaped and joined the French Resistance.

In 1944 he was involved in the failed Aran Valley guerrilla campaign when Spanish Republican exiles invaded Spain through the Pyrenees. After this, he was involved in clandestine work within Spain, maintaining contacts between anarchists there and those in exile.

For much of his working life Téllez was a journalist for Agence France Presse. However, his chief fame is for his historical writings on the anarchist resistance to Franco, a struggle largely unknown to the outside world, which continued from 1939 to 1975.

His best-known work in English is his biography of Francisco Sabater Llopart, Sabate: Guerrilla Extraordinary, translated into English by Stuart Christie. He also produced biographies of anarchist resistance fighters like Francisco Ponzán Vidal, Agustín Remiro, Jose Luis Facerias and Salvador Puig Antich.