Diego Abad de Santillán

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Sinesio Baudillo García Fernández (20 May 1897 – 18 October 1983), commonly known by his pseudonym Diego Abad de Santillán, was a

In 1897, Santillán was born Sinesio Baudillo García Fernández in Reyero, a small, isolated town in the region of León.^[1] His father was from a Leonese family of blacksmiths and his mother was from an Andalucian family of miners.^[2] In 1905,^[1] the family moved to Argentina,^[3] settling in Santa Fe.^[1]

After working a number of jobs,^[4] in 1913, the young Sinesio returned to León and earned his bachelor's degree at a local university. After some travels around Catalonia and the Basque Country, in 1915,^[2] he enrolled at the University of Madrid,^[4] where he studied the humanities,^[2] graduating as a Doctor of Philosophy.^[5] In the Spanish capital, he began to live a bohemian lifestyle,^[2] taking the pseudonym Diego Abad de Santillán while writing for dissident journals.^[6]

Santillán participated in the

When the Republic was defeated, Santillán fled into exile in France, before finally returning to Argentina. There he continued his historical work and contributed to dictionaries and encyclopedias,[9] notably writing Why We Lost the War, which his son Luis later adapted into film. He largely ceased political activities and gravitated increasingly towards reformism, defending anarchist collaboration with the Republican government during the war, while also coming to prioritise the abolition of the state over the abolition of capitalism.^[10]

During the Spanish transition to democracy, Santillán finally returned to Spain, settling in Barcelona, where he died in 1983.^[11]

• After the Revolution: Economic Reconstruction in Spain (1937)^[12]
• Why We Lost the War: A Contribution to the History of the Spanish Tragedy (1940)^[10]

• Anarchist economics
• Gaston Leval
• Matteotti Battalion

• Diego Abad de Santillán papers at the International Institute of Social History
• Diego Abad de Santillán Archive at The Anarchist Library
• "Diego Abad de Santillán". Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana (in Catalan).