Octavio Alberola Suriñach

Octavio Alberola Suriñach (4 March 1928 – 24 July 2025) was a Spanish physicist and anti-Francoist activist. Forced into exile as a child, he became interested in physics and anarchism, seeing the two as interlinked. After growing up, he moved to France, where he became involved in militant activism. In 1962, he attempted to assassinate Francisco Franco, and in 1966, he kidnapped Spanish diplomat Marcos Ussia. He remained in France for the rest of his life, even after the Spanish transition to democracy.

Life and career Octavio Alberola Suriñach was born in Menorca in 1928, the son of the Catalan rationalist schoolteacher . In 1933, the family moved to the Aragonese town of Fraga, where a young Octavio Alberola witnessed the Spanish Revolution of 1936. At the end of the Spanish Civil War, Alberola and his family were forced into exile in Mexico. Through other Spanish anarchist exiles, Alberola was introduced to the works of Peter Kropotkin and Élisée Reclus, who inspired him to study physics at university. He believed physics and anarchism were interlinked, stating that society was a stage of evolution. He came to view humans as "intelligent water", or as matter made conscious from the water created by the Big Bang.

Alberola died in Perpinyà, Northern Catalonia on 24 July 2025, at the age of 97.

Selected works Articles "Venezuelan anarchists see Noam Chomsky as Chavez’s Clown" (Fifth Estate, #383, Summer, 2010) "Cuba: The Economy Changes" (Fifth Estate, #409, Summer, 2021)

Obituaries "Salvador Gurucharri aka Salva, Comrade and Friend (Revista Polémica, 2014) "David Graeber and Anarchism" (, 2020) "Goodbye to Stuart Christie" (Rojo y Negro, 2020)

Books Spain 1962: The Third Wave of the Struggle Against Franco (Kate Sharpley Library, 1993, , ) Revolutionary activism: the Spanish resistance in context (Kate Sharpley Library, 2000, , )