Human Rights, Terrorism, and Anarchism in Spain: Past and Present

This talk compares the impact of alleged anarchist bombings in Spain on state repression and human rights organizing at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Based on his book, The Anarchist Inquisition, Bray will explore how anarchist bombings in theaters and cafes in the 1890s provoked mass arrests and executions and catalyzed the formation of a transnational human rights network composed of journalists, lawyers, union activists, anarchists, and other dissidents. Similarly, a movement against state repression emerged in 2013 in response to the Spanish state's infamous "Operation Pandora" which aimed to clamp down on the anarchist movement after the bombing of a church in Zaragoza.