Wilebaldo Solano - Later Years

Later Years

In the 1980s, he was one of the founders of the Fundació Andreu Nin, which focused on the total rectification of the prestige of that eminent revolutionary and the clarification of the mystery of his death at the hands of the NKVD, and at the same time the defense of revolutionary Marxism and dialogue with all the tendencies of the socialist labor movement. Solano is the author of a biography of Nin, a history of the JCI, and numerous essays on the POUM, the exile of Spanish revolutionaries in France, and the problems posed by the fall of the USSR and the collapse of Stalinism. He was a major advisor to and collaborator on films such as Ken Loach's Land and Freedom and the documentary Operación Nikolai.

1999 saw the release of Solano's book-length study of the POUM and Nin's role in the Spanish revolution, El POUM in la Historia. Andreu Nin y la revolución española. It was published jointly by Libros de la Catarata and the Fundació Andreu Nin, and is a personal and observed discussion of the poorly understood time period and political movement – some have called it one of the two most important works about the POUM, the other being Andrew Durgan's study of the Bloque Obrero y Campesino, BOC 1930-1936. As yet neither work is available in English.