Julio Anguita

Julio Anguita González (Fuengirola, Málaga, November 21, 1941-Córdoba, May 16, 2020) was a Spanish teacher and politician. Throughout his political career he held different positions: he was mayor of Córdoba between 1979 and 1986 (time in which the media gave him the nickname "the Red Caliph" or "the Caliph"), general secretary of the Party Communist of Spain (PCE) and general coordinator of the United Left (IU).

Under his leadership, the IU coalition achieved its greatest electoral successes, far exceeding two million votes in the general elections of 1993 and 1996, reaching more than 10% of the votes and 21 deputies in the latter year. His period at the head of Izquierda Unida was distinguished by the demand to specify programmatic agreements and the rejection of corruption. After his departure, IU began a phase of decline that, firstly led by Francisco Frutos and later by Gaspar Llamazares, led him to get just two deputies in the 2008 general elections.

Separated from active politics due to a heart condition, Julio Anguita continued to participate in different acts and alternatives to achieve the ideological objectives of the left, among which is a republican state. He was part of the Prometeo Collective and the Somos Mayoría Civic Front, of which he was the founder.

Biography

Julio Anguita was born on November 21, 1941 in the Malaga town of Fuengirola. Member of a military family, he moved away from the family tradition by studying Teaching and, later, graduating in History at the University of Barcelona. A teacher by profession, in 1972 he joined the then clandestine Communist Party of Spain, and in 1977 he joined the Central Committee of the party in Andalusia.

Mayor of Cordoba

In the municipal elections of April 1979, he ran as a PCE candidate for mayor of Córdoba, managing to win the most votes, although he was far from an absolute majority —the PCE obtained 8 of the 27 councilors at stake. Anguita decided to form a concentration government together with the rest of the political forces (PSOE, UCD and PSA), for which he was elected municipal councilor. In this way, he became the first and only communist mayor of a provincial capital. Upon coming to power, Anguita found himself in a difficult situation in the city, and his first months as mayor ran into numerous problems.. By then Córdoba was certainly a degraded city and in urgent need of urban interventions, especially in the depressed area around the railway facilities. His rise to power coincided with the economic crisis of the 1970s and the closure of many companies, such as the Westinghouse factory.

The problems within the concentration government also began very early on. Relations with the PSOE were strained as a result of the acquisition of the private bus company Aucorsa, then in a dilapidated state, at a cost of 200 million for the municipal coffers; the subsequent purchase of a new fleet of buses worth 300 million pesetas and the management of the operation led to a new disagreement between socialists and communists. In 1980 both the PSOE and the UCD blocked various economic initiatives, such as the creation of a local public radio station, the management of the municipal water company or the revision of the PGOU. As a result of the so-called Provienco case —the municipal purchase of a property that Anguita authorized without knowledge or approval of the municipal corporation- led to the definitive break with the PSOE. Muslim headed by the Saudi Ali Ketanni. However, this transfer would not prosper and came to nothing.

Despite the economic crisis that the city was going through and the problems that the municipal government was going through, his popularity among the Cordoba population continued to be quite high. In the municipal elections of 1983 he was re-elected as mayor, but this time by an absolute majority (17 councilors). After this overwhelming victory he became known as the "Red Caliph". The new absolute majority of the PCE would lead to the formation of a government tandem between Anguita and his deputy mayor, Herminio Trigo. It is noteworthy that it was around this time that UNESCO was asked to declare the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba as a World Heritage Site, which was finally achieved in 1984.

After 1983, after the overwhelming socialist victory in the 1982 general elections, Anguita maintained a confrontational attitude towards the central government and other institutions governed by socialists. This new policy led to the development of the city being remarkably paralyzed. The construction of a new railway station was another of the contentious issues of this time. Anguita had numerous confrontations with Renfe and the Ministry of Public Works, given Anguita's claim that the land released from the old station would become the property of the city council and that the State would exclusively finance the works of the new station, an idea that shocked with the frontal opposition of Renfe and the ministry. Anguita's position caused the construction of the new station to be paralyzed for almost a decade. In 1985 he sent a letter to the then Prime Minister, Felipe González, in which he opposed at his request to promote construction from the municipalities of Spain, as a solution to the problem of unemployment; in it he also defended municipal autonomy and respecting the land law in force at that time to promote a sustainable urban model. In addition, Anguita proceeded to freeze the building permits and the General Urban Planning Plan (PGOU), a decision that was widely rejected from many sectors of Córdoba, even with the frontal opposition of his deputy mayor and fellow party member, Herminio Trigo. At the beginning of 1986 he resigned from his position and resigned to run again as mayor for the following elections. However, shortly after he would jump into the Andalusian political arena by becoming a United Left candidate for the presidency of the Junta de Andalucía.

General Secretary of the PCE and coordinator of IU

The resounding failure of the PCE in the 1982 general elections led to a serious process of internal reorganization being considered. It was in 1986 when the PCE, along with other minority political forces, laid the foundations for the founding of Izquierda Unida. Facing the Andalusian regional elections of 1986, IU obtained 18% of the votes and 19 seats, as a sign of the success of the new brand.

In February 1988 he was elected general secretary of the PCE and the following year he became head of the United Left, obtaining his seat in the Congress of Deputies during the 1989 elections. He was also elected deputy and spokesman for the parliamentary group of United Left in the Congress of Deputies in 1993 and 1996, years in which IU obtained its best electoral results, around 10% of the votes. He defended a political line for the United Left based on the theory of the two shores (based on the establishment of differences between, on the one hand, the Popular Party and the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, and, on the other, Izquierda Unida) and the sorpaso (according to which IU should aspire to surpass the PSOE as the hegemonic force of the left in Spain). Likewise, he affirmed that the agreements with the PSOE should be established under specific programmatic agreements, and never by system (a conception expressed in his well-known slogan "Program, program, program").

In September 1997, at the PCE party, Anguita announced that they were going to defend a republican and federal Spain, and at the party the following year she defended the right to self-determination of peoples and clarified that her party had only accepted the monarchy temporarily, during the transition, to reach consensus, as long as the Constitution is developed.

He left the general secretariat on December 5, 1998 during the XV Congress of the PCE, asking the communist militants to vindicate the principles of anti-capitalism, anti-system and the fight for an egalitarian society. He equated the PSOE and the PP politically, and called on the militancy to recover the fight in the streets.

After a third cardiovascular problem, at the end of 1999 he relinquished his candidacy for the presidency of the Government in the 2000 elections to Francisco Frutos, alleging health reasons. In the VI Assembly of the United Left, in October 2000, he was replaced as general coordinator by Gaspar Llamazares. He was one of the few politicians who, after spending more than eight years as a parliamentarian, has renounced his retirement pension as a former deputy and received that of a school teacher.

Refoundation of the left

Julio Anguita in 2014

On June 1, 2005, at the XVII Congress of the PCE, he presented a document calling for the refounding of the party and reflecting on the International Communist Movement. He pointed out the negative impact brought about by the fall of the Soviet Union and the uncriticism and submission of the unions and the left to the established capitalist order. On April 22, 2008, he sent a document to the Federal Committee of the PCE in which he defended the need of a "refounding" of UI. In his letter, he attributed the electoral debacle to the "lack of a clear line" and the inexistence of a coherent program. He defended radical democracy, the fight for the third republic and federalism, both for the organizational model of the coalition and for the model of the State he defended. In his opinion, the debate should be opened at the next IU federal assembly.

Last years and death

He died on May 16, 2020 at the age of seventy-eight at the Reina Sofía Hospital in Córdoba, where he had been hospitalized since Saturday, May 9, after suffering a cardiac arrest at his home. His remains were buried in the Fuensanta cemetery, in Córdoba. On May 16, 2021, one year after his death, he was posthumously awarded the title of Adoptive Son of the City of Córdoba, which had been voted unanimously by all the groups municipal.

Family

Initially he was married to Antonia Parrado Rojas, with whom he had two children: Julio Anguita Parrado and Ana Anguita Parrado. In 2007 he married María Agustina Martín Caño, whom he had met at the Blas Infante Institute in Córdoba, where they both taught and where Anguita had joined after leaving active politics.

Damn wars and the scoundrels who support them

His son, Julio Anguita Parrado, studied journalism and took a war correspondent course in Quantico (Virginia, USA) organized by The Pentagon. He went to work as a war correspondent in Iraq, where he transferred on March 21, 2003 along with the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division. On April 7, already in Baghdad, he was hit by a missile, causing his death. After being repatriated, he was buried in his hometown on April 16, 2003.

Julio Anguita, at that time former general coordinator of Izquierda Unida, received the news of his son's death when he was about to speak at an event organized by the Republican Civic Unit at the Federico García Lorca Theater in Getafe (Madrid). He took the podium and stated, visibly moved:

My 32-year-old son just died, fulfilling his obligations as a war correspondent. 20 days ago he was with me and he told me he wanted to go to the front line. Those who have read their chronicles know he was a very open man and a good journalist. He has fulfilled his duty and I will therefore address the word to fulfill mine... It's been an Iraqi missile, but it's the same, all I can say is that I'll come on another occasion and continue fighting for the third republic. Damn the wars and the scoundrels who support them.

The phrase "Damn wars and the scoundrels who support them" It has remained as an anti-war expression in Spain.

Posts

• Ecclesiastical decay in the city of Córdoba (1836-1845) (1984)
• Other Andalusia: Julio Anguita and Rafael Alberti, hand in hand (1986)
• Prologue The last utopia. Notes for the History of the Andalusian PCEby Francisco Moreno Gómez (1995)
• Prologue The 35-hour bookauthors several (1998)
• Prologue Memoirs. 1962-1996of Sixto Agudo (1998)
• Red Heart: Life After A Heart (2005)
• Time and memory, together with Rafael Martínez Simancas (2006)
• Prologue Neoliberal Globalization and its Impact on Educationby Enrique Díez (2007)
• Prologue Susurers of freedom. Memoriesby Rafael García Contreras (2008)
• Prologue Diego Cañamero Valle, the man with his feet on earthby Joaquín Recio (2010)
• Prologue Left and republicanism. The Jump to Consolidationof Armando Fernández Steinko (2010)
• Prologue Reasons for rebellionof Willy Toledo (2011)
• Fighting this time (2011)
• Collaboration Utopiaof Jesus Martin Ostios (2012)
• Conversations on the Third Republic, next to Carmen Reina (2013)
• To the left of the possible: conversation between Julio Anguita and Juan Carlos Monederotogether with Juan Carlos Monedero (2013)
• Against blindness, next to July Flor (2013)
• Prologue From the crisis to the democratic revolution, by Manuel Monereo (2013)
• Prologue Saramago, by José Saramagoby José Saramago (New edition of Joan Morales Alcudia) (2014)
• Collaboration Passionary, a legend that could be touchedby Felipe Alcaraz (2014)
• Rebellion! (2014)
• I draw memory. A historic tour of the political life of Julio Anguitatogether with Juan Andrade Blanco (2015)
• Collaboration History learned and taught. Polyphonic reflectionsby Alberto Carrillo-Linares (2016)
• Prologue Dignity, last trenchof Manolo Cañada (2017)
• Collaboration Tell him to Marx.of several authors (2018)
• I live as I speak (2020) Posthumous book.