Anarchism and the Roots of Philippine Labor Politics: Isabelo de los Reyes–Tarrida del Mármol in Context

Francisco Tarrida del Mármol (1861–1915)

Recently, I found myself reading Francisco Tarrida del Mármol (1861–1915), a Cuban-born Spanish anarchist — a struggle with my French! It struck me how ideas once traveled across languages, prisons, and empires long before our age of globalization.

Tarrida was not merely a political activist; he was a prolific anarchist thinker and publicist. He wrote extensively in Spanish and French, defending what he called “anarchism without adjectives”—a call for unity among anarchists beyond rigid ideological divisions. After the Montjuïc arrests of 1896, he became one of the most forceful voices exposing torture and judicial abuses, publishing articles abroad and transforming the scandal into an international outrage. Through his writings, repression in Spain and also in its remaining colonies became part of a wider global debate on state violence and political liberty.

That same repression touched Isabelo de los Reyes. In 1897, he was deported from Manila and imprisoned in Montjuïc Castle, where anarchist and radical ideas circulated intensely among political prisoners.

Whether or not Tarrida and de los Reyes personally met, both were connected through the Montjuïc repression and the transnational anarchist circles of late 19th-century Spain

When de los Reyes returned to Manila in 1901, he founded the Unión Obrera Democrática, the first modern labor federation in the Philippines. While not strictly anarchist, its emphasis on worker solidarity and resistance to domination clearly echoed European radical thought.

We often frame early Philippine political history in nationalist terms. Yet it was also shaped by global currents—by exile, repression, and the restless circulation of ideas between Barcelona, Paris and Manila.

Isabelo de los Reyes