Frente Popular Antifascista Gallego

Anti-fascist society created in 1937 in New York.

Announcement from the Galician Anti-fascist Popular Front in the newspaper *España Libre*

Society created on December 4, 1937 after a meeting at the Centro Galicia (147 Columbus Avenue with 66th Street), to bring together the support of the Galician community to the Republic during the Spanish Civil War and the fight against fascism anywhere in the world. To this end, they organized public events to raise funds used, for example, to buy four ambulances for the Republican army, which bore the names of the four Galician provinces. They also sent financial support to anti-fascist newspapers published in Valencia and Barcelona, and to Galician guerrillas fighting against the Francoist army in the mountains of Galicia. They helped to raise funds to charter the steamboat Ipanema that brought Republican refugees from France to Mexico.

Among its prominent members were the head of the society Emilio Flores Pérez (later president of the Casa Galicia on several occasions), the secretary general Ramón Mosteiro, the secretary of propaganda Víctor Fernández and Xosé Castro, who was also president of the Spanish Benevolent Society (known as “La Nacional”) and secretary general of the Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas, in which the Galician Antifascist Popular Front was initially integrated. Most of its members came from the northern coast of Galicia (Sada, Oleiros and Bergondo), and were part of the Workers’ Union of the Electricity Company. Emilio González López provides the full list of founding members:

Secretary general: Ramón Mosteiro
Vice-secretary: Xenaro Borines
Treasurer: Xoán Díaz Alonso
Vice-treasurer: Celso Gil
Secretary of propaganda: Víctor Fernández
Vice-secretary of propaganda: Xosé P. González
Secretary of minutes: Antonio Rodríguez
Vice-secretary of minutes: Antonio Sánchez
Trustees: Luísa Pérez, Rolinda Pérez, Enriqueta Borines, Fernando Díaz, Robelio Medín, Ramón Barbeito, Xosé Castro Álvarez, Xosé Lugrís, Paulino Basanta, Bieito Santos

Among their propaganda activities, they organized the visits of Ramón Suárez Picallo, Bibiano Fernández Osorio-Tafall and Castelao. Castelao’s visit in 1938 inspired the creation of new FPGA committees in Brooklyn, Newark, Bayonne and Bridgeport. Castelao, Luis Soto, Ramón Suárez Picallo and Marcial Fernández promoted the creation of a committee to rescue Republican refugees in 1939.

Due to ideological differences, the FPGA ceased to be part of the SSHHCC in 1940. Since the Centro Galicia had disappeared in 1939, Castelao proposed the creation of a new society that would unify the Galician community, which became the Casa de Galicia de Unidad Gallega de Nueva York in 1940 (Sources: Emilio González, Castelao, propagandista da República en Norteamérica (2000); Nancy Pérez Rey, “Unha achega á emigración galega a Nova York” (2008); Miguel Anxo Seixas Seoane, Castelao. Construtor da nación, tomo II (1931-1939) (2020)).