Benito Pabón y Suárez de Urbina was born in Seville on 25 March 1895[3] into a wealthy family. His father, Benito Pabón y Galindo, was an Integrist, and his mother, Teresa Suárez de Urbina y Cañaveral, was a Carlist. His uncle José Ignacio Suárez de Urbina was a prominent Catholicpublicist and leader of the Traditionalist Communion in Córdoba. In his youth, Benito was also a member of the Carlist cause and was part of the Jaimista Youth of Villanueva del Río.[4] Benito later studied with the Jesuits and at the Law Institute of Seville, then went on to work as a labor lawyer in Granada, Zaragoza and Madrid.
In the 1936 Spanish general election he was elected deputy of Zaragoza, with 44,545 votes out of the 85,178 cast,[7] running as an independent.[nota 2] In parliament, on 3 July 1936 he responded to Angel Galarza (PSOE) in relation to the amnesty of political prisoners, arguing against the interpretation given to the Ley de vagos y maleantes:[11]
[...] The concept that has been held in Spain regarding amnesty responded to the legal reality of not having the ley de vagos y maleantes, which is a shame really, because things are as they are and not as we want them to be, and although we persist in saying that the imprisonment of those declared socially dangerous is not a punishment - go and ask them or their children, it is a real punishment and a punishment that they are really suffering. But if there were no legal reason for what I intend there would be a practical reason: that of wanting to fulfill a promise of an electoral pact.[12]
[...] this hegemony of the Communist Party means, and the facts show, the implantation of the political methods characteristic of Russia. The disappearance and assassination of Andreu Nin was an alarming and tragic symptom.
— Letter to the clandestine Executive Committee of the POUM.[17]
Exile
After a short stay in France he left for the Philippines.[15] But when Japanese forces occupied Manila he was imprisoned in the military prison of Fuerte Santiago, from which he was released in the fall of 1942.[18] He then left for Latin America, earning a living as a Spanish language teacher in Santiago de Veraguas and Colón, where he settled permanently after a stay in Mexico. He died in Panama in 1958.[3]
Notes
^Together with Manuel Blasco Garzón y José Monje Bernal.[5]
^Although some sources link his seat to the Syndicalist Party,[8]Manuel Tuñón de Lara explicitly stated that he did not belong to the party and that Pestaña was the only syndicalist deputy elected in the 1936 elections,[9] this was also supported by Eduardo Comín Colomer, who separated Pabón, whom he lists as an "independent trade unionist", from Pestaña's seat with the Syndicalist Party.[10]
^Among which was, among others, Julián Gorkin,[14] Encargado inicialmente de la defensa, abandonaría el caso, al sentirse amenazado por los comunistas, cuya prensa le habría etiquetado como «espía».[15] Fue sustituido por Vicente Rodríguez Revilla.[16][15]
Alba, Víctor; Schwartz, Stephen (2008). Spanish Marxism Versus Soviet Communism: A History of the P.O.U.M. in the Spanish Civil War. Transaction Publishers. ISBN978-0-88738-198-0.
Comín Colomer, Eduardo (1967). Historia del Partido Comunista de España (in Spanish). Vol. 3. Editora Nacional.
Kelsey, Graham (1991). Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State: The CNT in Zaragoza and Aragon, 1930-1937. Kluwe Academic Publishers. ISBN0-7923-0275-3.
Pasamar Alzuria, Gonzalo; Peiró Martín, Ignacio (2002). "Pabón y Suárez de Urbina, Jesús". Diccionario Akal de Historiadores españoles contemporáneos (in Spanish). Ediciones Akal. pp. 461–462. ISBN84-460-1489-0.
Pascual, Pedro (1986). Partidos politicos y constitucionales en España (in Spanish). Fragua, D.L. ISBN8470740571.
Peláez, Manuel J. (2000). "El diputado anarquista Benito Pabón y Suárez de Urbina (1ª parte)". Cuadernos Republicanos (in Spanish) (41). Cuadernos Republicanos: Centro de Investigación y Estudios Republicanos: 109–116. ISSN1131-7744.
