Facundo Perezagua Suárez (1860-1935)
He was a metallurgical worker born in Toledo who expanded the socialist ideology among the working people of the mines and metallurgical centres of Bizkaia. For decades he was the main leader of Basque socialism; he led the first general strike in Biscay, the Great Strike of May 1890, which led to the strike of about 20,000 people. He was for years the promoter and the visible head of the great strikes of the Mining Zone and the Left Bank.
The industrial landscape of La Arboleda, Triano or Miribilla were part of his own biography. His radicalism and anti-clericalism marked a before and after in the workers’ struggle, being one of the first councillors in the Greater Bilbao region. With the appearance of the reformist line of Indalecio Prieto (1883-1962), he became one of the founders of the Communist Party and gave name to one of the main communist battalions of the Euzko Gudarostea, Battalion Facundo Perezagua.
Portugalete was part of that border urban geography, where the masses of working people in full social conflict arrived through their local roads guided by that man. Near a prophet, with a huge beard, he was reflected in the literary works of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1867-1928) in El Intruso and Julián Zugazagoitia (1899-1940) in El Botín.
