Tino Brugos (1958–2025)

The internationalist militant and educator was also a pioneer of LGBT+ organising

~ Cristina Sykes ~

Tino Brugos, a committed trade unionist, educator and internationalist whose activism spanned more than four decades of social struggles in Spain and beyond, died on 10 November 2025 in his native Cantabria. He was 67.

Born in Santander to a working-class family, Brugos became a history teacher and long-time syndicalist militant. Colleagues describe him as a figure of rare coherence and generosity, a union organiser who “brought people together, listened, and worked with rigour, tenderness and a sense of humour”. Brugos was central to defending public education, secular schooling and equality in the classroom, transmitting to generations of students a critical understanding of the world and a belief that social transformation was possible.

He played a key role in the Inter-syndicalist Confederation, later becoming its head of union action, and was known for his democratic instincts and ability to hold diverse movements together. An early pioneer of LGBT+ organising in Asturias, he helped open spaces where visibility still carried personal risk. He was also active in feminist, ecological and labour struggles, seeing them as inseparable fronts of the same fight for collective emancipation.

Brugos’s internationalism was equally deep. He participated in solidarity campaigns with Kurdistan, Palestine and the Western Sahara, and travelled repeatedly as an observer to support human-rights defenders. In 2023 he was expelled from Turkey for his work accompanying the Kurdish movement—an episode fellow activists cite as emblematic of his commitment. Anticapitalistas Asturies remembered him as “a revolutionary encyclopaedia” whose homeland “was anywhere an oppressive regime was doing the oppressing”.

He was also active in antifascist memory work with La Comuna and other groups documenting Francoist repression, viewing historical memory as a living tool for present struggles. The CGT union, which had been collaborating with Brugos on recent working groups, noted his tireless dedication to anti-militarist organising, opposition to NATO and solidarity with peoples resisting war and occupation.

Brugos had recently retired from teaching but remained active until days before his death. Friends and comrades across the left have expressed profound loss. “Your loss is enormous for the movement in Asturies, the Spanish state and internationally”, wrote Anticapitalistas. For the Confederación Intersindical, his legacy is a mandate to continue “the defence of public services, critical education, equality of rights, democratic memory and solidarity between peoples”.

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