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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Verified machine edit
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