In 1919 he was the vice president of the Jumilla Workers' Center and was arrested for the first time. He refused to do military service and escaped to Barcelona with false documentation. He agitated there within trade unions and anarchist groups. There he was a member of the anarchist union, the CNT, where in 1922 he became a member of the National Committee of the CNT and secretary of the National Commission for Relations with Anarchist Groups during the Catalan Anarchist Plenum. There he met his partner, Lola Iturbe, co-founder of the libertarian women's organization Mujeres Libres.
