Ricardo Mella and Miguel Anxo Bastos, two uncomfortable people from Vigo

By Álvaro J. Díaz-Mella

A few months ago I attended a lecture by Miguel Anxo Bastos in Vigo. As I listened to him speak about the limits of political power, bureaucracy, and the tendency of institutions to grow beyond their original purposes, I found myself thinking about another person born in this city more than a century earlier: Ricardo Mella.

Vigo is dying. The city of lights is going out
Galicia, that place where they now look at your tongue before looking you in the eyes

I am Mella's great-nephew and I had been rereading The Law of Number, published in 1893, for months. Leaving that lecture, I had the feeling that both of them, from very different eras and traditions, were participating in a similar conversation.

Not because they thought alike. They didn't.

Ricardo Mella was one of the leading figures of Spanish anarchism in the late 19th century. Miguel Anxo Bastos is one of the best-known voices of contemporary liberalism, inspired by the Austrian school. Their starting points are different, as are their economic proposals.

However, both share a deep distrust of political power when it ceases to act as an instrument and begins to become an end in itself.

The Spain Mella knew was marked by political bossism, electoral fraud, and a political system where elections often served to ratify pre-established agreements. Faced with this reality, he put forward an idea that remains unsettling: a majority does not automatically make a decision just.

Majorities can be wrong. They can be driven by immediate interests, by habit, or by the influence of those who shape public opinion. The mere act of voting does not eliminate these risks.

Reading Mella today makes it difficult not to think about some current debates. Not because the Spain of 2026 is the Spain of 1893—which, fortunately, it isn't—but because certain dynamics seem to be reappearing under different names.

Bastos often insists on something similar when he questions the idea that any state decision is legitimized simply because it has received electoral support. Both are wary of the tendency of political structures to acquire a life of their own and to gradually distance themselves from those they claim to represent.

Another aspect that caught my attention when comparing both authors is the importance they place on the limits of power.

Mella clearly distinguished between authority derived from knowledge and authority derived from position. He respected the competent doctor, the experienced engineer, or the renowned teacher. What he questioned was whether that prestige granted a permanent right to direct the lives of others.

More than a century later, Bastos raises similar objections from a completely different intellectual tradition. His argument is that knowledge is dispersed among millions of people and that no central body possesses the information necessary to effectively organize a complex society.

The differences between the two are evident and should not be concealed.

Mella distrusted both the state and large concentrations of capital. Bastos, on the other hand, considered private property and the market to be fundamental tools for protecting individual liberty and coordinating economic activity.

We are not dealing with two authors who arrive at similar conclusions because they share an ideology. We are dealing with two thinkers who come from very different traditions and who, nevertheless, end up formulating similar questions about power, political representation, and individual autonomy.

Perhaps that's why Ricardo Mella still has something to say more than a century later.

Too often he is remembered only as a Galician anarchist. In my opinion, that label falls short. His reflections on majorities, institutions, the concentration of power, and the relationship between rulers and the ruled remain useful for understanding some current debates.

Many of the questions he raised remain unanswered.

How much power does a society really need to function?

How can we prevent institutions from ultimately working for their own benefit?

To what extent do political, administrative, and media elites end up forming relatively closed circles?

I don't have definitive answers to those questions.

All I know is that, after rereading Mella and listening to Bastos, these questions seem as relevant today as they were then.

And when an author continues to make you ask questions more than a century later, they probably deserve to be read.

Álvaro J. Díaz-Mella
Great-nephew of Ricardo Mella

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Álvaro J. Díaz-Mella is a happily retired man from Vigo who is already gray-haired and has too many opinions about what he sees in our imperfect society.

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Translation by Elentir. Image: openart.ai.