FRANCO’S PRISONER. Anarchists against the Dictatorship by ChristieBooks

Franco’s Prisoner

Anarchists in the struggle against the dictatorship

Miguel García García

ChristieBooks PO Box 35, Hastings East Sussex TN342EZ http://www.christiebooks.com/ChristieBooksWP/ christie@btclick.com Copyright © 1972 by Miguel García García Copyright © 2012 Estate of Miguel García García Revised and annotated © 2013 by José Ignacio Álvarez Fernández ISBN - 978-1-873976-52-4

Let no one tell us that we are a small band too weak to attain the magnificent end we aim at. Count and see how many are we who suffer injustice. Peasants who work for others, who eat the chaff and leave the wheat for their master — we are millions of men, we are so numerous that by ourselves we are the mass of the people. Workers who weave silk and velvet so we may be clothed in rags — we too are a multitude and when the factory whistle gives us a moment’s rest, we overflow the streets and squares like a roaring sea. Soldiers, under iron discipline, we who receive the bullets for which our officers get crosses and ribbons, we poor fools who have known no better than to shoot our brothers — we have only to turn about face and these braided personages who command us turn pale. All of us who suffer and are outraged —we are an immense mass — we are the ocean that can swallow up everything. When we have the will, a moment will suffice for justice to be done. Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921)

CONTENTS Foreword ................................................................................................. 5 Acknowledgements ................................................................................... 7 1 — Whose is Barcelona? .......................................................................... 8 2 — The Resistance .................................................................................14 3 — The Trial ..........................................................................................25 4 — Sentenced to Live .............................................................................30 5 — The Free-for-All ................................................................................46 6 — Two Trials ........................................................................................56 7 — The Mutiny .......................................................................................62 8 — Corruption ........................................................................................68 9 — The Tunnel.......................................................................................80 10 — The Cockroaches of Alicante ............................................................86 11 — Another Generation .........................................................................94 12 — The Scot in Carabanchel ..................................................................97 13 — Twenty Years After ....................................................................... 105 Notes to FRANCO’S PRISONER ............................................................ 114 14 — Looking Back After Twenty Years in Jail: Questions and Answers on the Spanish Anarchist Resistance ........... 173 Looking Back After Twenty Years ............................................................ 176 15 — Remembering Miguel García García – 1: Juan Busquets Verges......... 185 16 — Remembering Miguel García – 2: Stuart Christie .............................. 188 Bibliography ......................................................................................... 193

Foreword When will I die? Ask reiteratively the voices of millions of human beings. The only man that has the great fortune of being able to answer this question is the person that has been sentenced to death. Remarks made by the reverend Martín Torrent in 1942.

I had been released from ‘twenty years’ imprisonment in Spain, and was on my way to London. On the boat I fell into conversation with a pleasant Midlands couple, working people who were able to afford a late holiday. I wanted to practise my English. They asked me my hometown and I told them it was Barcelona. ‘ ’ ‘You’re so lucky,’ said the lady eagerly. ‘If only we could live in your beautiful country.’ If only we could live there . . . Thousands of our sons and daughters were dispersed all over the world when Franco won; and now fresh waves of emigrants are leaving Spain to find work. For the first time, a new generation may realise the difference in the standard of living, freedom of expression, and respect for human rights in other countries and ours. For years it was not possible for the youth of Spain to compare, to read, to discuss. I am not among those who call on tourists to boycott Spain. The opening up of the country to tourism at last gives the world the opportunity to find the truth about Spain, the shadows under the sun. Tourism on the one hand, emigration on the other, are dangers for the regime. The leaders of the country know it well, but economic pressure has caused them to lift the Iberian Curtain. Now there is no excuse for ignorance. The jails described here are not beyond the reach of the ordinary tourist. The casual traveller to the Costa Blanca may go and look at both the old and new jails of Alicante. The Central Prison in Valencia is not now used, but on the Costa del Sol the visitor may see Malaga, and near Cadiz he can view the notorious prison of Puerto de Santa Maria. From the centre of Madrid one need only take a bus ride to Ocaña, with its political prisoners, Yeserias, where the stench of the plastic factories fills the air and in the middle of which is the Penitentiary Hospital, or Carabanchel, a veritable factory of crime. If the curious visitor travels along the picturesque Segovia Aqueduct, he may also find Segovia Prison — if allowed near it—-as well as the Alcázar that appears on the tourist posters. He may continue his way to see the prison for political prisoners at Soria. Or, if he goes to Old Castile, he may see the walls of Zamora prison, reserved for priests who have offended against the régime. But Alcázar San Juan’s ramshackle prison as described in this book is gone, replaced by a new one. The political prisoners whom I left, and those who have joined them since, speak by their silence more eloquently than I. When we lost the war, those who fought on became the Resistance. But, to the world, the Resistance had become criminals, for Franco made the laws, even if, when dealing with political opponents, he chose to break the laws established by the constitution; and the world still regards us as criminals.

When we are imprisoned, liberals are not interested, for we are â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;terroristsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. They will defend the prisoners of conscience, for they are innocent; they have suffered from tyranny, but not resisted it. I was among the guilty. I fought, I fell, and I survived. The last is the more unusual. MGG

Acknowledgements I must thank Ben and Libertad Gosling, and Tony Reeder, for their help during the latter part of my captivity and on my release; Stuart Christie, whose help in smuggling letters from jail first brought my case to British notice; the Spanish libertarian exiles in London who invited me here; and Albert Meltzer, whose patience and kindness have enabled me to overcome the language problem and helped make this book possible.

1 — Whose is Barcelona? The imprisonment and social measures shall be aimed at reeducation and social rehabilitation and may not involve hard labour. The person serving a prison sentence shall enjoy fundamental rights except those expressly restricted by the content of the sentence, the sense of punishment and the Penitentiary Law. In any event, he will be entitled to a paid job and Social Security benefits and access to culture and the integral development of his personality. Spanish Constitution Article 25.2 This is briefly the situation of the Spanish political prisoners who are locked up in special prisons, far away from urban centres. The outside world is ignorant of their lamentable living conditions. The elite of Spanish youth is slowly dying away in prisons, without any legal redress or guarantee of any sort, in total isolation and silence carefully maintained by the press. May this news reach the consciences of those who are able to still live at liberty! May all that can be done come to be; to put an end to this penal system that has nothing to envy the practice of the Nazis. Miguel García, Spanish Political Prisoners There were armed police on every street corner. The Guardia Civil lined the streets. Troops stood by in readiness. The people were held back by the cordon of military. They were silent, though some of the women were weeping. ‘You would think it was the Lord’s funeral,’ said the friend handcuffed to me, jokingly, as our procession sped through Barcelona, escorted on either side by dozens of police motorcyclists. The unmistakable stocky figures of the secret police mingled in the crowd, every so often producing a card and challenging one of the silent spectators. One might think that the most dangerous gangsters in Spain were on their way to trial. We came to a halt at the back door of Military Government House, the supreme control point of the city, in Puerta de la Paz. As the parade came to a halt, the tense atmosphere was broken. An elderly gentleman, very much the retired military man, was waving his cane with apoplectic fury. ‘Assassins!’ he shouted. ‘You think Barcelona is yours! You will see! ‘Viva Franco!’ ‘Watch your blood pressure, grandpa,’ called my friend. There was a burst of laughter from the crowd round the old ex-officer, who glared at them angrily. ‘Ah, bad Spaniards!’ he cried. ‘You will see!’ It had taken two-and-a-half years to bring us to trial. I remembered how it began. I had been sitting on the top of a bus when it screeched to a halt outside the Prefecture of Police. A gun had been shoved in my back. ‘Move and you fry!’ a voice behind me snapped. Four plain-clothes policemen surrounded me. The other passengers shrank back in their seats in alarm. 1

‘Downstairs!’ the detective commanded. I went down the steps of the bus into the arms of half-a-dozen armed police. ‘Inside, march!’ they shouted. Nobody else had dared to say a word. That had been 21 October 1949, the greatest day in the history of the political police (Brigada política-social) of Barcelona. All over the town the brigade had been taking people into custody. Every one of the Resistance organisations — with only a few exceptions—had been smashed. Some had shot it out, some had been taken by surprise, and some had been shot down. Ten had been shot in ambush, four of them in accordance with the traditional ley de fuga (shot while trying to escape). Over 200 people were arrested that day, of whom 53 were kept in custody. Seven were summarily tried and sentenced — they were those who belonged to the group organised by José Culebra. Eleven who slipped the net that day were subsequently caught and added to our number. That made fifty-seven to come up for trial, in three groups of eleven, sixteen and thirty. Among them were men who had spent their whole lives in the labour movement. There were doctors who had done no more than tend wounded members of the Resistance. There were veterans of old battles of the Civil War, and of older battles still. There were those who had taken part in pitched battles with the police in the stormy ’twenties, and those who had fought in the Maquis in France, and others who had done nothing but take in a sick friend. Two faces were missing to complete the triumph of the political brigade. One was that of Francisco Sabaté, El Quico, the second but best known of the three Sabaté brothers, the scourge of the régime, who had kept the armed struggle going for years after the Civil War had ended. The police would dearly have loved to have included him in our midst, but he was in a French prison, at Perpignan, on a minor charge. The Spanish police did their best to bring him back for the trial. They had in custody another member of our organisation, named Sola. He had committed a daring jewel robbery for 200 million francs in a chateau in Pau, in the French Pyrenees, and crossed the border to join the Spanish Resistance and bring it the much-needed funds. The French police wanted him, and the Spanish police proposed an exchange for Sabaté. But it was unthinkable that Sabaté, one of the first men to take up arms in the French Resistance during the war, should be sent back to certain death in Spain merely to make the task of the French police easier. The other missing face was that of Facerías, who had once again evaded the net. It was because of Facerías above all that there were so many precautions as we were brought to trial. The Military Government could not be certain that there would not be an attempt at springing us as we ventured out into the fresh air. And it might also be that the police and the Guardia Civil did not want to have their victory underestimated. Some display of strength was surely permissible when they had made such a major haul. They had the complacent look of cats that had swallowed the cream. There were honours and promotions to be gained out of all that lay behind this day’s work: two-and-a-half years of preparation since October 1949, and who knows how many months and years of planning, struggling and danger before. Now, as the old gentleman said, we should see. 2

1952 In the courtroom where the trial was to take place there was an enormous portrait of the Caudillo, which contrasted with the tiny crucifix that hung

beneath. The officers who constituted the tribunal sat beneath these holy emblems. The swarthy, somnolent Lieutenant-Colonel Regalado presided. Dark as a gypsy, I knew him from around Barcelona before the war. He was a drunkard, a braggart, and fond of his own voice. The statements read by the lawyers made no impression on him; he had known in advance what the verdicts were to be. The two lieutenants who sat beside him peered eagerly at the accused that sat in benches before them. They had heard so much about the villainy of the anarchists. Here they had a choice selection of their enemies. Now they were face to face again, as they had been during the Civil War. Their dull faces—the heavy bovine faces of career officers who, despite long service, remained on the lowest rung — lit up at an occasional telling phrase. The wooden benches which had been provided for the accused appeared to have been borrowed from some religious philanthropic institution in strange contrast to the impressive furniture in that huge room which dwarfed the people in it, and reduced the trial to what it was: a farce played by puppets on strings. We, the accused, watched it as one watches a play. The prosecuting counsel droned on. He was a professional lawyer, and a career soldier. This was his great day and he was making the most of it. On the other side of the room the defence lawyers sat, also soldiers for the most part. Only one was a civilian, Majada, a brilliant lawyer who had been permitted to attend the trial as he was the son of a colonel and had served as an officer during the war. They shuffled their feet uneasily from time to time. It was difficult for them to intervene, to decide at what point they could say something for the clients who were paying them. The assessor, Major Montserrat, was a member of the 2 BIS (Military Intelligence). sat by the tribunal, noting down the points of law. Another professional soldier-lawyer, he was ostensibly there to advise the court on procedure: in practice he was there to show them how to convict. Nobody had any doubts as to the outcome. But the procedure of military law had to be observed, to impress a conquered people. The representatives of that people sat at the back of the court, but there were more plain-clothes police there than ordinary spectators, most of whom were relatives who had managed to squeeze into the space provided. In the front row I saw my sister. She gave. Me an encouraging smile, and made an imperceptible motion of her hands. She listened impassively as the colonel went on. ‘Criminals . . . they have put our whole structure of law and order in danger . . . Bandits, thieves, murderers.’ She looked inquiringly at the officer, searching his face. Was this really her brother of whom he was talking? Was this colonel really the defender of the tranquillity of the town? Her mind must have gone back, the mind of every civilian in the courtroom must have gone back, to the days not so long ago when this colonel and his friends, the judges, the lawyers, the very court ushers, every single one of the military men in the room, even the defence lawyers, were the enemy, the invaders, traitors, rebels. Now they sat there in judicial calm and dignity as the accusers, the representatives of law and established order. Over their heads, above that tiny crucifix, was the portrait of the Republican general, Franco, who had betrayed his oath and led the army, with foreign support, against his people. Now the list of our crimes was read out. We were accused of fomenting armed rebellion. Around that main charge the individual variations were made: the raiding of the enemy’s treasury and storehouses; the forging of 8

10 He

documents; the smuggling and possession of arms; the rebuilding of the unions. Every so often a pressman dashed out, with copy to be telephoned to his newspaper. But as yet I could not concentrate on the sentences, of which we were never in any doubt. There would not be much departure from the sentences demanded by the prosecutor. This droning of the lawyers was making a farce of the drama of our lives, I felt. How did they come to be sitting where they were? How did we come to be where we were? These men were our deadly foes. They had made war on us; they had rained down death from the skies in this very city. How did they come to be sitting in judgment on us? What reasoned judgment did they think they could give? The voice of the old gentleman came back to me. The voice of hatred, the voice of the régime. ‘You think Barcelona is yours!’ I thought of those familiar streets. Whose were they if not ours? Were they not what we had fought for, what we had defended? Tomorrow the newsboys would be rushing through the streets shouting that the bandits and terrorists had been sentenced. I could already imagine I heard the newsboys — all about the Tallion Gang! Anarchist bandits sentenced! Running through the streets of the fashionable quarters, selling their papers to the well-to-do customers at the tables on the Ramblas, who would nod complacently. Later, as they jumped on the trams and ran through the workers’ areas, the cries would vary a little. ‘Resistance fighters sentenced!’ Grey-faced men in overalls would shake their heads sadly as they dived into their pockets for a couple of centavos. 1936 It was sixteen years since Barcelona had been really ours for the first time. For months, the coup of the generals had been expected. Everyone knew they wanted to turn out their paymasters in the Republic and establish their own dictatorship, modelled on the lines of the Fascist powers. ‘The government can’t get out of it,’ everyone had said. ‘Now it has got to arm the people.’ Instead, the Popular Front Government had called on the army to be loyal. When it had finally revolted, we had hit back. Barcelona was ours in twentyfour hours! Everywhere in the town, at the end of that glorious day of 19 July 1936, we, who had started out with our bare hands and had to raid gunshops and armouries, had been triumphant over the army. And, after three days, the bands were playing, the people were rejoicing, the black and red flag of the CNT* flew over the town that was delirious with the excitement of victory. If only it had been the same everywhere in Spain! In Barcelona and Madrid we had defeated the national army. In Andalusia, the people were even more enthusiastically with us, but where could they obtain arms? The army was able to hold out in alcázars, in fortified churches, in military barracks. At that point the government should have distributed arms; it had them in the barracks of the police and the Guardia Civil. Had it acted then, there would have been no trench warfare. But it hesitated and was lost. The Axis powers ferried the troops in from Morocco, and gave a plentiful supply of their own arms and men. Even so, we resisted them for three years. We began as an undisciplined rabble. The men and women of the CNT had flocked to their union halls; brought along what arms they could, and marched out to silence the fire from the garrisons. We had marched out in columns on the advanced posts of the enemy. But we could get no further. Without heavy artillery, we could defend but not attack.

Halfway through the war we knew we could never win. The most we could do was to hold our positions. But neither could we surrender. The enemy took no prisoners. When the survivors from Zaragoza had first straggled into our lines at the very beginning of the war, they had told us gruesome stories. A priest had come to them as they were taken from the prisons — hundreds of them rounded up because as members of the CNT they were known to be anti-Fascist — and stood before the waiting lorries holding up a crucifix. ‘Kiss it, kiss it!’ he implored. ‘God is above, he will absolve you of sin, kiss the crucifix.’ The Falangists had moved him away, saying, ‘Don't worry, Father, it’s only for questioning.’ Then they had shot them by the roadside. Only a few who shammed dead had escaped. But men cannot live without hope and they felt a new wave of optimism when it was clear that Hitler planned war upon the West and Russia. Time and again the Communists reproached us for doubting that Russia would take the first opportunity to move in and fight Fascism. It had never happened. But now it seemed Hitler would resolve their doubts for them. In that case the British Navy would prevent Italian support coming in, the French Army would harass the rebels from the rear, Russia would bomb Franco out of existence . . . America too! Look how finely Roosevelt spoke of democracy. There was no end of democratic allies once one started to dream . . . ‘Hold out for just a few months longer, Hitler will cross the Rhine, and then it’s curtains for Franco!’ How many times did one hear that? 1939 I was thirty-two months in front of Madrid, as summer turned to winter and winter to summer again. We held out in the trenches long after the government had fled the city. It was a bitter joke among the anarchists. ‘At last we have a chance of victory, long live Madrid without a government!’ But they had left us with no chance of victory. The only hope was to defend, defend, defend, until the World War started and Hitler would drag Franco under with him. We were defending democracy . . . so we often heard in speeches. But there was something else we heard, too, daily, shrilly, insistently. It was boomed at us through loudspeakers over the trenches from the enemy side. It was the voice of a priest: ‘For the conscripts, an embrace! For the volunteers, forgiveness! For those whose hands are stained with blood, lead in the head and the belly!’ He was the official propagandist, calling across the lines for us to give in. We heard him all during the period from Christmas 1938 to the end of the war, at a time when even the most sanguine had come to realise that the democracies cared nothing for what was happening in Spain. Since Munich they felt they had bought eternal peace with Fascism: the naïve hope that if they intended to go to war with Hitler they would have to deal with his ally Franco as well was shattered. The French Popular Front had vanished into the scrapheap of history. The Communist Party, from nothing, had become the most powerful party in Spain. But did it care about us? Wasn’t its sole preoccupation the defence of Russia? Those vaunted Russian arms would not materialise, and its proudest achievement, the International Brigades, had gone. 11

And every day the radio message of the priest stuck in the gullet. They dared to speak of those whose hands were stained with blood! We did not dare to surrender precisely because of the massacres that were happening every day in the territory held by the rebels. ‘You will see, Miguel,’ said a law student in my battalion one day, bitterly. ‘They will set up tribunals and courts and try us as criminals. We shall have been the traitors.’ Death came over the lines every day. Without sufficient arms we could not go forward. But how could we finish? March into the concentration camps to be shot? Only the Communists still believed we should fight on. Russia insisted. ‘Bugger Russia! Let Russia defend herself! What has she done for us?’ ‘You will see,’ they told us. ‘Before the end of the year, by this summer, Russia will deal with Hitler.’ Who foresaw that Russia would indeed deal with Hitler that year . . . but as an ally? By March, however, everyone else had agreed. We must end the war; there was nothing to prolong the slaughter for. Even in the Cabinet the Communists were outvoted. Their puppet premier, Dr Negrin, was deposed. The Republican Army established its own junta, under a professional soldier, Colonel Casado, and the socialist leader, Besteiro, went to Burgos to treat with General Franco. It was agreed that we would lay down arms provided means of exit from the country was provided for those who felt themselves compromised — those whom the loudspeaker priest had stigmatised as having their hands stained with blood. There were some safeguards and requests for amnesty but nobody took these seriously. All that was hoped for was an orderly withdrawal. Franco may have thought he could not crack the line, or possibly his intelligence service may have warned him that world war was nearer than was thought, in which case he might, by his association with the Axis, have been committed to war with England and France. Whatever it was, he agreed. When we heard ‘Carmen Mejorada’ on the radio, we were to lay down our arms. It was to be the swansong of the Republic. We were to listen night and day for the refrain. But we waited in vain. The Communists revolted against the Junta, They were isolated and unsuccessful, but Franco took advantage of the situation to say that the deal was off and that he was advancing on our lines. The front was wide open. Everywhere it cracked. ' I was going to make, a farewell speech to my battalion, but when it came to it there was nothing I could say. ‘Disappear where you can,’ I told the lads who had been fighting with me. The journey into the prison state had begun. 12

* The CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, National Confederation of Labour), anarchosyndicalist trade union movement; allied with the FAI (Federación Anarquista Ibérica), anarchist federation. The socialist trade union movement (much less important in Catalonia) was the UGT (General Union of Workers).

2 — The Resistance The only thing there isn’t is oblivion Borges The wounds of a civil war penetrate deeply Pharsalia, Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, 1 AC. In my darkest days, memory kept me alive. Abraham W. Landau 1939 I went to Madrid, changed into civilian clothes, and burned my battle-dress. Like many others, I went where I was not known. In Valencia, I found a little hotel whose proprietor was an old friend of mine. There I saw the enemy come in. As soon as possible, I went home to Barcelona, where my mother had a little boarding house I had established for her. I could have got to France, but I felt I had to make provision for my family. Like so many others, my mother was completely penniless, for Republican money was now valueless. But she still had the apartment and I stayed to help her get it going again. During the next few months I saw the great labour movement I had known for so many years — which my father before me had cherished at the cost of his liberty many times, and which was an integral part of our lives — completely smashed. Thousands of our members went into exile. The lucky ones went to new lives in South America, a few to England, which granted political asylum in accordance with tradition. In France, thousands were herded into great open-air wire cages as if they were guilty of some vile crime. Cooped up like animals, closely guarded by Senegalese soldiers, many were later handed over to Franco, or to the Gestapo when France was occupied. Meanwhile, in Spain, thousands were shot, thousands went to prison. The Falange was drunk with victory. They would call on a house, take out the man, sometimes his wife too, and shoot him, or both of them, as they stood. Sometimes the regular police would call, in which case the man — some active trade unionist, someone denounced for his zeal in opposing Fascism — and sometimes his wife, too, would be taken to prison. There they would await trial, and execution all too often followed. The children? They would be unable to pay the rent and would be thrown out on the streets. Sometimes a relative or neighbour would be able to take them in. But there were too many in the same plight. This in a country that prided itself on its Christianity, which was in the process of restoring the Catholic Church to its glory. When asked why they did nothing to help, the Church would reply that it would certainly have given final absolution if it had been requested. Time and again the priests would beg the condemned to accept this sole gift in its power. The children? When they had been in the gutter a year or two they might be picked up as hardened delinquents and taken, screaming with fear, into a Catholic orphanage whose sole teachings were religion and sodomy. 16

Later I was to discover this ‘generation of criminals’ throughout the prisons of Spain. Their parents had been hard-working, self-sacrificing, selfrespecting craftsmen, who had disappeared under bullets or into prison. The children were brought up in the gutter by nobody; they learned to cheat and thieve. Often those who were denounced had been simply the victims of someone who coveted the house in which they were living, or had been jealous of them for one reason or another. Many personal grudges were worked off. It was so easy. A telephone call to the police was all that was necessary, for those who shrank from the barbarity of the Falange. I myself had almost succeeded in covering my traces when, in May, I was denounced by a woman with whom I had been friendly in Madrid. This happened when I tried to break off the association with her. The police came immediately and took me to prison to await trial. Because of the enormous number of people in prison, I could not be received in the Central Prison. Three other buildings had been pressed into service to house the huge number of prisoners of war, already regarded as criminals. The one to which I was taken was a large hemp warehouse in the district of Pueblo Nuevo, formerly in the possession of the Count de Godo, owner of Barcelona’s leading newspaper La Vanguardia. There were walls and a roof, but no more, not even a floor. It had just been the place where bales of hemp were dumped, now it was the place where conquered human flesh was dumped. We slept on the soil, crammed together almost without breathing space. When I first came in, it was late at night, and all I could see was bodies. They were unable to move, compressed like sardines. ‘Where are we to sleep?’ I asked in dismay as I and four others were pushed in. For answer the door slammed behind us. ‘Go there . . . over there . . . go the other side . . .’ This advice came to us from those we stepped over. But nowhere was there room. Finally we flopped down exhausted, despite the protests from those around us whose lyingdown space we had usurped. We could not stretch out, and had to sit hunched up. In that shed, 27 yards by 7 yards were 420 people. Two holes in the ground served as lavatories, but there was no way of reaching them other than walking upon people, and even when one did so, someone was lying across the holes. We lay there all night, asphyxiated by the stench of so many bodies. During the day we were let out into the yard. There were eight latrine holes in the ground for 2,000 people. I queued for one, hoping to reach it before the bugle sounded the order to line up for a cup of coffee. A few ‘stick orderlies’ maintained order. They were prisoners too, armed with the authority of a stick. One was a Guardia Civil, who had fought on the Republican side, another a Falangist who had abused his authority and found himself up against someone with influence. The officers came in to supervise from time to time. They would casually amuse themselves by inventing punishments. A prisoner would be ordered to stand with his hand in the air, or bend down to touch his toes, until ordered to stop. There was no medical attention, of course. Nearly all the prisoners contracted scabies, from the poor diet and the overcrowded conditions. To deal with it, the director lined up prisoners naked and had horse disinfectant that burned the flesh slapped on them with a paintbrush. It was in this camp that I learned of the outbreak of world war. The Falangist officers were excited; they felt themselves invincible. They had 18

reduced their enemies to utter helplessness, and in just the same way they would deal with England and France. ‘Now we shall have Gibraltar!’ they cried. It was the cry with which General Franco hoped to unify Spain. In the years that were to come, the equivalent of the city of Barcelona was to die by shooting, neglect and disease in prison, as well as by judicial execution. But to reconcile the people he thought he had only to evoke that barren rock, inhabited by a few thousand people who cared nothing about Spain. One day a crazy man ran amok in our room. He jumped up and down on the bodies lying there. The orderlies could not control him and sent for the guards. They dragged him outside and beat him up so severely that, although they put him in the shower to try to revive him, he died. Among the prisoners was a prominent Basque surgeon, Medinabetia. The director of the prison sent for him and told him to write a medical certificate. Medinabetia refused. ‘I have no power to do so, being a prisoner,’ he said. ‘But even if I had the power, I would not be an accessory to murder.’ He was punished for his refusal, and the prison doctor-who had been absent from his duties, as was generally the case — was brought in to sign a certificate that the man had died from internal haemorrhage. It was in that hemp prison that I first met José Sabater (El Pépé). He was the eldest brother of Francisco (El Quico), later famous throughout Spain. There we swore we would go on with the fight. We exchanged addresses and arranged to contact each other when we got out. In all I spent twenty-two months in prison. From Barcelona I was sent to the Unamuno concentration camp in Madrid. It had been named after the famous philosopher who had denounced the Franco rising in front of Doña Carmen Franco and General Millán-Astray (one of the fiercest of the rebel generals) at the University of Salamanca, at the very beginning of the war. I had been sent to Madrid because the Barcelona judge had held that any crimes I had committed would have been in the jurisdiction of the capital. The judge sentenced me to six months in the camp, No. 1, for the crime of having taken up arms to defend the city against the invaders. As I had already served twenty-two months, the sentence was remitted and I was free. 20

1941 Back in Barcelona, El Pépé and I began to undertake the task of reorganising our movement. Everywhere in the bars and cafés old comrades were beginning to get together again. They did not need to speak openly; they recognized each other from the memory of many battles together. The heady expectation that the Falangists — now organising hysterical demonstrations against England — would drag the régime into the war, gave us cause for optimism. If they took the country into war now as an ally of the Fascist powers, they would be destroyed. British agents quickly contacted our movement, promising guns and money. They hardly needed to tell us that the British government wanted to see Franco overthrown. The Condor Legion, sent by Hitler, had helped him win the Civil War. Hitler had used Spain as a training ground; its airmen learnt over Spanish cities how to bomb London and Coventry. It was clear that Hitler expected some return for the help he had given the Nationalists, and so British Intelligence turned to the Resistance. The men who took to guerrilla action in the Pyrenees were hardened fighters, toughened in the Civil War, who had in most cases been active

members of the FAI (anarchist federation) for years previously engaged in almost open street warfare with the pistoleros of the employers’ organisations and in later years with the Falangists and others. In many cases there were prices on their heads. They knew the art of guerrilla warfare like the backs of their hands, and had the Civil War been fought this way they would never have been beaten. They knew the Pyrenees intimately, and were the ideal people to guide the refugees who swarmed across the border to escape from Hitler. Some of the latter were wealthy, only too anxious to pay their passage, and the border gangs, who had to live, naturally allowed them to do so. Others had nothing but their anti-Fascism to recommend them and they came over free. After the war, the traffic was the other way. Wives of Spanish antiFascists, and their families, wanted to join their husbands exiled in France and elsewhere. Because of their intimate contacts with the Spanish exiles in France, who had been the first to join the Maquis against Hitler, those smugglers were soon eagerly contacted by British Intelligence, Most of the Resistance scorned this contact, for they had not much faith in the Allies after the experience of the Civil War. They had not taken up arms in order to help Britain, and did not want to depend on the policies of Whitehall as to whether they should live or die. But some, like Santiago Amir Gruañas, saw no problem. When taxed on the rather miserly sum of 1,500 pesetas a month which he received for escorting airmen into neutrality, he said, ‘If these gentlemen had sent us arms during the Civil War, we would have had to pay them. Now it suits the bourgeoisie to fight Hitler, let them pay us.’ He saw no more objection to carrying arms or information than any other form of contraband, though he was no mercenary in that he would certainly never let himself be bought by the other side. The British agents, of course, knew this very well. Gruañas, known for some reason as ‘the Sheriff’ (El Chérif), must have rendered invaluable service to the Allies, and his presence at our trial was one of the reasons the British and French Vice-Consuls attended. They knew him well, but did not intervene. At one of our early meetings I recognized Ginés Urrea Piña. I had not known him before, but he was famous in Barcelona for having killed the public executioner. In one of the great disturbances before the Civil War, one of our comrades had been sentenced to death, and the government had been warned that if he were not pardoned, the executioner would share his fate. Even the most ardent believers in capital punishment have always had a dislike of hangmen, and Piña, who put the threat of killing the hangman into action, was widely acclaimed for his deed. He returned from exile in France when the war broke out, and had fought throughout in a CNT battalion. Now, he was one of the most ardent advocates of resuming fighting —not in the vain continuance of trench warfare, but by guerrilla tactics that would spare the civilian population. ‘No more disciplined armies, no more political allies, we’re an “undisciplined rabble” once again!’ he said at one of our first clandestine meetings. Did one detect a note of relief? We had been an ‘undisciplined rabble’ when we had risen up in the streets and held back the army. When trench warfare began, army discipline was imposed on us, and much good it had done. Now it was possible to hit the real enemy, not just sacrifice lives to a few square inches of ground. He surprised us by admitting that he had 25

already accepted some sums of money from the British Secret Service (MI6) to get his organisation going. A comrade attacked him for it. ‘We should keep our hands clean. If you take English money you will become their servant. Isn’t this what we always attacked the Communists for, taking money from abroad?’ Piña shrugged his shoulders. He had no illusions about the democratic powers. ‘If it suits them, they will sell us, no doubt about it. But Hitler’s their enemy too, now. Besides, we did not reproach the Communists for taking money; we reproached them for obeying orders. When I take orders from Whitehall, you can call me a traitor too.’ His group carried out many daring raids and was greatly favoured by British Intelligence as a means of obtaining information by burglary about the Axis powers. Antonio Moreno Alarcón was a member of his group: although illiterate, Moreno was one of the most important links in our organisation, and he helped us rebuild our regional committee. Despite all the terrible blows, the organisation began to function again. We built illicit trade union groups once more. The membership cards of the CNT were issued again; shop delegates went round each week to collect dues. Though the workers were forced into the Fascist syndicates, their sympathies and allegiance lay with the libertarian ones. Some employers found it expedient to flout the law and negotiate with the ostensibly unofficial spokesman of the workers, a delegate of the CNT. But the weekly stamps were more a means of building morale than of covering the cost of the organisation. We had to raise funds for printing presses, arms, and aid for prisoners and for innumerable families. So we had to organise bank raids on a large scale. This was encouraged by the British agents, who said they liked to see us acting independently; but one felt they were happier at asking for assistance in the name of democracy than at paying with hard cash for the services rendered. I am grateful to them for one thing in particular. They sent a secret agent who was an expert forger into Barcelona, under cover of the Consulate. He taught me the art, and I became an expert. I had acquired my own printing press with the proceeds of a bank raid the group had undertaken (I had served an apprenticeship as a compositor in my youth) and was able to begin the work of devaluing the huge mass of official papers now being issued. Licences, orders, visas, pardons, and identification papers of all sorts — the demand was endless. We had to get our members at work again and out of hiding. After so many years of killing it was pleasant to acquire one of the most humanitarian arts in a totalitarian country. My teacher was one day admiring my handiwork at preparing a German diplomatic pass, which he said was undetectable from the real thing. He proved this by criticising some minor point in the genuine pass, having confused it with my imitation. ‘This proves you’ve passed with flying colours!’ he said delightedly when I pointed out his mistake. ‘In England you would have got seven years!’ He corrected himself hastily. ‘If you hadn't been working for us, I mean.’ As a result of my skill, Quico brought a German professor round one night. He and his wife were Jewish, wanted by the Gestapo. They had crossed the border, and were desperate. When they found we did not make any charge for the visas they needed, the woman began to weep. ‘They told us that the Tallion gang were anarchists, bandits, criminals,’ she said. 28

‘Anarchists, yes,’ I told her. ‘But if you think" we are the criminals; you should have asked the State to protect you. You had judges and policemen in Germany — how was it they couldn’t save you from the Nazis? The State is the criminal, not us.’ They were the first of many Jews helped by the Resistance across the border into and then out of Spain. Soon we had opened a highway of escape through which poured refugees from many nations, British airmen, and volunteers for De Gaulle. Later, this escape route was attributed by some foreigners to the * clemency of the Spanish government. 30

1945/8 By the end of the war, we had thirteen unions affiliated to the CNT organised in Barcelona. Meetings were held furtively on the factory floor, and the committee met in crowded bars, with others sitting around noisily drinking and singing so as to distract the attention of any police spy. Once again we were able to contact our movement in France, where the exiles had established headquarters in Toulouse. But what we heard infuriated us. There was now a faction of our movement in France advocating political action, to which our movement had always been opposed. We at home reacted sharply against this idea. I said to the emissaries of political action who came to us from France: ‘We fight as we have always fought. Is it really possible that now, when parliamentary action in Spain is finished for a generation, you are anxious for political participation? You could have had all the portfolios you wanted in the Republic — where do you want them now, in that farce of a Spanish government set up in Mexico? We are in the front line still. All the risk you take is to cross the border!’ At a crucial period we were divided. Most of us, particularly in Catalonia, remained true to our anarchist beliefs. Then, to our incredulity, we began to hear that we were criticised as being ‘for violence’. Had our critics accepted Franco’s victory, then? We were less prepared to surrender in 1945 than we had been in 1939. We were forced into bank robberies and forgeries, but we were not common criminals. Men who took millions of pesetas from a holdup did not put a penny in their own pockets, though they lived in poverty. It was all poured into the organisation. Who, in wartime, ever held back from the chance of raiding the enemy’s treasury? Certainly not the British — from as far back as the time of the first Elizabeth. None attacked us more bitterly as ‘criminal gangs’ than the Communists. Yet in 1939, when Casado sounded the retreat, they had wanted to go on fighting. What was it they supposed we were doing? Our Youth Regional Committee was Composed of some of our most dynamic young men. They were full, rather too full, of confidence, holding meetings of thirty or forty as if they were in a free country. They carried out a hold-up to get the money to buy a small Minerva printing press. They distributed — far too openly for my peace of mind — a journal called Ruta. Eventually they were raided in a bar which they frequented, De Valero’s, in Pueblo Nuevo. Thirty-three were arrested. One of them knew my double identity (I called myself Ferrer in the Underground) and in case he broke under interrogation, I decided to leave Barcelona and go and live in the country for a while. 31

There was an organisation called FARE (Armed Forces of Republican Spain) composed of former carabineros (armed customs officers) or police who had not accepted the defeat. They had special knowledge of the movements of the secret police, and warned us of the possible consequence of the raid in De Valero’s. It was a near thing for many of us. In the countryside I found there were a lot of wanderers: because of the hunger in Barcelona throughout the Second World War, people would go out in search of food, robbing orchards and farms. The Guardia Civil used to round them up. As so many of them were youngsters, often adolescents who had lost their parents, our Youth Group tried to organise them and make them a factor in the Resistance, though they had no real affiliations. In the countryside, too, one could often find caches of arms. Some had been left over from the Civil War and buried; others had been used by the Maquis in France and brought in more recently. They were the only arms that were available, and we did not dare to believe that in the event of a rising there would be any help from abroad. Now, since Sabaté (El Quico) had taken to the mountains and was raiding the very heart of the State, it seemed important to find where we could lay our hands on arms when needed. There were many active fighters who had begun to operate once more against the Falangists, and the one I admired most for his complete disinterestedness and nobility of character was Pedro Adrover Font, known as El Yayo (Catalan for ‘grandfather’). He had been in one of the French barbed wire encampments, and there had been rounded up for forced labour in the German Todt organization. His skill at sabotage had become legendary, though the hardships of the work caused him to contract tuberculosis. When the World War was over, he returned to Spain voluntarily, to take up the fight. In 1947, Adrover placed a bomb in Barcelona cathedral, timing it to explode the moment the Caudillo entered to attend a solemn Te Deum. But although the bomb exploded, it was before Franco arrived, and was only of sufficient force to raise all the dust in the building. Franco’s fellow participants in the Mass stood coughing and choking, their lungs full of the results of Adrover’s unintentional spring-cleaning exercise. On one occasion El Yayo blew in the entire front of a municipal police building. It was on this occasion a perfectly timed operation, but with one tragic exception. Some poor devil of a tramp had chosen to creep into the door and huddle up, unseen by passers-by, like a bundle of rags. He was blown to pieces. This caused a great deal of criticism and when next we had a delegate from France, we were soundly reproached for the deed — about which, like most of Adrover’s exploits, nobody had known anything until next day—which it was said gave our movement a bad image. ‘You are right,’ I replied sarcastically to the delegate. ‘I remember you as an artilleryman. You always managed to direct your shells so carefully they only fell upon Falangists with party cards and generals with more than one star.’ ‘That was war. Things are different now.’ ‘If this is not war—long live Franco! ’ The conversation took place on the very day a victory parade was being held on the Plaza de Cataluña. El Yayo struck again with an explosion that wrecked the presidential tribune. None of us had known about it beforehand. We abandoned our meeting hastily when we heard the news. If we were subject to these alarms and incursions, it was nothing to what the enemy must have suffered. The police sometimes lost their heads, most 33

notoriously in the case of an English doctor. The first trickle of foreign tourists was beginning to enter Spain when the doctor travelled down to Spain in his caravan with his family. A local Guardia Civil discovered that they were camping out in the road in what was then an unusual fashion. He panicked and sent to the Barcelona special squad for reinforcements. It must be Sabaté! They were told to shoot at sight and take no chances. The unfortunate doctor and his family were murdered by the Guardia Civil, who, when they discovered their mistake, put out the story that the atrocity must have been committed by the notorious Sabaté. It was nothing to some of the wild allegations made against Sabaté, but one he particularly resented. The doctor and his family were Jewish, and Sabaté had saved dozens of Jews by escorting them over the Pyrenees, saving their lives at the risk of his own. He could hardly sue for libel, so he went to the village and blew in the front of the barracks of the Guardia Civil. My unit called itself the Tallion Group. This name—altered by the police and Press to ‘the Tallion Gang’ — was almost synonymous with post-war resistance. We procured arms and documents for the movement in the whole of the Peninsula, including Portugal. Were we criminals? Perhaps. No government in the world offered us the benefit of its legality, not even that poor cardboard government of the Spanish Republic in Mexico City. To the world we were bandits who staged hold-ups and blew up government buildings, cut-throats who lived in tumbledown shacks in the poor quarters. Millions of pesetas found their way to those shanty buildings, but not one went astray. All was for the Resistance, and the money was as safe as if it were in the bank. Safer. If it had been deposited in the bank in the name of the trade unions, the Falangist Party would have seized it. 36

Like everyone else, when the Resistance groups began their activity, they had not a peseta in their funds. Antonio López, who was the confederal delegate for Rioja and Navarre, and one of the bravest men I have met, began the policy of forced contributions from industrialists. He had a portfolio of employers whose factories had been collectivised by the workers, who had seized control during the revolutionary period at the beginning of the Civil War. Now, with the new régime, the employers had taken their factories back again. Lopez had a habit of calling on the managing directors with a request that they pay compensation to the confederal movement in recognition of the way the workers had looked after the factories in their absence; and in some cases, under workers’ control, the value of the factories had trebled and quadrupled. So far as the workers were concerned, however, not only had they lost all; they now had no union to look after their interests. Surely the directors would contribute to this good cause? Many of them did, quite readily, possibly because it was late at night in their private apartments and López had come armed. On one occasion, he persuaded me to come with him to the office of a doctor, which was on the first floor over the Commissariat of Police. The doctor had managed to get hold of a large number of properties whose owners had escaped from Franco, as well as having been reinstated as managing director in his own company. López asked him for the equivalent of £5,000, blandly telling him that a cheque would do, as he knew the doctor would not care to go to the police considering the manner in which he had acquired some of his shareholdings. 38

The doctor, a large impressive man, towered over the stocky López, and shouted furiously, threatening that he would pick up the telephone and bring the police up immediately. López produced his gun. ‘Now the price is £10,000 and it must be cash,’ he said. ‘You have proved you can’t be trusted! ‘ The doctor was so terrified that he gave in. But he insisted that he did not have so much cash on the premises. Nevertheless, he managed to scrape together £7,000. ‘Here is your receipt,’ said López, blandly ignoring the looks that could have killed him. ‘Take care of it well. It will be useful one day to show that you have contributed to our funds when we needed them.’ We walked down the stairs and into the street. We had no car, but López insisted we walk slowly past the police to avoid suspicion. I must admit I was as frightened as the doctor had been. But he did not call the police, as López was sure he would not. Sometimes, during the seizure of a payroll, López would make speeches to the wages clerks, explaining that on no account were they to hand over their own money but only that of the employer. He would courteously explain the motives of the raiders, apparently without realising that many times the poor fellows were shaking with fear lest the police come in and they be caught in a shooting match. . I personally had no part in any other of these raids by López. My speciality was forgery. The only time I engaged in a bank robbery was in that of the Banco de Vizcaya. It was an abortive one. We had taken a taxi outside town, and ordered the driver to leave. This was the usual practice of the groups, and the chance was taken that he might inform the police. But this hardly ever happened. On this occasion the driver insisted he had an old cab and it would be useless as a getaway car. Before we got to the bank the clutch was found to be broken. We had to abandon the project. I was not again invited on such an expedition, but I was often used by those who came over the border for information. I would survey the terrain, and can boast that every one of the occasions on which I sent such information was successful. At the trial our group was accused of having taken a total of 17 million pesetas, and my share was stated to have been 275,000 pesetas. This was an understatement. The groups took much more than that figure, especially if one includes forced contributions, but it is doubtful if these were ever reported to the police. So far as I was concerned, I had taken out of the pool a lot more than that, for my printing press was expensive to run. We had masses of forged passes and permits to issue as well as running a newspaper. In all, this Resistance web of the anarchist movement consisted of five groups. Ours, the Tallion Group, was centred in Barcelona. The other four came from over the border. There was the group of ‘Los Maños’ which had come to Barcelona and operated from the suburbs of the city, among whom had been Jorge Pons, and which Jaime Albana had come to join. There was the group organised by José Sabaté (El Pépé); the one led by Piña which had been active throughout World War II; and the one organised by Culebra, which included the youngest of the Sabaté brothers, Manuel. José Culebra planned to invade Catalonia in September 1949 and took as his guide over the Pyrenees an old veteran of the border raiders, known as Caraquemada (Burnt Face). He had included in his group the young Sabaté, though everyone had warned that he was too young to go on such an expedition. His family was against it, and had warned him that the power of his name alone would mean that he and everyone else would be shot out of 39

hand if they were captured. Nevertheless, he had insisted on going. When they were in the vicinity of a little village called Moya, the Sabaté boy insisted that he needed new shoes, as his were now worn out. He said he would go into the village to buy them. It was a foolhardy thing to do, but he refused to admit that exile had made him in any way different from his own people in the village. For some reason the Guardia Civil immediately regarded him as suspicious and arrested him. Either because he yielded to torture, or because he had the map of the route on him — we shall never know — they found where the group was awaiting him in the wheat-field. The party was taken by surprise but opened fire. An Italian comrade with the group fell dead in the shots exchanged. The others ran away across the fields. All but Caraquemada, who was wounded, made for Barcelona, where they were arrested in the great round up. Caraquemada managed to reach a farmhouse known to the guerrillas as friendly. There the farm bailiff and his son-in-law were sympathisers with our movement and would always give shelter in the barn. But the Guardia Civil had got there first. When he called out to the farmer to let him in, he was answered with a hail of bullets, but he still managed to escape, and succeeded in getting back to France. He continued to harass the frontier guards for years to come, and remained for many years a key figure among those who fought on in the mountains. The farmer and his son-in-law were taken out and shot. José Facerias was a legendary figure in the Resistance; his nerves of steel had confounded the police time and again. He had bluffed himself out of every situation, and the authorities would have given millions of pesetas for his capture. His fair hair and baby face were very deceptive. In addition to his complete devotion to the cause, he had an impish sense of humour that added to the enmity with which he was regarded. I was personally involved in the famous Casita Blanca hold-up. The groups looked on the Casita Blanca as a ‘night out’ for the Resistance. Its motives were neither financial nor political, but psychological. We felt it paid back many of the humiliations that had been heaped upon us. It was the most expensive cathouse in the city. There, in the luxurious surroundings of the hotel, the rich and powerful conducted their affaires. We felt that it would strike fear into their hearts if they felt that even in the secrecy of their undomestic beds they could not be safe from these terrible people the anarchists; accordingly we raided it and held it captive for four hours, stripping the ladies of their jewellery and the gentlemen of their wallets. We assembled the guests in a big room on the lower ground floor. They came, wrapping blankets around their nakedness, shivering with cold and fright. ‘Have no fear,’ we told them. ‘You’re about to pay your tribute to the Resistance! Surely you people cannot be in sympathy with the Christian virtues advocated by El Caudillo!’ The raid had endless repercussions because of the powerful politicians, businessmen and society ladies who were present and recognised each other when assembled. Among the patrons of the establishment was a respectable paterfamilias out for the night with his ladylove, who discovered his virtuous teenage daughter and her boy friend with whom she had booked into another room. There was also a fashionable couple whose wedding next day was to be the event of the month, who had booked in with different partners unknown to each other. Even a blushing pillar of the Church was there, trying to drape his face as well as his body with the white sheet. In Spain, where virginity 44

until marriage and celibacy in the clergy are so prized, this night’s events were the subject for society gossip for years to come. Facerías had mounted a similar operation in the even more luxurious Hotel Pedralbes, and actually went back a second time. There he found a colonel, a notorious persecutor of our movement, who in normal circumstances would have been shot out of hand. But whether because Facerías was not capable of shooting in cold blood, or because he was laughing so much at the time, this did not happen. For the poor colonel knew he was on our ‘wanted list’, and through the combination of frustrated passion, cold and fear, he evacuated his bowels on the floor. Without doubt Facerías had an instinct for organisation in addition to his quick reflexes. He could have done great things if he had had more support from some of the ‘puritanical’ elements in the libertarian movement. Although Facerías often lost men in his raids on the interior, he was always the first to show his face. He was reproached for his ‘irresponsible’ actions in such ‘frivolous’ matters as that of the Hotel de Pedralbes, but they were great morale-builders.

3 — The Trial It is necessary to put and end to the hatreds and passions of our recent war but not in the manner of liberals, with their monstrous and suicidal amnesties, which are more fraud that pardon, but rather with the redemption of sentences through work, with repentance and penance. Anyone who thinks otherwise is guilty of irresponsibility or treason. Such damage has been done to the Patria and such havoc has been wreaked on families and on morality, so many victims cry out for justice that no honourable Spaniard, no thinking being, could stand aside from the painful duty of punishment. Franco’s speech, December 31 1939. Quoted in Preston’s The Spanish Holocaust. It is not important if one thinks libertarian communism is viable or not, nor that any other utopias is viable or not. It is not important whether things have changed, nor that we live or might have live in a different world. It is not important that we may think ourselves clever than they. What is important is the attempt to wipe out from memory the generosity of spirit and physical courage of these combatants and to convert the absence of this resistance into normality. Francesc Torres

1949 Down in the slum quarter of Barcelona, the Barrio Chino, Chinatown, it was a normal, bustling day in the flea market. The police informers were looking around for stolen goods, always a safe bet. How could they have known they were going to smash the Resistance movement that was rebuilding the trade unions, that had got to the point where, within a year or two, the clandestine unions of the CNT would have been holding their own, as they did in the days of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship? The eyes of a shabby little man opened wide as he saw a boy, eighteenyear-old Jaime Albana, offering a gold watch for sale at the street corner. ‘A bargain,’ cried Jaime. ‘Well under cost!’ ‘Good brass, eh?’ wheedled the informer. ‘Real gold,’ boasted the boy. ‘I have to sell it to pay for my studies.’ Ah, those studies! I know them well, the informer thought. He went to the market policeman, ingratiating. ‘You have seen the boy on the corner? Ay, such a watch! A Longines! Could it be stolen, perhaps?’ Why did he do it? For a few pesetas to spend on a glass of wine? His glass of wine cost us dear. Not all the vineyards of Cadiz were worth more than that information. For the price of a drink the informer set off a chain reaction that was to deliver us into Franco’s hands for more than twenty years. The policeman went up to Jaime. ‘Your papers!’ The boy was prepared. Arrogantly, he thrust out, not an identity card, but a Falangist Party card. That should impress and silence the policeman! But to 45

his surprise, the policeman reacted by grabbing him tightly and calling for reinforcements. An inspector and other policemen arrived. What went wrong with that magic talisman to immunity, the Falangist Party card? There were too many forgeries about. We had flooded the country with them, devaluing their worth. Now the party had changed its mode of printing the card, but the news had not percolated through the Pyrenees. This was a forgery of the old card made in France; every policeman was on the lookout for such a card. They searched the boy there in the street, and found a .45 Colt as used by American soldiers, and two grenades. Then they took the boy before Inspector Quintela, the head of the secret police, the greatest enemy of the libertarian movement, and yet to which he was no stranger. During the World War, Quintela was known to be working for the British. He too had smuggled Jewish refugees and British airmen across the border. He had been well known then to the Resistance movement. Why had he sold out to the new régime? Had he done it for the cash? Or had the régime used him in some subtle game of its own? Jaime Albana was no match for him, a boy green in the struggle, who could not stand much torture, who had not been trained what to do if caught. The very fact that he tried to sell his French watch in the open-air market revealed his ignorance of post-war Spain. ‘You’re from Toulouse! Don’t lie! From the school of terrorists! Who gave you the weapon? Where do you live? Do you know Sabaté?’ Jaime remained impassive, though a vicious blow accompanied every sentence. ‘We are not here to play games! Come on, talk!’ They begin to torture him. ‘I’m from Puigvert. I was born in Lerida. I came over the border from France to contact Jorge Pons. He’s a fellow townsman of mine.’ ‘Jorge Pons! At the very name the inspector’s eyes lit up. ‘So you’re with the Tallion Gang! Jorge Pons gave you the pistol, did he? Who were you to shoot? Me?’ ‘I was to shoot no one. He left it with me to collect later.’ ‘Did he? Where?’ That was it! It was impossible to avoid the question. Pons had left the pistol, where was he to collect it? They left the broken sobbing Jaime Albana, and went to the place where he should have met Jorge Pons. It was the house where they had both been staying, a little self-built home on the slopes of the mountain of Montjuich, where many small householders lived. The owner was a bricklayer from Murcia, who was connected with the Resistance, and had given refuge to Jorge Pons and Jaime Albana. But because Jorge Pons was easily recognisable by a strawberry birthmark on his cheek, it was felt advisable that he should not stay there too long. When the police came, only the woman of the house, Juanita, was there. She was plied with questions, and in order to save her husband, who was away at the time, she told them he did not know she had taken in lodgers and she was afraid when he returned he would not agree to it. She had taken them in to earn a few extra pesetas; a friend recommended them and she needed the money. As for Pons, he had been gone three days, saying he would come back, but she had not troubled to ask him where he had gone. He had paid in advance, that was enough for her, she said. 46

The police searched the place thoroughly but found nothing. She nevertheless came to trial on a charge of harbouring guerrillas, and ultimately received a year’s imprisonment. They belaboured Jaime Albana once again to find out anything more he knew, and this time he gave them two addresses. The first was that of José Corral Martín. He and his family were arrested. They were under arrest when I came; I could see by their faces as they opened the door that something serious was afoot, and in fact the police were lurking in the shadows. I fled. I thought I had become an adept in shaking off my pursuers, in avoiding the detaining clutch of the shoulders. But this time I was not so lucky; I was arrested on the top of the bus as it came screeching to a stop outside the Prefecture of Police. Had I been followed? For how long? I will never know. Handcuffed for two days to the hot water radiator on the first floor of the Prefecture, I listened to Jaime’s weeping as he still quivered and twitched from his interrogation. And in came my friends, from all over the city, rounded up by the police on that day of Quintela’s triumph. I heard that hated voice on the telephone shouting, with satisfaction, ‘Shot while trying to escape? Good! Bring in the body! ’ There was another who yielded to torture that day. Eusebio Montes Bescos, whose address was the other one that Albana had given, had belonged to the group of the elder Sabaté, and he gave the place and time where he was to meet El Pépé. Quintela looked at me glowing with pride as they set off for the date with Sabaté. ‘You would make a resistance, would you?’ he said. ‘I tell you, this day will be worse for you than March 1939!’ We were taken by vanloads to the Fourth Gallery of the Cellular Prison. The Political Brigade had been increased from 400 to 4,000 as a result of our activities. Now it had shown results. There would be promotions at the end of this day’s work. Yet a little dismay was felt too, so complete was the victory. ‘Now we have got them all, do you think we shall still be needed?’ one of the plain-clothes men anxiously asked another, on the way to the Cellular Prison. Jorge Pons defiantly broke into their conversation. ‘Another generation will come! You’ll see! You haven’t finished with us yet!’ His remark consoled both the vanquished, anxious for their lives, and the victors, anxious for their jobs. In the Fourth Gallery, joined by the others as they came in, we remained until the day of the trial. It took a long time for the legal administration to prepare our case. In the meantime, Jaime Albana, whose arrest had started it all, escaped from custody; the police in recognition for services rendered might have connived this at. 48

1952 Thirty of us were to be tried together, and we were taken to the huge edifice of the Military Government. Even there, our trial was to be upstairs, at the farthest side of the building from the entrance, for greater security. Despite the closed conditions of the coach that took us and the enormous numbers of police that kept back the silent crowd, we spotted here and there the notices

which had furtively sprung up overnight: ‘Free the Thirty Prisoners! No More Killings!’ The impressive room where our trial was to be held overlooked the harbour. Everywhere inside were police. They crowded the room in plain clothes, and searched the spectators at the back of the court. Outside the Guardia Civil stood with arms at the ready. ‘The session is opened!’ The prosecutor began to speak. He spoke of the evils of Communism and the machinations of the Kremlin. He was blissfully unaware that our downfall was not precisely a day of mourning for the world’s Communist Parties. ‘You are not to suppose that these people wanted trade unionism as in some Western countries,’ he harangued his brother officers. ‘It is not that they wish to introduce the trade unionism of other countries because our own Spanish syndicates are not good enough for them. In no country do they build up trade unions by bombs, by terror, by bank robberies, by hold-ups. The trial went on, the heavy dull features of the greying lieutenants beside the judge becoming lined with boredom. They did not want to hear these long speeches; everyone knew what the result would be. ‘They have made war against their own country, they have betrayed Spain and endangered the regime!’ thundered the prosecutor. I could not help twisting in my seat to look at the English and French viceconsular officials, who were attending the trial. Did I detect the ghost of a smile upon their faces? But they preserved a diplomatic silence. The prosecutor demanded eleven sentences of death: Pedro Adrover Font, El Yayo; Jorge Pons Argilés; Santiago Amir Gruañas; José Pérez Pedrero; Ginés Urrea Piña; Domingo Ibars Juanias; Antonio Moreno Alarcón; José Corral Martín; José Iglesias Paz; Pedro Meca López and myself. For five others he asked for thirty years, for four, twelve years; and for two, including Juanita, only one year. For Manuel Lecha Blanch he demanded four years three months and a day. Lecha was an old friend of mine, a docker, known in Barcelona as ‘The Artilleryman’. When the uprising had taken place, the Captaincy-General had held out, and while the fighting was at its height, the huge, sweating figure of Manuel Lecha could be seen pulling a large cannon from the harbour to the central square. He heaved it to the arcade opposite, sheltering behind the pillars. The first shot had gone wide, and the pillars still bear the scars. The second shot blew out the machine-gun nest, and the Captain-General of Barcelona surrendered. Later he had gone to Majorca with a naval commander, Comandante Balbó, in a bid to recapture the island. All his life had been wrapped up in the Transport Union, Dockers’ Section, of the CNT. Awaiting trial, he had shared my cell. A huge, tough man, sixty-two years old, a Valencian, he was gentle and chivalrous in his dealings with everyone. Now he faced the prospect of ending his days in prison for the offence of having been found in possession of 2,000 unused membership stamps of his union. They were a receipt for weekly contributions, and made it clear that he was still organising the dockers in defiance of the law. In fact, he was on the Regional Committee of the Confederation. The prosecutor showed that the Regional Committee had accepted funds from Domingo Ibars Juanias, who had staged seven known bank raids. He lived in a little house in San Adrian, with his wife and child. Jorge Pons had stayed with them and finally been arrested there. The place had been 50

surrounded by police, who took it to be Adrover’s headquarters and came up with arms and gas bombs. They shouted for the occupants to surrender. Inside the home there were enough arms to resist a regiment, for not only had Adrover stayed there; Facerías had used it as his hideout in Barcelona. But Adrover was away at a meeting and Facerías was in France. Pons and Ibars consulted with each other and decided to surrender for the sake of the child. Pons hastily burned everything compromising, and then put up a white flag. Had Facerías or Adrover been there, things might have been very different. Urrea Piña’s killing of the public executioner was also brought up. He had come back to Spain and fought during the Civil War, and the legal Republican government had lifted all charges. Nevertheless after the Civil War, he had been tried and sentenced for it. But as at that time the jails were crowded, even though he received twenty years’ imprisonment, he was soon released. Old offences had perforce to be forgiven for there were so many new ones. In the course of a raid upon the office of a public works contractor, the contractor’s daughter, who was pregnant and happened to be in the office, seized the metal pole used to push up the metallic grille door and beat the raiders with it. Taken by surprise — for everyone else was standing quietly— shots had been exchanged, and she died. This was one of the counts against Urrea Piña, but when the contractor and his wife came to the court they positively identified Corral Martín as the person who had shot her. This was an impossibility. Corral Martín had not only been in Paris at the time, his presence there at that particular time, obtaining support for the Resistance, formed part of one of the charges against him. The parents were obviously mistaken, but Martín was convicted on both counts. So the prosecution demanded eleven death sentences in all. They were reduced by two, those two receiving instead sentences of thirty and twentytwo years respectively. Nine were to die. I was number nine on the list. I too went to the condemned cell. What were my feelings? Impossible to relate. I had lived too long in the Cellular Prison, awaiting trial with the certain knowledge of a sentence of death. Pardons were rare in the early days. Now it's over, I thought. For however tardy the administration of the law, death followed swiftly after sentencing. Then a feeling of fury shook me. To see them sitting there in the judicial places they had taken by right of conquest! This was our city! Sentenced to death by them! I was shaking with rage as they bundled us out. Some nuns approached us, offering to take messages, ready to offer consolation if it were requested. The Guardia Civil came to attention as we were pushed back into the coaches. We were driven back at breakneck speed to the prison, but not to our all-toofamiliar cells. This time it was Death Row.

4 — Sentenced to Live At the entrance of most every Spanish prisons is a notice which reads: ‘I can affirm without fear of error that anyone who has visited the prisons of other countries and compared them with ours will not have found institutions as equitable, Christian or humane as those established by our Movement.’ (Francisco Franco). The above declaration notwithstanding, Amnesty International, after collecting detailed information about Spanish prison conditions, has compiled this report in an effort to impress first upon the Spanish Government and then upon world opinion the extent to which Spanish prisoners are continually deprived of their basic human rights. Amnesty International report on Political Imprisonment in Spain, August 1973. 1952 ‘Your death penalty has been commuted to life.’ That meant thirty years. A feeling of immense relief flooded over me. The protests must have been of some avail! I had been called to the prison director’s office early on the morning of 13 March 1952. Thirty-eight days had passed since I had been sentenced to death. I did not want to show any emotion in front of him. And I remembered my fellow-prisoners. ‘All of us?’ I asked eagerly. ‘You are not here to ask questions,’ he replied coldly. I was marched back to my cell. ‘Who else?’ I asked the guard. He did not reply. When he had slammed the door, I began frantically tapping on the walls to my next-door neighbour, José Corral Martín. ‘I am commuted, who else?’ ‘I too. There are four of us. The other five are to be shot at dawn.’ ‘Who? Who?’ We began tapping along the condemned row. ‘I am commuted to thirty years,’ said Domingo Ibars Juanias. ‘Antonio Moreno Alarcón is still with the director. He must be the fourth.’ We fell silent. There was no more tapping for a while as we thought of the five friends whose fate was sealed. Then one of them broke the silence. ‘Are there to be only four commuted?’ asked Adrover, hopefully. ‘Only four.’ Later the guards came and took the four who had been spared death up to the first floor. We did not sleep that night. We lay on the floor, our ears straining to hear every sound from below. One of the officers, a former Republican functionary, was friendly, and would give us information when the other guards were not present. We waited anxiously for his shift to come round, and meanwhile heard the last of our friends at midnight, when the guards came to take them to the chapel. They called their names. ‘Adrover!’ ‘Pedrero!’ And so on until they came to Urrea. He anticipated them. As they came to his cell, he let out a magnificent

shout, ‘Viva la FAI! Viva la Resistencia!’ The guards shouted for silence. We called back, as his shout echoed through the gloom of the prison. ‘Viva la FAI!’ Then the noise faded away. The prisoners had been taken to the chapel where they remained for seven hours while priests urged them to confess their sins. None of them obliged, the ex-Republican prison officer told us later. He was on duty when they were taken from the chapel to the Campo de la Bota. It was a field on the beach just outside the city, where ropes stretched out to buoys and youngsters learned to swim. Now, because of its remoteness, it was the place of execution. They all died bravely. José Pérez Pedrero was the youngest, twenty-three years old. He asked the officer of the execution squad to give his silk handkerchief to his mother. ' One of the Political Squad officers present shouted roughly, ‘None of that, don’t play the martyr!’ The army officer turned to him and told him to be quiet. ‘You have no say here. I give the orders. This is a matter for me.’ He took the handkerchief from the boy, saying he would see his mother got it. It was a harrowing experience for us back in the cells. We had lived under the shadow of death so long. All the time the only news from outside that reached us was the death of our friends. Most of the committees were disappearing, men trapped in ambush or shot by firing squad. López, for instance, had been sentenced and shot by court martial in Vitoria — he was the delegate for Navarre and Rioja. From what the prison warder told me, I wondered if even the army officers were beginning to feel restless at being involved in mass butchery. It was unusual to hear of one being as sympathetic as this one had been while carrying out his deadly duty. At all events, these were the last of the shootings. The guerrillas and the Resistance workers sentenced to death since have been strangled inside the prison by the public executioner. The garrotte had been used already— Manuel Sabaté was killed in this way, for his trial and execution were carried out in the swiftest possible manner, perhaps for fear of his brother—and was the ‘normal’ death penalty. Culebra too was garrotted. For one’s faith in humanity it would be pleasant to believe that the army officers were reluctant to continue to act as butchers, or the men revolted, and that the assignment of the task to the despised outcast of society, the hangman, was not due merely to political reasons. No sooner had we heard of the shootings than we were told we would be moved right away. We were now convicted; we had to serve our sentences at the appointed prisons. We wondered to which we would be sent, the bad or the very bad. I was lucky. As prisons went, San Miguel de los Reyes in the town of Valencia, to which I was to go, was not considered as bad as the other ones. But to go there for thirty years! It seemed now or never was the moment to escape, during the journey to Valencia. There was another prisoner in the jail, also going to Valencia. He was an electrician, and his trade was needed there. He agreed to try to escape with me, as we were to travel together, but just before we were taken away, his daughter came to him with the news that she thought he might be given a special release on her petition. ‘I then realized he might not be the best partner for an escape bid, and I pleaded with him either to go on with the escape or at least not to reveal our plans to anyone. We were transferred by train and an excellent opportunity turned up. There were six prisoners, including us, with two members of the Guardia 55

Civil as escort. When we entered the province of Tarragona a different pair relieved us, and the officer in charge agreed to share a bottle of cognac with us. By midnight everyone was asleep. I was sitting beside the man in whom I had confided and the carriage door. The officer was opposite me, snoring loudly, his gun on the rack over his head. The other guard was at the far end of the compartment. We were handcuffed in pairs, and this was why I needed the co-operation or complicity of the other man. We were to dash out at an agreed stop; there a friend, an adept locksmith, was to meet us, unlock the handcuffs, and rush off himself. As we stopped, I saw my friend there. I shook my hand at him frantically. He understood the situation, jumped in the train corridor and thrust the key at my free right hand. Then he ran down the corridor. I tried to open the lock on my left hand though the train was now gathering speed. Nothing mattered now but to disengage myself from the other man, dash out of the door and jump. At first my sleeping companion did not realise what I was doing. When he did, he grabbed my wrist, saying ‘No, no, not now!’ I wished the ground would open and swallow him up. The train was travelling at high speed by now, but he would not let me release myself. Had I jumped, I should probably have been killed, but I was desperate to escape before reaching Valencia. The officer was awakened by our movements, and asked what was happening. I told him my handcuffs were too tight and were hurting me. He seemed satisfied with the explanation, but now he was wide awake. I had lost my chance to get away. After some hours we arrived in Valencia, la ciudad de las flores (the city of flowers), the town I had always liked best after Barcelona. Now, feeling angry and depressed, it seemed a strange, alien city. A closed van was waiting to take us to our various destinations. The guards herded us in like cattle and slammed the door, shutting us away from the city and its sounds. I was simmering with hatred for the electrician, but we said nothing. He looked away from me.’ He was intended for the provincial prison, and those for that prison were unloaded first. Only three of us remained in the van for San Miguel de los Reyes, and we were then chained together. The journey across the city was made at high speed, to our great discomfort. When we reached the outer gate of San Miguel we climbed down from the van into a garden that separated the outer entrance and the main prison building. In the building, to which we were marched, we were taken to the reception room where they searched our luggage and us. Through the bars of its inner doors we could see the prisoners filing around the inner yard. After our examination we were taken out to join them. They watched us guardedly. I thought I recognized some faces when suddenly I came across an old friend, Juan Busquets. His death sentence had been commuted, like mine, to thirty years. But though we had been arrested at the same time, he had been sentenced much sooner, with the rest of Culebra’s group that included the young Sabaté, and was now an old hand in San Miguel, having already served two years. As the new prisoners crossed the yard, Juan pressed forward and asked permission to shake my hand. The officer agreed. I thought how well Juan looked; he had not spent as long as I in the expectation of death, an 58

experience that inevitably leaves furrows on the cheeks. The prison, too, seemed pleasant compared with the dreary cells of Barcelona. The yard was some 50 by 30 yards wide, rather like a village square. We had to go through it under an archway into a smaller yard. This was No. 1 wing, where we were to spend twenty days for what was known as the ‘sanitary period’, in quarantine. Even so, it was better than being cooped up in the cells of the Fourth Gallery of Barcelona. The officers had auxiliary warders to assist them in their duties. The auxiliaries chose the ordinary prisoners (as distinct from those imprisoned on political charges) as trusties to assist them. A group of trusties, supervised by an auxiliary, took charge of us. I was stripped and my possessions searched once more. Then they took away my suitcase containing my clothes and other belongings. Now I was a real convict. I was taken to my new home, cell No. 3. The cell, as I looked around it, seemed lighter than the one in Barcelona, but smaller. As in all prisons, the walls were whitened with lime, which eventually led to my near-blindness, and the only contents were a straw-filled mattress on the floor with two dirty looking blankets. In one corner was a crude toilet, with a small washbasin next to it, the water of which was used to flush the toilet. The cell was lofty, with one window high in the wall. Over the door was a grille through which I could hear the voices of the trusties as they went about their duties. It was April in Valencia, the sun was shining and the weather was warm. I looked at my new apparel and felt uneasy in that rough sack-like uniform of dark brown. This is what I shall wear for the rest of my life, I thought. This is the end of my dreams of liberty. I was ordered always to wear the jacket with buttons fastened, but I rebelled against it. I tore off the jacket and threw it on the mattress. I paced from one corner of the cell to the other, whistling, restless, until someone banged on the door shouting, ‘Shut up, and put your jacket on!’ There was always someone on the rounds, peeping through the spy-hole. I could hear distantly the sounds of the city traffic. It was tantalising. I would have liked to look through the bars of the window, but it was too high; the mattress would not support me in any case. I decided to try to climb up by tearing a narrow strip from each of the well-worn blankets and rolling and tying up the mattress. Then, standing on it on tiptoe, I was just able to peer out. I could only see the roofs of the nearby buildings. But below me there was a well-kept garden with palms and fruit trees, and prisoners working among the plants. Perhaps, I reflected, my chances of escape are not over. If I could break the bars and jump down from the window, I might stand a chance. It seemed feasible, though I would still be inside the prison. I determined that I would not give up hopes of escape, anyway, and that meanwhile I would appear to be a model prisoner. I untied the mattress and hid the strips in a slit in the cover, only just in time. The door opened and the trusty shouted, ‘Comida! Food! Bring your plate!’ An auxiliary was standing behind him. While he was serving the food I wondered how it would compare with Barcelona. I saw he was serving the soup with the ladle only partly filled. When the door had been shut I looked at the unappetizing mess. It smelled sour and stale. I could not eat it, so I poured it down the lavatory bowl. Fortunately, I still had a few dried figs and olives in the small bag I had been allowed to keep. I ate these greedily, finishing my reserve stock all in one go. 59

Suddenly the door opened once more and a different trusty handed me a plate containing fried eggs, steak and fried potatoes from the shop, a good meal usually given to those who could afford it. I expressed my astonishment, and he said my friend Jano had paid for it. There was sufficient for two people, and although I was not now so hungry, I forced myself to eat it not knowing when more would be served. Jano was a Gallic diminutive for Juan, and I guessed that Busquets was my good angel. I turned in to a restless night, and was awakened in the morning to the sound of reveille. Throughout the day, all orders, parades and meals were signalled by bugle calls. There were so many different ones I never became acquainted with them all. I got up and started to wash, so far as the facilities allowed. Then, at another call from the bugler, the cell doors were flung open one by one. It was the counting of prisoners, a perpetual routine. As I was in Cell No. 3, I was one of the first to be counted. An orderly banged the doors open noisily. I stood, as I had done in Barcelona, at the back of the cell. But here they had different ideas. As the officer passed quickly along the corridor, counting, checking he stopped at my door and said sharply, ‘You must be at your door, and put on your jacket and cap.’ The orderly slammed and bolted the door. I tried to finish my toilet and the bugle rang out again, this time for ‘coffee’. Two men brought it round in a large metal bin. I waited at the door with my plate, which they filled with a steaming, dirty brown liquid as they hurried past. I needed something hot to drink and plucked up courage to drink it — it was horrible. I sipped some of the bitter brew, throwing the rest away, and then ate up what remained of Juan’s gift of the previous day. The next order was to clean the cell. The mattress had to be rolled, the floor washed, the brass water-tap polished. ‘But how?’ I asked the orderly. ‘I have nothing to work with.’ He brought me a small scrubbing brush and a piece of old blanket. There was no handle to the scrubber, because once a prisoner had attacked an officer through the door grating with his scrubber handle, and it was also useful for passing objects from one cell to another. The cleaning had to be done with the cell door still open. I rolled the mattress and placed it on the lavatory seat to save it getting in the wet, and scrubbed and cleaned as best I could until they came round to shut the doors again. At 7.30 a.m. the bugle sounded talleres — time for work. We trooped off to the talleres (workshops), stopping work at 9.30 a.m. to yet another bugle call. Between these hours there were other calls I did not understand. It seems always on the go, I reflected. Then at 10 a.m. there was a very long bugle call, which I soon found meant the change of guard. This was the event of the day, and took a long time. Meanwhile the longer-serving prisoners would speculate on the change. Who was the next on? They knew the good and bad in each relief, officers and auxiliaries alike, and wondered which they would get. The officers were prison guards by career who maintained discipline. But even the auxiliaries did no work themselves, leaving everything but the turning of keys — and sometimes that, too — to their trusted orderlies. The change meant another count. We were lined up in the yard and swiftly numbered by an officer passing along the ranks. It was a matter of pride with them to do this as quickly as possible, as if it were a chore that must be performed rapidly before they went to their more important tasks, though it was often the sum total of their real day’s work. Nevertheless, it took quite a long time to count the serried ranks of prisoners in the yard—and then to go

round the cells to count those in quarantine or punishment. The new officer of the guard passed rapidly along ‘the open doors, which were banged to by the orderlies as he passed. When the count was over, the officers examined the newcomers. Here they made a special show of their strength to prove that this was not a holiday camp. It was not hard to see why they behaved as arrogantly as they did; outside prison the jail staff was treated with the utmost contempt by the civilian population. They could not mix freely and even their children had to play together in the domestic quarters of the prison, for no parent would allow his child near them. Like the executioner, they were hated and feared even by those who approved their calling. One auxiliary, a man named De Ponga, an ardent Falangist, used to take his warrant card to enter the docks and buy fountain pens, watches and other smuggled items from ships coming in from the Canaries. These he sold inside prison and did quite good business. While waiting for the ships, he used to sit in a bar near the docks and play dominoes with the dockers and warehousemen, until one day an ex-prisoner recognised him. He said nothing at the time, but after the auxiliary warder had gone, he told his mates, ‘That’s De Ponga, the biggest swine in the Cellular Jail. I knew one poor old man — off his head from what he went through in the trenches — whom De Ponga beat up because he had some smuggled tobacco. I’1l get that bastard one of these nights.’ Next day the proprietor politely asked De Ponga to take his patronage elsewhere. The bar had emptied when he came in. De Ponga went on to the boats, as was his habit. The carabineros (Customs) would not let him through. The dockers closed in menacingly, and he had to run for his life, or they would have thrown him in the water. He complained bitterly to us of how ‘our friends’ behaved to him. But it was not only among the dockers that such things happened to the prison staff. Even at fashionable tertulias, people would walk out if they came in. Most of them went out in civilian clothes, otherwise even the prostitutes would jeer at them. ‘Whose money have you got for me, dearie?’ All this naturally increased their hostility to the prisoners, and the political ones in particular. They had to show they were men of importance. When the count was over and the doors of the quarantine cells were banged to, I decided to polish the water-tap again. I expected there would be another inspection, and used one of the strips of blanket I had torn up. Suddenly the door burst open again. In dashed the fussy, irritable officer whom the prisoners nicknamed la atómica. An auxiliary stood behind him with the usual trusties in tow to do the work. ‘Take everything out!’ he ordered. He examined every article meticulously, and he even tore a slit in the mattress and emptied the contents on the floor. Fortunately they overlooked the strips of blanket, which were my only poor contraband. He began to interrogate me. I was near to breaking my resolve to be a model prisoner. His irascible and officious questions pushed me hard. Finally, he barked, ‘Are you a terrorist?’ I kept my temper. ‘You have my dossier in the office,’ I said. ‘Decide for yourself.’ He scowled as if he would like to smash my face in. He wanted to overawe me, to see me showing signs of fear and subordination. But I had no reason to give him the satisfaction. This was not a police station where they could beat people up until they confessed. The prison officers had to live with the prisoners a long time, not just for the interview. If they behaved as the police

did, they would have to fear the consequences any day. La atómica wanted to show he was boss, but while he had no truncheons at his disposal there was nothing he could do. I let him make his ferocious faces and said nothing. Finally he left, with a last withering look. Again I was not to be left alone for long. No sooner had he gone than I had another official visit. This time it was the doctor, accompanied by an auxiliary and trusties. They crowded into the cell as the doctor examined me. He spoke fluent French as well as Spanish, and looked almost a gypsy in appearance. After a few remarks in French — to show his acolytes he was a travelled cultured man who was more than a match for these terrorists who ‘came from over the border’ — he examined me and found me perfectly healthy. This should have got me out of quarantine, but he still ordered me to stay there for another twenty days. It all seemed part of a carefully planned scheme of humiliation, especially when the doctor left and the orderly in charge ordered me to strip. He then examined with obscene relish my private parts. I was given an injection, which I was told was a precaution against VD. In view of the years already spent without female company, it seemed an ironical statement. They then dusted my body with DDT and after various other indignities I was allowed to dress. Before they left, one hung back a little and slipped a piece of paper into my hand. When I was alone I found a note to say that Jano asked me to mention that I was a musician, if asked. I flushed the note down the lavatory for safety, though I was not sure what it meant. The DDT powder was beginning to irritate and I felt uncomfortable and bad-tempered. To counter it I began to refill the mattress cover, but when I had finished, I had no means of repairing the tear that La atómica had made. I banged on the door and shouted for a needle and thread. The auxiliary told me to be quiet and said I could have nothing. I told him that they tore the cover and should let me mend it. We had a heated argument and finally, grumbling that I was a troublemaker, he sent an orderly for what I wanted. It seemed that even if one wanted to be a model prisoner, one had to assert one’s rights. My next visitor was the chaplain who came with a trusty who carried his religious tracts for him. You look a real old fox, I thought. The chaplain told me he had been ten years in the prison and proceeded to ask me, in a condescending manner, about my upbringing, my family, my married life, and how it was that I had fallen into sin. He did not appear very interested in the answers, but no doubt he felt he was doing his duty. As he left, the other handed me some of the tracts, saying that when I had read them he would bring me some more. ‘They will do you good after the heretical literature you have read outside,’ said the priest as a parting shot. ‘You will see how, even for such as you, Christ can work miracles.’ As he was leaving, the food came round, and I wished that Christ would work a miracle and transform it into something edible. No sooner had I wished it than another orderly brought what seemed a veritable banquet to me. But the responsibility was not God’s but Jano’s. How does he manage it? I wondered. I was still not able to understand how eloquently money talked inside jail. In San Miguel, if you had nothing, you starved. If you could pay for it, you could, within reason, have it. And this went for most prison establishments. Our money was taken by the prison administrator when we went in, or the money subsequently sent in from outside was taken, and placed in an

account. A sheet was given from which the prisoner could withdraw, and against his sheet he would get vouchers for amounts to 200 pesetas a week. Naturally one could not use the prison vouchers outside. But they could be encashed for money orders to send to poor relatives, or friends outside could send money in to be converted to vouchers. This was the lifeline of the prisons and kept most of the inmates alive. To cash our sheet and receive vouchers, we had to go to the cashier’s office, needless to say at the sound of a bugle—‘Cashier’s Call’! When I was transferred to another prison, the sums were encashed, handed to the accompanying Guardia Civil, and exchanged between the Guardia Civil as I passed through each province and the guard was relieved. The punishment of deprivation of work was a serious threat that hung over prisoners, for not only could they not earn anything, their families were hit too, as even if the prisoner had not been able to send them anything, now he had to beg support from them. 60

The twenty days soon went. After the fifth day we were allowed an hour’s exercise a day on the terrace, and the ten inmates of the block met. The others were not political prisoners. One of them was a young chap who had been sentenced for killing his father, a drunkard who beat his wife. One day while the boy was at home, there was a violent row when the boy protested at seeing his mother abused, and when the father beat the boy, he grabbed a hunting gun from the wall and shot his father. He took great delight in walking on the balcony, for from there he could just catch a glimpse of the sea and — most important to him, an ardent supporter of the local football club— the Valencia stadium. Finally, we were released from our confinement in the special block, and were permitted to join the others, certified free of any disease. Before we left an officer arrived, accompanied by the leader of the prison orchestra, and I was asked if I was a musician. Remembering the note, I said I had experience with the cymbals and drums with a band in Barcelona. The bandleader, a prisoner himself, and a skilled musician, knew of this band and nodded approvingly. The officer gave me a form to fill in. He told me I must not be too modest, and that another prisoner had given them a glowing account of my talents. I guessed who that was, and hoped they would not be too disappointed. They signed me on for the prison band, and I was moved to the quarters it occupied. There at last I met Juan Busquets again. ‘Jano! ’ I cried heartily and we clasped hands. The bandleader showed me to my bunk. The room was large and it contained twenty-seven double-tiered bunks. I was to occupy the one below Jano’s. All of those present were members of the orchestra, except for seven buglers and drummers. The orchestra members were a motley selection of the prison population. But the buglers were a class apart, disliked heartily. Everyone believed them to be informers. Perhaps the feeling of authority they experienced when hundreds of people jumped to the commands they blew went to their heads. At any rate, they sometimes behaved as if they were auxiliaries themselves, and invariably sided with the orderlies. The room was comfortable, though slightly below ground level, and a variety of instruments hung on the walls. The washbasins and toilets were in a separate room at one end, and we could go for occasional strolls in the yard.

Jano took me out into the empty yard to explain that he and two other prisoners had discussed a plan for escape. We would need to wait until later in the year for darker nights, and whatever we did we must avoid letting the buglers know anything about it. We needed to cut through the iron bars in the window of the wash place. From there we could see the guard in his box on the top of the wall, but owing to the angle he could not see us. Once through the window we could creep up the steps to the sentry’s post to surprise him, and then, immobilising him in some way, we would be able to drop over the outer wall. Obviously we would need a file or small saw of some description. When we had got this we could work on the bars during the Sunday afternoon film show, when everyone else was out of the room. I was to ask to be allowed to work in one of the workshops where they made baskets and furniture — permission would certainly be granted. In the evenings I could practise the drums and cymbals with the other musicians. I was able to get into the workshops, and enjoyed both the work and the musical practice. A professional from the Valencia Municipal Orchestra, an old and very kind man who brought us cigarettes and little luxuries, as well as news, from the outside world, was coaching us. I became quite an adept musician under his tuition, which delighted him immensely. As a little token of thanks for my progress, he would occasionally play a few bars of our libertarian anthems ‘To the Barricades’ or ‘Sons of the People’ — rapidly changed to some related melody before anybody had noticed — but I saw the twinkle in his eyes. He must, during the Civil War, have played those tunes many times. It was his musician's way of expressing sympathy. I thought often of my family. My wife was working as a nurse in Madrid; my mother was still in Barcelona. I waited eagerly for mail days. One day my mother wrote and said that she was going to dispose of the boarding house in Barcelona and come to stay with my cousin who lived in Valencia. That way she would be near me and could come on visiting days. Three weeks later she came, with my cousin, whom I had not seen for many years, and her daughter. The daughter was fairly attractive but, after so many years away from women, she seemed to me overwhelmingly beautiful. I was overjoyed to see them all, though it was only for twenty minutes. My mother told me she had received a suitcase from a man who had simply told her, ‘It’s for Miguel’. It was full of clothes, and as comrades often collected gifts for prisoners and sent them on in this way, she naturally took it. I had, when in Barcelona, written to a friend at Perpignan asking him for a revolver to help me escape — and had hoped to get it before we left for Valencia. I had smuggled the letter out impulsively, not knowing how he could smuggle a gun in. Now I felt sure the gun was in the suitcase, probably in a false bottom. I did not know if she knew about the gun or not, so I decided not to ask her in front of the other two, though I trusted them completely, but to wait until next time she came, when she would be alone. Then I asked her if she had looked inside the suitcase, and she said she had. She would bring it next time. I said there was no hurry. She said nothing about the gun, but as the clothes she mentioned were so superfluous to my needs it was obvious that whoever sent the suitcase had hidden something in it somewhere. I felt full of confidence, as I had not been for years. The suitcase might come in without the secret of the double lining being discovered. From the

large gate at the limits of the yard, one could see parcels and other mail arrive, and those who were waiting for gifts from outside would gather there hopefully. Sunday was the favourite day for this. Some prisoners could keep suitcases in their bed space, so my hopes were high. In the workshop we made baskets and furniture of cane and osiers, and there was a good market for these things among our relatives and friends. The money we received from outside was taken by the administrator* and exchanged for prison currency. He ran the shop, and also sold us the raw materials we needed for working. We could buy many things in the prison shop, and most medicines that were totally unavailable from the infirmary could be purchased from it. Those without money did as badly as those in the outside world, unless there was someone to help them. Some prisoners were able to earn enough by working to be able to send money out to their relatives in need, who of course received nothing in the way of social assistance, not even in the case of wives or children, or even children both of whose parents were in jail. We in the workshop, a little group together, took turns to cook a meal consisting of pimentos, potatoes, and sometimes even meat, when in funds. We fried in a large paella pan over a brazier, but had to finish and clear the meal away before the change of guard at 10 a.m. These meals, in contrast to the usual quality of prison meals, were some of the tastiest I could ever remember. Vegetables were plentiful and cheap, for the market gardens of Valencia are fertile and productive. The administrator did not interfere with these arrangements, which enabled him to short-change our rations even further, some of them no doubt being sold back to us through the stores. We did not mind. Our own cooking was free from the cockroaches with which the prison kitchen was alive. The two men with whom we shared the escape plan spoke only rarely and then to each other. They were typical of the people from the northern borders of Catalonia. Jano and I got little from them but grunts. The discussions about escape were therefore between us two, long conversations in whispers. There had been previous escapes. The longest and most famous involved eight or nine men. Inside the main prison were two wells which until recently had been the only source of water supply to the prison. One was large and near the outer wall. Nearly halfway down the shaft there was a platform that supported an engine for pumping water. A gang of prisoners working on a shift system maintained it. These men used the platform as a base for excavating a tunnel, and as the well was near the wall and the platform on a slightly lower level than its foundations, it was a relatively simple matter to dig upwards and outwards. The disposal of the soil dug out had presented no great problem, as it was simply pushed downwards and into the well shaft. The operation took some time, as they had to work slowly and carefully between inspections, removing and replacing masonry from the wall of the shaft to conceal the tunnel entrance. When it was finished, eight men just simply walked through to freedom after the final parade of the day. Their absence was not noticed until the count an hour later. At first, the officers thought they had made a mistake in their count. So they had repeated the performance twice before realising the escape, and this had given the men valuable time to get away. The chief officer had a young prisoner named Rafael as a batman and bugler, and when the missing men did not turn up, the chief sent this boy down to the engine house to see if they were still there and had not heard the

bugle for the noise of the engine. He went in, saw the tunnel, and disappeared too. It was by no means the only escape from San Miguel de los Reyes. Another daring one took place while I was still in the orchestra. Three political prisoners simply walked out of the main door. They had taken advantage of the system whereby the officer whose duty it is goes daily to the Post Office to collect mail, and leaves it in the directorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s office for him. One of them stole an indulto (a free pardon) from the infirmary. It had arrived for a very sick man, but proved useless since he died within a day or so of its arrival. He bequeathed it to his comrades, and they smuggled it out of the prison to have three more forged from it. These they planted in the official mail, and not until the returns were forwarded to the Director General of Prisons did the forgery come to light. By then the men were over the border. Yet another escape was made in the rope-making shop. Some men had been made trusties and were given the privilege of living in special quarters in the same block as the office staff. This was a building of four floors, the fourth being empty and awaiting repair. These two had succeeded in gaining access to the empty floor that led to the roof, and they had smuggled enough material in to make a long, strong rope. They had also collected some of the larger pieces of masonry lying around waiting to be used. They wrapped up four paving stones in a sheet, placed it in the middle of a blanket, and tied it with a rope. Then they slung the blanket over the wall, the rope secured to the roof. The outer wall was five or six yards from the prison building, and the lifeline was thrown quite easily. It was dark and pouring with rain, and nobody observed them as, one by one, hand over hand, they crossed the gulf between the roof of the building and the outer wall. Then they swung over the wall, and off into the night. The escapes made the guards very careful. But it takes a lot to deter longterm prisoners from trying to escape. It applied even more so to us who regarded ourselves as prisoners-of-war. I bent all my energies to trying to get a hacksaw blade. It was impossible to get one in the workshop and the only thing to do was to have it smuggled inside, in one of our baskets. What we needed to do was to send out a basket with a hollow handle, and have it sent back with a blade inside tough enough to saw through the bars but flexible enough to be curved into the basket handle. My first big disappointment was with a young man I met in jail named Saravia. He was serving a criminal sentence, and was going out in two monthsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; time. He was as poor as a church mouse and was afraid he might not be allowed to go out, as he did not have any clothes. The rags he had come in had been burnt, they were so lousy. I said he could have a suit I had in the commissariat. We were about the same size. I would have let him have it anyway, but as I had known his father in the movement from long before the Civil War, I went further and asked him to help me in the matter of the hacksaw blade. All he had to do was to collect a particular basket I had sent out for sale, buy a blade and insert it in the handle. He then had to fill the basket with fruit and get one of the hired porters (mozos de cuerda) around the station to take it in the prison for 25 pesetas. Nobody would know where it came from. Nobody could blame the mozo. I told him I would give him 1,000 pesetas for doing this. All he would have to lay out would be the cost of the fruit and the mozo. It was a lot of money for me, but worth it. Some time earlier, in Barcelona, a comrade who was going

out arranged for a cobbler to make shoes with false heels, and sent them in to me, as part of the plan if I escaped in transit to Valencia. I had a reserve stock of 5,000 pesetas inside, and could offer Saravia 1,000 pesetas in ‘real’ money. But such transactions depend on honour, and cheating on such arrangements made in prison are the small change of prison life. How many go out, never to be seen again, having made such promises! I was not so green in the ways of prison life that I would give my irreplaceable 1,000 pesetas note to anyone I happened to meet who was going out and could make and break any promise, however little danger and expense it entailed. But I felt I could surely take a chance with Saravia. His father and mother had been good, honest, decent workers. They had lived steady lives and tried to do their best for their children. The father was a solid union man, loyal to the CNT. When he had been away fighting the mother had played her part in the defence of Barcelona. If one could not trust their child, whom could one trust? His father had been shot when the Fascists entered Barcelona, and the mother sent to jail for six years. The boy was thrown out on the streets, but taken in by his aunt, another kindly soul, whom I knew well. She had not been in the movement but her husband had, and he too was in jail. She had a large family but took in her nephew; then, unable to pay the rent, they had all been evicted. Saravia went round the streets, became a thief, and landed in jail. So this boy, who in normal circumstances would have been a good worker leading a steady life, had acquired the habits of the ordinary thief. He did not understand what scruples were, and I was a fool to trust him. When I found the boy had taken the money and disappeared, never to be heard of again, I wept inwardly, not for the loss of the money, not even for the disappointment over the blade, but at the thought of what had happened to the Saravia family. At least he had not descended to the lowest level of all . . . to be an informer. I kept my disappointment from Jano. I felt he would have asked me what sort of idiot I was to suppose such an arrangement would work. He too had problems. His sister had promised to bring in a blade, but he did not want to compromise her. At the same time he saw no other way. An idea occurred to me. A friend had taken refuge in Valencia under a new identity, where he now lived by selling earthenware pots in the market. He had met my brother and they now helped each other, since he could use my baskets. My mother was selling them in the market too, and he used them for his wares. I realized he should be the one to send in the basket of fruit, in the way I had proposed to Saravia. I decided to write to him in French: my mother would not understand it and I did not want to involve her. She would take the note out, however. The precious blade came back within the week, inside the handle. I breathed a great sigh of relief. It was now the end of August, and four months of planning had gone just in getting the necessary tool. Well, I thought grimly, one thing I have is plenty of time. That day Jano came to me excitedly. ‘My sister’s coming tomorrow and she’ll take out a letter to a friend of mine in the town!’ ‘Don’t bother,’ I told him laconically and showed him the file. He gazed at it with astonishment. ‘How did you do it?’ ‘The main thing is it’s here! ’ I replied. He was delighted not to have to involve his sister, and we set to work. Meanwhile many others in the musicians’ room, not knowing of our plans, made many similar propositions. One wanted to make a tunnel from the

carpenter’s shop, taking the rubble away with the shavings. He recruited some prisoners who wanted to take part in his scheme, but the standard of work fell off so much in the carpenter’s shop, with them all busy digging, that an investigation was made and the tunnel discovered in its early stages. I was glad not to have been involved, and we finally got down to our own plan in October. Everyone was at the film show. Jano and I said we wanted to catch up on our music practice. I began to cut through the bars with the saw, using a cloth and oil to deaden the sound. Meanwhile he blew heartily through his trumpet so that I could not be heard. It was necessary to leave the middle of the bar weakened but still able to sound as if it had not been tampered with, when the orderly passed and tapped the bars; he would want to hear it ring true. Beyond the window was a mesh of wire netting. We needed a wire-cutter, but that I could steal from the workshop. At the end of each day the cutters were counted, and on the following Saturday, after the count, I went back. ‘Where are you going?’ asked the guard. ‘I left my money on the table,’ I said. I picked it up, and grabbed one of the cutters in passing. We were due to escape the next day. We were about to break the bars when we heard another prisoner come in. ‘It’s not much of a film,’ he said. ‘I’ll practise too!’ Then another came in, and yet another. No film impresario ever felt a film’s lack of success more than we did! To carry on was impossible; I had to smuggle the cutter back to the workshop on the Monday. For two successive Sundays this happened, and then the rain, essential to our plans to get away, stopped. When we finally had a Sunday to ourselves Jano, over-excited, cut right through the bars. I painted the cut with sulphuric acid to make it look old. We had to wait for the rain, and isolation, to make the break. Now I asked my mother to bring the suitcase. She was not allowed to bring it with civilian clothes, but she brought it full of fruit and it was passed in. I eagerly opened it and in a secret cache I found the pistol. Then disaster struck. The director of the prison had been a great music lover. It was his passion for music that gave the orchestra so many privileges, and was why he had gone out of his way to invite in a professional to coach us. Now the director was in disgrace. Like many other directors of prisons, he was a speculator. During the Civil War the debris of a plane had been stored in the prison yard. The authorities had overlooked it. Now, with times hard and scrap iron soaring in price, he decided to sell this rusting relic, taking the profits himself. A prison officer who had at some time been punished for some minor dereliction of duty denounced him to the authorities. He was sentenced to loss of rank and transferred to Murcia as an ordinary prison officer. ‘His successor was a fussy martinet, nicknamed La Vieja (the old woman), who insisted on obedience to every prison regulation and who was none too well disposed to the orchestra. One of his phobias was that the doors of the workshop be opened and shut every time a prisoner went in or out. The rule had previously been liberally interpreted, for the auxiliary did not want to have to be constantly unlocking and locking the heavy door. As everyone was locked up anyway, it seemed pointless, but he insisted that it was in the regulations and must be obeyed. Then he instituted a special examination of all the windows. He objected to trusties tapping the bars for the warders and said they must do it themselves. They did it with an ill grace, banging loudly on the bars, and as the jailer hit

the bar that Jano had cut through, he shattered it. There was an outcry, particularly as it seemed that the ‘favoured’ musicians, already under attack, were involved. We were all taken before the director for interrogation. I shrugged my shoulders at La Vieja. ‘It has always been that way,’ I said. ‘It's an old cut, there are no fresh splinters, no sign of recent cutting.’ The auxiliaries, eager to defend their vigilance, agreed. ‘He’s right, it has been reported many times and nothing was done about it.’ The ‘stool pigeons,’ anxious to show they knew all that went on, also agreed. ‘It was done by El Loco’, said one of the buglers. ‘I reported it at the time’. El Loco had been a character in the prison, a man who had an aversion to iron bars and would constantly get hold of files or hacksaws and cut the bars, without any attempt at concealment. He did not try to get out, he just hated iron bars. He had been in the orchestra and had then been sent to the psychiatric ward. Reminders of his understandable obsession were all over the prison. We were safe . . . Then the ‘old woman’ of a director stirred up a strike. After the Civil War the prisons had been packed: there had been no room in the cells, people had slept in the outhouses and even in the open yards. There were not sufficient mattresses for so vast a crowd, so relatives and friends had sent in mattresses, which, unlike the straw mattresses of the prison, were of wool or rags. They did not become the property of the prison but remained the prisoners’ own property. When someone had been sentenced to death, or had been released, he had passed his mattress over to someone else. Now La Vieja claimed that according to prison regulations, we should all be sleeping on straw mattresses and that it was ‘unheard of’ that we should have mattresses from outside. This might not be thought unreasonable according to the way prison regulations go, but we strongly objected to letting him have the mattresses, which would surely be disposed of the way the aeroplane had been by the former director. The sum total of wool and rags would have made a nice little fortune on the market at that time, with the rising price of wool in the economy. He first put the matter of surrendering the mattresses to the ordinary prisoners. They made no objections, possibly not understanding the value of the mattresses. The politicals, however, were up in arms from the start. We held meetings and decided to go on strike, and many of the other prisoners began to join in. Work was voluntary and the strike could not be prevented in any way. We also effected a boycott of the prison shop. For a fortnight business was at a standstill, the place was like a mortuary, with no work and no purchases. To everyone’s surprise, La Vieja backed down. He made a speech in which he said he had only tried to observe the proper rules, that it was far from him to take away what he knew to be private property, that dishonest speculation was foreign to his nature . . . we had been led astray by idle gossip and should return to work as if nothing had happened. A director cannot make a speech of this sort without losing his authority. He was transferred to Ocaña. Before going, he tried to make a speech, but he had completely lost control. While he stood there pale with rage, his voice was drowned by the cries, taken up by the whole prison, ‘Two murders! God will punish you! ’ The reference was to two of our number who had died a little while before. One of them was Corredera, a simple-minded, good-natured effeminate. The other, a Majorcan, was his protector. Corredera was quite incapable of doing any heavy manual work, or taking part in the ordinary prison work, but everyone had accepted this, including the old director. Corredera was a

skilful sewer and darner, and was allowed to sit outside mending clothes, at which he earned a few pesetas. The Majorcan was a rough diamond who was inveterately jealous of any rivals for his boy friend and went around with a spoon sharpened to a knifepoint with which he threatened anyone who might sue for Corredera’s favours. One afternoon Corredera had been sitting at his task, alone, singing to himself as usual, when one of the officers approached him. ‘What are you doing out here?’ he said. Corredera had been told nothing about the new, more vigorous application of regulations. ‘Seven days peeling potatoes!’ ‘No . . . no . . . please, I have permission to be here . . . I am always here.’ ‘Ah, I didn’t know that. In that case, fifteen days.’ The officer, Asencio, went away laughing. It was typical Moroccanbarracks humour. Corredera could not understand it. He sat each day peeling potatoes, weeping. ‘What did I do? Why was I punished? It wasn’t fair . . . When I told him I had permission he doubled the punishment. Nobody could explain the matter to him satisfactorily. To say it was a joke only made it worse. Asencio thought it was funny beyond words. He kept taunting Corredera with it as he sat peeling potatoes. ‘Milady can’t earn her money sewing for a bit, eh?’ Then suddenly one day Corredera jumped up and plunged the potato knife straight at Asencio’s heart. Asencio collapsed. Blood was streaming over Corredera’s fist. He ran up to the top of an iron stairway leading to a gallery, screaming, ‘Murderers! Thieves!’ and threw down some bottles at the auxiliaries who gathered at the foot of the stairs. They sent for La Vieja. The director made no attempt to calm Corredera down, though it was obvious he had gone berserk. Instead he shouted back at him, taunting him the same way Asencio had done. ‘Maricón! Queer! Come down at once or I'll blow your balls off and you'll really be a woman! ’ ‘Corredera could not bear this type of -insult and he screamed with rage. ‘Go away or I'll jump down and kill myself.’ ‘Jump!’ shouted back the director, beside himself with rage. ‘Who cares about one maricón or less in the establishment! What do you think I'm keeping, a brothel?’ Poor Corredera jumped. His head was smashed in; it sounded like a melon being squashed. Those of us who stood there watched aghast. Then, to our amazement, Asencio appeared. He had not been stabbed. Corredera’s knife had been a potato one, with a curved edge, and Asencio had simply collapsed with shock under the blow to his heart. The blood on Corredera’s fist was his own. The director had not troubled to tell him that he had killed nobody, that he had no need to kill himself. Asencio now felt that he was in danger from the Majorcan, Corredera’s protector, and asked that he be put in solitary confinement. The officer who had the duty of taking him into the punishment cells was La Atómica. The Majorcan was incense at the unwarranted punishment, and the way that, when asking the reason why, he was unfeelingly told about his friend’s death. He blamed La Atómica. ‘One of these days when you're on duty I’ll kill you or myself,’ he said. He spent a month in solitary confinement and then one day, when his foe was on duty, he took an electric light bulb out of his pocket, waved it at the officer and then put it in his mouth. With horrible grins and twists he began to eat it.

‘Don’t, don't,’ protested La Atómica. But the Majorcan swallowed it all before he could open his cell door. To everyone’s astonishment, there were no ill effects. I do not know whether it was because of the Majorcan’s alcoholism, but at any rate the glass simply came out in the normal excretory way. Next time La Atómica was on duty, however, he hanged himself from the window. It was these two deaths that the prisoners attributed to the director, and why they accused him of murder as he left the prison. The first act of his successor was to take the orchestra away from the room it occupied and make that the film room instead. So the months of our hard work on the bars went for nothing. * Two positions, director and administrator, for discipline and administration respectively, correspond to the English office of prison governor.

5 — The Free-for-All It takes time for what has been erased to resurface. Traces survive in registers, and nobody knows where these registers are hidden, and who has custody of them, and whether or not these custodians are willing to let you see them. Or perhaps they have quite simply forgotten that these registers exist. All it takes is a little patience. Dora Bruder, Patrick Modiano. With the memory of your dreams we build today our future. Martxelo Alvarez

1953 The new director had his own whims and fancies, which now became law in the prison as if they had been handed down from Mount Sinai. He was not very interested in the orchestra, but as he disliked the sound of music practice he sent it beyond earshot to the top of the building. New rules came into being, one of which meant that my suitcase could no longer stay by my bed. It was sent to the stores where the prisoners’ baggage was kept. I feared for my pistol in case they discovered the secret cache. I was not sorry, under the circumstances, to be called before the visiting judge and told that I would have to go to trial in Lugo (Galicia) on the other side of the peninsula. Somebody named Muñoz, who had been arrested for selling mules with a forged permit, had denounced me. He had said, according to the judge, that I had supplied it. I saw no point in protesting my innocence, though I did not know the man. Everybody knew, anyway, that in my work for the Resistance I had forged a great many of these State documents. That was why they had sentenced me to death. ‘How can I remember when there were so many?’ I asked the judge. He was shocked at such a revelation of villainy, and decided I should be transferred to the province of Galicia to answer for my crime in enabling this man Muñoz whoever he was, to earn his living. Maybe the journey would afford the chance of escape that was bungled on my transfer from Valencia. The judicial procedure dragged on until the New Year, and then one day the Guardia Civil came with an order from the Galician authorities. I gave away my old suitcase and piled all my possessions into the one with the hidden pistol. It was taken along with the other prisoners’ baggage, containing their necessities. At each province we were handed from one posse of Guardia Civil to another, and each time searched thoroughly, but as the baggage went separately, they did not search it. Sooner or later I hoped to produce the pistol. There were eight of us taken, handcuffed, to Albacete. There we awaited the Guardia Civil from the next province, and so it went on as we passed through the departments of Spain. There was a long wait at Albacete, though, as that year the guerrillas were active in the mountains. The Guardia Civil had plenty on its plate. The regulations demanded one guard for every three

men, so our eight needed three guards. Such a number was not readily available, so we stayed a couple of weeks in Albacete, housed in the local jail. The baggage was put in the prison stores after we drew out our necessities. From Albacete we proceeded through the province of Ciudad Real. We were then due to go to Madrid, on to Old Castile, and finally to Galicia. But another delay occurred in Ciudad Real. The Guardia Civil do not cross the borders of a province. The local Guardia Civil would have to take us on to Madrid, and they were fully occupied. By this time we were fewer in number, as some of the prisoners had already reached their destinations, and so the rest of us were to be lodged in the prison of Alcázar San Juan until there were more prisoners to go on to Madrid, and a sufficient force of Guardia Civil to go with them. Our journey had been slow and painful already, handcuffed and marched to the train, where we travelled in the ordinary compartments. To some extent the weary journeys of the jailed were the result of bureaucratic decrees of one kind or another, or the devious ways of the administration of law. It was also a means by which the rulers of Spain showed their iron fist. The people were not to forget they had been conquered. But fifteen years had now elapsed since the defeat and the nation was now sufficiently cowed. It was still far from unusual, however, to see long lines of prisoners — now not only political, of course — marched to the railway stations. The other railway passengers cast furtive glances at the shackled voyagers. They were afraid of being involved, especially of approaching the Guardia Civil. Now and again a child would run up to be fondled, and some tough old jailbird would have tears in his eyes, thinking of his own children. Sometimes a really bold soul would openly pass a cigarette or leave one where it could be picked up, as if he had accidentally dropped it. Some prisoners would drop letters on seats, hoping that someone would post them, and this was frequently done. 61

Alcázar San Juan is a main railway junction. Here the lines from Andalusia, Valencia, Murcia and Madrid meet. In its jail were prisoners from every part of Spain on the way to some other prison. The prison occupied a key position as the main transit prison and its population was far beyond its capacity. It had been an old-fashioned stabling inn, built in a terraced street, and before the coming of the railway this inn was the most important post-chaise stop in the country. We entered an outer hall, where the Guardia Civil handed over their charge before returning to Albacete, and where the suitcases were spread out and examined, and the prisoners searched. Then we went through the inner courtyard, into the place where once the coaches had been kept, to approach the main gate. Once through the gate there was a small exercise yard, and beside that, what had been the stables. These were now the dormitories and the prisoners lay in them at night, packed tightly. If the stables were overflowing, the prisoners lay in the open outer yard. On the other side of the gate there was a larger exercise yard, into which the prisoners were let during the day. Here they were locked in, and meals served to them in the open air, until at night it was time to put them back in the other corral. A long inner corridor led from the main gate to the orchard of the prison director. At the beginning of this corridor was a large alcove where they left our suitcases—I took careful note of their position. In the same alcove the

prison barber sat waiting for custom. The prisoners were allowed out of the yard one at a time to see him. It was the only way to get near the suitcases. Although the prison was filled to bursting, because of its importance as a place of transit, the staff had not been increased. It seemed that the Directorate General of Prisons only calculated the staff on the basis of the comparatively small number of local prisoners serving their time there. I arrived with an intake of twenty-two that came from the railway stations, all coming from and going to different prisons. There was barely room for us to lie down. It was like the Vanguardia warehouse all over again. The lack of wardens meant that discipline was nil, and the regular prisoners ran the place, drinking, carousing, playing cards and dice, especially ‘seven-eleven’. But escape was impossible. One could do nothing — waking, sleeping, eating, and defecating — without tens, twenties, even hundreds of eyes being aware of what was going on. None of the local criminal prisoners could be trusted. Many of them acted like auxiliary warders. They hated the political prisoners and said to me: ‘You people all have trades, you could get good jobs, and you come crowding the jails unnecessarily. We poor devils suffer as a result.’ They also disliked what they regarded as the prudishness of the political prisoners. The average prisoner in Alcázar San Juan enjoyed the opportunity for drinking and sodomy. So notorious was its fornication that homosexuals from all over Spain in other prisons would try for a transfer there. Almost the first night I saw a commotion as the result of this. One of the prisoners tried to sexually assault a young Galician who was lying next to him, naturally in close proximity, as all the men lying side by side were scarcely able to avoid touching each other as they moved. The Galician took one of his shoes — good heavy brogues — and beat the assailant about the head unmercifully. Blood streamed from the man’s head and he howled for mercy, but nobody took the slightest notice. Indeed, for anyone to intervene, unless they had been immediately next to the affray, would have meant walking over a pile of bodies. When his attacker had been beaten into unconsciousness, the young Galician relented. Then they both had to lie again beside each other, the blood from the wounded man trickling upon his neighbour, and his moans keeping others awake. It was a free-for-all, like a grotesque medieval portrait of Inferno. The warders just locked us in. What happened, so long as we did not get out, seemed no concern of theirs. They turned the keys, and supervised the food being passed in. That was the limit of their duties. I did hear of one person who had got out. One afternoon during the siesta he had climbed up a rope, jumped over the wall, and by sheer good luck, nobody took the slightest notice. Nobody thought anyone would have the audacity to try it. The story of the man who had actually got out of Alcázar San Juan under all those eyes was endlessly repeated. It gave some hope, but it was galling to lie there in that open space, to be able to hear the noises of the city and yet to remain in that mêlée, amid the jeers of the carousing local prisoners. Only their stupidity and a few rifles lay between us and freedom. Normally, the ordinary prisoners left the political prisoners alone. Whatever their divisions, the latter formed a ready-made block inside the jail with whom it was dangerous to interfere. But not at Alcázar San Juan, where it was impossible to get together, because of the transitory nature of the stay and the chaos. The particular jeer against us was the cry ‘Hasta la Victoria!’ The sarcastic onwards to victory did not refer so much to the Civil War

(though that was derision enough), but to the World War; it was widely believed Franco would not be able to survive the defeat of the Axis. Many criminals supported the Nazis, and the greater the horrifying detail that was released about Nazi concentration camps, the more Nazism appealed to them. It was regarded as typical of the prudishness of the anti-Fascists that such things horrified them. The itinerant tinkers, the quinquilleros, however, always sympathised with the political prisoners. The ‘quinquis’ trade in copper, fancy jewellery and tawdry items, as well as running fairground stalls and sideshows at fiestas. They are not a distinct race of people like the gypsies but they are almost a separate nation in the way that whole families belong to their tribe, and outsiders are rigorously excluded. They are thieves by tradition, and specialise in safebreaking. The local council’s strongbox is said to have a particular fascination for them. They usually manage to get hold of a pistol — and it is this charge on which they are usually picked up, as it makes them a safe bet for a police raid — and they are, like the gypsies, horse-dealers (and horse thieves). They go around in ponies and carts, or, more recently, in old cars. The quinquis are prolific in La Mancha (hence their presence in the prison of Alcázar San Juan), Estremadura, Madrid, and Old and New Castile. They are rarely seen in Catalonia, Andalusia or the Basque country. Unlike the gypsies, they prefer the town to the country. When arrested, they inevitably have a long list of undiscovered crimes, and it is this that unites them with the political prisoners. There is no such thing in Spanish law as taking crimes into consideration. Each crime is added to another and must be paid for separately. So a quinqui sentenced on one charge must face the danger of having others discovered too. But not if someone else ‘confesses’ to his crime. He looks around for a ‘ruined’ political to sell a crime or two to. A man with forty or fifty years to serve is said to be ‘ruined’, beyond hope. Another year or two makes no difference. But in order to be sentenced, he must be transferred to the province where the crime happened. The quinqui has been all over. When he gets to jail he looks up the long serving political who wants to escape. He will ‘sell’ him a real crime — usually mule — stealing — in some remote province. If the quinqui feels sure he will not be taken up for the crime, he may charge for the ‘sale’. If he is in doubt about his safety, he will ‘give’ it away. Then the political ‘confesses’. Everyone is happy; the police are only too glad to clear up the unsolved crime and prove their efficiency. The case is transferred to the judiciary, and ultimately the political goes out to face his sentence. It is a change of scenery from the four walls of a jail, and there is always the hope of escape while travelling on the railway. Another class of person is pleased too by this handy arrangement. The authorities are able to deduce from it that the political prisoners are all criminals anyway. In Alcázar San Juan I found an old friend, Valerio, who had ‘bought’ a mule-stealing charge off a quinqui. He was imprisoned in El Dueso in Santander, and had been to Malaga for sentence. He was a case in point, well ‘ruined’ as he had 120 years to serve — thirty years on each of four charges, commuted to a total of forty years. He too was waiting for an escort to take him on his way to the next province, on his way back ‘home’. I had known him in Barcelona. He himself was a Communist, but he had assisted us in several actions of the post-war Resistance before being arrested 62

in 1947. When I arrived in the Fourth Gallery of the Barcelona Prison I met him again. Then he had been sent to El Dueso and I to Valencia. It was good to see a familiar face. He had been convicted on the Malaga charge and had a year or two more to serve on top of his forty. He was desperate to escape, for he had not had a single chance all the way from El Dueso to Malaga, and now he was halfway back. It was now or never for him. ‘And this is the easiest place in the world, Miguelito! Look, no warders to speak of. Over that wall is the town and beyond the town the railway sheds and the whole world before you! Christ Almighty, it’s heart breaking when you think how simple it is! About one man stands between us and the train to Paris!’ He had it worked out. All we needed to do was to go out to see the barber, threaten him with a pistol, go past him to the auxiliary at the inner gate, threaten him too, then dash through the outer courtyard which, according to him, was completely unattended during the siesta period. ‘If someone’s there, too bad, we have to open fire.’ And the pistol? ‘One of the quinquis here reckons he might get his pistol in from his wife inside a basket of fruit, during his last week here, if I can raise the money. I might get someone outside to send the cash.’ It was simpler than that, I reflected. Beside the barber was my suitcase with a pistol already concealed. But I did not want to rush into the plan. I had not forgotten how I had been let down during the transfer from Barcelona. Many people backed out at the last moment. Everyone wants to escape, but then they hear some encouraging news (usually illusory) and think they had better not take the chance. And La Mancha was the worst place in Spain from which to escape. The whole world was before one, but you had first to pass through the endless arid land of La Mancha. Nobody could imagine a more depressing town than Alcázar San Juan. Anyone there would have sold a life for a couple of pesetas. They had less cause than anyone in the peninsula to love the state, but their utter poverty and despair kept them from any sentiment of revolt. Their stable food was las gachas, which they made from flour — for six months of the year they had no oil. They went out poaching to make up their diet. The landlords did not mind their killing birds, since these attacked the grain (there were no sporting reservations; nobody would come to that arid land for recreation). But they were sent to prison regularly for stealing wood. All the forests belonged to the big landlords, and the townspeople crept in at night and loaded their mules with timber. The Guardia Civil protected the landlord’s private forests, and carried out an unceasing vigil against the wood-stealers. In prison, the townspeople were not as hostile to the political prisoners as the ‘locals’ of the province of Ciudad Real were. They were unable to comprehend the nature of their crime and treated them with respect as persons who could read and write. Before the guards they were cringing in their deference. The only lesson they had ever learned was obedience to authority. They felt that their meagre poaching was sin, but they did not see how they could help falling into it, and looked to the priest to rescue them from the consequences. When one thought of so many towns where there was a real and live sympathy either for the libertarian cause, or at least against Fascism, it was incredible to think that one should have to go out and depend for one’s life on these crushed people. Their poverty pervaded even the prison administration.

All everyone thought of was how to make a few extra centavos. The whole town toiled in the vineyards but the return was scanty. The one real industry was the railway line. Other than that, the reception of prisoners in transit was one of the few sources of money, and that was scraping the bottom of the barrel. They even sold water to the prisoners. In that land of no irrigation, with the water supply limited to what fell from the skies, water was severely rationed in prison. The guard came round, accompanied by an orderly carrying a couple of zinc bottles with the white wine that is plentiful in La Mancha. The zinc did nothing to improve its taste, but it was in any case diluted by the guard who sold it at outside prices, and watered it with the scanty supply of prison water. The charge was 1.25 pesetas, and it sold well to those who had the money. The orderly always managed to hold back some wine for himself, which he later re-sold at a slightly extra cost, sometimes— on a hot day — further diluted and up to twice the guard’s price. There were many speculators among the prisoners, too, who would buy what they could for further re-sale. They would crowd round the guard when he came in, and physically corner the market. They would then share their rations of water, pour it into the wine, and sell it at a still higher price. All Spanish prisons have some degree of corruption, but the speculators of Alcázar San Juan defied belief. This was due to the intense gambling fever. Because of the constant coming and going of prisoners on their transfers, there were always many who had not yet been sentenced and still possessed goods, stolen goods too sometimes, on their person — wrist-watches or pens or the like. These would be introduced into the gambling ‘capital investment’ of the prison and would change hands rapidly until finally being sold to one of the guards to realise their value outside. Even outside a peseta was worth a duro (five times as much), elsewhere in Spain, and financially those outside were worse off than some of those inside. At Villacanas and Madridejos, only a few miles away, people lived in caves. There were free men glad to earn the coppers they got for running errands for the gamblers in jail. Sometimes a gambler would be stripped of everything he possessed as the result of a crap game, and he had to beg a few rags from other prisoners to cover his nakedness. The cave dwellers would sell the gambled clothes for the winners in the local market if no prisoner could be found to buy them. When the guards came to transfer or release a man who had gambled away every stitch they would look around for some of the old clothes used for cleaning. But there were occasional charitable donations for such as these, which were handled by the officers, who no doubt took their cut. It can well be imagined that in these surroundings I was not too happy about the chances of escape. But the noises of the city were too much for me. To hear the whistle of the train was particular agony. I impulsively told Valerio that there was no problem about the pistol, I had one. Immediately I had told him I regretted it. It suddenly seemed to me that he was talking big about escape because he knew he had no pistol. Once his scheme was practical, he would back out, it was the wine that had been talking . . . I impressed on him that he should say no word to anyone, and he sounded so sincere I was ashamed of my doubts. . He wasn’t exactly a greenhorn in prison, he said. He had taken part in the Resistance, too; surely I couldn't have forgotten his presence? He went off to his dormitory and I to mine. I felt perhaps I was being too suspicious. But next day he told me he had improved on my plan, which was to ask for

something from the suitcase, smuggle out the gun into the dormitory, and next day ask to go to the barber, when we would be alone with him and the auxiliary turnkey alone between freedom and us. He felt it was dangerous to smuggle the pistol into the yard. Instead we could get the suitcase in. Some of the prisoners had got permission to bring suitcases in, to sell their suits or the case itself; this was against regulations but business first was the guiding rule in that place, and you only had to get the orderly to agree. And a friend of his, who would help us in the escape, had influence with the orderly. I immediately stormed. ‘You said you would say nothing to anybody and now you bring in this guy!’ ‘I told him nothing,’ he insisted. ‘Nothing! Besides . . . I can trust him. He’s “ruined” too . . . doing fifty years. He knows the place and the town inside out.’ I was not convinced. ‘You must have told him!’ I shouted. ‘Why should he bother to help us bring the suitcase in if you haven't told him about the pistol?’ ‘I told him we were trying to escape and needed the case . . . I said nothing about the pistol,’ said Valerio. But I knew this was not true. I pressed him to admit it, that he had let the ‘fifty-year man’ into our secret. ‘And how do you know you can trust him? Is he one of your party? You know they never try to escape.’ As a general rule, the Communist Party did not support the idea of escapes. It was ‘undisciplined’, they felt, it ‘lowered the politicals to the level of the ordinary criminals’. ‘Don’t panic,’ said Valerio. ‘He’s all right . . . He’s a Falangist. But he hatesFranco’s guts like we do. They “ruined” him though he had a party card.’ There were disillusioned Falangists, but those who were disgraced for mercenary reasons usually finished up as informers. They still felt on the side of authority. The man in question, José Luis Serrano Menéndez (I shall never forget his name), had been an aviator. He had been involved in swindling, possibly including the party itself, and this may have accounted for his heavy sentence. I was furious with Valerio. But at that moment José Luis came in waving a bag of sugar. ‘See,’ said Valerio. ‘That’s the signal to show he’s been to his suitcase and got the bag out of it. It’s OK for us to go.’ It did not convince me, but there was nothing I could do. We were about to ask for permission to go to the suitcases, when a list of people was called out, for transfer next day. It included Valerio. They were taken in the next yard, and told to bring in their suitcases. Valerio was stripped naked, his clothes examined as well as his suitcase. But they found nothing. The officer, as I heard later, was furious. He turned and slapped José Luis. ‘You lied! Who do you think you are?’ He reeled under the blow. He had not met me, but he was no fool. ‘It must have been the tall chap next to him. It must have been with him . . .’ They came into the other yard and called me in. There was no further pretence that these men were to be transferred tomorrow. ‘You!’ shouted the officer. ‘What do you call yourself?’ ‘García.’ ‘Get his suitcase.’ When the orderly brought it, he spilled out the contents furiously. He pushed the orderly aside who was rummaging through them in vain, searched himself but still found nothing. He got up, furious, and kicked the contents over to me. I bent down and began picking them up and repacking. José Luis was breathing heavily. I went back into line. I whispered

to Valerio, ‘If he does find out, it’s my responsibility. No use us both being caught. But this is a debt you owe me, you idiot!’ Years later I passed through Barcelona, and I recalled my words. I could have called on Valerio who had been out of jail for some while. I had often breathed vengeance and told myself what I would do to him. But time heals much, and I did not go to see him. I thought I had got away with it. The officer was actually walking away in a bad temper when he came back and kicked the suitcase, and his foot may have stubbed the pistol. Whether for that reason or not, he bent down and viciously ripped open the side. The pistol fell out. The guards seized me and dragged me to the punishment cells. The officer, don Eulogio, was a man with crazy eyes, whose manner startled everyone who came into contact with him. He began by slapping my face and asked me if Valerio was involved in the matter. I denied any knowledge of Valerio. It seemed to satisfy him and he left me in the punishment cell. There were four cells in a block just behind the outhouse of the dormitory. The prison urinals were the other side of the wall, and the wall was damp, moist and stank abominably, being steeped in the urine of generations of prisoners. The only window opened on to the corridor, and there was little light, no fresh air, and not enough room to exercise. Nothing but the stench of urine. Later that evening I heard José Luis shouting for mercy in the next cell. In spite of everything, I had to smile to myself. The same old story! Police and warders — pretending to beat up the informer so that he would not lose his usefulness, put it on regularly. Maybe they were really beating him up. This way they hoped to wipe out the public exposure they had made of him, through don Eulogio’s inability to keep his temper. ‘You tried to fool us!’ shouted the officer. ‘You tried to protect those men!’ The comedy went on for hours, with the other cell door open so that there was no chance of my not hearing. I waited for them to come and beat me up. It was usually taken for granted that one of the privileges of office was to beat up prisoners in the disciplinary cells. But in this impoverished town there was only a small staff. Two officers came on duty every twenty-four hours, with their auxiliaries. The officer who sold the wine doubled as administrator, and he disliked don Eulogio intensely for some reason. Whatever don Eulogio did, the administrator was sure to be in the opposite camp. With two officers on duty and the whole prison to look after they could not spend all night in the cells. At all events, when don Eulogio finally flung open my door, it was only for the orderly to throw in a mattress and lantern. I was worn out that night. Despite the stench and the dampness of urine, I slept as if I were in the Grand Hotel. If there was one in that town it was not likely to have been much more comfortable. Don Eulogio did not return till morning, strutting in with his hands behind him, holding the rubber truncheon carried by the officers and often used to devastating effect. He looked at me in what he hoped was a terrible manner. But by now I had the measure of the different warders one found in jail. ‘Well, now, What about it?’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘You found the pistol. What do you want me to say?’ He tapped the wall with his truncheon impressively.

‘You know what to expect?’ ‘From you on your own? Do I look as if I was tied up? What do you think I am, one of the boys from the village? Get the hell out of here before I break your neck!’ ‘What’s this, insubordination?’ he shouted. ‘What do you think it is, you fool? You think you’re the only one who can break the law? Show me the regulation which says you can beat me up or get someone to help you do it, or get out of here fast!’ He shook his truncheon. ‘You’re lucky the judge is coming tomorrow or you wouldn’t get off so easily!’ He left. A few minutes later a couple of prison orderlies came in to take away the mattress and the lantern. When the door was slammed to, he shouted through the Judas-hole, ‘You ungrateful swine, you take advantage of my kindness!’ Then he marched off. All I was left with was the aluminium plate with a little water, and the tin bowl that served as a lavatory. But at eleven o’clock a new officer came in, with the change of guard. He was a Falangist of the pre-war sort. When the party was small, many joined with idealistic motives, and they usually were above the mentality that knew only how to rob and kill. Those people had come in under cover of the war, and some of them were men who had come from other parties. To show their zeal for the new cause they had to be the readiest to denounce their neighbours. The lack of restriction on the Falange once the war started meant that for a long time they had the opportunity to enrich themselves and to take from their neighbours anything they coveted, simply by having them shot or jailed. The relieving officer of the guard was not one of this sort. He had been warned about me being dangerous by don Eulogio, and came in with a couple of auxiliaries. But he made no attempt at violence. ‘After all, it's natural for you to want to escape,’ he said. ‘But the whole place is talking about you. How the devil could you get a pistol in here? They reckon you must have bribed the Guardia Civil. The Prefect of Police wants to talk to you — just out of curiosity, not an official visit.’ Later the Prefect came along. He was a veteran of the police service. He told me he had been in France, and wanted to chat about the Resistance movement. He knew the names of many Spaniards who had been prominent in the Maquis. I was quite content to chat, but I did not make the mistake of forgetting what his profession was, however friendly he might appear to be. I did not even know what side he had been on. He sent for chairs and we were quite at home during his ‘friendly talk’. We smoked, and he left me a packet of tobacco. Perhaps he wanted to assure himself that the Guardia Civil was innocent, and he may well have assumed I would not have bothered too much about implicating them. But it was also quite conceivable he wanted an ordinary chat in that benighted town. Later in the day I was taken to the director’s office and officially questioned. I could not deny the pistol had been found in my suitcase. ‘But I did not know it was there,’ I said. ‘When we were in Death Row in the cells at Barcelona my friend Santiago Amir Gruañas gave me everything he had. He knew they wouldn’t commute his sentence and he asked me to send his books to his son but to keep everything else in remembrance of him. There was the suitcase, some clothes, a belt.’ There was a little truth in this. Poor Santiago had always known they would not relent in his case. He had sent his few, precious books to his young

son. His clothes and the belt he gave to me. I still have the belt, and a tobacco pouch which Jorge Pons gave me. Whenever I fill it with Old Holborn, I think of Jorge. ‘Santiago never told me the pistol was inside the suitcase. Maybe he didn’t know himself. You know how we pass on these things. There were a lot of shootings at the time, as you know. Maybe Santiago did know and forgot to tell me — there was a lot on his mind.’ I reflected how pleased Santiago would have been if he knew he was rendering yet one more service to his comrades — a posthumous alibi. When the police had tortured him he had proved such a ready liar he had left them knowing less than they did before the interrogation. I stuck to the story. They brought me before the visiting judge. The Prefect of Police was with him. They accepted that Valerio was not implicated, and that Santiago had given me the suitcase. I was glad about this as at least nobody else was brought in, and they would not find that my mother had brought me the suitcase. For possession of arms I could receive a sentence of from six months to six years, but as it had not actually been in my hands, I could reasonably expect the lesser sentence. This hope was raised when the Regional Inspector of Prisons came to see me. It was quite an event in that town when so important a gentleman arrived. I was puzzled as to where they could house him in accordance with his rank. When he came I had been here quite a while and had a cold in my kidneys from that damp, smelly cell. I could hardly walk. The interrogation, lasting an hour-and-a-half during which I was supposed to be standing at attention all the time, was sheer torture. The Inspector had formerly served in the Barcelona region and had in fact been in the condemned chapel the night of 14 March 1952. He had taken the opportunity to render a little homily on the obstinacy of the prisoners, who had known they were going to die in the morning, and yet declined to take advantage of the religious consolations a benevolent administration had offered, even pressed on them. He remembered that Santiago had given a note to the chief officer leaving his things to me. ‘But that’s not to say you didn’t know there was a pistol in the suitcase,’ he said. ‘You really didn’t know? How can I believe you?’ ‘That is a matter for your judgment of men. I’ve made my declaration,’ I said. ‘You are free to think as you wish.’ He was inclined to believe me. He wanted to show himself an authority on the subject, to explain in his findings what an expert he was on the mentality of these people, and to present himself in his report as having so wide an experience that he could call to mind what happened in one case to assist him in another . . . He dismissed me graciously. His account would be favourable when I came to trial. But that would not be for a couple of years. Whatever else it is, justice in Spain is not a winged figure. 63

6 — Two Trials Denial doesn’t work. It can never lead to forgiveness and reconciliation. Amnesia is no solution. If a nation is going to be healed, it has to come to grips with the past. Greer Colin It is not enough to say let bygones be bygones… Reconciliation does not come easy, believing it does will ensure that it will never be. Greer Colin 1954-1956 Once more our journey began, stopping at Madrid, Avila, Palencia, Leon. There was no question of escaping now. I could barely hobble along and I had a double handcuff chafing my wrists, thanks to the warning given the guards by don Eulogio, who told them that I was the most dangerous animal in captivity and had threatened to break his neck. At each stop we were housed in the local jail. The whole journey took ten days, and when we arrived in Lugo I was put in solitary confinement for a month. I was not even allowed in the yard, but anyway I could hardly move. The doctor did not come to see me, as the guards had explained that according to don Eulogio I would do anything, including shamming sickness. I managed to see the orderly, and he reported I was not malingering; but as he was only a prisoner, with no medical qualifications, the rules of the medical profession did not oblige the doctor to act upon his advice. But I was able to buy some Sloan’s Liniment from the prison shop, and the orderly, a very compassionate, humanitarian man, gave me the necessary friction. Thanks to him, I recovered during my stay in Lugo. . The trial was held in public, and caused something of a minor sensation. I did not see why I should deny falsifying papers. For the life of me I did not know who the man was who had said he had sold mules on a permission signed by me. At first I was so weary in my limbs I could not take the court seriously. ‘Supposing I did? Who gave you the right to say who should sell his mule?’ The court had to remind me of the seriousness of my crime: a thrill of horror went through it when I failed to see what was so wrong with forgery. In a society that worships money, the forgery of money strikes at its root, and in a totalitarian, state, the forgery of forms is equally as abhorrent. The prosecutor asked me if I really could not remember the person who obtained the licence — surely performing such a vile deed would have stuck in my memory? ‘How can I remember? There were so many.’ It shocked the court to be forced to listen to such a hardened criminal. ‘But what do you want? I was condemned-to death for doing it. Do you want to condemn me to death a second time?’ The public in court gave murmurs of sympathy. Indeed, the Galicians showed very clearly throughout where their sympathies lay. I was acquitted of the charge when ultimately the court accepted that it had already formed part of the case against me at Barcelona. The judge gave me a homily in which he explained that this did

not mean they thought me innocent, and they deplored the wickedness of my ways, which were an offence to God and man. I had further proof of the feelings of the Galicians when I was taken back to the railway station on my departure. Galicia is a poor country: its land is fertile, but the gap between rich and poor is enormous, and due to the parcelling out of the estates according to the old family law, everyone has some little piece of land but never enough to live on. For that reason they emigrate to the Americas in their thousands. They have little I to give; when they do so, it is a sacrifice. On the station a mozo was plying refreshments. Usually these men are keen merchants, and live only for a peseta — they have the grasping reputation that accrues to people who are eager to escape from poverty. I was being taken alone, with a Guardia Civil and a staff corporal as escort. When the mozo saw the corporal he did not want to serve him. But the corporal had possession of my money, and when the mozo saw he had come to buy bread and cheese for me, he served him and waved to me in a friendly way. He gave a bottle of wine to the corporal for me, and refused to take any money. ‘He can’t eat without drinking,’ said the mozo. ‘Go on, save your sympathy,’ said the corporal chaffingly. ‘These people have plenty, they ran off with all Spain’s money and that’s why we’re poor today. He gets nice sums from his bank in Moscow.’ ‘Good, tell him to send a cheque for ten roubles to Juanito el mozo at Lugo Railway Station.’ Kindness like that was water in the desert. I do not know what the mozo knew about me. Inside the prisons my reputation had grown fast. As we passed back through prison after prison, I found the story of the pistol had spread as if on wings. Each transfer carried the story, and of course each time it became more exaggerated. I had not only had a pistol in my suitcase, it seemed, I had wounded an officer . . . killed an inspector. I massacred the Guardia Civil. Many years later, in Alicante, I heard about a man in Alcázar San Juan who had fought it out with gun blazing — ‘he was a Miguel, too,’ I was assured. I had to go back to Alcázar San Juan on my return. Don Eulogio had received a special medal of merit for discovering my pistol. The distended pupils of his eyes glistened as he greeted me, with the smile of a boa constrictor. He had not come too badly out of the affair. It was different when I got to Albacete. The officer on duty there had been reprimanded for not having searched my suitcase as the diligent officer at Alcázar San Juan had done. His director considered he had endangered the lives of the Guardia Civil, though I could hardly have got to the suitcase during the journey. The officer was lame, and hobbled along jerkily, but compensated for his infirmity by hitting out at prisoners with his truncheon whenever they displeased him. But, like many of his type, he only hit the local people, who were cowed and not prepared to stand up for their rights; all they expected from authority was a cuff on the ear or a slap on the face. He took his revenge on me instead by refusing me permission to draw money or to buy anything. The wine seller was told not to approach me. I was too ‘dangerous’. Albacete still lived under the displeasures of the State, for during the war the International Brigade had made a stand there. But now all thoughts of resistance in that part of the country had been crushed. The land was still cultivated by mules — tractors were a recent innovation in a place where

labour was so cheap. The local crime was taking wood from the forest or coals from the track; one man was serving six years for taking timber, another five years for stealing a bunch of grapes from a vineyard, which he had been passing on a hot day. The judiciary had been told that it was necessary to enforce the law strictly in Albacete with its dubious past. In the women’s department, one poor lady was serving a sentence for the crime of having taken the railway company’s coals. But she had not taken them from a sack or a bunker; she had picked up the waste that lay in the tracks. The law was clear; what could she plead? That she was destitute and pregnant since her husband had been called up for the army? Poverty was no excuse for crime, as we had been repeatedly told; but her husband's military service served as an extenuating circumstance so she only received six months’ imprisonment. What would happen to her when she, and her newborn baby, were released? That was not the concern of Justice. We did not need social services in Spain, a country still imbued with the ideals of Christian charity. In plain language, let her go begging when she came out and found she had no home any more. When I came back to Valencia, I found my reputation had preceded me. In view of the mule trial, and the pending pistol trial, I was put into three months’ solitary confinement. But there are compensations in all things, as it spared me the humiliations of quarantine For the next year I was kept in the confined cells. I was, however, allowed to work, and to go to the yard, but spent my nights in the cells. It was unusual that in these circumstances they did let me work, but it was due to the new director of the prison. He was a military man, of aristocratic family, quite different from most people in his position. I had to admit he was not as bad as they usually were. He accepted the fact that so far as the political prisoners were concerned, the war was still on. My possession of the pistol therefore seemed a far less heinous a crime to him than it did to the civilian directors. His attitude was that of a commandant of a prisoner-of-war camp. ‘It is your duty to try to escape, it is ours to keep you in.’ In his conversation he spoke in the language of the officers’ mess, and often referred to the distinction between ‘honourable opponents’ and dishonourable ones. Normally, it was assumed that the ‘dishonourable’ ones were those who went on fighting after the Republic had fallen and it was no longer legal to do so. I think that for him these weren’t too bad; he could understand that one kept on fighting, but he regarded as ‘dishonourable’ Spaniards who ‘urged’ the English Prime Minister on no account to let Gibraltar go back to Spain lest it make her the greatest power in the world once more. Despite his antiquated military code, he was quite decent in stretching the prison rules, and though these forbade my working on my own, or in the ‘commune’ of prisoners which Jano had formed of some of the politicals, he said it would be possible to find me a situation in a new workshop being established in the prison by a suitcase manufacturer. He smiled. ‘This is in your line, surely? But no hidden pockets!’ The contractor had established a branch factory in the prison, for which he paid rent to the administration. He had installed machinery at his own expense, and was recruiting labour. There was nothing strange in these arrangements. Prison labour was cheap and plentiful, and the prisoners wanted work as much as anyone else. The money thus introduced, exchanged 64

into prison vouchers, circulated freely, and making for good business at the prison shop. The manager of the workshop was a known informer. But I needed to earn my living and I took the position. There was no chance of escaping with Jano now, who was on the other side of the jail from me. I was no longer in the orchestra, and was sleeping in the punishment cells. Before I had parted from the orchestra, to go to Lugo, they had been moved to a room on the sixth floor. From there one had access to an attic used for the disinfection of blankets and mattresses. The attic was up a small flight of stairs, and was closed by a padlock. Once inside the attic, one could easily get access to the roof. We had planned, Jano and I, to get up on the roof and try to make our way out from there. We had reckoned that if we got up there one rainy night we might clamber down into the garden, hidden by the obtruding towers of the Castilian palace, which the prison formerly was. Then we would dash across the garden — which was patrolled by Guardia Civil, who are used inside the towns for patrolling the outside of prisons. There was a house with a flat roof used by the chaplain. If one could climb up on his roof and get over the outer wall, there was a telegraph pole in the road outside that would guide one down. Jano decided he would have to go ahead without me, and joined forces with Gómez Casas, a distinguished writer in our movement, who since coming out of prison has written a definitive history of Spanish AnarchoSyndicalism. They decided that they would have to take the orderly into their confidence. A trusty, he had a key to the disinfection room, and that would solve their main problem. They could pick and choose their night; and when the time came, it went, at first, according to plan. They were even able, with the co-operation of the orderly, to make themselves ropes out of the materials in the disinfection room at their leisure; with the key they could come and go as they wished provided no other member of the room saw them. They got up on the roof and the orderly went first. He was by profession a cat burglar, and the operation presented no problems to him. He climbed down the rope, and pressed against the tower. A sentry passing by halted him. Then he dashed across to the house by the wall. ‘What was that?’ cried out the sentry. But all was still. ‘Must have been a cat,’ the sentry on the Wall answered. The sentries passed and the orderly shinned up the wall and down the other side, making a short leap to help him get down the telegraph pole. He was not seen again. Then Busquets climbed down the rope and hid in the shadows. He was not so skilled in running across, and the Guardia sentry on the grounds was alerted. ‘That was no cat!’ he shouted. ‘Call out the guard! ’ Jano jumped up on the roof nevertheless, and stood there ready to jump. But he was not skilled at heights. Hearing the noise of the Guardia Civil and knowing it was now or never, he jumped, without making use of the telegraph pole. He fell awkwardly into an irrigation ditch, and lay there groaning but unnoticed, outside the prison. He had broken his femur. Meanwhile Gómez Casas was coming down on the rope. He was still dangling in mid-air when the Guardia Civil found him. They beat him unmercifully about the legs, so that he was unable to walk afterwards. As he 65

lay on the ground they beat him up viciously demanding to know where the others were. But he kept silent. A speedy count revealed that two had escaped. But in the meantime a passer-by discovered Jano in the ditch and assumed he was the victim of a road accident. He called for help, but when the Guardia Civil came from the prison, they realised he must have been the man who jumped from the wall. They took Jano into the prison, beating him up and breaking his nose with a rifle butt. Fortunately the director came out, and he, being that rare species of prison director, who managed to do his duty-without sadism-prevented them from attacking Busquets further. Otherwise he would have died. He was taken direct to the punishment cells. The guard on duty in the cells was a certain Antonio, who liked to pass himself off as a democrat. He had indeed been on the Republican side during the Civil War though this may have been due to geography rather than conviction. I thought that he at least might agree to have a bed brought into the cell for Busquets. I was refused curtly. ‘Here everyone is equal,’ he told me. ‘There will be no favours for anyone.’ For my own escape attempt I decided to team up with someone in the furniture factory on the ground floor, where 250 prisoners worked. He could get hold of some useful tools and we planned a tunnel there, But we were able to devote so little time to it, as we were only able to meet at special times, that we were transferred long before we had dug very far. But several years afterwards I learned that eleven prisoners escaped from the furniture shop, and I believe they had improved on and continued our old workings. Two years went by. Visitors were not allowed, but the director made an exception in the case of my mother. ‘The regulations were not framed for such ladies as you,’ he told her gallantly. But my cousin could not come with her, or my wife, who was bringing up our young son in Madrid. When I had been in Madrid, in transit, I had not been permitted visitors so we had not met for years. At last, I was transferred to the province of Ciudad Real to stand trial for what was now the ancient offence of possessing a pistol at Alcázar San Juan. I had to go to Ciudad Real itself, capital of the province where the crime had been committed. Back I went the same way as before, this time forking left at San Juan for the city, instead of going on to Madrid. There, in Ciudad Real, I remained for four months. I met an old friend there, named Valencia, a constant escaper. So notorious a pair could not be kept in cells with other prisoners, and each of us was in solitary confinement. We met during the day. He was an expert craftsman and taught me how to carve up a domino set, of the usual twenty-eight pieces, into twenty-eight different sets of dominoes. His miniature work sold at good prices outside. We were able to buy our own food, but unfortunately were back to straw mattresses. Since 1952 beds had been introduced in the prisons, but such luxuries had not penetrated the backwoods. The director however was determined to give us what he regarded as lasting rather than illusory comforts, namely those of religion. The Roman Catholic religion was still compulsory in prison, and the prisoners were marched off to church whether they wished it or not, though barely half-a dozen chose to take communion. The director lined up the prisoners in files, and a bugle-anddrum band played smartly as each line was marched into the prison chapel. 69

He took great pride in this display and was bitterly disappointed at the paucity of those who took advantage of the confessional. 1957 During my last month there, the Feast of Epiphany (6 January) was celebrated with great pomp. On this day, the prisoners were lined up to march past the priest, and were expected to kiss a plastic doll he held in his hands. As the files went along, each prisoner kissed the toy, but as I came, I shook my head at the priest and marched on. The priest sent for me to ask me to explain my strange conduct. I told him I intended no disrespect to him. I had been forced to march, but kissing the doll was surely a voluntary act like taking communion or asking confession. It could not be part of the regulations. The priest, a backward rustic, was completely taken aback. He could not understand the possibility of disbelief. ‘It is a rule of the Church. This is Epiphany, and I have shown you the Infant Jesus. You must kiss to obtain his mercy.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It looked to me more like a child's doll, and the whole business seemed insanitary.’ The priest giggled helplessly. It was an enormous joke to him. His great paunch shook with merriment at the idea of this stupid townsman who was so ignorant that he could not distinguish between the Infant Jesus and a plastic doll, and thought he might catch something from it. He must have had a great time afterwards telling the story to his cronies. He told the director in front of me, and the director laughed too. I felt like laughing myself. Next day I did not feel too much like laughing. The court in Ciudad Real announced its findings. I could have got between six months and six years, and hoped for the minimum. They gave me, in view of my record, not only the maximum sentence permitted by law, but four years more. I was condemned to ten years and a day, to begin after my present sentence had expired.

7 — The Mutiny Absence, even death, could not erase the past. Irène Némirovsky Porque morir no duele, lo que duele es el olvido. Subcomandate Marcos History without tragedy does not exist, and knowledge is better and more wholesome than ignorance. H. G. Adler 1959 Time in prison moves painfully on. The early hopes are lost. The benumbed sensation that followed the mass shootings after the war remained, but I became conditioned by terror, by monotony and by routine. Resentment and bitterness are stored up but life goes on. The event that shook me most was the ambush of Facerías in 1957-as it did most of the CNT-FAI prisoners. His daring and ability had kept all our hopes alive. Nothing could be lost while there were men like him about. We recalled El Yayo, El Pépé, and El Chérif — all dead. Facerías had been chased out of the country into France, but had made such continued forays over the border that the French police had turned him out. He went to Italy, where a group of comrades befriended him. He became friends with one of them, Goliardo, and when Facerías decided to go back to take up the struggle in Spain, Goliardo came too. They came with another man, El Metralla. For security reasons, and although Facerías was an expert car driver, they came over the Pyrenees with bicycles, all the way from Italy. They dodged across the border, and Goliardo and El Metralla went to stay in a slum part of Barcelona, awaiting Facerías who was to come on separately. They were to meet at Torrent d’en Vidalet. Goliardo — unable to speak Spanish and a complete stranger in town — could not move out of the place where he was staying, but El Metralla went to visit a friend in Sabadell, twenty-five miles from Barcelona where the police picked him up. Beaten up until he told all he knew, he revealed where Goliardo was hiding, and also the rendezvous at Torrent d’en Vidalet with José Luis Facerías. When Facerías turned up, hidden Guardia Civil shot him on the spot. Another blow was the appointment of a new director of the prison. The military man had gone, on promotion, to Madrid. His replacement was an old fox, with a record of brutality and persecution. I was involved in many breaches of discipline but my usefulness to the prison contractor in the suitcase factory always saved me from being deprived of work. Of all the remaining months of 1957 and the whole of 1958 I recall nothing but drab monotony, relieved only by the visits of my mother. One day I had a message from my niece Sarita. ‘Aunt Rosario is very ill. She is dying. She is longing to see you.’ I was crazy with grief. In my 70

imagination I went to the director, wept, begged him let me out on parole, or at least with a guard. I had to see Rosario, I had to! But it was useless to ask this of any director, let alone this one . . . It is true that even in Spain, where parole is unknown, prisoners are allowed — under heavy guard and handcuffed, to go and see their close relatives who are dying, or to attend the funeral. Not always, but in some cases. Naturally they must pay all expenses including the armed escort. But Rosario was not my wife, though I looked on her really as my wife. But where was the scrap of paper needed to take to the director? The marriage certificate was all that mattered in a case like this. To talk to a prison director about love and one’s ideal would have been to stamp oneself as a lunatic. Very often the libertarian prisoners who had raised families found themselves obliged to go to the director to ask permission for their wives to see them. The procedure was always the same. ‘Wife? What wife? I have you recorded as a single man. I know of no family to which you have a claim. If you want your woman to visit you, go and see the priest. He will marry you. This is a Christian institution and we do not encourage irregular unions.’ Many chaplains reckoned it a good catch to be able to arrange the marriage of a prisoner to his loved one, and an Anarchist prisoner in particular. The libertarian movement rejected the idea of the marriage tie sanctioned by Church and State, and it offended the priests the more that these unauthorised unions were often attended by greater fidelity and love than the sanctified unions of respectable Christians. When, therefore, the libertarians wanted to see their families, permission was refused. The greater the reputation of the bridegroom in the revolutionary movement, the bigger the feather in the cap of the priest who ‘persuaded’ him to turn to the Church in his time of trouble. Sometimes a crafty priest could boast an even bigger ‘catch’. He would withhold permission unless the parents had the children baptised into the Catholic faith. Then they might be able to see their father behind bars, a privilege not extended lightly to the disbelieving. In the case of Rosario and myself, we had not even been living together. There was nothing I could do but beat my head against the bars. In a short while I had another letter from my niece telling me that Rosario was dead. Profound grief overwhelmed me. How could this girl, so full of life, be dead? And I, rotting away my life inside jail! I thought of times gone by. In the summer of 1934 in Barcelona We had all been happy. My younger sister had become engaged. Her fiancé had brought along his sister Rosario, and I fell in love with her. All four of us went out together and everything looked set for a double wedding. She was the woman I always looked on as my ideal, the woman who should have been my wife. But I was stupid, I behaved as if we would live forever, I had many interests. I went off to work in France and she, disillusioned, went to the Argentine. But I still heard from her, and knew she was working as a nurse. Some day I would go out to her. But then came 1936 and all my plans were altered. Now, years later, alone and in a foreign land, she fell ill with cancer. She wrote to her sister, a nun— headmistress of a high school in Tossa del Mar — who asked for leave of absence and went by plane to the Argentine, and brought Rosario home. There, at Tossa del Mar, she died, surrounded by her

sister and our nephews and nieces. But I was not there, for want of a piece of paper. I fell into a reverie, thinking of all those prisoners tied down by paper rules. How important rules are to society as it is constituted today, and how little they take into account the real affections that we feel in the course of life. Antonio, for instance, was my closest friend, a real brother. But I could never communicate with him legally while I was in prison. We had to pretend he was my brother. His visits were always subject to be stopped once it was found that we had ‘nothing’ in common but our mutual regard and love. 1959 Meanwhile, in prison, the numerous instances of petty persecution put the whole jail on edge. The present director was not one of those few who could act with humanity within the rules. He was building up for an explosion. When it came, the cause was trivial. It was over the quality of the film shows. Where cinemas existed in prisons — not all of them possessed them — they were a good commercial concern for the organiser. In this jail, the director’s assistant organised a show every Saturday and two on Sundays. The prisoners paid four pesetas apiece for admission — and it took a lot of hard work to earn four pesetas. He got the films for 100 pesetas apiece, and collected 500 pesetas for each of three showings. But it was worth it for the blissful escape into the unreal world of Hollywood musicals, with their glamorous surroundings and lots of beautiful long-legged girls. We had, with the rest of Spain, to put up with the censorship imposed on films. That was understood. But we were not prepared to pay good money for a regular dose of religious propaganda. This is what we now got. The director's assistant was treasurer of the local Catholic Action and an ardent propagandist of the faith. He had told us that some films that many prisoners had asked for, showing in Valencia, had been labelled by the Church as ‘gravely dangerous to morals’. We did not know whether to laugh or weep. What in God’s name was the prison, then? But now, week after week, the prisoners had turned up and seen nothing but Spanish Catholic films as one of the two features. Nuns, priests, monks, churches . . . these absurd films were brilliantly guyed by Luis Buñuel when he was invited by Franco, as part of the policy of trying to ‘recapture’ the exile intellectuals, to come back to make a film in Spain. In Viridiana, Buñuel made a bitter sarcastic attack, not only on Franco’s Spain but on the whole Catholic Church. The Catholic propaganda was usually shown at the beginning of a programme. Audiences did not expect too much and came in late. But the enthusiastic director’s assistant now thought to book both films from the same basket. It was coming on for Christmas, and he could not contain himself. Why condemn these poor prisoners to the temptations of the flesh? One particular Saturday, therefore, the second film came on, and the first few moments were enough. The tension broke and the audience exploded. They jumped up and shouted for the assistant director. He tried to explain as they roared ‘Thief! Swindler!’ at him. There was only one officer on duty and a couple of auxiliaries. Trouble had not been expected at the cinema of all places. The chief officer telephoned for the director. But meanwhile the bottled-up anger of the prisoners had been released. They shouted at the assistant about the way the staff stole from the kitchen, the way our rations

were short, how many times our relatives had paid bribes, the poor food — everything that had simmered so long. ‘Thieves, robbers, murderers!’ we shouted. ‘Bring us the director, let him hear what a scoundrel you are!’ The director appeared. He tried to conciliate, because many of the staff were on leave. He told us the admission money would be refunded, but was greeted with booing and abuse. He was accused of stealing from the kitchen, of selling us back our own rations at the shop. Finally, the prisoners took back their money. ‘Four pesetas, it should be four thousand out of what you have had, you rascal!’ Next day the director announced that the prices of admission were lowered to two pesetas for the Sunday. This only added fresh fuel to the flames. ‘They can charge half and still make a profit!’ So nobody went to the cinema. The director’s assistant, going to Mass, was insulted by everyone. ‘Be sure to confess your thieving, you crook!’ On Monday morning, the bugle sounded for work, but nobody went. It was pouring with rain and they were all on parade, but they would not go inside. The chief officer asked, exasperated, ‘What do you want?’ A string of complaints followed, everyone shouting at once. They demanded the director, but when he came, he was shouted down. ‘Enough, enough! Everyone back! Get out of the yard!’ The guards began hustling the prisoners in, and since the rain was now coming down in bucketsful, they obeyed. But instead of going to their normal places, they swarmed into one of the largest dormitories, at the top of the building. Of the 400 prisoners, a great many were in the infirmary with ’flu. The rest, 167 of us, crowded into this dormitory, still hurling abuse at the guards. When the turn of duty came, the guards were at double strength, with both the retiring and relieving shifts, but still they could not quell what was now becoming a mutiny. We noticed, too, that the warders were afraid of causing further provocation. Some of those most hated had been left out of the incoming shift. ‘Where is “Father’s Boy?” came the shout. ‘Is he dodging the column? Has he gone off with a whore? May he get the pox!’ ‘Father’s Boy’ was a strict disciplinarian, whose father before him had been equally hated in the prison and had recently retired from the service. The director came, and shouted for order. ‘Tell me exactly what it is you want!’ An old prisoner stood up and shouted his right to reply. ‘We want the central Inspector of Prisons from Madrid to come here and see what a scoundrel you are!’ he cried. ‘You cannot rob us like this; he is there to correct you and he never comes near.’ Others took up the shout. ‘He is right, people here are doing thirty years for less crimes than you do every day!’ One of them hurled a scoop at him. It was only a long-handled metal pan but the force of it could have killed him. It narrowly missed. He went pale, and left hurriedly. Soon the guards were withdrawn. Everyone whooped for joy. ‘Get out, you bastards, you sons of whores!’ they screamed with delight. Still the staff did not take action. Then, at midday, dinner was served. It was worse than usual. Nobody ate. Deprivation of food is a major punishment in prison, but refusal to eat is also a major offence. It devalues the punishment. If one is to die, one must do it by order and not of one’s own free will. However bad the food was, collective refusal was mutinous in itself. But now there was little pretence at anything else. The food containers were thrown at the orderlies who brought them in. 72

‘Feed it to the pigs and spoil their Christmas! We are not going to eat this muck!’ The director came back once more to the dormitory. ‘This is the end,’ he said. ‘Everybody who does not belong in this dormitory, out at once! You are declaring war on us! ’ He left. The word went round that he had sent to the Governor. But the Governor of Valencia was away for Christmas and in his place the Regional Inspector of Police was Acting Governor. He responded with alacrity. Within the hour we heard the screech of brakes, the whine of sirens, the blowing of bugles. The Acting Governor had sent three companies of police, a squad of engineers and six ambulances, all of which came rushing into the prison garden. The bugles sounded ‘Assault!’ Everyone was seized with a frenzy of excitement. It had been building up to this for two years or more. The invaders were countered with everything that came to hand — bottles, pans, and jugs. The police were taken completely unawares. The heavy bunk beds, double-tiered and movable, were hurled at them like tanks. The chief of police fired a gun at the ceiling as a warning he would open fire. The prison director was fumbling with his gun but the breech jammed. Then the two of them found themselves in the thick of the fray and about to receive some heavy blows. The police had been flailing out with their truncheons but had no time to reach their pistols. Now they were all but surrounded. The director rushed out of the dormitory and left them to it. The chief of police saw he was in danger of being trapped there, and he too fled. A few moments later the bugle sounded ‘Retreat’ as they all dashed out. ‘Retreat!’ How long it was since I had heard that from their bugles! ‘Viva la república!’ shouted one of the prisoners. ‘Send for the German Air Force! Where are the Moors?’ came the jeering cries of victory. Then the engineers threw in a couple of bombs, as they tried to slam the doors. ‘Gas, the bastards!’ ‘No, it’s smoke,’ I said. ‘They wouldn’t dare use gas when they haven’t got masks themselves.’ We began to choke all the same. Someone hurled a boot at the window. The sound of crunching glass stirred up everyone, and in an instant a rush of objects shattered every pane of glass. The doors were finally bolted on us, and we began piling up bunks and mattresses against the door as a barricade. The mattresses were to stop them firing bullets through the door. Our only communication with the outside world was through the iron grating high above the door. We counted our casualties: two badly injured, one of them lamed for life, and several slightly injured. The director was cursed vigorously. Tempers began to cool, however, when it was realised the heat was turned off, and all the windows were broken. It was freezing cold, and had begun to snow heavily. Before the night was out Valencia was covered with thick snow. Some of the lads began to make a fire. ‘Take care of that fire, you’ll set light to the building, you fools!’ came a voice from outside. We began to settle down for the night. I was already asleep when a megaphone began shouting through the grating. I vaguely heard parleying through my sleep. Then some prisoners came and shook me. ‘Miguel! The Commissioner of Police is here! You know how to talk to these politicians!’ It was the Acting Governor of Valencia. He was speaking in 73

a very conciliatory tone. He must have realised how much damage we could do, and in the absence of the Governor, he was responsible. ‘You have got to come to terms some time, you know,’ he said. ‘I myself never knew things were as bad as they are. I was told this was a breakout, but now I learn you have real grievances.’ I agreed. ‘We've been robbed and swindled for years, and the men are demanding justice,’ I said. ‘Write out all your complaints and you will have my personal word of honour they will go to the Ministry of the Interior immediately after the holidays. Then if you troop out normally and go back to your own dormitories and start work as usual I will promise there will be no reprisals and no punishments.’ It sounded reasonable. Not that I trusted him, but I knew there was no alternative. I hoped to bluff him. ‘I must go back and consult the men. I’m not the ringleader.’ ‘I will wait.’ I told them what was proposed. They all shouted together, ‘Don’t trust him! He’s a swindler like the director!’ But when I asked them what the alternative was they were silent. What could they do? We were not even the whole prison. A large number were in the infirmary, many simulating sickness to avoid committing themselves to the mutiny. Some dormitories had refused to take part altogether. The Communist prisoners indeed went to the chief officer to say it was nothing to do with them; apart from one who took part in the mutiny, the others were afraid of losing remission, and said it was a revolt of the criminals with which they had no concern. I talked with the mutineers and they all finally agreed to surrender. I told the Regional Inspector we had formulated our demands and would put them on official paper. He promised to supply it, and we said we would pass out the wounded to the infirmary, and remove the barricades. ‘Ah, Miguel, they should have had you in ’39 instead of Casado,’ said one old veteran of the Civil War jokingly. But it was a surrender all the same. We marched down to the yard and were counted. The riot was over. They let us go to the shop and buy drinks, and then we marched back to the dormitories. The bugles gave orders once again. One of the police lieutenants being treated for wounds said to me jokingly, ‘Some troops yours! With soldiers like these I would conquer the world!’ 74

8 — Corruption “Awareness, no matter how confused it may be, develops from every act of rebellion” Albert Camus Look Ernesto these are my brothers, defeated today, winners tomorrow. I will stay with them. Miguel Hernández answer to Ernesto Jimenez Caballero’s offer to release him from jail if he agrees to write for Falange. History with capital letters is told by the winners, but the survivors tell history in lower case. Alexander Hemon There was, at that time, a General Inspector of Prisons who was responsible to the Permanent Secretary of Prisons, and it was the General Inspector, a Basque, who came to investigate the mutiny at San Miguel de los Reyes. Like many Basques in government service, he emphasised his loyalty to the central government by being unpleasant to all Basques, violently prejudiced against political prisoners in general and naturally having a blind hatred of Basque political prisoners in particular. The moment I saw him I whispered to the others in line, ‘This monkey is going to shove us in the cells. Pass the word on to strike if he does.’ When I came before him, I found he had a mentality no higher than that of the guard Asencio; for all that he strutted around as proud as an admiral. As soon as I mentioned the film show, he snarled, ‘So all this started because of your hatred of our religion! But this is a Christian country, you know, and you are not going to forbid us to practise the Catholic religion!’ I protested at this misinterpretation. ‘That has nothing to do with it.’ Indeed we had seen one excellent Catholic film, a French-made one, glorifying the worker-priests. It was not necessary to agree with it to like it. Even the absurd Spanish films had been put up with as long as they had stuck to one at a time and not given us a double dose. They could not show such films in most commercial cinemas; only the prison would take them in the whole of Valencia. ‘Well! Maybe the prison has more need of them than the rest of Valencia!’ ‘You can’t shove propaganda down people's throats with a mallet! Anyway, this was good business for that guy! Have you reckoned what he was making? Did he have to make a packet for his retirement as well as save souls? He’s a crook like the rest of them! We’ll bring you proof of the rackets here! ’ The Inspector exploded. ‘Crooks! You dare to speak to me of crooks in my administration! You pretend to be a political prisoner but I tell you you’re just shit! You have the scum of the earth behind you and you think you’re king! Let me tell you that the political prisoners did not agree with the rising. They went to the chief officer and told him so. They said it was a plan to mutiny and escape and they would have nothing to do with it!’

‘You are referring to the Communists. But they don’t represent all the politicals, they spoke only for themselves.’ He banged the table with fury. ‘Always the same story, Anarchists, Communists . . . what's the difference?’ ‘They were afraid for their skins. They think they’ve got conditional liberty coming up.’ ‘So your anarchist bunch took the leadership to smash up the prison?’ ‘There was no leadership. It happened in a few minutes. Everyone who was there joined in. What do you expect when you coop men up like this? Believe me, every person in the prison will back up the complaints about the administration.’ ‘But I tell you that everyone will not back up these complaints. There were seven men among you that did not want to take part in the rising and they were beaten up. For that alone you deserve punishment.’ ‘The Acting Governor gave me his word of honour that we would not be punished.’ ‘And I give you my word of honour you will. He didn’t know you would beat up the men who wanted to remain loyal.’ I didn’t know about it either. It might well have happened. Probably the men were informers, and whenever the occasion arose someone would attack them. It was a chance they took. ‘Go! ’ Outside, the chief officer, a hard-line Falangist named Daniel, had lined the others up to go to the punishment cells. They began protesting, especially when I told them the General Inspector had promised we would be punished. We all began shouting for the strike to go on again. Prisoners who were passing carried around the word. The parade was being held and the men refused to go in. The chief officer sent for the director, who was greeted with groans and hisses. ‘I am aware that the Acting Governor gave his word that these men would not be punished,’ he said. ‘His word is as sacred with me as my own. They will have no punishment, they will have their bedding and food and there will be nothing entered on the records. But I must maintain security. They are to go to the punishment cells for I cannot risk these concerted demonstrations every day. The General Inspector asked for punishment but I could not agree. Now do not force me to break my word.’ They dispersed. In the confusion I had been marched back to the dormitory while the others who had appeared before the Inspector went to the cells. Daniel came for me as I was making coffee for the ’flu victims. I had the boiling pot of coffee in my hand, and he hesitated, knowing how I detested him. I held it menacingly. ‘Garcia . . . you're to report with the others.’ ‘To the cells?’ ‘Well, you heard what the director said. The trusty will take your bedding.’ ‘I'll finish making coffee first and then have a bite to eat,’ I said. ‘If you want to drag me along, try it.’ He shook his head in a conciliatory way, eyeing the coffee apprehensively. ‘There is plenty of time. This isn’t for punishment, there is no question of going at the double.’ As we went down to the cells, I saw the Inspector leaving. ‘You have the epaulettes of a general but the soul of a valet!’ I shouted at the Basque. He ignored me. But the whole episode had some effect. Because of what had

happened there was a flood of petitions from all over the prison. The proofs of corruption were too much for him to ignore, especially as he was not personally involved and sacrificing the director meant a tribute to his vigilance and the possibility of putting in an appointee of his own. Within a very short time the director was relieved of his post and several members of the staff were charged with fraud and other offences. The case that must have particularly shocked the Ministry when it saw the report concerned a warder who had sold shares on the National Lottery. It was an offence to sell shares in lottery tickets to prisoners, lest they come into too much money. But he had swindled them into the bargain, something as shocking to Spanish officialdom as fixing a cricket match would be to English gentlemen. You can buy a lottery ticket for, say, 1,000 pesetas. But this may be too big a gamble and you may care instead to risk only 500. You can split up the other 500 into, say, 100 lots at 5 pesetas each, and charge a little extra to the small‘fry investors. It is of course an offence to offer fictitious shares. If by mistake one oversells, it is usual to advertise in the press immediately. ‘Numbers soand-so are not valid, please return and have the money refunded.’ He did this. But as no papers were allowed in the jail the prisoners who had bought the shares at high prices, being contraband, were not to know. Then a lucky number came up, and was announced on the radio. When the man concerned had rushed, delighted and happy, to the warder, he was shown the newspaper advertisement in which the number had been cancelled, and was given back his stake. Forty-eight of us were to appear before the visiting judge, charged with mutiny. We protested to the director. ‘We were not to be punished!’ ‘But to appear before the judge is not a punishment. He is there to examine cases, to see if there is anything for which you should be sent to trial. He will not harm you in any way. You must be reasonable.’ A few nights afterwards we were woken by the guards. Twenty-seven of us were to be transferred to the maximum-security prison of Teruel. We protested, and demanded to see the director. ‘We were not to be punished! We have the word of honour of the Acting Governor! ’ ‘No, no, this is not a punishment,’ the director told us mildly, reassuringly. ‘It is for your own good. You will like it there. Teruel is in the mountains; it is a beautiful old town. You go there for security rather than stay here in the cells. How is that a punishment?’ We looked at each other mutely, despairingly. There was nothing we could do. There were only twenty-seven of us in the cells, and the Guardia Civil had come for us. Of the twenty-seven, I was the only political prisoner. Seven were psychopaths who had, in fact, had nothing to do with the mutiny. We made our way, chained together, to Teruel, 2,500 feet above sea level, its streets exposed to the bitter winds. There had been a great battle there during the Civil War. Now, because its isolation made communication with the outside world difficult, it was the obvious choice for a maximum-security prison for escapers and mutineers. The local prisoners amounted to only fifteen or twenty. The rest were recalcitrants from jails all over the country, kept there until they could be broken up and sent in groups of two or three to different prisons.

The director greeted us with a speech. He was like a father to his charges, he told us. If we behaved ourselves, we would have everything we needed. But Teruel was not San Miguel de los Reyes and we should not think it. There would be no mutinies while he was in charge. He pointed at me. ‘You, Garcia, are the political — yes? Well, We have just passed out twenty-three Communists, and allow me to say they were decent, educated people. It was a pleasure to have them here! They would tell you that this is a properly run prison, we do not sell lottery tickets, we do not set fire to State property. If you have a request, you may put it!’ ‘Yes, please,’ I said. ‘We are all veteran prisoners; we have all been in jail for several years. May we be excused the period of quarantine? We have been under prison supervision for years in San Miguel, what is the point of it?’ ‘Unheard of!’ he protested. ‘Regulations provide for quarantine. But I’ll grant you one concession. Five days only, no more!’ So once again we were shut up in solitary confinement to undergo the humiliation of quarantine. This is not to say it is unnecessary, especially considering the lousiness of some jails, and the dangers of contagious disease; but once the doctor has made his examination it should be the end of quarantine. In Puerto de Santa Maria, for instance, quarantine can last 100 days. In many it is twenty or thirty. When the day of ‘release’ dawned, I asked the chief officer first thing in the morning. ‘Can we go out in the yard now?’ ‘Wait for the relief,’ he said. ‘On this shift we are only allowed to distribute the coffee.’ I shouted through the window to the next cell and told them to pass on the news. Wait for the relief, at ten o’clock. It came, and ignored us. Everyone began banging furniture, shouting, kicking at the doors. It was the only way to get things done. ‘Open up, open up!’ The relief came back and opened up, making us stand in the centre of the corridor. The director came, furious. He paced up and down the line, shouting and waving his fist. ‘So! The fighting cocks of San Miguel de los Reyes! But here, I tell you, you will not be such fighting cocks! This is Teruel, you understand! How they run other prisons is not my concern but here you will behave decently.’ ‘But sir . . .’ I began. ‘Ah!’ he shouted. ‘Here we have it, the ringleader! You are a political prisoner, you should know better. The Communists understand that rules are made to be observed. The Anarchists are troublemakers! ’ ‘We are not making any trouble,’ I said. ‘We were trying to see that these fellows carried out your orders. You gave us a concession of five days. Why are they too lazy to open the doors when you tell them to? They should take their orders the same as we do.’ The others burst into voice at once. ‘It is true, he is not the ringleader, and we know our rights . . .’ The noise was deafening. The director shouted at us to stop. ‘Go into the yard! No more quarantine period for you! ’ Victories in prison are rare and must be savoured. The fresh air that day seemed doubly beautiful . . . Now we had to try to solve our miserable economic problem. We needed to work, to earn our living. Most of our group had lived individualistic lives of crime, and their families were often destitute. I suggested we form a

collective, as the political prisoners often did, and share our earnings. They all agreed, but when it came to it, I was the only one with anything to put in the pool. Still, we reckoned it was enough to buy our tools. But we were up against the fact that the director now refused to let us buy tools. Our notorious reputation made him afraid we would use them as weapons. In the prisons of Spain the quantity and quality of food varies, and one can be sure that in a place where there is work available and people can buy in the shop, the authorities will cut down on the official ration. Often the quality was low, as it was here in Teruel, though in frankness I must admit the amazing fact that years later I tasted the food in a London factory canteen where English friends worked, at wages which would seem a fortune in Spain. The food was of so poor a standard it would have started a riot in prison. Yet nobody complained. When I pointed it out to them, they laughed and agreed. We were hungry at Teruel because we could not eat the official ration, such as it was. It was agreed I should not spend my money on food but save it for when we got permission to buy tools. Then one day, one of the psychos went off his head with fury at what he was offered. He took the container and threw it down the stairs shouting, ‘Rubbish! Pig-swill! Robbers! ' The orderlies fled as this large, violent man ran amok, shouting, ‘Death to the director! Let the Russians come!’ We tried to calm him down. ‘Emilio, wait. In a few weeks we’ll be working and you’ll be able to eat.’ ‘They are going to starve us to death!’ he stormed. ‘I shall not wait to let them do it!’ The auxiliary warder approached gingerly and asked if we had him under control. They were afraid of him. But now he was sobbing. He was a large man, really hungry, and very much like a child in his ways. ‘If only they would give me some potatoes I wouldn’t mind! Am I really asking for too much? Just some potatoes! ’ I turned to the auxiliary. ‘Get the trusty to get him some potatoes from the shop and we will keep him quiet. Don’t worry — I’ll pay for them.’ The incident got to the ears of the director and he came to thank me. For all his protestations of toughness he was not an unfair man. He said he would see that the food was better in future and would make a personal investigation into the scarcity of the rations. He went with me to the kitchen and there we found five litres of oil left hidden under the sink for the guard to take away. An auxiliary was walking out of the prison kitchen with bags of sugar that he obviously intended to sell in town. The director was livid. He knew they did not expect to see him in the kitchen. ‘I will deal with these people!’ he told me. ‘Meanwhile, you have permission to buy tools.’ A second victory in Teruel! Wonders would never cease. We were now able to Work, though we could not mix’ with the other prisoners. But, all things considered, the ‘fighting cocks of San Miguel de los Reyes’ were now in high favour with the director. That did not prevent them wanting to spread their wings and fly. The mountains of Aragón were within sight from the yard, and they kept alive the hopes of escape. Somewhere there, the remaining guerrillas might be holding out.

In our group there was the famous escaper from Alcázar San Juan, Gambín. He had climbed over the wall in broad daylight, stolen a motorcycle in Cordoba and made the journey from there to the mountains at the border, which he crossed on foot. Then at a holiday camp in Bagnuls he stole another motorcycle, and picked up a hitchhiking French student. They had gone off stealing together, which had finally got him deported back to Spain. Gambín was at first a bit standoffish with me. He was a thief and a homosexual, and as such, thought that I, as a political prisoner, would consider myself too proud to speak to him. Many political prisoners were indeed like that. But I felt I had no right to condemn these youngsters who crammed the jails, the children of the great defeat, of whom Gambín was typical. His father had been a customs officer in Murcia and, though not a member of our movement, had served in one of our battalions. The mother had also taken part in defence activities, and afterwards they were both imprisoned. The child was simply left crying in the house, at five years old, until a neighbour happened to look in. She had a large family herself, and when they came to take away her husband, she too was thrown out of the flat she lived in. What happened to the boy for the next ten years? Who knows? Now he was a hero of all the prisons because he escaped from Alcázar San Juan in broad daylight, and it was an honour that he proposed to me, the man who produced a gun in that same jail, that we escape together. ‘Don’t tell a soul,’ he said to me earnestly. ‘Even your best friends in jail want to come in on these things. If you refuse them, they’ll threaten to go to the screws.’ ‘Don't worry about me,’ I said. ‘But you should watch your tongue at your wine-drinking sessions.’ The administrator sold a reasonably good glass of wine in the prison shop, not too diluted with water. It was expensive, and to buy a glass of wine one had to buy a sandwich too. The cheap pilchard sandwiches were worth nothing and were passed on to the poorer prisoners by the wine-drinkers. Their gatherings got wilder and wilder in talk. One evening, coming from a wine session, Gambín told me excitedly that he had the perfect plan. Barrios had to come into our plans. Barrios was back at his old prison trade of decorating. The sixteen cells on the floor above us were empty and he was to paint them. He would make a hole in the ceiling and cover it up, and we could get on to the roof. But Barrios was working with two or three others. Surely they would all want to come in with us? What of it? Gambín refused to see any flaws in his plan. ‘The more the merrier!’ ‘But one of them is old and sick,’ I said. ‘He will never be able to jump down from the roof. What should we do then? Leave him in the lurch up there on the roof with the guards taking pot shots? Or get him to jump and break his neck?’ Gambín did not like his plan being questioned. ‘They’re grown men, they know the risks. If they wait until they can walk out of the door they will wait till Christ returns to earth! Anyway, you haven’t heard my big surprise.’ ‘No . . .’ ‘Now you’ll have to wait for it . . .’ His eyes sparkled with mischief. 75

That night when I was in my cell, I awoke with alarm. The door had opened and there was Gambín. ‘See! I’m not such a fool as you think! I’ve made a master key to all the cell doors, now I can come and go as I want. If I’d told you, you would have said it was impossible!’ ‘Good, good — you’re marvellous, but go, quick!’ ‘The guard’s fast asleep.’ He went off chuckling. Next day I approached Barrios. ‘About this hole of yours . . .’ ‘Another one!’ he cried. ‘Who told you?’ ‘Never mind. Look, I can get a rope, and I've got a fallback in “real money” if we can get out of here.’ ‘All right, come in! That makes seven!’ We both groaned. ‘Only Carrasco has backed out. He’s too ill to come.’ Carrasco, an elderly man who was present, protested. ‘No, I've changed my mind! I could get down with a rope! It was only the jumping that made me back out. With Miguel’s rope I shall be able to come. I shall be no trouble. I promise.’ Carrasco was the brother of one of the best-known journalists in Spain. He had been a battalion commissar during the Civil War, and afterwards hid for his life. With his knowledge of affairs, he had passed himself off as a secret policeman, earning his living by fleecing black market establishments, illegal brothels and so on. They were accustomed to pay up and ask no questions, but he had been caught when a real policeman had come for his ‘cut’ the same day. I felt deeply sympathetic towards him though for the life of me I could not see him, in his condition and at his age, scrambling up through the ceiling and down the rope from the roof. But Barrios insisted. It was his hole. It was neatly plastered over and could not be noticed. We had to clamber over each other and pull the last man up, then get down to the ground from the roof and make our way to the outer wall. We had then to take our chance with the sentinels on the wall; but the wall nestled against the mountains, and it would not be too difficult to get over because of the steeply sloping land. We felt that on a rainy night-and in Teruel they have hard rains that can last all day-it might be possible. How Carrasco could manage it, though, was beyond me. ‘But we can’t go without Carrasco!’ said Barrios firmly. ‘And we must have Capullo,’ added Gambín. ‘Capullo?’ we all asked dismayed. ‘Another?’ ‘Oh, Capullo is the best man in the world for the job,’ he said. ‘His reputation is better than mine. He’s on the landing below . . . we can’t manage without him . . . Besides, I promised him.’ Barrios was furious. ‘You promised him! The whole damn prison wants a piece of my hole, but it’s mine, mine! Enough! You fellows make your own break your own way and with so many reputations you can’t fail! But if we go on together we’ll be having a procession across the grounds like Corpus Christi.’ He marched off. I asked Gambín why he had antagonised our friend, why he had brought up Capullo, whose reputation for escaping was nothing to speak of. ‘Oh, we’ll manage together,’ he said. ‘Barrios wanted to back out anyway. Why does he insist on Carrasco when he knows he could not even climb up on to a chair? He is talking, but he’ll

never do it. That hole in the wall is something he will sit and look at for the next five years and worship like a shrine of the Virgin Mary. He’s thinking about remission. How could he even get out of his cell at night without my waxed key to get to his cursed hole? We two will manage with his hole, the two of us . . . and Capullo . . . and (as an afterthought) ‘Martinito.’ ‘Martinito!’ I cried. ‘Is there no end to the roll-call?’ ‘Capullo won’t come without Martinito. And you can’t say he doesn’t have a reputation.’ It was true. Martinito was another of the ‘generation of criminals’. His father had been shot and his mother died in prison. But he was taken in by a relative and was nearly of an age to start work. He had been a member of our Libertarian Youth Organization, but he passed off as his relative’s son and signed a declaration to say he had never taken up arms. The lie was successful. Nobody denounced him. He got a job, and was ready to start a useful life. But he had been so completely ‘cleared’ that he received his call-up papers for the army! . It was a bitter blow to be conscripted into the very army he had fought and which had killed his parents, not to mention friends and relatives. But the war against the people was over, and on the Continent conscription is accepted with fatalism. His employer was satisfied with him and offered him his job back after he had done his service. He was a clerk and got an easy position as clerk orderly in the office of the Judge Advocate General. The Judge Advocate was fond of his wine, and did not pay too much attention to what he signed. Temptation overcame the young libertarian. It was easy for him to put clemency petitions for the judge to sign, false ones among the true, and mix them up among the penalties for death and applications for leave by his officers. The judge signed and signed . . . Once Martinito had started on this path he could not turn back, for he was haunted by the fact that he had taken on the role of God to decide who should live or die. If there were fifty to be shot and he put in one commutation, had he not condemned forty-nine? Which of the fifty did he choose? Someone he knew, a friend, a member of our movement as against some other . . . but what right had he to do this? So he put in more and more, as many as he dared, and then more. But this could not go unnoticed forever. The judge came under suspicion for his apparent wild attacks of clemency when it came to death petitions. Enquiry revealed the fact that there was a traitor in the office. Martinito was sent to a military prison to await trial, but when he was brought out to a court martial, he escaped. He had no way of supporting himself now, apart from thieving. The privations he suffered, in addition to the stay in a damp military prison, made him tubercular. When finally he was caught, he was sent to await trial in the Penitentiary Hospital at Yeserias, in a Madrid factory suburb. It was a dismal place. It stank. Old and dilapidated, it had originally been a lazar-house and then a retreat for beggars. Rubber and plastics factories now surrounded it, and the smells permeated the walls. From this notorious place, Martinito made a spectacular exit. Once again he was an orderly. In the course of his duties about the wards he calmly walked into the doctor’s dressing room next to the operating theatre, took off his clothes and put on the surgeon’s. He then walked down the corridor and jumped out on a terrace through a large bay window. 76

There were screams. It was the nurses’ quarters and two of them were sunbathing in the nude. They frantically dived for towels and covered themselves as best they could. ‘I beg your pardon . . .’ he stammered. ‘I only jumped because . . . an affair of honour, you understand . . . which way out, quickly!’ ‘There, there, go!’ they shouted, pointing to the door at the end. He rushed off and they must have thought what a modest young man he was to be so quick about it. Perhaps, too, if questioned they would have denied seeing him, thinking they were covering up for another nurse’s romance. Once again Fate was kind to Martinito. But he could not manage to live on the run. He could not get treatment for his TB, and did not know whom to contact. Again he drifted into crime. Finally the law caught up with him again. But they did not recognise his identity as a military deserter wanted on a major charge, and he was sentenced as a civilian. I did not think he could survive a night in the open in his tubercular condition. But his friend Capullo had talked him into it. Capullo was another son of the storm whose father had been killed at the battle of Manzanares where, having fought as a major in the Republican army, he had been lined up with the survivors and shot. The trouble with Capullo was the same as the others. He drank heavily, and now that we were earning money he was drunk every night. He got in some honey, which he mixed with the wine, and on the night we planned to escape he was as drunk as a lord. It was a perfect night for flight, raining heavily outside. I went to the barber’s shop during the day, so as to be spruce when we left. There I saw Martinito, who was coughing heavily. I was worried about him coming but he told me not to fuss. Gambín had cut a panel out of his cell door — it was of wood — and neatly put it back again, so that he could put his arm through and open the door, which only unlocked from the outside. He came out, opened my door with his master key, and then crept along to Martinito. Martinito was in a bad way, but he jumped up and dressed hastily. So hastily, in fact, that his belt was left dangling. It went clink-clink-clink along the corridor. Meanwhile Capullo was coming upstairs; his feet sounded as if he were wearing navvy boots. I was terrified that the guards would be awakened. I could peer down the corridor and see that one, the chief officer, was reading a Wild West story. He had his back to me. Another was puzzling over a French grammar I had lent him and was falling asleep over it. He was coaching his daughter, for whom he was ambitious, and took lessons from me. The others were fast asleep and snoring. Nobody noticed as Capullo clomped upstairs. But Martinito, trying to shake off his clinging belt, made such a noise it alerted them all. As one heard, they all sat up startled. Martinito immediately dashed back to his cell and shoved the door to. The noise resounded. Gambín dashed back into his cell. The guard turned out and began counting. ‘Correct, correct, correct!’ We had arranged to leave dummy figures in our beds. Mine was made up correctly, and my absence was not noticed. Gambín and Martinito were back in their cells. Capullo, however, had been so drunk that he had failed to leave a dummy. The guards called out that one prisoner was missing. ‘Oh, my Christ, we’re done for,’ said Capullo. ‘Get back, Miguel, lose yourself! Blast them all!’ He strode forward to the staircase as I scampered down the stairs. ‘You are calling for Capullo?’ he demanded. ‘He is here, present and correct!’

I knocked on Gambín’s door. ‘Gambín, Gambín,’ I cried in an urgent whisper. ‘For God’s sake, Gambín . . . put the key through the grating, so that I can get back in my cell before they get here! Gambín, Gambín! ’ It would have cost him nothing to help me. He was safe. But he did not answer. In his panic he had thrown the key down the lavatory pan. He did not even answer . . . I hid myself in a recess. I had not been seen so far, nor was my absence noticed. The guards were rushing upstairs, where Capullo faced them serenely. He was from Cordoba, and when he was drunk he had the grandiloquent oratory of his fellow-townsman, Seneca. He demanded to know why he should stay in his cell when his natural inclination was to be as free as the birds in heaven. They dragged him off as his loud protestations filled the corridor. Then the guard who had borrowed my French grammar passed me by. I tugged his sleeve urgently, and he jumped back, startled, as if he had seen a ghost. ‘Two thousand pesetas!’ I cried. ‘I can get them in next week if you can get me back in my cell!’ I had them in the heel of my shoe but I was not such a fool as to tell him that. I had helped him with the French lessons for his daughter but I knew a warder and a prisoner were never really friends. I hoped that the 2,000 pesetas would decide him in my favour. It seemed to work. ‘Very well, be quick!’ he breathed. He unlocked the door of my cell, and pushed me in. I slept the sleep of the just. Next morning, however, I was awakened early. ‘Garcia!’ the guard called out loudly. ‘You’re on charge for trying to break out! ’ ‘So you turned yellow,’ I whispered. ‘All right, so much the worse for you, you’re 2,000 pesetas the poorer, and as a matter of fact I could have made it ten! If your old woman knew about it she would murder you! ’ It was a sure way of wounding him. His face fell. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he said. ‘You were seen.’ I scoffed. ‘By you only. Never mind, stay poor!’ He took me to the chief officer, who was glowering at me. He was a great hulking ape of a man, who had failed to pass his examinations to become an officer but by sheer perseverance had worked his way up to head the auxiliaries. ‘You deceived me,’ he raged. ‘You pretend to be a political but you are the worst of them all!’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘How did I deceive you? Do you expect a prisoner not to escape? Is he taking a State salary that he should want to remain here? What do you think you get your pay for, to sit there and read Westerns?’ He could hardly contain himself. ‘Get back to your cell!’ he roared. ‘I brought you here to tell you that I am informing the director of your conduct, but it’s useless to speak to you—you’re a fool and the representative of fools!’ I knew that under the prison regulations of the time a limit of forty days could be imposed for ‘maximum faults’ which included attempts at escape, mutiny and refusal to eat. But directors were reluctant to give up the power of imposing major penalties to which they had become accustomed, and so they often gave the maximum of forty days in solitary for each separate ‘fault’. Thus one was likely to get forty days for attempting to escape, forty days for

making the hole, forty days for having a rope . . . 120 days in all. During this period one earned nothing towards remission. Capullo sent me word that they were all sorry about what had happened. He and especially Gambín were thoroughly ashamed of themselves. ‘But don’t blame us, it is this accursed drink,’ he added typically. Even Barrios was angry only with them. He had been charged, as the hole had been found. ‘Not only did you steal my hole and get me charged, but you have involved Miguel, the father of us all!’ He had insisted that he and Gambín should share ‘faults’ so each would get forty days by confessing to a different crime, he for the hole and Gambín for the key. Nobody knew Gambín had left his cell but us. The rope was not discovered. I should only admit to leaving my cell. I went before the director, who had the priest with him. The chaplain was an incredibly bigoted cleric who would not have been out of place at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. To my surprise he spoke up for me. ‘Although he is an anarchist, he is a good man and not beyond redemption,’ he said. ‘He persuaded the other prisoners to go to church willingly. It is a sign of grace.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ scoffed the director” ‘One is a model prisoner when one is planning an escape, one does not want to cause trouble at church.’ At a recent holiday of the Church, the others had wanted to refuse to attend, or to kick up a fuss when they got there. The hole was under discussion and I persuaded them not to. The priest had evidently learned I was the one who got them to drop their opposition. He shook his head sadly at the cynical director. ‘It is not for us to question God’s manner of leading sinners to the means of obtaining mercy. His ways are strange,’ he said. The director did not quarrel with this theology. He began to taunt me instead. ‘You give yourself the airs of a university professor and you are ignorant as a peasant,’ he shouted. ‘Where did you think you could get to in Teruel? You are all of fifty years old and you are dreaming of going over the hills with Sabaté! But I have news for you, you fool!’ He flung down some newspapers, which were not allowed to enter our quarters. ‘Your precious Quico is dead — he was shot down in the streets like the bandit he was by the Guardia Civil! Can you read?’ I bit my lip and stood to attention. ‘He was the last guerrilla —the future of Spain is with Franco,’ snarled the director. ‘But I tell you even in the underground your movement is finished! The Communists will beat you every time because they understand discipline and you do not. Those from El Dueso were educated people who knew how to behave in prison — you, with your years, understand nothing! ’ ‘I hope I never learn anything you have to teach me!’ I shouted back at him. ‘Maybe it’s true we don’t understand discipline but when you have a Communist here in front of you, you tell him the anarchists may be bandits but at least they are Spanish ones and not Russian ones.’ The priest, to whom Communists were merely an aspect of the Devil incarnate, nodded. ‘It is better to be a Spanish bandit than a Russian one,’ he said to the director. ‘Here in a Christian country, even the dogs may eat what falls from the rich man’s table . . . Where, in Russia, could the poor criminal turn for repentance? To the preachers of atheism?’ ‘When the Communists get power you won’t be short of a job!’ I shouted at the director. ‘But we want to abolish prisons altogether. When nobody wants

to be a warder or a policeman or a soldier or a hangman then weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be able to call ourselves civilised!â&#x20AC;&#x2122; If it had not been for the priest, the director would have slapped another forty days on me. As it was, he sent me back to the cells quickly. I left as the priest was explaining that government was a sign of God's benevolence. At least it was in Spain. I never learned if he included Russia too.

9 — The Tunnel Gracias, Compañero, gracias Por el ejemplo. Gracias porque me dices Que el hombre es noble. Nada importa que tan pocos lo sean: Uno, uno tan solo basta Como testigo irrefutable De toda la nobleza humana. Luis Cernuda Desolación de la quimera 1936 1960 The prison at Teruel buzzed with the news that this fellow García had not only taken someone else’s hole to get out of the prison, he had told the director to his face that he was uncivilized and there should be no prisons. With the priest in the room to hear this blasphemy! It was a wonder he had not produced a pistol as at Alcázar San Juan . . . The prisoners smuggled in food and cigarettes to me, putting them in a sandal and swinging it from a neighbouring cell, or dangling it from a window above. They were filled with pride that someone should be so bold and get away without extra punishment. When the punishment was up, they broke up the ‘Fighting Cocks’ who had all been in a compartment together. I was taken to a downstairs dormitory. It was near the central shop, where two dormitories were adjacent. Barrios was in one of them, I was in the other. With him were Isglesias, Braulio, Demetrio, two quinquilleros, a gypsy lad and a rough young man from Seville whom we called the Chico de Triana, who had committed many robberies. Isglesias was a very powerful man, a Galician, who had been heavyweight champion of his province. The tinkers in the dormitory were brothers-in-law, travelling showmen like so many of their kin. They were specialists in the three-card trick, and the two ‘quinquis’ used to hold animated conversations with the gypsy lad. He too knew all the fairgrounds of the Peninsula; like them, he scorned the gullibility of ‘the Spaniards’. There were also a couple of Asturians, Braulio and Demetrio. The latter was toughened by a life in the mountains. He was the son of a socialist miner. Coming home from work one day, a lad of fifteen or sixteen, he had been met on the way by a tearful mother who told him the Falangists had come and shot his father. She implored him to leave town and not to return to see her again. He fled to the hills and lived on his own, until arrested and sentenced years later as a cattle-thief. In my dormitory there were the two members of my ill-fated escape plan, Martinito and Capullo, as well as crazy Emilio, Pajares and a couple of others. Pajares was a professional footballer, in jail for signing with three clubs at once and pocketing the money. The most interesting man I met in the prison was in neither dormitory. I met him in the yard. He was a local prisoner, a farmer, called Cesáreo. He lived for his little farm in Camino Real, on what was once the royal highway

from Madrid. In the fertile, flowering, Sierra de Alban he kept 600 beehives, and was far from being a poor man with nothing to lose. But he had been forced into the so-called National Service of Wheat growers, a State Board with which the farmers were forced to deal. The State delegate could buy the wheat at a fixed price, and re-sell it at whatever he chose. Their position was perfect, for as a monopoly the farmer had no say in negotiations with them. Cesáreo was a calm man, with a fund of simple country wisdom, not the type to be easily provoked. But the selling of his wheat for less and less, and the insolence of the State delegate, became too much for him. ‘What can you expect?’ he asked philosophically. ‘They must know we too are men, we are Spaniards also. Can they treat us however they want?’ One day in the course of an argument the delegate insultingly slapped the farmer’s face. He went home, took out his gun and returned to shoot the Falangist dead. Now he was awaiting trial. But he did not take his imprisonment too hard. ‘All Spain is a prison as I see it,’ he said. ‘As they do outside, so they do here. The agricultural delegate fixes the prices, the administrator defrauds us of our rations.’ He was also fond of representing prison as the real Cortes of Spain. ‘Those who speak in Madrid do not represent the country,’ he explained. ‘They are scum, rubbish, nothing; I would not give them for pigswill! Who is represented there, what opinions, what peoples? Nobody, nothing! Only in one place in Spain can one talk freely, exchange views on the future, discuss intelligently, and that is in jail. There it is! We are the true Cortes, from every province, from every town, of all opinions. Gentlemen, you may continue the discussion.’ Once the chief officer was slow in letting us out for exercise. ‘Come, you lazy rascal!’ shouted Cesáreo. ‘The Cortes is in session and it cannot wait for an usher like you!’ The chief officer was too thick-headed for such irony. He would have booked him for insolence but for the fact that he thought Cesáreo was a lunatic. He became so sure of this that I suggested to Cesáreo he should try and pass as one. It might stand him in good stead at his trial for shooting the State delegate. ‘But how can I be a lunatic for shooting him? The lunatics are the other farmers who do not shoot them!’ he protested. Nevertheless he did as I suggested and began to cultivate the company of some of the psychopaths such as Emilio, to imitate their Ways. Meanwhile the topic of escape inevitably came up once more. Barrios announced he had a new plan: we should dig a tunnel. ‘Who is for it in both dormitories, should say so now,’ he announced. ‘All may come in. But those who are not for it must keep their mouths shut. If they betray us, I will see they are killed. Make no mistake!’ Some in both dormitories were for, the others agreed they would not inform. Of those who were not in favour, some were expecting remission. Pajares, the football player, was one of these. He had powerful patrons in the football world. Altogether four out of the seven in our dormitory, and all eight in Barrios’s dormitory, were in favour. I? Of course I was for it. It might be as foolish as the director had said, but I wanted to get out and take my chance in the hills. 77

‘This time there will be no question of my hole being taken. The tunnel will belong to us all but nobody must go alone. We will all work on it,’ said Barrios. ‘Those who are not concerned must look the other way.’ He had worked out a difficult plan. The floor was covered by mosaic, and he planned to take out two large squares. It was necessary to get the cement out from between them, and this was in very narrow strips. He had been repairing the floors in the corridor and from there he took some broken mosaic. This was to cover the hole. To make the hole, he smashed the mosaic under his bed with a kitchen cleaver. Meanwhile in another part of the prison, crazy Emilio — not always as mad as he seemed — was dancing and shouting, to distract the attention of the guards. When the mosaic was broken, we carted the dirt away to a special rubbish pile that Barrios had created in the course of his decorating duties. Every day one of his decorating assistants cleared this pile. Soon we had the beginnings of a tunnel, which was to occupy our thoughts day and night. Plenty of work and energy went into it, and in our circle there was some fine craftsmanship, further sad proof of the waste of talent in jail. At first the tunnel was lit by oil, but this proved too smoky. Then it was lit by candles, but these did not give a good enough light underground. Finally, we fixed it up to the electricity system. One of the men in the other dormitory was a skilled electrician and wired the whole tunnel. It was difficult to arrange for the guards not to notice the absence of any particular person. Only two at a time were allowed down, while one stayed on guard in the dormitory, and the rest attracted as much attention to themselves anywhere and everywhere else. There was one amusing incident. The gypsy had gone down first, followed by Demetrio, the Asturian. On a previous occasion, someone had come up with his clothes so dirty that we had been afraid the auxiliary warder must notice on his rounds. So we arranged that in future everyone should go down naked, and wash immediately they came up. While the gypsy and the Asturian were down, however, we heard shouts and yells for help. ‘My God,’ cried Barrios.‘ ‘The tunnel has collapsed on them. Quick!’ Like lightning he pulled the Asturian out by his feet, and then someone else pulled out the gypsy. The gypsy began, shouting and striking the burly Asturian, who could have eaten him, but stood there sheepishly. ‘He tried to assault me!’ he cried. We all burst into laughter and stood there helplessly, until someone remembered to replace the top of the hole with the loose mosaics. As they pulled the poor gypsy off Demetrio, Barrios gave the latter a mock lecture. ‘Surely you know that nothing is so valued by a gypsy maid as much as her honour?’ he said. ‘Yet you actually try to seduce a gypsy lad! Is there a lack of queers in the prison that you must endanger our tunnel? That is not the purpose I planned it for.’ ‘Shut up,’ growled the Asturian. ‘What do you want, they shut up a man for seven years without seeing a woman except once on the journey from Valencia, and then he flashes his arse in front of me in the tunnel. It’s too much! ’ Once or twice the walls of the tunnel actually did cave in. We had so few tools, and each day everyone brought something different, a stair banister, maybe, or a crude tool made in the workshop. But despite all the setbacks, the tunnel grew. We took great pride in it; it was our one justification for living in

this damned Teruel Prison. We christened it the Tunnel of the Fighting Cocks of San Miguel de los Reyes. Suddenly, one day, it was all over. As in Valencia, an auxiliary warder went round each day with a couple of orderlies with sticks, who banged window bars, parts of the floor and so on, for him to hear if they rang true. Usually the inspection of the floor was cursory. But on this occasion, he ordered the trusty to move back Barrios’s bed and try the floor there. It sounded hollow, and no wonder, for the tunnel already stretched beyond the corridor. Obviously, an informer had alerted the auxiliary. Barrios’s face was a picture. ‘I will kill the stool pigeon!’ he said. We had actually been ahead of schedule—we had planned to make a Christmas break when the guards were carousing, and we would have a common meal in both dormitories. Now all that was finished. The director came down to see our tunnel, complete with electrical installation and all conveniences. He gesticulated with horror. But only the ones in Barrios’s dormitory were charged. None of them denounced anybody, and each received forty days on each of two charges, eighty in all. Perhaps this led to the dispersal of the ‘fighting cocks’; or maybe after fifteen months in Teruel they decided that if by then we were not ‘rehabilitated’ for normal prison life, we never would be. They broke us up by sending us all to different prisons, some to Cordoba, some to Ocaña, some to Puerto de Santa Maria, and five to Alicante. Puerto de Santa Maria was the worst prison of all. An old fortress prison, it looks picturesque by the sea. Inside it is damp, dreary, isolated. The folksingers remind us that one would be better dead than buried forever in the cells of Santa Maria. Fortunately for me, I was to be sent to Alicante. My mother wrote to me to say that once I was moved she would come to live in Alicante. She would sell her little boarding house to be where she could visit me. First, however, I had to stand trial at Valencia for the mutiny that had occurred at San Miguel de los Reyes. The law moved slowly. I was taken back to Valencia, but this time lodged not in San Miguel, but in the Provincial Cellular Prison, where people await trial. A few months after the tunnel episode, therefore, we all met once again. The last of those to have left Teruel had news about the informer. There was a local prisoner, a Falangist, who had been there when the tunnel was discovered, but was later released on provisional liberty. He was friendly with the son-in-law of the prison director, a vintner, and had told one of our number that the informer was the footballer, Pajares. The Falangist, who had no reason to lie, related his story with a wealth of circumstantial evidence that seemed black against Pajares. Pajares had only a year and a half to go, and was troubled with domestic worries. His wife had taken their daughters and abandoned him when he went to jail, and he missed the cheers of the crowd and the feel of the game. He was a man who would do anything to get out and presumably thought this would earn him the director's favour. But he was there with us, on trial for the Valencia mutiny, and he vehemently denied the accusation. Barrios was troubled. He had sworn to kill the informer and he was pretty sure, as we all were, that the Falangist was telling the truth, but he said, ‘How can you convict a dog of scratching himself on the word of one of that bunch?’ 78

Our trial was held in camera. The Attorney General could not help but admit that there was something to be said in our favour, since there had been prosecutions against members of the staff. ‘But why did you revolt?’ he asked. ‘For such a crime there can be no forgiveness. You know it is the worst thing you can do in prison! Do not tell me you could not submit a petition. Every day upon my desk there are ten, twenty, a thousand petitions. Many are worthless but I investigate each one. When you knew of the corruption in San Miguel de los Reyes, you should have made a denunciation. The commission of faults by others did not entitle you to commit a graver one, the worst of all crimes in prison, mutiny! ’ He did not call the director to appear, but the Regional Inspector of Prisons came. Everyone in the dock began shouting, ‘Assassin, criminal, thief!’ The judge banged his gavel helplessly against the uproar; finally having to adjourn the hearing until the Inspector could make himself heard. When I was called to the box, the Attorney General tried to trap me to incriminate one of the other prisoners. He asked who in my opinion was the person most responsible for the rising. I answered without hesitation, ‘The chief officer. When he realised the prisoners were not going back to work he should have sent them to their own quarters. There they would have simmered down as they always do. The rain was so heavy they did not want to stay in the yard and at that moment everyone would have obeyed an order to return to their quarters. But he broke the rule of prison security. When they were excited he put them all in one dormitory — what then did he expect?’ The judge intervened. ‘You are not here to accuse, you are accused yourself. By your own showing you admit that you were in revolt.’ ‘I am not for revolt in prison, I am for escape,’ I said. ‘Look at my record, you will see it is true. How can one mutiny in prison? It can never be successful, everyone knows that. The prisoner can never win. In the finish he has to take somebody's word. And I personally had the word of the Acting Governor that we would not be punished.’ There was an outburst from the dock again. ‘The police chief of Valencia is the biggest crook of all! ’ When the shouting subsided, the Attorney General returned to the attack. ‘You admit then that you planned this outbreak not for mutiny, not for redress of your grievances, but as part of your plans for escape, just as the other political prisoners alleged?’ ‘No, no,’ I protested. ‘Nobody planned this outbreak. I was as surprised as the chief officer when it happened. How could we break out? We did not even have a hostage. And if we had got one, we would have had to take the word of some scoundrel . . . The fact is that you pushed the prisoners too far. It is the old story. You pile up punishment and humiliation and degradation upon us, and the officials treat us like animals, but we are not animals, we are men, and we will not be treated like them!’ The other prisoners shouted and huzza’d in support. ‘It is true! Miguel has spoken for us all! You are bandits, robbers, criminals, assassins!’ Only the footballer was silent. The judge banged again and again. Finally he sentenced four of us to fifty months, and the rest, including myself, to five months and ten days. Among the unlucky four was Pajares. It was alleged that the footballer had been one of those who had beaten up one of the men who had not taken part in the

mutiny. This overzealousness was often the mark of an informer trying to conceal his ways. Barrios smiled when he heard that Pajares had got fifty months though he had been due out in twelve. ‘I am sure he was the informer,’ he said. ‘God is just.’ We appealed to the Supreme Court. After an interminable delay, it confirmed the sentences. But as it was the almost invariable practice of the Supreme Court to augment the sentences of the lower court, perhaps it was some sort of moral victory. 79

10 — The Cockroaches of Alicante We are going to inherit the earth. There is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie may blast and burn its own world before it finally leaves the stage of history. We are not afraid of ruins. We who ploughed the prairies and built the cities can build again, only better next time. We carry a new world, here in our hearts. That world is growing this minute. Buenaventura Durruti 1961-I966 Alicante Central Prison. When I think of it, all that comes into my mind is cockroaches. Millions and millions of cockroaches. The kitchen was covered with them. They were not rare in the kitchens of other Spanish prisons, even in San Miguel. They were there; always ready to fall into the soup. One could not be fastidious. But Alicante was something special. The cockroaches belonged there more than did the prisoners. They were part and parcel of the walls, the food was never free of them, and they crawled into the beds, the cooking pans and the toilets. The rice was dotted with them like raisins. One could not take a spoonful of it in one’s mouth without having to spit out cockroaches. Under the Republic, this prison had been the main one to which sexual offenders were sent. It was still classed as a reformatory prison, though no facilities for reform had ever been offered, and it would be a miracle if anyone could point to a man that had been reformed in its walls, before or after. Those who were corrupted were legion. When Franco won, political prisoners so swamped the jails that sexual offenders could no longer be segregated. Now there were fewer politicals, and so far as Alicante was concerned, only three at that time, of whom I was one. As the general prison for offenders in Alicante was closed, a military annexe for soldiers under sentence from the Foreign Legion had been incorporated with the Central Prison. The other prison was closed because it had become holy ground. In that prison the would-be Leader of Spain, son of its former Dictator and the man who began the Nationalist Movement, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, had been shot by the Republic. The Nationalists moved into battle under the shadow of a dead leader, from whom ultimately a minor General, Francisco Franco, took over. The prison in which José Antonio died had been transformed into a shrine. Though his body had been moved to the cemetery of Victory near Madrid, the cell in which he spent his last moments was like the crypt of a revered saint. José Antonio’s embittered sister lived on. Whether because she idolised her brother, or because she regretted her lost chances as the First Lady of Spain, I do not know, but for Alicante she entertained an undying hatred. The rulers of Spain loathed this town, which had shot José Antonio, and it was discriminated against in every way during the years of reconstruction. Food was scarce, investment was lacking, every trade that could be diverted elsewhere went away. Like Albacete, and many other towns, its name 80

condemned it. There was another reason, too. Alicante was the last refuge of the Republic. There, in the last days of legal anti-Fascism, thousands fled, knowing themselves to be compromised in the eyes of the victors. It had been part of the surrender terms that they should be allowed to do so, but the surrender terms were not accepted, and it was a race for these people to get to Alicante and the promised British ships before the enemy finally moved in. They gathered in the harbour area, hemmed in between the approaching Italian troops and the Falangists, reinforced by the town's fifth column, and in the distance they saw the Union Jack flying, promising them repatriation. They stood anxiously awaiting the British fleet; the navy was going to help get the refugees to Gibraltar. Mexico promised to take those who got away; she had been the only country to sell arms with no strings and now she offered unconditional refuge. It was desperate for them standing there, wondering how long they could resist the encircling enemy . . . Impatiently they waited for the British ships to put on speed. There came a moment of hope as warships sailed into the harbour. Then utter despair. The ships were flying the Italian flag. The Union Jacks disappeared over the horizon . . . the British fleet had sailed away. There were dreadful scenes of horror as the Nationalist troops moved in. Even the regulars in the Italian Army were appalled by the indiscriminate killings by the Falange. The survivors went to Albatera concentration camp, where the ration was a slice of bread and some tinned sardines. The prisoners broke out in sores, they died of malnutrition. What was their fault? Those people killed JosĂŠ Antonio. The shadow of the dead leader and his grim sister lay over the town for years. Who would dare suggest cleaning up the cockroaches in its prison? Inside the jail, I was assigned to be assistant to the schoolmaster. He occupied an important place in the prison hierarchy, being an officer (as distinct from an auxiliary warder) and by virtue of his rank he belonged to the governing junta of the prison, and thus was responsible for maintaining discipline. This body consisted of the director, the schoolmaster, the priest, the administrator and the doctor. Two of them at least were usually present at all awards of punishment. In practice, the director was supreme so far as discipline went and the others did not interfere greatly in this aspect. The instructors, like the chaplains, were usually men who had failed in their jobs outside and were happy to get a State salary in jail. This particular instructor was a Falangist who was quite incapable of working in a school outside; he was acutely sensitive of his withered arm which one fears would have made him the butt of many schoolboy jokes. Proud, arrogant and unapproachable, he was the typical bureaucrat satirised by Spanish literature over the centuries, bone-idle and corrupt. He spent one hour a day at his classes, and left all the work to his prison underlings. There were six assigned to him: four to teach, one to the library, and one to bind the books. I enjoyed bookbinding and managed to get the job, but found that he would allow me nothing by way of expenditure to bind the books. I could not do it with my bare hands, so he took me off the job and made me a teacher. But I was so disgusted at the condition of the books that I decided to bind them in my spare time. I did not even tell him about it, but used my own concoction of starch, stolen from the laundry, and flour, stolen from the 82

kitchen. When I had nicely bound all the books, the priest happened to notice the changed condition of the library and congratulated the officer. He was thunderstruck. He rushed to me demanding to know why I had not told him what I was doing. Transformed into action, he immediately put in an enormous invoice to cover his ‘costs incurred’ in binding the prison books, every peseta of which, of course, went into his pocket. He was not at all grateful to me; on the contrary, he was annoyed that I had nearly let the occasion go by without his being able to profit from it. He knew the politicals were more artful than other criminals and one could not always understand their motives. He told me that he suspected me of stealing the materials but that in the circumstances he would not be making any charge. This he regarded as a great concession. Many of the illiterates wanted their letters written home. They would only trust a fellow-prisoner to do it for them. It was difficult teaching some of them, especially the gypsies who in many cases had a superstitious dread of reading and writing. They explained that if they signed their name, they put a weapon into people’s hands. But I was patient with them and eventually succeeded. When some of the prisoners found I had even taught gypsies to read and write, they were encouraged to learn. They felt it below their dignity to be more illiterate than a gypsy, a group of people traditionally credited with dullness of mind. The schoolmaster had one saving grace so far as the prisoners were concerned. He was in charge of the cinema, but he liked money, and did not force Catholic propaganda films down the throats of the prisoners as the director’s assistant at Valencia had done. He held several sessions at the weekend, and it was his ambition to get everyone present at one showing. If he could have made it compulsory he would have done so. He was so greedy for money he studied the tastes of his audience as avidly as any movie mogul. He knew the prisoners wanted Westerns, crime films and lovely women. He snapped up all the old American films he could. Many a Hollywood film actress, ageing and thinking herself forgotten, might have been consoled at the thought that, young and beautiful still, she was solacing the prisoners of Alicante. Meanwhile, my mother had settled in Alicante, and was living cheaply in a room rented from some friends. I bought baskets from the prison workshop and sent them out to her. She sold them in the market and also passed them to a friend in Barcelona who helped raise money for us in this way. The basket making in this jail was in the hands of the authorities, and not the individual prisoners, but when I bought workshop produce, naturally the others put their best work into it, Later the prison brought in an outside contractor who set up a suitcase factory. I was experienced in this work, and he asked me to act as manager. It enabled me to pass on some of the proceeds of the work to those who did it; and we managed to make it pay quite well. One way and another there was quite a flow of money in the prison, with regular card schools, drink and pot smoking. Cannabis was a major addiction in Alicante and the authorities could not prevent it coming in. There was more smoked in the jail than in the town, and in this respect at least Alicante Prison anticipated the fashion of the next generation. Bottles of cognac were smuggled in by the officers to the prisoners, who included many alcoholics. Some of them, unable to afford real alcohol, drank wood alcohol. On one occasion, a man from Alcoy, a confirmed alcoholic who was in jail for drunken driving, swigged a magnum carafe of methylated

spirits used in the woodwork shop. The doctor was sent for, but arrived in time only to sign the death certificate. The number of alcoholics was partly due to the fact that many motorists were being sent to Alicante. The law was severe on motoring offences. I became friendly with a motorcyclist, a young man named José. He was a decent fellow always ready to help anyone, who had worked in Barcelona in a hotel. Coming home to see his parents in their village near Alicante, he had been riding his motorcycle when he had accidentally knocked down a man. He was at little intoxicated at the time, and had been sentenced to four years’ jail or a fine of 50,000 pesetas. He chose the former. ‘It was an accident, but that guy was the local Falangist boss,’ he told me. ‘Why the hell should I pay 50,000 pesetas for wounding one of them when given the mercy of God we shall be killing the bastards for nothing one of these days?’ He was quite rigid on it. His relatives wanted to raise the sum as a loan but he refused it. ‘It would take twenty years to pay it back under this government,’ he said. ‘I would sooner spend four inside. Let the Falangist’s wife go out to work the same as all your wives and widows have to.’ I had another friend there, a stout Catalan in his early fifties. He had been one of those forced to change his address after the war to avoid denunciation, and the only living he could make was by selling beer on the trains. He jumped the trains, or bought a ticket and went on them, and then passed through the corridors selling beer and soft drinks. Some ticket collectors accepted this, others were more hostile. One was particularly officious whenever he saw him and warned him if he were caught again he would be thrown off the train, tray, bottles and all. He did catch him again and was about to carry out his threat when the Catalan gave him a blow that knocked him out. The collector hurt his head on the wall; the Catalan was arrested and sentenced to seven years. In prison he was a cheerful companion, energetic in spite of his weight, full of high spirits. He decided to learn English, so as to approach the tourists, and I taught him as best I could. One day our Catalan friend made his usual hearty meal, scoffing up huge handfuls of rice. We could never bear to look at it, but he never seemed to mind the cockroaches that abounded in the rice and filled us with so much disgust. ‘You, Miguel, should be used to this,’ he would say. ‘In China they are a delicacy—-that’s a fact! ’ I had complained many times about the cockroaches in the food. The auxiliary in charge of the kitchen was indignant. ‘You are supposed to be an educated man, assistant to the schoolmaster. You should not speak of these things in public,’ he told me. ‘You should have approached me privately. Perhaps I could have done something.’ One day, the Catalan downed a particularly hearty meal, ours as well, and then went out into the yard for a vigorous game of pelota. But his exertions on a full stomach were too much for him and he collapsed and died. Our poor friend had only forty more days to serve in prison. His last words were, ‘I don’t die in here. . .’ Goliardo, the Italian anarchist, and I mourned him deeply. I came to know Goliardo well. It was the same man who had followed Facerías to Spain and then been accused of his betrayal. It was a terrible accusation, and had I thought it true — even though it was forced out by torture — I could never have been so friendly with him. Facerías was more than anyone a hero to us 83

all, and the accusation against Goliardo went through the jails of Spain, and through the movement in France and Italy. But I knew that Goliardo looked on Facerías as a brother and wept for his death. He never betrayed him; even under torture he could not have done so. I wrote round to all my comrades. My mother took letters out for me in which I indignantly wrote to our newspapers abroad. But my protests could not travel as quickly as the false news. Goliardo, serving twenty years’ jail and with a name made infamous, paid a high price for his friendship with Facerías. To be at the prey of informers is the fate of clandestine movements. On occasion we even had to denounce ourselves. Barrios sent me word that they had a great plan for an escape. I should ‘buy’ a crime from a quinqui and join them. But it did not appeal to me at the moment. My mother had just sold up to go to Alicante, and I felt I could not abandon her just at this time. Afterwards I bitterly regretted not having done so. They almost made the break. And I still believe that if I had been with them, as they had wanted, they would have pulled it off. The gypsy and Braulio had been sent to Ocaña. But Demetrio, Isglesias, Barrios, Chico de Triana, and the two quinquilleros were in Cordoba. They were returning to Teruel to be tried by the court for their part in the tunnel. They were prepared to ‘denounce’ me so that I could be with them. But as they would go directly from Cordoba to Teruel, whereas my way would be from Alicante, via Valencia, this would not have suited the purpose and I would have had both to ‘buy’ a crime from a quinquillero to get to Cordoba and to confess to the tunnel to go with them from Cordoba to Teruel. I did not want to take the chance of two more lots of ‘sanctions’ for another abortive attempt, and I did not want to be transferred now that I had the pleasure of constant visits from my mother. So I let the opportunity go by and it did not recur. When they left Cordoba, the five men were staggered by the fact that, after the first train stop, one of the quinquis calmly got up and jumped out as the train was gathering speed. They were as staggered as the Guardia Civil to see him pick himself up, walk calmly through the crowd without hurrying himself, and disappear. None of the party could believe his eyes. He had picked his lock in some way without a word to anyone, and jumped on the spur of the moment. The guards could not open fire because of the crowd. Naturally this ruined any chance of escape on the way to Teruel. The other tinker apologized for his brother-in-law. He was suffering under an abominable insult, he said. While in prison his wife had gone off with a gypsy, which is the greatest affront that can be put on his tribe. Four years later, in Alicante, I met the quinqui who escaped. He was reluctant to say how he did it in case he might get the chance again. But he insisted vehemently that it was not preconceived, and also that he would never have been taken again had it not been because of the shadow of his former wife. He had found another lady with whom he lived quite happily, and went round the fairgrounds only bothered by the occasional taunt that his wife had gone off with a gitano and what sort of man could he be? As a result he had hunted for the woman to teach her a lesson, but his new wife had misinterpreted the reason. She thought he still hankered for the old love and punished him by reporting him to the police. Barrios decided, because of this defection, to make the break on the journey back from Teruel. Another prisoner was with them, but as he was a stranger they did not confide in him.

When the train was near the sierra of Alcatraz, between Valencia and Albacete, Demetrio and Isglesias, who were chained together, asked permission to go to the toilet. The sergeant, and one of the Guardia Civil, took them out of the compartment and let in first one, then the other. As Isglesias went in he turned round suddenly and with one blow knocked the sergeant out. The southpaw was not really a good boxer, but he had a punch like the kick of a mule. Immediately, Isglesias jumped on the other Guardia while Demetrio took the pistols and guns of both and returned to the compartment, where the other three jumped on the remaining Guardia and disarmed him. All had so far gone according to plan. But when they took the keys, they did not seem to fit. While Barrios was struggling with the key, the other passengers in the carriage began to notice what was going on. But nobody so far had raised the alarm and there were no military about. If they had kept their heads, they could have dealt with the matter very simply. As any Resistance fighter could have told them, they needed to get the public on their side. But they could not distinguish between society and the State. They had only to shepherd the passengers and railway guards politely into one compartment, holding the guns at them but explaining: ‘We wish no harm to anyone, ladies and gentlemen. We are just prisoners trying to escape. Please take your seats here and enjoy your journey and we will go at the first opportunity. If, however, you wish to die for Franco, now is your opportunity.’ They could then have carried on trying the keys calmly, while the train rushed along at 60 m.p.h. But they did nothing to allay the fears of the public. There were screams from the women and the prisoners were carried away in the general excitement. They all jumped as soon as the handcuffs were off, except Barrios who was still struggling with his chains. All who jumped were injured, and it was a miracle they were not killed. Isglesias got up and ran across country but was caught. The only one who got away completely was Demetrio. The others lay there moaning. The Guardia Civil came out and hauled them off to the nearest prison where they could be battered unmolested. They all nearly died under the treatment. Demetrio, who got clean away, slipped off to the mountains where he was accustomed to living off the land. He still had the sergeant's machine-gun with him but a broken arm as well, caused by jumping off the train. He went back to his hermit life, and the countryside was scoured for him for several days. Finally tracker dogs surrounded the cave where he was living. He knew he was cornered and threw out his machine-gun, coming out with his hands up. Had he been a political prisoner that would have been the point where he would have been shot ‘trying to escape’. All subsequently received a sentence of twenty years and a day for this attempt. Barrios faced the rest of his life in prison; however, in 1961, in the belief that the guerrilla movement was finished and the land was ‘tranquil’, an amnesty was granted, which made twenty years the maximum sentence one could serve. This ultimately was what Barrios served. It was a consolation to me to know that I had, according to this decree, served two-thirds of my sentence. I cursed myself to think that I had settled down into the greyness of imprisonment for what might be all my life. I had to wear dark glasses now because I could not bear the sunlight any longer. Still, it was pleasant to have my mother visit me. It was an idyll late in life for us both. She had sacrificed so much to be near me. She felt it her duty to travel from prison to prison, and she was so kind and affectionate and so

lacking in reproach that I loved her more than ever. All over the country mothers warned their sons and daughters, ‘Be careful, be prudent, remember your poor father. . . for God's sake don’t mix in what does not concern you’, or shook their heads at their menfolk, ‘It was to have been a better life, so you promised, and you see what your activity has brought us to.’ This was never the case with my mother. Not only was she such a comfort to me, she made, even the staff respect her. The schoolmaster once rushed into the room where I was meeting her. He had an impressive-looking letter from America, which had been sent to the director. He had sent it to the official instructor, whose allowances included one for his non-existent knowledge of foreign languages. He took it to me to translate. It was enquiring after the fate of some Jehovah’s Witnesses, of whom there are many in prison. Though the Protestant sects are no longer actively persecuted, the cults that object to military service suffer severe repression. Conscientious objectors go back to prison time and again, with no allowance for subsequent medical disability or age. Even the amnesty of 1961 disregarded them, since the cat-and-mouse treatment was applied by which each refusal to salute the flag and enlist is punished by two or three years’ imprisonment; the prisoner comes out to be brought again before the flag to salute and enlist. A fresh crime is then committed, and so it goes on. The Witnesses, whatever the quality of their theology, have a high morality in prison, and their lot would be greatly improved if their American coreligionists acted on their behalf more vigorously. The very arrival of a letter from America sent the schoolmaster into a flurry of excitement. He found me talking with a visitor, whom he would normally have interrupted brusquely. But my mother conveyed such kindness and sympathy that he overcame his natural rudeness and spoke to her with the respect she received everywhere. Afterwards she told me how courteous she found him. The fact that he was a notorious Falangist, who in the days of victory had been the head of a squad that had shot dozens in cold blood during the opening weeks of peace, was completely beyond her. Guiltless herself of vindictiveness, she could see none in others. She was then in her eighties, living quietly in the town. The climate was pleasant and suited her; each afternoon she sat on a deckchair in the Esplanade, reading the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia, marking the bits that told of liberalising decrees for the prisoners, dreaming of my coming out of prison. Almost everyone in the town knew her and liked her. The market women knew her well. They would look after her retreating figure pityingly. ‘Such a country! There goes a real saint, and her son grows grey in prison among thieves and murderers!’ She came to me once, smiling, to tell me she was having a regular courtship with an old gentleman who was retired, and sat on a deckchair near hers by the harbour. ‘Imagine, he wants to marry me. At my age! ’ ‘Well,’ I urged her, ‘why not? For companionship.’ ‘Go on with you,’ she said. ‘When you come out of prison it will be time for me to think of marriage, and so I told him.’ But the gentleman was of some consequence locally and had at one time been a prominent lawyer, and could not believe I would stay in prison much longer.

‘I understand law,’ he told her. ‘He is entitled to conditional liberty. I will make a petition. You are like your son, you do not understand that we have justice in Spain.’ 'Under the law of 1870, a prisoner was entitled to conditional liberty when he had done three quarters of his sentence. The constitution was perfectly plain on the subject, and it was only necessary to find that the person concerned was likely to be of good character. It had in any case been applied by the Franco régime for over twenty years when it was administratively convenient in view of the long sentences and overcrowded jails. The condition as to good character clearly meant what it said, but the Minister of Justice now insisted that it could not apply to the political prisoners, who were not going to change their ‘character’. The old lawyer was unable to comprehend how the Ministry could act in such a way as to disregard clear constitutional law. He, therefore, got up a petition signed by many local people who knew my mother and wished to make her happy. He succeeded in convincing her it would work; he believed it himself. ‘Don’t despair, Miguel,’ she told me. ‘We will walk together in the streets again. There is more mercy in this world than we may hope for.’ The old lawyer came to her one day, proudly. ‘Now you will see! The Minister will have to eat his words! The petition has gone to the Caudillo himself! ’ The answer came back: Petition refused. My mother was so upset she fell ill. She contracted pleurisy and I was in despair as to where to raise money for the treatment, when I had a double stroke of luck. I had taken part in a football pool with some prisoners, and won 17,000 pesetas. And an old friend in Montevideo, having heard from my mother I would be out in a few months, sent me 10,000 pesetas to begin life again. With these sums I could pay the doctor’s bills, and it was some comfort to me to know that I was able to provide for her despite having been in prison so long. She recovered, and resumed her visits, always graceful, dignified, compassionate to all, completely indomitable. 84

11 — Another Generation When does a lie begin? A lie … has no beginning. A lie Runs downwards like a rootlet, branching an infinite number of times. But if you trace the rootlets down, you never find a moment of inspiration and vision, only overwhelming desperation and despair. A lie always begins with denial. Something has happened — yet you do not want to admit that it has. This is how a lie begins. Steve Sem-sandberg The Emperor of Lies 1962 In the ten years since I had been sentenced, there were great changes outside which, slowly, came to alter conditions in prison. Only one thing remained unchanged: the nature of the State and of the régime. The refugees from persecution had ceased to flee over the Pyrenees. But now whole villages uprooted and went to find employment, leaving ghost towns behind them. The workers were bullied into silence, but they could always pack a bag and go; and opposition to the régime, once confined to the revolutionaries, now became general. The middle classes became articulate, the students questioned established values, the Church dreaded that it might have backed the wrong horse and began to hedge its bets. It was some years since the jails had been packed like sardines with the prisoners-of-war. Their numbers had begun to thin down, but now, all shades of opinion, all the spectrum of society from nobility to vagrants, came in as political prisoners. After the death of the last Sabaté, it seemed to us in jail that our movement outside had fallen apart. The fighting in the mountains was over. With no access to newspapers, information came from relatives or friends who were allowed as occasional visitors, and we had to rely on the ‘grapevine’. But we were allowed books, including foreign ones, and would have been hard up indeed for news had we known no better than the professional commentators on the scene, journalists, sociologists, political writers. For them our movement was dead, or had never existed. It took them years after the Civil War to ‘discover’ the CNT. It was some time longer before they got to hear of Francisco Sabaté, and one day they may know of his brother, or of Facerías. The years of lonely struggle overwhelmed El Quico. Spain was getting smaller, the roads were becoming busy, and the police had radiotelephones and fast cars. It was more difficult to be a guerrilla, it was no longer possible to support the revolutionary movement or the trade unions with such activity; the guerrilla still harassed the régime but, driven to maintain his own existence, he became little different from any bandit, so far as the public could see.

The government felt it could relax once the guerrilla movement had been ‘crushed’. Accordingly, the Ministry of Justice instituted the Tribunals of Public Order, before which such ‘offenders’ could be brought. These were composed of lawyers, men of sedentary habits, who were less inclined to give punitive sentences than courts martial. This ‘liberalisation’ of the law was complemented by an agreement the Spanish government made with the French. They each co-operated against each other’s terrorists. The Spanish police cracked down on the Right Wing that used Spain as a base; the French against the Left Wing that used France as a base. Franco turned on the neo-Fascists (OAS) from Algeria‘— France on the Spanish anarchists. But they still could not tranquilise Spain. The new Basque nationalist group, E.T.A.*, was increasingly militant in the Basque country. It had little in common with the old conservative Basque independence movement that had supported the Republic in the Civil War but was now moribund in exile. It claimed to fight on four fronts — industrial, military, political and cultural; and the persecution by the police united the whole Basque people. The same thing happened in Catalonia when regionalism became active there. Within prison, we became aware of the new activism, an international and not an exclusively Spanish trend, when Jorge Cunill Valls, a young man of 23, was arrested in Barcelona. He himself belonged to the new Resistance in Spain. When he was sentenced to death, a group of anarchists in Milan kidnapped the Vice-Consul in that city, Isu Elias, and held him as hostage. Cardinal Montini, Archbishop of Milan (and now Pope Paul VI) intervened to ask that Cunill’s sentence be commuted and that the Vice-Consul go free. This was eventually conceded. In many countries, attacks were made from 1962 onwards against Spanish institutions, tourist offices, banks and planes. Under the banner of the ‘First of May Group’ [it was actually Defensa Interior, the ‘First of May Group’, from which it evolved, didn’t officially come into existence until 1 May 1966, ed], concerted attacks were made against planes in London, Paris and Frankfurt. A determined effort was made by Interpol to drive the terrorists associated with the First of May Group out of France and Belgium. It succeeded beyond the wildest hopes of those concerned — but it was a Pyrrhic victory for them, for it drove the First of May Group back into Spain, which was the last thing the Spanish government wanted. It hoped to see them come over the border in chains, but not in a position to hit at government buildings. As a result of the First of May Group, a thrill went round the libertarian prisoners. International anarchism, small as it was, was hitting back at Fascism on their behalf. Though, once more, political cases were referred to courts martial rather than the Tribunals of Public Safety, the campaign had received an impetus that nobody was able to quell. The First of May Group is not a tiny, well-organised conspiracy. How could one ask hard-headed detectives to work on the poetic assumption that it was something that came out of conquest and frustration and repression, and asked only something as intangible as freedom? They could not believe that we did not accept the idea of leadership. On 30 June 1962 there was an attack on the Residency of a Papal dignitary, Monterolas, on the Madrid headquarters of the Falange, and on a financial institute of the Opus Dei. Again there was an attack on a University College, also run by the Opus Dei, and on the Barcelona headquarters of the Falange. An attempt was also made on Franco’s life in Valencia. A bomb was placed 85

on the balcony where he was to speak, but its mechanism was delayed and it went off a month later. He had a charmed life where bombs were concerned. There were many attacks on his life, but always something went wrong. Another attempt was made on 19 August. Only the week before the First of May Group had set off a bomb in the basilisk of the Valley of the Fallen, the Victory cemetery of the Civil War, where the Caudillo hopes one day to lie in peace. On this occasion a bomb consisting of 20 kilos of plastique was set at the entrance to his summer palace, near San Sebastian, subject to electronic control. Some crisis put off his arrival for two or three days and the batteries could not last so long. All these people were amateurs; their trade was not in explosives, nor had the younger ones any experience of guerrilla action. The efficiency of government agents could not be expected of them. The most downtrodden in Spain were the prisoners, all of them. From now on we libertarians felt a real pride in being still capable of inspiring the Resistance. The government had always had an ambivalent attitude towards political prisoners. It wanted to impress upon the country that political offences would be punished severely. But it wanted to tell the world that everyone loved the régime, and only those whose crimes merited it were in prison. For years it had left people like myself part of the criminal convicted population, distinguished by a political record only by the staff to suit their convenience. To some it meant ‘potential troublemaker’; to others it meant a closer watch on visitors; to a few it suggested potentialities by which the man could be used to help other prisoners. Now, and especially because of the suggestion made that the First of May Group was ‘directed’ from a central intelligence inside jail, and this was why its members were never caught, it was decided to segregate the political prisoners. All of them were to be taken to Soria. At one time, to do so would have taken a town three times the size of Soria and left not a square inch free. Now they could all be housed in the one jail. We make progress all the time. 88

* ETA — Euzkadi ta Askatasuna — Euzkadi (the Basque country) and Freedom.

12 — The Scot in Carabanchel We were cut with a sharp instrument. Its blade bit painfully into our bodies, yet, in our souls, it found fields to till… Captain Witold Pilecki 1965-66 The governors of the prison were reluctant to let me go. They complained to the Director General that they would be losing someone necessary to the work of the prison. Two voices especially pleaded to keep me. The schoolmaster was afraid of losing his languages allowance, as he had nobody else available for translations. The travel goods contractor had told the administrator that if I went, he might have to close down. My opinion was not asked, but if it had been, I would not have known what to answer. I wanted to stay in Alicante and not expose my mother to the necessity to move again. On the other hand, I was restless, I wanted to get away. But the die was cast. I received one day the curt instruction, ‘Pack your bags! Orders from Madrid, you’re to be moved to Soria.’ They would not even allow me time to send word to my mother to come and say goodbye. I went by car, something previously unheard of. But train journeys with compartments full of handcuffed prisoners were coming to be considered a little depressing for the fastidious tastes of tourists. I went from Alicante to Albacete, and from there the trains were less crowded with tourists so we went by rail, on to Alcázar San Juan, where a new prison — long under construction but unfinished for years — replaced the old coaching inn. I did not stay long there. I was taken by train to Madrid and then transferred to a lorry at the railway station, to be taken to Carabanchel. I felt ill. It had been an unpleasant journey throughout. The weather was burning hot, and the back of the car, where the prisoners lay manacled hand and foot, had contained no seats. We had lain there, shaken by the bumping of the car. I was depressed too at parting from my mother without a word. By the time I was checked in at Carabanchel and got to my cell, I was vomiting violently. When the doors were open, the orderly told me I should report sick. I shrugged my shoulders. When doctors troubled to come to the infirmary, their ministrations were cursory. I had given them up as useless. I told him so. ‘Go, go,’ he said. ‘The orderly there is one of “your people”. It’s Stuart Christie.’ The prison grapevines had buzzed with the exploits of this young Scotsman, only eighteen years old when he had come to Spain the year before. If Cesáreo was right and the prisons were the ‘real Cortes’ at last the British people had an ambassador worthy of them. Stuart Christie was a young man from Blantyre, who, in a daredevil entry into Spain, crossed the border carrying plastique in his knapsack. He was involved in a plot to blow up General Franco at the football stadium. He thought he could brazen out the situation by being as conspicuous as possible, and entered the country wearing a kilt from his native Scotland.

Unfortunately, the mentality of the border police was at a less sophisticated level, and seeing a longhaired and kilted foreigner, they immediately became suspicious. Checking with the international police [Interpol], they found police at an anti-Franco demonstration in London had photographed him. The national police was alerted to follow him. Christie was to meet a comrade named Fernando Carballo Blanco, now serving thirty years in Burgos jail for his part in the affair, and arrange to deliver the explosive. He was to send him a telegram saying where they should meet — in a bar in the middle of Madrid [Miguel is confused here, Christie’s arrest actually took place at the offices of American Express in Madrid where he had gone to collect final instructions from Paris. Details can be found in Christie’s memoir Granny Made Me An Anarchist, ed.]. While he was writing the telegram, he was arrested. The police took him to the bar. When Carballo came in, he saw Christie was handcuffed. But it was too late. They were taken before a court martial and sentenced, Christie to twenty years. The incident placed the Spanish government in considerable embarrassment. There was nothing novel in French and Italian libertarians coming in to fight against tyranny, and for a century such people had been treated no differently from anyone else. A Briton, however, was different. It is no exaggeration to say that the case caused more mutual embarrassment to the two Foreign Offices concerned than any other Briton in Spain had done since George Borrow was jailed at the time of the first Carlist War for distributing Bibles. At his court martial, Stuart not unnaturally pleaded his innocence, since the prosecution was calling for death by strangulation as the only fit punishment for this insolent foreigner who had dared to interfere with the tranquillity of peaceful Spain. Such a sentence would have sent every hotelier and travel agent in the country into as much despair as clemency would have done into the hearts of the Falange. Certainly English public opinion was not prepared to accept that this pleasantly spoken, highly intelligent young man could possibly have had designs on the head of a friendly state. It appeared much more likely to the English that some wicked foreigners had framed a peaceful young idealist who had no more than a few harmless propaganda leaflets in his knapsack. The liberals who signed petitions for Christie’s release were upset when they eventually found that, instead of having been an innocent tool or fool, he was in fact guilty of the crime of resisting tyranny. Worse, he had told a lie saying he was innocent, merely in order to save his life. I was very interested to meet this young man who had come forward in our cause and given hope to the libertarian prisoners that they were not forgotten. Although he had a twenty years’ sentence in front of him and he was a young man who liked life and action and pretty women, he was always bright and cheerful and kept up lively discussions with his comrades. For all his jokes he was indispensable in the infirmary, though his sole medical knowledge previously had been as an apprentice dental mechanic. He received parcels from abroad, as his case had attracted worldwide attention, and shared his parcels with the ‘commune’ of libertarian prisoners in Carabanchel. His was the only source of aspirins, with which he supplied the entire prison and without which a medical orderly could not have given anything to a sick man. When later he was released, he understood the need for parcels to be kept up to prisoners and began an organisation for helping 90

the libertarian prisoners in Spain [Anarchist Black Cross]. He even sat, while in jail, for his English examinations and gained several ‘A’ levels, one of them naturally in the Spanish language, which he had not understood before he came to Spain. Although compulsory church parades were beginning to be waived in prison for most adults, it was still absolutely rigid for those under twentyone. The priest at Carabanchel was particularly adamant on it, and told everyone he would not permit any deviation, ‘even for that Scottish bombthrower’. But the director stepped in firmly. He had a clerical friend who, on the basis of a few months in Belfast on his way to Dublin, considered himself an expert on Anglo-Saxondom. He had interviewed Christie and questioned him as to his family's religion. When he learned of their ‘Orange’ background he was aghast at the consequences of compelling such a person to attend Roman Catholic services. ‘You will start a war with England!’ he said firmly. So they allowed the heretic to remain an atheist without the opportunity of grace. He was still medical orderly during my stay and put me on the sick list so that we had the advantage of several days’ conversation before I was on my way to Zaragoza. I discovered I did not speak English as fluently as I had thought. I had spoken French and Italian when I entered prison and throughout my years in jail I had been studying English. Now I found they pronounced their language in a completely strange way. I could read it, but conversation was beyond me. I left with an invitation to come to London ‘any time it’s convenient to you . . . and the Director General.’ In Zaragoza I waited for some days, and was joined by three more from Valencia. They were Communists who had taken part in propaganda activities and were going to the new jail for politicals. One had had a busy shoe-shop in Valencia. He had done no more than print a few leaflets, not terribly subversive, protesting‘ against American bases. He had got five years’ imprisonment. Soon we were on our way to Soria, a town freezing cold in winter, which disputes with Burgos and Avila the privilege of being the coldest in Spain. The icy winds and bleak surroundings make it a desolate spot standing three thousand feet above sea level. The jail was recently built, in a town that boasted one of the lowest rates for delinquency in the country and could not support a prison on its own. All this made it the obvious choice for the new policy of collecting the political prisoners together. The administration could never quite make up its mind whether to deny that there was such a thing as a political prisoner at all, or to separate them from the rest of the prison population. Such a distinction conferred no privileges; it singled one out for harsher treatment. Yet the government did not like to admit that it jailed its opponents. ‘You cannot argue with these people!’ declared the General Inspector of Prisons. ‘They are not to be reasoned with. They are not in jail to be reformed. They are there to be crushed! ’ With so promising a lead from above, it was not to be wondered at that the warders at Soria were expecting the scum of the earth when the political prisoners came along. The staff was a little surprised, and resentful, to find reasonable people such as might have been found in any respectable workingclass district. For the moment, we were relieved to find that we were to be subjected to quarantine for three days only.

The local prisoners at this time numbered only between five and ten, but when the fair came round, the police would soon make up the numbers of the locals with a sprinkling of arrests, especially quinquis, who were fair game. The political prisoners, however, came in from all parts of Spain, like delegates to a great national congress that represented almost all shades of the political spectrum but one. As they all had a keen knowledge of their rights, it put the staff continually on the defensive. Among those who came to Soria from Carabanchel was Luís Edo. He had been a great fighter in the new wave of individual resistance. With several others Edo had been charged with planning to kidnap an important American military attaché and hold him as ransom for the release of our prisoners. As he had been sentenced during the period when the Tribunals of Public Order were operating, he was given what was considered a light sentence of nine years. Inside prison his constant demands for what was guaranteed constitutional law to the prisoners led to two administrators giving up their jobs with nervous breakdowns . . . and these were solid, profitable jobs not lightly relinquished. With him on the kidnap charge had been several comrades, including an intelligent and attractive young woman, Alicia Mur. She was now in a women’s prison along with the Duchess of Medina Sidonia, who had fallen foul of the regime when she had led a protest march to Madrid against the fact that an American plane had accidentally lost atomic bombs off the coast near Palomares, in Almería, where her traditional estates were. The villagers protested against the dangers of nuclear fall-out on their fishing grounds and organised a march on Madrid in which the condesa participated. In England, she might have been charged with obstructing the traffic. In Spain, anyone else would have received ten to twenty years’ imprisonment. But as she was heiress to one of the greatest names in aristocratic Spain, she received only a year’s imprisonment. The Duchess and the anarchist became friends in jail. Edo told me that he had left Christie behind in Carabanchel. He had not been included in the transfer of political prisoners, and was planning an escape. We were worried that the government might solve itself of the constant embarrassment he was causing by an application of the ley de fuga. Before Edo left Carabanchel he had led a hunger strike in protest against the director’s bugging the interview room where prisoners met their relatives. It offended prisoners and their families when they found that microphones were spying on them. The incident came to the notice of the press and was the first of a series of stories in the Spanish and international Press. The presence of Christie in a Spanish jail had made the prison worthy of attention by journalists. Christie established a way of smuggling out letters, which served us in good stead. Meanwhile, in Soria, many Communists were arriving, most of them from the ‘workers’ commissions’. We also received many Jehovah’s Witnesses. They were later transferred to the fortress of Santa Catalina, in Cadiz, as military prisoners. The Basques, too, began to arrive. The militants of E.T.A. were a vastly different type of nationalist from the old Basque Separatist movement, now moribund in exile. They were untiring revolutionaries, who used much the same sort of action as had been associated with our movement. The celebration of the Mass in the precincts where men were tortured and executed was taken for granted by old prisoners like myself and those who had no faith, but it seemed the most horrible blasphemy of their beliefs to the 92

young Basque Catholics. To the surprise of the chaplains, they would not attend Mass in the jails. The clergy was taken aback. It did not expect the same rebellion from the Catholic Basques as it did from the anti-clerical anarchists. They wrote to the parents, or to the local priest to ask him to visit the parents, asking if they knew that their son was not taking communion. Even the tears and fears of the mothers did not induce the young Basques to take part in what they felt was an alien worship and not the Catholicism they knew. Later, Basque priests came into jail because of their involvement in the independence movement. It was necessary to open a special prison for priests, at Zamora. Otherwise the Basques would have been taking communion and having their confessions heard by their own priests. Together with the Basques, there came the students. The student protest began earlier in Spain than elsewhere. For the first time the régime found itself in the dilemma of what to do with the rebellious sons and daughters of well-to-do families, the heads of which had perhaps been old supporters of the régime. Not all of them were disposed to allow their children, however much they disliked their views, to be beaten up and bullied and treated like the scum of the earth. Originally the police tried putting the students from Madrid University, when they protested against the examination system, into prison for a month or two and then letting them go, without charges being preferred. This illegal procedure, however, only made matters worse from the authorities’ point of view, since it introduced the students to the very facts about the régime and its opponents that years of Falangist-controlled education had tried to hide. The students began to support a common cause with young workers. They ceased to be solely concerned with matters of the campus and became critical and contemptuous of the regime itself. They integrated into the opposition to Franco, and the sentences against them became more severe. In Soria, we were not allowed to work. Cleaning was the only activity permitted. The political prisoners were there to be crushed, though now many of them were entitled to the benefits of conditional liberty, as I was. The prisoner had a right to be released if he showed that he intended to lead an honest life. I began to smuggle out letters in the way Christie had initiated, until one day the director of Soria Prison sent for me in a rage. I had had letters and communications published in influential foreign papers, which were also sold in Spain. He would punish me, he said. I would never get out of prison alive. I denied authorship. . ‘Who else could know so much?’ he asked. I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Who else but Christie?’ I said. It was safe to blame him, for after three years he had finally been released. ‘Christie is in London, he writes whatever he pleases and if he chooses to do so, he uses my name. What can I do? Unfortunately God has punished the English for their heresies, and they do not have the benefits of our past glorious thirty years. We cannot ask the Lord Mayor of London to order out the army and imprison Mr Christie in the Tower for writing as he thinks, whether he uses my name or the Queen’s.’ Christie’s release had been presented as a special act of clemency following an appeal by Stuart’s mother—as if she, and many other thousands of mothers, including my own, had never thought of making such appeals before. The Spanish Press glamorised the action to show Franco in a rare generous mood, and one paper went so far as to announce lyrically that 97

England had sent us a terrorist and we had, thanks to our reforming prison administration, returned her a good citizen. Needless to say, Stuart, on release, showed not the slightest intention of giving up the struggle for freedom and that all the Spanish government had sent back to England was a relentless enemy. Someone brought into the prison a newspaper picture of Stuart being greeted at Madrid by his mother. It made me very happy. I thought of my own mother who had waited patiently for so long. She had now sold up in Alicante, and wanted to make the long, wearisome journey to Soria. But I wrote to my sister on no account to let her do this. It would have been cruel to let her go from the pleasant Mediterranean climate of Alicante, with the cooling breezes of the Esplanade, to bitter Soria. So she went back to Valencia instead, hoping I would be transferred to San Miguel de los Reyes. She put in a petition to this effect, but it was not granted. My nephew took her to his home in Barcelona — he looked on her as his own mother — and she went to stay in Castellon, hoping it would be easier to visit me from there. But in Castellon she was admitted suddenly to a nursing home. She had a cerebral haemorrhage and was paralysed down one side. My sister hastily made arrangements for the bills to be paid, and relatives to be informed. But she knew my mother's main wish: it was to see me. At ninety years old, she still had the ambition to see me freed. Under the law of 1961 I had less than a year to serve. But under the law of conditional liberty I should have been freed long since. The priest at the nursing home greatly admired my mother; he wrote to the Director General of Prisons on her behalf, and when he could not get my release sanctioned, wrote to the priest at Soria to do what he could to see that I at least got to see my mother before she died, as a personal favour to himself, for this was her one remaining hope in life. The chaplain at Soria was a man greatly troubled at heart since the Basques had refused to take communion from him. It struck at his conscience after so many years of service to the State and he wondered if he had failed them. He continued to do his work conscientiously — in censoring letters, for instance — but privately he wondered if it were right that the Church should be solely with the rich and powerful. He told me frankly that the director had said to him. ‘Garcia is the greatest villain in prison. If there is any trouble, he is behind it.’ But now, having spoken to me, he did not believe it. He did not try to force the Basques to confession or communion; he tried by acts of kindness not only to them, but also to all the prisoners, to prove he was a Christian. When my case came before the junta, the director slammed his fist on the desk and said that never would he allow García to go round the country ‘on social visits’. It was inviting him to escape. ‘He has the worst record in the prison. Think of his crimes!’ The priest, to the surprise of the director, who expected acquiescence to anything and everything he proposed, said, ‘He has paid for his crimes.’ ‘It is unthinkable, preposterous,’ said the director. The priest rose to go. ‘Father,’ he said. ‘You must understand why it is an absurd idea . . .’ The priest cut him short. ‘I am leaving to prevent you from insulting your priest by explaining how something he has proposed is unthinkable, preposterous and absurd,’ he said. The director was terrified he would go to the Bishop and complain that the cloth had been insulted. He apologised, and granted the request for leave.

But meanwhile I had a letter from my nephew saying that my mother was sinking fast. I must come quickly or it would be too late. I thought despairingly that I could never make it. Going by the normal, wearisome route, by train from one prison to another, a different Guardia Civil escort at each province, lodging at each stop in a different jail and waiting for the next escort, I would never be in time. ‘You must go by taxi,’ said Edo, who was a mine of information on everything. ‘The junta must give permission, but you have the priest on your side to start with, and the administrator will back him up because he, gets a commission on the taxi. It will take you straight there, with the minimum of stops, because they charge by the mile. It will cost 3,500 pesetas.’ I did not have it, but Edo overruled the objection. ‘The libertarian prisoners have 5,000 altogether. Take 4,000. When you have it, you will give it back.’ The other political prisoners also wanted to contribute, as we did in similar circumstances. I am not sure why we did not accept, as it was meant as a kindly gesture. The Communists were hurt that we did not do so, and thought we suspected their motives, though on this occasion there was no motive behind their actions. Still, habit and caution die-hard and we declined. I went off, handcuffed to two Guardia Civil, in the back of a taxi. Edo had advised me to tip liberally to ensure a swift journey. From the Guardia Civil I asked only one favour, to let the handcuffs be taken off me before I went to see my mother. They were a bit reluctant to do this, but were a trifle abashed when the hospital priest repeated the request. So one of them went in first to see if everything was in order, and there was no way of escaping. Then they let me go in to see my mother, without handcuffs. She was already in a coma and sinking fast, completely paralysed. But as soon as she heard my voice, she sat up and cried, ‘Miguel, Miguel! ’ ‘A miracle! A miracle!’ cried the attendant nuns ecstatically, clapping their hands. My mother sat up and pressed my hand. We both wept. I did not think, at my age, I could cry again, but I did. She looked beautiful, near to death, with a skin like a young girl's. For over an hour I sat with her. Then the Guardia Civil became restive to go, but the priest went and spoke with them, questioning them about their families and their religious duties, and they were obliged to stay. When finally I went, the Guardia Civil had arranged to lodge me for the night in the prison of Castellón. I returned at seven in the morning, accompanied as before, and stayed another hour. When I left, her last words were, ‘I shall not see you again . . .’ On the journey back, the Guardia Civil, softened by the discussion with the priest, were more human. When we stopped at a restaurant, they insisted I come in for a drink. ‘We will take the cuffs off,’ they said. ‘Do as you wish . . .’ I went in with them and the taxi driver. I could not eat, but had a double cognac. They all ate and drank heartily. They paid the bill out of my money as we left. A day or so after my return, the hospital priest wrote to say my mother had died. She had not spoken since I left, but suddenly came out of her coma to say, ‘Miguel . . . come out of prison,’ and had then died. ‘Have courage, my son, she was a saint,’ he wrote. He was a good man, youngish, an idealist. I wrote back thanking him, but the Mother Superior of the hospital replied, to say he had died suddenly of a heart attack. ‘He was

sure your mother had reached Heaven,’ she said. ‘Now God has called him too.’ For months afterwards I could not speak of my mother without tears. Only a day after my return, one of my comrades asked me brusquely to write a résumé of the penitential system of Spain and send it abroad. I was taken aback by his tactlessness. Now I realize it was an attempt to divert my mind. I was going crazy with grief. I wrote the survey in my ‘office’. It was a hole I had dug in the infirmary, while I was sick. It was the last tunnel I ever tried to build. When I dug under the floorboards, I found a small cavity already there, evidently dug by some other prisoner, who found it led nowhere. I put a lot of work into trying to enlarge it, and meanwhile used it as an ‘office’. There I had my invisible ink set, and sent my letters to a correspondent who knew where to re-address them. Christie in London, and friends in Brussels, knew how to make good use of this material. Though the director had me constantly raided, believing I was responsible for sending the letters out, he never found out. Now he may have the satisfaction of knowing he was right all the time. If he likes to look in the infirmary he will find my ‘office’. The penalty? One year, six years, fifteen? He must be patient. For the moment it is unenforceable.

13 — Twenty Years After Las cárceles se arrastran por la humedad del mundo Van por lo tenebroso vía de los juzgados, Buscan a un hombre, buscan a un pueblo, lo persiguen, Lo absorven, se lo tragan. Miguel Hernandez, El hombre acecha, 193 “The task to be accomplished is not the conservation of the past, but the redemption of the hopes of the past.” Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectics of Enlightement (p. xv) The prisoners in Soria had contacts throughout the jails. Now, meeting together, they could compare notes. As a protest, the organised, for Christmas 1968, a series of hunger strike throughout Spain. Demands were made that the law relating to conditional liberty, guaranteed since 1870, be observed. Now they received sympathy everywhere. The communication from inside prison to outside was now wide-open thanks to the new method of smuggling letters. When the hunger strike was over, it was, of course, punished with confinements and added sentences. But the publicity achieved made it worthwhile. No sooner were those concerned out of solitary confinement than another petition was drawn up. This time we had heard that there was an international lawyers’ conference in Rome. We prepared a lengthy statement explaining the illegal actions of the Ministry of Justice. The Spanish delegates to the conference were gravely embarrassed. Franco’s desperate attempts to get the country into the international community were once more frustrated. ‘We are being treated like lepers,’ complained the Falangists. A judge came to examine us for the offence of sending the petition, which had been signed by every single one of the political prisoners in Soria. Once again I made the familiar excuse and blamed Christie. They preferred to take the view it was a ‘forgery’ and therefore accepted this excuse, which was transparently thin in view of the fact that the document had been signed with the familiar signatures of each prisoner. However, it suited us not to be punished. The damage to the prestige of the regime was done. The Director General of Prisons decided, therefore, it was a mistake to have concentrated the political prisoners in one place where they could ‘conspire’ together. He therefore once more repeated the well-worn dictum that there were no political prisoners in Spain, and decided to abandon the anomaly of having a separate prison for them. Instead they would be dispersed, and the more recalcitrant of them sent to Segovia, an old castle, picturesque to the passerby, but utterly unsuitable for living in. It had no sanitation and little water. It had been scheduled for demolition and only preserved when some enthusiast demanded its retention as a historical curiosity. Now it was to earn its keep again and was hastily improvised to take twenty-five of the ‘intractables’ from Soria. ‘

Segovia, I wrote to Stuart, was Spain’s Tower of London, and it was barbaric to continue to send prisoners there. But I was not one of those selected to go there, as I was in the infirmary. Of sixty-seven now remaining in Soria after dispersals, two were sick, Diego Capote and myself. Capote had been chosen to go to Soria. He was a 44-year-old Asturian miner, condemned for his trade union activity. He had phlebitis and a stomach ulcer, and needed regular injections without which he would die. When I heard he was to be moved, I told him that in no circumstances should be go. ‘They will kill you! ’ ‘How? What power have they in Segovia that they have not here?’ ‘Here the doctor knows you need injections, and you get them. If you go to a new prison you will go into quarantine and they won't come near you.’ He would not believe me. ‘I have my record, it goes with me. I spoke to the doctor here; he agreed to explain what injections I need. They have doctors and orderlies there, too.’ ‘Have I spent twenty years in jail that I don’t know what happens?’ I raged at him. ‘I know these doctors. By the time the prison doctor has torn himself away from his home and his pleasures and got to see you, and reads your medical report, you will be dead and cold.’ He thought I was exaggerating. ‘You are getting bitter. What can I do about it anyway?’ ‘Anything, everything. Complain, argue, malinger, chew soap, mutilate yourself. Nothing worse can happen to you than will happen when you get there and go to quarantine.’ But he went with the others. A special car came for them. I came back from the yard one day to find him gone. As I foresaw, when they got there, they went into quarantine, each to a separate cell. There were no lavatories, and just a bare board and blankets in each cell. Capote could be heard complaining from the next cell. ‘How can we be treated like this, when we are not on punishment?’ ‘Shut up!’ shouted the auxiliary. ‘I’m sick, I must have my injections.’ ‘Stop moaning!’ ‘Let me see the doctor. I have the right to go on the sick list.’ ‘The hell with you!’ Finally, after a day, the medical orderly came. He was a prisoner of low mentality, with no training. He tried to please the auxiliary. ‘The chap’s shamming. We can’t trouble the doctor, he wouldn't like it. He can wait his turn same as everyone else, the doctor knows what he's doing.’ That night, Capote became worse. The relief auxiliary became alarmed and had him taken to the local hospital, as nobody was available at the prison. When he got there, he died. When his wife came from Asturias and asked the hospital doctor why he had not given her husband his injections, he retorted coldly, ‘Madam, I do not give injections to corpses. I am not Christ to bring dead men back to life.’ Mrs Capote stood up in a local church and cried out in protest that her husband had been killed. A popular illustrated, Sábado Gráfico, printed the story for which it was officially reprimanded. The wives went to Madrid, to protest to the Directorate General. They had been forced to travel long distances to see their menfolk in Segovia, and they came to the capital to denounce the conditions under which they found them. An official who saw them remarked, ‘The political prisoners should be shot!’ 100

All the ensuing publicity made the director at Soria an unfailing enemy of the remaining political prisoners in his custody. He loathed me especially, for he still suspected me of sending out letters. I would not be released at the expiry of twenty years, he said. The law of 1961 was not for such as I. ‘You need to have been of good conduct during your past year. But when have you ever behaved yourself? Never able to obey, always due for punishment. In a young man I could understand it, but with your years! You must stay and purge your crimes! ’ Thanks to the organisation Christie had set up (The Anarchist Black Cross], I was now receiving parcels from abroad. This, too, angered the director, though at the time he could find no regulation against it. ‘You think because you have made foreign friends, you are too important to be kept in jail? We shall see!’ A young Englishman and his Spanish wife, with a neighbour of theirs, were regularly sending me parcels. I received them safely, but the letters inside were omitted. But one day the orderly was called away on some errand, and I hastily snatched the letter from the parcel before the officer saw it. I was therefore able to write to Ben, Libertad and Tony, in Essex. They invited me to come and spend a holiday with them in the English countryside when my time expired. Stuart, too, wrote and told me to come and stay as long as I wished. The police had harassed him since his return but he was sure I would be able to come in. But how could I start afresh, at my age, in a foreign country? He is at home, he has settled down to a working life, he is just of an age to be my grandson, I thought. And the director had talked me into believing I would never be released. All I hoped for was to be transferred to Segovia. We all agreed that bad as Segovia was, we should try to stay together. It was our only hope. To underline our claim we decided, in May (1969) to stay in the dining room. We wanted to kidnap the director while he was at Mass and hold him as hostage. But though the ETA and the Maoists supported us on this, the others did not agree. We wanted unity on the issue and therefore conceded that we would offer only passive resistance. It would not even be a hunger strike. That is one of the most serious of offences. Just remaining in the dining room might be regarded as an act of mutiny, but we would offer no resistance, no violence. We would demand that our grievances be put before a General Inspector of Prisons, or the Provincial Governor. Then, to my dismay, it was proposed at our final meeting on the subject that I and one other should not participate. I was due for release soon, they said, and the other, who was going blind as the result of his old war wounds, might receive a pardon rather than put the administration to the trouble of keeping him there. ‘They will never let me go,’ I said. I felt sick, and sure I would die in prison. I was cracking up since my mother’s death. But I wanted to go out fighting. ‘If Miguel takes part, then so will I,’ said the nearly blind man. ‘I am not going to be the only one not to protest; I would feel like a blackleg. With my record! ’ Everyone began protesting. ‘If you two insist on taking part, we shall call it off!’ they said. They convinced me that I must not participate for the sake of the blind man. So the two of us stayed in the infirmary while forty or so sat down in the dining room and refused to leave.

The warders were due to relieve each other, so there was a double shift as one relief had come and the retiring shift not yet gone. It made twenty in all, armed with truncheons, but they did not feel confident at coming in. It was hoped the director would have to call for the Guardia Civil, in which case he would have been obliged to make an official report, and the Press, now avid for stories from the prison, would have known. But he telephoned instead to the Inspector General in Madrid for advice. The Inspector General had instituted a trouble-shooting squad, composed of four dozen Falangists from the prison staffs of Burgos, Zaragoza, Pamplona and Madrid. They were bullet-headed toughs who moved like angry gorillas. As the prisoners were still sitting in the dining room late that day, the squad burst in. ‘So,’ they demanded arrogantly. ‘You won't leave the table, eh, you whoreson bastards! We’ll teach you manners!’ They grabbed each prisoner, sitting with arms folded, and frogmarched them down to the solitary cells. But there were so many they had to go two to a cell. Now they refused food. For weeks they remained there and as new prisoners came in the jail so they refused food and went down into solitary. All through, the director kept in touch with the Inspector General of Prisons. One of the officers told me that the Inspector had informed the director that ‘the criminal Garcia is the most dangerous man in the prison.’ ‘We have been too generous with him,’ said the director. ‘We let him sit in the infirmary; we let him go chasing over the country. I was always against it, I told the junta so, but the priest was against me.’ It worried them that nothing in the prison now escaped public attention. They could not understand how I got my letters through to Christie. ‘Has he studied witchcraft, or what, that he finds out what is going on in these four walls?’ the director demanded of me angrily. ‘Do you know that the Inspector General telephoned me to say that the warders were scoundrels and you bribed them to take out letters?’ The simple fact of invisible ink, so well known to readers of boys’ novels, escaped him completely. When finally the strike ended, my good friend David Urbano got 115 days, and the rest of them between 75 and 115 days. Some of them were transferred to Segovia as a punishment. It was precisely this transfer we had asked for. When they came out of the hunger strike they were in a terrible state, with their mouths white from lack of food. Some had to come into the infirmary. The doctor ordered two glasses of milk and eight biscuits a day, for extra nutrition, in order to save their lives, but hesitated before giving the prescription. ‘Have you money on your account?’ Where they had no money, others contributed. So the doctor could prescribe his milk and biscuits with a clear conscience. The others were let out in the yard separately. They could see me through the infirmary window. I had some chocolate from my friends in Essex, and put it on the windowsill. They were all starving still, and as they passed the window, they surreptitiously took the chocolate. This happened several times, until one of them came out so hungry that he made straight for the windowsill without concealment. A warder saw him, and I received a punishment of ten days. When they took me to the punishment cell, I fell on the floor. I did not answer the door. I was sick, I had just had a heart attack, and I felt a benumbing apathy. I was due to be considered for release by the junta, and

instead I was in the cell. Maybe it was true what the director said, I was incorrigible. To them, I hoped I always would be, I told myself. I lay there oblivious to anyone, until the doctor ordered me back in the infirmary. I do not even know now whether I was shamming or not. I could only hear what the warder said to me. ‘The director says this fault has confirmed his opinion. You don’t deserve your freedom.’ But later, the same warder told me wonderingly that at the junta the priest spoke up for me again. ‘That man is a saint, he speaks for you though he must know you are not a believer.’ The priest expounded the doctrine of forgiveness and mercy, to which the junta listened patiently, as men of the world will to a priest expounding what they believe in but will not act upon. The director finally overruled the priest, but the latter insisted he would raise the matter further. The director was almost at the end of his patience, when the order for my release came from Barcelona. It was nearly two days late, having come by post. The director snatched it angrily. Later in the day the priest came to the infirmary and was surprised to see me. ‘But you have been released, the director has the order, what are you doing here?’ It was my first intimation of my release. At ten at night an auxiliary came to wake me. I had gone to bed early, hoping to go in the morning. I was no longer a prisoner, he said, and I could go out into the night to find a lodging. I had five minutes to get out. ‘Can’t I say goodbye to my friends?’ ‘This is not a hotel; you have no right here now. Do you like it so much you want to stay?’ I went out, cashing my money, and made my way to a restaurant-bar called the Bar Palafox. Although I had told none of my comrades outside I was due for release, a friend who had been arrested the same day as me was due out on the same day. Friends in Madrid had met him, and they had written to me asking if I could let them know if I wanted anything, if I wanted to be met. I said no. I did not want to be obliged to anyone, I felt, and even more, I did not want the disappointment of knowing they were there and then not coming out. But coming out like this was a strange anti-climax. At the Palafox the manager, José, had been in jail for some minor offence, and been prison cook. We had become firm friends. He had transformed the cuisine when he had been there. His bar attracted the wives and relatives of the prisoners in Soria, who used to put up there at cheap prices when they visited their men. ‘Miguel!’ he cried as I came in. ‘I was expecting you this morning!’ * ‘Expecting me? How?’ ‘Your wife came last night, she’s waiting for you!’ ‘My wife?’ ‘She’s staying in one of the houses in the street that take in our guests. She has been to the jail and back twice. She'll be in for dinner at eleven.’ I could not imagine who it was. Then she came into the bar. Even then I did not believe it. It was Lina, my childhood sweetheart. It was like a dream, like many dreams I had in prison. She had been my girl friend when I was 15 years old, in Barcelona. There she was, as beautiful as ever at sixty-one. ‘Lina,’ I gulped. I could not say any more. She was a great admirer of my mother’s and called on her when she was in Valencia, and had come with her once or twice to visit me in prison. Had she written to me, I would have told her not to come. I did not think I could bear it. Over the years in prison I had become fixated with the desire for

a woman. Like most Spaniards of my generation, I felt revulsion for any form of sexual perversity, but now the overwhelming longing for a woman’s sex pervaded every dream. To kiss it, to bury myself in it. I looked at her with inexpressible desire. I could not talk properly. ‘Why did you come?’ ‘I thought you might need me,’ she smiled. She knew I was blocked with emotion. Now she was here, I felt such happiness as I had forgotten existed. ‘And Antonio?’ Her husband was a good friend of mine. He had sent me the file years ago. Lina had met him during a visit to me; he was ten years older than she was, and a widower, while she was on her own with three children. ‘Antonio can’t leave work. But he thought that after twenty years, it might be nice if I met you.’ We clung to each other with happiness. We had so much to talk about. José led us in triumph to his dinner. ‘There you are! Now you shall see what sort of cook I really am! No tin-plates either! ’ When we sat down he asked me if he should get another room in one of the neighbouring houses for me. ‘It doesn't matter,’ said Lina softly. Later I remembered to ask her how she could leave her children. She laughed merrily, as she had done when she was a girl in Barcelona. ‘Oh, Miguel, I don’t have to worry about looking after my children now. My daughter has babies of her own.’ We stayed there for some days, while I applied to the local Chief of Police for a passport. He said he could give me one to leave Spain but not to return. I told him there was no law by which he could refuse a passport to a citizen. If I had come out on conditional liberty I would have been on parole. As it was, I had finished my time. But Soria, though the capital of the province, had only 20,000 inhabitants. Reputation travelled faster than knowledge of the law. ‘I know you’ve been told I was the worst villain in prison,’ I said. ‘You sit in the casino in this one-horse town drinking with the director of the prison, you and the judge and the party boss together, probably the bishop too. You’re all friends and you take the director’s word. Very good, but even if I am the worst villain in the world I want a passport.’ The Chief of Police then telephoned Madrid. ‘They tell me to give García a passport to wherever he wants to go. If he wants to go to hell, he can have a visa there, too! ’ ‘I don't need a visa for hell,’ I said. ‘Only resident's documents.’ The Chief of Police smiled. He began to stamp my papers. ‘Do not go away in bitterness,’ he said. ‘We must all be united again. Don't be like the rest of them and continue to live in the Civil War; things are improving and one day you will find your place with us again.’ ‘We shall never find our place with you,’ I said. ‘The million you shot after you won the war stand between us. You are not united among yourselves, you only keep together for fear of the people.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Always the same! But we do not want any more violence,’ he said. ‘Good!’ I cried. ‘When do you resign?’ ‘I do my duty,’ he said. ‘I am a Christian, I act as God tells me.’ He seemed to be a member of the Opus Dei, that masonic-like Catholic body that is gaining control of many offices in Spain, in opposition to the Falange.

I fingered the passport he handed me. ‘I wish God would tell you that he created the world for all,’ I said. I took the night train for Madrid. There I parted from Lina, who returned to her family in Valencia. We wept as we parted. . . It had been odd to travel on a train without handcuffs. In Madrid I was lost. I had arranged to meet a lawyer on behalf of a number of prisoners, and to instruct him. While I was free I made a sentimental journey to my old battlefield, but thirty years had gone by and it did not seem the same. The city, however, was painful to see. This was the city those lads and I had defended, and here was the enemy strutting about in uniform. I seemed never to have seen so many Guardia Civil. I wanted to keep my promise to the prisoners to go out and tell the world what happened in Franco’s prisons. I had said I would go to France and Belgium and Italy and Germany and everywhere I would make Spain’s shame known. But I was old, I was ill, I was penniless. At sixty-two years of age I had to start life again. There were other, younger comrades taking up the struggle. In my pocket were four letters of invitation. Three were from England. One was from my friends in Essex, telling me to come to their cottage for a holiday. Another was from the Spanish refugee group in London who also invited me on a visit. Another was from Stuart who told me to come and stay as long as I liked: just as he had found friends when he was released, so would I. London was beckoning, but I hesitated. I had heard terrible stories about the food and the climate, but that was not the reason. I knew that if once I went to a town like that where I could write and speak as I chose, I would never be able to return to Spain safely while one stone remained upon another of the existing régime . . . Once I had spent a few months there I would not be silent. And how could I, at my age and with my health, uproot myself? I telephoned to Stuart, temporising. I might go to Ben’s’ cottage for a holiday, I said, but I could not stay in England. I needed expensive medical treatment. He pooh-poohed my objections cheerfully, and as for medical treatment, ‘here it is free anyway’. I had another letter, from my nephew. He had a good job with a foreign company in Barcelona. He would find me a light job, he said, and make me an allowance. I could live comfortably in Spain but . . . he made no conditions but he knew and I knew that if I took up his offer I would have to remain silent the rest of my life and even then there would be no –guarantee that I would remain at liberty forever. But I decided to see him. I went to Barcelona. In my hometown, once more. But a strange town to me. I tried to see old friends, old comrades in the struggle. Many were dead. Others, who had spent a lifetime of fighting and privations, were sick and weary. One old friend, paralysed and barely able to talk, made incomprehensible sounds when he saw me. There were many more, too, old and tired, who had given up the struggle under the bitter repression and the endless years of frustration. I was most affected by the death of Emilio, in whose house we used to hide munitions and firearms. Even his brothers did not know about this. He referred to himself jokingly as ‘the hardware merchant’. Even after the heaviest blows had fallen on our movement, we always knew we could get ‘hardware’ from Emilio.

Everything had changed. The repression had stupefied the people. The powerful anarcho-syndicalist movement we had built up over so many years seemed to have been eliminated. My old friend, paralysed and unable to say what he wished, I stood symbolically for the working-class movement. Everything seemed lost. I was mistaken to be so overwhelmingly pessimistic, the accumulation of twenty years of bitterness. The initiative in baiting the régime, pricking it with darts and causing it to rush round like an enraged bull, had passed to those who had suffered less, or not at all, from the Civil War and the years of repression that followed. It was the students, coming from comfortable middle-class backgrounds, who were now prepared to speak out, demonstrate, mount the attack, even if it would still have to be the workers who were to make the kill. I went into one bar where they knew me. They had taken I up collections for me now and again. When I came in, everyone was as terrified as if I had come from the dead. Some made excuses and shuffled out. The bartender was afraid to speak. I, had a drink, and left, to save everyone embarrassment. I went to a bar in the lower part of the city. It had been a workingman’s ‘local’, but now it was a fashionable clip joint if whose main clientele were prostitutes and ponces. Twenty years before I had known the proprietor well‘. Our friends used to meet there. Now they were scattered by the storm. I ordered a drink and sat at the bar in the vain expectation of meeting some old acquaintance. A lady beside me struck up a conversation. She was a tough, shrewd business operator, one who had hit the Argentine trail early in life and come back from the brothels of the New World with sufficient savings to start a bar and live prosperously. A dignified, proprietorial woman, she had kind eyes: she knew all the local history and had heard about me. ‘Now you should take it easy,’ she said. ‘There will be changes in Spain but they won't come about through revolution. Everyone wants to come here and spend their money. Believe me, I know. There is more money to be had in this town in the summer than on the game in Buenos Aires.’ As I chatted to her, there was a sudden quarrel in the bar between two men and a woman. There was a scream and we looked around. It had become a punch up. One of the men was bleeding badly from the mouth. Another customer pulled out a pistol. The señora walked over to them, calmly, firmly. The man with a pistol proved to be a plain-clothes policeman. Within a few minutes armed police were on the scene. She protested to them, as they demanded everybody’s documents. ‘This is a decent house,’ she was saying. Then they came to me. I had my papers, brand new, in order. I had done nothing to offend the authorities since receiving them. They scrutinised my papers eagerly. ‘Hey, look at this —he’s a con, done twenty years!’ I protested. ‘The twenty years are up. Here is my release paper.’ ‘Shut your mouth! Stop arguing and come along!’ They had lost interest in the quarrel. With that instinctive genius for picking upon the weakest that distinguishes our armed police, they had realised I offered the most promising target. I was hardly able to talk owing to a throat infection, my eyesight had got dim in the sunlight after the whitewashed walls, and there I was with a certificate to prove I had served twenty years.

I was shaking with rage. Was this the bread I had to eat in future, merely to be allowed to live in my native land? The woman intervened, confident, possessed. To her the police were only lackeys. She made good money, she paid for the right to be left alone, and she despised them accordingly. She had no doubts about her position. The police calmed down. One of them warned me that I would not be charged on this occasion, as I had apparently done no wrong, but I should watch my manners carefully. They were not too sure they wanted ex-convicts on their territory, but Madame had assured them I was going to try to be a good citizen. I knew at that moment I would never be able to resist provocation. Next time I would fight. Meantime better to leave Spain. The only time for return will be to a liberated Spain, or with gun in hand. I can still see the jailers of Spain counting, running up and down the ranks, always counting, anxious to know how many we are. Let the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s jailers count and see how many we have been who have suffered injustice. Let them count and see how many we are who intend to resist it. Let them count and tremble.

NOTES TO FRANCO’S PRISONER 1. ¿Whose is Barcelona? The Civil Guard was a rural paramilitary force founded in 1884 by Francisco Javier Girón y Ezpeleta, the second Duke of Ahumada as a repressive force against the peasant workers. Its mission was to protect the landowners against the awakening consciousness of the working class. It has been used by different governments to fight against organized labour, republicanism, and regional autonomy, and came to be seen as an instrument of state repression. The Civil Guard, demilitarized after the end of Franco dictatorship, has adapted to the new democratic Spain and is involved in antiterrorist operations, the coastguard service and environmental protection. Civil guards are armed and traditionally have had a distinctive uniform, including the tricornio, a black patent leather, and three-cornered hat. In an effort to change its image, the tricornio is now worn only on ceremonial occasions or in front of official buildings. (p. 13, paragraph 1, line 1-2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]) The Military Government of Barcelona and Province, and the Engineers' Park, was housed in an old building overlooking the Paseo Colón, Puerta de la Paz and Calle Ancha. The Primo de Rivera Dictatorship undertook the construction of a new building, in the same lot, which did not manage to finish. The Republic came and suppressed the military governments in Spain, instituting instead the Military Regional commands, which in that of Barcelona it was the headquarters of the Division IV, in the former building of Captaincy. The building destined for Military Government of Barcelona was then finished and during the Republic it stayed for military dependences. During the war it suffered some damages and once it was restored it became again the Military Government House with the address at Plaza de la Puerta de la Paz 31 1º. (p. 13-14, paragraph 4, line 1-2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]) The period of 1947-1949 was named the ‘Triennium of the terror’ for the massive repression carried out by the security forces of the dictatorship against the anarchist movement. As Eduardo Romanos points out, the CNT lost most of its cadres during this time. “Of the fifteen national committees created up to the year 1952, twelve were dismantled and almost the totality of its members arrested and condemned to long sentences and, in same case, to death penalty though this punishment was later commuted for twenty and thirty years prison term” (90). Regarding the libertarian guerrilla, things were not much better. According to Téllez Solá, “October 1949 was a terrible and tragic month for the urban anarchist guerrilla that operated in Cataluña. In a few days a great number of comrades, among them the most courageous and brave, lost their lives. Despite the fact that Francoist propaganda, as usual, branded the fighters killed as criminals, the bloody events that took place in Barcelona during October and the ensuing months of 1949 had extraordinary repercussions abroad” (Facerías, 249). Aside from Téllez Solá’s Facerías, another essential book on Barcelona’s urban libertarian guerrilla is Sabaté by the same author. (p. 14, paragraph 4, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]) Miguel García is referring here to the Brigada Regional de Investigación Social (BIS), a special police unit created to fight the political opposition 1

against Franco, The “Brigada Regional de Investigación Social”, popularly known as “Brigada Social”, had the headquarters in Vía Layetana, in the second floor where the Jefatura Superior de Policía de Barcelona ---reestablished by court order in October 1939— was housed it at the time. Essential works on Barcelona’s Brigada Social are the books by Antonio Batista, Tomasa Cuevas, Vicente Cazcarra, Miquel Núñez and, Ricard Vinyes; see also the articles by Manel Risques Corbella and Josep Maria Sòria; on the relationships of Franco’s Secret Services and Nazi Germany, J Alcala et all, in particular “Chapter II. Los Servicios Secretos en España”, and on English, and American secret services’ efforts to counteract Nazi influence in Spain see, among others, Burns’ book Papa Spy. [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]) La ley de fugas, from the 1920s onward, was a monster created by Severiano Martínez Anido (Ferrol, A Coruña 1862-Valladolid 1938), Director of Public Order and latter Barcelona’s Military Governor. It was an efficient and expeditious way of killing “lawfully” the militants and political leaders of the working unions. The way this extra judicial murder worked was simple. The political prisoners were release under the pretence that there was nothing against them; once in the street, they were gunned down while walking home. “In the report the police would write: Shot while attempting to escape” (Téllez Solá, Sabaté 26-27). According to Graham, during the 30s the “ley de fugas, inherited from the long-lived Restoration monarchy, was… operating on an industrial scale against those who had sought a voice and a vote” (The War 62). Buesa’s Recuerdos de un cenetista mentioned the killing of the anarchists Evelí Boal and Antonio Feliu (CNT treasure) by this scheme, and Graham’s 2012 book gives an extraordinary account on how Antonio and Saturnino Barayón, brothers in law of the Spanish novelist Ramon J. Senders, were murdered by this method. However, as it was the custom, their death certificates gave the cause of their passing “as a result of fire sustained from police weapon as the prisoner[s] fled, and during a period in which the state of war is in force” (Graham 180). See also Peirats’ Los anarquistas en la crisis (pp. 41-43 and 45-47). (p. 14, paragraph 4, line 8 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]) Most likely he is referring to Saturnino Culebras Sáiz, one of the Culebras’ brothers. Saturnino, also known as Primo, was born in Salmeron (Guadalajara, Castellón 1921). Despite his young aged, Saturnino waged war against fascism in the Spanish Civil War and after. Chauffeur and mechanic by trade, he was also a member of the anarchist militia at the Durruti’s Colum and fought at the Aragón and Ebro fronts. At the end of the war he enrolled at the “División Azul” which he deserted in Angouleme while on transit to the Russian front. On September 4 1949, he entered Spain with his libertarian guerrilla group Los Primos, also knows by the police as “Grupo de Bandoleros del MLA”, and was arrested. Saturnino was tried by a military court and sentenced to death. Saturnino’s ten-year younger brother, Gregorio Culebras Sáiz, gardener by trade, who had worked for the libertarian armed column Tierra y Libertad as stretcher-bearer in the fronts of Aragon and the Pyrenees, was also part and parcel of Los Primos. At the end of the Spanish hostilities Gregorio went into France where he was detained and deported to Dachau concentration camp. Once liberated, he settle down with his brother in Toulouse and participated actively in the libertarian movement. He crossed into Spain in 1949 and was arrested. In October 1949 he was sentenced to thirty-years prison sentence. Released in 1959, he passed away in 1980 (or 5

1981). Also in the group was Manuel Aced Ortell, nom de guerre “Joaquín Nicolás González”, also known by the alias El boxeador francés or merely El francés, because he was born in Toulouse in 1914 as the son of a Spanish family that emigrated to France for economic reasons. Detained on October 1949 and transferred to the Barcelona Modelo Prison where he shared a cell with Juan Busquets Verges and José Conejos García. On December 7, Aced Ortell was condemned by a military tribunal to thirty-year jail sentence, and released on probation in 1959. Another member of the group was José Conejos García; born in Barcelona in 1911, Conejos García worked as a car painter. When the war broke out, he fought with the Durruti Column and in the 26 Military Unit as a transmission liaison and political commissar. Convicted and sentenced to thirty-years imprisonment, Manuel Sabaté Llopart, the youngest of the Sabaté’s brothers, was born in Hospitalet de Llobregat in 1927. At sixteen he got an interest in bullfighting and trained himself with bullocks while in Andalucía. In 1946 he went to Toulouse and joined Saturnino’s anarchist cell since none of his brothers wanted to take him in their expeditions. In the autumn of 1949 Manuel Sabaté crossed the Spanish-French border with Helios Ziglioli —a 22-year-old Italian comrade born in Lovera, a little town near Bergamo in Lombardia (Italy)— and with Ramón Vila Capdevila (aka Pasos largos, Ramón Llaugí Pons, Raymond and El Jabalí). Capdevila was better known as Caraquemada because his face bore an ugly scare —from the wound he had sustained in latest brush with the Civil Guard— and some burns left by a lightning strike in his youth. Born in Peguera, near Berga, on 2 April 1908, Caraquemada has a long history of underground struggle against the Spanish right wing repressive forces. Since he was very young he participated in sabotages, uprising and revolts in the name of CNT. He escaped his imprisonment at the Argelès French camp in 1940, and after doing force labour at the Bèdarieux aluminium mines; he joined the resistance at Limoges. Attached to the Menessiers’ network under the name of Captain Raymond. As a Maquis guide, he escorted thousand of POW escapes into Spain. As a resistance fighter his actions stood out for the effectiveness of his operation of punishment and sabotage against the France invader. With the defeated of Nazism he resumed the fight against Francoism helping the guerrillas operating in the Pyrenees as well as those action groups that were being put together in Toulouse for dispatch into Spain. Along the route between France and Barcelona Manuel Sabaté, Helios Ziglioli and Caraquemada were ambushed near Moià. The Italian lost his life, Caraquemada was seriously wounded but managed to get away, and the Civil Guard picked up Manuel, inexperienced and left to his own devices. Manuel Sabaté Llopart, also sentenced to death, was shot with Saturnino Culebras Sáiz at the bloody Camp de la Bota on February 24 1950. Caraquemada was killed in the early hours of August 7 1963 at La Creu de Perello (Cataluña) by a Civil Guard patrol. Joan Busquets Vergés (also known as El senzill) was the youngest of the group. In 1944, at the age of 16, he was an apprentice at the Hispano-Suiza plant in Barcelona. By the end of 1948, when he was 21 years old, he had joined the Marcelino Massana Bancell (alias Pancho, Barcelona 1918 - Les Bordes-sur-Lez, Ariège, 1981) anti-Francoist guerrilla group that took part in a number of operations inside Spain. In this occasion, Los Primos’ mission was to ferry weapons, explosives and sundry sabotage equipment to a base in Manresa. In June 1949 Busquets participated with the other members of the group in the bombing of electricity pylons and a kilometre of railroad track in the environs of Tarrasa. In their wake back they had a series th

of incidents with the Somaten and the Civil Guard, but returned safely to France. In the autumn of 1949, Busquets went to Barcelona to join the 39 yearold José Sabaté’s urban action group but had to join the Saturnino’s instead of Sabaté’s because the latter had crossed the Spanish-French border a few days ahead and was already in the Catalan capital. According to Busquets, the Primos’ cell was ill-equipped for a long journey and, after a series of disasters that lead to the fragmentation of the cell, the whole group — included his contact in Barcelona Miguel Acevedo Arias (El Patillas), a former member of Los Aguiluchos anarchist Column— was arrested and condemned to thirty years in prison. Arias was released on parole from El Dueso in 1960. Busquets was detained at his house in Barcelona where he was staying with one of his sisters and his mother, on the fourth floor of 91 Calle Ribas, between the Calle Padilla and the Plaza de las Glorietas. On December 7 1949, Busquets was sentenced to death together with the leader of the guerrilla group Los Primos and Manuel Sabaté. Busquets death sentence was later commuted for a thirty-year prison term. (Edited from Busquets, Téllez Solá, Íñiguez, and Paul Sharkey’s translation of Busquet’s testimony, Stuart Christie, Sánchez Agustí, and Abel Paz). (p. 14, paragraph 4, line 11 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]) Francisco Sabaté Llopart (1914 or 1915 L’Hospitalet de Llobregat Cataluña Spain-1960,) also known as Sisco, Sisquet o El Quico. He was one of the most important anarchist guerrilla members from Cataluña. At 17 he joined “Los Novatos” (The Rookies), an action group aligned with the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) that participate in insurrections against the government of the Second Spanish Republic in late 1933 and fought against the army's coup attempt at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936. In 1935 Sabaté refused military service, the beginning of his life outside the law. Also in this year, “Los Novatos” carried out its first robbery (characterized by the group as "expropriations") to provide funds for a prison relief group. During the Civil War, Sabaté fought on the Aragon front with the CNT-FAI’s “Los Aguiluchos” ("Young Eagles Column"). When this division was forcibly assigned to a Stalinist commissar who crushed the free initiative of the column, Sabaté and two of his comrades got into a discussion with the commissar — Ariño apparently was his name—, who was shot and killed. Sabaté and his friends later deserted to Barcelona where they carried out many missions on behalf of the FAI and against the Stalinist authorities. Eventually the Communists arrested Sabaté, but with the help of his wife he, with a few other militants, managed a prison break. The defeat of the Republican forces found him in the 26th Division ("Durruti Column") that crossed the French border. He spent time in French internment camps during the Nazi occupation of France, later joining the Maquis and fought against the Nazis. After the II World War he returned clandestinely to Spain as part of a large guerrilla movement against Franco. His first action was the freeing of three anarchists from police custody. On March 2, 1949 his group attempted to assassinate police commissioner Eduardo Quintela Boveda but accidentally they attacked the wrong car, killing two of its occupants, the Falangists Manuel Piñol Ballester and his chauffer Antonio Norte Juarez. Another important Falangist, José Tella Bavoy was seriously wounded. Quico fled back to France but was arrested and jailed for six years. He was often described as having been the regime's “Public Enemy Number One”. In 1960, after an struggle against tyranny that lasted fifteen years, and at the age of 45, he was killed in Sant Celoni by the Somaten (a Catalan paramilitary organization th

mainly formed by François fascists) and the Civil Guard, along with four companions: Antonio Miracle Guitart, 29; Rogelio Madrigal Torres, 27; Francisco Conesa Alcaraz, 39 and Martinez Ruiz Montoya, 20. Edited from Téllez Solá, The Anarchist Resistance n. pag.; Téllez Solá, Sabaté 8, 21, 22, 29, 35, 36, 84-86, 112, 115, 116-118, 120, 124, 128-134, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 162-165, 170, 173, 174, 216, 217, 333 and 335; Téllez Solá, Facerías 14, 165, 173, 184, 224, 238, 243, 249, 259, 302, 334, 350-351, 354-355, 358-359, 366-367, 369, 370, 384 and 387 Iñiguez 54. (p. 15, paragraph 1, line 2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]) José Lluís Facerías (Barcelona 1920-1957), also known as Face and Petronio — this last nickname given to him by Dr. José Pujol Grúa (1906-1966), was a member of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) and of the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth (FIJL). He fought on the Aragon front with the Ascaso column (28th Division) and in other units. His partner and his six-month-old daughter were most likely killed while crossing the French border by the infamous Nazi Messerschmitt planes. He was incarcerated in various concentration camps and worked in battalions in Zaragoza, Vitoria and Extremadura. Once released he was conscripted into the Francoist army and stationed at Barcelona where he worked as chauffer for Unidad de Transportes Militares and for the military legal corps commander of the zone. Discharged in 1945, he joined the industrial network of the Graphic Arts of the then clandestine underground union CNT while working as waiter and as a cashier at “La Rotonda”, a restaurant located at the foot of Tibidabo. A very active member of “Grupos de defensa” of the central district, in April 1946 Face was nominated for the post of Defence Secretary of the Regional Committee of Catalonia and the Balearics of the FIJL. On 17th August 1946 the “Brigada Politico-Social” arrested Face with almost all of the members of the Regional Committee along with other CNT activists. Releases from the Modelo prison in July 1947, he joined the Libertarian Resistance Movement (MLR) —created it to be the armed wing of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism— but his participations in this organization was only ephemeral and ended it in February 1948. Facerías was of the idea that the best way to fight against fascism —and to support the anarchist union and its imprison militants and family in needy— was through armed struggle. Consequently, he formed his own guerrilla group and carried out the first of many actions against financial institutions —Banco Español de Crédito, Banco de Vizcaya, Banco de Bilbao, Banco Hispano-Colonial — corporations and motor industry — Hispano-Olivetti, INCASA, Automóviles Eucorand — and other business such as jewellery shops and the notorious "Meublés", Barcelona brothels where the hypocritical François society went to spend their leisure time. Face carried many other forms of political warfare against Franco’s regimen. For example, in August 1946 Facerías and his men machine-gunned the Gracia Police station and arson the CAMPSA gas tanks destroying 40 vehicles. He was also involved, in combination with the Sabaté guerrilla group, in the placement of explosives in the Consular delegations that favour Spain application to join the UN. In April 1950, during the 50 celebration of Franco’s victory, he was able to plant a powerful explosive device under the authority platform and then, in a stolen car, he distributed thousands of anti Francoist pamphlets all over Barcelona. Face continued his armed struggle until his death in a police ambush. One Friday 30th of August of 1957 at 10.45 a.m., in the intersection of Dr. Urrutia y Pi i Molist Street, next 8

to Paseo de Verdun, and almost in front of San Andrés Madhouse’s door, Face was gunned down by unseen assailants. Unable to move because of his broken ankle, he tries to drop a bomb but was riddled with bullets. He was 37. His Italian comrade Franco Leggio (Sicily 1921-Sicily 2006) managed to escape the ambush. This was a joined operation between the Barcelona Jefatura Superior de Policía —the VIth brigade regional of Politico-Social Division under the direct orders of his chief Juan Estévez Rodríguez and police inspector Pedro Polo Borreguero— and a Civil Guard detachment under the military command of Juan Luque Arenas, very well known for being an expertise in political repression. (Edited from Téllez Solá, Téllez Solá and Francesc Torres; Iñiguez; Sanchez Agustí, and Juan J. Alcalde). (p. 15, paragraph 2, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]) Caudillo usually describes a political-military leader at the head of an authoritarian power. The term originally referred to military power: Indíbil and Mandonio, Viriathus, Almanzor (sometimes in the modern historiography), Don Pelayo and other fighters of the Spanish Reconquista, even Simón Bolivar, Francisco Franco, etc., but in Latin America another sense has developed: the liberal caudillo lawyer and politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was honoured with the title "Caudillo of The Colombian People" (and other nuances with a significance mostly demagogic -accused by the right wing opposition and some landowners) and even without state responsibilities like cacique in Spain and oligarchical–plutocratic power. In Spain, the social and political instability caused by the disintegration of the Restauracion regimen, the totalitarian leanings among army groups of officers and, the rapid rise of fascism promoted the social cause of Caudillismo. This ideology advocated the totalitarian organization of the State under the leadership of a Caudillo, a head of State invested by the grace of God with the total power to govern and rule the people and the country. Thus, the title of Francisco Franco as Head of State, Generalissimo of the entire armies and Caudillo de España “by the Grace of God”; only “responsible of his actions before God and History.” Wikipedia. “Caudillo.” Web. 02 Jan. 2012. Also, Quesada Marco 89. (p. 15, paragraph 3, line 2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]) 9

Court case nº 658-IV-49. The court-martial members were all high-ranking military men. The examining magistrate was Infantry Major Bernabé Abalos Fernández. The presiding judge was Artillery Lieutenant-Colonel Pedro Regalado Sanz. Regalado had been prosecuted as one of the survivors of the military uprising in Barcelona against the Spanish Republic. At the end of the Spanish Civil War he enrolled in the “la División Azul” (“Blue Division”), an Infantry division sent by Franco to support the Nazis military campaign in Russia. He was decorated for his heroism with and Iron Cross. Other members were Cavalry Captain Luis Cervallo Contreras and Bartolomé Monrey Estrada, Artillery Captain José Nercebal Minjillón, presenting member captain auditor Sebastian Monserrat Alsina, Alternate members, Artillery Captain Luis Cotoner and Gregorio García Martínez. The military court pronounced nine death penalties. The trial cause outrage and demonstrations abroad followed. Many respected European intellectuals came out in defence of the condemned to death. It is hard to ascertain whether these acts on behalf of the Spanish political prisoners played any significant role, however, the fact remains that the court-martial commuted the death sentenced of four of the defendants for thirty years imprisonment. For the rest of the prisoners the death sentenced was carried out at six fifteen 10

in the morning —Friday, March 14 — at Camp de la Bota. (See Téllez Solá, Sabaté 216-217, 220. On Francoists’ court-martials in Cataluña see Villarejo “Los consejos de guerra bajo el franquismo.”) (p. 15, paragraph 3, line 5 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]) th

Usually defence counsels limit their intervention to a mere formal request of clemency for their clients. As the historian Helen Graham noticed the summary justice applied by Franco’s military mass trials provided no legal defence and the accused “could not intervene in any real way (they were permitted neither to call witnesses nor present evidence). Indeed defendants were usually only to identify the ‘defence’ lawyer in court because he would be the one asking for death penalty to be commuted to life imprisonment” (The War 105). (p. 16, paragraph 2, lines 14-16 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]) The Nationalist’s Army, the Navy and the Air Force had at their disposal it’s own intelligence service, each under the appropriate authority of the Army General Staff. In charged of the outside information was the 3 Section of the High General Staff, organism created in 1939 and, the first Foreign Service Intelligence that worked as such for the first time in Spanish history; in charged of the foreign intelligence was also the 2 Section-bis of the High General Staff. This section, popularly known as “Segunda bis” and latter officially named CESIBE, was active until 1950. The CESIBE was a domestic military intelligence dedicated basically to the persecution and criminalization of any political activity against the regime. The CESIBE had also the corresponding espionage and counterespionage sections. The “Segunda-bis” was then the main centre for the gathering and collection of all the important intelligence on the opposition to the Franco’s government. Lieutenant-Colonel López Moreno was in charged of “Segunda-bis”, which include the control of different intelligence agencies such as the ones corresponding to the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, as well as those belonging to the Civil Guard, the Brigada Político Social, the police arm forces, FET de las JONS (Falange), CNS (Unions), the informers, and the extreme-right organizations. “Segunda-bis” had also its own political schools to form the police officers in the ideologies they were supposed to fight, anarchism, communisms, socialism, freemason. “Segunda-bis” was not restricted to battle against the dissident groups in Spanish soil. According to Juan J. Alcaide, the headquarters of the Spanish libertarian movement in exile in Toulouse was full of agents from the “Segunda-bis” and from Brigada Politico Social. The Franco’s police was taking the fight there in order to destroy the anarchist resistance in Cataluña. López Moreno’s agents were also able to infiltrate the Spanish republican Maquis, a guerrilla army whose aim was to fight the Nazis in occupied France. By doing so, they were partially able to control the movement of the republican anti-Francoist’s forces with the added collaboration of the GESTAPO and the Vichy Police. For a more comprehensive view of the secret service in Spain, see J Alcalde’s Chapter II. (p. 16, paragraph 3, lines 1-2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]) A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal (or ‘bourgeois’) forces as well as socialist and communist (‘working-class’) groups. Popular fronts are larger in scope than united fronts, which contain only working-class groups. In addition to the 11

“

general definition, the term ‘popular front’ also has a specific meaning in the history of Europe and the United States during the 1930s, and in the history of Communism and the Communist Party. During this time, the ‘popular front’ referred to the alliance of political parties in France aimed at resisting Fascism. The term ‘national front’, similar in name but describing a different form of ruling, using ostensibly non-Communist parties which were in fact controlled by and subservient to the Communist party as part of a ‘coalition"’ was used in Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War.” Wikipedia. “Popular Front.” Web. 04 March 2012. “The Popular Front (Spanish: Frente Popular) in Spain's Second Republic was an electoral coalition and pact signed in January 1936 by various left-wing political organizations, instigated by Manuel Azaña for the purpose of contesting that year's election. The Popular Front included the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), Communist Party of Spain (PCE), the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM, independent communist) and the republicans: Republican Left (IR), (led by Azaña) and Republican Union Party (UR), led by Diego Martínez Barrio. This pact was supported by Galician (PG) and Catalan nationalists (such as the Esquerra Party), socialist union Workers' General Union (UGT), and the anarchist trade union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). Many anarchists who would later fight alongside Popular Front forces during the Spanish Civil War did not support them in the election, urging abstention instead.” Wikipedia. “Popular Front (Spain.” Web. 04 March 2012. See also Graham, “The Road to a Popular Front” and, Preston “Barricades against Fascism.” (p. 18, paragraph 2, line 7 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). On the Generalitat’s refusal to arm the libertarians to fight against the rebels forces in Barcelona and the subsequent CNT and FAI’s actions to procure themselves with weapons see, among others, Dolors Marin 269-277. (p. 18, paragraph 3, line 9 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 14

The Axis powers refer to the alignment of nations that fought in the Second World War against the Allied forces. The alliance began in 1936 when Germany signed treaties with Italy and Japan. The "Rome-Berlin Axis" became a military alliance in 1939 under the Pact of Steel, with the Tripartite Pact of 1940 leading to the integration of the military aims of Germany and its two treaty-bound allies. The war ended in 1945 with the defeat of the Axis powers and the dissolution of the alliance.” Wikipedia. “Axis Powers.” Web. 03 March 2012. According to Stanley G. Payne’s book The Franco Regime 19361975, “The Spanish war did provided the original opportunity for creation of the Rome-Berlin Axis in October 1936, yet the Axis did not participate jointly in the beginning of the general European war. On the side of the left the Spanish war featured an attempt to form a sort of international Popular Front, led in part by the Soviet Union, but that proved a complete failure. Hitler began World War II only after Stalin reversed the policy in which Soviet intervention in Spain had been based, and had instead come directly to terms with Hitler for the division of power that would make possible a broader European war. That is,… [t]he first, purely European phase of World War II was made possible by alliance of the two rival revolutionary imperialisms, Nazi and Soviet, against the western democracies and the smallest states” (161). (p. 18, paragraph 3, line 9 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 15 “

The Munich Pact was a treated signed on September 29, 1938 in Munich by

Germany, Italy, France, and Great Britain. The forming of the pact between these four countries served as appeasement purposes, securing Great Britain and France’s agreement to Adolf Hitler’s Demands. Hitler demanded for the secession of the German —speaking Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to Germany. German leaders argued and insisted that the government of Czechoslovakia were discriminatory toward the Sudeten people, and the secession of Sudetenland to Germany would justify to their request for selfdetermination. Long before the composition of the Munich Pact, negotiations between the participating countries had already taken place concerning the secession of Sudetenland to Germany. Looking for any attempt to prevent further confrontations with Hitler, Great Britain and France accepted Hitler’s demands. France and Great Britain were devastated by World War I and would be willing to do anything to avoid more confrontation. With Great Britain and France’s acceptance, Hitler promised not to claim any other European territory. The Munich pact served to determine simply the conditions under which the previously planned secession should be made. The Pact, signed by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for Great Britain, Premier Edouard Daladier for France, Adolf Hitler for Germany, and Benito Mussolini for Italy, set October 1, 1938 as the date of Czechoslovakian evacuation of the territory. The Germans would occupy the four specified districts between October 1-7. Afterwards, additional territories consisting of mostly German population were to be specified by an international commission, composed of delegates from France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and Czechoslovakia. Other territories were to be disputed there also; if claims of Hungarian and Polish minorities in Czechoslovakia were not settled in three months, a new conference was to be convened. It was March of 1939 when the Germans Marched into Czechoslovakia making most of the country a German protectorate. This immediately nullified the Munich Pact. The U.S.S.R. signed a non- aggression pact with Germany to avoid any war. On September first, Hitler attacked Poland, assuming that Great Britain and France would not intervene. Hitler was mistaken, as both countries immediately declared war on Germany. For the exact wording of the Pact see “Munich Pact September 29, 1938.” (p. 20, paragraph 4, line 5 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). “The Communist Party of Spain (Spanish: Partido Comunista de España, PCE) was the third largest national political party in Spain. It is the largest member organization of the United Left electoral coalition and has influence in the largest trade union in Spain, Workers' Commissions (CCOO). The PCE was the result of a merger between two organizations: the original Spanish Communist Party (Partido Comunista Español or PCE) and the Spanish Communist Workers' Party (Partido Comunista Obrero Español or PCOE). The former was created in April 1920 from portions of the Socialists' youth organization (Federación de Juventudes Socialistas or FJS) while the latter had been formed from a union of dissident Socialists (terceristas) and members of the General Union of Workers (Unión General de Trabajadores or UGT) who regarded the original PCE as not properly representative of the working class. The two parties joined in the new Partido Comunista de España on November 14, 1921. The unified PCE became a member of the Third International and held its first congress in Seville in March 1922. PCE was a small party during the initial years of the Republic, until it began to grow due to the victory of the Popular Front (of which the Communists had been a constituent part) in February 1936 and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War 17

in July of that year. The PCE, directed by José Díaz and Dolores Ibárruri (known popularly as La Pasionaria), worked consistently for the victory of the Republican forces and the Popular Front government, but was wary of the popular social revolution that was being waged by Spanish workers. The communists have also been seen as one of major factors behind the 1937 Barcelona May Days, when anarchists and Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) were violently suppressed, with many imprisoned. After the Republican defeat in April 1939, the PCE was persecuted by the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco (1939–1975), although maintained the best organization among the opposition parties inside Spain. A large part of the party membership was forced into exile. Some PCE members went to the Soviet Union and fought as volunteers for the Red Army during the Second World War. Another large section of PCE members were based in France, were a major party organization was set up. Dolores Ibárruri, La Pasionaria, a dedicated follower of consequent Comintern policies, replaced Jose Diaz as General Secretary in 1942, and held the position until 1960. Santiago Carrillo was General Secretary from 1960 to 1982. Carrillo put the party on a euro communist course, distancing it from its Leninist origins. The Party was legalized after the January 1977 Atocha Massacre, on April 9, 1977 as one of the last steps in the Spanish transition to democracy. In the first elections after the transition in 1977, PCE obtained 10% of the votes and received a similar result in 1979. In 1982, PCE suffered an electoral defeat. The electoral defeat and broad dissent amongst the party membership against Carrillo's social democratic path led to the removal of Carrillo from the party leadership. In 1985 Carrillo was expelled from the party.” Wikipedia. “Communist Party of Spain.” Web 05 March 2012. (p. 20, paragraph 4, line 10 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The International Brigades (Spanish: Brigadas Internacionales) were military units made up of volunteers from different countries, who travelled to Spain to defend the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. The number of combatant volunteers has been estimated at between 32,000–35,000, though with no more than about 20,000 active at any one time. A further 10,000 people probably participated in non-combatant roles and about 3,000–5,000 foreigners were members of CNT or POUM. They came from a claimed "53 nations" to fight against the Spanish Nationalist forces led by General Francisco Franco and assisted by German and Italian forces.” Wikipedia. “International Brigades.” Web. 05 March 2012. In his memoirs Howard Fast talked very proudly of the American Brigaders that went to fight for Republican Spain under the banner of Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and how they were banned from American society for being “premature antifascist”. (See also “’Premature Anti-Fascist” by Bernard Knox). (p. 20, paragraph 4, line 14 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 18 “

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union, and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939. It was a non-aggression pact under which the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany each pledged to remain neutral in the event that either nation were attacked by a third party. It remained in effect until 22 June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. In addition to stipulations of non-aggression, the treaty included a secret protocol dividing Romania, 19

“

Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland into German and Soviet spheres of influence, anticipating potential "territorial and political rearrangements" of these countries. Thereafter, Germany and the Soviet Union invaded, on September 1 and 17 respectively, their respective sides of Poland, dividing the country between them. Part of eastern Finland was annexed by the Soviet Union after the Winter War. This was followed by Soviet annexations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertza region.” Wikipedia. “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.” Web. 05 April 2012. (p. 21, paragraph 1, line 3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). Juan Negrín y López, the son of a wealthy businessman, was born in Spain in 1892. He studied at several German universities and in 1923 he became professor of physiology at the Medical Faculty of Madrid University. In 1929 Negrín joined he Socialist Party (PSOE) and two years later was elected to the Cortes. He supported the Popular Front government and in September 1936 Francisco Largo Caballero appointed him minister of finance. During the Spanish Civil War Negrín took the controversial decision to transfer the Spanish gold reserves to the Soviet Union in return for arms to continue the war. Worth $500 million at the time, critics argued that this action put the Republican government under the control of Joseph Stalin. In the Civil War the National Confederation of Trabajo (CNT), the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) and the Worker's Party (POUM) played an important role in running Barcelona. This brought them into conflict with other left wing groups in the city including the Union General de Trabajadores (UGT), the Catalan Socialist Party (PSUC) and the Communist Party (PCE). President Manuel Azaña asked Negrín to form a new government on 17th May. Negrín was now a communist sympathizer. In April 1938 Negrín also took over the Ministry of Defence. He now began appointing members of the Communist Party (PCE) to important military and civilian posts. This included Marcelino Fernandez, a communist, to head the Carabineros. Communists were also given control of propaganda, finance and foreign affairs. Negrín attempted to gain the support of western governments by announcing his plan to decollectivise industries. On 1st May 1938 Negrín published a thirteen-point program that included the promise of full civil and political rights and freedom of religion. President Manuel Azaña attempted to oust Negrín in August 1938. However, he no longer had the power he once had and with the support of the communists in the government and armed forces, Negrín was able to survive. On 27th February 1939, the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain recognized the Nationalist government headed by General Francisco Franco. Later that day President Azaña resigned from office, declaring that the war was lost and that he did not want Spaniards to make anymore-useless sacrifices. Negrín now promoted communist leaders such as Antonio Cordon, Juan Modesto and Enrique Lister to senior posts in the army. Segismundo Casado, commander of the Republican Army of the Centre, now became convinced that Negrín was planning a communist coup. On 4th March, Casado, with the support of the socialist leader, Julián Besteiro and disillusioned anarchist leaders, established an Anti-Negrín National Defence Junta. On 6th March José Miaja in Madrid joined the rebellion by ordering the arrests of Communists in the city. Negrín, about to leave for France, ordered Luis Barceló, commander of the First Corps of the Army of the Centre, to try and regain control of the capital. His troops entered Madrid and there was fierce fighting for several days in the city. Anarchist troops led 20

by Cipriano Mera managed to defeat the First Corps and Barceló was captured and executed. Negrín fled to France where he attempted to maintain a government in exile. After the invasion of the German Army in the summer of 1940 he went to live in England. After the Second World War Negrín returned to France where he died on 12th November 1956. (p. 21, paragraph 1, line 6 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Segismundo Casado López (1893, Segovia – 1968, Madrid) was a Spanish Army officer in the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. He reached the rank of major by 1936, serving as head of the military household of President Manuel Azaña. After the start of the Spanish Civil War, Casado helped to develop the tactics of the Spanish Republican Army in central Spain. He participated in the defence of Madrid and the battle of Jarama. He was promoted to colonel in 1938 and fought in the battle of Brunete. In 1938, he was the commander of one army corps (out of five) in the republican central zone. In 1939 he was given command of the Republican Central Army. On March 5, 1939 Casado, claiming that Prime Minister Juan Negrín was planning a Communist takeover, conducted a coup d'état with the support of the leader of the right-wing of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, Julián Besteiro, and disillusioned anarchist leaders —such as Cipriano Mera— and established an anti-Negrín Consejo Nacional de Defensa. General José Miaja in Madrid joined the rebellion on March 6 by ordering the arrests of Communists in the city. Negrín, fled to France on 6 March. But Luis Barceló, commander of the 1st Corps of the Army of the Center, rejected the coup and to try to regain control of the capital. His troops entered Madrid and there was fierce fighting for several days in the capital. Anarchist troops led by Cipriano Mera managed to defeat the 1st Corps, and Barceló was captured and executed. Casado then attempted to negotiate a peace settlement with General Francisco Franco, but Franco refused anything less than unconditional surrender. “Many Communist were left in prison where they were founded by the Francoist and soon executed. This was especially true of the areas in the centre such as Madrid and Guadalajara… The reprisals… were brutal. The Communist left imprisoned by Cipriano Mera, the local military commander, was shot immediately.” (Preston, The Spanish Inquisition 477). Casado fled to Valencia where he boarded the English destroyer Galatea at the end of March. He remained in exile in Venezuela until returning to Spain in 1961.” Wikipedia. “Segismundo Casado.” Web. 05 June. 2012. According to Preston, “Casado and Besteiro were culpably naïve to believe assurances from the fifth column that Franco would contemplate an armistice and that those without blood on their hands had nothing to fear. Widespread hunger and demoralization saw Casado received unexpectedly wide support. In the subsequent mini-civil war against the Communist, about two thousand people were killed. To the delight of Franco, troops were withdrawn from the front to fight the Communist.” (The Spanish Inquisition 477). Casado’s coup d’état unleashed a desperate flight of hundred of thousands of Republican soldiers, women, children and elders toward the harbours of Valencia and Alicante where, supposedly, they would be embarked for the exile. “In fact, there was no chance of that. The French company normally used by the Republic refused to undertake any evacuation on the grounds that it had no dealings with Casado, only with Negrín. It also claimed to be owned money… Therefore, there was no protection against the rebel fleet blockading the Spanish ports of the eastern Mediterranean, under orders of Franco to permit no refugees to escape.” (Preston’s, The Spanish Inquisition 21

479). Meanwhile, the Nationalist Army entered Madrid virtually unopposed on March 28, 1939. Further readings: Bolleton, Burnett, The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution. In particular, Chapter 64 "Segismundo Casado, Cipriano Mera and the Libertarians." Eduardo de Guzman’s testimony La muerte de la esperanza and the two subsequent testimonies (El año de la victoria and Nosotros, los asesinos) are indispensable readings to grasp the tragedy that took place on the Valencia and Alicante’s waterfronts. (p. 21, paragraph 1, line 8 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Julián Besteiro Fernández (September 21, 1870 – September 27, 1940) was a Spanish socialist politician and university professor. Born in Madrid, he was educated in the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, and studied in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Madrid, as well as at the Sorbonne in 1896, the Universities of Munich, Berlin and Leipzig in 1909-1910. In 1908, he joined the Partido Radical (Radical Party) established by Alejandro Lerroux. He became a member of the Agrupación Socialista Madrileña (the socialist circle in Madrid) in 1912 and in that same year he was offered the Chair of Fundamental Logic in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. Soon after, Besteiro became a member of Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) trade union, and of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). In 1913 he married Dolores Cebrián, a professor of physics and natural science at the teachers' training college in Toledo. In 1917, after the general strike of that year he was tried as a member of the strike committee and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was elected as a member of the town council of Madrid in the amnesty campaign. In the following year, he was elected to the Cortes Generales (Spanish Parliament) as deputy for Madrid. During the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera he was in favour of collaboration with the Dictator -who had offered the participation of UGT in governing the country. To a certain extent, it appeared to be a success in the mid-1920s. However, opinion within the PSOE turned against him as the Primo de Rivera regime became even more unpopular in the economic downturn. In mid-1930s Besteiro became isolated in his opinions on collaboration in opposition to the front established by the Pact of San Sebastián. Besteiro also opposed the participation of UGT in the December 15, 1930 general strike. At a joint meeting of the PSOE and UGT he resigned as President of both the party and the union in February 1931. In the same year he was elected a councillor of the Madrid town council. After the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic, Besteiro was elected Speaker of the Constituent Cortes. During his period as President of the Cortes, he seemed to become more conservative in his political views. He resigned as President of the UGT in January 1934. Opposing the growing radicalization of the Socialist movement, he disapproved the participation of various socialists in the armed uprising of October 1934. In February 1936, he won the highest number of votes of any candidate in Madrid in the Popular Front elections. When the Spanish Civil War broke out Besteiro continued to work in the university as a Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters and carry out his duties as a parliamentary deputy and councillor of the town council in Madrid. Against the persuasions of his friends he refused to leave Madrid and seek exile. Manuel Azaña, the Spanish Republican President, chose Besteiro as the representative to the coronation of the new British King George VI in London on May 12, 1937. Besteiro believed it was to be a peace mission. There he met with Sir Anthony Eden but no significant results followed. After the failure of his mission in London he returned to work in the town council of Madrid and withdraw 22 “

from official public life. He stopped attending the Agrupación Socialista Madrileña and the parliamentary group meetings. With the news of the fall of Barcelona on January 26, 1939, and Azaña's resignation as President of the Republic, Besteiro decided to find ways to achieve peace and stop the resistance. He contacted Colonel Segismundo Casado and, on March 5, announced the creation of a Consejo Nacional de Defensa. As a result, about 2,000 people were killed in the uprising against the government of Juan Negrín and its Communist Party of Spain allies. After the fall of Madrid to the Nationalists on March 28, 1939, Francoist forces arrested Besteiro. On July 8, he faced a court martial and was sentenced to thirty years. He was sent first to the Monasterio de Dueñas until the end of August 1939 and then to the prison of Carmona, where he died the following year.” Wikipedia. “Julián Besteiro.” Web. 05 June 2012. (p. 21, paragraph 1, line 8 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]).

2. The Resistance Valencia was the last Republican territory to fall in the hands of the Francoist. On 26 March 1939, Yague’s Nationalist troops advanced in Sierra Morena. There was no resistance and in one day they captured two thousand square kilometres of land and 30,000 prisoners. The Casado’s Junta ordered its soldiers not to resist the Nationalist advance and the Republican soldiers threw away their weapons and abandoned the front. By 27 March, the Nationalists were advancing on all fronts without resistance. Solchaga's Navarra Corps, Gambara's Italian CTV and Garcia Valiño's Army of Maestrazgo advanced from Toledo. On 28 March, Colonel Prada, commander of the Army of the Centre, surrendered and the Nationalist troops occupied Madrid. Casado and the other members of the junta, except Besteiro, fled to Valencia. On 29 March, the Nationalists occupied Jaén, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Albacete and Sagunto. 50,000 Republican refugees gathered at the harbours of Valencia, Alicante, Cartagena and Gandía but without the Republican navy an evacuation was impossible and, the French and British governments refused to organize one. Only a minority were evacuated by British ships, among them Casado. On 30 March, the Nationalists occupied Valencia and Gambara’s troops entered Alicante, rounding up a vast number of Republican soldiers and refugees. The Italian General Gambara was prepared to permit the evacuation of political refugees, but on 31 March, the Nationalist troops arrived and took over jurisdiction from Gambara. As a result, many refugees committed suicide in order to avoid capture by the Nationalists. On 31 March, the Nationalists occupied Almeria, Murcia and Cartagena, controlling all Spanish territory. By 1 April 1939 the war was effectively over. (p. 22, paragraph 1, line 3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). In a 1938 decree, Franco’s government stipulated the prohibition of Republican bank notes in all the territory dominated by the Nationalist, and the decree of June 1939 extended the period to collected the Republican bank notes in all the municipalities, towns and cities liberated after the December 1938 offensive (see BOE September 17 1938 and BOE June 13 1939). Miguel García’s mother, Dolores García, passed away in Segovia, where her soon was serving his sentence at Segovia Prison. She was 86 and has been following her soon from prison to prison since he had been condemned (Busquets, Veinte 163). All the prisoners’ families knew and appreciate Dolores. According to Juan Busquets, Miguel’s sister was the person that paid for the room and board expenses of Dolores, as well as for the food packages that 23

Miguel received while in prison. “Though he never confided to me I knew that he appreciated and love dearly his sister” (Busquets’ personal communication). In relation to this, it is noteworthy that conservative gender roles were replicated in the anarchist unions, which were, essentially, masculine spaces, as this and many other libertarian testimonies demonstrate through the absence and/or underrepresentation of female union leaders. This is a clear indication of “the failure of [anarchist] alternative culture to break completely with official culture… [Within the anarchist groups] women were frequently restricted to offering moral and material support for the masculine group, finding meeting places and offering logistical support” (Ealham 60). (p. 22, paragraph 1, line 5-9 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). The crossings at the border [between Spain and France] were not always open. On 28th January, two days after the occupation of Barcelona by the Nationalist army, Julio Álvarez del Vayo, at that time in office as the republican Minister of Foreign Affairs, obtained from the French government the opening of the frontier to receive thousands of refugees. On 5th February, after few days when only the civilians had been allowed to enter the country, the French authorities permitted to pass also to the soldiers, under the condition they were disarmed and interned into concentration camps. In roughly three weeks time – the last day of this huge crossing operation being 10th February – around 465.000 people entered the costal and agricultural district of the Eastern Pyrenees. Once across the border the refugees first had to undergo a selection procedure called triage, and afterwards they were relocated in temporary camps known as centres d’accueil. The first to open in France for members of the Retirada —the retreat remains of the Spanish Republican Army— was the camp of Argelès-sur-Mer on the 1 of February 1939. As a consequence to the large number of refugees arriving between 5th and 9th February, on the 8th of the same month another camp was opened in Saint-Cyprien: both were destined to the immigrants crossing the border through Le Perthus y Cérbere. In the areas surrounding Vallespir and the Cerdaña the camps of Arles-sur-Tech y Prats de Molló were also opened. Both the French police and the Moorish and Senegalese colonial troops constantly kept the camps under surveillance. Shortly after their arrival the refugees started to suffer malnutrition, promiscuity and overcrowding, as well as lack of hygiene and water contamination caused by the presence of human detritus on the beaches. All these factors generated avitaminosis, scabies, dysentery and the death of many due to cholera and starvation. The overcrowding in the camps of Argelès and Saint-Cyprien urged the French government to establish another shelter point on the shore of Barcarés, also situated in the region of the Eastern Pyrenees, in order to ease off the pressure from the other structures. Little by little new camps were erected in other districts, such as Agde (Hérault) – especially reserved to people with Catalan origins – and Bram (Aude), for the elderly individuals. Subsequently the camps of Gurns (Béarn), destined to Bask aviators and members of the International Brigades, Judes (Septfonds), for specialized workers, and Couiza, to offer repair to women and children, were also created. Accordingly, few correction facilities were as well prepared to receive those considered particularly dangerous. Several hundreds of Spanish officers and soldiers of the republican army, together with representatives of the International Brigades, were relegated in the ancient templar fortress of Collioure. Similarly, the former prison camp of Vernet-d'Ariège was used to 25 “

accommodate the majority of anarchists belonging to the Durruti Column. The women were instead sent to Rieucros, as a form of punishment and repression. The structures in Vernet and Rieucros both also served during the Second World War as prisons to intern men and women of different nationality who bore a specific military and political significance. They were mostly antifascists from central Europe, French communists and anarchist women.” (Edited from Lidia Bocanegra, n. pag.). There is an ample bibliography on the subject, see among others Cata-Arries work for an in depth study of life in the French camps and their effects on the Spanish republicans. (p. 23, paragraph 1, line 1-7 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). For a seminal work on the subject of Spanish republicans imprisons in French concentration camps see Cate-Arries. There is a Spanish edition published by Anthropos in 2012. On the French as well and the German concentration camps see Mariano Constante. (p. 23, paragraph 1, line 3-5 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The Gestapo, abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei, was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police. From September 1939 forward it was administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) ("Reich Main Security Office") and was considered a sister organization of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) ("Security Service") and also a sub office of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) ("Security Police"). The Gestapo had the authority to investigate cases of treason, espionage, sabotage and criminal attacks on the Nazi Party and Germany. The basic Gestapo law passed by the government in 1936 gave the Gestapo carte blanche to operate without judicial oversight. The Gestapo was specifically exempted from responsibility to administrative courts, where citizens normally could sue the state to conform to laws. The power of the Gestapo most open to misuse was called Schutzhaft—"protective custody", a euphemism for the power to imprison people without judicial proceedings. Thousands of political prisoners throughout Germany—and from 1941, throughout the occupied territories under the Night and Fog Decree—simply disappeared while in Gestapo custody.” Wikipedia. “Gestapo.” Web. 05 June. 2012. (p. 23, paragraph 1, line 7 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista, FE de las JONS, known simply as Falange, was the name assigned to several Spanish political movements and parties dating from the 1930s, and dovetailed with the Fascist movement in Italy. In Spain, the Falange was a political organization founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera in 1933, during the Second Spanish Republic. Falangism was originally similar to Italian fascism in certain respects. It shared its contempt for Bolshevism and other forms of socialism and distaste for democracy. Like the Italian Fascist Black shirts, the Falange had its own party militia, the blue shirts. Wikipedia. “Falange.” Web. 05 August 2012. (p. 23, paragraph 1, line 9 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Helen Graham pointed out that for republican “child survivor who remain inside Francoist Spain, the price of nourishment (via Francoist social welfare organizations) often involved… ‘moral suffering: obliging orphans to sign the songs of the murderers of their father; to wear the uniform of those who have executed him; and to curse the dead and to blaspheme his memory’” (The War 66). Miguel García refers in various passages of his testimony to “the children 26

28 Falange

of the great defeat” as “the generation of criminals, (23, 112-114) as they were “brought up in the gutter by nobody” (23) —their parents all to often executed after a show trial. “[T]hrown out on the streets…[where these children learnt to cheat and thieve, and later they were] “picked up as hardened delinquents and taken to a Catholic orphanage whose sole teaching were religion and sodomy” (23). Juan Francisco Gómez Westermeyer’s unpublished doctoral thesis on the criminality on Spanish society from 19391949 offers a very compelling case of the nefarious consequences brought by the Nationalist victory to the Spanish working class, and particularly for their surviving children. Among many other texts, we want to mention Michel del Castillo’s testimonial novel Tanguy (there is a Spanish and English edition) as a clear case in point of the destruction of the working class childhood. (See also Vinyes et all, and Antonieta Jarne article on “red youngsters.” (p. 23, paragraph 2, line 6-15 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). factory known as “Els Sacs” (“The Bags”) or “El Cànem”, located at no. 203 Carrer del Doctor Trueta, close to the Rambla del Poble nou, and opened as a concentration camp by the Francoist forces on April 1939, can be consider, without any doubt, a “place of memory” of the Spanish left. “Around 1880, the Godó family, who also owned famous Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia, set up a jute mill at a site on Carrer de Ramón Turró, then called Carrer Enna. For many years it was the only textile factory working with canvas in Spain, thus making it the most important one. At its peak, it provided work for at least 2,000 employees, most of them women and children. Women worked under terrible conditions because of the dust emitted by the canvas. Women who worked at “El Cànem” were called “bedbugs” because of the smell of the canvas. Even renowned writer Xavier Berenguer wrote about the women’s tough working conditions at “El Cànem”, and since 1999 there has been a plaque on the Rambla del Poblenou to remember the memory of the women that worked at this factory. During the week known as the “Tragic Week” (end of July 1909), workers from Poblenou burned down the Workers’ Foundation next to the Godós’ factory. That was when its owners decided to hand over a plot of land near the textile mill to the Civil Guard police so they could watch over the workers. The Godós’ factory was collectivized during the Civil War, as a large number of its workers were anarchists. Despite the improvements made by some companies due to collectivization, the return of the owners of “El Cànem” meant many workers were fired and reported to the Franco regime. Around 1937, the Godós’s decided to hand over the old “El Cànem” factory facilities to the Franco regime, and the textile mill was used for nearly four years as a prison for Republicans. According to Rosario Fontova, “El Cànem” was part of a network of satellite concentration camps created to release pressure on the Modelo prison that was full with republican soldiers, civil servants, and rank and file members of outlawed political parties. Besides the factory “El Cànem”, with approximately 11.000 prisoners, there were the Horta concentration camp (5,000 people), the convent of St. Elies, at el Palau de les Missions (between 200 and 300 military personnel) and a garage at Urgell street (118). As it has been the norm with all the memory places of the defeated, El Cànem concentration camp has also been erased from the Spanish memory to create the Institut Català de Ciéncies del Clima. See the articles published in Icaria. Papers Arxiu Historic del Poblenou by Marín, Blai and Pere Carbonell I Fita. Also Monfort i Cool, Aram, specially pages 310-314. See also the testimony of Ramón Fernández Jurado, militiaman from the POUM who spent some time at this concentration camp. 30 The

The works of Dueñas Iturbe, and Segura Soriano offer also important information on Franco’s repression and women in Barcelona. (p. 24, paragraph 1, line 9-13 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Miguel García may be alluding to doctor Juan Madinaveitia Ortíz de Zárate (Oñate, Guipuzcoa 1861), gastroenterologist with a flavour for anarchism. Although García’s testimony situated him in 1939, which is clearly an error because he died in Barcelona in 1938. Or he may be referring to one of the Madinaveitia’s sons since all of them worked in medicine and science. On this subject of the political purification undertaken by the Franco's regime in the university see Otero Carvajal’s La destrucción de la Ciencia en España. Depuración universitaria en el franquismo. (p. 25, paragraph 5, line 6 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 31

According to Monfort i Coll, “El Cànem had three governors, Alejandro Marín Company (until July 12th 1939), Juan Rodeño (until August 31st 1941), and Alfonso Escribano Isabal (until March 23rd 1942). After that date, “El Cànem” was closed down and the last prisoners, a total of 211, were moved to the Prisión Modelo de Barcelona. (314). In his article Pere Carbonell i Fita mentioned that “Every day, very early, the Cànem’s governor, don José, a big fan of heroine and hygiene, put the prisoners to one side of the courtyard, crowded as always, for the collective shower” (11). We haven’t been able to determine who is this “José” to which Carbonell i Fita refers, but the name does not match any of “El Cànem” concentration camp’s governors pointed out by Monfort i Coll. Ramón Fernández Jurado mentioned in his interview a man called Juan Brugueño as one of the officers in command at the Cànem concentration camp. According to him, Brugueño “was a brute, a monster, the Hitler, the Eichmann of Poblenou” (16). (p. 25, paragraph 5, line 6-7 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 32

José Sabaté Llopart, El Pepe (1910 - Barcelona, Spain-1949 – Spain) was born in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. “After the crushing of the Francoist-military uprising in his neighbourhood and in Barcelona at the start of the Spanish Civil War and Revolution he went off to the Aragon front with “Los Aguiluchos” (the Young Eagles) column, which was organized by anarchist Juan Garcia Oliver. He fought in different units until the end of the war, where he was stranded in the central zone. He was taken prisoner in Alicante. He was released on bail in 1948 and crossed into France so as to fight at the side of his brother El Quico, and the two of them became the nightmare of the forces of repression in Catalonia. His other brother Manuel joined an action group with Ramon Capdevila. On the 17th October 1949 the police were waiting for him at a rendezvous in Calle Trafalgar. He had been betrayed. It wasn’t the first time that he had fallen into a trap, but this time there was no way out. In a rapid escape he killed a policeman, but was seriously injured and was caught. When they were taking him to the Municipal Hospital in Calle Sepulveda, José Sabaté died. He was 39.” Téllez Solá, The Anarchist Resistance n. pag. (p. 25, paragraph 6, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). The school Miguel de Unamuno was converted into a concentration camp to classify the political prisoners from Madrid. According to Julius Ruiz, “By 1941 this camp dealt exclusively with foreign internees” (74). See also Rodrigo, pp. 167-168. (p. 25, paragraph 7, line 2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Miguel García is referring to the public quarrel that José Millán-Astray y 33

Terreros (July 5, 1879, A Coruña, Galicia, Spain – January 1, 1954, Madrid, Spain) —the founder and first commander of the Spanish Foreign Legion— had with Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1864, Bilbao –1936, Salamanca) the Basque writer, philosopher and rector of University of Salamanca. On October 12, 1936, the celebration of Día de la Raza had brought together a politically diverse crowd at the University of Salamanca, including Enrique Pla y Deniel, the Archbishop of Salamanca, and Carmen Polo MartínezValdés, the wife of Franco, and Millán-Astray himself. According to the British historian Hugh Thomas, the affair began with an impassioned speech by the Falangist writer José María Pemán. After this, Professor Francisco Maldonado decried Catalonia and the Basque Country as "cancers on the body of the nation," adding that "Fascism, the healer of Spain, will know how to exterminate them, cutting into the live flesh, like a determined surgeon free from false sentimentalism." From somewhere in the auditorium, someone cried out the motto "¡Viva la Muerte!" As was his habit, Millán-Astray responded with "¡España!"; the crowd replied with "¡Una!" He repeated "¡España!"; the crowd then replied "¡Grande!" A third time, Millán-Astray shouted "¡España!"; the crowd responded "Libre!" This was a common Falangist cheer. Later, a group of uniformed Falangists entered, saluting the portrait of Franco that hung on the wall. Miguel de Unamuno, who was presiding over the meeting, rose up slowly and addressed the crowd: "You are waiting for my words. You know me well, and know I cannot remain silent for long. Sometimes, to remain silent is to lie, since silence can be interpreted as assent. I want to comment on the so-called speech of Professor Maldonado, who is with us here. I will ignore the personal offence to the Basques and Catalonians. I myself, as you know, was born in Bilbao. The Bishop," Unamuno gestured to the Archbishop of Salamanca, "[w]hether you like it or not, is Catalan, born in Barcelona. But now I have heard this insensible and necrophilous oath, "¡Viva la Muerte!” and I, having spent my life writing paradoxes that have provoked the ire of those who do not understand what I have written, and being an expert in this matter, find this ridiculous paradox repellent. General Millán-Astray is an invalid. There is no need for us to say this with whispered tones. He is an invalid of war. So was Cervantes. But unfortunately, Spain today has too many invalids. And, if God does not help us, soon it will have very many more. It torments me to think that General Millán-Astray might dictate the norms of the psychology of the masses. It should be expected from a mutilated that lacks the spiritual greatness of Cervantes to find horrible solace in seeing how the number of mutilated ones multiplies around him." Millán-Astray reportedly responded: "¡Muera la inteligencia! ¡Viva la Muerte!" ("Death to intelligence! Long live death!"), provoking applause from the Falangists (although some versions suggest he actually said "Death to traitor intellectuality" but in the commotion in the auditorium this was not perceived). Pemán, in an effort to calm the crowd, exclaimed "¡No! ¡Viva la inteligencia! ¡Mueran los malos intelectuales!" ("No! Long lives intelligence! Death to the bad intellectuals!") Unamuno continued: "This is the temple of intelligence, and I am its high priest. You are profaning its sacred domain. You will succeed, because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. In order to convince it is necessary to persuade, and to persuade you will need something that you lack: reason and right in the struggle. I see it is useless to ask you to think of Spain. I have spoken.” Millán-Astray, controlling himself, shouted, "Take the lady's arm!" Unamuno took Carmen Polo by the arm and left in her protection.” Wikipedia.

“Miguel de Unamuno,” and Wikipedia. “José Millán Astray.” Web. 14 May 2012. Many historians of the Spanish Civil War have offered versions of this incident —Thomas, among many other histories, mention the event in his La Guerra Civil española III, vol. 5 (54-59). For a complete biography of Astray see Tagore’s book Millán Astray: Legionario. (p. 26, paragraph 1, line 1-5 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The Condor Legion (German: Legion Condor) was a unit composed of volunteers from the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) and from the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) which served with the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War of July 1936 to March 1939. The Condor Legion developed methods of terror bombing which were used widely in the Second World War shortly afterwards. The bombing of Guernica was the most infamous operation carried out by the Condor Legion during this period. Hugo von Sperrle commanded the aircraft units of the Condor Legion and Wilhelm Ritter von Thomas commanded the ground units. Among the Condor Legion’s most famous pilots was Adolf Joseph Ferdinand Gallard, who flew ground attack missions in support of the Nationalists under Franco, and Werner Molders who also fought in General Franco’s side. Wikipedia. “Condor Legion.” Web. 14 May 2012. According to the Times’ correspondent, Emmet John Hughes, Franco’s “government had been placed in a debtor position by extensive German aid received during the Civil War year. Huge Nazi credit balances had been built up on the basis of supplies furnished through the German clearinghouse Hisma. To this there was added the value of 374,000,000 Reich marks which Berlin placed upon the service of the Condor Division” (242). (p. 26, paragraph 3, line 3-4 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 36

The pistolerismo — a hit man plan devised and paid by Catalan’s employers’ organization to kill political leaders of the working class — was one of the hallmarks of the social and political life at the turn of the XX century in Barcelona. The triumph of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the rise of Fascism as a reaction to the working movement and, the use of violence as a political tool, were the cause that brought about pistolerismo — also know as “guerra dels pistolers” and “the gun law” (1919-1923) — within the working class struggle in Barcelona. As stated by Peter E. Newell, “The state's terror against the workers, the CNT and the anarchist movement had begun in earnest. Driven to desperation by the extreme repression, anarchists such as Durruti and his friend Francisco Ascaso… met violence with violence, assassination with assassination. Between 1919 and 1922, almost every wellknown anarchist or syndicalist was either murdered by pistoleros hired by the employers' federation, or were shot 'trying to escape' from jail —the so-called ley de fugas. Indeed, “[the] new civil governor, Martinez Anido, and a police chief, Arlegui, fought the anarchists with every weapon they could, including the foundation of a rival, government-favoured Union, the Sindicato Libre, and a special constabulary, the Somaten” (Thomas, The Spanish Civil War 48). See Maria Amàlia Pradas, “Pistoles I pistolers”; Maria Sória “La maldición de los hermanos Badía”, and Josep M. Plans’ collection of journalist articles under the title Els gànsters de Barcelona. For a broader perspective of the anarchists and anarcho-syndicalist fight within Cataluña and Spain see García Oliver, El eco de los pasos; José Peirats Los anarquistas en la crisis política española (1869-1939) and, Angel Smith’s Anarchism, Revolution and Reaction. (p. 26, paragraph 4, line 5 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 37

FAI, Federación Anarquista Ibérica —Spanish anarchist federation founded in 1927 with the ostensible aim of defending core anarchist principles in the CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo —anarcho-syndicalist labour union founded in 1910). On FAI see Gómez Casas 1969 and 1977. (p. 26, paragraph 4, line 3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 38

The Palace of Whitehall (or Palace of White Hall) was the main residence of the English monarchs in London from 1530 until 1698 when all except Iñigo Jones's 1622 Banqueting House was destroyed by fire. Before the fire it had grown to be the largest palace in Europe, with over 1,500 rooms, overtaking the Vatican and Versailles. The palace gives its name, Whitehall, to the road on which many of the current administrative buildings of the UK government are situated, and hence metonymically to the central government itself. Wikipedia. “Palace of Whitehall.” Web. 14 May 2012. (p. 27, paragraph 3, line 7 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]) 39

Santiago Amir Gruañes (Palamos, Gerona 1914-Campo de la Bota, Barcelona 1952), (aka El Chérif) was a 38 years old guide and member of the anarchist resistance. During the Second World War, he worked with the French resistance, and had escorted shot-down British airmen, Jews, and French Resistance members from France into Spain. He collaborated with Francisco Sabaté, and helped the badly wounded Jose Sabaté escape into France in April 1949. Arrested in May 1950 and sentenced to death by a court martial (lawsuit 658-IV-49) celebrated in Barcelona; he was executed in March 14 1952 at Campo la Bota together with four other urban guerrilla members. Guinés Urrea Pina or Piña (55) born in 1896 in Ramonets, Murcia. Before fighting throughout the Spanish Civil War with the CNT, Urrea Pina worked as a photographer. Once the out break of war started Pina obtained money from the British Secret Service for providing information about German and Italian activities in Spain, which he used to help his guerrilla group and the resuscitation of the CNT in Barcelona. Piña was an early advocate for the relaunching of armed struggle against the Franco regime. He signed a manifesto against Pestaña and was very active towards the enemies of CNT. The Capitania General de la IV Region Militar accused him of being the assassin of the Burgos’ executioner Federico Muñoz Grande in Barcelona (1932 or 1935) as a reprisal for the garrotte death of the young libertarian Martorell. Trapped in Alicante (March 1939), he was able to escape to France where he was living until 1942 when he joined the urban guerrillas active in Barcelona. José Perez Pedrero (aka Tragapanes) —or bread swallower because he was always hungry) born in Barcelona 1925. He worked as a miner and had been involved in many guerrilla operations with Marcelino Massana in 1949. Jorge Pons Argilés (aka Tarantula) was a farmer and like Tragapanes was involved with the guerrilla activities of Massana. Argilés, born in Puigvert de Lleida (Segrià) on September the 7 1912 (or 1915), was the guide of the Tallion group, and had re-entered Spain in 1947. Member of CNT (and also of its secretary’s office) and of FAI of Lleida, and alternate member of the 1937 Tribunal Popular. There were an international outcry against these executions. Public rallies and meetings were celebrated al across Europe. In Paris, the Lliga dels Drets de l’Home founded in France in 1898, held a great meeting on Saturday 23 February where Albert Camus, Andre Breton, Jean Paul Sartre spoke. The meeting, under the title “Franco assassina encara!” denounced and protested against Franco’s crimes and the sentenced to death hand it over to eleven CNT members. Other well-known writers and 40

intellectuals protested the executions. For unknown reason, on Thursday 13th March 1952 four of the condemned men —Antonio Moreno Alarcón, Domingo Ibars Juanias (or Joanines), Pedro Meca López and Miguel García García— had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. The other five anarchists —Jorge Pons Argilés, José Pérez Pedrero, Gines Urrea Piña and Santiago Amir Gruañes— were executed at 6:15 the next morning, Friday 14 March 1952 at Camp de la Bota, Barcelona. A last minute and futile attempt to prevent the executions was made by the British Parliamentary Labour Party and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions but to no avail. On March 27 1952, after the men were executed there was a large public meeting in London entitled “An Appeal to the Public Conscience”. Speakers included Herbert Read. The organization was presented as a broad front of socialist, anarchist, republican and Basque political and trade union groups. See “A Leaflet [protesting the execution of members of the Tallion group]” Web. <http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/dv42ss> 16 Dec. 2012; see also Íñiguez, 447, 488, 610; Téllez Solá, Facerías, 262, 297, 310; Téllez Solá, Sabaté, 166-167; Busquets, Veinte, 74, 109. (p. 27, paragraph 2, line 8-9 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Antonio Moreno Alarcón (aka Cejablanca) had born 1908 (Lucainema de la Torres, Almeria-Tarrasa 29-1979) and worked as a day labourer. As a young man, he emigrated to Sallent de Llobregat, Cataluña, where he joined the CNT labour movement from this miner enclave. He participated in the Fígols’ miners’ insurrection of Jan. 1932 that abolished the use of money and private property, and established the libertarian communism. According to Abel Paz, this libertarian insurrectional movement “had done more than several tons of propaganda to make the revolution seem feasible to the workers. Psychological, insurrections like the one in Fígols made the impossible appear possible… [for] the working class” (Durruti… 290). Cejablanca was deported to the Spanish colonial enclave Villa Cisneros for participating in the anarchist insurrection. Fígols’ rising constituted the beginning of a series of armed struggles in which Moreno Alarcón would participate. In 1933 he was arrested and fired from his job as miner due to his involvement in the anarchist raising that took place almost a year after the Fígols’ one. In 1934 he was taken prisoner for having gone on strike. The same year he was arrested in Manresa with explosives, and clubbed by the police in Barcelona. At the end of the Spanish Civil War, where he fought in support of the Republic, he went into exile in France. Released from the French concentration camps he was caught and imprisoned again by the French authorities. Afterwards, he returned to Spain to fight against Franco’s dictatorship and subsequently fell into the hands of Falangist police, and in 1947 was sentenced to twenty-year prison term. Released after several years of jail, he rejoined the anti-Franco struggle, and once again he is captured in Barcelona in 1949. In 1950 he is accused of being a saboteur and in 1952 he is sentenced to death, which is later commuted for thirty years prison term. After many years in Franco’s jails, he was released and though he was already and old man, he never relinquished and kept his fight against the dictatorship until the very end. For a good review of all the actions and failures of the Spanish largest anarchist and anarcho-syndicalists revolutionary trade union (CNT) see Iñiguez 421; Tellez Solá Sabaté. 137, 189, 190, 218, 220; and Tellez Solá Facerías… 262-263, 310, 315. Also, Chris Ealham’s book Class, Culture, and Conflict in Barcelona 1898-1937 and Red Barcelona. Social Protest and Labour Mobilisation in Twenty Century edited by Angel Smith. (p. 28, paragraph 5, 41

line 3-4 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The secret agent Miguel García is referring here could have been Major George Marshall of the British Special Intelligence Service, the very same agent that drew Francisco Ponzán Vidal to work for the British intelligence. Stuart Christie personal communication. (p. 29, paragraph 2, line 2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Together with the incipient urban and rural Spanish guerrilla that started to act during the Second War World years, there have been a great number of escape routes through the Pyrenees to help the Allies. These escape routes, known as charchas, were also used to smuggle arms as well as people that were persecuted by Nazis. One of the most active freedom fighter through the Pyrenees was the “Pat O’Leary” also known as Ponzán escape network. “This network was run by Francisco Ponzán Vidal, also known as "the master of Huesca" (also François Vidal, Paco, Sparrows and Glasses), and was funded by the Allies to help them out of France. Ponzán was one of the most legendary of the Spanish resistance fighters during the Second World War. He organized evasion networks from France to Spain through the Pyrenees. These networks have enabled thousands of people escape the Nazi horror and avoid deportation and death. Francisco Ponzán went to France after the Republican defeat in 1939 and was interned in the camp of Vernet d'Ariège. He managed to be released by the employment contract offered to him by the owner of a garage. Shortly after the start of World War II, he came into contact with British intelligence services and began to organize, from Toulouse, and with her sister Pilar Ponzán, the most important networks that facilitated the passage of fugitives from France to Spain. It was a large spider web that began in Brussels and ended in Lisbon. It was centred in Toulouse and branched into the French Pyrenees and Andorra, on the Mediterranean coast, reaching to Banyuls, near the Spanish border. The Ponzáns had the cooperation of their Spanish anarchist contacts and guided the escaped men and women to the consulates of the United Kingdom, Belgium and the United States in Barcelona and Madrid, where they facilitated the trip to Lisbon or Gibraltar and off of the peninsula to their new destinations. Between 1941 and 1943, this network saved many thousands of French, English, Polish, Belgian and Jewish refugees of war. According to Sánchez Agustí’s Espias from which we extracted the information for this article - there were about 2000 escaped Allied prisoners of war, of which about 200 were British airmen of the RAF. One of the escapees linked to the network of Ponzán was the physician and Belgian general Guérisse Albert who survived the death camps of Dachau and Mauthausen. Among the characters saved by the network can be counted the prince Werner de Merode who was born in Belgium and was a RAF pilot during the war. He was shot down in 1941 over Boulogne-sur-Mer and was pulled out of France to Banyuls, where he could reach the Belgian consulate in Barcelona and back across the border to fight again in 1943. Ponzán was arrested in 1942 and interned again in the prison camp of Vernet, from which he managed to escape with several members of his network. He settled in the Paris’ Hotel Toulouse, activity centre of the Resistance, which provided the means to continue his work in assisting the escapees. Arrested again in April 1943, he was locked in the prison of Saint-Michel and sentenced to six months in prison for illegally being undocumented. Located by the Gestapo, he was subjected to interrogation and a new trial that sentenced him to an additional nine months in jail. Having finished his sentence, the Nazis refused to release him. When Toulouse was about to be liberated, Ponzán 42

was taken from the prison of Saint-Michel along with 52 other detainees. All were executed in the forest of Buzet sur Tarn, 27 km from the city. The bodies of the prisoners were thrown into three huge fires. His ashes were placed in three coffins in a mausoleum of Buzet where a plaque reads: "To our brother Francisco Vidal Ponzán, Spanish political exile, and great resistance fighter for France on 8/17/1944 died at the age of 33 years." Francisco Ponzán posthumously received the highest consideration by the allied governments. The distinction of his Majesty for his "courageous conduct and service" with the emblem of the Laurel Leaf of the Crown and the Medal for Freedom in the UK, the rank of captain of the French Forces, the Medal of the Resistance, the Croix de Guerre and the "recognition and admiration of the Allied nations". In addition to the Certificate of Appreciation signed by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, which was also awarded to his sister Pilar. He always had the respect and admiration of his colleagues and all the allied forces, and their efforts helped save many lives, although in this endeavour they sacrificed theirs. Their contribution, along with many other Spaniards, was instrumental in the victory over fascism. There were many partners in the Ponzán evasion and supply chain, and many of them were from 'High' Aragon. Such is the case of Prudencio Iguacel Piedrafita, born in Botaya (Jaca) in 1913 and died in Bordeaux in 1979, who fought in the Spanish civil war and was with Ponzán in the French internment camp of Vernet. Also Antonio Saura and Carmen Mur from Calasanz, and the brothers Rafael, Eusebio ('Cotena') and Pascual ('Sixto') Lopez Laguarta, natives of Fontanelles, near Ayers. Castellón Albalat Josep Ripoll, a carpenter, went with Ponzán to Spain in May 1940 with the intention of releasing anarchist prisoners in Zaragoza. Ponzán was wounded and took refuge in Boltaña. Both shared Vernet prison in 1942; Albalat is an exceptional case because he managed to survive the passage of five fascist camps. Floreal Barbera worked on the network and on one occasion helped to cross to Spain through Esterri and Viella Àneu an exceptionally large a group of 62 Jews. Among the climbers on that crossing there were two casualties: an old man who died of exhaustion and a young man who plunged to his death. Barbera was arrested in Spain during a later mission and after a brief stay in jail was released. Along with other members of the French General Association of Former Spanish resistance fighters Ponzán's figure stands above, in whose memory a plaque placed in Montjuïc at the monument to the dead Spanish volunteers in the European war. There is no space here to name many other compatriots who collaborated with "the master of Huesca", many of whom suffered deportation to Nazi death camps. Special mention should also be made for Josep Ester Borrás, a native of Berga, and a close associate of Ponzán. His wife was Alfonsina Bueno Vila, a native of Moros, in the province of Zaragoza. Ester Borrás was sent to Mauthausen where he managed to survive. He was decorated by the British, French and the Americans, and between 1947 and 1965 he was secretary general of the Spanish Federation of Deportees and Political Prisoner Victims of Fascism. He died in France in 1980. His wife, Alfonsina, also survived the women's death camp of Ravensbruck though, because of an experiment she underwent by Nazi doctors during her confinement, she contracted a chronic illness and lost her health steadily until her death in 1979. Her father, Gil Miguel Bueno, died in Mauthausen as a result of these horrific experiments.” Extracted from <http://www.anarcho-punk.net/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5199>. Web. Dec. 30 2012. There were many other escape routes besides the Ponzán network. Some of them, like the one organized by Francisco Viadiu in Andorra, was

able to save more than two thousands combatants. The Joan Cornudella’s network helped 600 pilots to escape through the Pyrenees. There was also an escape route organized by the POUM that depart from Lyon to Marseille. (p. 29-30, paragraph 6, line 6 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The Government of the Spanish Republic in exile continued to exist until the restoration of Spanish democracy in 1977. The first government of the Spanish Republic in exile was constituted in France and presided by Diego Martinez Barrio and Juan Negrín as Prime Minister. When Nazi Germany occupied France in 1940, the government was moved to México, where President Lázaro Cárdenas continued to recognize the Republic as the legal government of Spain. (p. 30, paragraph 3, line 10 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Ruta was the title of various anarchist periodic publications. Juventud Libre which adopted the title Ruta in October 1936, was founded well before the July revolution of 1936 when the Libertarian Youth of Catalonia were the ‘Cultural and Propaganda Section of the FAI’… Ruta played a leading role in [defending and proclaiming] the orthodox position of all anarchists: war on the state, authority, privilege, religion, right up to militarism… Until the Spanish civil war ended, Ruta's management was successively in the hands of Fidel Miro, Jose Peirats, Manuel Peres, Santana Calero, Benito Milla, and Benjamin Cano Ruiz. After the defeat of the Spanish Republic, Ruta continued to be published in exile and passed it into Spain where it was distributed hidden within sacks of movies that were delivered to movie theatres, bars and flee markets. For an account on how Ruta was born and its agitated existence see A History of Spanish Libertarian Youth Paper ‘Ruta’ by Victor García. For an in deep work on the importance of Spanish anarchist literature and other periodic publications see Soriano, Ignacio and Francisco Madrid’s massive work; also on Ruta Iñiguez p. 538. (p. 31, paragraph 1, line 6 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The bar, located at Wad-Ras, a street that belongs to the neighbourhood of la Plata in Poblenou, was used as a distribution centre for anarchist underground press. A vivid description of this working class periphery barri also known as “the catalan Manchester” is to be found in Xavier Benguerel, El Poblenou, Barcelona, 1988. According to Chris Ealham, “the barris (neighbourhoods) as well as the streets were the natural working-class collective spaces “in which people entered into a high degree of face-to-face contact. The most important of these [spaces] were the streets, which were largely free of cars and were generally viewed as an extension of the proletarian home, all the more during the summer months, when large parts of neighbourhood life were conducted there. The other most significant spaces of working-class socialization were neighbourhood cafes and bars, which acquire the status of the living rooms of the poor” (42). (p. 31, paragraph 1, line 7 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). AFARE (Association of Republican Armed Forces of Spain) was an organization formed by members that served in the military and the security forces of the Spanish Republic and whose main goal was to find ways to fight against Franco’s dictatorship. The association started to grew in 1943 but it was in 1945, with the support of different groups, when it crystallized in AFARE. For more information about AFARE, see Republicans represaliats pel franquisme. La causa contra l’AFARE i altres judicis. (p. 31, paragraph 2, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 44

Pedro Adrover Font (aka El Yayo) (Palma Mallorca 1911 —some sources give 1908) worked as a glazier, and was a major figure in the Barcelona anarchist resistance movement. Secretary of Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) in 1936 and militiaman in the FAI column “Los Aguiluchos.” After the Civil War, he went into France; arrested and sent to work for the German organization Todt. As an underground resistance fighter he participate in many sabotages until his detention and deportation to Mauthausen concentration camp. He took part in 1947 in the newly created Movimiento Libertario de Resistencia (MLR). After spending some time in France he returned to Spain on 15 August 1948. Sometimes a loner, he had worked with Facerías in a series of raids and bank robberies. He often acted as a courier leading militants in and out of Spain from France. Between 1947-1949 —with Celedonio García Casino, also known as Celes and El Largo (Barcelona 1922 – Girona 1949), Facerías, and González Sanmartí y Pareja— he carried out many incursions into Spanish territory (expropriations in Barcelona, assaults in Granollers, etc.) On 15 May 1949 he took part in a bombing campaign against those countries that had favoured rescinding the United Nations policy of 1946 urging members not to appoint ambassadors to Franco’s Spain. With Facerías and another comrade he planted a bomb in the main lobby of the Bolivian, Perú and Brasil consulates. Adrover Font was also associated with “Los Maños”, a guerrilla group whose leader, Wenceslao Jiménez Orive, was in charged of contacting the organic committees of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) in Tolosa de Languedoc. On July 12 1947 he participated in the killing of Eliseo Melis Díaz, a former confederal member accused of being a police informer. As a member of Barcelona’s defence commission, Adrover Font manufactured more than one hundred booms and was involved in at least two killing attempts against Franco: on May 17 1947, with a boom in the Barcelona’s Cathedral and on June 3 1949 with an explosion in the altar of Sant Pancraci de la Seu of the same city. The same year of 1949, together with José Lluís Facerías’ group, participated in confiscation actions to collect money to finance the guerrilla. On July 2 1949, with Domingo Ibars Juanias, Arquímedes Serrano Ovejas (or Oveja), Francisco Martínez Márquez, know as “Paco” in the libertarian movement (Barcelona 1922-1949) and César Saborit Carralero (San Martín Sagrera 1915Barcelona 1951), he broke in the ICAM ceramic factory taking 50.000 pesetas in the undertaking. On September 27 of the same year he associated again with the same group of people latter mention to stormed the company headquarters of a Swiss constructor, and three days later he assaulted the company «Edificios y Estructuras» located in Barcelona’s popular and busy ‘paseo de Gràcia’. On October 9, he collaborated in the famous assault to the Barcelona’s well-known brothel «La Casita Blanca», where his team collected 37,000 pesetas and took away all the customers’ personal documents. On October 14, the team took 400,000 from a robbery at the Barcelona’s jewelry shop in Laietana Street. The November 3 1949 arrested of the group member Ramón Loscos Viñas (Barcelona 1901-?), made possible a police ambush and the detention of Adrover Font together with José Pérez Pedrero (Tragapanes) and Arquímedes Serrano Ovejas, who will be gun down in the street by the police. On February 6 1952, with about thirty anarchist guerrilla members, he was tried by a court martial celebrated in Barcelona and sentenced to death. Executed at Camp de la Bota with Jordi Pons Argilés, José Pérez Pedrero (Tragapanes), Ginés Urrea Piña i Santiago Amir Gruañas (El Sheriff). His remains lie in the Pedrera mass grave at Montjuïc cemetery. (p. 31, paragraph 48

4, line 4 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). One of the most important specialized organizations of the Third Reich, the Todt Organization (OT), named after its director, Fritz Todt, was used for the construction of military and related sites, especially in occupied Europe. Labour service “volunteers” and private construction firms were first used by the OT in the building of the Siegfried Line in 1938–1939. During the war hundreds of thousands of foreign civilian workers, prisoners of war, and in places close to concentration camps, Jewish and other slave labourers were used to repair war damage and construct military-related projects. It was one of the few organizations in Hitler’s Reich to enjoy extensive administrative autonomy and worked all the more efficiently as a result… OT’s most ambitious task was the construction of the Atlantic Wall, the German defences against an invasion of France by the Western Allies; it ran from Norway to the Bay of Biscay. On this effort, the OT expended some 13.3 million tons of concrete and 1.2 million tons of steel in 3,000 fortifications. The ruins of many of these may still be seen today. The OT also built the submarine pens in France that proved so difficult for Allied aircraft to destroy. Following Todt’s death in an airplane crash in February 1942, his assistant, Albert Speer, took over the organization, and under him, it reached its greatest extent. Increasingly, the OT was involved in cleaning up bomb damage from Allied air raids on Germany. In autumn 1944, the organization was renamed the Front-OT, when it was armed and enlisted in the defence of German territory.” For further reading regarding German force labour see Gruner, Wolf. Jewish Forced Labour Under the Nazis. Economic Needs and Racial Aims, 1938–1944 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). (p. 31, paragraph 4, line 7 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). There has been a lot of controversy on who were the actual participants in this action and what were the real intentions for this incident to happen. To this day nothing for sure can be said on the 1953 mystery of Collada de Toses, other that there was a dead woman and a seriously wounded adult male. The woman was the thirty-four year old Mrs. Dora Phoebe Peck of Cardiff, and the man was her husband, Mr. Bernard Joseph Peck, a dermatologist doctor by trade with Jewish roots. It seems that for the anarchists that was an unacceptable crime and therefore they have never admit the authority of this action. In fact, within the anarchist environments there have always been a strong suspicion that the whole affairs was planned and carried out by Franco’s security service with the aimed to incriminate the anarchist and therefore make their exile in France unviable. In any case, and according to different studies and testimonies consulted, if this operation was ever carried out by the anarchist, it seems that for the Spanish police the villain and main protagonist of the crime would have not been Sabater, as Miguel García’s account maintain, but Ramon Vila Capdevila, Caraquemada. The story goes as follow. On July 25 1953 Caraquemada and his cohort intercepted a 10 CV Ford Zephyr with a British license plate HCO-543. After taking possession of a camera, the anarchist group asked the couple to leave. It seems, however, that Dr Peck and his wife did not understand the instructions and started following the guerrilla who responds with a burst of gunfire that accidentally killed the doctors’ wife and left Mr. Peck badly wounded. See among others Clara and, Sánchez Agustí, El maquis. (p. 33, paragraph 1, line 10 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The Tallion group, named chosen to reflect the desire to retaliate in kind and degree to the injury suffer, was formed on September 1949 at Mas Tartàs, in 49

Palau de Cerdaña. The majority of its members had fought on the Spanish Republic side. The group leader was Julio Rodríguez Fernández, alias El Cubano. Born in La Habana, Cuba, in 1918, he had fought with Cipriano Mera in the Spanish Civil War, and took part in several Republican army divisions afterwards. Arrested at the end of the war, he escaped and joined the Almadén (Ciudad Real) guerrilla passing later into France. The day he was gunned down at the Barcelona’s Diagonal Street (1949) the police found on him identification papers under the name of Rafael Grado Pelejero. Beside Miguel García García, alias El Seco (Archena, Murcia 1908-1981) —who died in a London’s Hospital of tuberculosis (a disease he got while spending time in Franco’s jails)— José Luis Barrao, known as Pepe el largo, constituted the group. Very ill, he was carrying identification papers under the name of Ramón Sans García the day he was killed in Barcelona (1949). Victor Espallargas, alias El Viejo from Alcorisa, killed by the police in 1949 in Barcelona. Espallargas was an anarchist and a militant of the Barcelona Construction Workers’ Federation. In his Esbozo Íñiguez states that he was the FAI Secretary in Aragon in 1936 (202). Manuel Sanchez; Manuel Guerrero Motas alias Manolo, from CNT since 1934. According to Iñiguez, Guerrero Mota was born in Medina Sidonia, Cádiz, in 1914. Other sources cited him as native from Barbastro, Huesca. He met El Cubano in Madrid, and agreed to hide some weapons in exchange for some guidance help to cross the border to France, where he arrived in the early months of 1949 accompanied by José Iglesias Paz (Galicia 1916-2006). Once in Toulouse, Guerrero Motas was given monetary support by Juan Cazorla Pedrero, Tom Mix (Cartagena 1920Venezuela 2005). Guerrero Motas’ arrested in Barcelona in 1949 was, according to Sanchez Agustí, the cause of the Tallion’s downfall. In his work El maquis anarquista Sanchez Agustí states that Guerrero Motas reached an agreement to cooperate with the police and, in exchange for his information, the authority promised not to ask for his death penalty. He was condemned to a twenty-six years sentence and got parole in 1962. José Corral Martín (Valladolid 1910), MLA and CNT of Barcelona, carpenter and anarchist bricklayer was sentenced to twenty years prison in 1943. However, he was released one year later. He joined the Tallion group in 1944. Arrested and tried in 1952 by a military tribunal and sentenced to the capital punishment, latter commuted it for life sentence. Release on parole in 1962 (other sources say 1967). Jordi Pons Argilés (Puigcerdá de Lleida 1912 or 1915) alias Tarantula was a peasant and an ex-combatant in the Durruti Column. He had hold the positions of Lleida’s CNT provincial secretary, and CNT’s board member in the Popular Tribunal established in the city hall of Lleida between August and October 1936. He went into exile in 1939 with the defeat of the Spanish Republic, and joined the MLE (Spanish Libertarian Movement) in 1948. The police, finding out that he was hiding at the Domingo Ibars’ home in the Sant Adrià del Besòs, a neighbourhood close to Barcelona. After a fourhour shoot-out, Pons Argilés gave himself up to the authorities. Shot at Camp de la Bota, Barcelona, in 1952. (p. 33, paragraph 2, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Antonio López Montes (1916) from Alto Aragón fought in the 127 Brigade and was a delegate in the meeting of the JJLL (Libertarian Youth) celebrated in Igries to recruit peasants to the cause of anarchism. He participated in the anarchist action group “Los Novatos” (The Rookies) founded by El Quico and his brothers. Exiled in France in 1939, he defended a head-on confrontation with Franco’s repressive forces. He was the first delegate of the CNT regional 52

confederation of Aragón and delegate of MLE in Barcelona. Dispatched into Spain, he was arrested in Irún in 1946 with Diego Franco Cazorla —pen name Amador Franco (Barcelona 1920)— with abundant propaganda and logistic material. Franco Cazorla joined the FIJL (Federation of Iberian Libertarian Youth) at aged thirteen. In July 1936 he fight at the Barcelona’s barricades and participated in the assault at Pedralbes’ barracks. Member of the Rojo y Negro Column, he participated actively at the collectivization movement in Aragón. He wrote for the anarchist journal Acracia (1936-1937) and Frente y Retaguardia. Delegate at the Regional Committee of FIJL in May 1937 celebrated in Barcelona, he was appointed secretary of culture and propaganda for the Regional Committee of Barcelona where he opposed any collaboration with government. In 1938 he was chosen as the Committee regional delegate at the FIJL Peninsular Congress that took place at Valencia where Franco Cazorla, as one of the main figures of the anti-collaboration movement in the libertarian cause, sustained a public confrontation with those in Favor of cooperating with the republican government. Exiled in France at the ended of the war, he suffered the French internment camps and participated in the reconstruction of the libertarian movement during the Nazi occupation of France. Together with Raul Carballeira Lacunza, alias El Argentino (Juarez, Argentina 1917- Barcelona 1948) he was dispatched into Cataluña in 1946 with the mission to reorganize the FIJL and as editor of Ruta, the mouthpiece of the Catalan anarchist youth movement. At the ended of July, he went into a new mission in Spain and was arrested with Antonio López Montes. The police capture some documents on the latter that help them to carried out a series of raids that ended up with the location of the house in Caballo Street that was being used as shelter and meeting place for clandestine reunions. As a result Ignacio Zubizarreta Aspas (Zaragoza 18981958), alias Zubi, delegate for Aragón’s MLE, was arrested. He died in jail in 1958. Wenceslao Jiménez Orive, alias Wences or Jimeno (Gijón, Asturias 1922 – 1950 [committed suicide]) detained in Zaragoza with anti-Franco propaganda brochures was tortured brutally by Luis Ansón Luesma, Inspector of the Brigada Politico-Social (Politico-Social Brigade) of Zaragoza. The owner of the house was so badly torture that she committed suicide to void further “questioning”. On the 21 of April 1947 a military court martial judged Antonio López Montes and Diego Franco Cazorla at the Loyola military headquarters in San Sebastian. They were asked for the capital punishment, and were executed on May 2 (according to other information May 1 ) of the same year at the San Sebastian’s jail at Ondarreta (see Téllez Solá, Facerías, 103; 106-107; 110-113; 147; 163; 334; Sabaté 86; Íñiguez, 338, Montseny, 1947) (p. 33, paragraph 3, line 2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). According to Lorenzo Íñiguez, the libertarian guerrilla “Los Maños” carried out their actions mainly in the regional are of Barcelona between 1949-1950. Wenceslao Jiménez Orive, of whom we have already offered some information in the previous note, together with Simón Gracia Fleringan (Zaragoza 1923-Barcelona 1950), alias Miguel Montllor and Aniceto Borrel, Plácido Ortiz Gratal, alias Vicente Llop and Vicente Lobo (Huesca 1921-executed 1950), Daniel Gonzalez Marín alias Rodolfo, and some others, were the most important men of the “Los Maños” guerrilla warfare. Wences, the leader of the group, was the oldest of four brothers; his father was a railway worker, ticket collector and activist in the anarcho-syndicalist union the CNT. Wences started as an activist in the Young Socialists, but when he met Ignacio st

Zubizarreta Aspas he became interested in anarchist ideas. In 1946 he was arrested and brutally tortured. After three months he was release on bail and he joined José Luis Facerías’s guerrilla group. However, their collaboration didn’t last too long due to disagreements. In 1949 Wences formed his own action group, “Los Maños”, with his childhood friends from Zaragoza. After undertaking various actions in Barcelona —among them the unsuccessful attempt on Barcelona BPS chief police Quintela Bóveda— the whole group moved to Madrid in order to organize an attempt on the life of Franco. When they were on the point of carrying it out, unforeseen problems cropped up and they had to abandon the idea for the time being. The group went to France. In December 1949 the group left for Barcelona with the intention to investigate the causes of so many activists being shot down in the streets of Barcelona. On the 9th January 1950 Wences was shot down in the street without any warning. Seriously injured, he had just enough strength left to take the cyanide capsule, which he always carried with him, so as not to fall into the hands of the police alive. He was 28. A few hours after Wences death Gracia Fleringan was arrested with Plácido Ortiz Gratal due to the betrayal of Aniceto Pardillo Manzanero, El Chaval. Gracia Fleringan, Victoriano Muñoz Tresserras (Barcelona 1923), who has promised to be their chauffer, and Plácido Ortiz Gratel were executed on December 24 1950 in Barcelona and their bodies thrown into a mass grave. (Edited from Téllez Solá, The Anarchists; Téllez Solá, Facerías and Iñiguez). (p. 35, paragraph 2, line 4 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). In September 1949 Jaime Albama (or Albana) Morell, who was born in Puigvert (Lleida 1931) and worked in Nimes (France) crossed into Spain with the Tallion group. Denounced by an informer, and at the request of the police, Albama Morell presented a phalange card. The police, realizing that the document was fake one, arrested him and upon his searching they found two hand-grenades and a 45 revolver. After being tortured, he gave away the place where Jorge Pons Argilés and Domingo Ibars Juanias were hiding. Arrested on the 21 of October, the rest of the Tallion group was completely wiped out the same day (Tellez Sabaté, 159-160; 164-165; Sanchez Agustí, El maquis n. pag.) (p. 35, paragraph 2, line 6 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). Saturnino Culebras Saiz, El Primo (Guadalajara 1920 – Barcelona 1950). Saturnino fought in the Durruti Column as a militiaman. Exiled in France at the end of the war. He was twenty-nine years old when he, and his guerrilla group Los Primos, passed into Spain in September 4 1949. Ramon Vila Capdevila, the famous libertarian guerrilla and the oldest of the group, was guiding them through the Pyrenees. In October 1949 Saturnino was arrest with the totality of the group members. The Barcelona’s group liaison Miguel Acevedo Arias, married with two daughters, was sentenced to thirty years; Saturnino got the death penalty at emergency summary court martial celebrated in December 7 1949. He was shot at Camp de la Bota with Manuel Sabaté Llopart — the younger of the Sabaté’ bothers and the second youngest of Los Primos group with twenty-four— for whom, according to Busquets, “the prosecutor had not read out the counts upon which he was being indicted, probably because there were none. It was surely enough that he was the brother of José and of El Quico” (Sentenced… 19). Gregorio Culebras Saiz (Guadalajara 1911) member of CNT since 1929 was ten years older than his brother Saturnino. Arrested by the communist he spent two weeks in the clandestine jail located in 52 Ronda Sant Pere, Barcelona. Fought with the 54

anarchist Tierra y Libertad Column in the Pyrenees. Exiled in France at the end of the war, he was arrested during the Nazi occupation and deportee to the Dachau concentration camp. He survived the deportation and at the end of World War II returned to live France settling down in Toulouse with his brother Saturnino. As a member of Los Primos, he went into Spain, was detained and imprison at the Modelo prison in Barcelona. Condemned to thirty years prison on December 1949, he was released from El Dueso jail in 1959, got married and worked as gardener until his dead in Barcelona (1980 or 1981). José Conejos García, a native of Barcelona (1911) was thirty-eight years old at the time of his arrest. During the Spanish Civil War he fought as a political commissariat in the 26 Division. In France 1949, he joined Los Primos and was arrested in Barcelona in October with the rest of the group. Sentenced to thirty years jail term of which he spent some at El Dueso prison, in Santander; Manuel Aced Ortell El Francés, born in Toulouse (1914) from Spanish immigrant parents. Sentenced to thirty-year prison by the same emergency summary court martial, he was freed on parole from Burgos prison in October 1959. Hélios Ziglioli, a twenty-two year old Italian from Lovere —a little town near Bergamo in Lombardy— who was passing into Spain for the first time. He, together with Ramón Vila Capdevila and Manuel Sabaté fell into an ambush near Moiá. Capdevila was seriously wounded but managed to escape; Manuel, inexperienced and left to his own device, was picked up the Civil Guard, and Helios lost his life. The youngest of the group was Juan Busquets Vergés, El Senzill. He was twenty-one when arrested. Busquets worked in Barcelona’s Hispano-Suiza factory as apprentice. In 1947, he left Spain to work as miner at Cransac, a town in the Aveyron department in southern France. In Toulouse he established connections with the Spanish Libertarian Movement (MLE), and in 1948 he joined Marcelino Massana Bancells’ —alias Pancho— guerrilla group. In fall 1949 Busquets became a member of Los Primos and crossed into Spain arriving at Barcelona where he participated in a political meeting with members of José Sabaté group at the Clot neighbourhood. Arrested on the 18 of October 1949 and transfer to the Modelo prison, he was sentenced to death, latter commuted for thirty years. In 1956 Busquets, together with Juan Gómez Casas (Bordeaux 1921- Madrid 2001), attempted to escape from the San Miguel de los Reyes prison but the flight was uncovered and Busquets almost lost his life. He was transferred to the hospital of Valencia, and latter to the penal hospital of Yeserías in Madrid to be operated. He passed time in Carabanchel and Burgos before being released in 1969. Once free, he settled down in France where along with Manuel Llastser Tomás and Alicia Mur Sin, he found the Franco’s Political Prisoners Association in 1990. He is also the author of a testimonies and collaborate in libertarian journals (Íñiguez 14, 107, 162, 177, 540, 630; for a detailed account of this events see Busquets, Sentenced… 5-27; Busquets, Veinte 15-75. Los de la sierra; also Téllez Solá, Sabaté… 8, 22, 79-81, 112, 154158, 167, 170, 186, 197-198, 221, 333, 335, 341-345; Téllez Solá, Facerías… 16, 51, 57, 159, 174, 179-181, 188-189, 197, 240, 248, 259, 267, 271, 312; Christie, General Franco… 19, 102, 120, 151, 171, 237, 242). (p. 35, paragraph 2, line 9 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). One of the many unknown heroes who fight Francoism and Nazism. Born in Peguera, near Berga, in April 1908, Ramón Vila Capdevila, also known by various nicknames (Caraquemada, Pasos Largos, Ramón Llaugí Pons, Raymond and El Jabalí) was since 1928 or 1929 member of the Berga CNT. After the laid off workers at La Pobla de Lillet plant, he participate in a machine sabotage 56

mission and has to serve an eight years jail sentence. Released with the proclamation of the Republic, he worked as a miner and participated very actively in the 1932 Figols rising. Imprisoned in Manresa and Barcelona, worked in Berga as lumberjack and met there guerrilla leader Marcelino Massana. Arrested 1936 in Castellón he escaped being killed by the “ley de fugas”. Locked up at Valencia after the trolley strike, he was released with the break out of the war. Enlisted as a voluntary into the Tierra y Libertad Column (he quitted it when it became militarized), he fought at the front (was also a member of SIP —Servicio de Información Periferica)— infiltrated the enemy rear (Zaragoza). Following the Nationalist victory over the Second Spanish Republic, Caraquemada crossed the French border to avoid capture but was interned at the French concentration camp in Argelès-sur-Mer. The following year he escaped and returned to Spain. At this point, he formed a clandestine resistance group. Not long after, he was in Vichy France to acquire supplies, and was arrested by Germans, who were by this point occupying France. Imprisoned in Perpignan, he was only there a short time before the Germans sent him to work to bauxite mines at Bèdarieux. He was soon able to join the French Resistance at Limoges under the pseudonym of Captain Raymond —in Rochechovart he command a group of 200 men— and put his experience with explosives to use in sabotage operations. The Freedom battalion that he was commanding in the Atlantic Coast was incorporated in to the Free French 2 Armoured Division, led by General Philippe Leclerc. During the war many Jews escaping from the Nazis, as well as allied servicemen, came out by that backdoor from Europe, and Caraquemada was one of the guides most sought after. Following the end of World War II, he primarily operated in the Catalonian areas of Alt Llobregat and Baix Llobregat. As his last act of resistance before his death, he destroyed electricity pylons on 2 August 1963 near Manresa. He was killed on 7 August 1963 after being shot in the heart by Guardia Civil officers near Balsareny (or Castelnou de Bages). Caraquemada was buried in Figols. On 15 July, 2000, a plaque was placed at his burial site remembering him for his fight for freedom and for the anarchist ideal (García García, Black Flag, vol. 4, No. 6, Jan/Feb 1976; Íñiguez 630, Téllez Solá, Facerías 51, 57, 159, 174, 197, 240, 248, 267, 271, 312; Téllez Solá, Sabaté 8, 79-81, 112, 154-158, 167, 170, 186, 197-198, 221, 341-345; Busquets, Veinte 16-23, 28-30, 175-176, Busquets, El Senzill 7, 5258, 63, 65, 190-193; see also among many other books, Ferran Sánchez, El maquis, Chapter 10 Ramón Vila “Caracremada” (El ultimo guerrillero) (p. 35, paragraph 3, line 3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). nd

The youngest of the Sabaté’s brothers, Manuel, aka Manolo, was born in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat in 1927. At 16 he was very fond of bullfighting and tested the bravery of young bulls in the bullrings of Andalucía. In 1946 he crossed into France to re-unite with his brothers José and Francisco, El Quico (the famous Sabaté brother). They never wanted their youngest brother to get involved in the Resistance and go with them in their risky actions against the Francoist regime. In September 1949, making the most of the fact that El Quico was in a French jail, and Jose, his eldest brother, was with an action group in Spain, Manolo joined the group led by Ramon Villa Capdevila Caraquemada. This group fell into an ambush and had to separate, and Manolo was captured. In a summary military trial he was condemned to death and shot at Camp de la Bota on the 24th February 1950. He was 23 (Íñiguez 630; Téllez Solá, Busquets, Sentenced 11-28; The Anarchist Resistance n. pag.). (p. 35, paragraph 3, line 4 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 57

There is a documentary by Carles Balague, La Casita Blanca. La ciutat oculta. The film uses as a pretext this famous love hotel to show the life in post-war Barcelona. It portrays personal accounts and stages some dramatization with old people who are interviewed and through their memories, the usual NODO -news and propaganda from Franco's dictatorship- from the times illustrates what they remember. The documentary tells us about the double standards, the misery and the hypocrisy of the power players of that era. One person in particular -Juan Antonio Samaranch - even got into the top of the International Olympic Committee. He later will become the key person for the successful Barcelona bid to host the Olympics Games in 1992. But this is not the point, the point is to expose by word-of-mouth from different sources the dirty laundry during the 40s and 50’s, the black market, misery, ration books, the brothels, the urban guerrillas, and all in dire contrast with the Eucharistic Congress, and Franco's and Eva Peron's visits to Barcelona. There are several films on black market, white crime and prostitution during the post-war years, among them La huella del crimen by Ricardo Franco. (p. 36, paragraph 5, line 4 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 58

3. The Trial Before joining the Tallion group, Jaime Albama (or Albana) Morell, born in Puigvert (Lleida) was working in Nimes. Contrary to Sanchez Agusti and Téllez Solá statements, for Miguel García the arrest of Albama Morell in Ciudad Condal —he was detained 1949 in the district of Raval, also know as Barrio Chino, a neighbourhood located in the medieval city quarter of Barcelona, trying to sell a golden watch he had bought in France— was the source of Tallion’s demised. According to Abel Paz, to have a Falange card or being a veteran of the “Spanish war of liberation” as the Nationalist referred to the civil war, was a pass that open all the official doors to gain access to jobs in the government organizations and or other social institutions (Al pie 22). However, the Franco’s police was for some time aware that the market was riddled with false Falange identity cards. (p. 38, paragraph 2, line 2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 59

The chief of police of the Brigada Regional de Investigación Social, also known by Brigada Social was Eduardo Quintela Bóveda (Orense 1891-Barcelona 1968). He joined the police force in 1917 and served in his post for thirty-six years (36). Quintela Bóveda, known as “the terror of the FAI”, became an expert in anarcho-syndicalism. In a time of bustling anarchist activity, he was the man in charged to pursue the destruction of the libertarian organizations in Cataluña. However, the sustained and hectic activity carried out by the anarchist groups made it necessary to reinforce Quintela’s Brigada Social with another police squad called Servicios Especiales. Despite repeated attempts by anarchist groups against Quintela’s life, he was always able to escape unharmed. In his article “Vietnam y fantasia/Vietnam and Fantasy”, the Falangist journalist Manuel Tarín Iglesias recalled Quintela Bóveda’s expletive at the newspaper’s request for information to write about the Brigada Social in Barcelona: “—¿What’s what you want to know? ¡Fuck, don’t write biographies for the future!” For a detailed account of the many unsuccessful attempts to Quintela’s life see, among others, Téllez Solá, Sabaté 99-100; 123-127). Another important figure in Franco’s repressive forces was Pedro Polo Borreguero (Extremadura in 1897 – Barcelona 1972), a heavy 60

smoker, and short, neat and tidy figure. Polo Borreguero was in charge of the new Brigada de Servicios Especiales funded in September of 1946 to help Quintela’s fight. He joined the police force 1921, and during the civil war was a member of the Catalan government police force. With the end of the hostilities he passed into France where he started working for the Franco’s intelligence service SIFNE (Servicio de Información en la Frontera Noroeste de España). Earlier, Polo Borreguero’s mate was Miguel Badía, the chief police officer of Barcelona who was murdered as retaliation for his campaigns against the Catalan anarchist movement. Polo Borreguero replaced Quintela as chief of BIS, and remained in his job until his retirement in 1962. Afterward, he was named Honorary Chief of Police and took up the position of Cabinet Chief of Intelligence at the Barcelona Civil Government. He died suddenly in 1968, when he was 75 years old. Téllez Solá’s Sabaté is also a good source of information to follow this figure in his fight with the Catalan libertarian movement. Last but not least, the Creix brothers (Antonio Juan Creix and Vicente Juan Creix) specialist in beating and torturing detainees. Despite the high sophisticated degree the Creix brothers had achieved in this art, the novelty of systematically torturing all political prisoners at Layetana Street belong to the SS commanding officer and GESTAPO member Paul Winzer, appointed directly by the Reichfüher Heinrich Himmler as the person to be in charged of the GESTAPO in Spain, where he remain until 1944. The Creix brothers were very sympathetic to German methods. In 1963, Antonio Juan Creix was named the chief of the Brigada Politico-Social de Barcelona but during the Spanish transition to democracy he was forced to present his resignation based on very shaky accusation. The truth was that for the “new democratic regimen” figures like Antonio Juan Creix were undesirable and therefore need to be hidden or eliminated. Unfortunately, as writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán notice, “We, their victims, did not do anything to shine a light on them. The political reforms had already absolved those who owned the Creixes. Would it have been right to pursue their servants?” (Tremlett 84). Antoni Batista has published a very interesting book on this dreadful police entitled La carta. Historia de un comisario franquista. (p. 39, paragraph 8, line 3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). On the Tallion group and Jorge Pons Argilés, alias Tarantula see notes 40, 51, 54 and 59 (p. 40, paragraph 3, line 2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 61

On José Corral Martín and Jaime Albama see notes 51, 54 and 59 (p. 41, paragraph 1, line 3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 62

Alias José Castro Velasco, libertarian bricklayer born in Barbastro 1923 (or 1919)-Huesca 1980. Téllez Solá gave Brescos as Eusebio’s second surname. Too young to fight in the Spanish civil war, he took part in military patrols, guard duties, and building reinforcements. In March 1938, two days before the arrival of Franco’s forces to Barbastro, he took the last train for Barcelona. Failing to find a job, he joined the Republican forces. Recovering from injuries sustain at the front when Barcelona fell, he was arrested and transferred to Barbastro. Not being objet of legal proceedings, he was sent to Miranda de Ebro concentration camp where he worked as gardener, and then he was sent to Burgos and, finally, was deported to a camp in Nador, Morocco. Released and backed in Spain, he was drafted and spent four year doing the military service. Discharged from the army, in 1947 he joined a guerrilla group from the region of Barbastro. Arrested in Jan. 18 1948, the 63

police find on him a machinegun given by his CNT comrade Bonifacio Noguero Ubiergo —Huesca 1904 —arrested in 1947 and sentenced to fourteen years prison by a military court marshal celebrated in Zaragoza in 1948— and Marcelino Begueria Agon —Uncastillo, Zaragoza 1914Tona, Barcelona1998—. Of socialist ideology, Beguería Agon fought in the Spanish civil war and was exiled in France. After passing for several French concentration camps, he enlists in the 32 CTE. Arrested and sent to Mauthausen he escaped in May 1945. Repatriated back to France, Beguería Agón emigrated to Venezuela and years later he returned to Spain, establishing himself as typographer of the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia. Incidentally, Bescos was imprisoned and sick at the local jail, escaping the night of the 7 to 8 of February and passed into France. Condemned in 1954, six year after his break, to an eleven-year prison term and 3,000 pesetas fine. Settled in Montauban, France, he continued his militancy activity with the CNT in exile and kept his underground fight in Spain. In July 1949, with several other guerrilla fighters, he crossed into Aragon, Spain, and had a runin with the Civil Guard at Mesón Seville. One of the members of the group was killed and another was injured. After another encounter in which another fighter died, they returned to France. At the end of August, beginning of September of 1949, Bescos went into Spain again with a new group. Arrested in Barcelona in October 1949 under the name of José Castro Velasco, he was lengthily and brutally tortured. The court martial gathered in Barcelona in February 1952 sentenced him to thirty years prison and hand in nine dead sentences. He spent prison time at Barcelona, Ocaña, and Huesca. He was released on parole from Alcala de Henares by the Ministry Order of Justice of March 23 1962 (See BOE Núm. 123, May 23 1962. Web. May 15 2013). In his later years he participated in the reconstruction of CNT of Barbastro (See Téllez Solá, Sabaté 139, 159-159, 163, 219; Íñiguez 414) (p. 41, paragraph 4, line 1-2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). th

See notes 40, 48, 51, 54 and 65 (p. 43, paragraph 2, line 3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 64

Or Juanías or Joanies aka Mingo; Roset; Rubio. Barcelona 1921 (or 1924) – 1997 (or 1998). Anarchist born in the Plaça de les Olles of Barceloneta, at young age he moved to the Antic Cami de València, at Poblenou. He attended the famous La Farigola school where he studied drawing and painting (did an exhibition while in jail) and worked as maintenance fitter. At age 15 he participate in the barricade that was set up on the street Pere IV by the anarchists to control the 1936 fascist coup d’état. Member of the Libertarian Youth, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Model in January 1938, as result of systematic repression that hit the libertarian movement after the events of May 37. Shortly before the end of the war he was released and went to France where he spent time in St. Cyprien and Septfonds concentration camps. An iron and steel worker at a factory in Nièvre, he was arrested by the Germans in Jun 1940; released by the maquis he returned to Spain, where for the moniker of no criminal record is sent to do military service in Morocco. Back to Poblenou he joined again the FIJL (Libertarian Youth). It is a time in the district that, despite the repression, they live certain anarchist effervescence. Juanías was arrested in 1946 in the Valero bar —this was a place for distribution of underground press— in Wad-Ras street that belonged to the "Barri de la Plata" Poblenou. After the beatings in the police station, and once released, he decides to join the "action groups", whose main 65

function was to raise funds through expropriations to banks and businesses, designed primarily to help prisoners. In January 1947 he went to Barcelona and joined the Movimiento Libertario de Resistencia (MLR) —a resistance movement limited to Cataluña— but by then there were deep disagreements, often personal, understandable under the repressive atmosphere of physical elimination that the regime practiced. Alongside Pedro Adrover Font, el Yayo, shot in the Camp de la Bota, he performed many actions, until finally in late 1949 he was stopped. Sentenced to death by a court martial in 1952, the sentence was commuted by thirty years in prison. First in the criminal "punishment" of Ocaña and then in Burgos. After twenty years, and with a very impaired health, he was released in 1969. Afterwards, he joined the Sindicato Confederal de Espectáculos Públicos, between 1971-1971 secretary of propaganda and culture in the Catalan CR; in 1970-1975 he worked together with Negro-Rojo (Black-Red) group and in the publications of CNT, Solidaridad Obrera, Tierra y Libertad and Tribuna Libertaria (Íñiguez 305; Téllez Solá, Facerías and Sabaté; Web. 22 May 2012. <http://historiasdelpoblenou.blogspot.com/2010/03/domingo-ibars-joanies1921-1998.html>. (p. 43, paragraph 2, line 3-4 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). Born in Pujedos, Orense 1916. At aged 18, he emigrated to Cataluña and joined the CNT and the JJ.LL (Libertarian Youth). In 1936 he fight in the war as a militiaman of Land and Freedom Column. With the defeated of the Republic, he crossed to France and is confined in St. Cyprien concentration camp. After a while, he escaped but is arrested in Perpignan; transferred to Germany where he suffered imprison at Baden-Baden and at Karlsruhe. Back in Paris and since 1945 once again in the libertarian movement. In 1948 he went under cover to Spain to take care of Barcelona, Madrid and Zaragoza’s anarchist prisoners as the legal advise member for the CNT-AIT in the interior. In 1950 he is arrested and tried but his sentence to dead is commuted for thirty years of which he will complete eleven. In 1961, he is on parole and returned to his little patria Galicia. In 1973, he applied for political asylum in Switzerland, lived with his family in Lugano, and collaborated with anarchist groups, and kept in touch with the Spanish anarchist organization. In 2000 he returned with his partner to Galicia and join up again the CNT until his death in June 2006 (Íñiguez 306; <http://pacosalud.blogspot.com/2006/06/enmemoria-de-jose-iglesias-paz.html>. (p. 43, paragraph 2, line 4-5 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Pedro Meca López was born in Murcia in 1914. He worked as a sales representative and was a member of MLE and CNT of Barcelona. During the war he fought in the Ascaso Column as lieutenant but abandon the column after its militarization. Imprison in 1944, he participated then in the groups of action and was arrested on the 27 of May 1949. Released temporary in August 23 of the same year, he was arrested again in Barcelona on May 3 , 1950 during the raids where were imprison several old members of the groups dismantled in October 1944. Taken in front of a court-martial which opened in Barcelona on February 6th, 1952 against thirty survivors and collaborators of these groups, Meca López was sentenced to 25 year of prison, whereas 9 of his comrades were sentence to death, among which five — Santiago Amir Gruañas, Pedro Adrover Font, Jorge Pons Argilés, José Pérez Pedrero and Gines Urrea Piña— were executed on March 14th, 1952 at the camp de la Bota. (Téllez Solá, Sabaté 219; Téllez Solá, Facerías 262-263; Íñiguez 369) (p. 43, paragraph 2, line 5 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 66

1972]). Miguel García is referring to Manuel Lecha Aparisi, born in Torga, Castellón in 1899 (or 1891). Lecha Aparisi did his military service with Mariano Casasus in the artillery regiment in Gerona —that is way his libertarian partners at CNT, to which he joined in 1923, called him el Artillero. In 1923, he formed part of the local Committee of Barcelona and was elected as union representative of the chemical industry. In 1936 he earned his living as docker and was part of the Barcelona seaport transport trade union of the CNT. In July 1936 he played an important role in the political warfare in the streets of Barcelona. He, on his own, pulled an enormous cannon from the Barcelona docks to the middle of the town, where it blew out a Francoist machine gun nest. He participated in the military expedition to Mallorca and was in charge of Column Rojo y Negro’s artillery. After the militarization of the Column, he took up the post of intendant commissar for the 127 mixed Brigade. Arrested in Barcelona at the end of the war, he was sentenced to death; commute in 1943 to thirty years life sentence. According to other sources, Lecha Aparisi crossed to France before coming back to Barcelona in 1943. After the application of some prison privilege, and while in probation, he joined the underground transport trade union of the CNT, and was a member of the Catalan regional committee of the CNT. His flat at 3 Passatge Serra y Arola was the assembly point of many underground meetings. Detained in 1953 by a police raid, he was arrested with the last surviving members from the libertarian military action groups. In his dwelling the police found more than 2000 union cards with the employee contribution stamps. He was court martialled on February 1952 in Barcelona together with nine others activists. He received a four years, three months and three days prison sentence. The military prosecution asked for capital punishment for the rest of the member and five of them were executed at Camp de la Bota on March 14. Manuel Lecha Aparisi died in prison in the fifties (Téllez Solá, Sabaté 189, 191, 219; Téllez Solá, Facerías 263; Íñiguez 325; “Los de la Sierra” n. pag.). (p. 43, paragraph 3, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 68

4. Sentenced to Live As Montjuïc, Somorrostro, El Carmel or La Perona, Camp de la Bota was part of an urban phenomenon of the first magnitude in Barcelona extending from the beginning of twenty century to almost the time of the 1992 Summer Olympics. These shanty dwellings, that formed what then was known as “the crown of thorns” of the city of Barcelona, were “[b]uilt from a range of materials, including cardboards, scrap metal and household rubbish… [B]arracas normally consisted of one large room in which all family members would sleep. Lacking all basic amenities, including toilets, electricity and water… [B]arracas were highly unstable structures, vulnerable to the extremes of heat and rain and occasionally collapsing during inclement weather” (Ealham n. pag.). Among all the different slum areas born to the heat of an incessant immigration, Camp de la Bota was one of the most popular, and also one of the most complex because it belongs to two municipalities: Barcelona and Sant Adrià des Besòs. During the 1920s, with the Exposición Internacional of 1929 and the arrival of a great number of immigrants, Camp de la Bota grew very fast. Originally set up as a firing range by Napoleonic troops in 1810, it was then taken over by the Spanish 69

military at the end of the French invasion. During the late 19th century, desperately poor immigrants moved in, building shacks. There was even a community of Chinese people so the area was known for some time as the “Barrio de Pekín“. But Camp de la Bota has a more recent and sinister memory for many Barcelonans. Its strip of sand was used as an execution ground between 1939 and 1952. Lorries of prisoners escorted by Guardia Civil, the Army and zealous volunteers would drive out here from Montjuïc castle and the Modelo prison with people condemned in summary trials. It is estimated that 1,700 political prisoners were killed at la Bota. Anarchists also executed a number of Nationalist sympathizers here during the Civil War. As the Army abandoned the area, a new wave of immigrants from around Spain occupied the land. Most of the huge shantytown was cleared away in the 1980s, to make way for the Forum site. As Manuel Delgado pointed out, “the enormous operation of reform which is hidden beneath the pomp and ceremony of Forum 2004 is not only an extreme expression of tertiarisation, thematisation and capitalist reappropriation of the city. It is also an unbeatable example of how the history of a city can be manipulated by imposing an artificial memory, suited to the dominant political and economic interests and, at the same time, ignoring the undesirable aspects – for being ugly or inconvenient – of its real past.” On memory, art and history see Frances Abad project “Camp de la Bota”. On Camp de la Bota as a place of killing see Josep María Solé y Sabaté and Joan Villaroya y Font. Also Rosa Domenech’s social work on living conditions for the immigrants of this shantytown. For more on shantytowns in Barcelona, see “Shanties. The Informal City”. (p. 47, paragraph 2, line 18 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). In his Al pie del muro testimony, anarchist activist and fighter Abel Paz retold a story he hear while in jail on the ritual that the public executioner has to undergo after finishing his job. “Apparently,… once he garrotted the person under sentence of death, the public executioner was place in a cell under the charge of murder. Judged and asked by a magistrate: ‘Have you killed a human being?’ he would responded ‘Yes, but by the requirement of the Law.” There and then the executioner was acquitted. The money he was to be pay for was thrown to the floor” (78). Basilio Martín Patino’s Queridíssimos verdugos is a great document to the history of death penalty by garrotte during the Franco’s regimen. It explores the thoughts, attitudes and work of a number of official and semi-official executioners while the death penalty was still in force in Spain (up to 1975). (p. 48, paragraph 3, line 7 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The history of this monastery goes back to centuries ago. The building is the result of a construction labour that was undertaking during different periods: a Muslim farmhouse in the 11 century, a Cistercian monastery in the 14 , and a Hieronymite monastery in the 16 and a prison in the 19 century. It ceased to function as a prison in 1966 and in the 80’s the owner of the building, different political institutions of Valencia, started the work of restoring the building. Today, the Monastery is housing the Bibliotéca Valenciana. In 2006 more than 300 people met there to pay homage to all the people imprison there by the Franco regime (p. 48, paragraph 4, line 5 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Born in Barcelona in 1928 and known among the libertarian militiamen as el Senzill and Jano. First arrested in 1944, aged 16, Juan Busquets Verges was an apprentice fitter in the Hispano Suiza factory in Barcelona, a member of the 70

clandestine anarcho-syndicalist labour union (CNT), and a member of the factory strike committee. In 1947 he crossed into France where he contacted the Spanish Libertarian Movement in Exile (MLE) in Toulouse, and found employment in the mines of Cransac. The following year he joined Massana’s guerrilla group and took part in a number of operations inside Spain including, in June 1949, the dynamiting of more than 40 electricity pylons and the uprooting of a kilometre of railway lines in the vicinity of Tarrasa. In the autumn of 1949, Busquets guided by Ramón Vila Capdevila crossed into Spain with the guerrilla group led by the Culebras brothers. Arriving in Barcelona he attended a meeting of various urban and rural guerrilla groups in the Clot district of Barcelona. Busquets was arrested on 18 October 1949. Sentenced to death, and later commuted for thirty year prison term. In 1956 he almost killed himself attempting (with Gomez Casas) to escape from San Miguel de los Reyes. Afterwards, Yeserías, Carabanchel and Burgos prisons. On October 1969 he was released, and settled down in Barcelona. He was not happy with the Spain he has to endure and passed to France where he kept his fight for political freedom for Spaniards. In 1977, together with Manuel Llatser Tomás alias Rosendo (Barcelona 1921-2008) and Alicia Mur Sin (Madrid 1935), he created the Association of Political Prisoners of Franco to fight for political and social recognition for the victims of Franco’s reprisal. Unfortunately, as Busquets personally communicate to us, this association was dissolved in 1995 due to lack of financial resources (Busquets, Veinte; Íñiguez 107; Téllez Solá, Facerías 16, 179, 180-181, 188; Téllez Solá, Sabaté 8, 155, 156). (p. 50, paragraph 3, line 9 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). To control the source and spread of infections in Franco’s prisons, a “sanitary period” in quarantine was imposed, as well as other type of hygienic measures (shave the hair of the prisoners, delouse, high temperature washed of inmates cloths, etc.). It is worth remembering that Franco’s prisons were infested with disease due to poor sanitation and overcrowding. An epidemic like spotted fiver —initiate by lice bite— caused thousand of deaths among political and ordinary prisoners. Nonetheless, most of the times the sanitary period was uses as a way of conditioning the inmates, when it was not a clear instrument of exploiting the political prisoners, as it can be seen from Abel Paz explanation of his experience at Burgos prison: “The sanitary period for the new arrivals, like us, means that we have to endure three months in solitary confinement as an indispensable prerequisite to adapt to the penal discipline. Added to this there were another three months in which we were kept in solitary confinement, but we still were responsible for the cleaning of the whole prison as members of Brigada de Higiene” (Al pie 104-105; unless otherwise mention, all translations are mine) (p. 50, paragraph 5, line 4 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). We know that money penetrates everything and it is able to break even the most insurmountable walls. Money was constantly changing hands in society and therefore in prison, as a microcosm that it was of the Francois society, it happens as well. The penal institution management comes up with a new parallel currency to be use in its environs that was exchangeable and keep the parity with the legal tender in the street. It consists of vouchers made up of little cardboard bits that were given to replace the prisoners’ money. The prison officers noted down the amount handing in by the prisoner (or his family) into an account, a type of sheet in which it was recorded the daily personal expenses of the inmate. The prisoner then had at his disposal only a 73

“

small amount of money-vouchers for his expenditure. During the sixties a very important number of forge vouchers were passed on to the Modelo prison that though it didn’t collapsed the economy it provided the causes for a very dangerous inflationary process. During the eighties’, may be as a consequence of the bad experience during the sixties, the vouchers idea was no longer in use and in its place only cash —in small quantities— was employed.” (Paz, Al pie 56) (p. 57, paragraph 1, line 7 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The removed director was Armando (Flors?) Zapata “was a wellupholstered man in his fifties. His face spoke of his annoyance at the [idea of prisoners’] escape, in that it might represent a hindrance to his career prospects” (Busquets, Sentence 32; see also Busquets, Veinte 104). The new governor, nickname la vieja, was Emilio Carrasco Cuesta, first class officer (see BOE 24 September 1952). (Busquets, Sentence 39-40; see also Busquets, Veinte 105-106; 111; 113 and 121). (p. 57, paragraph 1, line 7 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 75

5. The Free-for-All Due to the long delays, the terrible conditions and the cruelty suffered in transit to another prison, the Franco’s system of transferring political prisoner —also known ironically “penitentiary tourism”— was in a way a substitute form for killing the inmates. As Eduardo de Guzmán rightly and humorously point out in one of his testimonies, for inmates three prison transfers were the equivalent to one dead sentence (p. 72, paragraph 2, line 3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). According to Juan Busquets, the prisoners gave the name of embolado to this arrangement, which entails “[the] opportunity to attend a trial (whilst having nothing to do with it) as a witness or as the accused, in the intention of making a bid for freedom along the way.” (Sentenced 43) (p. 75, paragraph 4, line 15 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Old Holborn is a British brand of hand rolling tobacco. (p. 84, paragraph 1, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 76

6. Two Trials Agustín Gómez Escolástica, a former judge advocate in the Auditoría de Guerra del Ejercito de Ocupación, and inspector of penitentiary services, was the new prison director. Juan Busquets’ appreciation of Gómez Escolástica is rather different. According to Busquets, Gómez Escolástica was a man devoid of any human empathy for the dire predicament of the political prisoners. (See Busquets, Sentenced 48; Busquets, Veinte 129). (p. 90, paragraph 4, line 2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Known by the alias Benjamín. Underground militant, first post-Franco Secretary General of the CNT and prolific writer and historian, Juan Gómez Casas was born in Bordeaux in 1921. The son of Spanish immigrants returned to Spain in 1931 with the Republic, he joined the struggle for the anarchist ideas — as his father did before him— in 1936 by becoming a member of the main youth organization affiliated with the CNT-AIT, Juventudes Libertarias (Libertarian Youth). During the war he fight as a member of the Brigada mixta 39, and with the end of the hostilities he was able to elude prison for being a minor. Later on he joined in the clandestine struggle against the Franco regime. In 1947 he was elected Secretary General of the Juventudes 79

Libertarias del Centro in Toulouse, France and Secretary General of the Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL) and CP of FAI in 1948. He was arrested at his home in Carabanchel bajo in Madrid the 15 of January of 1948 in possession of the press used to publish the anarchist magazines Tierra y Libertad and Juventud Libre. The police also arrested the print worker of the magazines Rafael Cayuela Cubillo (born 1924). Court martial and convicted, Gómez Casas was sentenced to thirty years prison of which he served 14 years in San Miguel de los Reyes, Ocaña and Burgos. He was freed in 1962 and then worked as an antique painter, a trade he learned in prison, and as a bookkeeper for a hotel in Madrid. Although he did not have any formal education, he started to write —under the penname of Benjamín and/or Jacques de Gaulle— articles, prefaces and books dealing with the history of the Spanish anarchism and other historical topics that are considered today classical texts. Gomez Casas even translated into Spanish the classic book Moby Dick. Aside from being a prolific propagandist he was the first above ground CNT-AIT General Secretary from 1976-1978. Gomez Casas's life began to wane due to illness in 1999, and he died a year latter. (see Íñiguez 271; Busquets, Sentence 30; Busquets, Veinte 83; Paz, Al pie 247; In Memoriam Pro Praesentia). (p. 91, paragraph 3, line 2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). The “orderly” name was Sebastian Catalá, a non-political prisoner in charge of sanitation. He was the reason why the escape was unsuccessful. Catalá died years later in Paris as a consequence of a casual accident (Busquets, El Senzill 160). (p. 91, paragraph 3, line 5-6 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). It is important to remember that inmates in Franco’s penal system were habitually left to their own luck and abilities to feed themselves. As Stuart Christie was able to experience himself while he was at Carabanchel, “Spanish prisons operated on a semi-privatized basis; people either worked and ear money, or starved” (General Franco 68). And this were not just conditions from the early Franco’s years of repression, the Amnesty International report on Political Imprisonment in Spain stated, as late as the year 1973, that “The quality of food provided varies from prison to prison, but in general the meals are scanty, lacking in proteins, and green vegetables, and extremely badly cooked”, and concludes that “This kind of diet taken over a long period —three years or more— is bound to result in health damage” (15). Aside from providing for the basic needs working, either in the prison factories or by carrying out some other tasks traditionally performed by the orderlies —such as cleaning the galleries, handing out the food and mail, opening and closing the cells, help with the counting of prisoners, etc.— was a way of reducing the prison term for the internees through remission of sentence through work (two work days meant one day less in prison). For a broader view of prisoners’ life in Franco’s prisons see Vega Sombría article. (p. 91, paragraph 3, line 2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). For a different angle on how these escape unfolded see Busquets’, Veinte 122132, and Sentenced 46-48. (p. 92, paragraph 2, line 6 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Miguel García, also known in anarchist circles as Seco, had at leas four other brothers and a sister. His father, a CNT member and a strong-arm man for Salvador Seguí (Noi del Sucre), was left physically disable while in police custody. In 1920, at aged eleven, Miguel had to take charged of the family as th

a head of the household because of his father dead. Miguel married in Madrid during the war with a nurse, and had one child with her. Apparently, there was not much of a father and son relationship in spite of the fact that both were members of the local CNT at Barcelona. In fact, it seems that it was after Miguel’s dead when his son started to fathom the mystery of his progenitor, a person whom he had never got to know very well. I want to thank Philip Ruff and Stuart Christie for this information. (p. 93, paragraph 2, line 5 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]).

7. The Mutiny “Goliardo Fiaschi was born in Carrara (Italy) on 21 August 1930 and died in the same city on 29 July 2000. At aged thirteen, he joined the Resistance. He joined forces with the libertarian “Gino Lucetti” formation participating with this group until 31 December 1944. In late December, Goliardo Fiaschi decided to cross through the German lines to join the Anglo-American forces and was sent to the Abetone front along with the 3rd Costrignano Brigade, Modena Division (Emilia Region). In 1956, Goliardo made the acquaintances of the Spanish anti-Francoist fighters José Lluís Facerías and Luis Agustín Vicente, known in Italy as “Alberto” and “Mario Mella” respectively. From them he learned of the tragic plight of the Spanish people under the Franco regime and this planted the notion in his head of joining the fight against the dictator Francisco Franco and trying to overthrow it. On 15 August 1957 Facerías, Goliardo and Luis Agustín set off for Spain; they reached the border by nightfall. On the 15th it poured with rain. They entered Spain at 8.40pm on 17 August. On 28 August Facerías and Goliardo reached Barcelona and took cover in a hut on Tibidabo. On 27 August he was arrested in Sabadell (Barcelona) in the home of a friend. At 7.30 pm. on 29 August, Facerías made the trip down into Barcelona, telling his friend that he had a rendezvous to keep “with a comrade” and warning him that he would be back by midnight at the latest. He also told him that if by any chance anything befell him, Goliardo should move to a base of which he gave him the details. Goliardo accompanied him part of the way and while returning to the hut was arrested by a six-strong police unit laying in wait in the area. Facerías was killed in Barcelona on 30 August and Fiaschi and Luis Vicente were brought before a Court Martial on 12 August 1958, with the former receiving a prison term of 20 years and one day and the latter 24 years and four months. Goliardo had served five months when news reached him of the death of his father, Pietro. He served a total of seven years, eleven months and fourteen days, emerging from prison on 14 August 1966, only to be handed over to the Italian authorities, which had sued for his extradition. Goliardo applied for a review of the sentence passed on him in his absence on 12 April 1960, but his application was rejected out of hand. He was committed to the prison at San Giorgio di Luca. In October 1971 he was transferred to the prison in Lecce and finally to Portolongone where he served 13 months in the cells for constantly protesting and demanding to be released. After a lengthy campaign for his release, he was pardoned and discharged on 30 March 1974. Between Spain and Italy, he had seen the inside of 48 penal establishments. Several hundred anarchists from Italy and elsewhere attended his funeral, bidding him farewell by waving red and black flags and singing anarchist anthems. Goliardo Fiaschi died after completion of his memoirs, having begun the writing of them some years previously after he was diagnosed with the disease that carried him to his grave” (see “Goliardo Fiaschi” by Téllez Solà 85

[translation Paul Sharkey], also Christie, General 156). (p. 96, paragraph 1, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Undoubtedly, this is a typographical error. Miguel García is referring to Luis Agustín Vicente, otherwise known as El Metralleta (El Metralla and/or El Garulla). He went also under the false names of Luis Ruiz Costa, Luis Ruiz López and Mario Miglia. According to the information provided by Busquets —who met him in prison— contrasted by us with Iñiguez Esbozo, Metralleta was born in Lorca, Murcia, on the 22 of January of 1920. Metralleta was a very active anarchist member and therefore he has a long history of fighting against fascism. In 1939, after the defeat of the Republic, he and his parents went into exile to France. In 1942, they returned clandestinely to Spain. In September 1946, he was summoned to appear before a court for failing to show up to do the military services. In 1947, he was arrested in Molins de Rey with eleven combatants and accused of being the perpetrator of several armed robberies and of the attack on “Sansón”, a cement factory located at San Feliu de Llobregat whose arsenal was blasted off by a bomb. In September of 1952, after overpowering a warder and taking away his gun, he fled with other prisoner from Castillo de Montjuïc. With the help of the organization he crossed the border and worked at the Carrara mines, later establishing in Italy where he carried our several arm robberies. According to the Spanish police report, from the arm robbery at Geneva he collected four million of liras and from the one perpetrated in 1957 at Banco de Vilanova de Montferrato one million an a half. Accompanied by Goliardo and Facerías he went back to Spain the same year but was arrested in Sabadell and sentence to twenty-four years of prison. During the 80’s he was living in Lorca, Murcia (see Íñiguez 19, ABC Hemeroteca 31/08/1957, p. 25; La Vanguardia Hemeroteca 31/08/1957, p. 15; Los de la sierra). (p. 96, paragraph 1, line 2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The Madrid Inspector Regional de Prisiones in 1959 was Fernando Arnao García (see BOE 24 Nov. 1956; we thanks also Floreal for his confirmation regarding this point). Arnao García had different post in Franco’s penal system: from a simple orderly officer at the Murcia prison to governor of the cellular or Modelo prison of Barcelona, to inspector of corrections, and Director General of Prisons (see BOE 13 Jan. 1958) and Warden Corps. Fernando Arnao García was a typical Francoist bureaucrat in that he viewed the political prisoners as someone to be mutilated bot mentally and intellectually, without no rights, as it can be seeing from his declaration: “One must neither vanquish, nor convince political prisoners, but break them down” (García, Spanish 6). (see Busquets, Sentenced 60; Busquets, Veinte 134, 137 and 167) (p. 100, paragraph 8, line 2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The Valencia governor at the time was Jesús Posada Cacho (Soria 1910Madrid 1981), father of the current President of the Spanish Parliament. Posada Cacho held many post in Franco’s bureaucracy: local leader of the Movimiento in Avila, Mayor of Soria 1942, labour representative and civilian Governor of Soria (1946), Burgos and Valencia (1956-1962). Captain with the rebel army and member of Falange Española, Posada Cacho was also Procurator in Franco’s Courts as well as labour inspector and Director General of Labour. The acting governor Miguel García mentions could have been Antonio Cano Gonzalez (Requena, Valencia 1906-Sevilla 1972) who was the head of the Valencia police since 1956 until his dead. It is important to notice that the head of the police of each province had a directed telephone 86

communication with the civilian governor of the province. Cano González join the police in 1930 and started working as a police officer in the Barcelona Brigada Social where he distinguished himself for his role in the events of October 1934. Later on he was sent to Asturias playing there also an important part in de domination of the revolt. He was laid off with the Republic and reinstated to the police force at the end of the war. For an up to day on the political inheritors of the Franco's regime see the article by Ana Pardo Vera. (p. 101, paragraph 4, line 2-3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). “The Policía Armada, popularly know as los grises, was established on March 1941 as an integral part of the Government police. As the new forces of law and order of the dictatorship, its main goal was to control and repress any opposition to the regimen. This police force has a military organization: infantry, cavalry and motorized patrol. An army general called General Inspector with the headquarters in Madrid was in command of the military units. The commanders-in-chief and officers of the different military units belong to the army. Thirty per cent of the staff officers was reserved for members of the Policía Armada. The major orders come from the Director General of homeland security, civil governors, government representatives, and the senior leadership of the national police. There were mobile units for immediate intervention to restore public order. In 1978 the Policía Armada had more than 100.000 men as a defence forces. According to the 1971 official statistics of body composition —by profession— 52.28% were workers, 39% were farmers, and 8,44 were students. Geographically, the biggest number of members came from Castilla-León, then Andalucía, Extremadura and Murcia (73,20% of the total). Cataluña and Asturias amount only to 0.62% for each region” (Téllez Solà, Sabaté 85). (p. 101, paragraph 4, line 6 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). In his testimony, Busquets stated that the strike didn’t have any political motivation. “The prison staff were at loggerhead with the governor: he berated them as incompetents [for not knowing how to deal with the young non-politico’s discontent] and accused them of being derelict in their duties.” This generated a resentment that the warders used at the first opportunity. “Thus the bulk of tensest non-political prisoners, [their] itching for a fight and for a chance to let fly their ill-contained rebelliousness” was used as a ploy by the warders to get rid of the prison governor. Three of San Miguel the los Reyes’ governors were: Emilio Carrasco, Agustín Gómez Escolástica, and Gabriel Castro Marco. The Director General of the Prison Service of Levante was Fernando Arnau García. The San Miguel de los Reyes prison closed in 1966 (Sentenced 57-58) (p. 103, paragraph 1, line 3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 89

8. Corruption As García stated in his testimony, Joaquín Gambín Hernandez, born in Murcia, —known by El Grillo (the Cricket), Cesar and El Viejo Anarquista.— was one of “the children of the great defeat.” (112). By trade a shoemaker, the police arrested him the first time at the age 17. “By the time he left prison in 1977 he had spent 28 years of his life at one time or another behind bars. In several occasions he took part in failed escaped attempts whilst in prison, but strangely —despite establishing a name for himself with the press and inside the jails as a ‘legendary’ escaper— he was never punished for these supposed bids for freedom. Whiles in Barcelona’s Model prison in 1977, he had met 91

anarchist prisoners. Amongst them were Jose Cuevas and several other comrades who had been arrested in one of the regular police operations against the CNT and the libertarian movement in Catalonia” (“The Scala File” n. pag.). On January 1984, the CNT Solidaridad Obrera issued a writ against the police for the alleged involvement in the Scala provocation, and acknowledge Joaquín Gambín Hernandez’s status as a police collaborator and police informer. For more information on Gabín and his libertarian connections see the “The Scala File”; on state terrorism and dirty war against CNT see Cañadas Gascón’s book, and J. Alcaide et all. (p. 111, paragraph 4, line 2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). See note 29. (p. 112, paragraph 1, line 1-2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). See note 29. p. 114, paragraph 6, line 1-2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). According to José Peirats, the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth “had been founded soon after the birth of the Second Republic … Later, [the libertarian youth] spread throughout the whole of Spain until they came to represent the third branch of the great libertarian family… The FIJL had agreed upon the following statement of principles: ‘...This Association shall strive to invest young people with a libertarian conviction, as to equip them individually to struggle against authority in all its forms, whether in trade union matters or in ideological ones, so as to attain a libertarian social arrangement'" (The CNT 76). This libertarian socialist organization was created in 1932 in Madrid. In February 1937 the FIJL organized a plenum of regional organizations (second congress of FIJL). In October 1938, from the 16th through the 30th in Barcelona, the FIJL participated in a national plenum of the libertarian movement, also attended by members of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI). During the purge of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) and other dissident organizations that took place in Barcelona towards the end of the Spanish Civil War, those who were acting on the orders of Joseph Stalin murdered many FIJL members. After the Civil War FIJL acted in two branches, one in exile situated in Paris and one domestic as secret and illegal organization under Franco’s rule. Some FIJL members were associated with the militant First of May Group. The organization’s most famous member was Federico Borrel García who was the subject of Robert Capa’s most well known photograph, The Falling Soldier The. This image, taken in 1936, depicts the moment of a republican soldier's death during the Spanish Civil War (p. 114, paragraph 6, line 4-5 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 92

9. The Tunnel In 1937, in full Civil war, the Nationalist created the National Service of the Wheat to control the production, trade and cultivation of the cereals. In spite of the fact that it was trying to guarantee the supply of bread to the cities, it had a negative incident on the farmers, who were feeling that their were cheating with the price. This motivated that many of them will conceal part of their production to sell it on the black market to higher prices. The black market had just sat it bases and it was booming. The bad crops, the “pertinacious drought” and the black market drove to the rationing and to the 95

import of cereal from Argentina. (p. 122, paragraph 6, line 1-2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The Hospital Penitenciaria del Puerto de Santa Maria was a top security stage prison housed in the Monasterio de Santa María de la Victoria. It open in 1896 as Penitenciaria Hospital and finally, after several alterations and additions, as Prisión Central de El Puerto de Santa María. It closed in 1981 when the last inmates were transferred to the new facilities known as Centro Penitenciario Puerto I, II, and III. The Puerto de Santa María was known among the Spanish prisoners as a very difficult prison, with an inhumane regime, continued sanctions, hundreds of days in punishment cells, discriminatory treatment, and a constant harassment for which one had to has a remarkable human resilience. It is no wonder then there is a popular song entitled “Carceleras del Puerto” in which there is a verse remembering those painful memories from the Spanish prisoners: “mejor quisiera estar muerto, que verme pa toa la vía / en este Penal del Puerto / Puerto de Santa María.” For a statistical analysis on the socio-economical and political background as well as on mortality rate and types of crimes of the prisoners at the Penal del Puerto de Santa Maria see Daniel Gatica Cote; for the origins and history of the Penal see Martínez Cordero’s book. (p. 126, paragraph 3, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). It is important to notice, as Juan Manuel Olarieta Alberdi does in his article, “The Decree of March 12, 1937 was reserving half of the civil servants' posts — among them, those of judges and justices — to the former military members of Franco’s army. All the new bureaucrats — also the judges and justices — of the new administration were demanded to pledged an oath of loyalty to the Caudillo and to the National Movement, requirement demanded by the article 4 of the Regulation for oppositions to the judicial service of May 5, 1941 and, repeated by the article 36 of the Civil servants' Law of 1964… The terrible repression unleashed immediately after the war was not an act of spontaneous and disorganized revenge, but a labour carefully planned and executed in which the judges played a decisively role. And not only a small and limited judicial personnel was the one that carried out the task of political repression: all the judicial organs were involved and assumed the most delicate political missions in defence of the Franco regime.” This can be clearly seeing with the Audiencias Provinciales which under emergency rule — which was nothing less than martial law under another name — were transformed into “emergency courts” to persecute, torture and imprison all of those that fight against the regime. For Olarieta Alverdi, “the clearest case was that of the Supreme Court, jealous defender of the most antiquated values and Franco’s principles. In Spain to consult the jurisprudence of the highest court gives one a feeling of shame, not only in the juridical sense but also from any aspect that wants to be analyzed. The decisions of the Supreme Court are an insult both to the most elementary sense of the justice and to the human intelligence” (“La creación” n. pag.). Also by the same author Las leyes de represión del anarquismo a finales del siglo XIX. (p. 128, paragraph 9, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 96

10. The Cockroaches of Alicante José Antonio Primo de Rivera y Sáenz de Heredia, III Marquis of Estella (April 24, 1903 – November 20, 1936) was a Spanish lawyer, nobleman, politician, and founder of the Falange Española. Captured by the republicans 98

on 6 July 1936 and held in captivity until being executed in Alicante on 20 of November 1936. Born in Madrid into a wealthy family, he was the oldest son of General Miguel Primo de Rivera, Prime Minister and Dictator under the monarchy of King Alfonso XIII of Spain. Primo de Rivera studied law at the University of Madrid between 1917 and 1923, and in 1925 he became a registered lawyer. He became involved in politics when he made speeches defending the policies of his father. He also edited the right-wing journal, El Fascio. He wrote for the newspaper ABC after El Fascio —of ephemeral life, just one issue— was shut down by the Republican government. He also founded two newspapers, Fe (1934) and Arriba (1935). Detained briefly in 1932 for collaboration in General Sanjurjo’s attempted coup. On October 29, 1933, he launched Falange Española, a nationalist party inspired by Italian Fascism. The foundational convention of the fascist party was held in the Theatre of Comedy of Madrid. Candidate in the general election of 19 November for the umbrella organization "Unión Agraria y Ciudadana," part of the broad conservative coalition Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (CEDA), José Antonio Primo de Rivera was elected to the Parliament as a representative of Jerez de la Frontera, Cadiz. On February 11, 1934, Falange merged with Ramiro Ledesma’s Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista to create the Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista under José Antonio's leadership. Primo de Rivera created several Falangist symbols. The Falangist uniform was a blue shirt with the embroidered design of a yoke (a symbol for farming) plus a backdrop of five vertical arrows (a symbol for war), copied from the heraldry of the Catholic Monarchs. The cap was the red beret of the Carlists. The flag bore the red and black colours of the Anarchists. In 1935 Primo de Rivera collaborated in editing the lyrics of the Falangist anthem “Cara al Sol.” For an authoritative study on Primo de Rivera, his ideology, contradictions and personality as well as for a comprehensive history of Spanish Fascism, see Fascism in Spain 1923-1977. (p. 131, paragraph 3, line 7 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). María del Pilar Primo de Rivera y Saen de Heredia, 1 Countess of the Castle of La Mota (November 4, 1907 – March 17, 1991) was the sister of José Antonio Primo de Rivera founder of the Falange and the daughter of Spanish dictator General Miguel Primo de Rivera, 2 Marquis de Estella. She was an enthusiastic member of the Falange, heading its Sección Femenina (Women’s Section). Unlike two of her brothers (both put to death by the Republicans) she survived the Spanish Civil War, during which she met Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Antonio Salazar. Pilar became president of the Association of Sección Femenina Veterans in November 1977, and held the post until her death. The main seat of the association was at the Castle of La Mota. She never married. According to rumours, Francisco Franco’s foreign minister, Ramón Serrano Suñer, and Ernesto Gimenez Caballero attempted to arrange a marriage between her and Hitler in order to create a fascist dynasty, but this plan never came to fruition. She died on 1991. (p. 131, paragraph 5, line 1-3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). At the end of Spanish Civil War thousand of prisoners began to arrive at Albatera concentration camp. Located in the municipal term of San Isidro to the south of Province of Alicante, Albatera/Catral was one of the hardest camps of Franco’s Spain. It remained open until October of 1939. Eduardo de Guzman’s trilogy La muerte de la esperanza, El año de la victoria, and Nosotros, los asesinos deserve special mention among the testimonies bearing witness to what happen at the end of the war in the Alicante harbour and afterwards in th

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Los Almendros and Albatera concentration camps. Among the ample bibliography dedicated to the Francois repression and the concentration camps see the books: El libro blanco de las cárceles franquistas 1939-1976; Prisión y muerte en la España de posguerra; Víctimas de la Guerra Civil, and Los campos de concentración franquistas, entre la historia y la memoria. (p. 132, paragraph 4, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). See note 74 (p. 134, paragraph 3, line 1-2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). See note 85 (p. 136, paragraph 3, line 7 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Miguel García could be referring to Antonio Iturmendi Bañales (Barakaldo1903-Madrid 1976) who occupied the post from 1951 until June 1965. Or, it could have been Antonio María de Oriol y Urquijo (Getxo 1913-Madrid 1996) that took the portfolio of the Department of Justice and hold it until 1973. (p. 141, paragraph 3, line 2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 101

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11. Another Generation The Tribunal of Public Order, also known as TOP was created during the last phase of the Franco regime. The TOP was born with the Law 154/1963, of December 2, 1963, after Julián Grimau's execution, and its functions continued until the year 1977. The main objective of the Tribunal’s was to prosecute and punish those activities that were considered political offences or crimes against the state. The TOP assumed some of the functions of the Special Court for the Repression of the Freemasonry and the Communism and some others that were bordering on the military jurisdiction, since they were judging crimes committed against the Armed Forces. Trial’s as the famous “Proceseso 1001”, against Comisiones Obreras’ leaders (Union Workers' Commissions), were run by the TOP. The Jan. 4 1977 Law Decree abolished the TOP. In spite of the fact that the law 52/2007 declared in its articles 2 and 3 that the sentences passed by the TOP were illegitimate, it did not mean the retroaction of effects of its resolutions. Therefore, this didn’t go beyond being a mere political declaration without any practical implementation. (p. 143, paragraph 4, line 3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). (or Conill) student of chemistry at the Universidad de la Ciudad Condal, and a young anarchist belonging to the Federación Ibérica de las Juventudes Libertarias (Iberian Federation of the Libertarian Youths (FIJL)). He was detained in Barcelona on September 18, 1962 with Marcelino Jiménez Cubas (Valencia 1936) and Antonio Mur Peirón (Huesca 1934), both workers. They were accused of three attempts by bomb claimed by the FIJL and committed between 29 and 30 of June 1962. One was at the Residencia Universitaria Monterol, believed then that it belonged to the Opus Dei. The second bomb was place near a Falange building located in Lesseps Square, and the third one exploited in the Instituto nacional de Previsión. There were no victims and there were minimal property damages. To tray to save the life of these libertarians, on October of the same year the “”Gruppo Giovanile Libertario” kidnapped the Spanish honorary vice-consul in Milan Isu Elías but within a few days he was liberated. On September 22 The Court-martial (process n°71IV-62), celebrated in Barcelona on September 22, 1962, sentenced Jorge Conill Valls to thirty years, Marcelino Jiménez Cubas to twenty-five years and Antonio Mur Peirón to eighteen years. The general Captain of Catalonia 104

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refused to approve the judgment of the Military Court —he considered that the accused deserved the death penalty— and consequently another process was carried out. Upon the their retrial in Madrid October 5 1962 by the Supreme Council of Military Justice, the district attorney, colonel Rafael Díaz Llanos requested the death sentence for Conill Valls, and life imprisonment for Marcelino Jiménez and for Mur Peirón, but the Court confirmed the September 22 sentence. Locked up at Burgos, in August, 1963 Conill Valls joined the Communist Party. During the Barcelona’s municipal elections of 1983, Conill Valls was one of the three chosen communists. At the end of 1986, he resigned from all his post (PSUC provincial delegate, and member of the Executive Committee and of the Central Committee of the PCE) but his deputy’s position, which he kept as independent up to the end of his mandate in June 1987. He was fifty-nine years old when he died in Perpignan 1998. (See Busquets, Veinte 175; Busquets, El Senzill 188-189; Íñiguez 164; Herrerín López 243; Christie, My Granny 227-228; Téllez Sóla “El secuestro” n. pag.). (p. 144, paragraph 2, line 2-3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). According to Stuart Christie, “The First Of May Group (International Revolutionary Solidarity Movement), an action group formed in 1966 by former members of the anti-Francoist ‘Defensa Interior’, consisted mainly of Spanish, French, Italian and British nationals fighting against Francoist, Salazarist and US imperialism. The first action undertaken by the group was the kidnapping, on the 1 of May 1966, of Mgr. Marcos Ussia, the Ecclesiastical Advisor in Franco’s Embassy in the Vatican. The goal of the kidnapping was to focus the attention of the world’s media on the plight of Franco’s political prisoners.” See Christie, General Franco 158 and subsequent). (p. 144, paragraph 3, line 3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). “[F]ormally known as The Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei is an institution of the Roman Catholic Church that teaches that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity. The majority of their membership is lay people, with secular priest under the governance of a prelate (bishop) elected by specific members and appointed by the Pope. Opus Dei is Latin for Work of God; hence members and supporters often refer to the organization as the Work. Founded in Spain in 1928 by the Catholic priest St. Jose María Escrivá de Balaguer (1902-1975), Opus Dei was given final Catholic Church approval in 1950 by Pope Pius XII. In 1982, by decision of Pope John Paul II, the Catholic Church made it into a personal prelature — that is, the jurisdiction of its own bishop covers the persons in Opus Dei wherever they are, rather than geographical dioceses. As of 2010, members of the Prelature numbered 90,260. Lay persons, men and women, numbered 88,245, while there were 2,015 priests. These figures do not include the diocesan priest members of Opus Dei's Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, estimated to number 2000 in the year 2005. Members are in more than 90 countries. About 70% of Opus Dei members live in their private homes, leading traditional Catholic family lives with secular careers, while the other 30% are celibate, of whom the majority live in Opus Dei centres. Opus Dei organizes training in Catholic spirituality applied to daily life. Aside from personal charity and social work, Opus Dei members are involved in running universities, university residences, schools, publishing houses, and technical and agricultural training centres. Opus Dei has been described as the most controversial force within the Catholic Church. According to several journalists who researched Opus Dei separately, opponents base many 106

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criticisms against Opus Dei on fabrications, and Opus Dei is considered a sign of contradiction. Several popes and other Catholic leaders have endorsed what they see as its innovative teaching on the sanctifying value of work, and its fidelity to Catholic belief. In 2002, Pope John Paul II canonized Escrivá, and called him "the saint of ordinary life." Criticism of Opus Dei has cantered on allegations of secretiveness, controversial recruiting methods, strict rules governing members, elitism and misogyny, and support of or participation in authoritarian or right wing governments, especially the Francoist Government of Spain until 1978. The mortification of the flesh practiced by some of its members is also criticized. Within the Catholic Church, Opus Dei is also criticized for allegedly seeking independence and more influence. In recent years, Opus Dei has received international attention due to the novel The Da Vinci Code and its film version of 2006, both of which many prominent Christians and non-believers protested as misleading, inaccurate and antiCatholic.” Wikipedia. “Opus Dei.” Web. 21 April 2013. For an in deep study on the relationships of Opus Dei and the Spanish traditionalism see La ACNP: La otra cosa nostra, particularly the “Introducción” elaborated by the Ruedo Ibérico’s team under the name of Colectivo 36. (p. 145, paragraph 2, line 3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). “The Valle de los Caídos ("Valley of the Fallen") is a Catholic basilica and a monumental memorial in the municipality of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, erected at Cuelgamuros Valley in the Sierra de Guadarrama, near Madrid, conceived by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to honour and bury those who fell during the Spanish Civil War. It was also claimed by Franco that the monument was meant to be a ‘national act of atonement’ and reconciliation. As a surviving artefact of Franco's rule, the monument and its Catholic basilica remain controversial, particularly because 10% of the construction workforce were convicts, some of them Popular Front political prisoners. 108

The monument, a landmark of 20th-century Spanish architecture, was designed by Pedro Muguruza and Diego Méndez on a scale to equal, according to Franco, "the grandeur of the monuments of old, which defy time and forgetfulness". Together with the Universidad Laboral de Gijón, it is the most prominent example of the original Spanish Neo-Herrerian style, which was intended as a revival of Juan de Herrera’s architecture, exemplified in El Escorial. This uniquely Spanish architecture was widely used in public buildings of post-war Spain and is rooted in International Classicism exemplified by Albert Speer or Mussolini's Esposizione Universale Roma. The monument precinct encloses over 3,360 acres (13.6 km ) of Mediterranean woodlands and granite boulders on the Sierra de Guadarrama hills, over 3,000 feet (910 m) over sea level where stand the Basilica, the Benedictine Abbey, the Hospedería, the Valley and the Juanelos, four cylindrical monoliths dating from the 16th century. The most prominent feature of the monument is the towering 150-metre-high (500 ft.) cross-erected over a granite outcrop 150 meters over the basilica esplanade and visible from over 20 miles (32 km) away. Work started in 1940 and took over eighteen years to complete, the monument being officially inaugurated on April 1, 1959. According to the official ledger, the cost of the construction totalled 1.159 billion pesetas, funded through National Lottery draws and donations. The complex is owned and operated by the Patrimonio Nacional, the Spanish governmental heritage agency, and ranked as the third most visited monument of the Patrimonio Nacional in 2009. The Spanish socialist government closed the complex to visitors at the end of 2009, basing the decision on safety reasons 2

connected to restoration on the facade. Controversy arose upon this decision, some people attributed the closure to the law of Historical Memory enacted during president Zapatero's mandate, and there were claims that the Benedictine community was being persecuted. The works include the Pietà sculpture prominently featured at the entrance of the crypt, using hammers and heavy machinery. In November 2010, alleging safety reasons, the socialist Spanish government of Zapatero closed down the Basilica for Mass. Mass was celebrated in the open during several weeks, with an attendance of 3,000 faithful, in a rainy day on November 14. Checkpoints were set up, according to socialist government sources, to prevent right-wing political manifestations such as Falange flags, in accordance to the Law of "Memoria Histórica". However, Catholic sources claimed that the government was simply trying to interfere with the celebration of the Mass. After the electoral defeat of the Socialist Party of Zapatero and his leaving office on December 21, 2011, the Basilica has returned to its normal functioning.” Wikipedia. “Valle de los Caídos.” Web. 21 April 2013. For an exhaustive study of this subject see the book by Daniel Suiro on the Valle de los Caídos. (p. 145, paragraph 3, line 7-8 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). For more on international military action against Franco’s regimen by anarchists see Téllez Solá’s book Anarchist International. (p. 145, paragraph 3, line 13-16 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 109

12. The Scot in Carabanchel On May 1961 the Director General de Prisiones José María Herreros de Tejada designated Juan José Brajimo Fernández as governor of Prisión Central de Alicante —also known as Reformatorio de Adultos de Alicante. (p. 147, paragraph 1, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Carabanchel prison, official name Prision Provincial de Madrid, was one of the best well-known punitive spaces of Franco’s dictatorship, and for the Spanish left a place of collective memory par excellence. Constructed by political prisoners after the Spanish Civil War between 1940 and 1944 in the Madrid’s neighbourhood of Carabanchel, the prison was inaugurated on June 22 1944 by the Ministry of Justice, the Falangist Eduardo Aunos. With capacity for 2000 inmates, it was one of the biggest prisons in Europe until its closure in 1998. Carabanchel demolition in 2008 was seeing as a symbolic act of hostility against the memory of those who fought against fascism and for democracy and freedom. No wonder that some historians call for the demolition of the Valley of the Fallen, which they considered it to be a monument to the extermination policy and the slavery of Franco’s political opponents. (For more on this infamous prison see Lugares de represión, paisajes de la memoria. La cárcel de Carabanchel. Also “El fin de Carabanchel,” broadcasted it by TVE on Oct. 10 1999). (p. 148, paragraph 2, line 6 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Ramón García Labella —named in 1963— was the Carabanchel prison director in 1965. For Stuart Christie, García Labella “was yet another Franco lookalike and carried himself in the same manner: proud, parchment-skinned, tight-arsed, straight-backed and stiff-necked” (General 59). In 1948, after an unpaid leave, García Labella re-enters to the active service and was destined to serve to the Colonia Penitenciaria del Dueso (Santoña) as an assistant officer. Before being named director of Carabanchel, he was the governor of Prisión Central de Burgos. Regarding the priests a Carabanchel, see Christie’s recollections on pages 68-70 of his General Franco. (p. 148, paragraph 3, line 6 110

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[Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). For a full account on Stuart Christie’s story consult his different books in which he describe his personal upbringing as a Glasgow anarchist, his unsuccessful attempt to assassinate General Franco and his twenty year sentence of which he only served three and a half at Carabanchel jail. See also “Objetivo matar a Franco.” (p. 148, paragraph 7, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). “Anarcho-syndicalist and anti-Francoist activist Fernando Carballo Blanco was born in Valladolid (Valladolid, Spain) on 30 May 1924. Aniceto Carballo, his father, worked at the Northern Railroad Company and, as a member of the (National Confederation of Labour) CNT. Francoist forces in Valladolid shot him. As a result Fernando’s mother, Concepción Blanco, was driven mad with grief and was committed to Valladolid’s provincial hospital. When the civil war ended, Fernando was jailed for five months for refusing to comply with the wishes of a police inspector and agree that his father had been executed, insisting instead that he had been murdered. By 1940 Fernando was eking out a living in Valencia, working as a joiner when able to find employment. He served six months in jail for stealing a packet of peanuts, and it was there he first came into contact with CNT militants. In 1942 he was working as a day-labourer in the farms around the towns of Viñaroz, Valencia and Tarragona, planting and harvesting rice. To make ends meet he also bought and sold livestock and other goods on the black market. In 1946 he was arrested in Mora de Ebro for resisting a night watchman who tried to confiscate his black market oil, and as a result he spent 18-months in Tarragona and Reus jails awaiting a trial that never took place. Released in 1947 he was rearrested in April 1948, in Trivissa, and charged with membership of the Socorro Rojo Internacional (International Red Aid/SRI) a charge that was later changed to robbery for which he was sentenced to a 13year prison term. By 1949 he was in the notorious prison of the Puerto de Santa Maria where he remained until August 1955 when he was transferred to Ocaña prison. Released on parole in 1956 he met and married Juana Rodriguez Olivar, and worked thereafter as a tailor, a trade he had learned in prison. In 1963 he joined the underground CNT and was involved in propaganda work. On 11 August 1964 he was arrested in Madrid along with the Scottish activist Stuart Christie, and charged with ‘Banditry and Terrorism’ for possession of explosives and planning bomb attacks targeting the Franco regime, and on Franco himself at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid. On 2 September 1964 a council of war sentenced him to 30-years and Christie to 20 years. In November 1969 Carballo mounted a hunger strike, claiming political prisoner status. In Burgos prison in November 1970, he mounted a further hunger strike in solidarity with ETA prisoners. He remained in Burgos until 1971 when he was transferred to Alicante where he remained until 1975 after which he was shuttled around a number of prisons (Córdoba, Valladolid, Alcalá de Henares, Jaén, Puerto de Santamaría, Carabanchel, etc.) on a “prison tour”. In December 1976 — by which time there were scarcely any political prisoners left and at which point he had served 26 years behind bars, 244 days of them in complete isolation, making him Franco’s longest serving prisoner — a campaign was launched in France to secure his release. The ‘Frente Libertario’ group published a poster calling for his release, but this was never fly-posted because on 13 January 1977 he was finally amnestied and released from the Adult Reformatory in Alicante, and at last able to rejoin his wife in Valladolid as well as the 20-year-old son 113

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he had previously only seen once. After his release from prison he participated in various CNT rallies and meetings (in Paris, Bordeaux, San Sebastián de los Reyes. etc.). In 1977 he settled in Alicante before moving on to Denia. Rearrested in January 1979 he was sentenced to 18-months imprisonment. Fernando Carballo Blanco passed away in his sleep as a result of a heart attack on 5 November 1993 in Denia (Marina Alta, Valencia).” Christiebooks, Estelnegre n. pag. (p. 149, paragraph 2, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). George Henry Borrow (5 July 1803 – 26 July 1881), also known in Spain, as Jorgito el Inglés, was an English author who wrote The Bible in Spain, subtitled "or the Journey, Adventures, and Imprisonment of an Englishman in an attempt to circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula" published in London in 1843. The work relates numerous unusual personal encounters Borrow had with Spaniards, from the prime minister to beggars, and frequent encounters with Gypsies. (p. 149, paragraph 3, line 8 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). The prisons of Soria —together with Palencia and Jaen— was allocated for the detention of politicals. Luis Andrés Edo was born in Caspe (Zaragoza) in 1925. The son of a Civil Guard, he moved the following year to Barcelona when his father was transferred to new cuartel. He started working at age 14 on the national railways company, RENFE as an apprentice and two years later as a locomotive engineer. At age sixteen, and after participating in underground union work, he affiliated to the CNT. He took part in the first student strike in Barcelona under the dictatorship. He deserted the conscript military service and fled to France. Arrested in Spain in August 1952 and returned to the rank in October 1953, he deserted again in early 1954. Re-arrested and sent to Castillo de Figueres where he spent six month in solitary confinement. Back in France again, he joined the libertarian anti-Francoist resistance movement. In 1955 he become involve with Laureano Cerrada Santos, another RENFE employee and a key figure in the WWII anti-Nazi Resistance and escape and evasion networks. It was Cerra who, in 1974, had bought a plane for an aerial attempt on Franco while the dictator was in his yacht in San Sebastian 1948. In 1961 he joined Defensa Interior, a group set up to engage in actions against the Franco regime. In 1966, he was arrested in Madrid for complicity in the kidnapping of the Papal Nuncio Mgr. Ussia in Rome and by 1972 had passed through the prisons of Carabanchel, Soria and Segovia, which he described in his book La Corriente, published in 2002. There he participated in several hunger strikes and was often put in solitary. Between 1972 and 1974 he was in Paris, where he worked with other anarchists, working on building sites to earn a living. On his return to Spain he was again arrested on the 1st May 1974, accused of collaboration with the Internationalist Groups of Revolutionary Action (GARI) and of having taken part in a press conference in Madrid claiming the kidnapping of the Spanish banker Suarez in Paris. He was sentenced to five years and once again took part in hunger strikes, which earned him 120 days in solitary. He was released with the amnesty of 1976. !With the refunding of the CNT in Catalonia on the 29th February 1976, he became a member of its Regional Committee acting as General Secretary and as director of the CNT paper Solidaridad Obrera. He took part in the huge meeting at San Sebastian de los Reyes in 1977 which celebrated the re-emergence of the CNT and which attracted more than twenty thousand people. He was an organizer of the 115

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Libertarian Days in Barcelona the same year, which drew an audience of over a thousand. In 1980, he was again imprisoned for a month. ! He wrote for many anarchist papers like Catalunya (1977), CNT, Construccion (Barcelona, 1979-80), Historia Libertaria, Lletra A, Nada, Solidaridad Obrera, Presencia, Tinta Negra, etc., and was the author of the book La CNT en la encrucijada: aventuras de un heterodoxo published in 2006. He died on 17th February 2009 after heart and lung problems. (Edited from Nick Heath’s short bio. of Luis Andrés Edo, from the obituary written by Stuart Christie’s, from Antoni Segura’s necrology in El País and from Íñiguez 195-196). (p. 152, paragraph 2, line 1-2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Alicia Mur Sin was born in 1935 into a libertarian family that went into France at the end of the Spanish Civil War. There, the family spent some months in French concentration camps for Spanish refugees until finally setting in Bagnères de Bigorre where she did her studies. During the 1960s she was active in the clandestine Defensa Interior (DI) and participate in diverse anti-Franco campaigns led by the organization. In 1966, as a member of Primero de Mayo (First of May Group) she travelled to Madrid to, according to Franco’s police, set up a plot “to kidnap Angler Biddle Duke, the US Ambassador to Spain, Rear-Admiral Norman G Gillete, Commander-inChief of American forces in Spain, and the Argentinian dictator, Juan Perón, who had been living in exile in Madrid since 1955” (Christie, General 164). Unfortunately, as it has happen many times before, “Operation Durruti”, as this particular kidnapping plan was known, was discovered due to the infiltration of the libertarian movement by Franco’s security forces. In this case, the villain was Inocencio Martinez, a long-standing police informer, known as “Heredia”, and controlled since 1962, by Brigada Político-Social. Arrested in Madrid in 1966 —together with Luis Andrés Edo and Antonio Cañete— and tried by Public Order Tribunal (TOP) in Madrid on 4 July 1967, she received a three and a half years sentence, which she spent in the women’s prison at Alcalá de Henares. Freed on parole in September 1969, she went back to Paris to take care of the rest of his comrades in prison and she continued to be involved with anti-Francoist resistance. (Edited from Christie, General 164-165; Kate Sharpley Library n. pag. (Web. 26 2013); Busquets, Veinte 198; Los de la Sierra n. pag. (Web. 26 2013); ABC June 11 1967 (Web. 26 May 2013); Íñiguez 427). (p. 152, paragraph 3, line 2-3 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The Spanish aristocrat Luisa Isabel Álvarez de Toledo (Estoril, Portugal, 1936), Duchess of Medina Sidona, also known as the ‘Red Duchess’ —a title she never accepted-- for her opposition to the Franco’s regime and her republican ideas (she referred to King Juan Carlos as ‘Mr. Borbón’), died in 2007 in San Lucas de Barrameda, Cadiz, Spain. The Duchess joined the Spanish socialist party during Franco’s dictatorship and started to give away her land dividing it up into agricultural cooperatives. By the time of her death, she retained hardly any of the extensive states, other than the palace where she lived, classified since 1978 as a historical monument. She retained, though, another palace in the village of Medina Sidonia and houses in Spain and France. After her separation in 1960 (divorce was not legal then), the family was left bitterly divided. Hers children, two boys and a girls, initiated and won a legal battle to stopped her mother from giving away portions of the family state at Sanlúcar, in Andalucía in the early Nineties. Apparently, the duchess re-married on her deathbed with her twenty-year German secretary Liliana Maria Dahlman, to whom she left in charge of the duchess’s 118

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palace in Sanlucar. As the duchess’s ‘widow’, Miss Dahlmann is now also the president of the Foundation Casa Medina Sidonia, meaning she is now responsible for the palace’s archive, the biggest private archive in Spain, of particular value to students of the 16 century reigns’ of Carlos V and Felipe II. But rather than for being a member of a group of radical lesbians and a bad mother, as the duchess’s second son Gabriel Alvarez de Toledo claims, Luisa Isabel Álvarez de Toledo is remembered with respect and affection in Spain as the woman who stood up to the dictator Francisco Franco, and fought untiringly against social injustice on many fronts. After her return from exile to Sanlúcar in 1976, she devoted her life to the six million documents conserved in her palace. She published 11 books based on the archives. From her nine months prison term experience in Alcalá de Henares’ jail, she wrote Mi cárcel (My Prison) in which she denounced the conditions in Franco’s jails. She also wrote another book on the Palomares crisis (Palomares). Prohibited by censorship, the latter was not published until 2002. She wrote three other novels, La cacería, La Base and La Huelga (The Strike), which form a trilogy attacking the corruption and oppression of the Franco regime. In 1992 she caused a stir with No Fuimos Nosotros (It Wasn't Us). Published to coincide with the 500th anniversary of Columbus's "discovery" of America, the book argued that the celebrations were misplaced, as trade between Spain and the Americas had begun long before Columbus (edited from The Guardian’s obituary, March 14, 2008 (Web. May, 26 2013); The Telegraph’s, March, 11 2008 (Web. May 26, 2013), and The Independent’s, March 17, 2008 (Web. May 26, 2013). (p. 152, paragraph 3, line 3-4 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The Palomares incident occurred on the 17 January 1966, when two military planes —a B-52G bomber of the USAF Strategic Air Command collided with th

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a KC-135 tanker during mid-air refuelling over the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Spain. The KC-135 was completely destroyed when its fuel load ignited, killing all four crewmembers. The B-52G broke apart, killing three of the seven-crew members aboard. Of the four Mk28 type hydrogen bombs the B-52G carried, three were found on land near the small fishing village of Palomares in the municipality of Cuevas del Almanzor, Almería, Spain. The non-nuclear explosives in two of the weapons detonated upon impact with the ground, resulting in the contamination of a 2-square-kilometer (490-acre) (0.78 square mile) area by plutonium. The fourth, which fell into the Mediterranean, was recovered intact after more than two-month-long search. Officials tried hard to calm public fears. At one point, the Spanish information and tourism minister, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, joined the American ambassador, Angier Biddle, for a “swimming party” in the sea to demonstrate that the waters were safe. The photos were published around the world (including on the front page of The New York Times). (p. 152, paragraph 3, line 7 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The first seed of what was going to turn into the most powerful democratic workers union under the Franco's regime was born in the bathrooms of the Asturias’s mine of La Camocha. The ‘Comisión Minera’ (mining commission), which was a 'commission of workers' entrusted to move to the Department of Employment the dissatisfaction of the workers of the mentioned well. In successive strikes the formula would be developing and spreading to other zones of the Spanish geography. Comisiones Obreras 121

(Workers' Commissions). The organization meeting of Workers' Commissions (Spanish CCOO) is of 1966 by the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and workers' Roman Catholic groups to fight against the dictatorship of Francisco Franco dictatorship, and for labour rights (in opposition to the nonrepresentative "vertical unions" in the Organización Sindical Española (Spanish Trade Union Organization). Along with other unions like the Unión Sindical Obrera (USO) and the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), it called a general strike in 1976, and carried out protests against the conditions in the country. Marcelino Camacho, a major figure of Spanish trade unionism and a PCE member, was CCOO's General Secretary from its foundation to 1985. (Suero, Daniel; Bernardo Díaz Nosti, Vol. III, 278; “Otones” 43-46; Wikipedia “Workers’ Commissions”). “ETA, abbreviation of Basque Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (“Basque Homeland and Liberty”), Basque separatist organization in Spain that used terrorism in its campaign for an independent Basque state. ETA grew out of the Basque Nationalist Party (Partido Nacionalista Vasco; PNV), which was founded in 1894 and which managed to survive, though illegally, under the fascist regime of Francisco Franco by maintaining its headquarters in exile in Paris and keeping quietly out of sight in Spain. In 1959 some youthful members, angered at the party’s persistent rejection of armed struggle, broke away and founded ETA. During the next few years the new organization developed groupings associated increasingly with Marxist positions and set revolutionary socialism as their goal. In 1966, at ETA’s fifth conference, the organization divided ideologically into two wings—the “nationalists,” or ETA-V, who adhered to the traditional goal of Basque autonomy, and the “ideologists,” or ETA-VI, who favoured a Marxist-Leninist brand of Basque independence and engaged in sabotage and, from 1968, assassination. The Franco regime’s attempts to crush ETA in the Basque Provinces were severe, involving arbitrary arrest, beatings, and torture. By 1969–70 the principal leaders had been rounded up by the police and subjected to military trials in the city of Burgos. Factionalism plagued ETA in the 1970s and ’80s, with various internal groups alternating between violence and political action. After Franco’s death in 1975, Spain’s democratic governments moved to establish regional autonomy for the Basque Provinces and to offer pardons to ETA members who renounced terrorism. In the following decade, however, the number of ETA killings by bombing and assassination multiplied tenfold compared to the occurrences under Franco’s ironhanded repression. Most of those assassinated were high-ranking Spanish military officers, judges, and government officials. ETA came to rely financially on robberies, kidnappings, and “revolutionary taxes” extorted from businessmen. It formed political front organizations—such as Herri Batasuna, which generally was considered the political wing of ETA—to contest elections in the post-Franco period while continuing to engage in assassinations and car bombings to achieve its goals. Successive ETA leaders were captured by the Spanish government or killed in factional disputes, but the organization remained active. In 1983 two ETA members were kidnapped and murdered by Spanish security forces as part of what many considered a “dirty war” against the group. In 2000 two government officials were convicted for their role in the murders and sentenced to more than 70 years in prison. In September 1998 ETA called a cease-fire, but it lasted only 14 months. Continued violence by ETA at the beginning of the 21st century once again led the Spanish government to attempt to suppress the organization, and in March 2006 ETA announced a 122

permanent cease-fire. In December 2006, however, ETA members carried out a bombing at Madrid’s international airport that killed two people, and in June 2007 it officially lifted its cease-fire. Although increased policing efforts and the arrests of several high-ranking ETA leaders in subsequent years weakened the organization, violent attacks continued. Bombings occurred in the city of Burgos and on the island of Majorca in July 2009, less than a month before the 50th anniversary of ETA’s founding. In 2010, however, the organization announced that it would not carry out “armed actions.” The cease-fire was dismissed by the Spanish government, which called for ETA to renounce violence and to disarm. In October 2011 a conference was held to discuss the conflict, and the attendees, who included former UN secretarygeneral Kofi Annan and Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, urged ETA to renounce violence and called on France and Spain to open talks. Shortly thereafter ETA declared the definite cessation of its armed activities, though it vowed to continue to seek an independent Basque state.” (n. pag. Enciclopedia Britannica Online). (p. 153, paragraph 2, line 9 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). On the subject of the repression that part of the clergy of the Basque Church underwent during Franco's regime see Anabella Barroso Arahuetes. (p. 153, paragraph 3, line 13-14 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). On the Zamora Prison and the Basque clergy see the articles by Francisco Fernández Hoyos. (p. 153, paragraph 3, line 16 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert HartDavis: London, 1972]). The dictatorship had to face constant conflicts with the academic world during the sixties. Strikes, detentions, expulsions and resignations of students, teachers, deans and rectors, as well as the closing of universities, was the typical reaction of a regime that was felt by the majority of the population as too conservative and repressive. (p. 153, paragraph 4, line 1-2 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). The prison of Soria was located in the Palace of the Audiencias and in 1959 it moved to its current location. In 1964 the director was Angel Rodriguez Santamaría (see BOE 30/07/1964). It is worth mention, as we have done in a previous note, that the ‘penitentiary tourism’ was not an element that could be applied only to Franco’s prisoners while in transferred to another jail, but also to the prison officers themselves. For instance, in a five-year period, the Soria prison had, at least, four directors that came for all geographical locations; and this was not an exception but the rule of the whole Franco’s penitentiary system. (p. 154, paragraph 2, line 16 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 123

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13. Twenty Years After The circumstances of the death of the Asturian miner, and communist militant, Mario Diego Capote (Oviedo 1924 - Segovia 1969) are, after so many years, still contested. He was arrested and sentenced to four years of prison for illegal propaganda activities. According to some information, he bled to death after suffering a beating in the jail of Segovia. 'Otones', lucked up at the time in Soria and transported with Capote to the jail of Segovia, stated in his testimony that the miner from La Camocha suffered from a stomach ulcer and, that he died from of an internal haemorrhage for not having received any treatment. Other reports mention that the reason of Capote’s dead was a hunger strike. In his memories, Portela Gondar reports that Capote "had licensed as an industrial clerk during the time spent in jail” (101). (p. 160, 126

paragraph 4, line 5 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Ben and Libertad Gosling were supporters of the Anarchist Black Cross who offered Miguel a place to stay on his release while he acclimatized himself to freedom and life in England. They lived out in Suffolk. Ben was a letterpress printer who also did posters for the ABC. Stuart Christie’s personal communication. (p. 162, paragraph 4, line 6 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). 127

On July 21, 1965, being a lieutenant colonel, Jesús Gonzalez del Yarrow Martínez was nominated general inspector of Penitentiary Institutions by Antonio María de Oriol, Minister of Justice at the time. González del Yerro left the post in September 1970. According to Paul Preston, González del Yerro, Jaime Milans del Bosch, and Pedro Merry Gordon, Captain-General of Seville, were “the three most serious ultra generals still on active” (Juan Carlos 436) during the Spanish transition to democracy. Jesús González del Yerro was known to be involved in the Spanish coup d’état of 1981. Jesús González del Yerro was then Captain-General of the Canary Islands. “[K]nown to be a hardline reactionary, stood on his oath of loyalty to the King and the constitution. This reflected his long-term rivalry with Milans del Bosch. In the notes that he took in the course of the night, Quintana Lacaci noted about Gonzalez del Yerro: ‘Doubts. When he heard of Milans’ role and that Armada wanted to be Prime Minister, he declared himself loyal. He asked why Armada and not another soldier [he meant himself]” (Preston, Juan Carlos 475). The Provincial Governors of Soria in 1969 was Antonio FernándezPacheco y González. On the role of civil or provincial governors during the dictatorship see Josep Clara’s article. (p. 163, paragraph 1, line 10-11 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]). Son of an activist of the CNT interned in the end of the civil war, David Urbano Bermúdez (Cordoba 1944) had been brought up by his family in Barcelona where they had emigrated after his birth. At the age of twelve he left with one of his brothers for France to Strasbourg where he begins to militate in the Youths Libertarians (FIJL) and collaborated in the weekly Espoir (Toulouse). In 1964 David Urbano Bermúdez was in Paris the secretary of the Iberian Federation of the Youths Libertarians (FIJL). Arrested in Madrid on December 24th, 1967, he was accused of belonging to the First May Group, which led then a campaign of attacks against Franco interests abroad and a series of actions in solidarity with the political prisoners. A military court (trial n°609) condemned him on April 29th, 1968 to six years of prison. Transferred to the prison of Soria, he participated there in diverse movements of protest and in a hunger strike. He was then transferred to the prison of Segovia from which he was released in May 1972. Sent to the military service, he avoided it as “unfit”. Arrested again on November 23rd, 1973 and condemned (trial n°771) in January 1974 to five years in Carabanchel for illegal propaganda activity. On June 27th, 1974 he was again arrested in Barcelona, with Luis Andres Edo, during the GARI affair (Grupos de Acción Revolucionaria Internacionalista or Internationalist Revolutionary Groups of Action) and the kidnapping of the banker Suárez. Condemned to four years at the end of 1974. On February 17th, 1975 he was again sentenced top five years for "illicit association". Imprisoned in Segovia, he was transferred in April 1976, after a collective escape, to Zamora. He benefited from the amnesty in summer, 1976 after the death of Franco. Next year he was with Father Marcilla who was the manager of the bookshop Cosa Nostra in Barcelona. At 128

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the end of 1990s he collaborated in the newspaper CNT and 2003 he joined the Group for the revision of the Delgado-Granado case. (Íñiguez 609; “Los de la Sierra” [Web. May 1 2013]; see also J. Alcaide). (p. 164, paragraph 6, line 1 [Franco’s Prisoner, Rupert Hart-Davis: London, 1972]).

14 — Looking Back After Twenty Years in Jail: Questions and Answers on the Spanish Anarchist Resistance Miguel García García (1908-1981) (Originally published by the Kate Sharpley Library, 2002) Miguel García García, who died in December 1981, was in some ways, perhaps every way, and the reason why the Kate Sharpley Library exists. He was, as he himself ruefully admitted, the embodiment of a lost history of anarchism – part of a resistance movement, even now little known or understood by many. A movement that was disgracefully slandered by some anarchists as mere banditry. Search the “histories” of anarchism. Those “scholarly” tomes by Woodcock, Joll, Marshall. Search long and hard but you won’t find Miguel or his comrades there. These are top down histories of “great” men producing “great” thoughts with little understanding of either the dialectic of anarchist theory and practice, or the genesis of anarchist ideas. It is only through the groundbreaking work of Antonio Téllez Sola that some of the story of the Spanish Resistance has been told (although his great work Facerias is still waiting for an English language publisher). Miguel’s own book Franco’s Prisoner (1972) is long out of print. How many more Miguel Garcías? How many more stories waiting to be excavated? How long until a more realistic picture of anarchist practice is obtained that will inform and aid contemporary anarchist struggles? Anarchism for Miguel was what you did. Fighter in Barcelona during the July days of 1936. Fighter on the Aragon Front and outside Madrid with the anarchist militia. His memoir, Miguel García’s Story (1982), is full of powerful and illuminating vignettes on the resistance of the Barcelona working class and life in the anarchist front lines. Wounded in early 1937, Miguel went on to spend 32 months in the trenches. With the defeat of the Revolution he went into hiding, was captured and spent two and a half years in a concentration camp near Madrid. On his release he joined the anarchist Resistance against the Franco regime. These groups smuggled countless Jewish families into Spain in conjunction with the French Resistance. Not for medals but from a fervent anti fascism. His experiences with the Resistance and his subsequent imprisonment are outlined in his autobiography Franco’s Prisoner. Rereading this autobiography one cannot help but be struck by Miguel’s unassuming modesty and wry self-deprecation. This was no act. He wrote as he was. One cannot fail also to be struck by his commitment to anarchism. It runs through him like blood providing him with hope, obstinacy, humour and courage in situations many of us would have struggled simply to exist in. Trained by the British as a forger (as part of his work smuggling refugees from France into Spain) he worked with the Tallion Group until his arrest in 1949. Initially sentenced to death, the sentence was later commuted to thirty years. The early part of the book memorialises a lost generation of anarchist militants – El Yayo, Antonio López, Jose Sabaté (El Pepe), Ginés Urea Piña – whilst his account of prison days rivals, at times, Berkman’s Prison Memoirs of An Anarchist. Miguel left prison in 1969 and, at the invitation of Stuart Christie, with whom he had spent time in Carabanchel prison, came to England. He became

International Secretary of the newly reformed Anarchist Black Cross and worked tirelessly to aid imprisoned militants. Together with other active CNT members he was a critical link between his generation and the new generation of anarchist militants that was growing throughout Europe. He campaigned to save MIL (Iberian Liberation Movement) member Salvador Puig Antich from execution and founded and ran the International Liberation Centre/Centro Ibérico in North London. Comrades from all around the world would visit. Black Flag was produced there and the Anarchist Black Cross flourished. Countless campaigns followed including the Murray Defence Group in 1976. He spoke throughout England and Scotland, in France, Belgium and Italy in support of comrades in struggle and imprisoned throughout the world. A powerful and emotive speaker, his death from tuberculosis was a great blow to all who knew him. Miguel was an anomaly of history. Somehow, he survived. Never, I would imagine, could he have thought in 1959, as he sat in prison, that fifteen years later he would have been active with a whole new generation in a country he had never visited before. He had been part of a movement grounded in the everyday life and experiences of ordinary working class people that was driven into clandestine activity and guerrilla warfare. How easy, then, to live in the past. Miguel, though, was no historical artefact. Of course he carried in his heart and head the memories. Memories the like of which you and I can only sense. Of course he told stories from his life and of the comrades he knew. He missed them. Yet he had the ability to concentrate on the here and now and not the past. His arrival in London confirmed what some of us had been instinctively sensing anarchism could be and was. His very presence epitomised for us the necessary unity of anarchist practice and theory. Irascible, spiky, possessed of a ferocious temper that could leave as quickly as it came, certainly not given to suffering fools gladly, he carried with him a dignity and remarkable lack of arrogance. This memorial booklet comprises the pamphlet Looking Back After Twenty Years of Prison (first published by Simian Press in the early 1970s) and a series of previously uncollected letters sent to various London newspapers and journals. Looking Back After Twenty Years in Prison offers us important information about the structure and decision making of the anarchist resistance groups. No leaders and all have equal voice in decision-making. All skills are needed and valued: “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” It is an important start in documenting the complex, organic relationships that the groups possessed and how the individual functioned in them. It’s an important antidote, also, to the tendency to hero worship comrades like Sabaté. Yes they were brave. No they were not any more important in the operation of the group than anyone else. Miguel didn’t write as much as he should have. He was busy doing things, trying to make things happen. He kept the memory of his dead and brutalised comrades alive by carrying on their work into new areas of contestation. In the appendixes to Miguel Garcia’s Story Goliardo Fiaschi, Italian comrade of Facerías and Miguel’s fellow prisoner, wrote: “When Anarchy comes the new generations must be told what the anarchists endured in order to liberate humanity from injustice, and the name of Miguel Garcia must be written in the annals of the future.” This pamphlet is a small part of the project Fiaschi outlines. Finally, Miguel Garcia, and all the thousands like him, help us identify what anarchism is. We see through his life anarchy in practice. Not a theory

handed down by “great” thinkers which they, marvellously, have evolved. Not an intellectual strategy in the battleground of ideas. No. Anarchism is the self-activity of ordinary people taking action in any way they can, in equality with others, to free up the social relationships that make up their lives. Such action will feed theory as it always has, imbuing it with feelings and emotions as well as ideas. Without those critical components anarchism will be as intellectually onanistic as any other scheme to save the world. Further Reading: Miguel García Franco’s Prisoner. Rupert Hart-Davis, 1972 Miguel García’s Story.* Miguel García Memorial Committee/ Cienfuegos Press, 1982 Miguel García Spanish Political Prisoners. Comité Pro-Presos CNT-FAI, nd Miguel García wrote extensively in the early volumes of Black Flag & appears in the wonderful autobiography: Albert Meltzer I Couldn’t Paint Golden Angels. * AK Press, 1996 For background material on the Spanish Resistance: Octavio Alberola and Ariane Gransac L’Anarchisme et l’action revolutionnaire Internationale (1961-1975). Christian Bourgeois, 1975 Francesc Escribano Cuenta Atras: la historia de Salvador Puig Antich. Peninsula, 2001 Albert Meltzer The International Revolutionary Solidarity Movement. Cienfuegos Press, 1976 Antonio Téllez The Anarchist Resistance to Franco. * Kate Sharpley Library, 1996 Antonio Téllez Facerias. Ruedo Ibérico, 1974. English trans. awaiting publication. Antonio Téllez El MIL y Puig Antich. Virus Editorial, 1994 Antonio Téllez Sabate, Guerrilla Extraordinary. * AK Press and Elephant editions, 1998. Kindle 2012 Antonio Téllez The Unsung Struggle: The assassination attempt on Franco from the air. KSL 1992 Antonio Téllez The Anarchist Pimpernel: Francisco Ponzán Vidal (1936-1944). Meltzer Press, 1997. The Meltzer Press POB 35, Hastings, East Sussex, TN34 2UX, United Kingdom; ChristieBooks (Kindle edition), 2012 * Available from AK Press or Kate Sharpley Library

From the introduction to Franco’s Prisoner (1972): When we lost the war, those who fought on became the Resistance. But, to the world, the Resistance had become criminals, for Franco made the laws, even if, when dealing with political opponents, he chose to break the laws established by the constitution; and the world still regards us as criminals. When we are imprisoned, liberals are not interested, for we are ‘terrorists’. They will defend the prisoners of conscience, for they are innocent; they have suffered from tyranny, but not resisted it. I was among the guilty. I fought, I fell, and I survived. The last is the more unusual.

LOOKING BACK AFTER TWENTY YEARS INTRODUCTION I have just come out after a long time in prison. Since my arrest on October 21st 1949 I have been inside 20 years and 30 hours. Add to that the 20 months I served as a prisoner after the Spanish Civil War and it makes 21 years, 10 months and 30 hours – and that is a lot. How I reached the end of it I just don’t know. I thought at the time that a sentence like that could never be lived through, and I tried, often, to escape, though I failed every time and it just made me more trouble. But a man with such a long sentence in front, of him must never for an instant lose hope of escape or he will surely go crazy. I spent the last three years at Soria, and they turned out to be the worst of all, for the jail at Soria is a terrible place. When I was transferred there from Alicante it had just been adapted for political prisoners; nobody knew how to run it except that they had been told to treat us in the toughest possible way. They were expecting the newcomers to be the roughest of thugs, and as it turned out they were well-mannered and educated. Quite a disillusionment! They felt inferior, and it is a very bad thing for prisoners to be under guards who feel that way. The officers were well selected for the special duties required – they would like to have forbidden us breathing as well as everything else. According to their mentality I was not exactly a saint anyway. Ever since that faraway day of July 18th 1936 I had not stopped being active for a minute. I had had more than a fair share of ups and downs and hard times but in prison they showed me how much I still had to learn about prison officers and their refined cruelty. In particulars the prison governor there could quite easily have taken the place of any of the infamous war criminals of the German concentration camps. Tough skinned and hardhearted, he sometimes pushed me so hard that I was on the point of going berserk with him. When I was released he was nowhere around (though he was legally obliged to be there) since he had many reasons to expect a nasty scene, and if I had seen him he certainly would have got one. It was 10 at night and the man who had stood in for him called a cab. When the driver asked “Where to?’ I found myself thinking “Well, that was a nice long rest. And now – here we are!” Then the scenes of that unforgettable October 21st 1949 flashed across my mind. Certainly the fight against the Franco regime has quietened down quite a bit since that day. Ten comrades lying shot in the back in the

Barcelona streets; just one out of the 10 shooting back â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the elder of the Sabater brothers (el Pep we, called him) who, wounded and dying, took with him an Inspector of the Brigada Social; 66 comrades on trial, of whom another 9 were to face the firing squad. Quite a day for us. When I think of it now it feels as if I am still going through it. There is no need to ritualize the homage to the dead for us to remember those comrades who so freely gave their lives, we pay them tribute in carrying on the work they can do no more. Now that I have left all that behind me, I am wandering from place to place raising the flag of liberty, never forgetting the friends back there and the promise I made to help them. In the talks I have been giving, old folks and young have asked me all sorts of questions that I always answered the best I could. This is an interview I gave to one young fellow. I decided to put it down in black and white as I expect many of you would have the same questions to ask. Miguel Garcia INTERVIEW Where were you at the outbreak of the Civil War? I was living in Barcelona, and at dawn of the 19th July those of us who knew of the military uprising began to prepare. Since the government had been afraid to arm us, particularly the CNT (National Confederation of Workers â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a syndicalist union) for fear that since it was opposed to all authority it would make use of the arms for starting the revolution. It was necessary to take the guns from wherever possible, in armouries and barracks. Barricades were thrown up and armoured cars improvised in the fight against the army. On the 21st the military uprising in Barcelona had been stamped out. News came that our comrades in Zaragoza had not been so successful, and we immediately made plans to go and help them in the street fighting against the military. On the 22nd a column was due to leave with Durruti at its head, but on the 23rd since nothing had happened the six of us who formed my group set off in a car. In Caspe we came up against resistance and after a sharp fight with the Civil Guard found that we could not get through. We fell back to Lerida for reinforcements. The following day again we tried to take Caspe and this time met with very little resistance. We pressed on, but it was now too late for Zaragoza. Nobody had arrived soon enough, and the military, which were very strong there, had taken the town. A front line formed before Zaragoza and it lasted right up to the famous battle of the Ebro. From there I went to Madrid in November 1936 with a Catalan force that was to help in its defence against the tremendous pressure from the fascist forces. I spent the rest of the war there. What did you do at the end of the war? I went back to Barcelona where on the 9th May 1939 I was arrested and put into a hemp warehouse which had been converted into a prison, since the Prison Cellular was by now brim-full. After 22 months I was cleared and released. When was that? March 1941. What was the atmosphere like when you came out?

The atmosphere was good, though perhaps a little too optimistic. Although the Germans had pushed back the allies, people were so confident in ultimate victory that they did not attach much importance to this, and everyone was preparing for a possible comeback of the CNT. We certainly were active, but we also had to work cautiously since the firing squad was hard at work carry day. Trials condemning 30 or 40 people to death were quite frequent. The Prison Celular, built to take 1,100 men, was at bursting point with 14,000 – fourteen in a cell! There was hardly room for them standing up and they slept in turns. 18,000 men were shot, according to the record, and it was unwise to hope for a mere spell in prison – people were automatically locked up for nothing more than having a union card. They were terrible times, right up to the fall of Germany. Much has been said about the extermination camps of Germany but the systemic slaughter of Spaniards, particularly those of the libertarian movement, at this time reached proportions that have never been seen before – or since. What did you do at the end of the World War? We were all certain that the Spanish exiles, with the help of the Allied Forces, would invade Spain to smash the last stronghold of Fascism in Europe. But no, as everyone knows, the interests of economic investment came first, and Franco went happily on with his reign of terror. Many people accepted that nothing could be done, but others did not and carried on fighting in secret resistance groups. How did these groups develop? Well, in fact, as far as the libertarian movement is concerned, undercover resistance has never died; but at the end of World War II it was reinforced by comrades who had been fighting on the side of the Allies and wanted to fight on in independent groups. They crossed the frontier and made contact with comrades in the interior, and wreaked havoc for the regime by sabotaging electricity plants, industry and the banking system, and the same time crossing and recrossing into France and making complete fools of the frontier guards. Occasionally there were the inevitable skirmishes with the police and Civil Guards, by whom they came to be regarded with terror. Were there any men lost among the guerrilleros? Yes, many comrades left their blood on Catalan soil, but many, many of the servants of the regime also paid with their lives. Was there any guerrilla who stood out from the rest? Somebody will always stand out from the rest more or less in any lifesituation. There were men in the movement who, whether by luck or ability became famous and very much feared by the enemies of freedom. Can’t you give me any names? I am not keen on mentioning the names of men who distinguished themselves, since we are opposed to all idols, but to satisfy your curiosity I will tell you of two who were renowned for their quick reflexes, their courage and for the havoc they caused for the havoc they caused for the regime. These were Jose Luis Facerías and Francisco Sabaté Llopart. Sabate’s elder brother was with me in that hemp warehouse I told you about when I explained how I was arrested at the end of the war; he died in a police ambush – but not without making sure he took with him a police inspector.

Anyone else? Many. In fact, hundreds, but there was one group that stood out because of the affinity that existed amongst all its members. It was called the Los Maños group. They were comrades who had known each other a long time and had weathered good and bad together – plenty of the bad. Can’t you tell me about any particular thing they did? Can I? I could make a 100,000-page book about it. But I’ll tell you one about Sabaté; it’s a good one and will give you some idea of his fast reflexes. It was in Barcelona and Sabaté was riding on the platform of a tram. He was dressed as a poultry-farmer and hanging on his arm was an egg-basket in which his submachine gun was hidden. He thought one of the other passengers looked like one of the secret police and he got off the tram to see if he would follow him. Well, the other fellow got off too and started to follow. After a short distance Sabaté, in one of those lightning-reactions that only fast movers get, spun round like a cat, grabbed the chap by the lapels and said: “Who are you? Let’s have your papers, pronto!” He almost snatched the identity card out of his pocket and seeing that he was a detective, picked him up by his jacket collar. He spun him round and sent him flying with a very powerful boot, thundering after him in raucous Catalan: “Get out of here and don’t bother me again!” The fellow took off as if the devil was after him and never dared to look back once. When you think that it was just like doing it in the middle of Piccadilly you’ll get some idea of the nerve this man must have had. How many men to a group? It varied. Usually about six and never more than twelve. Where were they recruited? I don’t think recruit is the right word when there were always enough comrades keen enough to form a group. But since the strength of these groups lay in their solidarity and affinity, they never approached anyone unless through heavy losses. Was Sabaté as good a leader as he was a fast-mover? We have no leaders in our movement. Every man in a group was his own leader and nobody took decisions without everybody’s agreement. If the need arises to represent somebody on their behalf, the man chosen is no more than a delegate and his only authority lies in carrying out decisions agreed upon by the group members. But didn’t this create endless discussion and delay important decisions? Any action is thoroughly discussed before carrying it out, but in a way so that every man states his opinion and we come up with the most appropriate and sensible decision, as is logical. As far as delaying decision-making goes, in specific instances of unforeseen circumstances the individual acts on his own initiative at the time. It’s not done any old how. Each group member knows what he has to do and when to do it. These are determined men, with lots of fighting experience. Each man uses his own particular knowledge for the benefit of the group without attaching any more importance to it than that. In our society most people expect anyone with specialist knowledge to exploit it for profit making and it is perhaps difficult for you to understand the spontaneity and freedom of spirit in libertarian dealings. We are all brethren of the same family and our fatherland is humanity itself.

What exactly is the libertarian movement? The word liberty has been bandied about quite a lot, and to say that a libertarian is a lover of liberty can be rather vague, but in fact it could be said to suffice. However, to avoid confusion it is best to say that the libertarian movement includes all those who reject imposed authority. Any individual who has sufficient insight to understand that his own rights end only where those of his neighbours’ begin, who does not want to treat people any different to the way he would wish them to treat him, is capable of living without guards and policemen to impose rules on him concerning what he may or may not do. Yes, that’s fine, but I meant the Spanish libertarian movement in particular. Well, it is composed of the Libertarian Youth (JJLL), the syndicalists (CNT) and the pure anarchists (FAI). And what exactly are these three? The youth movement consists of just the young libertarians. The syndicalists are the workers and their unions in their various trades; the pure anarchists are the ideologists of the libertarian ideal. Are these three movements independent from each other? Completely – otherwise they would no longer be libertarian. And did they attempt to establish collectives during the Civil War? Yes, and it worked too, in spite of opposition from other ideological elements. It showed clearly that the idea of all living and working together as one family is perfectly feasible. Can you tell me about any specific case? Yes, certainly. In Lérida for example, I spent two days there on leave from the Aragon front on one of the farming collectives. The whole thing was running in harmony and perfect order; everybody looked happy in a way that I had never seen before among country folk. They now had no more problems, financial or otherwise. The same thing happened in industry. Factories and workshops were collectivised, and when the original owners moved back in at the end of the war they found them in better running order than when they had left them. Everybody knows how a collective gets under way so I won’t bother to go into it again. Perhaps, but I myself don’t know much about it. For example, how did you organise the administration in a factory? Just the same way it is organised now, except that position in administration do not exist within a hierarchy that demands respect from inferiors. All we have to do is to get rid of a few prejudices and realise that it is no more difficult to work at a desk than on the production line. But then won’t everybody opt for the production line rather than the desk, since the money is the same? Yes, perhaps an actor, seeing that he is not going to earn any more than an usher, would rather be an usher. And this is exactly what did happen in Barcelona in the case of a well-known actor, Enrique Borras, who tried to change places with an usher for a few days to see what would happen. He made his point, since as you can see it is not easy for an usher to do the job of

a first-rate actor, and Borras would only have been cheapening his vocation. Every individual is born for a certain function in society in accordance with his aptitudes, and the idea of valuing one’s function in hard cash is only a creation of our modern society. In real life we each of us follow if we can, our impulses and these are derived from what our organisms require. It is just as absurd to suggest that a man gifted in the arts would win glory as a dustman as it is to force a left-handed person into doing things right-handed. You can be sure that in a free society production would become balanced to suit people’s aptitudes. I would like to believe what you are saying but it would seem to me to be very difficult to put into practice. It’s all a problem of education, and whether we want to live in shacks or palaces – that is, putting progress and civilisation within reach of everybody. The solution to your doubts lies in the verse of an English poet: Labour is the one thing man has had too much of Let’s abolish labour, let’s have done with labouring! Work can be fun, and men can enjoy it; then it’s not labour. Let’s have it so! Let’s make a revolution for fun! Very original. But, tell me, how are you going to set about replacing the present structures with the new? Whatever is not covered by the regulations is solved by logic, and the present laws are only the consequences of anti-social customs. You can be sure that mankind’s ingenuity will not disappear just because of social change. Let the bird alone and he will find the best place for a nest. There is something that I have always wondered about. How did the libertarians take the militarization of their forces during the Civil War? Very badly. Since we were opposed to war, we were opposed to all specialist organisation for making it, but here is where that logic comes in. We found ourselves in a situation where the alternatives were war or revolution, but if we wanted to have a revolution we had first to win the war. There is no doubt that war is a specialist subject, a profession with its own necessary techniques that cannot be improvised. Had we all been libertarian the process would have been unnecessary, but Spain has always been a country with a high illiteracy rate, more so in the ideological and political aspect. State power like Church power was based on the ignorance of the people; there were people everywhere who knew the whole catechism by heart yet without hardly knowing left from right. With a whole people in that state – anxious for liberty, but full of old, deep-rooted prejudices – it was inevitable that the various political factions should try to impose a system that would guarantee them control. We would never have needed it, but they did. We had to compromise, and militarization went ahead. But wasn’t this useful in any way? Certainly it was. It was extremely useful for the Communists in their struggle for power. They accept imposed discipline as a basic principle, whilst we believe only in self-discipline that the individual must impose on himself. Lastly, what do you think the future holds for Spain? It is difficult to say, the fear of vengeance is persistent among the members in the government. The regime, built as it is on the bodies of more than a million

dead, is terrified of having to account for its crimes. Something would have evolved long before now were it not for this fear, since the regime has hardly ever known harmony in its midst. There is one right-wing party that is very strong and with a fairly moderate programme, more or less on the lines of the Christian Democrats. They could have taken over if the extreme right-wing Opus Dei had not jumped in ahead of them. The Opus Dei, which is still in power, is like a revival of the Inquisition, as if Torquemada had risen from the grave to re-impose his law. The workers are becoming more politically orientated, but are still kept silenced by the law. If only they could organise independent unions outside state control, it wouldn’t take long for them to he a big factor in what happens next, and the government will eventually be forced to concede them more rights. This will give them the freedom essential to plan their destiny and the future will be in their hands. Otherwise only prolonged guerrilla warfare such as the one started by us is going to bring us nearer our vision of the future. Jose Lluís Facerías Died murdered by the Barcelona police on 30th August 1957 He belonged to the Libertarian Resistance Movement and was undoubtedly one of the most gifted of men of action in all the groups active in the Spanish mainland. Quick thinking and decisive he held paralysed all the Barcelona police for more than 15 years through constant sabotage of industry and banking. Though he appeared fair and baby-faced he was in reality a man of iron. Surrounded by police several times he always managed to break out with his speedy, and decisive action. Francisco Sabaté Llopart Died shot in the back in San Celoni by a special civilian constable, in January 1960. He fought in the Libertarian Resistance Groups of which he was nearly always a delegate and formed part of the secret Barcelona Defence Commission which coordinated the groups. If instead of being a libertarian he had belonged to a Political Party he would undoubtedly have been the most obvious hero of all the guerrillas and they would have built monuments in his honour and called streets and places by his name. He and his brother Jose made the most compact and efficient team there has ever existed in any resistance of commando groups. He will be admired forever in the minds of many comrades Letters Letter to the Times Literary Supplement (25/6/70) Sir, – Of three recent eulogies of Franco, including Mr. George Hills’s work peppered with mistakes and bias against the libertarian movement in particular (I do not know the others), your reviewer grants the claim that “in the past twenty years there have been relatively few political prisoners” (May 28). I was one of these, taken into custody after the police ambushed the elder Sabater on October 21 1949. I was sentenced to death, later commuted to twenty years, coming out on October 21 1969. Sir, in these twenty years of which you speak I lacked much but never, except for periods in the solitary hole, for company. “Relatively”? Yes, when I first went to prison (1939-41) there were 14,000 politicals – sometimes up to 16,000 – in the Prison Cellular

in Barcelona, which was built on no generous standards for 1,000. Fourteen to sixteen people stood, sometimes lay, ate, slept, defecated in the space intended for one. Now it has about 2,000 prisoners, few of whom are politicals. In 1952, there were 600 Politicals in with me at San Miguel de los Reyes, Valencia. But in Burgos there were 1,200, and every prison had its quota, amounting to some 7,000 in all. Now there are about 1,200 politicals, in Segovia, Soria, Jaen, Valencia, Burgos, and Zamora – a few in Bilbao, some of the intransigeants in Puerto de Santa Maria. “Only a handful of militants have been shot” since 1949? One terrible morning, March 14 1952, at 7 a.m. there were twenty-one of us in the condemned gallery, No. 4, in Barcelona. I had received my commutation to twenty years the night before. Five of my close comrades were taken out to be shot. They were Pedro Adrover Font. Ginés Larrea Piña, Jorge Pons Argiles, Santiago Amir Cruañes, Jose Perez Pedrero – an “active and organized opposition” of which you profess ignorance. True, none have been shot since then. They have been strangled by the executioner’s garrotte. In our movement, the libertarian, we had 1,800,000 members. Eighty thousand went into exile, 500,000 were shot or otherwise “legally” murdered. This is to speak of the anarcho-syndicalists alone, who have borne the main struggle. But let each of the oppositions count his own and you will see why Mr Hills is wrong when he thinks that others than Franco and his cohorts care about Gibraltar. Franco craves what? – a population of 5,000? 10,000? – who care little or nothing about Spain. And he has lost for Spain by shootings, disease and death caused by imprisonment, and exile, the equivalent of the population of Barcelona among them some of the most industrious, intelligent, idealistic and zealous of Spain’s sons and daughters. Are those who remain reconciled to him? I can assure you it is not the case. He conquered by force and rules a conquered nation. MIGUEL GARCÍA GARCÍA Reprinted from Facts on Spanish resistance No. 1 (published by Centro Ibérico) Letters to the editor, The Guardian 1/7/75 Sir – you describe Santiago Carrillo as “Franco’s chief democratic opponent” (June 27). He is certainly not a democrat, in spite of his position on the socalled “democratic junta” which joins together the Communist Party with the parties that need alibis for their past conduct. He is not chief even of the Communist Party – as Marcelino Camacho, proposed by it for the Nobel Peace Prize, though originally styling himself a plain and simple trade unionist without party affiliations and just interested in the so-called “workers commissions” has now edged him from the leadership. It is not even certain if he is an “opponent” let alone the chief, or the chief democratic one: the so-called Opposition played no part in the Resistance to Franco and while curtailed because of the wide extent of the repression, has suffered nothing like the libertarian movement which for 36 years has been fighting against Franco and been subject to execution and imprisonment for unheard of terms – Yours faithfully, Miguel Garcia 83a Haverstock Hill London, NW3.

[No regrets] Evening News 28/11/75 As a Spanish citizen I do not find it in bad taste to “note without regret” the death of Franco. Perhaps if a British general who didn’t like the British Government turned London into a battlefield and condemned its citizens to death, exile or forced labour, Mr. Ball might not regret his death either. Miguel Garcia (prisoner of Franco for 22 years) Upper Tollington Park, Finsbury Park.

15 — Remembering Miguel García García – 1: Juan Busquets Verges The first time I ever met Miguel García was on the 4th gallery of the Modelo prison in Barcelona in February 1950. On the day my death sentence was commuted I stepped out into the yard with the rest of the inmates and a number of prisoners congratulated me with handshakes and hugs. I was accosted by one tall, beefy inmate who seemed to be about 45 years of age; I remembered having seen him at the Inter-Continental Committee premises at 4, Rue Belfort in Toulouse and, later, in the dungeons at police headquarters in the Via Layetana. ‘My name is Miguel García’ he said to me. ‘And if it wouldn’t be too much of a bother I'd love to have your impressions of life on death row.’ ‘I can speak only for myself’, I said. ‘Every person responds differently to the same situation. It’s all a matter of temperament. As far as I am concerned, to start with I relied on looking on the bright side of things to counter the fear, but such subterfuges proved useless, as I was aware of how I stood. To be honest, let me just say that my every thought finished up the same, at the moment when they would come to fetch me for execution. I played out that final scene in my life in a variety of ways, but in every single version I wound up sitting down on my bedroll with my heady dizzy and physically spent.’ As he listened to me, Miguel was tense, a faraway look in his eye and I realised that problems of his own were his main concern too. Some days after that I was moved to the Penitentiary of San Miguel de los Reyes (Valencia) and I lost touch with Miguel, but through others, I discovered that two years after that he had been sentenced to death together with eight co-accused. From experience I knew what it was like to go through that alone and on one's own, in some condemned cell anxiously waiting for the final outcome, an anxiety that peaked whenever a saca occurred — saca being the expression we used for shootings; it was a rare month when there was no saca. Come the fateful hour, we condemned men used to wonder: who are they coming for this time? How could one forget the worries of those few moments! There are no words to express the psychological suffering that our extreme circumstances entailed; it was a lingering nightmare, hanging around still despite the passage of the years. Wounds of that sort do not scab. Of the nine death sentences handed down, four were commuted, Miguel Garcia's being one of them. A couple of months after that he turned up in San Miguel de los Reyes. The moment I set eyes on him I could detect that he had aged. The firing squad now banished, there was another hurdle for him to have to clear, the longer-lasting hurdle of ‘life imprisonment’, which meant a descent into hell. Twenty years in prison was quite some sentence and, besides, there were also the dire nutrition and the mistreatment at the hands of the Falangist gaolers who were forever pestering us with unfair punishments. This whole pattern of perversity was a well-thought out programme designed to demolish the personality and amounted to

a psychological and physical; torture that executioners, their hated insatiable, never wearied of applying year n and year out and which, in the long run, left its mark. I had quite a lot to do with Miguel GarcĂa in prison and I kept in touch with him following my trip to London. By nature he was a one-off, quite the bohemian. He could never hold down a job for long and earned a living from doing odds and ends, just enough to cover his expenses. Which left him with a lot of free time to spend on his ideas. He played an active part in an Anarchist Prisoners' Aid Association [Anarchist Black Cross] launched by Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer. And he devoted the last years of his life to drawing attention to the fact that the crimes carried out by Francoist thugs had gone unpunished. In London a scandalised Miguel explained to me how, when he was freed, his sister tried to find him a position in one of the estate agencies she ran. He looked upon the work in question as rather tedious and ruled it out immediately, reckoning that they were out to bind him hand and foot when his freedom took precedence over any economic considerations, he stated. Miguel really was a rare specimen. In my book Veinte aĂąos de prisiĂłn (Twenty Years A Prisoner), I mention his mother (p.163). I say that she followed her son through all of the prisons he passed through, dying at the age of 86 in Segovia where he was serving out his sentence. Miguel's sister covered all her outlay: their mother's board and lodgings, the food parcels that Miguel received every day; these are things that really are worth something, especially in such troubled circumstances. Although he never mentioned it to me, I know that he felt a profound love and gratitude for his sister. As I say, Miguel never had any steady job that I knew of. Albert Meltzer found him a place at the newspaper where he was working, a place where jobs were handed down from father to son. He had many other jobs, but could hang on to none of them. He was never comfortable anywhere and he suffered the same problem as all of us who have spent many years in prison. Those twenty years spent in prison were too heavy a burden for him to be able to fit back into society; by the time of his release he was 65 years old and at that age adapting is hard, not to say impossible. The help he received from some comrades, especially from Albert Meltzer who was enormously patient with his support for him, was not enough. He was never at ease anywhere and was never able to regain his normal balance. He dropped into see me in Paris in the middle of the winter, wearing a raincoat as thin as a short; my wife gave him a sweater, which he declined, saying that he was no beggar. He died of TB in a London hospital; comrade Albert Meltzer paid for his funeral as Miguel himself had not two pennies to run together. Miguel was a great one for letting his imagination run riot and ignoring reality; in prison, for instance, he organised a number of escapes but lacked the resolution required to see them through. To make up for this lack of resolve he urged other inmates to take part in the breakout that he was preparing. In the end, this became an open secret: for which reason, all his plans came to naught. Maybe those imagined escapes helped him bear prison better. It is hard to place any other construction on this behaviour; remember that Francoist prisons were not rest homes but

extermination camps. Every individual defended himself as best he could; some lost their sanity as a result and nobody emerged from the ordeal unaffected. Juan Busquets Picauville, France â&#x20AC;&#x201D;15 July 2008

16 — Remembering Miguel García – 2: Stuart Christie My first meeting with Miguel García García took place in the mid-1960s in the Seventh Gallery of Madrid’s Carabanchel Prison. He was in transit to another penitentiary and was in what was known as ‘periodo’ – a fortnight of sanitary isolation, ostensibly to prevent or limit the spread of disease. I was the practice nurse (practicante) for the 5 Gallery, a position that gave me the run of most of the prison and allowed me to liaise with comrades in different wings, especially with isolated transit prisoners or prisoners in solitary confinement. Miguel passed through Carabanchel on a number of occasions over the years, going backwards and forwards between penitentiaries and Yeserias, Spain’s main prison hospital in Madrid. Miguel and I struck up a close relationship, one that was to endure for a decade-and-a-half until his death in 1981. What particularly impressed me about him on our first meeting was his undoubted strength of character — forged by his experiences in the Resistance as an urban guerrilla and ‘falsificador’, and in Franco’s prisons — and the extraordinary quality of his spoken English, a language he had acquired entirely from English-speaking prisoners. No other political prisoners I came across during my three years imprisonment in Franco’s jails had Miguel’s mastery of language, or his skills as a communicator. Our conversations centred on how to expose the repressive nature of the Francoist regime and raise the profile of Franco’s political prisoners in the international media, something I was in a position to do given my relatively privileged position as a foreign political prisoner and the access I had to the outside world through my by then extensive network of friendly functionaries in Carabanchel itself. In 1967, following receipt of a personal pardon from Franco, I was released from prison and, on my return to Great Britain, I became involved with the resuscitated Anarchist Black Cross, an anarchist prisoners’ aid organisation. The focus of our activities was international, but Franco’s prisoners were, naturally, because of my history and the continuing and intensifying repression in Spain, top of our agenda. The case of Miguel García García, one of the Anarchist Black Cross’s most prominent correspondents, was one that we regularly pursued with the international press and through diplomatic channels. Released in 1969, after serving twenty years of a thirty-year sentence (commuted from death), Miguel came to live with me in London. It took him a little time to acclimatise to the profound social and technological changes that had taken place in the world since his arrest as a young man in the Barcelona of 1949, changes that were even more profound in the ‘tolerant’ and ‘permissive’ London society of 1969. In fact, so great was the trauma that he literally was unable to speak for some months. The shock of his release had triggered a paralysis in some of the muscles in his throat, and, through Octavio Alberola then living under effective house arrest in Liege, we arranged for him to see a consultant in Belgium about his condition. The time with Octavio was well spent and brought him up-to-date with what was th

happening within the European movement and the role of the International Revolutionary Solidarity Movement, which operated under the banner of the Grupo Primero de Mayo, a continuation of the clandestine anarchist Defensa Interior (DI), which had been tasked with the assassination of Franco. The First of May Group had recently emerged from the sabotaged (by Germinal Esgleas and Vicente Llansola) ruins of Defensa Interior (DI) as an international, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist revolutionary organisation, structured to carry out spectacular direct actions. It took its name from the first operation carried out on 1 May 1966 when members of the group kidnapped the ecclesiastic adviser to the Spanish Embassy to the Vatican, Monsignor Marcos Ussia. Soon the group began taking in a much broader area of attack targeting, in particular, the US and European governments for their complicity in the imperialist war in Vietnam. BACK IN London, mainly with the moral and financial support of comrade Albert Meltzer, my co-editor of Black Flag and the driving force behind the revived Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), Miguel entered into a dynamic new phase of his life as the International Secretary of the ABC and a pivotal figure in the libertarian resistance to the Franco regime. With Albert he embarked on lengthy speaking tours of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, West and East Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark and Italy, talking to a new generation of radicalised young Europeans about anarchism, international solidarity and, of course, the need to confront tyranny with practical cooperation and direct action. It could be said that the result of one of Miguel’s early talks — in a crowded meeting room at the offices of Freedom Press in London’s Whitechapel High Street in February 1970, shortly after his arrival in Britain — was to give rise to the so-called Angry Brigade, Britain’s first urban guerrilla group. Miguel’s voice was still weak so I had to do much of the talking for him, but as the evening wore on and the story of his adventures and deprivations at the hands of the Francoist authorities unfolded, that and the fact that his revolutionary spirit and determination remained clearly undiminished, it was clear he had made a deep emotional impression on the fifty or so young people in the audience. Here, in front of them, in person, was someone who had been in direct confrontation with a fascist state, who had been totally involved in resistance struggles, and who had paid a heavy penalty. Nor was it a purely historical struggle. Franco remained in power and a new internationally coordinated anarchist action group, the First of May Group, was carrying on that struggle. At Freedom Press that February night in 1970, the significance, the importance of the First of May Group, and the tradition it — and Miguel — sprang from, was not lost on the people crammed into the small room to hear Miguel Garcia’s story. Among those present were some of the core activists later convicted in the historic ‘Angry Brigade’ trial: John Barker, Hilary Creek, Jim Greenfield and Anna Mendelssohn. Miguel’s flat in Upper Tollington Park, near North London’s Finsbury Park, soon drew visiting anarchists from all over the world. It also began to attract police attention once Miguel launched (with Albert’s help) the Centro Ibérico and International Libertarian Centre in London, a cosmopolitan venue that became a magnet for anarchists everywhere; it had been many years since there was such a thing as an international anarchist club in London, and its success was entirely due to Miguel’s powerful personality.

In 1971 the Centro Ibérico moved to a large basement in Haverstock Hill to which came many extraordinary people, including survivors from innumerable political upheavals. Visitors included the Spanish militant and historian José Peirats and Emilienne Durruti, partner of Buenaventura Durruti. Another regular at the Centro Ibérico was ETA leader Pedro Ignacio Pérez Beotegui, also known as ‘Wilson’, who was involved in the planning of the December 1973 assassination of Franco’s protégé and deputy, Prime Minister Carrero Blanco. The new Centro was entirely Miguel’s creation and he spent his whole time nurturing it, cutting himself off from any paid employment, even though he was well past what should have been retiring age anyway. Through Albert, however, he did extract a small pension from the British government. Phil Ruff, the Black Flag cartoonist who shared Miguel’s Upper Tollington Park flat after Albert moved to Lewisham, remembers accompanying Miguel on endless trips from Finsbury Park to Haverstock Hill, almost every night throughout the 1970s, to open up the Centro so that someone would be there if anyone dropped in. Often it was just Phil and Miguel looking at the paint peel off the walls and having a drink, but if someone did drop by Miguel would immediately make them welcome, cook up a paella, and start weaving his magic. He was without doubt a great communicator and would have made a wonderful hostage negotiator. Everybody left the Centro feeling they were Miguel’s best friend, and ready to slay dragons. He had a way of making you think that. He turned the basement into an internationally known place to go if you needed help in London; somewhere to find a welcome, food, and a bed for the night, or a place to squat. He also brought people together from all over the world, becoming the birthplace for many affinity groups that were active in Central and South America, and Europe. In 1970-71 Albert was working in Fleet Street as a telephone reporter/copytaker for The Daily Sketch, a right-wing British national tabloid newspaper, and after much discussion and argument — and believe me Miguel could be extremely argumentative and pugnacious — Albert finally convinced Miguel to write his memoirs. And so it was that the typescript of what was to become Franco’s Prisoner was hammered out between Miguel and Albert and typed up in a disused back room of one of Britain’s foremost Conservative populist newspapers — and paid for on the time of Associated Newspapers. The book, Franco’s Prisoner, was published in 1972 by the Rupert Hart-Davis publishing house, which had originally commissioned my book The Christie File, but reneged on the contract at the last moment because of the allegedly contentious nature of the material. As well as providing wide-ranging advice from abortion to legal aid to squatting, Miguel played a key role in many of the international defence campaigns run by the International Anarchist Black Cross at the time, including those of Julián Millán Hernández and Salvador Puig Antich in Spain, and Noel and Marie Murray, two members of the Dublin Anarchist Group sentenced to death in Ireland for their alleged part in killing an offduty Garda officer during a bank robbery in Dublin, in 1975. Salvador Puig Antich had been a regular visitor who accompanied Albert and Miguel on some of their speaking tours around Britain. Returning to France in August 1973 to take part in a conference of young activists to set up the anarchist defence group known as the MIL (Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación), Salvador Puig Antich was involved a series of spectacular bank expropriations across Catalonia and Southern France. In September 1973,

however, Puig Antich walked into a police ambush in Barcelona’s Calle Gerona in which he was wounded and a Francoist policeman was shot dead. Puig Antich, 25, was garrotted in Barcelona’s Modelo prison on 2 March 1974. After the military coup in Argentina on 24 March 1976, Miguel persuaded a lot of people to ‘lose’ their passports so that comrades fleeing to escape the Junta could adopt a temporary identity change. In June 1976 he installed a printing press in the basement at Upper Tollington Park, on which he printed a number of anarchist books in Spanish, including Anarquismo y Lucha de Clases (the Spanish translation of Floodgates of Anarchy, written by Albert Meltzer and myself) that he distributed in Spain. As well as printing identity documents, he also got together a group of young Spanish comrades in London to produce their own anarchist paper Colectivo Anarquista. In the late 1970s Miguel returned to his native Barcelona where, funded by the Spanish writer and former diplomat José Martin-Artajo, anarchist son of Franco’s foreign minister Alberto Martin-Artajo, he fulfilled one of his life’s ambitions – to open his own bar. La Fragua, a former forge at No 15 Carrer de la Cadena in Barcelona’s Raval District — not far from where pistoleros working for the Catalan employers’ organisation gunned down the noted CNT leader Salvador Seguí and his friend Frances Comes in 1923 — opened for business in 1979. As with the Centro Ibérico, La Fragua became a Mecca for anarchists and libertarians from all over the world, and an important meeting place for the anarchist activist groups of the so-called ‘Apache sector’ centred on Luis Andrés Edo in Barcelona. Miguel’s humanity was the most characteristic thing about him, that and his tenacity and ability to persevere and survive despite all odds. He was, without doubt, a pretty significant figure to the generation radicalised in the late 1960s and 1970s. Miguel had gone to prison fighting - and that was how he came out. He was untouched by the years of squabbling and in-fighting that characterised the life of the Spanish Libertarian Movement in exile. Miguel's answer for any dire situation was always the same – ‘we must DO something!’ His work with the Black Cross — providing practical aid to libertarian prisoners all over the world and making solidarity an effective springboard to militant action — influenced a new generation of anarchists not just in Spain but in many other parts of the world including Britain, France, Belgium, Italy and West Germany. I was living on the northern island of Sanday, in Orkney, for much of the time Miguel was in Barcelona, but we met whenever we could. In 1980, Brenda, my partner, went to work with him at La Fragua for six months, at his invitation, to help improve the bar’s menu. Miguel’s culinary skills, acquired in Franco’s prisons during times of great austerity, left much to be desired! It was on Sanday, one December evening in 1981, that I received an unexpected telephone call from Miguel who by this time was back in London, in a nursing home, being treated for advanced TB. It was nice to hear from him and we chatted about this and that, but nothing in particular, and for that reason alone it was strange. Usually, when Miguel rang it was to arrange to do something or get something done. But on this occasion it was simply to talk, nothing else. He also spoke with Brenda, again about nothing in particular, and she promised to write him one of her long chatty letters the following day, which she did. Unfortunately, Miguel never received it. He died in the early hours of the following morning.

Miguel Garcia Garcia’s life is a good pointer to what anarchism is in practice. Not a theory handed down by ‘men of ideas’, nor an ideological strategy, but the self-activity of ordinary people taking action in any way they can, in equality with others, to free up the social relationships that constitute our lives. Miguel García García may have lived a hard life, but it was a worthwhile life, and he was an inspiration to us all.

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