Prison of Women : Testimonies of War

title:
and Resistance in Spain, 1939-1975
author: Cuevas, Tomasa.; Giles, Mary E.
publisher: State University of New York Press
isbn10 | asin: 0791438589
print isbn13: 9780791438589
ebook isbn13: 9780585060507
language: English
Cuevas, Tomasa,--1917- , Women
political prisoners--Spain--Biography,
Francoism, Reformatories for women--
subject Spain, Women communists--Spain--
Biography, Guerrillas--Spain--History-
-20th century, Government, Resistance
to--Spain--History--20th century, Spain--
publication date: 1998
lcc: HV9742.5.C84A313 1998eb
ddc: 365/.45/0820946
subject: Cuevas, Tomasa,--1917- , Women
political prisoners--Spain--Biography,
Francoism, Reformatories for women--
Spain, Women communists--Spain--
Biography, Guerrillas--Spain--History-
-20th century, Government, Resistance
to--Spain--History--20th century, Spain--
 Page iii

Prison Of Women
Testimonies of War and Resistance in Spain,
19391975
Tomasa Cuevas

Translated and Edited by

Mary E. Giles

State University of New York Press

 Page iv
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1998 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Production by Susan Geraghty
Marketing by Anne Valentine
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may
be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the
prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, address State University of New York Press, State
University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246
Cover art by Antoni Tàpies
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cuevas, Tomasa, 1917
[Cárcel de mujeres, 19391945. English]
Prison of women: testimonies of war and resistance in Spain,
19391975 / by Tomasa Cuevas; translated and edited by Mary E.
Giles.
p. cm.
Translation of Cárcel de mujeres and Mujeres de la resistencia.
ISBN 0-7914-3857-0 (hc: alk. paper).ISBN 0-7914-3858-9 (pb:
alk. paper)
1. Cuevas, Tomasa, 1917. 2. Women political prisonersSpain
Biography. 3. Francoism. 4. Reformatories for womenSpain.
5. Women communistsSpainBiography. 6. GuerrillasSpain
History20th century. 7. Government, Resistance toSpain
History20th century. 8. SpainPolitics and
government19391975. I. Giles, Mary E. II. Cuevas, Tomasa,
1917 Mujeres de la resistencia. English. III. Title.
HV9742.5.C84A313 1998
365'.45'0820946dc21 97-33352
CIP
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Page v

CONTENTS
Introduction vii
by Mary E. Giles
PART 1 War and Prison
Chapter 1 Growing Up in Prewar Spain 3
Chapter 2 Coming of Age in Politics and War 11
Chapter 3 Prison Life Begins: Guadalajara 1939 25
Chapter 4 Sisters Condemned to Death: Blasa Rojo at 39
Guadalajara
Chapter 5 Childbirth in Prison: Nieves Waldemer Santisteban 45
at Guadalajara
Chapter 6 My Prison Odyssey: Durango 19391940 51
Chapter 7 The Dynamiter: Rosario Sánchez Mora at Durango 57
Chapter 8 Into the Storm: Santander 19401942 67
Chapter 9 A Minor in Prison: María del Carmen Cuesta at 75
Santander
Chapter 10 The Cemetery of the Living: Amorebieta 85
19421943
Chapter 11 The Socialist: Pilar Pascual Martínez at 93
Amorebieta
Chapter 12 Solidarity and Compassion: Ventas and Segovia 99
19431944
 Page vi

Chapter 13 Reflections on Prison Life for Women: Josefina 109

Amalia Villa at Ventas and Segovia
Chapter 14 The Costs of Sacrifice: Antonia García at Ventas 117
and Segovia
PART 2 Resistance and Prison
Chapter 15 A Stranger in a Strange City 19441945 141
Chapter 16 The Exile of Prison: Les Corts 19451946 151
Chapter 17 From Prison to Clandestine Life Again 1946 167
Chapter 18 Escape: Victoria Pujolar at Les Corts 173
Chapter 19 Through the Gate to Freedom: Adelaida Abarca 181
at Les Corts
Chapter 20 Crossing the Border: Angelita Ramis at Les 189
Corts
Chapter 21 The Guerrilla: Esperanza Martínez 197
Chapter 22 The Burden and Strength of Clandestinity 207
19461948
Chapter 23 The Long Years 19481976 219
Afterword 235
by Mary E. Giles
Glossary 237
Notes 243
 Page vii

INTRODUCTION
Mary E. Giles
Something about the book on the top shelf caught my eye. Standing
on tip-toe, I turned my head awkwardly to read the title sideways:
Cárcel de mujeres. 19391945 (Prison of Women, 19391945). I
managed to pry the volume loose from the books squeezed tightly
on each side. Leaning against the shelves, I read on the back cover
how a certain Tomasa Cuevas had gathered oral testimonies from
women who had been incarcerated in the months and years
following the end of the Civil War in Spain in 1939. Leafing
through the pages, I paused to read a paragraph here and there.
I left the Madrid bookstore with the volume tucked in my purse and
walked back to my pension a block off the Castellana avenue. Later
that afternoon I settled near a window in the parlor of the pension
and began to read. An hour or two passed. I let the book rest open
on my lap and looked pensively out the window on the busy street
below, reflecting this hot July evening in 1989 on a strange
coincidence of events.
I'd come to Madrid three weeks before to read documents of the
Inquisition in the National Historical Archives. Each morning I
would leave the pension with notebooks under my arm and walk
the three miles or so to the archives, savoring the artful displays of
elegant clothing in the boutiques that lined the avenue. From nine-
thirty to two-thirty each day I undid cardboard boxes tied with
strings and searched through the documents for evidence on how
women had fared in the courts of the Holy Office.
Here was a letter from the daughter of an old woman exiled to a
neighboring village as punishment for suspected judaizing; now,
the daughter pleaded, with the old woman paralyzed by strokes,
could she please bring her mother home? There was a request from
a younger woman to wear red skirts, which the Inquisition had
forbidden as part of her punishment; without colorful clothing, she
argued, how could she keep her husband from straying? Letters,
petitions, records of proceedings, on and on the documents gave up
their grim secrets, the ways large
 Page viii
and small that women had suffered the heavy arm of the church.
From the courts and prisons of the Inquisition, I now returned each
day to Franco's prisons. Reading from Cárcel de mujeres I lost all
sense of time and place. How was one prison different from the
other? Had one system of terror simply replaced another?
That was the summer of 1989. Five years would elapse before I
met Tomasa Cuevas. During that time I thought about the
testimonies and how they deserved an audience outside the
Spanish-speaking world. I even tried my hand at translating two or
three of them and wrote to the publisher in Barcelona about
bringing them out in English. But when no reply came and other
projects intruded on my attention, I let slide the idea of translating
the testimonies.
Then, at an academic conference in 1993 in conversation with a
friend, I happened to mention my intriguing encounter with two
different sets of prison texts that summer in Madrid. Coincidence
again carried the day: my colleague had met Tomasa at a
conference organized by a colloquium of universities to observe the
fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
Tomasa had been brought in as a distinguished speaker along with
other women and men. Through our mutual friend, Tomasa and I
began to correspond and agreed to collaborate on an English
translation of the testimonies. The first step was to select an
appropriate number of representative testimonies for one book. By
this time I had discovered that Tomasa had published two more
volumes: Cárcel de mujeres: Ventas, Segovia, Les Corts (Prison of
Women: Ventas, Segovia, Les Corts) and Mujeres de la resistencia
(Women of the Resistance).
In the summer of 1994 I traveled to Spain, this time with Joanne
Allen, whom I'd known since 1966 when both of us were
beginning our academic careers as Spanish teachers. Joanne and I
had made our first trip to Spain together in 1967, traveling by car
for a month throughout the Iberian peninsula. Fresh from graduate
studies at the University of California, Berkeley, we were wide-
eyed romantics, more ready to quote Machado's poetry at the sight
of poplar trees in the lands of Castile than question the legitimacy
of a state authority wrested by terror.
Even though professors of ours at Berkeley had been political
refugees from Spain, we were blithely unaware of the implications
of their status in terms of the current political situation within
Spain. We might wince at the sight of the dreaded Civil Guard
patrolling by foot or motorcyle in pairs, but our fears stemmed
more from allusions in García Lorca's poetry than from the reality
of ordinary men and women being imprisoned and tortured right
then. Much later, working with Tomasa's books, I would be jolted
time and again on realizing what this woman whose story I was
translating had been enduring while I was
 Page ix
skimming about the Spanish countryside agog at castles and
cathedrals.
The woman who opened the door to greet us was small, barely five
feet tall, probably in her late seventies, and despite the added flesh
that comes with age, still petite. Her nickname, Peque, which
means "little one," suited her. Tomasa's expression was open and
lively. Even with the reserve normal in first meetings, I knew that
here was a woman I would like and trust.
As we worked together for three days selecting and ordering the
testimonies, I came to appreciate Tomasa's natural intelligence. Shy
on formal education, she nonetheless quickly learned techniques of
editing. Soon she was rereading her material with a critical eye,
alert to repetition and obscurity. At one point, when she'd finished
working on a long section of her own story, she looked at me
proudly: "See, Mary, I'm doing what you did."
If Tomasa learned from me, far more did I learn from her, not
merely the outline of her story, but the character of this woman
born to poverty and refined in adversity: damaged spinal column,
diabetes, heart problems, deteriorating vision, arthritiseffects of
age, yes, but also the marks of imprisonment and torture. But if she
mentioned her infirmities at all, her tone was matter-of-fact. In
large part suffering defines her life. But so, too, does joy: the calls
from her husband in Madrid; visits from friends; her daughter,
Estrella, and the four grandchildren; the glass of wine and stories
we shared at dinners in the nearby restaurant; the champagne and
dessert she served our first evening together in traditional
celebration of the Eve of the Feast of St. John the Baptist. In spite
of age and infirmities, what an alive woman this Tomasa Cuevas!
Tomasa already had seen the need to reduce the number of
testimonies when I conferred with her at her home in Vilanova i la
Geltrú, a seaport some forty-five miles south of Barcelona. But the
length of the original material wasn't the only problem. I soon
realized that a straightforward translation of the material would not
suffice for non-Spanish readers. The material itself had to be
reshaped: first, to reduce its length and number of different
narrators and then to find coherence in those stories. I'd already
spoken with Tomasa about bringing her own story sharply into the
foreground in order to make her a kind of guide for the reader
unfamiliar with the Spanish Civil War and the Franco era.
The need to sharpen the focus on Tomasa grew in the following
months when I was translating the stories. Tomasa's voice was
emerging from the aggregate of testimonies as an especially strong
and insightful one. Through her I was seeing the forces that shaped
political and personal decisions during and after the war more
clearly than from the other testimonies, individually or collectively.
I credit this understanding to Tomasa's ability to recapture scenes,
conversations, and feelings. But
 Page x
other women's stories were important, too; they imparted further
credibility to Tomasa's story, widening and texturing the canvas of
her narrative. Together the stories attest to the magnitude of
oppression and, paradoxically, sharpen the brutality inflicted on the
individual woman.
The first draft of the translation revealed another vexing
problemrepetition. With two or more women narrating their
experiences in the same prison, some redundancy was inevitable.
But the volume of repetition was making it very difficult to
distinguish one voice from another. Convinced that each woman
did have her unique voice, I realized with increasing earnestness
that my responsibility was to sort out and enhance the individual
voices.
At times the task was relatively easy, as with Rosario Sánchez
Mora whose job as a dynamiter before imprisonment was a key to
her strong personality, or María del Carmen Cuesta, whose innate
sense of the dramatic immediately sets her story apart. Other voices
are less identifiable but nonetheless powerful: the very inability to
articulate eloquently demonstrates in its own way how disfiguring
cruelty is to the human spirit. If some testimonies are writ in small
letters, they remind us that everyday existence in prison has, like
ours, its own kind of humdrum rhythm. Perhaps that humdrum
rhythm is as true a representation, if not a truer one, than the
sensibility-shattering din of torture and killing.
Editing the testimonies by trimming away repetition and reordering
events for the sake of chronological clarity and narrative interest
still left unsolved a problem that was inherent in Tomasa's original
methodology. In the late 1970s Tomasa had set out on her quest to
collect from women she had known in prisons their testimonies
about prison life. In the prologues to their stories we hear Tomasa
speak about how she met the women, some of whom she'd not seen
since their prison days together. In her purse she carried a tape
recorder. We can picture the two women seated at a table with tape
recorder between them, recalling old times. Now Tomasa interjects
a question; now the questions and answers become a dialogue; now
the story is an uninterrupted monologue.
But the image of two women in conversation persistswomen
reminiscing about a common past. For them no explanations are
needed. They know where they are in the past; they can see and
hear and smell the prison. If one woman refers to the uprising at the
Montaña barracks or the Casado coup, the allusion strikes
immediate recognition in the other woman. So on the women go,
talking about a world to them familiar and firm. They don't require
explanations and footnotes to set the context for the life they
recount. That context is in their shared memory.
But the reader who stands outside that memory, a stranger to the
setting for the events to which the women allude, that reader is like
a
 Page xi
person listening to a conversation in a foreign language; she strains
to catch a word here or there to get her bearings. Such is our
response to much of oral literature, which by nature is informed
with assumptions about the listener/reader's familiarity with the
subject matter either by dint of shared experience or through
research. Tomasa is not oblivious to the possibility that readers are
unlettered in her school of experience; she begins her introduction
to the first volume of testimonies by referring to the young people
of her day who express interest in the early years of the Communist
Party and especially want to know about brutality and torture in the
prisons of Franco.
Tomasa's awareness of a potential audience beyond a circle of
readers from within the context of the Civil War and the Franco
years may account in part for her eye to details of time, place, and
emotions in the telling of her own story. I think it is clear, too, that
the "young people" include Tomasa's own grandchildren, a
generation far removed in time and concern from her experiences.
She may even have had in mind her daughter, Estrella, who
emerges as a vital part of Tomasa's story in Part 2.
So as we listen to the women talking about "old times," we're
aware over and over that we are outsiders. We're brought up
sharply by a reference to the uprising at the Montaña barracks,
unable to get the drift of the conversation just right and fearful to
interfere with its flow. But what is the uprising of the Montaña
barracks and how are we to appreciate the urgency in voice if we
lack information about the event? Certainly, it would not do to
interrupt the story with a paragraph of information. Nor would it be
realistic to put this information in the mouth of one woman as if
she were telling the other one what she didn't know. I decided to
provide a context in two ways: notes within the text and a glossary
of names, abbreviations, and events. Some events, however, appear
so frequently in the testimonies and are of such pivotal importance
to the unfolding of the Civil War and resistance to the Franco
regime that I have elected to treat them briefly here in the
introduction. 1
The October Revolution of 1934 was a prelude to the outbreak of
hostilities in 1936 and, for Tomasa, a coming-of-age event in her
career as political dissident. For about two weeks during the so-
called Red Days of October workers' committees of the Socialist
Republic and workers' militia controlled the mining districts of
Asturias. Socialists, Anarchists, and Communists forged solidarity
among the miners, resulting in a kind of civil war. The uprising was
part of an unsuccessful general strike to protest the claiming of the
offices of agriculture, labor, and justice by the conservative party,
CEDA, Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (Spanish
Confederation of Autonomous Rights). The government brought
 Page xii
in foreign legionnaires from Morocco to help put down the
uprising. An estimated one thousand died and some 30,000 were
imprisoned. A major result of the failed uprising was to unify the
political left around the program of amnesty for the prisoners.
Many women were imprisoned and many others mobilized their
voices in a call for amnesty for jailed husbands and sons. Although
Tomasa did not live in Asturias, she, too, rallied around the call for
amnesty for political prisoners.
The unification of leftist groups during the October Revolution of
1934 later acquired identity as the Popular Front and emerged in
the elections of February 16, 1936, as a major force in the political
scene. Composed of Socialists, Republican Left, Republican
Union, Esquerra (Left Republican Catalan nationalist party), and
Communists, the Popular Front won 4,176,156 votes as opposed to
130,000 for the Basque Nationalists, 681,047 for the Center, and
3,783,601 for the National Front, that is, the parties of the right.
The Popular Front thus won more votes and more seats than did the
other alliances. The Communists, however, gained only a total of
seventeen seats, a number that indicates the relatively minor
position of the party at that time. This is the period, from 1934 to
1936, when Tomasa worked as a political activist in the areas of
propaganda and what she calls ''agitation." The elections are the
ones that she and her friends faithfully commemorated from within
prison.
A little more than two years after the election, civil war broke out
in the peninsula, triggered by uprisings from within the army. The
successful uprising by officers in the Army of Africa on July 17,
1936, spawned military responses in garrisons throughout Spain
whereby the army intended to take control of the nation. The focal
point for the uprising in Madrid was the Montaña barracks, located
in the western part of the city on a site overlooking the Manzanares
river. By early afternoon on July 19, 1936, General Fanjul and
officers from other barracks in Madrid met at the Montaña barracks
where the general gave a speech on the political aims and loyal
intent of rebelling against the duly-elected government. The
military attempted to go out into the streets with their rebellion, but
they were prevented by large crowds that by then had gathered.
The barracks fired with machine guns and the crowds responded
with gunfire of their own.
The night was frenzied as more than fifty churches were burned
and the workers and their parties extended their control of the city.
By the following morning an even larger crowd marched on the
barracks and bombarded it for five hours, supplemented by aircraft
and artillery. General Fanjul requested help from General García de
la Herrán, but it proved impossible to get through to the barracks.
At ten-thirty in the morning the general, along with the previous
head of the barracks, were
 Page xiii
wounded and one-half hour later, the white flag of surrender
appeared. But when the crowd went forward to accept surrender,
they were met with machine-gun fire until, shortly after noon, they
broke down the massive door of the barracks. Historians agree that
what followed was a massacre, with most of the officers killed. The
survivors from within the barracks were put in the Model prison
and General Fanjul was taken away for trial.
The uprising failed in part because the soldiers themselves were
divided in their loyalties and in part because the forces of the
Republican Assault Guards were overwhelming in number and
force. A similar situation obtained in other barracks throughout the
city with the result that the city remained loyal to the Republic.
The uprisings of July 1920, 1936, against the Republican
government took place not only in Madrid but also to the south in
Toledo and east in Guadalajara where Tomasa and her family lived.
As news of the other uprisings reached Madrid, the militia, or
fighting units made up of workers rather than regular soldiers, left
the capital in taxis, trucks, and private cars to combat the rebels,
capturing Alcalá de Henares and then, in spite of resistance by the
Civil Guard, Guadalajara. The militias held Guadalajara and by the
end of July had captured Sigüenza to the north. Tomasa's account
of these days and months of turmoil reveals the terror and suffering
for the ordinary person.
By 1937, when Guadalajara was headquarters for the Russian air
squadron, the leaders of the rebel Nationalist forces decided to
attack Madrid from the northeast, advancing against Guadalajara
and once again jeopardizing Tomasa and her family. The attacking
force included 30,000 Italians divided into four divisions, 250
tanks, 180 pieces of mobile artillery, a chemical warfare company,
a flamethrower company, about fifty fighter planes, and twelve
reconnaissance planes. The advance began on March 8, 1937,
hindered by foul weather. On the morning of March 10 Tomasa's
birthplace of Brihuega fell to the Italian Black Flame and Black
Arrow soldiers. About noon Italian forces who supported the
Republic defeated the Black Flame patrol; fighting between the
two Italian forces continued throughout the day. At this time
Republican aircraft dropped pamphlets promising safe conduct to
all Italian deserters from the Nationalists, and rewards of up to 100
pesetas if they surrendered with their arms. The Thaelmann
Brigade sustained heavy casualties. 2 On March 12 Republican
bombers pounded the Italian mechanized columns and the
Republican forces retook Brihuega. On March 18 Republican
aircraft bombed the surroundings of Brihuega, followed by heavy
Republican artillery. By early afternoon two divisions with tanks
attacked, one on the west, the other in the east, thus encircling the
town. They had almost completed this
 Page xiv
maneuver when the Italians got the order to retreat. The retreat
turned into a rout.
In the final days of the war Guadalajara fell to the Nationalists. On
March 27, 1939, the Nationalist army broke through the
Guadalajara front and joined up with rebel forces advancing from
Toledo. The bombings in the final days of the war Tomasa
describes in haunting detail.
From Tomasa's story we see how she lived out the war from her
corner of the world in Brihuega and Guadalajara: she worked in
hospitals, organized sewing shops to make overalls for the militias,
planned diversions for the troops, set up laundries for washing
soldiers' clothing, recruited men for the front, and persuaded
women to take over men's jobs. In short, Tomasa was like countless
women in Republican Spain who were mobilized for the war effort.
3

For Communists the war ended ignominiously with the coup led by
Colonel Segismundo Casado, the Republican commander of the
Army of the Center who opposed Prime Minister Juan Negrín's
policy to continue resisting the Nationalists at a time, in the early
months of 1939, when the Republican cause seemed lost. Casado
and like-minded opponents of the policy of resistance were
especially disillusioned when on February 27, 1939, France and
Britain recognized the Nationalist government that had
headquarters in the city of Burgos.
Even though Prime Minister Negrín apparently came to agree with
Casado's policy of ending resistance and showed his favor by
promoting the colonel to the rank of general, Casado proceeded to
form an opposition government. At midnight of March 4, Casado
broadcast the revolt to the people of anti-Fascist Spain. In the
meantime the Communist Party, which had not given up resistance
to the Nationalists, defied Casado's action by moving troops
against him. Even when Negrín and Communist supporters flew to
France on March 5, party resistance continued in Madrid until most
of the city was under its control. But by March 12 strife within
Republican ranks was appeased and by the terms of an agreement
reached with Casado, Communist forces returned to the positions
they had held on March 2. The bitterness with which Tomasa and
her friends refer to the Casado coup is explainable in part by the
next action of the council that Casado had formed; by its order the
Communists Colonel Barceló and his commissar were arrested and
shot. By March 19 Casado had sent a negotiating delegation to
Nationalist headquarters in Burgos. A week of negotiations brought
only one outcomeunconditional surrender. On March 27 Casado
ordered the surrender of Madrid to the Nationalist commander in
University City; two days later he flew to Valencia and from there
to Gandia, boarding a British ship for Marseilles. Meanwhile, on
the preceding day high-
 Page xv
ranking Communist leaders had flown to Orán from Cartagena,
leaving behind a party in disarray and its members, among them
young Tomasa, to fend for themselves.
If readers are short on contextual information so also are the
narrators themselves. Over and over I am reminded both from the
text and conversations with Tomasa that she and the other women
interpreted the larger context of the Civil War and the dictatorship
according to their own necessarily limited experience. Their moral
judgments about who is right and who is wrong are based on their
experiences. Tomasa states repeatedly that she is no theorist, that
her role in the Communist Party always has been that of a doer.
Policy making is for the theorists, among whom her husband,
Miguel Núñez, is a notable example. She has been one of the many
rank-and-file members who have put policy into action.
At times Tomasa does hint at the larger picture, as in allusions to
the party's change of policy about the guerrilla when she and
Miguel worked and lived at a dam near Seville. The word guerrilla
means a little war, and it refers to the subversive actions carried on
by opponents of the regime both inside and outside of Spain. The
fact that the people carrying out the "little war," that is, the
guerrillas, were operating in both Spain and France gave rise to a
clash in leadership between the two resistance groups. In October
of 1944 guerrillas from southern France attempted to join effort
with guerrillas in place within Spain to spark a general uprising
against the Franco regime. When that effort failed, the Communist
Party changed its policy; the new policy was to infiltrate Spain
with small groups of guerrillas from France so that by collaborating
with groups inside Spain they could wear down the regime through
terrorismblowing up trains, attacking Civil Guard barracks,
destroying power lines.
From 1945 to 1948 these tactics demanded the regime's attention,
but they did not mobilize wide-spread revolution. The policy was
effectively laid aside in October, 1948 when the Soviet Union
Communist Party called for the evacuation of guerrillas, a decision
carried out in 1950 and 1951. Tomasa refers to this decision by the
party to end guerrilla action; she states that it was 1948 when she
and Miguel were carrying out that decision in southern Spain.
Meanwhile the guerrilla continued in cities with bank robberies
and attacks on Falangist offices, terrorist activities that did not go
uncontested from within Communist ranks. Tomasa's friend,
Victoria Pujolar, mentions Cristino García and Gabriel León Trilla,
both of whom favored terrorist tactics. Their fate demonstrates
party strife with respect to urban guerrilla: on September 6, 1945,
Trilla was stabbed to death in an abandoned cemetery for his
disagreement with the view of party lead-
 Page xvi
ership that terrorism was counterproductive, while Cristino García
was arrested on September 22, 1946, in Alcalá de Henares and shot
on February 21, 1947, along with nine other guerrillas. 4
The testimonies reveal that Tomasa and the friends she mentions in
Part 2, Victoria Pujolar, Adelaida Abarca, and Angelita Ramis,
were involved in urban resistance, though it is not clear if or to
what extent they participated in terrorist activities. From their
accounts the women set up contacts between the party and prisons,
provided support for prisoners, and made connections between
party leadership in Spain and in France. Only in Esperanza
Martínez's testimony do we see first hand the life of rural
guerrillas. Captured in 1952, Esperanza had been with the
guerrillas during years when groups lived a hand-to-mouth
existence and their activities were primarily defensive.
For Esperanza, Tomasa, and the other women who tell their stories,
their understanding of the politics that informed the life-and-death
struggle in which they found themselves is limited. For the most
part, these women began their work in the Communist Party by
joining the youth movement. Although the Communist Youth could
claim only 14,000 members before the elections of February, 1936,
after joining with its Socialist counterpart in April, 1936 to form
the JSU, Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas (Unified Socialist
Youth), membership dramatically increased.
Tomasa's initial attraction to the party is understandable in light of
the grueling hardships of her youth. Not only does the opportunity
for a better life that the party promised appeal to the young
teenager but also the trust that older members place in her.
Subsequent eventswar and imprisonmentconfirmed her
commitment to the party.
Although Tomasa was in no position to assess the role of the party
in the political life of the Republic, historians tend to view the
effects of the Communist Party as problematic. The PCE, Partido
Comunista de España (Communist Party of Spain), had been
founded in 1921 when a younger radical youth group joined with
members who had left the PSOE, the Partido Socialista Obrero
Español (Spanish Socialist Workers Party), a Marxist-Leninist
party founded in 1879 by Pablo Iglesias that advocated a workers'
state and government. The role of the PCE in Spanish political life
was minimal until the war because the party was unable to have an
impact on either the PSOE or the CNT. The CNT, the
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of
Work), was an anarchist labor union founded in 19101911 that
believed in no government at all outside of unions or libertarian
communes.
At the outbreak of the war the Communists had only sixteen
deputies out of 473 in parliament, and the total number of
Communists
 Page xvii
in Spain probably did not exceed 50,000. At the end of the first
year of the war, the numbers had increased to about 300,000,
thanks in large part to the growing popularity of the Soviet Union
for sending military aid to the Republic while western democracies
stood by in silence.
But the PCE was not without internal strife, another fact that
receives scant attention from Tomasa and her companions for
whom the party was the model of discipline and loyalty. In its
internal wrangling, the party reflected the state of the Republic in
general in that supporters were far from agreement in their political
aspirations and methods in spite of the threat of a common enemy.
Granted a coalition of left-wing Republicans, Socialists, and
Communists had been formed under the rubric of Popular Front
prior to the February, 1936 elections, but the name was no
guarantee against the danger posed by competing ideologies from
within Republican ranks.
In early May of 1937 wrangling turned to out-and-out warfare in
Barcelona, the city to which Tomasa repeatedly turns and returns as
the center of her political life. At the heart of what has been called
a minicivil war within the Civil War was long-standing acrimony
between POUM and PSUC. POUM, Partido Obrero de Unificación
Marxista (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), was a
revolutionary Marxist party founded in September, 1935 from a
Trotskyist Left Communist Party composed of workers and
peasants. Holding to the belief that workers must seize political
power, POUM and the CNT united in opposition to PSUC, the
Partido Socialista Unificado de Cataluña (Unified Socialist Party of
Catalonia). PSUC had been established in July, 1936 with the
uniting of the Catalan Communist Party, the Catalan branch of
PSOE, and two other organizations. In effect, PSUC was the
Communist Party in Catalonia.
Ideological differences among these factions were acute, and they
inform the thinking and activities of Tomasa and her husband,
Miguel Núñez. The PSUC was derided for its conservative bent
with respect to the Catalan middle class and the defense of private
property and the free market. Its main target was Largo Caballero,
Prime Minister from September 4, 1936 to May 17, 1937. The
PSUC wanted Largo Caballero out of office because he opposed
the party's proposals to create a united Socialist and Communist
Party and to bring the army under the control of the party and
Soviet advisers.
By the spring of 1937 PSUC had succeeded in regularizing the
militia and the militia patrols, thus depriving the workers of their
own army and police force. This action, among other measures,
triggered fighting in the streets of Barcelona. On May 3 the PSUC
police commissioner seized the ground floor of the central
telephone exchange, a building long held by the CNT. Fighting
spread to the streets, with members of
 Page xviii
PSUC on one side and the CNT and POUM on the other firing at
each other from behind street barricades. The hostilities were
heated but short-lived; on May 7 the CNT broadcast an appeal for
the cessation of fighting. Casualities from the riots totalled 400
dead and 1,000 wounded. Subsequently, the Communists forced
the resignation of Largo Caballero, who was replaced by Dr. Juan
Negrín, a man whom Socialists, Communists, and Republicans
could support.
Historians tend to draw a line between the policy and the methods
of the Communist Party. The party's policy of strong central
government made sense in the teeth of the larger war being waged
against the Nationalists, but its terrorist methods against opposition
from within the Republican side drew harsh criticism. The Stalinist
secret police in Spain, headed by Alexander Orlov, was especially
vicious in the months following the May uprising, virtually
eliminating POUM and murdering its leader, Andrés Nin. One of
its most outspoken critics was George Orwell, who in articles and
in his book, Homage to Catalonia, exposed as trumped-up the
charge of siding with fascism brought against POUM leaders at
their trial in October of 1937. In spite of such criticism, POUM
leaders were convicted of rebellion against the Republic and of
conspiring with Franco.
One aspect of Spanish Communism that is fresh in the women's
testimonies is the role of women in the party. Esperanza Martínez
concludes her story with biting criticism of the party for its general
disparagement of women: on the one hand, women were not
sufficiently educated in party philosophy to assume leadership
responsibility, and on the other, the same men who criticized
women for lack of education were reluctant to facilitate the
education that would qualify them for positions of leadership.
Ironically, this double bind is precisely the same one by which the
church had dominated women for centuries.
After the war the PCE emerged as the principal clandestine
opposition to the Franco regime from within Spain. But internal
strife continued to weaken the party, and discontent with what
members perceived as a failure in the party's own democracy led to
its near demise. During the process of transition to democracy after
Franco's death in 1975, the PCE lost out to PSOE, which came to
power in the elections of October, 1982 and dominated Spanish
politics until its loss in the March, 1996 elections. Meanwhile
elections of 1986 had seen the PCE forming the nucleus of a leftist
coalition known as Izquierda Unida (United Left), and most
recently, in the 1996 elections, the political fortunes of Spanish
Communism declined even further.
Although some women allude to the failure of democracy within
the party, they do not remotely suggest that Spanish Communists
were guilty of political crimes or even consider the possibility that
brutality
 Page xix
marked the Republican as well as the Nationalist side. Here again,
we must remember that these women's vision was that of
participant rather than observer or historian. Prisoner to filth,
hunger, torture, and uncertainty of execution, the Communist
woman could not be expected to rationalize her suffering on the
basis that her enemies might be enduring like conditions.
Historians may cite the figure of over 89,000 executions and
murders in Republican Spain during the war and describe in brutal
detail the torture and murder of nearly 8,000 priests and nuns as
evidence that suffering was not exclusive to Republican
sympathizers, but even today those reports are no source of
comfort to women like Tomasa whose understanding of events was
forged in torture and refined in the sounds of executions carried out
at dawn.
Nor do the women hint at the dark workings of SIM, the Servicio
de Investigación Militar (Bureau of Military Investigation), which
was a secret police under the direction of the Communists,
supposedly for the purpose of ferreting out spies. Its methods of
torture were the same as those used by the Soviet secret police in
Spain and many men were said to have been murdered by its
agents.
We who stand apart from the events that Tomasa and her
companions relate must appreciate the necessary limitations on
their vision and grant to them the truth of their experience. At the
same time, we ought not dismiss the possibilityand in this case the
factthat war generates a cruelty that may infect the best of political
intentions. If there is a larger lesson to be learned from the map of
human suffering that is the Spanish Civil War, that lesson is the
immeasurable value of peace. Or, as Tomasa says at the end of her
story in the original Spanish text: "Peace and democracy for all
oppressed peoples. Peace for all the world."
Conversation over dinner in the summer of 1994 at the home of
Joanne Allen's friends in Vilanova was powerful testimony to the
truth that we measure the world from the window of our own
experience. The friends who had invited the three of us for dinner
were a couple in their late seventies, the same age as Tomasa. No
sooner had we sat down to the table than Mr. García leaned toward
Tomasa, seated at the other end of the large table, and said, "Tell
me, Señora Tomasa, what did you do during the war?"
I gasped inwardly at the sudden and only too-real prospect of a
"nice" dinner turning ugly. For two hours, Tomasa and Mr. García
talked; after feeble attempts to change the subject, Joanne and I
resigned ourselves to silence and perhaps an early leave-taking. All
three people had supported the Republic, but there the similarity
stopped. Mrs. García had inherited the family home and land; Mr.
García owned a small
 Page xx
business; Tomasa was a proletarian by birth and experience. The
Garcías had no sympathy for Communist theories or practices. Mr.
García told Tomasa outright that her party was dead. She, in turn,
did not deny the truth of his observations, but neither did she
second his opinion. For a woman who had validated her belief in
the party through imprisonment and years of separation from
husband and child, silence was a telling response. What words
could substitute for the reality of self-sacrifice?
All the while Mrs. García was busy serving her guests from the
abundance of delicious food she had prepared. But suddenly she
erupted. In a rapid-fire barrage of Spanish and Catalan she told her
story: how her family home had been run over by the dregs of a
popular army, by men who were little better than beastsdirty,
boorish, cruel. She didn't care if they fought for or against the
Republic: they had violated her family home and she would never
forgive them. If the Tomasa-Mr. García confrontation made us
squirm uncomfortablythough by this time Joanne and I had given
up responsibility for what we were sure was a disaster in-the-
makingMrs. García's outburst confirmed our worst fears. The
sweet, motherly Mrs. García bearing plates of food from kitchen to
dining room had metamorphosed before our very eyes into a kind
of maenad, crazed by memories of brutish soldiers blaspheming the
God of hearth and family. Not one of us uttered a word: Tomasa,
Mr. García, Joanne, and I, a silenced Greek chorus, as it were.
As suddenly as Mrs. García had launched the denunciation, she
ceased. She turned to pouring coffee and heaped our dessert plates
with sponge cake and Spanish meringue. Soon Mr. García and I
were deep in discussion about business in Spain and the United
States. Mrs. García, Tomasa, and Joanne went outside to sit on the
verandah and look at family pictures. And Tomasa was the first
person to answer Mrs. García's invitation to see the upstairs
apartment they had made for their married son and family. When
the five of us said good-bye, it was as if we were all the best of
friends. Tomasa might mutter "fascists" under her breath on the
drive home, but she had known the Garcías' political leanings
beforehand and it was clear that nothing would have stopped her
from going with us to their house for dinner.
Of course, Mr. and Mrs. García were not fascists. But their politics
were realized in different circumstances than were Tomasa's. And
just as Tomasa's views cannot be changed neither can theirs.
That scene has replayed itself many times in my head. I've come to
see it as a microcosm of Spanish society today. Old hostilities and
old pains are not dead; they rise up in the particular event of a
conversation and form a disposition to the meaning of life and
death that ultimately defines individual identity.
 Page xxi
There is one other aspect of Tomasa that remains for the tellingher
relationship with her husband, Miguel Núñez. I've not met Miguel
personally, but his presence I feel everywhere in their Vilanova
flat: a photo of him taken in Cuba, handsome still in his middle
years, with every bit the look of the intellectual; shelf upon shelf of
books on politics, philosophy, history, sociology, literature;
paintings and photographs revolutionary in mood. And I wonder at
this union of the intellectual and the proletarian, as if Miguel and
Tomasa were a metaphor for the ideals they advocate as
Communists.
But there is something between them rooted more deeply in the
heart than political commitment. There is a love I hear in Tomasa's
voice when Miguel calls from Madrid, three or four times a day to
see how she's feeling, as happened on our visit in January, 1996,
when she was suffering from a cold and flu. The Catalan writer,
Teresa Pamiès, honored their relationship in her preface to the first
volume of testimonies where she wrote with deep admiration of
Tomasa's strength to claim her identity apart from her well-known
husband, who has served as a member of the PSUC executive
committee and the Central Committee of the PCE:
If Tomasa Cuevas had not been the companion of a leader, surely
today she would occupy a position of responsibility commensurate
with her proven organizational talents and a natural intelligence
enhanced by an unblemished record. But the heart has its reasons and
no one should inquire into the life of a couple. In this society made by
men, a woman who has the "misfortune" to fall in love with a leader
must resign herself to life as his lover, secretary or nurse or else
renounce union with him.
Noting that neither option was right for Tomasa, Pamiès admires
her for being her own person rather than simply "the tail of the
comet." "Tomasa radiates her own light," continues the writer, "and
only she knows how difficult is has been to share the militant life
with her husband. Her light may not dazzle, it is true," writes
Pamiès, "but it is no less authentic."
In this prologue Teresa Pamiès honors as well Tomasa's
determination to gather these women's stories and bring them into
print. Others would have thrown in the sponge in face of the
mountain of work required by the project, asserts Pamiès:
Kilometers and kilometers of tapes; hundreds of notebooks filled with
transcripts of the tapes done by young friends, leaving to herbecause
she was the only one who could do itthe horrendous job of putting in
order, coordinating, and verifying material that was important but
often repetitive. Trips to various cities and villages, the search for old
 Page xxii
friends dispersed throughout Spain or exiled, prodding the recalcitrant
and the wearyand all that in spite of a health broken by a life of
painful physical work since childhood, abuse in police stations,
precarious living conditions and taking care of sick and aged family
members.
When I began to translate these testimonies about women and
prison, I could not foresee the effects that knowing Tomasa in
person and in her story would have on me and on my attitude
toward the work of translation and editing. What began as an
intellectual enterprise with moral overtones has become a spiritual
odyssey, brought to fruition in part by intellectual skills. But the
full fruit of this odyssey is the realization that more than anything I
would like to honor my friend, Tomasa, by helping to bring her
story to the appreciation of a new audience.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the following people for their
generous help in the preparation of this book: Joanne Allen, for
accompanying me on two visits to Tomasa's home and with her
sense of humor and linguistic skills forming in large part the bridge
of trust and understanding that is necessary in this kind of
collaborative work; Amanda Powell, for putting Tomasa and me in
contact with each other and reading thoroughly the completed
manuscript; Robert Richardson, my colleague at California State
University, Sacramento, and cartographer par excellence, who
generated the maps for the book; and Terence Manns, Director of
Graduate Research and Studies at the university, who made
possible partial funding for the first trip to meet with Tomasa.
 Page 1

PART 1
WAR AND PRISON
 Page 2

Map by Robert Richardson, California State University, Sacramento

 Page 3

Chapter 1
Growing Up in Prewar Spain
I was born on March 7, 1917, in Brihuega, a little village not far
from the provincial capital of Guadalajara. I was a girl when I left
the village but in my imagination I still see it as it was. Not long
after beginning this account in 1975, I visited my village and
wandered through it as if I had lived there all my life. My family
was of the working class. My maternal grandfather was a mason
and my other grandfather was a baker. My father was only a boy
when he began working in a flour mill in the village and delivering
sacks of flour by horseback to homes. There were five children in
our family: Antonia, Alejandro, who was two years younger, Angel
and Concha, who both died of childhood diseases, and me.
I must have been three or four years old when my father had a bad
accident. His horse slipped and fell; my father's leg was pinned
under the horse and badly cut and broken in three places. When my
father was taken to the hospital, the horse tried so hard to follow
that it took several people to hold it back. The story went around
that whenever the man hired to replace my father left the horse
alone so he could deliver flour, the animal would run off to the
hospital. That little horse was my father's best friend. Another of
his friends was the dog, Canela, who always walked next to father
and right between the horses' feet. This dog was the one who told
my mother of father's accident. When Canela ran barking into the
house as if she was crying, my mother realized something was
wrong.
My mother suffered terribly during the two years my father was in
the hospital. Even after he came home, life didn't improve. The
mill wouldn't hire him because they considered him useless. It's
true he limped a little, but he was as strong as ever. He might have
been able to get field work but he didn't know anything about
working in the field. The only solution was to leave the village. We
decided to move to Guadalajara where my sister was working
doing housework and cooking. There my father went from white to
black. Before he'd delivered flour; now it was coal. My sister was
able to help us a little; she'd salvage what she could from the
leftovers in the kitchen where she worked. My brother only got day
work, now here, now there, never in one place; he hadn't learned a
trade or gone to school.
 Page 4
I must have been six or seven years old when I began to attend
school, not on a regular basis, though, because that was when my
mother got so sick. The doctors said she had a stomach ulcer or
something that caused internal bleeding. She hemorrhaged so
severely she almost died; for several years we were on the verge of
losing her. The doctors said she couldn't stand an operation, so her
only hope was to follow a strict diet, which in our economic
situation was almost impossible. I was the only one in the family to
set foot in school, but I missed a lot because I had to stay home
with mother when she wasn't feeling well. We couldn't leave her
alone. The school I attended was run by nuns. When I had to miss
several days to be with my mother, they didn't just ask me politely
why I had been absent but they accused me of being a vagrant who
didn't want to study. So I gradually gave up school. But I had
learned to read and write a little bit.
Working and taking care of my mother left no time for play. I didn't
even know what a toy was. Once, on the Feast of the Three Wise
Men, my father brought me a little candy bar of caramel and
roasted almond. Unused to such a delicacy, I covered my father
with kisses. Tears in his eyes, he said: ''Look, child, you're going to
see the girls outside and they'll say that the Kings brought them this
and the Kings brought them that, and they'll even show you the
gifts the Kings brought. But, my child, the Kings don't exist, and
the gifts they show you are ones their parents bought. Now we
don't have the means to buy gifts." I told him not to worry; it
wouldn't bother me to see the girls with their toys.
I saw my father go off to work. All that day I thought a lot about
our situation and my father, a day laborer with a seriously ill wife. I
went outside and just as my father had warned, there were the girls
with their toys and dolls, embroidery hoops, sewing kits, and
countless other gifts. When the girls asked me what the Kings had
brought me, a small lie took shape in my imagination: "A darling
doll, so pretty."
"Why don't you have it?"
"Oh, my mother won't let me bring the doll outside. Do you know
what? You take her by the hand and she walks and says, 'Papa' and
'Mama.'"
I had heard about such dolls. The girls crowded around me begging
to see the doll. I kept on saying that my mother wouldn't let me,
wouldn't let me. I finally got away from them and went back in the
house. I cried in a corner. My mother asked me why I was crying.
"It's nothing," I said. "I just feel like crying, that's all."
"Did you see the other girls' gifts?"
"Well, yes, but I don't care."
That's where the matter stayed until afternoon when several
neighbors came to visit my mother for the holiday. But those
damned girls!
 Page 5
They thought that if they came with their mothers they'd see the
doll.
"Come on," they begged, hugging their mothers' skirts, "show us
the doll."
Finally my mother realized the girls' scheme, but I kept on saying
that I had put the doll away for safekeeping.
"But you can show us the doll in the house. Come on, tell your
mother to let you show it."
I don't know how but I finally managed to drag them outside
without showing them the doll. But they said: "Hey, you lied. You
don't really have a doll!"
When I went in the house, my mother was crying bitterly.
"Mommy, are you feeling worse?"
"No, my daughter, I'm better. I'm crying because I truly wanted to
buy you that doll."
At that the two of us started crying. My mother explained that I
wasn't the only little girl not to receive toys that day; she said there
were many, many children whose fathers earned just enough to put
a little food on the table. And she repeated what my father had said
that morning: "You're old enough to know the truth, my daughter.
The parents are really the Kings."
I was only nine years old when I started working in a knitwear
factory. In those days it was considered a factory, but today we'd
call it a small workshop. I remember it perfectly. It was a tiny little
store where they sold stockings and other machine-made things.
There was a small show case and a shop in back with four knitting
machines, one for socks, another for stockings, and two for pants
and skirts. My job was mending stockings. I began by earning two
reales a week, and I stayed at that level for some time. Later I
asked for a raise and received one more little real a week.
I was a rebel by nature and I was becoming more and more
rebellious. I didn't let an opportunity slip by without asking for a
raise. The answer was always the same: "Who do you think you
are, you brat? Don't you know how many people would like to earn
what you do?" But I wasn't convinced. Those three reales were
very little pay. I knew what they earned from my work because in
each little parcel of repair work they would put the price that had to
be paid. Always grumbling and always arguing, they would raise
my wages one more real, then another and another, until by the
time I was eleven years old I was earning seventy-five. Mending
wasn't my only job. On Sundays I worked as a nanny in a house
where my brother's fiancée was employed. The regular nanny had
Sundays off. I learned a lesson in life from my two jobs: you have
to stand up for yourself. We needed more money at home so I
asked for another raise. My employer said: "I've told you many
times that you earn
 Page 6
more than your work deserves. Be quiet and don't ask me again."
I didn't argue with her that day. But I began to jot down in a little
notebook everything I earned for the shop during the week. When
it was time to be paid the following week, I said to my employer:
"Well, I'm going to insist again on a raise."
When she repeated that I wasn't earning my pay as it was, I took
out the little notebook with the record of my work. "And this," I
asked, "what is this? Look at how much I made for you this week
and how miserably you pay me."
I thought the woman would go crazy. I was afraid she might even
hit me. But no, the only thing she did was to say good-bye to me,
call my father and tell him he had a very rebellious daughter and he
ought to be careful with me and remember that Guadalajara was a
small place and that she was well known in the community and
could make it impossible for me to get work. And she put me out in
the street. So at the age of eleven I began to look for work. I found
a job in a factory that made pasta for soup. At the same time I
asked a relative of my mother if he would put an advertisement in
the liberal paper he published. I placed an ad for mending at home.
My first customers came from the shop where I had mended
stockings previously. When they called from the shop to complain
that I was taking their customers away, I answered very calmly:
"Well, you're wrong, Señora Isidra, because I didn't knock on the
doors of these women who come to my house. The only thing I did
was to advertise in a liberal newspaper, just as you advertise in the
other paper. They knock at my door. But me? I never knock at
theirs. So whenever you want to denounce me, go right ahead."
I worked days in the factory and at night mended stockings at
home. The mending was difficult because we had only one light in
the house and it was high up in the ceiling. I would put a chair on
the table, climb up on the table, and sit there to do the mending.
Usually I worked until midnight or one o'clock, and the next day
when I left for work I would leave the little parcels with my mother
to give the ladies who came for them.
The economic situation at home was increasingly bad. My mother
needed a glass of milk every two hours. Such an expense was
impossible for us. But I found out that a dairy farm was looking for
a girl to deliver milk from six to eight o'clock in the morning. I got
the job. They only paid me fifteen pesetas a month but they gave
me three liters of milk free. Winter was the hardest time. I put on
wool gloves to pick up those containers of milk, but my hands got
so cold that when I knocked at customers' doors they would have to
serve themselves the milk because my hands were too numb to
move.
Matters went from bad to worse. We owed a month's rent on the
 Page 7
house. I learned that the owner needed someone to bring water
from one-half kilometer away; the owners still didn't have running
water in the house. So in the afternoon when I left the factory, I
went to fill jugs of water. I carried one jug on my hip and a pail in
my hand. In the morning milk, then the factory, carrying water in
the afternoon, and mending stockings at night. Sometimes I
wondered how I possibly could do so many things. It must have
been the necessity I felt to do it and love for my mother and seeing
that my efforts did help my family and home. But all that made me
rebellious. I rebelled against everything that exploited me.
My job delivering milk ended when they began using a little cart.
Then I found a house that needed someone to wash clothes. Very
early every morning I would go to the public washing place where
I'd seen women washing clothes from morning to night. How angry
I felt to be there. I put in the soap and went off to the factory. I
returned from the factory and washed. When I left the factory I did
the rinsing. There I was, running in circles from one job to the
other. The baskets of clothes were so heavy I couldn't lift them; my
brother would carry them from the washing place to our home or
the customer's house.
At the factory I was the person who protested the most. I protested
everything, but not just for me, for all the others, too. From
carrying heavy trays of wet pasta while I was still growing my
arms started to become deformed. But that is where I learned to
fight. And that is where I met one of our companions, Santos
Puertos. I'll always remember him as the person who guided my
steps to the struggle that I carry on today. It happened like this.
One day he said: "Peque, come here, please."
And he took me over to a window and showed me some men in
front of the factory. "Do you see those men?" he asked. "They're
police. They're waiting to arrest me. Do you understand? I'm a
Communist and they don't like Communists. But you could help
me. You're a good girl and you can make something of yourself."
"What do I have to do?"
"Look, I have a little package I can't take out. If you keep the
package for me, the police won't get it if they arrest me. You carry
it to your house and hide it. But don't tell a soul, do you
understand?"
"Yes, I promise. Not a word to anyone."
"Good. I'll give it to you before you leave."
There was no way I could say no to him because he was the only
person who helped me take up the trays of pasta when the
supervisor wasn't looking.
So we had an agreement. The next afternoon on the way to work I
met a peasant, Raimundo Serrano, known as Peregrino. Everybody
knew he was a Communist. The police arrested him frequently and
made life
 Page 8
impossible for him; he couldn't get work or even feed his family.
"What's new, Peque, are you off to work?"
"Yes."
"What do you know about Santos?"
"They arrested him yesterday."
"Oh! Listen, before they arrested him, did he give you anything?"
"Me? No! Why would he give me anything?"
"Well, look, there's something very important that I have to
collect."
"It must have been some other girl from the factory. Santos didn't
give me anything."
"Look, don't treat me like this, girl. This is an important matter."
"It can be as important as you like but I don't have anything."
"Okay, okay, so you don't have anything."
The next day he approached me again with the same questions. I
insisted again it was a mistake, that I wasn't the one, that I didn't
know anything, that I didn't have a thing to do with Santos. On the
third day he brought me a note from Santos and said: "Look, I
managed to get this letter from Santos out of jail. Now you'll see
that he wants you to give me the package." I was convinced. That
night I gave him the package.
That was my first clandestine work for the Communist Party in
Spain. After this little job members of the party trusted me to set up
connections or arrange meetings. One day I asked one of the men
why the Communist Party had to work secretly when their
demands for the people were just. He explained very clearly that
capitalism and the middle class didn't want to recognize the
workers' claims. He explained in more or less these words:
"Is it true that you don't want to continue being exploited? Is it true
that you want to live better than you do now and work fewer
hours? Is it true that you would have liked to go to school like our
bosses' children, like middle-class children, and not had to go to
work when you were nine years old? Well, that's what we want and
that's what we ask for. And that's what we work for. Now, don't
think it's easy. The struggle will cost us a lot: imprisonment, even
blood, who knows? But we have to fight. We have to live better.
We have to make Spain democratic."
His words affected me deeply. "You can count on me," I said. "I'll
always be with you even if it costs me my life."
I worked with them in the party until 1931. When the Communist
Youth 1 was founded in our region, I became a member and began
work in propaganda and what we called "agitation," things that I
could do in spite of my lack of education. Using an old, ugly
machine, we published the Joven Guardia (Young Guard) and
handed it out on the streets. These were the years of the big
campaigns for freedom conducted by the
 Page 9
internationally known Communist leaders, Carlos Prestes and Ernst
Thaelmann. 2 We campaigned by painting slogans and signs on
walls and roads and organizing gatherings in the country to meet
with other young people. We had to be very careful because by
then the Assault Guards had been organized as a special security
force to defend the Republic. These shock troops were made up of
officers and men thought to be especially loyal to the Republic.
My life at home and at work improved. Through friends I made in
and out of the party I was able to get construction jobs for my
brother. His income made it possible for me to quit my extra jobs.
Meanwhile my sister had married a farmer and they provided us
with fresh vegetables from their garden. My mother was improving
thanks to her milk treatment. At least at home we were beginning
to see our way clear.
My brother bought his first suit, on installment of course. And I
bought something for myselfshoes with heels. How grand they
made me feel, I who had worn nothing but sandals all my life.
Sometimes at home I had tried on my sister's shoes when she
wasn't there. Of course, she got angry with me and said I was going
to break the heels or make them misshapen. But I loved to wear
shoes with heels. As far as how I dressed, I looked nice. I was
lucky enough to have a sister who could make a dress out of any
piece of cloth they gave her in the houses where she worked. From
any little thing at all she made me skirts and blouses so that I was
always well turned out and very pretty. She loved to see me like
that. She also made herself some beautiful dresses. She was very
good looking, the cute type, with blue eyes like my mother's and
long blond hair that she wore in a big top knot. People would call
her "the blond with the top knot." I remember that after the
elections of April 14, 1931, which was the first year we celebrated
May Day, she made me a darling pleated red dress in just twenty-
four hours because I was going to carry the banner for the casa del
pueblo that day. The casas del pueblo were a kind of Socialist club
house that the local trade unions used for meetings, and they had a
cafe and lending library. I saw my sister near the sidewalk
watching the demonstrators march by, her baby boy in her arms,
and I could see the happiness in her face and eyes as she watched
me in the dress she'd made for the occasion.
That May Day was and is unforgettable for me. The demonstration
developed in a way that none of us expected as people from
surrounding villages came to Guadalajara. All kinds of
revolutionary songs were in the air.
My brother got married around the year 1934, leaving only my
parents and me at home. I, too, had a sweetheart, a fellow from a
working-class family who had a job as an electrical mechanic. If I
had a job to do for the youth group and he came to take me out, I'd
tell him I had mend-
 Page 10
ing to do. We'd chat a while at the door and then he'd be off. As
soon as he left, I'd go out. He didn't know I was active in the
Communist Youth. Sometimes he was the one who'd come to tell
me he was going with a friend to do some extra job. These boys
were the kind who handed over their entire salary to help out at
home; for their own spending they depended on odd jobs.
One day it happened that we both had odd jobs. That dayand it was
now 1934a bigger meeting was scheduled. If I remember correctly,
the purpose of the meeting was to discuss preparations for a
national strike. To reach the house where the meeting was to take
place, I had to go a roundabout way to avoid walking across the
central square. Still I had to cross it at one point. Just as I was
crossing, I met some groups of young people. In one group I
spotted my sweetheart. He left the group, very angry. "Are you
following me?" he asked. "Don't you take my word for it that I
have a job to do? I'm just here for a little while with some friends
and then we have to get to work. I'm not very happy if you've
followed me."
I looked at him calmly, almost figuring out what was going on.
"Follow you? Follow you? It never crossed my mind. I met you by
pure chance. Go to your job and I'll go to mine. I'm off to deliver
some stockings. See you later."
I reached my destination and went in the house. People were
coming in, some now, some later. In one of the groups coming in I
saw my boyfriend. Both of us were happy to find the other in the
same place; from then on we worked more together than
individually. One of the jobs the two of us did was acquire paper
for printing. We got some of the paper from a boy whose father had
a print shop. When the boy's father finished his work, he locked the
print shop, put the keys in his jacket pocket and went home. The
routine never varied: arrive home, take off the jacket, hang it on the
hook. The boy would wait a moment, then say to his parents, "See
you later." Going through the hall, he would put his hand in the
jacket, take the keys, go to the shop and get what paper he could.
This was pretty dangerous for him because he might be seen at any
time. Then we made a deal: the boy would continue the business
with the key while my sweetheart courted me at the window, right
by the door. Without lifting the latch, the boy handed us the paper
through the window and off we went. That way the boy left with
clean hands. When the war broke out in Guadalajara in 1936 and
the fascists took the city within twenty-four hours, there were few
casualties. But this fine young man was one of them.
 Page 11

Chapter 2
Coming of Age in Politics and War
My first arrest was in 1934. In late November or early December, I
don't remember which, some children from Asturias whose parents
had been killed or incarcerated or who had fled their homes were
passing through Guadalajara on their way to live with other
families. I went to the municipal square where the two cars
carrying the children were due to stop. I don't know what had
happened, but when I got there I saw an assault guard threatening a
small child. I flew like a streak toward the guard and looking up at
himhe was very tall and I was just a cute little snotty-nosed galI
said: "You touch that kid and I'll blast you and curse your mother."
I think I would have had to stand on a chair to hit him. He grabbed
me by the arm, "Yes? What's that? You're under arrest."
He took me to city hall and they threw me in jail. The jail was full
of rats that scurried over my feet. I was desperately afraid. When
my father heard about my arrest, he went to the jail to find out why
I was being held. "Come now," they told him, "she's in politics up
to her eyeballs." My father answered that I was much too busy with
three jobs and a sweetheart to have time for politics. In short, the
police had to be mistaken. I must have been with those little
children by accident. Besides I wouldn't behave like that toward a
policeman. When they brought me out to make a statement and
asked me what I had done, I answered, ''Nothing."
Then they brought in the policeman who had arrested me. "Why
did you arrest this girl?"
"Because she threatened me and cursed my mother."
"No, sir," I replied. "I didn't 'curse your mother.' I said that if you
touched the child, I was going to curse your mother and hit you.
But you didn't touch the child, so I did not curse your mother and I
didn't hit you."
The policemen laughed because my statement was so simple and
straightforward. But they still wanted to pull some information out
of us. What had I been doing there? Who had given the orders?
Who was I with? If I gave them just one name, they said, nothing
would happen to me.
 Page 12
"Me? I just happened to be there. I was passing by, saw the
children and stopped. Then I saw this man mistreating one of the
kids and it just popped into my head to say what I did. But, since I
didn't hit him or shit on his mother, I don't think you should hold
me as if I'd committed some crime."
But they did hold me, for three days, even though they weren't
much interested in the business with the policeman. What they
wanted to know was who had sent us to welcome the children.
"Nothing will happen to you," they said, over and over, "if you give
us a name." All they got for their trouble were empty wishes.
Finally they let me go.
My father was my best friend, the person who appreciated
everything I did around the house. I knew how much he loved me.
But that time he was waiting for me in the hall with a slipper in
hand to shake the truth out of me. As I walked toward the open
front door, he slowly backed away. And as he backed up, I reached
the door leading to the attic where I kept my Communist Youth
membership card. I seized the card and held it under his nose.
"Look, father, you and mother are what I love most. But I've put
my dreams in this. See, it's my membership card in the Communist
Youth. I've been fighting for it for some time. If you touch me, it's
all over. I assure you I'll leave home, and you know that I've been
able to support myself for many years. Do what you want. I'll stay
on at home and continue to help you as always, but I'll do it as a
member of the Communist Youth."
The slipper fell from my father's hand. "Don't worry, Pequeña,
don't worry. I'm not going to hit you. Stand up for your rights
because I've never known how to stand up for mine." The two of us
embraced weeping. My mother, who was in the dining room
awaiting the outcome, said: "And that's what you were going to tell
her and what you were going to do to her? Well, it's all over now.
That's the last straw. You've given her wings."
The campaigns for the elections of February 16, 1936, were hard
fought. More than once people came to Guadalajara from Madrid
to hold meetings and go around the villages promising people the
moon. If there wasn't running water in the villages, they'd install a
central fountain. They'd provide help with the harvests. They'd
even bring in the railroad. Even before the Republic we'd always
been promised a railroad. The promise never materialized. We also
campaigned, but we didn't promise anything we couldn't deliver.
We only reminded people that nothing could be accomplished in
our country without a united front. Only by uniting our efforts
could we free ourselves from slavery, distribute to the peasants the
uncultivated land belonging to the large landowners, and form
collectives of small farmers so they could earn more money
working
 Page 13
together than from small parcels of land held individually.
I was one of the members who went out to the villages for two or
three days at a time. I don't know why I was chosen to speak, but
the fact is that people in those little towns liked me and when I left
they would promise to vote for the Republic. One time some
people in government were planning a big meeting in the bullring
at Guadalajara. Our job was to make sure the meeting didn't take
place. In the morning a bunch of cars arrived and they began
passing out leaflets and calling people to the bullring. We didn't
interrupt their propagandizing, but the story changed when the cars
of the representatives tried to get near the bullring. Stones rained
down everywhere. The police appeared, and the Civil Guard and
the Assault Guard were on horseback. In spite of efforts by the
police to clear the area, we were able to prevent the meeting from
taking place. The cars backed off with fresh dents and broken
windows.
The elections were a success. Right away we asked for a general
amnesty for the loads of political prisoners all over Spain and
especially in the north. Guadalajara had two prisons, one civil, the
other military; both were full of political prisoners. At three o'clock
one afternoon I left the factory and joined workers from all over for
a rally to support amnesty. Out in the street we met groups of
friends who'd also left their work. At the rally the officials agreed
to the amnesty but said they had to communicate with Madrid first.
We didn't accept that plan and shouted for amnesty. We divided
into two groups, one going to the civil prison, the other to the
military one, shouting "Amnesty, amnesty, amnesty!" Our actions
were communicated to Madrid and the order was given to release
the prisoners. I remember that I was in the group that went to the
military prison. Among the men released was a certain Lieutenant
Castillo. We carried him to the casa del pueblo where we
celebrated his release the best we could. The men embraced one
another, those that were freed and those who had rallied.
Lieutenant Castillo's voice was heard: "Well, now, it's good for
men to embrace one another, but bring on the girls. They're the
ones I want to hug." Little could we imagine that that man, with his
courage and valor, that handsome, strong man, would be
assassinated from behind just a few months later.
In April of 1936 our youth group was strengthened with the
unification of the Socialist and Communist groups. The new
organization was called the Unified Socialist Youth, commonly
referred to as the JSU. On May 1, 1936, we Communist members
of the JSU went out to celebrate wearing our uniforms; the only
change in the uniforms was that now we wore a blue and red
handkerchief with our blue shirts instead of the plain red one of
before. The rally was very exciting. The Falange came into the
street and tried to break us up. They didn't succeed but there were
skirmishes and punching and kicking.
 Page 14
The following months were full of worry and fear from threats
hanging over our heads. We had to endure constant provocations
from the Falangists. Assassinations and betrayal spread throughout
Spain. The assassination of Calvo Sotelo on July 13, 1936, was the
final blow; Sotelo had pushed for the restoration of the monarchy
and authoritarian rule. War broke out. We already had heard about
uprisings in the south. The day we learned about the uprising in
Madrid I went to warn my sister who lived in the country; she had
a five-year-old child, a little girl two and a half years old, and a
third child was due any day. I told her to keep the children away
from the garden and not leave the house. My sister and her family
stayed in their house for a few days, but when bombs started falling
all around, they took refuge in the train station.
On the way home from my sister's house, I met several friends
crossing the fields and some workers on the way to the afternoon
shift at the Hispano-Suiza plane factory. When the workers left at
two o'clock in the afternoon, they didn't use the main doors because
the forces of the Civil Guard and the Army already were out front
with machine guns. They all fled, running through the fields toward
the villages of Cabanillas and Marchemalo. They wanted to know
where I was going.
That's when I realized there wasn't anything else for me to do but
return to Guadalajara. My parents were there and they would have
been extremely worried if I didn't return from my sister's house. I
couldn't go by the main highway because of the shooting there, so I
went up along the side of the cemetery. I finally made it home to
my parents, but I didn't know what to do. I could see resistance was
useless; we were far outnumbered by the fascist troops.
That night we turned off the lights inside the house and peered out
the window. A group of people appeared; among them we
recognized Falangists. They approached the door. The three of us
looked at each other, waiting to hear the knock. It didn't come.
Then we saw them going along the street. Why hadn't they
knocked? When my father opened the door to investigate, he saw
the sign of a cross scrawled on the door, a sure sign they'd intended
to make an arrest. My father warned me to get out of Guadalajara.
He told me to stay off main streets, go by way of a gully leading to
a small poplar grove, and from there cross the main highway to
reach the road leading to the village of Iriepal. My father was sure I
could find refuge with friends there. By now it was late at night and
very dark. I was scared. As I reached the knoll between
Guadalajara and Iriepal, I looked at the bundles of wheat in the
fields, set in rows like little huts, and asked myself: "What if the
fascists are arresting people in Iriepal. Am I putting myself in the
wolf's mouth?"
 Page 15
I waited for dawn to come in that field of wheat bundles. When the
skies began to turn light, I heard the sound of planes flying very
low. Looking in the direction of Guadalajara, I saw planes circling
the capital and dropping leaflets. I made out the flag of the
Republic painted on the wings. The planes were ours. I soon was to
find out that the leaflets were warning citizens to evacuate
Guadalajara, especially old people, women, and children. The
workers' militias from Madrid, who had fought heroically against
the fascist uprising and had won the battle of the Montaña Barracks
on July 1920, were en route to Guadalajara to free us from the
fascist hordes. Then I saw whole families fleeing across the fields
with their children. But a little later I saw the fascists and armed
forces running, looking back and firing from time to time.
Then I began to see the situation more clearly. I was running a
greater risk out there in the wheat fields than in town. However
great the danger of returning to Guadalajara to see if the city was
being liberated, chances were there wouldn't be enough enemy
forces left to do anything against us. But first I went on to Iriepal to
the home of my friend, María Andrés. She told me my parents were
with neighbors in a nearby house. My old father was overjoyed to
see me. I told them I was going to Guadalajara since we were
beginning to get news that the liberation was complete and the city
was once again in the hands of the people. In Guadalajara I would
be able to make contact with the party and the youth organization.
So much has been written about the Spanish Civil War that I'll only
say I served wherever needed. I worked for a while in a hospital in
the region of Alcarria and in hospitals of the International
Brigades; helped organize sewing shops in Guadalajara making
coveralls for the militias; organized diversions for the troops that
came to the villages for a few days of rest; set up laundries for
washing the soldiers' clothes; established sewing shops; recruited
men from villages for the front; and convinced women to take over
men's jobs.
During one of the many severe bombings of Guadalajara our house
was ruined. Fortunately we didn't suffer personal injury because
my father was working, I was at party headquarters, and my mother
as usual had run outside as soon as she heard the planes. My
mother was so afraid of the bombings that she wouldn't even stay
in the house at night with my father and me; she'd take her little
mattress and sleep in the shelter.
The worst bombing took place one day around three o'clock in the
afternoon. I remember how brightly the sun was shining and then,
when a mass of bomb-laden Junkers came overhead, how an eerie
darkness settled over the city. Not one ray of sun could penetrate
the darkness formed by those planes overhead. The bombing was
horrible. They
 Page 16
dropped incendiary bombs in the city center, and the fires
destroyed many, many buildings, including the National Museum. I
was among the people who went by car and ambulance to help the
wounded and dead. The sight that met my eye paralyzed me. I saw
a friend who was probably sixteen or seventeen years old, hopping
along on one foot. She was carrying one of her feet in her hand and
she'd wrapped the stump of her leg in her blouse. I began searching
in the rubble for my family. Where could they be? Children,
women, all kinds of people were there. You could recognize them
only by their clothes; their bodies and faces were blown away. As I
searched through the rubble, I felt someone catch me by the
shoulders and almost lift me off the ground.
"What are you looking for here?"
"For my sister and her children."
"They're not here; I saw them on the way to El Molino."
I took off for El Molino, shouting, "Antonia, Antonia!"
"We're here, we're here," came the answer.
I warned her to stay put and I would let her husband know where to
find her. No sooner had I left El Molino than I met him crossing the
highway. As we embraced, I began to cry from nervous tension. He
got frightened, but I said: "No, don't be afraid, nothing's happened.
Antonia and the children are in El Molino. Go get them and take
them to your parents' house, but don't go home now. There's
nothing but death and destruction."
That same day the fascist prisoners attempted an uprising in the
hope that they were going to be liberated soon. Some of them even
had pistols and fired through the prison windows. The townspeople
were so incensed over the horrendous air raid that they marched to
the prison demanding the prisoners be killed. A huge rally formed
in the central streets of Guadalajara, with the people shouting for
justice. They wanted the prisoners to pay with their lives for the
bombings that had caused so many deaths. When I arrived from the
station, the rally was already underway; I joined in. The
consequences of this rally later on were something to remember.
When some of my companions were arrested after the war, they
declared that I was the one who had organized the rally. At the time
they thought I was safely out of the country. My impression is that
the rally was an entirely spontaneous event. No one person or
group organized it.
In March, 1939 the party informed the JSU that some soldiers from
the Republican army were coming to rest for a few days in
Guadalajara and we were asked to arrange a party for them and let
them use the game room in the casa del pueblo. The room was in
disrepair, and the billiard tables were in such bad shape they
couldn't be used. Nonetheless, we immediately began to put the
room in order and make life more
 Page 17
agreeable for the soldiers during their rest in Guadalajara. We
couldn't find any felt to cover the billiard tables, so I went to
Madrid with a boy named Ramón to look for felt. It must have been
the fourth of March when we left for Madrid in the middle of the
morning. 1 No sooner had we arrived in Madrid than we did our
shopping and by noon were loaded with packages of things the
leadership had asked us to buy. It was Ramón's idea to stay in
Madrid until the next day; he wanted to spend some time with other
kids in the JSU. So we went to the Hotel Atocha near the Atocha
railroad station to reserve rooms and leave the packages. This done,
we went our separate ways, agreeing to meet at the hotel at nine
o'clock that night to see if we might want to catch the night train or
wait for the morning one. I went to my cousin's house in Ventas.
She was surprised to see me.
"Girl," she said, "what are you doing here?"
"I came with a friend to do some shopping."
"Don't you know the war is ending?"
"Ending? Don't tell me that! Who told you so?"
"Get with it. The news is everywhere in Madrid. The war will end
any day now."
I was completely unsuspecting that the war was nearly over.
Neither the leadership of the party nor the JSU had informed us of
this. I didn't know what to believe. I took it for a passing rumor and
we changed the subject. I ate supper with them; we chatted about
the family and ourselves and after a while I walked with my cousin
to Manuel Becerra street where she was going to do some shopping
and I could get a streetcar for Cibeles. I planned to walk to the
hotel from Cibeles, but before we reached the Puerta de Alcalá the
streetcar stopped and I heard shouts I couldn't understand. People
began to get off the streetcar so I did too. I walked to the Puerta de
Alcalá where I heard more shouts. This time I could make out the
words: "Long live the Republic! Long live the Republic!" And,
"Long live the junta of Casado!" And, "At last, the war is ending!"
The worst part is that there were shots along with the shouts.
People were already lying dead in the street. Several times I had to
duck into doorways to dodge bullets. I was scared and didn't know
what to think. I finally made it back to the hotel. Things were
confusing there but at least there wasn't the shooting that was going
on in the Puerta de Alcalá. I went up to the room, not knowing
what to do or if something had happened to Ramón. The best
course was to do what we had agreed on and just wait. When
Ramón got there, he was scared, too, and indignant: "It's horrible,
do you understand? Colonel Casadohe's the Republican
commander of the Central Armywell, he's formed a junta. He's
selling us out, selling us out to Franco."
 Page 18
"Who told you that?"
"The JSU. They're preparing to defend themselves. And we've got
to fight, too. We've got to defend ourselves. We can't let Casado's
junta sell us out."
"Sell out" became the watchword of the JSU and the Communist
Party in Madrid. We both were silent for a moment. Perhaps we
were thinking the same thing. We were young and didn't know
politically what to think of everything we'd seen in the last couple
of hours. Ramón was probably eighteen or nineteen years old and I,
I was twenty-one. I had been active in the JSU for some time but I
didn't understand anything about politics. Finally the boy broke the
silence: "Come on, let's collect our packages and get to the station.
We'll take the first train out. Maybe we'll be able to do something
in Guadalajara."
We went down to the vestibule and stopped to pay for the rooms.
The concierge charged us for only one room since we hadn't slept
in them. He urged us to hurry to the station because the night train
always filled up quickly. We took off running for the station. We
asked the man there what time the train for Guadalajara left and he
said at half past ten. It was about a quarter past nine. Just then a
freight train was leaving. We asked where the train was going and
the man said: "To Guadalajara. It's carrying a special load, but if
you catch it, you'll get there sooner." The door to the last car was
open and the conductor was standing there. We threw him our
packages and thanks to him got on the moving train. When we
climbed into the car and sat down, we were very sad and subdued.
The conductor asked: "What is it, kids? Where are you going?"
"To Guadalajara."
"Well, what's happened to you?"
"What do you think? The war's ending."
"I saw shootings in the Puerta de Alcalá," I added.
"So? Were you afraid?"
"Yes, a little. Is it true what they're saying about Casado's junta?"
"Yes, child, it is. The people who truly fought for freedom and for
the Republic don't want it, but it seems to me they won't get
anywhere simply by not wanting it. Me, I think it's all over. Still,
we should fight as long as we can. We shouldn't let ourselves get
caught because we're not going to have an easy time of it. Do you
belong to some organization?" We answered that yes, we belonged
to the JSU. "Well, kids, if it's true and if you've been activists, then
you better find yourselves some corner where they can't find you
because you're not going to have it easy."
The conductor talked with us the entire trip. He explained that we
couldn't win the war because Hitler and Mussolini had helped
Franco
 Page 19
and the arms from the Soviet Union were stacked at the border
because of the nonintervention policy.
"Oh, if we had those arms sitting at the border, the story would be
different. In '36 we didn't have any arms and they didn't take
Madrid. But that old goat Casado rushed ahead of events. He's
betrayed the people of Spain. He'll pay for it dearly because we'll
keep on fighting. They won't defeat us."
We finally reached Guadalajara. The man embraced us: "My
children," he said, "I wish you lots of luck, lots of luck." I think
tears came to his eyes. I felt a lump in my throat. We left the station
and had walked for a while when we heard someone call out to us,
a neighborhood boy: "Hey, are you going home?"
"Of course, where else would we be going?"
"Well, be careful. Some of your friends have been arrested
already."
"Arrested? Who arrested them?"
"How would I know! But around here people are saying that the
war is over and Franco has won."
We entered the city very cautiously, avoiding the center of town.
Going up Market Street, we came out in front of a building where
the local chapter of the JSU had offices. We were astonished to see
the black and red flag of Franco's forces flying from the balcony.
Now we really did cry. When I got home, my mother was very
upset: "Why did you come back, my daughter?"
"What's happening, mother?"
"They've been here looking for you. They came to arrest you. A
whole bunch of girls have been arrested. There's a Mercedes and a
Trini. And a lot of men have been detained. I guess the war's over.
So, look, you better leave. I'm afraid they'll catch you."
I went to a friend's house. She asked me what I was doing there.
"Don't you know they're arresting people?" she asked.
"So, if they're arresting people, why haven't they taken you?"
"Because they're arresting the leaders."
"I'm no leader."
"Maybe not, but they've already gone to arrest you."
"And you, why don't you go away?"
"Because they're saying nothing will happen to us if we don't have
blood on our hands."
"Ah, I don't have bloody hands!"
"No, but you really stood out."
"Okay, I stood out, but I never did anything they could arrest me
for."
I realized that my mother was afraid for me to stay on in the house.
Mother had been housing a young woman from La Solana in the
 Page 20
province of Ciudad Real. This girl, Agustina was her name, invited
me to go home with her. The first night in the village we had a
scare. It must have been midnight when we were awakened by
shouting. They were arresting people at that hour and shooting
them in the village square or beating them nearly dead before
putting them in jail. It was horrible to hear the men moaning as
they were hit. Horrible to hear the women shouting for help for
their husbands and fathers and brothers.
The next night the shootings and beatings resumed. I couldn't stand
it. It was as if they were doing it to me. I thought they were
punishing the people who had fought for the Republic, those
simple country folk who fought for freedom and their country. The
noise went on until two or three o'clock. I couldn't go to sleep. I
was crying, my face buried in my pillow. I felt ashamed to be there,
as if I were in hiding, as if it didn't matter to me what was
happening in our Spain. I cried tears of rage and sorrow.
The next day I moved to Agustina's sister's house. But the arrests,
the beatings, the shootings went on in that village, too. One day her
sister came back from the store with the rumor that the authorities
knew someone was around who wasn't from the village. She
thought they'd come for me that very night. I told her not to worry.
I'd leave for Madrid immediately.
I got on the train without buying a ticket. But the train was enough
to make me sick. It was full of Franco's mercenary soldiers from
North Africa, quarrelsome foreigners and soldiers covered with
dirt, filth, and scabies. They were all the same, so I got out at the
first station. I made my way to Madrid by following the railroad
tracks, sometimes walking along them, sometimes near them. I
don't know how many kilometers I walked. But my feet were a
disaster. In Madrid I went to my aunt's house. She soaked my feet
in salt water, gave me something hot to eat, and got me into bed.
But my relatives were afraid to have me in their house.
The next day I went to my cousin Pura's house in Ventas, but no
one was at home. Then I remembered the address of a friend from
the JSU who had been in Guadalajara several times. I set off for her
house in Cuatro Caminos. When I knocked at the door, her mother
was taken aback. They'd come many times to arrest her daughter
but hadn't taken her away because she had typhoid fever and was
confined to bed. They were expecting the ambulance at any
moment to take her to the hospital. Her mother was concerned that
the police might have seen me. I hadn't been there five minutes
when we heard the ambulance. "Get under the bed," the mother
said. "I'll give the key to a neighbor and go with my daughter in the
ambulance."
The men came in with a stretcher, along with the police. The
mother
 Page 21
asked the police if she could accompany her daughter in the
ambulance; they agreed but said they didn't know if she would be
going to the hospital or to the prison in Ventas. Possibly she would
be taken to the hospital because her illness was contagious, but
they weren't the ones to decide. All this I heard from under the bed.
As my friend's mother was leaving, she said to a neighbor in a
voice loud enough for me to hear: ''Take the key. I left the door
open because they're coming to disinfect the house. When they've
finished, lock it up. I'll get the key from you later."
I left immediately. I wandered around Madrid from one place to
another, not knowing where to go. In an effort to find housework, I
went to several homes, but when they asked me for verification of
"good conduct" I was at a loss. I couldn't just pull such a
verification out of my hat. I realized that under such conditions it
was useless to continue looking for employment. So round and
round I wandered in Madrid. It was disgusting to go along those
streets, filled with strangers and legionnaires harassing girls. Later
some girls fell victim to those conquerors who had carte blanche to
do whatever they liked. I looked at them with hate, with fury, with
disgust. I thought about the men, women, and young people who
had fought and suffered to defend Madrid, and to what avail? So
that fascism could trample her because a traitor and coward sold us
out? I didn't know what to do. I decided that I'd rather go home
than fall victim to one of these good-for-nothings. I didn't care
about prison. All I cared about was morale. I was tired. I was
hungry. I had no money. I went to the station but the few coins left
from what mother had given me weren't enough to pay the fare.
Besides I was afraid of meeting someone I knew from Guadalajara.
So I left the station. An African soldier who'd seen me counting my
money apparently realized I didn't have enough and started
following me. He began to talk and offer me things. I started to run.
He ran after me. But my legs were quicker than his. I ran down the
Avenida del Prado as if rushing to put out a fire.
I finally reached the Post Office building. I mixed among the
crowd there, all the while keeping the fellow in view. He went from
one place to another looking for me. When I saw he had his back to
the door, I slipped out of the building. Once in the street I calmed
down. Then I caught a streetcar for Ventas and went on to
Canillejas at the end of the line. I still didn't know what to do. The
only solution that occurred to me was to walk down the highway.
During the walk I thought about all that had happened to us during
the war, the lives we had lost, and how everything had turned out
so cruelly for us. I realized that we would go on losing lives and
suffer imprisonment and separation from our families. The war was
terrible; it separated loved ones, destroyed homes, ruined
marriages.
 Page 22
How well I knew about personal losses. I had had to separate from
a young man I'd loved since I was fifteen years old. He was a good
man, but the war and postwar times raised havoc with homes. Then
I met a young French soldier of Spanish parentage. We'd only
spoken twice but carried on a relationship by letter from different
fronts. Was I in love with him? I don't know. I only know that
through letters I developed strong feelings for him. He helped me
to forget. But he died at the battle of Ebro, fighting for Spain,
defending the Republic. I contacted his family. His older brothers
were very good about writing to me. Later when I was in prison I
felt the warmth of that wonderful family who treated me like a
daughter and sister, even though the young man and I were united
only by letters. How much I would like to have met his family, but
through all the years of clandestine living I lost touch with them.
By nature I was happy and in good spirits. But during the time I
walked those kilometers I felt physically and morally exhausted.
Finally I reached Guadalajara. I avoided the city center and took
the alley beside the patio wall by the house. I thought the owners of
the house probably had come back and that I was just asking for
trouble. Climbing up on the wall, I peered inside. Yes, the owners
were back. Where could my parents be? I went to the house of
some close friends and knocked on the window pane with my
knuckles. Señora Adela came out: "Pequeña, what are you doing
here? Come in, come in." These friends explained that the owners
of the house had come back and managed to have my parents
evicted. So my poor parents were put out on the street with just
their belongings and my brother was put in a concentration camp. It
was hard for my father to find a place to live in one day. Finally a
man nicknamed "Rata" who ran a coal yard let my father and
mother take refuge there.
After resting a bit with Señora Adela and soaking my feet, I left to
hunt for my parents. The big gate at the coal yard was closed but
the little door in the gate was only partly shut. "Who's there?" It
was the owner himself coming toward me.
"Girl," he said, "what are you doing here? You've caused your
mother such sorrow and now, just when she's calmed down and
thinking you've made it safely across the border, here you are in
Guadalajara. Look, you're going to end up in prison. Your friends
are there already."
"Okay, but my parents, where are they?"
I found the address he gave me. My poor parents were so upset.
What a scene! "Why did you come?" my father asked. "What's
going to happen to us? And to you? They've already been here
several times looking for you. We've been lucky so far; some
parents are arrested simply because their children haven't been
found. Those bastards said they weren't going to arrest anyone, but
of course they do. The military jail
 Page 23
is full to the brim; the provincial jail, too. You should see the trucks
coming in from the villages loaded with men and women. Half of
Guadalajara is under arrest. Entire families. The entire Picazo
family is in jail, except for Paquito and Carmen. Julia, the coal
dealer, with all her family. The Morales are all in prison except for
the two little ones who get some food from Social Aid and
whatever they can scrounge for. In short, the list goes on and on.
And I haven't said anything about the concentration camp there in
the Polygon at the entrance to the road to Cabanillas. That's where
they detain soldiers caught here when the war ended and those
returning from the front. It's painful to see the men there, barely
enough water to drink, one little meal a day, no way to shave or
bathe. Dirt and mange everywhere. And if you protest, they kick
you. That's where your brother is."
We talked until three in the morning about what was happening in
Guadalajara and the surrounding villages. Father was worried I
would be arrested as soon as it was known I had returned. I
expected it, too, but first I wanted to see my brother released from
the concentration camp so my parents wouldn't be alone. Father
had told me that he could be released if we got a certain affidavit
with three signatures. But that night I didn't have any idea where I
could get the signatures. I was utterly worn out and only wanted to
go to bed. But I was too tired to sleep. Then I remembered a lawyer
whose daughters I had cared for. And there was Mr. Lucio, an old
neighbor of ours, said to be a Falangist.
The next day I went to see the lawyer. When I explained what I
wanted, he drew up the document immediately and asked me if I
had two other possible signatures. I told him I hoped Mr. Lucio
would agree to sign, but I didn't know where to get the third
signature. He suggested another man who would sign just because
he, the lawyer, had signed. True, that man signed right away when
he saw the lawyer's signature. From there I went to Mr. Lucio's
house, who also signed. My father was surprised how quickly I had
gotten the signatures. I went to the camp to deliver my brother's
document. Four or five hours later my brother was home.
By now I was feeling better about my parents' situation so I began
to talk with friends about the possibility of reorganizing the JSU.
Everyone said it was a crazy idea with the situation in Guadalajara,
all the arrests, the Falangists, the requetes, the Civil Guard, the
police. The next day the Civil Guard knocked on the door. They
said they just wanted to know where I had been since the war
ended. I told them I had been in Madrid living with an aunt of mine
who was sick and had asked me to stay with her. They warned me I
was being watched.
That day I hardly left the house. My father spent the day peering
out the window to see who was there in the street. The next day,
May 16,
 Page 24
was my sister's birthday. I decided to go to the station to see if I
could catch the train going from Madrid to Barcelona. If I met
someone on the way I would say I was going to my sister's in the
country to wish her a happy birthday. I crossed the tracks and hid
among some houses. When the train arrived, I ran out and
scrambled up into one of the last cars. I didn't know whether to sit
down or go to another car. I decided to move to another, but I
hadn't gone more than four steps when a neighbor from
Guadalajara showed up. He called the Civil Guard and I was
arrested. They took me straight to jail.
 Page 25

Chapter 3
Prison Life Begins: Guadalajara 1939
They put me in a cell and the accusations began. I couldn't deny the
truth of their questions: I hadn't hidden away during the war but
had worked for the party, for the JSU, and with other women. They
hit me several times and then took me to a room called "the room
of scabies." It was a mass of human beings. The huge number of
women was placed so that no one could move unless we all
changed position at the same time. The size of the room was meant
for ten, at the most twelve women with their sleeping mats. We
must have numbered about sixty. During the day we collected our
scant bedding so the older women and mothers with small children
could sit on it and the rest of us spent the day standing up. There
were so many women that some even rested their head on the edge
of the drain in the floor that served as our toilet. Everyone had
scabies. I caught it, too. They gave us sulfur for scouring our
bodies and then every two or three days we got buckets of water
for washing off our bodies. But they allotted only three or four
buckets for all the women whose bodies were covered with sulfur.
Every three days they gave us a little drinking water, no more than
would fill a can for condensed milk.
For several days they summoned me morning and afternoon to
make declarations. They began by asking questions I didn't
understand. That's when I decided not to talk, even if they kicked
and hit me. I remembered the comrade who had told me years ago
that we wouldn't be liberated without a struggle and maybe even
bloodshed. I wouldn't talk even if they killed me. In spite of the
kicks and punches I refused to recognize any of the names they
mentioned. Finally they left me alone but not before they kicked
me in the kidneys. I was bent round like a hoop by the time I
returned to the cell. The next days I could do nothing but lie on the
mat. They didn't summon me again.
All the women who returned from questioning were beaten up,
some even demoralized, but others remained courageous and
staunchly determined. I remember one particularly awful situation.
One day the door opened and two children were pushed in. One
was probably five
 Page 26
years old and the other not much older than two and a half or three.
We asked where their mother was, and the older one said she had
been left with some men. The little one was crying desperately,
calling for his mother. At last we got the children calmed down by
playing with them. After two or three hours the door opened again
and a woman was thrown in like a sack of potatoes. We wouldn't
have recognized her if we hadn't known who she was. The older
boy cried that it was his mother. He clutched her and sobbed:
"Mama, mama! What did those bad men do to you? I'll kill them.
How are you mommy? What's wrong? What did they do to you?"
The little one didn't want to get near his mother. He said it couldn't
be his mommy, no, it couldn't be. And he sobbed and sobbed. The
older boy said: "Yes, it is, it's mommy. Come, it's mommy."
"No, it's not my mommy," said the little one, covering his eyes.
I don't think there was a person in that cell who didn't cry at the
sight of those little boys and that poor girl. A few days later the
three were taken away. We never knew what happened to her. Later
someone told me the woman had been killed after she was arrested
on a train bound for Alcalá de Henares where she was doing
clandestine work for the party.
As we gradually got over the scabies, we would go down to the
patio where some seventy women lived in a space that in the best
of conditions couldn't hold more than thirty. The older women,
including women as old as eighty-two, and mothers with small
children, preferred to stay inside since there was no protection from
the sun on that patio.
They brought in expeditions of women from jails in nearby
villages. That's how some women arrived from my native village of
Brihuega. One of them was a young girl of about sixteen named
Soledad Villa; she arrived with her head shaved and the letters
UHP smeared with tar on her skull. The letters stood for Unión de
Hermanos Proletarios (Union of Proletarian Brothers). I lived with
Soledad, María Andrés from the village of Iriepal, and Ceferina
Cortijo, a girl from the hills who had been arrested when the war
ended just because her brothers hadn't appeared yet in the village.
She was only nineteen years old and the one time she left her
village was to go to prison. Because I was older, all of twenty-two,
my friends called me "mother." We enjoyed our companionship in
spite of what we suffered on that patio. We suffered horrible
humiliations that I'll never forget, but our morale never broke for a
moment.
We were always hungry. There were only two menus for months on
end. The first was onion cooked with water and salt, the second,
dirty lentils so full of sticks, bugs, and stones that you got sick just
looking at them.
 Page 27
But we suffered even worse from the water; the little bit we got
was brought from the river in gasoline tanks. We had a special way
of asking for water; we would sing a song but instead of saying
"desire" at the end we shouted out "water." With so many of us
young women shouting, even people outside the prison could hear
us. The officials and the Falangists at the prison became so
annoyed when townspeople appeared with bottles of water for us
that they wouldn't let them in. The only bottle that made it in full
was from a woman who ran a restaurant called "La Mascota.'' The
few other bottles that got in were empty. Sometimes the officials
put the bottles at the top of the stairs leading down to the patio and
emptied them. Then they'd call the person who had brought the
bottle and return it to him.
There was a well in the patio, but it was sealed up. One day the
Falangists opened it. The doctors among the prisoners warned us
not to drink even one drop of that well water. They said the
Falangists had opened the well just so we would get sick drinking
this water that came from all the drains in the prison and the living
quarters of the prison officials. Typhoid fever would be terrible
during the summer months in those conditions. But we didn't take
the warning: we tied several belts together, fastened them to a pot,
drew up water and drank it. The first potful was drinkable but then
it came out so dirty and murky we had to strain it through a
handkerchief. We drained the well dry. Fortunately we didn't suffer
serious illness.
Another time the men prisoners warned us that we women were
going to be tricked into doing something for which we would be
punished severely. The plan was to turn on the fountain in the
center of the patio at midnight; the fountain was dried up, without a
drop of water. The officials expected that when the fountain was
turned on a bunch of us would go for water. They even expected us
to riot. Then their plan was to clear out some of the women with
the machine guns they would have placed at the top of the stairs.
Afterward they could say we had started a riot in the prison. We
thanked the men for telling us about the plan and immediately
began to caution other women not to move from their mats or rush
over there in case the fountain really did give out water. Some
women didn't believe us, saying that since we were young we were
making up stories. But we finally succeeded in getting the women
to promise that they wouldn't stir from their mats.
We were so anxious waiting for night to come that we couldn't go
to sleep. We heard the door open. We heard them set the machine
gun in place. After a bit we heard the water running. Our throats
were dry, dry like our lips. It was truly amazing. Someone was
crying, thinking that the water was running and we couldn't get
even one little sip. The poor children were so thirsty and we
couldn't give them even one drop.
 Page 28
But not one person moved. Amazing! To tell the truth, I didn't
expect this. I thought someone would go running with her bowl.
After the water had been on for a long time and the Falangists
realized no one was going for it, they began to shout hysterically
that we must not be thirsty after all and that our shouting "water,
water, water" must be just a line because here was the water
running in the fountain and not one person was coming for it. Any
person near the prison that night would have heard their shouting.
Still we didn't move. Then one of the men approached the door at
the entrance to the school where the mandata was sleeping. The
mandata was the woman with the job of clapping her hands to have
us line up for a head count, get our meals or water, or intervene in
some disagreement.
"What are you doing to prevent these women from getting the
water?" she was asked.
She answered very calmly: "Oh, is there water? Well, then, yes,
why don't we get some. We certainly do need water."
She got up, clapped her hands, and said to us: "Come now.
Everyone on her feet, but please, what time is it?" She looked at the
clock: "It's after midnight. I don't want to hear even a single word.
Line up with your bowl and get your ration of water."
With incredible discipline we lined up, collected our ration of water
and returned to our places. The Falangists were astonished, but
fortunately they couldn't do anything with their machine guns.
The men lived in the same conditions as the women. Sometimes
their heads would appear at the windows and they'd ask us for
water. They even asked for our children's pee to drink. But that was
risky business because the guards on duty at the corners of the
walls would shoot at anyone who looked out through the bars of
the windows. Once we heard a shot and saw one of the men fall.
Later we found out that he had died from a gunshot to the chest.
How many awful hours we spent listening to the men's horrible
moaning from the beatings. We cried with rage at our helplessness.
Similar things happened to us, but not as frequently as with the
men. I remember, for instance, Consuelo Verguizas. She and her
husband were detained just because the Falangists hadn't been able
to arrest their son who was a leader in the Communist Party and, as
we found out later, had gone to France. His parents were arrested
when the authorities couldn't find their son. They beat the father
mercilessly. One day they opened the door to our patio and tossed
in some bloody boots and clothing and called Consuelo: "Here's
what's left of your husband." They'd done their job; now they didn't
have to put him on trial. Consuelo was dumb-struck. Shortly after
that they passed sentence on her, condemning her to twelve years
and one day.
They didn't allow packages from the outside into the prison until
 Page 29
September of 1939. Hunger began to take its toll on our bodies and
women almost fainted from weakness. The doctors told the prison
directors that the situation couldn't continue; unless they allowed
packages from the outside, they'd have people dying on them. But
the officials didn't care; they wanted people to die. At last the
doctors managed to have packages allowed in for people in poor
health. To get the packages we had to have a medical check.
The doctors who checked us in the presence of the officials and
Falangists selected the people they knew would share their
packages with friends, and above all they took into account
mothers with children and old people. Not all the imprisoned
women who went to the infirmary were granted the privilege of
receiving packages. The Falangists made their own selections and
only the women they chose could receive packages. From my
group they chose two of us, Soledad Villa and me. Soledad had no
one to send her food because her brothers and sisters were in
Madrid; besides, we weren't allowed to write relatives asking them
to send packages. My parents could send me very little because
they barely had enough to feed themselves, but my sister, who was
living with her in-laws, sent greens, tomatoes, and peppers from
her garden. We were allowed only two packages a week, but with
trickery we increased our number to four a week. The other girl in
the group was from the nearby village of Iriepal, and we managed
to send a message to her family, who were better off than mine.
Maria's family sent two packages each week addressed to Soledad
Villa. But it was a long time before we ate anything from those
packages. We wanted to get food to the men who were in worse
condition than we women; we managed to tie belts together and
using a small bag got food to them through the windows.
Every day we selected a different cell. Around one or two in the
morning when the guards were tired and went to the guard tower
for a rest, we carried out our mission, knowing that if we were seen
we would pay dearly. We were especially careful not to let the
woman who owned the restaurant "La Mascota" see us; we thought
she was a fascist. Her restaurant sent her a big package every day
and from time to time she would give something extra to the
children and old people. Even though she didn't seem to be a bad
person, we tried not to confide very much in her. Her mat was
installed in the patio by the school door. Whenever we sent the
package to the men, we would walk toward the toilet that was in
the middle of the school so that if anyone did see us it would look
as if we were going to use the toilet. One night, just as I was going
to the toilet, "La Mascota" grabbed me by the leg and motioned for
me to squat down.
"I know what you women are doing every night when I see you get
up and go to the bathroom."
 Page 30
"What are we doing?"
"Giving food to the men."
I told her that wasn't true and she must be dreaming, but she
insisted: "I've watched you for several nights; you can't deceive
me."
"Well, what's the difference," I retorted. "The food's ours and
they're our friends. We don't want them to die of hunger. We have
to help them. So now you know. If you want, go tell the officials. It
doesn't make any difference to us."
She answered that we would talk about it in the morning, for me to
go to the toilet and then we'd see. When I got back to my group, I
told the girls what had happened. To tell the truth we were a little
afraid that she'd call those characters in the morning and tell them
what we were doing. We knew, though, that we wouldn't be the
only ones punished; we feared for the men. But nothing like that
happened. To our surprise the woman came to see me in the
morning.
"You already know," she said, "that I receive a package every day.
You get one twice a week. You're young but you're wasting away
because you're not eating enough for your age. On the other hand,
I'm older and the food they send me is more than enough. I don't
want anyone else to know about this, but every day I'll leave you a
bag with food next to the well. You take it and do with it what you
want; use it for your friends or for yourself. I know you consider
me a fascist, and even the fascists think I am, but I've never been
one. If I'm here, it's because they know I've shown a great deal of
favor to the soldiers who came through my restaurant and to the
militias when the war began. If they arrested me, it's because no
soldier, not even one in full retreat, went without a meal in my
restaurant, whether he could pay or not. I've told you that I don't
hold to any idea, but I am a human being and I will not deny bread
or a bowl of soup to another human being. That's the crime for
which I'm in prison. Now think of me what you will."
One day the men threw in a note warning that they had heard three
women were to be taken out and shot that night. One of their
companions had heard the same when he was taken out to give a
statement and was tortured. They even had the names of the
women: Blasa Rojo, the wife of the party's secretary (her husband
hadn't been arrested because he had gone into exile); Isabel, the
wife of Relano who was also in the party's leadership and had been
shot; the third name was mine. They cautioned us about the risk we
were running and urged us to do everything possible to remain
calm so we would be prepared and could prepare the many women
on the patio. It wasn't clear how those women would react if the
officials appeared at midnight or dawn to take us away; if the
women protested, there would be more deaths than ours.
The three of us got in touch with each other hoping to find out if it
 Page 31
was true that our last hour was approaching. It must have been two
or three in the morning when we heard the patio door open. There
was a discussion among the fascists who had come for us and the
guard on duty. That man had been a prison official for at least forty
years. We knew that he treated us correctly because he was a true
prison official and nothing else. The Falangists wanted to take us
away at all costs, but the official answered that so long as he was
on guard, they wouldn't take us away; he said he was responsible
for the prison at that hour and would not hand us over. If we had
committed a crime that deserved death, then they would have to
ask for the death penalty in a trial, but without a trial he would
never hand over the women. The discussion between the Falangists
and this official was very brief. The official had his way and the
Falangists quit trying to take us out that night; we owe that man our
lives. A tremendous silence filled the patio. The door closed. We
heard the Falangists walking down the hall away from the patio.
We all breathed a sigh of relief.
By now they had begun to hold trials and hand down long
sentences. Many of the men in the Central Prison were transferred
to other prisons throughout Spain. With all the cells in the left
gallery now empty, we women from the patio were taken there.
Eighteen or twenty of us ended up in cells meant to hold one
person, at the most two. This transfer split up our little group. Only
María and I remained from the original group while Ceferina and
Soledad went to another cell. In our cell was a little old woman,
eighty-two years old, named Manuela Letón. We called her Letona.
Her favorite place and the one where she was most comfortable
was in the little corner that served as a toilet. There she spent the
days with a handkerchief over her face and a rosary in her hands,
praying constantly. We would ask her: "Granny, why do you pray?"
"So that none of that trial business you talk about will happen to
me. I don't know what it is."
During the battles of Guadalajara the fascists occupied old Letona's
village and then evacuated it. She carried everything she could on a
little donkey. I don't remember her husband very well, but I think
he died during the retreat. Her sons had volunteered for the front.
She was in Guadalajara all the time and when the war ended and
she still had her little donkey, she returned to her village. But
before she got there the Falangists stopped her on the highway and
asked about her sons. She said she didn't know where they were
and that she was on her way to the village to see if they had come
back now that the war was over. They told her her sons weren't in
the village because they'd gone to look for them. Right there on the
highway they cut her hair close to her scalp and made her swallow
a liter of castor oil. When she couldn't swallow any
 Page 32
more and refused to open her mouth, they forced the castor oil
down through a funnel. The poor little donkey was standing on the
shoulder of the highway and those beasts asked if the donkey was a
Red. When the donkey moved its head up and down the way those
animals do when they're standing still, the Falangists said the
donkey was saying yes, he was a Red. So they beat it to death.
Right there on the shoulder of the road they left that poor little
animal and took Letona away to prison. The poor woman suffered
frequent bouts of diarrhea because the purge of castor oil had
damaged her intestines. For her the seat on the toilet was not only
comfortable but necessary.
In the cell we also learned more and suffered more because we
could hear even more clearly when the men were taken out and
brought back dead or nearly dead from beatings. I'll never forget
one day when our cell door was openwe thought the official, sadist
that he was, had left the door open intentionallyand the door to the
men's cell in front was also open. We could only see two men. One
of them had been a priest; during the Republic he had taken off his
clerical garb, married, and had two children. They had tortured him
so brutally he couldn't even move. The other man was a professor.
They had stuck matches under his fingernails and lit them; he
couldn't move his hands at all. Apparently they had to feed the
priest and help him dress because his hands were completely
destroyed. We could hear his torturers come for him and beat him
even more cruelly in his terrible condition. Those brutes still
weren't satisfied. At dawn we would hear them come to take out
the men they intended to kill, and above all we could hear the
prison priest saying to them: "I've come to put myself at your
service at this, your last hour." They would answer: "Yours might
come tomorrow. We don't need your services. We aren't thieves or
assassins." Our men faced death courageously. Seldom did we hear
a lament or complaint. Usually the men went out singing
revolutionary songs, shouting in support of the Republic, and
calling the officials assassins.
Being young, we women had some good times in prison. Once a
keepsake belonging to one of our friends disappeared. We searched
our belongings, but the keepsake didn't turn up. Then a
handkerchief disappeared. We were sure someone had to have it
because handkerchiefs don't just fly off by themselves. But no one
had it either. Then two belts from robes disappeared. We didn't find
them either. At the same time we noticed more cracks showing up
in the walls of our cell. One day a little piece of one of the belts
appeared in a crack, then the whole belt. We began to pull on it and
out came the handkerchief, the keepsake, the other beltthe thieves
had been mice! They carried their loot back to their nests. The mice
episode was a distraction for the four or five of us younger women.
 Page 33
But the rest of the women ranged in age from forty to eighty-two,
the age of old Letona. The older women who had lived through the
war hadn't been involved in politics; they were imprisoned just
because their sons or husbands had been at the front or they had
looked up and cursed the German planes dropping bombs on them
or some neighbor woman of rightist inclination heard her cursing
the planes and denounced her. These women thought we younger
ones didn't care about the suffering all around us when we laughed
or joked. That wasn't the case at all. We had to forget our
circumstances for a little while; otherwise we would have gone
crazy. Besides, we wanted to help the older women not worry
about their families every minute.
From my point of view living together with friends was bearable
even with the ever-present hunger and thirst. Some days we would
go down to the patio and spend a couple of enjoyable hours
chatting with other companions. We shared news and found out
what was going on in the prison. The patio was a safety valve for
our nerves after being locked up in cells. Once when I was down in
the patio I met a woman from near my home. She was a
dressmaker named Monica. She explained that before her arrest she
had been bothered several times, so she always had her things
ready in case of arrest. When my mother found out about Monica's
arrest, she brought some material so Monica could make me a
dress. My mother knew I was due to be sentenced, and she wanted
me to look nice. Through Monica I found out about my family's
severe difficulties. My brother, who lost both his son and wife in
the war, was living with my parents and provided some comfort.
But, Monica told me, people often came to tell my parents to pray
for me if they were Catholic because I was going to be taken out
and shot at dawn. So for months my poor father went out at dawn
to hide in the brush of a ravine near the cemetery and watch the
shootings. He saw some of his old friends from Guadalajara fall,
men with whom he had shared many a drink. The poor man's
nerves must have been destroyed watching the executions day after
day. His life revolved around the prison, his home, and the
cemetery. He would walk by the prison just to feel near to me. The
penitentiary had very high walls and watch towers on the sides so it
was impossible to see or talk with someone inside. And visits
weren't allowed yet. But Monica told me my father consoled
himself sitting behind the penitentiary facing the fields; he would
stay there until it got dark. With no work or anything else to do, my
father thought it was his duty to be near me and know what was
happening to me.
The trials for women had begun. Some women were condemned to
death; others received long prison sentences. During the time we
spent in the Central Prison rumor was that people condemned to
death, including women, were sent to the Military Prison. Perhaps
that explains
 Page 34
why we never saw a single woman taken out to be shot while we
were in the Central Prison. But the people in town said that there
were women in the executions. I wouldn't doubt it. When women
from the Central Prison were transferred to the convent of the nuns
that had been equipped to serve as a prison, the ones who went to
trial petitioned removal of the death penalty. But they would return
with the death sentence upheld and then be mixed in with the rest
of the prisoners. You can imagine the anguish those prisoners felt
as they watched their companions await the dawn and said good-
bye when they went to their execution.
I found out that I carried the death penalty and my trial was coming
soon. More than a month passed. I remember that whenever I went
down to the patio, I talked with "La Mascota." "Look, Peque," she
said one day, ''if they give you the death penalty and take you to the
Military Prison, I'll see that you lack for nothing in your last
moments. I'll tell my husband to send you every day the best of
whatever they have in the restaurant." I laughed to myself because
I was thinking: "I don't care about dying with a full stomach. I'd
like to feel full right now!"
Monica made a pretty dress for me to wear for my sentencing.
What hands that girl had for sewing! Not one stitch showed. She
barely finished the dress when she was set free without a trial.
Toward the end of September I was advised that my trial was set
for the twenty-seventh. They asked if there was someone in
Guadalajara who would testify in my defense. I replied that I had
no one but that all Guadalajara knew me, so they could decide for
themselves on the defense witnesses. I didn't know which people
wished me good and which bad, so I left the matter in their hands.
"You're very generous," they said. "What if we choose Trallero or
Galloso for you!" Those were two mean characters who'd taken
lots of cheap shots at me.
"It's all the same to me," I answered. "Anyway, you'll do whatever
you want. If you want to beat me, that's what you'll do."
They had the gall to say: "Well, no, because some people already
have volunteered testimony on your behalf."
That stopped me for a minute. Who could have volunteered to
testify in my defense? I was surprised to hear that one witness was
the lawyer, José Sanz Vacas, and the other, our neighbor, Mr.
Lucio.
I found this strange. The truth is that we hadn't asked anyone for
help, so they must have offered to be my defense witnesses. I didn't
think the two men would speak ill of me. They'd never seen me do
anything to bother them or anyone else; my work was strictly
political. There were never noisy meetings at my home or anything
going on to disturb people. These two men must have presented
many arguments for me because the hearing was very different
from what I had expected.
 Page 35
Old Letona also went for sentencing that same day. Poor little
woman, no sooner had she found out that she was to be sentenced
than her bowels became terribly upset. She couldn't leave that hole
where she sat. For two days she was unable to control her bowels.
We asked the doctor for help, but he had no medicine at all left.
The day of the hearing we got Letona ready the best we could.
Since she didn't wear underskirts, slips, or underpants, we folded
up a towel and some petticoats and fastened them between her legs
with safety pins so she wouldn't have an accident on the floor at the
hearing.
There was a group of some twenty prisoners from another cell that
also left; their only crime was that they had established a laundry
and store for soldiers who came through their village and then
organized parties for them in the town square. I knew two of the
prisoners because I had been in the village to organize the laundry
and store and had come in direct contact with them. These girls
never said for one moment that I had been the person who'd gone
to the village to set up the laundry and shop. One of the twenty or
so women was set free but they sentenced the two girls who were
most responsible to twelve years and one day and sentenced six
other women as well.
We fixed ourselves up so nicely it looked as if we were off to a
wedding instead of a military tribunal. I wasn't even thinking about
whether they were going to ask for the death penalty for me. I was
proud of my new dress and wanted to impress the tribunal with my
courage and serenity. Naturally they took us out in handcuffs. Since
Granny Letona and I were the only women from my cell, the two
of us left together. I was terribly upset to see this little old woman
whose only "crime" was that her sons had volunteered for the front.
When we went out the door of the prison, I saw my father. He was
alone. His eyes glistened with tears at the sight of his daughter in
handcuffs. He walked behind us down to the square where the
military tribunal was. I glanced in the direction of my house; there
was my mother at the door leaning against the wall with her head
bandaged. My heart jumped: what could be the matter? Inside the
court room I saw my sister with her children. One of the guards
who had accompanied us had been a friend of my sister and her
husband when we were young and my sister had asked him if she
could talk with me and give me a hug. But he said it was forbidden.
Little Pedro, who was probably seven years old, came up and
hugged me. "Auntie, auntie, why are you here? Why are those men
so bad?"
"Hush, my son, hush, don't say a word. If you talk like that they'll
punish your mommy just like your aunt."
The boy fell silent.
"Do you know what's wrong with your dear grandmother?" I asked
 Page 36
him. "Yes, she has a bad eye and had an operation." A Civil Guard
came up, grabbed him and took him a way. Then a guard who was
an old friend came in and said: "Because I've known you since you
were a little girl, I'm giving you a very special favor. You can
embrace your sister and father. But don't say a word; it's
forbidden." My father was able to say that my mother had had a
tumor in her eye. They operated in the hospital, but she lost her
eye.
The trial of Granny Letona was grotesque. She was completely
deaf so you had to yell in her ears. When they called her by her
first and last names, she was supposed to reply to the last name.
But since she couldn't hear a thing, Granny didn't respond. They
repeated it three times and still she didn't answer. Then they asked
very angrily why she didn't answer. I answered that she was stone
deaf so if they wanted to speak with her they had to approach the
little bench where she was. They answered that I should do it for
her; I was to tell her to stand up and answer to her last name, which
she did. The only accusation they made was that she had fried
some eggs for two Republican soldiers who had bought them in the
village and asked her to fry them. She also gave them bread and a
little wine to have with the eggs. They asked if she knew who those
men were; she answered that they were soldiers for the Republic,
and she knew that if her sons at the front knocked at some door
they would like to be cared for as she had cared for those boys.
They answered her that they must have been bandits who probably
had stolen the eggs because they didn't fry them where they bought
them but instead brought them to her to cook them.
"Well," she said, "I think they were Republican soldiers."
Thus her trial ended. When they decided on twelve years and one
day they asked if she had anything to say. I didn't even ask her but
answered: "She has nothing to say." They asked me how I knew.
"Well, I know you've already imposed a sentence and they
denounced her in the village."
They had to take her out of the room because the poor woman's
bowels were running again and the stench was very bad.
Then it was my turn. There were several accusations against me:
demonstrations, meetings, organizing shops, recruiting village men
for the front. In short, I was a Communist in service of the people
defending the Republic and had fought the three years of the war to
obtain our freedoms. My greatest surprise was hearing the
sentence: thirty years. In truth I thought they would ask for the
death penalty, as I had been forewarned. The reason I was not
charged with the death penalty is that the two defense witnesses
spoke on my behalf, which I had not expected. They asked me if I
had anything to say. "No," I answered, adding that if the occasion
presented itself again, I would do a thousand and one
 Page 37
times what I had done to defend the freedom of my people and the
Republic.
Then they judged the men. There were eighteen or twenty of them,
I don't remember exactly, it's been so many years. The accusations
were really serious; they had volunteered for the front; lent a bus or
car to the militias at the outbreak of the war; contributed part of
their harvest to help feed the soldiers. On that day in court there
wasn't a single man accused of killing a Falangist, a priest, a nun,
or any person from our village or surrounding towns. Nevertheless,
if I remember correctly, seven men were condemned to death.
Clearly all the sentences were prepared ahead of time; how else
could they have tried forty people in less than three hours? By noon
we were back in prison.
On the evening of September 27 thirty of us from the Provincial
Prison in Guadalajara were told that we would be leaving in an
expedition the next day. The truth is we didn't believe it would
happen because the twenty-eighth is the feast of the Holy
Innocents. Our first thought was that those "children" just wanted
to make fun of us by seeing us get our packs ready for the trip. On
the other hand we had heard rumors that with so many women in
prison who already had been sentenced, some of us would be
transferred. So we stationed one woman at the door to cover the
peephole while the rest of us began to prepare our packs. If the
rumor turned out to be true, we'd be ready; if not, then those
"children" wouldn't have the fun of laughing at us because they
wouldn't have seen our preparations.
The rumor was true. Thirty of us were called the next morning.
Only four from my cell went, including poor old Letona. We were
handcuffed two by two; in our free hand we carried our little packs.
In front of the prison I saw my father, mother, and sister, but we
couldn't even greet one another because the Civil Guard wouldn't
allow it. We walked to the station.
My sister, brother-in-law, and nieces and nephews were there, but I
didn't see my father. Nor did I have a chance to ask about him
because they wouldn't let us near our families. We said our good-
byes from a distance. Later I learned that my father had gone home
because he couldn't stand to see me handcuffed walking with the
Civil Guard. What they didn't tell me is that he suffered a stroke;
the poor man was at the end of his rope. He died a year later. All
that year he was obsessed with me, his pequeña, his little girl. The
nun who cared for him in the hospital thought that when he spoke
of his pequeña, he meant his little granddaughter. One day when
my sister-in-law went to the hospital with the little girl, the nun
said: "Oh, look, Señor Jesús, they've brought the girl today. Do you
see her? Now you have your pequeña here."
"No," he said, "she's not my pequeña."
 Page 38
The nun looked at him in surprise and walked away. After the visit
the nun said to my sister-in-law: "I don't understand your
grandfather; he spends the whole day talking about his pequeña,
his pequeña and today when you bring her he doesn't pay any
attention to her."
My sister-in-law didn't say anything because the nuns didn't know
that the little girl he asked for and wanted so badly to see was his
own daughter. And that little girl was in prison.
From those nine months I spent in the prison at Guadalajara I
remember clearly and with deep emotion many companions of
mine. Some of them I've mentioned already. Others I have asked to
tell their stories themselves. In the following chapters we hear the
voices of Blasa Rojo and Nieves Waldemer.
 Page 39

Chapter 4
Sisters Condemned to Death: Blasa Rojo at
Guadalajara
April, 1975. After many years I meet Blasa Rojo again. I didn't let
her know that I was coming. She's completely surprised but she
welcomes me warmly with a big hug. She lives in a housing
project; on the outside it looks nice but the houses are very simple.
This entire area was once fields; it's all new to me. We chat in a
room that has a little balcony overlooking the street. We sip coffee
and eat cookies. She doesn't object to giving me her story. But she
regrets that her memory is failing after all these years.
When war broke out in 1936 my husband, Raimundo, and I were
living in Guadalajara. We had been active in the Communist Party
for some time. With the outbreak of war Raimundo was in charge
of the workers' militias. Toward the end of 1938 he returned from
the front at Humanaes. Unfortunately, he'd only come to say good-
bye; he was being transferred to Catalonia. Later I found out that
our army was retreating. I never saw my husband again. He crossed
the border into France where he spent a year in a concentration
camp. He was one of the first refugees to leave for Mexico. A
friend saw him there some years later. Raimundo told him that he'd
received news I'd been killed. He remarried in Mexico and had
three children.
When Franco's forces entered Guadalajara, I left with my sister and
the military buses for Alicante. But when we reached Alicante we
weren't able to embark. They simply left us on the dock. Then a
real odyssey began. The dock was mobbed. We women and men
who were carrying guns took cover under the sail cloth on a boat
used for carrying coal. We looked like little Negroes when we
came out the next day. You couldn't see anything except our teeth.
We waited and waited for the ships. They never came. We waited
until we began to see guards and priests. We were told to hand over
our arms. Some people threw their weapons into the sea rather than
surrender them. From the dock at Alicante we were taken to a
theater. I spent eight days sitting on a theater seat. Then we were
put in the prison at
 Page 40
Alicante for about two months. From that prison we were
transferred to our home provinces.
No sooner was I back in Guadalajara than I secretly hurried to see
my children. The following day, at eight o'clock in the morning, I
was arrested. They took me to the commander's office and held me
there for two nights to make a statement. Since I refused to say a
word, I was sent to a prison and held for a year without an
indictment from the provincial government. When the provincial
jail filled up, I was taken with other prisoners to a convent that had
been turned into a prison. That's where I was condemned to death.
And that's where they condemned my sister, two times. I lived
under the death penalty for six months, my sister for a whole year.
Who could forget the prison at Guadalajara? Hunger, thirst, at night
the cries of men being beaten. I remember one night when they
were going to hang a man from Torija who had been a chauffeur.
They were getting the scaffold ready, putting it up right there in the
patio. What a night! The poor man went crazy. He was young, only
twenty-seven years old. "I'm innocent," he would cry, "and they're
going to kill me. I'm innocent!" Oh, what a night! Hearing that
poor boy's voice right up to the moment they killed him made my
hair stand on end.
And I remember how they killed poor Raposo. They fastened him
to those iron doors and beat him to deathjust like Jesus Christ.
Then there was that man, Chinas, I think his name was. He was a
good-looking fellow, with dark hair. Eight days after his arrest I
happened to see him looking out the cell window facing the patio. I
was stunned. They'd beaten him so badly his hair had turned
completely white.
But the worst was living with the death penalty. Your life hung by a
thread. You'd think: "Today they're coming for her. Tomorrow it
may be me." There were sixteen of us condemned women in one
tiny cell. My sister was more nervous than me; she couldn't sleep.
All night long she'd sit by the little window facing the street,
watching to see if they were coming. "I hope they kill me," she'd
say. "They've condemned me twice! Yes, I hope they kill me."
My sister had been denounced for something she hadn't done. The
reason for my death penalty was political. I'd been president of the
Antifascist Women, a member of the Women's Union, the
International Red Cross, which was the party's relief agency, and
the Communist Party. I was detained for my part in the arrest of a
woman named Campoamor. My husband had sent me instead of
the soldiers to detain the woman so she wouldn't be scared. She
wasn't arrested. We just took her to headquarters to make a
statement and then released her. For detaining that women I was
condemned to death.
Our friend Dolores, poor Dolores, she was killed for doing some-
 Page 41
thing similar. The men had sent her to search for some nuns in
Brihuega. Dolores refused to confess anything at all. She embraced
us the night they took her away to be executed. They killed her and
her three brothers. Her poor mother was left with Dolores's little
boy, such a little thing. To care for him she had to go begging all
through Brihuega. A few days after Dolores's execution some girls
entered the prison from the police station. It happened that one of
them had been chatting with a guard who'd been selected for the
firing squad, and he'd told her: "When I got home I was crazy and
wanted to go to my room and cry. I was so upset by the sight of
such a pretty young girl being killed with her brothers." The girl
who told us this was imprisoned because she and some other
friends had crowned a young friend of theirs with flowers when she
died: the flowers were red carnations. For just this all the girls were
imprisoned.
We lived in constant fear. Besides the hunger and other suffering
there was always the thought: "Oh, God, what if they come for
me!"
When I talk about that time in my life with my children, my
daughter will say: "Mother, it couldn't have been so bad."
"Look, my daughter, you had to have lived through it."
It's exactly for that reason that we must speak about those times.
The young people think we're making up stories. We're not. I
remember going by the jail when I was married to my husband and
saying: "How I agonize over the people stuck there. It's a cemetery
of the living dead."
What horrors those walls hide. After the year I spent in that prison
there's nothing in the world worth having any member of my
family endure what I did. I would rather they die than go through
what I did. That kind of suffering makes you crazy. They say I have
heart disease. Of course my heart hurts. And my head. And my
stomach. When you're condemned to death and you see them come
for this woman or that woman and you don't know if you'll be next!
Six o'clock in the evening comes and you don't know. Of course
you can hardly stand talking with anyone, not even your friends
trying to pep you up. All you can think is: "What if the best I have
is a few more hours here." Mother of mine, it was madness. And
the madness went on for six months from one day to the next and
one night to the next. That's the worst torture and the worst
suffering a human being can endure. To spend just twenty-four
hours under the death penalty is enough to pay for all the bad you
might have done in your life. Imagine what it was like for me with
six months and my sister with a year. It's no surprise that my sister
just about turned into a beast, to the point of growing fuzz on her
face like a monkey.
At first I'd try to console myself saying, "They won't execute a
woman." But listen, the last thing we did when we left that prison
was to write down the names of the executed women on a tile
behind the
 Page 42
window. Señora Antonia, the mother of the Morales woman, is on
that list. Poor Morales, how desperate she was when they took her
away.
You can't anticipate what the final reaction of a prisoner will be. I
saw how bravely Señora Paca, the woman from Aunon, went when
they took her, her niece, her daughter-in-law, and her daughter out
to be shot. They had petitioned the Council of War to commute the
niece's death penalty to thirty years. The niece thought her sentence
was that, thirty years, because she wasn't being kept in the little cell
with the other condemned women. I was with the women in that
cell when they started calling the names: Valentina, Gregoria,
Francisca, oh, I don't know how many. Then they called the name
of the niece who thought she was sentenced to thirty years.
Señora Paca was seventy years old when they shot her, and Señora
Gregoria, well, she hadn't done anything. She was married to one
of the most revolutionary men in Aunon; he was a real character,
that husband of hers. He'd been a fighting man for years, but she,
she hadn't done a thing. Her home and family were her whole life.
The poor woman didn't know one thing about politics. But they
killed her. And they killed her husband and her sister and her
mother and her cousin. They killed them all that same night. She
was just an old woman who ran a grocery store.
The same with Valentina. I remember her words: "They're going to
shoot me and I don't know if the family can save my husband." I
don't know if her husband was shot. I think so. Poor Gregoria had
three little children, the oldest only eleven. The poor children
would walk to town or catch a ride and then come by the prison,
calling through the window: "Mama, Mama." Poor little ones,
barefoot, with running noses. Gregoria was crying that she was
being killed and wasn't there one human being around to take her
children? Wasn't there someone to put them in an orphanage? They
were going to kill her, and she didn't know what would happen to
her children. After they executed her, the city government placed
the children in an orphanage.
And me? They destroyed the best part of my life. When Raimundo
left, I was twenty-seven years old. They put me in prison, along
with my sister, both of us condemned to death with no trial. They
commuted my sentence and hers. She ended up spending thirteen
years in prison and I was shuttled from one prison to another for
eight years. First they took us out with a group of twenty women
whose sentences had been commuted; we were transferred to the
Canary Islands, but we couldn't stay in the prison there because it
was also full. So they took us to a convent, then to a prison in
Zaragoza, then to Torrero where we were locked up for eight days
with almost nothing to eat. Then we went to Barcelona to the
prison of Les Corts, then to Cáceres, Bilbao, Amorebieta, Motrico,
and back to Amorebieta, where I was freed.
 Page 43
When I got out of prison, I was a wreck, homeless, without
clothing or money. When you have nothing, you're a nuisance
everywhere. My mother was too old to care for me. I went to one
brother's home but soon saw that I annoyed him. I went to another
brother's home. My anxiety to find out about my husband became
my whole life. I finally got news. He was living with a woman; she
was his whole life now.
My children have suffered the consequences of their parents'
actions. My son finally stood his ground; he told his professors he
hadn't taken part in the war and they should remember that if the
outcome had been reversed, they'd be the ones suffering reprisals.
They allowed him to finish his studies and now he has a good job.
Ever since prison I've done nothing except help my children. I
know I've been selfish. I've closed myself up in my own needs, not
worried about other people's needs. Why? Fear. Fear of going back
to prison. Fear of all that pain and suffering.
After finishing her story Blasa tells me that when she got out of
prison she didn't get mixed up in politics any more because she was
afraid of being imprisoned again. She acts as if she has been a
failure in the revolution. But I know better. Blasa, you loved your
husband so much you would have followed him to the ends of the
earth. When he left, you poured all your love into your children.
War doesn't only kill the ones we love. Even without killing, it
destroys families.
 Page 45

Chapter 5
Childbirth in Prison: Nieves Waldemer Santisteban at
Guadalajara
Two years after my visit with Blasa I found out through a friend,
Clotilde, that other people from our home region were living in my
neighborhood in Barcelona. Aurelio and Antonia are a fine couple.
Aurelio is the son of Nieves Waldemer and he was born when she
was in the Central Prison of Guadalajara. From the time I was sent
from there on an expedition to another prison, I have known very
little about the Waldemer family. Her son told me about his
parents, and shortly after our visit, on one of my trips from
Barcelona to Madrid, I went to my region of Guadalajara and
spent some hours with Nieves. She lives in an old neighborhood, in
a little house, tiny but comfortable. She's surprised to see me. She's
still a handsome woman and in good shape. She welcomes me
happily. She tells me many things and some I keep and present here
as one more testimony.
I was born and lived in Guadalajara. I was arrested on May 8,
1939, because I belonged to the Antifascist Women and had
worked for the front sewing for the soldiers and taking care of
them. I was also a member of the Union of Miscellaneous Work
(Sindicato de Oficios Varios) and of the Communist Party, but until
the war I had never taken part in any activities, either directly or
indirectly. But war came and I had to help the cause of the
Republic. I was eight months pregnant when I was arrested, which
is how my son happened to be born in the Central Prison of
Guadalajara.
I gave birth upstairs in the infirmary. Within half an hour I had to
go downstairs because the baby was fussing so badly. When they
put us on the ground with the blanket I found out what the matter
was: there was a bunch of bedbugs, at least forty, under him.
Afterward they put me in a room with four women who had chest
problems. One of them suffered hemoptysis; she tried to cough into
the little pan on the table between us, but my nightshirt got soaked
instead. I spent the whole time
 Page 46
with my back turned to her so none of the blood would touch the
baby. When the military doctora requete wearing his pink-colored
capcame, he said: ''Don't keep the new mother here, not for her
sake but for this little boy who'll be a man one day soon." That guy
wasn't wrong. Today my son is indeed a fine boy and a soldier in
the PSUC.
The day after my son was born, they hanged two men in the patio.
And they didn't give us any food. I had to eat what a prisoner gave
metwo little tomatoes, that's all I had to eat the day after my son's
birth. The men they hanged were the mayor of Tendilla and a boy
who I think was from Torija, maybe twenty-two years old. All
night long he shouted: "If only the people knew, they'd save me!"
I was in the Central Prison until the end of 1939. I was transferred
on December 29. It was fiercely cold and we had to wait all night
for the Civil Guard to take us to the convent of some French nuns
that had been turned into a prison. Naturally we lived the life of
cloistered women there! We mothers with our children were kept
apart from the other women. Several of us shared a room about
fourteen meters square with just one toilet. We were a mass of
women and children and what one had the other caught: boils,
scabies, all those illnesses that spread in close quarters. The room
was almost a pig sty.
The women were simple folk, mostly from the country. I don't
know why all of them were there, but judging from my own
situation I imagine their cases were similar. They'd drummed up
reasons to deprive them and their children of their freedom. What
mistake, what crime had those children committed? Yet there they
were, locked away like common criminals. I became friends with
many of those women. They suffered terrible hardships, perhaps
more than I did because at least my family brought me basic
necessities. But those women didn't receive help of any kind; as
villagers, the women and their families had been penalized with no
way of defending themselves.
While I was in that convent-prison my sister, Mercedes, heard the
horrible news that our father had been executed. She said some
things the prison officials didn't like. The next day a certain Ramó,
one of the officials, told her: "You compromised yourself with your
words. What a shame. You don't deserve to be punished. It's clear
that you were upset at the news of your father's execution and
reacted as any daughter would. It's not right that you're here." The
next day she was transferred out of the prison and taken with an
expedition away from Guadalajara.
There was one women in the group who wasn't there for political
reasons; in fact, she had been on the side of the regime. She was
the wife of a sergeant in the national forces and had been
imprisoned for stealing 400 pesetas from one of her husband's
companions. Now I've seen some acts that are truly inhuman,
which is why I bring her up. She might
 Page 47
not have shared my ideas but she shared my life in prison. I'm
mentioning her case to demonstrate how bad things were. If they
treated this woman who was one of them so badly, imagine what
they did to us. Well, she was imprisoned because she had
committed a robbery in the house where she and her husband were
guests. She had a little baby girl and was expecting another baby.
When time came to say the rosary, the nuns left her covered with
just a sheet and locked and bolted the door. She was already going
into labor, but the nuns weren't concerned about her. When the
rosary was over, the nuns returned to the cell. They saw blood
running. The woman had given birth to a baby girl. But the poor
woman was dead, dead because no one stayed to help her. All of us
women lamented what had happened to that woman, even though
she didn't think as we did. She was a human being, after all, and
she didn't deserve that treatment.
You may wonder how the nuns treated us. Well, the treatment
varied. There was one nun who was very decent to us. Then there
was Sor Gertrudis; she was the worst of the lotan evil woman. One
nun, Mother Visitation, was more or less human, but the other
nunsone day they'd take the women to chapel as if they were off to
a party and the next day the same nuns would take women out to be
shot. I myself saw fourteen women taken away. Those women went
to their deaths bravely. Two sisters-in-law from Aunon went out
with their clenched fists raised high. One of them said: "Friends,
remember my children. I'm leaving my little children."
The person I remember most vividly was a young girl from
Zamora. María was her name. I was separated from the other
women and kept in a little room with the mothers. But they didn't
lock us in so we could go to the patio for water and wash the
children. Well, this girl, María something, I don't remember her last
name, they took out to be shot. Cabecilla himself, the one who had
denounced her, came to get her. They held her in the chapel with
the nuns all night and tried to make her kiss the crucifix. She
refused. "You're the ones who've committed crimes," she told the
nuns, "you're worse than we are. You're the ones who should
confess."
The other two girls they killed were Virginia Martín and Olivia
Villén. Olivia was blond; she looked English and had a darling
figure. She was the sweetheart of one of Virginia's brothers and one
of Olivia's brothers was Virginia's sweetheart. They killed the four
of them on the same day.
I remember one Christmas Eve when we pooled the food our
families had sent and the decent meal we were given that night:
fried potatoes and lamb and lots of it. They let Eloisa Caro, who
was condemned to death, go down to the patio because she got
along with all the nuns.
 Page 48
They let her take some little pieces of charred wood and put them
in a small can. It was so cold that Christmas Eve. She asked for a
little coal from the kitchen and by blowing on it she was able to
start a fire in the can. It seems to me there were eight of us women
having supper, including my sister and three other women
condemned to death. We were seated around the can when we
realized that the "good mother" was coming to pay a visit. To hide
our light we took a blanket and put a wash board on top. When
Eloisa saw that the nun wasn't leaving, she sat down on top of the
board to hide the light. Well, it burned her bottom and finally she
cried out: "I can't stand it any longer. I'm getting scorched." It was
a bit of comedy in an otherwise grim situation. ''Oh, mother of
mine, I'm burning up," she said. "My behind can't take any more!"
If we hadn't done some silly things, we couldn't have stood the
situation. You had to do something when all around you came the
howls of men being beaten.
They didn't kill any of my brothers and sisters. But if we managed
to keep going it was because of my mother. Not one of us was at
home and our father had been executed when he was seventy-one
years old. But that mother of ours! She brought us what she could.
She did washing for other people and all kinds of housework. With
her help we survived. My son was taken out of prison because he
had an eye disease. My mother-in-law and a sister-in-law cared for
him. His father was also a prisoner, in Cuenca, the town where he
was born. Because they didn't have a denunciation against him in
Guadalajara, they took him to Cuenca even though he'd never lived
there. Then they transferred him to Guadalajara. He was released
because the military tribunal had no evidence against him. After
that I was freed.
We got along as best we could. We worked. I did jobs that I'd never
done before, like picking beans or vetch or any other field crop by
the day. I cleaned offices. I made gloves. In short, I did anything
and everything except something wrong. That wasn't in me. And
what can I say, with all six of us in jail. One brother of mine who
had never hurt a fly they condemned to death. Another brother
spent five years in jail. My sister, who lived rather well
economically, was also imprisoned; she spent four years in prison.
Another sister they kept in jail for ten years; first she was in for
five years, got out, and then was caught again and kept at
headquarters in Madrid where they subjected her to three months of
beatings, every morning and every evening. She was left a broken
woman: she lost her mind and lived for ten years just sitting or
lying down, cared for by only her husband.
A long time has gone by. You remember many things. Other things,
like names, you forget. Many people say hello to me around here,
but I don't know who they are because I don't remember them.
They've
 Page 49
changed physically, just as I have. I used to be petite, but look at
me now. Who could recognize me? I've changed so much, in
character, too. Youth can endure everything, but now, well now
we're no longer young.
We say good-bye with a little lunch, some good ham, an even better
Manchegan cheese, and good wine.
 Page 51

Chapter 6
My Prison Odyssey: Durango 19391940
After nine months in the prison at Guadalajara I was sent on an
expedition to the prison at Durango in northern Spain. To get to
Durango we had to travel by way of Madrid. We got off at the
Atocha station where the Civil Guard had a bus to take us to the
North station. At that time the North station was under repair and
there were no doors in the waiting room. We just about froze to
death while we were waiting for a group from the Ventas prison to
join our expedition.
We waited in the freezing cold for four or five hours; finally the
expedition of 350 women arrived from Ventas and the loading
began. It was a freight train, and we had to clean out the manure
left from transporting animals. We didn't have time to do a
thorough job so we had to travel in filth. The Civil Guard took out
a square piece of the floor in each car so we could do our business.
There were thirty of us to each car. When they stopped at stations
for a change of guards, the guards climbed a ladder up to the little
windows in the freight cars and called us by our first name; we
were to reply with our last. I suppose they were afraid one of us
had escaped through that little hole in the floor.
After three days of traveling like this we reached the town of
Zumárraga at night. It was very cold, and even before we got to
Zumárraga we could see the ground all white with snow. They
pulled us onto a side track, for what reason we didn't know at the
time. Later we found out that it was a narrow gauge track from
Zumárraga to Durango. The Civil Guard that took charge of us in
Zumárraga was very friendly; I would say that they were even
good people. They let us get off the train for a little while to stretch
our legs, numb after three days in cramped quarters. When the
town found out that there were political prisoners at the station,
many people hurried to see us and even bring us things, which the
Civil Guard allowed so long as they didn't get near the prisoners.
The guards themselves collected the little packages and handed
them over to us.
The mayor of Zumárragawhat a shame I don't remember his
name!also did a strange and wonderful thing. When this man heard
 Page 52
we were at the station, he came to see us; talking with the Civil
Guard and listening to us he realized that we had started the trip
with food enough for only twenty-four hours and now after
seventy-two hours on the train we had absolutely nothing left to
eat. So the mayor asked the captain of the Civil Guard if he could
offer us hot soup. The captain agreed. So big pots of good hot soup
were brought; it tasted glorious to us. He also brought a light for
every car and a huge loaf of bread, the kind they called a hogaza in
the villages of that region; it must weigh four or five kilograms. He
offered, too, to pay for a pile of empty fruit boxes stacked there so
we could have a little fire in the front of each car for warmth. We
spent the night there in Zumárraga. The next morning they
transferred us to the narrow gauge train for Durango.
I think the entire population of Durango had turned out at the
station. It seems they didn't want political prisoners and a prison in
their town. They were so adamant that the guards cordoned us off
for fear the people would hit us. But no, the people didn't want to
harm us; they just didn't want political prisoners in their town.
Finally, though, they got us to the prison, which was a convent for
French nuns that had been turned into a prison.
Every day new groups arrived in Durango. From all over the
Spanish land the prisoners came. There weren't enough prisons in
all of Spain for so many prisoners. That's why convents like the
one at Durango were converted into prisons. Finally more than two
thousand women were housed in the converted convent in Durango
along with scores and scores of children ranging in age from a few
monthssome had been born in jailto three and four years. Yes, there
were many children, that is, until the government issued a decree
that children older than two years couldn't stay in prison with their
mothers. But if by chance all the family was imprisoned, where
would the children go? To the orphanage? That created problems.
In some cases friends and relatives came for the children, but we
were up north and all the women were from central Spain, some
even from Andalusia. The government set a date by which time the
children had to leave prison. The mothers became desperate. What
was to become of their children? Where would they be taken?
Would they ever see their children again?
When the people of Durango realized the situation, they responded
very well. They told the prison director that the children should be
taken to their homes in Durango until their families could come for
them. All children over the age of two were removed; one baby
under two was even taken out. Those people of Durango dressed
and fed the children very well and brought them to see their
mothers on visiting days. Little by little the children disappeared
from Durango as families and friends came for them. I think that
one or another of the children remained in
 Page 53
the region because their families were in prison and no one was left
to claim them.
The poor little children who stayed with their mothers had to eat
the same food as the adults; there was no milk or any kind of
supplement necessary for little ones. It wasn't long before two of
the children died. When we protested, the officials fixed up a room
down below for mothers with children. I don't think their motive
was to improve life for the little ones but to avoid people seeing
that the situation was continuing the same. Later on townspeople
became very upset at the news two little children had died and
others were gravely ill. They brought jugs of milk which were
distributed among the mothers. No thanks go to the prison
administration but to the beautiful and compassionate people of
Durango!
The Durango prison housed not only political prisoners but also
common criminals. Some women were well-known thieves; others
were prostitutes; still others, murderers. Next to us was a little girl
not more than eighteen years old who had killed her sweetheart's
sister for having objected to the relationship with her brother. She
told of killing the girl with a knife as matter-of-factly as if she were
telling the story of Snow White. Other women had committed
murder out of revenge or jealousy. But for us political prisoners the
worst criminals were the women of the street. It was disgusting to
live next to them; it wasn't just that these women no longer had the
fun of walking the streets but they were so immoral they even
turned to sexual relations among themselves. We were so offended
by them we felt obliged to denounce some of the incidents to the
officials, but in those years, in '39 and '40, it didn't do any good.
The nuns and officials in charge were no better than the prostitutes.
In an attempt to heed our protests and demands, the prison director
set aside one room for the younger girls. Since I acted as a mother
to the young girls in our group, they refused to go to the room
without me; so even though I was older, the officials took me too.
But this arrangement didn't work because there were minors among
the common criminals who were set aside with us.
In spite of the horrible conditionsand naturally the food and
hygiene were terriblewe young women didn't lose our good humor.
We were always happy, always singing and planning some joke to
distract the older women, and sometimes the younger ones too,
from thinking about their homes, their children, their husbands. We
would do all sorts of pranks to divert the women who spent so
many days under the death penalty. I remember vividly one such
prank. Almost every night we staged a mock trial where we judged
Franco. We cast lots for the part of Franco because naturally no one
wanted to play that role. The unlucky woman would sit on a
sleeping mat that served as the defen-
 Page 54
dant's chair and the popular tribunal was formed around her. The
entire room had the right to speak and render opinions. It was like
an army of devils rising up. No one can begin to imagine what
tortures the prisoners dreamed up to make Franco die little by little,
to make... . Well, what can I say? It was horrifying.
I don't know if someone looked through the peephole or if some
official going up the stairs happened to hear us, but suddenly one
night the door opened. However, we always had one woman on the
lookout, and she heard the keys in the door in time to warn us. We
quickly lay down on the mats that had served as our seats; when
the officials came in, they found every woman lying in her place.
But they weren't convinced that we were just lying there; they
searched us thoroughly thinking we had a radio transmitter that
someone had been using. Then came the punishment: a week
without mail and going to the patio. But we spent the week in a big
way; every night we held the trial.
The room fixed up for the young girls didn't have a toilet or water.
The toilet and sinks were out in the hall. Being locked in at night,
we would have to call a guard to have the door opened so we could
use the toilet. We decided to take matters into our own hands. We
collected buckets, bottles, and anything else to use when we
couldn't stand it any longer. But the solution wasn't satisfactory and
certainly not hygienic. At that time the director's living quarters
were directly under our room. So we decided to stir up a
tremendous racket and make all the noise we could; maybe he'd get
tired of our noise and move us. We pulled up our skirts so far our
panties almost showed and tied them up with our belts. Then with
ribbons in our hair we ran around in a circle playing a game called
"potato wheel," stomping our feet as hard as we could. All of a
sudden the door opened and there stood the director. He had an
expression on his face as if he didn't know whether to laugh or
scold us. The door closed and he left. He didn't say a word or
punish us even though, as we found out later, a lamp in his dining
room had fallen over and broken. What we did accomplish with our
game was that they never closed the door to our room again; we
could go to the toilet whenever necessary. The director must have
thought we were crazy to dress up like little girls, but we made our
point. Where demands had failed, a joke worked.
On the fourteenth of April we celebrated the anniversary of the
establishment of the Second Republic in 1931. 1 We spoke about
what the Republic had meant for Spain and how it had been
betrayed. This the women with political education did for the
others, speaking with several groups of women. We wanted to do
something special for the first of May, but we couldn't agree what it
should be. So the youngest ones of us took charge. One girl
composed a charming, happy song set
 Page 55
to music as if it were a march. There must have been fifty or sixty
of us. We went out to the patio with one girl marching in front
carrying an old broom and wearing a red sweater. The rest of us
followed behind singing the words to the march. There was a
terrible uproar because we were singing at the top of our lungs:
When they ring the bells
early in the morning
I stretch disdainfully
for I go to bed dreaming
and dreaming I get up,
when I laugh and when I sing.
I weep not knowing why;
it's because there await me
hearts that love me
and weep for me.
I'm a prisoner, a prisoner
I do not have, I do not have another sorrow,
for my liberty I lost.
Riches I do not want
nor do I long for comfort
to ease my pain.
Only madly do I desire
another first of May
to live at home in peace.
When the officials heard the words "first of May," they came out
furious, the director, the nuns, the officials, all of them shouting.
Pushing, kicking, hitting, they made us return to our rooms.
Fortunately, no one touched me. One thing that made me laugh, yes
laugh, was that one of the officials kicking us lost his shoe and a
prisoner grabbed it and passed it to another who in turn threw it
down to the patio. He got really mad. I laughed so hard I almost
fell in his hands. But being such a little worm of a thing, I scurried
among the rest of the women so he never found me or knew who
had been the one laughing. He was too mad and irritated to pay
attention to the face of the woman who was laughing almost,
almost in his face. So we did celebrate our first of May and the
town of Durango did hear about our celebration and talk about it.
The women who were caring for the children from the prison told
the mothers on visiting days what was being said in town,
including the news that the prisoners had celebrated the first of
May.
Meanwhile the nuns had petitioned the state for the return of their
convent. At last they won their case. The more than two thousand
of us were taken from that prison and dispersed among several
others. I was
 Page 56
chosen to go to Santander with Daniela and Consuelo Verguizas
and also old Letona while other women went to Amorebieta and
Saturrarán. Departure at the station was emotional for it seemed as
if all the townspeople had agreed to be there. Everyone wanted to
give us packages; everyone wanted to say good-bye to us. Of
course, the townspeople couldn't get close to us because of the
guards, but the packages were handed over to us. We sang a song at
the station just as the train began to leave and we could see some of
those women of Durango in tears. We had set words to some music
that is well known throughout Spain: "Greetings Durango, Durango
of my affection, my affection. Greetings Durango, when we meet
again I will be free. I do not leave because of the people, for they
are good. I leave because they transfer me from the prison."
I also formed strong friendships with many women in the Durango
prison. One of my friends. Rosario Sánchez Mora, offers her
testimony about prison life in Durango.
 Page 57

Chapter 7
The Dynamiter: Rosario Sánchez Mora at Durango
At some events on the Civil War held in Barcelona in 1979, I
happen to meet Rosario Sánchez Mora again, a companion from
the Durango prison. I invite her home and rather than staying in a
hotel she spends the three or four days with me. Rosario is already
retired in 1977. She lives in Madrid, is married and has children
and grandchildren. As a hobby, she paints pictures, using her one
hand. Her health is good and we spend a nice time together
remembering things from the past. I use this time to take her
testimony about life in Durango.
I'm from Villarejo de Salvanes in the province of Madrid. My
father had a shop where he made carts, wagons, and all kinds of
work tools. I lived in the village with my parents until I was sixteen
years old when I went to Madrid to live with some friends who had
taken care of me after my mother died. The year was 1935. My
father gave his permission for me to leave home provided I learned
how to be a seamstress. I lived with this family until war broke out
in 1936.
In the afternoons Carmen and I would take the children for a walk
in the Moncloa area. That's where we met some young people who
belonged to the JSU. As they explained the purpose of the JSU, I
decided I would like to join the organization.
The house where we lived was very close to the Montaña barracks.
The night the barracks were attacked neither Carmen nor her
husband would let me leave the house. I can't pretend that I
understood what was happening. I was a new member of the JSU
and still didn't know much about politics. The explosions we heard
coming from the barracks were very strong, but as soon as I could I
managed to meet my JSU colleagues. When I got there, everything
was chaos; the boys were running around getting orders. That same
day there was fighting in several sectors of Madrid, and insistent
calls for help were coming in from Somosierra and Guadarrama.
With no thought for my own safety, I asked if I could go with the
boys to help.
Every truck load of volunteer militia made up a company. The boys
 Page 58
in my truck told me to stick near them and they would look out for
me. I certainly wasn't afraid of those fellows; they showed no hint
of aggressiveness toward me. I only have wonderful memories of
those boys who fell, one by one, until they were all gone. We were
approximately the same age, between seventeen and nineteen years
old.
Even though we organized ourselves as a company, we hardly
knew what we were doing. I certainly didn't know how to use the
rifle when they handed it to us and showed where we could
practice. They also gave us rudimentary muskets that must have
weighed at least seven kilos each; that musket was such a museum
piece I couldn't even figure out how to fire it. We spent three or
four days there in a trench, without rest or relief. They brought us
food whenever they could and we dozed at odd hours; things
weren't very well organized.
Our job was to defend the so-called German rock, which was a pile
of boulders and rocks that became famous. Many young people
died there. It was considered an honor to have shot from that pile of
boulders. The area around the "German rock" was arid and open,
unprotected, except for a small uneven wall that marked the
boundary between fields; the only protection for the defenders was
behind parts of wall that jutted up.
There was a group of three or four fellows who tried to humiliate
me because they were against women going to war. They wanted to
see if I had the physical stamina to stand guard on the parapet. So
they stationed me for several nights, in the greatest of danger, on
the parapet of the infamous front line called the "German rock."
They could never have imagined how seriously I took this
responsibility and what strength I gained from doing that. If my
eyes closed, I would shake my head as hard as I could and open
them again. I always spent five or ten minutes longer than the time
assigned me before I would call the boy who was supposed to
relieve me. The guys began to lose their mistrust of women. Like
all girls, I was a flirt, but during the war I combed my hair just to
comb it and not to flirt. The guys respected us as girls who were
under the direction of an organization. We weren't just girls they'd
met somewhere; we were their comrades.
The time came when they considered taking me from the trenches
and putting me with a group of dynamiters. This work was also
dangerous, but I wouldn't have to stand guard at night and also I
wouldn't be on the front lines. Between Buitrago and Gascones
there was an old run-down shack that we used for making a small
fine powder; powder is just the name we gave it because with so
few materials at hand it couldn't really be called powder. The group
the dynamiters belonged to had the dynamite there and that's where
they made the bombs, right next to the front lines, only about five
kilometers away. My job was to
 Page 59
work with the dynamiters making bombs by hand using empty
condensed milk cans, screws, nails, bits of glass, and old pieces of
shrapnel. We made the bombs by mixing dynamite with all this
stuff.
We were under the orders of a man who was the captain, an
Asturian named Emilio González González from Sama de Langreo
in Oviedo. He was a miner who knew how to handle dynamite very
well. He didn't let us touch the fulminates; that was the most
dangerous part of all because fulminates made the bombs
discharge. He would touch the fulminate to the fuse and then
squeeze it between his teeth to close them. I don't know if he did it
this way because he didn't have any tools or whether he was used
to doing it that way. The fulminate is a piece of metal that has a
hollow part where half of the explosive is set and in the other half
that's hollow the little piece of fuse is set; then the two halves are
closed to hold in the fuse and this combination of fuse and
fulminate is very carefully put inside the can and slightly flattened.
That's how the bomb is made.
Along with the large musket this was the only material we had for
defending ourselves; we didn't even have a machine gun. Later on
they brought one and a mortar for every company, but at that time
we only had the musket and the hand bombs. We tested them right
there, behind the house. One day we were testing some fuses to
find out whether they were fast enough or damp; if the fuse is
damp it burns from within and isn't noticeable from outside. When
the fuse is normal, you squeeze it with the thumb nail and when
you're burned you release two more fingers of the fuse, that is,
about three centimeters; you do this to keep it burning until there
are only three centimeters of fuse left and then you have to throw
the bomb. We weren't making this test with a bomb but with a
cartridge of dynamite in order to find out if we could work with the
fuse. Mine exploded in my hand. That's how I lost my hand.
When I entered the hospital they cut away what was left of my
wrist. My hand had exploded with the dynamite, flying off in one
piece. I didn't see it or realize what had happened. I only know that
I was left with a piece of bone and blood running out through the
veins. I fainted, bleeding copiously, and my companions picked me
up. One comrade who was older than Ihis name was Toquero and
he was from Fuentelsar and had been exiled in Mexicotore off the
straps of his sandals and used them to make a tourniquet on my
arm. He took me in his arms and stood in the middle of the
highway to stop a car. The first one that came by stopped and
Toquero took me to Buitrago, a village a few kilometers from
where we were. Until now I had never noticed this man who was
older than I; he was calmer than the other fellows who had all fled
in horror so they wouldn't have to see me bleed like that. In
Buitrago they applied first aid by treating me against tetanus and
gangrene and then took me to the hospital at Cabrera for an
operation to trim away
 Page 60
what was left. I spent three days there. Normally they sent the
wounded home after the first treatment.
Being there was painful. You had to be strong to see how people
died from bleeding in the hospital. When the shots were in the
bowels or stomach, the ambulance took them away because they
didn't have any facilities there for operating on them. This was a
Red Cross hospital and it was run marvelously. The staff had no
rest for twenty-four hours of every day; when a group arrived they
had to attend to them and rest in shifts in the hospital.
After the operation, I had the honorand I don't say this to flatter
myselfof a visit from the famous writer, Ortega y Gasset, 1 who
had been told of my conduct during the weeks that I had been
fighting on the front line at the ''German rock" and making bombs.
"Where are you from?" Ortega asked.
"Villarejo de Salvanes."
"Well, listen, I go by there every day. This afternoon I'm going to
Valencia. Do you want me to say something to your family?"
"Oh, no, sir, please don't tell my father about this. How unhappy
he's going to be."
"But, child," he said, "he's going to have to find out somehow, don't
you understand? It's best that he come; he can care for you and be
at your side. I myself will give him the news. I know how to tell
him. You'll see he won't be very upset."
"All right," I finally said, "we'll see."
That very evening my father, mother, and two friends, one the man
who made fritters and the other a gentleman from our village, came
to the hospital. When they arrived, the doctors went out to greet
him so as to cheer him up and downplay the seriousness of my
situation. But they didn't know my father. He said to them: "Look, I
am very, very sorry that my oldest daughter has lost a hand. I have
five more children and if my six children would all lose a hand for
the same cause, I would be proud." My father didn't scold me at all
or utter any recriminations. All he said was: "Why didn't you tell
me you were here?" My father knew I was in Buitrago; what he
didn't know was that I'd lost my hand.
They transferred me to the Red Cross hospital in Madrid. The
wound where the hand had been scarred over without any
complications. I spent fifteen days recuperating; with plenty of
good food to eat. I didn't need any transfusions. Then they
discharged me. My father took me to the pavilion of Philosophy
and Letters where they had set up a rest home for convalescents.
I'm not sure if it belonged to the Republican Left. I spent eight or
ten days recuperating there. I left because the front line by the
University City was getting nearer and also I had recovered enough
to return to the division.
 Page 61
I served as a telephone operator for the general headquarters of the
10th Brigade. It was there I met the poet Miguel Hernández. 2 By
this time several months had gone by and I continued to work in
spite of missing a hand. One day Antonio Aparicio, a comrade of
mine who was a poet, came up and said: "Listen, a very good poet
is bringing a poem for you." I didn't know how good a poet he was,
and besides I thought that it would just be some little thing like the
poem another comrade had written for me. I didn't realize the
repercussion this poem would have later, for the poet was none
other than Miguel Hernández. Many prestigious intellectuals came
through our division, including the Nobel Laureate Vicente
Aleixandre3 as well as Miguel Hernández.
I didn't know this great poet at all. On introducing me, Aparicio
said: "We're going to carry this poem on the radio; he'll introduce it
and then you'll read some stanzas." I was a little frightened but they
encouraged me. I did it to please them and also out of curiosity, for
I'd never seen a transmitter before and I wanted to find out what a
radio was. First he read the poem and then I read the stanzas. For
several months I had the good fortune amd great honor to work
with Miguel Hernández, each of us at our own job but in the same
vicinity. That's when I realized he was a sentimental man, simple,
affectionate, a man of few words, a little introverted; he saw, he
observed, and he smiled. He always had a kind word for everyone,
and the people adored himworkers, women, childreneveryone
adored him. He made no distinctions between the upper and lower
classes. What he did make was poetry; he was a soldier with the
pen, and with the pen he defended the working classes. Inside of
him was the beauty of the born poet. As for me, he didn't really
know me; he only knew that I had been left without a hand when
the bomb exploded. Then he wrote the poem for me, "Rosario,
Dinamitera."
Rosario, dynamiter,
on your lovely hand
the dynamite covered
its fierce attributes.
Looking at it no one would believe
there was in its heart
a desperation
of crystals, of fire-shot
eager for a battle
thirsting for explosion.
It was your right hand,
capable of fusing lions,
the flower of munitions
and the desire of the fuse.
 Page 62
Rosario, you good harvest,
tall like a bell tower,
you seeded the adversary
of the furious dynamite
and your hand was
a maddened rose, Rosario.
The vulture has been witness
to the condition of lightning
of the deeds I keep silent
and of the hand of which I speak.
How well the hand of this maiden
knew the enemy!
but now it is not a hand because
not a single finger of it moves,
the dynamite captured it
and turned it into a star!
Rosario, dynamiter,
you can be a man and you are
the cream of women,
the foam of the trenches.
Proud like a flag
of triumphs and splendors,
shepherd to dynamiters,
see her spirit moving
and send to the wind
the bombs of the traitors'souls.
When I returned to my division I was given the most dangerous
jobs. Every day was a gamble with death. I was responsible for
delivering mail to the front lines. There were many, many troops at
the battle of Brunete, 4 which went on from July 6 to July 25, 1937,
but the 46th Division was there an especially long time, for
months, risking lives for the town that one day was in our hands
and the next in Franco's. Well, my job was especially dangerous
because there were always low-flying planes shooting at any object
or person that moved. Three of us went in the mail car: myself,
whose job was to deliver and collect mail; the driver, a fine man
named Valentín from Morata in the province of Madrid; Fita, who
came only on pay days and collected money from the soldiers
eager to get money to their families before they died.
One day when I was going by myself through an unprotected area
with a small delivery of mail for some troops near a bridge, I
spotted a low-flying plane. I saw a blanket on the ground covering
what I thought was a man: "I'm going to get under the blanket," I
said to myself, "so the plane doesn't see me." I spent who knows
how long waiting for the
 Page 63
shooting to end; when I finally got up, I said to the one beside me:
"Let's go. It's over." No answer. That's when I discovered there
were four cadavers under the blanket left there to be picked up.
The closest I came to being shot was the day I was returning from
the general staff of the 10th Brigade that was set up near a little
bridge on the road. The shooting came nearer and nearer. That was
also the last day I carried mail because our division was relieved
and each brigade returned to the barracks. Then I went with the
general staff to Alcalá de Henares where I worked in the office and
served on the political committee for propaganda for our division.
This was my last assignment. When the militia left for the Ebro, I
remained with my parents in Madrid.
I would like to emphasize that I could have retired from service
after I lost my hand, but I continued in the army without pay in
order to defend the Republic. Let's not talk about danger because in
war danger is everywhere, but I do want to speak about morale. Let
me say that the women militia suffered very much in this sense
because some sectors of society put us down just because we were
women. Some people couldn't understand that we were risking our
lives to fight valiantly for a noble ideal. Of course we were afraid,
but we felt it was necessary to defend ourselves so that Franco
couldn't wipe us out. With this ideal in her heart a woman is just as
effective as a man wherever she serves. I want to praise the efforts
and idealism of the women militia, especially in answer to those
critics who accused us of being prostitutes.
When the war ended I tore up everything that might compromise
me; I left my party card until last. It broke my heart to tear up my
card; I felt as if I were breaking off all connection with my past.
Finally I just slipped it under the table cloth. I left home kissing my
mother and daughter good-bye, not knowing where to go. I went to
the division to see if someone might be there who could take me to
an airport or a seaport. That's where I met Dora, a friend I'd known
for several months, but there wasn't anyone else around to help us.
Dora had enough money for us to spend two days in a hotel; that
way we wouldn't be caught in our homes. Then she managed to
find some friends with a truck who were going to Valencia.
When we reached Valencia, the city was over-flowing with people
on the way to the port of Alicante, desperate to get out of Spain.
What happened in Alicante is well known: the arrests, the
concentration camps, horror and misery everywhere. But there's
one fact I don't want to pass over. I remember a gentleman who
took his own saffron harvest, carried it in two five-kilo cans, took it
out by the fistfuls, threw it on the ground, and set fire to it. When
he saw the Italian soldiers in the Littorio Division 5 that entered
Alicante, he cried: "Look, here's my saffron harvest." This man was
a true example of valor.
 Page 64
Dora and I were among the thousands who were captured and
returned to Madrid. The trip took seven long days. What terrible
shape we were in: skinny, dirty, dying of hunger, we looked like
strange creatures. The guards left us in the Atocha station with the
recommendation that we go home. There we were at three in the
morning, not knowing what to do or what road to take. I went to
the home of some acquaintances who were professors, a family of
marvelous intellectuals called the Palacios. There I spent the night.
Then I wandered from house to house until the police detained me
in one of them and took me to the village. They held me for more
than twenty days; they intended to cut my hair but it just so
happened that on the day they were going to cut it the Civil Guard
came for me to take a statement.
The women prisoners told me terrible things about what happened
to the men: how they were beaten to make them confess and then
left half dead; how the skin from their backs stuck to their shirts;
how the men were taken down to the wells with their hands behind
their back and their wrists tied with cords so tightly their shoulder
bones were dislocated; how they were pushed in the wells with
their heads under water to make them believe they were going to be
drowned; how the men were taken down there over and over if they
didn't confess.
In Villarejo the people were sent to two places. Some went to
Aranjuez and others to Getafe. The worst was the prison of Getafe,
which is where they sent me. In that prisonand everyone who has
been there knows thisthere were no toilets; we had to do everything
in cans that were put in three or four rooms without doors where
women prisoners were held. We had to use those cans for
defecating as well as urinating. Those cans stayed there twenty-
four hours a day and they only took them out once a day, at seven
in the morning. Worst of all was the lack of hygiene; there were no
sinks or running water for washing. The water was given us in a
can that had been used for condensed milk, which means that each
person had only one fourth of a liter for twenty-four hours. You
couldn't ask for more, not even for the old women or the children.
The young girlsI was twenty years old and we were all
approximately the same agewould take a little swallow of water
from the can and put the rest in a bottle in case an old woman or
child got thirsty in the night.
Later in 1939 I was tried and sentenced to death, which came as no
surprise. My denouncers were from my home town and were
fascists in the style of Hitler. I was sent to Ventas under sentence of
death. Compared to Getafe, Ventas was a paradise. They stuck me
in the gallery of condemned women. That's where Matilde Landa
was; she saved my life. I was in Ventas for only three months
before I was taken to Durango. After eleven months in Durango, I
was transferred to a prison in Bilbao
 Page 65
and from there to Saturrarán. That was the last prison I was in, and
probably the worst.
When I look back on the dangerous work I did during the war, I am
proud, not just for me but for the history of women and especially
for the "feminists" of today. The word feminist didn't even exist
during the war because we women weren't considered separate
from the men. It's true that women haven't been treated as equal to
men throughout history, but I wonder if the majority of women
have done anything to defend their rights. There's a lot of talk these
days about feminism, but I'm not sure if fighting with words is the
best way to achieve equality with men. Fighting side by side with
men, we felt equal. I hope that my story will be a testimony to
women's equality. Obviously I am only one of many women who
worked alongside men in those war years. Many, many women
took over men's jobs in shops, factories, agriculture, and
administration. And it wasn't the physical work that made us equal.
It was our sense of responsibility, our concern for companions, our
idealism, our self-sacrificethose inner qualities determined equality.
We say good-bye at home, happy to see each other again. I am
grateful to her for the testimony she gives for the book.
 Page 67

Chapter 8
Into the Storm: Santander 19401942
There's a very funny story about our departure from Durango. In
those first years after the war all the railroad cars in Spain had
written on them "Franco, Franco, Franco." We saw some cars
sitting on a side track with those three words, and underneath them
the words, "Sal de España." Those three words mean "Salt from
Spain,'' and they indicated that the cars were loaded with salt. Now
the words were placed in such a way that you could read the whole
car as "Franco, Franco, Franco, sal de España." We started shouting
like the devil: "Bravo, bravo, that's it, that's itFranco, Franco,
Franco, get out of Spain." At first the guards didn't understand what
was going on, but when they saw all of us looking toward the cars
and laughing, they got the joke. The railroad worker who wrote
those words so they could be read two ways must have been some
joker!
We left Durango between eight and nine o'clock in the morning and
reached Santander very late at night. With one hand manacled and
the other clutching our personal belongings, we were forced to
climb the steep Alta hill that runs from the station to the prison.
Once again our prison originally had been a religious house, this
one a monastery run by Salesian friars. We were exhausted after
traveling all day, climbing the hill, and then having the hassle of
finding a place to sleep. The prison was overflowing with people;
we could scarcely find room to put down our narrow sleeping mats.
Worse even was being mixed in with thieves, common criminals,
and women of the street. Since Santander was a capital city, the
custom was to imprison the prostitutes for ten, fifteen, or twenty
days if they didn't pay their fines at the time of arrest.
Our group was split up when we reached Santander; one part went
to Saturrarán, the other to Amorebieta. I became close friends with
some of the women from Santander. I remember one woman from
Santona whose husband had been killed, leaving her with five
children, the eldest no more than fifteen. She would go out fishing
with her son in a little boat they owned and then sell the fish to
support her family. Her arrest came about when she was suspected
of having gone fishing one night
 Page 68
and not selling her catch. She tried to explain that she hadn't fished
that night because her child was sick, but her protests didn't sway
the authorities. If she had gone fishing, they wanted to know, and
hadn't sold any fish, then where had the fish ended up? The
officials assumed she had given the fish to the band of Cariñoso,
who was a famous guerrilla in the area.
We also had to endure the misfortunes caused by the hurricane and
fire that hit Santander while we were imprisoned there. I don't
recall the exact date, but it must have been toward the end of 1941.
One day such a strong wind began blowing that we couldn't stand
to have the window open even a tiny crack. We hurried to secure
all the windows. As the wind blew harder and harder, panic set in.
Suddenly a gust of wind shook the windows; they flew open so
hard that all the panes broke. I remember being beside one of the
windows; I threw myself to the ground and covered myself with
the mattress, not knowing what else to do. Papers were blowing all
about, clothes spilling every place, women all around me
screaming. We were in terrible danger because the room was so
large it had lots and lots of windows and all of them were broken.
We not only had to escape that hurricane and save what we could,
but we also had to calm down the hysterical women, especially
those women from Santander whose fear for their families added to
their panic. We tried to give comfort by assuring them that
probably nothing was happening down in Santander and that the
wind was much fiercer up here on the Alta hill than down below in
the city. We didn't know what was going on in the other rooms, but
we heard shouts and screams of terror. All the women were
screaming, running from one place to another. The nun in charge of
our room we called "Big Shoes" because she was big and strong
like a Percheron horse and must have worn at least a size forty-
three shoe; she sounded like a man when she walked. And she was
a brute in her own right. She would hit you on the head with the
food ladle at the drop of a hat. But that day, for what reason I don't
know, maybe she was in shock or genuinely upset at our
helplessness, she spoke to us kindly: "Calm down now, calm down,
don't get excited; go down the stairs very calmly, don't hurry, don't
hurt your-selves." In fact we did behave in a disciplined way; we
went down the stairs and into a lower part of the building.
Women were coming out of all the rooms toward the stairs. Then
we found out that some of the sick women in the infirmary had
been injured. Originally the infirmary had been one large room, but
they had installed dividers to make compartments. One of those
dividers had crashed and slid when the windows flew open. We had
no more than left the rooms and reached the lower area when we
heard the cross on top of the building come crashing down; it
crossed the length of the
 Page 69
building from top to bottom and pierced the ceiling of our room.
Thank goodness we weren't there. Downstairs we were out of
danger. There were some porches with tremendously thick walls,
the church and a few rooms; with three floors above, we felt safe.
The entrance door also came off; they asked us to help by holding
the door up while they got heavy poles to brace it. Later the saying
ran throughout Santander: Question: "How can you tell a perfect
prisoner?" Answer: "She holds up the door so it won't open." The
truth is that the last thing on our minds was escape. But of course
there were some suspicious people who alerted the Falangists to set
up a guard in front of the prison door just in case we tried to take
advantage of the situation.
The priest took us to the church to offer his so-called
encouragement and consolation, especially for the poor women
from Santander.
"My daughters," he said, "resign yourselves, many people have
died in Santander, many, and there are so many wounded that the
hospitals can't take all of them."
He actually seemed to enjoy saying this to women who didn't know
if their families were dead or alive, their homes still standing or
destroyed. Besides being the priest in our prison, he also was priest
to the Tabacalera prison for men. One of his duties was to take the
men out to be executed and give them the coup de grace.
The hurricane finally began to subside. But then we heard the news
that the storm had caused the electrical wiring in a drug store in
Santander to short circuit and that fires were spreading throughout
the city. "Big Shoes" said that some of us should volunteer to go
with her to the rooms to collect our things and have them ready in
case we had to evacuate the prison. Her words upset us because if
they had to take us away, then what on earth was happening? When
we went up to our room with its view of the whole city, the sight of
the raging fires paralyzed us. All Santander seemed to be in flames.
And the wind hadn't stopped. We watched in horror as the wind
picked up burning beams and dropped them on houses and as the
houses immediately burst into flame.
So we gathered up our belongings and made up the sleeping mats;
everything was ready in case we had to evacuate. We spent three
days waiting for the fire to be completely extinguished. We ate
only canned food because the stoves couldn't be lit and we couldn't
lie down because the sleeping mats remained rolled up by order of
the prison directors. For three days we sat on our sleeping mats. We
did take the little old women down to the porches where the poor
souls could stretch out on the ground.
Next to our building in Santander was the Alta barracks. The
soldiers had taken precautions; no sooner had they spotted the first
fires than they began to transfer the munitions to the countryside.
The com-
 Page 70
manders had even come to the prison to assure the officials of our
safety; if something happened to the barracks there wouldn't be an
explosion because all the munitions had been removed. That
calmed us down, there's no doubt, but who could calm down the
poor women from Santander who still had no news of their
families? And if that beast of a priest came, he only recounted
tragedies. Some of us were always going around the room sniffing
out news of Santander; sometimes we would hear a voice from the
street across the walls shouting the name of a prisoner to let her
know her family had survived.
After three days life returned to normal. There were still small fires
burning in Santander, but the hurricane was over. Orders were
given to light the stoves so we could have something hot to eat,
which our stomachs welcomed.
I have other memories of the Santander prison, especially of
women from Guadalajara. There was Consuelo Verguizas, whose
husband had been beaten to death. She was sentenced to twelve
years and one day simply because the authorities hadn't been able
to catch her son. She knew nothing about his whereabouts. On one
occasion, through someone who was corresponding with people in
Francethey had begun to receive letters from family memberswe
found out that the boy had left Spain with the troops when the war
ended. While we were in Santander his mother received a letter and
photo of him along with his address; they got in touch with each
other and from then on she received news of her son. I don't know
if it was the shock of knowing that she had lost her husband
because her son hadn't been caught and then finding out he was out
of the country, but the fact is that Consuelo began to lose her mind.
Perhaps it was hunger, too, for the poor woman suffered so much.
Consuelo and I were in the same room, though not close to each
other; she was near the door while I was in the center of the room.
Nonetheless, she was always near me. She was a very humble
woman with little spunk, used to giving in to others. A good
seamstress, Consuelo was always ready to sew something for her
companions or for the children; she had no one at all outside of
prison. The one other son had been killed a few months after the
war began. Some nights the woman who slept next to me and I
would wake up with the feeling that something was hovering over
us. Sitting up on our sleeping mats, we'd recognize Consuelo.
"Consuelo, what are you doing here?"
"I'm afraid they're coming for me."
She would cross the room by dragging herself over the floor so
they couldn't shoot her from the windows.
When we went to get our food and the nun put the ladle on her
plate, Consuelo would look at her and say: "Hah, do you think I
didn't
 Page 71
see you put poison in my food?" I would take hold of her, lead her
away and assure her that the food wasn't poisoned.
"Yes it is, yes it is. I saw it."
"All right, come along, take my plate and give me yours."
Then we would exchange plates and she would say to my friend,
Amparito, who was also at her side: "Hah, Amparito, you, too,
huh? Do you think I didn't see? Yours is poisoned, too."
Then I would say to the poor woman so she could eat: "Look, mine
isn't poisoned because they don't want to kill me."
"No, not you, but me, yes they do."
"Good, well then so you can see there isn't any poison, let's you
and I eat from the two plates." A spoonful for her, a spoonful for
me, so it went until we finished the meal.
She even followed me to the toilet. I was, shall I say, bashful about
doing some things in front of her, so I'd say: "Please, Consuelo,
leave me alone for just a minute."
"Yes, of course, but as soon as they see me alone. ... If they haven't
killed me it's because of you. Without you my life is over."
We consulted the doctor about Consuelo. I would have preferred a
specialist to examine her so she could be taken to the appropriate
hospital for observation. But no, the woman doctor, who was
herself a prisoner, looked at Consuelo there in the room with us.
The doctor warned me to be careful: if Consuelo was so obstinate
with me, it was likely she'd turn on me some day.
"Why would she turn on me?"
"Because people who are crazy or disturbed sometimes turn on the
people they like the most."
I didn't believe her then and I never did, but it's true that I was
always a little on the alert after that.
One day Consuelo refused to leave me alone when I wanted to use
the toilet.
"Please, Consuelo, I can't do anything with you here. Leave."
She grabbed me by the throat and squeezed hard. I kicked on the
door. Some of my friends came, pushed on the door and got me out
of there. But it could have been bad for me because she had hold of
me with a frightening nervous strength. It wasn't that she was a
naturally strong woman but her nerves gave a strength to her
fingers that she didn't even realize. She didn't know what she was
doing. Later I asked her: "Consuelo, do you see what you did to
me?"
"Who? Me? I did that to you? It can't be, my daughter, it can't be. I
did that?"
She kissed me and caressed me.
"It can't be, my friend, it can't be. Are you sure I did it?"
 Page 72
One day I noticed that she was very subdued and barely came over
to my sleeping mat. One moment I saw her seated pensively on her
own mat, the next moment she was gone.
"Have you seen Consuelo?" I asked the girls.
"No, we didn't see where she went."
No sooner were those words spoken than we heard "Plom!" coming
from the toilet. We went running and there was Consueloshe had
tried to hang herself by her girdle ties but they were too worn out to
hold. She hurt her throat a little but that was all. All this we had to
put up with, knowing that the prison administrators could have
remedied the situation had they wanted. That woman could have
been put in a hospital. She was no murderer. We submitted
petitions to have her transferred to a hospital but our petitions
disappeared with the wind.
So the days passed. We did handwork to earn a little money for
buying necessities from the commissary, not only for ourselves but
for the old women and for others who had no one outside to help
them. We made large bags with pretty embroidered flowers,
clusters of violets from pieces of soft bread the country women
gave us; we went without bread so we could color and fashion the
crumbs into lovely bouquets. We had many orders from Santander
to sew flowers on jacket and coat lapels. Something else I like to
make were paper boxes. I used untrimmed paper cut lengthwise in
strips of one centimeter. Four of these strips I would weave into
what are called carnations. Then I'd make stars and turn them into
the pattern I wanted and form a box. Next the inside was lined with
cloth and the outside painted with a shellac to give it a wood color,
like mahogany.
While Consuelo was improving with the treatment the doctor had
given her, I was getting worse, in part because I was working very
hard to earn money. Also I no longer had extra food because by this
time Amparito and some other women whose families had brought
in food had left the prison. And the truth is that my nerves had been
affected by Consuelo's sickness. One day when I was making a
flower, I stuck my finger and it got infected. The doctor, who had
taken a liking to me, said: "Look, I'm going to take advantage of
the fact you're running a slight fever because of the infection in
your finger to send you to the infirmary. You look terrible. My
advice is that as soon as you know there is calcium in the infirmary,
you go down for an injection: put your name in for calcium
because you need it. You're young but you don't eat. I don't know
what's going to happen to you and many other women."
Old Letona was released from prison at Santander because of her
age; she was more than eighty years old, eighty-three, I think. Poor
little womanhow was she going to get to her home town all alone?
 Page 73
There was no one to come for her. But there are good people
everywhere. One of the prisoners had a nephew, her sister's son,
doing military service in Alcalá de Henares and at that time he was
on leave in Santander. During a visit she asked her sister if it would
be convenient for the young man to accompany old Letona on the
train as far as Alcalá and then we'd arrange for someone to meet
her in Guadalajara. Not only did the boy agree to accompany
Letona but he asked for the address in Guadalajara where he could
leave her so that she wouldn't have to change trains by herself in
Alcalá. Poor Letona. I know that she reached home safely thanks to
that young man. That's the last news I had of her.
We can't only speak about the hardships we endured in prison. We
must also remember the times when we forgot our suffering and
enjoyed ourselves like crazythat's what the little old women called
us, crazy. But it was our craziness that helped those women set
aside their sad memories for a few moments and have a good time.
We had a choir that sang the rich songs of our home region of
Guadalajara. The people of Santander would climb up the little
road that ran between the barracks and the prison to listen to the
women prisoners sing in three parts. We always set a watch at the
door so that if a nun came we would stop singing. The nuns were
eager to get us into the church choir, but we wouldn't go near it.
That year many women arrived at the prison. There were Asturian
women who hadn't been near their native land for years; some had
left behind very small children they hadn't seen again even in a
photograph. On the Feast of the Virgin of Mercy these children
were brought to be with their mothers. When they came in, they
had their names printed on little cards hanging around their necks.
We welcomed these little ones by singing words that one of our
companions had set to the hymn of Santander. At first the children
were scared, but we had prepared games for them and even made
some toys. We organized a big party with a music band and
uniforms we'd made from wrappings on the packages that came for
us and cardboard top hats. The only musical instrument we had was
a drum which, if I remember correctly, the soldiers from the Alta
barracks had given us. I still have a photo that shows Rosario, a
very pretty redhead from Santander, carrying the drum; to her left
is a lovely little brunette, Enriqueta; Andrea is above; the first on
the left, a strong young girl from the mountains; the rest, I
remember their dear faces but, regretfully, not their names.
Once more a prison closed. As in Durango, the religious had been
negotiating with the state to have the facility returned to their
Salesian order for use as a school. They won. So we were taken
away; the women who hadn't been tried yet were taken to the
provincial prison of San-
 Page 74
tander while the rest of us were dispersed to other prisons. They
selected me for Amorebieta. What a prison I got by chance! But the
women who went to Saturrarán said that the prison there was much
worse, so I kept a song on my lips and hope in my heart.
I've already mentioned several women I knew well in the Santander
prison. The friend who gave me her testimony is María del Carmen
Cuesta.
 Page 75

Chapter 9
A Minor in Prison: María del Carmen Cuesta at
Santander
During the years from 1940 to 1942 that I spent imprisoned in
Santander, a city on the coast of the Cantabrian sea in the north of
Spain, I met a young womanactually she was legally a minornamed
María del Carmen Cuesta. She was one of the hundreds of women
prisoners in the Salesian convent that had been converted into a
prison. She had come to Santander from the prison in Ocaña. We
didn't have much to do with each other since she was on one floor
and I was on another, in a room that held more than 800 women.
But thirty-six years later, in 1978, I saw her again, in Valencia. And
this is how it came about: Adelaida Abarca, a friend of mine from
the prison of Les Corts in Barcelona in 1945 and 1946 (and whose
testimony appears here a little further on), had kept in touch with
me through the party ever since the 1950s when she escaped from
Spain. Adelaida was still living in France in 1978 when she told me
that María del Carmen was in Valencia and very interested in
talking with me and giving her testimony. The day I visit her she is
ill with flu and a fever. But she's so anxious to give me her
testimony that she makes an effort to speak even though she's not
feeling well. I like to talk with her because she has such a sweet
way of expressing herself. She puts so much love and energy into
telling her story that she relives it. And sometimes she breaks down
crying and says to me: "Please forgive me, Tomasita, but I can't
help it." But here is her personal testimony about that time in
Santander from 1940 to 1942.
About six or seven years ago there was a movie on television called
"Fahrenheit 451." That movie had a tremendous impact on me
because the plot concerned cultural repression under a dictatorship.
There was a special unit of firemen who destroyed all the books
they could find. Denunciations were rampant. Whenever a
denunciation was received, the unit would appear, take inventory,
and burn all the books. The people fled to the forest, but each
personman, woman, and childhad etched in his mind everything
pertaining to universal literature, all the works and every literary
genre. Each person was converted into a human-book in
 Page 76
the hope that one day the books could be published again.
The movie made a huge impression on me because I thought that
there were hundreds, no, more than hundreds, there were thousands
of us women who, like the people in the movie, retained in our
minds profound testimonies, testimonies we hoped would come out
at a given time to fill all the pages of history, the history of the
longest, darkest, and most brutal period of our country, the history
of fascism.
I'm telling you this because it's exactly four weeks since the film
was shown again on Spanish television. When I saw the film for
the first time, I thought we women were so tightly gagged that our
stories would never see the light of day. Seeing the film again,
shame, pain, and helplessness consumed me even more. Now the
gag has been removed, but a profound weight bears down on us
that seems impossible to cast off; for some women the weight is
political, for others, a kind of collective shame, born perhaps from
so many years of distorting history. These weights pressure us not
to speak too much about the Civil War and the subsequent
repression, but this smoothing over of history's harsh events and
the effort to calm those dark forces make it very difficult for new
generations to realize the Franco repression in all its intensity.
I'm saying this as a way of explaining why we haven't been able to
bring out these testimonies. But now it appears that the stories will
be published, and so, let me begin my story by recounting how I
joined the JSU. In 1934, when I was nine years old, I went to Sama
de Langreo in Asturias to spend the summer with family. On my
mother's side all the family were miners. At that time there was a
lot of unrest among the miners in Asturias, and I began to breathe
in the repression of the miners. Because of my age I didn't realize
many things, but I was moved by affection for those family
members I saw imprisoned deep in the well of the mine. I saw how
families were prevented from taking food down to the miners and
how little by little they had to eat the mules in order to endure the
long days of the strike.
Later, in Madrid, I met Virtudes González. We immediately formed
a deep, caring friendship. It was the fourteen-year-old Virtudes who
talked with me about politics. Through her influence I gradually
started working in the JSU and was active in the attempt to join the
anarchist youth groups into what would be called the Antifascist
Youth Alliance, which came about in November of 1937. By the
end of 1938 I was involved in the Drama School of the JSU. By
now times were grave and serious. I was given the post of secretary
of the so-called Comets when the previous secretary was called to
the front lines. We were called Comets rather than Pioneers in
order to avoid sectarian affiliation. As a Comet I worked with
children, trying to distance them from the problems of war and
train them in everything relating to cultural movements,
 Page 77
sports, and film. Unfortunately, the war was being waged so close
by and so bitterly that it was impossible to meet all the children's
needs. I also met men and women in the Provincial Committee.
When Casado's junta seized power in March, 1939 and was
negotiating a cowardly surrender without even minimal defense of
Madrid, the entire Provincial Committee had to leave the city.
Virtudes and I left together, joined by other young people from
Aranjuez, Villaconejos, and Chinchón on the roads out of Madrid.
We spoke with them about what surrender to the troops of Franco
meant. For us it meant that Spain would be soaked in blood. We
were convinced of this from evidence of the persecutions,
imprisonments, torture, and shootings that went on in the zones
controlled by Franco's troops. Any doubts people might have had
during the war now vanished; we had evidence that these brutalities
were more than a case of excessive propaganda.
Returning to Madrid, we found the front lines in total collapse and
the city under occupation by Franco's troops. Horror was
everywhere. I ran to my parents' home, fearful that my father
already was under arrest. Virtudes went to see her parents and
brothers and sisters. We ran around like crazy ants, not knowing
where to go or what to do. We knew that many people, thousands
of people, were in jail but we couldn't grasp the situation. We were
disoriented. I remember asking my father why he hadn't left; his
answer was that there was no reason to leave because he didn't
have blood on his hands. But two days later they came for him; the
man who denounced him had spent the war years in hiding on the
third floor. Not finding my father, they took me to the Office of
General Security. As I said good-bye to my grandfather, I
whispered in his ear: ''Warn papa to leave." The next day my father
appeared at the Office of General Security and I was released.
I went to find Virtudes, and we decided to make contact with as
many of our friends as possible. We wanted to scrape together a
little money to buy tobacco and food for the people in prison who
we knew had nothing to live on. We didn't contact our friends at
their homes but in the street. Every evening at seven or eight we
met on Alcalá street, with a little ribbon pinned to our clothes to
identify us. I served as the link between my sector and the
Provincial Committee.
At that time an edict had been issued for everyone in possession of
firearms to leave them at designated sites. The order was a laugh
for the people of Madrid. No one dared hand over arms of any
kind, especially since most people owned at least one pistol. My
aunt had a pistol in her house which, she often told me fearfully,
had belonged to her husband before he crossed the border with the
army of the Ebro. She was very much afraid. I told her: "Don't
worry, aunt, I'll get it out of here."
A friend we called "Pioneer" offered to help; he went to my aunt's
 Page 78
house and brought the pistol to mine. Being young, we didn't think
anything could happen to us for what we did, but one day a girl
appeared who had been closely connected to our JSU when she
worked as a typist for the Provincial Committee. She couldn't have
been even sixteen years old. I don't know why, perhaps it was the
threats and fear of torture, but she led the police to the houses of all
of us out on the streets who had belonged to the JSU and had taken
part in the war in some way. Around three o'clock one morning a
detachment of probably eight men showed up at my house to arrest
me.
I was only fifteen years old but already I had a sense of courage.
They say that moments of terror bring out courage. I have never
understood why, but it happened like that with me. My sister, who
was four years older, almost died of fright and sobbed terribly. But
me, I was calm, as if something inside of me had been set free.
Perhaps it was my hate for these men that gave me such a calm
appearance. They made us get dressed in front of them and after
talking with the doormen, who didn't share our thinking, they took
us to the infamous Jorge Juan police station. It was very dark, but I
was able to recognize Virtudes, Victoria, Anita, and a bunch of
others. Virtudes I knew by her laugh, which was something special,
like a tinkerbell. She was brunette, with very Spanish features, a
girl of good humor, young, happy, always full of life. Seeing that
we were together again, we all began to laugh like crazy, not
suspecting what truly horrifying days lay ahead.
By chance one of the men in the detachment that had come for us,
a certain Emilio Gaspar, had been a member of the JSU. He was
one of those people who always land on their feet and always find
themselves in favor; they're vulgar, funny, don't bother anyone, and
are welcome everywhere. Well, he appeared with the police squad.
When they took me out to make a statement, he said: "Peque"that
was my nickname; it means "little one"''Peque, don't be afraid. So
long as I'm here, nothing will happen to you."
They put me in a car with Emilio Gaspar; the inspector also came.
They took me to the walls of the East cemetery where I was told to
show them where I had hidden the firearm. They said they knew I
had had a weapon and had buried it in this cemetery. I told them
that was impossible, that I'd never had a weapon, and that besides I
was terrified of cemeteries and dead people. I imagine it was my
naive way of speaking and my frightened expression that were
convincing; they took me to a hotel in Ventas where the doorman
had told them my mother was staying. When we reached the hotel,
the inspector told my mother to get dressed. They were about to
take her away when Emilio Gaspar said: "No, not that lady. She's
got a bad heart." But my aunt, who lived in Ventas, they did take
away.
 Page 79
When we returned to the police station, they called my sister to
make a statement. The questioning was a shock for my sister; she
was completely removed from political parties, being a Republican
by conviction, but nothing more. At one moment, when they called
the two of us, I said: "The fact is that my sister never belonged to
the JSU."
Then, in a flash of courage, I added: "But I did, and what's more,
with honor." All that got me was a whistling of blows, the only
ones I received.
So began the interrogations. I don't know if we were in the police
station for ten or fifteen days. In the first days nothing out of the
ordinary happened except that they questioned us at any hour of the
day. Sleep was impossible. We would just start to fall asleep when
they would summon us. Always being on guard and alert wore
down our resistance. At first we didn't pay much attention to what
was going on around us, but after three or four days we became
aware of terrible cries, shuddering, horrifying cries. They had
begun to put some of our women companions in cold water baths
and apply electric shocks. But something very serious, very grave,
happened at that time, something that would mean the end for
many of those young lives.
On July 27, 1939, a certain Lieutenant Colonel Gabaldo 1 was
returning with his daughter and chauffeur from Talavera de la
Reina to Madrid. I don't know the exact moment or kilometer it
happened, but his car was machine-gunned and his daughter died
along with the chauffeur. Gabaldo was hated because he was
responsible for the archives and documents that made it possible
for the military police to accuse us of being Masons and
Communists. I don't know in what manner, either directly or
indirectly, that "Pioneer" was blamed for the incident. Nor do I
know exactly how they tortured him. But I do know that from the
moment we heard "Pioneer" had been thrown out a window one
night and killed, we began to experience true fear. The rumor
everywhere was that they hadn't been able to get one word out of
that eighteen-year-old boy. Had he uttered even one word about
carrying the pistol from one house to the other, many more of us
would have been arrested. But he didn't open his mouth. Whatever
he knew he carried with him to the grave.
We spent about fifteen days in the police station. They let my sister
go, but the rest of us were sent to the prison at Ventas. Now begins
the most hellish part of our journey. It was in Ventas where my
strength began to wane. Reaching Ventas at dawn, we were still
happy and laughing because even in the midst of tragedy we felt
the joy of our youth. But when those enormous bolts that looked
like giants clanked shut behind us, I felt as if we were passing
through the gates of hell that we had heard so much about as
children. It was then I broke down. For
 Page 80
the first time since my arrest I began to sob, uncontrollably.
The following morning they assigned us our places. The oldest
women went to galleries and halls while we younger ones enjoyed
the privilege of staying in the School of St. Mary. The school was a
room where the minors were to live with two or three inmates to
act as teachers and a prison official who would be with us at all
times. Here we would live out our confinement, forbidden access to
the other prisoners, family members, or our companions. For
companionship we had only ourselves, the minors. We couldn't
imagine how huge this tragedy was because at first we came up
with some fifty-thousand schemes for escaping. With every escape
attempt the companions outside the school and the rest of the
inmate population greeted us with affection and hugs. When we
were returned from an escape attempt, we would sing to the
women, dance, and tell stories. The women would weep and laugh.
I think that as we walked through those galleries, halls, and cells,
we gave something of our youth to those women, reminding them
of their own daughters left behind in villages, in Madrid, and other
places. These women were enormously concerned about us, more
so than for themselves. Perhaps news had reached them through
their families that our trial would take place soon.
August 3, 1939, arrived for the occupants of the ill-named School
of St. Mary. The entire prison of Ventas was in an uproar as the
news spread rapidly: the minors were going to trial. All of us were
convinced that we would be in the same proceedings, but the older
women knew better. They were truly frightened for us. Virtudes
came running with the news that she and some others were leaving
for their trial. I was confused. "But aren't I going?" I asked.
"I don't know. Be ready in case they call your name."
Among the minors Anita López, Martina Barroso, Victoria Muñoz,
and Virtudes left. Argimira Hampanera, Julia Vellisca, Mari
Carmen Vives Samaniego, and I remained: four of us. We were
stunned. Our friends left on the third and returned on the fourth. All
Ventas waited impatiently, but we all knew that they would return
with what we called "la pepa"the death sentence.
After Virtudes returned, she spent two hours talking with me out on
a little patio. I'll never forget those two hours. She spoke to me of
what fascism meant and the time it would take to stamp it out. For
the first time in my fifteen years I began to understand what I had
never grasped beforethe meaning of the fight the workers were
waging. Virtudes spoke of many things, as if she wanted to pass
along to me all her own experience. The way she was speaking
reminds me of the old man in "Fahrenheit 451" who taught an
entire work from memory to a child so the book would live on in
the little boy and he in turn would pass it on to posterity.
 Page 81
"But Virtudes," I said, "nothing is going to happen to you. They'll
commute the death penalty."
"No," she replied, "they won't commute our sentences."
Then in my impulsive way I said: "Well, I want to go with you
because I'm from the Provincial Committee."
"No, Peque, you stay here for you must bear witness to all you will
endure."
As we embraced, she said: "Don't forget anything I told you this
afternoon. Don't ever forget it."
That night, at what time I don't know, with Victoria asleep beside
me and Anita and Martina sleeping elsewhere, we were awakened
with a blow to the shoulder. Victoria and I sat up like two
automatons; in front of us were the director's lieutenant, Carmen de
Castro, María Teresa Igual, and some other officials. I don't know
who was outside the room, but Anita and Martina were already
standing up and Victoria, with her curls falling over her forehead,
clutched my neck, crying: "María, they're going to kill me. María,
they're killing me!"
She clung to my neck so hard I couldn't loosen her grip. At last
Martina and Anita drew close and Martina said to me: "You'd
better put your affairs in order soon because if you don't, they'll kill
you just like us."
And Anita said: "Please, Victoria, be brave."
Then Victoria stopped crying and I saw her go through the door,
her head drooping. We were all speechless from shock. I don't
think we even cried. I don't know whose idea it was to kneel down,
but again, like robots, we all fell to our knees. We remained
kneeling until we heard the sounds of a machine gun in the
morning. Those sounds you could hear clearly, especially if there
was a breeze coming from the east. Some nights we could count
perfectly the shots of the coup de grace. That night we kneeled
until we had counted sixty-five of those shots.
One-half hour later María Teresa Igual, a haughty, cold woman,
came in to tell us of the valor and integrity with which our friends
had met death. She told us that some of the girls had gone to
confessionI don't know if that was trueand they had gone out
singing JSU hymns and died shouting "vivas." What's more, she
told us that the machine-gun fire hadn't killed Anita López, the
tallest of the girls. Anita was still alive when she fell. She had sat
up and asked, "Well, aren't they going to kill me?" At that very
moment the coup de grace was administered. This same woman,
María Teresa Igual, who was present at the executions and told us
everything, also brought our companions' personal belongings. To
me they gave Virtudes's dress and from Joaquinita López, a belt
from Africa.
When the minors arrived from the Salesian prison, their families
had
 Page 82
intended to go to Burgos to ask for clemency, or at least to have the
death penalty commuted. Not all the families could afford the trip,
but Virtudes's brother had gone to Burgos. Her mother, who adored
Virtudes, came very early to the prison and pressed herself against
its walls as if to feel the throbbing of her daughter through their
stone. She wouldn't leave. How Virtudes suffered because of her
mother's grief! When they took Virtudes to the bus, there was her
mother. Seeing her daughter get in the bus, the mother began to
shout: "Murderers! Leave my daughter alone! Murderers!" And she
ran after the bus, running, running, until at last she fell flat on her
face. Then she was put in prison, and every day she would appear
at the door to the School of St. Mary. The prison officials left her
alone, perhaps believing, as I did, that she had lost her mind. She
would watch me until I left our room. I was permitted to go out.
Then she would grab me by the arm, squeeze it with alarming
strength, and direct me to the infirmary. When we reached the
infirmary, she stationed herself by the window from where she
could see the walls of the cemetery. Her breathing would become
very rapid and deep, but she never said a word or cried. Then, with
her squeezing my arm and breathing deeply, I took her back again
to her sleeping mat and returned to the school. She was there for
maybe two months before she was freed. I never found out if she
died or went crazy.
After a few months the four of us minors still left were told of our
upcoming trial. The prison director, Carmen de Castro, called us
into her office to say that there had been some cases of clemency
and she didn't think anything bad could happen to us.
The girl who initially had denounced all of us also went to trial.
She was very ugly, like a little monkey. I remember that with our
legs bandaged because of scabies, she and I looked like Egyptian
mummies. I realize now that we treated her harshly. We were proud
of our courage and intolerant of any weakness. No one would say a
word to her, not one word. She sat completely alone in a little
corner, drooping like a rag.
When the Civil Guard came in, they asked: "That one over there,
who's she?"
Some of the prisoners replied: "That one, she's the beast."
That girl, the beast, they put in Ventas because of what she did.
Look, after they took the minors away, this girl who had turned us
in had to be put in a special room in the infirmary because they
feared the reaction of the women. In a prison with thirteen
thousand women there are all kinds; in a moment of anger and
helplessness a woman can turn on a person who betrayed her
companions.
How different that creature was from the notorious Roberto
Conesa. 2 Conesa had been a member of the JSU before he began
to work for the Francoist police. With his help, the police stepped
up their arrests
 Page 83
of Communists in July and August of 1939. Conesa was fully
aware of what he was trying to do when he pushed for the arrest of
JSU members. He knew that he was taking the first step in his
professional career. He quit being an ordinary shopkeeper and
found an opportunity to advance himself at the end of the war and
the beginning of the repression. This he did by accusing young
people of taking part in the plot to kill Franco. Of course, it's
inconceivable that young people without any means could commit
such an act in the first month after Franco's forces took Madrid.
But the deaths of the minors had to be justified, which this man did
and in so doing began his professional career.
Thanks to whom, I don't know, my sister was given permission to
give me a kiss before I left for my trial. There the two of us were,
me being strong and telling my sister that she had to be strong too,
and my sister, desperate and crying, "Mari, no, Mari, no!" And I:
"Be strong. Tell papa that I was strong, very strong, and tell mama,
too; tell her I didn't cry."
On December 15 four minors, sixteen years old, appeared before a
military tribunal along with some guerrillas. The Agency of
Military Intelligence and Espionage tried us for taking part in the
plot to kill Franco. The room was over-flowing with people, so
many they had to close the doors. The sentences began to rain
down. We were sentenced to twelve years and one day and returned
to prison.
We remained in Ventas from the fifteenth of December until the
middle of 1940 when we left with a group destined for the
penitentiary at Gerona. The trip was interminable. We were
transported in freight cars used for shipping cattle. We absorbed
our own smells and excrement because we had to do our business
in little pots or sardine cans they set up in each car. The rattling of
the train wore us out. At first we stood up, but little by little the
jostling of the train pushed us together until we sat down. We
reached Tarragona where we stayed for fifteen days. With our
sleeping mats on our shoulders the line of prisoners walked across
the entire city to reach the convent of the Oblate nuns. From
Tarragona we were taken to Les Corts for two months and finally
to Gerona.
If comparisons could be made, we might say that we had gotten out
of hell and made it into heaven because here, in Gerona, we began
to experience a little equilibrium in our lives. The nuns in Gerona
had a magnificent garden that belonged entirely to them. But one
day Carmen de Castro appeared with the order to turn the garden
into basketball courts so we could exercise.
We also were authorized to present plays at the discretion of the
prison director and administrator. We were rehearsing Life Is a
Dream, the seventeenth-century play by Calderón de la Barca, and
I was playing
 Page 84
the part of Prince Segismundo. In a letter to my boyfriend in
Madrid I mentioned how difficult the part was for me because as
Segismundo I had to throw my enemy off the balcony in one scene.
He jokingly replied that it was impossible for me with my delicate
constitution to grab my enemy and throw him off the balcony or
through the window. On account of that letter I was taken to the
superintendent; she interpreted my words as "political signals." I
don't remember how many arguments I put forth to convince her
otherwise, but the price I paid was transfer to the prison at Ocaña.
Ocaña was hell. After all these years I am relieved to be able to talk
about those grievous times. One face and one name I've tried to
forget but can't is that of Conesa. Today I can hardly believe that
this man continues to hold positions of responsibility in the General
Office of Security when evidence proves that he held interrogations
and tortures and that he was the principal accuser and assassin of
the minors. I don't think of him with revenge in my heart but in the
process of remembering these events we have no recourse other
than to remember the perpetrators of so much torture and so many
shootings. In remembering Conesa, my thoughts go again to our
young girl from the JSU who betrayed us. With the passage of time
I've said that perhaps we were a little inhuman and we shouldn't
have treated her as we did. Who knows a person's limits under
torture? Who knows how long you can resist? I don't know if they
beat that girl or tortured her. All I know is that she was sixteen
years old, like me, a mere girl, another of the minors.
 Page 85

Chapter 10
The Cemetery of the Living: Amorebieta 19421943
There must have been 450 women in our expedition. It took all day
to get from Santander to Amorebieta. When we arrived late in the
afternoon, they held us for hour after hour in a solitary patio to
count and recount us. They would call us by our first name and we
would answer with our last. Seated on our bedrolls we didn't know
if we were going to spend the night out there or what. Later we
found out what was going on; the prison was jammed to the rafters
with inmates and couldn't hold even one more person. But leading
us by the nose, the officials still worked to find room for us. They
began to take us up to the rooms at night; the women up there
already had been counted. We'd been counted, too, and also given a
little food.
We were led to different halls, each woman on her own to find a
place to settle down. But we couldn't find room in any hall because
the sleeping mats already were stretched out and women were lying
on them to keep their places. There we were left standing, pushing
this woman and that one to find a place to lie down. During the
train trip and while we were in the patio, I had struck up a
friendship with two pretty sisters, Elena and Elvira. The three of us
took charge of finding room for poor Consuelo Verguizas, the
nearly eighty-year-old Daniela Picaza, and Gloria Nolasco, who
was seriously ill when we arrived. Elvira was tall and strong, and
she immediately made room where she could, putting down the
three women's sleeping mats with mine next to Gloria's. Lying
there next to one another, Gloria and I looked like two little
creatures stuck together. The hall was hell, cries everywhere, on
one side coming from us prisoners, on the other, from the prison
officials.
"Be quiet, please be quiet."
There we were trying to find a place to sleep for just that night. But
we couldn't go to sleep. Before we knew it, it was dawn and we
heard a little bell ringing, ringing.
"What's that?" we asked.
Someone was dying in the infirmary, we were told.
With morning we could see the faces of the women in Amorebieta.
 Page 86
Their skin was so yellow they looked as if they belonged to another
race. Obviously these women were wasting away. I remember one
little girl who called me by name and came up to hug me
affectionately. Not recognizing her, I let her leave without learning
her identity. We must have been together in some other prison, I
thought. Then another woman came over whom I did recognize.
Even though she was terribly thin, I was certain it was Blasa Rojo.
We hugged warmly. We'd known each other for many years.
"And Mari?" I asked, referring to her sister.
"She's over there on her sleeping mat sobbing because you didn't
pay any attention to her."
"Is Mari really here?"
"Yes, you hugged and kissed her, but she says you didn't pay any
attention to her."
"But I didn't recognize her."
I went with Blasa to where their sleeping mats were and for sure, it
was Mari, but who would have known that creature who had been
so darling. But it wasn't only Mari; all the women looked like her.
The prison was a hell hole. We women from Santander looked as if
we'd been eating in a restaurant every day.
From the first day in Amorebieta we had to be lined up and
recounted before breakfast, if you could call a ladle of flavored hot
water breakfast. Later on we were ordered to line up in the patio
with a spoon and plate for another recounting. If someone was
missing the officials went up to see what was wrong with her; if the
woman wasn't running a fever, she was punished for being
absentno mail, no visitors. I remember one poor old woman who
hadn't been down to the patio for several days because she couldn't
stand up. She asked repeatedly if there was any mail for her.
Finally one day they called her name to notify her that she had mail
down below in the patio. One of the other prisoners offered to get
her mail, but the nun in charge insisted the old woman herself go
downstairs.
"So, granny," she asked, "why don't you go down to the patio?"
"Because I can't, sister. I'm so sick I can't stand up."
"Oh, no, you don't have a fever; there's no reason for you to lie
there on your sleeping mat. Do you understand? You've received a
letter and I think there are even photos of your grandchildren in it."
And out she pulled a letter and some photos. "Now," she said, "you
won't get to see your grandchildren or read the letter from your
children." And she tore the letter into four pieces.
That first day in the patio of Amorebieta was terrible for us. We
saw how the women who had been there for some time spent the
whole day just seated next to a wall, too weak from hunger even to
walk around
 Page 87
the patio. The time came for our ration. The food tasted good. We
hadn't had food like that in any other prisontasty and well prepared.
The problem was not with the food but the quantity; the ladle
wasn't of regulation size. After those two spoonfuls I felt hungrier
than before. We spent two days on the watch for what could be
done to improve the prison; we began to talk with the women to
see if they would support a petition for a ladle of regulation size
and to have more than just hot water in the morning. It was difficult
for those women to complain because they were totally cowed, but
at last one morning we succeeded in persuading most of them not
to go near the pot for hot water.
The prison was in an uproar; there were threats, many threats. We
thought a delegation should be named to meet with the director
about a regulation ladle and a better breakfast. Three women went
as delegates; one woman was a lawyer, another had been
imprisoned for her activity in Freemasonry, and the third was one
of the sisters. The director's only reply was to throw them in
solitary confinement. We responded in turn by persuading the
women to refuse all food. So began our hunger strike. The strike
didn't last long because it was just too difficult to sustain it in those
miserable conditions. The director walked through the halls
warning us it wouldn't be hard to put all of us from Santander in
the patio and cut us down with a machine gun. He wouldn't have to
answer for the act. It was clear that the women from Santander
were responsible for stirring up the mess; before our arrival order
and discipline reigned in the prison. Our demand for a ladle of
regulation size was granted, and our delegates were released. But
the food that came with the new ladle was awful, and it wasn't long
before we too were turning yellow.
Not a week went by without one or two women dying of hunger.
No wonder we called that prison "the cemetery of the living." One
day when the woman who had been imprisoned for Freemasonry
was in the patio, she began to feel ill and asked to go to the
infirmary. As she was going up the stairs, a dead woman was being
taken down. The woman swore that she had seen the corpse move
and she yelled right out that it was a crime not to let the woman die
in her bed and to take her away for dead when she was still
breathing. The director punished the woman by sending her to the
"rabbit room." That's what we called the little house at the other
end of the garden where they kept rabbits and chickens. That's also
the place where they stored the corpses until the following day
when someone would come with a box on a wheelbarrow to take
them away. As punishment this woman had to spend the whole
night in that room with the dead woman. The next day after the
body was hauled off and she was brought back to the hall, the
director asked her in the presence of the priest: "Well, did you have
a good night?"
"Yes, very good. You can repeat this punishment whenever you
like.
 Page 88
I was pleased to serve as my companion's family in keeping vigil
over her. I wasn't frightened at all. I enjoyed being with our
companion.''
Then she told us about one of the guards who was passing through
the garden and saw something in the window of the "rabbit room"
move. He thought the corpse had come to life and ran to get
another guard. He didn't know a live woman had been put there for
punishment. The guards told their superiors what had happened and
refused to go near the "rabbit room." The director was so provoked
that he put the woman in solitary confinement again, this time for
fifteen days.
Whenever we saw a companion being taken to the infirmary, we
were sure we wouldn't see her again. There were women in far
worse shape than I, but still my weight had dropped to forty
kilograms. Luckily Elvira and Elena received packages from their
family in Santander and they shared with me as they could, but not
much because they also took care of their own countrywomen who
had no other extra food, as well as the older women and the women
with children.
One day I had a wonderful surprise. I had been corresponding with
the family of the young man I loved who had died with the
International Brigades during the Ebro campaign from July 24 to
November 18, 1938. 1 When his family wrote to friends in
Portugalete that I was in Amorebieta, they came to see me with a
package containing a large loaf of bread filled with fried sardines. I
shared the bread and sardines with my countrywomen who were
most in need. Gloria Nolasco also received packages, from her
mother, but we wouldn't let her give away even one cracker. Gloria
needed extra nourishment because her lungs were diseased and she
often coughed up blood. At night when we were lying on our mats,
she would get up, cover her head and eat chocolate and crackers
and sip milk from a hole she'd made in the can. I'll never forget the
smell of crackers and chocolate; I, too, covered my headto keep
from smelling that delicious food. Gloria and I were in that prison
for seventeen months and I cried from hunger every night when I
smelled crackers and chocolate.
It was painful to see the begging that went on everywhere in the
hall. When someone was about to eat an orange, seven or eight
women would cluster around asking for the rind. Sometimes the
woman would keep the rind to eat later; other times she gave it
away. If she secretly threw it away, someone was always there to
retrieve it from the garbage. The same thing happened with
bananas. I was hungry, but I never begged; my eyes might follow
the woman who was eating a banana or orange, but I never begged.
My friend, Elvira, had the job of delivering packages in
Amorebieta. One day she came up to our room very upset and red
in the face. "I wonder what's happened," she said to her sister,
Elena. "The girl in the
 Page 89
office told me she'd heard my name and something about
Tabacalera when the officials were talking. And there was a letter
they tore up. I know something's happened to my husband. Our
friend in the office promised to retrieve the pieces so we can put
the letter back together."
Elvira's husband was still in Tabacalera under sentence of death. I
don't remember if he was from Torrelavega, but I think so, and I
remember that he lost a hand. At last the woman in the office was
able to collect the pieces of paper; they were so small that it took us
several days to piece them together. At times Elena and I worked
alone. Seated on the sleeping mat with a board and sheet of
transparent paper, we put the letter together piece by piece. As we
were picking up loose words, we realized it was a farewell letter, a
beautiful letter to Elvira from her husband, encouraging her to
continue the fight to liberate our Spain. We found out later that he
had been shot.
I often think about Amalia Morales whom I called my prison sister.
Poor girl, what bad luck she had. She lived under the death penalty
for a long time before it was commuted. We met in the prison at
Santander at a time when her mother and husband already had been
shot. Later she began to correspond with a young man who was in
prison, and after they both were freed, they married. I met her in
Madrid later. She had a little boy and was very happy.
Unfortunately, her husband, a mason by trade, fell while working
on a job and was killed. Someone told me she left the country with
her child, but I don't know for sure. My last memory of Amalia is
an afternoon we spent together in the shack her husband had built
near the Manzanares river in Madrid. She gave me a photo of
herself and her child, which I still have.
Amalia embroidered beautifully, and wherever she was the
opportunity arose for her to work with those hands of hers. Her
embroidery work was so marvelous that it looked like a painting.
The nuns in Amorebieta wanted her to complete a very large order
for table linen to be done with cross stitch and filled with
embroidered pansies. The order included twenty-four place
settings, twenty-four napkins, a table cloth for eight places, and a
tea cloth with six settings and matching napkins. She said that she
couldn't finish such a huge job in the time specified without help.
So I and two girls from Toledo with experience working on fine
Toledan linen were chosen to help Amalia. The nuns put us in a
separate little room because the work was too delicate to be done in
the patio or the hall. The cloth was white, very lovely, and the work
turned out to be truly beautiful, all of the linen filled with pansies
in a rainbow of colors. The four of us spent nearly two months on
the project. During that time our health improved because we
received a double portion at one of the meals. But we also left our
eyes there.
We were paid 1,000 pesetas for our work. I thought it was a fortune
 Page 90
because I had never made more than ten or fifteen pesetas from
time to time doing handwork. As much as we were thrilled to share
in that money, we were furious later when we heard that the
marquis who ordered the linen had paid the nuns 5,000 pesetas.
Following the orders of the doctor at Santander, I would show up at
the infirmary for calcium injections, and once in a while I was
selected. I don't know how it happened but once when they gave
me the injection, I got an infection. Because we had no doctor in
our prison, the doctor from the prison in Bilbao was asked to come
and look at my arm; he never came. When our nurse, a handsome
and courageous Asturian girl, saw how badly swollen and
discolored my arm was, she asked me: "Do you trust me?" I told
her to do what she thought was right.
"Look," she said, "either we make an incision in that arm and drain
all that filth or you'll get gangrene. But I don't have any
anesthesia."
When they opened up my arm, the infection filled up a whole
basin. The nurse had no medication; all she could do was apply
sterilized gauze and change the bandage daily. She managed to heal
the infection. According to her, if she hadn't made the incision and
drained the arm, at the very least I would have lost an arm.
One episode at Amorebieta started as tragedy and ended up a
comedy. A certain mother from Toledo was in prison with two very
young daughters. The husband was free at home taking care of the
younger children. One day the woman was reading a letter from
one of the children and just as she was about to finish the first
page, the words "father has died" jumped out at her. Crumpling up
the letter, the woman gave in to her desperation. She and the little
daughters, the misfortune that had befallen her, her husband dead,
the children alone at home, what was going to happen? All the
women from the area around Toledo and almost all the rest of us
came by to offer words of consolation. That afternoon one of her
friends asked: "Did the children tell you the cause of your
husband's death?"
"Well, I didn't finish reading the letter."
"But, woman, now that you're calmer and recovered from weeping,
read the letter."
The woman opened her hand, smoothed out the letter, and read the
last words "father has died." She turned the page over and read "a
350-pound pig." The letter continued: "We did the slaughtering and
when the sausages are dried, we'll send you a package." Since the
words "ha muerto" could mean either ''has died" or "killed,"
depending on the context, she had assumed the worst.
The conditions in Amorebieta were so harsh that we decided to
send letters to the Ministry of Justice denouncing the prison. And
in fact we did manage to get our letters mailed. In the meantime the
woman lawyer
 Page 91
who had been a delegate during the hunger strike had been released
from prison but before leaving she promised to go to the Ministry
of Justice in Madrid and expose our living conditions. One day
when visitors were allowed, she came back to find out if the
situation had improved as officials at the Ministry had assured her
would happen. We had to answer that we were going from bad to
worse: women still were dying and we were getting skinnier and
skinnier and more and more yellowish. By now I weighed less than
forty kilos. She promised to make yet another trip to Madrid and
insist on improvements. This time we did receive news that they
had paid attention to her: the director of prisons, Carmen de Castro,
was on her way to inspect Amorebieta.
Carmen de Castro and her secretary came in person. Through the
prisoner who worked in the office we found out which day she was
due to arrive and prepared a surprise for her. According to custom
we were lined up in the halls to receive her. In the first row we put
many women she had known in the prisons of Barbastro and
Gerona; the poor women had come into Amorebieta in the same
condition as we had, but now they couldn't even stand up. Some
women were beauticians who used to do Carmen's hair; others had
cleaned her room; others took up her meals; one even prepared her
meals. All these women we placed in the first row. When Carmen
de Castro entered the hall, we had to shout "Franco, Franco,
Franco" and sing hymns"Cara al Sol," the Requete, the national
hymn, and shout "Franco, Franco, Franco." Normally we detested
singing these songs, but this day we sang with real gusto. As
Carmen walked in review, the women called out to her as they had
been prepared: "Doña Carmen, what a pleasure to see you here.''
"Who are you? Do you know me?"
"Yes, of course. Don't you remember me? I'm the one who fixed
your hair, the one who was in Gerona and went up to comb your
hair every day."
Carmen waived her aside with her hand. Then one after another the
women spoke up. Finally Carmen de Castro recognized one of the
women, though she couldn't remember from which prison.
Then she and her secretary inspected the toilets, which were hardly
enough for 800 women, and the wash basins that didn't have
running water. When she turned on a faucet and nothing happened,
she asked: "Why are there so many wash basins if there isn't any
water?"
That day we discovered there was another toilet. The hall was
shaped like a U with two toilets and six basins at one end and
nothing but a door at the other end. We had often seen the
mandatas going in that door, but we didn't know why. When
Carmen de Castro came to the closed door and asked what was
behind it, the mandata said: "I'm not sure but I think it's a toilet."
 Page 92
"Ah, and who uses it?"
"It's always closed."
Carmen kicked the door so hard it almost broke. "I want to see this
toilet open at all times," she said. Highly indignant, she went to the
office and began to give orders and tell them how to run the prison.
She even gave the order that we were to go out to the garden
because the patio, with its high walls and lack of ventilation, was
unhealthy. And when smoke from the kitchen and laundries filled
the patio, we had more smoke than ventilation. In spite of her
orders, all that Carmen de Castro said to the director as she left
was: "Well, look, don't make any changes. I'll handle this myself in
Madrid."
We soon found out what her words meant. Within a few days three
expeditions were named: one for Saturrarán, another for Barbastro,
and the third for Madrid. The women were chosen for Madrid on
the condition that they could sew overalls. Try outs even were held.
As sick as she was, Gloria Nolasco volunteered for the try outs. If
she could just get to Madrid, her mother in Guadalajara would be
able to help her. Daniela Picazo also wanted to go to Madrid to be
near her family. Consuelo Verguizas was among the women left
behind in Amorebieta, but she was freed soon after because she
was a septuagenarian. I passed the test for making overalls.
What I remember most vividly about Amorebieta was the hunger.
Either you swelled up or you were nothing but skin and bones. The
surest thing was death, which came almost daily. Perhaps one day
the archives will reveal the names of the women who got out of
prison only by leaving the "rabbit room" in a wheelbarrow. One
thing I do know for certain: Amorebieta deserved its
name"cemetery of the living."
How many living dead there were at Amorebieta, I don't know. But
from the hundreds who suffered in that "cemetery" I offer this
testimony by Pilar Pascual Martínez, who was not a Communist
but a Socialist.
 Page 93

Chapter 11
The Socialist: Pilar Pascual Martínez at Amorebieta
Years later, in 1976, a year after Franco died, we returned home to
Spain with legal status. At the Christmas holidays in 1977 we
received telephone calls, letters, and some bottles of good wine
from Yecla in the province of Murcia in southern Spain. They had
been sent by a comrade living in Barcelona. One day this comrade
came to visit us along with another man from the town. This other
man turned out to be the son of my friend, Pilar Pascual. He
encouraged me to go to Yecla to speak with his mother for he was
sure that she would be delighted to give her testimony. I go to Yecla
in 1978 and I find Pilar just fine, living with her daughter and
family. I spend two very pleasant days with Pilar and her children,
and this is the testimony she gives me.
My name is Pilar Pascual Martínez and I'm from Yecla in the
province of Murcia. I joined the Socialist Youth when I was eleven
or twelve years old, before it merged with the Communist Youth.
I've been active in the party since then. I was arrested on March 30,
1939, taken first to the commander's office and then to the Court of
Justice. There were at least thirty of us together from Yecla. At
three o'clock in the morning they moved us to the prison for
women. Two days later I was led to the Court of Justice to make a
statement, one soldier walking in front of me, the other behind,
both with guns.
The first question they asked was: "Are you the one who wrote the
article in the newspaper?"
I had no idea what they meant. "No, that's not true."
"Yes, it is," they answered. "Do you want us to show it to you?"
"If you want. What importance can that article have? It was simply
a defense of humanity. I didn't offend anyone."
No response. Then the judge came in and began to take my
statement. I told him I'd only answer questions about my activities
and not what other people had done.
"All right," he said, "take her away. Tomorrow we'll see what's to
be done with her."
 Page 94
After a few days I was taken out at three in the morning to make a
statement to some men who probably were from Yecla, though I
didn't recognize them. I repeated: "Ask me about my activities;
don't ask me anything else because I know nothing." When they
got tired of questioning me, they said: "Okay, take her out to the
little hill tomorrow and put four shots in her and be done with her."
I acted as if nothing bothered me. "What? You're not shedding a
single tear? Don't you have children?''
"I have two."
"Aren't you even going to cry for them?"
"When you have a clear conscience, there's nothing to cry about."
"Back to prison with her."
For thirteen days they kept me in a cell with only four little fingers
of light and space for just one body. I couldn't sleep because there
wasn't room enough to lie down. When they took me out after
thirteen days, I was half dead. Again I was to make a statement.
My answer was always the same: "Just ask me about my activities.
I've been president of a women's group and I've helped with artistic
stagings for young people. But don't ask me about anything else."
"You mean you don't know so and so or such and such?"
"No, sir, I don't. I was only active with the women."
On June 13 they transferred me with a group of women to the
prison at Murcia where some forty or fifty of us were confined in a
very small area. From there I left for a military tribunal. I wasn't
beaten but they did insult me verbally. And of course those thirteen
days in the prison cell had been a kind of torture. Like everyone
who went to the military tribunal, I came back sentenced to death. I
lived for five long months under the death penalty. Finally one
other woman and I had the penalty commuted, but we were the
only ones out of that group.
I managed to have the death penalty commuted because none of the
accusations against me was signed. The lawyer who met with me
before I appeared at the tribunal assured me my chances for
commutation were good. Ah, those accusationseverything the town
gossips wanted to say but no one would sign! Imagine thisthey
accused me of killing the mayor's cat. Obviously my accusers were
running out of charges.
One day during the war when my sister and I worked in the
hospital, we noticed on our way to work a crowd of maybe 300 or
400 people angrily heading for the old folks home run by the nuns.
When they got to the door of the home, I was already there.
"Well, where are you going?" I asked.
"We're here to evict the nuns."
"Look, most of all you need to have trustworthy women who'll
treat the old people well. If there are problems, there are
committees to
 Page 95
handle them. The people on the committees are the right ones to
decide if the nuns must leave."
That evening we had a meeting with the appropriate committee and
the people; the nuns were allowed to remain because the committee
knew they were good with the old people. Every day I went to see
those nuns, and they always treated the old people well. In those
days the nuns weren't allowed to wear their habits; they wore the
ordinary clothing of country folk. When Yecla fell to Franco's
forces and the townspeople wanted to have me executed, those
nuns spoke to the prison officials in my defense.
So the lawyer succeeded in defending me because of unsigned
denunciations and witnesses, especially the nuns, who testified for
me. I even have a copy of my proceedings that one of the prisoners
who worked in the office was able to make.
About forty of us women were taken by train from the Murcia
prison to Amorebieta. We had a sympathetic Civil Guard who
bought us bread with the money he had been given for his own
food. That night we stayed in the Ventas prison at Madrid and the
next morning left from the North station. We were about to climb
into a car used for transporting pigs when we heard a voice say:
"Don't squeeze in here; we've had to do our business in that corner
because there's no other place." There were other women prisoners
in that car. When the guard climbed in to check the condition of the
car, he was thoroughly disgusted. "If you give me your word not to
move from here," he said ''I'll take you to a heated mail car." Of
course, the guard was looking out for himself so he wouldn't have
to travel with us in that horrid car. "We give you our word," we
replied. "We won't move from here." I don't know where the guard
went, probably to get authorization from his superiors and the
station masters, but we were transferred to the other car.
The next day we reached Amorebieta. It was the Christmas season
of 19391940. As we got off the train, accompanied by the Civil
Guard, some little kids came up to look at us. I heard one of them
say: "Hey, they told us there were prisoners but look, they're just
women."
The first day we had a big hunk of bread and a plate of food at
noon. After that, nothing for three days. By that time we were so
weak we could hardly get up from our sleeping mats. At the word
food no one could even more. Then the director showed up. I have
his image nailed in the retina of my eye: a fat character, dressed in
black. He planted himself at the door and yelled: "Don't you want
to get your food? There's nothing else. Now let me tell you
something. I'm going to put a machine gun here right this minute
and not one of you will be left alive. One signature on a piece of
paper and it's over for all of you."
When the prison of Amorebieta was closed, some of us were trans-
 Page 96
ferred to Madrid to work in the shops at the Ventas prison making
overalls. My release from prison life happened this way. It was the
feast of the Ascension and they called us earlier than usual so we
would have time to attend mass. I refused to get up. The woman we
called "Aunt Poison" came for me.
"Are you the one who's not getting up?"
"I don't feel well today."
"Well, as soon as the doctor gets here, you have to go."
When all the women left for mass, I got up and dressed. I was just
finishing rolling up the sleeping mat when I heard the call: "Pilar
Pascual."
"I'm here, who's calling me?"
"There's a letter for you."
Since the usual punishment for not attending mass was to tear up
any mail you might have received, I answered: "I don't know how
you're going to give me the letter when you know I didn't go to
mass."
"Come out."
As I went out, some of my companions said: "You're going free."
"Don't waste your jokes on me," I snapped. "I don't like it."
"But it's true."
When I reached the iron grating, the director was standing there.
"Good day, what's your name?"
"Pilar Pascual Martínez."
"And your parents' names?"
"Lucas Pascual Gil and Juliana Martínez García."
"All right, go back to your cell and get ready. You're going free."
My cell matesthere were seven of uspacked my suitcase and helped
me get everything ready. Singing, they followed me as I left. I'll
never forget it. "Good-bye," I said with my heart, too filled with
emotion to say anything with my lips. When I reached the prison
door with my suitcase and purse, I asked myself: "Where am I
going? I've never been in Madrid before." Then I remembered a
girl from Madrid who'd been with me in Amorebieta before her
release. "If you get out some day," she'd said, "go to such and such
a street and ask for María Dorado."
So I went to the address and yes, I found María. She went with me
to another address I had, that of Pili's mother. At her home I was
able to telephone my children in Yecla. When they heard my voice,
they shouted with joy: "When are you coming home, Mommy?"
"As soon as I get my papers tomorrow."
My son and daughter were waiting for me when I arrived home in
Yecla. Since my husband had died before the war, my children had
been without a mother and father for years. Thank goodness I had
very kind sisters who took them in.
 Page 97
Life in Yecla was hard for me after I got out of prison. I took
whatever work I could find to support my family. And I had to
endure gossip that was still going around about me. One rumor was
that I had had a child in prison. That rumor got started because one
night when I had been taken out to make a statement, I was put in a
room with fourteen or fifteen men and had to spend the night there.
What a terrible rumor when those men were such good and
generous companions! The only place to sit or rest was on a stone
bench, which the men insisted was for me. Even today, so many
years later, people talk about me behind my back. I know. I see
them looking at me and murmuring. But I take comfort in what our
Prime Minister Largo Caballero once said: "When people look at
us it's because we are interesting; we make them uncomfortable."
While I am with Pilar we go to eat in a bar; we have toasted bread
with anchovies, wine, and a coffee. We reminisce about the good
times and the bad and relive the hunger and misery of Amorebieta,
feeling once again the fury and impotence that had filled our days
in that prison. We visit the park and end up having a snack in a
bar-restaurant that served as a prison long ago. This is the first
time Pilar has been in the bar since she was detained there in April
of 1939.
In 1981 I learned that Pilar had been hit by a car in a street in
Valencia. I attended her funeral.
 Page 99

Chapter 12
Solidarity and Compassion: Ventas and Segovia
19431944
We arrived at Ventas after three days of travel. At first we were
thrown in with black marketeers, thieves, and women of the street.
There was the usual coming and going of the prostitutes who paid
their fines right away. During the first days we women from
Amorebieta were scattered around the room wherever we could
find a spot, but little by little we found room together.
After twenty days in what can only be called a dungeon we women
who had been selected to work in the shop were transferred to the
first gallery on the right. Unfortunately, work in the shop lasted no
more than a few months, thanks to the maneuverings of Mother
Serafines. That woman was a fascist through and through. She
hated Communists. She would go over the records of all the
recently arrived women to identify the Communists; then she
isolated us in the third gallery to the right and denied us work in the
shop.
The prison at Ventas was different from the others where I'd been.
Perhaps the reason was that Ventas was located in the center of
Spain, in Madrid, while the others were far away and out of
political contact. In Ventas there was a true sense of community
that bolstered morale for all of us, and especially for the little old
women. This solidarity was the consequence of political
organization rather than a reaction to a particular condition such as
the scarcity of food in Amorebieta. Another difference between
Ventas and other prisons is that we knew what was happening
outside; we received almost daily news about the war on the
various fronts. We were convinced, foolish women, that we would
be released when the allies won the war and fascism ended.
It was interesting to see two tendencies develop in the party; one
reflected politics of the party outside of Spain, the other, politics
within the country. Coming from prisons in the north where the
party was not officially organized, I was unable to give opinions on
issues of the day. But I remember the heated discussions about the
position of Heriberto Quiñones who advocated party leadership
from within Spain and a national union to include Republicans and
even Monarchists. But his
 Page 100
ideas were opposed by the party leadership in exile. And I
remember how divisive the issues raised by Quiñones were. 1 What
I see clearly today is that the party itself was not free of
sectarianism and that comrades suffered recriminations. I believe
that regardless of their political opinions within the party, our
comrades who gave their lives before an execution squad or in the
dungeons of police stations deserve reconsideration and
rehabilitation.
Friendship continued to be precious to me in Ventas. Friends like
Gloria Nolasco and Daniela Picazo had come with me from
Amorebieta. Gloria Nolasco was dying of tuberculosis. We knew
that in Amorebieta when she vomited blood and fainted. In Ventas
they put her in the infirmary, but except for occasional calcium
injections she received no medical treatment. Much later, after I
had been transferred to Segovia, I found out that she had vomited a
great amount of blood during a visit with her mother. Desperate
and almost crazy with concern for Gloria, her mother personally
went to the Ministry of Justice, screaming for them to listen to her.
Eventually she got a hearing and as a result Gloria was examined.
The doctors concluded that she had only days to live. The mother
managed to take her daughter home in an ambulance where she
remained in policy custody. She died a few days later with her
mother, a mother whose courage freed her dying daughter from
Ventas.
Daniela Picazo, the woman from Guadalajara I called "aunt," was
close to eighty years old; she lived in the gallery where all the old
womenand there were many of themwere kept. I visited her twice a
week, washing her clothes and writing letters for her, which the old
woman couldn't do because her hand was partially paralyzed. I also
used the opportunity to lift the spirits of the other old women by
telling them about allied advances and assuring them the war was
soon to end with the defeat of Germany and fascism. We
exaggerated the news sometimes to give our older friends a few
moments of hope and happiness.
Among my new friends were the Alicias, so named because both
the mother and daughter were called Alicia. Their family had been
a comfortable one: Alicia's husband was a fine dentist. The couple
had three children, two boys, one a dentist and the other a medical
doctor, and the girl. The daughter had grown up to be very delicate,
with a small defect in her spinal column; she had always been
cared for by this closely knit family. In the summer of 1936 the
mother and three children had gone on vacation to La Granja, I
think, that little town where well-off families from Madrid and the
environs vacationed in the summer. The father had had to stay in
Madrid working. The uprising caught the mother and children in
La Granja. The boys, who had belonged to the Communist Party
for some time, were arrested by the fascists after they fought with
 Page 101
the local people in defense of the Republic. Alicia the mother was
also arrested; Alicia the daughter was detained for twenty-four
hours. When she couldn't get back, she stayed on with friends in La
Granja.
The girl was able to see her brothers in prison and she knew they
were being brutally tortured. Knowing that death was imminent,
the brothers made her promise not to say anything to their mother.
They didn't want their mother to suffer knowing that her sons were
dead. Alicia the daughter was arrested again, this time in Segovia
in 1938, and after being sent to several prisons she was tried in
Madrid in 1940 and confined in prison until her release in 1941.
The mother and daughter were separated until the parents were
united; then the three were arrested again in 1943. All this time
Alicia the mother was unaware that her sons had been executed.
Alicia the daughter suffered intensely when her mother spoke about
what good sons she had and how she would see them when the war
in Europe ended, provided they hadn't been killed. At times the
daughter would get up and go to the cells of friends to avoid
hearing her mother talk about her sons fighting some place or
living in exile.
The Alicias still hadn't been tried. When Mother Serafines broke up
what she called the "gallery of the Communist Party" by sending
the women to different prisons throughout Spain, the Alicias were
judged and sent to Barcelona. I don't remember if the sentence was
for twelve years, but I know that later, in 1945, I met the two of
them in the prison of Barcelona where I recalled a charming story
about our stay in Ventas. The moment they caught sight of me in
Barcelona, Alicia the mother said: "You see? You see now what I
told you about the Germans not ever winning the war?"
This is the story. I don't know where she got it, but Alicia the
mother had a map of Europe that showed the advances of the allies.
One day I said to her: "Alicia, why don't you show the advances of
the Germans?"
"Because the Germans aren't going to win the war. Why would I
want to mark the advances if I just have to erase them later?"
Her answer amused me, so later when I met her in the gallery in
Barcelona I asked: "Alicia, what marks have you put down? What
advances have been made?"
"Well, well, life goes on!"
"But have you put down any marks or not?"
Then she realized what I meant.
"Look, get along with you girl, go take a walk. I'm too old for you
to pull my leg."
We got along very well and I liked her a lot because she was a
warm, affectionate woman, always hanging around us younger
ones.
 Page 102
"I'm not very worried about having to spend these years in prison,"
she would say, "but for you, so much younger than I, to spend the
best years of your life locked up, that does cause me pain."
Many years later I met Alicia the mother for the third time.
Our famous Communist leader, Dolores Ibarurri, dedicated these
words to Alicia the mother: "Alicia Martínez... how many
emotional memories this name evokes. On one occasion she said
that memory may fail but the heart never will. And the name of this
extraordinary family is profoundly etched in my memory. I hadn't
met them yet when one day in the prison for women in Madrid I
was summoned to the room for visitors. A woman with an eight- or
nine-year-old girl was there to visit me, me a prisoner whom they
personally did not know but whom they esteemed because her
sons, Wilfredo and Daniel, who were later shot by Francoism, had
spoken about me. Not once in the long months of my incarceration
did this marvelous woman fail to visit me. At the time I could not
imagine that that admirable woman, the wife of one of the finest
odontologists in Madrid, Daniel Martínez, would have to suffer the
terrible Calvary to which Francoism would condemn her as the
mother of two young Communist men. It is difficult to evoke, with
deepest emotion, the life and fate of this exemplary family who
sacrificed everything defending the cause of democracy and
socialism."
In Ventas I was able to write my family and have visits from them
because they lived nearby. I remember that only my mother and
brother came at first. When I asked them about my father and
sister, they explained that the whole family couldn't afford to come
at the same time and that my father and sister would come the next
visiting day. I thought it was strange that my father hadn't come
first, but I didn't give the matter too much thought. Gloria, too, had
a visitorher mother. After the visit Gloria came up to see me.
"How's your family?" I asked her. "How is everyone? How's the
child?"
"Well, the child is very handsome, but listen, TomasaMother says
your father died two years ago."
The news chilled me. I put my head in my hands. I don't know how
much time passed. I only know that when the meal came I realized
I hadn't opened my mouth or cried. My companions looked at me
pensively, feeling my pain; clearly they were concerned about how
I would react. But I got my food ration and then, as if nothing had
happened, ate it up as I did every day. There was no taking back
my father's death. What else could I do except resign myself to the
fact?
To me my father wasn't just a father; he was a friend and a
companion. He had been a strong man; I'd never seen him sick.
The two times he was confined to bed were due to accidents. When
the war
 Page 103
ended he suffered terribly. First they threw him out of work merely
because he had let a daughter become a Communist. I didn't feel
responsible for his death. He agreed with my thinking. But that
business of spending hour upon hour at the prison door, going to
the cemetery walls every morning, seeing his neighbors arrested,
friends he'd known since we had come to Guadalajara, all that
undid him, nothing else. He was one more victim of Francoism.
Mother Serafines was intent on making life impossible for the
Communists in the third gallery to the right. But she didn't succeed
in breaking us, which was her objective. Our morale remained
high. So she decided to break up that nucleus of Communists by
dispersing the women to other prisons. Since I was taking a series
of calcium injections because my health was so poor, I was chosen
for the prison at Segovia where one pavilion had been equipped for
tubercular prisoners.
It was almost night when we reached Segovia and snowing so
heavily that we couldn't manage our sleeping mats and had to leave
them at the station. By the time we reached the prison it was late at
night and the snow was up to our knees. They put us in a pavilion
with no lights or blankets. When we tried to stretch out a little on
the floor, we realized the place was nearly flooded with water.
Hungry and cold, we huddled together in one corner of the
pavilion. When it began to get light we understood what was going
on with the water: after the tubercular prisoners vacated that room,
handfuls of lime had been thrown on the floor and left there
puddled with water. We were obliged to clean the floor in the
morning, but first there was the compulsory sermon. Our sleeping
mats arrived in the morning, but we weren't allowed to rest until
night in accordance with the prison schedule. Two days later the
medical examinations began. Granted a woman here or there was
shown from the X-rays to have tuberculosis, but the majority of us
were there at the whim of Mother Serafines.
Not many days elapsed, however, before sick women from other
prisons came to this place that officially had been named the Anti-
Tuberculosis Penal Sanatorium for women. We were astonished to
see them bring in little beds for our room; what a stupendous night
we spent sleeping in a bed after such a long time sleeping on the
floor. But the treat lasted only a short time. When the doctor began
to examine the sick women, more rooms had to be equipped. If we
weren't sick, we were separated, leaving the beds for the sick
women. Once again I found myself sleeping on the floor.
For the first time during all the years I'd been in prison I met a
religious woman who was truly religious and humane. An older
woman, probably more than seventy years old, Sor Juliana's
concern for us was evident from the first moment. She would say
to us: "Poor women, how
 Page 104
much you are missed at home if your husbands are in prison and
you have little ones with no one to care for them, poor children
abandoned to the mercy of second families or hospices." She was
genuinely sorry for us, and she expressed her sorrow to make us
understand that she was on our side and that she truly regretted our
captivity. Sor Juliana actually put us in contact with the men
prisoners. In the pockets of her habit she brought us news from our
male comrades, news about the course of the war and even material
from the party. I don't know how Sor Juliana managed it, but in the
comings and goings of the doctor from our prison to the men's
prison in Cuellar, something for us women always appeared. I don't
believe the doctor collaborated with the nun but inadvertently he
became the special messenger between the men and us women. We
came to hold Sor Juliana in very high esteem.
One of the girls in our room became seriously ill with meningitis
and other complications. The doctor advised the priest that the girl,
who was only seventeen or eighteen years old, was near death.
When the priest tried to administer the sacrament for the dying, she
refused to let him even near her bed. She hadn't done anything, she
said, and besides, the priest in her village had killed her older
brother and father, her mother was in another prison, and the
younger children were with other family members.
"You're all assassins," she shouted. "You killed my family and
destroyed our home."
The Mother Superior was an evil woman. When she saw that the
girl refused to confess and was insulting the priest, this nun refused
to administer the prescribed medication and treatment. Because the
sick girl was burning up with fever, the doctor had told them to put
a rubber bag filled with ice on her head; neither the bag nor the ice
appeared. At that time there was some construction going on in one
part of the prison and the workers came from outside the prison.
Sor Juliana took the risk of speaking with some of the workers
about bringing in medicine, which they did. Hiding in the toilet we
heated a little syringe in a can used for condensed milk and gave
injections of medicine that those men at great risk brought from the
town pharmacy and gave to Sor Juliana. It was very cold, and in
the mornings the little puddles in the garden would be frozen over.
Sor Juliana would go out for pieces of ice, put them in rags and
then place them on the girl's head. But the girl's fever was so high
the ice melted immediately. At last Sor Juliana dared to ask a
worker to buy a rubber bag.
The poor boy Sor Juliana turned to for help thought it was an
emergency and he was to bring the bag as soon as possible. So
right after work he brought the bag to the prison door and asked to
have it delivered to Sor Juliana. Sor Juliana realized she had been
discovered. Right
 Page 105
there, in front of the workers and prisoners, the Mother Superior
and the prison director tried to find out who in our room had
ordered a bag that wasn't officially authorized. Sor Juliana
defended the boy, who by this time was under arrest; she said he
was not to blame because she was the one who had asked him to
get the bag and had not told him the purchase was unauthorized.
The proof of his innocence was that no sooner had he left work
than he brought the bag to the front entrance and asked the portress
to give it to Sor Juliana. Her words saved the boy from jail though
not from losing his job.
When we saw that Sor Juliana was going to be severely
punishedthe way the superior threatened her in front of the
prisoners was shameful, not acting like a religious woman at all but
like some old hagall of us together, forty or more of us in that
room, said it wasn't true, that we were the ones responsible, that we
had secretly undertaken the plan, that Sor Juliana had absolutely
nothing to do with us. When the officials began to gather names in
order to try us for illegal activity inside the prison, Sor Juliana
swore before God that our story wasn't true; that the prisoners
wanted to come out in her defense but that she was really the one
responsible because she didn't want the girl to die without being in
a state of grace; that she had acted as the Catholic and religious
woman she was; and they could do what they wanted with her but
we women and the boy weren't to blame.
The matter didn't go beyond this. What the officials didn't discover
is that the medicine was coming in with another worker who was
more clever and devious than the first boy. And we were saving the
girl. Naturally the officials thought it was a miracle that she was
improving without medication. How shameful it was to see the
priest bothering her every day to confess and how heroic the young
girl was to maintain her position that she wouldn't confess. We
were proud to be able to save her.
Yes, they did punish Sor Juliana. They sent her to the laundry to
wash the clothing of infected people. But that woman didn't wash
clothes. We fixed up a little brazier for her by putting some embers
in a can that some friends brought in from the kitchen. That way
she stayed a little warm while she sat in the corner of the laundry.
Some of the women kept watch in a corridor outside the room
while others of us took turns washing the clothing. We couldn't let
that woman who was already elderly and who had risked
everything to save our friend's life have her hands stuck in water
that was so cold it froze you to the heart.
One day when Sor Juliana was in the laundry watching us wash
clothes for her, she said: "I don't know if I'm condemning myself or
winning heaven, but I must ask your help. I have committed
robbery."
 Page 106
We stopped and stared at her.
''Calm down; nothing will happen."
Sor Juliana explained her robbery. She had accompanied some sick
prisoners to the tuberculosis sanatorium for prisoners in Cuellar.
Some of the men, she told us, didn't even have underwear, so she'd
taken advantage of her transfer to the laundry to have some sheets
disappear from the closet. Since the sheets already had been
recounted, she couldn't replace them.
"What am I to do?"
"We'll make the underwear," we offered.
"Thank you, my daughters, that's what I wanted to ask you.
Sending them will be my job."
Of all the nuns we knew in the prisons, Sor Juliana was the only
one who reached out with compassion to help the prisoners.
Meanwhile decrees were being issued, sentencing people to maybe
six years or six years and one day or twelve years or twelve and
one. I was given thirty years and then proposed as a candidate for
release. When I signed my release papers, I found out that the
sentence had been revised to twenty years. The conditions of my
freedom were the following: they asked for three reports from my
home areaone from the Falange, one from the Civil Guard, and one
from a neighbor. With three good reports, I could go home; with
two good ones, I would be exiled three hundred kilometers from
the place of arrest and trial; with one good report, I would be
denied freedom. This was the usual procedure for all prisoners. If
no good reports were sent after three months of initially sending
the telegram to a prisoner's home area, the administrative council
of the prison could propose you for release to the Ministry of
Justice and the Ministry could grant you freedom or not. At least a
prisoner had the right to another request for release. In my case two
good reports were sent; therefore, I was to be set free, but with
exile. So my name was for-warded to the Ministry of Justice.
During my five years in prison all my clothes and shoes had worn
out. My friends from Portugalete had sent me some rather good-
looking slippers that looked like little shoes; I'd kept these to wear
when I went free. But I didn't have a decent dress to wear. So
Gloria Cueto, who was in charge of the showers, and I came up
with a plan. Since it was spring we were using light-weight
blankets. One of those blankets happened to disappear. Gloria
secretly dyed the blanket using hot water in the showers, and the
two of us made a presentable dress. I wore that dress when I left
prison, exiled to a strange city. Where and how I would find
support in Barcelona, I didn't know, but I was ready to move ahead.
 Page 107
With Ventas and Segovia this part of my prison odyssey ended. But
my prison days weren't over. Clandestine work for the party was to
be dangerous and bring its share of horror in police headquarters
and prisons. But for now, those times in Ventas and Segovia bring
to mind friends like Josefina Amalia Villa and Antonia García who
give us their testimonies.
 Page 109

Chapter 13
Reflections on Prison Life for Women: Josefina
Amalia Villa at Ventas and Segovia
In the prison of Ventas in Madrid, during the years 19431944, I met
Josefina Amalia Villa, a great comrade and friend. She was always
a model Communist; proud and rebellious, she showed impressive
dignity before her enemies. At times she paid dearly for her dignity.
It was through another old friend from prison that I renewed
friendship and contact with Josefina. This is how it happened. In
1961, eighteen years after our stay in Ventas, I went to Burgos to
visit my husband who was imprisoned there. There I happened to
meet Manoli, this old friend I mentioned. Manoli was also in
Burgos to visit her husband in prison. I immediately recognized her
Basque face. It turned out that Manoli had kept in touch with
Josefina in Madrid and knew where she lived. Later, in 1978, when
I was visiting Manoli in Madrid, she invited Josefina to have coffee
with us.
I use this opportunity to take her testimony. At this time she lives
alone with her two big dogs. She uses a cane and takes the dogs
out for a walk in a nearby park. Like many other companions, we
know what Josefina suffered, how they tortured her in the
government dungeons, but she doesn't want to talk about that. The
following is the testimony she gives me.
Before I speak about my experiences in Ventas and Segovia, I
would like to explain that prison life for women was no different
than for men. When a woman was arrested, she was treated the
same as if she were a man; she ran the same risks as the men.
Because only older women and children remained at home, the
arrested woman could expect no help from outside. In the first
period of arrests at the end of the war, women and men were
denounced and convicted for absolutely everything and anything. It
was enough for someone, anyonea neighbor, a colleague
 Page 110
at work, a widow or the relative of a person killed by the
"Reds"simply to appear at the police station or the Civil Guard or
Falange head-quarters and denounce a person. That denouncer
might not have any specific ideas about the beliefs or actions of the
woman for her to be arrested, tortured, and left to rot in jail.
How she fared later depended on chance. If the denouncer persisted
and if reports gathered in the neighborhoodwhich were always
sought from people on the rightconfirmed not the act but merely
the ideas of the woman being denounced or even of her family,
most certainly she would have to appear before a military tribunal
made up of military personnel without any particular legal training.
The defense attorney was often some obscure law clerk that the
prisoner saw for the first time when she appeared before the
tribunal. His participation was usually so pathetic that the most you
could hope for was that he wouldn't be confused with the
prosecutor for what he said. Then it was back to jail to wait. Most
of the time people returned to jail without knowing what they had
been asked or what the sentence was. It happened in several cases
that a woman wouldn't realize she had been condemned to death
until she found herself in the gallery reserved for women awaiting
execution by shooting. By the way, I don't know any cases of
execution by garrote vil among the women executed in Madrid.
There is compelling evidence that convictions were arbitrary and
excessive. When the government began to review the cases of
women with the death penalty, all of the sentences were commuted
for lack of sufficient cause. Obviously, there was no chance of
review for the women who'd already been shot.
Normally women stayed in prison for four to six years for
problems arising during the war, but women condemned to thirty
years or whose death penalty had been commuted spent far longer
in prison, between twelve and eighteen years. With respect to the
women arrested for postwar activities against the government, they
all knew that their clandestine work would incur exceedingly harsh
sentences. That's why their mental attitude was different. Women
denounced for wartime activities had the illusion of being treated
justly, but women arrested later didn't expect justice or mercy.
Women who had done no more than act as messengers, without
even knowing the content of the letters that passed through their
hands, these women were sentenced to as many as twenty years or
even to death.
Another pain that sharpened with the years was seeing our youth
pass by, a youth that in many cases had scarcely been lived at all.
How sad it is for a woman to be aging and to know instinctively
that she disappears as a woman when she ceases to be desirable. I
saw a woman about to go free after ten years in prison weeping
with uncontrollable
 Page 111
bitterness; she realized that menopause had deprived her of the
desire and hope to have children. But it doesn't do a woman much
good to think about how she is to realize herself as a human being.
For such a plan to have a real content she must have choice in her
life; she must be able to choose her role and not have it imposed on
her in some implacable form.
It wasn't only the tenacious struggle to survive that dehumanized us
as women. There were the close quarters, the uninhabitable
conditions, the impossibility of having a single minute to yourself,
the lack of mental stimulus.
Ventas was a new building with red bricks and white-washed walls.
Originally its six galleries held fifteen individual cells with large
barred windows and a good-sized room with wash basins, showers,
and toilets. There were workshops, a school, stores in the
basement, two infirmaries, and a pavilion for public functions that
was turned into a chapel. Each cell held a bed, a small wardrobe, a
table, and chair. In 1939 there were eleven or twelve women in
each cell and no furniture at all. There were mats or straw
mattresses for the women and nothing more. All trace of the
original purpose of the rooms had disappeared. The place had been
transformed into a gigantic storehouse, a storehouse of women
without food, water, or sanitary assistance. How could they provide
meals twice a day to the many thousands of women heaped in there
when the kitchen had been designed for a maximum of 500 people?
When the expeditions to the prisons slowed down and the number
of prisoners decreased, they organized the school and workshop.
Still, there were beds only in the infirmaries and the wider areas of
the gallery where the old women gathered. The school and shop
eventually lent a kind of rhythm to life, but at the bottom of
everything hunger still lurked. And even though the offensive
smells that characterized prison life in 1939 and 1940 gradually
went away with the zeal for cleanliness, the vague smell of people
not well enough washed, of cold food, and of disinfectant lingered.
During my imprisonment in Ventas there was no intellectual
stimulation at all. Books were nonexistent. The prison library had
suffered attack by successors to the Inquisitor Torquemada. 1
Among the books they burned were the Episodios nacionales by
the nineteenth-century novelist, Benito Perez Galdós.2 Nothing
more need be said about the ruling state of mind. But, of course,
there was no room to hold books in that crowded prison, nor any
place where we could organize classes or people to teach.
Truthfully, we were too hungry and too cold to find the energy for
study.
I want to pay homage to the first gallery to the right that held the
women condemned to death. Here Matilde Landa, herself
condemned to
 Page 112
death, struggled with a group of courageous companions to help,
within the bounds of military law, the some 189 women who
occupied the socalled gallery of death. Matilda was a well-educated
woman with connections to the director of the prison, Carmen de
Castro. Matilde's father had been one of the founders of the Free
Institution of Education in 1876, 3 and Carmen had been a student
there. So Matilde asked the director for permission to set up an
office in the gallery for the purpose of preparing formal requests
for review of cases. The director gave her a cell for an office and
typewriters that she and the prisoners who helped her could use.
As soon as a condemned woman arrived, Matilde would advise her
of her rights and make a request for review according to the laws of
the Republic, which Franco had not abolished. Of course no judge
dared utilize these laws and the military tribunals simply
disregarded them. But Matilde did see the possibility of recourse.
And it is true that she saved many women from the firing squad.
Matilde also inspired hope in the condemned women and their
families. After all, of what use were lawyers? We only saw them at
the trial and then they were useless; sometimes they even pointed
out things that hadn't occurred to the prosecutor.
Matilde also succeeded in getting permission for the prisoners to
see visitors face to face rather than through bars. Visiting hours
were from eight to half past eight in the morning. Matilde prepared
the requests for visits and told the families where to go and what
they must do. What comfort it was for families to be able to visit a
loved one condemned to death, something that was not possible in
any other prison, only in Ventas. Yes, Matilde was a great woman.
But I think she came to a strange end.
In the early years we had little information from the outside world,
but we did know about and discuss the problem of the German-
Soviet pact. Paradoxically, World War II helped us organize; we
managed to get propaganda and study material, which gave the
women a clearer idea of events and created a close connection
between us and the outside organization. We became aware that in
spite of their discontent people outside continued to mobilize
themselves and maintain their sense of struggle and indomitable
fighting. Regardless of desertions, personality conflicts, and
personal ambitionsand there were many of themthe spirit of
struggle and self-denial was kept alive.
I had been transferred to Amorebieta by the time World War II
ended. What emotion we felt on hearing about the liberation of
Paris and the end of the war! What emotion there was in
Amorebieta, where we lacked all human contact with the outside,
when the director, who was a good person, had us lined up to hear
the news that the Soviet troops had entered Berlin and a peace
treaty had been signed in Europe!
 Page 113
Fearing the reaction of the oblate nuns, who were ferocious
functionaries in the prison, the director ingeniously asked us to
pray the "Our Father" for those who had fallen on both sides.
When we learned in Amorebieta that Franco's position had been
consolidated by international support, all of us women, whatever
our party, felt a heavy weight on our hearts. We knew that we
would have to complete our sentences unless there were changes
inside Spain. But we also thought that the foreign governments
supporting Franco would do what they could to see that he lived up
to his name as the so-called sentinel of Christian civilization.
From Amorebieta I was sent to Segovia, which was a central
prison. Here they managed to have books available, usually simple
novels that the priest carefully censored and some work or other of
history. At least we could read in groups while our hands were
busy with the endless needlework that brought in a little money to
buy toothpaste, cotton for sanitary purposesthough many young
women didn't menstruate because of their hungerstamps so we
wouldn't lose contact with our families, who were the only ones
authorized to write us, and a little food, poor in quality and high in
price, which turned out to benefit the prison officials more than the
prisoners.
The situation in Segovia was very tense, however. The living
conditions were impossible. Then suddenly on January 16, 1948,
we were informed that the office was expecting the imminent
arrival of a Chilean woman who was writing a thesis on penal
systems throughout the world. This woman had friends among
Spanish intellectuals in exile, and apparently there had been
discussion about whether the spirit of Don Quixote 4 was still alive
in Spain and whether the Spanish people truly accepted Franco's
regime. The exiles had told her: "Try to see the prisons. You will
discover how many quixotic spirits there are in Spain."
When the woman came to Spain, she presented the authorities with
evidence of her visits to facilities in other countries and asked to
visit women's prisons in particular. The Ministry granted her
permission to visit one prison for an entire day and to talk with the
prisoners without interference from the officials.
We found out that she was due to arrive because on that day they
gave us sheets, which of course we never had, cleaned up the
infirmary, and even took off the bedspreads that hadn't been
washed for months. The authorities tried to give us uniforms, but
we refused them; the sheets we took, thinking, "Man, these are
ours." We didn't believe that the visitor would be allowed to spend
the entire day with us so we agreed to have a spokeswoman ready
in each room to answer the woman's questions. We tried to have
well-educated women like lawyers and professors set to speak for
us.
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But the visitor didn't come alone; the prison officials, the doctor,
and the priest were with her. First she was taken to the hall for
common criminals, then to the area that held the old women; the
functionaries wanted to convince her that the rest of the prison was
the same, but she insisted on seeing the other halls where the
political prisoners were. When they came into the third gallery, all
of us were lined up in orderly fashion. The visitor stopped in front
of Merché Gómez, a self-possessed young woman from Madrid.
Merché began by explaining that she was a prisoner whose death
sentence had been commuted. To the visitor's first questions,
Merché responded that it wasn't possible to speak frankly about the
prisons because the visitor had come with the backing of the fascist
regime. Then she said: "But I'm ready to talk. Ask what you want
and I'll answer you with no thought for what might happen
tomorrow."
The woman asked her many questions about the system in prison,
and Merché explained everything: how they gave us injections
without boiling the syringes; how we had to dry our clothing by
piling it up on a railing; how there was no running water and only
two toilets for all of us women; how the sheets on our beds were
given us just this day to impress her. Merché went on and on
talking about prison life, and then she told the woman that, please,
if she wanted to know Spain, she ought to visit the suburbs, by
herself. The woman remarked that from what she had seen the
people didn't live so badly and she didn't understand why there was
still armed resistance against the Franco regime. Merché answered
that she herself took part in guerrilla activities in the city; that the
prisons were crammed with women arrested for clandestine
activities; that people feared for their lives because the repression
was brutal; that even though government control made full-scale
resistance impossible, the spirit of resistance was still alive; and
that even though the threat of incarceration was ever present, many
people made sacrifices that kept the flame of rebellion alive in
Spain. Merché invited her to visit ordinary people and gave her the
address of a sister of hers who lived in the ghetto in Tetuán de las
Victorias in Madrid; there the Falange had constructed a fence
around an area where people were left to live as they could in
collectivesfamilies had only one room to themselves and shared a
dining room, wash room, and kitchen. There the visitor would see
people who had no place to live because their houses had been
destroyed by bombs. There, Merché said, the woman would find
the spirit of the people, not in the company of María Topete, the
daughter of marquises and a Falangist to her bones. By this time
the priest was furious: "In a Communist regime they would shoot
you for what you're saying."
Merché answered: "And we don't know what will happen this
afternoon when this lady leaves."
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By now the Chilean woman was visibly unsettled. She asked the
director not to take measures against the prisoner; after all, she was
just answering her questions. Assured by the director that no
sanctions would be taken against the prisoner, the visitor hurriedly
left with the officials, but not before she quickly gave us some
directions: "Please, if something happens to you, I'm in such and
such hotel."
In spite of the director's words we knew that the matter wasn't
closed. At improvised meetings of Communists and other parties
we agreed to prevent at all cost the expected punishment of Merché
Gómez. We would take collective action. Merché had spoken for
all of us and either all of us or none of us would be responsible.
Merché was summoned to the director's office. We prisoners
became nervous. A little while went by. Then in the profound
silence that reigned throughout the prison we heard a door close, a
door to the cells on the first floor. Those were the cells used for
punishment.
Within four hours of the woman's visit the order came: as an
example, Merché Gómez was to be shot in the patio the next day.
Every woman, whether she was Communist, Socialist, or
Anarchist, agreed on a plan: we would all go up to where mass was
said in the patio, surround Merché and say that if they shot her
they'd have to shoot all of us because what she said was what all of
us thought.
Officials from all the prisons around Segovia, including the men's
prison, arrived. They beat us with whips and clubs. Bunched
together, we tried to protect our chests and heads. Women vomited
blood. We agreed to go back to our cells, but we weren't done. We
called a hunger strike for four days in hopes that Madrid would
hear about the terrible happenings in Segovia. Many of the women
were already so worn down from lack of nourishment that the
strike almost killed them. They had to be carried to the infirmary
and revived with glucose. When the medical inspector, a Dr. Botija
from Ventas hospital, made his report, he wrote that the smell of
acetone was noticeable, a clear indication that the women were
living on their last organic reserves.
As further punishment for our actions, the officials took everything
out of our cells: mattresses, clothes, everything. Some women were
left in those empty cells for three weeks, others for six, while some
were kept in isolation until September. On Friday, the twenty-
eighth, Dr. Botija went in one of the cells. There wasn't even one
light or a peephole in the door; the women were locked away in
absolute darkness. The doctor was so upset he almost fainted and
had to go outside to a small bar facing the prison for a cognac.
In spite of this harsh treatment we felt we had won: Merché got out
of solitary confinement at the same time as the other women.
So now the question is whether there is any compensation for our
 Page 116
suffering. For the loss of our youth. For the sadness and the
loneliness. What would be our sincere reply if each one of us were
to ask the question that Joaquina, one of the minors who were
condemned to death, asked. How horrendous it is to hear a twenty-
year-old girl sentenced to die ask, "Is the suffering worth it?" I
would like the reply to be, "Yes, the suffering was worth it."
I have faith that something positive survives from the sacrifice of
those men and women; from the prisons of Franco that were never
emptied of political prisoners. We keep the torch of rebellion
flaming, paying the high price of lives destroyed not only by death
but also by the weariness and bitterness of those long years, by the
loss of the human aspect of life that slipped away between our
fingers. And the reply is, "Yes, the suffering was worth it." Let me
end with the words a man uttered before the military tribunal that
condemned him to death and ordered him shot: "In spite of
everything Spain will be reborn!"
I'm told that the three companions, Josefina, Manoli, and Petra
Cuevas, meet each month for dinner in a Madrid restaurant. They
must look like three old witches in their coats, their heads wrapped
in kerchiefs, and Josefina hobbling along on her crutches.
 Page 117

Chapter 14
The Costs of Sacrifice: Antonia García at Ventas and
Segovia
Another companion I met in Ventas was Antonia García. She also
came from a prison in the north, Saturrarán. I remember Toni as a
sensitive, politically well-informed young woman. I also remember
how much her friends respected her. Because of the torture she
suffered, especially the electrical shocks that were put in her ears,
Toni had cerebral attacks that left her unconscious. I came into
contact with Toni again through the party's clandestine work before
Franco died. I saw her again in 1978 and took her testimony. She
lives in Barcelona, is married and has two grown children. She
gives body massages and beauty treatments in her home. That's
where I get her testimony.
The Falangists arrested me several times, and all together I spent
eleven years in prison. Since it takes a long time to tell my whole
story, I'm going to paint it in large strokes. My story starts when I
was a little girl and my mother took me with her to clean the Civil
Guard barracks. The truth is I almost grew up in those barracks. I
remember how fond the older guards were of me and how they
would hold me on their knees. I wasn't even eleven years old when
my mother died. The day she died she told me many things I've
never forgotten; one thing was that she trusted some of those men
even more than some family friends. She assured me the men
would always help me and that I should do what they said. So I did
become very close to them, spending lots of time at the barracks
from the age of eleven to thirteen. At that age they thought I was
old enough to work for them.
My job was to copy the duty sheet in the guards' room and then
clean the room after they left. Following their instructions, I locked
the door from the inside while I worked and never told anyone, not
even my grandmother, that I saw people being tortured at the
barracks. My situation was somewhat strange. On the one hand I
was very friendly with the guards; while they were making their
rounds they would stop by the house where I lived with my
grandparents to play cards and have a cup of coffee. On the other
hand I wanted to join the Communist Youth;
 Page 118
whenever the guards returned with political posters they had
confiscated, I'd secretly return them to my friends. But I never
joined the party. At first, I was afraid to go against the orders of my
friends, the guards, even though I was involved in political
activities that would have gotten me in trouble. Later, a
membership card just didn't matter.
The first time I was arrested, the guards went to the police station
and got me released. Later on they couldn't help me and I was
finally arrested for good. I was taken to the police station on Núñez
de Balboa street and stuck in a dark, dark dungeon. I couldn't see
anything but after a while I realized from some groaning that
someone else was there. After what seemed like a long time, a light
switched on and six or more men along with a woman and young
boy were brought in. The police began to beat the boy so hard that
blood streamed from his mouth and nose; then they stomped on his
testicles and left him limp as a rag. All the while his poor mother
was crying ''My son, my son." Unable to bear the sight, she turned
her face to the wall and in desperation threw herself on one of the
men and scratched his whole face. The men pushed the woman
away and she fell so hard against a stone bench that one of her eyes
popped out.
I wasn't even eighteen years old when I witnessed that horror. From
that moment on I vowed that no human being would ever suffer
because of me. No matter what was done to me, I wouldn't say a
word. When I was taken out to make a statement, I was tortured
until my tormentors grew weary. They put electric currents in my
ears that made me crazy with pain for years and years. Still I said
nothing. I wouldn't open my mouth. That infuriated my torturers.
They questioned me nonstopwhat had I done, where had I been,
who was so and so and such and such? But I didn't even consider
making up stories. I simply refused to talk. Whether it was from
trauma or shock, I'm not sure, but I remember with absolute clarity
that only one thought was in my mind: I don't have to say anything.
They tried to put electrical currents on my nipples but I was too
young to have any so they put them in my ears again. My eardrums
burst. I lost consciousness.
When I came to I was in the prison infirmary. For a month I
suffered blackouts and was half out of my mind with pain.
According to doctors, the brain's neurons are always moving and if
one stops, a blackout results. I am aware that I have these
blackouts, which in itself is psychologically very upsetting.
I'll never forget the first day I spent outside the infirmary in the
hall. After the women were counted, they fell to the ground right
where they were standing, just to get a place. I was stuck next to
the wall along with many more women and that's where I stayed all
night, unable to move. I awoke to a frightening view of the life that
awaited me: the place
 Page 119
looked like a picture of demented people with women picking lice
and others scratching at their mange. "We're being changed into
beasts" was my first thought.
I was placed in the room set aside for the minors, thanks to the
efforts of Doña María Sánchez Arbos, who had been an
administrator at the Free Institution of Education where our
director, Carmen de Castro, had studied. Carmen de Castro was
very moved to see this outstanding educator in the prison. Doña
María refused special treatment and asked Carmen, as a human
being who respected her, to treat all prisoners on an equal basis.
Carmen couldn't guarantee equal treatment for so many women,
but she granted Doña María's request to have a gallery set aside for
the children to keep them apart from the rest of the prisoners; there
the children would have a little better food, more room, and a
different schedule from the other prisoners. Doña María also asked
for a separate room for the many minors so as to keep them away
from the large number of prostitutes.
I was one of the minors who had been arrested for opposing
Casado's policy near the end of the war. After several of our friends
in leadership roles were arrested, a group of us turned to
clandestine activities. The casadistas got hold of the files of the
Provincial Committee in Madrid that held information about the
members of the Socialist Youth. So it was easy for them to find us.
Twenty-four of us from my neighborhood were caught. All of us
were minors, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old at most. These
were the minors whose cause became notorious. In the first round
of arrests about seventy-five minors were killed, including the
thirteen girls made famous in this poem written by Rafaela
Fernández "Rafita" on August 5, 1939, the day the girls were
executed:
I
When the stars die
Green, green water ...
A sky of blue fish
The stars have died!
Shrouded roses among the white rushes
of the dawn! The whiteness of maidens!
Ay! Green, green water ...
II
The stars have fallen in their flight,
three stars, red
blue and yellow,
and the earth is covered with currants,
and white roses and little bells
for the stars have died ...!
Ay! Green, green water ...
 Page 120
III
Thirteen stars have died,
thirteen vestals
from the temple of freedom
Virgins!
Who in a white cortege without uttering a cry
in the arms of death move toward infinity
Ay! Green, green water ...
IV
You course silently among the lichen
and nourish the fields and the garden
with eternal essences
verdure of spring!
of purity!
of grace and beauty!
Thirteen roses have rent the eternal rose garden
Ay! Green, green water ...
Goddess of nature!
Their execution caused such a scandal that leftist groups from all
over Europe organized to intervene. Their actions were grace for
three of us. On August 12 twenty-four of us were sentenced to
death; in September three of us had our death penalty commuted.
The authorities had granted the minors permission to study and
have classes, but I wasn't able to participate because the electric
shocks had left me with excruciating headaches. My ears rang, I
was sick to my stomach, and my eyes hurt as if knives were being
stuck in them. So I spent only a few months with the minors before
I was transferred to a prison that had been set up in Quiñones for
crazy people. The authorities considered us crazy if we had those
splitting headaches. It's true the pain was enough to drive us crazy
but we certainly weren't out of our mind.
So began years of being shuffled from one prison to another: Palma
on the island of Mallorca, Amorebieta, Saturrarán, Ventas again,
Segovia. So many memories, so much pain. Some are little
memories but significant in their own way. There was the time we
left Madrid. Our families had found out we were leaving and had
come to the station to say good-bye and give us what food they
could. My poor old grandmother gave me some food along with a
mysterious little package. As the train pulled out, I peeked in the
package: three candles and a box of matches! Why did she put
these in? Didn't she know we weren't allowed to have matches and
why the candles? Did she think they'd let us loose on the island?
On the day they took us to Palma in the hold of a stinky, beat-up
boat full of lice and every imaginable bug, a terrible storm came
up. Suddenly the lights went out and we fell over one another. How
 Page 121
frightening! Thanks to the little candles and matches my
grandmother gave me, well, look, those of us who weren't as
seasick as others held the candles so at least we didn't fall on each
other. Ah, poor grandmother, who was going to tell you how
helpful your little gift was?
It was in Mallorca that I saw Matilde Landa again, the woman who
had done so much for the prisoners in Ventas. I have mixed
feelings about Matilde. I was immensely grateful to her for all she
had done in Ventas to get my death penalty commuted. But as a
working woman I didn't understand Matilde. Oh, I knew she was
intelligent, cultured, and politically idealistic, but she wasn't treated
as we were. She certainly wasn't tortured like other women. Her
own secretary, María Guerra, was beaten to death in a cemetery.
Matilde Landa knew how to act with the police in such an
intelligent way that they let her talk and were ashamed to employ
certain methods with her that they applied to the rest of us.
But Matilde was considered to be dangerous just because she was
intelligent and cultured with connections in high political places.
So she was transferred to Mallorca. There the prison officials
pretended to treat her as an equal so as to get her on their side. But
she saw through their game. The fact is that you were either for
them or against them. She was against them but she wanted to be
their equal. For that she was brought down.
Two days before she died, the officials let her leave her cell and
spend some time with us. Matilde said to me: "What do you think,
these people want to baptize me, but I'm not going to be baptized."
A lady who was president of Catholic Action 1 in Palma had
befriended Matilde. She spent a great deal of time with Matilde and
gave her things to ease her life in prison that Matilde then passed
on to the children and old people. The day they wanted to baptize
her, Matilde told me she would like to make the Catholic lady
happy because she was a good person and Matilde had become
very fond of her. "Look, Matilde," I said, "I'm an uneducated
woman, but if I were you, I wouldn't even talk with that woman.
Leave her in her place and you in yours. You can't be friends in this
place, truly you can't. You're going to find yourself in a dead-end
street. You're very intelligent and probably what I'm telling you is
just nonsense. Who am I compared to you? Nothing."
The next day Matilde Landa threw herself out the window. At least
that's what the officials said. No one saw her do it. She could just
as well have been thrown out. Who knows? What I do know is that
Matilde was an emotionally stable person. She wouldn't have lost
her mind. I think that at the last moment she preferred death to
renouncing the principles she had fought for.
 Page 122
In Palma and later in Ventas we were able to earn a little money for
extra food and books by doing handwork. Catholic Action had
organized an office with some prisoners and a nun who had
connections with the outside. The specialty in those days was knit
items. We were paid by the skein. A certain percentage of what
each of us earned went to our "family," which is what we called the
group of women who shared money and packages. While the rest
of the women sat in a circle knitting, one of us would read the
books we were permitted to buy. The best readers read for two
hours each day, taking turns every half hour. After the reading we
would discuss what we had heard. Our library was what you could
call ambulatory. We even had a librarian who kept a record of who
had which book. When a book had been read by all the prisoners, it
was raffled off; in that way each prisoner had her own book.
Study was important to us, and we organized classes for the women
who couldn't read and write. We wanted all the women to be
literate. Our program was successful because there were well-
educated, professional women among the prisoners. Some of the
prisoners went so far as to take examinations for careers.
When I returned to Ventas, the workshops that had made military
clothing were being converted to civilian use. Accordingly, the
prison officials set up shops in the prison basement and used prison
labor to make money. But we managed to use the shops to our own
advantage: we smuggled articles of clothing out for the guerrillas.
We also used our wits in the matter of social service. Supposedly
all women under the age of thirty were to do social service.
Falangist ladies were in charge of this social work and they would
take us to work in their homes everyday. We decided to resist in a
novel way: we'd act like dummies. When they tried to teach us to
make little figures out of felt, we ruined meter after meter of the
material. So they tried us with paper ... failure again. Then it was
sewing; I don't remember how many handkerchiefs I ruined trying
to learn the hemstitch. The only thing we did well was discuss
politics. We would ask the Falangist ladies to explain their politics
and then demonstrate why they would never achieve the revolution
according to the Falangist agenda or how they were nothing more
than Franco's puppets.
When employment in the prison shops came to an end, we were
able to arrange embroidery work through a certain Swiss man. The
items we embroidered using all kind of stitches were of invaluable
craftsmanship. One day when the truck from the man came for the
work we had done, some of the Falangist ladies happened to come
by and see our work. "Who made these items?" they asked.
It turned out that the women responsible for the exquisite hand-
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work were all from the gallery of Communists. Those ladies almost
went crazy when they realized how we had mocked them. But
look, we had women who had been seamstresses for Balenciaga, a
woman who had specialized in embroidering evening gowns,
others who had held office in sewing and tailoring unions. Spain's
best seamstresses were in our prison. That's why the Swiss man
had come our way.
I wish I'd had a camera when those ladies realized how we had
pulled their leg. At the expression on their faces, we asked
innocently: "Has the regime fallen?" Then we gave them a lecture.
"It's clear to us that you came here thinking you would teach us.
But you forget that we are people of the working class. We're
workers. We know how to cook and sew and embroider. These are
our jobs. Most of us are here in prison precisely because we have a
history as workers who have been outstanding in our jobs since
before the war began. Those people stood out because they knew
their profession and enjoyed respect from other people. Here we do
first-rate work and earn something to help ease the misery of
prison."
That same day they brought out a Santa Claus doll that was a full
half meter in size with its pocket filled with felt dolls. The woman
who created it already had won two international prizes and had
received many, many commissions. And she was one of the
prisoners who didn't know how to make even a felt poppy! The
ladies were speechless. We continued: "You've offended us because
you presumed to teach us. It's possible you can teach us other
things, but to work like workers, certainly not. Maybe you think
you wouldn't have found out if it hadn't been for the Swiss man.
Oh, no. We'd been planning to bring you a sample of our work after
our social service was over. We needed to teach you that you don't
know the women you label 'Reds' and that even when you're
around us, you don't know us. So you seeit's ignorance that keeps
this regime afloat. You do what you're told and nothing else."
After the hunger strike I was held incommunicado for six months.
During that time news came that my request for freedom had been
granted. But the local officials refused to release me because I was
being punished. So I had to put in another year. Apparently a
relative of mine had been responsible for the many, many
telegrams and telephone calls that the disciplinary committee
received. The director called me every two or three days telling me
to make a written declaration that I repented, but each time he
called, I said: "Look, I've been unjustly imprisoned for eleven years
and I'm not going to dishonor myself now by repenting, not even if
you ask me fifty times. I've spent all these years thinking that the
only thing you couldn't take away from me was my dignity. I'm not
going to lose my dignity now just so you'll set me free. I'm not
going to sign that document."
 Page 124
During the many years I spent in prison, I've seen all kinds of
women on both sides: directors who were hypocritical, violent, or
gross and prisoners with nothing but revenge in their hearts. But I
never wanted anyone to have to suffer as I did and others did. I
have always thought it was my duty to combat a regime that would
persecute its citizens and that I could not stop struggling for one
moment to bring down that regime and create a different society.
But we should never do to them what they did to us. I am in
complete agreement with the politics of reconciliation. I have
agreed to speak about our experience so that it may serve as an
example to others and help them realize the fascist nature of this
dictatorship.
I am ready to be a living testimony. What I ask of young people is
for them to do whatever possible to make sure that the horrors of
the past are not repeated. I have seen so many women die; I have
seen so many brave people disappear; I have seen the sacrifice of
marvelous people who dedicated their entire life to changing
society. Now it's not a matter of weeping for those who died or
avenging their death. No, but in the name of all these men and
women I ask each and every person who realizes the need to
change society to rise up and take the place of those we lost. We
will succeed when the absence of those lost in battle is no longer
noticeable.
Toni died in 1991 or 1992.
 Page 125

Tomasa Cuevas and Mary E. Giles collaborating on the English version of

the
text in Tomasa's home in Vilanova i la Geltrú, Spain.
 Page 126

The young Tomasa, first row, right, with companions in prison.

 Page 127

Rosario Sánchez Mora, the "Dynamiter," as she appears much later in

Barcelona.
 Page 128

María del Carmen Cuesta, second row, fifth from left, and
companions present an artistic production at the prison in Gerona.
 Page 129

Pilar Pascual Martínez, second row, far right, is with friends in the
prison of Amorebieta on a rare ''holiday," or day of grace.
 Page 130

Over a good lunch, Pilar Pascual and Tomasa recall the days in Amorebieta
when breakfast was dirty water.
 Page 131

In the top row on the far right, wearing a white blouse, is Antonia García
with
a group of her companions whose death sentences had been commuted.
Taken
in the prison of Palma de Mallorca in 1940, the photo also shows Matilde
Landa, third to the left from Antonia, the woman who worked on behalf of
the
prisoners at Ventas.
 Page 132

In the prison of Les Corts are Tomasa, first row, second from left, with her
prison family, Mercedes, Adelaida, and Victoria, second row, third, fourth,
fifth
from left, respectively.
 Page 133

From left to right, Angelita Ramis, Victoria Pujolar, and Adelaida Abarca,
enjoying the fruits of freedom in Toulouse after their escape from Les
Corts.
 Page 134

Years later in Burgos, Tomasa, María Valés, and Soledad Real recall the
long
fight for amnesty for political prisoners.
 Page 135

Tomasa's friendship with Victoria Martínez (now dead) continued after their
days in prison as the two women traveled the same road to Burgos to visit
their
husbands who were imprisoned there.
 Page 136

On the rare day that visitors were allowed Esperanza Martínez enjoyed the
company of a nephew.
 Page 137

A typical workshop in prison where women worked as their only means to

reduce their sentences.
 Page 138

PART 2
RESISTANCE AND PRISON
 Page 140

Map by Robert Richardson, California State University, Sacramento

 Page 141

Chapter 15
A Stranger in a Strange City 19441945
My appearance in Barcelona didn't make waves. After I left my
miserable suitcase in the checkroom at the station, I went to the
city center and walked all around to orient myself as best I could.
With only thirty-five pesetas in my pocket, I couldn't afford to
spend money. Most of the day I spent looking for work. At last at a
fruit stand in the Boquería market in the Ramblas I was given the
address of a house where they needed help. I found my way there
and spoke with the lady of the house. Apparently I made a good
impression. She offered me a job and I accepted the salary.
The woman told me to come back the following day at nine in the
morning. But I insisted several times on starting right away; I
wanted to stay there that night. By then it was after six o'clock. The
lady asked if anything was wrong and I explained that yes, I had
run away from home. I told her I was from another townI don't
remember if I said it was Toledo or some other place in Castileand
that my family wanted to marry me to a cousin just for the sake of
combining the small lands the families owned. I continued with my
story that the family couldn't force me to marry against my will
because I was of age. I had left home and now I found myself
without a place to stay in Barcelona. Good Catholic that she was,
the lady crossed herself and said: ''Oh, my poor little one, so that's
why you want to spend the night here. Well, yes, my child, but
don't you have anything, not even a bundle?"
"Yes, mam, I have a little suitcase at the station."
"Well, dear, run and get it, go on, but come right back. Barcelona
has turned into a bad place and I don't want you to get mixed up
with some of the girls around here."
That night I slept under a roof, happy to have found work. It's not
that I liked hiring out for housework, but I didn't worry. I knew I
would do well in the housework and later we'd see. Gloria had
given me addresses of people in Barcelona who might be able to
help me get other work.
Bene, my friend from prison, continued to be a worry to me. I
didn't
 Page 142
know what had happened to her or how to find her. So the next day
I found an excuse to leave the house and go to the police station to
see if she had checked in with them and given her address. The
police weren't very helpful: so many people had presented
themselves that the police didn't even know which list she might be
on.
Some things are incredible but true. After two or three days of
housework that involved ironing and lots of washing and mopping
the house and the owners' leather goods store with lye, my hands
developed awful sores. The boy who cleaned and greased the locks
early in the morning saw me mopping the store one day and
noticed my bleeding fingers. He knocked at the grille of the door
and asked in a low voice: "Did you just get out of prison?" I said I
hadn't, but he answered: "Look, my sister got out recently and she's
got hands like yours from doing housework. So you can't fool me.
Besides there's another very young girl at the corner bar who was
just released."
The incredible happened: the girl turned out to be Bene. We
managed to spend Sundays together. I would tell my employers
that I was going to mass and then I'd meet Bene and we'd go for a
little walk. Bene explained that when she was released in Segovia,
she asked permission, just as I had done, to stay over in
Guadalajara in order to visit some aunts and uncles. But the
authorities had denied her request because permission had to come
from the Barcelona police. So Bene continued toward her
destination, a destination without family or friends or anyone, to a
large city she didn't knowall this for a girl who had never been
separated from her mother until the moment she was transferred
from Ventas to Segovia.
When Bene appeared before the police and they asked her for her
residence, she answered that she had no family and no place to live.
They took her file and suggested she go to the large market in the
Ramblas where she probably could find housework. Bene followed
their advice. She went from place to place. But she didn't find a
job. And she didn't have a place to spend the night. Night surprised
her still out on the street.
Fortunately she met a kindly night watchman who gave her
protection in the concierge room. The next morning he found out
on his rounds of the bars in the neighborhoods of Barcelona's old
quarter that a girl was needed with a family on Baños Nuevos
street. He himself took her there. When her employers discovered
that she was just out of prison, they agreed she should go to the
police station with her address. The police advised her to appear at
the station on the first Sunday of every month. I had found out
earlier that we were in the precinct of Ancha street. I persuaded
Bene to change from the station on Vía Layetana to the Ancha one
because I'd heard horror stories from Cata-
 Page 143
lan comrades about the tortures they had suffered at the hands of
the Creix brothers, Poloco and Quintela, 1 at the Vía Layetana
station. Antonio and Vicente Juan Creix belonged to the secret
police in Barcelona and were responsible for the torture of
prisoners at police headquarters. So were Eduardo quintela and
Poloco, or Polo, who were both commissars in the hated Political-
Social Brigade.
So many exprisoners had to appear at the same time each month
that there were long lines of men and women waiting to sign their
names in the appropriate book. It was especially painful to see the
men because they had fewer opportunities for work than we
women. At least we could start out with housework. But when the
men who applied for work at factories and for construction showed
their papers with the words "libertad vigilada," which was
something like parole, they wouldn't be hired. Weakened from
hunger, poorly clothed, desperate, some of the men even said that
they preferred prison to exile. One day a certain boy failed to
appear with the group of us waiting to check in with the police. We
found out he had been arrested for stealing food. One of our
comrades said furiously: "That's what these assassins want, to evict
us from our homes, close the doors to work, and force us to steal.
Above all else we're political people and we have to defend our
rights." He told us we didn't have to be criminals because that's
what the authorities wanted us to be. The man's cadaverous face lit
up with this truth. How well I remember that face. I don't recall his
name and I don't know what happened to him, but whenever
possible he would gather people around him and tell them it was
better to die of hunger in the street than be sent back to prison as
thieves. If we died in the streets, he said, people would realize that
we were being thrown out of prison with no rights at all, left to die
of hunger or steal and be imprisoned as common criminals.
During that period of four weeks all of us women who had
housework would take something from our employers' kitchens, a
little can of preserves, chunks of bread, tobacco, anything we could
get away with, for the men on the streets. We women would meet
to pool what we had taken and then on Sundays on the way to mass
we'd meet the men some place and give them the little packages.
Bene was able to get away with lots of little things because there
were always appetizers left over in the bar: croquettes, little meat
pies, sandwiches, things like that. It was a nightmare for us
whenever we sat down to eat in the kitchen.
In the meantime I made friends with a marvelous woman who
worked in the house opposite my employers'. Carmen was a
wonderful person and she offered to share her shanty on the
Diagonal with Bene and me. So Bene and I moved to Carmen's
shanty. Bene quit her job and I started work at a tailor shop that a
friend in prison had recommended.
 Page 144
The drawback was the owner asked me to join the union so that he
wouldn't be fined and have his shop closed. I knew party members
weren't supposed to unionize and that the party had ousted
members for joining unions. I preferred to leave the job until such
time as I would find the party. So on Monday I phoned the shop
with some excuse and didn't go back to work there.
Then I looked up a friend of a countryman of mine who owned a
shop that made and sold children's underclothes.
"Here you have a job," he said right away. "Come whenever you
want."
"This very day."
That very day I did begin work. There were several electric sewing
machines as well as two pedal ones. I used a pedal machine. I
worked twelve hours with fifteen or twenty minutes off for rest and
a sandwich. I was anxious to get in extra hours. The first night I
took home a big package with clothing for Bene to sew little bows
on.
Our health was improving, but life was mainly work, work, and
more work. I remember that just seeing people lined up at the
movies stirred me to rebellion. I would think about the prisoners
and friends I'd left in prison, about the people they would shoot or
had shot already that very morning, about the police stations where
our companions were tortured. And seeing people dressed up in the
evening for parties, I wondered how Spaniards could live like that
and why they weren't capable of fighting and thinking about the
thousands and thousands of prisoners all over the country. At that
time there were so many prisons stuffed with prisoners that I
couldn't understand why people didn't fight on their behalf. I
thought about how much good the money wasted on movies could
do for the prisoners.
After one of the girls in the shop got married, I was changed from
the pedal machineI had done a lot of pedaling in my twelve hours
of work a dayto a motorized machine and one of the apprentices
inherited my old machine. The apprentice was a young girl, only
fifteen or sixteen years old. She was the only person I had contact
with at work. I found it difficult to become acquainted with the
Catalans; they're more serious than Catilians and they spoke a
language I didn't understand. It really hurt when we left the shop in
the evenings and the other women went off in a group. They never
said to me, "Let's go have a beer," as they did to each other.
Perhaps I couldn't have gone because I couldn't afford such
luxuries, but it would have been nice just to be invited. Now I
realize that when you do become friends with a Catalan, she'll do
anything in the world for you. But until she knows you and offers
her friendship, you feel like a stranger in a strange land.
I didn't hide the fact that I had been in prison. Nor did the shop
 Page 145
owner; he'd been imprisoned, too. One Saturday after this young
girl had discovered I had been in prison, she drew me aside and
invited me to Sunday dinner with her sister and brother-in-law. I
told her I'd let her know in the afternoon. I didn't know whether to
accept the invitation or not. I hardly knew her. But I finally decided
to accept; perhaps I'd meet a comrade.
I wasn't wrong about that. The brother-in-law turned out to be a
comrade in the party. He didn't get to the heart of the matter right
away but talked with me first. He wanted me to tell him about
prison, how we had lived and how we were getting along now.
Finally everything was out in the open and he asked if I would be
ready to do something for the party. I asked him why he had risked
talking so openly with me when he didn't know who I was. He
answered that he did know who I was because several Catalan
women who had been arrested in Barcelona had been imprisoned
with me. Most of them had been with me in Ventas but one, Catia
Alonso, had also been in the Segovia prison. When Catia was
released, she spoke to them about me. It was pure chance that his
sister-in-law had gone to work in the shop and met me. I told him I
was ready to do anything to work with the party. It was agreed that
the girl would let me know the day and time for my meeting with a
contact person.
By coincidence there was a terrible storm the very day and hour
when I was supposed to keep the appointment the girl had relayed
to me. In spite of the storm I hurried to the place. I even remember
what I was wearing: a pleated percale skirt and a little white
blouse. I was to meet the contact person on the Diagonal at the
corner of Aribau. I waited and waited. All the while rain poured
down and the wind blew furiously. I couldn't let go of my skirt or it
would have blown over my head. After half an hour I was soaked
to the skin. No one ever came. Finally I went home.
During the following days the girl didn't say a word to me in the
shop, nor did I mention anything to her, even though I was furious
at the effort they had cost me. So I chalked up the failure to
unreliability on the part of my comrades.
The next Sunday Bene and I were in the streetcar on our way to
Carmen's when Bene noticed a young woman in the streetcar.
"Don't you know that girl?" she asked me. I had difficulty
recognizing the girl but Bene knew who she was. "It's Pura. Don't
you remember Pura?"
Bene recognized her immediately because she had spent more time
with her in prison than I had. Bene and I agreed not to get out until
Pura did. We went past our stop and got off with Pura. We set off
walking behind her. Then Pura realized she was being followed.
She turned around and recognized Bene. "You, here, Bene?"
 Page 146
She was slow to recognize me. But she did, and then the three of us
chatted for a while. It was clear to Bene and me that Pura was in a
better position than we were. She invited us to have a snack in a
nearby cafe and get out of the rain. She and I agreed to meet
another time. That's when I told her about the failed meeting.
"Don't worry," she said. "I'll find out if that contact was really from
the party. At any rate, if you like, you can work with us."
Of course, I had no doubts whatsoever about Pura's reliability. A
few days later we met again and Pura told me not to worry: the
contact had been certain I wouldn't be able to make the
appointment because of the storm. So it was that in September I
finally found what I had been looking for since May.
Life was very difficult for Bene and me during the last months of
1944. As party work increased, I worked less and made less money.
But Bene knew nothing of my clandestine activities; I wouldn't
compromise her by telling her anything. I made sure she never
missed a meal. Even though we were very poor, I was happy
because I could carry my head high: my work was honorable.
On December 24 I didn't go to work. My comrades had
commissioned me to carry food packages to the prisoners in the
Model prison. They gave me an address where I was to pick up the
packages. Seeing how many packages there were I asked one of the
men: "How am I supposed to carry all this? Do you think I'm a
pack mule? I can't carry these packages, not even on the streetcar.
I'll have to use a car or pay for a taxi."
"Well, my girl, I don't have money for a taxi and I don't have a car."
We began to discuss how I could take the packages. Perhaps I
could make several trips to the prison. What to do? Suddenly he
had an idea. Another comrade who had gone to bed very late after
attending a meeting just might have taxi money. He hated to wake
the fellow up but he had to.
"Antoñito, Antonio," I heard him say. "Wake up. There's a woman
here who's supposed to take the packages, but there's just one
problem. She can't take all those packages by herself. She'll have to
pay for a taxi and I'm broke."
I heard a voice from the room: "Hold on, I'm coming."
A young man came out, not very tall but not short either, very thin,
with curly black hair, and very good looking. You could say it was
love at first sight. I remember he was wearing tattered pajamas
with a hole in the shoulder. But he made a tremendous impression
on me.
"Comrade," he said, "I've known you for a long time. I've seen you
several times from a distance at some of the appointments you've
had.
 Page 147
Besides, my comrades talk about you, especially Moises."
Taking out money for the taxi, he told the other man to help carry
the packages to the door. When we were about to go down stairs,
"Antoñito" asked: "Hey, Peque, you don't have anyone here?"
"No."
"No family?"
"No."
"Well, what are you doing tonight?"
"Nothing, I will stay at home with the friend I live with."
"So is there someone with you?"
"Yes, a girl who got out of prison and is living with me in the
shanty."
"Good, well tonight the two of you won't be alone. You'll eat with
us."
I acceptedI liked that fellow.
That evening we were having a very good time when the blow
struck. I had taken a real liking to that boy when I saw him in the
morning with his tousled hair, sleepy-eyed, and in torn pajamas.
That night in between all the customary toasts for democracy,
liberty, socialism, the family, and on and on, they also toasted his
sweetheart. "For Maruja, may she get better and may you be able to
join her one day."
I felt as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown on me. So he had
a sweetheart. But we still had a pleasant evening. Among the many
things we talked about, aside from singing, laughing, and telling
jokes, was my situation. This young man was truly concerned
about everyone. He asked how I was getting along financially; he
thought I was too thin, very pale, and sickly looking. I told him I
wasn't sick but I was worn out and didn't have enough food to put
on weight. I was working for the two of us; Bene made very little
money sewing bows on little shirts. Bene and I stayed the night
there and in the morning as we were leaving, he said: "Okay, I've
spoken with my companions and you're going to have one less
burden. Bene will live here. She'll be one more family member.
She can help with housework. They can't pay her, but she'll have
food and we'll take care of her clothing needs."
The truth is that they did take a load off my shoulders. Seeing that
he was a person with whom I could speak candidly about my
worries, I told him how disgusting my situation at work was
because the owner had been trying to get me to go out with himand
he was a married man! He promised to do all he could so I could
quit the job.
Toward the end of December the shanties were torn down.
Fortunately, Carmen secured through her employer's influence one
of the residences the unions were building in the Meridiana. We
moved between Christmas and New Year's. The utilities weren't
hooked up yet, there
 Page 148
were puddles everywhere, and the street was full of ditches. But the
place was a palace compared to the shanty.
In January of 1945 I quit my job in the tailor shop and started work
in the Cottet factory assembling glasses. I worked there until April.
I was able to do more and more party work now that I didn't have
the worry of Bene and could limit my work day to eight hours. I
was a contact person between the party and the guerrillas. It was
risky business. I knew that if I was caught I would be tortured and
could get the death penalty or at the very least thirty years in
prison.
In the early months of 1945 with the Allied advances there was
intense contact between the party and the guerrillas. So many
Spaniards were fighting with the Allied forces to destroy Nazism
that we were sure those Spaniards, thousands and thousands of
them armed, would cross the border and liberate us too. The
guerrillas in the mountains were preparing for that event while the
party was working within the country.
I remember one trip I made in this effort to the province of Gerona.
I went to the city by train and from there I took a bus for a little
village. The bus stopped at a small pension in that town. I got off
with my big bag. The first thing I was going to do was get a room
for the night; the bus wasn't scheduled to return to Gerona until the
following day. But when I got off the bus I noticed a man who
didn't seem to be waiting for any of the passengers; he stood
looking at me in a most interested way. I asked for a room in the
pension. They gave me one with a window facing the street. I
looked out the window. I didn't see anyone. My suspicions about
the man must be wrong. I went outside to walk to the address
where I was to identify myself with the password. As I turned the
corner of the pension, I saw the same man I'd seen when I got off
the bus. Bad business. I walked around and around the town. I went
in a market and bought who knows what. I went out. There he was
again. I went in a dairy and drank a glass of milk. I went out and
met him again. That bothered me so badly that I went back to the
pension. At supper time I went out again. I walked around the
town. I didn't see the man. Then, making some moves that we used
in clandestine work to make sure no one was following us, I went
to the house designated for the meeting. Imagine my surprise when
the person who opened the door was they very man who'd been
following me. I must have changed color, for he said: "I made a
serious mistake. I realized that you were on the verge of not
coming, so after you went in the pension for the second time I left
so you could make sure no one was following you. We are cautious
to the point that I had to verify whether you were alone. But all I
accomplished was raising your suspicions that I might be the
police. Forgive me. It won't happen again. This has been a real
lesson for me."
 Page 149
That evening the friends gave the heavy bag I'd been carrying to a
young guerrilla from the mountains. This house was the support
point for his group. The next day I returned to Barcelona.
Whenever I traveled by train, I tried to sit in the car with the Civil
Guard. I would pretend to be very naive and ask them if I could sit
in the same car with them because I was traveling alone and would
feel safer with them. They would puff up like roosters with their
hens. "Yes, yes, of course. Sit down, sit here." They would offer to
put my bag in the baggage compartment, but I'd say: "No, that's all
right, it's fine here." Then I'd put the bag on the seat next to me,
leaning my arms on it, or on the floor next to my legs. So I traveled
around under the protection of the Civil Guard.
I was very worried about living in Carmen's house with her
daughter because if something were to happen with the work I was
doing, Carmen would be in danger too. I couldn't go to the police
with the truth about what the woman meant to us, how she had
opened up her home to me, and that she knew nothing of my
activities. She would end up in prison and maybe her little girl, too,
who was only fifteen or sixteen years old at the time. Because
"Antoñito" was the party member I knew best, I asked him if he
would please inquire among his comrades about finding me
another place to live. That's how I came to rent a room on
Sepúlveda street from Antonio del Amo's sister. But I didn't tell
Bene where I was living because I didn't want to put her at risk.
Still, she managed to find out.
The stories I could tell about underground life! Some of them are
even funny. I remember one night we were sticking posters on
walls, trees, wherever we could. We were in the act of pasting one
on a wall when the night watchman appeared. I put my back to the
poster, which was already up, and my companion got real close to
me, as if we were lovers. The watchman passed close by, looked at
us, and said: "Huh, if you were my daughter, I'd give you a little
spanking, out on the streets at this hour of the night, you shameless
girl."
In March there was a small number of arrests. "Antoñito" had to
leave the house where he stayed. I was asked to pick him up and
take him to Carmen's boarding house. Carmen and I had become
close friends, and she was aware of my clandestine work. I trusted
her enough to tell her that a boy was coming to live in the small
vacant room she had, but I didn't explain who he was. I was
supposed to meet him on Muntaner at the corner of the Gran Vía. I
saw a man crossing the street. By the way he walked I knew it was
"Antoñito." I looked again. No, it wasn't. I kept on walking. By this
time the man had caught up with me. He grabbed me by the
shoulder: "Where are you going? Weren't you expecting me?''
 Page 150
"Me? Expecting you?"
Then I burst out laughing. I recognized his voice. But in the few
days since I'd last seen him he had let his mustache grow and with
the hat and the strange glasses he was wearing I didn't recognize
him. His own mother wouldn't have known him.
March was drawing to a close. In spite of all our precautions we
didn't realize that some of us, including me, were being followed.
 Page 151

Chapter 16
The Exile of Prison: Les Corts 19451946
April 4, 1945. I worked all day at the factory so I didn't know
anything about the arrests and shootings in the street. Returning
from work, I was just about to go in the door when I realized there
was someone by the tree in front of the door. Then I saw another
guy in the entrance where the shoe repairman worked. Just as I
went in the door, the man in the entrance hall came out with a
pistol in his hand and stuck it in my cheek. The one on watch by
the tree put another pistol in my back.
"What is this?" I asked, turning sideways.
"Come on, take us to your flat."
"Flat? I don't have a flat. I've got a room."
"Whatever!"
They began to search the pockets of my jacket.
"What do you think, that I'm carrying bombs?"
"You're mixed up in this business."
"Me, mixed up with bombs? You're on the wrong track."
They told me to be quiet and go upstairs. I went up to the
mezzanine where I lived and knocked at the door. Creix opened it.
He and another policeman were already there, their guns on the
table, sitting with poor María. They asked me where I was coming
from.
"From work, from the factory."
"Show us your room."
When we entered the room, there was another policeman, sitting on
my bed. "So why did you ask me where my room was when you'd
already invaded it?"
They began a thorough search. Fortunately, they didn't find
anything. There was an armoire that was always locked.
"This armoire?"
"It's not mine; it belongs to the woman who owns the house."
"Call her and tell her to open it."
"María, bring the key to the armoire. These gentlemen want to
know what your brother has inside it."
I knew the armoire belonged to her brother, Antonio del Amo. He
 Page 152
kept his materials for developing photographs there. Antonio was a
fan of photography and movies. During the war he had made films
for the Republican Army. Afterward he was imprisoned by the
Franco regime. Since his release he had been a cinematographic
director. There was a knock at the door. I intended to open it, but
Creix said to me: "No, no, today you've got servants to open doors
for you."
He himself went to the door. My blood turned to ice when I heard
Bene's voice.
"Who are you looking for?" Creix asked.
"I'm sorry, I made a mistake."
I breathed a sigh of relief. It didn't last long. Creix was too astute.
He kept asking her questions and harassing her until he got her to
admit that she had come looking for me. He grabbed her by the arm
and pushed her into the room. My first impulse was to deny that I
knew the girl. On the other hand, I thought it might complicate
matters even more. I immediately thought about the comrade she
had in her home. I didn't know whether the police could get to him
through her and then use him to find the others. In short, I was
afraid I'd risk everything with a lie. That's when I noticed Bene was
carrying an empty milk can.
"Why didn't you bring the milk? How are we going to have
breakfast in the morning?"
The men looked at one another, saying: "What, what's this?"
"Since I get home late from work, it's her job to buy milk."
"Well, where does she live?"
"Here, with me."
I had a double bed in the room so two people could have slept
there.
"So she lives here with you?"
"Yes, certainly, the two of us live here."
María looked at us very surprised.
"Listen, mam," Creix said to María, "does this girl live here?"
"No, she doesn't live here and I don't know her."
"Ah, so she doesn't live here and you don't know her?"
I looked intently at María: "But don't you understand that these
men will treat you the same whether one or two of us live here?
You know very well that we both live here."
"You're lying," Creix said to me. "We'll see about this at head-
quarters. Let's go."
And the three of us women were taken to the Vía Layetana police
station. My intention was to gain enough time with the story about
Bene living with me for my comrades to find out about her arrest
and vacate the house. I succeededbut at the cost of severe beatings.
They put us in the same office, separated by a couple of meters,
and questioned us, one after another. To Bene: "Where do you
live?"
 Page 153
"With her."
"Where do you live?"
"I said with her."
Then they would come to me. "Where does she live?"
"With me."
Fortunately, they didn't touch Bene because she was such a thin
little thing. But they hit me so much I thought my temples and ears
would burst. They would ask María: "Mam, tell the truth, do the
two of them live with you?"
And pointing to me she would say: "No, she's the only one who
lives with me."
I would look at her and say: "But why do you say that? Of course
the two of us live with you."
Then they'd hit me again. I remember Polo. He was so small that if
the two of us had hit each other with our hands free I don't know
who would have won. He grabbed my head between his hands. I
still remember his white shirt stained with the blood running from
my gums where a tooth had been broken out. My lips were
bleeding, my nose was bleeding. He kept on hitting and hitting. He
was obsessed with where Bene lived. She kept answering the
questions with "I live with her, I live with her."
Hour after hour went by. I think it was about nine o'clock at night
when we reached headquarters. At one in the morning, or even
later, we were still in that office and he was still hitting me and
asking the same three questions. To María: "Do the two of them
live with you?" To me: "Where does she live?" To Bene: "Where
do you live?" Bene's answer: "With her." Marí: "This one lives
alone.'' And I: "She lives with me." On and on. Nothing changed.
My head was spinning. There were moments when I thought I was
going to faint. They hit me in the ribs, kicked me on the shins.
Thank goodness they didn't touch the other two women. Once they
lifted Bene out of the chair where they held her and Polo cornered
her: "Look, girl, if you don't tell me right now where you live, I'm
going to pull your tongue out by the roots."
He slapped her twice. She gave the name of the street and the
number. I heard her perfectly, but the man who was taking down
the statements on a machine didn't. He was further away and with
the noise of so many policemen in the office, he couldn't hear
clearly. He asked them to repeat the address. I was near him so I
repeated the number, but I changed it slightly. I put a one in front of
the two numbers she had given.
They stopped beating me and took us down to the basement cells.
It was two in the morning, maybe later. Obviously they went to the
number that had been written on the statement. They must have
combed the
 Page 154
floors from top to bottom trying to find someone who knew Bene,
but they were a hundred numbers too far up the street. It was
probably five in the morning when they returned and made the two
of us go up to the office again. This time they didn't bother María.
They asked Bene where she lived and she gave them the address.
By now I wasn't worried because I was sure our comrades had
escaped. They took her down again to the basement and left me.
They verified with the man who was taking statements by machine
that I had taken advantage of the confusion in the office to change
the true number the girl had given.
I paid dearly. The police knew I was trying to gain time for friends
to get out of the house where Bene lived. This time they beat me
with real fury. They threw me to the floor. They picked me up by
my hair. They kicked me in the ribs and kidneys. I was supposed to
tell them who lived there.
"Look," I said, "you've made a mistake with me. It's true I said that
girl lived with me but that's because she's sick. I lied to save her
from ending up alone and out of work."
I insisted that had been my only lie and my arrest was a mistake.
How could they have followed me for several days and then
arrested someone who was completely different from the person
they'd followed? Then they said: "So you're not the one who was
with the lighthair man on the Rambla de Cataluña?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know any blond
man on the Rambla de Cataluñ."
"And you don't know the man in the dark red hat either? We've
seen you with him more than four times."
"I don't know what you're talking about. You've arrested the wrong
person. I'm not the one you're looking for. The only thing I do is go
from home to work and back home again."
During one of the interrogations Antonio Creix said to me: "Look
you're a fool. After five years in prison you get out and instead of
finding a nice friend and living a better life you hook up with your
party again."
I thought about that exprisoner who would say when we were
standing in line to check in with the police: "These people exile us,
the men back to jail, but this time as common criminals, and the
women, to the streets, without a soul in the big capitals, without
families and out of work. But we should die of hunger before these
people call us common criminals." Those words went through my
mind as I answered Creix: "Yes, certainly, you exile us so that later
you can arrest us for turning to prostitution out of hunger and
misery. But the party is in my bones. I came from my mother's
womb a proletarian. I've worn myself ragged working. Leave me in
peace. You've made a mistake, arresting one person for another."
 Page 155
Their only response was to give me details of the seven days that
according to them I had been watched. But my denial was stronger
and stronger. I didn't know anyone. I never had a meeting with
anyone. I didn't know anything about anything. All the policemen
who had taken turns following me came in, and all of them said,
"Yes, certainly, she's the one." I kept on saying no, and they kept on
hitting me from head to toe, everywhere on my body. I was
prepared to leave my skin in the hands of those murderers before
I'd reveal a name, an address, or anything that would give away my
companions. Confessing doesn't free you from beatings. No, they
always want to get more and more out of you. If you give them just
one little clue, they keep hounding and hounding you to confess
everything you know.
The second day after arrest they carried out a test. They went to
Bene's previous employers and tried to find out where we'd been in
Barcelona since her release from prison. I had told them the two of
us had done housework on Baños Nuevos street, she in number
one, a bar on the corner of what street I don't know, and I in
number two, opposite her. The owners of the bar knew perfectly
well that Bene had been in prison and had arrived at their house
under the circumstances I've already related. And they knew I
worked at the house at number two, Baños Nuevos. But I hadn't
told them the truth about where I'd come from. The police's reply
was that here was one more lie, like the one I'd already told about
Bene living with me. They insisted we had made contact with the
party before we ever got out of prison and that the party had
support and a place for us to live. In this respect, they were surely
wrong. I quickly made the point that they should prove what they
said.
"Why don't you take Bene to the bar and straighten it out? That's
right where the night watchman took her when she had no place to
stay. They'll tell you the truth about whether she arrived with a
contact already set up or with only the sky and the earth and four
pesetas in her pocket."
That's what they did. They took Bene to the bar, but that son of a
lying mother must have been a brutal Francoist. He denied even
knowing the girl. The police returned to headquarters. The blows
rained down on me again. I was the one who deceived them, the
one who was holding out. Whatever it was I had done I was hiding
something and either I confess or they'd kill me. I insisted I had
told the truth. Why didn't they take us there? I would go to the
house of my exemployers and to the bar; they knew me at the bar
because on our days off I would go there looking for Bene. The
police agreed. You could see they were bent on knowing where my
statements were leading. First they took me to my employers'
house. When those people saw me with the police, they asked:
"What has this girl done?"
"Nothing, just tell us if you know her, that's all."
 Page 156
"Of course we know her. She worked here. We wish she hadn't left.
She knows we were ready to increase her salary if she stayed. She's
a good girl, a hard worker and very honest. We're very surprised to
see her with the police."
"It's not a question of theft or anything like that," the police
explained. "She's been arrested for political reasons."
Even though those people supported the Franco regime, they still
spoke on my behalf: "We have nothing to say about her except that
she is a very fine person of complete integrity."
Next we went to the bar. The owner of the bar refused to recognize
me. But I had my own proof. When that guy assured the police he
didn't know me, I said to him: "How can you say that? You turned
your back on Bene but you'll not do it to me. Behind that door is a
circular stairway that leads up to the room where Bene stayed. Do
you want to test me? I'll prove this guy is lying."
I pushed past him and went up the circular stairway to Bene's old
room, which another girl now occupied. The owner had to admit
that, yes, the night watchman had brought Bene there, but he really
didn't know much about her.
We went back to headquarters. Now they wanted an accounting of
my life from July first until December. I told them about living in
the shanty on the Diagonal. They couldn't prove me wrong about
living there because the shanties had been empty since December.
The rest of the time they knew about; I was living at 172
Sepúlveda. So we got Bene released.
The nights in prison were terrible with women and men being
tortured. Days were horrible too. I was held apart from the political
prisoners, thrown in with common criminals; the usual black
marketeers, thieves, and street walkers. Some days fifty women
were crammed into a cell that could barely hold half a dozen.
One night, or more precisely, one dawn, they took me up to the
offices and resumed their interrogations. They were obsessed with
finding out where I went on Saturdays and Sundays. They didn't
ask me about the man with the dark red hat because they had
arrested him already. They'd already arrested Pinocho, the one they
called "the walking professor" because he walked along the streets
reading. He had been my comrade for some time, since I'd begun
clandestine life in Barcelona. Poor Moises Hueso, he'd been beaten
so many times that an old wound in his lungs had reopened and
he'd had several hemotypses.
That dawn Polo put me in a corner against a wall and began hitting
me. One of the times he hit my head against the wall I felt such a
searing pain in my neck and down my whole spinal column that I
could hardly breathe. I thought I was going to faint. As if in a
dream I heard them say, "She's going to faint and we've got to stop
her." They
 Page 157
grabbed me by the shoulders and sat me in a chair. Leaning his
hands on the back of my chair, Creix put his feet on mine and
leaned all his weight on my toes. The pain in my spine was
excruciating. I didn't lose consciousness. I knew I had to continue
denying everything. I remember how Polo looked at me and said:
"You will talk, you will talk."
"Assassin, you son of a wolf."
He hit me again and again.
"Look, you don't have a mother because if you did, you wouldn't
hit a woman."
That made him hit me so hard with his first that I fell from the
chair to the floor. They picked me up by my hair. By then I couldn't
stand up. My only thought was not to lose consciousness. I thought
about my comrades. I thought about the responsibility the party had
given me and which I had to fulfill. I thought that day was the last
day of my life, but I felt proud they couldn't drag anything out of
me except "no," "no," and "no"not even if I had to leave my life in
the hands of those assassins in the dungeons of the Vía Layetana
station!
That dawn they finally took me down to the dungeons. But not
before they made someone else suffer too. The police had hidden
Bene in one of the halls so she would have to see me go by, bent
over, barely able to shuffle.
"Do you see what shape your friend is in? Well, if you don't tell us
the names of comrades you know, you'll have it even worse tonight
when you go down to the dungeons. So get on home. But we'll
come looking for you. I think you're going to talk now." I didn't
find out until months later that the police had threatened her.
I remember going down the stairs after the interrogation. After the
first flight there's a landing with a door leading to the guard corps
of the Armed Police. Just before reaching this flight I heard a
policeman say: "This woman is falling." That's the last I heard. I
don't know how much time went by. When I opened my eyes I
found myself stretched out on a bed used by the guard of the
Armed Police. The sergeant came over. "Don't be afraid," he said.
"You're with us. Don't worry. Nothing will happen to you now."
After a bit a policeman came with a glass of cognac and some
sugar cubes to revive me. When I was a little better, he said:
"Good, now get up and we'll go to the cell. We can't keep you here
any longer."
But I couldn't move. When they put me on the bed, I was
completely bent over. That's how I was and that's how I remained. I
couldn't put my feet on the floor. The pains in my spinal column
made me scream. A big, strong man picked me up and carried me
down to my cell. They put me in a corner. There I lay for days and
days, unable to move. My legs were as dark as burnt wood from
the kickings and beatings. I could hear
 Page 158
my comrades begging and begging: "A doctor to the first, please, a
doctor to the first." The first was my cell. Finally they got a doctor
to come down. But what a doctor! I was stretched on the floor. He
drew near, with two policemen.
"What's happened to you?" he asked.
I didn't have time to reply. A woman in my cell accused of black
marketing sneered: "What do you think happened! They tortured
her and threw her on the floor."
The doctor did nothing for me. Fortunately that was the last time I
was taken up to be tortured.
I found out that "Antoñito" had been arrested. The arrest had come
about because of a companion of his who had been with him in the
Ocaña prison. The two men had been like brothers. When that man
was arrested in Madrid, he didn't resist torture. He took the police
to arrest the man who had been his prison brother. One morning a
policeman told me to come out. Opposite the first cell was the door
to the stairway going up to the offices. I stopped there waiting for
him to open the door, but he signaled, no, that I was to go toward
the hall. I remember that he cornered me in the wall between the
fifth and fourth cells. Then he opened the fifth cell. Out came
"Antoñito." Of course he was unrecognizable. His face looked like
a monster, all swollen and discolored. He put his hands on my
shoulders and out of the corner of my eyes I saw that his wrists
were swollen and bloody from the handcuffs by which they'd hung
him. But seeing him helped me with my declaration; now it was
safe for me to give the address of Carmen's pension where I spent
Saturdays and Sundays sewing and ironing. My interrogators were
surprised when I finally gave them the address. They asked me
why I had refused for so long and suffered so much.
"Because you treat everyone alike. That lady has done nothing but
good things for me, like giving me work, and I'm very grateful to
her. I was afraid that if I gave her name and address, you would
arrest her and she's a person who had nothing to do with my life.
She's a widow with a daughter and she earns her living by running
the pension. I would never have forgiven myself if you had
connected her with me and arrested her, leaving her daughter out in
the street and her work abandoned."
But I had to go up to the offices one more time. When they arrested
us they heard Bene as well as María calling me Toni, and when I
left the house the doorman had said to me: "Good evening,
Antonia." That's how they put the name of Antonia Gutiérrez on
my file. And I hadn't felt like revealing my true name. When that
file reached central headquarters, my real file was sent to
Barcelonamy finger prints had betrayed me. Then they brought me
up again and with joking little
 Page 159
laughs, said: "So, you tricked us here too or you tried to trick us.
What did you think, that we weren't going to find out who you
are?"
That was the last time I went upstairs until they transferred me to
prison. I was down there forty-eight days. At that timetoday the
situation is differentbut at that time they only gave you a little hunk
of bread toward eleven o'clock in the morning, that's all for twenty-
four hours. There weren't any mattresses and they didn't allow me
to have a blanket brought in because I was being kept
incommunicado. When I was able to stand up a little, I cleaned the
cell with water and disinfectant. The Armed Police that served in
the dungeons had to threaten the prostitutes to get them to help
keep the cell clean.
I had been there for more than twenty days when a woman who
was forty or forty-five years old came over to me.
"I know you," she said. "I don't know from where, but I'm sure I
know you."
I looked at the woman. I remembered her face perfectly well.
"Yes, you saw me every morning going down to the University
metro at half past five on my way to work. You were selling black
market tobacco on the stairs."
"Well, yes, that's possible. That's right where I station myself when
people go to work."
"Yes, there's no doubt it was you. You saw many people go down
the stairs, but we who were using the stairs saw only you and so I
remember you perfectly."
That woman treated me very well during the twenty-four hours she
was there. She said to me: "But my girl, how can you stand being
here for so many days without even a blanket, just that little jacket
to lie on?"
I told her I was being held incommunicado and that the authorities
had refused to let me have the blanket that friends had tried to
bring me. Carmen, from the pension, tried to send me food and a
blanket, but even after I gave the police her address, they didn't
allow it.
"Tell me where to go to find you a blanket," she said. "I don't have
one to give you, my dear, but I could pass one along to you."
I told her that it wouldn't do any good because the police wouldn't
give me the blanket.
"Yes, they will," she answered. "Look, this woman"and she went to
find a woman over in the corner"this woman is going to stay here
because she's been told that she can't pay the fine until she's been
here forty-eight hours. They're not going to take her to prison so
she'll be here for sure. But I'm leaving today. So tell me where I
can get a blanket and I'll bring it for this woman and she'll know
that it's for you."
And that's how they sent me a blanket from María's house.
One day they brought in a young girl who came over to me when
 Page 160
she realized I was a political prisoner. She stood looking at me.
"But aren't you Peque?"
"Yes, and you, who are you?"
She told me her name. Then I remembered her from the prison at
Durango. We had been separated when we left Durango. She had
gone to other prisons and we hadn't seen each other again until
now.
She explained that after moving through the penitentiaries of Spain
she finally was pardoned for the twenty years still on her sentence.
Even though the paddy wagon used for thieves and prostitutes had
brought her in, I thought she'd been arrested for political reasons
and that perhaps there had been another general arrest in
Barcelona.
"What's happened? Has there been another general arrest?"
Her head drooped and she started to cry: "No, no, they didn't arrest
me for political reasons but because I'm a piculina"that's what we
called a prostitute in those days.
I stopped in my tracks.
"How could that be? How could you have fallen so low?"
She explained that when she got out of prison and reached
Barcelona, she wandered around the city with hardly any clothes or
money. One day as she was looking at clothes in a shop window, an
older man approached her. "Look, daughter," he said, "if there's
something there you like, I can buy it for you."
That was her first fall. Afterward she continued in that life. As she
related it, she had been arrested many times. I thought again about
the comrade who spoke to us when we were waiting in line to
present ourselves on the first Sunday of the month. I repeated his
words to her: "That's what these people want, for us to fall, some
by robbing, others by turning to the street. Isn't it true that at some
time or another the police threw it in your face that you had once
been a Red and now were a whore?"
She wept even more bitterly because that's exactly how the police
had taunted her time and again. I assured her she was young and
still had time to change her ways. In spite of the sorrow she showed
on seeing me in those conditions, she still answeredwhich
infuriated methat for the time being she intended to continue as she
was: the old man supported her well and she was working now to
save a little money. She would quit her life later on. Her reply
repulsed me so much I think I insulted her. I left her. We didn't
speak again until they paid her fine and she went free. She huddled
in a corner, crying with her head down, not daring to look at me.
When they called her after the fine was paid and she was free, she
came over to me and said: "I wish you much luck. I envy you and
am ashamed of how I am, but now there's nothing to be done."
In general the Armed Police treated us well. I remember that one
older guard said I reminded him of his daughters. He truly did feel
sorry
 Page 161
for me. At the time of my arrest I was having my period. The
beatings made me hemorrhage so much that I flowed constantly for
fifteen days. I hadn't been allowed to bring any sanitary materials
from home. But this good man secretly passed me packages of
cotton. Every time I asked him to please bring me another package
of cotton, he would say: "But my daughter, are you still like that?"
He would shake his head and then bring me what I asked for. He
also brought me a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, and a fine-toothed
comb used for getting rid of lice, which we had in abundance.
Thanks to that fine man I was able to enjoy a little personal
cleanliness. I'm sorry I didn't find out that guard's name. Here was
a man who in helping us prisoners ran the risk of becoming a
prisoner himself.
I was in the basement prisons of police headquarters when World
War II ended. The Allied victory filled me with satisfaction and
joy. We prisoners had been expecting that the end of the war would
bring coordinated intervention from within and without to crush
fascism in Spain. The day we heard the news of the Allied victory
was wonderful, a time of hope. Most of the police didn't come to
headquarters because they also expected changes in Spain as a
result of the war's end. But our illusions crumbled at our feet. Our
men had sacrificed everything in war and thousands had died in the
trenches, guerrilla activities, and German concentration camps.
Once the war was over and our men were disarmed, fascism in
Spain did not collapse.
On the forty-eighth day of confinement in those cells, I was taken
out and put in a paddy wagon for transfer to the prison of Les
Corts. Les Corts was an old convent, a convent-reformatory, I
think, for girls on the street. There were no cells, just naves, a
patio, interminable halls and stairs, with everything divided by
those well-known barred doors with bolted locks. When a woman
entered the prison, she had to spend a thirty-day period of
observation, for disinfection and other things. My clothes were
filthy. I asked them to let Adelaida Abarcawe called her Deliknow I
was there. I knew here through the party and the Montoya sisters,
but not personally. Deli immediately brought me clothes of hers to
wear until mine were disinfected.
There were only four of us political prisoners in the room for
observation. The rest were prostitutes, thieves, girls who'd had
abortions or killed their newborn babies. Through the efforts of
Deli and Estrella I had a few days taken off my observation period.
Deli and I and later Victoria and Mercedes, we formed a prison
family.
Here, as in Ventas, I found some "special" little groups, as I used to
call them, groups of friends who had risked their lives in our
struggle. Many of them were arrested twice, first for their war
activities, then for their clandestine work after the war. We did lots
of handwork, espe-
 Page 162
cially making linen table centerpieces. We burned our eyes out on
that work but it sold very well at first, even though the nuns took
their percentage. One time we refused to take the centerpieces
down for sale because we'd found out that the nuns had replaced
the prices we'd put on the items with their own prices. Eventually
the centerpieces came back to us because people couldn't afford the
high prices the nuns asked. We responded by attaching a little piece
of paper to the centerpiece with our asking price. The nuns were so
upset at this they wouldn't allow us to take centerpieces down when
we had visitors. At that time people would come on visiting hours
just to buy our handwork. Finally we reached an agreement with
the nuns; we would give them a certain percentage of our sales.
My stay in the room didn't last long. I was suffering very badly
from damage to my spinal column inflicted during torture, and the
pains in the nape of my neck were so excruciating I would even
lose consciousness. One day I fainted when we were lining up for
our twice-a-day counting. They took me to the infirmary where I
spent the rest of my days in Les Corts. The prison doctor diagnosed
a blood clot in my neck, brought on by the beatings. The reason I
lost consciousness now and then and had such terrible pains was
because the blood clot was drying up and rubbing on a nerve. The
best solution was an operation.
I didn't feel as abandoned in this prison as I had during my
previous five years of incarceration. That's because I received a
beautiful package every weekfrom whom I well knew. I also had a
visitor every week. Through him I could let my friends with the
party know about the doctor's offer to send me to a hospital for the
operation. My friends advised me not to accept the offer because it
looked as if all of us would be released before long and then I'd be
able to consult a good specialist. They didn't want me to go to a
hospital as a prisoner and have my life in the hands of a doctor we
didn't know. I was told to refuse. At any rate I was getting better
even though I was in almost constant pain.
Without leaving the prison I began to lead an almost normal life. I
would go out to the patio to be with my friends, take part in the
artistic representations, and do handwork. Sometimes when I went
to the patio I chatted for a little while with the Alicias, mother and
daughter. What a joy it was to see them! I respected and liked them
so very much from the time we'd been in the same gallery in
Ventas. Alicia the Mother was an astounding woman, so
enthusiastic. She loved to speak about the years of the Republic
and her friendship with Dolores Ibarruri, better known as "La
Pasionaria," from their time together in prison. Alicia often said
about "La Pasionaria": "Ah, if we were worth only one fourth of
what she is worth." I also came to enjoy a family with three
 Page 163
other women. I think it was in the month of July when three girls
were brought in; two of them, Victoria Pujolar and Mercedes Pérez
had been beaten very badly. Mercedes was black and blue all over;
she'd been slapped and hit so much that her face was misshapen for
the rest of her life. Victoria looked like some hunched over old
woman because they had stomped on her kidneys; but she was
young and strong and recovered quickly. She was even able to play
basketball later on, as was Mercedes. As the youngest of all, Deli
was also the most serious. She worked in the prison offices. The
four of us, Mercedes, Victoria, Deli, and I, were so close we called
ourselves prison sisters.
As I mentioned, I liked to chat with the Alicias in the patio. I often
found Alicia the Mother talking with a woman named Pura de la
Aldea. Pura's story was extraordinary. I had known her by name in
Ventas where, amazingly, she had served as a prison official during
the period of the Republic and the war. She had worked in the
prison when Dolores was a prisoner there.
I remember Pura de la Aldea as a very friendly woman who never
had a harsh word for the prisoners. She did her best to help the
prisoners and make their life in prison somewhat bearable. She was
a sweet, affectionate woman, and all of us who knew her will never
forget her correct and courteous behavior. Possibly it was the
comportment of the Communist prisoners that persuaded Pura de la
Aldea to join the party. When the Republic was defeated, Pura de la
Aldea, like so many democratic women, was arrested, sentenced to
thirty years and tortured with the brutality that the fascists usually
employed. The memory of Pura de la Aldea as a woman of great
dignity and fine character lives and will live among those of us
who knew her.
In their conversations on the patio Alicia the Mother and Pura de la
Aldea always got around to talking about Dolores. The affection
and respect Pura had for Dolores was reciprocal. Later, when I got
out of prison, I found out that Pura, by now an older woman, had
been released and was living with Enriqueta Montoro. The two
women had been very close in Les Corts. To earn a living Pura
worked as a dress-maker in private homes. Their house was a
gathering place for the party leadership in Barcelona. The two
women were arrested again in 1958, at the same time that Miguel
Núñez was tried. I didn't see the women again until 1967 when
Miguel got out of the Burgos penitentiary. Then the two little old
women gave us the great satisfaction of spending a day with us in
our home.
Later, in 1969, when I was living clandestinely at a support house
belonging to José Aymami, his wife, Mercedes, said to me one day:
''Today I have an old friend of yours sewing at home. With your
clandestine status, it's best not to tell her anything. The woman is
Pura de la Aldea."
 Page 164
"I trust her and I'm not leaving without giving her a hug" was my
answer.
Our meeting after so many years was very emotional. Her first
question was: "What do you know about Dolores?"
"The only thing I know is that she's all right."
"Can it be that I'll die without seeing her again?"
At one time or another I had inquired about having Pura do
something for the party that would put her where Dolores was. But
that was out of my control, and besides Pura was already an old
woman and in no condition to travel, certainly not make a long trip,
no matter how much she longed to see Dolores again.
Later I had the joy of embracing Dolores and giving her news of
Pura. How happy Dolores was to hear about Pura, the prison
official who was penalized when the war ended and imprisoned for
having treated prisoners well and supporting the Republic. When
we said good-bye after several days, Dolores gave me a letter for
Pura and a pretty broach as a remembrance. When I gave Pura the
gift, she was so touched that she kissed the broach as if she were
kissing Dolores and wept with emotion and happiness. Here is the
letter that Dolores wrote to Pura, which shows how the memory of
this exofficial from Ventas during the years of the Republic
remained alive in Dolores.
To Pura de la Aldea. Barcelona
Dear Friend: It's been several years now since I have had news of
you and the news I have received fills me with profound emotion.
I have never forgotten you, just as I have not forgotten some of the
friends I knew, whose memory, pleasing or not, lives indelibly in
my memory.
You do not know that I searched for you when I found out about
the death of your Max, but I could not find out where you lived.
Forgive me, Pura, if perhaps I didn't do everything I could have to
find you during a time that was so painful for all of us.
I am sending a little remembrance with our mutual friend in the
hope that one day, perhaps not too far off, I can embrace you and
show you my affection and respect.
Cordially yours, Dolores Ibarruri
July of 1969
 Page 165
In my clandestine work for the party as well as in the prison of Les
Corts I became good friends with Victoria Pujolar, Adelaida
Abarca, and Angelita Ramis. Adelaida, Victoria, a third friend
named Mercedes, and I formed what we called a family in prison.
Their names appear in the next chapter of my story and I include
their testimonies among the following chapters.
 Page 167

Chapter 17
From Prison to Clandestine Life Again 1946
I remember the Christmas of 1945 that I spent in prison. The
packages arrived in the afternoon of the twenty-fourth. Deli came
up to get me. Without saying a word, she took me by the hand and
ran like a crazy woman to the place where the packages were
placed for distribution. "Look, just look at the basket they've sent
you!" There was a precious basket with a bouquet of red carnations
tied with a darling ribbon. It was filled with stupendous things:
roasted leg of lamb, fish in a pastry shell, beef filets in pastry,
Catalan cream, nougats, fruit, and a bottle of sherry, the only bottle
left by the officials.
We had organized the Christmas party to honor the old women. We
pulled together the bedrolls to make a kind of table and used sheets
for table cloths. Dressed up with paper or cloth aprons and little
paper coifs on our heads, we served the women their dinner. They
were so happy and moved by what we'd done for them that they
cried with emotion. Two or three times we were told to be quiet,
but we had obtained permission from the authorities to celebrate
until midnight, so we kept on singing. Afterward we were obliged
to attend midnight mass. We had a marvelous evening, and we
were especially pleased to honor the old women, many of whom
had been in prison for up to ten years. Lots of women came from
the fascist zone and had been imprisoned since 1936.
The following day we members of the artistic group acted out The
Little Shepherds. And that day I had a big surprise. From the time
of our arrest I had kept up a wonderful friendship with my
comrade, "Antoñito." When he was arrested I learned his identity;
his name was Miguel Núñez. He had written me several times from
prison. I knew it was from prison because only a close family
member could write directly to a prisoner. He was able to have his
letters smuggled out and then they would be mailed to me in
Barcelona. He pretended he was my nephew, and as he told me
later, he wrote with his left hand making lots of mistakes and using
incomprehensible words so his writing really looked like that of a
boy just learning to write. This ruse meant that it took three or four
days for his letters to reach me because the censors had trouble
 Page 168
deciphering that writing. However, I had a way of reading the
letters the very day they arrived. Whenever the office workers had
to go out to be counted or for some other reason, my little sister,
Deli, would bring me the letter to read and then take it back with
her to the office. That's how I already knew what my little letter
said and meant; after all, a person who doesn't know how to write
very well can easily understand the writing of someone with
similar difficulties.
Miguel's letters filled me with wishful thinking; he knew that I
hadn't let my family know I was in prison, that my mother was
very old, and that I didn't want to worry her anew with my arrest.
That's why I had my letters to my family smuggled out and why I
wrote about my work and life outside of prison as if I were in fact
living as a free woman in Barcelona. I gave them to understand that
I didn't have a permanent address yet.
Since my family more or less knew my political leanings, they
assumed I couldn't give out my address. They were content just to
receive news of me and know that I was all right. But I didn't get
letters from them. So Miguel wrote to his parents and asked them
to write me as if they were my aunt and uncle. Their letters I
received regularly.
Miguel's sweetheart had died in August of 1945, her death perhaps
hastened by her fiancé's detention. Her disease was very advanced
and there was no hope she could live much longer, but the news of
his arrest didn't help. On Christmas Miguel was already out and his
parents came to see him in Barcelona. Maruja's sister, Luisita, came
along. Apparently the families hoped the ties would continue.
On Christmas day the three of them came to visit just as I was
getting ready for the theatrical presentation. They were allowed to
come see me in the auditorium. Since the prison authorities had
invited their relatives to the performance, some prisoners, and
especially the women who didn't have many visitors because they
weren't from the capital, were given permission to have visitors. A
choir sang songs and selections from zarzuelas.
The three people were just about to enter the auditorium when
someone caught Miguel by the shoulder: "Friend, you're not going
in."
"Why not? My cousin and mother are inside."
"I'm very sorry if your mother is inside. Wait until she comes out
because you're not going in."
Maruja's sister backed up when she heard this. She didn't go in
either. So his mother was inside the prison to watch me act;
afterward they let me embrace her. That was my first direct contact
with Miguel's family. Apparently it was very difficult for me to go
free even though many people from the group I'd been tried with
had already been released. I don't know why they were keeping me.
In any event, thanks
 Page 169
to Miguel, who walked near the Captain General in the company of
our lawyer, Mr. Gómez Ponchón, I was granted my freedom.
The day I got my provisional liberty in February of 1946 I was a
little under the weather and in bed with a slight fever. As soon as
Deli got the news in the office, she flew up to tell me. So it came as
no surprise when the official appeared to advise me that the order
for my release was in the office and to collect my belongings. As I
embraced Victoria and told her good-bye, I said: "Our plan has
fallen through. You'll have to find someone else."
I was very close to Victoria. Since I'd already spent five years in
prison, I didn't want to spend more time in this prison. And
Victoria would have to spend even longer than I since this was her
first imprisonment. So Victoria and I had thought about how we
could escape. At the time of my release, we'd already hatched a
bunch of plans for escape and had decided on the best one.
Carmen from the pension had offered me her home in case I got
out; it was no secret to the police that we knew each other and that
I often went to her house to sew and wash clothes. But I had
resolved not to submit myself to monthly check-ins at the prison
and not to expose another person to danger by being with me. I
remembered perfectly the street and the number of our old shanties
on the Diagonal; that's the address I gave. Of course, I knew that
they'd been pulled down and all the area fenced off.
The officials were surprised when I told them my residence was
right on the Avenida de Generalísimo Franco, a street that people
called the Diagonal whether or not they were from Barcelona.
"Don't be surprised at the address," I told them. "There are just
some shanties there that face the Rosaleda."
Those shanties were well known, so the authorities swallowed the
bait. What they didn't know was that the shanties had been torn
down more than a year before.
Only a few days after leaving prison I received news that Raquel,
Mercedes, and Victoria were being taken to Madrid for sentencing.
I spoke with a friendthe poor woman is dead nowMaruja Montoya,
a fine girl, and the two of us went to the station to see them off. We
took a box of cookies and a thermos of coffee with milk. When we
talked in prison about escape and how to pull it off, I told Victoria
it would be easy to escape during transfers just by distracting the
Civil Guard a little. Victoria remembered my words.
When the three women reached the station, they weren't wearing
handcuffs, something very unusual for the Civil Guard. In a
moment when the guard relaxed his vigilance, Victoria got away.
By the time we arrived, there was a tremendous uproar all through
the station and out
 Page 170
in the street, with both the police and Civil Guard involved.
"Victoria's escaped," I said to Maruja.
"You're crazy. How could Victoria escape?"
"I tell you she's escaped. Look at the confusion here and look over
there where the guards arethere's just Mercedes and Raquel. No
Victoria."
Just then someone called out to Maruja; it was Victoria's cousins.
"Don't come near," they yelled, "Victoria has escaped. We were
here spying and realized what happened. We don't want to get
close."
Maruja stayed back with them, but since I could clearly prove that
it was only a few days since I had been released and that Mercedes
was a friend from prison, I went up to the guards and told them I
was taking a thermos of coffee and cookies for my friend.
"Which friend? Victoria Pujolar?"
"No, no, Mercedes Pérez."
"Well, get it to her and then leave right away."
I thanked them, went up to Mercedes and without giving her a kiss,
handed her the coffee and cookies. As she embraced me, she
whispered that Victoria had gotten away.
I left them and went to join Victoria's family. I told Maruja that it
would be much better for us to get away from the family because
someone who knew them might come up to ask about her. We
moved away from them but lingered at the station watching what
was going on. The police were frantically running around and
searching for Victoria, but she didn't appear. We saw an aunt of
hers, a little old woman, with a package for her niece. She and the
other relatives didn't see one another. The woman went up to the
guards asking about Victoria. We felt badly for the woman because
she was old, but at the same time we admired her nerve. Dressed in
her little light-weight coat, she gave those guards a hard time:
"Where's Victoria? Where's Victoria? Of course, you've got her.
I've come to see her because they told me she was being transferred
and I know you're taking her."
"She escaped. Don't you know she got away? Tell us where she is."
"You tell me where she is. I just came to give her a little package. I
don't know anything."
"What do you mean you don't know anything?"
"I don't, sir. If I knew something, I wouldn't have come."
We waited until we finally saw men and women boarding the train
and our two friends being taken to the train. We left, thinking:
"Where can this girl be? Where did she go?"
I continued to visit Deli in Les Corts. At the time she was having
trouble with her ears. Since the prison administration trusted her so
much, they decided she could go to the Hospital Clinic for
treatment.
 Page 171
She got word to me when she was going so that when she was
taken out, I caught the same streetcar and accompanied her to the
clinic. The prison officials certainly didn't show the trust they
professed to have in Deli: she was taken, handcuffed, by two Civil
Guards. Delia had the face of a little girl. In spite of her twenty-one
or twenty-two years, she didn't look older than sixteen or
seventeen. She was very blonde with rather long curls and she still
wore short socks. It pained me to see her handcuffed between two
guards. More than once I heard people commenting: "What could
that little girl have done?"
"Nothing," I would answer, "she's a political prisoner. They're
taking her for treatment to the clinic because she has ear
problems."
"Political prisoner?"
"Yes, yes, political. Besides she's been in prison for more than six
years."
Generally her treatment was at the same hour each day and the
same pair of guards accompanied her. Deli and I struck up a kind of
friendship with those two men. They wouldn't let me in the clinic
while she was being treated so I stayed out by the door and chatted
with the men. One day Deli said to me: "I have some material for a
coat I'd like to have made. How do you think we could arrange
that?"
"Well, Juan Bernarl's companion, who's in the Model prison, is a
dressmaker. Ask the office for permission for her to go in and take
your measurements and do a fitting later."
"Yes, but ... to make me a coat ... they'd ask why I wanted a coat
made."
"Tell them you need a coat when you go to the clinic."
That's what she did, and Joaquina, the dressmaker, went to the
prison, took her measurements and left with the material. She also
went in for the first fitting. I often saw Joaquina and her little girl,
María Rosa Bernal, with her leg in a cast. She was a charming little
creature. She had a sealed cardboard box that she used as a money
bank and whenever clients and visitors came, she'd hold it out and
ask for money for the political prisoners.
One day Joaquina said to me: "Look, I'd like to have another fitting
for this coat. Tell your friend to get permission for me to go to the
prison again."
I forgot to advise Deli to ask permission. So when she left for the
treatment, I told her I had forgotten to let her know that Joaquina
wanted another fitting, the last one.
"Confound it! That's a pain."
"A pain? Why? You can ask permission today."
"Yes, but we're going to lose time." (The escape had been prepared
already.)
 Page 172
While she was having the treatment, I asked the guards if they
would do us a favor.
"Tell us what you want."
"Well, she's having a coat made and the dressmaker told me to ask
permission for her to go in to do a fitting. I forgot to tell Deli to get
permission. It's my fault. But if you men agree, we could take a
taxi to the dressmaker's house and try the coat on in a jiffy. I
promise you no one will know. Besides, if someone asks, tell them
we were a little longer at the clinic, that's all."
They agreed. We went to Joaquina's house, they stayed at the door,
and we told them to go in if it wasn't a bother. They did go up, and
Joaquina gave them coffee. But they felt a little uneasy and went
back down to the street. We stayed upstairs. The coat fit
beautifully. We chatted with the little girl and then left. Not to lose
time taking the bus, we paid for a taxi again and returned to the
prison. Deli also asked me to look for some shoes in her size. She
had such small feet it was hard to find women's shoes to fit her. I
finally found some very good-looking shoes.
Deli's situation in the office was becoming more and more
dangerous. In her desire to help friends she was doing things that
would have cost her dearly had they been discovered. For example,
she saw to it that the order for Angelita Ramis's transfer for
sentencing disappeared, not once but several times. Angelita ran
considerable risk in sentencing; apparently the accusations against
her were so serious that the death penalty would be asked for. The
party decided that both women, Deli and Angelita, would escape. I
was to be the link between the party and Deli.
During my last visit when everything was set, Deli, with her little
girl's face, said: "And if it fails, what will we do, without a phone
number or an address?"
I was living in a room on San José de la Montaña under an
assumed name. Without thinking, I gave her my telephone number.
I didn't tell the party because I knew it wasn't the right thing to do.
But I thought everything would turn out okay and my
irresponsibility wouldn't be discovered.
On the day set for their escape a friend was to go for Deli and
Angelita in a taxi and pick them up at a spot close to Les Corts. But
a terrible storm came up that day and the girl couldn't get a taxi. So
she took a streetcar. She reached the meeting place too latethe girls
were nowhere in sight.
I was especially close to Deli and Victoria in Les Corts. Angelita,
too, was a good friend. I've talked a little bit about their escape,
but my friends should be the ones to tell their stories of escape and
flight.
 Page 173

Chapter 18
Escape: Victoria Pujolar at Les Corts
Victoria had been arrested in 1945. I met her in the infirmary of the
prison of Les Corts in Barcelona. I left prison with provisional
liberty in February of 1946 and Victoria escaped the next month.
She went to France where her parents lived as political exiles. She
returned to Spain after Franco's death in 1975. She lives in Madrid
where she works as an artist for a publishing firm.
My arrest was the last in an important round-up of members of the
JSU in Catalonia in 1945. In Barcelona they also arrested a group
of young guerrillas who had recently come from France. Their
leader was Francisco Serrat, nicknamed "Cisquet," a JSU member
for twenty-three years who had been active in the French resistance
and was on the side of Cristino García 1 in the liberation of towns
and villages in southern France. The group had performed a
"miracle." They had managed to get into Spain with arms.
Unfortunately, just when they were at the delicate point of making
contact with political organizations in order to join efforts with the
guerrillas in the city or with the civil organization, there was a
breakdown in communication. Either they contacted a person the
police were following or someone denounced them. The fact is that
the Political Social Brigade hunted them down right by the house
where they'd left their weapons. Along with the guerrillas two girls
were arrested, one who lived in the house and another sent by the
organization from Madrid with an empty suitcase. I saw those
weapons, including the machine guns, some ten days later when I
was arrested and taken to the office of Quintela, who headed up the
Political Social Brigade. It was there that I was slapped in the face
for the first time. Some of the propaganda found in my bag
Quintela had difficulty reading because it was written in Catalan.
In our clandestine work we were careful to change the place and
time for appointments at the last moment. I was on my way to meet
the man in charge of propaganda; our job was to find a safe place
for the copy machine that was so essential in our work. The usual
procedure
 Page 174
was to reach the meeting place ahead of time. I knew that if he
hadn't been arrested, he would be there before the designated time
as well. Without stopping I walked by the place where we were
supposed to meet. I looked in the vestibule but he wasn't there. So I
kept on walking rapidly toward the Vía Layetana. But when I
rounded the corner two policemen in civilian clothes came running
after me like crazy men. They grabbed me by the arm, took my
purse and made me take the caramel out of my mouth. But they
didn't handcuff me for the short trip to the police station on the Vía
Layetana.
The policemen told me they had taken a taxi to the meeting place
with the very man I was supposed to see. Just as I rounded the
corner, he'd said, ''That's the woman." It might have been the truth.
It might have been a lie. But the truth is that at the very least my
appearance as a girl from the suburbs of Barcelona didn't exactly fit
the image the police had of a Communist woman. They probably
never would have arrested me if they hadn't been tipped off.
At the police station I was taken downstairs to the cells. They were
cramped, dirty, and barely lit. Behind the bars, silhouettes, faces,
political prisoners and common criminals, all mixed together. They
didn't give us any food or blankets. Whatever we had came from
friends and families, unless we were being kept incommunicado;
then we had nothing but a piece of bread for the entire day. There
were only two cells for women. In the first one I met four young
political prisoners, two very young black-marketeers and a fat old
French woman who had been denounced by a policeman just so he
could keep the place she had sublet him. Later all of us political
prisoners were thrown in with the prostitutes in the other cell.
When I was brought in they already had just about finished
interrogating the people from our round-up. Most of them had been
beaten. When Mercedes Pérez insisted that the only reason she'd
come from Madrid to Barcelona was to find work, she was
punched so hard that her face was permanently twisted and
disfigured. Of course, Mercedes had another reason for coming to
Barcelona: she intended to return to Madrid with her empty
suitcase filled with arms.
The interrogations went on and on, interrupted only briefly at night.
You could feel the fear in the air as soon as the sound of the locks
echoed through the cells and someone disappeared up the stairs
between two guards. The first ones interrogated were the guerrillas.
All of "Cisquet's" teeth were knocked out. When I saw him, he
looked just like a baby with his toothless smile. Raquel, the woman
from Santander, was beaten repeatedly; they'd found a machine gun
in her house. "Cisquet" was our neighbor in prison. Coming and
going, or pressed against the bars, we exchanged a few words, even
though we couldn't see each
 Page 175
other. In this way he let me know that someone had squealed to the
police, but it wasn't one of his boys. He thought this "someone" just
might be Raquel.
On June 24, the eve of the Feast of St. John, the guards down
belowthey were always more humane that the ones upstairsthose
guards opened up the barred cells for a little while so all of us
political prisoners could chat. All the prisoners belonged to the
Communist Party, the JSU, or the Fighting Youth, 2 which was the
youth branch of the National Spanish Union, the national union
that the Communists had called for in August and September of
1941. That's when I saw Jesús Monzón,3 the Communist governor
of Alicante, for the second time. I had seen him once before in the
hall talking with a girl with curly blond hair, but I didn't know who
he was.
Then my interrogations began. The police concentrated on one
pointmy contact with the party. Since they didn't know or couldn't
imagine that I was in direct contact with the party, they assumed I
must be in touch with a comrade named Lluis whose undercover
name they'd discovered in a letter in my bag. The police became
increasingly nervous and irritated. One day they took me to an
interior room with hardly any furniture, just an armoire in the back,
a table, and some chairs. It was sinister. A long, blood-stained
jacket was hanging from a hook. One of the policemen, Calleja was
his name, played the good cop: "Look, I have to wear worn-out
shoes too. I understand you. You're idealistic, but listen, don't
sacrifice yourself for your leaders in Paristhey're leading the life of
luxury in exile. It's better if you just speak out. Do you want some
coffee?"
"No."
On and on it went. Then a bunch of police headed by the Creix
brothers appeared. They stood in a semicircle around me and took
turns slapping me in the face while one of the Creix brothers
bombarded me with questions, his voice getting louder and louder,
coarser and coarser. My alibi was that Lluis didn't exist. Lluis was
just the name we used for the party leadership; if we said that
something came from Lluis, it meant the leadership said such and
such. The blows rained down along with hysterical cries: "You're
lying. Lluis is your lover. Confess it." Then one Creix pulled a lead
bludgeon out of the armoire; they immobilized me on a chair and
began to hit me in the area of my kidneys. They kept on hitting and
hitting. For how long, I don't know. But my back turned black and
was crisscrossed with nasty welts. I had a raging temperature and
terrible thirst. One of the guards brought me some water,
something that was strictly prohibited.
One day one of the Creix brothers sent for me and as a joke tried to
convince me that he hadn't been the guy who'd hit me. When I told
him
 Page 176
I knew perfectly well who had done it, he laughed cynically and
said he hoped I wouldn't denounce him if things changed. Clearly
he didn't have the least fear that the situation would change. It was
a dangerous game of cat and mouseand the police played the cat!
Seventeen days went by. Our group was transferred from the police
station to the prison of Les Corts. I breathed a sigh of relief. No one
else had been arrested after I was. Men and women prisoners went
together in the same paddy wagon. First we went to the Model
prison where we said good-bye to the men. As Jesús Monzón
embraced me, he urged us to keep up our solidarity. I got a knot in
my throat when I hugged "Cisquet." I was sure I'd never see him
again.
I had seen Les Corts from the outside. And I'd been in the visiting
room when I had visited prisoners who belonged to the JSU. Now
those big, heavy prison doors closed behind me.
Mercedes, Raquel, and I came in with the same group. First we had
to undergo quarantine in the transit room, sleeping on mange-
infested mattresses. No wonder I got mange. Finally we were put
on a normal schedule and placed in the main part of the prison.
There I faced the harsh, though fraternal, reality of prison life.
Granted, it was no longer 1939 or even the first years after the war,
but I saw women there who bore the scars of that previous period.
There were women from Catalonia and from all over Spain who'd
been transferred to Les Corts just to deprive them of assistance and
visits from families and friends. There were even some women still
finishing their sentences for "war crimes." Among the
Communists, which included women from the party and the youth
organizations, the majority had been arrested for "posterior
crimes," meaning for activities after the war. These women we
called the "posteriors."
In effect, along with the Alicias, mother and daughter, the country
women from Toledo and others, there were "posterior" women who
had been arrested for organizing the party or the youth
organizations and for their solidarity with the men prisoners. The
women included Antonia Hernández and her sister, both grossly
tortured and violated in their dignity as women soon after the war
ended. There was the young woman, Adelaida Abarca, from
Madrid, who was part of the group of minors arrested in 1939 on
account of their solidarity with prisoners. Thirteen girls from that
group had been shot. There was a large group of textile workers, all
arrested, I think, from the same factory. And there were many
women, young and old, accused of reorganizing the PSUC. Isabel
Vicente was in that group.
It was in the infirmary that I met Tomasa Cuevas. She was there
because of the problems she suffered with her spinal column as a
result of beatings at the hands of the police. Tomasa was arrested as
a "pos-
 Page 177
terior" after spending time as a war prisoner in half of the prisons
of Spain. Angela Ramis was another member of the PSUC. She'd
been arrested with a group of people accused of crossing the
border. She lived under the double threat of being transferred to a
prison in Africa where others from her group were held and of
being sentenced to death. There were many other women whose
faces I can still see, but their names have slipped from my memory.
Prison life was a monotonous series of lining up to be counted,
morning and evening, singing "Cara al sol" in the patio, cleaning,
and doing our official jobs like working in the kitchen or the
offices. And there were the annoyances: obligatory mass on
Sundays and as always, spoiled food. We tried to earn a little
money doing handwork, but of course we weren't the ones to
profit; the real money went to the people inside and outside prison
who found buyers for our work.
When we arrived, we put more spirit into all the activities. Our
morale was a little higher because of the Allies' recent victory over
fascism. We reorganized the JSU in prison. We read and discussed
clandestine materials that kept us in touch with the party outside.
We managed to read the daily press even though it was prohibited
inside prison. Our sisters working in the office devised ingenious
ways to get forbidden material in and out of prison; food containers
with false bottoms were put to good use.
We also took advantage of whatever the administration would
permit. We played basketball, performed plays and operettas, held
poetry recitals, song fests, and dancing. Both common criminals
and political prisoners took part in all these activities. We also had
a natural comic among us who improvised on texts with lines
alluding to prison life.
In short, we kept solidarity alive. Sometimes solidarity meant
raising a woman's morale and being with her in her pain. Low
morale could affect a woman's physical condition so that she lost
her appetite and became sick. That's what happened to Angela.
Angela was always worrying about her trial. She got to the point
where she couldn't stand having to clean newly arrived prisoners.
She was sick of fleas and lice and disheartened by the moral and
physical misery all around her. I tried to get her to eat some of the
food her mother brought and which she insisted on dividing among
the other prisoners. I tried to convince her to escapeTomasa and I
sized up all the possibilities for escape and came up with a plan. I
was in a position to falsify a safe conduct across the border that
either Tomasa or I could use. It was agreed that the safe conduct
would go to the first one summoned to a tribunal. As it turned out, I
was that person.
Meanwhile, we received some news that turned our hearts to stone.
"Cisquet" had been taken summarily to the military tribunal and
con-
 Page 178
demned to death. We drew up a letter of protest to be sent to the
embassies of the western nations in order to have our position on
record. Without exception, every political prisoner signed the letter.
We got the letter smuggled out and a copy sent to Miguel Núñez,
who was responsible for the party in the Model prison.
A year in that prison had gone by when I and two of my
companions from our original group, Mercedes and Raquel, were
notified that we were being transferred to Madrid to appear before
the military tribunal. The day before the transfer I entrusted
Mercedes with a letter of recommendation for the organization at
the prison of Ventas. Mercedes looked at me and hugged me. She
understood my intentions.
At five o'clock in the morning, after saying good-bye to all the
political prisoners, we left Les Corts. On foot and without
handcuffs, we set out for the Model prison where the pair of guards
escorting us was supposed to pick up a common prisoner who also
was being transferred. Walking slowed us down. When we left the
Model prison, the guards suggested taking a taxi so we wouldn't be
late for the train. But we had to pay for it. We got in a taxi with one
guard while the other guard and prisoner set out on foot. When we
reached the Francia station and got out of the cab, Mercedes paid
the fare while we started for the stairs up to the station. When
Mercedes complained that we'd been over-charged, the guard went
over to see what was going on. As Raquel and I reached the top of
the stairs, Mercedes joined us. Just then, at that very second, I
made a decision. I put down the packages and sped down the other
stairs. Two memories stand out clearly in my mind, the one of
sound, the other visual. The first memory is Raquel crying
"Victoria, not now" and Mercedes saying "Yes, Victoria, yes." The
second memory is seeing the Civil Guard out the corner of my right
eye running up the stairs two at a time while I was going down the
other stairs.
I dashed through alleys and streets until I reached the Post Office.
There I went down to the metro. The ticket vendor shouted after
me that I'd forgotten my change. I got it. The metro came. I found
myself protected by the crowd on its daily way to work. I got out at
a station that was beyond the reach of radio. I went into a cafe. I
remembered the phone number of a friend I'd known for years. I
called him. The rest was easy.
I waited for my friend outside in the splendid sun of that wintry
morning. By the time he got there I had made a decision; I couldn't
stay in Barcelona. As soon as possible I must go to France. He had
the same idea and arranged a meeting with the organization. That
same afternoon I had a train ticket for Figueras.
Isi, from JSU, and her sister, Marujilla, came looking for me.
Marujilla had been waiting with Tomasa since early in the morning
at the
 Page 179
Francia station to say good-bye to us. When they didn't see me,
they knew I was trying to escape. They took me by taxi to the
home of some sisters from Madrid who had also been in prison.
They dyed my hair and used makeup to change my appearance.
A few hours after my escape I returned to the Francia station, this
time in the company of the women from Madrid and with a first-
class ticket. I was on my way to Figueras and the Madrid women
were saying good-bye. What could be more natural?
When we reached the border zone, I was asked for my safe
conduct. I showed it to the authorities. We reached Figueras at one
o'clock. I only knew Figueras from the time of the retreat in 1939
when we had been under full air attack. But I found Angela
Ramis's house from her descriptions during our chats in prison.
Angela's mother opened the door. She recognized me from her
prison visits and pulled me inside.
A few days later I crossed over to France with the help of a
professional guide, a contrabandist. It took two days and nights of
tough walking to cross the Pyrenees.
I reached Toulouse and my parents' home safely, only to read in the
newspapers that Francisco Serrat had been executed by garrote vil
in the patio of the prison. They had murdered "Cisquet!"
 Page 181

Chapter 19
Through the Gate to Freedom: Adelaida Abarca at
Les Corts
Adelaida, or Deli, was one of my dearest friends in Les Corts. After
her escape, she went to France, but from the 1950s on we kept in
touch through clandestine party work. Like Victoria, Deli returned
to Spain after Franco died in 1975. I got her testimony in 197879
in the same years that I saw Victoria. Deli lives in Barcelona, is
married, and works for an insurance company.
During the war I joined the JSU and like many young people was
active in the organization. After the war and in spite of the
atmosphere of repression the JSU began to organize secretly and all
of us who knew one another regrouped. We began by organizing
aid for those who were arrested. By the beginning of May in 1939
the arrests began. I was sixteen years old when I was arrested, right
in my own home. I was hiding a JSU comrade the police were
looking for because of her activities with the Bureau of Military
Investigation. 1 Her parents had been arrested already, and we had
looked in vain for her mother in police stations and in the prisons at
Ventas and elsewhere. She was left completely alone.
It was a group of Falangists with guns that invaded my house.
questioned us about this friend's activities, and searched
everything. The Falangists took me away along with Paquita
Rodríguez, the girl who was staying with me. They escorted us by
foot down the street until we reached a house in a vacant field on
the outskirts of Madrid. The house must have belonged to farmers;
there were just a few little windows with bars and only straw on the
floor. There they locked us in and left us, not saying anything
except they would be back. We took advantage of the time before
they returned to make sure we were alone and no one was around
to hear us. Then we agreed on what we figured would be their line
of questioning and planned our answers. The Falangists appeared
about midnight or a little after, took us out, and walked us through
the empty field. I didn't recognize where we were. They led us to a
house in a large field where there were stables for horses and a
hangar. They separated us. Paquita they took to one side and me to
the other. In a room
 Page 182
with twenty or so Falangists, including men and women, the first
interrogation began. They threatened me with insults and vile
words, demanding the names and whereabouts of our leaders. They
threatened to get the information by force; they knew I was a
member of the Provincial Committee and assumed I knew where
the leaders were and where the propaganda and weapons were
stashed. The interrogations went on and on. I hardly had a moment
to breathe.
Because I didn't say what they wanted to hear, their threats became
harsher: they would cut off my long hair. They grabbed some
scissors and started to take my hair in their hand and snap the
scissors. Each time they asked me something and I didn't answer
they cut some more hair. So it went for quite a long time, exactly
how long I don't know because I was too nervous even to guess. A
Falangist raised his fist to hit me but one of the girls objected: "No,
leave her alone; she's very young." At least there was one person
among them who didn't agree with their brutish behavior.
I couldn't breathe. I was very thirsty. I asked for water. They
brought a pitcher but I didn't trust them. When they saw that I
didn't dare drink they took a glass and put water in it for me. Then
another girl took a glass, filled it with water and drank first. So I
decided to drink. They kept on cutting my hair and the
interrogation turned nastier and nastier. But they were getting tired
of the whole business. One of them got up, grabbed the scissors
from the other and threw them down. That's when I realized that
what was on the floor wasn't my hair but hair from a horse's mane.
I shook my head. No, they hadn't cut my hair. Meanwhile another
man had arrived and asked if they had finished. They were done,
they answered, but they hadn't got anything out of me. Now they
would work on the other girl.
They took me out and went to find Paquita. They put me in a stall
with two young Falangists. There were horses there too. While
those two guys were guarding me, they continued the interrogation
using more subtle methods. They said that Paquita was telling them
everything. Besides, there was another man, they said, who was
locked up in the dungeon. He'd spilled the beans and told lots of
things about me. When morning came, they told me they were
sending me home. They opened the corral gate. "You can go now."
I didn't know where I was. They showed me more or less where to
go. I left, but I was very careful in case someone was following me.
I made lots of turns so I wouldn't meet anyone I knew. In fact I did
see people I knew, but we didn't speak. They understood I was
being followed. Finally I got home. My family and friends thought
the trouble was over, but the next day a knock came on the door. It
was the secret police.
 Page 183
They took me by car to the police station on Núñez de Balboa.
There I met Paquita. The Falangists hadn't released her but had
brought her directly to the station. There we found many others
who had been detained. Núñez de Balboa was a hellish police
station. Interrogations were conducted late at night and before
dawn, under blinding and bewildering lights. Whenever we were
summoned, they made sure we had to see the person they'd just
tortured. If we didn't answer their questions, they warned, we'd end
up like one old man I sawhe couldn't stand up or even raise his
head. When we were taken away after the interrogation, they'd
show us to the young people waiting their turn, as if to say: "Do
you see what happened to these girls; well, the same to you if you
don't act right." But we'd look at the prisoners with signs of
encouragement not to say a word.
During one of the interrogations we had to go by a hall where they
had hung a prisoner upside down by his legs. One of the policemen
told me to wipe up the blood on the floor under the man. Another
time when the police beat a man to death during an interrogation,
Paquita and I were ordered to take the dead man's clothes to his
family who were waiting at the door. On the victim's undershirt
were blood and pieces of his skin. We went to the entrance and
gave the man's wife the bloody underwear. Paquita and I were
unable to utter even two words, but that woman realized what had
happened.
After a few days in this station we were taken to the Ventas prison.
Ventas already held an incredible number of women prisoners.
Paquita's mother was there. When she found out we had arrived,
the poor woman came running, frantic to find out where her
daughter was. She was in prison because Paquita hadn't been
found. She hadn't heard anything about her daughter for many
days. This woman was both happy and sad at her daughter's arrest.
She only calmed down a little bit when she learned that Paquita had
been arrested because of me and not for anything she had done.
I was given the job of taking the children from their mothers and
handing them over to their relatives who then took them to be
weighed. Too often the little ones had no care whatsoever in prison;
by the time they were taken out of prison they were dying or so
sick they never returned. In my job I managed to get messages
back and forth between prisoners and relatives. I had to trick the
officials who would undress the children to see if anything was
being smuggled out with them. To avoid being detected, I would
carry the child in my hands along with notes prisoners had given
me, and as I handed the child to the family member, I would slip
my hand under the little coat or cape and give them the messages.
When the family came back, I did the same thing, in this way
getting messages to the prisoners. These children had a horrible life
in
 Page 184
prison. With childhood illnesses, epidemic, and no care available,
the children died, little by little. Every day six or seven little ones
died. The corpses were taken to a room and put on little marble
tables. There the mothers had to keep careful watch over the
corpses because of the rats. How frightful it was to see those awful,
hungry animals coming to eat on the squalid little creatures, their
bodies no more than skeletons, reduced to nothing. Gradually the
majority of children without help from relatives outside
disappeared from our midst.
One day I happened to meet the director of the prison, Carmen de
Castro. Rather severely she asked me what I was doing there.
When I told her that I'd just been brought there, she called me into
her office where she questioned me about my age and why I was in
prison. Then she said she was going to conduct an investigation
because at my age I shouldn't be in prison. I replied that if it wasn't
right for me to be there, neither was it for many other women. So
she took Paquita and me to the room for minors.
When our trial was near, some forensic judges came to question
Paquita and me; they isolated us in a room for interrogation. Pura
de la Aldea didn't trust the men; she asked to be in the same room
with us. Her action was reassuring because we had been frightened
just thinking about why these men were here and how they'd gotten
entrance to a prison that usually was off-limits to everyone. The
forensic judges came to verify our age and ask several question;
they looked in our mouths as if we were horses and filled in some
papers. Their certification undoubtedly played its role because it
was read on the day of the trial after the sentencing. We were in the
same process as the "thirteen roses" who were shot on the fifth of
August. We were all members of the JSU, and the accusations
against us were identical. The "thirteen roses" were tried on the
third of August and our trial was on the fourth.
Our trial took place with open doors. There were many people in
the room. We were accused of every kind of crime; we were even
called depraved women. I didn't even know what the word
depraved meant. They insulted us in every imaginable way and
concluded by asking for the death penalty. After asking for the
death penalty they read the certificate from the forensic judges and
went out to deliberate. The sentence was for thirty years. That same
day we signed the sentence for twenty years, not thirty. Returning
to prison on August 5, after being sentenced, we found out that the
minors had been taken out to be shot. Our arrival was very
dramatic because the women in prison didn't think we would
return. The door had hardly opened when we were met by such an
avalanche of women, including Paquita's mother, that the officials
were helpless to stop it. The women took us everywhere. I only
saw heads, haggard faces, sunken eyes, and heard questions and
more questions.
 Page 185
No one could believe that we hadn't been condemned to death.
They all thought we would be shot too, if not the following
morning, then at least within forty-eight hours, as had happened to
the ''thirteen roses." It was very difficult to convince them we
hadn't been sentenced to death. Our companions in the galleries
feared we would be shot from one minute to the next and for forty-
eight hours they called out night and day for news of us.
In May of 1940 we were transferred, first to the prison at Tarragona
for several days, and then to Gerona. I spent four years in that
prison, until it was emptied of political prisoners so it could be
used for prostitutes. At that time they had begun to arrest and
imprison prostitutes in an effort to curb the epidemics that resulted
from the increase in prostitution. The prostitutes would undergo a
special treatment to prevent the spread of disease. The officials left
behind a group of political prisoners to do office work and care for
the patients. We political prisoners didn't want to stay on. I
protested loudly. I went to the director several times, telling her I
wanted to leave with the women who had been arrested with me.
My protests were in vain. I was part of a team forced to work for
prostitutes.
Some 400 prostitutes came. We had to work among women sick
with venereal diseases. tuberculosis, and other contagious illnesses.
We had to learn how to draw blood, give injections, administer
medication, and take care of personal hygiene. We had to do
everything. It was very hard for me to learn how to draw blood and
give injections. The first time I felt the blood going through the
syringe I almost fainted.
The nun in charge of the medicine dispensary was a smart but evil
woman. When the patients were dying, the nun ordered us to give
them injections and call the priest to confess them and administer
extreme unction. When the poor women saw the priest arrive, they
imagined their last moment had come. They would try to get out of
bed. Many times it happened that they would fall as they were
trying to get up and die right there on the floor. I couldn't stand the
situation. I wouldn't be an accomplice to this cruelty. So when I
saw that a woman was at the point of death, I didn't give her the
injection and I didn't advise the priest.
That nun told me indignantly that I was responsible for the woman
going to hell and that I had the devil in my body. Then she would
grab a bottle of holy water and douse me from head to toe to rid my
body of the devils. Besides, she forced all of us to pray the rosary
in the medicine dispensary. Every afternoon I sat there with the
others as a discipline. Not seeing me pray she would ask: "Well
aren't you going to pray?"
"Yes, sister, yes I do pray, but it's that I ..."
"I don't see you move your lips."
 Page 186
"Well, I am praying, but I do it within myself." My words didn't
convince her. Finally, some days later she looked at my lips again.
"Don't you hear me? Pray with your lips."
The treatment of women who were less seriously ill took effect.
They didn't lack for what was needed to be cured. But we didn't
have the right to treat ourselves or take medicine because
everything that arrived was for them. Little by little they improved
with treatment and were put out on the street again. The prison was
emptied. That is, once the mission was accomplished with the
prostitutes, the convent was returned to the nuns of Gerona and we
were sent away, each woman to a different prison.
When we had to be transferred, the nun who had behaved so badly
with us felt the need to say good-bye.
"My daughter," she said to me, "I am so old now that I won't see
you again, but I am confident that one day we will meet in heaven."
I couldn't help but answer, "If I knew we were going to meet in
heaven, I would rather commit a crime than see you there."
They transferred me to Les Corts and on the recommendation of
the director at Gerona I was assigned to office work. My
assignment gave me the opportunity to do many things on behalf of
the prisoners. Sometimes when the mail arrived and was put on a
pile on the table, I sneaked out letters addressed to prisoners from
friends in other prisons and made sure they ended up in their hands
and not the waste basket, as usually happened. Other times I
collected bits of letters from the waste basket and got them to the
addressee to piece together. I was also able to help in some cases
where the punishments could be very serious. If the notice for a
proceeding arrived asking if such and such a person was in our
prison, I would answer yes, register the letter, and set it aside for
mailing. But after the director signed the letter, I would tear it up.
Months would go by and I would get another letter insisting that a
request had been sent before for information about such and such a
woman. Again I would answer and then tear up the letter. That
happened three or four times, I don't remember exactly, but I do
know that even the director finally asked me what was going
onhadn't I answered the letter? I would show her the registry and
tell her yes, the letters had been sent. I couldn't understand why
those letters hadn't reached their destination!
The day they came to get Victoria Pujolar, Mercedes Pérez, and
Raquel Pelayo, I went down to the office to prepare their
documents for the guards. This was another of my jobs. It was a
day when we didn't have any light in the prison because of power
failure and we were half in the dark. Since the transfer was public
knowledge, almost the entire prison was up very early that morning
to tell the women good-bye. Their departure was very emotional.
All the women prisoners gathered
 Page 187
where Victoria and the other two women were to exit, and dressed
only in nightgowns or wrappers and with their candles lighting the
way, they accompanied their friends right up to the door, bidding
them good-bye.
Meanwhile I was speaking with the guards and telling them to treat
the women well because they were good people. At that moment
the guards had no way of knowing whether I was an official or a
prisoner. I handed the documents to the guards, making sure they
didn't realize I hadn't taken the women's fingerprints. Then I
telephoned from the director's office that the expected number of
prisoners was just leaving. The women were taken to the Francia
station. That's where one of them managed to escape.
After her escape I was under suspicion. Many nights when the
officials came by to check on the prisoners they would touch me to
make sure I was in my bed. There was an atmosphere of suspicion
even in the office. The rumor was that I might be removed from my
job; that prospect worried me because then I wouldn't be able to
help the prisoners as I'd been doing. Because I kept the records of
visitors, I was able to tear out the pages with the names of people
who had visited the prisoner who escaped. When I realized that I
might not be useful any longer because my activities would be
limited, I started planning how to get out of there before something
happened to me. I was able to communicate with the party. They
agreed I should escape, taking all possible precautions.
A friend who was due to appear before the military tribunal to
petition her death penalty planned the escape with me. I took
advantage of the time left me in the office. The usual procedure
was to hand over the release papers signed and sealed by the
director to the guard at the garden door. Since prostitutes went free
every day and at no set time, I could arrange for their release at any
hour and have the director sign and seal their papers. I would
arrange for two prostitutes to be released.
One of the precautions that had to be taken concerned the dog that
was at the entrance and belonged to the nuns; that dog knew me. So
a third person had to be involved to shut the dog in the office so we
wouldn't be endangered. When the time came, on March 8, 1946,
Angelita and I left with the greatest precaution. It just so happened
there was a rain storm that day and the guards were in the sentry
boxes. We went as far as the garden door where the sentinel was,
handed him our signed release, and went out the gate.
 Page 189

Chapter 20
Crossing the Border: Angelita Ramis at Les Corts
I met Angelita Ramis in Les Corts where she worked disinfecting
the new prisoners. We corresponded for years. She went to live
with her husband in Budapest, Hungary. That's where I met her
again; the party had sent me to a special hospital in Romania for
Communists from all over the world. I was there for treatment on
my fractured spinal column. Since I was in Romania and close to
Hungary, I asked for a passport to visit Angelita. When I see
Angelita she is in very bad shape and depressed because of her
husband's death. I interview her in her home. She doesn't even perk
up when we go out for a walk. But here is the story she tells me.
As soon as the war ended, we began to organize within the party. I
made crossings from Spain to le Perthus in France. Another
comrade I had contact with went to Ceuta. He must have given
something away in our correspondence because the general arrest
originated in Ceuta. But I didn't know what had happened in Ceuta
so I continued making crossings. Unfortunately I was caught in le
Perthus. I told the police I was engaged in the black market, but of
course they didn't believe me. I spent eighteen days in a police
station, along with nine young people who also belonged to the
party.
I never told my mother about the beatings in the police station. I
was questioned under harsh lights they kept on night and day, and
they threatened to shove my head right through the wall. But I
didn't say anything that would compromise the party.
After eighteen days we were sent to the Model prison in Figueras.
While I was there a military tribunal met with the commandant and
a lawyer and questioned me about my activities. I insisted that I
had gone to France only to get food to sell on the black market.
They sent me to Les Corts in Barcelona.
In the meantime there were efforts to have me transferred to Ceuta.
The first time my transfer orders arrived, Adelaida grabbed the
papers and said: "The order for your transfer is here. But look, now
it's disappeared."
 Page 190
The party managed to send me a false form, one that was used for
rationing and didn't carry a photo. If I had a chance to escape at the
station or some other place I could use that form. But since Victoria
got her transfer order for Madrid before I received mine, she was
the one to use the form. The party sent me another form, but it
turned out I didn't use it because my escape happened in a different
way.
Adelaida made the documents disappear a second time after the
transfer was requested. Now it was too dangerous for her to use the
trick again. I was working with a prison official at the little window
where we received packages and mail. Joking around, I would pick
up her door keys, one a regular key and the other one with a bolt.
For a long time she didn't trust me and she would try the door to
make sure it was securely closed. Since she always found the door
locked, she gradually came to trust me and didn't watch me so
carefully.
On the day we had the preparations made with our friends outside,
I was to give two turns, one to open the door, and the other to close
it. That is, there would be two sounds. But I didn't push the bolt in
the whole way on the other side so the door was left unlocked. The
guard who was supposed to be at the door had gone to the office
for the meal that had been brought to him from home. Meanwhile
Adelaida had prepared two false release documents for prostitutes.
At eight o'clock, the time when they counted the prisoners, I was
counted in the hall. After that I went to my job of disinfecting
newly arrived prisoners. I went down the stairs that led by an area
where the nuns had their living quarters. The nuns saw me go
down. I didn't say anything to them, acting as if I were going to
work. They probably thought some prostitutes or political prisoners
were arriving. At any rate, they had no reason to be suspicious.
Down below I met Adelaida. At the very moment when we went to
open the door, we heard some steps. We ducked behind the door
where there was a sign for the deposit of cadavers. We stayed there
until we didn't hear anything more. Then, quickly, very quickly, we
slipped the bolt out and went into the room where packages were.
That morning we had put a package there with our most necessary
things. We loosened the light bulb. In case someone heard a noise,
she wouldn't be able to see who was in there. We escaped through
the little window used for receiving packages.
I had been hoping for rain all day, and there it was, rain! The
guards were inside, leaving only one guard outside in the sentry
box. We gave him the papers Adelaida had prepared with the false
names and out we went. We walked down the street and turned the
corner where a car was supposed to be waiting for us. We found a
car with a man sitting behind the steering wheel. José or Pedro, I'm
not sure which was the name we
 Page 191
were supposed to give. But the man took us for prostitutes and said
something or other to us. We left quickly. Then we saw another car
on the other side of the street. Surely that must be the person we're
supposed to meet. We gave him the password but he behaved very
badly to us. Later we learned from Tomasa that the person who
intended to pick us up had missed us by just minutes. She said the
party knew we had escaped because all the lights in the prison were
ablaze, a sure sign that they were counting the prisoners.
We decided to get out of there. We started walking along the
Diagonal, walking and walking. Finally we reached a house that
belonged to an acquaintance of mine. We got a warm welcome.
This was a rooming house for students. My mother had stayed
there when she came to visit me in prison. That's why I knew the
address. They gave us coffee with good hot milk; it was heavenly.
After we got there, Adelaida said she had to make a telephone call.
I didn't know who she was calling until I saw Tomasa. Adelaida
had kept the number in her head and said nothing to me except that
she had a number.
Tomasa came and took us to a very pretty house in San José de la
Montaña belonging to some lady. I don't think she knew who we
were. We spent the night there. The next day a man named
Fernando came. Later, much later, I found out he was Miguel
Núñez. We were there all day. The following morning a car picked
us up in the Sanllehy Plaza and took us to the little town of Corvera
Baján where we stayed for maybe three weeks. We stayed in the
home of friends. Adelaida passed for my sister-in-law and since she
was small, young, and very cute, we said that she was rather
delicate and was there to benefit from the mountain air. They told
the people in town that we were roomers. We stayed until the party
told us that Adelaida would remain in Catalonia to work while I
was to be in Madrid. Later the party thought better of it and ordered
us to France. We were advised to go in disguise.
They brought me the long, black skirts of an old woman and one of
those bodices that country women wear and a black kerchief. They
dyed my hair blonde and Adelaida's black. They cut my long hair
and dirtied it with shoe polish to resemble an old woman's hair.
Since my hands weren't those of an old woman, I put them in a
flower pot and got my nails and hands all dirty. But there was no
way my face was an old woman's, even though I dirtied it a little
bit and put on dark glasses and stuck some cotton in one eye.
We reached Gerona dressed like that, neither of us talking to the
other. I had told Adelaida to follow me so that if they caught one of
us the other would get away. When we got off the train in Gerona, I
recognized the road because I'd often been there with my mother. I
knew where we had to go. On our way we passed by a pretty
furniture store
 Page 192
owned by a friend of mine from Figueras who had married a man
from Gerona. The store had large show windows. I could see Deli
beside me, but I didn't see me! I didn't even recognize myself. We
reached the home of Catalina Brasera who had given shelter to
Maruja Montoya when she got out of the Gerona prison. When the
mother opened the door, she said: "What does that gypsy want?" I
gave her a big push and in we went. She was very shocked and
called her daughter. By the time the mother and daughter came into
the room, I had taken off my gypsy disguise.
"So, where's the gypsy?"
"I'm the gypsy."
"But, look, it's a young girl!"
We told her we had escaped from prison. We spent the night there.
The father spoke with some railroad men who were taking people
to France by train. But our luck was bad. The man who had been
taking comrades to the border had come under suspicion and had
been relocated to the machine shop. Our passage to France looked
impossible now. I suggested we go to Figueras and arrange for a
crossing through my parents and friends.
There was a train leaving at half past six in the morning with
workers who went every day to the border. I put my rags on again
and we left early in the morning. It was a cold, cloudy day, raining
a little. We reached the station, me with those dark glasses and a
cotton patch on my eye. Right there were two Civil Guard, some
soldiers, and two rural policemen.
"There they are," I said to Deli. "There they are. Leave it to me."
I went up to them and in a pitiful voice asked, "Oh, mister guard,
where's the train for Figueras? Right in front of me? Oh, excuse
me. I've got a bad eye and don't see very well."
"So where are you going?"
"I'm going to an eye doctor in Figueras that I hear is very good. I
have such a bad eye that I can hardly see. I've got to get there."
"So you're going on the train? Well, there it is, right in front of
you."
"Many thanks, mister guard, many thanks."
With Adelaida behind me, we got in the car, without papers and
with just a form. But when we reached Camallera, which is where
the control began, two guards went along one side and two on the
other, asking for papers. I was sitting by the little window with
Adelaida seated in front of me. I had a little basket and was eating
some chocolate. Through the window I could see the guards
approaching. I thought, well, now we're going to see what happens.
Two people were seated beside Adelaida and two by me. The
guards
 Page 193
began to ask for our papers. Since I had asked where the train was
that went to Figueras, they had trusted us a littlethey didn't say a
word to us. How lucky we were! They made two other women get
out and they detained two men without papers. But we made it to
Figueras. Imagine what a coincidence when I got out on the
platform and saw that there were guards in Figueras too. We had to
present our tickets. The man on guard was one of the men who had
detained me, but he didn't recognize me.
I told Deli to follow me. We went to the house of some friends of
my mother whose son I knew was a member of the party. We got
there early in the morning. He had a little umbrella shop, but it
wasn't open yet. I knocked and María, the woman of the house,
came out. Seeing my appearance, she said: "What do you want?
The store's closed." I pushed her inside. Then her husband and
daughter appeared.
"What kind of manners are these?"
"Quiet, please be quiet. Don't you know me? It's Angelita." I took
off my trappings and we embraced. They went to let my mother
know I was home. Meanwhile the family took us to a flat that they
were painting and getting ready to rent. That's where my mother
came to see me. Later my father came too. How wonderful to
embrace them again!
We slept there one night. By the following morning my mother had
contracted a guide to take us across the border. She didn't tell him I
was her daughter. She only said that there were two women. He'd
already taken Victoria across. When Victoria escaped, she'd gone to
my mother's house and spent several days there until she could go
over to France. When that man took us across, he said: "Oh, Doña
Dolores has a daughter in prison. If you could see her daughter!
What a misfortune." He spent the whole time talking about Doña
Dolores's daughter: "Poor little girl, she didn't do anything wrong,
but there she is, in prison in Barcelona. Her family are very good
people. But they're scared she'll be shotshe's got the death penalty."
He talked like that the entire way. It was a terrible trip with rain
and wind. During the day we hid in a kind of cave he had and then
at night walked, stumbling and falling. One of the horrors of
crossing the border by foot over the mountains was climbing parts
where the bushes were all smoky from a recent fire. Adelaida
wasn't very strong so she climbed the mountain by grabbing hold
of bushes. When it dawned the next day, we laughed and laughed
to see how black she was from those bushes. We spent two nights
on the mountain, usually walking but sometimes crawling so our
silhouettes wouldn't be seen in the bright moonlight. Finally our
guide said: "Here's the border." My mother had given me a ring
with these instructions for the guide: "When you reach the border,
come back and give me the ring. Then I'll know the girls got safely
across the border."
 Page 194
So I gave him the ring, and he said to us: "Look, go down to le
Perthus if you like."
"No," I said, "no, not to le Perthus. They can seize us there even
though they're French because one side is Spanish and the other
French. No, on to le Boulou."
We didn't go on the highway but instead followed a road through
the woods. We slept there, cold, soaked, just about undone. In the
morning we saw from up above that some men were going to work
along the road. We fixed ourselves up a little to go down. We could
barely walk because our feet were even more swollen and painful
than the night before. When we reached a bridge leading to le
Boulou, we suddenly spotted a guard. He said something we didn't
understand. There was nothing we could say. He turned away and
let us pass.
In the first open store I saw I went up to a woman and asked her if
she knew a certain Ricardo Garriga, a cousin of mine who worked
in that town.
"Yes, he works in my house."
"Don't you know me? I'm the daughter of Dolores from Figueras."
"My heavens! How wonderful."
We embraced, and she gave us everything they had until there was
no more to give. Then my cousin came.
We were there a day or two, I'm not sure, until that woman's son
arranged for us to go by car to Perpignan where they were
supposed to put us in a concentration camp. Since I could speak
French, I said to the man who met us: "Don't leave us in the
concentration camp."
"You've crossed the mountain clandestinely, without passports, so
you have to go to the concentration camp."
"Don't be like that. Listen, we've got relatives in Toulouse"I meant
Victoria's parents. "They'll take us in once we get there. So why do
you want to stick us in a camp?" In short, he was a very good man
and let us go on. And since they had given us a bit of money and a
suitcase, we could travel decently and a little better dressed.
We reached Victoria's parents in Toulouse where we stayed until
we made contact with the party. Since we were coming from
Catalonia, we appeared before the PSUC. Joan Comorera, a leader
of the PSUC in Catalonia, his son-in-law, Wenceslao Colomer, and
another person whose name I don't remember were there. 1 When
they saw the three of us, Victoria, so good-looking, little Deli with
her curls, and me, now looking a little decent, they said: "What do
you mean you're from the party? You belong to the JSU."
Out of sorts, they dismissed us.
"Mother of mine, what are we going to do?" Victoria asked. "We've
got to find a contact."
 Page 195
Luckily at that very moment Santiago Carrillo, a long-time party
leader, appeared to preside at a meeting. Our story was being
checked through the PCE.
"Don't give your names," they told us, "but go to this address, to
the Hospital of Varsovia."
But the hospital director also greeted us disagreeably, probably
because in those days it was hard to know who was the good guy
and who was the bad one. So we had to leave. By that time,
however, Carrillo had received the names of three girls who had
escaped from prison and probably were in Toulouse. The party in
Toulouse telephoned the PSUC: "Well, three girls with those names
came here and we sent them away."
Carrillo telephoned us immediately. We went to meet him, and
after spending some time together he said that we would have to be
checked by Doctor Parra who was the director of Varsovia
Hospital. After being examined at the hospital, we were sent to a
rest home near Pau. We three fugitives spent a month there.
Afterwards, Victoria and Deli left for Paris with the JSU while I
remained in Toulouse. I was told to stay there and work in the
Varsovia Hospital. I was there until Felix, the man I'd married in
Toulouse, was deported. In 1950 the French government rounded
up the Spaniards and deported them to Corsica. Felix was with Dr.
Bonifaci, 2 a Communist doctor in Varsovia Hospital. The two of
them went together.
Boni's wife, Elvira, and I joined our husbands in Corsica and from
there Felix and I sought asylum in Hungary. I buried my husband
in Budapest and I myself became seriously ill. In my Spain I no
longer have any immediate family to help me or free medical
assistance. But the doctor does come each week to see me and I get
along all right.
 Page 197

Chapter 21
The Guerrilla: Esperanza Martínez
I met Esperanza Martínez in Barcelona in 1968, but not in prison.
She had been in the prison at Alcalá de Henares and when she got
out our comrades told her to go to Barcelona where they would put
her in contact with me. From that time we have kept in touch, even
after she moved to Zaragoza to live. She married a man who had
also been a prisoner. In 1978 I go to Zaragoza to get Esperanza's
testimony. At this time her health is good. She works in a private
home and her husband in a factory. They have a son who rebelled
against military service and escaped. She tells her story in her own
words.
I first came into contact with the guerrillas through the Montero
family. After the father and older son got out of prison, the father
found out that his job as a forest ranger had been filled by someone
else. With no income, the family lived miserably. My father,
Nicholás Martínez, needed help with the summer harvest, so he
hired the younger boy, Casimiro, who had experience in the
harvest. When my father found out how the family was suffering
reprisals because of their leftist beliefs, he helped them in every
way possible.
By working at whatever jobs they could the Montero family
managed to get ahead a little. But the older son was a restless
fellow; he got involved with clandestine activities. Eventually he
had to go off to the mountains with the guerrillas to avoid arrest. It
was through him that we made contact with the guerrillas.
My father was a widower with five daughters, Pruden, Esperanza,
Amada, María, and Angelita. He was opposed to our getting mixed
up in any resistance activities. But one night this boy showed up at
our house looking for a straw loft or some place to hide; his feet
were so swollen he couldn't walk any further. My father hid him
and secretly cared for him. My sister and I didn't know about the
boy but we did wonder why we were always running out of food.
We'd slaughter an animal and suddenly the sausages, blood
pudding, and ham would be gone. We'd say to our father: ''How can
everything be eaten up so
 Page 198
quickly?" He wouldn't answer. He was in touch with the guerrillas
and was smuggling food and other goods to them through the boy.
One night my sister was flirting with her sweetheart at the window
when she noticed some men with a machine gun. She thought the
men were from town coming to take reprisals against us again. I
was frightened, too; like my sister, I thought the men were after my
father. They called for him at the window of his room that faced the
street. Then they came in through the corral and met my father. The
men embraced. Our hearts rejoiced because we saw that the men
were on our side. We didn't know if we should run out to embrace
them too; we decided to act as if we didn't know what was going
on.
My father didn't say anything to us about his clandestine work. But
my curious sister went to the straw loft one time and found the boy
there along with some other friends of his.
"Please, Pruden, don't give us away."
"Why would I give you away? Not a word. What do you need?"
"Nothing," he answered, "nothing, don't say anything about seeing
us."
He told my father that Pruden had discovered them. "There's
nothing to do now but talk with her," father answered. "I'll speak
with her and she'll help you and me too."
The situation got more and more complicated. My sister didn't say
a word to me and went on working with my father. When I
discovered the situation, I didn't say anything either. For a time,
then, all of us at home knew what was up but no one said a word.
Finally the plot was out in the open and we could all act together as
one.
After my sister got married and went to live with her mother-in-
law, I began to work with my close friend, Reme Montero,
furnishing supplies to the guerrillas. I would leave my house, go to
Reme's village, and then the two of us would go to Cuenca to shop
and lead the donkey loaded with goods for the guerrillas. We often
met the Civil Guard when we were bringing provisions, but we just
put on a foolish act so they wouldn't realize what we were doing.
We lived like that for a long time, supplying the guerrillas and
letting them stay in our place as needed. I was very idealistic about
the work. I knew the guerrillas were Republican soldiers who had
escaped to the mountains rather than face jail.
The Civil Guard didn't have any solid information about our
activities, but they began to watch the houses of people known to
be leftists. When the guerrillas knocked at our windows at night,
we answered with the countersign, and if they returned the signal
we opened up. Then the Civil Guard got to knocking at the
windows to see if we would think they were the guerrillas and open
up. But they didn't give the counter-
 Page 199
sign, so of course I didn't respond. I don't know if it was an error or
a good guess, but I said to my father: "Look, I think we've been
discovered. The Civil Guard were dressed like beggers and came
asking for alms to see how we'd react. We have to do something,
father, or one of these days we're going to be arrested."
We had a tremendous watch dog; he never barked at the guerrillas
but as soon as he smelled the Civil Guard he would alert us.
"I'm going to the mountains," I told my father. "If you want, come
with me; if not, stay with my sisters. But I'm going before I get
caught."
"Then let's all go," he answered. "I won't let myself get taken
either. If they're going to fire a shot at me, better in the mountains
where at least I stand a chance of defending myself."
By this time we'd found out that some friends from a nearby village
had been arrested and tortured unmercifully; supposedly they'd
disclosed the names of people who helped the guerrillas. My sister
and her husband, in fact all the family, were helping the guerrillas,
so we all agreed to leave that very night. Reme, her father, my
father, my two sisters, my brother-in-law, and I, all of us set out at
the time and for the place set by the guerrillas. Reme's mother
wasn't with us; the family had buried her just the previous day. But
that was fortunate because the poor woman was paralyzed and
suffered horribly: she couldn't do anything for herself, not even
feed herself.
So we set off for the mountains and became guerrillas. For us,
being with our comrades and feeling free was the greatest thing in
the world. My father had heard about atrocities committed against
young people and he couldn't help but imagine what the police
would do to his daughters if they were caught: they might rape us
or do any number of barbaric things. If they killed us in the
mountains, we would die defending ourselves and not like helpless
creatures waiting for them to come to our house. In the mountains
we would also enjoy camaraderie.
But life in the mountains was very difficult, with snow and rain,
lots and lots of problems, and always having to hide from the Civil
Guard. One time we had nothing to eat for four or five days
because the snow was too deep to get to the aid stations for
provisions. All we could do was pick out a book and read.
One night Reme was caught when she went for water. Before we
realized what was happening, the guards were on top of the rest of
us. We did what we could, but the Civil Guard was everywhere.
Three of our people were wounded, and the Civil Guard lost three
men. We managed to escape because we were quicker than the
guards. The next day we spent the entire time lying on an
esplanade covered with rosemary; we didn't dare move until night.
After that Reme left for the city while my sisters and I remained as
 Page 200
guerrillas in the mountains for almost two years. Later Reme
returned. By that time the guerrillas had decided we would have to
leave because they couldn't provide for us. My sisters were to go to
the city and Reme and I were supposed to go to France. It was
agreed to send our fathers to a quieter sector until a safe place
could be located in the city. Our fathers were sent to the seventh
sector, but the two men didn't go together. My father set off with
another man. They happened upon a shepherd who gave them
away to the Civil Guard. The Civil Guard killed the two men, but
they didn't finish my father off right away. He was still alive with
his pistol in hand, but he couldn't fire it. Since he couldn't kill
himself, my father grabbed the guard by the leg and bit him. The
guard's reaction was to shoot him. It's clear that my poor father
thought it was the only way he would be finished off.
One day my brother-in-law and Reme's father were killed in an
ambush by the Civil Guard after some shepherds had given them
away. When their encampment was attacked, the men tried to cross
the river to safety. But they didn't know how to swim and drowned.
When their bodies surfaced, not even the families recognized them.
So time passed. Then the order came for the guerrillas to retreat.
But the group didn't dissolve completely; some guerrillas remained
along the border and some walked with us to France. They sent my
sisters to a specific town, all very clandestine. Nothing was
revealed about the plans; we were just told to prepare to leave.
Reme and I were off for France. To leave the mountains we went
by different routes. I went with a comrade named Teo to a town in
Valencia and from there to Barcelona where Reme and I were
reunited. From Barcelona we walked to a specific place in the
mountains where other friends were waiting for us to cross the
border, going first to Perpignan and from there to Paris. In Paris the
party asked if we wanted to work as links between France and
Spain.
I left for Spain before Reme did. I traveled to Pamplona with
friends I'd left there and met up with others. We made the journey
in the usual way. We spent the least possible time in Barcelona and
at night we left to cross back over the border, walking as far as St.
Jean-de-Luz and from there to France. I made the trip safely,
without any problems. No sooner did I return to France than I was
asked to go back to Spain because Reme was in danger. That night
we made the necessary preparations and the next morning we were
underway.
I was to make contact with a man who would help me across the
border. I didn't trust that man from the time we reached St. Jean-de-
Luz and he asked for a certain address in Bordeaux that the party
had given me in case I missed the contact. I told him the address
wasn't his business, but finally I did give it to him. That was a
mistake.
 Page 201
At night we left St. Jean-de-Luz. Wherever we rested, he treated
me well enough, but I didn't like the way he wanted me to carry
more weight. And I couldn't understand why he made me go right
by a power station and near farm houses with dogs barking
everywhere when I'd been trained to avoid light and populated
areas. What's more, when people passed near, we pressed against
house doors to hide. All this seemed very strange to me.
I was so suspicious about this guy that I was tempted to kill him
while he was crossing the Bidasoa in a rubber boat with the
knapsack. I had stayed behind with the machine gun waiting for the
next crossing. But how would I look to the party if I told them I
had killed a comrade because of personal suspicions? Then I
thought that my duty was to continue the trip because what
mattered most was to save the lives of comrades who were in
danger. Still, I mulled over arguments I would give the party for
disliking that fellow.
We reached Rentería where we had a coffee with milk for
breakfast. Once in Spain he opened our suitcase so we could
change into city clothes; he was very upset to see that I had been
given more money than he. I told him it was all the same because
whatever money I had left over belonged to the party. He asked me
to reimburse him for the money he had spent for our breakfast. I
was thinking about his strange behavior while we waited for the
train to Salamanca. He badgered me about exactly where we were
to go in Salamanca and whom we were to meet. I told him not to
worry, that I would tell him when we were close. I distrusted him
all the more when he spent a long time talking with the man at the
window where he was buying our train tickets.
When we boarded the train, he handed me the tickets. He sat in one
car and I in another; evidently the police knew the man well and he
ran the risk of arrest. When we were well under way I heard loud
talking in the next car where he was sitting. After a bit the police
came in and demanded my documentation. Then they said I was
under arrest until some matters were cleared up. They took the
money I was carrying, except for the thousand pesetas I had in a
money holder; this I put between the seats for some lucky traveler
to find. That was better than having the police get money that I
knew they wouldn't return to me.
I think it was Miranda de Ebro where we were taken for a
statement and from there we were transported by train to Burgos.
Under questioning in Burgos I revealed only the name and job
indicated on the documents I was carrying. At noon they asked us
if we wanted something to eat; I didn't feel hungry at all but I did
ask if they could bring me an orange because I was thirsty. I was
surprised to hear my companion asking for a succulent banquet. I
imagined they would bring what he asked for and that he'd strike it
rich.
 Page 202
The authorities began to ask where we'd come from, what the
purpose of our trip was, and what party I belonged to. I answered
that I didn't belong to any party and I didn't understand anything
about football. I was making a pun on the word partido which
means both party and football game in Spanish. They didn't find
my joke funny. Their answer was to hit me.
They left me. Then they came back to get me. Every two hours
they took me out and beat me. I insisted that my name was
Consuelo Pallares Olivares and that I worked at such and such a
dress shop, just as it said on the documents. The police made a call
there and tried to get me to take the phone and talk with the owner.
I refused. I told them I had no reason to speak with the woman. I
kept to my story. After two days they took me to the provincial
prison for men where a group of women also was held. When I got
to the prison an official demanded the thousand pesetas that I'd put
between the train seats. Now it was clear that my friend was in on
the plot during the whole trip.
I was taken back to the police station where they beat me again; the
police were furious because I wouldn't reveal my reason for going
to Salamanca. When I was returned to prison, my head and body
were swollen from all the beatings. The prisoners reacted violently
against the police when they saw the shape I was in. The men
who'd done this to me were nothing but beasts, they shouted. They
protested so loudly that one official even took my side and agreed
that the police had no right to treat people so brutally.
On one of the trips to the police station, a couple of men came to
see if they recognized me. They walked around me a few times,
peering at me from head to toe, taking a few steps here and there.
Then they said: "No, it's not Peque. You can take her away."
That "Peque" was Tomasa Cuevas, who had been in the hospital of
Pedrosa in Santander as a prisoner; many friends called her
"Peque." She had escaped after two years in the hospital and they
were looking for her. This I found out many years later.
They took me away when they realized for sure that I wasn't the
woman they were looking for. Afterward they took me to the
provincial prison where I was for how long I'm not sure. Then
Reme and I and some other comrades were put, handcuffed, in a
freight car and kept at the point of a machine gun for the trip to
security headquarters in Madrid. They put us in some ancient
dungeons. If those walls could talk, they would tell of monstruous
things they had seen, men and women maimed and even killed by
torture.
The cells were very dark by contrast with the place where they took
us to make statements. There brilliant lights were played on our
eyes at full strength. They put us in the center of a ring and played
hardball, giv-
 Page 203
ing us all the wood we could stand. At seven in the morning they
stuffed my mouth with dirty rags so I couldn't scream. They knew I
was in for a rough time. I was ordered to lie on the floor. I refused.
They knocked me to the floor, face down. After I had covered
myself up, they lifted my skirts and took off my underpanties. Two
men, one on each side, hit me with rubber clubs, first one, then the
other. When they saw that the beating wasn't hurting me because I
had gone numb, they let me rest. Then they resumed their act,
always in the same way. "Get down on the floor. Undress." I
refused to do anything they demanded. They threw punches freely,
from one side and then the other.
I refused to give my true name.
"Reme says your name is Esperanza Martínez," they said. "Besides,
we've got letters you wrote and information about you from
guerrillas."
"I'm Consuelo Pallares Olivares, not Esperanza Martínez."
How many blows I suffered that way! In the final analysis I could
have saved myself all those blows because I ended up confessing
that I was Esperanza Martínez. Besides, they had loads of
information and photos. I don't remember how long I was beaten.
Once the policeman who was playing the good guy took me out in
the hall and after going through a large gate and a tunnel he sat me
on a stone bench.
"Don't be a fool. Tell everything you know and we'll give you
documentation so you can go to Portugal and no harm will come to
you."
I answered that I had nothing to say and they should speak with the
man who was in charge of the mission.
"That's 'el Largo,'" he told me. El Largo was Eduardo Pelayo
Blanco, which was also the name of the man I had traveled with. I
answered that I couldn't accuse that man of anything even though I
might be suspicious of him. I told the police over and over that I
had nothing to say.
Even though the police knew my name, they kept on questioning
me about my mission. Then some police from Valencia came and
had me transferred because my case belonged in Valencia. So it
ended up that I spent an entire month going from police station to
police station. In Valencia I found out they had arrested my sister,
Amada, who had also been with the guerrillas. She had been
arrested just a few days after she reached the town where she was
supposed to go. The Civil Guard had granted her provisional
freedom with the purpose of seeing whether she would meet up
with me.
Our first days in Valencia prison were very hard. Among other
things they tormented us by saying we were going to be shot. And
we were convinced they would do it. They called us vipers with so
much poison in our hearts that we had no feelings. The guerrillas,
they said, were nothing but heartless bandits. The police got furious
when we
 Page 204
women answered that the guerrillas were the most honest people in
the world.
I was arrested in 1952. In 1954 I was notified of my upcoming
transfer to Madrid. I spent a year in Ventas. Given the situation
there, I got along very well. I met some companions in the second
gallery who were political prisoners. During this year I began to
work in the Ventas workshop. Then I was transferred to Burgos
where I was scheduled to appear before not just one but two war
tribunals. One proceeding was for helping the guerrillas and
crossing the border, the other for communist activities in Valencia.
One arrest, but two proceedings.
I spent a year in the Burgos prison and then went before a war
tribunal. I saw Eduardo Pelayo Blanco; he was in the same group
with me when they took us to the provincial prison. I was put in an
upstairs pavilion until my appearance before the tribunal. At the
tribunal I was given a list of lawyers. They all sounded the same to
me so I just chose one at random. The man I had distrusted so
much also was tried; but he had the benefit of a private attorney,
who got him off. From the statements he made at the trial I found
out how long he'd been a member of the party, his dedication in
helping Communists across the border and how he had taken the
police to the place where he'd hidden the knapsack, the gun, the
clothing, and the documents.
They asked for ten years for me, and I think it was the same for
him. But they gave me a sentence of six years to sign and even less
for him; and counting the time we had already spent in prison he
went free. But the prison director must have been a hateful fellow;
he sent that fellow's case to a higher court that condemned him to
how many years I don't know. As for me, they didn't give me just
six years or even ten but twenty-six years, four months, and one
day.
After being tried in Burgos, I asked for a transfer to Valencia to
join Reme and my sister, Amada. After four years they judged me
again; this time I got twenty years. How could I be tried twice? I
still don't understand it. I think they tried me twice for my part in
trying to get to our group in Salamanca. That is, after they arrested
the Salamanca group they tried me as part of them. Since I was
arrested with the guide who helped me cross the border, the two of
us were tried in Burgos. But how did they know I had crossed the
border? They arrested me in Spain, my documents were Spanish,
and nothing about borders crossed my lips. In that trial they
sentenced me to twenty-six years with the aggravating factor that
when they took it up to the higher court I had signed for six years.
After I was tried in Valencia and sentenced to twenty years and
already doing time for that twenty-year sentence, they notified me
of the judicial action in Burgos that sentenced me to twenty-six
plus more years on the grounds of false documents and crossing the
border.
 Page 205
Between the two proceedings I now had a term of more than forty-
seven years to complete.
My sister and Reme were also sentenced to twenty years, but with
credit for time already spent in prison and other considerations they
ended up with eight years. I also got some credit on one of my
sentences, but not the other; exemptions could only be applied to
one sentence. So I spent four more years in prison. In 1967 when I
was released, I had spent fifteen years in prison and was out on
conditional basis.
The period I remember most fondly was when Margarita Sánchez
entered. I consider her one of our best comrades even though she
was a little strange to live with. It was her idea to form communes
in which we shared equally everything we received from outside.
For me the best part of all the prison years was living like a family.
My friends began to leave until one year there were only two of us
left, I and an anarchist, a very nice woman. She had been a member
of our commune. She and I spent a Christmas all by ourselves, but
in good spirits. The following year I spent Christmas completely
alone. That's when I started reading lots of books in my little cell.
Since the custom among political prisoners was to toast the New
Year, I didn't let that occasion go by without toasting, even though I
was by myself. I couldn't be a coward. I got into bed to wait for
midnight. I didn't have champagne or wine because they weren't
allowed, so I took a glass of beer. At midnight I got up to toast
happiness for the New Year, for freedom, for so much we had
fought for. In those moments I wasn't thinking about being alone,
not at all, because as soon as I lifted my hand with the glass, I
thought about how thousands and millions of people were lifting
their glasses to toast with the same desires and goals for which I
had fought and for which so many people in the world had fought.
After the toasting I felt comforted, very happy and extraordinarily
sleepy.
I continued to expect my freedom. But when José María de Oriol y
Urquijo 1 served as Minister of Justice, he made it the rule not to
grant provisional freedom to political prisoners. I should have
received my provisional freedom six months before it was granted.
Thanks to the General Director of Prisons I did get my freedom. It
seems that the sister of Mercedes Gómez spoke to the director
about me when he was buying a newspaper in her kiosk. I appeared
before the council of ministers and on February 25, 1967, I was
released.
I had kept current on all the news while I was in prison, but I
wasn't prepared for real life. I felt very insecure, as if I were
floating. I spent some three years in that insecurity, not knowing
little things like intersections with traffic lights, new
neighborhoods, different currency, and strange shops.
I went to Manresa to the home of a sister who was the widow of
the
 Page 206
brother-in-law they had killed with the guerrillas. I spent two years
there. Then I began a relationship with my current husband. We
wanted to get married quickly and had all the papers in order. But
the wedding was delayed because ecclesiastical authorities still
refused civil weddings, even though they were legal at that time.
As soon as the authorities found out about our plans to marry, they
took away Manolo's provisional freedom and put him back in jail
to complete the sentence.
Meanwhile I continued with the wedding preparations. Once the
papers were finalized, I transferred my conditional freedom from
Manresa to Zaragoza, which is where I live. Here I completed the
provisional term. We were married in prison. I lived free while
Manolo completed his sentence. But his misfortunes didn't end
with the end of his sentence. I was seven months pregnant when he
was incarcerated again. He was still in prison when the baby was
born. When my husband finally was released from prison, our little
boy was three years old. After his release he had many difficulties
finding work; businesses would be advised not to hire him because
of his prison record and political convictions.
As for me and other women in the party, discrimination still exists,
A man's responsibilities in the party are considered more important
than a woman's. If my husband and I both have political meetings
on the same evening, I'm the one expected to stay home with the
children. Women are excluded from positions of higher
responsibility in the party because they say we're less well prepared
than men. I hoped my husband would help educate me in the ideals
and programs of the party, but he didn't. And he hasn't shared the
work at home as I think men in the party should. We say that the
party is for the masses, but in reality the few people who run it are
interested in theories and lofty ideas rather than the everyday
problems we women face.
 Page 207

Chapter 22
The Burden and Strength of Clandestinity 19461948
A boarder at Carmen's house on Mallorca street was waiting for me
in a taxi at the prison door when I was released that February of
1946. When I saw Miguel again I told him how I'd given a false
address.
''Does that mean you're going to continue working for the party?"
"We aren't done yet with the Francoist regime, are we?"
I stayed a couple of days in Carmen's house. Then a man who was
active in our party and personally like a brother to us arranged a
room for me in San José de la Montaña. My room had a terrace and
looked out on a garden. He paid all my expenses for a month so I
could consult with two or three doctors about my head and spinal
column.
After seeing the radiograph, the doctors determined that the blow
to my neck had knocked my spinal column out of alignment. None
of the doctors agreed with the diagnosis from prison that I would
have to have an operation. These doctors thought the blood clot
would dissolve by itself, though not without causing me some
difficulties. They insisted that I get complete bed rest and lie on a
board. I spent a month in that house. Afterward I stayed with
Miguel's parents in Madrid for two months. Then I returned to
Barcelona where Miguel welcomed me with open arms. We had
almost joined our lives together, but it was difficult even to
consider marriage in our clandestine circumstances.
"Get along with you, my fine friend," I finally said to Miguel. "If
we have to wait for the end of Francoism, we'll be old and gray."
Miguel laughed. He is and always has been an optimist. "This
situation will end. We're in debt to our party and ought to continue
fighting. If we get married, it's going to be all the harder for us to
keep up the struggle."
I disagreed. I told him the two of us could continue together since
we belonged to the same party and shared the struggle to end the
dictatorship. I assured him I would never stand in his way and I
couldn't imagine that he would ever stand in mine.
On that condition I was ready at any time to join our lives together
for however long we could enjoy them. I was prepared to endure
any
 Page 208
separation. I would always think about him and I knew that when
we were together, we could rejoice in our love. It took him a while
to understand that I really wouldn't be an obstacle in his political
life. We were married on June 29, 1946.
Our first home was a house on Sarria street near Avenida Infanta
Carlota. There three married couples lived in a very pretty flat. One
of the couples had a darling little girl, about two and one-half years
old. The other couple was Moises and Agustina, some of the
closest comrades with whom we had worked before the arrests of
1945. Also living there was our comrade, Celestino Carrete,
nicknamed "the old man." The seven adults and little girl lived
there for several months until we had to split up for reasons of
security. Only María and her husband, the parents of the little girl,
remained. As for the others, each went to a place with friends of
the party. We went to live at 72 Urgel street in the first apartment
on the third floor. We had two small rooms with kitchen privileges.
On our same floor lived a marvelous family. The mother, Luisa,
was like a mother to me. All of us called her Mama Luisa.
In our state of semiclandestinity we went on working for the party
and the guerrillas. But when I found out I was pregnant I didn't
make trips as frequently as before my arrest in 1945. I worked with
the contact person between the party and the guerrillas. I had a lot
of dealings with Pedro Valverde.
In April of 1947 there was another general arrest like the one in
1945, but this one was much more serious because of the
consequences. In 1945 we had managed to get the death penalty
lifted from a group of guerrillas that had been tried under
exceptional circumstances, but in this new round of arrests our luck
ran out. Our comrades were hideously tortured. Pedro's optic nerve
was broken and he was left half blind. In spite of the beatings and
torture, the police couldn't drag out of them the name of even one
comrade or the location of one drop-off point or a single support
house.
On February 17 Gómez Ponchón, who had been our lawyer in
1945, called Miguel at his office, told him his comrades had been
arrested, that the police were looking for him and that he should
leave town immediately. Without saying a word to anyone, Miguel
left. His pen was on the desk in his office just as he left it and his
coat still hung on the coat hook. He took the key to the strong box
with him and came home to collect some things and see what we
would do. Before we left, Miguel gave the key to the strong box to
Luisa and told her to take it to the office after a couple of days and
give it to Mr. Rivero, the man in charge.
I don't remember where we came to rest that day but I do know that
the police were searching everywhere for Miguel. The word was
they
 Page 209
were looking for him but not me. Nonetheless, it was decided that
Miguel shouldn't leave Barcelona but stay on for a while hidden in
a house. I was to be taken to France where I could give birth. They
put me on a train bound for some town where a car then took me to
a textile factory where I stayed with friends. There I awaited the
party's decision. If I went to France I might be separated from the
party for a long time. In those days you couldn't know for how
long.
But I flatly refused to cross the border. I was determined to stay in
Catalonia come what may. Our friend, who was an engineer,
communicated my decision to Barcelona and I returned to the city.
When I reached Barcelona, I was taken to the same hiding place
where Miguel was. There was a rather large shop on the ground
floor and upstairs Miguel had make-shift living quarters, but no
kitchen. Our friend "Coa" brought us food and papers every day;
for furniture we had only a sofa and some big boxes. During the
day the boxes were our table and we used the sofa for sitting. At
night Miguel slept on the inside part of the sofa while I slept on the
edge with my stomach, growing bigger every day, resting on a
large box. We had no light except from the street. On the roof of
the house was a terrace where we went at night for fresh air. We'd
go on tiptoe in case a nearby neighbor out on the balcony or terrace
might see us. That terrace was our refuge; no one could see us
seated there, leaning back against the wall and breathing free air.
During the day I would walk around barefoot through those empty
rooms because I couldn't stand to sit all day with my big stomach.
At dinner time when the workers left and we heard the machines
stop, the two of us would walk around as we pleased and eat.
Miguel would read newspapers and write. We stayed there for two
months, all the time our companions were detained at police
headquarters. It wasn't until 1962 that our hard work with
international lawyers on behalf of prisoners paid off: prisoners
couldn't be held in police stations longer than seventy-two hours.
But that action came too late for the four companions in jail.
When we learned that the authorities weren't going to let up on
their search for Miguel, we decided that I would go to Luisa's
house for the birth of our child. When I left Miguel said to me: "If
the birth is at night, let 'Coa' know and I'll come."
In a matter of a few days everything was ready for the baby's
arrival. At night they would take me out for walks. The doctor had
said I should walk a great deal. The house didn't have an elevator
so we went down five floors and then along the avenue as far as the
Plaza España. At that time there were gardens and a waterfall in the
city center as well as benches. We would cross the square, sit
down, and then return home along the same route.
I had a marvelous doctor. We called him Dr. Marcos, but that prob-
 Page 210
ably wasn't his real name. He was a young man, a refugee from
Madrid, living clandestinely with his wife in Barcelona. Most of us
didn't pay him anything when he examined us because we simply
didn't have the money. On occasion some midwifethere were still
midwives in those dayswould come to help in case she was needed.
But there wasn't much call for midwives because most women at
that time had their babies in hospitals or clinics.
Labor started around noon, July 5. Luisa called Dr. Marcos. He
came immediately. After examining me, he said: "Looks as if this
will take a long time, so I'm going to leave. Call me if something
happens. At any rate, I'll be back around eight or nine o'clock."
When he returned that night he examined me again. There was
reason for concern: I was older than most women having their first
baby and it looked as if this would be a dry delivery. Dr. Marcos
and his wife had supper and spent the entire night in Luisa's house.
Since it was clear the baby would be born at night, Luisa let "Coa"
know so he could get word to Miguel.
The July heat was suffocating. Luisa had bought ice which she kept
in a dish pan along with beer for the doctor. I spent the night
walking from my flat to Angelita's; hers faced the street. There I
would peer out from the balcony for a glimpse of Miguel. Every
time a car or taxi drove by, I thought it was Miguel. I knew that it
might take a long time for Miguel to get the message. That's what
happened. Miguel didn't know for several days that he had a baby
daughter.
Estrella was born at four o'clock in the morning. That very day,
July 6, 1947, the first referendum under Franco was held. As an
exprisoner, I couldn't vote. Before Luisa went to vote, she made a
good breakfast for us with chocolate, churros, and cream. Thanks
to Luisa's incredible way with money, we had a real feast that day.
After breakfast Dr. Marcos examined me and then left with the
promise that he would return in the afternoon to see how mother
and daughter were doing. Luisa left to vote. In fact Luisa was
voting because she was afraid sanctions might be leveled against
people who didn't vote and if so, she might lose her boarding
house.
On Friday I learned that Miguel was coming the next day.
Naturally I counted the hours until I would see him. When Miguel
finally got there, I hardly recognized him; with his hair dyed blond
even the mother who bore him wouldn't have known him.
That night Miguel explained our plan of action: we would leave
Catalonia. Our departure had to be prepared carefully since Miguel
couldn't just walk around the streets with the police still after him. I
had to take charge of everything. We began by dying his hair dark
again. I contacted comrades to get false documentation. The only
document
 Page 211
needed at that time was the rationing card, which didn't have a
photograph stamped on it. Miguel took care of the baby and house
while I went out to take care of these matters. He always watched
to make sure no one was following me.
I would make lots of false turns before going in the house. Miguel
would sigh with relief whenever I got back. By now we also had a
false military service card, which was indispensable for Miguel
who at his age certainly would have served in the military. Any
policeman or Civil Guard or any other authority would have asked
for this document. Finally the only documents we lacked were the
safe conducts that were still required for train travel. The day I
went for them was the most frightening time for Miguel, not that he
was afraid for himself but rather that something had happened to
me. I went out promptly in the morning, right after nursing the
baby at nine o'clock. I expected to be back by noon. But there was
a long, long line of people waiting for safe conducts. I waited from
quarter past ten until one o'clock. What must Miguel be thinking
when I was supposed to be back by noon to nurse the baby? In
short, Miguel had a bad time. He told me later that when the baby
began to fuss at noon, he gave her a little bit of sugar water to quiet
her.
Now all that was left was the actual departure, but that was risky
business because the train stations were swarming with police. The
baby was a month old when we left Barcelona. I caught the train at
the Francia station, carrying the baby in a little basket. Miguel got
the train from another station. We changed trains in Calatayud and
went on to my sister's home in Soria. My mother was there, too.
We had a marvelous month together. Then we went to Guadalajara
where Miguel stayed while I traveled to Madrid to find out if our
contacts were still in place. We were in Madrid only a short time
before Miguel informed me that the party was sending him
elsewhere to work. And me? I was left with a baby and two pesetas
in my pocket. I didn't even know where my husband was going.
I was able to stay with a friend for three months and got work
doing cross-stitch on trim for children's clothing. At the end of
December I was told to leave the shop because I would be going
with Miguel in January. I was to spend the Christmas holidays with
the grandparents so they could enjoy their granddaughter for a little
while. I had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's holiday helping
prepare and take packages to the prisons. I often went to Miguel's
parents' house and many friends came over curious to see the baby.
Miguel's mother wasn't very happy about our marriage. She would
have preferred her only son not to have a Communist for a wife
and to give up the risk of clandestine life, which constantly
jeopardized our freedom and perhaps our lives. What his mother
couldn't understand was how difficult it was for her son to give
 Page 212
up the political struggle. It's not easy to be separated almost
constantly, to see each other only once in a while, and not to know
where the other person is, to spend years and years in these
circumstances. Our best years were spent in separations, either by
prison or clandestine living.
When the holidays were over I went to see the man who had set a
day for me to leave Madrid. The only plan I had to follow was to
catch the train to Seville and meet someone who would identify
himself with the countersign. So with Estrella in a little basket I
took the train for Andalusia. The train left at half past eight at
night. The car I happened to get in was occupied by a priest and a
seminarian. When they saw the little girl in their car, the priest said
in a voice I could hear: "So, we have a canary in the room. What a
fine night we're going to have."
I looked at him but didn't answer. At that time I was rabidly
anticlerical. To me the priests' cassocks smelled of the coup de
grace shots they had administered when prisoners were executed.
At nine o'clock I took the baby out of the basket and nursed her.
After being fed and cleaned, she went fast to sleep. About ten or so
the priest and the seminarian began to eat supper; then they took
out their cigarettes. Up to that time they'd done their smoking
outside on the car's platform but now, after dinner, they intended to
smoke inside.
"Please, gentlemen, the canary isn't bothering you; she's sound
asleep. But your tobacco smoke is going to harm her. So go outside
to smoke."
The little priest turned red as a tomato but he nodded to the
seminarian and they went outside. What must those men have
thought! It was quiet in the compartment all night along. At nine
o'clock in the morning we reached Seville. Those men behaved
very well and said to me: "Madam, you get down with your
suitcase and we'll lower the little basket."
So they did. They bid me good-bye and I remained standing on the
platform with my suitcase in one hand and the basket in the other. I
walked toward the station exit. Someone on the platform
approached: "Communist and Catholic, right?"
I stood looking at him, thinking, "Tomasa, you're caught." But the
comrade saw the expression of doubt on my face and immediately
gave me the countersign. He looked at the little basket and seeing
the baby girl, said: "This girl is yours?" But in Spanish his use of
the plural form of "yours" meant that he knew Miguel.
"Yes, whose would she be? She's mine. And her father's, of
course."
"But could such an ugly father have such a fine looking little girl?"
"Now, young man, you haven't looked at me," I said jokingly.
"Hey, you're not bad, but this little girl is something else. She's one
of the prettiest babies I've ever seen. What's her name?"
 Page 213
"Estrella."
"I'm not surprised. With that name she must be prettier than the
stars shining above. That child is sure to do honor to her name."
He took my suitcase and the little basket we carried between the
two of us. We left the station and walked a short way.
"Good, now we're going toward a truck that's coming for food and
supplies for the dam. That's where Fernando is working as a
bookkeeper, at least that's the name we give him. It's a big wooden
barracks where the company has the commissary. You'll live with
him there. Remember, when we're in the truck picking up people,
we don't know each other. Understand? You told me you were the
bookkeeper's wife, nothing more."
I got in the truck and we left. In Seville we picked up several
people who had gone shopping. They were surprised to see me and
asked where I was going.
"To the dam. My husband is the bookkeeper at the commissary."
Miguel was at the dam on party orders. By the beginning of 1948
the party had decided to dissolve the guerrillas and organize the
party on a firmer basis. The main work in the area at that time was
organizing workers for the party. My job was to visit the caves
when the workers were eating their lunch or in the evenings after
work and pass along messages or set up times when Miguel could
meet with the party men working on the dam.
Eighty percent or more of the workers had fled their towns to avoid
arrest or they had been exiled when they got out of prison. Without
any other source of work they had been stuck in that hole where on
the one hand they were safer than in their home towns but on the
other more tied to the job than if they'd been prisoners. Their wages
were so miserable that the money ran out before the week was up
and they had to get credit from the commissary; their credit was on
a weekly basis so the men couldn't leave the dam even if the
conditions at home had been less dangerous.
Miguel was very happy to have us together again. And he was so
proud of little Estrella, darling that she was. We established a
relationship with the man in charge of the commissary that went
beyond business. The Civil Guard were constantly in the store;
they must have been afraid the guerrillas would sneak in and take
away their food. What they didn't know was that Miguel was there
by a plan established between the party and the guerrillas.
As for me, I would speak with the wives of the comrades. It hurt
me so much to hear about the miseries and calamities they suffered.
By the time the children reached the age of two, three, or four, they
had rickets and were anemic. The death rate among children was
very high. And it
 Page 214
was impossible to guess the age of the women. They might tell me
they were twenty-six or twenty-seven, but they easily looked ten or
twelve years older.
One day, without being seen, I took a handful of caramels from the
store. They never sold because the families didn't have money for
candy. I went into the first hovel where they were two little kids
and gave them caramels. They didn't want to take the candy. Their
mother told them to go on and take the caramels. But even with the
candy in their hands they didn't know what to do. They switched
the candy from one hand to another and finally gave it back to me.
"Don't worry," their mother said to me, "the children just haven't
ever had a caramel." My eyes began to water. I took a caramel,
removed the paper, and put it in the little boy's mouth. Of course he
loved it. The kids were so happy and smiling eating their caramels.
Their mother began to cry. I tried to make her feel better; I told her
that this misery was going to end soon because we were working to
overthrow the fascist regime that was choking people to death.
We didn't know if it was the weather or what, but Miguel became
very ill, his fever so high he was delirious. Everyone was
concerned about him; even the guards wanted to visit him. I played
the part of the Civil Guard, prohibiting anyone from coming in. I
couldn't leave him for a minute because everything he said in his
delirium pertained to the work at the dam. I spent several days not
knowing where we would end up if some guard walking through
the commissary happened to hear what Miguel was saying.
Sometimes I even had to put my hand over his mouth to stifle his
words. When he was better, he realized that he couldn't continue
there. We knew the guards were becoming suspicious. The
precautions I had taken as well as refusing to let them see Miguel
struck them as odd. After Miguel was well, he made a bus trip to
Seville on the pretext of doing company business. During the trip
he managed to send a message to our contact in Barcelona. By then
he had accomplished what he'd set out to do.
After we reached Madrid, we were separated again. And again, I
didn't know where he was going. But after a few days I got a
cryptic note, letting me know I should go to Vitoria, which I did. I
didn't see Miguel at the station, but when I got off the train a lady
said to me: "You're Peque, right?"
"Yes."
"Oh my dear girl, how much I've wanted to meet you," she said,
embracing me.
With the two of us carrying the little basket and me with my
suitcase, we went to the house where I was to live. Meanwhile
Miguel had been watching to see if we were being followed. When
he was sure that
 Page 215
no one had followed me, he came in the house. He explained that
his work wasn't in Vitoria but in Vergara. He would come to see us
some Sunday. In those days he combined his professional work
with his work for the party. We received no salary from the party.
Wherever we went we had to work to be able to eat; food didn't fall
from heaven.
We didn't stay long in Vitoria. Not many days after our arrival, I
went out shopping with Paquita, the woman whose house we
shared. We bought some little sandals for Estrella. After we
finished shopping, we went to a cafe for a refreshment. I had some
black coffee and Paquita had coffee with milk. She was holding the
girl and soon I saw that she was giving her a little spoonful of
coffee with milk, which Estrella loved.
"Paquita, don't give the baby anything that doesn't come from
home."
"Oh, don't be foolish. This can't hurt her."
She only gave her that one little spoonful. A fatal spoonful. That
night Paquita got sick with terrible pains in her stomach and
intestines. She tried to throw up but couldn't. I had her drink
glasses of water with bicarbonate. She finally vomited. She had to
get up several times during the night to throw up again. Meanwhile
Estrella spent a very restless night. She usually slept soundly but
that night she was restless and whimpered from time to time as if
something were hurting her. By morning she was worse. She hadn't
had a bowel movement and she threw up what I fed her. By then I
was giving her orange juice and tomato juice besides nursing her.
Everything came up.
That afternoon we went to see a pediatrician who had taken care of
Paquita's children. He diagnosed some little infection and
prescribed sulfanilamides. The baby was sick all that afternoon and
that night she got worse. The following day I told Paquita we
should see the doctor again.
As pretty as the baby usually was, I could tell she was getting
sicker by the hour. I phoned Miguel to tell him how our little girl
was. After eating we went to the doctor, hoping to be among the
first people he would see. The time for seeing patients came but the
doctor didn't appear. We waited an hour. I could see Estrella getting
worse all the time. I asked Paquita if she knew another doctor in
Vitoria and not to think of the cost. She took me to an expensive
but excellent specialist. When we reached his office the waiting
room was filled with women and their babies. I thought my baby
needed immediate attention or we might lose her at any moment.
Paquita spoke to the nurse who took one look at the girl and said:
"We've got one other case like yours. The doctor will see them
first."
So it was. The other woman was the first to go in with a boy a little
older than Estrella. When she came out she looked more desperate
than when she'd gone in. When we went in, the doctor spoke to us
so
 Page 216
quietly we had to strain to hear him. I thought he must have a
problem with his hearing, but that wasn't the case. His custom was
to speak with children in a low voice. When I went in his office, he
spoke in a normal voice. The first thing he said when I entered was:
"Madam, you've brought me a dead little girl."
I got a knot in my throat. I could hardly breathe. But I managed to
control my nerves and listen intently to the doctor's words. He
examined her carefully, asking me how she had gotten to this
extreme situation. I thought we should explain what happened in
the cafe.
Paquita described her symptoms too. Without a doubt, the doctor
said, the milk must have been bad.
"But I only gave her one little spoonful," Paquita said. "Her mother
wouldn't let me give her more."
"Madam, poison comes in little doses. Remember that you knew
what to do to make yourself vomit. But the baby couldn't tell you
what was wrong with her."
Since she hadn't had a bowel movement and had vomited the
nourishment I'd given her, her little body was filled with toxins.
The situation was grave. At that age only one in a hundred children
survived such a poisoning. Quick action was needed. First he
prescribed a treatment at a nearby clinic. There they would give the
baby a liter of antitoxin serum, half of a liter in each little thigh
muscle. If the baby tolerated the first half of a liter, he explained,
trying to encourage me, she would tolerate the second more easily.
But nothing was certain.
The doctor also prescribed an infusion of some kind of liquid with
a medication to be given every hour in a soup spoon. I was told that
if the baby tolerated the liquid, she might throw up and have a
bowel movement too. If this didn't work by nine in the morning,
they'd have to try something else.
While Paquita dressed the baby, the doctor called me to one side to
say that if she was still alive in the morning and hadn't vomited or
had a bowel movement, he would have to operate. I had to give my
approval right then because he needed to advise the surgeon. I
asked him how much the operation would cost. I was taken back to
hear 25,000 pesetas, but I reacted quickly: "Yes, yes, of course.
You understand that everything must be done for the child. Advise
the doctor. If we have to operate, then we'll operate."
When we left the doctor's office, I told Paquita about the operation.
She stared at me. "Where are we going to get that kind of money?"
"Don't worry, be calm. The important thing is to save the baby."
We reached the clinic and I gave the clerk and nurse the sealed
envelope from the doctor. They looked at each other, then at us.
Then they quickly set about to give the injections. The whole time
they put the liq-
 Page 217
uid in the little leg the nurse took the baby's pulse. The first half of
a liter was in. They went to the other leg. Then the nurse looked at
the baby and said to me: ''Relax, madam. The baby tolerated the
first injection and she'll stand the other one, you'll see."
So it went. She tolerated both injections, that is, a liter of antitoxin
serum divided in two parts. When we were ready to leave, they put
the doctor's note in the envelope, saying: "There, madam, take it
with you."
We were a long way from home. Paquita couldn't find a taxi so we
had to walk home with the sick baby.
Miguel opened the door. "You're crazy to come and go at these
hours with a sick baby."
Choking with fear that the baby was going to die, I burst into tears.
"What's the matter?" Miguel asked. "Why are you crying? What's
going on?"
I explained what was happening. He stood there asking forgiveness
for greeting me like that. He asked me to please calm down.
He explained that when he came in from Vergara and didn't find
anyone at home, he'd gone to the station where Paquita's husband
worked and gotten the doctor's address. But when he hadn't found
us in the doctor's office, he'd come home.
Everything was cleared up and we set about to prepare the baby
and give her the treatment. Miguel took a sheet of paper where he
kept track hour by hour of the baby's symptoms each time she took
her spoonful of medication. At the beginning she didn't take all of
it, spitting some out, but after one or two in the morning she began
taking the whole spoonful, even eagerly. When I put it in her little
mouth she gave us the feeling she would have taken more, but we
followed the doctor's directions carefully. We spent an anxious
night: the baby wasn't passing anything, either above or below. But
she was keeping the liquid down, which the doctor had told us was
important. After seven o'clock in the morning the baby finally had
a bowel movement. Her stools showed how badly poisoned her
little body was.
Paquita made us a hot breakfast. We were worn out. I'd been able
to lie down and sleep a little but Miguel had spent the night sitting
next to the baby. I cleaned up the baby after breakfast and we went
to the doctor with a stool sample. On the way Miguel said: "Last
night with all this business about the baby I didn't ask how you
could say yes to the operation. How did you plan to come up with
25,000 pesetas?"
"Look, Miguel, the main thing is to save the baby. I went to prison
for political reasons. I would go again to save my baby."
Miguel stopped suddenly, took me in his arms, kissed me and
uttered beautiful words that anybody would love to hear.
When the doctor saw us come in, the first thing he said was: "I can
 Page 218
see already from your faces that everything turned out all right."
And so it did. When he saw the stools he was astounded. He told us
that the little boy who had exactly the same thing had died that
morning.
"One out of a hundred survives," he repeated. "You're lucky. That
one is your baby."
Miguel gave him the record we had kept during the night. The
doctor was impressed by how carefully Miguel had charted the
baby's condition.
"All fathers should do this when their children are sick," he said.
"Unfortunately, they don't."
How different the situation was now from the previous day when
the baby had cried as the doctor put his hands on her stomach and
sides. This morning all she did was sleep. She would open her little
eyes from time to time and then close them again. He gave her a
pat on the fanny: "There, there, little girl, the danger has passed."
Yes, that danger was over, but not the dangers of our clandestine
living. By June Miguel and I were separated again. Shortly after we
left Vitoria the police came to the house where we had stayed.
They took Tomás to jail and interrogated Paquita. She only said
that she had had some boarders by the names of Fernando and
Juanita. They interrogated Tomás much more strongly, but he stood
up well under it.
When we left Paquita and Tomás we told them we were going to
Madrid. Tomás had even bought the tickets. But we got off before
Madrid and bought two more tickets, one for Barcelona, where
Miguel was going, and another for Soria, where my sister lived. I
spent a quiet three months with my sister and her family in Soria
until the morning my brother-in-law came in the house white as a
sheet.
 Page 219

Chapter 23
The Long Years 19481976
My brother-in-law turned pale because the Civil Guard had turned
up asking for a certain Juanita. He thought it was just their way of
getting at him. He didn't know Juanita was my cover name. At that
time he was the manager of a large farm with fruit trees, vegetable
gardens, and a large herd of dairy cows. He barely made enough
money to support his six children, wife, our mother, and now me.
So he made an agreement with the man in charge of the cows to
exchange goods: fruit and vegetables for a well-hidden pail of
milk. There was also an understanding with the guards; he was
under orders to fill their knapsacks with fruit and vegetables every
fifteen days or so. The guards had been there just a few days before
and left well supplied. It seems that the previous night my brother-
in-law had brought home a sack of dried beans to have something
hot to feed the children during the coming winter. These beans the
older children were shelling by walking on them when the guards
unexpectedly showed up asking about this Juanita. After the guards
left, my brother-in-law came up to the room and began swearing:
"This had to happen to me, this had to happen to me. They'll be
back. Everything they asked was just a cover. They'll come back to
check everything and then they'll find the beans."
"What did they ask you?" we all wanted to know.
"They were looking for some woman named Juanita."
Hearing that, I caught my brother-in-law, gave him a kiss and said:
"Look, Manolo, clam down, this business about the beans isn't
anything to worry about. We'll burn the shells and they won't find a
trace of them if they come back. And for sure they won't find that
Juanita on any farm around here. You see, that Juanitait's me."
They all stared at me. They didn't know I went by the name of
Juanita, but it didn't surprise them because they did know the kind
of life Miguel and I lived. We put the beans in a sack and hid it
under a dresser and then took the shells down to the kitchen and
burned them in the hearth. Since the house was old, the hearth was
always lit for cooking whether it was summer or winter. I told
Manolo that if the guards returned I would do everything possible
to make sure they didn't see him. He probably would have such a
frightened expression on his face it would be better if he didn't
come out. Besides, since he'd already
 Page 220
told them that this Juanita didn't live there, there was no reason for
him to face them again.
I went to the door and sat down outside on one of the stone benches
to cross-stitch. My mother was in the kitchen and didn't know what
was going on, and my sister wasn't at home. The entrance to the
house was very pleasant with its little patio, fruit trees, stone
benches, even a cute pine tree and large vegetable garden.
The guards weren't long in coming. They asked for my brother-in-
law. I told them he probably was working out in the gardens.
"Would you like me to look for him?"
"You're not from these parts, are you?"
"No, I'm Manolo's sister-in-law. I've come to spend a few months
with my mother and family."
"And where are you from? Where do you live?"
"In Barcelona."
"And your husband, where's he?"
"Bilbao."
"What's his name?"
"Fernando."
"Hmm, what a coincidence. We're looking for a woman named
Juanita whose husband is Fernando, and she has a little girl named
Estrella."
I looked at them in surprise. "Hey, that is a coincidence. I have a
baby named Estrella and my husband is Fernando. But my name
isn't Juanita. But tell me, why are you looking for them?"
"Oh, we're just acting on orders."
"Well, look, you're worrying me because we live in Barcelona. My
husband works in a business and he has to go to Bilbao now and
then to work for a few months in their branch office. Why would I
want to stay alone in Barcelona when I've been so anxious to see
my mother and family? My husband suggested I come to Soria
until his work in Bilbao is done. But now you've got me worried. I
wonder if something's happened to my husband. Maybe there's
been a mix-up over names."
"Could you tell me the address where your husband works?"
A Basque name came to mind. "Yes, certainly, in such and such a
street." And I gave a number.
The two guards looked at me, not knowing what to do. On the one
hand they trusted my brother-in-law and were grateful for
everything he gave them from the garden; on the other hand, they
were suspicious.
"All right," one of them finally said, "all right, what can we do? If
her name were the same there wouldn't be an issue, but it's not."
"Look," the other answered, "the best thing is to go to the station,
call Barcelona, and get more details."
 Page 221
"If you think it would help, I could go with you to the station. The
matter will be cleared up if I'm there with you. It won't take long to
get the baby ready and we can be off."
My reply calmed them down a little but also made them reluctant
to take me, Manolo's sister-in-law, to the station.
"Oh, no, madam, no. Look, we're going and if there's any news,
we'll come back. But don't worry. Don't move from here."
And very respectfully they left for the station. In those days the
same Civil Guard station served three or four villages, so they had
to go to another village. No sooner had the guards left than my
oldest nephew got the horse, left for Carbonera, the closest village,
and hired a taxi to come for me. While my nephew was off getting
the taxi, I got the baby ready, packed my belongings and as soon as
the taxi arrived left for Soria. My plan was to leave the baby with
her grandparents and go on to Barcelona: first, so I wouldn't be
with Miguel's parents in case the police came looking for me there
and second, to see what was going on in Catalonia. I was calm
about Miguel because I knew I would have been advised
immediately if something had happened to him.
I left for Soria in the taxi and from there went on to Madrid where I
went straight to Mama Anita's house; she was a marvelous woman
whose son was in prison. The grandparents came to her house and
took the baby home with them. I spent the night at Anita's house.
The next morning when she saw what pain I was in from my
breasts, she went for the baby so I could nurse her. I wasn't
comfortable with what Anita had done, though of course I realized
she'd acted with the best of intentions. But it had been difficult
enough to leave the baby the day before; now to say good-bye once
again was more than I could bear. How many times since then have
I thought: "Why did I leave her? Why didn't I stay with her or take
her with me?" I know it was fear, fear that I might be arrested and
have to take her to prison with me. But then again, why not? So
many children had endured prison. What was one more child? It's
possible, I don't know, but it's possible that in those moments I
could only consider what I ought to do and I believed that I was
doing the right thing. Perhaps I should have stayed in Madrid and
done what I could clandestinely with a little girl at my side. Would
this have been wiser? I don't know.
I reached Barcelona and according to procedure I didn't go to any
comrade's house. Instead I looked for domestic work, which I
found immediately. I told the family I had an aunt in Barcelona,
Luisa, who might be calling me. Luisa, of course, was my
connection with the party.
It wasn't long before I received instructions to go to Reus. Once in
Reus, I walked toward the place where a comrade was supposed to
meet me. I'd only gone a short way when I spotted a young fellow
with a mag-
 Page 222
azine in his hand, similar to the one I was carrying. He approached
and gave the countersign. He took me to a house where I was to
stay until night when he himself would come back for me and put
me in touch with the person I was to work with. There was food in
the kitchen and a radio and books to help pass the time. More than
five months had elapsed since Miguel and I had separated and I
hadn't had one bit of news from him. In spite of the fact that he had
seen these men, I didn't ask them about Miguel. I didn't know what
name to use or whether to reveal my own identity.
Just after nightfall the man came for me. He took me to a place
called Sweethearts Walk. That's where engaged couples and
sweethearts who weren't engaged yet would meet. He and I were to
walk as if we were a couple also. He'd let me know when we met
the contact man, but we were to keep on walking until we reached
the end of the walk and then he was to leave and I would go back
to meet the other man. So we acted like sweethearts, walking close
to each other and chatting intimately. Suddenly I noticed a man
coming toward us. There was something familiar in his silhouette.
Was I dreaming? Were my desires to see him overcoming me? No,
I wasn't dreaming. It was Miguel coming toward me.
"Look," my companion said, "that man coming our way is the one
you're supposed to join. Look at him carefully so you don't make a
mistake with all these couples around here and the path so poorly
lit."
I didn't dare look at the man for fear of giving myself away. My
companion realized I was scarcely looking.
"Look at him," he said, giving me the elbow, "look at him."
"Don't worry, I saw him. I won't make a mistake. Don't worry."
The guy wasn't convinced, which meant he didn't know the
connection between the other man and me. We reached the end of
the walk, stopped a few minutes, then said good-bye. He left the
park. I walked around a little while and then returned on the same
path. I walked in the shadow of the trees to avoid the light playing
on the center of the path. Miguel was doing the same. Finally we
met next to a tree.
"Wait," he said, not embracing me, "wait." And opening a large
portfolio he was carrying he took out a big jacket and put it on me.
''Now, girl, this fits as if it had been made just for you."
Then he took me in his arms, happy, of course, but also worriedhe
knew about my leaving Soria and how the baby was with her
grandparents. He knew everything about me, but I didn't know one
thing about him. Speaking with Miguel about our little girl was so
painful. But how could we avoid talking about her. Miguel wanted
to know if she remembered him.
"Remember you? Poor man. She doesn't even remember me. At her
 Page 223
age children only remember people who take care of them, feed
and bathe, dress and undress them and fuss over them. Others don't
even exist for them."
"That's nonsense. Her grandparents talk to her about us."
"No matter how much they say, it's nothing. In her mind neither of
us exists."
I couldn't stand it any longer. I burst into tears.
"Don't be like that, woman," Miguel said, putting his arms around
me again. "Be strong. You've always been strong. You'll see, we'll
have her with us before long. We'll be together soon. This business
will end. Do you understand?"
Those words, "this business will end," had been on our lips since
the end of the war, ten long years ago. Thanks to this optimism we
had been able to keep up the struggle. Had we known then that the
struggle would last for thirty-seven years, would we have acted
differently? Would we have settled into a regular family life? But
we never seriously considered that possibility. We continued
fighting, up to the very end.
And what about the other couples that night in the park? Some sat
on benches, huddled together for warmth. Others walked beneath
the shadows of the trees or leaned against the trees. Perhaps there
was no happiness for them either. Perhaps love was all mixed in
with disgust and jealousy. Who knows? Each person has his world.
We, too, were leaning against a tree. And something was missing in
our lives, our little daughter. I wept for her. I had the feeling that
my conscience cried out to me that nightthat I should not have left
her. My grief was especially acute when I milked my breasts each
morning and evening. Each day a little less milk came. But there
was still some milk, milk my little girl should have had. And each
day I wept when the milk came. But that grief I could stand. This
was different, this night being with Miguel on the Sweethearts
Walk. My grief made him suffer. He wanted to appear strong, but
tears filled his eyes. We ended up not talking, not saying a word, in
silent, painful embrace. Our grief gradually eased and we calmed
down.
"Well let's leave," Miguel suggested when he saw me calmer. "I
want to introduce you to a friend so you'll know the house where
we are to meet tomorrow when you start a job with us. I'm not
going to tell you anything tonight but tomorrow I'll explain what
you're to do." The house belonged to a single woman, Teresa, a
professor who had worked for the party for many years. She was
the owner of the jacket Miguel had brought me.
So it was that Miguel and I both did party work in Reus, though I
also worked for three small shops mending nylon stockings. During
the mornings and part of the afternoons I worked at home mending;
then at
 Page 224
half past four I walked to Teresa's house in time to listen to Radio
Independent Spain at five o'clock. The news stories, which they
read slowly, we copied down. We also got news of Spain which we
used for a bulletin we put out called The Guerrilla. This work
Teresa did after she left school, along with another comrade. Teresa
taught me a lot; with her help I came to understand politics much
better and I also improved my reading and writing.
During this time in Reus, Miguel and I behaved in front of the
others as if we were just friends. From time to time we made love
secretly. By December 24, Miguel knew that he was being sent
elsewhere. He asked the leadership in Cataloniaat that time it was
Gregorio López Raimundoif we could spend the Christmas
holidays with other friends in the party. Gregorio agreed. So on the
twenty-fourth four of us women spent the entire day cooking and
preparing packages for the prisoners in Tarragona and Reus.
Naturally we talked about everything while we were working.
Among other things we talked about our families and how they
would spend Christmas. They hadn't ever asked me any questions
about my personal life. Such questions would be dangerous in
clandestine life. To them I was just one more comrade who
happened to be called "Luisa." That day I told them I was married
with a little girl. They asked to see a photo of her. Miguel had
always said he was married and had showed off Estrella's photo.
He was very proud of her. Even today, when he has grown
grandchildren, he carries that little photo in his billfold. When I
showed them Estrella's picture, two of them looked at each other,
then said: "But this is Fernando's daughter."
"And mine. She's one and the same."
The girls couldn't get over their surprise. "Look, girl," one of them
said, "if I had to spend months living the way you do, I couldn't
stand it. Everyone would know in days who my husband was."
"But if the party told you beforehand to keep that a secret, wouldn't
you do it?"
"I'm not sure. No, I don't think so."
At dinner time we ate together. There was no dearth of jokes about
how we were going on our honeymoon and so forth. Later, when
we finished preparing the packages and the men's political meeting
broke up, Miguel and I were left alone in the house for the first
time. Miguel was set to leave the next morning between eight and
nine o'clock. That would be January 17. He didn't know where he
was being sent. Naturally we wanted to spend this last night
together. We couldn't go to Miguel's boarding house; besides, he'd
already left the dirty place. So we decided to meet later at Teresa's.
When Miguel got to Teresa's, I met him at the door. He had a little
square package in his hand, like a pastry box, and some other
packages,
 Page 225
including one that appeared to hold a bottle. We walked to a park
and sat down on a bench under a tree. I was trembling with cold.
We opened the little box of pastries and drank from the bottle of
liqueur. Then we went back to Teresa's house. It was freezing cold.
I was especially cold, in spite of the swallows of liqueur. But the
political meeting at Teresa's was still going on. Then Miguel
remembered another house; he went to see if we could stay the
night there.
"Yes, we can go there," he said when he returned, "but there's no
bed or bedroom, just a place under the stairs. But it's completely
separate with enough room for a mattress."
That's where we spent our last night in Reus. With the little bit of
liqueur I had drunk, the cold, and hugging Miguel tightly between
the blankets, I went to sleep quickly, something he still teases me
about. The very night before we had to say good-bye for how long
we didn't know I went to sleep while he lay awake looking at me
and thinking about having to leave me. I like to tease him that if I
went to sleep it was because I felt at peace in his strong, safe, and
loving arms.
Very early in the morning we went to Teresa's house to get his few
things. There we said good-bye. I remember his saying: "Look,
you're still young and if you think you can't wait for me, I'll never
hold it against you. Just let me know somehow. You'd tell me the
same thing if I were the one who had to wait."
We agreed not to deceive each other and always, always, good or
bad, we would tell each other the truth. That promise we have kept,
right up to the present time. There is no one better to solve our
difficulties than we. We have always stood together, in good times
and in bad.
On the seventeenth of January in 1949 I was alone once more,
without the baby and with little news of her. What news I did get
came through Mama Luisa. I don't remember exactly if it was the
end of January or the first week of February when there was an
attack on a train. A bomb had been placed on the track. One of the
comrades who came by the house was very upset because at the
time we weren't involved in guerrilla activities. He thought it might
be a police ruse or the work of guerrilla groups who didn't agree
with the party's policy to disband them. The fear was that there
would be reprisals against the comrades who had been condemned
to death more than a year before. There was a neighbor on the floor
above who listened to the radio. This man was very reserved; he
would greet me but nothing more. In those days it was a crime to
listen to Radio Independent Spain. This neighbor would put the
radio on the floor, right where his dining room was, so it wouldn't
be heard through the walls. In order to listen to his radio I would
put a chair on top of the table and climb up to listen. Two mornings
had gone by without listening to his radio because I had a bad cold.
On February
 Page 226
17, 1949, I heard the radio go on. No sooner had the broadcast
started than I heard a heavy stomp on the floor. I jumped out of bed
and got up on the table, thinking something had happened already.
And something had.
That very morning our four comrades had been executed: Numen
Mestres, Angel Carrero, Puig Pidemunt, and Pedro Valverde.
I remember how difficult it was for me to get down from the chair
to the table and from the table to the floor. I wept bitterly for the
loss of our comrades. The Francoist assassination was one more
among the many that had been perpetrated. That morning I cried
even more than other times when friends had been snatched away
to be shot. Maybe it was being alone that sharpened my grief. It
used to be that my reaction had been one of fury and renewed
courage to keep fighting. This time, February 17, my tears were
bitterthat the struggle would have to be continued.
I looked up at the ceiling and remembered the knock the upstairs
neighbor had given listening to the news. Was he a comrade or
simply a citizen opposed to Franco? What must he be thinking?
Revenge, like me? In those years many of us wanted more from the
party's struggle than a national political reconciliation; for myself
and many others it was very difficult to accept a change in the
party's political philosophy that would settle for compromise.
Still today there is etched in my memory one day and two months:
the seventeenth of January and the seventeenth of February. The
first seventeenth was the day I said good-bye to Miguel. I was not
to see him for another four years and eight months, during which
time I would not receive a single bit of news about him. The
second seventeenth was the day in February they shot our
comrades.
A couple of months later, on the way back from delivering the
mended stockings to the shops and just as I turned into the street
where I lived, I saw a man at the other end hide when he saw me
approach. At least I thought he did when he saw me. It might just
have been a coincidence. But the following day when I returned a
little later, there was a man in the same spot as the day before. Was
he waiting for someone? Watching me? I made a third test. The
time was different, but the guy was there again.
There wasn't a doubt in my mind. Something strange was going on.
I went up to the flat and without turning on the light I very
carefully opened the door to the balcony. I stretched out on the
floor and watched the man in the street. He began to walk. When
he reached the entrance to my building, he looked up at the
balconies and windows. Clearly he was trying to ascertain if a light
had gone on with my arrival home. If he recognized me, he could
have me arrested. Why didn't he do it? Or
 Page 227
was he watching the house? Had someone tipped off the police
about the meetings held there? If they've recognized me, I thought,
they're probably waiting to catch someone in this house because
they know there's a reason why I live here. It's not my arrest alone
that interests them. It could be they're just watching the house. At
any rate, it was clear I had to leave Reus.
I left Catalonia for Madrid and went directly to Luisa's house. She
told me the baby was fine. I made arrangements to stay with the
parents of Miguel's previous sweetheart, Alfredo and Maximina.
Luisa let the grandparents know I was at her home. That afternoon
they came with the little girl. Estrella was twenty-two months old
at the time, a precious child with long, curly hair and a cute way of
talking. I could hardly believe I was seeing her so near to me. But
there was one huge blow: she didn't know me and didn't want to
have anything to do with me. When I asked her to come to me, she
answered: "You aren't my mommy. You're stupid and ugly and I
don't like you."
I spoke with the grandparents about my staying with them. But I
saw they were very confused about this, perhaps because they
feared the police or perhaps because they had made the baby their
own.
I sublet a room with kitchen privileges, found work giving
permanents and made contact with the party. Although I saw my
little girl frequently, she refused to accept me as her mother.
Perhaps she couldn't understand the situation.
In the month of July I went to Los Molinos in the mountains for a
summer job in a hotel. I still hadn't succeeded in having my
daughter give me a kiss or hug. And I had no news at all of her
father. It was a bad time. I was also suffering from pains in my
spinal column and neck.
The hotel in Los Molinos was very pleasant, with three floors and a
big garden. The owners were a married couple with a daughter who
was a professor and did the bookkeeping during summer months. I
was the oldest person among the personnel they had chosen for
summer work. They gave me lots of responsibilities in the hotel.
As usual in clandestine life I had to tell stories about myself: my
husband was working in Germany, my daughter was with her
grandparents in Madrid, my name was Eugenia. They didn't try to
confirm who I was or who I had ceased to be. From extra jobs I
took on I was able to save some money and rent a room so the
grandparents could visit with Estrella.
The first Saturday they came the owners realized right away that
the little girl didn't like me. I was usually the only person to eat
with the owners in the kitchen, but that first day the grandparents
and little girl also ate there. She went to play in the garden with the
owner's daughter, preferring Elisita to me. On Sunday when they
left, I still hadn't had a single kiss or hug. Estrella continued with
her usual talk of how I was
 Page 228
stupid and ugly and not her mommy. I wondered how she could
keep up this same song after all these months when I had seen her
often enough, though not every day. I went with them to the train
station to say good-bye and when I returned to the hotel, my eyes
were red from crying all the way back. Mr. Torquemada, the owner,
was a pleasant and compassionate man.
"Eugenia," he said when he saw me return, "look at me."
"Why? What's wrong?"
"Nothing, go on with your work."
The following week the grandparents and Estrella returned. The
same thing happened. There was nothing to be done. The girl didn't
want anything to do with me. On Sunday I was preparing the table
in the kitchen for our meal and Estrella was playing in the garden
with Lucky, the owners' big German shepherd. The grandparents
were seated at the table in the garden where Mr. Torquemada had
invited them for a cold drink.
"Eugenia," he said, "if you agree, I'm going to speak with your in-
laws. It's not right that your little girl doesn't like you. They don't
realize what they're doing to you."
Fed up with the situation, I answered that he had my permission to
speak with the grandfather and tell him whatever he liked. After
dinner they went out to the garden for a coffee and later I found out
they had spoken. When the grandparents left, I went as usual to the
station with them. The walk was very tense and we scarcely spoke.
I didn't know if the two had spoken with Mr. Torquemada or if it
had only been the grandfather. The strain on me was terrible. When
I returned from the station, Mr. Torquemada told me he had spoken
with the grandparents and their answer was I couldn't care for the
child because I worked all day. They did take good care of her and
were always attentive to her. Mr. Torquemada had told the
grandfather: "If the girl is here with Eugenia she can take care of
her in the most essential ways. When she's working in the dining
room, Estrella can be with my daughter. What you cannot do is
make that child dislike her own mother. You don't realize how
much Eugenia is suffering."
"Do you think they'll give in?"
"Possibly. Let's wait until next week. They promised to think it
over. We'll see."
The following Saturday they returned as usual. This time they
brought a little suitcase. Mr. and Mrs. Torquemada looked at me
satisfied as if to say, "We've won."
"Here, take the girl's things," the grandparents said. "We need to
talk when you have time."
"Well, right now."
 Page 229
The grandfather told me they were leaving the child with me to see
if she got along, but I should be very careful because she didn't
know me. Besides, I should watch what I gave her to eat because
she didn't eat everything yet and the hotel wouldn't be able to give
her the food she was used to eating. I answered that however much
they loved Estrellaand I understood how deeply they cared for herI
was still her mother and knew how to take care of her. They said I
could let the room go because the girl was going to stay with me.
But I replied they could continue coming every Saturday because
just as I wanted to see my daughter I knew they wanted to see their
granddaughter.
I also had the idea that the money I earned in tips would pay for the
room so they could spend the month of August in Los Molinos
when grandfather had his vacation. On Sunday they didn't want me
to accompany them to the station for fear the little girl would throw
a fit when they left. They couldn't stand to see her cry.
Mr. and Mrs. Torquemada set up the crib they had used for their
daughter in the room where I slept. That night my daughter cried
herself to sleep.
"Don't worry, Eugenia," Mr. Torquemada said. "Don't suffer. You'll
see that the girl will have changed in a few days."
The next day she didn't want a thing to do with me. She called and
called for her little grandpa and grandma. Elisita was the only one
who could do anything with her: she got her ready, took her out to
the garden and played with her and Lucky. I took her to the upstairs
rooms to be with me, but everything seemed so strange to her that
she didn't pay any attention to me. She watched how I dusted and
then took the handkerchief out of her pocket to dust.
"No, Estrellita, not with your handkerchief. You'll use it on your
nose and it will be all dirty. Look, mommy will give you a dust
cloth."
She grabbed it from me and threw it on the floor angrily. So it went
for three days. On the fourth I didn't put the handkerchief in her
pocket. When I took her to the upstairs rooms, she tried to dust but
when she realized she didn't have a handkerchief, she stood looking
at me.
"Well, give your mommy a little kiss and I'll give you a dust cloth
so you can clean. Okay? Will you help me?"
It was the first time after months that she took hold of me and gave
me a kiss. Everything changed after that.
Her grandfather was surprised the next Sunday when we all ate
together and had paella. I put some rice from the paella on the girl's
plate, only the rice, with a bit of chicken cut up in little pieces,
mixing it with the rice. Seeing this, the grandfather said to me:
"Are you going to give that food to her? She's not used to such
food."
"Don't worry. She'll get used to it. She's getting used to eating
 Page 230
everything and as of today to harm's been done. Look, grandpa,
remember that I'm her mother and I don't want to hurt her in any
way. Do you think you love her more than I do? Well, you don't.
You may love her as much as I do, but not more."
That Sunday when the grandparents left, we didn't hide the girl.
She said good-bye to them without crying. Apparently she realized
that it was better to play in the big garden of Los Molinos than in
the grandparents' small house. The following week the
grandparents stayed in Los Molinos for their vacation, and when it
was over they left happy to see that Estrella was running the hotel.
She was everybody's favorite.
I stayed at the hotel until the beginning of October. The owners had
told me they hadn't taken vacations for years. Now they had found
a person to run the hotel during September. They spent fifteen days
in Santander while I stayed with my daughter to help the other
person manage the hotel. I returned after the summer season to
Madrid, happy to have recovered my little girl but physically a
wreck. The hotel work had aggravated my spinal column and the
pain was driving me crazy. Many times when I was out on the
street I would lean as straight as possible against a wall to ease the
pain. At home, since I didn't have the hundred pesetas it cost to buy
a board for the bed as the doctor had advised, I slept on a mattress
on the floor. I went to several clinics; they all agreed I must enter a
bone sanatorium to improve. The method of getting better was to
spend several months in a body cast. But to get admitted to a
sanatorium I had to present a birth certificate. Every time I had
gone to a clinic I had used a different name. I would tell the doctors
that yes, I would return to ask for admission, but they'd never see
me again. A lot of clinics in Madrid have my file under different
names.
The provincial prison in Guadalajara had been converted into a
penitentiary for prisoners with long sentences. Since I'm from that
province and know the city and its people, I was given the job of
setting up contact between the prison and the party. I used the
excuse of visiting my married brother for going to Guadalajara. Of
course, I had some fears about being caught since I was known in
the area. And it was a huge risk to set up contact with a prison
where I myself had been detained.
One morning I took Estrellita and went to the prison to ask for
visiting rights. I recognized a girl who was also asking for visiting
rights; we had been in the JSU and later in prison together. Her
brother had been transferred to this prison with a thirty-year
sentence. When he saw us at the window, he stared at me and then
broke into a smile. But I shook my head as if to say "Don't say
anything to me." He understood perfectly. When it was my turn to
go in for a visit, I walked with my head down talking to Estrella so
the officials I knew wouldn't recognize me.
 Page 231
When I entered the visiting area, the man I'd come to see wasn't
there yet. When he finally came in I saw why it had taken him so
long: his lungs were in very bad shape and his doctor had forbidden
him to walk or talk. Two other prisoners held him up on either side.
When the officials made the two men leave, he held himself up the
best he could by clutching the bars. I explained the reasons for my
visit as they had been presented to me. On that visit and the
following one we were able to set up a system for communication
between him and the outside: the person who came in for his dirty
clothes and brought them back clean would be his contact.
About this time I renewed friendship with María Valés who had
been released from prison and was doing housework. Through her I
found work in a sewing shop embroidering fancy sweaters. María
also made Christmas possible for usonce again she cut off her
beautiful braids for money, this time to buy a gift for her little boy
and one for Estrella. About this time I also found out that Amalia
Morales had been released and was living in a shanty by the
Manzanares river. Thanks to her social security card I still have my
sight.
By now I had been told that I had anemia of the retina; later I was
diagnosed with an embolism. With treatment my left eye could be
saved; but I barely saw out of the right one. I couldn't finish the eye
treatment because my spinal column deteriorated so badly I had go
into a sanatorium. In November of 1950 I was admitted to the
sanatorium in Pedrosa, Santander, under the name of Emilia
Roldán. In one respect, my stay there was worse than prison. There
were twenty-one beds in the room and everyone received daily
communion and prayed continuously all day long; they even took
turns praying throughout the night. I wouldn't take part, which
displeased the other patients. Interestingly, neither Sor Primi nor
the priest badgered me.
In April of 1951 the political scene in Spain changed as strikes and
arrests broke out everywhere. One of our friends gave information
to the police when she was arrested. As a result, my little girl and
her grandparents were confined to their home and the authorities
took meimmobile in a body castfor three days of interrogation.
They threatened to haul me to Madrid: if the Barcelona police had
dislocated my spinal column, they said, the Madrid police would
stomp on it until it broke. But the doctor at the hospital refused to
discharge me.
The authorities forbade any contact with the outside world. The
priest came to my rescue. He mailed my letters from Santander and
picked up ones for me that were sent to a certain address in that
city. He knew my true identity, but he never asked any questions.
The other patients in the room now respected me. And the doctor,
who also knew my real name, said that my file would always bear
the name of Emilia Roldán.
 Page 232
The months passed. I wanted to move my body, but the doctor
refused to take off the cast. In October of 1952 he admitted that he
could have discharged me six months earlier, but he didn't want to
risk my safety. But now they needed my bed very badly. He felt
terrible to tell me I must leave. I asked him not to discharge me. I
would try to get up.
''What are you going to do?"
"It's better you don't know. That way you'll have no responsibility
to the police."
When he left my bedside, tears of emotion filled my eyes. What a
good man! No wonder the people of Santander called him "God on
Earth."
By the end of November everything was set for my escape. By now
I was able to get around. Shortly before supper one day I told my
companions I was going down to the first floor to see the children.
I met Sor Primi in the hallway. She had suspected a possible
escape, but she hadn't said a word to anyone. Now she embraced
me and wished me good luck.
I left the sanatorium and walked with a man to his boat, for the
sanatorium was on an island. When we reached the mainland, I
followed him to the train station and boarded. He put the little
package with my belongings on the seat and left. Not a word had
passed between us. I stayed the night with friends in Santander and
the next morning took the bus for Burgos. Ultimately I made my
way back to Barcelona where Luisita, as usual, helped me. I needed
help: after all those months in the body cast, I was very thin, my
feet were deformed, and I was all bent over. Luisa found out the
police were looking for me. I hadn't wanted to leave Spain but now
it seemed the best thing to do. My friends and Sor Primi at the
hospital had advised me to go to France. But first I wanted to see
my daughter and the grandparents; maybe they had news of
Miguel. I'd heard nothing from him since January 17, 1949.
Estrella was five and one-half years old and a darling. She
preferred to stay inside the house with me than go out to play with
her friends. "Mommy," she'd say, "if the bad men come looking for
you, I won't tell them I saw you." The grandparents promised to
send Estrella to me as soon as my health improved. Promises aren't
always kept.
From Madrid I went to Santander and then to a contact house in
San Sebastian. At the beginning of January, 1953 I crossed into
France, though not without some problems. A member of a Spanish
refugee family met me in Paris. This person was a boy who had
been released from prison only recently and also had crossed the
border. His family chose to live in a wood shack so they could save
money for their return to Spain. They believed each year would be
their last one in exile. They
 Page 233
wondered how the Franco regime could last. They had to wait
thirty-nine years. I contacted a comrade to ask that he let the party
know I was in France and ready to make a verbal or written report.
I stayed with the family of this contact person a few days in a small
village nearby. From there I was taken to Nemours to stay with a
family that had previously offered refuge to a certain "Manuel,"
known to me as Miguel. Other refugees lived there, too. I was
known as Auntie Amalia. But I wanted to hear from the party so I
returned to Paris.
On April 14 there was a big celebration in a large movie house.
Maybe I'd meet someone I knew. I didn't recognize a soul. But
suddenly I heard my name called. It was a woman from my days in
Les Corts. She said not to worry, the party would reach me, but
first I'd have to legalize my status as a political refugee. For that I
needed a job. I found work as a housekeeper for a family of White
Russians. My document said I was a widow with a daughter in
Spain. My employer offered to have my daughter come and attend
school with their six-year-old son. By now I was well recuperated.
I thought the grandparents would let Estrella come. But they didn't.
I would not see my little Estrella again until she was ten years old.
By then her father would not have seen her since she was eleven
months old. Some hurts are too painful to talk about.
In July the party asked for my report. I did it between July and
August. One evening at the end of September a friend came to the
house where I worked. He asked me to come to the door because
his mother was with him. I was serving supper, so I gave him the
key to my room and asked him to wait for me there. After supper I
went upstairs. Someone opened the door. Not a woman. It was
Miguel. I could only stammer, "you, you, you." It had been four
years, eight months, and fifteen days since I'd had word of him.
Miguel had found out in April at a meeting in Paris that I'd escaped
from the sanatorium and gone to france. He'd asked to see me, but
the party had refused, saying they didn't have my report. "How can
she do it if you don't ask her?" was his reply. He had returned to
Madrid and then in September come back to Paris for another
meeting. That's when we met.
Miguel went back to Barcelona but returned to Paris for Christmas
and New York's of 19531954. I left the house where I'd been
working and Miguel and I spent some time together in a little house
in Saviny that belonged to a comrade. After Miguel left again, I
stayed with close associates of his in Paris and resumed clandestine
activities. I was with them until 1959. A lot happened during those
five years. In August of 1957 Estrella and her grandparents finally
joined us. In March of 1958 Miguel was arrested in Barcelona. I
immediately asked for a passport, with the party's authorization, of
course, and in January, 1961 I made
 Page 234
my way back to Spain. Miguel was still imprisoned in Burgos. He
finally was released on September 20, 1967.
But life still wasn't peaceful. Franco remained in power. When a
state of exception was declared in January of 1969 we had to live
clandestinely in Barcelona once again, this time until the beginning
of 1976. By then Franco had died and we obtained legal
documentation. We were home at last.
 Page 235

AFTERWORD
Mary E. Giles
Tomasa's final words in the third volume of the trilogy of
testimonies speak to her undying commitment to the ideals of
peace, freedom, and democracy. And, as she wrote me early in
1997, she continues to search out the stories of men and women
from among the hundreds of thousands who suffered execution,
imprisonment, exile, and clandestine living, that they, too, may be a
part of Spanish history. Miguel is no less dedicated: though retired,
he travels to Central and Latin America to help organize political
groups on behalf of the poor and unrepresented.
The peace and freedom for which Tomasa and Miguel have fought
and suffered may not be realized yet on the scale they envision, but
their love for each other and for their family and friends is a
glimpse into the truth of their ideals. Estrella, once carried as a
baby in a basket, is now a beautiful, mature woman who lives in
Paris with her husband, an architect, and spends a great deal of
time in Spain. Estrella's four children, Tomasa writes, "me adoran y
les adoro""adore me and I adore them." Some people past eighty
years of age are content to resolve their lives in the seclusion of
family. Not Tomasa. Adore her family she does, but not at the
expense of the larger arena in which she has forged her identity for
decades. The spark of the fighter still lights her eye, straightens her
back, steels her resolve. Wife, mother, rebel, fighter, friend, all
these you are, Tomasa, yes, all these, and how much more!
 Page 237

GLOSSARY
AJA Alianza Juvenil Antifascista (Antifascist Youth Alliance)
In November, 1937 the Communists succeeded in establishing an
alliance of leaders of youth groups on both national and local
levels. The main contingents of the alliance were the Libertarian
Youth and the JSU. The Communists estimated that 70 percent of
all Spanish youth adhered to AJA.

Calvo Sotelo, José (18931936)

He was a radical counterrevolutionary who rejected democratic
procedures and looked for an authoritarian Spain to be established
by the army. He was shot on July 13, 1936, at 3:00 A.M., as he sat in
the front seat of a government car, after having been taken from his
house by a captain of the Civil Guard. The political right saw his
murder as the complete collapse of order.
Carrillo, Santiago
Early in his political career, in the 1930s, he was secretary to the
JSU. As Secretary General of the Communist Party in the 1950s he
advocated a policy of strikes; in the following decade he worked to
reconstruct the Popular Front of 1936.
Casado, Colonel Segismundo (b. 1893)
As Republican commander of the Army of the Center, he opposed
Juan Negrín's policy of continuing the war in the face of inevitable
defeat. Forming an opposition government and taking for himself
the portfolio of defense, at midnight of March 4, 1939, he
broadcast the revolt to the people of antifascist Spain. After days of
unsuccessful negotiations with the Nationalists, he ordered the
surrender of Madrid to the Nationalist commander in University
City, after which he flew to Valencia and ultimately to Marseilles.
casas de pueblo
Established by the UGT, these Socialist club houses held
committee rooms for the local trade unions, free lending libraries,
and cafes.
 Page 238

CEDA, Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas

(Spanish Confederation of Right Wing Groups)
Formed in 1933 as a general national Catholic party, it backed
revolt against the Republic even though it had supported socialist
positions in principle.
CNT, Confederación Nacional de Trabajo
(Anarcho-Syndicalist Trades Union)
Formed in 191011, the union rejected political action and electoral
participation in favor of direct action against employers. In
November of 1936 it changed policy and joined the Popular Front
government, though some purists remained absolute anarchists. Its
strength was in Barcelona, the Levante, Aragon, and among the
landless laborers of Andalusia.

Falange
The nearest thing to a fascist party in Spain, the organization was
made up of authoritarian nationalist parties under the leadership of
José Antonio Primo de Rivera (190336), who was executed on
November 20, 1936, by the Popular Front in Alicante. The party
grew rapidly in the early years of the Civil War and in April, 1937
Franco fused it with the Carlists, long-time traditionalists and
monarchists, to form FET de las JONS (Falange Española
Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-
Sindicalistas).
Guardia Civil (Civil Guard)
A militarized police force created in 1844, it served under the
Ministry of the Interior and was commanded by a regular soldier.
Especially notorious for rigorous methods of keeping order in rural
Spain, the guard fought on Franco's side because when war erupted
villagers throughout Spain reacted by slaughtering the hated Civil
Guards.
Ibarruri, Dolores (b. 1895)
Known as La Pasionaria, she was the most recognizable figure in
the Communist Party, especially effective as an orator.
JSU, Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas (Unified Socialist Youth)
In April of 1936 the Communist Youth and the Socialist Youth
were joined. Although the initial membership of Communist Youth
was far less than that of the Socialist Youth, the Communist Party
 Page 239
gained control of the JSU and used it as a successful example of
uniting efforts of both Communists and Socialists. The Communist
Party also used the JSU to promote cooperation with the
Anarchists, against whom they had been working. The JSU worked
vigorously for the Republic and was praised for its role in
defending Madrid in 1936 and 1937.

Largo Caballero, Francisco (18691946)

A leading figure in the UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores), a
Socialist trade union with power in Madrid, the mining regions of
Asturias and the Basque industrial zones, he was prime minister
from September 4, 1936, to May 17, 1937.
militias
In February, 1936 the unions formed paramilitary forces in
Catalonia, and after July 18, 1936, they were expanded elsewhere
in Spain. There was an effort to centralize them into a disciplined
and regular Popular Army that would be dependent on the central
government rather than on unions and political parties. The
militarization of the militias was a controversial issue because on
the one hand the image of men and women fighting in their
uniform of workers' overalls was appealing but on the other the
irregularity of training and equipment and inefficiency of a system
left to random were not promising of victory. By December, 1936
the government refused to pay nonregular units and the process of
militarization of the militias was complete by the summer of 1937.

Mujeres Antifascistas (Antifascist Women)

This was one of many organizations set up by the Communist Party
to attract members who otherwise might have been reluctant to
become Communists.

National Front
This "umbrella" group was made up of all the organizations and
parties that supported Franco.
Negrín, Juan (18891956)
Prime minister from May, 1937 until the end of the war, he found
himself in sharp disagreement with Colonel Casado about
continuing the war against the Nationalists.
 Page 240

PCE, Partido Comunista Española (Spanish Communist Party)

The orthodox, that is, Stalinist, Communist Party was founded in
1921 when a younger radical youth group joined with members
who had left PSOE, a Marxist-Leninist party founded in 1879 by
Pablo Iglesias that advocated a workers' state and government. The
party became very popular during the war and afterward
maintained the only consistent opposition to the dictatorship. It
gradually lost power, however, and in the elections of 1996 its
influence was negligible.
Popular Front
During the October Revolution of 1934 leftist groups unified and in
the elections of February 16, 1936, united under this rubric to
emerge as a major force in the political scene. Socialists,
Republican Left, Republican Union, Esquerra (Left Republican
Catalan nationalist party) and Communists collaborated as the
Popular Front, a clear opponent of the rightist National Front.
POUM, Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista
(Workers' Party of Marxist Unification)
This revolutionary Marxist party was founded in September, 1935
from the former Trotskyist Left Communist Party of Andrés Nin
(18921937) and Joaquin Maurin's block of workers and peasants.
The party advocated workers' seizing political power.
PSOE, Partido Socialista Obrero Español
(Spanish Socialist Workers Party)
A Marxist-Leninist party founded in 1879 by Pablo Iglesias, it
advocated a workers' state and government. Although the party did
not oppose the dictatorship as vigorously as did the PCE, after
Franco's death it emerged as an effective rival to the PCE, and after
winning the 1982 elections managed to hold political power until
its defeat in the 1996 elections.
PSUC, Partido Socialista Unificado de Cataluña
(Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia)
Established in July, 1936 with the uniting of the Catalan
Communist Party, the Catalan branch of PSOE and two other
organizations, it is, in effect, the Communist Party of Catalonia.
Requetes
They were the political descendants of the Carlists, who fought in
two wars for the right of Don Carlos (17881855) to ascend the
throne
 Page 241
in opposition to Isabella II (18301904), who was seen by them to
be too yielding to liberalism. This protest movement was centered
in the Basque provinces and the mountains of Aragón and
Catalonia. Defenders of the Catholic Church by tradition, the latter
day Carlists, known as requetes, put their paramilitary militia at the
service of the Nationalists. They were identifiable by the red berets
they wore.

SIM, Servicio de Investigación Militar

(Bureau of Military Investigation)
A secret police organized by Soviet specialists in August, 1937, it
maintained "law and order" through the harshest of means,
spreading terror and employing torture in the manner of the Soviet
secret police.
sindicato (syndicate or trade union)
To a large extent the trade unions were dominated by the
Anarchists, the more militant of whom wanted formal government
abolished and replaced with agreements and pressures of trade
groups. In the 1930s some syndicalists favored a degree of
cooperation with society. Syndicalism spread to Madrid in July of
1936 as a result of an antipopular uprising.
SRI, Socorro Rojo Internacional (International Red Aid)
The international Communists established a number of relief
agencies headed by Willi Muenzenberg in Paris, of which SRI was
the most important. Helping revolutionaries of the Left in Spain
since 1934, it counted 992 local committees and 353,000 members
in February of 1937. Because it distributed relief and aid, it had
real power and gained prestige for the Communist Party and the
Soviet Union among Spaniards.

UGT, Unión General de Trabajadores (General Union of Workers)

A socialist-led trade union founded in 1888, it was strongest in
Madrid, the Asturian mining region, and the industrial parts of the
Basque provinces.
UHP, Unión de Hermanos Proletarios
(Union of Proletarian Brothers)
In Asturias the Anarchists, Socialists, Communists, and semi-
Trotskyists of the Workers and Peasants' Alliance cooperated under
this rubric and rallying cry.
 Page 243

NOTES
Introduction
1. Information about the Civil War and the Franco regime is drawn
primarily from Raymond Carr, The Spanish Tragedy: The Civil
War in Perspective (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977);
David T. Cattell, Communism and the Spanish Civil War (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1955); Helen Graham and Jo
Labanyi, eds., Spanish Cultural Studies: An Introduction (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Hugh Thomas, The Spanish
Civil War (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961); Sergio Vilar,
Historia del Anti-Franquismo 19391975 (Barcelona: Plaza & Janes
Editores, S.A., 1984).
2. The military unit was named after Ernst Thaelmann (18861944),
a harbor worker in Hamburg, Germany, whom Stalin regarded as
the leader of the German Communists in the late twenties.
3. See especially "Women and Social Change" by Helen Graham in
Spanish Cultural Studies, 99116.
4. See especially "The Urban and Rural Guerrilla of the 1940s" by
Paul Preston in Spanish Cultural Studies, 22937.
Chapter 1. Growing up in Prewar Spain
1. Before February, 1936 the Communist Youth claimed
membership of about 14,000. When the organization joined with
the Socialist youth group in March of that year, membership
increased.
2. For his activities Carlos Prestes later was incarcerated; efforts
from supporters outside of Spain and within the country to effect
his release finally were successful. Ernst Thaelmann (18861944)
was a harbor worker in Hamburg, Germany, whom Stalin regarded
as the leader of the German Communists in the late twenties. In
Spain his name appeared with the "centuria," or group of 100 men,
German emigrés who had come to the "Workers Olympiad" at
Barcelona and worked under Hans Beimler, a Communist ex-
deputy of the German Reichstag.

Chapter 2. Coming of Age in Politics and War

1. Tomasa says in the original text that it was the second or third
day of March when they went to Madrid, but more than likely the
day she describes
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was the fourth because it was at midnight on the fourth that
Casado's revolt was broadcast to the people.

Chapter 6. My Prison Odyssey

1. On April 12, 1931, the monarchist candidates were defeated in
municipal elections. The following day King Alfonso issued a
statement that he was stepping down; driving from Madrid to the
coast, he left Spain for exile. The next day the Second Republic
was established.

Chapter 7. The Dynamiter

1. José Ortega y Gasset (18831956) was the most influential
thinker in Spain from 1914 to 1931. Educated in Germany, he later
occupied a professorship at the University of Madrid. A prolific
writer, he developed his ideas in journals, newspapers, and books.
Like many other intellectuals, he left Spain shortly after the Civil
War began.
2. Miguel Hernández (19101942), a member of the Generation of
'39, expressed themes of the poor and working class in his poetry.
He died in prison.
3. Vicente Aleixandre (b. 1898) is considered to be one of the finest
poets of the Generation of '27.
4. The battle of Brunete took place from July 625, 1937. The
Republic intended to move toward the village of Brunete from the
north of the road running from El Escorial to Madrid in order to cut
off the Nationalists who were besieging the capital from the west.
The battle was not a victory for either side, and the losses in terms
of men and equipment were heavy.
5. The Littorio Division was an Italian division on the Nationalist
side. After the defeat in the Battle of the Ebro, Mussolini decided
to concentrate the Littorio and the March 23 Divisions into one
large division and to withdraw the rest of the Italians.
Chapter 9. A Minor in Prison
1. Colonel Gabaldo was an inspector in the military police of
Region I who was responsible for the archives and documents that
made possible the arrest of many people on charges of
Communism and Masonry. He was a major force in political
repression and his death on July 27, 1939, produced a flurry of
arrests in the next two months.
2. Another reason for the increase in arrests of Communists in July
and August of 1939 was that Roberto Conesa, who had been a
member of the JSU, began to work for the Francoist police. On
August 4, 1939, sixty-five death penalties were handed down to
sixty-seven militants. On August 5, 1939, in the East Cemetery,
sixty-three people were shot, including the thirteen roses (las trece
rosas), young women between eighteen and twenty-one years old.
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Chapter 10. The Cemetery of the Living

1. The Ebro campaign from July 24 to November 18, 1938, was
one of the most important of the Civil War. The Republican War
Council in Barcelona devised a plan for reestablishing
communications between Catalonia and the rest of Republican
Spain that involved crossing the Ebro river in several places, about
sixty miles from the sea. Infantry battles were fierce and
Nationalist air attacks relentless. Hugh Thomas states that ''during
the first five weeks of the counter-offensive the Nationalist aircraft
dropped an average of 10,000 bombs every day" (549). What
began as a successful offensive by the Republican forces eventually
turned into defeat. During this period the International Brigades
were withdrawn from Spain.

Chapter 12. Solidarity and Compassion

1. By 1941 there was an effort to consolidate Communist
organizations within Spain. Heriberto Quiñones took the lead in
this effort. His position was that party leaders should stay in Spain.
During the war he had been part of the Provincial Committee in
Valencia and had worked in military information. While in the
concentration camp in Albatera he had met the Polish Communist,
Josef Wajsblum, who had been sent by the Communist
International during the war to help Republicans. He escaped from
the camp and with Wajsblum's help came to be in charge of the
party committee in Madrid, which became the main leadership of
the PCE within Spain. He never forgot that such leaders as
Santiago Carrillo and Dolores Ibarruri had abandoned the party
within Spain. He was bound to suffer for his criticism of their
leadership. Quiñones worked on a national union that was to
include Republicans and even Monarchists, but not Falangists. His
image of the PCE challenged Communists outside of Spain. His
efforts were restricted by both the Franco police and Communist
leadership in exile. Quiñones was arrested on December 30, 1941,
as he was going along Alcalá street in Madrid with a Communist
militant, Angel Fermín Cardín. He was tortured until his spinal
column broke. He was condemned to death and on October 1,
1947, shot along with his closest comrades, Luis Sendín and
Fermín Cardín.
Chapter 13. Reflections on Prison Life for Women
1. Tomás de Torquemada (14201498) is infamous for his role as the
Inquisitor General of the newly established (1482) Inquisition in
Castile.
2. Benito Pérez Galdós (18431920) is regarded as the finest
Spanish novelist of the nineteenth century. Unlike his
contemporaries whose novels were regional, Galdós cultivated a
national voice.
3. The Free Institution of Education was founded in 1876 by
Francisco Giner de los Ríos (b. 1839), who was a professor of law
at the University of Madrid. In the 1870s the Spanish minister of
education had decided to call for a loyalty oath from all professors
at the University of Madrid in support of the
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crown, the dynasty, and the Catholic religion. Refusing to sign
the loyalty oath, many professors decided to organize a union of
their own dedicated to educating young people in an atmosphere
of freedom. The aim was to graduate liberal men who would
lead Spain into the modern world.
4. The main character in Miguel de Cervantes's classic novel, Don
Quixote of La Mancha (Don Quijote de la Mancha), Don Quixote
is for many people the quintessential symbol of unflagging
idealism.
Chapter 14. The Costs of Sacrifice
1. Catholic Action was a large Catholic social movement started in
the early 1920s.

Chapter 15. A Stranger in a Strange City

1. Antonio Creix was head of the Political-Social Brigade, which
was directly responsible for the torture and mistreatment of
prisoners at police headquarters in Barcelona. His brother, Vicente
Juan, was also a member of the secret police. Eduardo Quintela
was chief of the Brigade in Barcelona. On March 2, 1949, there
was an assassination attempt on him near the cathedral of the
Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Three anarchists machine-gunned
the car they mistakenly thought he was riding in. Poloco, or Pedro
Polo Borrequero, was a commissar of the secret police in
Barcelona. The methods of the Political-Social Brigade were so
bad that on May 11, 1966, thirty priests marched in protest from
the cathedral to police headquarters. When the police found out
about the intended march, agents Olmedo and Vicente Juan Creix
went to dissuade them, but the priests went ahead with the march.
When the police took action, the demonstrators were forced to
disperse and with the help of the common people managed to
escape.
Chapter 18. Escape
1. Cristino García had been an outstanding guerrilla during the war
and later was a member of the "maquis" who resisted the Nazis in
France. In April, 1945 he entered Spain with a double mission: to
create guerrilla groups and to liquidate Gabriel León Trilla. Trilla
had been an original organizer of the PCE in the twenties, but had
been ousted in 1932, then readmitted in 1936. From 1944 on he
was in Madrid editing the clandestine paper, Mundo Obrero
(Workers' World). In the spring of 1945 the external leadership of
the party decided to take control away from Trilla and Jesús
Monzón. Trilla was assassinated September 6, 1945, in an old
cemetery. On September 22, 1946, García was arrested in Alcalá de
Henares and on February 21, 1947, he was shot along with nine
other guerrillas. He was decorated posthumously by the French
government in recognition of his resistance work in France.