Interviewing Survivors of the Spanish Civil War in Madrid
Scott Boehm | August 17, 2009
Scott Boehm and Miriam Duarte during an interview.
Some shared with me stories of survival in concentration camps. Others have demonstrated their commitment to revolutionary ideals in the face of great danger. Several talked about how desperately they want to locate the remains of a family member in one of the hundreds of mass graves scattered across Spain.
I am here in Madrid as part of the Spanish Civil War Memory Project, interviewing survivors of General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. Franco’s reign lasted from the end of the war in 1939 until his death in 1975, and although the worst period of repression lasted until the early 1950s, Franco continued signing death sentences until his final days.
I’ve been involved with the project since the summer of 2007, when Luis Martín-Cabrera, an assistant professor of literature at UC San Diego, and I started interviewing survivors of the Spanish Civil War and the harsh political repression that followed under Franco’s rule.
José Benito Batres, one of General Franco's victims, in his law office.
This summer, a team of six UCSD students working with volunteers in Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga, Granada and others in the south of France have talked to more than 40 survivors and recorded their testimonies.
A countless number of ex-political prisoners have told us how they were detained, tortured and imprisoned, sometimes for decades, simply for distributing anti-Franco flyers or information about basic workers’ rights. The last person I had the privilege to interview, José Benito Batres, is just one example.
When Batres was only 15 years old, he was arrested for his anti-Francoist political activities. Then throughout the late 1960s and the early 1970s, he was repeatedly arrested. In 1972, he was imprisoned for more than four years. In prison, he participated in two hunger strikes. When he was released, he continued to fight for justice in Spain after Franco’s death. Today, he practices law in Madrid.
Boehm observing a mass grave exhumation.
All of the stories, including Batres’, have been tremendous in some way, and every week I’ve been in Spain working on this project I’ve met someone who inspires me to be a better person, to fight for justice and to continue building this audiovisual archive so that the message of these incredible people, whose stories have been largely ignored in history books, will be preserved for all the world to see—and hopefully—to learn from.
For more information about the Spanish Civil War Memory Project go to: http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/scwmemory/
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