On the Tracks of a Shadow

At the end of the Spanish Civil War, the government of the Francoist “New Spain” set in motion a complex and Machiavellian system of repression directed against all those Republican prisoners who had lost the war. From that moment on, hundreds of thousands of prisoners (Republicans or not) suffered first-hand the torture of forced labour, internment in concentration camps or in prisons or, in certain cases, death. Although in the vast majority of cases the victims of reprisals belonged to political parties, unions and other left-wing organisations, some internees were practising Catholics educated by the Piarists but were still not spared. This is the story of Enrique, one of those internees, who in 1936, shortly after his twentieth birthday, found himself obliged to take part in a civil war instead of continuing his medical studies at university. Over the following 20 years, his determination to finish his degree did not waver and although he did not fire a single shot, because he spent the war working in a hospital, he was given a Summary Military Trial, sentenced to twelve years and one day for “aiding the rebellion”, suffered internment in concentration camps and prisons and was sent to work battalions where he carried out forced labour, and all that despite being Catholic and right-wing. Quite simply, he was on the wrong side at the least opportune time.