Original subtitles

THE DINNER

The idea of this film

is an approach

to the specific problems of political prisoners.

This meeting of ex political prisoners

took place in 1974

in Catalonia.

All the participants intervened in the making of this film,

both in the subjects discussed

as well as the strategy of approach to the specific character

of a person undergoing the loss of his freedom.

For obvious reasons, the names of the technical team

and the protagonists of the film are not given.

I will give concrete information

about each of the participants as ex political prisoners

in relation to their personal characteristics.

The youngest was arrested in November of 1962.

He was interrogated for nineteen days by the Political-Social Brigade.

He was given thirty years by a military tribunal

and a petition for the death penalty.

In fact, he did ten years going in prisons in Barcelona,

Logroño, Burgos, Madrid, Jaén and Zaragoza.

Another arrest took place in January of 1961,

a RENFE (national rail road entity) union mediator

accused of being a member of Comisiones Obreras (a communist union).

He did seven years.

Arrested in Santiago de Compostela

and accused of propaganda and illegal association,

she did two and one half years in the prison in Alcalá de Henares.

This man did 25 years,

spent in the various prisons under the military tribunals.

And finally,

a man who was arrested in 1966 and did eight years

after having been in the hands of the Political-Social Brigade for 20 days.

He underwent torture and was interrogated at intervals of 2 hours.

The sum total of prison years of these five people

adds up to more than 50 years.

Let's listen to what I taped before.

We can try to synthesize it

and then later on we can look at other aspects.

Let's turn up the volume.

Connect it, will you.

There is a belief in communes

and it is undeniable that when the commune is not working well,

politically things aren't working either.

To get the commune to work well you have to be realistic.

If it's not working it is because of dishonesty

on the part of the majority of the components of the community.

Or because it hasn't been well conceived.

Maybe, but apart from that,

if for example the commune has a meeting

and the commune is following the agreements voted on by the majority,

it is difficult for the commune not to be working well.

What you can do in a commune is to abstract,

ignore that there are private interests, honest interests,

interests that you have to respect.

In the commune they had the possibility

of handing over their monthly budget

that they had been spending individually.

You know that as well as I do,

because I've been looking at the papers and I thought to myself:

I can't take anything from this page because it won't cash up.

But there were pages where I knew the guy had money

but the guy was a real vulture.

He was using the solidarity of the other guys

and keeping what he got from home for himself.

What happens is that the political prisoner,

actually prisoners in general, are substantially individuals,

individuals who are alone and in a difficult situation

and they have to resolve their reality, try to...

When they got to Jaén,

the time they rounded up 50 or 60 peasants

from Linares and other villages,

those people had absolutely nothing.

In those conditions it is imperative, above all,

to give up everything

and show some solidarity with these 60 men who have nothing.

But that situation is provisional

because after a couple of months, there were only four left.

Doing time in prison, there are long periods,

but people receive a little or a lot from the outside,

you keep receiving something. And there is a kitty or joint fund.

But in my experience, the best way is

to establish small communes by origins.

The people from Asturias, the Catalans, the people from Madrid.

Or by friendship, your friends.

You get people together by political affinity or ideological affinity,

but at mealtimes people want to go with their friends

and you don't choose friends politically,

you choose your friends and that's it.

You can't choose them for someone else.

...I am not against it,

I just consider it a very extreme formula.

Because in prison I think you have to resort to...

You're saying that a hunger strike is an extreme form of struggle.

But what do you mean by extreme?

If you mean it as a last resort as a way of harming the enemy,

which is what the struggle is for,

I wonder whether it really harms the enemy or not.

Maybe we only harm ourselves.

Because taking over the prison, burning it,

kidnapping the warden,

all that is an extreme form of fighting,

a tough struggle, but it harms the enemy.

Of course it also harms us afterwards,

but a hunger strike only destroys our bodies,

and where is the harm to the enemy?

If our enemy was sensitive to the loss of lives,

he would hurt because he cares about human rights,

but if the enemy doesn't care,

the hunger strike is a fatal business for us.

We don't hurt the enemy, we destroy ourselves

and we achieve nothing.

I think there is a certain suicidal implication in a hunger strike.

But that is also true in a revolt.

A hunger strike is extreme and suicidal

and if you are not receiving support from the outside,

you haven't got a chance.

But outside support isn't constant.

It must be very well organized

and it has to be for an important event such as the Burgos trial

where outside support overwhelmed the prisons. What we did in prison

was nothing compared to what was happening outside on the streets.

In fact, if some men were saved in the Burgos trial

it was because of the fight on the outside.

In a case like that, the street resistance guarantees a victory.

But you have to realize that when you resort to a hunger strike

it is because there are no other possibilities left to turn to.

In that sense...

Just a minute. Lots of hunger strikes

are not a last resort because there are no other possibilities,

they are just a lack of imagination,

or doing it because it worked once

and it is repeated again and again

and the results get worse and worse.

Before doing a hunger strike,

which more than extreme is a desperate measure,

I think there are a lot of other things that can be done.

You have to work hard to find solutions.

Lots of times we get obsessed with a hunger strike

thinking it will harm the enemy and it just isn't true.

This enemy is not sensitive to suffering or the loss of lives.

The enemy is sensitive to scandals.

If there is no outside support, the hunger strike is pitiful.

Allow me, I want to make something very clear.

When I said it was extreme,

I did not mean it was the loftiest way

because I agree that it is a desperate measure

and is only useful with outside support.

It becomes noticeable

when people on the outside are fighting for us.

What I meant when I said extreme, not loftiest,

is that you resort to it

when there are no other possibilities left to fight with.

I agree that there are other ways to fight in prison

I have participated in lots of hunger strikes,

and I know what it can do to your body.

I'd like to say that there is also another aspect involved.

The hunger strike is not always directed at the enemy.

When it is done against the enemy it is usually useless.

Often hunger strikes are meant

to make people aware of the desperate situation we are in,

and then, if there is no solidarity or support or a struggle on the outside,

we are nowhere. We are just rotting and dying.

It can be effective just like those Chinese who commit suicide

to demonstrate how cruel the enemy is and so on...

"Sometimes it is a way of drawing attention

to a desperate situation with a desperate measure".

I agree somewhat with that:

"Sometimes it is a way of drawing attention

to a desperate situation with a desperate measure".

But what I want to insist on is something else.

You say other forms of more direct,

more violent action in attacking the enemy are more efficient.

I think a revolt, just like the hunger strike,

is a form of impotence in a desperate situation.

In that case, for me the analogy is very clear.

And I agree that you can't resort to a hunger strike

for less important demands without having tried

all the other possibilities of action inside the prison.

And of course, the conditions at this time

are not favourable to a hunger strike.

It's been used excessively.

I think that it depends

on the existing forces within each specific prison.

It has to be the people in that prison

who weigh the probabilities of receiving support

and stirring up a reaction on the outside

and the possible outcome of drawing attention to the situation.

The concept of a hunger strike

brings up another question which is vital for a political prisoner.

Is the prison a front line fight?

Yes, I think it is.

Especially for those who are on the outside.

In other words, the aim of the people on the outside

is to free political prisoners, to achieve an amnesty

or get them out in the best possible condition.

For those on the inside, and given the conditions we are in,

our main goal is to withstand.

To withstand with dignity under the best possible conditions,

to get back on the streets in good condition

so as to rejoin the struggle once again.

But the fighting front within a prison

is not comparable to the fight of the workers,

the students, the intellectuals and others.

I don't think it is comparable or on the same level

as the struggle on the outside.

Conditions on the outside and the inside are completely different.

Prisoners in jail are in the enemy's entrails.

We are literally and materially surrounded.

We are subjected to a special and extreme police vigilance.

We are surrounded by the Guardia Civil within the prisons.

Undoubtedly we cannot fight like they can on the streets

or in a factory or the university.

We cannot deal with it the same way.

First we must withstand,

because when the enemy throws us in prison

what he wants is to break us down politically.

When we leave prison the enemy wants us politically dried out,

wanting nothing to do with politics.

Just going back into a normal private life.

Basically that is what the enemy wants

if we are not doing away with us altogether, which also happens.

Okay, I agree. The first point is that you can't compare

the different fronts in the struggle.

But precisely because the most important for the political prisoner

is to get back on the streets to continue fighting,

he must not only withstand but fight

to obtain the best possible conditions in prison

so he can be freed in the best possible condition.

What you mean is that the fight has to also continue in prison.

Of course, because otherwise

they would reduce us to a minimal expression of what we are,

they would make us common delinquents.

I agree you shouldn't compare, and this must be clear. However…

Taking this stand, not giving in,

is a continuous fight to improve conditions on all levels.

That means, the first thing you have to do in prison

is to take measure of the place where you are.

You are not in a factory or in the university or on the street,

you are in prison.

You have to realize where you are. If not, you are doomed to failure,

and we have seen some nasty examples of this.

What is very clear is that our attitude in prison cannot be passive.

Well, of course not!

From that moment on it is not only a question of withstanding

but of fighting against the violations of human rights, the humiliations etc.

But I agree that our form of fighting cannot be the same as on the streets.

At any rate, what we are saying is elementary.

I call it withstanding, resisting.

You call it resistance but you have to take into account

that some things are similar, for example:

in Burgos there were penitentiary workshops.

We worked in them as part of our prison term

but also for economical reasons, for us and for our families.

Also by working there we did not lose our identity as workers

we posed the same problems of working hours, salaries...

That was also a fight

even if we applied the forms that corresponded in prison.

I think we are talking on a very superficial level

because everything we are saying is obvious.

Every militant and every revolutionary,

wherever he is, is a fighting front.

What interests us now is to study in depth

the characteristics of this front line fight.

To talk in depth about what prison signifies

and how to act inside in order to resist and,

in any measure possible, to attack the enemy.

Resisting is a form of attack.

Considering a militant only as a front line fight

is an ethical consideration to be valued on that level.

But that clears up absolutely nothing...

I would like to specify...

I understand a front line fight

to be an offensive such as a general workers strike

or a general strike at the university

or both at the same time.

You are then attacking the enemy to reach a goal,

to improve living conditions for the working class,

better salaries, etc.

Or to reach better political and social positions

than the existing ones.

For me, this is an offensive front line fight.

In other words an advance by occupying enemy territory.

Posing these kinds of demands is difficult to do in prison.

I think that in prison

the point is to make the enemy recognize us for what we are:

their enemies, a certain kind of enemies.

Political prisoners.

In other words, what we want to achieve through resistance

is a statute, something we have asked for many times,

a statute for political prisoners.

They should let us have this either legally or de facto

as they have done many times.

All of us who have been in prison know this for a fact.

They have had to accept a special regime for us.

Sometimes we have asked for it and sometimes we have recovered it.

Right now, in prison,

you can't really start any political offensive action

to improve political and social conditions.

What we do in prison

is to improve our conditions as political prisoners and individuals.

Wait...

And when we can go on a hunger strike

if it is done seriously and responsibly,

after studying and exhausting every other possibility,

and it is then that men are reduced

to their most minimal expression as men

or maybe as the widest expression.

They are men who can do nothing politically, socially or culturally,

who can do nothing as a political group

and they respond to the enemy by saying:

No sir, you can't beat us, you beat us politically,

you can beat us physically, but you can't beat us as human beings.

Right, that is what I mean

by going more in depth into what we are discussing.

Leave aside the tactical and political questions, etc.

I think there is another important aspect

when I say it is a front line fight

which is both personal and collective.

The problem: Marin - 8 years in prison.

He withstood his stay in prison, he came out whole.

Was it only because he had a very clear political strategy

in regard to his behaviour? No.

It was his day to day human aspect,

his integrity, his resistance, that defeated the enemy.

This is what I'd like to go into in depth.

How do you define the situation of a political prisoner?

I'm not referring to the easy physical aspects:

walls, bars, Guardia Civil, etc.

It is something difficult to explain to others.

It is the dislocation situation of the individual.

In other words, as soon as you cross the entrance gate

you enter a completely different time/space dimension

where you can find practically

no analogy to your previous experience in life.

At that moment the individual undergoes a complete break.

A loss of historical proportions.

How then do you define that?

I would dare to say

that what the enemy wants to do to us in prison

is to subdue us, they use the word "reduce".

Reduce us not only physically

but psychologically, mentally.

They want to shrink us, they want...

There is a good image

that reflects their intentions:

a fetus,

which is the image they want of us.

They want the political prisoner to dry up

and leave the prison completely dried out politically.

Dry him out, depoliticize him.

Then send him back to his private life, his family,

his work, back to productivity and society.

That is the goal.

They want us to forget about everything.

To leave everything behind. That is their goal.

One of the policemen I met,

the most efficient one from the Political-Social Brigade,

from their point of view, who went into things in depth,

wanted to break us, depoliticize us.

He didn't only want a confession,

or a statement

or accusations against other people and against the regime.

He wanted us to surrender, to turn ourselves in.

Another worrisome problem which hasn't been well researched

because in resolving it we resort to too much dogmatism,

wishing it to go well,

is knowing whether repression really achieves or not its objectives.

In other words, if the majority of militants, political prisoners,

continue as militants once they get out of prison.

I don't mean giving up

their revolutionary beliefs

but rather whether they continue as active militants

with all the personal sacrifices this implies.

It worries me because my personal experience

tells me that in general, and especially when repression acts

on men and women who have been in prison for years,

that this repression achieves a lot.

After having met hundreds and hundreds of men

who have been in prison a good number of years,

my experience tells me that when they get out,

the majority are no longer actively militant.

This is not because they have lost their beliefs

but because they are no longer in condition,

they are overwhelmed and they no longer have the capacity.

And not only because of repression, strictly speaking,

but because of the experience of having been in prison

and the machinations undergone, other types of human experiences,

a different level of profoundness in a series of vital relationships

for an individual with things and people, etc...

This leads the person to a certain failure

to adapt that is later reflected once out on the streets.

There are those who crack, who are ignorant of a reality

that incapacitates them to be politically active

and, at the same time,

they are marginalized to a certain degree,

a product of such an extreme experience as prison

which also leads them to a certain type of social conduct that is

contradictory to the requirements necessary to be active militants.

I would like other opinions in this regard.

We know these people are anti-Franco, but...

I agree with your clarification

but I don't feel this applies to a majority

My experience in jail demonstrates the exact opposite.

Only a minority stop being politically active.

In the time we have spent together in jail

you should have been able to see

that a great majority of those who have been in there with us

have continued to fight once they are back on the streets.

That is my opinion.

As far as my personal experience goes,

I think that those who spend a relatively short time in prison

get back into the fight much more easily

than those who have been locked up for a long time.

I think the latter have a hard time

picking up the rhythm of the fight again.

They is also confronted with a number of problems.

We've got to remember

that during the 35 years of Franco's dictatorship

some prisoners have done 17, 18, 20 years.

Many of them hardly know their children or their families.

I met my daughter while I was in prison

and that is where I met my daughter's kids, my grandchildren.

So, when a person is freed,

he is confronted with some very human problems,

there is a moral commitment involved.

But as far as joining the fight again,

and even though in jail he has tried to stay in touch,

he is slightly marginalized.

It is hard for him.

I can truthfully say it has been hard for me

and I am still having trouble

adapting to such a fast changing situation.

Such a different situation from 25 years ago.

Those long, long years,

revolutionaries condemned to 10, 20 years...

There are studies that demonstrate

that a sentence of more than 5 years

destroys a person's personality.

It marks a person forever

and Franco's repression achieved its objective this way.

So what helps me find my place?

Being able to share my problems.

But after this first phase, after a while,

Do you think you can continue to function as before?

No

Do you and others understand you in the same way?

There the enemy has achieved what he intended.

They have influenced your capacity and everything else.

Even when talking, your language is not as quick as it was before,

apart from the fact that you are much older.

I think in our discussion we have been forgetting

an important question which is, the problems of women in prison.

The problems of these women have been completely ignored.

There has been talk of highly incorrect actions

carried out inside the only women's prison.

There have been criticisms

but no one has ever gone in depth into these women's situation

and the discrimination demonstrated by political organizations

towards women who are serving time.

I think we should go into why this has happened.

First of all, compared to men in this situation,

women are a minority.

There are few women political prisoners.

Secondly, if a woman is captured, it is accidentally,

usually because of her relationship with someone.

She is a subsidiary militant.

There are other cases

where the woman participates politically

and is extremely dedicated, but when she is imprisoned

she begins to feel she has been abandoned.

To what extent, women are attended exclusively from a sentimental aspect.

Even though she receives hundreds of cards

for her birthday or on May 1st,

she continues to suffer discrimination.

A discrimination that is a reflect of the subsidiary aspect

of the revolutionary woman

Maybe this is beginning to be recognized,

but there is still a long way to go.

regarding female militancy, regarding the revolutionary woman.

We have found that

for more than two years, news has been sporadic.

The type of information received was triumphalist,

which is gratifying emotionally but serves no other purpose

and lacks any kind of information

about the ongoing fight on the outside.

The repercussions of this are serious in two ways:

first because it verifies

a degradation of revolutionary militancy.

It is a lack of connection

with the general outline of the fight

and a lack of perspective of a revolutionary future.

This means that many times the sanctions in prison

expose us to visceral situations due to a lack of perspective

at all political levels.

And, in addition, this produces after effects

on that person when she is released.

It affects her reincorporation to the revolutionary fight on the streets.

However, in spite of all the enemy's repressive action,

what the enemy has not achieved in most cases

is to make the revolutionary militant forget his principles,

not while he is in prison nor when he gets out.

I can say, from my own experience, that one of the things

that has helped me the most when released prison,

has been my contact with reality,

which even though we tried to be informed in prison,

is not the same thing as being there physically.

What has been decisive in my case

has been not only contact with the veterans in this fight,

with whom I was able to establish contact,

but also the new generations.

The new generations that had joined the fight.

Observing them I felt like this was something we had contributed to.

Forgive me.

It was just a small contribution that resulted

in the mountain of changes in which we find ourselves.

As I say, that has been decisive for me

and I insist that except in very exceptional cases of desertion,

in general a man, in spite of having spent years in jail,

does not lose his revolutionary principles

and the enemy cannot achieve this in spite of his repression.

I'll tell you something,

I think,

the enemy, at times, is able to defeat an individual, 10, 100,

corners them, depoliticizes them, which is its fundamental objective,

turns them away, keeps them aside and they go back to private life.

But what the enemy has not achieved, up to now,

is to break, eliminate, the causes, the reasoning

for which we, and the future generations,

have and will go to prison.

The enemy can defeat an individual, 2, 20, 200, or whatever,

- but not the cause. - Exactly.

When we get out of prison, we can be better or worse, or whatever,

but we do find one thing: the struggle continues,

and that is our victory and the enemy's defeat.

In my contact with the new generations and other people,

they always ask me the same question.

After explaining my experience, my 25 years in prison and all that,

they ask me: "Well, Narciso,

after so much suffering and so many years in jail,

what do you think of your sacrifice, was it worth it?"

I have always given the same sincere answer and I still do.

All those sacrifices were worth it when I see all the changes

and the situation I am living in right now.

Because, in a way, we feel we have contributed

in small measure perhaps, but we have contributed.

In my ten years in prison I have maintained

and experimented a series of unforgettable,

personal experiences, much more profound

than anything I ever felt when I was free.

And not simply the most pleasant ones.

I have felt the deepest fear.

I have felt the greatest boredom.

I have been annoyed beyond belief.

In prison you masturbate with an incredibly emotional depth,

letting your imagination run to the limit

and it was the same when I was reading

or imagining trips while in punishment cells.

I never thought man's imagination could reach so far.

I have seen comrades, friends, people give everything they've got

like I have rarely seen on the outside.

I mean I have undergone unforgettable moments.

Of course it would be stupid to deduce from all this

that prison is the best of all possible worlds.

Well, after such a nostalgic song to a lost world, I would also like

to say something. I don't think a revolutionary

discovers his enthusiasm for life in prison.

One of the things I consider absolutely essential

in the revolutionary fight is an enthusiasm for life.

Passion, energy. And this is previous to prison.

In any case, what helps you discover human potential in prison,

both in its positive and negative aspects,

is precisely this enthusiasm, this passion.

And it continues afterwards.

If it doesn't then we had better give up

because you then become a melancholy ascetic,

you turn into something absolutely negative.

What do you think?

It isn't just some moments when you feel a vocation.

You can't live on a memory

or on what is good and beautiful in prison.

30 years later

But unfortunately we didn't foresee, is the day that we were to come here,

It is just the day that they execute, that the sentence is fulfilled against Puig Antich

In the Barcelona Model applying the garrote vil.

There was a lot of mobilization around this

and the police were very attentive.

Next year will be 30 years, this was in 1974.

I swear it's that one! Look at it!

He's down here.

I came with Jordi Cunill and Pere Joan Ventura.

One of the most important things is to have the slightest information

in case you are arrested.

That is, one of the keys to being able to say that you did not know anything

Is that you only know, exclusively, to get here, what concerns you directly

And if they asked me now

How did they arrive? How did the material come first?

And how did people come?

Which in this case were the express protagonists.

Well I do not know.

But everyone came phase in.

You see, the kitchen here, look at it!

With drawings...

They were here.

Here is this window that I shoot while preparing...

I remember very well,

We had very good light and we made a frame here.

I said: listen,

Let's try this topic, If it seems okay, but from within.

The interlocutors at least all, Had two years in prison.

But it's not about making a kind of... Unloaded strong, very immediate,

Is to try to touch the problems with the distance that allows being from here,

And put what are the elements that most harm the individual in this case,

As subject subject in a State, that is not of right, that is a dictatorship

And that by the own ideas is confined in a prison

like the ones at that time.

Also a nice thing about them, is that they do not make one, they are not tearful,

They are not explaining that they suffered much, etc.

This is splendid on their part, they are fighters.

They were fighting inside the prison, these, they were fighting!

They had punishment cells...

And here when they go out, they are talking about fighting.

And the day that Puig Antich was killed, we met here,

And they, the first thing they said, is that the best we could do,

It was this filming, as a gesture of solidarity, it was the best thing that could be done for liberties.

And we went ahead,

We forget the pressure of the police and end point.

Oriol Arau's office, lawyer of Salvador Puig Antich

Well, this is dossier number 68 from 1973,

which corresponds to Salvador Puig Antich.

Although actually, to get a better view of this affair

perhaps it would be best to have the file we keep in our office.

This is a file that we call economic file…

just a minute… sixty eight,

well, these are files that we keep

for our internal organization

and these give us all the steps taken

in regard to the client and any matters we have taken care of:

visiting the courts, written documents, visits in jail, interviews…

Of course, in these files,

apart from the economic question,

we also have a complete day to day summary of what is done about the matter in hand.

Once the case is finished, we cancel the file and it is filed away.

Would you please read the conclusion?

We are now in 1974

We begin on January 8

with a visit to the prison by Mr. Condomines, the lawyer.

January 9, a visit to the military government.

February 10, a visit to the prison and an interview with the director.

February 11, we attend a hearing at the Supreme Council of Military Justice.

February 12, Visit to the Supreme Council of Justice.

Interview with the lawyer, Mr. Garcia Trebijano.

March 1, Dispatch from the Military Government

the discharge of the Government met in a decision-making cabinet meeting.

Visit to the prison and informing Salvador of his sentence.

Spent all night in the prison.

Three visits to the Bar Association.

March 2, at twenty minutes to ten the sentence is carried out.

Death of Salvador.

Visit to the cemetery.

Informing the Bar Association.

March 3, attending the burial is prohibited.

March 7, attending the funeral ceremony.

March 8, the matter is accepted as finalized and it is filed away.

Forty-four years later

The Generalitat de Catalunya has been taken over by the Government of the State

as a result of applying Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution,

based, according to the resolution of the Council of Ministers, on:

“Manifest, stubborn and deliberate non-compliance

by the highest governmental and parliamentary institutions,

involving rebellious, systematic and knowing disobedience,

seriously affecting Spain’s general interests.

The Government of the Nation is authorised to proceed

to remove the President of the Generalitat de Catalunya,

the Vice-president and the members of parliament forming the Government Council.

After this removal has been ordered,

the administration of the Generalitat de Catalunya

shall act on the instructions of the bodies or authorities

created or designated by the Government of the Nation.”

Extract from the resolution of the Council of Ministers,

signed by the president of the Government, Mariano Rajoy.

Today, 25 January 2018, these political and judicial measures,

amongst others, have entailed the order

for imprisonment of the President of the Generalitat de Catalunya,

of the members of parliament in his cabinet,

of part of the Parliament bureau,

of the presidents of the civic organisations ANC and Òmnium Cultural

and the investigation of hundreds of persons.