In the second issue of El Mensajero Catolica there were two letters from Valladolid. One was from a man who had been a Falangist up to early September 1936. He described how he and his comrades had seized opponents of the Nationalists, taken them to the outskirts of the city and shot them. He lost count of the number he killed, but it would have been at least thirty. Some of his comrades having fortified their courage with brandy did not kill, but wounded their victims leaving them to die in agony. He himself had put several wounded men out of their misery. He was consumed with guilt for his crimes.
The other letter was from a woman whose husband was arrested on 22 July 1936 because he was an official in a branch of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party. After a travesty of a trial which consisted of his name and supposed offence being read, he was sentenced to thirty years in prison. Because of gross overcrowding he was in cell with five other men. Every morning he and his fellow prisoners had to have icy cold showers, after which still wet and cold they were forced to run the gauntlet of guards who hit them with truncheons or clubs. They were malnourished and suffered from various diseases. [1]
These letters were also published in other newspapers in government controlled Spain, and having been translated into the relevant languages, in the press, including Catholic journals, in the Western democracies. They caused a sensation with no independent figures believing the claim by the Nationalists that they were all lies.
[1] The descriptions in the first two paragraphs are taken from the account of Nationalist repression in Valladolid in the book The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain by Peter Preston, London: HarperPress, 2013.
The other letter was from a woman whose husband was arrested on 22 July 1936 because he was an official in a branch of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party. After a travesty of a trial which consisted of his name and supposed offence being read, he was sentenced to thirty years in prison. Because of gross overcrowding he was in cell with five other men. Every morning he and his fellow prisoners had to have icy cold showers, after which still wet and cold they were forced to run the gauntlet of guards who hit them with truncheons or clubs. They were malnourished and suffered from various diseases. [1]
These letters were also published in other newspapers in government controlled Spain, and having been translated into the relevant languages, in the press, including Catholic journals, in the Western democracies. They caused a sensation with no independent figures believing the claim by the Nationalists that they were all lies.
[1] The descriptions in the first two paragraphs are taken from the account of Nationalist repression in Valladolid in the book The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain by Peter Preston, London: HarperPress, 2013.
