His words have that characteristic tone of people with firm convictions. At 67 years old, half a century after his first arrest, Carlos Serrano has become the latest plaintiff against the crimes of Franco’s regime through the State Coordinator of Support for the Argentine Complaint against crimes of Franco’s regime (Ceaqua). A militant in the Communist League, he was arrested twice for his activity opposing the regime. They tortured him. They threatened him. They imprisoned him. Now, he says, he just wants to get the justice he never had.
Five decades ago, Serrano lived in the Madrid neighborhood of Lucero with his parents, his grandmother and his brother. He always enjoyed a certain left-wing and anti-Franco consciousness. He maintains that, although with exceptions, at that time it was something that was inherited. “My father’s family had suffered exaggerated repression by the regime. Even one of my uncles had to live with a name that was not his so that he would not be arrested and another died in Mauthausen,” he says. He was 15 years old when the first skirmishes began for him. At the institute he joined the so-called course committees. He studied at Cervantes, in Embajadores. It was 1970 and there were still four years until his first arrest.
He enrolled in Economics at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM), although he would never finish his degree after various incarcerations during the first two years. “It was 1974 and society was bustling. I remember that in those days the Police respected university jurisdiction much more than now, so we took the opportunity to organize ourselves between class and class knowing that it was difficult for me to enter the faculties,” he recalls. That year he began to serve in the Communist League (LC), a Trotskyist organization and a split from the Revolutionary Communist League.
17 years old, first arrest
Serrano holds the ID photo that for a few months identified him as a UAM student. It still has the mark of the university seal. While he keeps it in a small plastic box, he tells of his first arrest by the Francoist police. “It was May 4, 1975, I was still 17 years old. We had organized a jump,” he says. The idea was that, after hearing an agreed slogan, dozens of students like him would interrupt traffic for a few moments in the Plaza de la Cebada, in the center of the capital, to shout slogans against the dictatorship and throw leaflets into the air.
“Before we reached the square, the police already caught me and so many other colleagues. On the corner of Toledo Street they handcuffed me and put me in a car,” he continues. At that moment they also took away an iron chain that he was carrying in case he needed to defend himself from the Police, Serrano himself maintains. “You see what I could have done with her, if she was 17 years old,” he says ironically.
The nightmare had only just begun. That morning there were up to fifty detainees, all taken to Puerta del Sol, headquarters of the General Directorate of Security (DGS) at that time. “The cells were very full and they put me in with another kid I didn’t know. At first I thought it could be some crony of the Police to make me sing, and he believed the same about me,” he says. They soon realized that they knew people in common and suspicions disappeared.
The interrogations were not easy. “They tortured and threatened me. Furthermore, he was completely isolated. My family knew nothing about what was happening to me, nor did I of course have access to a lawyer. Even though I was a minor, I received the same abuse as my classmates,” he recalls. They ended up accusing him of illegal demonstration, illicit association and possession of illegal propaganda. For all this, he was sentenced to a fine of 100,000 pesetas, which was equivalent to just one month in prison.
Living for a month in Carabanchel: “el Cadenitas”
He didn’t even have the option to pay it. “They took me directly to Carabanchel, I passed the three-day health period without being able to be in contact with other prisoners and I joined the third gallery, with the other political prisoners, after spending only two days in the reformatory, where I belonged. because of my age,” he says while showing a report prepared by the Francoist Political-Social Brigade on the student movement, in which his name appears.
He still gets a little emotional when he remembers it: “I was amazed, I would never have imagined that people could live like this,” he emphasizes. They called him “El Cadenitas” because he was 17 years old and had the chain that was confiscated from him during the jump. “I saw that the prisoners were organized into communes, that they could even cook a little in their cells and they had their own library. These conditions had been the result of the struggles, protests and hunger strikes that the political prisoners had previously carried out,” he illustrates.
When he left it was already summer, he decided to retire a little from circulation in Madrid to go to his town. “When you get out of prison you are burned. You have to be very careful not to facilitate the arrest of other colleagues, because they were sure to continue following us, that’s why I decided to disappear for a few months,” he says. In September he returned. His desire for struggle and freedom did not allow him to avoid militancy, so he joined the LC again, as well as neighborhood militancy.
New arrest at home
At the same time that he points out his fingerprints, immortalized in the police file that was made of him, he points out that the regime barely let him breathe. “On October 25, 1975, one day before I turned 18, they arrested me again,” he explains. This time the arrest was different. The Police showed up with submachine guns at his house in Lucero. “My father tried to stop it, but he couldn’t do anything. I think they saw such a small, working-class house, because I lived there with my parents, my brother and my grandmother, with beds everywhere, that they barely searched it,” he says.
His bones were returned to the DGS. Serrano was afraid, more so than a few months ago. “This time I didn’t know what they could accuse me of. Furthermore, at that time attacks were not stopping and, although I have always opposed armed struggle, I didn’t know if they were going to get me any of those,” in his own words. That uncertainty, he confesses, was more difficult to bear than the torture he received, again.
He ended up accused of belonging to Platajunta. La Platajunta was a coordinator in which the Democratic Junta of Spain and the Democratic Convergence Platform were integrated, two organizations in which political forces opposed to the dictatorship were grouped. “They said he had put up posters at the UAM calling for subversion to overthrow the regime,” adds the professional photographer. Returning to Carabanchel became a relief.
At least they had already passed the worst torture and in prison he could be with some of his companions. He faced a fine of 200,000 pesetas, so two more months of imprisonment awaited him. “I was still scared because the investigation was open, so I didn’t know if they would accuse me of anything else,” he adds.
Franco died with Serrano behind bars. On November 25, 1975, King Juan Carlos issued a pardon. This young student and resident of Lucero was released three days later. He did not return home and went from precarious job to precarious job. He enrolled in the second year of Economics, but after the arrest he stopped going to class. “I always really liked journalism, so over time and self-taught I became a photographer, and I have lived from that until now that I have retired,” he explains.
A complaint for Human Rights
Now he is 67 years old and wants justice to be done. Through Ceaqua, Serrano has filed a complaint in the Madrid courts to investigate his detention and the torture he received. “We only want the justice that has been denied to us for decades,” reiterates this member of the La Comuna association of prisoners and victims of Franco’s reprisals. “Impunity has to end in this country,” says the now complainant.
Serrano believes that “the Transition was a scam so that the same people who were ruling previously would continue in power, and that is evident in the purges that did not exist in the judiciary, nor in the banking and business oligarchy, the army or the Police.” . It was during the Transition, specifically in 1977, when the Amnesty Law was approved, which almost half a century later continues to hamper the investigation of the crimes of Franco’s regime.
Charo Arroyo, spokesperson for Ceaqua, emphasizes that the organization has already filed more than a hundred complaints throughout Spanish territory, all without success. “Let’s see if we end up in a court that assumes international Human Rights legislation and at least investigates what was reported,” wishes this memory activist.
There is still some hope, especially after the courts took a statement from Julio Pacheco, also arrested by Franco’s police and tortured in the DGS. “They filed the case, but it was the first time that a victim of retaliation was able to tell what he suffered in the Spanish courts,” Arroyo concludes.
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