At 96 years old, Joan Busquets is the last living catalan maquis. Established in France for more than five decades, The fight – against dictatorship, inequalities and for a more just world – has marked his life and he is clear that he wants it to be that way until the end.
Right now he is fighting for the Spanish State to recognize him as anti-Franco fighter. And as such demands compensation of one million euros for the 20 years he was locked up in Franco’s prisons and the physical and psychological consequences that this entailed, in addition to the obvious deprivation of liberty.
The fight against the regime made him lose his youth –He was imprisoned at the age of 21 and did not come out until he was 41.–, but in no case the ideals. Fully lucid as he approaches the century of existence, he detailed the reasons for his claim to the State this Tuesday in a press conference organized by the CGT Catalunya at the headquarters of the Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popularin Barcelona.
Your lawyer, Raúl Maíllo has explained that in July they presented the letter to the Ministry of Justice and that if six months have passed since then they continue without a response will resort to judicial means. The state law democratic memoryin force from 2022, establishes the annulment of Franco’s sentencesa fact that has opened the door to Busquets’ claim. According to Maíllo, “a true repair and guarantee of non-repetition “would have to entail financial reparation”. That is, they are not satisfied with the “symbolic” reparation documents that the state executive has already delivered and that the former maquis has not received.
Right after the press conference, Busquets interviewed several media outlets, including Publicto review his life. At the age of 18, he made the first attempt to go to France and flee from “the black and sad Spain” that the dictatorship had imposed. “Youth were leaving because there was no future and the Church had an enormous role”remember.
On that occasion he would be detained in Espolla (Girona), very close to the border, but He would try again shortly after and then he would get his way.. He would start working in a coal mine and come into contact with CNT militants –the clearly hegemonic union in Catalonia during the first decades of the 20th century– and He would join the Libertarian Youth.
Busquets’ politicization did not come out of nowhere. Son of the Barcelona neighborhood of Sant Gervasi de Cassoles, he comments: “My father was from the CNT, many colleagues came to our house and “I have always viewed the CNT with sympathy.”. The readings would complete his politicization process when he was a teenager and in France he became involved in militancy and, for example, distributed Routehe newspaper of the Libertarian Youth and he often went to Toulouse, where “there was a fabulous atmosphere, with rallies with thousands and thousands of people.”
Relatively close to the border, the Occitan capital It welcomed numerous exiles of many political tendencies –anarchists, communists, socialists,…– and there the young Busquets would meet Marcel·lí Massanathe legendary maquis from Berga (Barcelona).
“Initially I was convinced by the political work he did, but then I saw that it was not enough and I had to go further and I spoke with Massana to join his guerrilla group and fight against Francoism”details. It was 1948 and they started a short, but very intense and decisive time in his life.
Commuted death sentence
Busquets spent a year with the Massana guerrilla group, where he also would coincide with Ramon Vila Capdevila, alias Caracremada, in which they would make incursions into Catalonia to try to sabotage the dictatorship. At that stage they gave him the nickname Senzill (the Simple).
Above all, he remembers the action they carried out near Terrassa in June 1949, in which With explosives they brought down more than forty high voltage electricity towers and a kilometer of railway track.according to him one of the main sabotages that the regime suffered. “He had his feet on the ground and was no longer thinking about overthrowing the regime, but he was “I wanted to do him as much damage as possible and totally discredit him.”he comments about that time.
Just four months later, was arrested in Barcelonaafter the Franco police caught his partner Manuel Sabatebrother of the guerrillas Quico and Josep Sabaté. He would spend weeks at the Via Laietana Headquarters, where would suffer torture by Commissioner Antonio Juan Creixfor decades one of the main people in charge of the Political-Social Brigade of the Catalan capital.
“They wouldn’t let me sleep and this is martyrdom, torture. Afterwards they slapped you to wake you up, you can imagine what state I was in,” he details, before recalling that there “I didn’t know if it was night or dayI only had one light bulb that was on 24 hours a day.”
Court-martialed, Busquets was sentenced to deathalong with his colleagues Manuel Sabaté and Saturnino Culebras. “We were thinking about running away, but in the end I came to the conclusion that If they killed me, I would die with dignity and it is very hard to come to this conclusion at 21 years old,” he recalls.
Finally, His sentence was commuted to 30 years in prison. –of which he would serve 20 and six days–, without ever knowing exactly why it happened. His companions were executed. “The trauma of all those years closed is still inside me and will never go away,” he emphasizes.
Escape attempts
The next two decades, Busquets would live in prison, the first 15 years in the San Miquel de los Reyes prison, in Valencia, and the last five in the Burgos prison. “Life in prison initially was extermination, because they were very full and we were hungry, but later, “Once people left, help from abroad began to arrive.”he states.
Of course, he did not resign himself to seclusion and He tried to escape on several occasions. In one of which, in the winter of 1956, he suffered a fall in which he broke his femur. They left him lying on the floor of the cell for a week, without any medical attention, which would cause almost lifelong consequences.
However, he does not regret the escape attempt: “I have always sought freedom and I always fight for it, but I have not achieved it yet and I still fight for it.” “Freedom is a constant, permanent fight and you have to fight for it until death,” he adds. Words that show how maintains his convictions and idealswhich today leads him to continue collaborating with texts for the CGT del Berguedà bulletin.
In this sense, the Democratic Memory Law does not provide economic reparations to the victims of Franco’s regimebut the lawyer Raúl Maíllo points out that international law does, which “establishes the responsibility of the state for illicit acts and economic reparations for the damages causedsuch as physical or mental damage.
“You have to fight until the last day”
In 1969, finally, would regain freedom but his return to Barcelona would barely last until 1972. Beyond the problems of adaptation due to the changes experienced during his confinement, such as the appearance of traffic lights in the city, he remembers that “I had a good job, well paid, but the police made my life impossible.”
The horizon, again, is the north. Busquets goes into exile in Francewhere he immediately obtained the status of political refugee. There he would meet what would become his wife, with whom he would have a son, and he would settle in Normandy, after a first stage in Paris. But the exile It didn’t save him some problems with the police and remembers that “despite leading a normal life”, in October 1976 the gendarmerie confined him for ten days on an island in Brittany to “get him away” from the presence of the then King Juan Carlos, who was visiting the French capital.
Since then He has never considered returning to his homeland.partly due to the lack of recognition of his anti-fascist commitment. In the past, for example, sent letters to Felipe Gonzálezwhen he was the Spanish president, and José Montillawhen he was at the head of the Generalitat, to demand a pension and recognition for the anti-Franco guerrillas.
None received a response, a fact that confirms how His fight has been one of the great ones silenced by Spanish democracywhile “those who won the war are still the ones who have all the advantages,” he laments.
Of course, Busquets is clear that “he doesn’t regret anything” and having fought “in favor of the Republic without being a republicanbecause I am an anarchist.” And despite confirming the global advance of the extreme right encourages young people to “fight to change things“. “You have to fight until the last day,” he concludes. And at 96 years old it seems evident that he will do so.
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