Second time that the Minister of Culture attacks historical reality, a sad way to rewrite History. Ernest Urtasun He already stated last September through X (former Twitter) that the Franco regime knew that “the work of Miguel Hernandez is inseparable from his political commitment,” and that “that is why he murdered him.” The criticism of him was of little use. Now, a few months later, the politician is once again at the heart of the controversy after having insisted on his mistake through the same social network: “Today we pay tribute to someone who was murdered for transmitting his ideas.”
The reality is that the poet was not murdered. Miguel Hernández was arrested and transferred from prison to prison until tuberculosis ended his life on March 28, 1942. An illness that the Francoist authorities did not treat adequately, that is of course.
From jail to jail
The sad path to the poet’s death began at the end of April 1939. It was then that Miguel Hernández, without shelter or work, decided to travel to Portugal to escape repression. He didn’t get far. In Santo Aleixo he sold a suit and a watch that his friend Vicente Aleixandre had given him. It seems that it was the buyer who reported him to the Salazar police. And from there, to his arrest on May 4, 1939. He was soon transferred to the Huelva prison and then moved to Seville first, and then Madrid.
Miguel Hernández was released from prison on September 15, but only to be imprisoned again a week later and found dead in the Conde Toreno prison in Madrid. He would no longer taste freedom again. On January 18, 1940, he was sentenced to death for “adherence to the rebellion.” It was argued against him that he had fought in the 5th Militia Regiment and that he had later joined the political commissariat of the Shock Brigade. This is confirmed by ABC journalists Pablo Muñoz and Cruz Morcillo in their report ‘The last years of Miguel Hernández through his prison file’.
There would be pages missing to list the vicissitudes he suffered in the different reformatories and prisons that Miguel Hernández went through. Suffice it to point out that he was in a Madrid prison on a day as important as June 25, 1940. That day his sentence was commuted to “the lowest in degree.” In practice, he went on to add thirty years of imprisonment. The pleas of great friends and writers like José María de Cossío were key to this. From there he was taken to the Palencia prison, where they remember that he stated that “he could not cry because the tears froze due to the cold.”
Tuberculosis
He arrived at his last stop in June 1941: the Alicante Adult Reformatory. It was there that he died nine months later as a result of the pulmonary tuberculosis he suffered from; an illness that was aggravated by the terrible conditions of that prison. His friend and also inmate, Joaquín Ramón Rocamora, stated years later that the poet slowly faded away in his confinement. He ended up lying in bed, oozing pus that soaked the sheets. Miguel Hernández longed for a transfer to a place where doctors would treat him, he knew it was his only hope, but it was of no use to him.
In this way he spent his last days, as Rocamora himself explained: «He barely spoke, he couldn’t anymore, it was like snoring; When he moved his lips it came out like a snore; and his eyes were open, he always had them open, and he looked at me, he always looked at me; He didn’t move his feet and legs, he couldn’t move. […]; “He named his mother, his wife and his son, he always named them…”
The final stretch on the way to the afterlife was undertaken on March 17, 1942. According to his biographer, José Luis Ferris, in ‘Miguel Hernández. Passions, prison and death of a poet’, it was that day when a note sent from the Alicante reform school informed the general director of Prisons of the need to transfer the prisoner to a hospital. «By then, the poet was already practically hopeless by the doctors. All prison health personnel […] “He could feel sadly proud of having poured his efforts, not only into saving Miguel Hernández’s life, but at least into providing him with worthy assistance during those last months of ordeal,” explains the author.
The response came on March 21: “The transfer of the inmate is authorized.” But no one dared to move that body anymore. “The doctor told me that there was no remedy,” revealed the poet’s wife. Six days later, his wife and sister paid him a visit. «This time I didn’t take the child, and he asked me about him. With tears running down her cheek she told me several times: ‘You should have brought it with you.’ He had the hoarseness of death, I touched his feet and they were cold and had black spots,” the first wrote.
He died at half past five the following morning, on the edge of Rocamora. He fanned him and wiped away the pus that was still oozing. His friend said that one of the last phrases he heard from him was when he remembered his wife: “Oh, daughter, Josefina, how unfortunate you are!” The death was made official by the chief medical officer through a regulatory report: «The inmate hospitalized in this Infirmary, Miguel Hernandez Gilabert, [ha fallecido] as a result of Pulmonary Fimia according to what the inmate assistant doctor tells me. You have received Spiritual Aid. May God keep you for many years. Alicante March 28, 1942 »
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