The Minister of Culture says that Miguel Hernández was murdered, and the right-wing press, the social media and the social networks rush to correct him: “he died of tuberculosis!”, to laugh at the minister for being ignorant, or to criticize him for being sectarian and manipulative. And they are right: Miguel Hernández died of tuberculosis. Spot. In a newspaper headline, a talk show comment or a tweet there is not much space, and that is surely why they do not add “Miguel Hernández died of tuberculosis in a Francoist prison.” Or even: “Miguel Hernández died of tuberculosis in a Franco prison after passing through a dozen prisons where he was mistreated and became ill.” Or for that matter: “Miguel Hernández died at only 31 years old of tuberculosis in a Franco prison, with his body covered in sores and unable to breathe, after being convicted for his republican and communist ideas and passing through a dozen prisons where he was mistreated and He fell ill like thousands of political prisoners who suffered cold, hunger, torture and illness in the post-war period, many of them dying.” It doesn’t fit in a headline, what are we going to do about it.
It must be said loudly: Miguel Hernández was murdered. He was murdered by the Franco regime. The minister is right, it is not a lapse or ideological blindness. They murdered him but not with bullets, but rather by letting him die of a disease that surely would not have contracted or killed him if he had not spent three years in prison in difficult conditions. They killed Miguel Hernández slowlyis the title of a book from a few years ago written by a doctor who documented the inhumanity and cruelty of Franco’s prisons and the prison cruelty towards the poet. If we get exquisite with the language, since we are talking about writers, the Royal Academy define murder as “killing someone with treachery, cruelty or for a reward.” And in the death of Hernández there was undoubtedly cruelty.
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