Three P’s dominated the darkest period of the Franco regime: politicians, police, and journalists. Persecutions, arrests, and trials defined this era. Politicians and police have been studied more extensively, while the journalists’ union and its collaborators — including pencil artists, photographers, and illustrators — have often been overlooked.
Juan Antonio Ríos Carratalá, a professor at the University of Alicante and an expert in researching judicial summaries and processes, led the effort to illuminate this issue. He previously explored war councils connected to Miguel Hernández and the trials of the Oriolano poet; now he has delved into thousands of the poet’s summaries from the General and Historical Defense Archive to deepen the record.
Conclusion: Weapons against letters, co-edited by Renacimiento and the University of Alicante, this volume, slated for publication next December, includes twenty-five cases from 1939 to 1945. Carratalá researched, documented, and recovered these cases, lending them renewed attention in the history of the period and clarifying the author’s ongoing work on a second volume of the trilogy.
The apparent illegality of the summaries against Miguel Hernández
If a pattern emerges, it is this: many were never subjected to a formal judicial process because they were cartoonists, writers, or photographers who collaborated with the Republican press. They were processed not once but three times, an abnormal sequence for crimes. The first trial often occurred in a military court; after conviction, a second proceeding under the Political Responsibilities Code of 1939 imposed fines and confiscations. A third phase followed in the Special Tribunal for the Suppression of Freemasonry and Communism. In sum, the process produced multiple convictions and punishments for individuals who were not always charged with distinct crimes but with political alignment and association.
Ríos Carratalá notes paradoxical cases in which many who were executed were summoned to a new trial, and when they failed to appear, authorities declared them in rebellion. The decree to haul them to trial was sometimes published in the press, adding a layer of black humor to the tragedy.
Some special cases
Women began to appear in the press, yet the overall rate of those tried and convicted remained under ten percent. Regina García stands out. She became the second editor of La Voz, a Spanish newspaper, and operated as a double agent, working with the Republicans while also serving the Fifth Column. She was imprisoned and began sharing information, yet she did not escape jail altogether.
The researcher also gathered cases such as journalist Matilde Zapata, who was found guilty along with partner Francisco Malumbres, paying a fine of 20,000 pesetas after a conviction tied to their reporting and wartime activity. Zapata and Malumbres were among those who faced the brutal consequences of the era.
Fernando Perdiguero worked at La Codorniz and, despite a conviction, continued collaborating with the magazine after his release. Others include Andrés Martínez de León, a Seville cartoonist famous for the anti-fascist character Oselito, whose work carried political weight in the period.
Ramon Goy de Silva, an extremist poet who would later be associated with the presidential press apparatus, faced trial. Even an impassioned sonnet written in his honor by Franco did not spare him from the court. Antonio Montoro, a theater critic from Monovar, also faced conviction, and sports reporter Ricardo Ruiz Ferry, a member of the International Olympic Committee, was tried by a military court.
More doomed than being shot
Many collaborators with the Republican press faced death sentences, and a number were executed. One notable case involved Julián Zugazagoitia, a novelist and former Minister of Internal Affairs, who sought exile in France but was captured by Gestapo agents cooperating with Spanish police. He was eventually executed in Madrid after an incomplete extradition. Emilia Marroquín, a woman who intervened to protect a victim from mass grave burial, reportedly helped avert a completely erasing fate for her counterpart.
Other figures included Easter Virgil of ABC, Manuel Navarro Ballesteros of Mundo Obrero, Javier Bueno a well-known figure at the time, and Augusto Vivero, director of ABC. A striking paradox appeared in a judge named Martínez Gargallo, who was a comedian at 27 and a judge at 31. A lawsuit against Miguel Hernández targeted many journalists and writers and even the cartoonists who drew the period’s humorous stories.
The work has been painstaking and complex. Summary files are not organized by categories or occupations. The researcher had to identify individuals who contributed to the Republican press during the Civil War and then verify whether they appeared on prosecution lists. There were more than twenty permanent courts in Madrid and many specialized in professional sectors, with the city housing a vast network of accused across twenty-three prisons. Access to these documents has historically been restricted, a fact the researcher highlights as part of the archival narrative.
The project continues, and Ríos Carratalá has already clarified the fate of many of the twenty figures who faced retaliation. A second volume will further illuminate these stories and their outcomes.