The unusual documentary trail of more than 300 people shot by Franco

Antonia Molla was a 61-year-old illiterate woman, married to Francisco Durá, with whom she had four children and living in Castalla, a mountain town located about 30 kilometres from Alicante. On December 16, 1941, she entered the women's section of the Alicante Adult Reformatory , the prison where the poet Miguel Hernández was also imprisoned, coming from the Women's Prison of Monóvar, another town in Alicante. Her prison file states that her previous record is unknown and that it is the first time she has been behind bars. You can also see the cross that marks the documents relating to those shot during the Civil War and Franco's regime. Antonia's dossier is one of the 302 that have appeared in two files of the funds of Penitentiary Institutions held by the Provincial Historical Archive of Alicante (AHPA). They all died facing the firing squad: Antonia died on July 21, 1942.

“It is unusual for two entire files to appear dedicated exclusively to executed prisoners,” says María del Olmo, director of the AHPA. The Historical Memory Law of 2007 paved the way for all documentation from the General Directorate of Penitentiary Institutions to arrive at its facilities in three batches, with collections of files dating from between 1934 and the 1960s. “So far,” continues Del Olmo, “we have described some 37,000 files and we have another 10,000 left,” and the executed prisoners “were appearing among the prisoners” who were not sentenced to death. However, files 15,934 and 15,937 have been particularly sinister. They contain the files of 187 and 115 prisoners, respectively, including five women in total. “It is shocking to see that the cross of those shot appears on all of them,” the historian laments.

All the files belong to the Alicante Adult Reformatory, whose building currently houses the city's courts, until the completion of the work on the City of Justice, which will be located just opposite. Miguel Hernández was imprisoned there in June 1941, a few months before Antonia Molla, until her death from illness on March 28, 1942. The files of his fellow inmates reflect the activity of the firing squad between June 1939 and 1945, long after the end of the war. Among those listed, "there are quite a few military men," such as Lieutenant Roberto García, a 34-year-old from Alcoy at the time of his arrest who was tried in the special military court for chiefs and officers on May 26, 1939. In the documentation of García, married and with a son, there also appears the blue cross over a text indicating that "the death sentence has been carried out."

The bulk of those sent to the firing squad, however, were “people from lower social classes, manual workers, artisans, rope makers and carpenters,” says Del Olmo, who suffered from worse economic conditions and had a much more difficult time fleeing into exile. Like Manuel Carrillo, a fisherman from Dénia who was arrested when he was 32 by the Civil Guard and handed over to the prison in Alcoy in November 1940, after being sentenced by a military court in his hometown. After his transfer to the Alicante prison, the cover of his file is marked with the cross of those shot.

The army that rose up in 1936 was cornering the Republic until the last report, dated April 1, 1939, in which Franco proclaimed that the war was over. The port of Alicante became the last stronghold of the followers of the Republic, who tried to escape by sea to exile. “As the war ended here,” says Del Olmo, “the number of arrests made was very large, immense compared to that of other provinces.” In their description of the files for their insertion in the database of the archives of the Generalitat Valenciana (Savex), they made available to those interested information that until now was not accessible for consultation.

The documentation transferred from the Penitentiary Institutions also draws a map of the concentration camps and penitentiary centres that dotted the province of Alicante during the Civil War and after its end. The AHPA has been able to document, for example, the use of the two fortresses of Alicante, the Castle of Santa Bárbara and that of San Fernando, as concentration camps during the first months of the Franco regime. Curiously, the only one that does not appear is the most famous, the Campo de los Almendros , where the prisoners in the port were taken during the last gasps of the legitimate Government. “It lasted only a few days,” explains the director of the archive dependent on the Valencian Generalitat, “and there is no written record” of its penitentiary activity.