October 28, 1973 was Sunday. At nine in the morning, the Santa Maria Mitjancera church in Barcelona opened its doors for mass. Outside, a young man was waiting with a white book in his hand: it was the green traffic light for those attending the meeting called to conspire against Francoism, on the first floor of the same building. They entered through a side door, with a password: Pacem in terris.
The attendees, about 150, were members of the permanent commission of the Assembly of Catalonia, the main clandestine body of opposition to the dictatorship that united political groups – from the PSUC to the liberals – and social groups. Churches were safe places for political meetings, due to a concordat with the Holy See that prohibited police from accessing sacred places. But after ten o’clock, the political-social brigade kicked the door. “Throw away your weapons, if you have them.” Papers began to fly. The most urgent thing was to eliminate and get rid of compromised information.
Some escaped through the inner courtyard, pursued by plainclothes police – with jeans and beards -, pistol in hand, across the roofs. Others mixed with the parishioners who were hearing mass, in the pews and in the communion line, some hid in the sacristy or queued in front of the confessional. Like in a movie. Some were able to flee, 113 were arrested and sent to prison. It was 50 years ago.
“When I entered the church, I saw that in front there was a flower stand and it seemed fictitious to me; I had a suspicion that perhaps the police were watching us from there, but I thought ‘well, you’re exaggerating,'” recalls Raimon Obiols, then a member of the Socialist Movement of Catalonia. He was 33 years old. They were watching them. Obiols remembers that he had invited two exiles in Paris from the POUM action groups during the war to the meeting. “When I knew that the police were going to come in, I asked them to get them out no matter what, they were the ones who were going to be beaten the most. And they escaped,” he points out.
Handcuffed two by two, the 113 detainees – 93 men and 18 women – were taken to the police station in vans. “I remember that Xirinacs came to eat papers, even a plastic agenda. I swallowed a few papers, but an agenda… It was common, they told you not to catch anything that could compromise you, telephone numbers, addresses,” remembers lawyer Magda Oranich. She was 28 years old.
At the police station, during the interrogations, no one knew anything. They had met “to discuss the encyclical Pacem in Terris of John XXIII.”
The judge ordered prison for everyone. Women, a la Trinitat. There, those responsible were nuns from the Crusades. “They put us all together in a cell, with four other victims of reprisals, one of them Laieta Berenguer, who told us how terrible the Les Corts prison had been in the 1940s. In 1973 there was only abuse in the police station,” he points out. Oranich. She was released before Christmas, her father had died of a heart attack.
They sent the men to the Model. “The Franco regime was on its last legs. Outside there was a lot of mobilization and solidarity with us,” highlights Joan Subirats, who at the age of 22 studied Economics and was active in Bandera Roja. “They kept us together, in cells of three, there was good vibes, even though it was prison. I was with Josep Lluís Carod-Rovira and Josep Ayza, a fisherman from Vilanova who wrote the lyrics of an Assemblea anthem. The musician Carles Santos made the music and played it on an out-of-tune piano that was in the library. “He made us rehearse a chorus,” he explains, with a smile.
From outside they received many books, food – preserves, sausages, some ham. And cigars, boxes and boxes of Cohiba and Partagas, which the Cuban consul sent.
“My interrogation was very fast, some pushing, some hair pulling, some blows… They had others there who interested them more,” explains Martí Carnicer. He was 22 years old, he studied Economics and was active in the Socialist Movement of Catalonia. “In prison we held meetings, assemblies,” he remembers. It was safer to talk about politics there than on the street.
“I shared a cell with Antoni Gutiérrez Díaz and Francesc Serrahima. That was dirty and sad. We killed the bed bugs by putting lit strips of paper through the tubes so that the smoke would suffocate them,” explains Ramon Espasa. He was 33 years old, a surgeon and a member of the PSUC. “But there were many of us, and with Guti’s optimism. Already at the police station he told us: ‘Don’t worry, we have them surrounded,’” he recalls, smiling.
Before they were two months old, many were released. But a fine had to be paid. “The most active of us decided that we would not pay,” explains Espasa. They came to look for me at home, I was able to escape. But Guti convinced us to surrender, to show strength, and we returned to prison.” A few more weeks passed until everyone was released.
