On May 30, 1924, the anarcho-syndicalist of the CNT, Fernando Carballo
Blanco, was born in a small town in Valladolid, Castromonte. ---- Son ofAniceto Carballo, a worker in the workshops of the Northern Railway
Company and a member of the National Confederation of Labor (CNT), shot
in 1936 in Valladolid by Franco. ----- Fernando Carballo was the
political prisoner who spent the longest time in Franco's prisons and at
the beginning of the transition.
When he began to work as an animal dealer, he met the peasants who had
been dispossessed of the lands they worked in the collectives. He
realized that there was a lack of men to fight against these atrocities,
and that it was the politicians who carried them out. He leaned directly
towards anarcho-syndicalism and, in 1963, he joined the clandestine CNT
and devoted himself above all to propaganda tasks.
In the summer of 1961 the CNT held the Congress in Limoges. At that same
Congress the creation of a secret organization known as Defensa Interior
(DI) was approved, a clandestine action group of the clandestine CNT,
with the objective of dynamizing the armed and conspiratorial action
against Francoism and whose main objective was to kill Franco.
Defensa Interior was formed by four well-known militants exiled in
Europe, two in America and one in Africa: for the CNT in Europe, Acracio
Ruiz and Cipriano Mera; for the FAI and representing the libertarian
exile in America and Europe respectively, Juan Garcia Oliver and
Germinal Esgleas; for the FIJL, Octavio Alberola; and representing the
CNT in Africa, Juan Jimeno.
Fernando Carballo was arrested in August 1964 along with the Scot Stuart
Christie, founder of the Anarchist Black Cross and Cienfuegos Press, as
well as co-author of The Gates of Anarchy, for possession of explosives
and for attempting to attack the Franco regime and Franco by taking
advantage of the Spain-USSR football match at the Bernabéu stadium in
Madrid that was held in June of that year.
«I was involved in propaganda. I did indeed have plastic explosives,
detonators and sulphuric acid, but I was missing chlorate mixed 50% with
sugar. (...) there is no one who can find out the thought or the
intention. Perhaps as an anti-Franco I needed to have that. Maybe one
day the time would have come to use it, or not; but you cannot forge an
accusation on that basis. Indeed, the only accusation was possession of
explosives.»
On 1st September 1964 a court martial sentenced him to 30 years in
prison and Christie to 20.
From then on his anti-prison struggle began.
In November 1969 he went on a hunger strike to obtain the status of
political prisoner. In November 1970, in the Burgos prison, he went on a
new hunger strike in solidarity with the prisoners of the Euskadi Ta
Askatasuna organisation (ETA, Basque Country and Freedom). He remained
locked up in Burgos until 1971, in Alicante until 1975 and then he spent
time in various prisons doing "prison tourism" (Cordoba, Valladolid,
Alcalá de Henares, Jaén, El Puerto, Carabanchel, etc.).
THE ANTI-PRISON FIGHT OF FERNANDO CARBALLO
During his repeated and endless confinement, Fernando suffered
ill-treatment, torture, hunger strikes, transfers, punishments, ...
He spent 244 days in solitary confinement in different Penitentiary
Centers. Burgos, Ocaña Prison, Puerto de Santa Maria, Tarragona... 24
hours of total isolation without speaking or seeing anyone, without
packages or letters, and most of the time without even being able to sit
down. What we would call the FIES Regime. Prison within a prison.
The frequent transfers were a greater threat to him. They consisted of
taking prisoners from one end of Spain to the other without any reason
or need. There was so much suffering and humiliation during the endless
transfers, increased by the conviction of his fate that he tried several
times to escape during the course of them, preferring to be shot before
reaching his destination.
In Alcázar de San Juan he climbed onto one of the roofs, but
unfortunately two tiles broke and the jailers caught him.
On the train from Córdoba to Seville, he managed to free himself from
his handcuffs and tried to jump out of the train window. The jailers
caught him and beat him to death with blows and clubs.
Despite everything, Carballo had incredible resistance, an amazing
capacity for recovery and he kept his spirits up with great fortitude.
The veteran CNT militant survived the most agonising tortures.
He was a man of incredible generosity of spirit, and he never believed
in the amnesty of 1977, which should include the so-called common or
social prisoners, victims in most cases of the injustices of a
capitalist society and the abnormal conditions that Spain had
experienced after a Civil War.
«I have lived in poverty and the poverty and calamities I have seen have
made me realise that most criminals are so out of necessity. When
someone is missing a pair of sandals for their children, they have to
get them somehow. If a wretch goes and steals a sack of potatoes, they
get six or twelve years in prison. On the other hand, we are going to
catch those responsible for Matesa, Sofico... Shouldn't they get more?
However, it is the opposite.
In short, living with them, knowing their causes, is how I have come to
the conclusion that the most colossal social injustice is that committed
against these men. Many of the so-called common crimes could be called,
not political, but social.»
HIS RELEASE
Released in January 1977, he came out like any person who has spent so
much time in prison, stunned. He came out into a world that was not the
one he had known before entering prison. Despite this, he adapted quite
well. He knew the reality of the moment. His demands regarding the poor
situation of prisoners were a constant in his interventions in freedom.
His arrival in Madrid, where he was received by a CNT delegation, led to
a demonstration and some arrests by the police. He returned to
Valladolid, where he was the subject of several interviews by the local
press.
On March 27, 1977, in the bullring of San Sebastián de los Reyes, the
first meeting of the anarcho-syndicalist organization took place after
Franco's death.
Chaired by Juan Gómez Casas, general secretary of the CNT, where Lluis
Andrés Edo, regional delegate in Catalonia; Eduardo Prieto, regional
delegate in Asturias; Mekel Orrantía, in the Basque Country; Joan
Ferrer, from the Valencian Country; José Luis García Rúa, from
Andalusia, and Leandro Quevedo, from Madrid, spoke. Fernando Carballo,
and Navarro, a young Frenchman who spoke on behalf of the International
Workers' Association (IWA).
It was a mass meeting, attended by some 25,000 people and some 15,000
people who had come from different parts of the State and from exile
were left outside the premises. A documentary film was made of this
meeting, shot by the French libertarians Roger Langlais and Guy Cuestes,
which was given to the CNT in Paris and which distributed it.
And Carballo intervened to tremendous applause from the attendees:
«I am going to address this square with two words, this little square
full of libertarian fury. To you, those young libertarians who have been
able to defeat Franco's fascism (...) you are the ones who have to
liberate Spain, the ones who have to make a powerful Confederation, the
ones who have to make a libertarian movement capable of destroying
fascism and capitalism (...) Spanish comrades, comrades of the universe
that is our homeland, do not destroy your hands applauding the speaker,
destroy your hands to destroy international fascism».
He was arrested again, in January 1979 he was sentenced to a year and a
half in prison.
Fernando Carballo Blanco died on November 5, 1993 in Denia (Alicante,
Valencia) of a heart attack while he was sleeping.
I only have to say that the CNT should take more into account the people
who are in these extermination centers. Because they are victims of an
unjust system and because they are exploited at work.
https://www.cnt.es/noticias/la-furia-libertaria-de-fernando-carballo-blanco/
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