Last hours of a doctor condemned to death
In 'Ingrata patria', Martí Domínguez reconstructs the end of Juan Bautista Peset Aleixandre, a doctor shot by the Franco regime.
- Martí Domínguez
- Proa Editions / Destination
- 288 pages / 21.90 euros
Joan Baptista Peset Aleixandre was a prestigious Valencian doctor, professor of legal medicine and rector of the University of Valencia, shot by the Franco regime in May 1941. He came from a brilliant liberal lineage of Valencian doctors and intellectuals (his father was one of the honorary presidents of the First Congress of Doctors, Popular Front in the 1936 elections, integrated into the party of Manuel Azaña, Republican Left).
His scientific excellence was accompanied by great popularity, but he remained, in the eyes of some, a man of bourgeois origins, a fellow traveler of the proletarian forces that confronted the uprising. In one way or another, he was tried after the war and initially acquitted, but in a second trial he was condemned to death, not for any violent crime, but for a speech in which he openly defended the Spanish Republic. An intellectual crime, very much in line with the "Death to intelligence"of the supporters of barbarism."
Martí Domínguez sought to use Peset's ordeal to explore, from a polyphonic perspective, his final hours before the execution. Thus, we witness the testimonies of the various individuals surrounding Peset on his way to the grave: the priest who hears his confession, the director of the Model Prison of Valencia, the doctor who must sign the death certificate, the comrades who die with him...
A partially recovered memory
After The harvest (dedicated to the maquis of the Els Ports mountains) and The spirit of the times (regarding the collaboration of German scientists with Nazism), Domínguez concludes with Ungrateful homeland An ambitious trilogy about the wars of the 20th century and their legacy. It must be said that Peset Aleixandre's memory was restored after the dictatorship: a hospital, a major avenue, and a university residence hall commemorate him in the city of Valencia. But until recently, some of those who denounced him (his own academic colleagues), such as the sinister Marco Merenciano, were also part of the city's toponymic nomenclature. Merenciano collaborated with the infamous Antonio Vallejo-Nájera in the search for the supposed "red gene," which unequivocally identified those predisposed to professing "Marxist" (sic) ideas.
Fortunately, the current Historical Memory Law has put a stop to this absurdity. The former Merenciano Street, near Peset Avenue, now bears the name of a local activist. This is how history is written—also.
