The bust of Franco that changed the life of activist Cristina Farré

There are iconic episodes of the anti-Franco struggle: the workers' movement of Baix Llobregat (from the Siemens strike in 1946 to the general strike thirty years later), the flag hung during the enthronement of the Virgin of Montserrat in 1947, the tram strike of 195. Among these episodes we would place The defenestration of a bust of General Franco and the Spanish flag from a window of the historic building of the University of Barcelona (UB) led by some 150 students who, after an assembly in the Auditorium, had occupied the rectorate on January 17, 1969.

Far from remaining an anecdote, the relevance of the events became immediate. On the one hand, they confirmed a generational shift in the opposition student movement, which, sheltered by the revolutionary winds of 1968, was abandoning the more unionist, gradualist, and unitary approaches of its elders (represented by the SDEUB) in favor of a constellation of more radical and ideological groups. On the other hand, Franco's regime was accepting that the university had become a hostile territory, abandoning attempts at structuring (it had dissolved the SEO in 1965) and relying solely on repressive means: closing faculties, expelling students, judicial persecution, fines...

There are many works and witnesses to this specific moment. The UB itself organized an exhibition to mark the fiftieth anniversary, still available online on the institution's website. However, perhaps only for the activist Cristina Farré (Barcelona, ​​1948) did that day so profoundly mark her life and career. The daughter of a defeated Catalanist craftswoman, urban but still with rural ties, with a strong character and political concerns, her time at the university connected her with trade unionism and Maoism, and with her first experiences of love and activism. This "cursus honorum"The anti-Franco movement of the time then turns around, with a point of no return that leads him to clandestinity, flight, detention and torture, first in Spain and, later, linking struggles in Algeria (especially), Colombia and Cuba.

A career marked by militancy

This strong commitment impacts her private life—family, friendships, and loves—conditioned by the limitations of militancy and the submission of every personal horizon to ideological principles. Thus, she would have two children with the party leader Manuel Valverde, twenty-three years her senior: "I didn't fall in love with the man. I was dazzled by the communist leader, the charismatic leader." The entire book is permeated by an interesting and necessary critical perspective—with parallel echoes with Teresa Pàmies and the case of the PSUC – on the contradictions between discourse and action regarding the treatment of women by party colleagues.

In fact, it is perhaps these more reflective and emotional fragments that are most appreciated by the reader, as well as some details about the inner workings and the portraits (of the other prisoners, of the other activists). To see a dogmatism as dangerous as that which initially—and still today under other masks—claims to want to combat cholera—neither the means nor the ends always justify everything.