Carlota Falgueras: "I didn't want to go back to prison, so I went into exile with a fake passport."

BarcelonaIn 1963, the Barcelona Provincial Women's Prison opened in the Trinidad neighborhood. More than 7,000 women passed through it during the dictatorship, accused of crimes against property or morality, or for being part of opposition movements and groups. Carlota Falgueras (Barcelona, ​​1950) was one of them. It was closed when she was eighteen years old for participating in a demonstration. Together with historian César Lorenzo, they have just published the book Trinidad: The Ignored Women's Prison 1963-1983, published by Memorial Democràtic, an investigation that gathers the testimonies of nearly forty women who experienced and knew prison from different contexts.

Why has no one published anything about the Trinity until now?

— I'm the first to be surprised. Not only had no one written anything about it, but its history also risked being forgotten. The Trinidad, as a women's prison, operated from 1963 to 1983 and underwent many changes after that.

How many inmates have you been able to contact?

— For the book, we relied on around forty witnesses, most of them women who had been in prison, but also lawyers Magda Oranich and Jordi Oliveras, and Dolors Calvet, a PSUC member of Parliament. We had access to the prison archives, which are housed in the National Archives of Catalonia, and we investigated 3,000 prisoner files. Most of the profiles were of common-law prisoners, but there were also inmates punished for political reasons against the regime. Officially, they weren't called political takeovers, but that's what we called ourselves. And in fact, many of the common-law prisoners hadn't committed any crimes as such. The dictatorship criminalized behaviors it considered immoral, such as having an abortion, leaving home because your husband beat you, or staying out on the street until late at night.

In Trinidad, was there a difference in treatment between common and political seizures?

— Of course! From the start, we were separated. Through interviews, we discovered that in the early years there was more contact, but when I joined, in '69, there was already a total separation, following handwritten leaflets against the regime that the political prisoners wrote to the communities. We went, they put us in the back pews, very far apart so we wouldn't rebel against them. crusades, were intended to lead us towards the most foolish national Catholicism.

The crusades They were lay women who were part of a secular institute. Have you been able to contact them?

— We've tried and failed. Although we've investigated and learned that the CRAE Residencia Montserrat in Cerdanyola was managed by the Evangelical Crusades from 1979 to 2021, and that they were terminated because they asked to cease operations, not because the Generalitat (Catalan government) withdrew their subsidy or because they were forced to leave.

This institution, then, still exists...

— Especially in South America.

I commented that the crusades They carried out continuous psychological abuse when they were in charge of the Trinity.

— They mistreated everyone, but the common prisoners even more so. The political prisoners were girls from fairly well-off families, and some from influential ones. On the other hand, we also had a strong network of supporters behind us. But they were crueler with the communes. One woman explained to us that she was pregnant when she entered, and one day they took her out of her cell, took her to the area where the children were, and told her: "Look, your son is going to grow up here."And of course, that wasn't necessary... They could also lock you up in the punishment cells or leave you without visitors.

You were imprisoned in Trinidad in 1969. How long did you spend there?

— One month and twenty-one days. I was arrested at a May Day demonstration. I was a freshman at the Autonomous University of Madrid. I had connections with people from the CCOO (Working Council of Workers' Parties), and they arrested me and another colleague. Then we went to the military court and from there to the Trinidad prison.

What was everyday life like in prison?

— It was extremely boring. We couldn't go to the workshops, the movies, or the cafeteria. These were activities reserved for communal meals. We were locked in the cell, which was like an old-fashioned hospital room with 24 beds. Once a day, which usually happened in the morning, a crusade They would come and get us and take us to the courtyard. They would lock us in there, cold, hot, or snowy, until they felt like it. In my time, in '69, in the afternoon, they would sometimes take us to a small room that had a TV and a Parcheesi game. They would take us there during the children's program. Others have explained to us that the TV didn't work in their time.

Could they receive visitors?

— In my time, it was two days a week. However, there were times when it was only one. Only immediate family members could come to see you, and if you had a boy about to get married, he could bring a certificate from the parish stating that they offered marriage courses, and then they would let him in.

How long could I stay with a visitor?

— Twenty minutes. And we had to speak in Spanish. crusade He listened to us, and if he heard us speaking Catalan, he'd immediately cut us off. Of course, we didn't notice and switched languages. I didn't speak Spanish with my sisters and my mother.

And when it comes to communicating with other prisoners?

— We were alone in the cell. In my time, there were seven of us at most. But thanks to interviews, we learned that toward the end, in '73, they almost filled the room.

In 1973 you were arrested again...

— Yes, but I didn't go to prison. I was arrested at a demonstration in solidarity with a worker who was killed in Sant Adrià. They took us to the police station on Via Laietana. The lawyer I had, who was Soler Barberà, I don't know how he managed it, but they let me go and didn't lock me up. I was released provisionally pending trial, and in April 1974 the court sentenced me to one year in prison. We appealed to the Supreme Court, they confirmed the year again, and I decided I didn't want to go back to prison. I was already working at a school by then, and I went into hiding. This meant living from house to house so as not to compromise anyone.

Due to that arrest he went into exile in Italy.

— I decided to go into exile with a fake passport. When I went to prison, they took it away from me, and I needed it to travel abroad. During my second arrest, I was already a member of the PSUC (Socialist Workers' Party), and I told the party leadership that I wanted to leave. They saw it as a good idea. In '74, early '75, it was a very difficult time, there was a lot of repression. Just think, Franco died killing people... So they made me a fake passport. My name was Mercedes García Jubany, I'll always remember that.

Were you able to say goodbye?

— No... My mother knew I'd leave, but not when. From Barcelona, I went to Perpignan, and from there to Paris, with a family of Spanish exiles. There was a very nostalgic atmosphere there, with many older people who had left after the war. From there, I continued on to Italy, to Turin.

He arrives in Turin and what does he do? Was anyone expecting him?

— I didn't know anyone, I didn't speak Italian... Luckily, I had my last paycheck from high school and some savings. After a few days, I met a girl who took me to the headquarters of the Italian Communist Party, the PCI. There, I was offered a job with an organization called Committee Italy-Spain. I was dedicated to gathering information coming from Spain. Until Franco died in November 1975, and I thought that with the first pardon I could return. But that wasn't the case; that pardon didn't affect those of us accused of terrorism, which was my case. I wasn't a terrorist by any means, but at the demonstration where I was arrested, Molotov cocktails had been thrown, and I was accused of terrorism.

When were you able to return to Catalonia?

— After the passage of the amnesty law in 1976, I had found a job at the University of Palermo and was thinking a lot about whether to return.

The Trinidad building is already planned for demolition in June 2026, as they plan to build social housing. Do you know if anything is planned to remain to preserve its memory?

— Both the Catalan Association of Former Political Prisoners of the Franco Regime and organizations in the Trinitat Vella neighborhood are calling for it to be a memorial site, with some elements left behind so that what happened isn't forgotten. But it depends on the City Council; it's unclear what will happen.