Carles Vallejo is the new President of the Catalan Association of Ex-political Prisoners. I filmed Carles this year for a film I am currently making which features first-hand testimonies by people directly affected by the Franco dictatorship (1936–75).
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Carles Vallejo outside the Modelo prison in Barcelona March 2017. Film still. © Christine Jones
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In December 1970 Carles was detained for 21 days and tortured, then sentenced to 3 and half years in prison
for possession
of illegal propaganda and illicit associations. He spent 6 months in the Modelo Prison in Barcelona, where he participated in a hunger strike demanding political prisoner status. After one month on provisional release, in September 1971, he was rearrested, but released due to international solidarity campaigns and a SEAT strike (where he worked). With the threat of a further and lengthier prison sentence he went into exile at the end of 1971, first in Paris, then Rome and Milan where he remained active in solidarity campaigns, before he could return to Spain in 1976 where a partial amnesty was established after Franco's death in November 1975.
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Date and publication unknown. Courtesy of the CCOO de Catalunya archive.
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Rome. Italian General Confederation of Labour (trade union), where Carles found refuge. Film still. © Christine Jones
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