Stuart Christie and fellow British prisoner, Jimmy Wagner, Talleres Penitenciarios de Alcalá de Henares (1967)

Stuart Christie and fellow British prisoner, Jimmy Wagner, Talleres Penitenciarios de Alcalá de Henares (1967)

Stuart Christie (July 1967): 'Jimmy Wagner* and me in the patio of the printshop where, among other publications, I was a printer on the weekly Francoist propaganda sheet ‘Redención’. The print-run, if I remember correctly, was about 10,000 copies, a bit down on its peak of 37,000 in 1943. Published continuously since 1 April 1939 (the date of Franco’s victory), ‘Redención’ was written and edited by a motley collection of ultra-Catholic integrists, followers of ‘Our Lady of Fatima, determined to spread the social reign of Christ the King and roll civilisation back by 400 years or more. Prisoners were obliged to purchase the newspaper, like medieval indulgences, in order to make a public display of repentance and to ensure they benefitted from the occasional general partial pardons (‘indultos’) and qualified for provisional liberty on serving two-thirds of their sentence. Jimmy worked upstairs in the bookbinding workshop, a trade I wanted to learn, but the DG of Prisons insisted I was destined to be a printer, silly billy! Jimmy re-bound most of my contraband anarchist library in half-leather bindings, some with red and black buckram, gold-leaf titling, gilt-edging, marbled end-papers complete with silk head- and tailbands, and placemarkers. Works of great beauty they were; only a few of them left now, sadly.

* Jimmy (James Bell Wagner) — a Dostoyevsky aficionado — was serving 30 years for murdering a moneylender in Barcelona in 1962.'

Stuart Christie

1967