Bearing Witness

‘Thanks to this superb translation, English-language readers finally have access to a classic work of prison literature that has played a major role in keeping alive the memory of the crimes of Franco’—Paul Preston, historian and author of Architects of Terror

‘A humane, vivid and painfully honest testimony of incarceration under two fascist systems that flares up an urgent signal in our moment of clear and present danger’—Helen Graham, Professor Emeritus, Royal Holloway

This is the story of a woman who resisted two totalitarian regimes. Mercedes Núñez Targa was a Catalan socialist imprisoned under the Franco dictatorship. On her release, she joined the French Resistance and was subsequently arrested by the German Gestapo.

This is her story in her own words. Her vivid writings about her time in Ventas prison in Madrid reveal the contrast between the horrific conditions in the prison and the prisoners’ incredible spirit and endurance. Later, writing about her confinement in a Nazi concentration camp, she describes the violence of the SS guards and her comrades’ own pitiful conditions, showing how the appalling treatment only united the women further. This is the first time her story has been available in English, her words providing a unique opportunity to further understand female solidarity and resistance against the dreadful power of fascism. 

Mercedes Núñez Targa (1911–1986) was born in Barcelona. She became an active member of the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia from an early age. Her outrage at Franco’s military coup in 1936 galvanised her commitment to the fight against fascism. Arrested in 1939, she spent most of the next six years in fascist prisons in Spain and Nazi Germany. Freed at the end of the war, Núñez Targa continued to campaign against the Franco regime while in exile, and finally returned to Spain after Franco’s death. She died in Spain in 1986.