Spanish Civil War Memory Project

Summary

Téllez Luna was born in 1945 in a small town in Extremadura, but he grew up in Andalucia. As a boy he worked on a farm, but moved to Barcelona as a teenager to join his siblings. Later he settled in the rapidly expanding town of Santa Coloma de Gramenet. His father had been a communist who fought on the Republican side during the Civil War. He gives an account of his underground activities with the Comisiones Obreras, including general comments on the organization of underground political cells, propaganda printing and distribution and PSOE activities. Téllez was brutally tortured after being detained for his involvement in a worker's strike in late 1975, after Franco's death. His case is notable as an example of the brutality of political repression even during the immediate post-Franco transition administration under Carlos Arias Navarro and Manuel Fraga