Spanish Civil War Memory Project

Summary

Peñafiel was born on Aug. 6, 1928. His father, who was a communist, worked as a taxi driver and machinist (lathe operator). His boyhood memories of the Civil War in the republican zone in Madrid are marked by hunger, fear and cold. He played marbles with grapeshot found in the street. Memories of sirens, fears of bombing raids, and witnessing aerial machine gunning were all part of his childhood. He began working at age fourteen, eventually associating with various international pharmaceutical companies, though he also worked with a door manufacturer and for a brief time as the manager of a bingo hall. A self-styled free thinker, he describes the difficulty with which he acquired through friends in Mexico or Argentina, books banned by the Franco regime. He associated with the CNT. Since retirement at age seventy he remains severely critical of gloabal capitalism