UoB University Graduate School
Holly Pike
A Sea of the Dead by Holly Pike, postgraduate researcher in the School of Language, Cultures, Art History and Music
This image represents my research on writing by female political prisoners incarcerated during Spain's Franco regime (1939-1975). As so-called transgressive citizens imprisoned by a repressive dictatorship, those men and women sentenced to time within Francoist prisons endured a myriad horrors of torture and abuse, horrendous conditions of overcrowding and lacking amenities, and ongoing societal stigma. Although the regime sought to obfuscate these brutalities that affected up to one million individuals, some of the prisoners themselves have told their stories. These texts, many of which remain out of print, demonstrate crimes of the regime and explore how the prisoners have used narrative to both highlight and move beyond the experiences of incarceration that are still integral to their sense of self. This is depicted within this image, featuring a photograph of barbed wire atop a fence by a leafless tree, alongside a photograph of some text. The text is a poem written by Ángeles García-Madrid, imprisoned for political activism at the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Entitled 'Un mar de muertos' [A sea of the dead], it begins:
A sea of the dead.
That’s what this is. A sea of the dead.
They feign breath, but they deceive.
Here nobody inhales. Nobody exhales.
Look closely at them: they form a beach,
Without oceans, nor waves, nor ebbing and flowing.
García-Madrid, Ángeles, 'Poemas testimoniales' 149-162, Gómez Blesa, Mercedes (Ed.) Las intelectuales Republicanas: la conquista de la ciudadanía, Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2007. Translated by Holly Pike with permission from the publisher.
Holly Pike
A Sea of the Dead by Holly Pike, postgraduate researcher in the School of Language, Cultures, Art History and Music
This image represents my research on writing by female political prisoners incarcerated during Spain's Franco regime (1939-1975). As so-called transgressive citizens imprisoned by a repressive dictatorship, those men and women sentenced to time within Francoist prisons endured a myriad horrors of torture and abuse, horrendous conditions of overcrowding and lacking amenities, and ongoing societal stigma. Although the regime sought to obfuscate these brutalities that affected up to one million individuals, some of the prisoners themselves have told their stories. These texts, many of which remain out of print, demonstrate crimes of the regime and explore how the prisoners have used narrative to both highlight and move beyond the experiences of incarceration that are still integral to their sense of self. This is depicted within this image, featuring a photograph of barbed wire atop a fence by a leafless tree, alongside a photograph of some text. The text is a poem written by Ángeles García-Madrid, imprisoned for political activism at the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Entitled 'Un mar de muertos' [A sea of the dead], it begins:
A sea of the dead.
That’s what this is. A sea of the dead.
They feign breath, but they deceive.
Here nobody inhales. Nobody exhales.
Look closely at them: they form a beach,
Without oceans, nor waves, nor ebbing and flowing.
García-Madrid, Ángeles, 'Poemas testimoniales' 149-162, Gómez Blesa, Mercedes (Ed.) Las intelectuales Republicanas: la conquista de la ciudadanía, Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2007. Translated by Holly Pike with permission from the publisher.