The Supper (El sopar)

THE DINNER

The idea of this film

is an approach

to the specific problems of political prisoners.

This meeting of ex political prisoners

took place in 1974

in Catalonia.

All the participants intervened in the making of this film,

both in the subjects discussed

as well as the strategy of approach to the specific character

of a person undergoing the loss of his freedom.

For obvious reasons, the names of the technical team

and the protagonists of the film are not given.

I will give concrete information

about each of the participants as ex political prisoners

in relation to their personal characteristics.

The youngest was arrested in November of 1962.

He was interrogated for nineteen days by the Political-Social Brigade.

He was given thirty years by a military tribunal

and a petition for the death penalty.

In fact, he did ten years going in prisons in Barcelona,

Logroño, Burgos, Madrid, Jaén and Zaragoza.

Another arrest took place in January of 1961,

a RENFE (national rail road entity) union mediator

accused of being a member of Comisiones Obreras (a communist union).

He did seven years.

Arrested in Santiago de Compostela

and accused of propaganda and illegal association,

she did two and one half years in the prison in Alcalá de Henares.

This man did 25 years,

spent in the various prisons under the military tribunals.

And finally,

a man who was arrested in 1966 and did eight years

after having been in the hands of the Political-Social Brigade for 20 days.

He underwent torture and was interrogated at intervals of 2 hours.

The sum total of prison years of these five people

adds up to more than 50 years.

Let's listen to what I taped before.

We can try to synthesize it

and then later on we can look at other aspects.

Let's turn up the volume.

Connect it, will you.

There is a belief in communes

and it is undeniable that when the commune is not working well,

politically things aren't working either.

To get the commune to work well you have to be realistic.

If it's not working it is because of dishonesty

on the part of the majority of the components of the community.

Or because it hasn't been well conceived.

Maybe, but apart from that,

if for example the commune has a meeting

and the commune is following the agreements voted on by the majority,

it is difficult for the commune not to be working well.

What you can do in a commune is to abstract,

ignore that there are private interests, honest interests,

interests that you have to respect.

In the commune they had the possibility

of handing over their monthly budget

that they had been spending individually.

You know that as well as I do,

because I've been looking at the papers and I thought to myself:

I can't take anything from this page because it won't cash up.

But there were pages where I knew the guy had money

but the guy was a real vulture.

He was using the solidarity of the other guys

and keeping what he got from home for himself.

What happens is that the political prisoner,

actually prisoners in general, are substantially individuals,

individuals who are alone and in a difficult situation

and they have to resolve their reality, try to...

When they got to Jaén,

the time they rounded up 50 or 60 peasants

from Linares and other villages,

those people had absolutely nothing.

In those conditions it is imperative, above all,

to give up everything

and show some solidarity with these 60 men who have nothing.

But that situation is provisional

because after a couple of months, there were only four left.

Doing time in prison, there are long periods,

but people receive a little or a lot from the outside,

you keep receiving something. And there is a kitty or joint fund.

But in my experience, the best way is

to establish small communes by origins.

The people from Asturias, the Catalans, the people from Madrid.

Or by friendship, your friends.

You get people together by political affinity or ideological affinity,

but at mealtimes people want to go with their friends

and you don't choose friends politically,

you choose your friends and that's it.

You can't choose them for someone else.

...I am not against it,

I just consider it a very extreme formula.

Because in prison I think you have to resort to...

You're saying that a hunger strike is an extreme form of struggle.

But what do you mean by extreme?

If you mean it as a last resort as a way of harming the enemy,

which is what the struggle is for,

I wonder whether it really harms the enemy or not.

Maybe we only harm ourselves.

Because taking over the prison, burning it,

kidnapping the warden,

all that is an extreme form of fighting,

a tough struggle, but it harms the enemy.

Of course it also harms us afterwards,

but a hunger strike only destroys our bodies,

and where is the harm to the enemy?

If our enemy was sensitive to the loss of lives,

he would hurt because he cares about human rights,

but if the enemy doesn't care,

the hunger strike is a fatal business for us.

We don't hurt the enemy, we destroy ourselves

and we achieve nothing.

I think there is a certain suicidal implication in a hunger strike.

But that is also true in a revolt.

A hunger strike is extreme and suicidal

and if you are not receiving support from the outside,

you haven't got a chance.

But outside support isn't constant.

It must be very well organized

and it has to be for an important event such as the Burgos trial

where outside support overwhelmed the prisons. What we did in prison

was nothing compared to what was happening outside on the streets.

In fact, if some men were saved in the Burgos trial

it was because of the fight on the outside.

In a case like that, the street resistance guarantees a victory.

But you have to realize that when you resort to a hunger strike

it is because there are no other possibilities left to turn to.

In that sense...

Just a minute. Lots of hunger strikes

are not a last resort because there are no other possibilities,

they are just a lack of imagination,

or doing it because it worked once

and it is repeated again and again

and the results get worse and worse.

Before doing a hunger strike,

which more than extreme is a desperate measure,

I think there are a lot of other things that can be done.

You have to work hard to find solutions.

Lots of times we get obsessed with a hunger strike

thinking it will harm the enemy and it just isn't true.

This enemy is not sensitive to suffering or the loss of lives.

The enemy is sensitive to scandals.

If there is no outside support, the hunger strike is pitiful.

Allow me, I want to make something very clear.

When I said it was extreme,

I did not mean it was the loftiest way

because I agree that it is a desperate measure

and is only useful with outside support.

It becomes noticeable

when people on the outside are fighting for us.

What I meant when I said extreme, not loftiest,

is that you resort to it

when there are no other possibilities left to fight with.

I agree that there are other ways to fight in prison

I have participated in lots of hunger strikes,

and I know what it can do to your body.

I'd like to say that there is also another aspect involved.

The hunger strike is not always directed at the enemy.

When it is done against the enemy it is usually useless.

Often hunger strikes are meant

to make people aware of the desperate situation we are in,

and then, if there is no solidarity or support or a struggle on the outside,

we are nowhere. We are just rotting and dying.

It can be effective just like those Chinese who commit suicide

to demonstrate how cruel the enemy is and so on...

"Sometimes it is a way of drawing attention

to a desperate situation with a desperate measure".

I agree somewhat with that:

"Sometimes it is a way of drawing attention

to a desperate situation with a desperate measure".

But what I want to insist on is something else.

You say other forms of more direct,

more violent action in attacking the enemy are more efficient.

I think a revolt, just like the hunger strike,

is a form of impotence in a desperate situation.

In that case, for me the analogy is very clear.

And I agree that you can't resort to a hunger strike

for less important demands without having tried

all the other possibilities of action inside the prison.

And of course, the conditions at this time

are not favourable to a hunger strike.

It's been used excessively.

I think that it depends

on the existing forces within each specific prison.

It has to be the people in that prison

who weigh the probabilities of receiving support

and stirring up a reaction on the outside

and the possible outcome of drawing attention to the situation.

The concept of a hunger strike

brings up another question which is vital for a political prisoner.

Is the prison a front line fight?

Yes, I think it is.

Especially for those who are on the outside.

In other words, the aim of the people on the outside

is to free political prisoners, to achieve an amnesty

or get them out in the best possible condition.

For those on the inside, and given the conditions we are in,

our main goal is to withstand.

To withstand with dignity under the best possible conditions,