LIVING

A black Ford saloon sporting a Catalan flag drives along a flat stretch of the La Coruña road in the pine-clad Guadarrama mountains, east of Madrid. In addition to the chauffeur, inside sits a militia captain, a journalist and a Catalan politician. The car is travelling at some speed, and shoots past several groups of soldiers, resting from the relentless sun, who are unable to warn it to stop. The four men confidently continue until they are finally stopped at a small building at Kilometre 52, known as La Casilla de la Muerte (the Little House of Death), because trucks bearing fresh seafood from Galicia to the Spanish capital regularly crashed in its vicinity. They get out of the car and salute the officers and soldiers with a ¡Viva la República!, explaining that they are on their way to visit the troops at the front. The officers return their fraternal greetings and invite them inside the hut for a drink. The travellers reply they are in a hurry and move to return to the car, but the soldiers turn their guns on them, this time ordering them inside the hut. It is August 6th, 1936 and the group have inadvertently crossed into Nationalist Spain. Within a few hours they will all be dead: shot and buried in an unmarked grave by the roadside. Among them is Josep Sunyol, newspaper owner, member of the Spanish parliament for Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya and president of FC Barcelona.