Carceller, el hombre que murió dos veces

The Instituto Cervantes in Manchester is collaborating in the programme of activities “Satire and Memory Against Repression”, organised by Newcastle University, with the screening of the documentary Carceller, el hombre que murió dos veces, followed by a discussion with its director, Ricardo Macián, who will be joined by Santiago Fouz, Professor at Durham University, and Jorge Catalá, Reader at Newcastle University.

Screenings:

-18 November: Manchester.

-20 Novembre: Newcastle.

Carceller, el hombre que murió dos veces (Ricardo Macián, 2021) puts forward the need to recover the memory of those repressed under the Franco dictatorship, while also highlighting the role of culture and satire in the struggle for justice against totalitarian regimes in twentieth-century Europe—an issue that still has repercussions today. The documentary was nominated for eight Goya Awards and won the Best Documentary prize from the Valencian Film Academy in 2021. However, although it has been screened at several Spanish film festivals, such as SEMINCI in Valladolid, it has not yet been shown outside Spain.

The film explores the life and legacy of Vicente Miguel Carceller, a Valencian publisher and businessman who championed freedom of expression and humour through La Traca, a satirical weekly magazine with a significant impact among working-class audiences. The magazine challenged established morals between 1909 and 1939, reaching a weekly circulation of over half a million copies. During the Spanish Civil War, La Traca became a key vehicle for political satire against the ideological discourse of the Nationalist side that rebelled against the Second Spanish Republic. The documentary reconstructs the lives of Carceller and the cartoonist Carlos Gómez Carrera (known as Bluff), both executed in 1940 and subsequently erased from public memory due to Francoist censorship. Both were buried in unmarked mass graves in the cemetery of Paterna (Valencia). The work of anthropologists, historians, forensic experts, and volunteers has made it possible to identify the remains of Carceller and “Bluff”. In 2022, Gómez Carrera’s daughter, Olivia, travelled from Hawaii to Valencia to take part in a tribute to her father. And in July 2024, the Spanish government recognised the illegality of the sentences handed down to 13 people repressed during the Franco dictatorship, among them Carceller and Gómez Carrera.