Spanish government certifies annulment of the trial and the sentence of killed anarchist

The Spanish government's Department of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory has issued a resolution in which it declares the court that tried the anarchist activist Salvador Puig Antich "illegal and illegitimate,” therefore nullifying his 1974 death sentence. 

The resolution, dated January 30, 2025, is the end of a process started last fall, when Minister Ángel Víctor Torres gave the Puig Antich family a document in which Salvador was declared “a victim of persecution and political violence.”

The document, published by El Punt Avui, contains an introduction explaining that Puig Antich was part of the Iberian Liberation Movement (MIL) and “suffered persecution for political and ideological reasons during the Franco dictatorship.” When he was arrested on September 25, 1973, a shooting caused injuries to his face and shoulder for which he had to undergo surgery.

The text states that Salvador was sent to the La Model prison in Barcelona ​​was tried in court martial, sentenced to death, and executed by the garrote vil on March 2, 1974, and that Puig Antich “has the right to recognition and to obtain moral reparation.”

"The court that tried Salvador Puig Antich is declared illegal and illegitimate, as well as the juries and other criminal and administrative bodies that, from the 1936 coup d’état, had been constituted to impose on him, for political, ideological, conscience or religious belief reasons, convictions or sanctions of a personal nature,” the text adds.

In a second point, “the conviction, sanction or resolution issued against Salvador Puig Antich is declared equally illegitimate and null.”

The document does not refer to the death of police officer Francisco Anguas due to the shots received in the shooting, it does not specify the crime of terrorism for which Puig Antich was convicted, nor does it go into the irregularities of the judicial process.

The resolution is the result of a letter that the Puig Antich family sent to the ministry after the first reparation document was delivered to them last autumn, one full of irregularities both in form and substance. On the one hand, the court case was cited incorrectly, referring to summary 106/73 when it should have been 106-IV-73, and, on the other, there was no date on which it had been issued.

The family's letter to the ministry was in line with requesting an amendment to the title, which was erroneous and incomplete, and a clarification on the need for them to be issued a document specifying the nullity, as has now happened.

To learn more about Puig Antich and La Model prison, listen to this episode of our podcast Filling the Sink.