Rojo / Seargent Rojo

The flabby hand of Seargent Rojo clasped the even flabbier hand of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. That handshake was the least manly handshake in the history of handshakes.

The Nationalist soldier Conrado Rojo Rojo spent the Civil War with no more ammunition than the keys of his typewriter. The biggest problem he faced during the war was dealing with or rather suffering the consequences of his unfortunate surname every time a superior ordered him to identify himself.

A soldier’s life is turned upside down when he is transferred from the comfort of his office in the Ministry of the Army to the horror of the San Martín del Río Cuervo Prison Camp and Military Penitentiary Colonies.

Among the barracks surrounded by barbed wire, he finds, in addition to old acquaintances, a reality that no one had ever told him about: hunger, misery, humiliation, arrogance, idleness, subjugation, humiliation, disease and death.