(Editorial note: the following letter has been sent to us via the SPANISH WORKERS DEFENCE COMMITTEE, 29, Rylett Rd., London W. 12 This committee publishes a regular bulletin and has other material which is useful for building solidarity action with the Spanish workers' movement).
We address ourselves to our friends all over the world with profound gratitude and hope.
We, a group of Spanish political ex-prisoners most of whom have spent more than 20 years in Franco's prisons, address ourselves to our friends all over the world and our compatriots resident abroad and we invite them to show their solidarity with the political prisoners and their families this coming year of 1970.
We know only too well how sad it is to spend Christmas and the New Year in prison far from the family, surrounded only by the cold prison walls.
We know only too well the meaning of the solidarity which, in those days, reached our prisons and homes as a living proof that the world had not forgotten us.
Today, once more, Spain's prisons are full. In Segovia, Soria, Jaen, in the prison of Carabanchel in Madrid, in Catalonia, in the Basque country and in Galicia, in the prison of Ocana in Palencia, in Almeria, Burgos, ... hundreds of our brothers are still imprisoned some, mainly in Burgos and Soria, have spent more than 15 and 20 years in prison, Others - communists, socialists, anarchists, members of the workers' commissions, catholics, intellectuals, students, priests, militants of the ETA, men and women from the anti-Franco opposition, have recently been condemned by the Emergency Laws, some by military tribunals for activities which in your countries are within the normal rights of every citizen.
Let us hope that during this coming year the warmth of your solidarity will reach the prisons and the homes of those imprisoned. Let us send the prisoners and their families thousands of cards, money orders, presents for their children, for their wives and for [illegible].
This solidarity will not only provide a necessary material support, but at the same time will demonstrate the international protest against the repression and the injustice which they are suffering, It will be a public stand for the freedom of the Spanish prisoners and for a general amnesty in Spain.
Rafael Alcala Balaguer - sentenced to death; served 20 years.
Gilberto Alvarez - served 16 years imprisonment.
Santiago Alvarez - served 9 years imprisonment.