Between the pen and the trial

the military court-martial against Antonio Oliver Belmás (1940-1946). Writing, repression, and military justice in post-war Spain

Abstract

This article offers an exhaustive analysis of urgent summary military trial no. 11156/1942 brought by the Francoist authorities against the poet and telegraphist Antonio Oliver Belmás (1903-1968) between 1940 and 1946, preserved at the Naval Archive of Cartagena. Through critical transcription and systematic study of the seventy-three folios comprising the dossier—preliminary proceedings, judicial orders, political-conduct reports, witness statements, the prosecution’s conclusions, and the War Council sentence—it reconstructs the legal persecution of the writer on account of his journalistic work and his propagandistic role in the Altavoz del Frente during the Civil War (1936-1939). From a microhistorical perspective, the case illuminates the mechanisms of Francoist military justice; the political instrumentalisation of cultural production; the contradictory logic of conduct reports as evidentiary support; the discursive construction of guilt in summary proceedings; and the gender dimension implicit in the judicial treatment of the literary couple formed by Oliver Belmás and Carmen Conde. The article contributes to the study of cultural repression and closes with a reflection on military archives as a source for literary and intellectual history.