Return To Spain and Death
In February 1957 he returned to Spain, where most of his family already lived. This return was made possible through a series of negotiations which involved several Nationalist military officers in Madrid, F. José Luís Almenar Betancourt S.J., a Jesuit who was in contact him during his stay in Bolivia, and the Bishop of Cochabamba, a former military chaplain who had served under Rojo.
Although he was not bothered in the beginning by the Francoist authorities, on July 16, 1957 the Special Court for the Repression of Masonry and Communism informed him that he would be prosecuted for the crime of military rebellion, in his position as ex-commander of the Army. This was the customary charge on professional military officers who did not join the rebels in 1936. He was sentenced to 30 years, but did not served a single day as the sentence was suspended sentence, and he was soon pardoned.
Vicente Rojo died at his home in Madrid, June 15, 1966. Of the obituaries appearing in the Spanish press, only the one in El Alcázar, -mouthpiece of the Francoist ex-combatants- and the one by noted Falangist writer Rafael Garcia Serrano in the party press, amply eulogized his military achievements.
He wrote several books detailing his military experiences in the civil war, which were published in the following order: ¡Alerta a los pueblos! (1939), ¡España heroica! (1961) and Así fue la defensa de Madrid (1967).
Read more about this topic: Vicente Rojo Lluch
Famous quotes containing the words return to, return, spain and/or death:
“I thought to myself that it was still another Sunday gone by, that Mother was now buried, that I was going to return to work and that, after all, nothing had changed.”
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“A tree may grow a thousand feet tall, but its leaves will return to its roots.”
—Chinese proverb.
“last time I saw you was the hospital
pale skull protruding under ashen skin
blue veined unconscious girl
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the war in Spain has ended long ago
Aunt Rose”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)
“If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever- present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”
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