The last execution by garrote: Salvador Puig Antich

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Nordea.fi private banking. Hello, welcome to Witness History with me, Stefania Gotzer. Now, if this is one of your favorite podcasts already, you can skip ahead a little bit. But if you are listening for the very first time, welcome.

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So if that sounds like your thing, hit subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts and turn on your notifications so you never miss an episode. But for now, let's get to the story. I'm taking you back to the 1970s in Spain,

when a grim execution device known as the garote was used for the lost time. This is a story about a grim execution and includes strong language. It's the 2nd of March 1974, and in Spain, the last execution by Garot is about to take place. The Garot was a feared instrument.

It consisted of a metal collar tightened by a screw, designed to kill by crushing the neck. Inside a prison in Barcelona, four young siblings are spending the night together. They sit, talk and look at old photographs. But mostly, they wait.

They wait for a pardon that could save Salvador Puchentic, the only brother among them, from being executed in the next few hours. It's what they call the final vigil. It's a night when, unlike during normal visiting hours, you can touch him.

There are no bars between you. That's Karma Puchantik, one of Salvador's sisters. She's here to tell us how her brother became a symbol of resistance to Francisco Franco's regime. The new ruler of Spain rides into the city of his conquest.

Behind him is moors, his army lines the route. Generalissimo Franco became a dictator in 1939, when the Spanish Civil War ended. He wanted everyone to submit to his authority or they would be taken to jail or a police station where everyone was tortured. There were six of us, my eldest brother in the US.

Then came my sister Irma, Salvador, my sister Monse, me, and my younger sister Marzona. My parents were Republicans. They had opposed Franco in the war. My father was first in a concentration camp in France and then in a prison in Spain. He was also sentenced to death, but later pardoned.

So in our house, we never discussed these things out of fear. And although Salvador kept that silence at home, outside, he wasn't afraid to speak out. Salvador hated injustice. He couldn't stand it. When he was at school, he used to tutor a boy with learning disabilities.

One day, he heard a teacher call the boy a retard. He stood up and punched the teacher. As he grew older, this defiant streak led him to join an anarchist group. It was called the Iberian Liberation Movement.

They rocked banks and then gave the stolen money to working-class people. It was a tiny, short-lived group with no more than a dozen members. He didn't want us to know. But the family began to notice changes in his behaviour.

We would never see him. And when my mother died, he came home to say goodbye with glasses that had no lenses and a suit instead of the jeans he always wore. He had gone on the ground.

He'd say, relax girls, it's going to be okay. He was 25. We're now in September 1973, when Karma and one of her sisters were passing a newsstand. We saw his face in the newspaper and read there had been a shooting and that he was in hospital.

He had been shot in the shoulder and the mouth, so he couldn't speak. Salvador had been detained when he was meeting members of his group. The circumstances have never been clear, but he was accused of resisting the arrest. There was a struggle and shots.

Some of them injured Salvador. Others killed a young police officer whose death was blamed on Salvador. Because Salvador's father was very ill, it was his four sisters, aged 12 to 27, who visited him in prison twice a week.

We thought he'd be locked in for a while. But the death penalty? Spain was plunged into political turmoil following the assassination of the nation's second most important man,

Admiral Elise Carrero Blanco, President of the Government and General Franco's most trusted lieutenant. The 70-year-old admiral was blown up by, it is believed, left-wing terrorists who planted a bomb

either under a drain cover or beneath the presidential car... The attack had been carried out by the Bosque separatist movement, ETA. Even though Salvador had no ties to this militant group, many in Spain, including Salvador and his sisters,

believed the regime wanted to revenge the assassination of President Luis Carrero Blanco and that Salvador would be the target. A military court tried Salvador and handed him not one but two death sentences. Salvador's lawyers spent the night in a frantic bid for clemency.

Every time we saw the lawyer, his face looked worse than the time before. At 5 a.m., we knew it was bad. But the worst news was to come. My siblings went to the toilet and I came out to the corridor.

A prison officer asked me, do you know what that girl wrote is? And I said no. And he explained. My face must have been a picture.

I didn't say a word to Salvador. So I refuse to believe it was true. The sisters weren't allowed to stay for the execution. They were dismissed at 6am.

Three hours later, Salvador was taken to the mail room where the executioner was waiting. The garot hadn't been used in almost a decade, so like everyone else, he was expecting a firing squad.

He walked in, saw the garot, and... He swore. He used a Spanish word with no real equivalent in English, something you say when someone, or life, has played a dirty trick on you.

We were stunned. Like a road? Like in the Inquisition? It's completely barbaric. In 1974, we couldn't say goodbye, or kiss, or hug.