Carlos Hernández de Miguel dedicated a lot of pedagogical effort to make it known that the concentration camps he was looking for, about which he investigated and documented, were not in Poland, Austria or any point in Europe occupied by the Nazis, but were in Spain, and whose creation was decided by Francisco Franco as a continuation of his victory in the Civil War. Places of confinement, death and illness about which there was not much data. Hernández de Miguel, from Madrid, with a degree in Information Sciences, did an exhaustive job of compiling these horrors in a book published in 2017. His health has not accompanied him to continue his task of recovering unknown data from historical memory; He has died at the age of 56, from the illness from which he had apparently recovered.
He carried out a variety of journalistic occupations with determination, enthusiasm and excellent results. Nothing was small or minor to him. The parliamentary information for Antena 3 gave him a notable background and he always remembered that stage as interesting and rich in knowledge and contacts. He experienced the intensity, the fear and the testing of all his abilities as a war correspondent on the same network.
His five years, in two stages, in communication with the PSOE with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba—he also dealt with a young Pedro Sánchez, still far from the front row—left his technologically innovative mark on that political organization. On the outside, in the face of his professional colleagues, there was nothing surprising: Carlos was the usual journalist, the companion, infinitely removed from any hint of sectarianism and seeking to favor the work of his colleagues with clues and information, without distinction. He was never seen as a “party” journalist.
His before and after in the exercise of the profession occurred with the murder in 2003 of the Telecinco cameraman by fire from a North American soldier. Carlos Hernández was also in the attacked hotel along with other Spanish colleagues, such as Olga Rodríguez, from Cadena SER, and the Mediaset network. Hernández maintained the thesis that he and those who saw Couso die have reiterated for almost 24 years: “It is a war crime, it is an attack against freedom of the press and it is also proof of impunity in war conflicts,” he assured three years ago. But there have been no consequences for that crime despite the sustained denunciation and demand for justice from Couso’s family and the colleagues who accompanied him. Now, in these hours following the death of Hernández de Miguel, many professionals highlight his splendid chronicles as a war correspondent in Iraq, Palestine and the Balkans, among other destinations, for the Atresmedia network.
He took off his helmet, but the drums of war, in this case, of Spain, did not abandon him. He documented that the consequences of the war continued for thousands and thousands of Spaniards thrown into captivity. “Franco’s concentration camps.” Submission, torture and death behind the barbed wire was the title of the work of the Madrid journalist, who found 300 places of confinement beyond all control.
“The concentration camps were the first leg of a repressive system, an ideological holocaust, which turned all of Spain into an immense prison full of graves. In them, political prisoners and prisoners of war were murdered, they died of hunger and disease, they suffered all kinds of torture and humiliation,” he noted.
“The data is necessary and the documentary evidence is fundamental, but nothing has true meaning if we are not able to understand that behind each figure, each list, each Franco concentration camp there were thousands and thousands of men, women, families,” Hernández de Miguel wrote in the presentation of his work. There were more of his discoveries, about Spaniards held in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Until a few months ago I wrote In elDiario.esvery focused on the situation in Gaza and the Palestinians.
Through journalism, he defended human rights and worked to bring to light the horrors of Franco’s dictatorship. Such stormy affairs did not affect his character. Always friendly, always with a smile. He said that in his free time he “wrote and read poetry.”
