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Original title: ADIÓS PRISIÓN. El relato de las fugas mas espectaculares, First Spanish edition: Txalaparta ed., Tafalla, October 1995
Italian Edition: ADIÓS PRISIÓN. Il racconto delle fughe più spettacolari Biblioteca Dell’Evasione, August 2008
Translated by Barbara Stefanelli and Jean Weir in collaboration with Antonia and other accomplices

Introduction to the English edition
As soon as I finished reading Adiós Prisión in the Italian edition published in August 2008 I felt the urge to translate it. It is one of those books that you do not want to finish. You cannot get it out of your head, you want to delve deeper and deeper into it.
This book talks about freedom, the urgent need for freedom and the impossibility of living without it. This book says that freedom must be taken back at all costs and that is exactly what the protagonists of Adiós Prisión, Spanish prisoners under the infamous FIES regime, did: they took back their freedom using all means necessary, challenging the impossible, ready to kill for it if necessary. There is no room for political correctness or abstract morals concerning human life here: if the screws keep you locked up and your life, even in its most banal and insignificant aspects, is at the mercy of their caprice, violence and stupidity, your only choice is to eliminate them if they put themselves between you and your freedom.
The protagonists of this book are not passive subjects of the prison system, on the contrary they are well aware of the fact that prison is the absolute negation of human dignity. As FIES prisoners they are experiencing directly how human beings will never adapt to life in prison, and their most impelling need is to escape in order to put an end to a situation that is unendurable.
The FIES, Ficheros de Internos de Especial Seguimento (record of prisoners under special observation) was inaugurated by the Spanish prison system in 1991 in order to further punish and control prisoners who had been carrying out revolts in the Spanish jails over the previous decades. Two amnesties were granted following the dictator Franco’s death, one in 1976 and one in 1977, but they were systematically denied to a large number of prisoners, the ‘social’ prisoners, whereas many of those declared or considered ‘political’ were released. It was then that revolts started breaking out continuously, not only for the amnesty to be extended to all prisoners but also against the unbearable conditions inside the jails (torture, beatings, overcrowding, rotten food, no medical attention for prisoners affected by medical conditions, and so on). Prison infrastructures were smashed and destroyed as a result of the frequent riots that occurred in most Spanish prisons in the years following Franco’s death. The FIES was created with the precise aim of keeping a record of the most rebellious prisoners of those years. However, it was not just an archive for gathering information about hot-headed prisoners: along with its inauguration special wings were being built inside prisons all over Spain to hold those considered particularly dangerous by the prison system. In the special wings the cells were tiny, the walls were completely bare, the toilet was a hole in the floor, the bed was made of iron, and it was impossible to see out through the barred window. Prisoners spent days, months, years locked up in these dungeons and were allowed to keep nothing with them as their personal possessions were seized on entry to the wing. The screws were always ready to provoke, search and beat prisoners, knowing that they could count on total impunity and the
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“Operación Buyo” is not as dark as you think
After being informed today of the closing of “Reporting Restrictions”, we are notifying anyone interested that Maria Otero, the woman mistakenly considered to be an anarchist comrade and who has given the name of Gabriel Pombo da Silva, accusing him of possessing a cache of weapons, did not “limit” herself to lying… she is currently an official collaborator of Justice. A role that she has assumed given the impossibility of finding any glimmer of freedom by other means.
As anarchists as we are not interested in the investigative details in our possession until now (which of course we will not spread); precisely these details, however, give us confirmation of how this informer, in all the many and heavy cases of repression that have involved her personally, has always struck deals with “justice”, not doing even one day in prison (she lied when she told us that she had been inside for a few months).
The well known strategy of leaving her free movement has allowed the repression to open investigations and / or incarcerate other people in recent years. In the present case, she was fully aware of being under investigation but was moving freely even in some “places of struggle”: which allows the usual “competent authorities” to consider her, as well as linked to the two of us, “close to anarchist circles”. In our view, although she is imprisoned, she continues to be a dangerous loose cannon.
Investigations are still open and Gabriel, although free, is accused of being the “leader of an anarchist cell preparing to attack.”
All this does nothing but give us the sad dimension of how it is always easier to be surrounded by people like Maria in question: neither the first nor the last of those who have sold out in this not at all new liberticidal world.

6 Febuary 2017
Gabriel and Elisa

(translated by Act For Freedom Now!)


Španjolska: Operacija Buyo - Gabriel i Elisa o ulozi doušnice pravosuđa (06.02.2017.)
"Operacija Buyo" nije tako mračna kao što izgleda
Nakon što su nas baš danas informirali o zatvaranju "Secreto del Sumario", želimo obavijestiti, tko želi čuti, da se Maria Otero, greškom smatrana anarhističkom drugaricom, žena koja je odala ime Gabriela Pomba da Silve, nije "ograničila" samo na laganje... trenutno je suradnica službene pravde. Ulogu koju je preuzela kada je uvidjela da ne može pronaći izlaz na slobodu drugim metodama.
Kao anarhiste ne zanimaju nas detalji istrage, koje do sada
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Careful who you call comrade!

Tuesday, 24 January, on the outskirts of Vigo (Mos), a deployment of about 60 armed men between the Guardia Civil and secret agents, searched (and almost destroyed) the house where Gabriel Pombo da Silva had lived for a few months with his partner Elisa Bernardo. At dawn the two were violently awakened, handcuffed and separated… aim: to find firearms and explosives! The search lasted about eight hours and in spite of the means employed (dogs and high technology radar tools), gave no results… among the things seized there is the usual “interesting” anarchist material, cameras, maps of various cities, some cable and old malfunctioning cell phones. While Elisa, despite the repeated threat of being placed under arrest unless she revealed the much desired hiding place, remained free, Gabriel was arrested on charges of “illegal possession and trafficking of weapons and explosives and armed group”. During the 24 hours’ detention (the release of the comrade happened, in fact, the next day) the facts were bitterly reconstructed.
About three months ago the couple got to know a self-proclaimed anarchist comrade who, during the few opportunities to meet, “confesses” her problems with drugs and a conditional sentence she is doing because of an arrest suffered in 2013 on charges of being the author of an attack with Molotov cocktails on an institution in Vigo. Heart in hand, Gabriel and Elisa, respond to the request for help from the “comrade”, accepting her for a week (at the beginning of the year) in the aforementioned house to accompany her in the worst phase of a path of detoxification. After this brief period, the girl returns to her own home… reappearing as informer (of false information) the day prior to the present named “Operación Buyo”. If we had not received certain news that during her previous arrest she had defamed other people, we would have limited ourselves to considering her a “victim of the system”, but that is not so. Maria, this is her name, is currently in jail on the same charges as Gabriel, probably hoping that being the daughter of a military leader can help her to avoid the worst since an arsenal of firearms was found at her home. In 2013, in fact, despite the charges of terrorism, one saw the sentence being reduced significantly (from 11 to 2 years !!!), then converted to parole, with her remaining imprisoned not more than a few months. With all the hatred toward the repressive system, prison and the judicial system, it is inevitable to wonder since when do those who claim themselves as anarchists receive such treatment. Each to their own conclusions.
Gabriel, for now on bail and under investigation… comments on this latest repressive operation thus:

“Inside as outside” one palpates this reactionary arrogance against who never resign themselves. You see that the pigs of every race and condition need “additives and dyes” to sweeten the whole “reality” that is inconvenient to them. “Journalists” more concerned to sell their printed shit than verifying the veracity of what they publish. “Police” more interested in organizing speculations to prove their hypotheses. What is really “surprising” (or who knows not), is that since they let me go (not to mention all that this tremendous affair contains) there was more “protection” in “Judicial Power” than within the so-called “libertarian movement”. Since 2012 there are already 3 “Operations” (Ardire, Scripta Manent and “our local” Operation Buyo) against me. In Italian ” buio ” means” dark… and yes… ”dark” is this whole operation in which a “girl” (with a dark past) approached with the question of being a “comrade” to then want me stoned alive. Those requesting information on this “girl” can read the following links and answer for themselves. I am neither a judge nor a prosecutor. In relation to the shit about the “training ground”, the “terrorist cell”, the “possession of weapons” and trafficking of the same… well… I think the facts belie all. However I understand that in this alienated society and this corrupt system it is preferred to speak / to lie about the underlying causes of poverty than watch one’s own navel. I’m still standing. I continue with my anarchist path despite all and everything. They will never be able to stop the Agustin Rueda University, that I am going to inaugurate in my parents’ house in the country there in Mos, with this kind of maneuver. In my house were seized: 5 winter cabbages, anarchist books and magazines. It is obvious that if they had found even one nail clipper in my possession, Gabriel Pombo would be writing “communiques” from a cell and not in freedom.
To those who continue to support me and show me their unconditional love: I’m here!
To those who continue to want to assassinate: I’m here!
Never Defeated!
Never repentant!!
For Anarchy and the end of domination!

Gabriel Pombo da Silva
29 January 2017


Galicija [Španjolska]: Nova represivna operacija protiv anarhista Gabriela Pombo da Silve i Elise di Bernardo (24.01.2017.)
Pazite koga nazivate drugom!
U utorak 24. januara, na periferiji naselja Vigo (Mos), masa od oko 60 naoružanih osoba iz Guardia Civil i tajnih agenata pretresla je (i skoro uništila) kuću u kojoj živi već nekoliko mjeseci Gabriel Pombo da Silva sa svojom partnericom Elisom di Bernardo. U zoru su nasilno probuđeni, stavljeni u lisice i odvojeni... cilj: pronaći vatreno oružje i eksploziv! Potraga je trajala oko 8 sati i unatoč korištenim sredstvima (psi i radari najnovije tehnologije) nije dala nikakav rezultat... između zaplijenjenim stvarima nalazi se uobičajeni “zanimljivi” anarhistički materijal, fotografski aparati, planovi raznih gradova, par kablova i stari pokvareni mobiteli. Dok je Elisa, unatoč ponovljenim prijetnjama zatvorom ako ne otkrije toliko traženo skrovište, ostala na slobodi, Gabriel je uhapšen pod optužbom za “nelegalno posjedovanje i šverc oružja i eksploziva, te za oružanu bandu”. Tokom 24 sata pritvora (drug je otpušten dan kasnije) gorko su spojene činjenice.
Prije oko tri mjeseca par je upoznao jednu navodnu anarhističku drugaricu koja,
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from the introduction:

These pages shine a light on three anarchists presently sequestered in the dungeons of the neo dark ages as a result of the collusion between money lenders, science laboratories, judges and their henchmen.
It all began a few years ago. Two branches of dedicated speculators in genocide, worldwide slavery and domestic misery – Aachener Bank and Pax Bank, bank of the Vatican, – were relieved of a fraction of their spoils when employees obeyed the requests of some clients arms in hand. No shots fired, a couple of news items, examples of one of the few ways for the excluded to deal with banks: put one’s life on the line and take back some of what has been stolen from us all, in anticipation of destroying the bank itself and the exploitation that goes with it. If this elementary activity has changed little over the centuries, the retaliatory instruments available to such institutions through their eager defenders have extended to the laboratories of high technology (which they finance), opening up a new repressive era for those who do not accept the logic of misery and waiting.
If once the bosses’ hounds would sniff around for ‘clues’, they now claim to extract them from inside our very bodies, to which end they have invented a whole series of tricks, some of which are denounced in the pages that follow, after turning to their cyber colleagues and the now ubiquitous practice of DNA matching. As a result, three anarchists from various European countries have been targeted, accused, imprisoned and
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