Marcos Ana

Fernando Macarro Castillo (Marcos Ana) was born in 1921 in Ventosa del Río Almar, a village in the countryside of Salamanca. In 1929 his parents move to Alcala de Henares near Madrid as orchard workers. In 1936 the Spanish Civil War got underway and Marcos, then only 15, volunteered himself. At 17 he became a member of the Eighth Division. When the war came to an end in 1939 with the fall of the Alicante bridge, Ana was captured and sent to the Albaterra concentration camp, from which he soon escaped. On foot he returned to Madrid, where he was recaptured and returned to prison; it was April of 1939, and it would then be another 23 years before he would be free once more: years of torture, deprivation and enclosure. This was the context for the genesis of his vital and lucid poetry, which itself formed a window through which he could contemplate society in its chains; a poetry born out of pain, but one which also celebrates life, as well as Man's intelligence and dignity.