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This post describes a 20th-century judicial execution carried out under the Franco dictatorship in Spain. Shared solely for historical education and remembrance of those who fought for democracy.

History’s Last Garrote Execution – The Fate of Salvador Puig Antich

For centuries the garrote vil – an iron collar slowly tightened by a screw until it crushed the cervical vertebrae – had been Spain’s official method of capital punishment. By the 1970s it was almost obsolete, yet the Franco regime chose to employ it one final time.

On 2 March 1974, in Barcelona’s Modelo prison, 25-year-old Catalan anarchist and anti-Franco militant Salvador Puig Antich became the last person in history to be executed by garrote.

Salvador had joined the Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación (MIL) in 1971, a small armed group that carried out bank expropriations to finance workers’ struggles and to publish libertarian literature. On 25 September 1973, during a routine street check in Barcelona, a shoot-out occurred between MIL members and a police patrol. A young police officer, Francisco Anguas Barragán (aged 23), was fatally wounded. Salvador, although wounded himself by four bullets, was arrested at the scene.

His trial in December 1973 by a military court lasted only a few hours. Despite serious doubts about who fired the fatal shot and clear evidence of torture during interrogation, he was sentenced to death. International pleas for clemency – including personal appeals from the Pope, the West German Chancellor, and thousands of demonstrators across Europe – were ignored by General Franco.

At 9:40 a.m. on 2 March 1974, Salvador was led to the prison yard. He remained calm, refused the last rites, and reportedly said “I die innocent, but long live liberty.” The executioner, acting under orders, carried out the sentence using the traditional garrote vil. Spain abolished the garrote forever the following year, and the death penalty itself in 1978 with the new democratic constitution.

We remember Salvador Puig Antich today not to nurture hatred, but to honour all those who, at the cost of their lives, resisted dictatorship and fought for democracy in Spain; to acknowledge the courage of a generation that refused to accept silence; and to reaffirm that the abolition of the death penalty and the triumph of liberty in 1978 were built, in part, upon their sacrifice.

Official & reputable sources

Archivo Histórico Nacional – Causa 87/1973 (military court records)

Yániz, Juan Pablo – Salvador Puig Antich: caso abierto (2014)

Fernández, Eva – El verdugo del garrote: memorias de un ejecutor franquista (2008) – testimony of the last official executioner

Amnistía Internacional – Informe sobre la pena de muerte en España 1974

Generalitat de Catalunya – Memorial Democràtic archives, file on Salvador Puig Antich