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The students' execution The execution of the eight medical students took place during General Blas Villate y de la Hera, Conde de Valmaseda's government.
The eight students, arrested on November 25,
1871 by the Spanish Governor of Havana himself, were accused of desecrating
the grave of Gonzalo Castañón, a Spanish journalist. The next day, under the
order of the second in command, General Crespo, the students were
summarily tried and convicted. The verdict was not accepted by the Spanish
volunteers, who protested in front of the building where the trial took
place. The students were tried a second time and sentenced to death.
Valmaseda accepted the veredict and refused to
commute it to a lesser sentence. The students were executed on November 27,
two days after their arrest. Their names and ages:
Alonso Álvarez de la Campa y Gamba (16)
Anacleto Bermúdez y González de Piñera (20) José de Marcos y Medina (20) Ángel Laborde y Perera (edad 17) Juan Pascual Rodríguez y Pérez (21) Carlos A. de la Torre y Madrigal (20) Eladio González y Toledo (20) Carlos Verdugo y Martínez (17)
Another thirty students were sentenced to prison
terms.
One of the Spaniards who had aroused the
volunteers' hate declared some time later that "no one took care to find
out the truth of what happened". Years later, Gonzalo Castañón´s son
personally inspected his father´s sepulchre and publicly declared that it
didn´t show signs of having being opened or desecrated.
The memory of those innocents is venerated in
Cuba. November 27 is considered a day of national mourning.
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