On Captivity: A Spanish Soldier's Experience in a Havana Prison, 1896-1898

A rare and unfiltered witness to Spain’s colonial collapse—Ciges Aparicio’s prison memoir exposes the political, human, and moral stakes of the Cuban War of Independence.

Ciges enlisted in the Spanish army in 1893 at the age of twenty. He served in Africa and then in Cuba, where he opposed Spanish General Valeriano Weyler’s policies in Cuba as well as the war itself. Ciges soon found himself imprisoned and facing execution for treason as punishment for an article critical of Weyler’s conduc...