LA VERDADERA HISTORIA DE LA MUERTE DE FRANCISCO FRANCO

Ignacio Jurado Martínez, a former headwaiter at Mexico City’s Café Español, now in his latter days, almost bald, practically deaf, but with the same yearning to listen in on other people’s conversations, returns to this other café every day to tell his genuine story. The one he never dared to tell.

The true story of the death of Francisco Franco is a hilarious story published in Mexico in 1960 by Max Aub, one of many examples of his acidic wit, such as his Manuscrito cuervo (Raven Manuscript) or Crimenes ejemplares (Exemplary Crimes). This wild half-fabricated exploit, half severe condemnation of the decline that, in the author’s opinion, prolonged the émigrés’ nostalgic discontent and the dictatorship itself. In barely twenty pages, he introduces us to a Mexican waiter who is tired of hearing Spanish exiles talk about the conflict all day long. He has no choice but to travel to Spain in order to assassinate Franco and thereby restore the peaceful tranquillity of his old, quiet café.