Wednesday October 9. Santiago Sánchez Cogedor takes a photo at the entrance to the penitentiary center. It’s around five o’clock in the afternoon. The Spaniard, released after more than a year in Iran, returns to prison, this time to recount his travel experience and how he ended up behind bars. The chosen prison is Ocaña I, where the reflections of this 44-year-old adventurer from Alcalá are supported by a video about his situation.
Among the public, around 80 prisoners, we find very varied profiles and some sentenced to very long sentences. They talk about solitude, silence, mental improvement… “I didn’t eat the bread they gave me, but I used it to crumble around the cell so the ants could come and talk to them,” he told them.
With permission from the authorities, they are also viewing photos of him on his Instagram account, which he respectfully requests so his family can follow his journey.
It is clear that in a dictatorship like Iran’s, there are no human rights. And he is moved, with tears in his eyes, when he reads to his audience the contents of the diploma that the inmates gave him upon his release from prison in Iran.
Then the prisoners get up from their seats, break their hands while applauding and throw an idea at him: come back and organize a friendly football match, a meeting that Santiago intends to prepare with the Real Madrid Foundation.
There’s even a series of questions and they give him candy before leaving after about two hours. He returns on his way after taking photos with the public surrounding Santiago and also bought copies of his book “How I survived 15 months behind bars” (Editorial Alienta): the story told in the first person of this Spaniard in one of the “wildest” prisons in Iran.
“All the prisoners stood up. Everything was very beautiful, a brutal, brutal experience…”, Santiago tells ABC as he drives his car to Valdeavero, a Madrid municipality of about 1,600 inhabitants more than 100 kilometers away, where he has a meeting with the soccer club; the same one that manifested itself when he was in prison.
The visit to Ocaña I will not be the only one to visit Spanish prisons. Next Monday he will be in Alcalá Meco. “I want to leave my little seed, share my experience”, Santiago said. An experience which this Wednesday surely left its mark behind bars.
