On 28 August 1975, fifteen days before the 23^rd San Sebastian Festival’s inauguration, the first in a series of summary courts-martial began in Burgos, which would end with 11 ETA and FRAP militants being sentenced to death. In Burgos, a military court would convict Jose Antonio Garmendia Artola and Ángel Otaegui, and the news would spread like wildfire, even internationally, where coexistence with a fascist state – the last dictatorship in Europe’s – was becoming increasingly unsustainable.

Besides a register of popular protests in almost all major cities and capitals, Mexican President Luis Echeverría Álvarez demanded that Spain be expelled from the UN, cancelled flights between Madrid and Mexico City, and closed Spain’s trade office in the country and the EFE news agency’s office. The governments of Norway, United Kingdom and the Netherlands recalled their ambassadors in Madrid for consultations. In Copenhagen, the Atlantic Alliance approved a motion of protest and urged member countries not to do anything that could favour Spain’s entry into that organization. Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palmer took the streets of Stockholm with a collection box to protest the sentences and to ask for funds to promote the democratization of Spain.

In that turbulent climate, filmmakers, actors and guests saw how the San Sebastian Festival, the most important diplomatic and cultural body of the State, was finalizing the details of its opening ceremony completely oblivious to the protests and social demands. It was precisely from the Swedish island of Lidingö that the first letter of rejection of the event from a filmmaker arrived on August 30, just two days after the Burgos Council. In his letter, Hans Alfredson detailed how the recent events in Spain and the death sentenced of Garmendia and Otaegui had shocked both him and the Swedish people, and how the situation prevented him from participating in the Festival, which had invited him with his first film Ägget är löst! (The Softening of the Egg), a film about the dynamic work of factory, starring Max von Sydow. Alfredson withdrew his film from competition in ‘protest against the inhumane treatment of these prisoners, whose guilt obviously has not been proven. Of course, I will not appear either’. The film was released commercially, ruling out a festival premiere.

Alfredson’s letter was followed by dozens of letters and telegrams from various personalities, film institutes and film crews, adding to the refusal to attend San Sebastián. On 27 September 1975, the regime carried out the executions by firing squad of Ángel Otaegui, Juan Paredes Manot ‘Txiki’, José Luis Sánchez Bravo, Ramón García Sanz and José Humberto Baena Alonso, whose death sentences had not been commuted.