El Campesino, un volcán indomable

Why did a rude, illiterate, simple and undisciplined military man, who didn't even know how to read a map, become a myth? Valentín González, el Campesino, a true legend of the Spanish Civil War, was one of the most controversial characters of the last century. Cain, as he was called in the Legion, was for many a perverse, atrocious and bloodthirsty being. Others, like the poet Miguel Hernández, always considered it a passionate inexhaustible volcano. Santiago Peláez, veteran journalist, interviewed him in Metz, a small French city, in 1977, in order to reveal the real story hidden behind the myth of that indomitable Extremaduran. Well, according to Peasant's own words, there was not a single truth in everything that had been written about his life. A brave and unique biography that fuses the historical vision, the incredible adventures of a survivor and the sentimental dimension of a man as controversial as he is popular. An extraordinary character who went through war, prison, exile, desertion, ruin, fanaticism, egomania, the gulag and, in the twilight of his life, through eclipse and loneliness. Loved and hated in equal measure, he was always true to himself.