José Nieto Ruiz

José R. Nieto Ruiz (1937 Orihuela, Alicante – 2023 New York) escaped Spain after being subjected to torture by the Francoist forces. After first going to Canada, he traveled to Cuba, but he soon fled the island due to the Communist political repression there. He arrived in New York in 1962 and became a staff member for the New York newspaper España Libre, published by the Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas (SHC). The publication denounced Francisco Franco's regime until 1977, the year of the first democratic elections in Spain. In the 1960s and 1970s, Nieto Ruiz ran the SHC's bookstore and corresponded with Spanish exiles worldwide. Reporter Manuel de Dios Unanue and Nieto Ruiz investigated and published in España Libre about the disappearance of SHC’s member Jesús de Galíndez in New York and the death of novelist Manuel Barranco in a Spanish prison. The Spanish diplomats in the United States tried to deport him back to Spain, but thanks to lawyer Ernest Fleischman, Nieto Ruiz could remain in the United States. When the periodical closed, Nieto Ruiz ensured that the España Libre issues and SHC archives were donated to Brandeis University to preserve the legacy of the fight against Franco from the United States and generously helped and mentored researchers of the SHC’s antifascist fight.

As the inaugural employee at the Hispanic Information and Telecommunication Network (HITN) TV station, José Nieto's dedication and passion were the cornerstone of the network's foundation. Through his press, Iberama Publishing Co., he published Ramón J. Sender’s Nocturno de los 14 (1969) and reprinted Max Nettlau’s Miguel Bakunin’s La Internacional y la Alianza en España (1868–1973) (1971), among others. He collected books about the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship all his life. Nieto Ruiz wrote four bibliographies about the Spanish Republic, the Spanish Civil War, and the Francoist’ repression, and the democratic exile: Bibliografía de la II República Española (1931–1939); Bibliografía de la intervención extranjera y las Brigadas Internacionales en la Guerra Civil Española, 1936–1939; Derrotados, exiliados, transterrados de la Guerra Civil española: Bibliografía del exilio español, 1936–1975; and Bibliografía del régimen Franquista (1939–1975).

José Nieto: “I Never Knew There Were so Many Reds in New York”

Nieto Ruiz laughed helplessly when he narrated some absurd situations he lived in during his interview linked below. Despite the adversities of his life and the twists of fate, his sense of humor, devoid of any sarcasm, proves that he has never been a defeated man. His account also shows that he benefited from the solidarity of anti-fascist transnational networks. In this interview, he talks about his arrival in the United States and his career in New York as a television producer and documentary maker.