Calle Francisco Lastres

In 1875, when Spain still hanged its condemned, a jurist born in Havana published a book calling for the death penalty to be struck from the code. His name was Francisco Lastres y Juiz, born in 1848 across the Atlantic, who earned a law doctorate at the Central University of Madrid, where he became an assistant professor. His major work, the Studies on Penitentiary Systems, opened in Spain the first serious inquiry into what punishment was for. Lastres believed in correcting rather than avenging: he argued for sentences with no fixed release date, lasting as long as the convict took to reform, and dreamed of star-shaped prisons where a single guard at the center could see everything. He represented Spain at the prison congresses of Stockholm, Rome and Antwerp, and served as member of parliament and senator for Puerto Rico. He died in Madrid in 1918, far from the island where he was born. The calle de Francisco Lastres runs through Fuente del Berro. The council decision that named it does not survive, so the day the city chose to remember the man who wanted star-shaped prisons remains a small mystery.