The shooting of the eight medical students occurred on November 27, 1871. On that date, eight innocent students of the first year of Medicine at the University of Havana were unjustly shot, and each year is remembered as a sad event.
On November 23, 1871, a group of first-year medical students waited for their professor in the anatomical amphitheater that continued at the Espada Cemetery, in Havana.
According to historical investigations, the young people dispersed around the cemetery, some rode around on the local wheelbarrow, another plucked a flower and the rest played with each other. Subsequently, the Spanish authorities accused them without proof of desecrating the grave of Spanish journalist Gonzalo Castañón.
This occurs in the midst of a tense historical context due to the increasing defeats of the Iberian army at the hands of the leaders of the war of independence who had been fighting since 1868 in the east of the country.
In the first Council of War, the innocence of the young people was proven, however, due to pressure from the Spanish Volunteer Corps in Havana, a second trial decided to sentence them as an example.
To complete the figure of eight, three of the students were chosen at random, a lottery in which a 17-year-old student left the city of Matanzas, who was not in the capital of the country on the day of the alleged desecration.
On November 27 these students were shot, another group was sentenced to prison and later exiled.