Chapter 6: Mola’s Terror: The Purging of Navarre, Galicia, Castile and León

"In his proclamation of martial law in Pamplona on 19 July 1936, Mola declared: ‘Re-establishing the principle of authority demands unavoidably that punishments be exemplary in terms of both their severity and the speed with which they will be carried out, without doubt or hesitation.’1 Shortly afterwards, he called a meeting of the mayors of the province of Navarre and told them: ‘It is necessary to spread terror. We have to create the impression of mastery, eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do. There can be no cowardice. If we vacillate one moment and fail to proceed with the greatest determination, we will not win. Anyone who helps or hides a communist or a supporter of the Popular Front will be shot.’2

Such instructions imply a degree of insecurity on the part of the conspirators desperate to impose control as soon as possible before mass resistance to the coup developed. Thus over half of the executions carried out by the rebels between 18 July 1936 and 1945 took place in the first three months after their seizure of power in each area. Both the short-and long-term objectives of the terror would be more easily accomplished in conservative smallholding areas such as Galicia, Old Castile and Navarre. Terror was the chosen method for the annihilation of everything that the Republic signified, whether specific challenges to the privileges of landowners, industrialists, the clerics and soldiers or a general rejection of subservience by rural and urban workers and, most irksome for the right, women. This was what Sanjurjo, Franco, Gil Robles, Onésimo Redondo and others meant when they railed against the Jewish–Masonic–Bolshevik threat of ‘Africanization’. The rhetoric of the need to eradicate such foreign poisons, which always had clerical advocates like Tusquets and Castro de Albarrán, would soon be taken up by the majority of the Church hierarchy. At the beginning of September, José Álvarez Miranda, the Bishop of León, called the Catholic faithful to join the war against ‘Soviet Jewish–Masonic laicism’.3"

"On 31 July, after being told that the French press had suggested that Prieto had been appointed to negotiate with the rebels, Mola exploded: ‘Negotiate? Never! This war can end only with the extermination of the enemies of Spain.’"

"In the areas of Spain where the military coup met little or no resistance, the war aims of the rebels were starkly revealed. The execution of trade unionists, members of left-wing parties, elected municipal officials, Republican functionaries, schoolteachers and Freemasons, who had committed no crimes, have been called ‘preventive assassinations’. Or, as the commander of the Civil Guard in Cáceres defined it: ‘the sweeping purge of undesirables’.5

In Navarre, Álava, the eight provinces of Old Castile, the three of León, the four of Galicia, two-thirds of Zaragoza and virtually all of Cáceres, the coup was successful within hours or days. In these predominantly right-wing, Catholic areas, the excuses used for the slaughter in Andalusia and Badajoz – alleged left-wing atrocities or a threatened Communist take-over – were not plausible. Essentially, the ‘crime’ of those executed was to have voted for the Popular Front, or to have challenged their own subordination as workers or as women.6"

"The first step towards establishing a military dictatorship was the establishment of a National Defence Junta. A thin legal veneer was provided by its first decree, on 24 July 1936, which claimed ‘full state powers’, something repeated in subsequent decrees. Decree no. 37 of 14 August declared that the Republic was guilty of armed rebellion against the legitimate government of the Junta. On 28 July, an edict of martial law placed military law above civil law across the entire territory in the hands of the rebels. It thereby unified the various edicts issued in different places which had seen the military arbitrarily assume the right to punish opposition to its actions with summary execution. All those who supported the legitimate Republic either morally or by taking up arms were declared guilty of military rebellion, liable to court martial and subject to the death penalty or long jail terms. This was justified by the sophistry that the rebels’ own military rebellion was carried out in the name of ‘the highest moral and spiritual values of religion and the Fatherland, threatened by the perversity of the pseudo-politicians in the pay of the triple Judaeo-Masonic lie: Liberalism, Marxism and Separatism. That is why the term military rebellion can be applied only to the red camp. Regarding our side, we must speak of Holy Rebellion.’8 Thus the rebels always referred to themselves as ‘nacionales’ (usually translated as ‘Nationalists’), implying that the Republicans were somehow not Spanish and therefore had to be annihilated as foreign invaders."

"In some cases, such as Segovia, the local military authorities went further, referring to ‘the Madrid government, which since 19 July has been in armed rebellion against the Army, which found itself obliged to assume the responsibility of power to prevent chaos taking hold of the country’.9 A decree of 31 August 1936 permitted any officer to be a judge, prosecutor or defender in a trial. Officers were thus obliged to fight the enemy on the battlefield and also in the courtroom, where the enemy had even less opportunity to fight back. So wide was the range of the offences deemed to be military rebellion that, in 1937, a handbook was issued to assist officers in the conduct of ‘trials’. The author, a military lawyer, recognized that ‘in view of the number of proceedings in progress, the consequence of the glorious deeds with which our army, valiantly supported by the true Spanish people, is astounding the world, those who have to act in such trials are facing many difficulties’.10"

"On 20 July, Mola was given the news that a lorry full of Republicans fleeing the Navarrese capital Pamplona had been captured on the road to Bilbao. Without hesitation, he barked into the telephone: ‘Shoot them immediately by the roadside!’ Aware of the deathly hush that this outburst had provoked, Mola had second thoughts and instructed his aide to rescind the order, saying to the rest of the room: ‘Just so you can see that even in such serious times, I am not as bloodthirsty as the left thinks.’ At that, one of the officers present said: ‘General, let us not regret being too soft.’ Three weeks later, on 14 August, Mola would be heard saying, ‘A year ago, I would have trembled at having to authorize a firing squad. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep for the sorrow of it. Now, I can sign three or four every day without batting an eyelid.’11"

"The repression in Navarre was especially ferocious in the area known as the Ribera, along the River Ebro. The Socialist landworkers’ union, the FNTT, had been strong there before the war and this was reflected in the scale of the killing. In the small town of Sartaguda, for example, with 1,242 inhabitants, there were eighty-four extra-judicial executions – 6.8 per cent of the population. In Peralta, eighty-nine of the 3,830 inhabitants (2.3 per cent of the population) were killed. Sartaguda was widely known in northern Spain as ‘the town of widows’. When the very young, the very old and almost all women are excluded, the scale of the terror can be imagined. The figures suggest that around 10 per cent of the male working class were murdered. Republican women were, of course, molested and humiliated in various ways. Family networks in the area were close, so these killings reverberated throughout the province and beyond.21"

Clergy involvement in fighting

"Indeed, they urged their congregations to fight and some were among the first to join rebel columns. Cartridge belts slung over their cassocks, rifles in hand, they joyfully set off to kill reds. So many did so that the faithful were left without clergy to say Mass or hear confessions and the ecclesiastical authorities had to call some of them back.14 Peter Kemp, a British volunteer with the Requeté, spoke admiringly of Father Vicente, the company chaplain. ‘He was the most fearless and the most bloodthirsty man I ever met in Spain; he would, I think, have made a better soldier than priest. “Hola, Don Pedro!” he shouted to me. “So you’ve come to kill some Reds! Congratulations! Be sure you kill plenty!”’ When not occupied with spiritual duties, he would be in the thick of the action. The role of minister of Christ caused him dreadful frustrations. He would point out targets to Kemp, urging him to shoot them. ‘It seemed to me that he could barely restrain himself from snatching my rifle and loosing off … Whenever some wretched militiaman bolted from cover to run madly for safety, I would hear the good Father’s voice raised in a frenzy of excitement: “Don’t let him get away – Ah! Don’t let him get away! Shoot, man, shoot! A bit to the left! Ah! that’s got him,” as the miserable fellow fell and lay twitching.’15"

"Unlike those who went to the front, the tall, wild-eyed clerical outfitter Benito Santesteban stayed in Pamplona, like a rapacious carrion crow, devoting himself instead to purging the rearguard of leftists, liberals and Freemasons. He later boasted that he had killed 15,000 reds in Navarre, and more in San Sebastián, Bilbao and Santander. The province’s left-wing minority faced immediate extermination at the hands of the fanatical enthusiasts of the rising. In the first months in Pamplona, early-morning executions attracted large crowds and with them stalls selling hot chocolate and churros (fried dough fingers). Many were taken as hostages and shot in reprisal when the death of a Carlist was reported.16 Others were seized at night by the Falangist squad known as ‘Black Eagle’ and murdered on the outskirts of the city. Santesteban’s boast was a wild exaggeration and he was also known to have saved individuals.17 Nevertheless, many prisoners taken to the Requeté headquarters in the monastery of Los Escolapios were never seen again. In this ultra-conservative province, 2,822 men and thirty-five women were assassinated. A further 305 people died of mistreatment or malnutrition in prison. One of every ten who had voted for the Popular Front in Navarre was murdered.18"

"Father Eladio Celaya, the seventy-two-year-old parish priest of the village of Cáseda, was notable for his benevolent concern for his parishioners whose campaign for the return of common lands he had supported. On 8 August, he went to Pamplona to protest at the diocesan offices about the killings. He was told to go home because nothing could be done. Because of his efforts to prevent the violence, he was murdered on 14 August 1936 and his head cut off."

"In La Rioja there were cases of the clergy trying to restrain the perpetrators. There were eighty-three villages where, in part as a result of their priests’ action and, crucially, because of a pre-existing level of tolerance between right and left, there were no deaths. Unfortunately, there were another ninety-nine towns and villages where extra-judicial killings did take place. To intervene against the killing required great bravery. Father Antonio Bombín Hortelano, a Franciscan monk from Anguciana just outside Haro, was murdered by Falangists because, in his sermons, he had criticized the rich and spoken out about social injustice. Other priests who went to see the Civil Governor, Emilio Bellod, to plead for mercy on behalf of parishioners were thrown out of his office. Sadly, there is no evidence to sustain recent claims that the Bishop of Calahorra protested to Bellod about the arbitrary executions.33"

"The Bishop of Ávila issued instructions to his diocesan priests which suggest complicity in the execution of prisoners without trial: ‘When dealing with one of the frequent and deplorable cases of the unexpected discovery in the countryside of the corpse of a person apparently of revolutionary sympathies, but without official confirmation of them having been condemned to death by the legitimate authorities, then simply record that “the corpse appeared in the countryside … and was given ecclesiastical burial”. However, parish priests must make sure to avoid any suggestion that could reveal the author or the cause of this tragic death.’70 Certificates of good conduct issued by priests could save a life. The refusal by a priest to certify that someone was a practising Catholic was the equivalent of a denunciation. Those priests who did sign certificates to save a parishioner from death or imprisonment were chastised by their superiors. The Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela noted that scandal was provoked by such acts of Christian charity. He ordered the priests of his diocese not to sign certificates for anyone who belonged to ‘anti-Christian Marxist societies’. All others should be considered ‘without timidity or hesitations born of humane considerations’.71"

Logrono

"A remarkably high number of the Falangists and Requetés who took part in the killing had, prior to the war, been members of the CNT or UGT, or of Republican parties. Several had taken part in the anarchist insurrection of December 1933. It is impossible to say who among them had been agents provocateurs or were simply trying to hide a left-wing past. Some of their victims were shot; others were flung from high bridges into rivers.28 There were also cases of Republicans thrown from bridges across the Ebro in Burgos and the Tagus as it passed through Cáceres. The corpses caused public health problems.29"

The experience of Republican prisoners in Logroño is known in large part thanks to the survival of one of them, Patricio Escobal, the municipal engineer in Logroño and a member of Azaña’s Izquierda Republicana party. Although most of his fellow party members were murdered, Escobal survived prison, despite appalling mistreatment, because he had been a famous footballer, a distinguished captain of Real Madrid and a member of Spain’s Olympic silver-medal team of 1920. The potential scandal if he was murdered restrained his persecutors. Thus he lived to write his memoirs.32"

Valladolid

"Subsequently, as the first city in the mainland where the coup was successful, Valladolid came to be known as ‘the capital of the uprising’."

"Elsewhere, the rebels did not have it as easy as in Valladolid. Franco and the African Army were blockaded in Morocco by the Republican fleet. Anarchist forces from Barcelona were moving virtually unopposed towards Zaragoza. The overall leader of the coup, General Sanjurjo, had been killed when his plane crashed on take-off for Spain and command was assumed by Mola when he reached the neighbouring Castilian city of Burgos on 20 July. The hope of rebel forces that they would capture Madrid had come to nothing. Faced with an acute shortage of ammunition, they had been held at the sierras to the north of the capital. Mola himself was plunged into a depression by this accumulation of reverses. His spirits were somewhat revived by a visit to Zaragoza on 21 July to consult with General Miguel Cabanellas. At Cabanellas’s suggestion, they decided to create a provisional rebel government, the Junta de Defensa Nacional. Its formation was announced by Mola in Burgos on 23 July.39"

While awaiting trial, the prisoners in Valladolid, as in most other places, were kept in appalling conditions. Because the local prison had neither the space nor the resources to look after so many inmates, two repair sheds at the tram depot were used to house prisoners. The acute overcrowding, malnutrition and the lack of basic hygiene facilities led to many deaths from sickness. In the prison, more than six prisoners were squeezed into individual cells. They were forced into icy showers and then, while still wet and shivering, made to run a gauntlet of guards who beat them with truncheons or rifle butts. Responsibility for food, clothing and laundry fell upon their families, an acute hardship given that, by dint of the arrest and imprisonment, the families had already been deprived of their principal breadwinner.43

"Estimates of the scale of the repression in the province of Valladolid have varied wildly, as high as 15,000 but none lower than 1,303. Exact figures are impossible since many deaths were not recorded. The most recent local study places the figure at over three thousand.44 There were 1,300 men and women tried between July and December 1936, often in large groups. Such ‘trials’ consisted of little more than the reading of the names of the accused and the charges against them, followed by the passing of sentence. Although most of those accused of military rebellion were likely to face the death penalty or prison sentences of thirty years, they were given no chance to defend themselves and were not even permitted to speak. On most weekdays, several courts martial were held, rarely lasting more than one hour. All 448 men detained after the surrender of the Casa del Pueblo were tried together accused of the crime of military rebellion. Forty were sentenced to death, 362 to thirty years’ imprisonment, twenty-six to twenty years’ imprisonment, and nineteen were found not guilty. The selection of the forty to be executed was made on the basis of their having held some position of responsibility in the local Socialist organizations. The one woman condemned to death had her sentence commuted to thirty years’ imprisonment, although at least sixteen other women were executed in Valladolid. There were other cases in which fifty-three, seventy-seven and eighty-seven accused were ‘tried’ at once. In some cases, the ‘crime’ was simply to be a Socialist member of parliament, as was the case with Federico Landrove and also with José Maesto San José (deputy for Ciudad Real) and Juan Lozano Ruiz (Jaén) who were captured on the outskirts of Valladolid.45"

"At least, the 616 executions carried out in Valladolid as a result of summary wartime courts martial were registered.48 In contrast, the unofficial murders carried out by the so-called Falangist ‘dawn patrols’ are impossible to quantify. These killings were significantly more widespread if rather less public. Executions were often extremely inefficient. Having augmented their courage with brandy, the squads often wounded rather than killed prisoners, who were then left to a slow death agony. Corpses were sometimes just dumped by the roadside, at other times buried in shallow common graves. On occasion, wounded prisoners were buried alive. The murders of prisoners were often carried out quite arbitrarily by Falangists who would arrive at the tram sheds or the bullring just before dawn. Macabre humour might see a victim selected simply because it was his saint’s day. On the basis of data from those towns and villages in the province for which it is possible to reconstruct what happened, it has been calculated that at least 928 people were murdered by the patrols. The total number is likely to be significantly higher. The random killings caused public health scares for fear that rotting corpses might be affecting the water supply.49 Certainly, by any standards, the scale of the repression was totally disproportionate to the fighting in the city on 18 and 19 July. At the end of the war, there were still three thousand detainees in the provincial prison, of whom 107 died as a result of the appalling conditions.50"

Repression of leftists

"Years later, Onésimo Redondo’s widow, Mercedes Sanz Bachiller, spoke of her conviction that her husband’s death had intensified the subsequent repression. In fact, the process of revenge against the left in Valladolid was already well under way and would gather momentum over the next few months. Large numbers of Socialist workers from the railway engineering works were herded into the tram company garages. Those who, having obeyed the union order to strike on Saturday 18 July, had not returned to work by Tuesday 21 July were shot, accused of ‘abetting rebellion’. Throughout the late summer and autumn, anyone who had held a position in a left-wing party, municipality or trade union was subject to arrest and the likehood of being paseado – that is to say, seized by Falangists, taken out and shot – or subjected to summary court martial. For many, their crime was simply to carry a membership card of a trade union or left or liberal organization. General Saliquet’s edict of martial law, published at dawn on 19 July, effectively passed a death sentence on all those who had not actively supported the uprising. ‘Crimes’ subject to summary trial and immediate execution included ‘rebellion’ (either action in defence of the Republic or failure to support the rebels) and extended to disobedience, disrespect, insult or calumny towards both the military and those who had been militarized (thus including Falangists). Men were arrested on suspicion of having their radio dials set to stations broadcasting from Madrid. Court martials were set up and firing squads began to function. In addition to the 448 men arrested on 18 July, one thousand more would be detained in August and September.42"

"Prisoners condemned by court martial were taken out in the early hours of the morning and driven in trucks to the Campo de San Isidro on the outskirts of the city. This became such a regular occurrence that coffee and churro stalls were set up for the spectators"

"The terror had become ‘normal’ and no one dared condemn it for fear of being denounced as a red.46 Similarly, in Segovia, middle-class ladies attended military trials, laughing and cheering when death sentences were passed. Executions in the provincial capital were praised as ‘a good bullfight’. In the tiny village of Matabuena, to the north-east of Segovia, the inhabitants were forced to watch executions.47"

"The philosopher Miguel de Unamuno was furious with himself for having initially supported the military uprising. On 1 December 1936, he wrote to his friend Quintín de Torre about life in Salamanca: ‘It is a stupid regime of terror. Here people are shot without trial and without any justification whatsoever. Some because it is said that they are Freemasons, and I have no idea what that means any more than do the animals who cite it as a reason to kill. There is nothing worse than the marriage of the dementality [sic] of the barracks with that of the sacristy. To which is added the spiritual leprosy of Spain, the resentment, the envy, the hatred of intelligence.’58"

"The Casa del Pueblo of each town was looted and often requisitioned but first scoured for membership lists of left-wing parties or unions. Discovery of a name could lead to murder. Equally, Falangist groups executed people simply on the basis of accusations that they were Republicans, Freemasons, Marxists or simply opposed to the military coup. No judicial procedures were carried out to ascertain the validity of the accusations. Once arrested in a village, allegedly to enable them to make a statement before judicial authorities, some men were simply murdered en route to the provincial capital. Others were first taken to the local Falange headquarters, tortured, forced to drink castor oil and beaten. Frequent use was made of the ley de fugas, known locally as ‘the greyhound or rabbit race’. Men supposedly being transferred from one prison to another were set down from the truck transporting them and told that they were free to go. When they ran, they were shot in the back. Some of the killings were carried out by very young adolescents. There were cases of entire families being executed, usually with the children shot first in order to intensify the suffering of the parents. Bodies were generally left where they fell as part of the terror. Subsequently, letters were delivered to the homes of men already shot, demanding information as to their whereabouts or requiring them to present themselves for military service.84"

"As the death toll mounted throughout rebel Spain, in September 1936 the monarchist poet José María Pemán coincided in Pamplona with General Cabanellas, who was still head of the Junta. Cabanellas requested his help in drafting a decree to forbid the wearing of mourning. His reasoning was twofold. In the case of the widows and bereaved mothers of rebels, the gesture of not wearing black would proclaim that ‘the death of someone fallen for the Fatherland is not a black episode but a white one, a joy that should overcome any sorrow’. For the mothers, widows and fiancées of executed Republicans, forbidding the wearing of mourning ‘would put an end to that sort of living protest and dramatic testimony that, when we conquer any town, we see in the squares and on the street corners – those black and silent figures that in reality represent protest as much as sorrow’.132 Cabanellas was right that Republican mourning implied a protest since it signified solidarity with the recently eliminated family member. However, a decree forbidding Spanish women in rural areas to wear mourning would have been impractical because most older or widowed women wore black dresses as a matter of course. Moreover, the Catholic womenfolk of the rebel dead could not be deprived of their right to mourn their heroic loved ones. The issue was how to deprive the mothers, sisters, wives and fiancées of liberal and left-wing men of the opportunity to mourn and express that solidarity. In the south, Queipo simply issued a decree prohibiting mourning. In the north, it had to be done through more informal social pressures and fear of further reprisals.

Sometimes, after a man had been taken away at night, family members would bring food for him to the jail only to be told brutally that ‘where he has gone, he won’t be needing it’. The agony would often never end. They would see, as did Mola’s secretary, José María Iribarren, while walking in Burgos, children playing at capturing a Republican then shooting the ‘prisoner’ who had refused, as the game required, to shout the rebel slogan ‘¡Viva España!’133 Women whose menfolk had ‘disappeared’ could never remarry since, without an official death certificate, they were not legally widows. They had no right to administer the property registered in the names of their husbands. It is doubtful that Mola cared about, or was even aware of, the wider consequences of the terror that he had initiated."

Family suffering of those persecuted

"For the families of those executed or murdered, the suffering did not end with the loss of their menfolk. Gruesome details of the executions would reach them from members of the squads, who often boasted publicly of killing a particular individual. They would recount with relish how prisoners had begged for water or how fear had made them lose control of their bowels. Frequently, the surviving families of executed left-wingers were subjected to punitive fines. A notable case was that of Eduardo Aparicio Fernández, a bank manager in Ciudad Rodrigo and a man of broadly liberal views. He was arrested on 15 December 1936, along with seven others. In the early hours of the morning of the next day, all eight were taken from their cells, on the basis of an order for their release from the local military commander. They were brought to a nearby estate, shot and buried in a shallow grave. Eduardo Aparicio’s family was given permission for him to be buried in the cemetery in Béjar on 24 December. At the end of the war, twenty-eight months after his death, Eduardo Aparicio was called for trial on a charge of political responsibilities. The judge demanded that his widow reveal where he was since he had been ‘released’ from prison on 15 December 1936. The accusations against him were that he had worn a red tie, had announced the news of Calvo Sotelo’s murder in the Ciudad Rodrigo Casino and was a member of the Socialist Party. The third charge was demonstrably untrue. On the basis of the first two, the deceased was sentenced to a fine of 500 pesetas, which had to be paid by his widow.97"

"For all families, the death of a loved one without proper burial and ritual was traumatic. To be able to visit a grave, leave flowers or meditate permits some reconciliation with the fact of loss. This was denied to almost all the families of those killed in the repression. The theft of the dignity of the dead caused intense pain. In the deeply Catholic areas, like Castile and Navarre, the experience was especially painful. Those brought up there, Catholics practising or not, believed that, after death, the body would be buried and the soul pass on to heaven, purgatory or hell. Most Catholics would assume that their loved ones would go to purgatory, the halfway house, where they would purge their sins in order to continue on to heaven. Friends and relatives on earth could hasten this process by prayer, lighting candles in church, or paying for Masses to be said. In Castile, there even existed fraternities dedicated to praying for the dead. All such spiritual comfort was denied to the families of Catholics killed in the repression. For the families of all the victims, Catholic or not, mourning and the support of their community were replaced by insult, humiliation, threats and economic hardship."

Salamanca

""In keeping with Mola’s instructions about the need for rapid, exemplary terror, the left was quickly crushed with notable brutality. The new Civil Governor ordered the removal of all Socialist town councils in the province and their replacement by ‘patriotic elements’. Since there had been virtually no violence in Salamanca in the months preceding the military coup, most liberals and leftists made no attempt to flee. Nevertheless, there was a witch-hunt of liberals, leftists and trade unionists""

"The first victims in Salamanca, as elsewhere, were those who opposed the military coup and prominent local left-wing politicians or union leaders. Schoolteachers and university lecturers were favoured targets. The repression soon embraced those who had helped the Popular Front, by distributing leaflets or by acting as stewards in meetings. In some cases, those who had supported centrist groups were put on trial, accused of taking votes away from the right. The victims, as in so many places, had been denounced by those who coveted their property or their womenfolk. This was especially the case with those who owned businesses. When trials became the norm, the victims who had money were frequently blackmailed by those named as their defenders. In fact, the ‘defenders’ rarely did more than act as court reporters. Nevertheless, there was a racket run by Lieutenant Marciano Díez Solís. The accused was told that a punitive sentence awaited him but that Díez Solís could get it reduced for a price. Díez Solís was finally stopped, not for extorting money, but because it was discovered that he was homosexual and had tried to blackmail some of his victims into having sex with him.73"

Castille and Leon

"The vindictiveness of the military high command and the senior clergy took its toll throughout most of Castile and León. The weakness of the working class in most of the region facilitated the rapid annihilation of opposition. In Soria, a profoundly conservative province whose capital was a town of only 10,098 inhabitants, three hundred local people were executed along with others brought from Guadalajara. Soria had seen no violence during the years of the Republic and there was no resistance to the military coup. The arrival of Requetés on 22 July was the trigger for the killing. The wives of those murdered were forced to sign documents stating that their husbands had simply disappeared.78 In neighbouring Segovia, there was also no resistance yet there were 217 illegal executions during the war and a further 175 as a result of sentences passed by military tribunals. Another 195 men died in prison.79"

"The situation in the neighbouring province of León was almost identical. There was little resistance against the coup but considerable repression, especially in the mining districts in the north and in the three other principal towns, Ponferrada near the border with Ourense, and La Bañeza and Astorga towards the border with Zamora.87 Despite early enthusiasm for the coup, the Bishop of León, Monsignor José Álvarez Miranda, was so appalled by the scale of killing that he began to intercede with the local military on behalf of some of the prisoners, including Manuel Santamaría Andrés, Professor of Literature at the Instituto de León. Santamaría was imprisoned at the end of July, in the notorious San Marcos prison, simply because he was a prominent member of Azaña’s Izquierda Republicana party. On 4 September, along with the Civil Governor and twenty-nine other Republicans, he was sentenced to death. His wife and family went to Burgos and successfully interceded for his sentence to be commuted to imprisonment. The news of this concession reached León before they did and when they returned, they were met with a hail of bullets. The commutation was revoked in response to protests by the military authorities. All thirty-one were shot on 21 November 1936. The Bishop was fined the enormous sum of 10,000 pesetas for his temerity in questioning a military tribunal.88"

"In Zamora, the coup triumphed easily, although railway workers maintained a resistance movement which would continue until the late 1940s. In both the provincial capital and the other principal town, Toro, the prisons were soon overflowing. Beatings, torture and mutilation and the rape of female prisoners were frequent. As elsewhere, the targets were Socialists, trade unionists, Republican officials and schoolteachers. Local historians calculate that more than 1,330 people were murdered in the province. Between 31 July 1936 and 15 January 1937, a total of 875 bodies were buried in the cemetery of San Atilano, registered simply as ‘found dead’ or ‘executed after sentence’.89"

"Amparo was not alone in her suffering. Kept in below-zero temperatures, without bedding, other mothers saw their babies die because, themselves deprived of food and medicines, they had no milk to breast-feed them. One of the policemen who arrested Amparo told her that ‘red women have no rights’ and ‘you should have thought of this before having children’. Another prisoner, Pilar Fidalgo Carasa, had been arrested in Benavente because her husband, José Almoína, was secretary of the local branch of the PSOE. Only eight hours before her detention and transport to Zamora, she had given birth to a baby girl. In the prison, she was forced to climb a steep staircase many times each day in order to be interrogated. This provoked a life-threatening haemorrhage. The prison doctor, Pedro Almendral, was called. He refused to prescribe anything either for Pilar or for her baby and told her that the best cure for her was death. Numerous young women were raped before being murdered.90"

"Throughout most of Old Castile, the violence was carried out by groups of recently recruited Falangists and the younger members of other right-wing groups, students, the younger sons and permanent employees of landowners. There, as elsewhere, men joined for money, to curry favour with the powerful or to blur a left-wing past. Just as in the Republican zone, there were criminal elements that enjoyed the grisly opportunities for violence and rape.93 They were egged on and often financed by landowners and helped with denunciations and information by local villagers, either out of fear or because they had in some way felt threatened by Republican legislation. With vehicles and weapons provided by the military authorities, legitimized by the Church, these groups acted with impunity. In the minds of the local conservative establishment, which included poor small farmers as well as rich landowners, the enemies were those who had disturbed the traditional structure. That meant the trade unionists who had encouraged landless labourers to negotiate for better wages and working conditions, the left-wing municipal officials who had supported them or the schoolteachers who had disseminated subversive and secular ideas that persuaded the poor to question the established order. Those who, to a large extent, formed the social basis of Republicanism were among the first targets of the repression.94"

Segovia

"All the local military forces in Segovia had long been committed to the coup. Unaware of this, the Civil Governor, Adolfo Chacón de la Mata, of the centrist Republican party Unión Republicana, informed representatives of the left-wing parties that he had full confidence in the local garrisons and refused to have arms distributed to the workers. At 10.00 a.m. on Sunday 19 July, Chacón de la Mata was arrested by army officers and Civil Guards. Half an hour later, martial law was declared. The main post, telephone and telegraph office, the town hall and the Casa del Pueblo were occupied by troops. The left, without leaders or weapons, and totally outnumbered, was unable to resist beyond some sporadic pacific strike action.80 Chacón de la Mata was tried in Valladolid on 13 October on charges of ‘military rebellion’, sentenced to death and shot on 5 December."

Burgos

"Burgos, where there had been relatively little social conflict before the war, fell immediately to the rebels. In the provincial capital, the Republican authorities were detained immediately, among them the Civil Governor and the General in command of the military region, Domingo Batet Maestre. As a Catalan and for his moderation in repressing the rebellion of the Generalitat in October 1934, Batet was a marked man. The extreme centralist right despised him because he avoided the exemplary slaughter that they considered appropriate for use against the Catalans. When he refused to join the rising, he was arrested. Because of their long-standing friendship, Mola prevented his immediate execution. However, Franco intervened in Batet’s subsequent trial to ensure that he was sentenced to death and executed.91"

"Burgos saw around four hundred extra-judicial murders between August and October 1936 and a further one thousand in the wider province. Overall, in Burgos, there were more than 1,700 people either murdered by the rebels or who died of mistreatment in the massively overcrowded prisons. The old prison of Santa Águeda had been built for two hundred but held nearly one thousand; the central Penal de Burgos, built for nine hundred, held three thousand prisoners. Those awaiting execution were union leaders, Republican officials, schoolteachers and those who had voted for the Popular Front. These included children and women, some pregnant, shot on the bizarre grounds of ‘right of representation’ which meant that they were executed in substitution for their husbands who could not be found. Another 5,500 people suffered beatings, torture and/or imprisonment. By 2007, some 550 bodies had been exhumed from unmarked graves.92"

Galicia

"Although Yagüe was not involved, an Africanista ferocity was unleashed on Galicia. Even in comparison with the provinces of Old Castile, the repression throughout Galicia was massively disproportionate to the limited scale of resistance.104 Indeed, the repression there was comparable to that in Navarre and La Rioja, where the presence of militant Carlism constituted something of an explanation. In Galicia, however, albeit a highly conservative region, the extreme right was not prominent before the military coup. In the course of 20 July, the rebels took over the region. The only places where there was any significant resistance were A Coruña, Vigo and Ferrol, but it was sporadic and had been crushed well before the end of the month. In Vigo, when the edict of martial law was read out, the crowd protested and twenty-seven people died when troops opened fire.105

The first few days after the coup saw relatively few deaths, just over one hundred. Thereafter the pace of executions increased with more than 2,500 in the five months from 1 August to the end of December. Recent research identified the total number of executions in Galicia as 4,560, including seventy-nine women. Of these 836 were the result of trials; the rest were extra-judicial murders. The worst of the repression was in A Coruña with nearly 1,600 executions and in Pontevedra with nearly 1,700. In these two Atlantic provinces, the Popular Front had won, albeit with a predominance of moderate left-of-centre Republican deputies. In Lugo, where the centre party had won, there were 418 deaths, of which two-thirds were the victims of extra-judicial murders. In Orense, where Renovación Española and the CEDA triumphed, there were 569.106 The experience of Galicia shows that, as in Castile, the rebels aimed not just to defeat the left but to eradicate an ideal and to terrorize the population into subservience."

"Accordingly, resistance was minimal and in inverse proportion to the ferocity of the repression. The establishment of martial law in A Coruña prompted resistance in the naval base at Ferrol. A mutiny by sailors on the warships España and Cervera was crushed. Both the town hall and the Casa del Pueblo surrendered after artillery bombardment and false promises that there would be no reprisals. On 26 July, the executions began of the sailors who had opposed the rising. On 3 August, the Admiral in charge of the base was tried and sentenced to death for the ‘offence of abandoning his post’. Captain Victoriano Suances of the Civil Guard, who was put in charge of public order, supervised a particularly savage repression, with Falangist squads given free rein to eliminate Republicans.108

Columns of troops and Civil Guards moved out from A Coruña and Ferrol to organize the ‘pacification’ of the towns and villages of the province. Although there were few examples of church-burnings in Galicia, in Betanzos retreating anarchists set fire to the Convento de San Francisco. In consequence, the repression was all the more intense. In Curtis, to the east of A Coruña, sporadic resistance was smashed with ferocity. Throughout the province, the Falange suddenly found itself overflowing with new recruits from among the unemployed and petty criminals.109"

"Those tried by court martial in A Coruña were usually executed by firing squad in the early hours of the morning. Nevertheless, it was common for there to be crowds of spectators. However, they did not compare with the spectacle mounted on 23 October 1936 when eight young conscripts were shot after being accused of plotting to rebel against their superior officers. They were paraded through the city in mid-afternoon and executed before a huge crowd. Their stentorian shouts of ‘¡Viva la República!’ as they stood before the firing squad undermined the effect being sought.114

The repression in Galicia was notable for the high level of denunciations by parish priests, the Falange or hostile neighbours. In country districts, this was perhaps a reflection of the resentments provoked by poverty. There were also cases of denunciations of professional rivals such as led to the arrest and subsequent murder in A Coruña of Dr Eugenio Arbones, a distinguished obstetrician who had been a Socialist deputy in 1931 but had been now retired from politics for some years. His ‘crime’ was to have treated men wounded by the military rebels.115"

"A more striking case was that of José Miñones Bernárdez, a popular lawyer, banker and businessman from A Coruña who was elected deputy for Unión Republicana in the February 1936 elections. In the immediate aftermath of the elections, when there were riots in response to right-wing voting fraud, he had been acting Civil Governor. With remarkable courage, he had prevented the burning of two convents and a Jesuit church and protected a number of right-wingers. In gratitude, the Compañía de María granted his children and descendants free education in perpetuity. In response to the assassination of Calvo Sotelo, he called upon his fellow deputies of Unión Republicana to renounce their participation in the Popular Front. He returned from Madrid to A Coruña on 18 July, convinced that he was in no danger, having always been fair in his treatment of both left and right. This was demonstrated by the fact that, on 19 July, he appealed for military protection for the local electricity generating company of which he was managing director and he also successfully persuaded a convoy of workers to refrain from going to A Coruña to oppose the coup. Nevertheless, he was arrested, accused of military rebellion, condemned to pay a fine of 1 million pesetas and shot on 2 December. The reasons behind his death lay in his home town of Corcubión, where his family had incurred the hatred of the local commander of the Civil Guard.116

Santiago was quickly taken, with military trials beginning as early as 26 July. Five men, tried for crimes such as using the clenched-fist salute or shouting ‘Long live Russia’, were sentenced to life imprisonment. Murders began on 14 August; many of those who had been sentenced to imprisonment were taken from the jail illegally and shot. One of the victims was Eduardo Puente Carracedo, well known in the town for his fierce anti-clericalism. This derived from the fact that a young cousin of his, made pregnant by a canon of the Cathedral, had died when she was obliged to have a (necessarily illegal) abortion. Thereafter, Eduardo Puente would interrupt religious processions (on one occasion with a donkey bearing a crucifix). If the canon in question was taking part, Puente would attempt to hit him. Detained in the early days of the war, Puente was seized from the local prison; on 28 June 1937 he was murdered, and his body dumped under a bridge. The registry recorded the deaths of those murdered as the consequence of ‘internal haemorrhage’, ‘cardiac arrest’ or ‘organic destruction of the brain’.117"

"On the Portuguese border, in Galicia’s coastal province of Pontevedra, the Civil Governor, like his counterparts elsewhere, refused to arm the workers. As in Ourense, there was a high level of collaboration in the repression in poor rural communities. Indeed, the military authorities issued a statement on 9 August that unsigned denunciations would not be pursued and eventually threatened to impose fines on those who made false accusations. Perhaps the most striking death in Pontevedra was that of Alexandre Bóveda Iglesias, founder of the Galician Nationalist Party, a conservative Catholic greatly admired by Calvo Sotelo. General Carlos Bosch y Bosch, the commander of the VIII Military Region, dismissed a plea for clemency, saying, ‘Bóveda is not a Communist but he is a Galician Nationalist which is worse.’122"

Canary and Balearic islands

"While this rebel repression had proceeded in Spain’s north-western corner, similar horrors were taking place far to the south and the east outside the Spanish peninsula. In the Canary Islands where the rebellion had triumphed immediately, there were no deaths at the hands of Republicans. Nevertheless, in the course of the war, it has been estimated that as many as 2,500 people were killed by the rebels.125 It has been reckoned that more than two thousand people were executed in the Balearic Islands. In Mallorca alone, despite having an extremely weak workers’ movement, there were at least 1,200 and probably as many as two thousand executed. The initial coup provoked a general strike as a result of which large numbers of workers were arrested and imprisoned.126 The bulk of them were killed after Alberto Bayo’s ill-fated attempt to retake the island for the Republic in mid-August. Prisoners captured by the rebels were immediately executed. They included five nurses, all aged between seventeen and twenty, and a French journalist.127"

Chapter 7: Far from the Front: Repression behind the Republican Lines