Chapter 5: Institutionalized Violence in the Rebel Zone

Early uprising and repression in Morocco and Cadiz

"Having practised extraordinary brutality during the repression in Asturias in October 1934, Yagüe was bitterly hated on the left. He in turn had ample reason to resent the Republic, having been demoted in 1932 from lieutenant colonel to major by Azaña’s military reforms, which had reversed many of the rapid promotions enjoyed by the Africanistas. Humiliated by losing eighty-two places in the seniority list, he had had to wait a year before being restored to the rank of lieutenant colonel.3 Yagüe commanded the Second Legion in Ceuta on the southern side of the Straits of Gibraltar. Loudly indiscreet in his hostility to the government, he enjoyed the unquestioning loyalty of the tattooed mercenaries under his command.

Leading Socialists had repeatedly warned Casares Quiroga that it was dangerous to leave Yagüe in post. Yet, when he arrived on 12 June, he was offered a transfer either to a desirable post on the Spanish mainland or to a plum position as a military attaché in Rome. Yagüe replied curtly that he would burn his uniform rather than leave the Legion. To Mola’s relief, Casares weakly acquiesced and let him return to Morocco. After their meeting, Casares said to his adjutant, Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros, ‘Yagüe is a gentleman, a perfect officer, and I am sure that he would never betray the Republic. He has given me his word of honour and his promise as an officer that he will always loyally serve the Republic. And men like Yagüe keep their word.’ It was a major political error.4"

"The Generalitat’s security services had uncovered the plans for the rising in Catalonia and a deeply pessimistic Ramón begged his brother to desist. Emilio replied that it was too late and ordered Ramón to return to Barcelona. It was a virtual death sentence. When the coup failed, as Ramón had predicted, he shot himself. This contributed to the further brutalization of Mola. In contrast, he would be unmoved by the fact that the President of the Generalitat, Lluís Companys, saved the life of his father, the eighty-three-year-old retired General of the Civil Guard Emilio Mola López.5"

"The first of Mola’s secret instructions, issued in April, echoed the practice of the Africanistas against the Rif tribesmen, calling for extreme violence to shock the left into paralysis. Throughout the army as a whole, commitment to the conspiracy was far from unanimous. If it had been, it is unlikely that there would have been a civil war. Thus, Mola’s third secret instruction ordered the immediate execution of officers who opposed, or refused to join, the coup. The fifth instruction, of 20 June, had declared that ‘the timid and the hesitant should be warned that he who is not with us is against us and will be treated as an enemy’.6 Thus the first victims executed by the military rebels would be fellow army officers."

"On 24 June, Mola sent specific instructions to Yagüe. He urged three main principles: extreme violence, tempo and high mobility: ‘Vacillations lead only to failure.’7 Six days later, Yagüe received a more detailed set of twenty-five instructions about the organization of the repression. They included the following: use Moorish forces; delegate control of public order and security in the cities to the Falange; arrest all suspect authorities; eliminate all leftist elements (Communists, anarchists, trade unionists, Masons and so on); shut down all public meeting places; prohibit all demonstrations, strikes and public and private meetings.8 These instructions were the blueprint for the repression unleashed on Spain’s Moroccan territories on the night of 17 July. By sheer force of personality, Yagüe entirely dominated the overall commander of forces in Morocco, General Agustín Gómez Morato. Between 5 and 12 July, in the Llano Amarillo in the Ketama Valley, manoeuvres involving 20,000 troops from the Legion and the Regulares saw Yagüe’s tent become the epicentre of the African end of the conspiracy as he briefed the principal rebel officers. The manoeuvres concluded with Falangist chants.9

On 17 July, at Melilla, headquarters of the Second Legion, the general in command, Manuel Romerales Quintero, having refused to join the plotters, was arrested and shot for his ‘extremist ideas’. The rebels, headed by Colonel Luis Solans-Labedán, very soon had nearly one thousand prisoners in a concentration camp. When the overall commander General Gómez Morato flew to Melilla, he was immediately arrested. In Tetuán, in the western half of the Protectorate, Colonel Eduardo Sáenz de Buruaga and Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Asensio Cabanillas detained the acting High Commissioner, Arturo Álvarez Buylla, who was shot some time later. On the night of 17–18 July, the rebels shot 225 soldiers and civilians in Morocco.10"

"Many other wives and daughters of Republicans were seized, raped and tortured by Falangists. This was central to the reign of terror initiated by Luis Solans. In late September, a gang of Falangists came to the prison with the intention of killing all the female detainees to celebrate the rebel capture of Toledo. The director of the prison reprimanded them, saying, ‘it’s outrageous to kill them all at once. When you want to kill women, by all means come and get them, but one at a time.’"

"One after another the following morning, the town hall, the Civil Governor’s offices, the telephone exchange, the main post office and the headquarters of left-wing parties and trades unions surrendered virtually without resistance. All those within were detained and numerous members of the town council murdered without even a semblance of a trial. The Mayor, Manuel de la Pinta Leal, was not in Cádiz at the time of the coup and thus in no position to oppose it. Nevertheless, he was arrested in Córdoba in September, taken to Cádiz and shot. Over the days following the capture of Cádiz, the Civil Governor, the President of the provincial assembly (Diputación) and numerous officers who had refused to join the rebellion were accused of military rebellion. While detained, they wrote statements pointing out the absurdity of the accusations, since they were obeying the orders of the legal government and had merely defended themselves. Before any trials could take place, they and several others, including a Socialist parliamentary deputy and the town-hall lawyer, were simply taken from prison and murdered on or about 16 August, on the orders of General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, rebel commander of the south.13"

"The annihilation of less prominent leftists took place as follows. The rebels first closed off the narrow tongue of land that connected Cádiz to the rest of Spain. Groups of Falangists, Civil Guards and Regulares then searched and looted houses. Liberals and leftists, Freemasons and trade unionists, were arrested en masse. Some were shot directly in the street. Others were taken to Falange headquarters in the Casino where they were subjected to sadistic torture. They were forced to ingest a litre of castor oil and industrial alcohol mixed with sawdust and breadcrumbs. In acute abdominal pain, they were savagely beaten. A so-called ‘Tribunal of Blood’ was established and each day would select twenty-five of the detainees for execution. Over six hundred of those arrested in Cádiz were executed in the next five months and more than one thousand in the course of the war. A further three hundred would be executed between the end of the war and 1945. These figures do not include those who died in prison as a result of torture.14"

The coup and repression cont. in other towns

"Most of the other principal towns of the province fell quickly. On 19 July, Salvador Arizón Mejía sent troops from Jérez to seize the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda in the north. Supporters of the Popular Front held them off until, on 21 July, a force of Regulares entered the town, killing twelve citizens including nine in one house. Executions began immediately, although a few leftists escaped in small boats. Eighty people were shot over the next five months.18 In Rota, nothing happened on 18 July. The following day, having been deceived into believing that the Civil Guard and Carabineros were loyal, the town’s anarchists, Socialists and Communists joined in declaring a general strike and establishing an anti-fascist committee. Falangists and other rightists were detained and roads into the town barricaded. When the Civil Guard declared in favour of the rebels, the anti-fascist committee surrendered without a fight. Despite the absence of left-wing violence, the Falange and the Civil Guard set about the systematic annihilation of the town’s relatively few liberals and leftists. They were tortured and forced to drink castor oil, and over sixty were shot at night, their ears cut off as trophies.19"

"Despite the protests of the parish priest, men and women were tortured and shot without trial for reasons as capricious as having advocated improved working conditions or for having taken part in a carnival involving a spoof funeral of Gil Robles and songs ridiculing the right. One seventeen-year-old was shot because his father was a Socialist and a sixteen-year-old because his anarcho-syndicalist father had fled. Altogether four teenagers were murdered. A couple aged seventy-three and sixty-three were shot because their anarcho-syndicalist son had also escaped. Married couples were shot, their young children left to starve. In another case, Cristóbal Alza and his wife were arrested, their heads were shaved and they were given castor oil. Believing that they were now safe, they stayed in the town but were arrested again. Cristóbal’s brother Francisco pleaded for their lives with the Captain of the Civil Guard, who replied that he would spare only one and that Francisco must choose. He chose his brother. Between July 1936 and February 1937, a total of 102 men and nine women were executed in Villamartín.24 Three women were murdered in Bornos, two in Espera, one in Puerto Serrano, one in Arcos de la Frontera, at least ten in Ubrique and five in Olvera.25"

"The repression in Benamahoma was undertaken by a notorious gang known as the ‘Lions of Rota’, consisting of self-declared Falangists led by Fernando Zamacola, a man from Galicia with a record of assault and armed robbery. At a post-war investigation into Zamacola’s crimes, it was revealed that more than fifty people had been executed including several women. The town postman was shot along with his fifteen-year-old son. Members of the Lions testified that Juan Vadillo, the local commander of the Civil Guard, had ordered the shootings to cover up the appalling beatings inflicted on those arrested. As well as murders, there was also considerable theft of the property of those detained and sexual abuse of the wives of men who had fled or been shot. These women were forced to clean the Civil Guard barracks and the offices of the Falange and made to dance at parties organized by Zamacola’s men. As well as cases of head-shaving and the use of castor oil, several were raped by both Vadillo and Zamacola.31 Zamacola was awarded Spain’s highest military decoration, the Gran Cruz Laureada de San Fernando.32"

"Meanwhile, Mora-Figueroa’s column made daily expeditions to mop up after the troops who conquered the smaller towns to the north of the province, Ubrique, Alcalá del Valle and Setenil. Many local Republicans and trade unionists had fled to the sierra around Ubrique, fearing reprisals. However, when on 24 July a light aeroplane dropped leaflets announcing that anyone without blood on their hands had nothing to fear, many of them returned. Most of these trusting souls, including the Mayor, were shot in the course of the following weeks. A member of Izquierda Republicana, the Mayor owned a prosperous bakery and olive press. By providing cheap bread for the poor, he had earned the enmity of the local oligarchy. He was tortured and forced to hand over substantial sums of money before being shot. At least 149 people were executed in Ubrique.33"

"While the various paramilitary forces purged the province of Cádiz, a similar process was taking place in Seville. There the right-wing victory was attributed by Gonzalo Queipo de Llano to his personal daring and brilliance. Within a year of the events, he claimed that he had captured the city against overwhelming odds with the help of only 130 soldiers and fifteen civilians. In a radio broadcast on 1 February 1938, he made an even wilder exaggeration, declaring that he had taken the city with fourteen or fifteen men.35 He claimed that he been opposed by a force of over 100,000 well-armed ‘communists’. In fact, the defeated workers had had between them only eighty rifles and little ammunition and were armed, if at all, with hunting shotguns, ancient pistols and knives.36

Far from being an act of spontaneous heroism, the coup had been meticulously planned by a major of the General Staff stationed in Seville, José Cuesta Monereo, and was carried out by a force of four thousand men. The commander of the Seville Military Region, General José de Fernández Villa-Abrille, and his senior staff were aware of what was being hatched. They did nothing to impede the plot, despite the pleas of the Civil Governor, José María Varela Rendueles.37 Nevertheless, Queipo had them arrested and tried for military rebellion. The majority of the Seville garrison were involved in the coup, including units of artillery, cavalry, communications, transport and the Civil Guard. This is clear even from the lists included in the hymn of praise to Queipo composed by the journalist Enrique Vila.38 After artillery bombardment, this large force seized the telephone exchange, the town hall and the Civil Governor’s headquarters, blocked the main access routes into the centre and then applied indiscriminate terror.39"

"Despite artillery bombardment, the working-class districts resisted doggedly. Finally, Queipo’s forces, using women and children as human shields, were able to enter and begin the repression in earnest. Women and children, as well as their menfolk, were were put to the sword. After the subjugation of Triana, the new Mayor Carranza strode through the streets with a megaphone ordering that all pro-Republican and anti-fascist graffiti be cleaned from the walls. He set a ten-minute deadline, after which the residents of any house whose walls carried slogans would be shot. With fathers, husbands, brothers and sons dead or dying in the streets around them, the surviving men, women and children began frantically scrubbing at the walls while the victorious rebels gloated.43 For his final attack on La Macarena, on 22 July, Queipo used aircraft to bomb and strafe the district. He published a warning in the press demanding that weapons be thrown into the street and windows and doors be covered in white sheets to ‘avoid the damage that could be caused by air attacks and the forces of the Army’.44"

"On 16 August, the bodies of two Falangists were found in Triana. In reprisal, seventy men from the surrounding streets were arrested at random. They were shot in the cemetery without any form of trial two days later.45 When the actor Edmundo Barbero reached Seville in August, he would find the city (and many of its inhabitants) entirely plastered in Falangist symbols. Triana, La Macarena, San Julián and San Marcos were full of the rubble of houses destroyed by the artillery barrages. Barbero was appalled by the terror-stricken faces and the fact that all the women wore black, despite Queipo’s prohibition of public mourning, incessantly and threateningly repeated in the press and on the radio. Elsewhere, in the pueblos, Falangist patrols ensured that no houses carried emblems of mourning and that laments of grief could not be heard.46"

"When working-class leaders could not be found, members of their families were taken as hostages. The Communist leader of the Seville dockworkers, Saturnino Barneto Atienza, went into hiding and eventually reached the Republican zone. His sister, his wife, his infant daughter and his mother-in-law were detained in inhuman conditions for the duration of the war. His seventy-two-year-old mother, Isabel Atienza, a devout Catholic, was arrested and interrogated. On 8 October, she was forced to witness a shooting in the cemetery and then, seriously disturbed, was taken to a square near her home and shot. Her body was left in the street for a day.50 On the night of 10 August, a number of murders were committed to commemorate the anniversary of General Sanjurjo’s failed military coup in 1932. Among the victims were the Andalusian intellectual Blas Infante and the Republican Mayor José González Fernández de Labandera, who had helped foil the Sanjurjada."

"On one such occasion, a bored Díaz Criado decided to take those present to a dawn execution. To his irritation, they arrived just as the echoes of the shots were dying away. However, he was mollified when the commander of the firing squad offered the women of the party his gun for them to finish off the dying. A sergeant of the Regulares then proceeded to remove gold teeth from the dead by bashing their heads with a stone.54"

"Díaz Criado’s replacement by the Civil Guard Major Santiago Garrigós Bernabéu brought little relief to the terrorized population. Indeed, it was fatal for those who had been saved by the bribery of Doña Mariquita or by sexual submission to Díaz Criado himself. Francisco Gonzálbez Ruiz commented on the situation: ‘since some fortunate ones were saved by the opportune intervention of a female friend or by dint of paying a goodly sum, of course, when Díaz Criado was sacked, his successor felt the need to review the cases. Because the procedure followed had been corrupt, those who had been freed were now shot. Needless to say, nothing could help the thousands of innocents already dead.’58"

"On 27 July, Carranza’s column reached one such town, Rociana in Huelva, where the left had taken over in response to news of the military coup. There had been no casualties but a ritual destruction of the symbols of right-wing power, the premises of the landowners’ association and two clubs, one used by the local Falange. Twenty-five sheep belonging to a wealthy local landowner were stolen. The parish church and rectory had been set alight, but the parish priest, the sixty-year-old Eduardo Martínez Laorden, his niece and her daughter who lived with him had been saved by local Socialists and given refuge in the house of the Mayor. On 28 July, Father Martínez Laorden made a speech from the balcony of the town hall: ‘You all no doubt believe that, because I am a priest, I have come with words of forgiveness and repentance. Not at all! War against all of them until the last trace has been eliminated.’ A large number of men and women were arrested. The women had their heads shaved and one, known as La Maestra Herrera, was dragged around the town by a donkey, before being murdered. Over the next three months, sixty were shot. In January 1937, Father Martínez Laorden made an official complaint that the repression had been too lenient.64"

"When Gonzalo de Aguilera shot six labourers in Salamanca, he perceived himself to be taking retaliatory measures in advance. Many landowners did the same by joining or financing mixed columns like that of Carranza. They also played an active role in selecting victims to be executed in captured villages. In a report to Lisbon, in early August, the Portuguese Consul in Seville praised these columns. Like the Italian Consul, he had been given gory accounts of unspeakable outrages allegedly committed against women and children by armed leftist desperadoes. Accordingly, he reported with satisfaction that, ‘in punishing these monstrosities, a harsh summary military justice is applied. In these towns, not a single one of the Communist rebels is left alive, because they are all shot in the town square.’65 In fact, these shootings reflected no justice, military or otherwise, but rather the determination of the landowners to put the clock back. Thus, when labourers were shot, they were made to dig their own graves first, and Falangist señoritos shouted at them, ‘Didn’t you ask for land? Now you’re going to have some, and for ever!’66"

"The atrocities carried out by the various columns were regarded with relish by Queipo de Llano. In a broadcast on 23 July, he declared, ‘We are determined to apply the law without flinching. Morón, Utrera, Puente Genil, Castro del Río, start digging graves. I authorize you to kill like a dog anyone who dares oppose you and I say that, if you act in this way, you will be free of all blame.’ In part of the speech that the censorship felt was too explicit to be printed, Queipo de Llano said, ‘Our brave Legionarios and Regulares have shown the red cowards what it means to be a man. And incidentally the wives of the reds too. These Communist and anarchist women, after all, have made themselves fair game by their doctrine of free love. And now they have at least made the acquaintance of real men, not wimpish militiamen. Kicking their legs about and squealing won’t save them.’67"

"Queipo de Llano’s speeches were larded with sexual references. On 26 July, he declared: ‘Sevillanos! I don’t have to urge you on because I know your bravery. I tell you to kill like a dog any queer or pervert who criticizes this glorious national movement.’68 Arthur Koestler interviewed Queipo de Llano at the beginning of September 1936: ‘For some ten minutes he described in a steady flood of words, which now and then became extremely racy, how the Marxists slit open the stomachs of pregnant women and speared the foetuses; how they had tied two eight-year-old girls on to their father’s knees, violated them, poured petrol on them and set them on fire. This went on and on, unceasingly, one story following another – a perfect clinical demonstration in sexual psychopathology.’ Koestler commented on the broadcasts: ‘General Queipo de Llano describes scenes of rape with a coarse relish that is an indirect incitement to a repetition of such scenes.’69 Queipo’s comments can be contrasted with an incident in Castilleja del Campo when a truckload of prisoners was brought for execution from the mining town of Aznalcóllar, which had been occupied on 17 August by Carranza’s column. Among them were two women tied together, a mother and her daughter who was in the final stages of pregnancy and gave birth as she was shot. The executioners killed the baby with their rifle butts.70"

"To inflate his own heroism, and inadvertently revealing his own obsessions, Haro claimed that the orders from General Pozas passed on by Orts which had instigated the expedition were to ‘blow up Seville and fuck the wives of the fascists’. Unsurprisingly, the accused were found guilty and sentenced to death. Numerous conservatives and clerics whose lives had been saved by the Civil Governor, Diego Jiménez Castellano, sent telegrams to Seville on 4 August desperately pleading for clemency. Queipo de Llano replied: ‘I regret that I cannot respond to your petition for pardon for the criminals condemned to death, because the critical situation through which Spain is passing means that justice cannot be obstructed, for the guilty must be punished and an example made of them.’ Diego Jiménez Castellano, Julio Orts Flor and Alfonso López Vicencio were shot shortly after 6.00 p.m. on 4 August.72"

"The savagery increased as the columns entered Riotinto. The inhabitants had fled from the village of El Campillo. Finding it deserted, Redondo gave the order to burn it to the ground. Queipo de Llano broadcast the absurd lie that the local anarchists had burned twenty-two rightists alive and then set fire to their own homes. An air raid on Nerva on 20 August killed seven women, four men, a ten-year-old boy and six-month-old girl. One right-winger had been killed before the arrival of Redondo. The Communist Mayor ensured that twenty-five others who were in protective custody were unharmed, despite the popular outrage after the bombing raid. When the village was taken, Redondo’s men executed 288 people. In Aroche, ten right-wingers were killed and, when Redondo’s column arrived on 28 August, despite the fact that many leftists had fled north towards Badajoz, his men executed 133 men and ten women. The town’s female population was subjected to humiliation and sexual extortion. Reports of this terror ensured that resistance elsewhere would be dogged. The siege of El Cerro de Andévalo lasted over three weeks and required the contribution of three columns of Civil Guards, Falangists and Requetés. There the local CNT committee or Junta had protected the nuns in a local convent but were unable to prevent attacks on church property. The repression when the town fell on 22 September was ferocious. In nearby Silos de Calañas, women and children were shot along with the men. Large numbers of refugees now headed north towards the small area in Badajoz still not conquered by the rebels.76"

"Castejón himself explained how he took these towns: ‘I employed an encircling movement which enabled me to punish the reds harshly.’95 The rural proletariat was no match for the military experience of the battle-hardened Legionarios. However, as Castejón revealed, it was a question not simply of seizing control but of imposing a savage repression. In the case of the next town conquered, La Puebla de Cazalla east of Morón, refugees from there and Arahal had given bloodcurdling accounts of what had happened when Castejón’s column had arrived. Moreover, on 30 July, a rebel aircraft dropped leaflets threatening that the town would be bombed if it did not surrender immediately. Accordingly, no resistance was offered. Nevertheless, the repression that followed was unremitting. The crimes of the left had consisted of sacking the parish church and the headquarters of Acción Popular, requisitioning and distributing food and arresting forty-six local rebel sympathizers. No deaths occurred while the town was in the hands of the Popular Front Committee. Indeed, anarchists from Málaga had been prevented from killing the prisoners. Now, the occupying troops looted houses. Before cursory military trials started, over one hundred people were murdered. More than one thousand men, from a town of nine thousand inhabitants, were forcibly mobilized into the rebel army. To replace them, women and older men were used as slave labour.96"

"One week later, on 1 August, a substantial column of around 1,200 Legionarios, regular troops, Requetés and Falangists reached Puente Genil from Seville under the command of Castejón and Major Haro Lumbreras. Ramón de Carranza also arrived with his column. Enjoying artillery and air support, they quickly overcame the town’s fierce resistance. Messages had been sent to Puente Genil threatening that one hundred lives would be taken in reprisal for every right-wing victim of the ‘red domination’. When the scale of the attack was realized, many tried to flee towards Málaga. Troops were deployed, according to Castejón himself, ‘to prevent the flight of refugees and to increase the scale of the killing’. Regarding his own forces, he said: ‘Once inside the town, the repression started in earnest.’ The killing was indiscriminate and many of the victims were not at all political, merely people who had fled in terror."

"Numerous women were raped before being shot. Men were taken off the street or pulled from their houses to be tortured and shot. Five hundred and one people were killed on that first day. Castejón returned to Seville on the same evening and the ‘clean-up operation’ continued for months afterwards. It took the lives of many who were anything but leftists, including several lawyers and doctors. The president of the Red Cross was shot ‘for having given medicines to the reds’. In his broadcast that evening, Queipo de Llano praised Castejón, saying that ‘the repression has been harsh but not nearly as harsh as it should have been and indeed will be’. At least another thousand people were executed over the following months, many as acts of petty vengeance against workers who had stood up to the owners in the previous years.98"

"Sometimes, however, the intensity of the repression was not sufficient for Queipo de Llano. Córdoba had fallen within a matter of hours to the city’s military commander, the Artillery Colonel Ciriaco Cascajo Ruiz, with help from the Civil Guard.109 With the city of Córdoba isolated within a province that remained loyal to the Republic, a group of Falangists went to Seville to get arms. Their leader was asked by Queipo how many they had shot in Córdoba. When he replied, ‘None,’ Queipo was outraged and thundered: ‘Well, until you shoot a couple of hundred there’ll be no more arms for you!’ Queipo was dissatisfied because Cascajo was ordering ‘only’ five executions per day. The municipal authorities and leading Republicans who had taken refuge in the building of the Civil Governor were murdered. Among other victims were four parliamentary deputies for Andalusia and Manuel Azaña’s nephew, Gregorio Azaña Cuevas, a state lawyer, who had gone to attend a meeting about the proposed autonomy statute for Andalusia along with another of those arrested, Joaquín García Hidalgo Villanueva, a Freemason and journalist who had been Socialist deputy for the city between 1931 and 1933. García Hidalgo, a diabetic, was taken to prison. There he was tortured and force-fed sugar. He died in a diabetic coma on 28 July."

"After an inspection by Queipo on 5 August, the rate of executions speeded up. Bruno Ibáñez, a brutal major of the Civil Guard, was put in charge of the terror. In the first week, he arrested 109 people from lists given him by landowners and priests. They were shot out on the roads and in the olive groves. The Socialist Mayor Manuel Sánchez Badajoz, a number of town councillors and a much loved parliamentary deputy, Dr Vicente Martín Romera, were taken to the cemetery at dawn on 7 August and, by the light of car headlights, shot with seven others. Within a few days, with the midsummer heat at its height, the numbers of shootings and the corpses left in the streets caused a minor typhoid epidemic. It has been calculated that more than 11,500 people were killed in the province of Córdoba between 1936 and 1945.110"

"A note issued by Bruno Ibáñez on 1 October 1936 stated that ‘Those who flee are effectively confessing their guilt.’112"

"Virtually every town and village of Cádiz had been conquered by 18 September. Despite exhaustive efforts to inflate the figures, the Francoist authorities could claim that, in the areas in Republican hands since the military coup of 18 July, only ninety-eight people had been killed, the majority in response to news of the rightist violence in other pueblos.123 This contrasts with the 3,071 people executed by the rebels within the province. There were executions in every pueblo of Cádiz, whether or not there had been any deaths at the hands of Republicans. The principal victims were those who had played any role in Republican institutions, political parties or trade unions. Anyone known to have taken part in any strike action over the previous ten years or known to sympathize with Republican ideas such as schoolteachers or Freemasons was a likely target.124"

Repression of leftists who protected rightists

"Gutiérrez Prieto was shot on 11 August. To silence opposition to his execution, thirty inhabitants of Palos, including his uncle, were shot, along with twelve people from other towns. In Moguer, the arrival of the rebels unleashed a sweeping and well-planned repression that saw the homes of Republicans looted and women raped and claimed the lives of 146 people, including women and twelve-year-old boys. More than 5 per cent of the adult male population was murdered.77

In the light of Haro Lumbreras’s declaration, it is worth recalling that the total number of right-wingers assassinated in the province from 18 July until it was totally in rebel control was forty-four, in nine locations. A further 101 died in armed clashes with the defenders of the Republic. The subsequent repression was of a different order of magnitude, not a vengeful response to prior left-wing violence but the implementation of a plan for extermination. In seventy-five of Huelva’s seventy-eight towns, a total of 6,019 were executed.78 In the days between the military coup and the fall of Huelva to the rebels, the Republican authorities had made every effort to protect those rightists arrested in the immediate wake of the military coup. There had been calls for serenity and respect for the law from the Civil Governor, the Mayor, Salvador Moreno Márquez, and Republican and Socialist parliamentary deputies for the province. One hundred and seventy-eight local extreme rightists, including Falangists and the most hated landowners and industrialists, were arrested. All were safe and well when the city was conquered. However, during the previous eleven days, six people were murdered. This was the only excuse that Haro Lumbreras needed to launch a bloody repression. There were nightly shootings without even the farce of a ‘trial’. Many of those of the right who had been saved by the Republican authorities protested. Haro was eventually removed on 6 February 1937 when it came to light that he had misappropriated donations of jewellery and money made to the rebel cause. Specifically, it appeared that he had used these funds to pay for the services of prostitutes. Evidence was produced showing that, over the previous fifteen years, he had frequently been guilty of theft and other abuses of his position. When he left Huelva, his luggage, carried in three trucks, consisted of ninety-three trunks and suitcases. After serving in Zaragoza, Teruel and Galicia, he became head of the Civil Guard in León. He was killed on 16 February 1941 by one of his junior officers. It was rumoured that the young man’s wife had been the unwilling object of Haro’s attentions.79"

"However, against the wishes of the Committee, the anarchist CNT–FAI organized a militia force. Two churches, a convent and seminary were set on fire and some religious images destroyed. Three private houses and three right-wing clubs had been searched and property thrown into the street – a situation eagerly exploited by criminal elements. Between 19 and 21 July, the Committee had detained thirty-eight right-wingers for their own protection. None was harmed and there were no more deaths after Alcalá y Henke. Anarchist efforts to burn the municipal jail were successfully repelled. When Castejón’s column reached Alcalá de Guadaira in the early evening of 21 July, it was joined by the local Civil Guard. The town fell after a successful artillery bombardment by Alarcón de la Lastra. In the words of his enthusiastic chronicler, ‘all the Communist leaders were killed while Castejón punished or rather liberated the town of Alcalá’. ‘Punishment’ was the Africanista euphemism for savage repression. The alleged ‘Communist leaders’ were actually four unconnected individuals. Three were shot by the advancing column: two of them young men who had come from Seville to buy bread and the third an agricultural labourer who ran in panic when he saw the Legionarios. The fourth was Miguel Ángel Troncoso, the head of the local police, who, according to his son, was shot in the town hall by Castejón himself. None could be remotely described as Communist leaders. Thirteen men captured in the town hall were taken to Seville, where at least six of them would be killed. Alcalá de Guadaira was then left in the hands of local rightists and a process of revenge began which saw the murders of a further 137 men. Another 350 were imprisoned and tortured, many of whom died. The belongings of the murdered and imprisoned were stolen by the new masters of the town.82"

"The victims were largely selected by the local caciques, because they were known to be Republicans or union members or had shown disrespect. One man was shot because he was the bill poster who had stuck up left-wing election posters in February 1936. As in virtually every conquered town in the south, women had their heads shaved, were given castor oil to make them soil themselves and, led by a brass band, were paraded around the streets to be mocked.85 The perpetrators of the murders and the other abuses included Civil Guards and estate employees who had swiftly joined the Falange. Their motives ranged from psychotic enjoyment to money, some boasting of being paid 15 pesetas for every killing. For others, involvement reflected gratitude for patronage received or shared religious views, as well as shared fears and anger. They all perceived savagery as ‘services for the Fatherland’. Men and women, and many teenagers, were arrested either by the Civil Guard or by the Falangists. Sometimes, victims were picked up at random, or because these thugs coveted their wife or their property, or simply because they were bored or drunk. Sometimes those arrested were shot immediately, sometimes taken to jail where they were beaten and tortured before being eventually murdered. After the shootings, the caciques, the recent Falangist converts and the younger landowners would meet in a bar and comment with satisfaction that there would be no more wage claims from those just despatched. On one occasion, unable to find a young man who in fact was hiding under the floor of his parents’ shack, they burned down the dwelling with all three inside.86

When the parish priest of Carmona protested at the murders, he was told that those executed had been found guilty by a tribunal consisting of the local landowners. When he pointed out that this did not constitute any kind of legal process, he was threatened. By 1938, those responsible experienced sufficient guilt to feel the need to falsify the circumstances of the murders committed in 1936. Witness statements to the ‘tribunal’ were fabricated, apparently ‘justifying’ the shootings. Many deaths were registered as having been caused by ‘military operations in the town’. Nevertheless, there were more executions when those who had fled came back at the end of the war.87"

"A substantial column of Legionarios, Falangists and Requetés sent by Queipo de Llano was gradually moving north-eastwards up the Valley of the Guadalquivir, taking town after town. They appeared in Cantillana at midday on 30 July. After the usual artillery bombardment, they entered the town unopposed. The defenders had only a few shotguns and soon the surrounding fields were thronged with people fleeing. Despite having been well treated, the local Civil Guard commander began the first of around two hundred executions without trial. Large numbers of townspeople were imprisoned and, over the next few months, more than sixty people including three women and the Mayor would be taken away and shot in Seville. After the Civil War, the parish priest of Cantillana was removed in punishment for a sermon in which he said: ‘If the church is damaged, it can be repaired; if statues have been burned, they can be replaced; but the husband or son who has been killed can never be replaced.’88"

Sexual violence

"The censorship may well have been designed to limit awareness of Queipo’s incitement to the sexual abuse of left-wing women, but the extent to which the rebels considered it legitimate could be seen from what happened in Fuentes de Andalucía, a small town to the east of Seville. It had surrendered without resistance, on 19 July, to Civil Guards. With the help of Falangists and other right-wingers, a Guardia Cívica (a right-wing volunteer police force) was created which set about rounding up the town’s leftists. The houses of those arrested were looted as many of the Falangists stole sewing machines for their mothers and girlfriends. On 25 July, the Socialist Mayor and three Communist councillors were shot. It was the beginning of a massacre. In one case, that of a family called Medrano, the parents were arrested, and their three children, José aged twenty, Mercedes aged eighteen and Manuel aged sixteen, were shot. The family’s shack was burned down and the fourth child, Juan, aged eight, was abandoned to his fate. A truckload of women prisoners was taken to an estate outside the town of La Campana further north. Among them were four young girls, aged between eighteen and fourteen. The women were obliged to cook and serve a meal for their captors who then sexually assaulted them before shooting them and throwing their bodies down a well. When the Civil Guard returned to Fuentes de Andalucía, they marched through the town waving rifles adorned with the underwear of the murdered women.91"

"It will be recalled that on 23 July Queipo had made his most explicit incitement to rape. The following day, he commented with relish on the savagery inflicted by Castejón’s column when it captured Arahal, a small town of 12,500 inhabitants to the south of Carmona. When news of the military rebellion reached Arahal, thirty-six local right-wingers had been locked up in the town hall. On 22 July, when a Socialist town councillor went to release them, thirteen left but twenty-three preferred to remain, fearful that it was a ruse to shoot them. With the town being bombarded with artillery, some armed men from Seville then set fire to the building and twenty-two of the rightists were burned to death, only the priest escaping with his life. When Castejón’s column entered Arahal, they reacted to this atrocity with an orgy of indiscriminate violence. Accounts of the numbers of the town’s inhabitants killed vary wildly from 146 to 1,600. Young women considered to be of the left were repeatedly raped. The Socialist Mayor, a seventy-one-year-old cobbler, who had worked hard to prevent violence, was shot.92"

Speeches and propaganda by Queipo de Llano

"In fact, what is known of such broadcasts by Queipo de Llano derives from the following day’s press reports, together with occasional snippets noted down by those who heard them. Comparisons, when possible, between the two suggest that the texts printed by the press were a pale reflection of the obscenity of the originals. Newspaper editors knew better than to print the more outrageous incitements to rape and murder. Indeed, there was concern that Queipo’s excesses might be damaging to the rebel cause abroad. Accordingly, the instinctive self-censorship of the press was reinforced on 7 September when Major José Cuesta Monereo issued detailed instructions regarding foreign sensibilities. Most of his fourteen points were routine, to prevent the publication of sensitive military information. However, they specifically ordered that the printed version of the radio broadcasts be expurgated: ‘In the broadcast chats by the General, any concept, phrase or insult, even though accurate, and doubtless the result of excessive zeal in the expression of his patriotism, whose publication is not appropriate or convenient, for reasons of discretion that will easily be appreciated by our intelligent journalists, shall be suppressed.’ Similarly, in the reporting of the repression, specific details of the slaughter were prohibited. Instead, journalists were obliged to use euphemisms like ‘justice was carried out’, ‘a deserved punishment was inflicted’, ‘the law was applied’.90"

Mola's friend executed

"According to the usually reliable Bahamonde, ‘A friend of General Mola was shot, despite the fact that Mola himself had taken a great interest in his case, even telephoning Díaz Criado personally. Since he usually just signed the death sentences after barely flicking through the files, Díaz Criado failed to notice that on the day in question he had signed the death sentence of Mola’s friend.’56 Even so, Queipo tolerated Díaz Criado’s excesses; but, in mid-November 1936, Franco himself insisted on his removal. The immediate trigger had been that he had accused the Portuguese Vice-Consul in Seville, Alberto Magno Rodrigues, of espionage. Given the scale of Portuguese help to the rebel cause, and the efforts of Salazar’s government to secure international recognition for Franco, the accusation was acutely embarrassing. Moreover, it was absurd since Rodrigues was actually compiling information about German and Italian arms deliveries at the request of Franco’s brother, Nicolás. An enraged Queipo de Llano was forced to apologize to Rodrigues in front of Nicolás Franco. Now known as the ‘Caudillo’, Franco personally signed Díaz Criado’s posting to the Legion on the Madrid front, where he employed his brutal temperament against the soldiers under his command.57"

Leftist reprisals

"Although the rebellion was defeated by 23 July, sporadic sniper fire saw further left-wing deaths. This intensified the hatred behind the brutal reprisals that were now taken by the left. While a revolutionary committee set about distributing food, the surviving Civil Guards were executed along with many of those who had supported the military coup – landowners, money-lenders, right-wingers and, inevitably, the clergy. Among the atrocities committed, a seventy-year-old man and his wife were burned alive. Although a rich landowner, Manuel Gómez Perales, paid a ransom of 100,000 pesetas for his liberty, he and his four sons were murdered. In justification of the even greater scale of subsequent revenge, the rebel newspaper La Unión stated that there had been seven hundred victims, although official Francoist sources eventually claimed 154. Exhaustive modern research has identified only 115. There were instances of victims being tortured and mutilated and of women dancing with corpses. Many houses were looted and forty-five burned down. Seven churches were destroyed. Ten clergymen were murdered, although three others, who had shown sympathy with the plight of the local working class, were saved. Two teams arrayed in ecclesiastical robes played football with the head of a statue of the Virgin Mary.97"

"However, there is no substance to the claim, first made by Queipo in a broadcast on 18 August and popularized by Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, that large numbers of prisoners were killed by being thrown into the tajo. The many rightist victims were shot in the cemetery."

Motivations for taking part in atrocities

"Juan Manuel Lozano Nieto was the son of a man murdered by the rebels despite having taken no part in the left-wing atrocities. Seventy years after the events in Lora, Lozano Nieto, by now a Catholic priest, wrote a measured account of them. In his book, he explained why even those who were not seeking revenge for an executed relative took part in the murders of the left. Some were simply trying to save themselves. Others, of lower-middle-class origin, were desperate to differentiate themselves from the landless labourers. Others were interested in enriching themselves with the property of those they killed. There were cases of the simple theft of the shops or cattle of the wealthier executed Republicans and the clothes and household goods of the more humble. Then there were simple degenerates, who killed for money or for alcohol, while others were involved for sexual gratification.101 According to his dispassionate account, between six hundred and one thousand men young and old, women and children were slaughtered in the repression in Lora. Entire families were eliminated or left without means of support. Children were left without parents. Women were abused and humiliated, subjected to the standard rebel practice of their heads being shaved except for a tuft of hair to which was tied a ribbon with monarchist colours.102"

Landowner support for rightists

"The relationship between the landowners and their military saviours was illustrated when Queipo de Llano asked Ramón de Carranza’s friend Rafael de Medina to raise money for the rebel cause. After years of anguished complaints that agriculture was in ruins as a result of Republican reforms, it might have been expected that Medina’s fund-raising efforts would meet with difficulty. On his first day, three olive exporters in Alcalá de Guadaira gave 1 million pesetas between them. Later the same day, in Dos Hermanas, one landowner asked what the money was for. When told that it was hoped to buy aircraft, he asked how much an aeroplane cost. When Medina replied, ‘About one million pesetas,’ without hesitating the latifundista wrote him a cheque for the full amount.107 Landowners often formed and financed their own units, such as those led by Carranza or the Mora-Figueroa brothers."

"Thereafter, several of the various volunteer forces were formalized as a kind of landowners’ cavalry usually known as the Volunteer Mounted Police. These units included both landowners and those of their employees specialized in horse-breeding and training. Polo ponies were used as well as working horses. As if taking part in a sport or hunting expeditions, they carried out a continuous campaign against the left in the south. Such groups were to be found throughout most of Andalusia and Extremadura. In Lucena in Córdoba, the local landowners funded a squad of expert horsemen to ‘defend property’ and pursue leftists who had fled into the countryside. The group was notorious for its cruelty, its pillaging and its many sexual crimes and was known locally as ‘the death squad’. In September 1936, for example, they crossed the iron bridge over the River Genil and entered Cuevas de San Marcos in Málaga. Many of the inhabitants who fled into the surrounding countryside, for no reason other than fear, were rounded up and shot. After such expeditions, the death squad would return to Lucena with lorries loaded with furniture, bedding, sewing machines, books, clocks and other household items.108"

Cordoba

"The rural labourers of the local CNT advanced on the town armed only with axes, sickles, sticks and a few shotguns. After a clash on the outskirts of the town, in which one Civil Guard and eleven workers died, they were driven off by a force of Civil Guards and right-wing civilians. The next day, 20 July, the workers returned to find the centre of the town defended by well over two hundred Civil Guards, Falangists and landowners distributed among several strategically chosen buildings that dominated the town. They threatened to kill a number of hostages they were holding in the town hall, including a woman at an advanced stage of pregnancy. The workers cut off their water, electricity and food supplies. Effectively controlling the town, the anarchists declared libertarian communism, abolished money and requisitioned food and jewellery as a first step towards common ownership of property. Coupons were issued for food. The revolutionary committee detained prominent members of the middle class in a nearby old people’s residence and ordered that none be harmed. A church and a convent where the rebels had established themselves were seriously damaged in the fighting and the parish priest killed. Moreover, in acts of revenge for personal grudges, eleven right-wingers were murdered before the town was captured by the military rebels. Sánchez Ramírez rejected proposals for a truce, fearing that surrender would lead to his death and that of his men.114

...On 28 July, just as the besieged Civil Guards were about to give up, a large rebel relief column left Córdoba under the orders of Colonel Eduardo Sáenz de Buruaga. It consisted of Civil Guards, Legionarios and Moorish Regulares, equipped with artillery and machine-guns. The workers, with virtually no firearms, were unable to put up much resistance and the column suffered only four wounded in taking Baena street by street. The Regulares led the assault, killing indiscriminately and looting. Survivors found in the street or in houses along the way were rounded up and taken to the town-hall square. The official Civil Guard account of the events in Baena admitted that ‘the slightest denunciation would see the accused shot’. Sáenz de Buruaga took refreshment in a café with one of his men, Félix Moreno de la Cova, the son of a rich landowner from Palma del Río. Meanwhile, Sánchez Ramírez, blind with rage, organized a massacre that echoed his experience in Morocco. First he killed the five male hostages detained in the town hall. Then he had lines of prisoners – many of whom had nothing to do with the CNT union or the events of the previous week – lie face down in the square. Completely beside himself, he insisted on shooting most of them himself. The occupying forces aided by local rightists continued to bring in more prisoners to replace those being shot.

ABC referred to these extra-judicial killings as the application of ‘exemplary punishment’ to ‘all leading elements’ and of ‘the rigour of the law’ to anyone found with arms. The paper’s final comment was ‘it is certain that the town of Baena will never forget the scenes of horror created by so many murders committed there and the activities of the liberating forces’. Nevertheless, despite ABC’s comments, Sáenz de Buruaga’s forces captured neither union leaders nor individuals with arms. Nearly all of these had withdrawn to the old people’s residence where the right-wing prisoners were being kept. The ‘so many murders’ were largely the consequence of Sáenz de Buruaga’s irresponsibility in going for a drink while Sánchez Ramírez conducted the massacre.

The many leftists who fled and packed into the residence used the hostages as shields in the hope that this would restrain Sáenz de Buruaga’s pursuing forces. It did not and many were found dead by the windows, shot with munitions possessed only by the attackers. Most of the anarchists who had taken refuge there fled, but a few stayed until the last moment, murdering many of the remaining hostages in reprisal for the executions in the square. In total, eighty-one hostages were killed. Many local people were convinced that, but for the massacre organized by Sánchez Ramírez, the hostages would have survived. Nevertheless, the discovery of their corpses led to a further massacre in an orgy of revenge so indiscriminate that several right-wingers were also victims. Masses of left-wing prisoners were shot, including an eight-year-old boy.115 On 5 August, with Sáenz de Buruaga’s column having gone to Córdoba, Baena was attacked unsuccessfully by anarchist militia. This in turn intensified the rhythm of executions within the town.116

On the night of 31 July, Queipo de Llano felt the need to justify, in his nightly broadcast, the repression in Baena, by referring to ‘real horrors, monstrous crimes that cannot be mentioned lest they bring shame on our people, and that produced after the fall of Baena, the punishment that is natural when troops are possessed by the indignation provoked by such crimes’.117 Two months later, the middle classes of Baena hosted a ceremony at which Sáenz de Buruaga presented Sánchez Ramírez with the military medal in the still bloodstained square. Nearly seven hundred people were killed by, or on the orders of, Sánchez Ramírez, Sáenz de Buruaga and, over the next five months, the man named as military judge. This was the leading local landowner, Manuel Cubillo Jiménez, whose wife and three young sons were among those killed in the residence by gunfire from the forces of Sáenz de Buruaga. He was implacable in his desire for revenge. Many townspeople fled eastwards to the Republican-held province of Jaén. The women who remained were subjected to various forms of sexual abuse and humiliation, from rape to head-shaving and being forced to drink castor oil. Over six hundred children were left orphaned, including cases of toddlers left to fend for themselves.118"

Granada

"Events in Granada were significantly different from those in Cádiz, Córdoba and Seville. The military commander, General Miguel Campins, had arrived in Granada only on 11 July and was not party to the conspiracy. Loyal to the Republic, he refused to obey Queipo’s order to declare martial law. However, Campins did send a telegram putting himself under the orders of his friend General Franco, whose deputy he had been at the Zaragoza Military Academy. Campins was arrested by rebel officers and it was alleged that his hesitation had led to the coup failing in Jaén, Málaga and Almería. Queipo declared on the radio that, if he had been less of a coward, he would have committed suicide.130 Campíns was tried in Seville for ‘rebellion’ on 14 August and shot two days later. Franco sent letters asking that mercy be shown to Campins, but Queipo tore them up.131"

"In the course of the war, more than five thousand civilians were shot in Granada, many at the cemetery. The cemetery’s caretaker went mad and, on 4 August, was committed to an asylum. Three weeks later, his replacement and his family moved from the lodge at the cemetery gates because the shots and the cries and screams of the dying had made it unbearable for them. Large numbers of people from all over the Alpujárras were buried in a common grave in a canyon near Órgiva.136"

"In Granada itself, he was closely connected with the moderate left. His views were well known and it had not escaped the notice of the town’s oligarchs that he thought that the Catholic conquest of Moorish Granada in 1492 had been a disaster. Flouting a central tenet of Spanish right-wing thinking, Lorca believed that the conquest had destroyed a unique civilization and created ‘a wasteland populated by the worst bourgeoisie in Spain today’. Recent research has also added another element which was resentment of the success of Lorca’s father, Federico García Rodríguez. He had become rich, buying and selling land in Asquerosa to the north-west of Granada (now renamed Valderrubio). To the annoyance of other landowners, he paid his employees well, lent his neighbours money when they were in danger of foreclosure and even built homes for his workers. His friendship with the Socialist Minister, Fernando de los Ríos, was another reason for resentment. Among his political and economic rivals were the lawyer and businessman Juan Luis Trescastro Medina and Horacio Roldán Quesada of Acción Popular. Roldán Quesada had hoped to marry the poet’s sister Concha, but she had married Manuel Fernández Montesinos, who became Mayor of the city.137"

"Trescastro later boasted that he personally had killed the poet and others, including the humanist Amelia Agustina González Blanco. ‘We were sick to the teeth of queers in Granada. We killed him for being a queer and her for being a whore.’ On the day after the poet’s death, Trescastro entered a bar and declared: ‘We just killed Federico García Lorca. I put two bullets in his arse for being a queer.’141 Murdered with Lorca were a disabled primary school teacher, Dióscoro Galindo, and two anarchists who had fought in the defence of the Albaicín.142 The cowardly murder of a great poet was, however, like that of the loyal General Campins, merely a drop in an ocean of political slaughter."

"A prominent figure in the right-wing support for the coup, the banker and lawyer José María Bérriz Madrigal, wrote to the head of his bank who had been on holiday in Portugal, on 18 August: ‘The way forward is to win or die killing rogues. The army wants to destroy by the roots the noxious plant that was consuming Spain. And I think they’re going to do it.’ On 22 August, he wrote approvingly: ‘Lots more shootings, union leaders, schoolteachers, small-town officials and doctors are going down by the dozen.’143 The following day, the American poet and novelist Baroness de Zglinitzki, a firm rebel supporter, commented with less enthusiasm that the executions were ‘increasing at a rate that alarmed and sickened all thinking people’.144"

"The outrages in Granada were seen by the local bourgeoisie as acceptable because they were perceived as less appalling than the atrocities that they were told were being committed by the Republicans elsewhere. Their perception of events elsewhere was fed by Queipo de Llano’s broadcasts. Thus they included the notion that people were flung from the cliff at Ronda, that men were impaled alive on stakes then forced to watch as their wives and daughters ‘were first raped before their eyes, then drenched with petrol and burned alive’, that nuns were exposed naked in the shop windows at Antequera, that priests had their stomachs cut open and filled with quicklime, that nuns were raped and priests tortured on the streets of Barcelona, that the sea around Málaga was full of the headless bodies of all those who were not anarchists, that in Madrid ‘famous doctors, lawyers, men of science and letters, actors and artists’ were being shot as fast as they could be caught. Baroness de Zglinitzki believed Queipo’s broadcasts to the extent of writing that the Republican government, ‘composed of anarchists, jailbirds and Russians, were determined to exterminate every man of brains and outstanding ability in Spain’.147"

Malaga

"Thousands of arrests were made. As the prisons overflowed, concentration camps had to be opened at Torremolinos and Alhaurín el Grande. After the immediate slaughter, the repression was organized by the newly appointed Civil Governor, Captain Francisco García Alted, a Civil Guard and Falangist. It was implemented by Colonel Bohórquez, under the overall jurisdiction of General Felipe Acedo Colunga, chief prosecutor of the Army of Occupation, as the rebel forces now called themselves. Trials were no longer justified by the application of the edict of martial law but rather on the pseudo-legal basis of ‘urgent summary courts martial’. The scale of the repression carried out is revealed by a report by Bohórquez in April 1937. In the seven weeks following the capture of Málaga, 3,401 people had been tried of whom 1,574 had been executed. In order to try so many people in such a short time, a large team of prosecutors had been brought from Seville. The trials, often of several people at once, provided no facilities for the accused’s defence and rarely lasted for more than a few minutes.152"

"Even before the occupiers began the executions, tens of thousands of terrified refugees fled via the only possible escape route, the 109 miles along the coast road to Almería. Their flight was spontaneous and they had no military protection. They were shelled from the sea by the guns of the warships Cervera and Baleares, bombed from the air and then machine-gunned by the pursuing Italian units. The scale of the repression inside the fallen city explained why they were ready to run the gauntlet. Along the roughly surfaced road, littered with corpses and the wounded, terrified people trudged, without food or water. Dead mothers were seen, their babies still suckling at their breasts. There were children dead and others lost in the confusion as their many families frantically tried to find them.153

The reports of numerous eyewitnesses, including Lawrence Fernsworth, the correspondent of The Times, made it impossible for rebel supporters to deny one of the most horrendous atrocities perpetrated against Republican civilians. It has been calculated that there were more than 100,000 on the road, some with nothing, others carrying kitchen utensils and bedding. It is impossible to know accurately but the death toll seems to have been over three thousand. The Canadian doctor Norman Bethune, his assistant Hazen Size and his English driver, the future novelist T. C. Worsley, shuttled back and forth day and night for three days, carrying as many as they could. Bethune described old people giving up and lying down by the roadside to die and ‘children without shoes, their feet swollen to twice their size crying helplessly from pain, hunger and fatigue’. Worsley wrote harrowingly of what he saw:

The refugees still filled the road and the further we got the worse was their condition. A few of them were wearing rubber shoes, but most feet were bound round with rags, many were bare, nearly all were bleeding. There were seventy miles of people desperate with hunger and exhaustion and still the streams showed no signs of diminishing … We decided to fill the lorry with kids. Instantly we were the centre of a mob of raving shouting people, entreating and begging, at this sudden miraculous apparition. The scene was fantastic, of the shouting faces of the women holding up naked babies above their heads, pleading, crying and sobbing with gratitude or disappointment.154

Their arrival brought horror and confusion to Almería. It was also greeted by a major bombing raid which deliberately targeted the centre of the town where the exhausted refugees thronged the streets. The bombing of the refugees on the road and in the streets of Almería was a symbol of what ‘liberation’ by the rebels really meant."

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