by Paul Preston
Another atrocity took place on 31 August at the hands of a small group of militiamen returning, embittered, from a disastrous attempt to retake Llerena. Their column had been bombed and strafed by German aircraft and nearly wiped out. A detachment of Falangists had finished off the wounded. The dead were not buried. Instead, the stomachs of the corpses were split open with bayonets, filled with petrol and ignited. The few that survived vented their anger by executing thirty-three landowners and businessmen. On 8 September, another priest was murdered. The last murders committed in Azuaga while it was still in Republican hands were the work of the militia group headed by Rafael Maltrana, the Mayor of Llerena. He controlled an area between Azuaga to Fuenteovejuna (Córdoba) where, on 22 September, his group loaded on to seven trucks fifty-seven men, including five priests and seven Franciscan monks. Six miles east of Azuaga, the first six trucks stopped and forty-three prisoners including the five lay priests were shot. The seventh truck carrying the remaining fourteen prisoners, among them the seven monks, carried on to Azuaga, where they were shot by Maltrana’s militiamen.
Two days later, after a sustained artillery bombardment, Azuaga was easily conquered by two columns of Regulares under the command of Major Alfonso Gómez Cobián, fresh from victory over a column of eight thousand refugees. In Azuaga as elsewhere, the repression was implacable. In justification, Gómez Cobián reported that 175 rightists had been hacked to death with hatchets. This was an exaggeration of the eighty-seven people who had been shot in and around Azuaga. However, the Franciscan Father Antonio Aracil provided documentation of horrendous tortures inflicted on the clergy.65
In contrast, in Fuente del Maestre to the west of the road traversed by the African columns, the Defence Committee managed to restrain the local left and there were only two deaths among the prisoners. After the fall of Los Santos de Maimona on 5 August, and with the African columns approaching, the Committee had fled and the prisoners were released. However, several hundred armed leftists arrived and took over Fuente del Maestre, rearrested the prisoners and killed a further eleven men. A column of Regulares appeared, led by Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Delgado Serrano, and a massive repression began. Over three hundred people were shot, including nearly twenty women. Most of the men were agricultural labourers. Many women considered to be leftist were raped and virtually all had their heads shaven and were forced to drink castor oil.66 In Barcarrota, where there was only one right-wing victim, those shot after the town was occupied on 25 August included all those prominent Socialists and municipal officials who had not managed to flee. Among them were Joaquín and Juan Sosa Hormigo, brothers of the parliamentary deputy José. Joaquín was shot on 24 October 1936 and Juan on 10 January 1937 after horrific torture. When Juan’s body was exhumed years later, it was discovered that his arms and legs had been pulled from his torso.67
Inevitably, as the rebel ‘cleaning up’ operations proceeded, there were ever more refugees in flight. Some were fleeing southwards from Badajoz and Mérida towards others who had fled northwards into Badajoz from the repression in Huelva. The occupation by the Carlist columns of Luis Redondo of the mining towns of the sierra in the north of Huelva provoked a substantial exodus. Already as towns and villages along the road from Seville to Badajoz had been taken by the African columns, many had fled westwards. The result was that a large number of desperate refugees came together in an ever shrinking pocket of the western part of Badajoz. They were cut off to the east by the Seville–Mérida road and to the north by the Mérida–Badajoz road, to the south by the advancing columns, and to the west by the Portuguese frontier. By mid-September, several thousand people including children, as well as the old and infirm, had congregated between Jérez de los Caballeros and Fregenal de la Sierra. Many were in Valencia del Ventoso, where the local population did its best to feed them at rapidly organized soup kitchens.
When Fregenal fell on 18 September, faced with the prospect of being driven into rebel hands the remnants of the Defence Committees of several towns convened at Valencia del Ventoso. The organization was assumed by municipal and union leaders including José Sosa Hormigo, the Socialist deputy for Badajoz, the Mayor of Zafra, José González Barrero, and the Mayor of Fuente de Cantos, Modesto José Lorenzana Macarro, who had escaped the night before his town fell on 5 August.68 They decided to undertake a forced march towards Republican lines, dividing this desperate human mass into two groups. The first contingent consisted of about two thousand people, the second of approximately six thousand. The first had a dozen men armed with rifles and about one hundred with shotguns, the second about twice as many. These exiguous forces had to protect two lengthy columns of horses, mules and other domestic animals and carts containing whatever possessions the refugees had managed to grab from their homes before taking flight. Young children, women with babes in arms, others pregnant, and many old people made up the bulk of the columns. It is impossible to say exactly how many refugees marched. The two contingents together have come to be known as ‘la columna de los ocho mil’ (the column of the eight thousand), although they seem to have marched separately.
The first, smaller column, led by José Sosa Hormigo, successfully crossed the road from Seville to Mérida between Los Santos de Maimona and Fuente de Cantos. They then headed for Valencia de las Torres north of Llerena and reached Castuera in the Republican zone. The larger, slower column crossed the main road further south between Monesterio and Fuente de Cantos. Inevitably, the column spread out and broke up into several groups, the aged and those with young families moving much more slowly than others. It had been a particularly hot summer, streams were dry and there was little water. The dust clouds thrown up by the progress of the refugees made it easy for rebel reconnaissance aircraft to pinpoint their position. Queipo de Llano’s headquarters in Seville was fully informed of the movements, the civilian composition of the columns and their sparse armament. Nevertheless, preparations were made to attack them as if they were well-equipped military units.
A force of five hundred well-armed soldiers, Civil Guards and Falangist and Carlist militia under the command of Major Alfonso Gómez Cobián prepared an elaborate ambush between Reina and Fuente del Arco, about twenty miles to the east of the main road. Machine-guns were placed among the trees of a hill overlooking the route. When the refugees were within range, they opened fire. Many were killed and wounded by the fusillades of bullets. More than two thousand were taken prisoner and transported to Llerena. A smaller refugee group that was straggling behind was met by a unit of soldiers flying a Republican flag. They believed that they had reached safety when, in fact, they had fallen into the hands of rebel troops under the command of Captain Gabriel Tassara. They were lured to Fuente del Arco, where they were detained. Some who tried to escape were shot on the spot. The remainder were loaded on to a goods train and taken to Llerena.
When Gómez Cobián’s ambush took place, many hundreds scattered into the surrounding countryside. Families were separated, some never to meet again. Some wandered in the unfamiliar territory for weeks, living off the land as best they could. Many were killed or captured by search parties of Civil Guards and mounted Falangists. Of the rest, some went back to their villages and an uncertain fate and a few hundred made it through to the Republican zone. In Llerena, where the prisoners taken by Gómez Cobián and Tassara were held, a massacre took place over the next month, with prisoners machine-gunned each morning in the bullring. Some prisoners were obliged to dig their own graves before being shot. Others were brought back to their places of origin for execution after right-wingers came from their pueblos to identify them. Many women were raped. Since the perpetrators were married men from well-known local families, considerable efforts were made to conceal their crimes. Many Andalusian prisoners were taken to Seville and imprisoned in the bilges of the ship Cabo Carvoeiro, moored in the Guadalquivir river. With inadequate food and water, in the baking heat of the late summer, few survived.69
In his nightly broadcast on 18 September,
Queipo de Llano boasted about what he described as a great military victory by Gómez Cobián over what he called ‘an enemy force’. After accusing the components of the refugee column of cowardice for letting themselves be defeated by five hundred soldiers, he spoke of the prisoners including many wounded. He ended with sinister overtones. ‘There are also numerous women, some schoolteachers and other educated professionals.’70
Before the ambush, when the larger refugee column had got about ten miles beyond the Seville–Mérida road, it was joined by a man fleeing from Fuente de Cantos. He told the Mayor, Lorenzana Macarro, that his wife and five daughters had been arrested by the occupying forces. Ignoring the frantic protests of his father and numerous friends, Lorenzana left the column, half crazed with fear that, because he had failed to stop the massacre of rightists in the town church on 19 July, revenge would be taken on his wife and daughters. He hoped that if he gave himself up he might be able to save them. After some days wandering in the countryside, he was captured by a patrol of mounted Falangists. Along with a number of prisoners from the refugee column, Lorenzana was brought into Fuente de Cantos. Once on the outskirts, he was tied to the tail of a horse. He fell and was dragged around the town square. He was beaten, then tied to a chair outside the Ayuntamiento, where local rightists kicked him, spat on him and insulted him. He was then shot against the wall of the church. Lorenzana’s battered corpse was left all night in the town square. The following day, his body was taken around all the streets of the town on the municipal rubbish cart, ending at the local cemetery, where it was burned. His wife and daughters were then released from prison.71
The repression continued throughout the province. One of the devices used to capture leftists was broadcasts of ‘edicts of pardon’ to the effect that those who gave themselves up voluntarily would face no reprisals. Those naive enough to do so rarely lived to tell the tale. A typical case took place at Olivenza, near the Portuguese border. Many rightists had been detained and demands made on the landowners among them for wages unpaid since 1932. The Socialist Mayor, Ignacio Rodríguez Méndez, ensured that no prisoners were killed and, to avoid a bloodbath, negotiated the peaceful surrender of the town on 17 August. After Olivenza was taken, the new authorities issued a declaration which returned working conditions to their pre-1936 level and also stated that ‘all those who are not charged with acts involving bloodshed … can return to their homes certain that our open arms are waiting to receive them’. Over the months following, 130 people from Olivenza and surrounding towns were executed in the town.72 In nearby Valverde de Leganés, there had been no violence before it fell to the rebels but more than one hundred men had fled for fear of the repression. On 2 January 1937, five men who handed themselves over to a patrol of mounted Falangists were taken to a farm and shot. The Falangists then went to the homes of three of them and stole the domestic animals on which their widows and children depended for their livelihood.73
In the meantime, Yagüe’s forces had long since moved on, accompanied by foreign correspondents. Harold Cardozo, the enthusiastic Daily Mail correspondent with Castejón’s column, reported on the fate awaiting any captured militiamen. They faced ‘a ten-minute trial, a drive in a motor-lorry, accompanied by a priest, to some outlying barracks, a volley and a grave full of quicklime’.74 From Badajoz, Castejón had set off back towards Mérida in order to take the road to Madrid through the province of Cáceres. By 27 August 1936, Tella’s column had reached the bridge across the Tagus at Almaraz and shortly afterwards arrived at Navalmoral de la Mata in the north of Cáceres. Later that day, Castejón, Tella and Asensio merged their columns before the last town of importance on the way to Madrid, Talavera de la Reina in the province of Toledo. In two weeks, they had advanced 190 miles.75
In the course of the advance, Queipo de Llano outdid even his own record in misogynist remarks on 29 August when he referred to the capture between Navalmoral de la Mata and Talavera de la Reina of Republican women. Gloating over the savagery of the repression, he fed widespread fears that women were given to Moroccan mercenaries for gang rape, remarking with relish, ‘Great quantities of munitions, ten trucks and many prisoners, including women, have fallen into our hands. The Regulares will be delighted and Pasionaria will be really jealous.’ The sexual comment appeared in ABC but was censored in the other Seville paper, La Unión.76 It was shortly after this broadcast that Queipo de Llano’s chief of staff, Major Cuesta Monereo, issued orders to the press not to publish the exact words of the broadcasts because ‘they are not appropriate and their publication is not convenient’. A journalist who read transcripts of the complete broadcasts observed later, ‘they were nauseating. The published versions were censored to eliminate their crudity.’77
Queipo’s verbal excesses were often excused as the result of his being drunk, although efforts were made to suggest that he was teetotal. The Bloomsbury Group exile Gerald Brenan, who lived near Málaga, referred to ‘his whisky voice’. Brenan’s wife, the writer Gamel Woolsey, wrote:
I am told that he does not drink at all, but he has the mellow loose voice and the cheerful wandering manner of the habitual drinker. He talks for hours always perfectly at ease, sometimes he stumbles over a word and corrects himself with a complete lack of embarrassment, speaks of ‘these villainous Fascistas’ and an agonized voice can be heard behind him correcting him, ‘No, no, mi General, Marxistas.’ ‘What difference does it make’ – says the general and sweeps grandly on.78
The actor Edmundo Barbero recalled this notorious occasion on which Queipo revealed his contempt for the Falange, referring to ‘the fascist scum’, only to be corrected nervously by the hushed whisper of one of his staff ‘Marxist scum’. Major Cuesta Monereo revealed years later that Queipo was not teetotal but was not supposed to drink because he was an alcoholic with serious liver problems. Cuesta wrote: ‘How often did I, who do not drink, take a glass out of his hand just as he was about to raise it because I knew the damage it would cause him.’ On the occasion of the fall of Toledo, without realizing that the microphone was still live, at the end of his programme Queipo de Llano shouted: ‘Bring wine for fuck’s sake!’79
The columns reached Talavera de la Reina on 3 September.80 The American journalist John T. Whitaker, who travelled with them, gained the confidence of Varela, Yagüe, Castejón and other officers. They helped him avoid the rigid controls imposed on the majority of correspondents from the democracies who were transported to the front only after a battle and escorted by Franco’s propaganda staff. Such limits were rarely imposed on the newsmen from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Whitaker took a room in Talavera as his base for visits to the front. There he established a relationship with José Sainz, the provincial head of the Falange in Toledo. Sainz showed him a neatly kept notebook, saying: ‘I jot them down. I have personally executed 127 red prisoners.’ Of his two months at Talavera de la Reina, Whitaker wrote:
I slept there on an average of two nights a week. I never passed a night there without being awakened at dawn by the volleys of the firing squads in the yard of the Cuartel. There seemed no end to the killing. They were shooting as many at the end of the second month as in my first days in Talavera. They averaged perhaps thirty a day. I watched the men they took into the Cuartel. They were simple peasants and workers, Spanish Milquetoasts. It was sufficient to have carried a trade-union card, to have been a Freemason, to have voted for the Republic. If you were picked up or denounced for any one of these charges you were given a summary, two-minute hearing and capital punishment was formally pronounced. Any man who had held any office under the Re public was, of course, shot out of hand. And there were mopping-up operations along the roads. You would find four old peasant women heaped in a ditch; thirty and forty militiamen at a time, their hands roped behind them, shot down at the crossroads. I remember a bundle in a town square. Two youthful members of the Republican assault guards had been tied back to back with wire, covered with gasoline and burned alive.
On 21 September, Y
agüe’s forces captured the town of Santa Olalla. Whitaker was appalled by the shooting of captured militiamen in the main street:
I can never forget the first time I saw the mass execution of prisoners. I stood in the main street of Santa Olalla as seven trucks brought in the militiamen. They were unloaded and herded together. They had that listless, exhausted, beaten look of troops who can no longer stand against the steady pounding of the German bombs. Most of them had a soiled towel or a shirt in their hands – the white flags with which they had signalled their surrender. Two Franco officers passed out cigarettes among them and several Republicans laughed boyishly and self-consciously as they smoked their first cigarette in weeks. Suddenly an officer took me by the arm and said, ‘It’s time to get out of here.’ At the edge of this cluster of prisoners, six hundred-odd men, Moorish troopers were setting up two machine guns. The prisoners saw them as I saw them. The men seemed to tremble in one convulsion, as those in front, speechless with fright, rocked back on their heels, the color draining from their faces, their eyes opening with terror.81
