by Paul Preston
All these sacas were initiated with documentation on Dirección General de Seguridad notepaper indicating that the prisoners were either to be released or to be taken to Chinchilla. When the order was for them to go to Alcalá de Henares, they usually arrived safely. This indicates that ‘liberty’ and ‘Chinchilla’ were codewords for elimination.59 The specific orders for the evacuations of prisoners were not signed by Carrillo, nor by any member of the Junta de Defensa. Until 22 November, such orders were signed by Manuel Muñoz’s second-in-command in the Dirección General de Seguridad, the head of the police Vicente Girauta Linares. Until he followed Muñoz to Valencia, Girauta was under the orders of Serrano Poncela, Muñoz’s successor for Madrid. Thereafter, the orders were signed either by Serrano Poncela himself, or else by Girauta’s successor as head of the Madrid police, Bruno Carreras Villanueva.60 In the Causa General, there are several documents signed by Serrano Poncela. Its published version reproduces two. The one dated 26 November 1936 read, ‘I request that you release the individuals listed on the back of this page,’ of whom there were twenty-six named. The document dated 27 November read, ‘Please release the prisoners mentioned on the two attached sheets,’ which had 106 names. All those on these two lists were assassinated.61 No explicit orders for the execution have been found.
Important evidence about the responsibility for what happened was provided in the post-war testimony of the Communist and close friend of José Cazorla, Ramón Torrecilla Guijarro. He stated that the entire process was directed by Segundo Serrano Poncela, supervised by members of his Public Order Delegation and implemented by agents of the Dirección General de Seguridad. These ‘agents’ were the policemen from the DGS and members of the rearguard militias of the MVR led by Federico Manzano Govantes. Torrecilla Guijarro himself admitted that three members of the Delegation, himself, Manuel Rascón Ramírez of the CNT and Manuel Ramos Martínez of the FAI, together with three policemen, Agapito Sainz, Lino Delgado and Andrés Urrésola, went to the Cárcel Modelo after 10 o’clock on the night of 7 November. Their orders from Serrano Poncela were to select prisoners and they began to go through the file-cards dividing them into military men, professionals and aristocrats, workers and those whose profession was unknown.
Between 3.00 and 4.00 a.m., they were about halfway through the task when their boss, Serrano Poncela, arrived. Given the urgency of the situation, he ordered them to prepare those so far selected for loading on to buses. He allegedly said that this was in fulfilment of an order telephoned from Tarancón by the fleeing Minister of the Interior, Ángel Galarza, on 6 November, to which Serrano Poncela added that those preparing the expedition knew that it was for ‘definitive evacuation’ of the prisoners, which presumably meant death. Accordingly, the categorization process was abandoned. Again, the prisoners had their wrists tied together with cord, usually in twos, and were dispossessed of everything of value. Between 9 and 10 the following morning, 8 November, seven to nine double-decker buses and two large single-deck charabancs arrived. The prisoners were loaded aboard and the expedition set off, escorted by armed militiamen and accompanied by the anarchist Manuel Rascón Ramírez and the three policemen, Sainz, Delgado and Urrésola.62 In the declarations made by those later interrogated by the Francoist police, there are no references to the convoys on this or any other occasion facing any difficulties from the anarchist militias guarding the roads out of Madrid. This suggests that the deal reached on the evening of 7 November between the CNT and JSU was being implemented. It is probable that Rascón Ramírez went along to ensure easy passage through anarchist checkpoints by confirming that the expedition had CNT–FAI approval.63
What happened that morning of 8 November at the Cárcel Modelo seems to have been the standard practice employed during the subsequent sacas. From that day, Carrillo had started to publish a series of decrees that would ensure Communist control of the security forces within the capital and put an end to the myriad parallel police forces. On 9 November, Carrillo issued two decrees that constituted a significant step towards the centralized control of the police and security forces. The first required the surrender of all arms not in authorized hands. The second stated that the internal security of the capital would be the exclusive responsibility of forces organized by the Council for Public Order. This signified the dissolution, on paper at least, of all checas.64 Under the conditions of the siege, Carrillo was thus able to impose by emergency decree measures that had been beyond the government. Nevertheless, there was a considerable delay between the announcement of the decree and its successful implementation. The anarchists resisted as long as they could and the Communists never relinquished some of their checas.
Shortly after taking up office, Carrillo had called a meeting with representatives of the Comité Provincial de Investigación Pública. He reminded them that, when the CPIP had been created, Manuel Muñoz had said it was a temporary structure while the Dirección General de Seguridad was being purged, after which some of its members would be incorporated into the police. Carrillo declared that the moment had arrived.65 Accordingly, by his decree of 9 November, he returned the services of security and investigation to the now reformed police and suppressed all those groups run by political parties or trade unions. This meant the end of the CPIP, known as the Checa de Fomento. In fact, several of its members, including Manuel Rascón Ramírez and Manuel Ramos Martínez, were already working with the Public Order Delegation. The treasurer of the Checa de Fomento handed over 1,750,000 pesetas in cash, gold to the value of 600,000 pesetas and 460 chests full of valuable household items, including silver, porcelain, clocks and radios, that had been taken in house searches and from those arrested. Other items of jewellery had been regularly delivered to the Dirección General de Seguridad.66
Explicitly included within these reformed services was ‘everything relative to the administration of the arrest and release of prisoners, as well as the movement, transfer etc of those under arrest’. They were under the control of the Public Order Delegation, which consisted of eight delegates chaired by Segundo Serrano Poncela with the Sub-Director General of Security, Vicente Girauta Linares, as his second-in-command and technical adviser. It will be recalled that one of the eight delegates, Arturo García de la Rosa, told Ian Gibson that this body began to function in the early hours of the morning of 7 November. This was confirmed by Ramón Torrecilla when interrogated in November 1939, which underlines Carrillo’s own admission that his team began to function before they had been officially named by Miaja at 11 a.m. and certainly before the first meeting of the Junta de Defensa in the evening.67
Two weeks after the creation of the Public Order Delegation in the DGS, under Serrano Poncela, Vicente Girauta followed Manuel Muñoz to Valencia and was replaced by Bruno Carreras, a member of the CPIP who had been accepted as a professional policeman and rose swiftly to become the inspector in charge of the city’s most important police station, the Comisaría de Buenavista. The post carried with it the position of Inspector General (Comisario General) with authority over the other eleven inspectors. This effectively made Carreras second-in-command of the Dirección General de Seguridad.68 What all of this makes indisputably clear is that all functions of the DGS were controlled by Serrano Poncela. However, it has to be noted that he, in turn, followed the instructions of Carrillo or of his deputy José Cazorla.
The Public Order Delegation took over the activities, and absorbed many of the personnel, of the CPIP. Control of roads in and out of the capital was to be in the hands of the police, the Assault Guards and Rearguard Security Militias (MVR) and co-ordinated by Serrano Poncela’s Delegation. The Delegation had a representative in each police station and in each of the principal prisons. According to Carrillo, the only opposition to his centralization measures came from the anarchists. Indeed, the closure of Felipe Sandoval’s checa in the Cine Europa was resisted and eventually required the intervention of the Assault Guards. Carrillo’s measures constituted the institutionalization of the repression under t
he Public Order Delegation in the DGS. Despite the presence of two CNT–FAI members and the fact that many ex-members of the component groups of the CPIP now became policemen, the Delegation was dominated by the Communists. They were thus able to push forward the reconstruction of the Republican state which had been a crucial necessity since the military coup had shattered the apparatus of government.69
Within Serrano Poncela’s Delegation, there were three sub-sections. The first dealt with investigation, interrogations and petitions for release. This was headed by Manuel Rascón Ramírez of the CNT. After interrogations had been carried out, this section made recommendations to the Delegation and final decisions were taken by Carrillo. This function was entirely compatible with the decisions taken at the meeting between JSU and CNT members on the evening of 7 November. The second sub-section, headed by Serrano Poncela himself, dealt with prisons, prisoners and prison transfers. According to Rascón, it used the Dawn Squad and small tribunals of militiamen set up in each prison to go through the file-cards of the prisoners. One such group in Porlier prison was run by Felipe Sandoval. The third sub-section dealt with the personnel of the police and other more or less official armed groups in the rearguard. Headed by another close JSU collaborator of Cazorla, Santiago Álvarez Santiago, it evaluated the reliability of existing policemen and also decided which members of the old checas could be incorporated into the police. For all these jobs, the Public Order Delegation could draw on the files and personnel of the technical section of the DGS.70
The procedures that would be applied to prisoners between 18 November and 6 December were established on 10 November at a meeting of the Public Order Delegation. Serrano Poncela laid down three categories: army officers with the rank of captain and above; Falangists; other rightists. This was roughly similar to what had been agreed at the meeting on 7 November between members of the CNT–FAI and representatives of the JSU, one of whom had almost certainly been Serrano Poncela himself. To supervise the process, Rascón Ramírez of the CNT and Torrecilla Guijarro of the PCE were in charge of appointing those who would in turn select the prisoners to be executed. Rascón and Torrecilla named a ‘responsible’ and a deputy for each prison who in turn set up a number of three-man tribunals to select the prisoners. When these tribunals had made up their lists, they were taken to Rascón who passed them to Serrano Poncela. He then signed orders for their ‘release’, which meant their execution. According to Torrecilla, those expeditions of prisoners that arrived safely at their destination consisted of men not listed for execution by the prison tribunals. Serrano Poncela had to report every day to Carrillo in his office in the Junta de Defensa (in the Palace of Juan March in Calle Núñez de Balboa in the Barrio de Salamanca). Carrillo also often visited the office of Serrano Poncela in nearby Calle Serrano.71
That ‘release’ (execution) orders came from Serrano Poncela was confirmed by the declaration of another policeman, Álvaro Marasa Barasa. In fact, the tribunals established after the August events in the Cárcel Modelo had already drawn up lists of candidates to be shot, some of whom had been executed in the course of September and October. Now, agents would arrive at each prison late at night with a general order signed by Serrano Poncela for the ‘liberation’ of the prisoners listed on the back or on separate sheets. The director of the prison would hand them over and they would then be taken to wherever Serrano Poncela had indicated verbally to the agents. The subsequent phase of the process, the transportation and execution of the prisoners in the early hours of the following morning, was supervised by the Inspector General of the rearguard militias, Federico Manzano Govantes, or his deputy on the day. The actual tasks were carried out each day by different groups of militiamen, sometimes anarchists from the rearguard militias, sometimes Communists from the checa in the Calle Marqués de Riscal and sometimes from the Fifth Regiment. The prisoners were obliged to leave all their belongings, which were handed over to Santiago Álvarez Santiago. They were then tied together in pairs and loaded on to buses. Usually, Manuel Rascón or Arturo García de la Rosa went along and delivered the coup de grâce to prisoners not killed when the militiamen fired.72
On Monday 9 November, Jesús de Galíndez of the PNV had gone to the Cárcel Modelo to collect some Basque prisoners whose release had been approved by the DGS. This was something that he had been doing regularly over the course of the previous two months. On this day, however, he noted a dramatic change. The prison was now in the hands of militiamen who were reluctant to accept the release orders that he carried. After a fierce argument, they agreed. However, as he left, his driver told him that, while he was waiting outside in the car, a truckload of militiamen had arrived to be greeted by one of the sentries saying, ‘Today you can’t have any complaints since you’ve had plenty of meat.’ This was understood by Galíndez to be a reference to the shootings that had taken place on Sunday 8 November.73
If Galíndez knew what was happening, it is impossible that Carrillo did not. This is demonstrated by the minutes of the meeting of the Junta de Defensa on the night of 11 November. The Councillor for Evacuation, Francisco Caminero Rodríguez (of the anarchist youth), asked if the Cárcel Modelo had been evacuated. Carrillo responded by saying that the necessary measures had been taken to organize the evacuations of prisoners but that the operation had had to be suspended. At this, the Communist Isidoro Diéguez Dueñas, second-in-command to Antonio Mije at the War Council, declared that the evacuation must continue given the seriousness of the problem of the prisoners. Carrillo responded that the suspension had been necessary because of protests emanating from the diplomatic corps, presumably a reference to his meeting with Schlayer. Although the minutes are extremely brief, they make it indisputably clear that Carrillo knew what was happening to the prisoners, if only as a result of the complaints by Schlayer.74
In fact, after the mass executions of 7–8 November, there were no more sacas until 18 November, after which they continued on a lesser scale until 6 December. Jesús de Galíndez, who was in constant touch with both the DGS and the various prisons as he tried to secure the release of Basque prisoners and members of the clergy, described the procedure that was followed. His account broadly coincides with those of Torrecilla Guijarro and Marasa Barasa. The tribunals would examine the antecedents of the prisoners to decide if they were dangerous – anyone so deemed would be executed. Those who had someone to vouch for them were released. Others remained in prison. Mistakes were made, with evident enemies of the Republic surviving and entirely innocent individuals being executed. Among the survivors were Manuel Valdés Larrañaga, a Falangist who was later Franco’s Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Agustín Muñoz Grandes, who would become Franco’s Minister of War and Vice-President, and Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, one of the principal Falangist leaders and future minister under Franco.75
According to a prisoner held in Porlier, one of the tribunals there, known as the ‘tribunal de la muerte’, was headed by Felipe Sandoval. Since its members were usually drunk, its decisions were largely arbitrary. Elsewhere, the process of selection was more systematic and was facilitated by the exhaustive records held in the Technical Section of the DGS. This consisted of the files on all those arrested since the beginning of the war, with the reasons for the arrest together with details of their fate – release, imprisonment, trial, execution. The Section also held the records of right-wing groups that had been seized by various militia groups. These files had been consolidated into one large archive at the DGS. There was relatively little material on the Falange, which had managed to destroy its records, but the files of Acción Popular, the Carlists and the Unión Militar Española were virtually complete. When the Junta de Defensa was created, the Technical Section’s holdings were passed over to Serrano Poncela’s Public Order Delegation.76
The sacas and executions, known collectively as ‘Paracuellos’, constituted the greatest single atrocity in Republican territory during the war, its horror explained but not justified by the terrifying conditions in the
besieged capital. Unlike previous sacas, triggered by popular outrage at bombing raids or news brought by refugees of rebel atrocities, these extra-judicial murders were carried out as a result of political-military decisions. They were organized by the Council for Public Order but they could not have been carried out without help from other elements in the rearguard militias. In the immediate aftermath, little was known about the events at Paracuellos and Torrejón on the road to Alcalá de Henares since they were not reported in the press. However, an investigation was initiated by a group of diplomats: the doyen of the diplomatic corps, the Ambassador of Chile, Aurelio Núñez Morgado; the Chargé d’Affaires of Argentina, Edgardo Pérez Quesada; the British Chargé d’Affaires, George Ogilvie-Forbes; Felix Schlayer, the German who, despite his questionable diplomatic status, was recognized by the Republic as Norwegian Chargé d’Affaires; and a representative of the Red Cross, Dr Georges Henny.
The government was bombarded with diplomatic protests, particularly from the two most openly pro-rebel diplomats, Schlayer and Núñez Morgado. Núñez Morgado’s sympathy for Franco’s cause actually saw him cross the lines to take the Romanian and Argentine representatives to Toledo to address the rebels ostensibly on behalf of the diplomatic corps.77 Schlayer’s position was extremely questionable given his German citizenship and consular post. Ogilvie-Forbes was led to ask ‘what exactly is the position of Schlayer, who sometimes calls himself Norwegian Ambassador?’78 According to the wife of the Reuters correspondent, Julio Álvarez del Vayo was ‘most insulting about Schlayer of Norway and has written the Norwegian Government demanding Schlayer’s removal’.79 Despite their blatant hostility to the Republic, the protests of Schlayer and Núñez Morgado led to the Red Cross representative, Georges Henny, being able to prise from the Junta de Defensa a list of 1,600 names of prisoners who had been taken from the Cárcel Modelo, of whom 1,300 had not reached Alcalá de Henares.80
