The Spanish Holocaust (54 page)

The Checa del Cine de Europa was one of the most notorious in Madrid, and among its members the thirty-six-year-old Santiago Aliques Bermúdez was the man responsible for the execution of prisoners. Along with an ex-bullfighter known as ‘El Bartolo’, Aliques led what was called the ‘defence group’ which is said to have committed several hundred murders of men and women, mostly in places on the outskirts of Madrid. Aliques was a common criminal with a long record of prison sentences for armed robbery. Among those murdered by his group were many women, several of whom were raped. Their only crime was to have been the wives and daughters of rightists. Indicative of the casually vicious way in which the Aliques gang went about its business was the murder of a woman because she had criticized the workers during a pre-war construction strike. Similarly, an old lady whose brother was a priest was arrested and executed for possessing religious medals. Even more gruesome was the case of the victim forced to dig his own grave by Aliques, who then killed him with the same pick he had had to use.
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Despite the complaints of corpses being seen on the streets, most of those killed were identified quickly, carefully registered by the Republican authorities and their relatives informed. In addition, on most days, the
Gaceta de Madrid
carried lists of unidentified corpses, with a physical description of the deceased and the place where they had been found. Moreover, in the Dirección General de Seguridad, there was an office where boxes of photographs of the corpses were kept for relatives of the missing to check.
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This was part of the Republican authorities’ efforts, albeit with uneven results, to put an end to the atrocities. That the government was not ignoring the repression was clear from the frequent public condemnation thereof, a phenomenon that had no equivalent in the rebel zone.

Among those who worked to limit the repression was the delegation of the Basque Nationalist Party (Partido Nacionalista Vasco – PNV) in Madrid. One of its most energetic members was Jesús de Galíndez, who wrote later that ‘only by condemning one’s own excesses can one condemn those of the enemy; only by exposing the crude reality does one have the right to accuse’. He was successful, with considerable official help, in rescuing large numbers of Basques and also non-Basque clergy. The intercessions of Galíndez and his colleagues and safe conducts issued by the PNV delegation saved numerous priests, nuns and right-wingers as well as legitimate Basque nationalists.
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The humanitarian efforts of Galíndez and others were a drop in the ocean. More than eight thousand supposed rebel supporters were killed in Madrid between 18 July and the end of December 1936. About 50,000 civilians were killed in the entire Republican zone in the course of the war. It is difficult to find a simple explanation. Some, such as those killed in the biggest massacre of prisoners, at Paracuellos del Jarama, during the siege of Madrid, were victims of decisions based on an assessment of their potential danger to the Republican cause. Some were executed as enemy supporters. Although concern about the enemy within existed from the earliest part of the war, anxiety grew more intense as Franco’s columns drew nearer to Madrid and refugees flooded into the city carrying bloodcurdling stories of the massacre that had followed the capture of Badajoz by Juan Yagüe’s African column, on 14 August. In many respects, what happened at Badajoz had been meant as a message to Madrid – just as Guernica would be a message to the people of Bilbao – ‘this is what will happen to you if you do not surrender’. The arrival of the terrified refugees provoked demands for revenge against the rebel supporters imprisoned in Madrid.

Hostility focused on the Cárcel Modelo in the Argüelles district of Madrid. There were approximately five thousand detainees in the prison, including over one thousand army officers who had been
involved in the thwarted uprising in the Montaña barracks, Falangists and other rebel supporters, as well as some common criminals and a number of Communists and anarchists who had not been released at the beginning of the war, having been imprisoned for violent crimes. Whereas Madrid’s other three prisons, San Antón, Porlier, Duque de Sesto and Las Ventas, were in the hands of militiamen, the Cárcel Modelo remained under the vigilance of Assault Guards and prison functionaries. For that reason, a number of political personalities had been placed there, some under arrest, some voluntarily, for their own safety. The prison consisted of five wings or galleries, like a star or a cog, around the main courtyard or patio. Each gallery had two hundred individual cells and a wide, rectangular central paved area, also known as a patio. However, by the late summer of 1936, there were five prisoners per cell.
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The right-wing prisoners would gather in the courtyard and the patios and rejoice openly at news of the advances of rebel troops. On various pretexts – to prevent them enjoying the sight of German aircraft bombing the city, when a prisoner was about to be executed or when militiamen arrived to take one away – they were often confined to their cells.
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Some of the younger Falangists would shout insults and fascist slogans through the windows at passing militiamen. Such provocative behaviour worried prisoners like Ramón Serrano Suñer, Franco’s brother-in-law. Some Republican newspapers published indignant articles about the prisoners which drew the attention of the CPIP. One especially provocative piece referred to:

various priests and military chaplains, with few exceptions, sleek and fat as befits their profession. They are dressed haphazardly, many in pyjamas, some in militia overalls, shirts of every colour of the rainbow, cotton and khaki trousers, wrinkled, too long or too short. Unshaved, they are hardly distinguishable from ordinary prisoners. Their previously elegant air was provided by their uniforms or suits. They speak little, meditate a lot and sob a bit … Other galleries hold more fascists involved in the rising and others who were arrested before it took place, such as the Falangist leaders Ruiz de Alda and Sánchez Mazas.

It then named the founder of the Agrarian Party and ally of Gil Robles, José Martínez de Velasco, the conservative Republican and friend of President Azaña, Melquíades Álvarez and Dr José María Albiñana, founder of the Spanish Nationalist Party.
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Even more specific was an article from
El Sindicalista
, reprinted in
Claridad
, protesting that many warders in the Cárcel Modelo were rebel sympathizers. Thus it was alleged that extreme rightists, such as Manuel Delgado Barreto (a right-wing newspaper editor and early sponsor of the Falange), were living comfortably and able to communicate with whomsoever they liked. It ended with a provocatively rhetorical question: ‘Will it be necessary for the people’s militias to do here what they have already done in Barcelona, widening their activities to take in the Cárcel Modelo? What simply cannot be permitted is that things go on in the Cárcel Modelo as they have up to now. Not a day longer! Not an hour longer!’
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The next day, two right-wing prison guards disappeared. Several were dismissed and then arrested.
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On 15 August, agents of the DGS, accompanied by militiamen of the CPIP, entered the prison to search right-wing prisoners for hidden weapons and compromising documents. The militiamen insulted and threatened the prisoners, from whom they stole money, watches, rings, pens and other personal possessions. Some militiawomen also came and harangued the common prisoners with speeches to turn them against the politicals.
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Rumours that Falangists in the Cárcel Modelo were planning to escape saw the CPIC, with authorization from Manuel Muñoz, send two teams of militiamen to the prison, led by Sandoval ‘el Dr Muñiz’ and Santiago Aliques Bermúdez. They arrived in the afternoon of 21 August and, as well as interrogating the army officers and right-wing politicians, stole their money, watches, religious medals and other valuables, even, in some cases, shoes and clothes.
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In the early hours of the morning of 22 August, the rebels carried out an air raid on Madrid, causing severe damage in Argüelles, where the prison was located. This provoked an appalling incident that saw more than thirty men murdered. On that afternoon, while Sandoval, Aliques and their men continued their search, the common criminals rioted and demanded their release, threatening to kill the right-wing inmates. Sandoval addressed the common prisoners and promised their release if they joined the CNT. Some of them set fire to the wood-store of the bakery in the cellar of the second gallery. At the same time, a hail of bullets from a machine-gun, previously set up by other anarchists on a nearby rooftop, was aimed at the right-wing inmates of the first gallery. Eleven were wounded and six were killed, including José Martínez de Velasco. It was later alleged that the fire and the machine-gun salvo were not an unfortunate coincidence but had been carefully choreographed by Sandoval’s men. The difficulties of access to this wood-store also
suggested a degree of collusion between the militiamen and the common prisoners.
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A rumour spread that the aviator and adventurer Julio Ruiz de Alda, one of the founders of the Falange, had bribed prison officials to permit right-wingers to escape under cover of the fire. Large numbers of angry militiamen entered the prison with the firemen who were responding to the fire alarm. Meanwhile, attracted by the talk of a fascist break-out, a huge crowd had gathered in the surrounding streets. The Minister of the Interior, General Pozas, arrived accompanied by a city councillor, Ángel Galarza Gago (who would replace him two weeks later). However, after vain efforts to halt the train of events, they quickly departed. The DGS, Manuel Muñoz, also appeared. With the crowd baying for the release of the common prisoners and threatening to invade the prison to lynch the fascist detainees, he telephoned for help from the political parties. Then he went to the Ministry of War and got permission from the Prime Minister, José Giral, to release the common prisoners.

However, when Muñoz returned to the prison, he discovered that Sandoval had already let two hundred common prisoners escape. As helpless as Pozas had been, Muñoz claimed he was unwell and returned to his office. While some of the released inmates looted the prison food store, the militiamen went through the prison registry and selected about thirty of the rightists, among them well-known liberals and conservatives as well as army officers and Falangists. They were taken down to the cellars and, after a brief ‘trial’ before a hastily convened ‘tribunal’, shot. The dead included prominent Falangists Ruiz de Alda and Fernando Primo de Rivera (brother of the party’s founder, José Antonio), Dr Albiñana, two one-time ministers from Lerroux’s Radical Party, Ramón Álvarez Valdés and Manuel Rico Avello (both of whom were in protective custody), and Melquíades Álvarez. The latter had been the mentor of Azaña, who was shattered by the news of his death. Among the lesser-known victims was Mola’s agent, the policeman Santiago Martín Báguenas, who had been involved in provoking disorder during the spring. The militiamen had picked out three left-wing defectors to the Falange – Enrique Matorras Páez, who had previously been a prominent member of the Communist Party in Seville, Sinforiano Moldes, who had left the CNT and started up a scab building workers’ union, and an ex-CNT gunman named Ribagorza. Another, Marciano Pedro Durruti, escaped the same fate because his brother Buenaventura, the founder of the FAI, had managed to secure his release.
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Further to Muñoz’s appeal, Giral arranged for the principal parties to send representatives to try to calm the crowds.
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The future Socialist Prime Minister, the distinguished physiologist Dr Juan Negrín, had already rushed to the Cárcel Modelo in a vain attempt to prevent bloodshed. One of his colleagues wrote of his courageous attempt to save lives:

Negrín hastened to put a stop to the murderous fury and, at the same time, to try to save the life of the father of Elías Delgado, the head porter at his laboratory. Elías’s father had risen through the ranks of the army to become an officer, which is why he was in the Cárcel Modelo. The determination of Dr Negrín to prevent the inevitable was useless since Elías’s father was already dead when he arrived. Negrín’s outspoken fury when he found out nearly led to the perpetrators killing him too.
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The prison officials could only look on helplessly while the militiamen went through prisoners’ files seeking out additional victims. Around 10 p.m. on 22 August, the lawyer of the prison officers’ union appealed to the British Chargé d’Affaires in Madrid, George Ogilvie-Forbes, to do something to prevent further killing. Ogilvie-Forbes immediately went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he saw the Minister, Augusto Barcia Trelles. On the verge of tears, Barcia confessed the government’s impotence. Juan-Simeón Vidarte, a senior member of the Socialist Party who had gone to the prison, was appalled to see the crowd outside baying for blood, having been infuriated by the earlier bombing raid and by the refugees’ horror stories. A long and tense night ensued before the violence died down.
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It took the combined efforts of a unit of Assault Guards and the Socialist squad known as the ‘Motorized Brigade’, which was closely associated with Prieto. Led by Enrique Puente, the men of the Motorized Brigade were fiercely opposed by anarchist militia, some of whom, according to Sandoval, were led by Amor Nuño.
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A prison official who was one of the right-wing sympathizers denounced by
Claridad
was Juan Batista, whose brother was a Falangist. In November 1933, Batista had been involved in the prison break of the millionaire smuggler Juan March and was known for helping imprisoned Falangists.
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Now, fearing for the lives of the inmates and for his own family, he sought help from an anarchist who had once been his prisoner but who was now working hard to counter the indiscriminate violence in the Republican zone. The man to whom he turned was Melchor Rodríguez García, a forty-three-year-old anarchist from Seville, a disciple of the humanist Dr Pedro Vallina whom he had met in prison.
Melchor had been a bullfighter until he was gored and then worked as a skilled panel-beater and cabinet-maker. He would be credited with saving thousands of lives and helping stop the repression behind the Republican lines. He had begun by requisitioning the Palace of the Marqués de Viana in the old part of the city. He did so at the request of the Marqués’s administrator, who was anxious to save the Palace, its many treasures and its staff. Rodríguez was accompanied by a group of friends who, he later claimed to his Francoist interrogators, were apolitical. They went by the name of ‘Los Libertos’ (the Freed Slaves). At his eventual trial, Melchor would be accused of using the Palacio de Viana as a
checa
, when in fact it was used to give refuge to many right-wingers, clergy, officers and Falangists. Indeed, his humanitarian activities eventually earned him the nickname ‘the Red Angel’. On the night of 22 August, to the fury of Sandoval, but helped by Enrique Puente, Melchor Rodríguez managed to save Juan Batista, and fifteen members of his family who had taken refuge in the prison. Thereafter, Batista became Melchor Rodríguez’s secretary.
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