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Title: Sabaté Author: Antonio Téllez Solà Language: en Topics: Spain, Spanish Civil War, revolution, Spanish revolution, 1936, Elephant Editions Source: Retrieved on January 29th, 2017 from http://archive.elephanteditions.net/library/antonio-tellez-sola-sabate Notes: First published in Great Britain, 1974 by Cienfuegos Press (London). Translated by Stuart Christie. Published by Elephant Editions / Refract Publications London 1985, introduction by Alfredo M. Bonanno. Cover by Clifford Harper.
With this, the first in our edition of anarchist pocketbooks, we are
opening the way to a series of instruments for use by anarchist comrades
and all those who have decided to make their desire for freedom become
reality. The series will be as many-faceted as anarchism itself,
offering a critique of the great institutions of oppression: religion,
economics, authority, ideology, even in their most subtle forms; a look
at the field of art and aesthetics; at moments in the past where freedom
was fought for and won, trying to see where things went wrong and what
we can still apply today; proposals of new methods of struggle to be
discussed and experimented.
We are doing this as a contribution to the struggle that is always in
course, not as something separate to be set aside and chewed upon while
we wait for better times. The value of this contribution to the great
task of revolution depends therefore not only upon our own efforts and
constancy, but also on the comrades we reach: that you do not treat
these pages as a commodity, but enter into a living dialogue where words
and deeds confuse themselves in the great turmoil of destruction and
creation that knows no bounds and which with reason and passion we call
anarchy.
The present volume is therefore not a history book full of mummies to be
taken out, dusted, then returned to the order of the past. On the
contrary, a dynamic reading of the experiences of Sabaté and others
could be a force in the moving of the somewhat still waters of the
present.
Elephant Editions
This book tells of the life, the action and the death of an anarchist
guerilla.
Many things have happened since it was first published at the end of the
sixties, and experience of armed struggle in Europe is no longer limited
to that of the comrades who carried on the struggle against Francoist
Spain. But that does not in the least detract from the theoretical and
practical importance of SabatĂ©âs actions, and the value of this book in
particular.
The discourse could be a long one, but let us try to shorten it so as
not to complicate things.
It would seem that all anarchists should agree on certain points; not
hold exactly the same opinion, but at least be without any major
contradictions. The first such issue is that of attacking the class
enemy (i.e. the exploiter), both in the macroscopic aspect of the State
and in the microscopic one of the individuals responsible for
exploitation. Yet when a comrade organises to pass from words to deed,
those who come forward with doubts, perplexity, suspicion, uncertainty,
are never lacking. There are always some anarchist comrades who have
turned their anarchism into a kind of wind-shield to hide their own
weakness and compromise. They obviously cannot approve of anyone who
contributes to unmasking them with their actions, of who, by attacking
the enemy rouses the still waters of sleep, often attracting the
attention of the forces of repression.
Such criticism as, âThe time isnât rightâ, âThese things are only done
when the revolution is nearâ, âWe must wait to be sure the masses are
with usâ, are constantly aimed at the comrade who intends to act now,
right away.
As far as SabatĂ©âs actions are concerned, he, in practice, was left
alone with only a few comrades who from time to time united with him
individually to continue the struggle. But these actions had to take
place inside Spain. When it came to wanting to do something outside to
strike the fascist regime, there was a flood of disagreement. And also,
later, when there was recourse to international collaboration (for
example the kidnapping of monsignor Ussia), there were more than a few
dissenters. The fact that the action was to be seen in the light of its
exceptional objective of saving the lives of comrades who had been
sentenced to death was also underlined.
The reader will realise that little or nothing has changed since the
time when Sabaté carried out his struggle in complete isolation. Even in
very recent times, when anarchists have organised to attack, the
so-called âofficialâ movement has preferred to remain silent, that is,
when it has not come out with declarations of doubt or outright
condemnation.
Is this the ineluctable destiny of all organisations? We do not believe
so. An organisation that defines itself as custodian of the anarchist
movementâs ideological traditions must necessarily become conservative
and regard all initiatives of attack â especially when not under its
control â with preoccupation and suspicion. On the contrary, an
organisation born as a structure of attack, capable of modifying itself
according to the needs of the moment, that avoids bureaucratisation and
has no intention of keeping any âmemoryâ, can become the indispensable
basis for revolutionary action. And, basically, it is towards this kind
of organisation that SabatĂ©âs efforts went, as with any other anarchist
revolutionary who intends to attack the class enemy.
It is precisely on either side of this separating line that two
different models of intervention develop.
On the one hand, the counter-informative model as an end in itself, a
structure eternally repeating itself, that survives in its own image,
from time to time supplying more advanced opinions on what the forces of
power decide to circulate.
On the other hand, a minimal structure organising in order to act, that
keeps itself well documented on reality, but only in order to bring
about projects of intervention and revolutionary actions, not to
distribute it for consumerism. In this perspective everything takes on a
different light. In the first place the availability of means. Whoever
limits themselves to counter-information bases themselves on the good
will of comrades and their subscriptions. Whoever has a precise project
of attack must go further, expropriating the necessary finance from the
capitalists. But then the level of engagement is also different, in the
latter case complete and total.
Of course there are risks. Not so much of life, which for a
revolutionary is always at stake in all his decisions, as of separation,
isolation.
The imbecility of others, their bad faith in not wanting to understand,
their tepidness: all these wound mortally, often more than the enemyâs
bullets. Interested sympathy is also harmful, as is morbid curiosity.
And Sabaté was wounded by all these painful thorns in his side before
being killed by the Guardia Civile.
But he never stopped, never drew back. He never let himself be overcome
by doubt. And let it not be said (as it has been said) that things were
easier for him because we all agree about combating fascism. That is all
right for the hypocrites who disguise themselves as revolutionaries,
certainly not for anarchists. Fascism is always before us, even when it
wears the multi-coloured clothing of Mrs Thatcherâs relatively
permissive welfare State.
Everyone understands that quite easily. Less easily do they decide to
act. That is why a book of this kind is always useful: because reading
it pushes one to action, arouses enthusiasm. Because it shows the
thousand and one ways in which it is possible to strike the enemy,
because it gives no space to resignation and doubt.
It is necessary to understand that we cannot wait for others â not even
for other comrades â to give us the sign to act, the final indication.
This must come from us. Each one of us, taken individually, must find
his or her own comrades and constitute small affinity groups which are
the essential element for giving life to the organisation of attack that
we need. Actions will come easily, as a natural consequence of the
decision to act together against the common enemy. Grand words,
declarations to go down in history, the great organisations of the
glorious past and vast programs for the future are all useless if the
will of the individual comrade is lacking.
And in this perspective Sabaté was never alone. His struggle is still
continuing.
Alfredo M. Bonanno
Manuel Sabaté belonged to the Guardia Urbana [1] in the little town of
Hospitalet de Llobregat[2], which, with its seventy thousand
inhabitants, is part of the great sprawling complex of Barcelona. His
wife, Madrona Llopart, self-denying, hard working, completely dedicated
to the care of her house and family, was a typical Spanish housewife.
They had five children. Three of them play a part in our story: José,
the eldest, born in 1910; Francisco, born on 30 March 1915; Manuel, born
in 1927. The fourth Juan, and a sister, Maria, never took part in the
brothersâ activities. Francisco, better known by the Catalan diminutive
of his name Sisco, Sisquet or Quico, was self-confident and showed
strength of character even as a boy.
The parents, completely ignorant of conditions in the reformatories of
the day and badly advised, decided to send their indomitable boy to the
Duran Home in Barcelona when he was only seven years old. This
institution, controlled by friars, was really a penitentiary
establishment for minors. The Duran Home became a nursery school for
rebels. Another of its pupils was Mariano Rodriguez Vazquez, known by
the diminutive of Marianet, who later became General Secretary[3] during
the Spanish Civil War of the National Confederation of Labour, the
CNT[4], the most important of all trade unions in Spain.
During the Civil War the Duran Home was razed to the ground and the
community of friars dissolved. After the war they re-re-formed and
bought the farm Torre Vilana, in one of the most aristocratic suburbs of
Barcelona, complete with modern fixtures. The discipline, however,
remained on the familiar lines of the old building.[5]
At the time El Quico[6] was there its prison discipline, with its many
humiliations and corporal punishment, touched off a chord in him, and
for ever after he fought for justice and liberty. It did not take long
for him to reach the end of his tether, and one day the boy climbed the
wall of the yard, using a tree and improvised rope, and returned home.
On his knees he begged his parents not to send him back to the
Institution, saying that if they did he would immediately escape again â
this time forever. He promised to be a âgoodâ boy if only they would not
take him back and, between pleas and threats, it did not take long for
him to get his own way.
Education in Spain at this time was of little concern to the government.
National schools were scarce, and the private fee-paying schools were in
the hands of monks and Marists,[7] out of the reach of ordinary workers,
more so those with large families like El Quicoâs. Schoolteachers in
Spain were not held in great social esteem. There was no humour in the
popular phrase âto be as hungry as a school teacherââit was not a
profession one sought. For thousands of children, the only school was
the street, and later, the workshop, where they went as apprentices at
the age of ten or less. El Quico was no exception to the rule and his
apprenticeship as a plumber was a normal one: the greater part of it
consisting of cuffs and abuse, which he took badly.
At the first opportunity he joined the General Union of Hospitalet,
affiliated to the CNT, and it was to this organisation that he remained
faithful for the rest of his lifeâin spirit if not in discipline. He
joined just before the Proclamation of the Republic in 1931. The
âworkersâ Republic was everything except what its name indicated. It
inherited all the vices and corrupt institutions of the monarchy. It
took over the Army, which was always ready to intervene in political
life and which abhorred all democratic institutions. It made room for
the absolute church, with its countless religious orders and their
obscurantist mentality, sworn enemy of culture and progress. It
tolerated feudalism on the land where landlords and aristocrats lorded
it over the most frightful misery of half Spain. It maintained a sterile
and corrupt bureaucracy.
The Proclamation of the Republic gave rise to riotous popular
demonstrations of support. It was thought to be the advent of a new era;
two days later, however, on 16 April, the Minister of the Interior,
Miguel Maura, said to reporters: âI should like you to make it
understood in your newspapers that I am not prepared to allow for one
more hour any further demonstrations in the streets. The people are
getting out of hand! Everything is degenerating rapidly into an
unacceptable public scandal!â
Mauraâs[8] arrogant behaviour on this occasion cannot be put down to a
simple case of nerves: throughout his career he showed symptoms of being
a chronic pathological case. This Catholic and Republican gentleman
demonstrated to the world his true character when, a few weeks laterâon
23 July, he ordered the Army to destroy the Anarcho-Syndicalist meeting
place in Seville, a bar called Casa dc Cornelio situated in La Macarena.
Three artillery pieces fired twenty-two high ex plosive shells into the
old bar, reducing it to ruins.
The new Republic took an immediate stand against the people who had for
years demanded major changes in the economic and social life of Spain.
It turned viciously against the very people who had brought it to life.
The social agitation in Spain during the period of the Republic need not
be described here in detail, but in order to give some idea of the
revolutionary spirit of the people (later to become the first in Europe
to rise against fascism) we may mention the insurrectionary movement of
18 January, 1932 in the mining area of Alto Llobregat y Cardoner in the
Catalan Pyrenees. The Anarcho-Syndicalists in Figols and Sallent
declared for libertarian communism, abolishing all private property and
the circulation of money in their villages. However, within five days
the revolutionary workersâ movement had been destroyed after a bitter
struggle. The last bulwark of the revolution, Cardoner, fell on 22
January. The repression that followed throughout Catalonia was bitter.
In the dark dawn of 11 February the ship Buenos Aires sailed for Bata in
Spanish Guinea[9] from Barcelona with 104 confederal militants aboard,
among them Buenaventura Durruti Dumanger[10] and Francisco Ascaso
Abadia.[11] Meanwhile, throughout the northern provinces the Army and
the Police applied the ley de fuga,[12] filling the cemeteries and
prisons with their working-class victims.
Popular protests against the deportations and police violence were
expressed by many strikes throughout Spain, and sometimes even by new
insurrections, such as that which took place at Tarrasa on 14 February,
where the people took to the streets and for some hours were in full
control of the situation; taking over the Town Hall, arresting the Mayor
and all the reactionary functionaries they came across. The red and
black flag of the CNT-FAI flew proudly over the Town Hall. Troops were
quickly sent from Barcelona, however, and soon managed to regain control
of the town. Forty-two men were arrested and charged under military law.
When they were brought to trial the prosecutor demanded forty-two
sentences of death.[13]
The peasants of Hospitalet also went on strike at this time in protest
against the feudal conditions under which they were being forced to
work. The landlords would not give way and the strike dragged on. With
no money coming in the labourers and their families were literally
starving. El Quico and another young Anarchist comrade decided to help
in the defence of the peasantsâin their own way. They robbed one of the
most important of the local landlords, taking every peseta he had in his
possession. The money collected was given to the strike committee to be
distributed to the families most in need.
Reaction soon hit back. The news that General José Sanjurjo y Sacanell,
Head of the Carabineros, and the ex-head of the Guardia Civil[14] was
preparing a military uprising was common knowledge. The Sanjurjo
conspiracy[15] exploded on 10 August, 1932 in Madrid and Seville, but
two months previously, on 9 June, in a question to the Cortes about the
situation in Seville,[16] Deputy Miguel GarcĂa Bravo Ferrer read out a
leaflet which had been circulating in the Andalusian capital and was
signed by the Committee of Revolutionary Workers and Soldiers:
The Guardia Civil under the criminal Sanjurjo is preparing to establish
in Spain a murderous dictatorship. Citizens, prepare yourselves for the
hour of struggle has arrived. Soldiers, citizens and workers â together
we shall fight against Sanjurjo and the Guardia Civil.[17] Grasp the gun
which you have in your hand and fulfil your obligations. People: Viva la
anarquia!
In Madrid, however, the rising was successful only in gaining control of
the Ministries of War and Communication.
Castilblanco was a village of four thousand inhabitants in the province
of Badajoz. On 1 January, I932 five hundred striking peasants held a
demonstration there, which was broken up by the Guardia Civil with
volleys of rifie-fire. Enraged, the villagers attacked the defenders of
the absentee landlords and at the end of the day the tally was four
guards and one peasant killed, with a number of demonstrators badly
wounded. The villagers charged with the deaths of the Guardia Civil were
sentenced to death, but public protest was so great that the authorities
were forced to commute their sentences, and they were eventually granted
an amnesty.[18]
In Arnedo (Logroño) on 5 January the Guardia Civil once again attacked a
demonstration with rifie-fire. Women and children were present on the
demonstration, and the result was a veritable slaughter. Six people
diedâamong them four womenâand thirty-two people were wounded. The
indignation throughout Spain was unanimous, and this was the prime cause
of Sanjurjoâs dismissal. The man who took his place, General Miguel
Cabanellas, was another equally perfidious figure in the history of
Spain.
In Seville, the Anarcho-Syndicalists declared a General Strike, and
stormed the barracks. Thus, ironically, they saved the Republic that had
so cruelly persecuted them. It was in this period of permanent social
unrest that Sabaté formed, along with other young men, one of the first
action groupsââLos Novatosâ. The eldest of the group was JosĂ©, El
Quicoâs brother, who was then twenty-two years of age. Los Novatos was
affiliated to the local Federation of the Iberian Anarchist
Federation.[19] The group went into major action almost immediately. On
8 January 1933, there erupted a new revolutionary movement inspired by
the FAI to protest against the systematic and tenacious political
persecution of the workers by the government, led by Manuel Azaña y
Diaz, an adept and capable persecutor. In Zaragoza and Barcelona
numerous arrests were made before there was any hint of revolution.
However, the protest movement erupted in many places. In Ribarroja and
other villages of the Levante, libertarian communism was declared and
other attempts followed in Andalusia.
In Casas Viejas, in the Cadiz area, the Republic acted with a savagery
rarely equalled in its history. A seventy-year-old peasant, Francisco
Cruz, better known as âSeisdedosâ (âsix fingers), refused to surrender
to the Assault Guards. Together with his family and like-minded
libertarians who desired social justice, he barricaded himself in a
farmhouse. The Republican mercenaries bombarded the building and killed
them all, women and children as well, in accordance with the orders of
Prime Minister Azaña:[20]
âDo not spare the wounded, do not take prisoners. Shoot them down like
dogsâ[21]
As a result of this order by the future President, of the twenty-four
who fought, twenty-four were left dead.
In the summer of 1933, SabatĂ©âs group attended one of the many meetings
organized by the FAI. It was a place well known to them, Fuente del Oso,
on a mountain near Esplugas, in the district of San Feliu de Llobregat,
and it was there that they met to practise arms-drill and the handling
of explosives. While the meeting was in full swing the sentries at the
access to the site warned of the approach of two truckloads of Guardia
Civil and Mozos de Escuadraâthe Catalan militia, organised by the
Generalitat from among gamekeepers, to put down poachers and
trespassers. The meeting broke up. Some escaped easily through the
nearby pinewood, while others, to divide their forces, ran quickly
through open country. Among the latter was El Quico. The chase went on
for over half an hour with constant shooting, but happily the faistas
suffered no losses or wounds. It was the baptism of fire for Los
Novatos. Next day, the CNT central trade union daily Solidaridad Obrera
published a front-page article under the title âEmpty bag at the
pine-woodâ.
At about this time the elections were announced for 19 November 1933.
The CNT urged total abstention in the voting. During the pre-electoral
period the Confederation poured out an immense amount of propaganda and
in the final period organised a mass meeting in the monumental Plaza de
Toros in Barcelona, in which well-known militants of the CNT/FAI, such
as Buenaventura Durruti, participated. The slogan of the anti-election
campaign was âpower to the peopleânot politiciansâ. The right wing won
the election, and the CNT carried out its promise. On 8 December, 1933
insurrection broke out again in Barcelona, Zaragoza, Valencia, and
Granada, however, the heat of the revolution was in the AragĂłn and Rioja
regions where once again the red and black flag flew above the villages
which had declared for libertarian communism. Los Novatos, who had made
intense preparations to participate in the revolution, launched
themselves into the streets, where they easily overcame the government
force in Hospitalet, taking control of every official centre in the
town, and collecting all the records and files they could lay their
hands on (these latter provided exceptionally good fuel for the many
bonfires organised during the festivities which followed). The
insurrection was eventually put-down on the 14^(th), but only after many
dead and wounded had thinned the ranks of the workers. Thousands of
cenetistas went to prison. In Zaragoza, the whole of the National
Committee of the CNT was arrested, as was the Revolutionary Committee,
which included Buenaventura Durruti, Cipriano Mera Sanz and Isaac Puente
Amestoy.[22]
Solidaridad Obrera was banned, although it had suffered its first
governmental suspension in 1933. Between then and 1934 (the day before
the insurrection of the Generalitat) it was suspended three times, once
for 104 days. Single editions were impounded thirty-four times.[23]
The Sabaté brothers managed to escape the repression, but the prisons of
Spain were filled with anarcho-syndicalist militants.
Nevertheless, the repression did not prevent the calling of many more
bitter strikes, and an unequalled rise in the feeling of resistance. The
most outstanding was the General Strike in Zaragoza. May Day was
celebrated in the AragĂłn capital with a complete and total withdrawal of
labour. The employers sacked all their workers. The Trade Unions then
declared a General Strike to demand the reinstatement of the dismissed
men, and, as neither side would give in, the city remained paralysed for
thirty-six days. The strikers were reduced to complete misery. The
editor of Solidaridad Obrera, Manuel Villar Mingo,[24] organised a
subscription to send the children of the strikers to Catalonia to
alleviate their distress and help their parents win the battle. The
subscription had an unprecedented success and within a few days the
offices of âSoliâ had accumulated what was, for that period, a
considerable sum of money. The people of Barcelona prepared to receive
the first influx of children from Zaragoza, due to arrive at the
headquarters of the confederal newspaper at six oâclock on a Sunday
evening. A large number of people gathered outside the print shop to
await their arrival. To prevent this act of solidarity the Generalitat
stepped in. Without any previous warning they stopped the buses bringing
the children and opened fire on the demonstratorsâany of them women and
childrenâkilling one workman and wounding others. As a result of the
public outcry Solidaridad Obrera was banned by government decree yet
again. The buses were diverted and did not arrive in Barcelona until
after a long delay. The children were then handed over to the workersâ
families who had been waiting to receive them.[25]
In reply to this act of provocation, the Catalan Regional Committee of
the CNT decided as a protest to call a twenty-four-hour General Strike
in the capital of the principality. The decision announcing the General
Strike was to be made in a public manifesto. Francisco Sabaté and
another youth were given the job of collecting the documents. They were
to meet in the bar âLa Tranquilidadâ in the centre of Barcelona, the
Paralelo. When the two friends arrived at the prearranged spot, comrades
there told them that the manifesto had to be collected from a bar in
Montjuich. While they were waiting at this bar the police arrived,
arresting everyone present. El Quico experienced for the first time a
taste of prison. He spent a night in the cells of the commissariat of
Pueblo Seco, and a day in the Palacio de Justicia where his case was
heard, followed by two days in the Model Prison of Barcelona. The charge
âclandestine meetingsâ would not stick, and after seventy-two hours
everyone was released.
On 6 October, 1934, insurrection broke out again and for fifteen
victorious days all the forces of the Left in the Asturias joined under
the common slogan, âunite, proletarian brothers!â (UHP), but in
Catalonia the rising was a disaster, as it was Nationalist in
inspiration and the CNT-FAI made no attempt to intervene. The Los
Novatos group dedicated itself to collecting the arms that had been
dumped in the streets and sewers by the men of the Generalitat. It was
these arms that later helped crush the fascist uprising in Catalonia in
July 1936. El Quico received his conscription papers in 1935, but as a
convinced anti-militarist he did not present himself, and was posted as
a deserter. It was also about this time he carried out his first act of
expropriation to help the funds of the Political Prisonersâ Aid
Committee at the expense of the Bank of Gava, a village of 6,000
inhabitants in the county of San Feliu de Llobregat, just outside
Barcelona. Towards the end of 1935 he met Leonor Castells Marti, the
woman who was to be his companion throughout the years to come. Soon
after he met her, after a bare six months of peaceful life, Spain
exploded. It was 18 July 1936.
Leonor says in one of her letters:
I remember it as though it were yesterday. After many days of meetings,
without sleeping and almost without any meals the comrades came to the
little house we had built with love and hard work. Francisco, always
active and courageous went from my side, one could almost say forever...
The revolution had started â Francisco hugged me and I held him in my
arms for a few moments and then he was gone.
On 18 July 1936, the fascist uprising broke out and the militants of the
CNT-FAI immediately made their preparations for the confrontation.
Francisco and José joined the local Defence Group and Revolutionary
Committee of Hospitalet, which had anticipated the rising, and on their
own initiative raided the houses of known fascists and sympathisers a
few days before the pronunciamiento. That way they managed to collect
arms and also cut off the possible roots of support for the uprising in
the area. In a day they had the situation in Hospitalet well in hand,
and were free to help their comrades in Barcelona on the I9th. The
military rebellion was put down in Catalonia within a few days and the
majority of SabatĂ©âs group, Los Novatos, left for the AragĂłn front on
the 24^(th) with a column led by Buenaventura Durruti, whose military
adviser and second-in-command was Enrique PĂ©rez Farras.
On 27 August José and Francisco also left for the Aragón Front with Los
Aguiluchos, the first column organised by the CNT-FAI in conjunction
with the Militia Committee.[26] This column was organized by Juan Garcia
Oliver and later, after the formation of the Peopleâs Army, it helped to
make up two Confederal divisions under Miguel GarcĂa Vivancos[27] and
Gregorio Jover Cortes.[28] José Sabaté was made a centurion (responsible
for one hundred men), while El Quico was made responsible for twenty
men. The brothersâ activities were neither more nor less outstanding
than those of the thousands of others prepared to sacrifice their lives
at the front rather than live under fascism. El Quico, anticipating the
Cuban barbudos on the Sierra Maestra, grew his hair and beard long,
saying he would not cut it until the peoplesâ triumph was complete
throughout the peninsula. He did not get home leave in Barcelona until
December. There, when he did arrive finally, he caused a minor sensation
in the Plaza de España when he parked his car. The Russians had come!
Everyone assumed him to be a sovieticoâhe never laughed more than he did
that time when Militiamen of all nationalities approached him trying out
their recently acquired Russian phrases.
Here we can mention how it came about that the Francoist Press could
label Francisco after his death, as a car thief. At that time the forces
at the front, especially the confederal forces (those of the CNT-FAI)
were always short of transport. It was the custom to pick out groups to
go back to town to ârequisitionâ some of the huge quantity of vehicles
used by the bureaucracy, and take them back to the front, where they
were incorporated into the units. Sabaté was then attached to the
126^(th) Brigade, 28^(th) Division (Ascaso), and it was his job to carry
out this mission. One day, together with some of his friends in the
4^(th) Battalion then at the Huesca Front (Almunia), Sabaté
ârequisitionedâ a beautiful De Soto parked outside the Air Ministry and
returned with it to the Brigade H.Q., where he was met with laughter and
cheers by his comrades in arms. His friends pointed out that obviously
such a magnificent machine would be spotted the moment it went into
service, but El Quico had his own ideas on the subject and went ahead,
ignoring the jokes. He stripped the rear of the car with an
oxy-acetylene torch and welded to it the body of a disused service
truck. A few coats of paint later and the beautiful De Soto was
transformed into a serviceable van. Soon afterwards Sabaté was
transferred to the 25^(th) Division (ex-OrtĂz Column) and, in his rank
of armourer, took âhisâ van with him.
In the middle of 1937 the Communist Party began its drive to seize
control of the Army commands throughout Spain. The watchword of Moscow
was âwho controls the army dictates the political orientation of the
countryâ. The attempt was resisted strongly by the overwhelming majority
of Spaniards, but unfortunately for the Spanish working class, the Party
had its way, having used every possible means to put this dictum into
effect.
At that time many young men were leaving for the Soviet Union to train
as pilots. El Quico too, wanted to become a pilot, as he realized that
the Air Force would prove to be the most decisive military arm of the
war.
The Air Force, however, was totally controlled by the Communist
Party[29] and to become a pilot it was necessary to be a member of the
JSU (United Young Socialists),[30] or at the very least have a special
recommendation as a. persona grata. El Quico thought at one time of
joining the JSU, if there was no other way; after all, as he said, âthe
habit does not make the monkâ. However, he was unable to put this idea
into practice owing to a cataclysmic series of events, which, as we
shall see shortly, were to force him into anonymity for the rest of the
war.
The âNationalistâ campaign in the north ended with the conquest of
Bilbao, Santander and Gijon. At that time the front stretched for over
1,800 kilometresâfrom the Pyrenees in the north, just east of
Canfrancâright down to Motril on the outskirts of Granada on the
Mediterranean coast. Along this front there were a number of important
individual Nationalist strongholds, such as that in the area of Teruel.
On 15 December Republican forces attacked the capital of Lower Aragon,
Teruel. The Chief of Staff for the central area, Lt-Colonel Vicente
Rojo, prepared a force of approximately 100,000 men together with the
necessary artillery, transport and aerial support for the offensive.
Teruel finally surrendered to the Republican troops on 7 January, thus
ending the offensive phase of the battle.
The Francoist counter-offensive developed rapidly and Sabaté, who was
one of the Republican troops sent to reinforce the sector being held by
the 116^(th), 117^(th) and 118^(th) Mixed Brigades of the XXth Army
Group, originally destined as one of the reserve units based in the
small village of Corbalan, near Teruel, was redirected into the front
line in order to contain the sudden advance of the National Armies.
One of the many methods used by the Communist Party in its struggle for
complete control of the Army was to try literally to annihilate the
Confederal forces. The tactic employed was usually that of sending
Anarcho-Syndicalist units into the most dangerous positions, almost
always headlong âkamikazeâ attacks which were certain to result in the
slaughter of the libertarian troops. The major advantage of these mass
murders, from the point of view of the Communist Party in its power
struggle against the numerically stronger Anarcho-Syndicalist trade
unions, was its legality. During one of these âliquidationâ operations,
a Confederal company led by Communist officers lost eighty per cent of
its combat force. The men were so furious that the General Staff were
forced to recall the Captain and the Company Commissar, a man by the
name of Ariño, to demand an explanation.
However, Sabaté and three of his comrades were not content with official
reprimands, and wanted to settle accounts properly. They prepared to
waylay themâthe âmandarinsâ, as Communist officials were derogatorily
named by the troopsâon their return from company headquarters. Commissar
Ariño was first to return and, when he found his way blocked, he took
out his gun prepared to force his way through. El Quico, always loath to
shoot first, reacted quickly and shot him with one bullet, leaving him
dying in the snow.
On their return to the battalion, the four friends realised that they
might have been seen and seriously risked facing a firing squad, and so,
Teruel already having been retaken by the Nationalists on 22 February,
they decided to desert and set out for Barcelona. The war was as good as
lostâ the Republican defeat at Teruel, together with the enormous losses
at the Battle of the Ebro some months later, had decided its course.
The four made their way to Barcelona, taking with them the De Soto. Two
of SabatĂ©âs comrades were from Almudebar in the province of Huesca, one
by the name of MatĂas and the other Alejandroâthe third oneâs name is
unknown to us. In Barcelona El Quico presented himself to the Regional
Committee of the CNT and informed them of the incident with Commissar
Ariño and requested that he be sent to a different Confederal unit where
he could remain in safety. This was accepted but could not be done
immediately, and he had to wait for some time in the Catalan capital.
While he was in Barcelona the Defence Committee of the Young
Libertarians asked him to undertake some risky missionsâone of which was
to liberate a comrade belonging to the Control Patrols,[31] who had been
wounded and later arrested in a gun-fight with the forces of the
Generalitat. The âChecaâ[32] was waiting for him to recover sufficiently
before submitting him to their âinterrogationâ. SabatĂ©, together with
Jaime Pares AdĂĄnâknown as El Abisinio because of his Afro-type
hairâcarried out the rescue operation with complete success.
Another task which Sabaté carried out successfully was organising the
escape of four comrades arrested following the âevents of May,
I937â,[33] while they were being transferred from Barcelonaâs Model
Prison to the Castle of Montjuich.
Another action of Sabaté at this time was an attentat against the
locally hated fascist, Justo Oliveras of Hospitalet. When the fascists
rose, Oliveras, a man without scruples, managed to save his life by
various devious stratagems and by going into hiding at the most crucial
moment. In Hospitalet, it should be pointed out in passing, very few
people were shot. Oliveras remained in hiding for a long period during
which the people expropriated his haulage business. Later, when all the
young people of the village and surrounding area were at the front, and
the others setting to work trying to build a free society, Oliveras
sensed that the moment of danger had passed and returned once again to
circulation. He set out to regain and double all that the revolution had
taken from him. He did this quite openly and brazenly, exploiting the
people by supplying the necessities of life at exorbitant prices, and
which only he could say how he had acquired.
Oliveras paid no attention to the constant warnings he received advising
him to stop this barefaced robbery of the people and, eventually, unable
to stop him by any other means, El Quico paid him a visit. Sabaté called
at Oliverasâ premises as he was closing his shop for the evening.
Locking the door from the inside, Sabaté left a comrade outside to stand
guard, having made up his mind that Oliveras would never again return to
exploit the people. The death of the black marketeer was never
attributed to Sabaté.
Another action in which Francisco took part had tragic consequences for
one of the Los Novatos group, Francisco Aleuâbetter known as El Nano de
Sans. One day Sabaté met a friend of his from Hospitalet, a father with
a large family, who had just received his conscription papers. He was
full of despair at the idea of abandoning his children. Sabaté, always
anti-militarist and bitter about the revolutionary setbacks of the war
and the course it had taken, and indignant at the temporising attitude
taken by the Spanish Anarchist Movement before the ever-encroaching
Communist hegemony imposed by Moscow, decided to help him avoid the
call-up. He told him he would supply him with forged documents, which
would allow him to remain in the rear with his family. A friend of El
Quico who ran a small print shop undertook to print the false documents.
Unfortunately, however, the police, suspecting the man, raided his
workshop and caught him in the act of printing the forgeries. The
printer was forced to confess the names of his customers and was obliged
by the police to make a rendezvous with these people on some pretext.
Suspecting nothing, two comradesâEl Nano de Sans and F ontanet,[34] both
members of Los Novatos, attended the rendezvous to see what the trouble
was. El Nano was shot down the moment he set his foot in the door by a
burst of machine-gun fire, but Fontanet managed to escape with only a
bullet in his leg. Unfortunately for Sabaté the police found his
photograph in the pockets of the dead El Nano, as well as a list of
addresses frequented by him. The police set out to arrest Sabaté and
finally ran him to ground coming out of a cinema one evening. Although
armed, he found himself surrounded by police and could put up no real
defence. This time he found himself in the hands of the SIM (Servicio
InformaciĂłn Militar),[35] who had searched for him relentlessly in order
to settle accounts for the death of Commissar Ariño.
Sabaté realised that this was no laughing matter as, only a few days
previously, Alejandro, one of the friends who had deserted with him, had
been identified in Barcelona and shot down without warning or
hesitation. Arriving at the police stationâthe Sans Commissariatâthe SIM
agents, who knew all about Sabaté, decided to play a little game with
him. In the interrogation room they had left one of their sub-machine
guns on top of a table. They removed his handcuffs and made as if to
leave the room but, as they had foreseen, El Quico fell for the bait and
grabbed the weapon. As he did so, they rolled about on the floor with
laughter. Foolishly, he realised that the gun was not loaded. They then
proceeded to give him one of the worst beatings of his life.
When the Regional Committee of the CNT heard of SabatĂ©âs arrest they
used all their influence to get him transferred to the Model Prison in
Barcelona. They knew that in the cells of the âChecaâ he would be
murdered without trial.[36] However, as the result of SabatĂ©âs arrest
and the finding of some personal letters in his possession, the
whereabouts of MatĂas, the third of the deserters came to light. MatĂas
was in hospital in Aguas de Ribas, in Gerona, as the result of a wound
received at the front. Luckily, in the next bed to him there was another
comrade in the same battalion, Alejandro T., who, on seeing the âChecaâ
arrive to arrest MatĂas, immediately telephoned the Secretary of the
Catalan Regional Committee of the Libertarian Youth Movement, Ramon
Liarte Siu. The immediate reaction from this quarter forced the âChecaâ
to return MatĂas to hospital. MatĂas, knowing of SabatĂ©âs arrest and the
death of Alejandro, did not believe the doctor would release him and
managed to escape from his guarded hospital bed, taking refuge in the
Confederal Remiro Battalion, where he remained until the end of the war,
then escaping to France.[37]
Once in prison, SabatĂ©âs sole idea was to escape. There was a convenient
cellar under his cell and whenever the opportunity presented itself he
crawled through in an attempt to excavate a tunnel. This went on for
weeksâslowly and patiently digging through the walls and foundations on
his way to freedom. Just as he was on the point of completing his escape
route the prison authorities barred up the entrance to the cellar,
placing it out of his reach. Resignation was a sentiment beyond the
understanding of El Quicoââso much work for nothing?ânever!â
As the cellar was directly below his cell he set himself the task of
opening up a direct access to it. He succeeded and could now continue
his clandestine digging. He waded through sewersâalmost drowning in one
of themâand broke his way through solid walls. At long last he thought
his efforts had been rewarded. According to his calculations the only
thing that stood between him and freedom was one wall, but when he
finally broke through he found himself in an abandoned cisternâstill
inside the prison. Without wasting any time he searched for another
exit, and hacking open a manhole cover, was confronted by a ray of light
shining in his face. He intended to wait until night to effect his
escape but that same day a patrol discovered his patient labour and El
Quico was taken before the prison governor.
âThey warned me to be careful of you but I did not pay enough attention
to them,â said the governor. âWhat you have done is absolutely
frightening and if I had not seen it with my own eyes I would have never
believed it possible. You must surely see it is my job to make sure you
donât try again.â
Sabaté was transferred to the punishment prison of Vic. His failure in
Barcelona did not make his chance of escape any easier, so he decided to
change his tactics. El Quico was receiving plenty of assistance from the
outside in the way of money and food. He thought that the most practical
idea was to gain the confidence and friendship of his warders through
their greed. He began to give large tips to the warders for the
slightest service. One day he bribed them to allow him to embrace his
wife. From then on her visits became more and more frequent until the
warders got used to seeing her and did not bother to search her in the
usual way. Finally a prison officer suggested that for a small
consideration he could allow Sabaté to spend a few hours with his wife
in an unoccupied cell. They agreed upon it, and the prison officer put a
little bed in the cell as well. From then on he met his wife completely
alone.
Seeing what an atmosphere of confidence he was building up, he suggested
to Leonor that on her next visit she should bring with her a pistol and
a hand-grenade. No sooner said than done. With the weapons in his
possession he immediately began preparing an escape plan with three
other comrades who were to go with him.
On the day planned for the escape, Sabaté called the orderly, a Moorish
ex-boxer called Ali, and when he arrived the four escapees pounced on
him. There was a short struggle and Ali was overpowered. The noise,
however, brought a nearby prison officer who was also quickly silenced.
They removed his pistol, and tied and gagged them both. They then locked
up some of the ordinary prisoners who did not want to escape to avoid
compromising them in the attempt. An Italian who worked in the prison
office and who knew what documentation was required to leave the prison
was one of those involved in the escape. They edged into the office and
easily overpowered the two auxiliary warders and one prison officer who
were sitting playing cards. As it happened it was the same prison
officer who had arranged SabatĂ©âs meetings with his wife. In the office
they picked up another two pistols. Once they had tied up the three they
made their way to the governorâs office, where they found the governor,
sitting talking to his French wife, who was pregnant at the time.
Sabaté, gun in hand, explained that he had no intention of using
violence but that he was going to leave jail, and nothing or no one
would prevent him doing so. Everyone was locked up in a cellar below the
office. However, the most difficult part remained: to get through the
armed guards at the entrance to the prison. For that one needed a
special pass from the governor. They found the necessary papers in the
office and Sabaté took them to the governor.
âWe know weâre risking our lives, but thatâs a chance weâll have to
take,â he said. âNow sign this and donât try to fool us because we wonât
forget it if you do. Sign correctly and remember your life depends upon
it.â
The governor signed. Everything went through without a hitch. One of the
prisoners handed his paper to the officer on guard duty and no one
stopped him. A few minutes later, Sabaté and the other two did the same.
They were free!
The escape was not discovered until the evening meal was being given out
late that afternoon. The Regional Committee of the CNT was in for a
surprise! Sabaté was once again in Barcelona!
The Regional Committee sent the two young Spaniards who escaped with him
to the 133^(rd) Brigade of the 24^(th) Division. (Later they deserted
and were executed by the Communists before they could reach Barcelona.)
It was obviously necessary to take Sabaté out of circulation for a time.
If he were discovered again no power on earth could save him from a
firing squad. He was advised to go to a childrenâs colony on Masqueta,
in the district of Igualada, which was run by the CNT under the care of
a comrade named Batista Albesa, in whom they had complete faith. There
he could remain for a time in complete security. Sabaté agreed, but to
avoid any incidents on the way decided to do the forty miles or so by
foot. He went with his brother-in-law, Castells MartĂ.[38] Travelling by
night the two comrades wandered into a gunpowder store without realizing
it. There they slept for some hours. At daybreak, when they went to
start their journey again, they realised they were in an extremely
difficult situation. They noticed they were surrounded on all sides by
barbed wire. Carefully they slipped out of the mousetrap into which they
had foolishly walked, but, after going only a short distance, a
Carabinero patrol ordered them to halt. They were dirty, unshaven and
wore leather jackets with their haversacks on their backs. Obviously
they could not help but look suspicious to the patrol.
The Carabineros decided to take the two to the nearby command postânot
without a great deal of protest on their part. For El Quico the
situation was more than critical. If he allowed himself to be taken to
the command post it would mean identification and certain deathâabout
that there was no doubt. What could he do? Sabaté tried to convince the
guards to allow them to continue their journey and told them repeatedly
they were on home leave and were returning to the villages but had lost
their way in the dark. He protested so angrily to the Carabineros that
one of them asked him for his papers.
âNaturally,â said SabatĂ©, âyou should have asked us that first.
It was the question for which he had been waiting. Sabaté opened his
jacket, brought out his pistol, and shot the four carabineros before
they knew what was happening. Once more he was freeâthe dilemma of
killing or being killed had been resolved, but this time at the expense
of four men carrying out their duties. It seemed as if Sabaté was doomed
to a life of trouble and violence. Even when he went out of his way to
look for peace, trouble came looking for him. This time it was so great
that even provisional refuge was out of the question. As they fied from
the area Sabaté remembered, too late, that he had left behind his
haversack. Inside were a number of books he had bought from the
Libertarian Bookshop in Hospitalet before leaving on his journey. In one
of the books was a receipt made out in his name. He might as well have
sent a written confession to the Hijos de Negrin.[39]
For greater security, the two separated, and Sabaté once more set out
for Barcelona. Whenever danger threatened, Sabaté always put his faith
in Barcelona. He left by train from a station near Martorell. This time,
strange for one who usually took too many precautions, he was
over-confident. He did not believe they would be waiting for him in the
city so soon. Coolly, but alert, he got off at the Francia station.
Walking along the platform, he saw a large number of police and security
men examining their papers. He immediately dashed into one of the
passenger coaches and out across the railway lines. However, he was
spotted by one of the guards who gave immediate chase. He managed lo
shake them off by leaping on and off trains and across the tracks, but
outside the station he saw they were sending out patrols to cut off his
access to the city. Due to the scarcity of petrol, horse-drawn carriages
were in vogue in Barcelona at that time. His lucky star shone on him,
for at that moment one of the carriages drove by with passengers inside.
He jumped in beside the coachman as it passed. The driver, a pistol
between his ribs, passed the cordon thrown round the area with no
questions asked.
This time El Quico managed to join, without further mishaps, the
121^(st) Brigade of the 26^(th) Division (Durruti) where he was among
comrades, and able to resume the struggle against fascism. In the last
few days of the war he took part in the desperate resistance at
Montsechâwinning the Medal for Valourâwhere entire sections were killed
on the parapets as the enemy gunfire took its toll. With his division he
travelled the length of the River Segre towards the Sierra de Gadi,
where they intended to prepare a last-ditch resistance. This idea,
however, was rejected by the High Command and also by the Confederal
committees, who were already making their way into exile in France.
On 10 February 1939 the forces of the 26^(th) Division entered France
through the PuigcerdĂĄ sector. They were the last organized units to
leave Barcelona. Sabaté and his comrades of the Division were interned
in the concentration camp of Vernet dâAriĂšge.
As we have seen El Quico was not the type of man to remain behind barbed
wire for long, and at the first opportunity he made his escape.
Strangely enough, however, this man who knew no fear nor accepted the
authority of the State, did an unexpected thing. After wandering around
in the Pyrenees, hungry and suffering from chest trouble, he returned
voluntarily to the concentration campâthis time to the infirmary where
he accepted his fate with resignation. France depressed him: âYou talk
and talk and no one understands what youâre saying, you hear them talk
and you donât know what theyâre saying!â
When World War II was officially declared on 3 September 1939, one of
the first consequences in France was the opening of the concentration
camps in which the Republican Army languished after many months of
inglorious battle against hunger, smallpox, lice and dysentery.
Thousands and thousands of Spaniards were incorporated in the production
battle, generally in the factories involved in the war economy such as
munitions, aviation, explosives, or in the associated activities such as
the construction of dams and roads.
Some 50,000 ârojosâ (âredsâ, as they were referred to), were organized
on military lines into labour battalions. Others, after being examined
as though they were in a slave market, were enlisted into the Foreign
Legion or the Pioneer Corps, to be used as shock troops on the Eastern
Front. Cannon fodder was so abundant that the recruiting officers threw
out anyone with a suspicious scar or even a bad tooth.
Sabaté left the camp in December 1939 and was sent to the building site
of a gunpowder factory at AngoulĂȘme.
The war did not begin in earnest for the French until 10 May 1940. For
more than eight months the two belligerent camps watched each other
closely then, suddenly, everything happened at once. A hurricane of
steel and fire swept over France. On 14 June German troops of the
XVIIIth Army under Von Kuchler entered Paris, and, only thirty-six days
after the offensive began on the Dutch frontier, swastikas flew over the
Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.
When the French Front disappeared, Sabaté attempted to escape, but
realised the German Panzers could move faster than he. He decided to
adapt himself as best he could to the existing situation.
At first the victors set up the illusory âfreeâ and âoccupiedâ zones.
The latter ran the full length of the Atlantic coast down to the Spanish
frontier, where the first German units arrived on 27 June.
Sabaté in the meantime took a job in a factory producing charcoal
burners (for ersatz petrol), and in 1941 his first daughter, Paquita was
born.
At about the same time the first Resistance groups, escaping the German
labour camps, took to the mountains, and within a short time became
known as the âMaquisardsâ, âMaquisâ or franc-tireurs. In the cities
sabotage units were organised, but the Germans later wiped out most of
these.
We do not know exactly what SabatĂ©âs activities consisted of during this
particular period of clandestine struggle, but certainly he was directly
involved with the Resistance movement from its inception.
On 10 December 1942 two warehouses, full of explosives, belonging to the
PoudrĂ©rie Nationale dâAngoulĂȘme (National Gunpowder Factory), were
destroyed in a daring act of sabotage. A number of Frenchmen were
arrested on suspicion of having been involved in the explosions, and one
of these men had in his possession a photograph of a group that included
Sabaté. Needless to say, this was the same gunpowder factory in which
Sabaté had worked on leaving the French concentration camp in 1939.
Once again, his tranquil interlude was over: Sabaté, accompanied by his
wife and child, moved to Perpignan in 1943ânot without difficulty as he
had neither prospects of work awaiting him, nor papers. However, he was
lucky enough to meet the Mayor of Prades, a good friend and sympathiser
of the Spanish refugees, who got him the necessary papers.
This problem solved, Sabaté realized he could take up the struggle once
again. Here was the Spanish border staring him in the face. He vowed to
himself he would renew the interrupted fight. How better than by
establishing himself in this area?
Together with his wife and daughter, El Quico moved into the little
village of Comes, north of Prades, which had been deserted for some
timeâthe only other occupants being a Spanish family. From the start
Sabaté and his family were at loggerheads with their new neighbours and,
after a short time in this unbearable atmosphere, Sabaté decided to move
once again and rented a small house in Eus near Prades.
He bought some plumbing tools and set to work doing minor repairs and
household jobs in the small cottages of the Pyrenean foothills. This way
he got to know every inch of the surrounding countryside in the region
of Vallespir and later, for a short time, joined a group of resistance
guides escorting refugees from occupied France into Spain. This enabled
him to gain an intimate knowledge of the Pyrenean mountains and passes
which he was later to use with great frequency. The main route he used
through the Pyrenees, and which he came to know like the back of his
hand, was that through Cerdanya.
One day, while walking through the streets of Perpignan, he met an old
friend from the 26^(th) Division, nicknamed El Roset. This chance
meeting proved to be a decisive one in SabatĂ©âs life, as it catalysed
all his ideas, giving him a definite goal at which to aim. The spirit
that had united these two comrades during the battle of Almudebar in
November 1936 now united them in the clandestine struggle against the
Francoist regime.
The first Congress of Local Federations of the Spanish Libertarian
Movement[40] was held in Paris in May 1945. It was undoubtedly the most
important working class gathering in the history of the Spanish
emigration.
The two wings of the libertarian movementâthose who were opposed to, and
those who had supported, participation in the Republican Government
during the war, appeared at last to have sunk their differences and
agreed to dedicate all their activities to the struggle against Franco.
In the months that followed a number of delegates were sent into the
interior.
To escort the first delegation the National Committee nominated a
skilled Aragonese guide, Antonio C.G., accompanied by José C. and Valero
G. This delegation was made up of two comrades: Angel Marin Pastor
(twenty-eight years) a member of the National Committee, and Lucio G.
Francisco Sabaté, Emilio C., Jaime Pares Adån (El Abisinio) and El Roset
acted as bodyguards for the delegation on their way to the capital. The
job of the commission was to set up a communications group to organize
closer contacts between the Organization in Spain and the exile
movement, under the National Committee of the Interior, whose secretary,
at that time, was Cesar Broto Villegas. They arrived safely in Barcelona
at the beginning of October 1945. SabatĂ©âs main reason for going to
Spain on this occasion was to establish bases for future guerrilla
activities in the Interior.
Having arrived in Barcelona without incident Sabaté set about the task
of establishing his own contacts in the city. The first meeting took
place in the mountains of San Pedro MartĂr, just outside the municipal
boundary of Esplugas. This meeting-place was known of old to the
anarchist militants, having been used frequently for this purpose during
the periods of Republican repression. Sabaté arrived at the rendezvous
armed to the teeth, with a submachine-gun, pistol and two hand-grenades.
He informed the comrades assembled there that he had been entrusted with
the task of reorganising the areas of Alto and Bajo Llobregat, and also
that he was preparing a number of actions for the near future. However,
he continued, he did not want to compromise any of the comrades who were
already on police files or under surveillance.
The local comrades, having heard what Sabaté had to say, gave him a
run-down of the infrastructure of the organisation in the area: all
co-ordination meetings consisted exclusively of a group of delegates and
printed local clandestine editions of the confederal papersâCNT and
Solidaridad Obrera. Sabaté was also told the names of comrades murdered
in the area by the fascists and the names of those responsible for their
deaths.
In order to carry out his plans, amongst which figured prominently
âatentados justicierosâ (reprisals), the first thing SabatĂ© required was
money to buy transport and to hide the necessary arms and explosives,
organise operational bases and set up an efficient propaganda printing
and distribution service.
Together with âthe Abyssinianâ and one other comrade, therefore, he
carried out a number of robberies in his hometown of Hospitalet. One of
the first victims was Juan Panellas Torras, an extremely rich man.
Another was Manuel Garriga Pugador, a well-to-do businessman who owned a
large store in the Calle del Generalissimo Franco. After tying-up both
Garriga and his wife, the three comrades took with them two typewriters,
30,000 pesetas and two sack loads of food. Before leaving the premises
Sabaté left his victims a note that said:
We are not robbers, we are libertarian resistance fighters. What we have
just taken will help in a small way to feed the orphaned and starving
children of those anti-fascists who you and your kind have shot. We are
people who have never and will never beg for what is ours. So long as we
have the strength to do so we shall fight for the freedom of the Spanish
working class.
As for you, Garriga, although you are a murderer and a thief, we have
spared you, because we as libertarians appreciate the value of human
life, something that you never have, nor are likely to, understand.
The next victim was one of the leading fascists of Hospitalet, a man by
the name of Canary. Sabaté and the comrades broke into his house at four
in the morning and, after tying-up Canary and his wife, made off with
25,000 pesetas, a sack of beans and a sack of potatoes. Before leaving
he left a note similar in style to the one already mentioned.
Following these initial âexpropriationsâ, the name of SabatĂ© became well
known and respected among the people in the streets, factories and the
clandestine meeting-places.
Apart from sympathy, these acts also gave the group an initial capital
of over 90,000 pesetas. Among other things handed over to the
organisation was one of the typewriters taken from Garrigaâs house. This
found its way into the hands of José G., a member of a recently-arrived
delegation from France, which had been escorted across the Pyrenees by
the veteran guerrilla fighter, Francisco Denis, better known to his
friends as âEl CatalĂĄâ.
The group took great care in establishing themselves and preparing their
plans, for their immediate enemy was Commissar Eduardo Quintela
Boveda[41] who led a highly-organised, efficient and ruthless
intelligence service, and was capable of the most devious machinations.
The efficiency of SabatĂ©âs organization did not take long to show
results. One of its most outstanding early achievements was the freeing
of a group of prisoners carried out in conjunction with the Defence
Secretary of the CNT Relations Committee, who was, incidentally, an
Italian named Antonio Pereira.[42] The prisoners concerned were two
comrades facing capital charges and who were about to be transferred to
another prison together with a third man, a member of the Communist
Party. With information obtained for them by another comrade, Victorio
Gual Vidal[43] which proved exact in every detail, the group prepared
their plan. Sabaté, El Roset and El Abisinio, took charge of the
operation.
The release operation took place on 20 October 1945. El Quico and El
Roset approached the two Guardia Civil escorting the prisoners, and when
they drew level with them, took out their guns and disarmed the
surprised Guardia. As they held them covered, El Abisinio remained at
the wheel of a car parked a few yards away with a sub-machine gun, to
protect the rear. Everything seemed to be going off smoothly, without
violence, when suddenly one of the guards being watched by El Roset drew
his pistol and aimed at SabatĂ©. The latter hesitated for a momentâwhich
could have cost him his lifeâbut El Roset, quite calmly, fired at
point-blank range and the guards fell, badly wounded. The other guard
fled, abandoning his prisoners. The incident taught Sabaté a lesson:
never bandy words with a policeman or Guardia Civil, without disarming
him first. Prisoners and liberators ran towards the get-away car in
which El Abisinio was waiting. The nearby Guardia Civil, hearing
gunfire, came running and opened fire on the group. El Abisinio let off
a few rounds from his sub-machine gun, which cooled the spirits of the
guardians of public order. They turned and fled. The operation was a
complete success, except that the third prisoner, the Communist, refused
to follow his liberators and returned voluntarily to prison.[44]
The police were not hard put to discover the identity of the robber in
Hospitalet. The victims were well known to Sabaté and he to them.
Perhaps this was why he chose them to be his first targets. He never
operated anonymously. His normal behaviour from then on was to approach
his victim or victims and say the three magic words, âSoy el Quico!â (I
am El Quico). It was sufficient to paralyse most people. Civilians and
military alike offered no resistance.
From 30 October 1945 onwards the Barcelona police began a wholesale
campaign of repression, arresting many militants, among them José G.,
the recently arrived delegate from France to whom Sabaté had presented
the typewriter taken from Garrigaâs house in Hospitalet. The custom was
whenever a number of comrades were arrested each individual would admit
responsibility for a part of the accused actions, thus reducing the
total collective charge. José G., who confessed to ownership of the
machine, could never have imagined what he was bringing upon himself. He
was beaten-up unmercifully, but of course could give no explanation to
the police concerning the origin of the typewriter, as he was completely
ignorant of its history. Not that it would have done any good explaining
matters to the policeâso far as they were concerned, SabatĂ©, delegations
and the organisation were one and the same thing.
It has often been argued that the activity of the armed urban guerrilla
groups was counter-productive from a revolutionary standpoint as it
invariably had disastrous consequences for the political side of the
organisation dedicated to propaganda and industrial action. Such
arguments have never been reasoned closelyâwhat was undoubtedly
disastrous was not the armed actions, but the deficient structure of the
clandestine organisation. This is a theme outside the scope of the
present book but some points should be made, as it is relevant to the
struggle being fought to this dayâand not only in Spain.
The Spanish Libertarian Movement never adopted a clear and concrete
position in the struggle against Franco, and neither did it attempt to
separate the activities of the political and guerrilla wings within its
ranks. People took part in the planning of guerrilla actions who had not
the remotest intention of participating in the operations themselves;
the âlegalâ political organisation (in France) controlled the formation
of the armed groupsâstubbornly ignoring the fact that within its ranks
were to be found informers, charlatans and hypocrites of every shape and
size; while the administration was in the hands of political
bureaucratsâa lunacy of the highest order, even ignoring for the moment
the obvious dangers such a situation could (and did) give rise toâas the
âcommittee menâ had a predilection for inventing what they called
âmethods of actionâ and âactivitiesâ which led inevitably to inaction
and inactivity.
These errors, briefly outlined above, cost the movement dear. They were
paid for with the blood and lives of some of its most outstanding
comrades. The members of the action groups argued continually but
unsuccessfully, within the organisation hoping to rectify this sorry
state of affairs and create an autonomous resistance organization
through which the men and groups involved could claim responsibility for
their actions and avoid, among other things, the effects of repression
felt by those comrades involved in propaganda and industrial action. The
MLE, however, never compromised itself in regard to the action groupsâit
had become a servant of legality in exile. Within the Spanish
Libertarian Movement nothing was totally authorised and nothing totally
condemned âthe standing of the action groups within the organization was
in a constant state of flux. For example, men who at any given moment
belonged to the urban guerrilla groups could pass to occupy responsible
positions within the organisation, and vice versa. This problem, perhaps
the most important of all, was never faced openly, in spite of the
disgraceful events which resulted with increasing frequency as the years
passedâbringing with them demoralisation and confusion.
Francoâs âNational Liberationâ was carried out with an orgy of bloodâa
murdererâs fury that lasted many months. From Barcelona to Seville, from
Corunna to Valencia and Madrid, the blood of the Spanish anti-fascists
ran in the gutters. Night and day the execution squads worked full-time.
One accusing finger was enough to send a man to his death. After this
period of mass extermination there followed another, no less efficient
and as arbitrary as the first, the Councils of War.
Probably the victors thought that in a âcivilizedâ country they should
at least cover their crimes with a cloak of legality. It was, after all,
the defence of Christianity they were celebrating. Where the mass
outrages ceased they carried on with raids.[45] Eighty or a hundred
people were often dealt with in the one swoop. It did not matter if the
accused knew each other or notâmost had never seen each other in their
lives before they set foot in the courtroom. The prosecutor read out
only the most outstanding deeds of the different accused and the
sentence was always passed immediatelyâ death!
How many Spaniards were murdered in this way between 1939 and 1942? The
exact figure will never be known, although it must run into hundreds of
thousands.[46] Then, tiring of so much bloodshed, the Falangists changed
their tactics. They began to try persuasion. They went as far afield as
France in search of likely material amongst the émigrés. By various
methods, which included coercion, they strove to enlist militant
workingmen into the so-called National Syndicalist â Centre (CNS). They
even had the effrontery to approach such men of integrity as Juan Peiro
Belis[47] and José Villaverde[48] who were both murdered when they
refused to prostitute their principles by collaborating with the
fascists. So it was not strange that they should attempt to do the same
with men of less merit, and less dignity.
In this new phase the Franco police agents not only tried to incorporate
militant syndicalists and those experienced in labour relations into the
CNS; they also tried to force them to submit to the will of the
authorities after giving them the impression that they would enjoy
complete independence. This happened, for instance, with the founders of
the so-called Labour Party, which drew its members from various sources
including the CNT and the Syndicalist Party,[49] founded by Angel
Pestaña[50] in April 1933.
Because of their record, their contacts and their knowledge of the
medium in which they had been so active for many years, these men were a
serious obstacle to the development of the revolutionary movement after
the Republican defeatâthe more so when they managed to gain control of
the reins of the clandestine organization in Catalonia. Pretending to
help comrades who found themselves in difficulty, they played a
treacherous game that proved disastrous for the whole working-class
movement. Their favours included the freeing of prisoners and the
dismissal of pending cases. In this way they managed to convince some
credulous people in the organisation that they were sincere and doing a
worthwhile job when, in fact, they were the despicable instruments of
the Police Headquarters. In particular one should mention Eliseo Melis
Diaz and Antonio Seba Amoros, whose activities in this respect were
particularly vile.
Melis was an ex-militant from the Textile and Fabric Syndicate in
Barcelona who had been active in the Shop Stewardsâ Committee between
1931 and 1935 and had often contributed articles to the confederal
newspaper Solidaridad Obrera. He was intelligent and active but, though
well known, he had never occupied any important position during the
Civil War. His later activity permits us to suppose that even then, in
the years prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, he was in contact with
the Directorate General of Security (DGS). At the end of the war Melis
remained in Barcelona and very soon began to appear in public with
Quintela. Nevertheless, he was still able to convince some guerrilla
comrades that he was working for the benefit of the CNT from inside the
Police HQ. He even managed to become Secretary of a clandestine Regional
Committee and, when he was voted out of this post, continued to
intervene actively in the organization by claiming to be a member of a
fictitious anarchist group.
His main function was to gain the confidence of comrades in order that
the police could break up the clandestine organisation if ever they felt
matters were getting out of hand. The Catalan Police should give eternal
thanks to Melisâas a result of his work, the setting up of an efficient
resistance movement was set back many years.
Quintela, who has only recently died, always preferred to see an
embryonic organisation of the CNT where he could be completely informed
of its activities and new members; above all, to know the intentions of
the members. The one thing that worried the head of the Secret Political
Police (Brigada Politico Socialâequivalent to our Special Branch) was
the formation of groups such as SabatĂ©âs, which did not come under any
control.
âThe weekly union stamp doesnât worry me in the slightest,â he used to
say.
Antonio Seba was another obnoxious character, though less so than Melis.
His principal activityâthough that was quite enoughâwas to act as
Melisâs lieutenant, and he became at various times secretary of
different Regional Committees in Catalonia. During the Civil War Seba
was chief of the 153^(rd) Mixed Brigade, or the âLand and Libertyâ
Column, as it was known prior to militarisation. With men of the 25^(th)
Division he helped to take Belchite and also took part in the battle of
Segre in August 1938.
Antonio Seba, suffering from a bullet wound, fled from Barcelona to
Valencia in February 1949 following a clean-up operation led by the Los
Maños Group under Wenceslao Jiménez Orive. The wound was not
particularly serious, but it made him understand that his reign was at
an end.
This confused situation made life extremely difficultâespecially so for
an underground movement. The credit for finally clearing matters up must
go to the Libertarian Youth, who had particularly bitter experience of
the subject. One of the first Regional Committees of the FIJL, Iberian
Federation of Libertarian Youth[51] was brought down completely in March
1943 thanks to Melis, and one of its members by the name of
Pallarols[52] was shot on the 8^(th) of the same month without any legal
proceedings having been taken against him. Pallarols belonged to the
Libertarian Youth of La Torrasa.
One thing that spurred on the young Catalans at this time was the
organisation in France, in 1945, of the Libertarian Youth in exile, who
held their first National Congress in Toulouse that April. Immediately
following this congress, some of the finest elements in the Catalan
Libertarian Youth Movement returned to Spain to renew the struggle, many
being subsequently killed or imprisoned. To conclude these pages on the
position of the Libertarian Organisation in Catalonia, and the confusion
caused by certain elements, we may mention Angel MarĂn, a delegate from
the National Committee in France, whom Sabaté accompanied to Barcelona.
He was arrested in October 1945 and by agreement with Quintela, made
contact with Melis. The result of this meeting was that in December,
Marin left prison to go on âoutside businessâ. He was said to have
escaped. In a circular from the National CommitteeâMLE in France, sent
round to the Regional Committees in 1946, it was stated:
For some days we have awaited with anxiety the arrival of the delegation
sent to Spain. Once in the Interior we received news that the Franco
Police had information as to its whereabouts, but, happily, they managed
to avoid the Security Services and return without incident. Apart from
meeting comrades and collecting information the delegation had the job
of ascertaining the whereabouts of comrade Marin and delivering to him a
letter from the National Committee, informing him that he should return
to France without delay. The delegates were instructed that once they
had found him in Spain, they should discover why he had remained in
Spain and whether he intended to remain there permanently or not â
basically in order to decide what should be done about him. They were
also instructed to allow him the necessary money to return to France.
This delegation has now returned and informs us they were unable to make
contact with Marin without going through Melis and Seba. Knowing the
relationship of these two with the police it would have been suicide to
attempt this course of action.
Angel Marin did in fact return to France accompanied by another comrade,
Juan Farre,[53] soon after this on 17 March 1946. He was expelled from
the National Committee and never again given any position of
responsibility in the organisation. Another very similar case was that
of comrade Evangelisto Campos, a delegate sent by the MLE to Barcelona,
in April 1945, to make preparations for the Youth Congress scheduled to
take place in Paris that May. During a police raid on a Regional
Committee meeting in Barcelona in March 1946, Campos was wounded as he
tried to flee. Later, however, while in police custody, he made contact
with Melis who arranged his âescapeâ.
The first job undertaken by Sabaté and his group was to seek out active
supporters and collaborators, not only in Barcelona but also in the
surrounding villages and along the whole length of the road between
Barcelona and the French frontier. He began to organise bases in the
mountains and the city that would serve as refuges for the comrades, and
also as arms depots and supply posts.
It would be no exaggeration to say that between 1945 and 1946 El Quico
got to know almost every tree in every village and mountain in
Catalonia. In February of 1946, while he was in Barcelona, he received a
telegram informing him that Leonor had given birth to twins the day
before. Without losing a minute, he immediately set out to return to
France. Despite the heavy snowâ waist deep in placesâhe crossed the
border by way of Bañolas and Coustouges, finally arriving in Perpignan
where his wife was still in the clinic. One of the little girls died a
few days later, but the second survived and was named Alba.
The Sabaté family had moved to Marquixanes shortly before this,
abandoning their home in Eus (between Prades and Vinta). Sabaté remained
a few days in the Roussillon capital and then moved with his family to
their new home, La Clapére, on the banks of the River Tech, about two
miles from Prat-de-Mollo.
Once settled in La Clapére, Sabaté then rented a small casa de campo
further up the mountainside on the opposite bank of the river, hoping
thus to make access to outsiders a little more difficult. The local
inhabitants knew this small cottage as âLa Sorangueraâ, and it was here
that El Quico organised his first operational base for his journeys
across the frontier. To cover his clandestine activities at this base he
rented a small nearby wood and arranged to have it worked by a group of
five comrades. Sabaté had the idea of building a commune on this spot,
finding it amusing that it should be within rifle range of Spain, but
the attempts to fulfil this dream were in vain. The people he approached
defrauded him completely and in the end he was forced to abandon the
idea.
The organisation took advantage of El Quicoâs visit to France and asked
him to undertake an important mission transporting a huge quantity of
arms into Catalonia. On 21 April, therefore, he left with a group of
comrades (all veterans who had endured their baptism of fire), among
them RamĂłn Vila Capdevila. The material, which consisted of sub-machine
guns, ammunition and explosives, was to be taken to a pre-arranged spot
inside Spanish territory. It was then to be transported to the Geronese
village of Bañolas where it would be kept by a comrade in whom they had
complete confidence. The group of five decided to split up in Bañolas
and meet later in Barcelona. Two of them left on the morning bus to
Gerona on 25 April, while another two intended to leave by the same way
that afternoon. Sabaté himself was making his own way the following day
in a lorry, with the arms carefully concealed under a tarpaulin.
The afternoon bus left Bañolas at two oâclock. As there was a fair that
day the village was full of travellers, which made things easier for the
group as, in a crowded street, they were less likely to be noticed.
After lunch the three friends left the inn where they had been staying,
Sabaté chatting to one, Ramón Vila following a short distance behind. As
they made their way to the bus station, two Guardia Civil suddenly
approached the first two comrades and demanded their papers, which were
duly produced and handed over for inspection.
It is hard to say what aroused the suspicion of the officers, possibly
it was because the papers were made out to persons from Logroño whereas
these two had pronounced Catalan accents. They ordered the two comrades
to accompany them to the barracks. Sabaté began to protest while Ramón
remained watching quietly in the background.
Some citizens gathered round, looking on at the argument with some
surprise. One of the Guardia Civil, with less patience than his
colleague, or perhaps deciding to end the argument once and for all by
showing his authority, drew his pistol. RamĂłn Vila, whose eyes missed
nothing, saw how the situation was developing and jumped forward,
shooting the Guardia Civil, JosĂ© Godo GarcĂa, dead on the spot. The
second, who had been the more fervent in the discussion, had scarcely
got over the shock of seeing his colleague killed when he found the
barrels of three guns pointing in the direction he should take. He
prudently took off like a rocket in the direction indicated, while the
resultant panic in the market place allowed the three to make good their
escape.
For what it is worth, it may be mentioned here that it was not Sabaté
who fired the fatal shot on this occasion (as was inevitably stated by
the Spanish press), but RamĂłn Vila. To this fact the best witness would
have been the Guardia Civil who ran for his life, but it was no doubt a
matter of prestige with him to have his colleagueâs death attributed to
the notorious Sabaté himself, whom he later, no doubt, identified from
photographs.
Ramón Vila and the other comrade took refuge in the mountains. Sabaté
returned, cautiously, to the inn, for he was still responsible for the
material that lay in two large trunks now in Bañolas. Arriving there, he
took with him a sub-machine gun and the necessary ammunition, hiding the
rest in a pile of manure at the back of the tavern yard where dealers
and small traders left their horses and carts. At nightfall he abandoned
the inn and took refuge in a cottage belonging to a reliable and trusted
comrade.
Bañolas was only a small village, at that time, of 6,000 inhabitants.
The police and Guardia Civil busied themselves furiously among the
villagers, making individual and house-to-house searches, setting up
patrols and roadblocks. Above all, the Guardia Civil wanted to avenge
the honour of the Corps.
Sabaté managed to escape the search by a retreat in which he received,
he said later, the biggest fright of his life. The woman of the house
where he was hidden gave him some peasant clothes and a scythe, and,
with the tool on his shoulder, he passed through the cordon of guards
controlling the exits out of Bañolas. Beside him the woman walked
carrying a large food basket in which was hidden the sub-machine gun. It
was the first and last time Sabaté went unarmed.
Meanwhile, the innkeeper, worried at the intensive activity of the
police, and seeking to remove any possible suspicion from himself, went
to the authorities to report the disappearance of a suspicious character
who had been lodging in his premises. It was not such a bright idea as
he thought because the police, realising that the innkeeperâs suspicions
were probably well founded and that the real bird had flown, decided to
make of him the example they needed to vindicate their âhonourâ. They
put him through the most terrible tortures to make him confess, leaving
him crippled for life. Meanwhile they ordered a search of the inn and
discovered the secret cache of arms in the dung pile.
SabatĂ©, in his peasantâs disguise, continued on his journey to
Barcelona, while RamĂłn and his friend returned to France to report what
had happened.
As a result of police enquiries following the incident in Bañolas, one
of the comrades in Gerona was arrested. He had acted as go-between for
the action groups operating in Barcelona, particularly with that of
Sabaté. We do not know exactly what led to his arrest, although previous
events in Gerona suggest an explanation. It is certain that when Sabaté
accompanied the delegation from the MLE in October 1945, contact had
been established in Gerona with a local resident. When he returned to
France, the âlocalâ gave him a number of important documents, which,
apart from minor matters, gave the complete disposition of Francoâs
border troops. When these documents were examined in France it was
discovered they had been typed on the machine belonging to Melis.
It does not take much imagination, therefore, to assume that the contact
was being usedâconsciously or notâby the Barcelona informer. Naturally
all relationship with the âlocalâ was cut off. However, it left a
difficult problem, for this man now knew many things and, living in the
same district, could not fail to know the identity of his successor. At
all events the arrest of this successor was a major police victory. He
attempted suicide, but was prevented from doing so. Subjected to extreme
interrogation the police obtained from him the address of a house in
Barcelona frequented by the SabatĂ© groupâa dairy in the Calle Santa
Teresa. The house was placed under close surveillance, in order to
identify everyone who came and went, with the object, at the appropriate
moment, of destroying them once and for all.
With his customary caution, Sabaté arrived in Barcelona on 2 May, having
made the journey from Gerona on foot. He was unaware that the contact in
Gerona had been arrested, and his first objective was to search out the
comrades who had preceded him to the Catalan capital. For various
reasons he was unable to meet them and so decided to call at the dairy
to find out where they were.
On 7 May the woman who owned the dairy managed to inform Sabaté that her
place was under observation and that the police had probably identified
some of the comrades who had called there, including El Abisinio, who
had appeared the previous day. Sabaté reflected on the consequences of
the police knowing about the dairy. To prevent any comrades falling into
the trap prepared for them he had to sabotage the machinery being set-up
by police HQ. Discreetly examining the neighbourhood of the shop he saw
a group of four workmen who appeared to be holding a heated discussion
among themselves. Calmly El Quico walked straight up to them. Still
apparently preoccupied with their discussion, the four men started to
walk towards Sabaté. When he was only a few yards away from the
suspicious looking group, he drew his Mauser pistol and pointed it at
them as though he were about to shoot. It is impossible to describe the
look on the menâs faces as they turned and ran as if all the devils in
hell were after them.
El Quico, being an excellent marksman, could have killed them all had he
so wished, but was not given to gratuitous violence. Once it appeared
they were safely out of range the disguised policemen turned and opened
fire with their pistols, but Sabaté did not want to get involved and
disappeared hastily. The important thing now was to inform his comrades
that the dairy was a death trap!
As he knew, several members of the group had already been identified,
including âthe Abyssinianâ. He had been followed discreetly, and was in
imminent danger, as the police knew his addressâthat of his sister, who
lived in the Travesera de Gracia, near the San Pablo Hospital. Now,
following their brush with Sabaté the police guessed that nobody would
fall into the trap, so they decided to act swiftly before everything
they hoped to achieve was lost.
The whole family living in the dairy was arrested, and it may have been
through them that the police managed to discover the addresses of Sabaté
and El Roset. Normally the discovery would not have mattered in the
least since, with his customary caution, Sabaté did not set foot in the
house again, even to collect his belongings. Unfortunately, however, the
trail led ultimately to the downfall of El Roset.
El Abisinio was the first of the group to fall. On 9 May, 1946, as he
was entering his home, the police shot him down in a hail of gunfire on
his own staircase. Jaime Pares died without being able to put up the
least show of resistance.[54]
Following the murder of Jaime Pares, âthe Abyssinianâ, another comrade
was imprudent enough to pass the street where the dairy was situated and
was immediately taken to the cells of Police Headquarters.
El Quico did not, of course, go home, but he kept a close watch on his
house under the very noses of Quintelaâs men as they went in to prepare
an ambush for him on his return. Sabaté had the daring idea of meeting
the police in an open fight. He went with El Roset to meet the MLE
contact, at that time Antonio LĂłpez,[55] to ask him to join them in
taking the house by storm and giving the police the fright of their
lives.
LĂłpez, sensibly, did not agree. He thought it suicidal and pointless, to
which viewpoint Sabaté and El Roset had to agree.
On 26 May Sabaté and El Roset split up, as the former wanted to go to
Hospitalet to see how his parents were faring. He knew that his brother,
José, was about to arrive from Valencia. José had been in charge of a
battalion in 1938 when the Republican Zone was cut in two, and at the
final disaster had been taken prisoner in the fall of Alicante. He had
been detained in the concentration camp of Albatera and in the Cartagena
Penitentiary. Finally he was released on âprovisional libertyâ, and
wrote to his family saying he would like to visit them.
Meanwhile El Roset, despite innumerable warnings from Sabaté that his
house would certainly be under surveillance, decided to go home for a
time. Quintelaâs men were waiting for him on his arrival, and took him
off under close arrest.
Sabaté knew how dangerous it was for him to go to Hospitalet, but he
dearly wanted to see his brother again. Drawing on all his knowledge and
experience of police methods, he examined carefully the surrounding area
before finally going to the house in the afternoon. There was no one at
home, so he scribbled a note to José, which only he would understand,
and left immediately through the back door to spend the night under the
stars.
Next day, at dawn, he looked round cautiously to avoid meeting anyone he
knew and noticed some unusual activity in the vicinity of his home. He
turned the first corner he came to hoping to get as far from the house
as possibleâand walked straight into the arms of the Policia Armada![56]
It was impossible to retreat without arousing their suspicions, so he
plucked up courage and like any good citizen walked past the parked
police cars cheerfully whistling to himself. It was not until much later
that he learned how close he had been to death that morning. The police
had orders to shoot him on sight without warning, and, sitting
handcuffed in one of the cars, El Roset and the Gerona contact were
waiting to identify him. His parentsâ house had been closely watched,
and it is possible he had been seen entering the day before. At all
events, when Sabaté passed the cars and buses packed with police, all
guns were trained on him, his life hanging by a slender thread.
However, both the contact and El Roset courageously affirmed to their
captors that the man passing was not Sabaté.
The same day his father, while leaving for work, was stopped by the
Policia Armada who used him as a shield to enter the house. This was to
be a common occurrence in the years to come.
José and Francisco, the two brothers, were reunited a few days later, in
the mountains. El Quico, told José about his activities and present and
future plans. José had to return to Valencia to clear up some personal
matters, but promised his brother they would meet shortly in France and
there discuss plans for future actions. A week later José arrived in
France and gave himself over fully to the struggle.
In June 1947 El Quico met a childhood friend, Juan P., on a bridge near
San Baudilio de Llobregat. The meeting was not fortuitousâSabatĂ© had
sent word to Juan that he would like to discuss some matters with him.
Juan P. had only recently moved to the little Catalan town of Gava
following the death of his only son. When El Quico explained that he had
planned a number of projects which centred around Gava and required
Juanâs assistance the latter agreed to help him in everything necessary,
and the two men went their separate ways having agreed to meet a few
days later. Juanâs house was situated some 300 metres from the Gava
barracks of the Guardia Civil and it was here Sabaté came a few days
later to spend the night and the following day, a Sunday, with his
friend and family. They could not discuss much on the Saturday night as
Juan, who worked in the nearby textile factory, did not finish work
until nearly midnight and his wife worked as a day labourer in the
fields, the only person in the house when El Quico arrived being the
fourteen-year-old daughter. However, most of Sunday was spent in deep
discussion. SabatĂ©âs plan was to isolate the village by cutting off all
communications to the village, storm the barracks of the Guardia Civil
for arms, and to rob the Bank of Vizcaya.
He also wanted to deal with some of the local fascist leaders who played
an important part in the repression that followed the âNationalâ
victory. Such a daring plan obviously required detailed information and
it was Juanâs task, together with other local comrades, to obtain this.
The project was never carried out, however, as in July Commissar
Quintelaâs right-arm, Eliseo Melis Diaz, was executed and the resultant
repression forced Sabaté and his group to return to safety in France.
The police also became suspicious of Juan P., who was on parole from
prison, which caused him to seek refuge, together with his family, in
France. The Gava plan was therefore shelved for the moment.
The nature of Eliseo Melis Diazâs activities has been described in
previous pages. The idea of eliminating this informer had been discussed
many times and approved by all the resistance organizations. In April
1945 three comrades had travelled to Spain to effect the assassination
but were unable to carry it out as a result of warnings being leaked to
the police. Manuel Pareja, another comrade from the action groups, also
went into Spain with this sole objective in mind, and had it not been
due to the intervention of Angel MarĂn (the MLE delegate who âescapedâ
from police custody with the assistance of Melis), would have been
executed.
Previous to this, in October 1945, the National Committee of the CNT led
by CĂ©sar Broto was arrested and the Committee which succeeded it, whose
Secretary was Lorenzo Iñigo, was also arrested at the beginning of April
1946. The Secretary of the new National Committee of the CNT visited
Pareja on two separate occasions, insisting that it was of the utmost
importance that Melis be eliminated as soon as possible.
In March 1947 the Spanish Libertarian Resistance Movement in Barcelona
(MLR) was formed with the idea of separating all organisational and
propaganda activities from the purely guerrilla actions. From now on it
was intended that the MLR should be the military wing of the Libertarian
Movement. The idea came from the comrades in the âInteriorâ and was
agreed by a new delegate from France. Later, however, the movement in
exile disagreed with this decision and disavowed their delegate.
Nevertheless, the movement in Spain decided to act on its own initiative
and received the support of many excellent and experienced comrades
including the group of Manuel Pareja. This collaboration bore fruit.
It was decided that the mere elimination of Melis was not enough. They
were convinced that there were more people, not only in Spain but also
in France, doing the same thing, quite unknown to anyone. A plan was
prepared which, it was hoped, would help unmask the traitors inside the
organisation once and for all.
The operation was given the code name âPlan Hâ and was perfected down to
the last detail. At noon on 12 July, 1947 Manuel Pareja, Antonio Gil
(better known as Antonio Sancho Agorreta) and another comrade, made
their way into a café in the Plaza Buensuceso where Melis was playing
billiards, in his shirt-sleeves. Pareja went up to Melis unnoticed and
touched him on the shoulder, telling him to come outside and not to
offer any resistance. Melis, who already knew through Angel MarĂn what
Parejaâs intentions were, put on a brave front. He collected his jacket
and left the cafe escorted by the three men.
In the street Pareja told him briefly that, more than his life, he
wanted all the documents and papers he had in his possession and he
would go with him to collect them. Melis realised he was in a position
from which there was no escape, the more so, when going into the street,
he found that in addition to the three beside him there were another
three comrades waiting, Pedro Adrover Font, known as El Yayo, RamĂłn
GonzĂĄlez SanmartĂ,[57] and one other. Before they set out Antonio Gil
wanted to frisk Melis but Pareja insisted that it was not necessary.
Pareja hoped by this to convince Melis that if he handed over the
documents his life would be spared. This was to have tragic
consequences.
Melis was convinced that he was taking the last walk of his life, so he
showed no resistanceâbut all the time waiting for the first opportunity
to get out of his terrible predicament. Suddenly, as they left the Calle
Elisabets (where Adrover and the others had joined them) and went into
the Galle Montalegre, Melis pushed violently against his two captors,
managing to escape through a doorway and up the staircase. Pareja rushed
after Melis, but as he paused in the darkness, Melisâwho was already on
the stairsâhad a perfect view of his silhouette. He drew out his pistol
and ired in the narrow passageway hitting Pareja, who fell fatally
wounded. He had the presence of mind, however, to fall face down, and
crawled towards Melis, firing rapidly. Melis fell limply and Gil,[58]
stepping into the doorway, delivered the coup de grĂące to the traitor.
Meanwhile, the four in the street had placed themselves strategically to
prepare for any eventuality and protect the retreat. Gil soon reappeared
with the news that Pareja was badly wounded and would have to be
carried. In seconds they hi-jacked a passing milk lorry, guns in hand,
and ordered the driver out. GonzĂĄlez took the wheel and the others
helped Pareja aboard. They then drove off at high speed. Pareja had not
lost consciousness but knew that his wound was mortal. He begged his
comrades to kill him and save themselves, but this they did not have the
heart to do. They took him to the Casualty Hospital where they left him
in the entrance foyer in terrible agony.[59]
When Quintela heard what had happened, he gave immediate orders that
Parejaâs life was to be saved at all costs. This solicitude was not out
of any humanitarian feelings but his desperate desire to question the
wounded man. It was, however, in vain, for Pareja breathed his last
before the duty surgeon had a chance to arrive.
Melis had given excellent service to the Spanish Police, but in the long
run everyone despises traitors. His death merited only a few lines in
the Barcelona papers, which did not even mention his name:
âIn one of the streets adjoining the Calle Fernando (they even concealed
the true name of the place where it happened) two men in a lorry shot a
man passing in the street. He received a number of bullets in the body
from which he later died. Notwithstanding the speed and surprise of the
attack, he managed to fire on his aggressors before dying, wounding one
of them. The wounded manâs friends took him to the Casualty Hospital
where they left him. They then fled.â
With the death of Melis the MLR made its first public statement, in a
leaflet that announced its policy:
âIn the future we shall reply to Governmental terrorism with peopleâs
terrorism. We shall answer the murdererâs bullets of the uniformed
gunmen with the pistols and machine-guns of the MLR. Men of the MLR will
carry out sentence on all traitors as they have already done in the case
of the notorious Eliseo Melis of unhappy memory, on July 12^(th), at
13.00. hours, in the Calle Montalegre in Barcelona.â
This communiqué was signed by the Revolutionary Committee and was dated
1 August 1947.
The Spanish Libertarian Movement in exile celebrated the 2^(nd) Congress
of Local Federations in Toulouse from 20 May until 29 October 1947. This
meeting was attended by many activists from the Interior, including José
Lluis FacerĂas and Francisco SabatĂ©. Also attending were representatives
from the MLR, but these were refused delegate status by the Congress
bureaucracy and not allowed to participate in the heated discussions
concerning the future role of the Libertarian Resistance movement in
Spain.
As usual, the Congress ended with a call for greater militancy and a
more dynamic propaganda and action campaign in Spainâcompletely
meaningless, but necessary to placate the demands of the always more
militant rank-and-file of the movement. Certainly the bureaucracy even
went so far as to refuse to permit the wishes and comments of the
guerrilla groups being heard or discussed while the Congress was in
session.
Disgusted with the manoeuvres of the bureaucracy, FacerĂas prepared to
leave France with his group and return to Spain. Francisco Sabaté,
Alberto B., and another comrade had prepared the ground for this trip by
setting up an arms cache for âFaceâ in the Mas Tartas base near Osseja
in the French Eastern Pyrenees. The three comrades had transported all
the arms and explosives to Osseja from the main arms dump in Font Romeu.
FacerĂas was taking with him a special delegate from the National
Committee of the CNT (whom we shall refer to as C) but unfortunately,
before they crossed the frontier, they were arrested by the French
border guards near Latour de Carol and taken to Perpignan prison.
Unexpectedly, however, the group was released after fifteen days without
any trial or court appearance whatsoever and, undaunted, renewed their
preparations for the journey before the winter snows made it impossible.
The journey turned out to be dogged with ill luck.
The group was guided by the veteran anarchist militant Mariano P.
Unfortunately, as they were packing the material to be taken with them,
a hand-grenade pin came loose and blew up in Marianoâs hand as he
fumbled with a locked shutter-catch, trying to throw it out of the
window. A fragment from the grenade hit RamĂłn Ballester Orovitg,
wounding him in the knee. The comrades carried Mariano to a doctor in
the nearby village of Osseja where his wounds were dressed and, as he
required surgery, he was then taken to Perpignan hospital, where his
left forearm and thumb of his right hand were amputated.
Eventually the group, consisting of FacerĂas, Ramon GonzĂĄles, Celedonio
GarcĂa Casino and Rafael Ballester Orovitg left for Spain on 6 December.
Bad luck continued to follow them, however, for Rafael was forced to
return to France due to an infection in his wounded knee.
At the same time as these events were taking place the Sabaté family
moved from La Clapére to another casa de campo near Coustouges. This
house was even better suited to his plans, being only one kilometre from
the frontier. To keep Leonor and the children company during his many
absences he brought with him a young comrade to do the odd jobs around
the house and to look after the land. He also bought a mule, which
proved to be of inestimable value in helping with these chores. His
labours were observed with some irony by the neighboursâthough at a
distance, the nearest house being over half a mile away as the crow
flies. To buy seeds and other materials he had to travel to Ceret,
Arles-sur-Tech, St Laurent and even as far afield as Perpignan, and
everyone he met he tried to fire with enthusiasm for his dream of a
libertarian commune in that pleasant area. The people of the area
knewâor at least thought they knewâthat particular piece of land only
too well. They looked on his hopes with scepticism. Others, they said,
had tried in that same spot and failed miserably.
However, El Quico was not only stubborn, he was a man of initiative and
a hard worker. He got hold of an old pump andâalways accompanied by his
muleâdug the necessary ditches and even managed to get water up to the
house. To the amazement of his detractors the makeshift farmer was soon
producing melons the like of which had never been seen before on the
French slopes of the Pyrenees.
At about this time, however, an event occurred in France whose
repercussions were to be intimately linked with SabatĂ©âs later life. On
the night of 6/7 May, 1948 a number of masked and armed men arrived in a
car at the yard of the RhĂŽne Poulenc factory in Peage de Roussillon
(Lyons) with the intention of robbing the payroll. They cut the
telephone wires and bound and gagged two of the guards, Poncet and
Hennebaud. The third, Maurice Monnot, who was on his rounds at the time,
opened fire in an attempt to stop the robbers, and was killed in the
ensuing gun-fight.
The unintended death of the guard forced the robbers to leave the
factory immediately and make their escape in the car they had arrived
in. The escape was made in such disarray and panic that they left behind
them a vast number of clues.
The robbers had changed the number plates of the car, and, for some
reason, no doubt to change them again when they had made good their
escape, when they got out of their car on arrival the number plates were
left lying on the ground. In their sudden haste to escape they forgot
them.
The police identified the owner of the car number 7263 F S8. It was
registered in Haute Garonne as belonging to a Spaniard by the name of
Carlos Vidal Pasanau, a resident of Toulouse, who had bought the car in
November 1947 from a garage in Toulon. Vidal was in Spain and could not
be interviewed by the French police.
On the night of 15 May, 1948 on Route Nationale 115, near the village of
La Cabanasse in the district of Ceret in the Pyrenees (only a few miles
from the Spanish frontier), French Customs officers carried out a âstop
and searchâ operation. As they were asking the passenger of a taxi they
had stopped to get out to produce his papers, the man gave them a sudden
violent shove as he handed over the documents and ran off into the
night. The Customs officers fired a few shots, but without hitting
anyone. The documents the man dropped were in the name of Francisco
Sabaté Llopart. Inside the taxi they found an automatic pistol.
A few hours later Customs men raided the Mas Casenove Loubette, the
Sabaté home. They searched the premises in the presence of Leonor and
found two American portable radio transmitters and receivers. These were
confiscated as contraband, something that was sorted out satisfactorily
between the Customs and SabatĂ© after a yearâs discussion. However, on 21
May, a few days after the first visit Police Commissioner Dupouy came to
effect a more meticulous search and found a sack containing: a packet of
twenty-two cartridges of explosive material; five hand-grenades; three
metal tubes packed with explosive substances; fourteen light bombs;[60]
two bombs described as dangerous, and two boxes each containing fifteen
detonators.
After making his escape from the taxi as described, Sabaté managed to
cross the River Tech and hide for a few days in the house of a friend
who lived quite near. He did not travel far as he was shortly to take a
group of nine people (including himself) into Spain, among whom were his
brother JosĂ©, RamĂłn Vila Capdevila and Francisco MartĂnez MĂĄrquez.
Sabaté, who was in Spain at the time, was charged in his absence with
illegal possession of the arms and explosives found in the Mas Casenove
Loubette. The Ceret Correctional Tribunal heard the case in his absence
on 23 November 1948, and El Quico was fined 50,000 francs and sentenced
to three years imprisonment.
On I2 January 1949 a number of libertarians, arrested the previous May,
were released from prison in Spain. Amongst these was Francisco
Ballester Orovitg. During his imprisonment Ballester had prepared a
census of all the CNT detainees, with the addresses of the families and
the names of the lawyers who had defended them. The purpose was to
organise in as efficient a manner as possible material aid for the
prisoners, their families, and supply them with legal aid. To prepare
this project he got in contact, through an intermediary, with Sabaté,
whom he knew quite well.
Sabaté took up the idea of organising help for the prisoners with great
enthusiasm, as it had been one of the problems that had worried him
consistently. He asked his brother JosĂ©âwho was at that time in
Barcelonaâto work with Ballester to prepare a realistic plan of action.
With this done, José and Ballester approached a sympathetic lawyer to
take charge of the legal aid for prisoners. SabatĂ©âs group undertook to
cover all expenses involved in the project, without any help from the
MLE.
As usual it was a question of money. Once more, the activist groups had
to fall back on the banks for forced contributions, they had no other
source of income and it was for this reason that robberies played an
important role in the Resistance movement.
Here we include some of the more important acts of expropriation that
took place during this period of our story:
Textile factory of ]osé Sanglas in Avia, Barcelona, amount taken, 65,000
pesetas.
Branch of the Banco Central de Barcelona, amount taken 77,000 pesetas.
Sociedad Anónima Ferrero, Barcelona. (The Director of this firm, José
Ferrero, was shot dead when he attempted to prevent the robbery).
José and Francisco, together with José Pérez Pedrero, called
âTragapanesâ because of his continual hunger, and another comrade
planned a âpolitical prisoners operationâ against a bank near Barcelona,
the Gava Bank, which SabatĂ© knew wellâhe had robbed it successfully as
far back as 1935! Although this particular attempt failed it does
illustrate the reason for SabatĂ©âs survival throughout many years of
constant action. It was due not only to his courage and character and a
certain amount of luck, but to his extreme caution at all times. He was
daring but never suicidal.
This bank had managed to foil any further robbery attempts after 20
January 1949 because, due to the large number of bank raids, all banks
in Catalonia were supplied with two armed police who stood guard in the
doorway. Sabaté had tried to raid it once before, but, finding the risk
too great for two men on their own, he called it off. The reason this
attempt failed was due to different reasons. José and Tragapanes had
stolen a car for this job a few hours before the deadline. José, who
knew how meticulous his brother was regarding timeâparticularly in
something of this nature âhad let the owner of the car go free, although
he knew the man would go straight to the police. There would still be
enough time to do the job successfully.
This time, owing to circumstances completely beyond his control, El
Quico and his friend arrived in Gava by taxi much later than expected.
When Francisco heard at what time the driver of the stolen car had been
freed he decided to leave the robbery for another day. This was
certainly a stroke of luck! As the four returned to Barcelona, the car
broke down after travelling only a few hundred yards. All their efforts
to fix it were in vain. Had this happened after the robbery, perhaps
even when they were being followed, they would have been in a very tight
spot.
Unknown to Ballester, however, he had been under close surveillance by
the police since leaving prison. Through following him they were able to
track down the address where Sabaté was staying, and hoped to lay hands
on not only his group, but all the other action groups as well. The
police plan failed because of the prudence already mentioned and the
experience gained from clandestine struggle. Nobody, for instance, came
or went to SabatĂ©âs house, or anywhere for that matter, without first
taking great care to check that the place was not being watched by the
security services.
For this reason Ballester immediately spotted the police and realised
the danger he was running. He conferred with Francisco and José Pérez
Pedrero, and together they decided to teach the police a lesson. Arming
themselves to the teeth, they made their way to the house in Sans, where
the trap for them had been set. When they got there, however, the three
policemen José had seen earlier had disappeared. Instead there were two
well-dressed gentlemen walking up and down the street. Were they a
relief? It was up to them to answer. Tragapanes and José hid discreetly
to give covering fire if necessary, while Francisco walked up to the
strangers. He produced the Thomson sub-machine gun that he always
carried under his raincoat and asked for their papers.
The two men, surprised, handed over their documents. One was a
pharmacist and the other something similar. They might well have been
ordinary citizens, but it was also more than likely they were undercover
agents. Francisco told them to get out of the district immediately, and
warned them that if he set eyes on them again he would not waste time
asking for papers.
The incident came to the attention of the police, who realised that
further surveillance of the house was a waste of time. They went to the
lawyer instructed by Ballester, with the intention of gaining
information that would lead them to the group, but he could tell them
nothing. The only person he had been in contact with was Ballester.
The police, now afraid that even Ballester would escape from their
clutches, ordered his immediate arrest. The Brigada Politico Social took
him into custody, to the cells of their headquarters in the Via Layetana
in Barcelona. It was difficult for Ballester to deny any knowledge of
the Sabaté group as the police had a full record of all his movements
from the moment he left the Model Prison. Naturally, what they wanted
from him was the place and date of the groupâs next meeting. Ballester
had no way out. Under torture he admitted that his next rendezvous with
the group was on 26 February in the foyer of the Cine America, in the
Avenida del Marques de Duero, No. 121, at 6.45 in the evening, or, in
the event of a slip-up, at No. 91 on the same street, which was the Cine
Condal. Ballester[61] had used a ruse, however, which managed to
sabotage the police manoeuvre, although it could have had tragic
consequences. He told the police that his contact with the group was
through Francisco MartĂnez (Paco), a man already known to the police.
Thinking they were dealing only with the arrest of Marquéz, they took
precautions, but not in any way as much as they would have done had they
known they were dealing with the Sabaté brothers.
The strongest police guard was around the Cine America, which Ballester
had given at the first rendezvous, directly under the orders of the
Chief of the Brigada himself, Pedro Polo Borreguero,[62] a man notorious
for his persecution of anarchist militants. Previously he had been the
confidant of Miguel BadĂa,[63] the Catalan Chief of Police who, with the
complicity of the Republican Government, re-enacted the police terror
carried out by Severiano MartĂnez Anido and General Miguel Arlegui y
Bayones.
The Special Services Brigade was formed in September 1946 to reinforce
the Brigada Politico Social and Polo, at that time second in command of
the BPS, was appointed its Supremo. Polo thus acquired the same rank as
Eduardo Quintela, Chief of the Social Brigade. Both brigades came under
the control of the Police Commissioner, Manuel Chinchilla.[64]
That night it so happened that the Sabaté group intended leaving for
Martorell, and in order to waste as little time as possible, they went
along together to the meeting with Ballester, not knowing of his arrest.
Before the arranged time of the rendezvous a policeman, Oswaldo Blanco
Gregorio, was posted in the foyer of the Cine Condal while Inspector
Jesus MartĂnez Torrecilla and another policeman (Alvaro Varela GuillĂ©n),
were respectively positioned at a street corner and a nearby garage.
SabatĂ©âs group approached the meeting place with the two brothers
leading and the other two comrades following at a discreet distance.
José, always attentive and alert, recognised Oswaldo Blanco from a
distanceâhe was one of the two policemen keeping watch on his home
address in Sans.
José warned Francisco of the danger and together they worked out a plan
of action. Between the comrades and the cinema itself there was a
newspaper kiosk that could act as a screen. Each would jump out from
either side of the kiosk, capture and disarm the policeman, leaving him
with a âgreeting cardâ for Polo.
Somehow José got in front of his brother and was immediately recognised
by Oswaldo, who drew his pistol to deal with his quarry. At that moment
Francisco came round the other side with his gun already drawn and,
seeing the danger his brother was in, opened fire at point-blank range,
hitting Oswaldo in the head.
Just as these events were taking place the cinema emptied. It is
impossible to describe the panicâmore so when the other plain-clothes
man outside the cinema saw his colleague fall dead and the Sabaté
brothers with guns in their hands. He ran across the road, taking refuge
behind a pile of rubble from nearby road works and began firing wildly
at everything that moved. It could have injured a number of innocent
victims, but luckily his shots went wide of all targets. Although he was
well protected by the earth works, the policeman was finally silenced by
a bullet in the thigh from JosĂ©âs gun. The brothers removed Oswaldoâs
papers and pistol, and then made their escape through the screaming
crowd before reinforcements could arrive.
Later, when the group met again, one of the other two comrades, who
lived nearby and who had vanished during the fighting, said that when
the battle began he realised he had forgotten his pistol... so he ran
home to collect it! The other went over the hill.
Towards the end of February, 1949 José and Francisco Sabaté came into
contact with another action groupââLos Mañosâ. The organiser of this
group, which operated mostly in Barcelona, was Wenceslao GĂmenez Orive.
It is worth recording the circumstances in which they met.
The âLos Mañosâ group had decided to get rid of the Barcelona
Commissioner of Police, Eduardo Quintela, once and for all. They kept
him under constant surveillance and carefully recorded all his
movements, waiting for the most propitious moment to strike. SabatĂ©âs
group, unaware of what âLos Mañosâ had in mind, decided on a similar
course of action. Quintela usually passed through the Calle de Marina on
his way home from Police Headquarters at lunchtime and in the evening,
and it was in that same street where the SabatĂ© and âLos Mañosâ groups
met. After exchanging greetings and a few words it dawned on them that
both groups had the same intention. Comparing notes at a joint meeting
shortly after they found that their information coincided. Every day,
with very few exceptions, Quintela left Police Headquarters in the Via
Layetana to return to his home in the Calle La Vina, situated in the
suburb of Guinardo, passing through the Calle Marina between 1.45 and
2.10 pm. This daily journey was made in his grey-coloured car, which
carried the official insignia of his office. The two groups decided to
lose no more time in discussion and arranged the time and place for the
attentat to take placeâbetween the Calles Mallorca and Provenza on 2
March 1949.
In the early morning of the day fixed for the assassination âLos Manosâ
went to find a car (this turned out to be a Fiat belonging to a
gentleman from Lorca who had arrived that day to carry out some business
arrangements in Barcelona). SimĂłn Gracia Fleringan took the wheel and
the frightened owner was made to sit beside Wenceslao in the back of the
car. The three drove off to meet El Quicoâwho had by this time hi-jacked
a truckâat a pre-arranged spot. The gentleman who owned the Fiat was
considerately but firmly tied, gagged and put in the back of the truck
accompanied by the Sabaté brothers, while another comrade took the
wheel. JosĂ© LĂłpez Penedo, of SabatĂ©âs group, sat next to Wences in the
Fiat and each car proceeded to the meeting place.
At 1.45 pm they parked the truck in the Calle de Marina, about a hundred
yards from the church of the Holy Family. One man sat in the driving
seat and another, in blue overalls, inspected the engine with a
preoccupied air. The mechanic who seemed so absorbed with his engine was
in fact watching carefully from the corner of his eye a young man in a
brown hat, who was strolling up and down the pavement fifty yards along
the road. The man in the driverâs cab was JosĂ©, the other, in overalls,
El Quico.
About twenty yards further up the street the other three comrades were
sitting in the parked FiatâSimĂłn at the wheel, JosĂ© LĂłpez Penedo and
Wences in the back with their Sten guns hidden from view, but ready to
open fire at a momentâs notice.
At 1.55 the man strolling on the pavement ostentatiously removed his
hat. The grey car, so anxiously awaited, was approaching the comrades
along the Calle de Marina. El Quico removed his machine gun from the
open engine compartment and moved out into the middle of the road,
balanced himself with his legs wide apart and opened fire on the
approaching car. Riddled with machine-gun bullets, it screeched to a
halt and two men jumped out in a vain attempt to escape. The Fiat drove
forward and the occupants opened fire on the running men. Sabaté, with
gun on hip, ran to the bullet-torn car to check the identity of the
victims. Quintela was not there! Despair was written across SabatĂ©âs
face the carefully prepared attempt had failed.
Inside, instead of Quintela and his usual bodyguard, were two Barcelona
Falangist leaders travelling in the passenger seatsâManuel Pinol
Ballester, Secretary of the local University Youth Front, and José Tella
Bavoy, Sports Chief of the same organisation. Pinol and the chauffeur,
Antonio Norte, were killed outright, but the other man was only slightly
wounded and was allowed to escape with his life.
These victims saved Quintela and only he can answer the many questions
raised by this frustrated attempt. An identical car had travelled along
the same street at the same hour every day with Quintela inside. Why had
he changed his routineâwas it an accident or a personal security
measure? Did he know he was sending these men to their deaths? The
answer to this mystery lives with Quintela. Perhaps some day he will
reveal it in his last confession.[65]
The Falangist press followed the police initiative in referring to these
as âinnocent deathsâ. Certainly they were the wrong victims, but it
should be remembered they came from a hierarchy that qualifies for any
description but that of âinnocentâ!
The attempt on Quintelaâs life in the Calle de Marina by the Libertarian
Resistance had wide repercussions on the life of Barcelona. Not only in
the capital, but also throughout the province the police declared a
state of war against the organised working class. Not only were there
house raids, but also the guardians of public order broke up groups of
people in the street to such an extent that it became impossible to put
on shows or entertainments in the evenings. After 8.00 pm the only
people to be seen on the streets of the capital were patrols of the
Policia Armada. The Brigada Politico Social felt itself powerless to
guarantee order in the city and fell back on the Criminal Brigade,
mobilized the Guardia Urbana and sent to Madrid for reinforcements from
the Directorate of State Security. During this period the police patrols
employed a fleet of fifty taxis with policemen inside, the hire sign
still showing free. Everyone who hailed a cab was taken to Police
Headquarters to have their papers checked. In fact this was a greater
blow to the Resistance groups than it seemedâthe taxi was their normal
means of transport.
Such was the tension in the city that on many occasions there occurred
terrible accidents. The police were so nervous they often shot peaceful
citizens raising their hands to remove their identity papers from their
inside pockets. Buses were stopped in the streets by patrols of five
policemen who would search the passengers menacingly with guns in hand.
The action groups made no attempt to de-escalate the tense situationâin
fact they did exactly the opposite. Wenceslao GĂmenez, together with
SimĂłn Gracia, hijacked a private car and from it machine-gunned two
policemen on guard duty in the centre of Barcelona in the middle of the
day. Here is the official police communiqué issued to the press:
At 10.30 am. yesterday morning a private car drove along the Calle
Provenza in the direction of the Paseo de General Mola and stopped
outside the Banco de Vizcaya, situated at the junction of the above
mentioned streets. Shots were fired from the passenger seat of this car
at two officers of the Policia Armada on guard duty at the bank. This
cowardly attack was successfully repelled by the police officers
concerned but, however, the would-be murderers managed to make good
their escape. Police officer Manuel Rodriguez Carballeda was seriously
wounded in the attack and had to be taken to the Hospital Militar del
Generalissimo where he was operated on successfully. His colleague was
not seriously wounded however and was allowed home within a matter of
hours. A passing pedestrian, Concepcion Fermens Queralt, was also
wounded in the attack.
What was not mentioned in the press handout was the fact that the
wounded woman was shot by the police as they repelled this âcowardly
attackâ. The Commissioner of Police in Barcelona received an anonymous
note about this time informing him that he was to be executed and that
the Police Headquarters would be blown-up. The authorities took this
threat seriously, believing it quite feasible, and reinforced the guard
on the buildingâgoing so far as to have a permanent guard in the nearby
sewers running under the Via Layetana.[66]
In addition to this no cars were allowed within a fifty-yard radius of
Police Headquarters, and the police were under orders to shoot at any
suspicious-looking vehicles. In some parts of the city there were large
traffic jams while police stopped and searched vehicles and pedestrians
at random. Finally, to prevent the blowing up of Police Headquarters,
they squeezed into its cellars all the arrested anti-fascists they could
lay their hands on. During the period of the alarm, which lasted some
weeks, the Commissioner spent the whole time in the âJefaturaâ without
once going home. Many senior officers followed his lead and when they
did dare to venture out they embraced each other, making their farewells
as if never again would they meetâat least in this world. It was a time
of complete panic.
At 2.00 am on 9 March 1949 two taxis stopped outside No. 40 Calle
Sanjurjo. Four Special Branch officers from the police station of
Hospitalet de Llobregat, amongst them Policeman (Third Class) Antonio
Juarez together with four Policia Armada got out of the two taxis and,
after a few words with the night patrolman who had called the police,
took up positions as though they were about to attack a fortress. One
pair of the Policia Armada and the night patrolman covered a door of the
house and the other pair covered the back. The four policemen went
silently into the house, up to the first floor, where they knocked on a
door.
The flat belonged to a railway worker, Ăngel HernĂĄndez Rodriguez, who
was at that particular moment working on the night shift. The time of
night and the number of police officers present indicated that this was
not just an ordinary raid but was a special operation for a specific
purpose. Somehow the police had discovered that members of the
Resistance lived there. The railwaymanâs wife, Manuela Valerio Ramos,
answered the door.
âWhoâs there?â
âA telegram.â
She opened the door and was confronted with the barrel of a gun. A voice
whispered.
âPolice! Whoâs sleeping in this house?â
âTwo men,â she answered, shaking with fear.
âWhere?â
She indicated the first room in the hallway and the four policemen
entered the flat, guns at the ready.
Although the conversation was held in a whisper, the knock on the door
awakened José Sabaté, who had been sleeping in the rooms pointed out to
the police. The door was slightly ajar, and José had witnessed the whole
scene. When he saw the police approach he opened fire through the crack
in the door. Antonio Juarez, who was in front, fell dead with a bullet
in his head. The other three policemen panicked and fell back, rushing
out onto the staircase landing. El Quicoâs brother and JosĂ© LĂłpez
Penedo, who had been sleeping in the adjoining room, took advantage of
this, and both made their way into the kitchen, which commanded the
entrance to the flat. They overturned the kitchen table to use as a
barricade and prepared to sell their lives dearly with what little
ammunition they had left.
The police, without offering them the chance to surrender peacefully,
opened fire from the landing. José Sabaté was wounded by a bullet which
passed through his chest and out again through his back, near his right
shoulder. The two comrades realized that they had an impossible position
to defend. They had to leave before police reinforcements
arrivedâsomething they knew would not take long. In stocking feet they
jumped out of the window into the street below. The two guards posted
outside had moved off a little when they heard the initial shots, but
not so far that they could not see the two shadows making off down the
street. They immediately gave the alert and set off in pursuit. José
Penedo was brought down in a hail of submachine-gun fireâshot through a
lung. Though he was wounded himself José Sabaté tried to help his
stricken comrade, but LĂłpezâs wound was too serious and even with
assistance he could not stand up.
âRun Pepe!... Save yourself... Iâm done for!â
Powerless to help his comrade, José Sabaté escaped amid a hail of
bullets. LĂłpez[67] was taken, unconscious, to the Red Gross Post of Coll
Blane in the Calle del Progreso, together with one of the police drivers
who had been wounded slightly in the cross fire.
LĂłpez was operated on immediately, and afterwards, taken to the Military
Hospital where he received further surgery and then, still in a serious
condition, taken to the Police Headquarters for interrogation. It was
there that he had the satisfaction of learning that José Sabaté had
managed to escape.
It is impossible to try to say why the police decided to raid the house
in Torrasa. José and Francisco Sabaté, together with Penedo, were
leaving for France the following day. Francisco wanted to spend the
night in the mountains, as did Penedo, but José preferred to sleep in a
comfortable bed and Penedo allowed himself to be talked into doing the
same at the last minute. The raid appears, therefore, to have been quite
accidentalâno one, apart from the comrades themselves and the couple
whose flat they were sleeping in, knew they were in that house.
José Sabaté knew the district like the back of his hand and, although
seriously wounded, managed to shake off his pursuers. With a great
fortitude he made his way a good distance from the scene of the
gun-fight to a tile factory. There he came across a pair of night
patrolmen chatting to the night-watchman of the factory. Menacing them
with his pistol, now empty of bullets, he forced them to hand over a
jacket and a pair of trousers. The sudden appearance of an almost naked
man, covered in blood and waving a gun took the three men aback. Without
protest they handed him the clothes he wantedâsomething that, one might
say in passing, was to cause them a lot of trouble later on when
confronted with the Brigada Politico Social.
José tore up the shirt, and with the help of one of the street patrolmen
made a provisional bandage to stop the flow of blood. He then headed for
the Rio Llobregat and, mustering all his strength, managed to swim
across the river. Finally he took refuge in the house of a comrade some
eight miles from the scene of the gunfight, where he knew he would be
given shelter.
As José struggled for his life, Francisco searched frantically
everywhere for him, ignoring the ever present danger to himself. El
Quico worshipped his brother, who not only had great courage but was
also a man of great intellectual capacity, which Francisco admired. The
two men always had a perfect understanding, their ideas being almost
identicalânot only in politics, but also with regard to action. After
forty-eight hours of anguish, El Quico finally located the place where
his brother was hiding.
The house of Manuela Valerio Ramos in Torrasa was searched meticulously,
and the good woman herself subjected to a high-intensity interrogation.
The police discovered in her house a list of libertarian prisoners and
their families prepared by Francisco Ballester Orovitg during his stay
in the Model Prison and later handed over to José Sabaté.
JosĂ©âs escape and the death of a policeman caused a tremendous fury
among the high-ranking officers at the Via Layetana. They had to produce
resultsâand soonâto justify their continued existence. On closer
examination of the list found in the house they discovered that one of
the prisoners had recently been released from prison on conditional
liberty. With their murderous mentality they decided to seek revenge for
the death of the policeman on this comradeâwho had nothing whatsoever to
do with this affair. At dawn on 11 March 1949 the uniformed assassins
knocked on the door of No. 4. Calle de la Torre, in the San Gervasio
district of Barcelona. When they identified the person who answered the
door as the man recently released from prison they shot him dead at
point-blank range, in front of his wife and children. The murdered man,
Miguel Barba Moncayo[68] was an old militant known in the Resistance
movement under the pseudonym of âReyesâ. He was a well-known and popular
figure in the Gracia suburb of Barcelona, although he actually lived in
San Gervasio.
For her part, Manuela Valerio was obliged to state that the men had been
introduced to her through a neighbour from the nearby area of Hospitalet
de Llobregat, the suburb adjoining Torrasa. The police raided this
neighbourâs address and discovered a large quantity of arms, ammunition
and parcels of anti-Franco propaganda.
JosĂ©âs wound needed immediate attention by a competent surgeon.
Francisco had treated him with his field kit but this was not enough, so
he went to a clinic to find a doctor who had been recommended to him. He
told the duty sister the name of the man he wished to see, telling her
it was of the utmost urgency.
âIâm afraid if you donât have an appointment he canât see you,â she
said.
âI know that is usually the caseâbut in this case it doesnât matter,â
insisted Francisco. âTell him I was sent by Dr X (he gave the name of
another doctor known to him) and that it is very important that I see
him.â
Sabaté was immediately shown in.
âWhat do you want?â
âOne of the Resistance has been badly wounded by the police. Get
together what you need and come with me,â said El Quico forcefully.
âI donât really have any objection to going with you,â replied the
doctor, âbut on behalf of the wounded man I must point out that you are
not being very prudent, and it could have fatal consequences. I am a
surgeon, certainly, but I specialize in hernia and appendix operations.
For anything else Iâm more or less useless.â
SabatĂ© was somewhat put out by this reply, but the doctorâs honesty
convinced him.
âVery good, forget I ever came to see you. That would be the best for
everyoneâincluding yourself. Iâm sorry for the trouble Iâve caused you.â
Francisco remembered that Pedro Adrover Font (El Yayoââthe Grandfatherâ)
knew an anti-Fascist doctor, a humanitarian first and last, who never
refused his services to anyone in need. After a fruitless search for El
Yayo, El Quico managed to obtain the doctorâs address from another
comrade.
Once again the doctor gave his services to the cause of Spanish
anti-fascism. He accompanied SabatĂ© to his brotherâs hiding place and
treated him successfully. The diagnosis was correct: the bullet had gone
right through his body without touching any vital organs. If there were
no complications, and fortunately the wound did not seem to be infected,
José would recover quickly. After dressing the wound, the doctor
returned to Barcelona.
Although the most pressing problem had now been solved, there still
remained the question of security, as the place where José was hiding
could not be used for any lengthy period of time. El Quico decided to
transfer his brother to a new hiding place where he could recuperate in
peace and quiet. To facilitate the transfer, El Quico approached a
peasant he was friendly with and asked him for the use of his cart.
âI must have it. Take whatever its worth. If I lose it you can buy
another and if anyone asks you about its disappearance you can tell them
it was stolen.â He handed the peasant 40,000 pesetas.
With José comfortably bedded down in this vehicle, Francisco made for
San Boy, where they left the horse and cart.
Disguising himself to look as though he had just come from the local
lunatic asylumâto avoid comment on the critical appearance of his
brotherâthey then took a taxi for Martorell. Here Francisco felt he was
safe and, with nothing to fear, could obtain everything he required
but...
Scarcely had the brothers made themselves comfortable in their new
hiding place when they discovered, quite by chance, that the police had
set watch on an adjoining house in Martorell, where they hoped that at
least one of the Sabaté brothers would sooner or later appear. The two
men found there was a large net thrown around them, and it seemed that
every effort had been made to ensure their capture or death.
The house invaded by the police contained a family with two children.
One was a girl of ten, and the other a little baby that cried the whole
time. Naturally enough the police were â on edge with the job they had
been given and this was aggravated even more by the constant screaming
of the child. At last, one policemanâs patience was exhausted and he
said to the mother:
âIâve had enough of this! Shut that bastard up!â
âEasier said than done,â said the mother. âItâs time for its feed and
there isnât a drop of milk in the house, let me go for some or at least
let me send my daughter.â
The police did not want anyone to leave the house, as they knew the news
of their presence would spread like wildfire and the trap would be
exposed. However, with the hungry cries of the child going on constantly
they could stand it no longer, so they allowed the mother to send her
young daughterâaccompanied by a plain-clothes policemanâfor milk. Either
because he was ashamed of his role, or because he sought to avoid the
suspicion that would be aroused if he were seen escorting the child, he
let the little girl go into the dairy on her own, while he remained
outside the door.
âGuess what... our house is full of policemen!â
This remark was enough. It spread around the village and within a short
time reached Franciscoâs ears. He was concerned about this new turn. It
would appear that someone had given the address of that house to the
police, and it could well be that, by following leads, they would
ultimately come to their hiding place. José had lost a lot of blood and
was still very weak. Now the police were on his trail again. What could
he do? He had to prepare a careful escape from the immediate danger.
There could be no question of a frontal attack.
Sabaté collected all the compromising material in the house and put it
in a sack. Disguised as a peasant, he left the house with the sack over
his shoulder and set out for Barcelona. There he met some comrades and
together they worked out a plan of action. They decided that the best
strategy was to play one section of the police off against the other and
take advantage of the resultant confusion to effect JosĂ©âs escape. In
Martorell there was an old militant who had adapted himself to the new
regime like the Vicar of Bray and had become a local municipal figure.
He was one of those people who always took care to remain in everyoneâs
good books. One of the comrades paid this man a visit, and, in the
course of conversation, mentioned to him that the house of âso and soâ
was full of police.
âWhatâs all that about then?â enquired the comrade from Barcelona.
âThis is incredible and I certainly have heard nothing about it. Iâll
pop along to the barracks just now to see what they have to say about
it,â replied the old man.
Up at the barracks, the Guardia Civil were incensed at this incursion
into their territory. It reflected on their status. The effrontery of
this outside police group coming into their village and setting up an
operation without so much as a by-your-leave.
The ex-militant and neo-Falangist, puffed up with his own importance and
accompanied by two Guardia Civil, called on the house occupied by the
Barcelona police. The whole affair was beautifully stage-managed. There
followed a stormy scene in which prerogatives were invoked, territorial
limits discussed and mutual accusations made of abuse of authority and
usurpation of privilege. While the argument raged in the house, El
Quicoâaided by Francisco Martinez (Paco) and Santiago Amir Gruanas (El
Sheriff) and one other, carried José from the nearby hideout into a
waiting car and whisked him off to Abrera. There, José managed to
recuperate sufficiently to return to France with CatalĂĄ, the guide, and
another of the local libertarians from Manresa. He arrived in Toulouse
at the end of April, and for a time took on the job of Secretary of the
Regional Committee of his home district in Llobregat.
Once the group had passed José Sabaté safely across the border they
returned to Barcelona, with the exception of the comrade whose name has
not been mentioned. This young man returned to Manresa after arranging
to meet El Quico in the Calle Tallers, near the Plaza de la Universidad
at a future date. On the day of the rendezvous, El Quico took his normal
precaution of driving past the arranged spot, where he saw a heavy
concentration of police. There seemed little doubt that his comrade had
been arrested and that the henchmen of Polo and Quintela knew about the
proposed meeting.
The young man[69] had, in fact, been arrested on the stairway of the
Metropolitan Railway in the Plaza Catalonia on his arrival in the
capital. The police were relentless in their efforts to lay hands on
Sabaté.
In May 1949 another action group crossed the frontier heading for
Barcelona. They were all experienced guerrilla fighters: José Lluis
FacerĂas (Face), Guillermo Ganuza Navarro, J. MartĂ and Juan Serrano, an
ex-boxer known as El Chofer. The departure of the group from French
territory did not escape the vigilance of the well-organised
intelligence service of the Francoist authorities. An ambush was
prepared for them near San Lorenzo Savall, just outside Barcelona, on
the main road to San Feliu de Codinas. Ganuza and Juan Serrano were the
first to cross the road, being the advance party; the others remained
some distance behind. No sooner were they both openly exposed than a
hail of Guardia Civil bullets brought them down. Ganuza was killed
immediately and Serrano was wounded in the leg. FacerĂas and MartĂ,
hidden in the ditch, opened fire on the Guardia and, under cover of an
exploding grenade which FacerĂas threw in the direction of the ambushers
they managed to drag Serrano[70] to safety and escape. Ganuzaâs dead
body remained on the road to San Feliu de Codinas.[71] The three
comrades made their way to Barcelona without further incident where they
established contact with the other action groupsâSabatĂ©, Pedro Adrover,
Francisco Martinez and others.
At this period the United Nations were discussing the position of Spain,
and a number of South American countriesâBolivia, Peru, Brazil and
Columbiaâproposed, with the approval of the Political Commission, that
the agreement of December 1946 â that no member country should accredit
representatives to Madridâshould be annulled. The agreement itself was
quite worthless. From the very moment of signing the document it was
ignored by all the countries who found it in the least inconvenient.
Indeed, Argentina, which did not previously have an ambassador in
Madrid, opened diplomatic relations with Spain immediately following the
UN Assembly decision against it. When the recommendation to reopen
relations was turned down in 1947, other countries went ahead nominating
ministers to Francoâs Spain and even when the âAllied Powersâ had no
official representatives they had trade delegations there, which
amounted to the same thing.
However, as it seemed that the exiles were taking the UN Assembly
resolutions seriously the Libertarian Resistance decided to organize a
series of protests which they hoped would have some repercussions
abroad, certainly they could not be as ineffective as the remonstrations
in the UN debate.
Some comrades decided that the best thing to do, to cause the maximum
sensation, was to have a few well-placed bombs in, for instance, the
Bolivian, Peruvian and Brazilian consulates. To do this they split into
two groups: FacerĂas, Adrover and a third comrade to plant the bomb in
the Consulate General of Bolivia, No. 148 Calle Gerona; El Quico, Paco
and another to take care of the Peruvian Consulate at No. 273 Calle
Montaner, and the Brazilian Consulate at No. 88 Ramblas de Catalonia.
The bombings took place on 15 May. There was a setback in the Brazilian
Consulate where, on capturing and disarming the guard a pistol went off,
accidentally triggering an alarm bell. It was nearly midnight when this
happened so Sabaté ignored the timing device, set to give them
sufficient time to escape, and replaced it with a short fuse which would
go off in a few seconds before help could arrive and the bomb be
dismantled, or innocent people injured. However, it failed to explode
because in his haste to escape, Sabaté failed to ignite the fuse
properly, and the Brazilian Consul, Noveras Portes, was saved from a
nasty shock the following morning.
The other two bombs, however, went off without a hitch. The one in the
Bolivian Consulate was placed in the main doorway, the one in the
Peruvian Consulate Sabaté managed to get on the balcony with the aid of
a fishing rod. Both went off together at one in the morning. The two
representatives of the Governments friendly to FrancoâJosĂ© Maria
Puigcerver (Bolivia) and Octavio Cabero de San Miguel (Peru) only
suffered the shock of being awakened in the early hours of the morning.
The buildings suffered somewhat more, but were not completely destroyed.
The aim had been achieved. They wanted an explosive demonstration, and
that it certainly had been.
The General of Generals himself, Generalissimo Franco, arrived in
Barcelona on 30 May, but the precautions taken by the security services
can be imagined. It was impossible to get anywhere near him. Determined,
at least, that the Caudillo should hear a noise if nothing else, Pedro
Adrover (El Yayo) attempted to place an explosive charge in the Banco
Español de Credito in the Plaza de Catalonia, but was spotted by a
patrol and had to make his escape with the bomb in his hand, primed to
go off at any moment! He eventually left it under a seat in the gardens
of the Plaza, and the neighbourhood was awakened by the blast of an
enormous explosion early that morning.
On 3 April another of his bombs exploded in the cloisters of Barcelona
Cathedral, causing enormous panic, but no injuries.
These activities, which, incidentally, were denounced by the Communist
Party as âfascist provocationâ, caused the downfall of the Barcelona
Police Commissioner, Manuel Chinchilla, who was succeeded in turn by
José Albert Rodriguez.
Meanwhile, as the urban guerrillas fought on in Barcelona, the
Libertarian Movement lost one of its most dedicated fighters, Francisco
DenĂs, better known as CatalĂĄ. He crossed the Franco-Spanish border for
the last time on 29 May 1949.
On his way to Manresa on a mission for the organization, he was arrested
near Gironella, but managed to swallow a cyanide capsule carried for
just such a situation and died on 3 Juneâa day of mourning for all
resistance groups.[72]
In early June 1949, Francisco Sabaté returned to France to spend a few
days with his family in their cottage, Mas Casenove Loubette, near the
Franco-Spanish frontier.
However, El Quico, as we have seen, had been sentenced in his absence to
a term of imprisonment and the French authorities had no intention of
forgetting the matter. On Saturday, 4 June, the gendarmerie arrived in
force at the cottage. As Leonor opened the front door to them Sabaté
fled to the atticâaccess to which was gained by a staircase inside the
house. This attic also served as a granary. As Leonor argued with the
gendarmes in the front-room, Sabaté made his escape through a trap door
which led back to the hallway, where only a few seconds before the
gendarmes had been standing, and slipped out across the fields. However,
this was no ordinary routine check. Knowing El Quico was in the house,
they had taken every precaution to prevent their quarryâs escape. The
house was surrounded, and as Sabaté ran out across the fields the
gendarmes let fly a few warning shots, and set their dogs in hot
pursuit. Within a short time the dogs had him pinned to the ground with
his legs in the vice-like grip of their jaws.
Before the French court, El Quico put up a vigorous defence. This
hearing took place on 28 June, and he received a two-month prison
sentence, but the Appeal Tribunal in Montpelier increased this to one of
six months plus five years prohibited residence in the area. El Quico
was then taken to Montpelier Prison whereâas we shall seeâhe was to
spend a year. As a result of this prison sentence the Sabaté family was
obliged to leave the Mas Casenove Loubette and Leonor and the children
moved to Toulouse.[73]
The crime, illegal possession of arms and explosives, was SabatĂ©âs first
offence in French territory and the result of the trial was given great
publicity in the Spanish press.
How did he come to spend so long in prison? Earlier we mentioned a
robbery by unknown men at the RhĂŽne Poulenc factory in Peage de
Roussillon in May 1948. Sabaté was accused of complicity in this robbery
and the Spanish authorities did their best to complicate matters for
him.
Carlos Vidal, the owner of the car used in the attempted robbery in
Lyons, was arrested in Barcelona. He made a statement under
interrogation to the Spanish police that the car registered in his name,
in fact belonged to Francisco Sabaté Llopart, and on 3 May he had been
asked by Sabaté to drive the car to Perpignan, which he did, and when
later asked to take it to Lyons, had refused. It was this statement that
prolonged SabatĂ©âs stay in Montpelier jail. In the meantime the French
police discovered that El Quico had sent a telegram to his wife on 19
April 1948 â less than a month before the attack â from the Post Office
at Saint-Fonts, which indicated that at least he had been in the area
about that time. Among the objects found at the scene of the crime were
three berets that were sent for forensic analysis to the police
laboratory. Hairs found in the material were alleged by the police
chemists to match closely SabatĂ©âs, and in all probability, he had worn
the berets.
The car salesman in Toulon, who had sold the car, formally identified
Sabaté as the man accompanying Vidal at the time of the sale. He also
stated that it was El Quico who paid the deposit. However, on 26 July
1950, the case was thrown out of court for lack of evidence. Sabaté
hoped that with this acquittal the French police would make no further
demands upon him, but this was not to be. The case of the RhĂŽne Poulenc
robbery attempt was to follow him until his deathâand perhaps it could
be said to be the direct cause of his downfall.
In August 1949 the Anarchist Defence Commission in Exile, together with
militants of the action groups, decided to re-organise the
infrastructure of the groups inside Spain. The reason for this was that
many of the groups, such as those of Julio RodrĂguez FernĂĄndez (El
Cubano) and José Sabaté Llopart, were much too large to maintain proper
security. Both groups were split into two. With all the preparations
finalised, the action groups began a massive infiltration into Catalonia
and, in particular, Barcelona.
The Francoist Intelligence Services were aware of this infiltration and
so, suspecting the worst, panicked. They unleashed a holocaust of
repression against all the known Anarcho-Syndicalist militants in
Cataloniaâgroups they had previously allowed to exist provided they did
not make too much trouble for the authorities. Unfortunately this led to
the almost complete extermination of the action groups operating in
Catalonia.
On 26 August the group led by JosĂ© Lluis FacerĂas engaged the Guardia
Civil in a gun-battle near the French frontier. Two of his comrades,
Celedonio Garcia Casino[74] and Enrique MartĂnez Marin,[75] were killed
in the affray. Another, Antonio Franquesa[76] was badly wounded by a
bullet that broke his left arm and punctured his left lung. FacerĂas and
two other comrades who were unharmed saved his life.
At the beginning of September a group of well-known comrades led by
Ramon Vila Capdevila crossed the frontier into Spain. Among these men
was Manuel Sabaté Llopart, the youngest of the Sabaté brothers. When the
Civil War erupted Manuel, the âBenjaminâ of the SabatĂ© family, was only
nine years old, and at its tragic end he was still in short trousers. He
lived with his parents and had no cares in the world, other than anxiety
for his brothers, one in prison, and the other on the run from the
police. Manolo was a carefree boy, with a thirst for adventure, who
wanted to learn a great deal and travel the world. He left home at
sixteen to wander Spain, which he did by jumping trains with his
rucksack on his back. He developed a love for bull fighting and for some
months travelled the villages of Andalusia practising passes and thrusts
with the young bulls in the meadows. On many occasions he would return
home tired and hungry, but within a few days he was off on the road
again, without telling anyone where he was going. Manolo travelled Spain
from north to south and east to west in search of excitement.
By 1946 he felt the attraction of the life and prestige of his older
brother, Francisco, andâwithout a word to anyoneâleft for Eus in the
Eastern Pyrenees where El Quico and his family were living at the time.
There he took a job in a local co-operative as a farm labourer. Neither
Francisco nor José wanted to take their younger brother with them on
their risky trips into Spain; indeed, they did their best to persuade
him to remain in France to study and learn a trade. Manolo, however, did
not want to learn a trade; he wanted adventureâthis time as a guerrilla
fighter, not a bull-fighter.
He seized his opportunity during Franciscoâs imprisonment (June 1949)
and JosĂ©âs absence in Spain to persuade other comrades to allow him to
accompany them into Spain. So, during the first days of September 1949,
Manuel Sabaté, Helios Cihilioli, an Italian anarchist from Venice, and
Ramon Vila crossed into Spain. Capdevila was one of the most experienced
guides in the organisation and on this occasion he was to rendezvous
with and accompany the urban guerrilla group of Saturnino Culebras Saiz
(Primo) to the outskirts of Barcelona. This group consisted of
Saturnino, his brother Gregorio, a French comrade, Manuel, José C.G.,
and Miguel A.A. Juan Busquets Verges accompanied them to join José
SabatĂ©âs group, now established in Barcelona. The nine men arrived
safely at the outskirts of the small Catalan town of Manresa and without
incident. It was here that the first misfortune befell the group. Being
extremely tired after their long and arduous journey, they decided to
commandeer a car to carry them to their destination. They prepared an
ambush on the main road from Rocafort to El Pont de Vilamura. When the
first car appeared three of them took up positions in the middle of the
road and signalled to the driver to stopâwith their sub- machine-guns.
The driver of the car made as if to stop but when he was within a few
feet of the group he put his foot down hard on the accelerator and made
off at top speedâfortunately without injury to the three comrades. The
men reacted immediately and opened fire on the fast-disappearing car,
puncturing the two rear tyres and forcing it to swerve into the ditch.
When they reached the car they discovered that a bullet had wounded one
of the occupantsâa young servant girl about twenty-three years old. The
driver was her employer, an industrialist from Manresa. The young girl
needed immediate medical attention so the comrades lifted the car out of
the ditch and placed it carefully in the middle of the road, telling the
industrialist to drive carefully to the nearest first aid post, a few
kilometres further up the road. When the police later announced this
incident to the press they said that the guerrilla group had killed a
young woman. This was a fabricationâthe young girl was fully recovered
and out of hospital a fortnight later.
Ramon knew that it would only be a matter of hours before the whole area
was swarming with Guardia Civil. Hurriedly they buried the more
dispensable arms, explosives and heavier equipment and moved off rapidly
before the police arrived. They reached the outskirts of Manresa early
the following morning where they spent the day hiding and resting in a
ravine, safe from inquisitive eyes and patrols of Guardia Civil.
Towards evening it was decided that Saturnino Culebras and Juan Busquets
would go to Barcelona to arrange the safe houses for the groupâs later
arrival. On the journey Saturnino and Juan came to a small village where
they made their first mistake, one that could have cost them dear. They
asked one of the villagers to direct them to the railway station. There
was no railway station in the village and this, together with the
appearance of the two strangers, made the man suspicious. After giving
them wrong directions and sending the two comrades off on a
wild-goose-chase, the villager hurried off to inform the local Guardia
Civil commander of the presence of the two strangers. Saturnino and
Busquets soon realized that they had been misled and were retracing
their steps when they saw a lorry load of Guardia Civil approaching
them. The lorry screeched to a halt, and as the Guardia tumbled out the
two comrades opened fire with their pistols. The Guardia threw
themselves to the ground and, as it was by now quite dark, gave the two
men the opportunity to make their escape into the mountains before their
pursuers realised what had happened.
Early the next morning Busquets walked into nearby Torrasa to buy food
and a pair of shoes, his own were in tatters and he had borrowed
Saturninoâs. He returned to the mountains with the necessary provisions
where they had a quick breakfast and then both made their way into
Torrasa, where they caught a train to Barcelona.
Once in the capital they made contact with José Sabaté and other
comrades, who informed them that they had prepared accommodation at safe
addresses for those comrades still in the mountains. This problem
resolved, Saturnino returned to meet the others and bring them into
Barcelona. For some reason, however, they hid all their machine-guns in
a wood before leaving for the city.[77]
Ramon Vila, Helios Cihilioli and Manuel Sabaté accompanied them to the
outskirts of the city then, saying farewell to their comrades, headed in
the direction of BergaâRamonâs usual theatre of operations.
Unfortunately, the earlier incident with the car had caused the
mobilisation of larger numbers of police and Guardia than expectedâthe
three comrades walked straight into an ambush. Helios died almost
immediately in the gun-battle that followed, but Ramon and Manolo
managed to escape without injury. Two days later Ramon left Manolo
hidden in a little wood while he went to a nearby cottage for food, but
this time exceptional measures had been taken to capture Ramon and his
accomplice. Patrols of Guardia Civil were strategically placed at all
points where the anarchists could take refuge. As Ramon approached the
farm he noticed some suspicious movements and turned to escape, to be
followed by a hail of bulletsâall of which missed their target. Ramon
only managed to survive by jumping into a deep ravine, where he almost
broke his neck.
Manolo was now alone in strange territory. Shivering from the cold,
almost starving, he finally hid his gun and made his way to the nearby
road, where he was arrested immediately by a patrol of Guardia Civil. He
was taken to the local barracks and there identified as one of the
âinfamousâ SabatĂ© brothers.
Manuel Sabaté Llopart was executed, together with Saturnino Culebras
Saiz (arrested in October 1949) at the notorious Campo de la Bota in
Barcelona on 24 February 1950. The Francoist authorities revenged
themselves on Manolo for all the trouble and ridicule his brothers José
and Francisco had brought on them.
At the beginning of October, also near the frontier, while they were
resting within a few hundred yards of the border line, the Guardia Civil
ambushed and killed Cecilio GaldĂłs Garcia,[78] a well known militant of
the mountain area and ex-Commandant of the 126^(th) Battalion (CNT
[known as the Columna Libertad prior to militarisation]) and a member of
the clandestine Peninsular Committee of the FAI; Carlos Cuevas, a
resistance fighter, and Oltra, a militant from Valencia.
In Barcelona the repression was triggered off by the arrest of a young
libertarian and a member of the Tallion group, Jaime A., in the Chinese
Quarter (Barrio Chino) of the city, while attempting to sell an unusual
gold watch to a police informer. The inspector who effected the arrest
knew he was dealing with a âterroristâ when the young man, on being
asked to produce his identity papers, showed him a Falangist membership
card, withdrawn from circulation shortly before as a result of the
discovery of numerous forgeries emanating from Toulouse. Without
arousing Jaimeâs suspicions as to the real reason for his arrest, the
inspector waited for the most propitious moment, lulling the arrested
man into thinking it was a purely routine and formal matter, before
overpowering him by surprise and discovering, when he searched the
manacled youth, a Colt pistol and two hand-grenades. Jaime was taken to
the Jefatura de Policia under heavy guard, thus starting off the
chain-reaction of arrests and murders of comrades in the streets, in
their own houses and in the police stations of Catalonia.[79]
In Barcelona, on 14 October, officers of the Brigada Politico Social,
effecting numerous arrests, located the young Aragonese libertarian,
Luciano Alpuente, known as Madurga, shooting him dead as he stood
talking to a friend in the street. Three days later, on the 17^(th), the
police discovered an arms dump near the Llobregat River on the road to
Prat and set up a watch on the site. An action group that came to
replenish its supply of guns and ammunition had to fight its way out in
a furious battle with the police. They managed to make their escape with
the help of hand-grenades, suffering only one casualty, who received a
slight wound in the leg. The police, somehow, were receiving good
information. They also knew that on the same dayâthe 17^(th)âat
seven-thirty in the evening, José Sabaté had arranged a rendezvous with
comrades in the Calle Trafalgar in Barcelona.[80] It was the perfect
opportunity to do away with one of the most tenacious and outstanding
members of the resistance. To this end they set up a huge trap covering
the whole length of the street as far as the Arco del Triunfo. The time
for his arrival passed and they were beginning to think that their
information was false. Unluckily this was not the case. At seven-fifty
José was at a tram stop in the Calle Bruch, adjoining the Calle
Trafalgar, when he spotted the police and they spotted him. Opening fire
with his pistol, José took advantage of their surprise and ran off down
the Calle Trafalgar.
José knew enough about police methods to realize that this was no chance
encounter. He knew he had fallen into a carefully prepared trap, and was
therefore on the lookout for any suspicious movements. At the end of the
street, in an alley that led to the passage of San Benito and the Salon
Victor Pradera, he found that two policemen had been posted there,
Miguel Moran Astigarra[81] and Luis Garcia Dagas[82] José again fired
first and Garcia Dagas fell with a bullet in his head. Other
plain-clothes policemen opened fire, seriously wounding José. Even so,
he kept firing and managed to wound another two policemen. Their bravado
waned rapidly when they saw how often his bullets found their targets.
José , his means of retreat blocked, ran through the passage of San
Benito and managed to cross the Plaza de San Pedro where a passer-by
helped him into a nearby pharmacy. The chemist, on seeing the wounded
man, made him sit down, but José , with all his strength now gone, fell
unconscious to the floor. In this condition the chemist did not dare
treat him and someone ran out to inform the police. At that moment two
Guardia Civil officers were passing and discovering the wounded man,
ordered an ambulance for him. They told the ambulance driver to take
José Sabaté to the Municipal Dispensary in the Calle Sepulveda, but when
they placed him on the stretcher he was dead.[83]
It was a day of rejoicing for the Falangists, a day of anguish for the
Resistance. However, the tragic list of murders had only just begun. On
Friday, 21 October the forces of repression struck down Julio Rodriguez
FernĂĄndez, El Cubano[84] one of the organizers of the Tallion Group in
the Calle Diagonal. A private car, full of police, pulled up beside him
in the street and mowed him down in a hail of gunfire, before he had a
chance to know what had happened. The same day the professional
murderers were at work in the Pueblo Seco area and, using the same
methods, took the lives of another two anarchists, Victor
Espallargas[85] and José Luis Barrao, known as Pepe.[86] Both were
unarmed.
The toll of deaths that day did not end there for, at nine in the
evening, Francisco Martinez (Paco) was killed in the same way. He was
shot down at the corner of the Calle Dos de Mayo in front of the very
âDamâ Brewery where he had played as a child. He was twenty-seven years
old.
In addition to these street murders, a large number of arrests were
made. On 5 November, José Perez Pedrero (Tragapanes[87] was arrested on
a tram, and the same day Pedro Adrover Font, (El Yayo) fell into the
hands of the police while on his way home. In the same place, a little
later, they shot down and killed another comrade, Juan (El Chofer), and
later discovered in his house a large quantity of badly needed arms and
explosives. The police rounded the day off with the arrest of Jorge Pons
Argilés, together with another comrade, and also three Barcelona doctors
accused of having given medical assistance on various occasions to
wounded members of the Resistance.
The repression was not confined to Barcelona. Apart from operating in
the industrial area, the Libertarian Resistance also had many groups in
the mountains and forest of Catalonia. Among the places they preferred
to operate in were Alto and Bajo Llobregat, where Ramon Vila Capdevila
(Caraquemada) and Marcelino Massana Vencell (Pancho) were two of the
best-known guerrillas. Another comrade captured was José Puertas, a
forty-seven-year-old militant from Granada who worked in the mines of
Figols. Puertas was savagely beaten-up and tortured in a desperate
effort to obtain information, but he replied bravely:
âOnly one member of the Resistance operates here... that one is me!â
José Puertas had played a great part in the Civil War. At the defeat of
the Republican Army he was unable to cross the frontier and was
subsequently arrested. The brutal treatment he received in captivity
seriously affected his lungs. Eventually, when released on provisional
liberty, he returned to his hometown of Berga where he quickly contacted
his comrades in the mountain groups. Most of these fighters he knew as
old friends and, in the winter of 1944, he joined them in the mountains
and shared their rough life. However, due to his chest complaint, he was
better suited to urban guerrilla activities so he returned to the city,
where he was of inestimable assistance to the mobile urban groups. He
was the contact between Barcelona and the mountains. If necessary, he
would go out in all weather, risking everything, and walk miles to warn
the guerrillas that actions were being planned against them. The
authorities were never aware of the activities and missions he undertook
and he was arrested simply because of his previous record as a
libertarian activist.
On Monday, 14 November, 1949 the Guardia Civil drove Puertas bound and
gagged, together with another two Anarchist comrades, José Bartovilo and
Juan Vilella â who had also been tortured in the Civil Guard barracks in
Berga â to a deserted area and murdered them in cold blood.
Following this triple murder, the Guardia Civil of Sallent went to the
house of Miguel Guito and shot him in his own doorway without the least
explanation. His only crime was that of being the uncle of one of the
most famous of the local guerrillas, Marcelino Massana.
In January 1950 the police wiped out the âLos Mañosâ group. Wenceslao
GĂmenez Orive was taken by surprise and mowed down by gunfire. Although
badly wounded, he had sufficient strength and presence of mind to
swallow a cyanide capsule hidden in his fountain pen. He was
twenty-eight years old.
On the same day another two members of his group were arrested, Placido
OrtĂz and SimĂłn Gracia Fleringan. Both were sentenced to death and were
executed by firing squad in Barcelona on 24 November 1950.
In the course of this chapter the name of Ramon Vila Capdevila has been
mentioned on a number of occasions therefore it seems only proper to
sketch in outline a few details of the life of this untiring libertarian
resistance fighter as we have no further occasion to refer to him in the
story of Sabaté. His story merits a book in itself, and it is to be
hoped that some day someone will attempt such a work.
Ramon was born in Peguera, near Berga, on 2 April 1908. As a result of
an accident when he was fifteen he was nick- named âBurnt-faceâ
(Caraquemada), but among his friends he was known as âWild Boarâ
(Jabala) because of his preference for solitude, independent character
and physical strength. Both mother and son had been in the country when
a thunderstorm broke and they sought shelter under a nearby tree. The
mother was struck by lightning, which killed her outright, but Ramon was
only struck a glancing blow causing the above-mentioned burns about the
face.
He was of Herculean build, a veritable man of the mountains who did not
tire easily. This physical strength sometimes led to trouble with his
other comrades in the mountain guerrilla groups, who did not share his
ability to continue for days on end with the minimum of food and water
and continue to give the impression that he was out for an afternoon
stroll in the park.
Ramon joined the Anarcho-Syndicalist National Confederation of Labour
(CNT) at an early age, and, took part in the abortive revolutionary
insurrection in Figols during 1932. As a result of this rising Ramon
spent the next couple of years in the dungeons of Manresa Prison. The
Republican Government did not look kindly on Anarcho-Syndicalists and
when Ramon was eventually released, he was forced to move from town to
town because of constant harassment by the Spanish Special Branch. On 18
April, 1936, as he was walking with his cousin through the streets of
the village of Castellon de la Plana, he was ordered to stop by two
police officers. These two agents of âLaw and Orderâ attempted to apply
the ley de fuga, but it proved fatal in the case of one of them. After a
short gun-battle Ernesto GarcĂa Bayona, one of the policemen, had a
bullet in his head and another in his heart. This man had taken part in
General Sanjurjoâs ill-fated military uprising in Seville four years
previously and, after being punished by the Government with a four-month
suspension from duty, was transferred to Castellon police station. The
other policeman, Ramon Beas Jimenez, was operated on, but his wounds
could not have been all that serious as, after the Fascist victory in
1939, he reappeared on the scene with the rank of Chief Superintendent.
Caraquemadaâs cousin, Ramon Rives, was killed in the gun-battle and it
was discovered during the autopsy that he had sixteen intestinal
perforations from the bullets. Caraquemada himself escaped and took
refuge in an orange grove adjoining a Guardia Civil Barracks and then,
with all his ammunition gone, surrendered to the Guardia rather than let
himself be taken prisoner by the Special Branch. He was released from
prison on 18 July 1936 as a result of the policy of opening all the
prisons in an attempt to quash the military Fascist uprising.
Ramon played an active part in the fighting in Catalonia during those
early days of the Civil War until the Fascist opposition was wiped out,
and later was nominated by his workmates as Supplies Delegate of the
Central TĂ©rmica (a large factory) in Figols-Las-Minas. Later in the war
he became a Commandant in the Carabinero Corps.
After the defeat of the organized working class and the Republican Army,
Ramon escaped to France where he was interned (as were thousands of
others) in the concentration camp of Argéles-sur-Mer, but managed to
escape in 1940 and returned to Spain, where he began to organise the
first of the guerrilla groups to continue the struggle against the
Franco regime. Unfortunately, however, he was re-arrested while
returning to France on a mission a few months later by a German patrol
and was imprisoned in Perpignan Gaol for a short time. The Nazi war
machine, however, was crying out for labour and so Ramon soon found
himself working for the TODT organisation in a bauxite mine near
Herault. In February 1944 he joined the French Resistance, where he soon
became indispensable because of his knowledge of explosives and
experience in sabotage operations. After the liberation of France in
1945 he turned, once again, to the struggle against fascism in Spain. It
would be impossible to recount all his activities in the Iberian
Peninsula from 1945 until 1963 (the year of his death), but the last act
of sabotage for which he was responsible was the blowing up of
electricity pylons near Rajadell in Manresa (Catalonia) on 2 August
1963.
Many years before, the Francoist police had attempted to implicate him
in the murder of the wife of a British doctor holidaying in Spain, Mrs
Bernard José ph Peck, near Puerto de Tosas in October 1951. According to
the doctorâs statement his car was stopped by two men in blue overalls
carrying sub-machine-guns who ordered both him and his wife out of the
car. The doctor drove off, but the men opened fire, shattering the rear
window of the car and killing his wife. Later the doctor thought he
recognised Ramon as one of his assailants from photographs shown to him
by the police. This event took place at a time when the French
authorities and press were in the process of unleashing an intensive
defamatory campaign against the Spanish Libertarian Movement in exile
(as we shall see in the following chapter) and when Ramon returned to
France it was not the most propitious moment for him to present himself
before a French court in order to prove his innocence. Ramon did not
have much faith in bourgeois justice and he most certainly was not the
type of man who would allow himself to be imprisoned voluntarilyâno
matter for how short a period. He was horrified to discover on his
return to France that he had been named by the Spanish police as one of
the murderers of the British woman. Following this incident he became
progressively a more and more solitary figure as the years went by, but
never once did he think of abandoning the guerrilla struggle against
Spanish fascism.
On 7 August, 1963, a Guardia Civil corporal and two privates on duty at
one a.m. near the castle of Balsareny, not far from Manresa, saw a
shadowy figure make his way towards the Castle through the trees. They
called on him to stop but were answered by a pistol shot. The man who
died early that morning with a bullet through his heart was Ramon Vila
Capdevila. His body was taken to the mortuary in Castellnou de Bages,
where it was formally identified by his sister José fa, who lived in
nearby Berga.
The Spanish police needed little excuse to issue victorious press
communiqués, eagerly published by the Fascist press, in the same way
they had crowed over the deaths of JosĂ© Lluis FacerĂas, JosĂ© SabatĂ© and
others:
âEl Caraquemada, the bandit, has been killed by the Guardia Civil after
twenty-seven years dedicated to crime and plunder.â
The last of the mountain guerrillas had fallen, but by that time other
comrades had taken up and were developing the struggle against fascism,
not only in Spain but also throughout the rest of the world. Caraquemada
did not die in vain and the new libertarian activists owe a great deal
to his inspiration and example.
In France the CNT remained silent as they had âdone before with FacerĂas
and others. Not once did they rise to their feet to explain to the world
who the dead man was and what he had fought for. The Spanish
dictatorship took his life, but it was the Spanish Libertarian Movement
that dug his grave.
We should mention here another incident which happened in France, and
which added to the many complications of Francisco SabatĂ©âs life. A Post
Office van was leaving Lyons sorting Office in the Rue Duguesclin on the
evening of Thursday 18 January 1951 with a driver and two guards, when a
black car blocked its way and three men carrying submachine guns ordered
the driver out of his cab. The robbers were surprise to see two guards
come at them from the rear of the vanâthis had not been foreseen in
their plans and after hesitating for a second or so, ran off in the
direction of their car, but a they made their escape they gave
themselves covering fire with their machine-guns. The whole thing lasted
only a few seconds, and the robbers were able to make their escape
without interference.
The victims they left behind in their haste to escape were Arnaud, one
of the guards, who was killed immediately, and Louis Morin, the other
guard, who was seriously wounded and died on 3 February. Another nine
people who were either in the street at the time or inside the Post
Office were also wounded and one of these, a sixty-four year old woman,
Agust Jard, died as a result of her injuries a few days later on 26
January. The car used in the robbery was discovered a few days later at
the bottom of the Jonage canal, near the Croix Luizet Bridge in Lyons.
On 28 January the Lyons police organized a massive manhunt in the
suburbs of the city, employing over 2,000 men, including detachments of
the CRS. The operation started at six-thirty in the morning and took
over twenty-four hours to complete. It involved the questioning of more
than 50,000 people within a radius of twenty kilometres of the area of
Lyons, and the searching of more than 10,000 housesâwithout any success.
On 30 January a thirty-seven year old Spaniard, Juan S., was arrested
and charged with complicity in the affair. Later the names of two other
suspects were announced to the Press; Francisco and José Bailo Mata,
thirty-one and twenty-seven years of age respectively, both Spaniards.
The French Press dedicated whole editions to the story of the âSpanish
Gangâ and the Francoist authorities and press, never ones to miss an
opportunity, followed up with an intensive defamatory campaign against
the anarchist movement in general and the Spanish Libertarian Movement
in particular. This hate campaign inciting the French authorities to act
against the Spanish movement in exile had a certain amount of success in
the beginning. A result of it was the harassment of many comrades and,
for some, internment.
The Secretary-General of the Spanish Libertarian Movement in France,
José Peirats Valls, was arrested in Toulouse on 3 February and the
right-wing Parisian daily newspaper Le Figaro announced the following
day that the âSpanish Gangâ were thought to have been part of an
anarchist organisation.
When a corrupt or dishonest policeman, judge, priest, army officer, or
politician is exposed (something which is becoming every day more
common), the integrity of the organisation or institution to which they
belong is never questionedâat least by the media. A general, for
example, employed by a foreign power never serves as an example whereby
the army itself is to be condemned. A priest who murders or molests
little children is considered to be âa bad appleâ, as are policemen who
plant detonators and âverbalâ a suspect or person they want to put in
prison. Never is it suggested that the institutions themselves are
corrupt and dishonest!
However, when the villain of the piece is a member of the organised
working class, the capitalist press takes great pains to place the blame
for whatever act the person or persons are accused of at the feet of the
collective organization to which they belong. This is what happened to
the MLE in France as a result of the frustrated Post Office robbery in
Lyons. The robbers were anarchists and this was sufficient excuse to
mount a vicious hate campaign against the CNT in France. Fortunately,
this campaign did not last long, as the libertarian émigrés were not
only the most numerically important of the Spanish emigration, but
generally speaking their activities and conduct were beyond reproach. A
typical example of harassment against the CNT was the arrest of
Marcelino Massana (Pancho) in Toulouse on 6 February 1951. The Spanish
Government demanded his extradition for alleged âcrimesâ in Spain. The
hearing took place in Garonne the following month, where the French
court refused the request and Pancho was set at liberty.
A few words in passing about Pancho. He was born in Berga in 1919. At
the end of the Civil War he held the rank of captain, and like thousands
of others, was stranded in the port of Alicante waiting for a ship to
take him to safety in France. He was arrested and taken with others to
the notorious concentration camp of Albatera, built by the Republic to
hold 800 prisoners, but which, under Franco, housed at the time 18,000.
After a few months he was transferred to Barcelona and there, after
serving three years in the Fascist prison, was released on provisional
liberty in 1942. Shortly after his release he was told that he was being
conscripted for the army and would be posted to Algeciras. Massana had
no intention of serving Franco, and took to the mountains, where he
began his career as a guerrilla.
As with most of his colleagues, to gain knowledge of the geography of
the mountains he spent some time as a smuggler between Spain and
Andorra, and later between Andorra and France. After this he dedicated
himself exclusively to the struggle against Franco. A few months before
the extradition hearing previously referred to, Massana had only just
managed to escape from the clutches of the French carabineros who tried
to arrest him while crossing the frontier, and as a result of this the
French press began a witch-hunt against him. Later he presented himself
voluntarily at the court of Saint Girons to answer the accusations being
made against him and was given provisional liberty. Massanaâs
description and photograph was posted on every public building in
Manresa and throughout the villages in the area of Alto Llobregat. A
substantial reward was offered for information leading to his arrest.
Needless to say, this reward was never paid out but the photograph that
appeared on the Spanish poster came from the archives of the French
police, who have shown themselves only too eager to co-operate with
their fascist colleagues in Interpol.
We return now to the incident in Lyons involving El Quico. One of the
arrested Spaniards, Francisco Bailo Mata, made a statement to the police
stating that he had been told by a third person that a man called Sabaté
had been involved in the attempted robbery of the RhĂŽne Poulenc factory
in May 1948, and so once again, the police turned their attention to
Sabaté.
On 2 February El Quico was in Dijon, the area in which he had been
officially confined, when he was arrested once more and take to the Rue
Vauban police station in Lyons where he was subjected to intensive
questioning. On this occasion the police acted without any arrest
warrant and without first taking their victim before a magistrate. He
was held in custody in Lyons for some days without being allowed to see
a lawyer. During these âinterviewsâ SabatĂ© signed what was supposed to
be a confession that he had cut the telephone wires in the frustrated
robbery at RhĂŽne Poulenc. We can imagine what form the âinterviewsâ took
when a man of SabatĂ©âs calibre attempted to commit suicide by throwing
himself out of the windows of police headquarters.[88] His only injuries
were cuts on his throat and neck from the broken window-pane.
Sabaté remained in the custody of the French police for four days before
he appeared before the examining magistrate in Lyons, Le Gueut, who
ordered preventive detention charging him with, among other things,
âassociating with evil-doersâ.
With this new information the prosecutor fiscal from the Department of
Vienne asked the examining judge on the 23^(rd) to re-open the case
against SabatĂ© and the others â the charge being culpable homicide and
attempted robbery with violence. The defence lawyers wrote to the Appeal
Tribunal of Lyons informing it that there had been a number of
violations of Judgesâ Rules â far too many to reproduce here, but
including the following:
It can be proved beyond doubt that not only did OâŠ, and SabatĂ© inform
the examining magistrate of Vienne that their alleged statements were
only signatures which had been obtained by force, but also, something
which cannot be ignored, that before the presiding judge Grenoble, in
another case other accused who benefited by a stay in execution Pedro MâŠ
, P ⊠, Francisco P ⊠and the same gave similar information regarding
the conduct of the Lyons Police, in particular those from the Rue Vauban
Station at the beginning of February 1951.
âIt should also be pointed out,â the defence lawyers went on, âthat one
of the defendantsâ lawyers, Pierre Levy, who visited SabatĂ© in the St
Paul de Lyons Prison on 10 February, 1951, could see clearly the marks
on the defendant from the beating he had received at the hands of the
police, and informed the President of the College of Advocates, who, in
turn, passed the information to the Lyons Procurator.â
The lawyers concluded by saying, âfurthermore, the âconfessionsâ taken
on 3 and 5 February, 1951 from Sabaté by the examining magistrate, can
neither be considered as valid nor regular, as the methods by which they
were obtained must surely indicate that they should be struck from the
deposition.â
The Instructing Judge from Lyons ordered that Sabaté be set free on 13
November 1952. However, even this decision did not prove to be final, as
we shall see later in our narrative.
The nature of the Resistance Movement changed somewhat in Spain at the
beginning of 1951. The clandestine work of the different anti-fascist
organisations through the years had helped build up the general feeling
of discontent that simmered constantly below the surface. Street
demonstrations were becoming more and more effective.
In Barcelona in particular, popular feeling exploded in a completely
spontaneous way during the protest demonstration against the Tram
Company. Students began it, but gradually the whole travelling public
and the working class became involved. The tram passengers resorted to
an original tactic to express their disgust (the tram company charged
much higher fares than for instance, Madrid)âthey boycotted the trams.
During the second half of February the incidents around this dispute
grew in magnitude and, after the 23^(rd) of the month, virtually every
tram in the city was being driven empty of passengers. This gave further
impetus to the illegal organisations taking part in the struggle against
the régime.
The agitation against the Tram Company led, on 12 March, to a General
Strike in Barcelona. More than 30,000 workers took to the streets to
show their opposition not only to the fares increase, but also to the
rising cost of living, and, above all, to the disastrous rule of General
Franco. During the course of the strike many duplicated leaflets were
widely distributed and one (which did not in fact emanate from any
Libertarian organisations) said:
Para arreglar lo de los tranvias
id a buscar a FacerĂas.
Contra el Requeté,
Viva Sabaté!
Which translated roughly means:
To sort it out with the trams
FacerĂas is your man.
To fight against the Requeté,
With SabatĂ© weâll win the day!
The people of Barcelona knew instinctively who were the real defenders
of freedom.
The strike spread to Badalona, Torrasa, Sabadell and Manresa and, by 13
March, 150,000 workers were out on the streets. The government
concentrated all its defences in the Catalan capital, and more than a
1,000 Policia Armada were rushed by special train from Madrid. Another
2,000 came from Zaragoza and Valencia. The cruiser Mendez Nuñez and
destroyers Elcano, Gravina and Liniers carrying large forces of marines
arrived in Barcelona harbour. The marines reinforced the army and police
in patrolling the streets of the city.
Barcelona took on the appearance of a conquered city. People walking
about the street were stopped and questioned and within a short time the
cells of all the Catalan police stations were crammed with arrested
workers. Although the strike could not last long, at least it
demonstrated to the régime, which until then had everything more or less
its own way, that its claims to have the support of the people were
complete lies. This resurgence of mass working-class action forced the
dismissal of the Civil Governor, Eduardo Baez AlegrĂa, who was succeeded
in turn by General Felipe Acedo Colunga, a man who had distinguished
himself by his bitter and cruel persecution of the working class, in the
Asturias following the minersâ insurrection of October 1934.
As a result of these experiences with the French authorities, Sabaté
lived in the hope that one day an organization could be formed capable
of undertaking subversive and guerrilla actions in Spain. To this end he
worked for more than six years, but the organisation in exile remained
split and undecided on this issue, making no concrete attempts
whatsoever to fill this organisational vacuum. They were quite content
to settle down into passive bureaucratic existence in their new
homeland. For El Quico a sedentary life was unbearable torture. By the
time he had completed his five-year period of area confinement in Dijon
his blood was boiling. In the early spring of 1955 some activists of the
Spanish Libertarian Movement (MLE), led by El Quico, decided to act on
their own initiative and responsibility without involving the
organisation in their activities, but at the same time maintaining a
firm hold on their libertarian ideals. They formed the âIberian
Federation of Anarcho Syndicalistsâ, whose watchwords were âculture and
actionâ.
It did not take long for problems to arise between Sabaté and the
organization in exile. El Quico, who had no desire to create a split in
the organisation, renamed the Federation âAnarcho-Syndicalist Groupsâ
after discussions with the Secretariat of the Inter-Continental
Commission of the CNT/FAI. Even so they were still disowned and attacked
by the official organisation in exile.
As we know Sabaté could not conceive of any other type of action other
than that of the battleground itselfâSpain. His idea was to make up for
the organizational and combative deficiencies in Spain through the
âGrupos Anarco-Sindicalistasâ. These groups were organised initially
from comrades living in exile and, later, those in Spain. Their purpose
was to act as the focal point for the struggle against the Francoist
rĂ©gime. SabatĂ©âs aim was always clearly definedâto act! It never crossed
his mind to create his own organisation to compete with the parent body.
Sabaté belonged body and soul to the CNT, and his only desire was to
make it an effective tool of the class struggleâreturning to it the
strength it should never have lost. In spite of all this, when he
returned to Spain as delegate from the Anarcho-Syndicalist Groups he did
not organise groups in their name, but instead took on the task of
forming local federations of the CNT. Naturally, the men he approached
were completely in agreement with his ideas regarding action.
Sabaté, who would only defend plans and projects that he personally
would have been prepared to carry out, arrived in Barcelona on 29 April
1955 with a group of four comrades. Things had not changed much in
Catalonia during his absence. The Governor, Felipe Acedo Colunga, was a
boaster, a charlatan, a man intoxicated with his own power and
importance, who meted out harsh penaltiesâeven to his own sycophants.
Neither had things changed much in police headquarters, apart from the
departure of José Luis Albert after four years of tyrannical activities.
He had been made Governor of Orense and his position in police HQ was
taken by Fernando Vives Camino, son of General Vives of the Military
Legal Corps, who had, as assessor to General Emilio Mola y Vidal in the
Army of the North, during the Civil War, managed to get himself into the
Tax Department and subsequently accumulated a large fortune for himself.
SabatĂ©âs Group carried with them an abundant supply of arms and
propaganda material bestowed on them by friends before their departure.
Their bags were mostly full of copies of a four-page publication, El
Combate, sub-titled, âThe Organ of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Groupsâ.
These copies were part of the first edition of that newspaper, and were
dated I May 1955. The main objective was to revive to its rightful
position that historic day in the history of the working-class
struggleâthe First of May. In El Combate they recalled the origins of
this workersâ holidayâthe Chicago Martyrs, the history of the CNT and
confederal participation in the struggle for workersâ rights. The
newspaper concluded with a call to the people for three fields of
militancy: for the CNT, for direct action against the peoplesâ
oppressors, and for freedom.
Two of the four comrades remained in Tarrasa until Sabaté required their
assistance. Naturally, after such a long absence, it was essential for
him to ensure his contacts were still in existence and willing to
participate in his plans. As the group had invested almost all its
resources in equipping the expedition to Barcelona and was now almost
penniless, it was imperative that funds be obtained quickly. El Quico
and his friend, after some initial difficulties in renewing contacts in
the city, began to distribute their propaganda in the early morning of
30 April. They hijacked a taxi and drove through the districts of Sans,
Corts, El Born, the Arco del Triunfo and the Carmelo, distributing El
Combate everywhere they wentâneither did they forget to send a few by
post to the Jefatura de Policia, the Governor and other authorities in
Barcelona.
A rather ingenious method of distribution was later employed by the
Group and which did not present quite so much danger to themselves. This
was to place dampened bundles of the leaflets on the roofs of parked
cars, buses and trams, in such a manner that when the vehicle drove off
the bundles would gradually dry and the leaflets blow off in the streets
of Barcelona. However, the financial situation rapidly worsened. At one
stage, SabatĂ©âs plight was such that he did not even have the money to
telephone the other two comrades in Tarrasa.
To bring the Group together in Barcelona, Sabaté had to get hold of some
money. As always El Quico thought it best if a bank supported the
operationâhis only source of funds, and which represented the symbol of
capitalism and exploitation. However, in order to carry out a robbery,
it was first of all necessary to be equipped with some funds and the two
comrades did not have two brass farthings between them. On 3 May Sabaté
and his friend hailed a taxi and drove to the Travesera de Gracia in
Barcelona. There El Quico told the driver to wait for him for a few
minutes. He took the shopping basket he had brought with him and went
into a textile shop near the vegetable market. Inside he asked for the
manager, and the moment the gentleman appeared he announced those famous
wordsââSoy el Quico!â
Having told the manger whom he was dealing with, he explained the reason
for his unexpected visit. Without hesitation the manager handed over all
he hadâor all he said he hadâ4,000 pesetasâand SabatĂ© returned happily
to the taxi. The first thing he did was to pay the cab driver and then
send for the two comrades waiting in Tarrasa to join him, in the city.
The four were reunited on 6 May, although the problem of money still
remained. However, El Quico had a plan.
Later that same day they hired a taxi in the Avenida de José Antonio
Sicilia. By the time they had reached the Hospital Clinico the driver
had become slightly suspicious of his passengers. Perhaps he had seen
they were armed. He attempted to draw-up at the kerb, saying to his
passengers that they should hang on for a few minutes. He had to be
convinced at the point of a gun that he should carry on to the address
they had given, in the Calle Mallorca. There, at No. 1 17, at the
junction with the Calle Muntaner, was a branch of the Banco de Vizcaya.
One of the group remained in the taxi, parked a short distance away from
the entrance, covering the driver. The other three, one carrying a
vegetable basket and all in shirtsleeves, entered the bank, passing a
pair of Policia Armada on guard duty outside the main door. Once inside,
the three produced their submachine-guns from the basket and told
everyone to remain quiet. One of the group positioned himself in the
hallway to keep an eye on the two unsuspecting guards outside, while
another kept watch on everyone inside the bank, and the third went with
the cashier to the safe. The cashier, frightened out of his life, helped
to fill up the sack with 700,000 pesetas from the vaults. This done,
they retreated to the doorway and told everyone to lie down, saying they
would shoot without mercy the first one to show his face outside the
bank. The three comrades then calmly proceeded to make a graceful
exitâwishing the guards âgood dayâ as they passedâand left in the
waiting taxi. As they drove off, one of the men from the bank ran out
shouting for the police but it was too lateâthe taxi had disappeared in
the traffic. At the junction of the Calle José Antonio and the Calle de
la DiputaciĂłn two of them alighted and hailed another cab. The other two
continued as far as the Avenida del Marques de Duero, where they stopped
outside the Cine America. They paid the twenty-two pesetas on the meter,
and Sabaté, laughing, then gave the driver a wad of notes as a tip. When
the driver arrived at the police station to report the incident, he
found to his surprise that the tip came to 7,600 pesetas!
Following this neat job the manager of the textile store received a Giro
cheque for 4,000 pesetas, the amount he had âloanedâ SabatĂ©.
To avoid the inevitable police manhunt Sabaté and one of the others
remained in Barcelona while the other two returned to Tarrasa. The
propaganda distributed the day before May Day had alerted the police.
The audacious robbery in the Calle Mallorca caused a complete
mobilisation of all the Barcelona security forces. Chief of Police Pedro
Polo called for a large-scale search. He ordered the immediate arrest of
all the anarchists on whom he had files in the hope of obtaining some
clue through what he described as âinterrogationâ.
The raids did not produce the slightest lead as to the whereabouts of
Sabaté or his three friends, but it did lead to the discovery, on 9 May,
of the print shop of Solidaridad Obrera and the arrest of seven
comrades[89] working there at the time of the raid. These men had no
knowledge whatever regarding the activities of El Quicoâs group. The
paper itself had also commemorated May Day â but in an issue produced in
the second fortnight of May.
El Quico proceeded with his task of forming other action groups. This
work was very dangerous, as the police had all known
Anarcho-Syndicalists under observation, and proceeded to arrest them
when they considered that their activities threatened the security of
the State.
Sabaté, as a member of the CNT, was forced to look for support from
members of the organisation. After having met the Secretary of the
Regional Committee of Catalonia, El Quico arranged another meeting with
him the same afternoon to discuss in detail the actions he proposed to
undertake and the extent to which they could work together. The meeting
place was arranged to take place in the Calle Wad-Ras, in the East End
of the city, at three in the afternoon. Invariably Sabaté refused to
attend meetings in cafés or other indoor places from which it would be
difficult to escape in the event of a trap.
Five minutes before the arranged time, El Quico drove through the street
in a taxi to check the rendezvous, as usual he trusted no one
completely. He noticed an over-large number of what appeared to be
workers on both sides of the street. This was unusual for that time of
day and his suspicions were aroused. He halted the driver a short
distance away from the rendezvous and told him to wait. He strolled
towards a group who were talking heatedly among themselves. Passing a
man in a raincoat, who seemed to be waiting for someone but who started
to follow him, Sabaté reached the corner of the Calle de Luchana, where
he saw a truck full of police. He realised it was a carefully prepared
trap.
However, the police in the truck had not seen SabatĂ©âs arrival and
thought he was merely someone who lived in the street going about his
ordinary business. The plain-clothes man following Sabaté was signalled
by his colleagues to return to his post. The policeman may have thought
it strange but no doubt appreciating that his colleagues knew what they
were doing, he returned without protest to his post. Sabaté continued
strolling for a few yards then turned and retraced his steps. At that
moment he saw the Secretary advancing towards him and, without any
apparent concern, hailed him cordially.
As both men walked to the waiting taxi he informed the Secretary they
were surrounded completely by police.
âImpossible,â said the Secretary, âyou must have been followed!â
âNobody follows me,â said El Quico. âWe havenât time to talk about that
now, keep walking and donât turn around.â In the taxi they told the
driver to drive off and then Sabaté, opening his briefcase, produced a
Sten gun. With the butt of the Sten he broke the back windowâto the
consternation of the driver and the Secretaryâto be prepared for any
eventualities, as the police van was following close behind them. When
they reached the Hospital of Santa Cruz y San Pablo, Sabaté told the
driver to pull up. He was about to advise his companion to make a run
for it, but the advice was superfluous. The Secretary already had his
hand on the catch and was out of the car and away before Sabaté could
finish his sentence. The latter could not help smiling. The Secretary of
the Regional Committee jumped into another taxi standing nearby and
disappeared. Sabaté remained there, with his Sten gun at the ready
waiting on the police van driving slowly along the road. When it came in
range he ran out in the road and opened fire, smashing the windscreen.
As the van screeched to a halt the driver fell slumped over the wheel
and the police jumped out, throwing themselves flat on the ground. The
taxi, which had brought Sabaté and the Secretary, drove off at high
speed, preferring in the circumstances to ignore the fare on the meter!
At this particularly crucial moment, El Quico discovered he had run out
of ammunition magazines. He fired a few shots with his Colt to
discourage pursuit, and was off before the police could pluck up the
courage to give chase. At the first corner he threw himself against a
wall, until he heard the sound of their running footsteps in his
direction. Waiting until they were only a short distance away he ran out
towards them with the submachine-gun on his hip as though he were about
to mow them all down. At this unexpected appearance they turned and ran
off the way they had come while he gained the necessary minutes to shake
them off completely and make good his escape. He ran down a nearby
street, stopped a passing car with his pistol and sitting beside the
driver, told him to take the first left-hand turn, go round the block,
and stop in front of the hospital where there was a taxi-rank. Having
changed taxis a number of times he then considered it safe enough to
return home.
From this incident Sabaté deduced the following: the police did not know
the identity of the man who attended the rendezvous in the Calle
Wad-Ras, since if they had known it was him his reception would have
been somewhat different. The police attitude indicated that they
intended only to follow, not to arrest, the newcomer and that they were
only concerned with widening the net, in order to place the whole
organisation under surveillanceâthe intention being to hit with one blow
all the Resistance groups in existence or those that might later come
into being. Once again, almost incredibly, Sabaté had managed to cheat
death.
Amongst the various odds and ends that Sabaté had collected during his
enforced stay in France, was a type of homemade mortar. It was
constructed to fire projectiles packed with propaganda over a distance
of 200 yards. The charge exploded in mid-air, scattering leaflets over a
large area. This novel method of distributing propaganda was tried out
during one of Francoâs visits to Barcelona, on 28 September 1955. He
hired a taxi with a sunroof and explained to the driver he was working
for the Ministry of Information and was distributing official propaganda
to the people of Barcelona in honour of the Caudillo. The citizens were
extremely surprised when they saw fluttering from the sky thousands of
subversive leaflets, printed on fine multi-coloured paper, written in
both Catalan and Spanish. This propaganda was signed by Sabaté as coming
from the âLibertarian MovementâCommittee of Relationsâ. He did not put
the confederal stamp upon it, nor mention any of the Libertarian
organizations. For Sabaté, the struggle against Franco could not be
considered in the light of group or party politics. His only concern was
to create a general climate of insurrection. Victory for him did not
consist of building up the power of a political name or tendency, but in
the incorporation of all peoplesâ forces against tyranny.
Sabaté was most definitely not an elitist. He knew, better than most,
that Francoâs rĂ©gime would only be overthrown through the mass action of
the people. However, as a man of experience, who had seen so many
mistakes made by the Anarcho-Syndicalists during the Civil War, he knew
also that it was even more difficult to maintain victory than to achieve
it.
The best safeguard of freedom, Sabaté realised, was a strong CNT Trade
Union, which was combative, and able not only to make, but also to
defend the revolution, which others, the day after it came, would
attempt to destroy. He never forgot the policies and position of the
Communist Party during the Civil War which, on the orders of Stalin was
dedicated to counter-revolutionary activities and which totally
destroyed the revolutionary morale of the people, leading inevitably to
defeat. Sabaté would sooner have died than have a repetition of this
tragic event. It was for this reason he devoted his life to creating
groups that would forcibly resist vacillation in the face of this
threat. That is why he distributed two different types of propaganda:
one the general type of anti-fascist propaganda and the other, as shown
in El Combate, putting forward concrete and specific anarchist ideas.
Issue No. 2 of El Combate came out in July and No. 3 followed in
October. They were both two-page productions, and in all the publication
ran to four issues. After the downfall of the clandestine paper
Solidaridad Obrera[90] Sabaté produced a special edition, without number
or date, in which he said, among other things:
âThis is a warning. When they took our âSoliâ and the CNT members there,
they took defenceless men. If they come for us they will find us with
guns in our hands and we are perfectly able to defend ourselves against
organised violence of the State, using the defensive violence of the
organized working class.â
It can be seen from this that Sabaté refers to the CNT paper as our
âSoliâ, and throughout his active life he considered anything that
affected his organisation as affecting him personally.
In addition to his âpublishing activityâ SabatĂ© also recorded a number
of speeches on a tape recorder and, every so often, would arrive
unheralded in public places where there were likely to be large groups
of workersâfactory canteens and so onâand play his tapes. Out of the
blue workers at their lunch break would hear speeches no one would have
ever imagined possible inside Spain in a public place. El Quico was
rapidly becoming a legend in Spain. In Catalonia he had been transformed
into âPublic Enemy No. 1â of the rĂ©gime.
He had his critics of course, especiallyâalthough it may sound
incredibleâamong the Libertarian organisations in France.[91] There the
Grupos Anarco-Sindicalistas were denounced as a usurpation, and his
activity was severely criticised. He was even accused of being
responsible for the police raid on Solidaridad Obrera. Accusations of
irresponsibility, lack of common sense, and attempting to cause a split
in the movement were thrown at him from all quarters.
As an example of these wild accusations we quote from the Agenda and
Reports of the VIIth International Congress of Groups held in July 1956.
In their report the Inter-Continental Committee of the FAI included a
number of paragraphs from an earlier decision taken at a full committee
meeting in 1951, stating what type of activities should be carried out
in Spain.
This was the prelude to a bitter and vicious attack on Sabaté and the
Grupos Anarco-Sindicalistas. The FAI Committee also reproduced in the
report a copy of the latest circular distributed by the Grupos
Anarco-Sindicalistas, following up with the text below:
All comrades active in our Organization know that they have hadâand
continue to haveâthe right to express freely any doubts they may feel, a
right nobody has ever tried to restrict. What no one has the right to do
in our movement is to divide and split it, creating an Organisation
within an organisation. This is what Georges Fontenis did in the French
Anarchist Federation (FAF) with the creation of the OPB.[92] In effect
this is precisely what the writers of this circular are asking of the
movement.
All groups and militants should realize the gravity of this circularâs
implications and the responsibilities its authors could have incurred.
We should add that this âself-styledâ Federation has published a little
paper called El Combate, Organ of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Groups. We
know for a fact that a close friend and admirer of Fontenis was involved
in the preparation of the first issue of this paperâa man who split the
FAF and created the Federation Communiste Libertaire, which in due
course passed bag and baggage over to the Trotskyists.
Finally, another paper, using the name Ruta, is styling itself as the
Organ of the Spanish Libertarian Communist Federation, a section of the
Libertarian Communist International. We do not believe that this paper
has anything to do with El Combate, unless the Fontenis faction and the
OPB are âfishing in troubled watersâ and hope to sow the seeds of
disruption and cause confusion by using for their own ends the
activities of our irresponsible comrades.
The authors of this calumny signed themselves âP.T. & C.â, and were
members of the FAI Committee of Relations. El Quico tried in vain to
defend himself against these unfounded accusations, and wrote many
letters to the organisation explaining his position. It was useless. To
defend himself properly it would have been necessary to abandon all his
clandestine work of resistance in Spain and to have played the sterile
and destructive game of circulars and counter-circulars. Deeply wounded,
as were so many other comrades at this time, he decided to carry on with
what he was doing, and depend solely upon the goodwill of thoseâand
there were many of themâwho were willing to help him in the struggle.
The Anarcho-Syndicalist Groups finally ceased activity in the winter of
1956/57 as a result of vicious repression. During this period
forty-three militants of the CNT were arrested in different parts of
Catalonia, accused of illegal organization and above all of having
conspired with Francisco Sabaté, against the security of the State.
The organiser and animator of the Grupos in France during this period of
repression following the discovery of a large arms dump near the Spanish
border. He was sentenced in absentia on 28 May 1957 to twelve months
imprisonment against which he appealed. The appeal was heard and he was
granted a retrial on I2 November at which hearing he was sentenced to
eight months imprisonment and five yearsâ confinement. He was released
in July 1958.
JosĂ© (Lluis) FacerĂas had been living illegally in Italy since February
1952 but throughout his stay there he had kept in close touch with his
comrades in Spain and France. After corresponding with Sabaté, he
decided to return to Spain to take up the armed struggle once more. So
it came about that FacerĂas and an Italian comrade crossed the
Franco-Italian border in February 1956, where by pre-arranged plan,
Sabaté was waiting for them with a lorry to take them to a hideout in
France. They agreed to meet later on a given date near the Spanish
border. Before crossing the Pyrenees again, FacerĂas wanted to see
comrades in Paris, Toulouse and elsewhere, and to see for himself what
was going on with the organisation in France from which he had been
separated for so long. The place they arranged to meet prior to crossing
the border was a cottage, La Graboudeille, a couple of miles from the
frontier.
It was owned by a French man, Michel Guisset, who lived there with his
wife and children. Sabaté had got to know this peasant family over ten
years before while working in the area as a mechanic building an aerial
cable for a tungsten mine in Costabonne. He knew the area like the back
of his hand and it was the ideal spot for a secret border crossing. The
Mas Graboudeille was situated some four miles from the thermal baths at
La Preste. Between the Mas and the border, a distance of only a mile or
so, there was only one other house, owned by Guissetâs brother, and some
five hundred yards from the border. Between the Mas and the thermal bath
there was also only one house, La Barragane, which belonged to Guissetâs
sister. To the north, east and west the land was barren and
uninhabitedâexcept for a few shepherds and their flocksâbut easy to
cross!
The group, composed of SabatĂ©, FacerĂas, the Italian and Angel M.U., met
at La Graboudeille and discussed their plans. Sabaté, as we have seen,
was now operating not only outside the organisation but contrary to its
decisions. This position made him bitter, and working on the principle
that his enemies should know nothing about his activitiesâand this
included his enemies on the Committees of the MLE-CNT in Franceâhe asked
FacerĂas to promise not to let the Toulouse Committee know anything
about their proposed journey into Spain, nor indeed to have any contact
whatsoever with them. However, FacerĂas had already met members of the
Inter-Continental Secretariat prior to meeting El Quico at the Mas, and
to avoid any argument, preferred not to tell him about it. Both held
similar ideas regarding the Committees, but FacerĂas, who so far had not
incurred the wrath of the Committees in exile, felt less bitter towards
them, and hoped that one day it would be possible to unite all the
working class organisations operating for and in Spain. He had some
support for this, although perhaps only verbal, which led him to expect
some role in coordinating activities, a role for which he was admirably
suited. He therefore tried to avoid a radical breach with the different
sections of the organisations.
The group reached Barcelona without mishap, but it did not take Sabaté
long to discover his friendâs âdishonestyâ. In Barcelona a letter was
waiting for him in one of the âdead letter boxesâ from a friend in
Toulouse. It told him in detail about Faceâs visit to the Committee HQ,
in the Rue Belfort. When El Quico read this he lost all confidence in
his friend. Sabaté was very punctilious in his behaviour towards others
and considered this to be a complete betrayal of trust and, after a
heated discussion which quickly degenerated into an argument, the men
split upâa separation which, unhappily, was to be forever. Both of them
regretted the stupid incident. Later when news reached Sabaté of
FacerĂasâs death he wept as if he had lost another brother.
FacerĂas now found himself alone in Spain, with the Italian who had
accompanied him, possessing only the arms and some money given him by
Sabaté. After such a long absence and without any really safe contacts
there was not much he could do. Having fallen out with Sabaté, and
knowing he must come across him in Barcelona if he stayed there, he
decided, bitterly, to return to Italy, which he did in March.
Notwithstanding all his trials and tribulations, Sabaté continued with
his organisation of the Catalan Resistance Movement. He was convinced,
at a time when everyone else had given up the dream of foreign
intervention, that a rising against Franco was imminent. The money he
invested as a result of this belief was fabulousâtaken as it was
directly from the banks. If some day someone takes on the task of
auditing SabatĂ©âs financial âaccountsâ in Catalonia, the results will be
staggering!
These funds, however, all went back into the guerrilla infrastructure
and were not touched by him, even for his personal necessities, which
were very few. He neither smoked nor drank and the household
requirements as well as the money to educate and bring up the children
was brought in by Leonor, who earned this by working as a cleaning lady.
Needless to say, the amount Leonor learned was still insufficient for
the needs of the family, but Sabaté would not consider taking any of the
proceeds of the robberies for his own needs or those of his family.
The large-scale plans that Sabaté prepared could not be financed by his
activity alone. Later we shall see the terrible repression that followed
in the areas where he carried out his operations, which led hundreds of
comrades to the dungeons of Francoâs prisons. One of SabatĂ©âs constant
preoccupations in Spain was the setting up of an effective urban
guerrilla infrastructureâbuilding bases, organizing groups and
contactsâto ensure that when the day arrived they would be in a
sufficiently well organised position to deliver the final coup de grĂące
to the dictatorship.
An important point should be mentioned about these groups. They never
carried out any direct action operations apart from the distribution of
propaganda and a general proselytising campaign in their own areas.
Neither did the groups outside contribute one peseta to the support of
the action groups. The reason for this was that Sabaté knew from long
experience that this method of support, reasonable when operating
legally, was very much counter-productive when operating in secret, for
it only served to give the police clues as to the structure of the
organisation and allowed them to break it up whenever they felt
endangered by its continued existence. This could be, and was,
heartbreaking, especially when one considers the amounts of time and
labour spent in building up a clandestine resistance organisation.
For this reason, then, all the money obtained from expropriations went
to finance the clandestine network; propaganda, journeys, arms and
explosives, false documentation, prisonersâ aid, and so on; and for the
same reason Sabaté and all the other activists were vilified in the
Spanish pres as âbanditsâ. At that time (and even to this day) it was
part and parcel of most Governmental policies to hide the existence of
revolutionary groups and their activities by presenting them as
criminals through the media.
On the other hand, however, neither did the exiled Spanish anarchist
press attempt to vindicate expropriation as part of the revolutionary
class struggle and the necessity of this activity to support the urban
guerrilla groups in their struggle against the terrorism and banditry of
the Franco Government. At that time the revolutionary movement had not
benefited from the writings and thoughts of the Brazilian revolutionary
Carlos Marighella,[93] who in 1968, wrote in his Guerrilla Operations
and Tactics the following definition:
âExpropriations are armed operations and a guerrilla tactic carried out
to finance, support and advance the movement towards revolution.â
As we have said, SabatĂ© financed the groupsâ activities with the help of
the larger Spanish banks, factories, rich landowners and industrialists,
but no matter how much money these operations brought in there was never
quite enough for the needs of the groups. Following his break with
FacerĂas, El Quico dedicated himself to the job of distributing
propaganda for the activist groups in Barcelona and the adjoining towns
and villages.
On 21 March 1956, Sabaté was walking through the streets of Barcelona
when he realisedâwith a sixth sense developed through many years of
dangerâthat he was being followed. He stopped several times to check,
but there was nothing he could put his finger on. However, he
instinctively knew danger lurked nearby, and with his friend, who had
been accompanying him, took a complicated route to ensure it was not
just someone who happened to be going the same way. Turning a corner, he
told his comrade to continue walking while he remained pressed against
the wall. It did not take long before he knew he was not being
over-paranoid. Sure enough, someone was walking quickly in their
direction. The man who had been following them turned the corner, and
was confronted with two inquisitive dark-brown eyes and the barrel of an
automatic pointed at him from the shadows. SabatĂ© demanded the manâs
papers, but the threatened man was a veteran police inspector, José
GĂłmez de Lazaro y Hernaiz[94] who, after his initial surprise, went for
his gun. El Quico fired immediately and the inspector fell dead on the
Montjuich road, in the borough of Pueblo Seco.
The police knew that SabatĂ© and FacerĂas were both in Barcelona, but
what they did not know was that the pair had split up on arrival. On the
following two days the newspapers carried photographs of both men, who
were jointly accused of the inspectorâs death. The photo of Face was of
police origin as he had already served a prison sentence in Barcelona in
1946 for illegal possession of arms and illegal propaganda. SabatĂ©âs
photograph, however, came from another source. The Spanish police never
had the opportunity to take his photograph and the only photo-record of
him was in France. The solidarity between international police forces
was becoming stronger as the years went on.
As usual, Sabaté was short of the necessary funds for the work he
proposed to undertake. Prior to his entry into Spain with FacerĂas they
had planned a robbery of a branch of the Central Bank in the Calle
Fusina. Though his break with FacerĂas forced him to alter his plans
somewhat, he did not change his mind about this. He carried it out with
unbelievable audacity and smoothness.
The branch office was near the Borne market place and on 23 May, Sabaté
and Angel carrying a large shopping basket, hailed a taxi and told the
driver to park near the bank. It was pouring with rain and the Policia
Armada, who normally patrolled outside the bank, were inside behind the
revolving doors, standing in the main hallway close to the cashierâs
desk.
Once inside, El Quico pulled a Thompson submachine-gun from under his
raincoat. As he did so, one of the police made to draw his gun but,
reacting quickly, Sabaté hit him on the arm, forcing him to drop it. He
then disarmed the other and took their pistols.
The bank was crowded with customers. SabatĂ© lined them all upâcustomers,
cashiers and guards. Angel, his comrade, then went round the tills
filling up the enormous basket they had brought for this purpose (in
their hurry overlooking a very considerable amount). Then, covering the
shopping bag, Angel retreated to the waiting taxi while El Quico covered
his exit. Giving Angel sufficient time to reach the taxi he brought out
what appeared to be an explosive device with a short fuse, which he lit
and placed in the main entrance, telling people to keep as far away from
the door as possible and to lie on the ground, as the bomb was due to go
off in a few seconds. The customers, guards and bank employees threw
themselves to the floor and Sabaté made his way unhindered to the taxi
whose driver was waiting, blissfully unaware that anything untoward had
occurred. The fuse burned its whole length, but the anxiously expected
explosion did not take place. When bomb disposal experts took the device
to a nearby park to dismantle it, they discovered that the contents
consisted of sand and a little note which said, âJust to show you I am
not as bloodthirsty as you make outâ and signed, âThe Analphabetic.â
âBloodthirstyâ and âilliterateâ were some of the more common terms given
to Sabaté in the official press.
Together with Angel M., Sabaté returned to France on 26 July 1956 but,
unfortunately, Angel was arrested as he crossed the frontier,
separately, and having no documents was taken to Prats-de-Mollo police
station. In his possession was discovered a 9-mm Star pistol, and he was
charged with possession of this and also illegally crossing the border.
The court agreed there were extenuating circumstances and gave him
twelve days imprisonment.
Meanwhile the organization in exile had solved none of its internal
problems. On the one hand there were the numerous committees and
commissions, such as the legally recognized MLE/CNT or the tolerated
ones such as the FIJL-FAI. On the other hand there were many comrades
who argued unsuccessfully in the various assemblies to separate these
âlegalâ activitiesâwith their bureaucracies and interminable meetings,
conferences and committeesâfrom the illegal but constructive work of
resistance organisation. However, the apathy of the majority of the
members in exile was such that it was the bureaucracy that carried the
day. If the bureaucracy had chosen to formulate and carry out any sort
of combative policy, they could quite easily have shaken the majority of
the membership out of their apathy. However, their poltroonery and
vicious denunciation of all those who refused to accept their authority
served as an excuse for the continued apathy of the majority. The
movement was reduced to such ridiculous abstractions as discussing âthe
position of the organisation in the event of another World Warâ, rather
than take any decisions on the war declared against fascism in I936.
Sabaté returned to Barcelona with two men: Angel M., and Amadeo Ramón
Valladar, better known as El Asturiano, in November 1956. This was the
first time Amadeo had taken part in guerrilla activity in Catalonia,
however, he had been active in guerrilla warfare in his native Asturias
for many years until he decided to cross into France following the
decimation of the Asturian guerrilla groups in 1955, where he came into
contact with Sabaté. In France he began to yearn for action, and was
always expressing his desire to renew the struggle against the Franco
régime. Amadeo was accepted into the group and although his personal
motives and irresponsibility provoked some minor incidents with Sabaté,
he was willing to accept that all money obtained by the group would be
used for propaganda and organisational activities. Because of this
Sabaté decided to overlook his shortcomings.
As usual they left from the Mas Graboudeille. The money they carried
with them soon ran out and more was quickly acquired. This time the
movementâs funds were to be supplied by the construction company
Cubiertas y Tejados of Barcelona. The offices and wages department of
this company were at No.12 Calle Lincoln. The robbery was planned to
involve only three men. To work out the details of the robbery Sabaté
went on his own to the city, leaving Angel and El Asturiano in Tarrasa.
Once he had made the preparations he called for the other two to join
him in Barcelona, where they met at the beginning of December 1956. The
operation was planned for the 22^(nd)âthe best day for the biggest wage
packets, which would include the Christmas bonuses.
The robbery was carried out with the meticulousness of a commando raid.
Angel and El Asturiano arrived first to check there had been no last
minute changes in routine. El Quico arrived at four in the afternoon,
the appointed time, in a taxi. He got out a short distance away and went
straight to the offices. He was surprised to see that his comrades did
not follow him, so he retraced his steps to find out what the trouble
was.
âWhatâs up? What the hell are you waiting for?â
âThere are too many people inside,â said Angel.
The offices of Cubiertas y Tejados had one peculiarity. It was a new
building with large windows, the interior easily visible from the
street. That day, not counting the employees, there were twenty-four
people waiting around in the foyer for one thing or another. Through the
main door there was a large vestibule where a flamboyantly-uniformed
doorman was on duty.
Hearing his friendâs remark, SabatĂ© replied abruptly, âCome on! Donât
worry about that! Letâs get inside!â He went off and they followed him.
All three men were impeccably dressed. The only thing that distinguished
them from the other customers were the Thompson submachine-guns they
carried under their raincoats. The doorman asked them politely what they
wanted.
âWe would like to speak to Señor GuillĂ©n,â said SabatĂ©.
âGuillĂ©n?â
âYes, GuillĂ©n,â replied SabatĂ©, and at the same time, as though it were
the most natural thing in the world and he was chatting to an old
friend, he put his hand on the manâs shoulder, laughing, as though he
had just told a joke, and said in his ear, âIf you want to collect your
pension donât make the slightest noise or do anything unusual. Just
follow my instructions. Soy El Quico! Understand? Come with us to the
first floor as if we were customersâand get in front.â
âPlease... I have a wife and children...â
âYou just remember it. If you do what I tell you you will see them
again. Get moving!â El Asturiano remained at the doormanâs post without
anyone paying him the slightest attention. At the left of the hallway
was a staircase which led to the first floor, and the three men walked
up the stairs, the doorman leading with Sabaté and Angel following close
behind. On reaching the first floor they saw a little room with three
doors leading off.
âKnock quietly on the right-hand door,â SabatĂ© told the doorman.
The door opened and Sabaté pushed the doorman into the room following
close behind with his Thompson at the ready, indicating to the five
employees to stay where they were.
His tone convinced them. He made them stand against the wall with their
feet some distance apart so that they were off-balance, and then asked
which one was the cashier. The man came forward, and, as directed by El
Quico, went to the safe, which covered the whole of one wall of the
office. On opening the door all to be seen were shelves full of nothing
but files but, happily, this part of the safe revolved and on the other
side was the money. Sabaté covered the office clerks with his gun while
Angel filled up a sack with bundles of money. Almost a million pesetas!
While the sack was being filled, Sabaté explained to the clerks the
reason for the robbery. He told them that the money was to be used to
help the resistance against Francoâs fascist rĂ©gime. When he had
finished emptying the safe he told them to accompany him quietly to the
basement, for they were going to visit the main strong room before they
left the building. To get to the basement it was necessary to pass
through the vestibule on the ground floor once again. To their surprise,
however, when they got to the foyer where they had left El Asturiano
they discovered he had all the employees and customers lined up against
the wall with his finger menacingly on the trigger of his
submachine-gun.
This unexpected move put a stop to their further plans of visiting the
strong room. The alarm could go off at any moment. Sabaté quickly took a
knife and cut as many telephone wires as he could, but there were too
many and they were losing valuable time. On the pavement outside a crowd
was gathering to watch the spectacle through the windows, grinning.
Presumably they thought they were watching the shooting of a gangster
film. Sabaté announced to the assembled employees and customers that the
first man to put his head outside the door would not live to tell the
story of his adventure. Angel ran out first with the sackful of money to
the waiting taxi that had brought Sabaté. The driver, needless to say,
was completely ignorant of what had happened inside the office.
âStart the car,â Angel ordered.
âEh?â exclaimed the driver, âIâm waiting for someone else... I donât
know you.â
Angel, without wasting time on explanations, produced the Thompson and
said, âNow do you know me?â
The other two joined him almost immediately and the taxi drove off. The
driver, not unreasonably, complained that heâd been treated with very
little consideration. Sabaté took the opportunity of asking El Asturiano
what had happened on the ground floor while they were upstairs.
âSome people wanted to leave the buildingâand I had to bring the gun out
to prevent them!â
This was no time to discuss the matter and El Quico held his peace, but
El Asturianoâs jumpiness could have caused a disaster. He had been
briefed to let everyone go in and out without hindrance, so that nobody
would notice anything was amiss.
When they arrived at the address they had given to the driver the group
split up. Sabaté advised the driver to go straight to the police in
order to avoid being held as an accomplice in the robbery. Later, after
changing taxis a number of times, they met again at a pre-arranged
rendezvous.
It was easily foreseen that a robbery as audacious as this one, against
such a large and powerful company in broad daylight, with so much money
involved, and carried out by only three men, would provoke an all-out
manhunt by the police. Also, of course, they would be looking for El
Quico.
Obviously they had to stay hidden for some days without venturing into
the streets, and this was how they spent 23 and 24. December. The
following day Sabaté told his friends he was going on a short journey to
a village in the province where he had to attend to some urgent
business. After insisting that his friends did not move from where they
were, under any pretext, SabatĂ©âdisguised as a peasant, made the trip
and was on his way back that same afternoon. When he returned, Angel M.
had gone. At first he was angry, but as the hours passed and his comrade
did not return, he decided to go out and look for him. Taking his usual
precautions, he called at several addresses where Angel could possibly
have gone, but there was no trace of him. More and more worried, he
headed for the house of a widow who lived with her son in the centre of
Barcelona, in the Diagonal.
As usual, instead of calling at the front door, he went through the
garden and knocked on the back door. The womanâs son answered the knock
and, when he saw El Quico, quietly signalled him to run. Sabaté, always
quick in his reflexes, immediately jumped to one side. Bullets whistled
past his ears. In a moment he crossed the garden and disappeared over
the wall. Fortunately for him the police had occupied the house but were
waiting in the front room, supposing that if he did come he would call
at the front. How did they know the house? What were they waiting there
for? Everything seemed to point to Angelâs arrest. Later the mystery was
cleared up. The intimate collaboration of the international police
forces, to which we have already referred, had enabled them to find
through the interception of correspondence between France and Spain, the
address of a married couple who lived in the Traversa de Las Corts.
Following the robbery of Cubiertas y Tejados the police raided this
house at two a.m. on 23 December. Subjected to the usual methods of
interrogation, the unfortunate tenant of the house, Miguel F., confessed
to the police what they already knew from their colleagues in
Franceâthat SabatĂ© sometimes used the address as a âdead letter boxâ. As
it was possible Sabaté would call there, the police arrested the couple
and took over the flat. For further security, they also occupied the
house of the manâs mother-in-lawâthe one in the Diagonal, where SabatĂ©
arrived and where he escaped, after being shot at, by pure chance.
The imprudence of Angel M. rang up the curtain on a fresh tragedy. As
Sabaté guessed, Angel had indeed been arrested. He had gone to the flat
in the Traversa de Gracia and walked into the trap prepared for the
group by the Brigada Politico Social. It was now certain that the house
where El Asturiano and Sabaté were staying, in the old town, was no
longer safe. Neither were any of the other houses known to the arrested
man. Sabaté had a great deal of confidence in Angel, but knew that soon
he would have to talkâinterrogation methods in Spain had been perfected
throughout the years to a fine artâbut he would take his time about it.
Sabaté and El Asturiano had to leave immediately.
They left in the nick of time, at nine in the evening. The police
arrived an hour and a half later with something like a small army. They
broke into the abandoned flat and, although they found nothing, they
knew they were hot on the trail. On the table the evening meal was laid
out, but nothing had been touched.
The first thing Sabaté had to do was to save all the important material
he had collected. This material was kept in another flat he rented in
the Calle Bassegoda, in Barcelonaâs East End. He called on another
comrade to help him, and together with El Asturiano they took a taxi to
the flag where Sabaté left his two comrades in the doorway while he ran
up the stairs to collect the materialâ arms, explosives, leaflets, tape
recorder, mortar charges and so on. While he was busy packing he heard a
warning cry from the streetâthe police were coming. From long experience
he knew that when the police came it was not a question of hiding or
hoping they would finish their rounds. Either you ran immediately or you
died on the spot.
He was surprised when he ran to the doorway and found no sign of police.
His two friends explained that the cry had come from the taxi driver who
had dropped them and who had just fied with the car. Obviously he had
thought there was something suspicious about his passengersâperhaps he
had even recognised them. What made matters worse was that they had left
a bag containing a large amount of money in the back seat. No doubt the
driver would immediately inform the police, as there was a station close
at hand. There was now no possibility of the hard-won material being
saved.
Two street night patrolmen, who had heard the driverâs shout, were
passing and saw the three men. One of them, gun in hand, came up and
asked what they were doing and for their identity papers. El Quico
replied, âI am El Quico! Understand? Now get the hell out of here! I
donât want to have to kill a poor bastard like you!â The second
patrolman came up to find out what was happening, but by this time his
colleague had sized up the situation and said, returning his gun to his
holster, that everything was in order. The three comrades then got out
of the district as fast as they could. First they had to find a safe
hiding place, since before long the whole of the Barcelona police force
would be on their trail. Where could they be absolutely safe? Angel M.
knew too much â too much for comfort, anyway.
When they were a respectable distance from the scene of the incident,
Sabaté told his friends to wait for him while he checked if they could
stay in a nearby house. On his return, much to his surprise (yet another
on that day of upheavals) he saw they had both disappeared. Walking up
and down, he waited for them to return, spending an hour of absolute
anguish. Lurking in the shadows, he saw in the distance patrols of
Policia Armada and Guardia Civil and, sensing danger at hand, once more
barely managed to escape their clutches. Hailing a taxi, he passed
through the network closing in on him.
Watching through the windows for possible control points, he suddenly
thought he was seeing things. Lo and behold, there on the pavement was
El Asturiano about to cross the street. They had met by sheer
coincidence. Sabaté ordered the taxi to halt and beckoned him to get in.
According to his friend, while the two had been awaiting SabatĂ©âs return
the other had gone for cigarettes and did not return. Soon after he
noticed some suspicious activity in the area and so decided to move on
himself. He was afraid the other had been arrested or maybe even gone to
denounce them. El Quico could only accept this explanation.
The pair, still in the taxi, headed for a building site in Monte
Carmelo, in the north of the city, where earlier they had hidden a bag
containing 100,000 pesetas and a submachine-gun. When they got there
they found the bag had disappeared. It seemed that Angel M. had broken
sooner than expected and they still had to find a safe hideout until the
police activity had died down. None of the usual hideouts offered any
security whatever. They needed somewhere completely unknown to Angel and
they finally came to a desperate conclusion, but the only one open to
them. As it was now quite late and the streets rapidly becoming deserted
it was obviously dangerous to continue walking around much longer
without running the risk of being challenged by the street patrols,
apart from the fact that they were exhausted after such a hectic day.
They left the taxi and went into a bar where there were still a few
customers lingering on, chatting. When the first of these customers made
his farewells, they followed him discreetly to his house, in the Calle
de Cartagena, in the northeast of the city. As the man felt in his
pockets for his key Sabaté went up to him, stuck a gun in his ribs and
said, âI am El Quico! My friend and I are coming up with you to your
home. I am sorry but we have no option.â The man lived with his wife and
twelve-year-old daughter. Sabaté courteously explained to them that he
would cause them the least possible trouble, but while he and his friend
stayed there nobody could leave, although nothing would happen to them
if they did not try to do so. However, the man calmly pointed out that
this was not a feasible plan. Both he and his wife went to work, and if
they were absent for any length of time somebody would almost certainly
call round to find out what was wrong. Sabaté agreed with him, and after
a few minutesâ reflection decided that the couple should go to work as
usual but they should telephone the school to say that their daughter
was ill. The plan had its dangers, but Sabaté had no alternative.
Everything went off perfectly, and the two were able to stay in the flat
for some forty-eight hours. This gave them time to recover their
strength and to think of some place that the police could not discover
from their interrogations and searches. Sabaté and El Asturiano then
decided to move to another flat in Barcelona. However, on leaving the
flat in the Calle Cartagena El Quico repaid the family handsomely for
their forced hospitality.
Sabaté had been up against it many times before, but never as much as
now. The Barcelona police were working tirelessly, night and day, to
eliminate once and for all Spainâs âPublic Enemy No. 1â. To make matters
worse, a bomb exploded on the plinth of the Victory Monument in the
Plaza de la Victoria, on the morning of 30 December. The bomb did not do
much damage to the monument itself, but, being a large explosive charge,
it broke a good many windows in the vicinity. This monunent was a
favourite target for Resistance explosivesâmarking as it did the
numerous commemorative festivals of the Franco régime and its victory.
In the form of an obelisk, it was erected originally to the memory of
Francisco Pi y Margall, the apostle of federalism in Spain and a
disciple of P. J. Proudhon, considered by many to be the âfatherâ of the
libertarian movement. In 1940 the Fascists pulled down the commemorative
plaque together with the bust of the great federalist, and converted it
into a symbol of the armed victory of tyranny. The police immediately
attributed the explosion to Sabaté. So tightly did they draw the net
around him and so convinced were the police hierarchy of his imminent
arrest that many of the senior police officers spent their nights in the
Jefatura waiting for the news that El Quico had been arrested or killed.
However, Sabaté and El Asturiano, managed to escape the immediate
clutches of their enemies, and remained undercover for more than a month
without showing any signs of life. Then, at the beginning of February
1957, SabatĂ© decided to return to France. In the meantime Angelâs arrest
and the information extracted from him by torture had unleashed a
ferocious repression in Catalonia. With the assistance of special
brigades sent from Madrid to assist their Catalan colleagues, houses
frequented by Sabaté and his comrades were raided, and the occupants or
owners, who were not directly involved in his activities, arrested. From
31 December, 1956 the tally of police victims taken from their homes
was: fourteen in Tarrasa, three in Olesa de Montserrat, three in
Esparraguera, eight in Ripoll, six in Moya and ten in Barcelona.[95]
By this time Sabaté had lost all confidence in El Asturiano. He had come
to know him better in adversity and so despised him, recognising him for
what he wasâa man without any principles whatever.
The repression and the police activity in the Llobregat area was
particularly harsh, and so Sabaté decided to take a different route
across the Pyrenees, one by which he had not travelled for a long
timeâthrough Santa Coloma de Farnes, outside his usual scene of
operations. He realised it would be dangerous to embark on such a long
journey with so much moneyâhe still had most of the money from the
Cubiertas y Tejados robberyâwith a man he did not trust.
There was a woman in Barcelona at that timeâat her own request as she is
still alive we shall give her the fictitious name of Maria. Sabaté
trusted her completely and had worked with her on many occasions in the
past. She had just undergone a serious operation, and wanted to return
to Franceâin fact she was already preparing to go when SabatĂ© called on
her. He explained his problem, the fears he had concerning El Asturiano
and the necessity of being accompanied by a third person. Maria pointed
out that in her condition she would be more of a hindrance than a help.
Sabaté promised the journey would be done in short stages, which she
could manage, and that she would not have to carry anything. Maria, who
really wanted to go with Sabaté, was easily convinced.
The date of departure was fixed for 6 February, and they arranged to
meet in the district of San Andreu. Sabaté arrived dressed as an old
Catalan peasantâcomplete with limp. He wore a beret, a long black scarf
and on his arm a basket of fruit. Under the fruit was his loaded
submachine-gun and mountaineering equipment. The two of them got into a
train compartment, where a little girl stood up on seeing the old man
and offered him her seat. He accepted it graciously. El Asturiano took a
compartment further down the train, with his luggage just like any
holidaymaker. In this way they arrived at Granollers, where they waited
for two hours for another train to take them on the last stage of their
rail journey to the small village of Hostalrich, near Gerona. They
avoided the town and headed straight for the mountains, where they
prepared for their long walk to the frontierâdressing in thick trousers
and heavy climbing boots. It was evening when they set out on their
journey and, at daybreak, they stopped in a wood, had a sandwich and
went to sleepâthe three of them taking it in turns to stand guard. It
had been eleven years since Sabaté had last travelled this area;
consequently he thought this route less likely to be watched than any
other.
Every evening they moved forward, walking slowly so as not to tire
Maria, and stopping frequently to conserve their energy. During the day
they rested, hidden in the woods, and three days went by like this
without incident, apart from the fact that Sabaté seemed unusually
jumpy. The truth of the matter was, however, that he was lost and hadnât
the slightest idea where he was. After a couple of days they all
realised it when they found themselves at a place they had passed three
days before. El Quico cursed himself furiously. Not only had they lost
three precious days, but also their food supply was rapidly diminishing.
Now they did not have a slice of bread between them.
To restock with supplies they decided they would have to leave the
mountains and get nearer the road. Eventually, in the distance, they saw
a charcoal-burnerâs cabin, which they approached with caution. The
Guardia Civil often used these cabins for sleep and rest. El Asturiano
remained outside as Sabaté and Maria entered the cottage. In the
half-light they saw two people sleeping â a young man about twenty years
old, and what appeared to be his grandfather. Sabaté woke the young one
and in a low voice asked him the road he should take to a certain
village. The boy then woke the man who turned out to be his father. The
old man sat up, obviously in a bad mood, looking at the strangers.
SabatĂ© repeated his request. âGet out of here,â grumbled the old man. âI
donât know anything and I donât want to know anything!â
However, Sabaté patiently repeated his request, this time in Catalan,
which seemed to give the old man some confidence in him. The father told
them that all the charcoal-burners in the area had been warned the day
before of the obligation they had to inform the Guardia Civil of the
movement of any strangers in the area. They had also been reminded of
the dire penalties involved if they failed to do so. The old man
insisted they should go as soon as possible and promised not to say
anything, but if they were seen near his house it would cause him a lot
of trouble.
The three comrades left, accompanied by the boy who was to direct them
on their way. He explained to them that his father had belonged to the
Trade Union Movement and because of this had been arrested and tortured
by the police. After the war he had spent two years in a concentration
camp and since then had refused to involve himself in any type of
political activity. After a short while the boy hesitated for a few
seconds and then told them to wait while he went back to the cabin.
Outside they could hear the shouts of the father and the pleas of the
boy, and after a few minutes, he returned with a large loaf of bread and
gave them the information they had asked for. It was so explicit that
they were able to get well on their way without any further problems. By
this time they were well into the mountains and, as the land was so
rough and wooded, they decided to travel by day. During the journey they
came across many more charcoal-burners who greeted them, but made no
attempts to involve them in conversation.
That evening El Asturiano complained that he had to drink some water, as
he was very thirsty. As a result of a stomach operation he was
constantly obliged to drink large quantities of water. Sabaté, always
conciliatory, changed the route. They went down into the valley where
they hoped they might find some water and where they could see huts
built either for the charcoal-burners or woodcutters. In the vicinity of
one of these huts they discovered three demi-johns that had been left
almost buried in the ground to keep the wine fresh. They drank
gratefully and filled their flasks. Sabaté paid for the wine by leaving
some money under one of the demi-johns.
Once again they made their slow way back up the mountain slopes. Maria
was so tired that when they finally sat down she immediately fell fast
asleep. Soon after, however, her friends had to awaken her. They had
heard the sound of shooting nearby. It may have been a poacher, but it
was best not to tempt providence and they continued walking as far as
they could manage. Sabaté knew he had to get out of the area as soon as
possibleâbehind them they had left too clear a trail.
Once again the problem was water. While crossing a little bridge El
Asturiano said he heard water below and went down to the side of the
stream, but there was nothing there except sand and pebbles. The ground
was becoming drier and more sandy and covered with brambles and briars,
which they had to fight their way through with sticks. When they finally
came to more open ground their hands were covered with bleeding cuts
from the thorns and spines. Maria, much smaller than her two companions,
was pitifully scarred on her face. However, by daybreak they came at
last to a pleasant green pasture with a flowing brook of fresh water.
They drank their fill, restocked their flasks, and, after bathing their
scratches, continued on their way. While walking they lost all sense of
time and, as they pushed on the land changed again, as if by magic.
Suddenly there were rocks and boulders everywhereâthe way blocked by
huge mountains and not one blade of grass to be seen. They travelled
slowly without making much progress and using up a great deal of their
energy. Once again on the open mountainside, they were forced to travel
by night, and in this rocky terrain there was always the risk of
twisting an ankle, or suffering some worse injury. At last, however,
they crossed this difficult zone and Sabaté set about looking for a
place where they could rest for a few hours. He managed to get them to
climb up the craggy slope of a mountain to reach a plateau where they
thought they could rest away from the sight of prying eyes. There,
exhausted, they slept like babies.
Maria was the first to awake at daybreak, and when she looked around had
to hold back a cry of horror. The little plateau where they had spent
the night ended in a sudden precipice and, a short distance away,
clearly visible, was a secondary road running past the entrance to a
large farmhouse. She woke her comrades quickly to tell them where they
were, and they all laughed merrily, seeing they had chosen to spend the
night in one of the most dangerous places in the area.
They made their way down the mountainside quickly and took refuge in a
wood. They were hungry and their food was gone again. In a field they
discovered a lettuce that SabatĂ© and Maria shared between themâEl
Asturiano refused to touch it. About ten in the morning they came across
a little cottage where, at the door, they noticed two little boys
playing happily. They went up to them and asked if their parents were
in. The children told them that their father was in prison and their
mother had left early that morning to go to the village for some
shopping. The three comrades decided to wait for the woman of the house
to return and hid themselves a short distance away, where they could
watch the road that led to the house. When the woman returned Sabaté and
Maria went to have a word with her while El Asturiano remained hidden in
the background. The press had given a full description of the fugitives,
but the police had not known of Mariaâs presence in the group and were
alerted for two men, not a man and a woman. In conversation with the
woman Sabaté was told that her husband was a Socialist and had been
arrested by the Guardia Civil following his attendance at a left-wing
meeting in the village. For three years he had languished in Gerona
Prison. The woman sold them some eggs, a rabbit, bread and wine, for
which El Quico paid generouslyâalso leaving behind him some money as a
gift. The woman wept with gratitude.
Once again they camped in the mountains and, while the men skinned the
rabbit and prepared the fire, Maria took advantage of the hot sun to
bathe in a nearby stream, then she had a long sleep. When she awoke the
banquet was preparedâroast rabbit. Later, contented, they waited for the
shadows of evening before continuing their journey. Now the ground was
less stony, and they made good time, but the sky soon grew overcast with
black clouds and it began to rain. It poured down that night and by
daybreak the three were soaked to the skin, until they came upon an
abandoned farm. There was plenty of straw in the barn, which belonged to
a nearby farm, and they made their bed there. It was the first time they
had slept under a roof since their departure from Barcelona.
Sabaté and El Asturiano fell asleep almost immediately, but Maria could
not close her eyes, as the barn was full of rats, which impudently ran
over the bodies of the two sleeping men. She was too frightened even to
lie down. When Sabaté awoke he examined the nearby farmhouse. It was
Sunday and, as far as he could see, the only occupants were two women,
one of them quite young. He decided to present himself and his friends
as holidaymakers. Sabaté had a most enchanting voice when he spoke in
Catalan, and had no difficulty in convincing the women to sell them a
couple of hens, some ham and wine. He asked if he could cook them there
in the farmhouse and the two women rapidly agreed. As he chatted to the
women of the house, El Asturiano and Maria plucked the hens. Then, as he
was peeling the potatoes, he saw two men coming up the road leading to
the farmhouse. Maria suggested that they make a run for it, but the girl
came in and told them it was her father and brother. Sabaté returned the
pot he had removed from the fire, in readiness to take with them in case
they had to make a rapid exit, and waited. The women introduced them as
holidaymakers who had bought some provisions, but the father informed
them abruptly to collect their things immediately, and ordered them out
of the house. After some argument between father and daughter, the men
eventually gave in, and allowed them to eat the meal they had prepared
in peace.
During the meal Sabaté won the confidence of the father without
difficulty. Once on friendly terms, he told them more or less the same
as the charcoal-burnerâthat the Guardia Civil had been to the house
warning everyone of the terrible penalties they would incur if they were
not informed of the presence of strangers in the district. Sabaté told
them he and his friends were crossing into France to look for work. Once
again the presence of Maria prevented the identification of the
travellers with the two men wanted by the Guardia. After some
persuasion, Sabaté managed to talk the father into sending his daughter
to the village to buy some provisions for themâbread, tins of milk, and
so on.
Finally SabatĂ© told him they needed a good nightâs sleep and asked if
they might spend the night in the stable, to which the man finally
agreed. There were no rats in the stable and the three spent a peaceful
night.
Early the next morning the daughter appeared, bringing with her a
steaming pot of garlic soup. It was pouring with rain outside and, after
the meal, Sabaté asked if they could remain until it had cleared up.
This time, however, the manâs mood had changed. He told them to leave
immediately, begging them that if by any chance anything happened to
them not to say they had stayed at his house. Before they left Maria
left an envelope for the daughter of the house on which was written âFor
R., to buy a raincoatâ. R. was the daughter and inside the envelope was
more than enough money to buy her one for every day of the week.
They pushed on that day through the pouring rain, but their spirits had
risen considerably. By this time Sabaté knew where he was and amused
himself by pointing out the landmarks to them. El Asturiano, however,
got into the habit of falling behindâat one time they lost sight of him
altogether. Sabaté shouted for him but he took a long time to answer,
even though he was not far away. When he eventually caught up with them
SabatĂ© said, âHombre! You gave us a fright then!â
El Asturiano gave a malicious grinâno doubt he felt the reason for the
fright was the fact that he was carrying all the money from the robbery.
Two days went by without incident, during which they covered a great
deal of ground, mostly at night, with everyone in good spirits. Turns at
guard duty were scrupulously observed: two slept while one kept watch.
The ground was much easier going now; spring was in the air and the
going was pleasant. Perky little squirrels watched them as they went by,
every now and then a rabbit would jump across their path, the frogs
croaked in the ponds, and occasionally the travellers would stop to
gather chestnuts to eat.
At dawn on the third day they saw a farmhouse a short distance from
where they were camped. Sabaté and Maria went to buy provisions while El
Asturiano remained hidden as before. They returned with eggs, bread and
wine only to discover that he had disappeared, having taken with him his
rucksack, machine-gun and walking stick. This time there could be no
doubt about it: he had run off. This betrayal, doubly painful because he
had already foreseen it in Barcelona, made Sabaté lose complete control
of his temper, something that rarely happened. He paced backwards and
forwards like a man demented, cursing to himself. Finally Maria managed
to calm him down. âBut, hombre! Itâs not the end of the world! Heâs gone
with the moneyâso what? Look on the bright sideâhe could quite easily
have killed us and here we are, still aliveâdonât jump about so much! He
might be watching us at this moment, killing himself laughing.â
Sabaté sat on a boulder and looked around him. His eyes rested on a
nearby hill. Lowering his head he thought for a moment and then said in
aloud voice, âThereâs only one thing for us to do now â we shall have to
go back to Barcelona.â He stood up and walked towards the hill. Maria
followed him without answering. The hill was densely covered with briars
and scrub and they had to tear their way through to the top. In spite of
the dense vegetation, however, it looked as if the summit would be bare.
They moved as quickly as they could, as though they wanted to get out of
the area as soon as possible and make straight back to the city.
Suddenly Sabaté caught Maria by the arm whispering to her to remain
quiet. Further up they could hear the sound of footsteps and the
breaking of twigs. It was as El Quico thought, El Asturiano was ahead of
them. He was moving forward when Maria grabbed hold of him.
âDonât go. Heâll kill you. At the moment heâs prepared for anything and
youâll be like a sitting duck for his machine-gun from up there.â
He halted. A quarter of an hour later they heard the footsteps returning
in the opposite direction. El Asturiano had gone to check if they had in
reality gone off in the direction of Barcelona, but it was not easy to
see the road from the top of the hill on account of the thickness of the
scrub.
Sabaté was inconsolable. In a low voice he told Maria that the money was
meant for the Resistance Groups, to help the comrades behind bars and
their families. When he had unburdened his miseries on Maria, El Quico
lay face down on the grass for an hour. She did nothing to distract him
and at last he decided on a course of action. He spread out his maps and
bus timetables, examined them carefully for a few minutes and then told
Maria, âBefore six oâclock tonight weâve got to get to the nearest
village.â
âWhich village is that?â
âSanta Coloma de Fames. We are sure to meet the slimy bastard there.
Heâll try to get some provisions there and pick up a bus in the
village.â
They started off on the road that Sabaté reckoned was the one El
Asturiano would have taken. The ground was sandy and Sabaté walked with
his eyes fixed firmly on the ground.
âWhat are you looking for?â asked Maria.
âHis boots are the same make as mine. I want to find his tracks.â
As they travelled on a change came over Sabaté. He was happy, very
happy. The boot marks were visible. El Asturiano was astute, but not
enough to deceive Sabaté. To avoid leaving a trail the fugitive had
drawn the branch of a tree behind him.
Who but he would have taken such precautions?
They reached a place where the road made a wide curve and where there
was a path, evidently used as a short cut by travellers. The trail ended
there. Sabaté walked down the path a few yards and returned with a
branch recently cut from a tree. There was no doubt now, they were hot
on the trail of El Asturiano. Sabaté and Maria continued along the path
and soon came on to the Santa Coloma road, but decided to wait until
nightfall before entering the town. Maria took advantage of the halt to
change from her rough mountain trousers into a skirt. They walked into
the village as evening fell.
Sabaté tried to work out the possibilities of meeting his unsuspecting
erstwhile friend. The village was quite large, but he was convinced that
El Asturiano was here somewhere since, although he had some hoursâ
start, he was not so stupid as to risk walking into the village in broad
daylight. In all probability he had done the same as they, and waited
until evening. When the couple reached Santa Coloma the church bells
were ringing out the hour of six. As they walked through the market
place Sabaté saw their quarry. He was in a shop on the right-hand side
of the street. He had to be careful, as he did not know how the other
would react. El Asturiano was quite capable of shooting it out in the
middle of the town.
The streets were almost deserted so El Quico told Maria to hide while he
edged closer to the shop. Maria felt as though she were about to faint.
Her knees were trembling. The ex-guerrilla came out of the shopâno
longer carrying his knapsack, but a villagerâs shopping bagâwalking
quickly and carelessly. As he passed the doorway, Sabaté stepped
outâconfronting him.
âHello, what happened to you? You had us quite worried for a while...â
The otherâs face was beyond description. He dropped the bag containing
the food, and, just at that moment, the shop attendant came running out
shouting that he had forgotten his bottles of wine. He stood
indecisively, looking first at the woman and then Sabaté. The latter
told El Asturiano to go and collect his wine. When he returned with the
bottles, which he gave to Maria, who had by this time joined Sabaté, it
was obvious he had been drinking heavily. Together the three walked away
from the shop with Sabaté a little way behind the other two. Once safely
outside the village El Quico called a halt and demanded an explanation
from the other. He explained, in a drunken manner, that while he was
waiting for SabatĂ© and Mariaâs return he had seen four Guardia Civil. He
picked up his rucksack and ran off. They had called on him a number of
times to stop, but he ran on until he reached the village. He said his
feet hurt, and gave other idiotic excuses in the same vein. He went on
to say that he knew he would meet them in Santa Colomaâhis main worry
had been to save the money and divert the Guardia Civil away from the
farm where his friends were.
SabatĂ© listened impassively without interrupting then said, âOne thing I
donât understand... we saw more than four Guardia Civil.â
âYes, there were at least eight,â affirmed El Asturiano
enthusiastically.
âAnd the moneyâwhere is it?â
âIâve got it hidden just outside the village.â
âWell, letâs go and get it. You remember where you put it?â
âOh, yes. Letâs go!â
Maria did not believe that he had hidden the money anywhere and made
discreet signs to Sabaté to look in the shopping basket, but Sabaté did
not believe, in the circumstances, that the other was still capable of
deceiving him.
For three-quarters of an hour they walked around the outskirts of the
village without Sabaté losing sight of his companion for a moment. If El
Asturiano had any hopes of making a run for it he was doomed to
disappointment. He knew that an escape now had no chance of success and,
finally said to SabatĂ©, as if bemused, âWhy are we going around like
this? What are you looking for?â
âThe place where you put the money,â SabatĂ© answered coldly.
âAh, that! The money! Iâve got it with me, in the basket, of course!
Hombre! Where did you think it was?â
And there it was, well wrapped up in plastic to protect it from the
rain. The bag was also well stocked with ham, sausages, tins of
sardines, tuna fish, even chocolate and sweets.
El Asturiano stopped to light a cigarette. As always, in the dark, he
took off his jacket and knelt down, his face almost on the ground as he
lit the match. Sabaté noticed that the only gun he possessed was a
pistol, in his shoulder holster, and asked what had happened to the
machine-gun. His companion replied that he had thrown it away in order
to travel faster. Sabaté was about to strike him but managed to control
himself, although he was shaking with rage. Smoking his cigarette El
Asturiano shrugged his shoulders and gave more explanations, each one
more confusing and contradictory than the previous. Sabaté and Maria
listened in cold silence.
Supper that evening was magnificentâsquid, fresh bread, desert, even
champagneâEl Asturiano was sick after so much wine, and the champagne
added to the fear he must have felt. Even he could not have been so
stupid as to imagine that he had deceived Sabaté. The cold manner with
which Sabaté had accepted his story must have been more alarming than
any show of anger. Before starting off again, Sabaté called Maria to one
side and told her to keep behind El Asturiano while he travelled in
front. If he made the slightest suspicious move she was to hit him on
the head with her heavy mountain stick.
As they crossed a bridge El Asturiano leaned on the parapet as though he
were about to faint, but with his right hand inside his coat clutching
the butt of his pistol. Sabaté turned back when he found his companions
were remaining behind, but was signalled to by Maria to remain where he
was, as their supposedly sick friend had his hand on his gun. Sabaté,
however, approached his companion with his machine-gun at the ready on
his hip, and his finger on the trigger.
âWhatâs up?â he asked.
âHeâs sick,â replied Maria.
âLetâs find a place to rest, then.â
El Asturiano said he felt better and insisted they carry on. Maria, who
was watching him carefully, noticed however, that his hand never moved
from his shoulder holster as they continued on their way.
As dawn they halted in a wood where they threw themselves down to rest,
El Asturiano lying facing his fellow travellers. Sabaté indicated to
Maria that the pistol was pointing straight at them although covered by
the jacket. As though he were looking for a more comfortable spot he
changed places and sat behind El Asturiano, but the latter turned round
to face him once again. This arrangement did not suit his plans at all.
The game was played several times during the night and Sabaté never
closed his eyes for a minute.
Later in the afternoon, while Sabaté was resting at the foot of a tree,
El Asturiano who appeared to be working something out in his mind, came
up close to him, took out a knife, and grunting spasmodically, cut off a
branch, stopping the knife a close distance from SabatĂ©âs head and at
the same time giving Maria an evil grin. As the hours passed the
atmosphere grew tenser. Sabaté was visibly tired, but dared not go to
sleep.
Maria suggested to him that he give her the machine-gun and try to get a
few hours sleep himself.
Taking advantage of a moment when El Asturiano had gone into the bushes,
presumably to relieve himself, Sabaté and Maria held a brief discussion
in a low voice.
âHeâs going to kill us,â she said.
He agreed.
âI donât like the look of it, heâll stop at nothing to get his hands on
that money.â
âWhat shall we do, shouldnât we get away from him before he kills us?â
âI donât know,â pondered SabatĂ©. âIâll think of something.â
âWell, you had better think quickly,â replied Maria.
Eventually before nightfall, Sabaté decided on a course of action. He
told Maria to take El Asturianoâs gun from him the moment he gave the
signal. However, another two days passed in this tense atmosphere of
suspicion before the opportunity arose. In the meantime Maria kept a
close watch on him and noted where he kept the three knives hidden in
his clothes. The girl also kept an eye on Sabaté, waiting for the
signal, but he ignored her mute pleas and gave no explanation.
At nightfall on the second day, as the group prepared a meal before
starting on their nocturnal march, El Asturiano made the mistake for
which El Quico had been waiting. He lifted his flask to drinkâwith both
hands. Normally he only used his left hand, leaving his right one free.
Sabaté did not waste the opportunity and jumped up pointing his pistol
at him, telling him not to move and keep his hands up in the air.
SabatĂ©âs sudden move had caught Maria unawaresâas it had El
Asturianoâbut she did not take long to react and, approaching him from
behind, removed the pistol and the three knives which had caused them so
much anxiety. She threw the weapons towards Sabaté and continued
searching his pockets. El Asturiano protested vigorously, demanding to
know why he was being treated in such a manner. He grew frightened and
fell to his knees, retelling again and again the story of the Guardia
Civil. Still on his knees he pleaded with Sabaté for his
lifeâapologising abjectly for behaving the way he had. He was convinced
his last hour had come. Despite the fact Sabaté had been without sleep
for several nights he still had the strength to deliver a sermon. He
explained to the other what he already knew, that the money was for no
oneâs personal gain and was to be used solely for the struggle against
fascism. With words that came from his heart he attempted to try to make
the other understand how despicable his conduct had been and exhorted
him in the future to behave like a man.
He went on to say that the machine-gun he carried would be used in the
defence of the three of them, and warned him that he had reached the end
of his patience and would not tolerate any fresh tricks.
âGet one thing into your head,â said SabatĂ©. âI ought to shoot you down
like a dog, but I wonât. Until I leave you safe and sound in France Iâll
defend your life with mine. If we have only one slice of bread left,
weâll share it with you, but donât forget for one minute, the slightest
false move and Iâll kill you. If you behave youâll have no complaint to
make of me.â
El Asturiano continued to protest on his knees. Sabaté who had sat down
on a tree trunk, got up ordering the other to do likewise and then,
strapping the bag containing the money to Maria, handed her the pistol
and kept the knives for himself. The look in El Asturianoâs eyes made
Maria shudder. However, he made the rest of the journey walking a safe
distance between the two of them. With only two stages remaining before
they crossed the frontier Sabaté was exhausted. His eyes were sunk deep
into their sockets, and though free from the fear of a bullet in the
back, he was never really sure what treachery the other might be
planning. That day, however, El Asturiano made a humane gesture.
SabatĂ©âs state was so pitifulâhe was walking along almost in a trance,
tripping over the smallest obstaclesâthat El Asturiano threw his stick
into a ravine, and said, âQuicoâplease go to sleep, pleaseâeven if itâs
only for a few hours.
Sabaté believed him and lay down on the grassy verge where he slept for
four hours. He woke refreshed and in a good humour. When they came to
share out the food, he hesitated for a moment âand then passed one of
the knives to El Asturiano. On the last night of the journey there
remained only half a tin of condensed milk, which they reserved for
Maria. Sabaté pointed out a view visible from the mountain and told his
companions that it was the frontier line. It was bitterly cold, but the
nearness of the border gave them wings. A short while later they were
standing on French territoryâall three, forgetting the hardship of the
journey and the bitterness between themâholding hands and dancing like
children. They had left Barcelona on 6 February and it was now the
19^(th). They had spent nearly a fortnight in the mountains.
Sabaté knew the terrain he was on now like the back of his hand and he
gleefully recounted the different adventures he had experienced
thereâthe agricultural collective he had tried to found, the time he had
been chased through the mountains by the dogs of the gendarmerie, his
arrest.
That day the only thing they had to eat was some mouldy chestnuts Maria
discovered in the bottom of the rucksack. By nightfall, El Asturiano
fell ill. They helped him to a nearby house, where Sabaté, in Catalan,
asked for shelter from the occupantâa man of about fifty years of age.
He felt sorry for them, and told the travellers they were welcome. His
wife prepared a meal and beds for them and sat Maria beside a roaring
fire. El Quico explained to his hosts as they ate, that he was a guide
and was bringing his brother and sister over the border to find work in
France. The following day Maria Went to collect the documents and papers
which they always left at a comradeâs house in French territory when
crossing the border into Spain.
One last detail of the long, hazardous episode proved that El Asturiano
had plotted his treachery as far back as when he and Sabaté planned
their journey, and its objectives, to Barcelona. The man looking after
the documents told Maria when she arrived that the ex-guerrilla had not
wanted to leave his behind when the group left France.
Before leaving his treacherous companion[96] Sabaté handed him 25,000
pesetas and 40,000 francs, telling him he never wanted to see him again.
And so it was.
Once again El Quico had made fools of the entire mobilised police forces
of Catalonia. He did not realise, however, what was waiting for him in
France on his retum. The repression unleashed in Catalonia continued,
the more violent because he had escapedâbut the long arm of the Spanish
police could even reach him across the Pyrenees. As we have seen,
Angelâs carelessness had brought him to the cellars of Police
Headquarters in the Via Layetana. There he was interrogated day and
night in the offices of the Regional Brigade of the Political and Social
Investigation Division, by Police Inspectors Cesar Rodrigo Rodriguez[97]
and Jesus Martin Garcia.[98] These gentlemen forced him to sign a full
confession in which were details of El Quicoâs activities not only in
Spain, but also in France. They had already managed to dismantle a good
part of the organisation in Catalonia, and now attempted to destroy
Sabaté across the border.
From a statement extracted from Angel a report was sent to the French
authorities who acted immediately. The text of the application for a
warrant reads as follows:
To the: âRenseignements GĂ©nĂ©rauxâ.
Reference: Deposit of Arms in the Eastern Pyrenees.
Subject: According to reliable sources of information a cache of arms
(machine-guns, pistols, grenades) has been created by a group of
Spaniards in the Preste area of the Eastern Pyrenees. It is in the
immediate vicinity of the Mas Graboudeille, beneath a pile of stones at
the side of a wall; four or five kilometres west of La Preste (Map Ref:
R.603/13) E.M. map scale 1: 50000. The cache consists of Thompson and
Sten sub- machine-guns, Colt and Star pistols, offensive grenades
explosives and ammunition.
Two French Nationals known as Juliette and Michel Guissot occupy the
farmhouse.
It is highly likely that this arms dump was created by Francisco Sabaté,
known as the head of the âspecificâ groups of the Spanish CNT
(apolitical), but better known as one of the Organisationâs franctireurs
who generally works on his own initiative. Although denounced by the
Spanish CNT in exile, his actions are tolerated for political reasons,
and also because of the fear he inspires. His punitive methods are well
known.
We should point out that Sabaté has served a number of sentences in
France, been expelled and subjected to territorial confinement. He has
continued to be the subject of an extensive investigation dossier. He
uses the Mas Graboudeille as the departure point for his clandestine
activities in Spain. Included in this report are two drawings by our
informant showing the exact position and plan of the Mas.
At midday on 9 January 1957 fifteen gendarmes from Prats-de-Mollo and
other brigades positioned themselves around the farmhouse. In charge of
operations was Gendarme Sub-Officer Boulbes. Michel Guissot, the
occupant of the Mas, was informed of the reason for the raid, but he
emphatically denied the existence of any arms dump. His denials were to
no avail, however, and he was placed under arrest. The area was
thoroughly searched by gendarmes using mine detectors. A small wall led
off from the courtyard of the house and ran for some distance beside a
cart track. At one point there was a mass of boulders six foot across
and, when the gendarmes removed the stones, they found a hole lined with
slate to protect it from the damp. Inside was an empty fifty-litre
petrol can placed horizontally, and from it the police collected the
following:
1 x 9-mm Sten submachine-gun
1 x Mosch machine pistol
1 x box 9-mm bullets
3 x kilos mixed ammunition
4 x magazines for a Sten gun
4 x magazines for a Mosch machine pistol
3 x magazines for an automatic pistol
In addition to the above there were holsters, and other equipment, all
in perfect condition.
Michel Guissot told the police he was unaware of the existence of the
arms dump, but was taken to Ceret where he was subjected to a lengthy
interrogation. He was shown a photograph of Angel M., together with the
drawings and plans of the Mas prepared by Angel, and finally, the
confession which went into great detail about Michel, his wife and
family. He finally confessed to knowing about the arms and was
imprisoned pending trial.
A warrant was issued for the arrest of Francisco Sabaté Llopart,
charging him with illegal possession of arms and ammunition.
So it was that El Quico found himself with all these problems on his
return to France. In addition to the warrant for his arrest, there was
also the organisational dispute with the MLE/CNT in exile over the
founding of the Grupos Anarco-Sindicalistas[99] and his own moral and
material obligations to the comrades arrested in Catalonia. His
activities at this time were summed up in a bulletin issued at the
beginning of September by sympathetic militants of the CNT/FAI in
exile.[100]
In the last few years, with or without the agreement of members, the
Confederal Organization, specifically that in exile, has abandoned the
active struggle in Spain. One group of comrades who had been fighting in
the Interior for many years in agreement with the decisions of the
Organisation in exile, decided to carry on the struggle at their own
initiative and risk, and for this reason formed the Anarcho-Syndicalist
Groups.
It took some time owing to the many problems we faced, but slowly our
organisation took shape, making contact with those comrades who wanted
to give some positive help. In Tarrasa, which has always been well known
for its revolutionary activity, the comrades formed a small group with
whom we made contact. They were all veteran militants and well known in
the CNT. These comrades were completely isolated and at no time had any
contact whatsoever with the CNT in exile. They approached us for help,
which we gave readily whenever we were able to do so. With the material
we supplied they managed to broaden their field of action to the
outlying areas of Tarrasa. At the beginning of 1957 there were a number
of arrests in the Tarrasa region. Amongst those arrested were two men
and one woman, comrades who previously had been presented as delegates
from the Interior to the National Committee in Toulouse. The National
Committee at first refused to receive them and, when finally, they did
decide to see them it was too late and these comrades had returned to
their factories and workshops. ,
Owing to our Anarchist and Trade Union activities of propaganda and
organisation, the police arrested forty-three militants and
sympathisers. Our legal aid to them and our moral and material support
was to the utmost of our abilities and did not cease for one moment. In
spite of all our difficulties, and with the relatively small number of
people we could count on, we managed to make contact with the prisoners
within three weeks and prepare a list of their names. We handed the list
personally to the Inter-Continental Secretary, who had already been
informed of the arrest of these comrades. We can prove that seven months
after this list was handed over the prisoners had not received the
slightest moral or material aid from him. On the contrary, we can prove
that the opportunity was taken to sow seeds of doubt and confusion among
the militants in exile regarding the arrest of these comrades.
Nevertheless, through our efforts we managed to get thirty-eight of
these comrades out on bail after seven months captivity, organising
lawyers from France and Madrid to act on their behalf.[101]
Yet some of our so-called comrades attempted to defame our conduct in
this matterâcalling us robbers, bandits, criminals in exactly the same
way as our fascist enemies. They do so to justify themselves to our
movement for their cowardice and inactivity.
We continue and shall continue in our struggle inside Spain. We consider
that inertia is the death of the revolutionary spirit. We shall ensure
the voice of anarchism will be heard in every corner of Spain, and
everywhere in Spain too we will show our solidarity with our persecuted
and imprisoned brothers and sisters.
We have reproduced part of this letter because it shows quite clearly
the relationship between El Quico, at a particularly difficult time for
him, and the MLE-CNT in exile. However, Sabaté was a man of his word and
before concerning himself with his own pressing problems he did
everything possible to help his arrested comrades in Spain. He sent
300,000 pesetas to help themânearly all that remained from the Cubiertas
y Tejados wages robbery.
As a result of the circular issued by the FAI the Grupos
Anarco-Sindicalistas were disbanded.
El Quico took it for granted that he had to live as an outlaw in Spain,
in fact he could not conceive of being there in any other circumstances,
but it was less understandable to find himself in the same situation in
France. Following his lawyerâs advice, he contented himself with
appealing against the sentence passed by the court in Ceret. Had he
wished to do so, he could have said that the arms dump had nothing to do
with him, and, in fact, could have quite easily have produced convincing
evidence of this. However, he felt it was his responsibility as a
militant to admit the arms were his, and to be used in the struggle
against Spanish fascism. The appeal was successful and the case was
heard again, this time in his presence, at the Civil Tribunal of Ceret
on 12 November 1957. The tribunal accepted there were mitigating
circumstances, but also bore in mind that he had already been sentenced
for a similar offence on 6 October 1949. He was therefore sentenced to
eight months imprisonment and five years area confinement. He was taken
direct from the court to Perpignan Prison and a few days later
transferred to the Penitentiary of Montpelier. The Franco Government
took advantage of SabatĂ©âs arrest to apply for an extradition order
against him, but fortunately this was refused by the French Government.
Sabaté was released on 12 May 1958, but it was a restricted freedom
since he was confined to Dijon for the next five years, in accordance
with his sentence. He came out of prison depressed by the indifference
of his friends in the Organisation to his fate. Dejected, he made his
way to his place of exile, Dijon.
JosĂ© (Lluis) FacerĂas returned to France from Italy in February 1957. He
wanted to take up the struggle in Spain once again. He had been in
contact with the different organisational committees as well as with the
isolated comrades to discuss the idea of preparing a coherent plan of
action in Spain. As usual, however, in France, his proposals to the
Organisation fell on deaf ears. Now he could see, at last, what had
caused the enmity between the Organisation and Sabaté. He would dearly
have liked to join up with Sabaté again, but El Quico still felt
strongly about the disagreement in 1956 and had avoided all contact with
Facerias. It was a great pity the two comrades did not get together,
they could have cleared the air of many things, and at least FacerĂas
would have never gone into Spain the way he did.
FacerĂasâs friends had offered to pay his fare to the Argentine, where
he would have good friends and solid contacts. However, this was not to
be. Spain called himâas it did SabatĂ©âirresistibly.
In making his plans, FacerĂas showed a certain lack of caution on this
occasion. Normally he was a very careful individual, taking no risks,
yet now he allowed himself to be seen everywhere without taking any
steps to disguise his identity. Everyone knew he was going back to
Spain. Together with an Italian comrade, Goliardo Fiaschi and a
Spaniard, Luis A.V., he decided to cross the Pyrenees. However, the
Fascist authorities must also have known of his presence in France and
possibly of his planned journey to Spain. When the group attempted to
leave, the crossing proved to be impossible. The Spanish border guards
were too numerous and the area they intended to cross saturated with
patrols. The three men waited near the border for two days before the
opportunity came to cross the line unobserved, even then the risk they
took was very great.
On Thursday, 30 August FacerĂas had a rendezvous at the junction of
Calles Dr. Urrutia and Pi y Mollist with the Paseo de Verdun, almost
directly in front of the main entrance to the Hospital of San Andres.
FacerĂas arrived not knowing that his two comrades had been arrested.
However, as usual, before the meeting he took a taxi through the area to
check that everything seemed normal. By this time the police had,
however, learned a lesson from their previous mistakes and changed their
methods accordingly. They knew from experience how difficult it was to
surprise men like SabatĂ© or FacerĂas in the street and had therefore
mounted an âinvisibleâ operation.
Not a car, not a policeman in disguise, no suspicious vans parked in the
area, absolutely nothing to be seen anywhere. Instead policemen,
soldiers and Guardia Civil, had occupied all the houses in the vicinity
of the rendezvous and all the windows facing onto the street were
shielding an enormous number of automatic weaponsâwaiting. The moment
FacerĂas arrived and was identified the police opened fire on himâthe
first volley hitting him in the ankle and fracturing his shinbones.
Badly injured, he grabbed his Walther P.38 pistol, the gun he always
preferred, and against a thousand difficulties, not even knowing where
his attackers were, he crawled to the cover of the trench, part of a
nearby road works at the corner of the Paseo de Verdun. Sheer instinct
of self-preservation gave him the strength necessary to climb over and
fall like a stone nearly twelve feet into the excavation in the road. It
was a terrific shock, but he retained consciousness and had just taken a
hand-grenade from his pocket, to blow himself or his attackers upâit is
not known whichâwhen he was ripped apart by a hail of bullets fired by
the police, who had by this time surrounded the trench. He died still
holding the unprimed hand-grenade.
Although obviously dead, with his blood soaking the ground, the body was
taken to the Hospital Clinico where nine bullets were removed. In his
wallet they discovered his entire fortune: 1,000 francs and 500 pesetas,
an identity card in the name of José Luis Soler, and five magazines for
the Walther automatic.
Police headquarters issued an official communiqué to the press evocative
of a major war-time operation, announcing that the police action had
involved a number of soldiers from the Barcelona Barracks seconded to
the Social Brigade (Special Branch) under the direct control of Juan
Estevez and the Commissioner, Pedro Polo Borreguero, plus a detachment
of the Guardia Civil under the command of General Juan Luque
Arenas.[102] Like many other instances of police actions and repression
in Spain the death of FacerĂas had been initiated in France. When SabatĂ©
was arrested on 12 November 1957, barely two months after the death of
Facerias,[103] the French policeâafter asking him ironically if FacerĂas
happened to be a friend of hisâgave him a surprisingly detailed account
of the murder. They told him how, when, where and with whom he had
crossed the border, even the precise spot where he had gone
overâLamanere, in the Eastern Pyrenees.
When Sabaté left prison in May 1958 he started work for a
central-heating firmâMauvais and Chevassuâin Dijon. Prison had affected
him a great deal, but the air of freedom soon revived his spirits. In
spite of the vicious slanders directed against him, both through the
Fascist press and the Organisation, he discovered he could still count
on many friends who had remained loyal to him. Slowly he managed to
build up his contactsâin Paris, Lyons, and Clermont Ferrandâand ignoring
the confinement order, he travelled the length and breadth of France,
taking part in meetings and consistently putting forward his position in
regard to the activist struggle in Spain.
There was no lack of people who thought Sabaté unsociable or elitist.
These views always came from people who either knew nothing whatever
about him or had reasons of their own for attacking him. It is true that
Sabaté was forced to act time and again on his own initiative, as he was
constantly confronted with demagogues and hypocrites, people who enjoyed
polished speeches and the striking of attitudes but who, above all,
wanted to lead an undisturbed life. Again and again he came across those
who âdid not want to cause any troubleâ, who felt that they should
submit to the authorities of the country âwhich had so generously
provided asylumâ and whose own passivity led them to spread insinuations
against activists such as Sabaté, who were incapable of remaining
inactive in the face of tyranny. It was precisely because he was not an
elitist that when he found the Committees had failed him he travelled
around desperately from one comrade to another, hoping that someone
would come up with a scheme for the struggle against Franco in which he
could be of some use. His eternal question was, âHave you got anything
going in regard to Spain? Can I help you in any way?â The dream of
SabatĂ©âs life was to stop being a âfranctireurâ and to take part in
organised activity, which would lead to the downfall of General Franco.
Meetings bored him to tears â he wanted to get on with planning
projects. He could not understand suggestions that the time was not
opportune, when beyond the Pyrenees people were suffering under the
dictatorship. El Quico met comrades who, like himself had similar ideas
and the same feeling of despair and importance when they saw the manner
in which the libertarian Organisation behaved in exile. So it was that
once again, without the support of the Organisation, Sabaté prepared a
new stage of activities in Spain with the meagre means he had at his
disposal. He managed to bring together a small group of comrades.
Together they constructed and designed some strange new weapons. He
experimented with these activities in the countryside around Dijon with
reasonably satisfactory results, and it was only due to bad luck that he
was prevented from using them against the tyranny in Spain.
While in prison he had been seriously ill with a stomach complaint, and
in the autumn of 1958 his health deteriorated rapidly. He was rushed to
the Regional Hospital in Dijon where, on 3 November, he was operated on
for a serious gastric ulcer. On three previous occasions he had been
obliged to attend hospital with this complaint but always, at the last
moment, he had left without undergoing surgery, hoping vainly that an
effective treatment might be discovered in the near future. On this
occasion, however, he allowed the operation to be performed when he
found he had no option.
The reason Francisco feared the operating table was, above all, because
of the necessity of anaestheticsâhe dreaded being unconscious in the
hands of people he did not know and who could do what they pleased with
his life while he was incapable of defending himself. Although not
obsessive, he suspected that Francoâs agents would one day try to
assassinate him. His immobilisation during the operation would give them
the perfect opportunity. Prior to the operation El Quico pleaded with
his friends to promise that while he was unconscious they would not
leave him unattended for one moment. As his friends could not take much
time off work they decided to contact SabatĂ©âs wife, Leonor, still in
Toulouse, thinking she would be the best person to look after him. She
arrived in Dijon just before the operation took place. There, at
SabatĂ©âs bedside, she explained to him that after his friends had called
her she had gone to the Organisationâs Headquarters in the Rue Belfort
in Toulouse, where they had given her 50,000 francs to cover her
expenses.
He reacted violently to this information. Struggling into a sitting
position he took from beneath his pillow a bundle containing 60.00
francs, which his employer had given him that same day as wages, due,
and handed them to Leonor. âTake this,â he said. âWhen you get back to
Toulouse give them back their money untouched. I want nothing to do with
them!â
The operation was a success and Leonor spent the next twenty-four hours
by his bedside, without moving once. His friends also spent all their
free time with him. After a fortnight the hospital told him he was being
discharged and as he had no family registered in Dijon he was being sent
for convalescence to an old peopleâs home. His friends bridled at the
suggestion, which they felt was an insult, and he went to stay at the
house of one of the local comrades. Two or three days later the wound
began to suppurate, but Sabaté absolutely refused to return to the
hospital. Instead his friendâs wife nursed him back to health. With El
Quicoâs robust constitution it did not take long for him to recover
completely, putting on nearly nine pounds in ten days â though he had
lost much more. Once again his high spirits and optimism returned.
About the middle of December he thanked his friends gratefully for the
loving care and attention they had given him, but as he now felt
perfectly fit and well he preferred to go his own way. He had already
spent too much time inactive. He wanted once more to take up the
struggle against Franco, and needed to be on his own. In this way he
would not compromise anyone as a result of his activities. He moved into
a rented flat at No. 2 Fontaine-Saint-Anne, and began visiting comrades
in Paris and other French cities.
Shortly after moving into the flat he received a letter from Angel M.U.,
who was serving thirty years in a Spanish prison, and who had caused him
so many problems. The repression in Spain following the Cubiertas y
Tejados affair sprang directly from Angelâs arrest. However, SabatĂ© had
looked after his defence and had sent money to him regularly while he
was in prison. In the letter Angel complained that while he was rotting
in a Spanish dungeon SabatĂ© was âliving like a lordâ in France. SabatĂ©
shook his head sadly at this unjust accusation, and said to his friends,
âYou see how I cannot give up the struggle.â
A little later he made the final preparations for his group to return to
Spain. Before leaving he wanted to spend a few days with his daughters
in Toulouse and so, on 28 December, 1958, petitioned the Ministry of the
Interior, through the Prefect of the Department of the Cote dâOr, with a
medical certificate stating that he should spend sometime convalescing
with his family. His hopes were dashed, however, when the Prefect
received the following ministerial reply:
I beg to inform you that I consider it to be totally out of the question
that this foreigner should be allowed to return to the Department of the
Haute Garonne, and with good reason, since his access to this area is
forbidden by a prohibition of residence order made against him dated 8
April, 1958, in accordance with the decision of Montpellier Court of
Appeal (18-I2-1957) which sentenced him to six months imprisonment and
five years restricted residence.
I would be grateful if you would inform the person concerned of this
decision etc.
His friends advised him not to make any final decision concerning his
proposed journey to Spain until the Tenth Congress of Inter-Continental
Groups of the MLE/CNT, fixed for August 1959 in Toulouse, had taken
place. This meeting was cancelled on the orders of the Prefecture of
Police, but it was held later in Vierzon in the Department of Cher, from
9 to 13 September. Hoping that some positive line would result from this
conference, Sabaté attended all the preliminary local meetings and was
made a delegate to the full regional meeting. Together with many other
militants he shared the illusion that this congress would at last bring
about confederal unity, which he firmly supported, and that the
libertarian movement in exile might once again become an effective
force.[104] At the Congress in Vierzon he had only observerâs status,
but he followed the discussions with avid interest. He went round
speaking to everyone who appeared to him more or less to have the same
ideas and propositions. The answers he got were all the same, wait...
wait... wait. He remained until the end of the conference and still the
same old result â the lion had spawned the usual mouse. âAnother year
lost,â he said grimly.
Everywhere he was confronted with the same apathy. However, the fact of
the matter was that this time SabatĂ© could no longer waitâeven if he
wanted to. The spectre of the RhĂŽne Poulenc case returned to haunt him.
After twice having brought up the case and twice being forced to bring a
stay to suspend the hearing, the Prosecutor now wanted to bring him up
for trial again. Repeated petitions by his lawyers were rejected out of
hand and, finally, on 5 November 1959 the Lyons Procurator arraigned
Sabaté before the Appeal Court. The hearing took place on 7 December and
its decision was as follows:
Under Article 617 of the Code of Criminal Proceedings this registered
letter is to inform Francisco Sabaté Llopart, accused of attempted
robbery with violence and wilful murder, domiciled in Dijon (CĂŽte dâOr)
2, Rue de la Fontaine, Ste-Anne, in the house of M. Petit, that in the
Criminal Court on 5 November, 1959, the Court has rejected his request
that proceedings should not be made against him in accordance with the
deposition made on 20 February, 1959 before the Appeal Court of Lyons.
THE PROCURATOR GENERAL
Sabaté was by now sick and tired of the whole judicial mess. He had not
the slightest intention of going back to a French prison and was advised
by many of his friends to emigrate to South America.
âSince when has South America been next to Spain?â he asked.
His period of waiting had come to an end. He began equipping his
expedition to Spain and gathered around him the enthusiastic friends who
were to accompany him. Behind he left many other comrades who were
prepared to come to his signal once he established his first bases.
However, this time Sabaté underestimated the growing efficiency of the
Spanish Special Branch and International Police co-operation across the
frontiers. At that very moment the ex-Chief of the Special Services
Brigade, Pedro Polo Borreguero, who specialised in the persecution of
the anarcho syndicalistsâwas in France, ostensibly as an attachĂ© to the
Spanish Embassy in Paris. El Quico was warned of the dangers he was
running, but what could he do? During his trips and at meetings he took
every precaution. Even when he returned to Dijon he always had someone
waiting for him at the station with a platform ticket so that it could
not be proved that he had actually left the city. This time none of the
precautions he took were sufficientâthis time the odds against him were
too great. Weighed down as he was by the measures of confinement imposed
upon him, Francoâs agents watched his every move, spying upon him
directly or from information from the French police.
On his way back to Spain on 1 December 1959, Sabaté telephoned a friend
in Paris. âMy regards to everyone. Thanks for everything until the next
time we meet... if there is a next time!â
At the end of December a comrade in Dijon received a card post-marked
Narbonne, written in an unknown hand and signature, saying that due to
the bad weather Sabaté was suspending his journey into Spain until the
spring. The origin of this card remains a mystery. On 5 January 1960
radio and television news flashes announced the death of Sabaté and the
four comrades who had accompanied him.
El Quico had crossed the frontier near Coustouges at the end of
December. Accompanying him were twenty-nine-year-old Antonio Miracle
Guitart; twenty-seven-year-old Rogelio Madrigal Torres;
thirty-nine-year-old Francisco Conesa Alvarez; and twenty-year-old
Martin Ruiz Montoya.[105] The Spanish Security Service knew of SabatĂ©âs
impending arrival from the French police, and the Guardia Civil had
prepared a reception at the frontier worthy of Sabaté and his
reputation. They had set up posts, patrols and surveillance units in all
the mountains of the area. They were watching and guarding crossroads
and main roads, as well as the approaches to the towns and villages.
Units of three Guardia watched all cottages in isolated areas day and
night. This time they were prepared for all eventualities and
reinforcements had been billeted in the neighbouring towns of Besalu,
Beuda and Albana. Also farmers, charcoal-burners and woodcutters had all
been warned that they must inform the troops immediately of the presence
of any strangers in their area.
From the many statements, depositions and accounts of the final episode
in SabatĂ©âs life we have tried to reconstruct as far as possible the
movements of Francisco and his group until the final tragedy a few days
later.
A Guardia Civil post at LladĂł reported sighting five men dressed in blue
overalls, mountain boots and rucksacks in the area of the River Manol at
four-thirty in the afternoon. A couple of hours later, two men, dressed
in blue overalls, presented themselves at a nearby farmhouse, passing
themselves off as smugglers and buying a quantity of food. A short time
later these same men were seen in the company of another three going in
the direction of the River Muga, as though they were heading for the
French frontier. This information was collated and sent to the Guardia
Civil Commander, who ordered immediate strengthening of all patrols in
the vicinity. The following day, 31 December, a mountain patrol of
Guardia Civil, after unsuccessfully questioning small farmers and
charcoal-burners in the valley of Maya de Moncalt took up a position on
the mountain slope that commanded a view of the whole valley. About
eight oâclock that morning they noticed smoke coming out of the Casot y
Falgos farmhouse, which they knew to be deserted. One of the Guardia
rode over to investigate and was met by a hail of machine-gun fire. He
let himself fall as if dead and saw five men run for the cover of the
mountainside. Now there was no doubt: it was Sabaté and his group. The
ground was heavily overgrown with trees and bushes so the comrades
managed to shake off their pursuers without any great difficulty, but
they could have had no idea of the enormous number of troops deployed in
the area to prevent them reaching Barcelona alive.
The Guardia returned to the nearby village of Maya and telephoned to
headquarters in Besalu, and within a short time every available unit was
despatched to the scene of the gun- fight. But the comrades had managed
to cover their tracks and disappear. The next reported sighting of the
group was at noon that same day, when they were seen heading in the
direction of the village of Espinavesa to the southeast. This time they
were reported to be progressing warily, with their arms at the ready.
The man in charge of the operation was a colonel commanding the 24^(th)
Battalion of the Guardia Civil, and he decided to try to encircle the
area in which the group were last sightedâBorrasa, Tarabaus, LladĂł,
Crespia and all bridges and possible crossing points along the Fluvia
River.
The last information as to the whereabouts of the group on the 31^(st)
indicated that they were still heading in a southerly direction and were
within a few miles of the Fluvia River. About ten oâclock that night
patrols in the vicinity of the village of La Palma reported hearing the
cries of quails. Later it was discovered that the comrades carried quail
whistles so it is likely that, in spite of the heavy guard, the group
managed to cross the river during the night of 31 December.
The next day, 1 January, both banks of the river were thoroughly
searched without finding any indication as to the whereabouts of Sabaté
and his group, so reinforcements were sent in the direction of Gerona,
where it was thought they might be heading. It should be pointed out
here that the Guardia Civil themselves were constantly being sent on
wild goose chases by local peasants and labourers, so adding to the
difficulties they were already facing.
On Sunday, 3 January, the group was located for the last time. The
Guardia, keeping watch on a hilltop known as Castillo de la Mota, near
Gerona, spotted them through binoculars entering the Clara farmhouse
between Bañolas and Gerona. This was an unusually large number of people
for a Sunday morning in a farmhouse occupied by an elderly married
couple, Juan Salas and his wife Balbina Alonso. The Guardia suspected
they were on to their quarry. An hour later the farmhouse, on the side
of a wooded hill, was completely surrounded by troops. The area in front
of the farm was clear, making it difficult for anyone to enter or leave
without being noticed. As the Guardia approached cautiously, they saw
three men come outside the front door and talk among themselves. The
captain ordered his men to open fire on the group, killing one,
Francisco Conesa Alvarez, immediately, and wounding another, Sabaté, in
the leg and buttock. El Quico and the other comrade managed to get back
inside the house safely. The woman of the house tried to close the
window shutters on hearing the sound of gunfire and was hit by a bullet
in the hand. There was to be no quarter in this final battle. The siege
was on.
To save ammunition, the besieged men used a shotgun they found in the
house to head off the attack and, faced with this show of resistance,
the besiegers decided to wait until nightfall before making any move to
attack the house. One Guardia Civil, JesĂșs GonzĂĄlez Otero, had already
been wounded in the leg as he attempted to close in on the farm. His
comrades also decided to wait until nightfall before bringing him in,
and he remained there in agony for the rest of the day.
At five-thirty in the afternoon the commanding officer of the battalion,
Lt-Col Rodrigo Gayet Girbal, arrived to take charge of the operation,
and at ten-thirty ordered the distribution of fresh ammunition,
hand-grenades, food and âplenty of alcoholâ, as the report says, to
âheighten the morale of the troopsâ.
The battle continued during the remaining hours of daylight. The four
comrades inside the farm waited impatiently for the disappearance of the
moon to make their escape under cover of darkness. At one in the morning
heavy clouds covered the sky and the night was plunged into darkness. It
was a stroke of luck they feltâthe perfect moment. During the day El
Quico had prepared an escape route by knocking a hole in the floor which
led to the stables adjoining the back of the houseâavoiding the front
which was commanded by the guns of the Guardia Civil. Under cover of
darkness they hustled a cow through the door of the stable and
immediately the besiegers opened fire on the moving object. Having
diverted the fire of the Guardia, two of the group ran off in the
opposite direction into the woods, but the guns of the Guardia Civil
were waiting for them there too. With no place to hide, they were both
shot down in a hail of sudden death.
Sabaté also tried to escape, but instead of running as his two comrades
had done, he threw himself on the ground and crawled along quickly to
the cover of some nearby scrubâonly to discover that the Guardia Civil
were thinking along the same lines and were within a few yards of him.
Lying there, flat, motionless, scarcely daring to breathe, he heard
someone crawling towards him from the opposite direction saying, âDonât
shoot... Iâm the Lieutenant.â It was this Lieutenant of the Guardia
Civil, Francisco Fuentes, who was fated to meet El Quico face to face,
though he was never to know it. Sabaté shot him in the head at
point-blank range, killing him immediately. The other besiegers could
not tell where and from whom the shot had come so Sabaté, reacting
immediately, began to crawl in the direction in which the lieutenant had
just come, repeating his words, âDonât shoot... Iâm the Lieutenant.â In
this way he managed to crawl through three lines of Guardia Civil.
At dawn the following day, 4 January, the troops found the body of the
officer and SabatĂ©âs three comrades, but two were still missing. They
fired a few shots at the house to see if it was still occupied, but when
there was no reply, two of their number went in under covering fire.
They got into the house without difficulty and found the married couple
lying terrified in one of the back rooms, and proceeded to search all
the rooms and outhouses. The bake-house was under the main building, and
the Guardia, suspecting that someone was hiding in there, and being
unwilling to run any further risks threw a couple of tear-gas bombs
inside. From the boiler itself there stumbled a blind and
half-suffocated figure who was cut to ribbons by the deadly hail of lead
as he ran through the doorway. This was the fourth of the group, MartĂn
Ruiz, but search as they may they could not find the fifth. They could
hardly credit it, but in the end they had to admit that El Quico had
escaped, slipping through the hands of over a hundred highly trained and
well-armed men!
When they reported their failure to Barcelona the orders came back
sharply: Find him without losing a second!
Such was the excitement at the prospect of catching their quarry that
even Eduardo Quintela, the ex-Chief Commissioner of the Brigada Politico
Social in Barcelona, now living in retirement in Galicia and a long
standing enemy of the Libertarian Movement, came rushing to the scene
when he heard that his old adversary was besieged in Sarria de Ter,
bringing with him his faithful companionâa bloodhound. He wanted to take
part personally in the hunt for Sabaté. Quintela could not miss being in
at the kill of the man who had caused him so much humiliation and
ridicule in the course of his career.
However, the huntsmen and their dogs soon lost the trail. Sabaté had
learned during many years in the mountains to include in his equipment a
packet of pepper to confuse his scent.
Although he had a few hours advantage over his pursuers, his situation
was critical. They would know, from the farmer and his wife, that he was
badly wounded. During the battle he had been hit in the neck, buttock
and leg by the Guardia Civilâs bullets. He was in considerable pain and
only by drawing on all his reserves was he able to continue his flight.
Before daybreak on 5 January, El Quico managed to reach the Fornells de
la Selva railway station, after swimming the River Ter, some twelve
miles to the south of Gerona. It was incredible that he had managed to
travel so far in his condition. At six-thirty that morning a mail train
left Gerona, coming from Port Bou, which stopped at every station as far
as Massanet. Sabaté remained hidden at the end of the railway platform
until the train started, and then jumped into the cab, pistol in hand.
The engine driver, Pedro GarcĂa Marcos, and the fireman, JoaquĂn Puig,
looked at the man as though he were mad. He calmed their fears and asked
for something to eat, as he was starving. They gave him their
sandwiches, which he ate voraciously and then told them to carry on
their normal procedure.
âGet the train going. Donât stop until you get to Barcelona!â
They were staggered. âTo Barcelona?â The driver explained to El Quico
that this was impossible, as they had to exchange the steam engine they
were driving for an electric one in Massanet. Besides, they had to obey
the signals along the line. Sabaté did not insist. Perhaps in his heart
he had not expected they could really carry out his wish to get to
Barcelona, his Barcelona, as soon as possible.
In Massanet, the train stopped to change engines and, when it was ready
to leave for Barcelona, the steam engine reversed onto another line. As
it passed Sabaté jumped from one to the other, bidding farewell to one
crew and introducing himself to another in one breath. He left the crew
of the first train in Massanet to recount their extraordinary adventure.
He had no doubts about the result. Before leaving them he had asked that
they should not mention his presence but in spite of this, fully
expected a gala reception at the next station.
The train reached Fornells de la Selva at eight in the morning. Sabaté,
who was watching the track, ordered the driver to reduce speed as the
train went round the bend only a few thousand yards from the station.
The driver obeyed and in seconds sped off without his passenger.
From Fornells de la Selva El Quico managed to travel another forty-five
miles towards Barcelona, but the city of his dreams was still very far
away. By now he could scarcely walk, as his leg was badly infected and
his mind clouded with fever. Nevertheless, he told himself he had
managed to drag himself as far as the slopes of the Sierra de
Montsenyâonly a few miles more and he would be able to rest himself in
its magnificent forest, among its oaks and chestnuts, its beeches and
cork trees, its maples and yews, which he had often wandered among as a
young boy. He knew its paths and its tracks, every corner of its green
woodlandsâthere he could escape an army and would be safe. This
salvation so near, was too far for him. He was weakening rapidly and
would die if he did not get medical attention soon.
San Celoni was in sight. Gasping, exhausted, he struggled towards it. A
peasant was busy by the roadside fixing his cart and Sabaté hailed him,
asking for something to drink to soothe his burning fever. The man
readily gave him a flask of wine, which Sabaté drained in one gulp. The
man was going into the village and offered El Quico a lift. In San
Celoni, when the man had left him, Sabaté asked an old woman who
appeared reliable for a doctor. It turned out there was only one in the
village, but she gave him the addressâin the Calle de JosĂ© Antonio. She
added that at this time of day it was doubtful whether he would find the
doctor at home. In that event he was told to go to the doctorâs driver,
who lived just opposite the doctorâs house and who would be able to tell
him where the doctor was and at what time he would return.
As the old lady had said, the doctor was not at home. El Quico then
stumbled across the road to knock on the door of the house opposite, No.
26, but in his fever he mistook the number. A man by the name of
Francisco Berrenguer Roca lived there. When Berrenguer opened the door
and saw the stranger in such a terrible condition asking for the
doctorâs chauffeur he replied rudely that it was the wrong house.
El Quico, more dead than alive, said, âIt doesnât matter to me! Let me
in to lie down for a bit, please.â
Berrenguer said no, and roughly pushed the wounded stranger from his
doorway. As he did so he felt the sub-machine-gun Sabaté had hidden
under his coat. Panicking, Berrenguer instinctively seized the gun and
would not let go. The two men, pushing and shouting, wrestled each other
out into the street towards the corner of the Calle José Antonio and
Santa Tecla.
In the meantime the news that Sabaté might have arrived in San Celoni
had reached the Guardia Civil, and they, in turn, called out the local
Militia[106] to go to the station as reinforcements. At the station they
found that Sabaté, or at least a man answering his description, had gone
in the direction of the village, so the Militia patrols were therefore
sent to search all the streets of San Celoni.
In one of the patrols there was a Militia corporal (who was also local
Secretary of the Falangist National Syndicalist Central [CNS]) named
Abel Rocha Sanz, and another Militiaman, José Sibina Morull,
accompanying a sergeant of the Guardia Civil by the name of MartĂnez
Collado. This patrol was passing near the Calle José Antonio, when they
heard the cries for help of the man with whom Sabaté was desperately
struggling for his life. The patrol split up, Rocha taking one side of
the street, the sergeant and Sibina going round the block so that they
could get Sabaté in a cross-fire.
In his fight to get away from Berrenguer, Sabaté, with what little
energy that remained, bit his assailant hard on the handâalmost removing
one of Berrenguerâs fingers. Abel Rocha fired his first bullet, which
missed Sabaté and hit Berrenguer wounding him badly. This enabled Sabaté
to wrench himself free and fire with his Colt. He was exhausted and,
panting for breath, did not have time to mount the Thompson gun still
under his coatânevertheless, his pistol was sufficient to hit the
Militiaman in the right leg near the kneecap. The wounded Rocha,
however, was still able to fire with his automatic rifle, and his bullet
hit Sabaté at the same moment as another from the Guardia Civil sergeant
behind. The fight was over. Sabaté lay dead. The Militiaman riddled his
corpse with bullets as it lay on the pavement, just in case.
And so, at eight-thirty in the morning of 5 January 1960, the eventful
life of Francisco Sabaté Llopart came to an end. He died as one thinks
he would have wanted to die and to no one better could one apply these
words of Thucydides:
For a manly spirit more bitter is humiliation associated with cowardice
than death when it comes unperceived in close company with stalwart
deeds and public hopes.
To die cut down in battle was the only death worthy of a man who had
refused to adapt himself to the corruption of an age and to surrender to
the conqueror. A man who risked everything in an attempt to tear out
that bloody chapter, written by Franco, in the history of Spain.
Sabaté was buried in the old San Celoni cemetery in an unconsecrated
grave. The doctor who carried out the autopsy revealed that the glory in
which those who thought they had taken SabatĂ©âs life were revelling, was
premature. The bullets of the Militiaman and the Guardia Civil had
killed a man who was already dead. The wound in his leg was gangrenous
and even if, on reaching San Celoni, he had been taken straight to
hospital and treated with all that modem science had to offer, it would
still have been too late. He was beyond saving.
Radio Luxembourg gave the tragic news of his death to the world at
one-thirty pm on 5 January. When the news of his death reached
Barcelona, the people refused to believe that it was true. They
dismissed it as a police machination. For the people some men are
immortal. The Catalan workers said, and kept on saying, âYouâll see, El
Quico will soon be back.â
Francisco Sabaté, El Quico, will never return to Barcelona. He will
never see the new Spain that will rise to honour him as a symbol of
those who struggled, in a battle not yet ended, for the emancipation of
man.
For some days after his death, a great deal of space was devoted in the
international press to Francisco Sabaté. Seldom had the death of an
Anarchist received such wide coverage. Why were they so interested?
Perhaps it was the spectacular nature of his escape from the cordon of
the Guardia Civil. But his four comradesâMiracle, Madrigal, Conesa and
Martin Ruizâdied in anonymity.
At first the worldâs newspapers carried the headline with the fascist
trademarkââDeath of a Banditââlater they came to understand that the
word âbanditâ did not exactly fit SabatĂ©, and they began to vary their
approach, while introducing new errors. For instance, there were idiotic
suggestions that Sabaté had returned to Spain merely to avenge the
murder of his brothers.
The Libertarian Movement in exile had the opportunity and the means to
correct the lies and errors of the press. But the Organisation preferred
to bury its head in the sand. The most unpardonable barbarities came
from self-professed libertarians. For instance, the weekly paper CNT
printed an article by its then editor, José Peirats, on 17 January 1960:
I do not wish to judge Sabaté or to think of harshly as do those who
have complained many times of the fact that his activity has caused
injury to the CNT, against whose decisions he rebelled, and
evenâsomething that should never come from one who has taken part in
itâendeavoured to supplant. Neither do I want to make a hero of him,
another Empecinado, another Durruti. Nor should the courts of Spain or
elsewhere presume to pass judgement on someone when they themselves have
passed beyond all norms of ordinary life and conduct.
I do not want to see in his obsession, in his unreasoning and
unreasonable determination to go into Spain against any possible
individual or collective interest, anything other than something which
can completely absolve him in many eyes, or certainly in my own: the
despair of his soul, the determination to avenge his murdered brothers,
the ideal that he had converted into so great an obsession that it made
every other consideration a secondary one. [Authorâs italics]
One could put down the libels of the capitalist press to ignorance. This
statement could not be so excused.
The death of his brothers did affect Sabaté deeply, but the pain he felt
did not supply the motives for his struggle. He did not seek vengeance,
something that never entered his head, but social justice. To say
otherwise not only deliberately slanders the man, but is deliberately
deceitful when it comes from those who knew him. Francisco SabatĂ©âas we
have tried to show in these pagesâgave himself to the struggle long
before his brothers died. He continued as he beganâwith the hope of an
insurrection by the Spanish people and the consequent destruction of the
Franco régime.
In another paper of the Organisation Solidaridad Obrera (Paris edition,
21 January, 1960) one piece managed to reach the pinnacle of hypocrisy.
It carried a photograph of Sabaté, but no article or any reference to
his struggle. Instead, it confined itself to refuting a sentence which
the international press had claimed were SabatĂ©âs last wordsââViva la
muerteâ.[107]
The article concluded the gross insult to SabatĂ©âs memory with the pious
truism: âThe Anarchist fights for everyoneâs life and in extreme cases,
loses his own. But he never commits the solecism of shouting âLong live
death!â like any totalitarian general.â
The height of impudence, however, was reached in an article carried by
the anarcho-syndicalist paper CNT published on 7 February 1960. The
article was signed by a friend of Miracle, one of the young men who died
with Sabaté, and read:
There are still many young men, many unknown people, who could also be
cannon fodderâyoung men who, precisely because of their youth and
idealism, are easily manipulated in the hands of evil men.
There was one reasonably satisfying and objective report, heard on the
Spanish service of Belgrade Radio in a broadcast on 14 January 1960:
Dear listeners: Our correspondent Rade Nikolic will give a short talk on
Francisco Sabaté, the Catalan revolutionary murdered last week by the
Francoist police...
Francisco Sabaté, known as El Quico, militant of the CNT and one of the
most outstanding defenders of the republican and democratic cause of the
Spanish people...
This is not the proper time to discuss the different methods of
struggle, nor to applaud or condemn this or that form of revolutionary
action. What is important is that the enemies of the people should not
be allowed to stain the memory of a revolutionary who, in his own words,
felt ashamed to be alive when his brothers and most of his comrades had
been murdered...
The broadcast ended with these words: âYou have just heard our reporter
Rade Nikolic give a talk on the life of the Catalan revolutionary
Francisco SabatĂ©.â
A few days later a Zagreb daily newspaper, Vjemik u Sridjedu (20
January, 1960) published an illustrated article on SabatĂ© entitled âEl
Quico, fought for twenty-four years. The death of a legendary combatant
against the Franco tyranny.â
Soon, too, the more scrupulous newspapers of the bourgeois press began
to look at Sabaté with more respect. Behind the lies and distortions
they began to perceive the silhouette of a guerrilla and view with
sympathy the real SabatĂ©, the man of the libertarian resistance, âPublic
Enemy No. 1â of Francoâs Fascist State.
But perhaps the best epitaph was written eight years before SabatĂ©âs
death. This is what Felipe Alaiz de Pablo[108] wrote in issue number 368
of Solidaridad Obrera, published in Paris, 15 March 1952:
Rightly or wrongly, anxious or not for fame and historical renown,
perhaps more sentimentally than coolly inclined towards an absolute
nihilism, probably scornful of the gregarious and passive mass for whom
they sacrifice themselves without expecting help from it, more attached
sometimes to anonymity than to an accumulation of redentorist
reverenceâfor religions are founded upon the spectacular sacrifice of
one, and only one, in favour of the comfort and passivity of the
restâthe activists, facing danger, dedicate their lives to their cause,
and with their own lives pay.
The persistent ones finish in the hands of the terrorist State, while
the terrorist but passive ideologues and terror-inspired masses keep
away from danger while applauding these isolated fighters, but never
ready themselves, these shy inhibited ones, to take direct part in the
struggle.
Slowly, the Organisation in Paris took the decision to vindicate Sabaté
publiclyâalthough always with a certain discretion. A document issued by
it stated that âFrancisco SabatĂ© Llopart was never, as stated by
sections of the press and radio, a âbanditâ. He was a militant of the
Anarcho-Syndicalist Action Groups and was killed by the fascist forces
of General Franco because of his struggle for the freedom of Spain.â
In Paris too, not elsewhere, they began a collection for the families of
El Quico and his four comrades. But at no point did they wish to concede
the same honours to JosĂ© Lluis FacerĂas, who had fallen in the same
struggle, but perhaps in less spectacular circumstances, or even to
Goliardo Fiaschi, at present in the Italian prison of Lecce, fifteen
years later, handed over from a Spanish jail to an Italian one, a living
symbol of the victims of the unity between Francoâs Spain and Fascist
Italy.
But the sincerest tribute to Sabaté was the fact that his enemies in
Spain celebrated his defeat with medals and honours for the police
service. The press carried full reports supplied to it by Police
Headquarters and the Directorate of Security. One and all referred to
their fallen enemy as the terrible bandit Francisco Sabaté Llopart.
I have here some lines from the last letter he wrote to his wifeâa few
hours before he faced the firing squad:
Dearest wife,
These last few hours of my life that I have left I dedicate to thinking
of you and our wonderful daughters. Today will see the culmination of
the fears that must have been apparent in all my letters.
It pains me to undo all those illusions which lately you have built
upâof my returning to live happily with you and the children.
I repeat what I said in my first letters to youâtry to keep close to my
parents and the rest of the family.
In particular fond regards to your brother and his family, also to the
nephews and their mother. To my mother I would ask you to give her a
warm embrace for me and to you and our dearly beloved children I send
the last embrace my heart can send you, kisses, kisses, kisses, and my
last farewell,
Pepe.
Torres was born on 5 November 1933 in Hospitalet de Llobregat
(Barcelona) and lived in Dijon where he worked as a bricklayer. He had
deserted from the Spanish Army and went to France in 1956.
Alvarez was born in Barcelona on 21 December 1921, and went to France in
I950 where he worked as a driver.
Montoya was born in Provins (Seine & Marne) on 13 April 1939. He was
French born of Spanish parents and lived in Lyons.
[1] The Municipal Guard, Guardia Urbana, was controlled by the local
councils and under the orders of the Mayor. It controlled traffic and
enforced the regulations of the Urban Police.
[2] The population of Hospitalet has grown considerably since the
beginning of the century. Since 1962 its population has risen from
150,000 to 250,000 in 1972.
[3] Mariano R. Vazquez was born in Barcelona in 1909. He was drowned
while bathing near Paris in the River Marne on 18 June 1939. See the
book Manuel Munoz Diez: Marianet, Semblanza de un Hombre, Ed. CNT,
Mexico, 1960.
[4] The ConfederaciĂłn Nacional de Trabajo was formed during the National
Congress of Labour held in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Barcelona on
30 October-1 November 1910. It was influenced by the Bakuninist ideas of
the First International.
[5] This âeducational establishmentâ is fully described in Michel de
Castilloâs book Tanguy, Ed. Julliard, Paris 1957 â the Home is referred
to as the âAsile Dumos, Centre de Redressementâ.
[6] After SabatĂ©âs death a number of journalists interpreted this name
as a derivative of Chico, Pequeño, meaning small or little. This was not
the case as Sabaté was of robust constitution, agile and quite tall (5
foot 9 inches).
[7] A religious order whose name derives from the âFollowers of Maryâ,
founded in Lyons in the XIX Century by Abbot Colin for the purpose of
âeducating young peopleâ.
[8] Miguel Maura was born in Madrid in 1887. He was succeeded as
Minister of the Interior, on 14. October 1931, by Santiago Cesare:
Quiroga â a politician as unpopular as his predecessor. Maura died in
Zaragoza in 1971.
[9] Fernando Poo and Rio Muni, in Spanish Equatorial Guinea, obtained
their independence in 1968; the Treaty of Fez signed on 4 January 1969
finally returned the territory of Ifni to Morocco.
[10] Durruti, one of the most outstanding figures of Spanish Anarchism,
was born in LeĂłn on 14 July 1896. He died on the Madrid front in the
area of University City on 20 November 1936. (See Durruti, The People in
Arms by Abel Paz, Ed. dc la TĂ©te de Feuilles, Paris 1972.)
[11] Ascaso, born 1 April 1909 in Almudebar. Inseparable comrade of
Durruti, he died in Barcelona on 20 July 1936 during the assault on the
Atarazanas Barracks that had risen in support of Franco. His elder
brother, Domingo, was killed during the events of May 1937 in Barcelona.
[12] The ley de fuga â a law that permitted the shooting of those who
tried to escape from the clutches of the forces of law and order. It was
the brainchild of General Severiano MartĂnez Anido, Governor of
Barcelona, and was applied from 1920 onwards. It was the easiest legal
method of eliminating the outstanding spokesmen and militants of the
workersâ organizations; the authorities would release the prisoners from
police stations and prisons and, as they made their way homewards, they
were massacred in the street, shot in the back by machine-gun fire. In
the files it was recorded simply as âan attempted escapeâ.
[13] See Solidaridad Obrera of Barcelona, 7 April 1933. The sentences
actually received were four of twenty years and one day, six of six
years and a day, two acquitted and four dismissed. The others received
sentences of twelve years and one day, according to Diego Abad de
SantillĂĄn in his book Contribution to the History of the Working Class
Movement in Spain, Volume 3, Ed. Cajica, Mexico 1971.
[14] Sanjurjo was dismissed as Director-General of the Guardia Civil on
8 January 1932, as a result of the incidents in Castilblanco and Arnedo.
The President, Manuel Azaña, as compensation, offered him the Director-
Generalship of the Carabineros.
[15] Sanjurjo, Marquis of Rif, was the moving spirit behind the
âNational Risingâ in 1936. Born in Pamplona on 28 March 1872, he died on
21 July 1936 in Portugal when the aeroplane carrying him to Spain
crashed. On his death the leadership passed to General Francisco Franco.
[16] Bravo Ferrer, the Radical deputy for Seville, made a dramatic
statement about the situation in the Andalusian capital, which can be
concisely summed-up as follows: during the three-month period from
October to December 1931 there were three hundred partial strikes in
Seville and a large number of bombs exploded. There was a rapid increase
in the number of robberies and âattentatsâ. The victims were numbered in
dozens.
[17] The Guardia Civil, in contradiction to its name, is a uniformed
military corps, controlled directly from the Ministry of the Army and
the Spanish Ministry of the Interior. In 1940 it was merged with the
Carabineros. Formed by the second Duke of Ahumada in 1844 to combat
banditry, it was very soon entrusted with governmental, judicial, fiscal
and police work. In 1969 the Guardia Civil numbered 60,000 men.
[18] Quoted by JoaquĂn Arraras in his History of the Second Spanish
Republic, Editora Nacional, Madrid I969.
[19] The FAI (Federación Anarquista Ibérica) was formed during the
dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera, at the National
Anarchist Conference held in Valencia on 25/26 July 1927.
[20] Azaña was born in Alcalå de Henares in r880. He died on 1 November
1940 in Montauban (France), shortly after stepping down from the
Presidency of the Republic.
[21] In fact, one did manage to escape from Casa Viejas, although badly
wounded â Maria Silva Cruz, called âLa Libertariaâ, the granddaughter of
Francisco Cruz and the daughter of Juan Silva, another of the victims.
She survived until August 1936, when she was murdered by Francoist
troops on the Jerez road, in Medina Sidonia.
[22] Cipriano Mera born November I897, fled to North Africa after the
Civil War but was handed over in 1942 by the PĂ©tain Government to the
Spanish Authorities who had demanded his extradition. He was condemned
to death the following year, but his sentence was later commuted to life
imprisonment. He was paroled in 1946 and went to France where, he worked
as a bricklayer, retiring recently at the age of seventy-four. Isaac
Puente, a doctor from Alava and a leading anarchist theoretician, was
murdered by Francoâs forces in July 1936.
[23] For further information see Manuel Villar, El Anarquismo en la
InsurrecciĂłn de Asturias, Ed. Nervio, Buenos Aires 1936.
[24] Apart from being the editor of âSoliâ and the Valencia paper La
Fragua Social he had also run La Protesta in Buenos Aires until his
expulsion from the Argentine. Arrested at the end of the Civil War, he
was freed a few months later, only to be imprisoned once again in 1941
for his activities against the Franco regime. He was not released until
April 1946. In May 1947, Enrique Marcos Nadal, Secretary of the
clandestine National Committee of the CNT, was arrested in Barcelona,
and Villar took his place. On 20 November Villar was arrested in Madrid
and in January 1949 he was brought before a Council of War in Ocaña and
sentenced to twenty-five years imprisonment. He died in Buenos Aires in
1972.
[25] Other transfers of children were organized, one of them by miners
of Salient. Another destined for Barcelona, was intercepted by Assault
Guards and the children taken to a hospice, from which the parents of
the children were ordered to collect them. Eventually, as a result of
these acts of solidarity, the workers of Zaragoza won their struggle.
[26] After the defeat of the rising, the Militia Committee was the only
effective power in Catalonia. The Generalitat, although it still existed
as the civil power in the province, was there in name only. The Militia
Committee had representatives from the Esquerra, the Catalan Nationalist
Party; from the parties of Republican Action; from the Union de
Rabassairex, and from the Marxist parties (PSUC, United
Socialist-Communist Parties of Catalonia â an amalgam of two parties
both of which were, at the time, weak in that province; and the POUM,
United Workers Marxist Party, a breakaway from the International
Communist ideas which preceded the orthodox Communist Party, at one time
with some sympathies with Trotsky); the CNT and the FAI.
[27] Vivancos was born on 19 April 1895 in Mazarron (Murcia) and died in
April 1972 in Cordoba, where he was on holiday.
[28] Jover was born in 1892 and died in Mexico in 1966.
[29] Jesus Hernandez, in his book I Was Stalinâs Minister, says that
seventy per cent of all control of the army was in the hands of the
Communist Party. Decisive sections such as aviation and tank regiments
were completely controlled by the Party.
[30] The United Young Socialists was a hybrid organization created by
Russian advisers in April 1936 bringing together the Young Communists,
Socialists, and the Socialist Union and Proletarian Party of Catalonia.
The leaders of this youth group, under the control of Moscow, were
Trifon Medrano, of the Young Communists, who died in Bilbao in 1937, and
Santiago Carrillo, of the Socialists, who, after becoming a Minister in
exile, later became General Secretary of the Spanish Communist Party.
[31] The Control Patrols were formed in Catalonia in August 1936 and
were composed of men proportionately from the different anti-fascist
organisations. About half were from the CNT. It was created to defend
ârevolutionary orderâ, but was dissolved by the Generalitat in March
1937, who gradually carried out a programme of disarming all the
revolutionary organisations in the rear-guard in order to build up the
armed bodies of the State.
[32] On 20 December 1917 an organisation was formed in revolutionary
Russia under the title âExtraordinary Commission to Combat
Counter-Revolution and Sabotageâ. Before long this organisation became
known to the world as the âChecaâ â organised along the same lines as
its Czarist predecessor, the Okhrana, formed by Alexander II in 1880. It
was the first police organisation in the world to adopt a scientific
approach in its investigations. The agents of the Checa arrested, tried
and executed their own victimsâalmost always in complete secrecy. In
1922 the organisation changed its name to the âPolitical Department of
Stateâ, better known as the GPU, and again in 1934, the name changed
once more to âCommissariat of Internal Affairsâ (NKVD). Russian advisers
introduced the methods of this organisation into Spain during the Civil
War. The Okhrana, Checa, GPU, and NKVD were always one and the same
organisationâthe only possible difference perhaps being that throughout
the years it developed its terrorist methods against its political and
ideological opponents into a fine art. For a long time after its change
in title people continued to refer to it as the GPU. It was from this
organisation that the Nazis took their model for the Secret State Police
(Geheime Staats Polizeiâthe Gestapo) under Herman Goering in 1933.
[33] On 3 May, 1937, at three in the afternoon, by order of the
Counsellor of the Government, Artemio Ayguader, a member of the Esquerra
Party, a patrol of Assault Guards led by Commandant Eusebio Rodriguez
Sales, Commissioner for Public Order in Catalonia and a member of the
Marxist PSUC, attempted to take by storm the Barcelona Central Telephone
Exchange, which was occupied and run by militants of the CNT-FAI. The
anarchists resisted, and within a few hours Barcelona was a mass of
barricades, open battle having broken out between the
Anarcho-Syndicalists and the Communist controlled State Forces. The PSUC
militants allied themselves during these events with the official State
body.
[34] Fontanet escaped to France after the Civil War and later moved to
South America where he is now living.
[35] The SIM was formed at the instigation of Soviet advisers, on I5
August, 1937, at the same time as the Negrin Government set out to
destroy the POUMâusing its âTrotskyiteâ tendencies (then a CP swear
word) as a lever to destroy the libertarian movement and the
anarchist-inspired collectives of AragĂłn as well. Indalecio Prieto, a
Socialist Minister in the Republican Government, drew up the
constitution of the SIM. Ostensibly its aim was to counteract the
activities of the Francoist espionage service but, in reality, from the
moment of its inception it was the executive arm of the Russian Secret
Police, the NKVD in whose cells many anti-fascists were tortured and
murdered. The SIM aided the Communist Party at the front just as much as
at the rear. Those who were impervious to its proselytising were often
physically eliminated. For further information on the SIM, see José
Peirats: La CNT en La Revolución Española, Chap. XXXVI, Vol. III, Ed.
CNT, Toulouse 1953.
[36] For further information on the role played by the Spanish Communist
Party during the Civil War, and its crimes against the anti-fascists,
see Rudolph Rockerâs Extranjeros an España, Ed. ImĂĄn, Buenos Aires 1938;
and Diego Abad de Santillanâs: âPor-quĂ© perdimos la guerraâ. Ed. ImĂĄn,
Buenos Aires 1940.
[37] AugustĂn Remiro Manero was born in Epila, Zaragoza, on 5 August
1905. He was a Centurion in the Durruti Column and later transferred to
the 25^(th) Division where he fought as a commando behind enemy lines.
After the Civil War he escaped to France but was one of the first to
return and dedicate himself to guerrilla activity against the Franco
regime. He was arrested and murdered by the Francoist authoritiesâthe
date of his death is unknown.
[38] In September 1972 we located Castells Marti in Perpignan, but he
was seriously ill and incapable of speech.
[39] Juan NegrĂn LĂłpez, a âMoscowâ man, was a tool of the Spanish
Communist Party. He organised the Carabineros (100,000 men), who were
called âSons of NegrĂnâ by the people. NegrĂn was born in Tenerife, in
the Canary Islands, in 1887, and died in Paris in 1936.
[40] Movimiento Libertaria Español (MLE)âthe CNT-FAI exiles.
[41] Quintela, born 1891, joined the police service in 1917, and became
known as the âexpertâ on anarcho-syndicalism. He was one of the fourteen
principal police chiefs appointed after Francoâs victory. (See Francoâs
Prisoner, by Miguel Garcia, Rupert Hart-Davis, I972.)
[42] Pereiraâs real name was Tommaso Ranieri. He was born in Naples on
29 March, I908 and, was forced into exile in France in 1928 as a result
of his activities in the Italian Libertarian movement. He moved to Spain
in I932 and, on the outbreak of the Civil War, he took part in the
attack on the Atarazanas Barracks on 19 July 1936 together with Durruti
and Ascaso. For the remainder of the war he fought in the ranks of the
Ortiz Column, and, following the Republican defeat in 1939, was taken
prisoner in Alicante. He soon managed to escape from prison with the
assistance of the local Organization, who supplied him with forged
documents. At liberty he resumed the struggle, once again becoming
Secretary of the Anarchist Defence Committee. He was arrested eventually
in October 1945, but with the intervention of the Italian Embassy on his
behalf, he was released after twelve months and deported to Italy.
Pereira died on 16 March 1969 in the Italian town of Ventimiglia.
[43] Victorio Gual was executed in Barcelona on 4. March 1947, accused
of having taken part in the attack on a car belonging to the
industrialist Fado, a notorious Falangist, in Esparraguera in 1945. Fado
had been responsible for the execution of a number of Catalan
anti-fascists. When called on to stop, Fadoâwho was collecting his
factory wages from the bank at the timeâdrove on at high speed. Though
the attacking group fired at the car, no one was killed or injured.
[44] One of the released prisoners was named Ezequiel Balencil.
[45] Sacas was the name given to the process of taking prisoners out to
be shot.
[46] Daniel Sueiro says in his book Los verdugos: españoles: (the
Spanish executioners), Ed. Alfaguara, Madrid 1971, that âthe official
legalâ publication recording all sentences, including death sentences,
ratified by the Spanish Supreme Court, was suspended, for the first time
since its founding in 1870, in March 1936 and was not published again
until I947.
[47] Outstanding Anarcho-Syndicalist militant born in Barcelona in I887.
During the Civil War he was Minister for Industry under the Presidency
of Francisco Largo Caballero. He was extradited from France, where h had
sought refuge, by order of the PĂ©tain Government and returned to Spain,
where he was executed in Valencia on 24 July 1942.
[48] Born in Santiago de Compostela. Arrested within a few days of the
outbreak of the fascist rising, he was offered the top post in the
propaganda section of the Falange and its Youth Section, the JONS, in
exchange for his life. He refused to accept this offer and was murdered
at the beginning of September 1936 in the outskirts of Corunna.
[49] SĂĄnchez Requena was the leader of the new Labour Party. During the
Civil War he had been Governor of Valencia. Shortly before the fall of
Madrid in the last few days of the war, Col. Segismundo Casado LĂłpez,
leader of the National Defence Council, appointed him Commissioner of
Police for Valencia. The reason being that he was âacceptable to the
nationalsâ â according to Wenceslao Carrillo in El Ultimo Episodio de la
Guerra Civil Española (Toulouse 1945). Requena was arrested in Alicante
following the Francoist victory and sentenced to death. His sentence was
commuted and after a few years he was released on parole. He died I
Valencia in November 1946.
[50] Pestaña was born in 1886 in Santo Tomas de las Ollas in the
province of Leon. He was several times Secretary of the National
Committee of the CNT and was one of the delegates to visit Russia in
1919, to decide whether or not the confederal organization should
affiliate to the Red International of Labour Unions, formed after the
Russian revolution. Later he moved away from anarchism to the
Syndicalist Party, which he represented during the Civil War as Vice
Commissar of the Army. He died in Barcelona in 1937. Pestañaâs decision
to form a political party perhaps had its origins in the frustration he
felt at the failure of the revolutionary movements of December 1931 and
of January/February 1932. He felt that the repressive strength of the
State was increasing rapidly and the only method of attacking it with
any probability of success was from within. This is referred to in
Maximilano Garcia Veneroâs book, Historia dc los Movimiento Sindicalista
Españoles, Ed. del Movimiento, Madrid, 1961
[51] The FIJL Anarchist Youth Organisation was created in Spain in I932.
[52] This Pallarols should not be confused with his namesake Esteban
Pallarols, known in the Underground as Riera, who was Secretary of the
First National Committee of the GNT formed after Francoâs victory. He
was shot with another comrade, Mares, in March 1946. Another member of
the same committee, José Cervera Bernell, was given a long prison
sentence and died in Valencia in March 1955, when he had only a few
months of his sentence left to serve.
[53] Farré was born in Barcelona in 1916. After the Civil War he escaped
to France where, during the German occupation, he joined the Resistance
escorting escaped POWs and refugees across the Pyrenees. Later, he took
part in the liberation of Toulouse and, subsequently, became a courier
for the Organisation between France and Spain. His body was found by the
French police on the night of 16/17 April 1946, in a sack floating in
the Midi canal. He was bound hand and foot and had a bullet in his
brain. In his pockets were found documents suggesting that he was on a
mission into Barcelona.
[54] He was born in Barcelona in 1910 and joined the Confederal Trade
Union Organisation at a very early age. When he was sixteen he joined
the clandestine defence groups. During the Civil War he belonged to a
transport unit of the Durruti Column, and was later transferred to the
bodyguard of the Armaments Secretary of Catalonia, Eugenio Vallejo
Sebastian.
[55] Thirty-one-year-old Antonio LĂłpez was arrested in Irun on his
return to Spain following a mission in France in July 1946, together
with Diego Franco Cazorla, twenty-six years old, better known as Amador
Franco. Both were shot on 2 May 1947 in the prison of Ondarreta. For
more on LĂłpez, see Miguel Garcia, Francoâs Prisoner (Hart-Davis).
[56] The Policia Armada, popularly known as âLos Grisesâ (âthe Greysâ),
were created in March 1941 to form an integral part of the Governmental
Police. Their mission was simpleâ public order and repression. The Corps
is organised on military lines with infantry, cavalry and motorized
divisions. Supreme command is held by the military general based in
Madrid with the title of Inspector General. The Directorate General of
Police, Civil Governors and local Police Chiefs manage the day-to-day
running of the Corps. According to the official statistics for 1971 the
Corps is made up of 52.28% workers, 39% country labourers and 3â44%
students, numbering at the present time 100,000 men.
[57] Born in Granollers in May 1920, died in Barcelona in July 1948
during a gun-battle with the police.
[58] Antonio Gil was born in Urrea de Jaen (Teruel) January 1921 He died
in Toulouse in a lorry accident in April 1948.
[59] Pareja was born in Velez Rubio (Almeria) in 1910. During the war he
was Commissar of the 104^(th) Brigade.
[60] Petardos as these bombs are called, are high explosive substances
pressed in the shape of a geometric prism. They have a rectifying hole
for the insertion of a detonator.
[61] Ballester, born in Barcelona, 12 September 1920, was a fervent
Esperantist. He later managed to return to France where he died in 1957
in the Paris/Nimes Express Train crash.
[62] Polo, born September 1897, joined the police force in 1921. During
the Civil War he served in the Republican Zone as a servant of the
Generalitat. José Peirats, in his book La C.N.T. en la Revolución
Española (Toulouse I952), says that Polo was working for Francoâs
espionage service based in France. Polo died suddenly in December 1972
in Barcelona. Having retired from police service some ten years before,
he was honorary Principal Commissar for Barcelona. Until the time of his
death he was Chief of the Information Bureau for the Civil Government.
[63] Miguel BadĂa was assassinated with his brother, a main organizer
for the fascist gunmen squads, in Barcelonaâs Calle Muntaner on 28 April
1936.
[64] This new police organisation was inspired by a similar service
created by General Miguel Arlegui, Inspector General of Public Order, in
Barcelona in 1920, together with his close colleague in the Civil
Government of Catalonia, Severiano Martinez Anido. This organisation was
also called the Special Services Brigade and was led by Police Inspector
Antonio Espejo Aguilar. The most significant difference between the two
epochs was that Inspector Espejo did not last long in his new job. He
was assassinated at the corner of Calle Regonir in the south of the city
on 19 January, 1921.
[65] Toma Gil Llamas, member of the Brigada de InvestigaciĂłn Criminal
(CID) for seven years from 1946 to 1953, says in his book La Ley Contra
el Crimen (Imprenta Pulcra, Barcelona, 1956) âthe car carrying the
unfortunate Falangists was identical to the one used by the Commissioner
and the resultant confusion led to their deathsâ.
[66] The police were quite justified in taking this warning seriously.
The signal to the Revolutionary insurrection in Barcelona on 8 January
1933 was to have been the blowing-up of this very same police
headquarters in the Via Layetana and the Civil Government buildings in
the Plaza del Palacio. Anarchist groups placed large dynamite charges in
the sewers under each building. The bomb under the Civil Government
building did not go off, but the one under the police headquarters did.
The only reason it did not blow the building apart was because it had
been prepared beforehand and the very size of the bomb did not allow it
to be placed near enough to the foundations, where the force would have
been at its greatest. See the book by Ricardo Sanz El Sindicalismo y la
PoliticaââLos Solidarios y Nosotrosâ (published by author, Golfech
82âFrance 1966.)
[67] José López Penedo, from Paredes de Cuidad in Orense was born on 13
July 1915. He was tried by Council of War on 16 November 1949 and he
received the sentence of death, carried out in Barcelona on 4 February
1950. He was executed alongside Carlos Vidal Pasanau who had been
sentenced for his part in the attentat in the Calle de Marina.
[68] Barba was fifty years old. Sentenced to death after the victory of
Franco, he was later commuted and left prison after spending seven years
inside. In August I947 he was re-arrested together with some younger
comrades. He had just returned home from prison on this occasion when
the police murdered him.
[69] He was sentenced to death on 16 December 1949 but later this
sentence was commuted to one of thirty years imprisonment. Many comrades
in the action groups, including Francisco Sabaté, suspected that he was
the man who, as âJosĂ© Franciscoâ, later wrote a. book denouncing his ex
comrades, Habla mi Conciencia (ALAS, Barcelona 1956).
[70] Serrano was murdered in a Barcelona street on 5 November 1949.
[71] Ganuza had remained in Spain at the end of the Civil War.
Imprisoned several times, he was eventually released in August 1948 when
he joined FacerĂas and crossed with him into France.
[72] Born in Leon, CatalĂĄ had been Commissar of the 2^(nd) Battalion of
the 121^(st) Mixed Brigade during the Civil War. He was an excellent
guide who, from 1943 onwards, constantly took part in missions between
France and Spain.
[73] I visited the cottage in June 1972 and found it in ruins. The
carefully cultivated fields and the house itself are overrun with weeds.
It has been empty since the SabatĂ© familyâs departure. (Authorâs note.)
[74] Celes, as his friends knew him, was born in Barcelona on the 25
December 1922.
[75] El Quique was born in Barcelona on 27 April 1927.
[76] Antonio Franquesa Funoll (El Toni), was born in Vich in 1920. He
was killed in another gunfight with the Guardia Civil on 19 April 1950.
H was a militant of the Partido Obrero de UnificacciĂłn Marxista (POUM)
and an experienced guide who, for feelings of affinity, preferred to
work with the libertarian groups. The POUM, the Workersâ Marxist Unity
Party, was founded in I935 with the union of the Workers and Peasant
Bloc, and the Communist Left. The Communist Party described it as
Trotskyist, though later disowned by Trotsky. George Orwell fought in
its column during the Civil War (see Homage to Catalonia).
[77] These arms were never seen again. A few days later Saturnino and
Busquets returned to collect them, without success. When Saturninoâs
group was arrested in October they were still without arms.
[78] Cecilio GaldĂłs was born in Santander in December I902.
[79] See Francoâs Prisoner by Miguel GarcĂa GarcĂa.
[80] Three days before on 14. October, José Sabaté and another comrade
robbed the wages van of a construction company â getting away with
734,000 pesetas.
[81] Born February 1906, joined the police in November 1934.
[82] Born May 1917, joined the police in July 1941. A veteran Falangist,
he had been sentenced to death by a Republican tribunal. His sentence
was commuted. After the war he joined the police corps, and in the
course of a few years went through all the different departments:
Governmental police, mobile brigade and the Brigada Politico Social. He
was especially notorious for his hatred of political detainees.
[83] José Sabaté had a wife in France, Emilia, and on his death left a
young child.
[84] Julio was born in Havana (Cuba) in July 1918. He was Commander of
the 39^(th) Mixed Brigade of the XVIth Army Corps during the Civil War.
[85] Espallargas was a veteran Barcelona militant who worked with the
action groups but on principle never carried a gun.
[86] Barrao was severely ill with an intestinal infection when he was
killed.
[87] José Pérez Pedrero was shot by a firing squad on 14 March 1952 in
the Campo del la Bota in Barcelona, together with Pedro Adrover Font,
Santiago Amir Gruañas (El Sheriff), Ginés Urrea Piña, and Jorge Pons
Argilés.
[88] Whether a suspect who âfallsâ from a police station window is
driven to suicide by torture, or is thrown out before or after death,
varies according to police requirements. It is noticeable that when
democratic statesman and scholar Masaryk âfellâ from a window in Prague,
Fleet Street poured Scorn on Communist Party apologists, using the sick
ironic term âdefenestrationâ to describe the type of apology made then
by Stalinists, later echoed when the anarchist railwayman Pinelli âfellâ
from a Milan police station window, by Richard Herd of the Daily Mail
(âhe died after falling from a window in Milanâ) or, more positively
dishonest, by Clive Borrell of The Times (âhe had been found dead after
a fall from a window in a block of flats in Milanâ).
[89] After spending a long period in custody, three of the accused were
granted bail. When the trial finally took place in April 1960 they were
sentenced in absentia having fled in the meantime to France. One of the
three was Antonio Miracle Guitart who, we shall see later, lost his life
with Sabaté in his last battle with the Guardia Civil.
[90] Solidaridad Obrera appeared once more, three months later, the
40^(th) issue, and dated the first fortnight in August.
[91] It is not as incredible as it may sound to a Spaniard steeped in
the tradition whereby anarchism was an integral part of the labour
movement. In democratic countries, and especially those where the
existence of a libertarian movement has not necessarily been synonymous
with the working-class movement, it has never been possible to form
anarchist organisations that remained such (as distinct from anarchist
groups within the revolutionary struggle). To form what is, in all but
name, a political party means one is unable to express oneâs
revolutionary ideas for fear of suppression of the organisation which in
turn must of necessity have a reformist programme and disdain any
revolutionary activity, which seems a small price to pay for âlegalityâ.
As it grows older, such a movement must become empty, useless, a
platform for the âliberalâ or a âveteransâ home for the ex-militant.
This happened to the CNT in exile but also, as proved at the Carrara
Congress in 1968 â(where the translator was the British Delegate), to
similar ageing movements which had sunk into social-democracy and become
superfluous since there was no lack of much more powerful
social-democratic movements, or in the case of ânew leftâ movements,
into liberalism or pacifism, and so to a position in- distinguishable
from the left of the Liberal Party.
[92] The Organisation Pensé a Bataille was a breakaway organization
formed within the French Anarchist Federation to win it over to
political activity. Under the leadership of Georges Fontenis, it managed
to break away from the FAF and form the Libertarian Communist
Federation, gaining control of the Anarchist paper Le Libertaire. It
collaborated closely with a Libertarian organisation in Italy â the GAAP
â Gruppi Anarchici di Azione Proletaria, led by Pier Carlo Masini. Both
organisations claimed to be representative of the Anarchist movement in
their respective countries, but had only a brief existence.
[93] Carlos Marighella was born in Salvador de Bahia (Brazil) in 1912.
The son of a Greek father and an Italian mother, he was a communist
until he rebelled against what he called the âbourgeoisification of the
Communist Parties of Latin Americaâ. In 1968 he founded the National
Liberation Alliance (ALN), which dedicated itself during its initial
stages to robbing banks and collecting arms in order to build up the
infrastructure necessary for the first guerrilla groups operating in
Brazil. Marighella was killed in an ambush he was lured into by two
priests in November 1969 in Sao Paulo.
[94] Born 28 June 1909, GĂłmez fought on Francoâs side in the Civil War,
and soon afterwards (1941) joined the Barcelona Police Force.
[95] Forty-three people who had been arrested at this time were tried on
14 July 1958 by a Council of War. At the time of the trial twenty-seven
were on bail after being detained for six months, and others had been in
custody. Angel was sentenced to thirty years imprisonment.
[96] Amadeo RamĂłn Vallador, El Asturiano, born in Fabero (Leon) on 24.
May 1920, committed suicide in 1963 in Perpignan on being informed by
his doctor he had cancer.
[97] Born 12 April 1916, he joined the force in July 1941 as a policeman
âsecond classâ, but due to his zeal rapidly gained promotion and is now
Principal Commissar of the Barcelona Brigada Politico Social.
[98] Born 27 March, 1916, joined the force in July 1934.â He acted as
Secretary during the interrogation.
[99] The VIIth Full International Conference of the FAI took place in
July 1956, to coincide with the VIIth Inter-Continental Congress of the
MLE- CNT in Toulouse. Maria attended the FAI meeting where the
activities of the Grupos Anarco-Sindicalistas were discussed, but she
was hardly allowed to open her mouth to protest. The meeting approved
the following resolution: âThe position of the Grupos
Anarco-Sindicalista: in exile is to be condemned!
[100] Sabaté sent the Organization three letters dated 15 August, 1
September and 8 September 1957. We only give the third one here, which
summarises his activities and ideas.
[101] One of the lawyers who acted on instructions from Sabaté was Jean-
Baptiste Biaggi, a well known French advocate.
[102] Considered an expert in social repression, he was made
Secretary-General of Security in September 1951, succeeding Lt Col
Alfonso Romero de Arcos, who had held the post since September I949.
[103] FacerĂas was born in Barcelona on 6 January 1920. During the
Spanish Civil War he fought in the Ascaso Column and was taken prisoner
during the last battles in Catalonia. Freed in 1945, he dedicated
himself to clandestine revolutionary activity and was, among other
things, Defence Secretary of the Catalan Young Libertarians.
[104] The unity of the Movimiento Libertario Español (MLE) was finally
decided at the first International Congress of the Spanish CNT in exile,
in Limoges in August 1960. Three months later, in November 1960, under
the chairmanship of the veteran militant Cipriano Mera, the reuniting of
the Libertarian Trade Union Movement was announced publicly at a meeting
in the Alhambra Theatre in Paris.
[105] Miracle was born on 20 November 1930 in Bra**n (Tarragona) and
lived in Clermont Ferrand where he worked as a builderâs labourer.
[106] This Militia (Somaten) was an armed civilian militia peculiar to
Catalonia. It was reorganized during the dictatorship of General Primo
de Rivera (1923â30) by General Severiano MartĂnez Anido, as a reserve
force in times of unrest.
[107] âLong live deathâ was in fact the favourite slogan of General
MillĂĄn-Astray, the badly scarred, mutilated, one-eyed, one-armed war
veteran of the Spanish Army, one of the most blood-thirsty generals of
the Franco régime. For Sabaté to have used a phrase associated with such
a reactionary figure would have been highly unlikely, and the suggestion
that he did a gross libel upon him. Some foreign journalists, knowing
the phrase as âSpanishâ but having forgotten or never having known
General MillĂĄn-Astray, may have attributed it to SabatĂ© to give âcolourâ
to their story. Perhaps he said, as many did, âViva la Anarquia!â
[108] Felipe Alaiz, Anarchist writer and journalist, was born in
Alarbate de Linea (Huesca). He died in Paris at the age of seventy-two
on 8 April, I959.