The Spanish Holocaust (48 page)

Some of the most violent clashes between Communists and anarchists took place in the Valencian region. This was in part a reflection of the repressive violence that had already occurred both in the city and in many towns and villages of its three provinces. Self-styled patrols and committees had eliminated those they considered to be fascists. Many Popular Front Committees would sanction land seizures, attacks on churches or the burning of the property registries but they could not always control individuals who, as happened in Catalonia, murdered priests, landowners and municipal and judicial functionaries. Not untypical was the case of Llíria, to the north-west of Valencia, where a moderate committee found itself under threat from FAI patrols from the capital. Others in danger included smallholders who did not want their farms collectivized. Again, as in Catalonia, the killing was often done by groups from elsewhere on a reciprocal basis by those ashamed to murder people from their own town. In Castellón, the killing was shared between ‘La Desesperada’, a group from Izquierda Republicana, and ‘Los Inseparables’ of the CNT–FAI.
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In the fertile Valencian countryside, there had been few problems when CNT and UGT members occupied land belonging to rebel supporters, many of whom had been assassinated in the first wave of disorder. However, when the anarchists tried to impose collectivization forcibly, they were resisted by smallholders old and new. The anarchists would arrive at a village, whether in Catalonia, Aragon or Valencia, and oblige the town crier to declare ‘libertarian communism’ and the
abolition of money and property. Thus considerable violence was provoked by CNT columns trying to impose the collectivization of land wherever they passed. Many of the members of the columns were urban workers who propounded purist anarchist aspirations without any understanding of the specific conditions of each place.

This explains the extraordinary case of the province of Zaragoza, where only forty-four of its towns and villages were in Republican territory. With 742 victims, this small area of Zaragoza, approximately one-third of the province, had the highest number of victims per capita in the Republican zone – 8.7 per cent of the population. Eight of the forty-four towns had no victims at all and a further eight between one and two. The towns with the greatest number of victims, such as Caspe, had not experienced significant social disorder before 18 July 1936 but were all ones occupied by the anarchist columns from Barcelona and Valencia. It was the militiamen of these columns who detonated the process whereby churches were set alight, clergy and right-wingers murdered and land forcibly collectivized. Most of these things, however, could not have happened without assistance from local anarchists. Victims were more likely where right-wingers had collaborated with the military coup, as was the case in Caspe, or where there had been social conflict before 18 July, as in Fabara. Where neither condition pertained, the local committee was able to ensure that there were no deaths. This was the case in Bujaraloz, Lécera, Mequinenza and Sástago, as well as many small villages. One hundred and fifty-two people of the province’s 742 victims were murdered by the anarchists elsewhere, and taken to Teruel, Huesca, Lleida or Barcelona to be killed.
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The pattern of violence beginning when the anarchist columns arrived, sometimes with the collaboration of the local committees, was repeated in Huesca, the northernmost province of Aragon. The highest indices of anti-clerical violence were in the east. In the small town of Barbastro, the Bishop Florentino Asensio and 105 priests were murdered, 54 per cent of a total of 195. The provincial capital lost thirty-one of its 198 priests, 16 per cent of the total. In numerous villages, the parish priest was murdered after being forced to watch parodies of the Mass and offered life if he renounced God. As was not uncommon in Aragon, the bodies of murdered priests were frequently soaked in gasoline and burned.
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In most of the province, no nuns were killed. At worst, they were threatened and obliged to leave their convents. However, at Peralta de la Sal in the east of the province, which fell in the diocese of Lleida, on 1 October 1936 three nuns were raped and murdered. Numerous lay
Catholics, including at least eight women, were assassinated by anarchists in Huesca.
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In the southernmost Aragonese province, Teruel, the repression was also set off by the arrival of anarchist columns. Having detained rightists and clergy identified by local militants, the leaders of the Ortiz Column would often organize a crude public trial. In communities like La Puebla de Híjar or Alcorisa, the population was obliged to assemble in the village square. Prisoners were brought out one by one on to the balcony of the town hall and the villagers asked to vote on whether they should live or die. The scale of the repression would depend on the will and determination of the local anti-fascist committee to prevent killings. In tiny villages like Azaila, Castel de Cabra and Vinaceite, the committee managed to ensure that there would be no executions. In other towns and villages such as Alcañiz, Calanda, Albalate del Arzobispo, Calaceite, Muniesa or Mora de Rubielos, the committee gave the names of those to be executed to the anarchist occupiers. In others, such as La Puebla de Valverde, the initiative came entirely from the anarchists of the notorious ‘Iron Column’ from Valencia (Columna de Hierro) who killed those who opposed their collectivization.
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Idealistically motivated collectivization was usually greeted enthusiastically by the landless labourers but met fierce resistance from smallholders. Some of the anarchist columns were accused of looting, abuse of women and large-scale theft of crops. In the villages of Valencia, growers were given worthless vouchers in exchange for requisitioned livestock. Their wheat and orange harvests were seized and taken to Valencia for export by the CNT. In late August, at Puebla de Valverde in Teruel, tens of thousands of cured hams were requisitioned ‘for the revolution’. The worst culprits in looting came from the self-styled Iron Column.
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The origins of the Column can be traced to an earlier episode at Puebla de Valverde in late July. What happened there underlined the contrast between the naive innocence of Republican militias and what they were up against. It also goes some way to explaining the reasons for the subsequent brutality of the anarchists involved. On 25 July, a Republican expedition was organized to recover Teruel, which had been taken by a small number of rebels. Surrounded by the loyal provinces of Tarragona, Castellón, Valencia, Cuenca and Guadalajara, it was assumed, reasonably, that Teruel would succumb easily. There were two columns, one from Valencia, consisting of Carabineros (frontier guards), Civil Guards and some anarchist militia, and another from Castellón, consisting of Civil Guards and a larger number of militiamen. Overall command
was entrusted to a fifty-six-year-old colonel of the Carabineros, Hilario Fernández Bujanda, who led the column from Valencia, accompanied by Major Francisco Ríos Romero of the Civil Guard. The column from Castellón was led by Francisco Casas Sala, the Izquierda Republicana parliamentary deputy for the city and, at his prompting, his friend, a retired army engineer, Major Luis Sirera Tío. In trucks and buses, 180 militiamen left Castellón at 8.15 p.m., to be followed shortly afterwards by two companies of Civil Guards.

The two columns joined together at Sagunto. Anarchist attacks on the town’s churches and the properties of local right-wingers severely undermined the commitment of the Civil Guards in the columns. According to one of their officers, they were merely biding their time until they could rebel, aware that to do so in a town like Sagunto would be suicidal. They moved off at dawn on 27 July. Some hours later, they reached Segorbe, where the force was joined by more Civil Guards from the local garrison and from Cuenca. The town was entirely in the hands of the CNT–FAI. The situation there, with evidence that members of the column were stealing, clinched the determination of the Civil Guard officers to change sides as soon as an opportunity arose. Setting off towards Teruel at dawn on 28 July, the force totalled approximately 410 Civil Guards, some Carabineros and an indeterminate number of militiamen, ranging from 180 to 600. The imprecision over numbers reflects the fact that new volunteers joined and others dropped out along the way. Whatever their number, all were recent volunteers, totally untrained, and many without weapons. Among them were several local politicians from Castellón.
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As they neared Teruel, the columns split up. Casas Sala led one group, the bulk of the militiamen and a small contingent of Civil Guards, to capture Mora de Rubielos further to the north. Fernández Bujanda headed directly for Teruel with the Carabineros and Civil Guards and about fifty militiamen. En route, they stopped to rest overnight at the tiny village of Puebla de Valverde, south-east of Teruel. Using the excuse of looting by some of the militiamen, the Civil Guards made their move. They surrounded the resting militiamen and, in a battle lasting barely twenty minutes, murdered most of them, the Carabineros and between fifty and sixty inhabitants of the town. When the news reached Mora de Rubielos, the other column hastened to Puebla de Valverde. Casas Sala halted the trucks outside the village, believing that he could negotiate a solution. When he and Major Sirera entered the village alone, they were quickly overpowered. The bulk of the militiamen abandoned them to
their fate and fled back to Castellón. On 30 July, the Civil Guards took Casas Sala, Colonel Fernández Bujanda and about forty-five other prisoners to Teruel, where they were executed without trial the following day. Their deaths were inscribed in the town registry as caused by ‘internal haemorrhage’. The reinforcement of the tiny garrison at Teruel by the treacherous Civil Guards guaranteed its immediate survival for the rebels.
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When the survivors carried back the news of the massacre to Sagunto, there was a wave of outrage. Twelve people were murdered in the port on 21 August and a further forty-five some days later in Sagunto itself. When the Column regrouped, its members insisted that the remaining Civil Guards in the town be disarmed to prevent them fleeing to Teruel. A compromise was reached whereby their weapons were handed over and the Civil Guards placed in the custody of the Communist Party. Nevertheless, the lieutenant in command was assassinated on 23 September.
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According to an article in the Republican press, before the expeditionary force set out, Colonel Fernández Bujanda had stated that he wanted only officers of proven loyalty. Concerned about one of the Civil Guards, he offered him the chance to drop out. The officer refused and begged Fernández Bujanda to let him join those going to Teruel and so prove his loyalty to the Republic. Fernández Bujanda was so impressed that he placed the officer in command of the Civil Guards in the expedition. Although unnamed in the article, the officer in question was clearly Major Ríos Romero. If the story is true, it explains why, after reaching Teruel with his men, and commanding the firing squad that shot Colonel Fernández Bujanda, Ríos Romero committed suicide.
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The survivors of the episode at Puebla de Valverde were among those who formed the Iron Column. Founded by José Pellicer Gandía, the Column was a hard-line anarchist group. It was composed largely of construction workers and dock labourers from Valencia and metalworkers from Sagunto. However, it also included substantial numbers of common criminals who, on being released from the prison of San Miguel de los Reyes in Valencia, had been offered the chance of ‘social redemption’. According to the Communist Minister Jesús Hernández, many Falangists, including the Marqués de San Vicente, took refuge in the Column. The POUM theorist Juan Andrade described the Iron Column as entirely undisciplined and consisting of both committed revolutionaries and ‘shady and depraved individuals’, driven by their basic instincts and an urge for vengeance. The ex-prisoners desired
revenge on the society that had imprisoned them. Others sought vengeance against rebel supporters for what had happened at Puebla de Valverde.
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In consequence, members of the Iron Column often just left the front to go to Valencia and other towns of the region where they were responsible for wreaking terror. The criminal records of the Civil Governor’s offices were burned. Policemen were murdered. The scale of robbery and vandalism committed in the Valencian rearguard by the Iron Column led both Communists and Socialists to deem it to be as much of an enemy as the fifth column. In clashes with its militants, there were numerous cases of prominent militants of the PCE and the UGT being assassinated. In late September, with the excuse of raising funds to buy arms for the front, members of the column left their posts and carried out robberies and other crimes in Castellón, Valencia and Gandía. The Bank of Spain, police headquarters, the Palace of Justice and the Treasury delegation in the provincial capital were sacked and their documentation burned. Shops, especially jewellers, were looted. Hostelries of all kinds were stripped of alcohol and cigarettes and their clients robbed. The secretary of the Valencian UGT, Josep Pardo Aracil, was murdered on 23 September. It was widely believed that the assassin was one of the more prominent leaders of the Column, Tiburcio Ariza González, ‘El Chileno’.

On 2 October, the provincial prison in Castellón was assaulted by the Columna de Hierro and at least fifty-three detainees murdered. The arrival of Ricardo Zabalza as Civil Governor of Valencia in early October was a major step towards the re-establishment of order. The Republican authorities, with the support of Socialists and Communists, created the Guardia Popular Antifascista, which began to clamp down on the violence. In one bloody clash, Tiburcio Ariza was killed. Ariza had served prison sentences for drug dealing, extortion, rape, theft and running prostitutes. He was shot by UGT members of the GPA in a shoot-out when they tried to arrest him for the murder of Pardo Aracil.
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