Chapter 9

The nefarious activities of the Communist Party—The Russian “Chekas” in Spain—Our side

Whenever we have deplored the suicide towards which we were led by the bureaucracy of our own organizations in the Spanish revolution and civil war—the bureaucracy of our own organizations, because if any other bureaucracy had done the same thing in any other organization, in absolutely the same way, it would be of less importance to us—the constant refrain we hear in response is that by acting in this way we avoided being accused before the court of History of having lost the war due to our rebelliousness or our yearning for justice.

It is quite possible that, if we were to have waged a vigorous counteroffensive against foreign interference on our territory and in defense of the rights of the Spanish people against their enemies—both the enemies who were conspiring from their positions within the Government of the Republic as well as the enemies who were hatching their plots in Burgos—we would have thereby abbreviated the war. And by doing so, we would have gone down to defeat in a way that was true to our principles, our people would have been able to reduce the duration of their fruitless martyrdom and it is possible that the massacre that followed Franco’s victory would have been less terrible. And at first, the traitors to Spain on the Republican side would have been able to blame us for what happened, but the time would have come to put things into perspective and it would have become evident that we were destined to lose the war after the fall of northern Spain.

We did not take action, we were obedient and we remained silent, surrendering the fates of millions of Spanish proletarians to the phlegmatic lack of concern of a Dr. Negrín; we put up with insults and treatment that we would have never borne before the war. This was not good sense, it was not reasonable; it was bureaucratic cowardice and it was the betrayal of our people. We will not be accused of having interfered with the plans of the communist-Republican Government, but we can be accused of not having interfered with them, and in the court of the future this charge will be the more serious one by far.

We do not have the nerve to try to justify such conduct; they sold the people down the river for the mess of pottage of a few Ministerial positions. Nor is it any excuse that all the parties and organizations did the same thing.

We did not have the right to do the same, we had the duty to do otherwise, it was our duty not to hesitate in the name of an absurd sense of responsibility. Responsibility to whom? To the gangsters of the Republic? And why did we not have any responsibility towards the fate of a people whose legitimate representatives we were?

As for myself, I only accuse myself of having erred during the May events, and my subsequent powerlessness to rectify the results of my error was a logical consequence of that original fateful mistake. The outcome of the war and the fate of our people would have been very different if, instead of risking my life to bring about a ceasefire in the uprising provoked by our enemies, I would have risked my life to provide some direction and meaning to that same uprising.

Even during an early stage of the disaster, those who later placed themselves under the orders of negrinismo succeeded in preventing, obedient to that very same sense of responsibility, the gold of the Bank of Spain from being shipped to Catalonia instead of Russia.

This sense of responsibility and equanimity in the face of continuous provocations is not enough to absolve those who were factors in the blind subjection of the masses of the CNT; this sense of responsibility and this equanimity are more accurately understood as complicity or cowardice in the face of enemies with whom we should have felt as little in common as with Franco.

Resolutions were voted, under pressure from below, from the people, but those who were so assiduous in fully complying with the resolutions of the Government, did everything that was in their power to prevent the resolutions forced upon them by the pressure of the people from being implemented. As we wrote in a report of the FAI:[26]

The actions of the Communist Party in the war, and in the revolutionary and political order, have merited the most absolute repudiation on the part of the libertarian movement, and have led the latter to pass urgent resolutions.

At the Regional Plenum of the CNT held in Valencia in mid-April, 1937, a committee was appointed to study a way to neutralize the shameless offensive unleashed by the party of slogans against the libertarian organizations, promoting various measures, including, among others, the following:

To work tirelessly to discover their secret organizations of repression and disgusting propaganda and their methods of operation, in order to unmask them, when the opportunity arises, in every “affair” in which they intervene or attempt to mediate. All this work must be carried out with prudence in order to avoid prejudicial setbacks and to catch them by surprise when the time is right.

To attentively and assiduously scrutinize the actions of those who occupy official positions, obtaining as much data as possible concerning their activities, which will allow us to expose their partizanship and their inability to exonerate themselves.

To zealously devote ourselves to discovering in detail the financial operations of the International Red Aid, taking into account the fact that we already have documentation proving that the large donations they receive are used exclusively for their propaganda, and that any intentions on their part to use the money for the purposes of solidarity that they loudly proclaim are entirely absent.

The Regional Plenum of the CNT-FAI-Libertarian Youth, held in May 1937, passed the following resolution, which states:

It is resolved: Attack the Communist Party on a national scale. Attack, on a local scale, those who have been persuaded to support it, for their conduct in each locality, province or region.

Summarizing the contents of the famous manifesto, “Confronting the Counterrevolution: The CNT to the Conscience of Spain”, the National Committee of the CNT published a number of manifestos that were severely critical of the Communist Party, under the significant titles: “The Party of the Counterrevolution”; “Democratic Procedures”; “The Carrion Crows of the Revolution”; “By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them”; “Above All, The Revolutionary Alliance of the Working Class”, etc.

Our agreement, then as now, with these views has never been a matter of dispute. We completely identified with them. We defended our movement against its most irreconcilable enemies.

Do we need to mention the invasion of Aragon by troops who were enthusiastic supporters of the Communist Party and how they destroyed the exemplary constructive work of the peasants of Aragon? We have more than enough reasons to state that, without the invasion of Aragon by Lister’s divisions, the subsequent invasion of the fascist armies would not have occurred.

Have we forgotten such infamies as the note from the Political Bureau of the Communist Party dated July 31, 1937? We could not stand side by side with the party of maximum irresponsibility and we could not treat it as an equal. Or had this Party changed its ways, its morality, or its purposes?

And what about those articles published in Frente Rojo that denounced our economic and military achievements in Aragon? This is how one of these articles begins (October 14, 1937): “The Popular Front Government has made a truly triumphant entry into Aragon. The peasants, instilled with hope, jubilantly welcomed the troops. Aragon is beginning to respect and experience the benefits of the new administration. An odious and woeful epoch has undoubtedly come to an end.”

The mudslinging directed at us by the Communist Party and its press galvanized our organizations, which stridently demanded a minimum of decency and responsibility. The National Committee of the CNT broke off relations with the Communist Party pending the rectification of the article in which Lister’s crimes in Aragon were praised and the epic achievements of the men of the CNT were denounced.

There was a long series of notes, replies and counter-replies, but, to make a long story short, the Party of slogans neither offered any explanations for its actions nor did it disavow responsibility for the content of the campaign of slander and insult of which we were the victims.

We had too much self respect, however, to allow the mainstay of a Government that did not enjoy the approval, sympathy or support of the libertarian movement to appear to have won this argument in the eyes of the domestic and international audience.

Without rectifying even one of its irreconcilably hostile accusations, the Communist Party then attempted to convince the leaders of the CNT to support the Government in order to enlist and manipulate them as rubber stamps for its own policy of hegemony. And it was because of the extent to which the comrades of the National Committee of the CNT actually began to respond favorably to these suggestions that the Peninsular Committee of the FAI found itself in increasingly more serious disagreement with the leadership of the confederal organization.

Nor do we think that libertarian militants have forgotten the October 1937 Pact between the CNT and the UGT, undermined by the communists who interpreted it as “a pact of struggle against the political parties and the Government” (Resolution of the Fourth Provincial Conference of the Communist Party of Valencia).

The Pact was truly a proletarian and revolutionary landmark. It had to be destroyed, because, among other things, it meant the disappearance, or the irremediable decline, of the Communist Party. It was necessary to create another kind of Pact that would be neither fish nor fowl, neither hot nor cold, and to bind us to the corpse of the Popular Front so that our independence would be trampled on and the whole world could be entertained with the legend of the total subordination of loyalist Spain to its Government, supposedly led by the Popular Front, and to the Thirteen Points.

A whole series of vapid political speeches, public embraces, and calls for unity of action in exclusive support for the Negrín Government did not prevent, for example, the Communist Party from issuing a directive to its Party Committees to work within the CNT to induce splits within our organization, cause its members to resign, influence certain comrades who held positions of responsibility in the CNT, etc.

It is true that the National Committee of our trade union denounced this maneuver, but only on paper. In its everyday operations we noticed that it did not respond to this perverse outrage with the same vigor that it displayed in the past when confronting similar challenges. And there was increasing dissent within our ranks, as we saw the CNT following the political line laid down by the Communist Party.

We believed that the incompatibility of the objectives and methods of the Communist Party with those of the libertarian movement was absolute and that we had to sever all relations with these agents of the Russian Government, who were responsible for our worst disasters.

Let us enumerate a few of the reasons why we must set forth our position with perfect clarity and declare, as we pleaded in vain to the National Committee, that the CNT, that the libertarian movement has perfectly defined ideals and methods and has nothing in common with the policy dictated by Russia to the Communist Party, in consideration of the fact that it is counterrevolutionary and harmful to the effective prosecution of the war.

The Communist Party has combated, in an openly counterrevolutionary way, the work undertaken by the working class organizations, on the pretext that it was necessary to first win the war, without noticing that by depriving the war of its dimension of popular enthusiasm, which was its natural soil, the Party would inevitably harvest the fruits that we have been seeing since May 1937.

The Communist Party shamelessly supported the political sectors that should have disappeared after July, seeking allies and recruits among those segments of society whose background was most dubious from the point of view of the anti-fascist struggle.

The Communist Party is the enemy of the autonomy of the trade unions and denies them the authority to intervene as such in the reconstruction and transformation of society, a mission that, according to the Communist Party, falls upon the shoulders of the Parties, that is, to itself.

The Communist Party has employed the most treacherous means to swell the ranks of the UGT in order to use it as a platform to penetrate the trade unions and to induce splits in them and to paralyze their direct involvement in society’s affairs.

It has created yellow trade union organizations in an attempt to see if they can compete with the socialists for control over the UGT. One example is the Provincial Federation of Peasants of Valencia.

The Communist Party has hindered the development of the agrarian and industrial collectives and has used every means at its disposal, the forces of public order, and even the army, to destroy those that have been created and have prospered. It took advantage of the fact that one of its members was appointed as Minister of Agriculture to deny credits, fertilizer and seeds to the CNT collectives. It has used the Unión de Rabassaires to sow discord in the Catalonian countryside.

The Communist Party has brandished the blackmail of Russian aid to enforce political changes that it considered most beneficial for its development to the detriment of the other sectors.

The Communist Party has used the bureaucratic and repressive apparatus of the State to eliminate its political enemies, inflicting grave harm on the anti-fascist cause. We need only recall the events of May 1937 in Barcelona, the persecution and outlawing of the POUM and the assassination of militants like Andrés Nin.

They transformed the Ministry of State into a diplomatic annex of the foreign relations bureau of the USSR, to the obvious discredit of Spain, which has been isolated from the rest of the world.

The Communist Party infiltrated the Liaison Committees to undermine the action of the UGT as a trade union that had been moved by our appeals based on the unity of interest and aspirations of the proletariat.

The Communist Party iniquitously exploited our country with their arms deals negotiated on the worst terms and facilitated the acquisition of our commodities at derisory prices, not to mention the robbery by Russian espionage of our industrial secrets.

The Communist Party has paralyzed and castrated by every means the creative initiative of the Spanish people to force us to be tributaries of Russian foreign trade.

It is futile to continue this repulsive enumeration. The Communist Party has been the greatest enemy of the revolution in Spain and it has not hesitated to use the most disgusting and most criminal means, assassination, defamation of character, persecution and torture, to hinder our social advance. All of this is very well known in the libertarian movement. What is important is to learn the lessons and to take the requisite action….

Each passing day provided more than enough arguments and facts to justify an armed rebellion against, or at least the strict limitation of the authority of, the Negrín Government. We did not keep quiet about these facts and these arguments, but the Celestine of the war, as Largo Caballero was called, was used to conceal every outrage, every complicity and every act of cowardice.

One of the aspects that was most prejudicial to our goals was the introduction of the methods of the Russian police in our domestic policy. Torture, extrajudicial executions, secret prisons, and abuse of the innocent as well as the guilty became routine. It was impossible to tolerate and applaud a Government that had abolished the traditional forms of harshness employed by the Civil Guard against its victims. Even in this aspect we became just like the enemy that we were fighting against, for in enemy territory, as well, the German Gestapo and the Italian OVRA had imposed their methods of persecution and elimination of enemies. In loyalist Spain, instead of the Gestapo and OVRA, we had the Russian GPU. Different names, but the same brutality.

What took place in the Communist Chekas of Republican Spain is almost beyond belief. In the Hotel Colón in Barcelona, in the Casal Carlos Marx, at Puerta del Angel 24, at Villamajor 5, all in Barcelona, as well as in the Convent of Saint Ursula in Valencia, in the fortress at Castelldefels, in Chinchilla, etc., crimes were committed that had no precedents in the history of the Spanish Inquisition, which is indeed saying a lot. Were we supposed to remain silent about these facts, so that we would take on the historical shame of complicity or cowardice? We did not mince words when we passed our judgments, which were so richly deserved, on the Ministers of the Negrín Government, for their passivity and their deliberate blindness. The Spanish revolution and the war against fascism were dishonored by the Dirección General de Seguridad, the Servicio de Investigación Militar, and the private and Party Chekas. Wounds were inflicted upon what was most sacred in the people’s soul and eternal Spain cried out against a regime that tolerated or sponsored these horrors.

The municipal government of Castelldefels had issue a formal protest because of the corpses that were dumped every night on the highway near the fortress. There were days when 16 men were found murdered, all of them anti-fascists, but all of them enemies of the communists.

1. We have exposed one of a thousand monstrosities, that of the assassination of 80 people in Turón, Andalusia.[27] This is what happened:

2. For a long time now we have been receiving more or less detailed reports of the activity of communist elements throughout Andalusia, and especially in the sectors occupied by military units under the command of the Communist Party.

One of the most seriously affected sectors is the one occupied by the forces of the 23^rdArmy Corps, which is under the command of a well-known communist, lieutenant colonel Galán. This sector is distinguished by the astonishing ease with which elements that do not sympathize with the Party disappear, elements that are sometimes merely politically indifferent or else openly left-wing. Such was the case of a socialist in the town of Peters, a person with a long revolutionary history, who was a victim of the law of flight [“ley de fugas”] (along with five other prisoners in the town) at the hands of a certain Bailén, a captain in the intelligence section of the 23^rdArmy Corps, an individual with a dubious background who, prior to the civil war, was a tax collector, one of the worst in the whole region, and whose job now consists in purging the zone of any elements that might compromise him.

The shootings mentioned above were carried out under orders from the commander in chief of the 23^rdArmy Corps, despite the intervention of the Provincial Committee of the Socialist Party of Almería, the Civil Governor of Almería and colonel Menoyo, who went to speak directly with the Minister of Defense (Prieto), who issued the order to immediately arrest Captain Bailén.[28] At the present time, the Communist Party is working hard to bury the affair, employing every means at its disposal.

This case, as serious as it was, was trivial compared to the one that we shall now relate:

One fine day the brigades comprising the 23^rdArmy Corps received an order from the Corps General Staff, commanding each brigade to assemble a platoon or squad of men whose anti-fascist credentials were beyond dispute. They did so and they were then given detailed instructions to march to Turón, a small village in the Granadian Alpujarra with about 2,500 inhabitants. The men were told that they had to eliminate fascists for the good of the cause. They arrived in Turón and killed 80 people, most of whom were completely innocent, since they were neither disaffected nor for that matter dangerous, insofar as elements from the CNT, from the Socialist Party and from other sectors killed comrades from their own organizations, unaware of the fact that they were doing so and thinking that they were acting on behalf of justice, as their superior officers had told them. There are also cases in which daughters were raped in exchange for saving their fathers’ lives. And what was most disgusting was the way these actions were carried out, in the full light of day and without any attempt at concealment, so that a wave of terror and tragedy swept over the entire district. At that time, the highway from Turón to Murtas was under construction, and the victims were buried at the construction site, in the roadbed itself. An attempt was made to prevent the affair from being made public, but, faced with the pressure of public opinion, the Permanent Tribunal of the Army of Andalusia could not remain inactive and ordered a criminal investigation. Thirty-five corpses were disinterred, but the investigators refused to dig up the rest, since this would have entailed the total destruction of the highway under which they were buried.

This Tribunal began to obtain the testimony of witnesses and, once it was proven that the orders for these killings came from the commanding officer of the 23^rdArmy Corps, Galán (who was a kind of Viceroy of Andalusia), at the order of the Tribunal, was suspended from his command, while the Tribunal informed the Government of what had taken place and requested instructions as to how to proceed.

Dr. Negrín was the Minister of National Defense at the time—the Minister of Defense was responsible for examining the evidence in accusations of this kind—and it was Negrín who, on the occasion of the incredible provocation of March 1939, would later appoint Galán to one of the most important commands in his planned coup d’état in the Center and Levante, after the fall of Catalonia.

It was our comrade Maroto, a dedicated militant from the region of Murcia—subsequently the target of a fierce defamatory campaign—who most insistently pleaded with the various organizations to which the victims belonged to expose the assassinations of Turón and then to deal with the assassins.

From a pamphlet distributed in December 1937, we excerpt the following fragments, from an appendix to a detailed description of the horrors of Santa Ursula in Valencia:

The cynicism and cruelty of the Stalinist GPU are unprecedented with respect to methods of repression. They never took into account the condition of the prisoners. Healthy or sick, men or women, fascist or anti-fascist, all were the same for the special brigade. And the worst thing about it is that all those sacrifices were completely futile. Once the confessions they wanted were obtained and signed and sealed, the prisoners were abandoned and forgotten in the dark cells of Santa Ursula. They would never actually be tried in a court of law.

And this is understandable. The police knew full well that the victims would denounce them before the Tribunals for the abuses and crimes they committed, that they would repudiate their confessions signed under the duress of torture, and that they would become their implacable accusers.

But Santa Ursula could not guard its secrets forever. Nor could it contain so much pain. The truth finally filtered out through the thickest walls and the most strongly barred doors.

Tragic and bloody accounts reached the working class organizations and were made public. The clandestine press of the revolutionary nuclei and the foreign working class press publicized some of the abuses committed in Santa Ursula. The Government was compelled to intervene. Its intervention, however, was too little, and too late. It did not penetrate to the heart of the matter. The Stalinists remained in their Government positions and there could be no question of forcing a break with them so soon. Furthermore: there were falsified records and testimonies extorted from witnesses by force, as is to be expected, to shut indiscreet mouths and silence people who are too curious.

But as of this time, the Government is still unaware of the fact that a large number of trade representatives of its own suppliers of war materiel, and its own industrial and military technicians, have been detained in Santa Ursula, and that others have disappeared forever. These men came to Spain with every guarantee of their personal safety and financial remuneration. At the Spanish Embassy in Paris all their necessary credentials, papers and contracts were approved. And now they have disappeared. The Government thinks that they left the country. But they committed the crime of being visiting specialists from friendly Russia. And the special brigade was ordered to liquidate them.

Government commissions and even representatives from the working class organizations often visited Santa Ursula. Once, Irujo, the Minister of Justice, went to Santa Ursula in person…. “The visitors never saw the cave of corpses, or the ‘cupboard’, or the mistreated prisoners.”

A typical case is the account of a young man who was a member of the FAI, J. H. Trafalgar, a militiaman who was serving on the front line on the Aragon Front, with whom we were acquainted. He was accused of having attacked an office of Estat Catalá with a pistol and hand grenades during the May events. He had been wounded twice at the Front. He was arrested two months later and brought to a Cheka on Córcega Street, presided over by a certain Gaspar Dalmau Carbonell, a communist. He spent 28 days there, the first eight without being given any food.

Since they could not prove any of the charges against him, the order was issued to free him, but when he arrived at the police station, a car with Cheka agents was waiting for him, and he was taken back to Córcega Street. He had documents that authorized his release; now he was in the hands of his executioners without any possible recourse. We shall let the victim tell his story:

At night, around midnight, I was taken upstairs to be interrogated. First, I was informed that the previous accusation had been withdrawn and that now I was accused of having directly participated, or at least was implicated in the planning, of the attack on Andreu, the Chief Justice of the Barcelona Court.

I explained where I was on the day of the attack, I said that I did not know anything about it, and I told them that I condemned it, as had our organizations, in Solidaridad Obrera.

My statements were to no avail. The police of the Cheka said that I was involved with the secret planning of the attack. And that if I ‘sang’, I would be released, taken to the border and given a lot of money. That if I had any brains at all, I would have to inform on those who had taken part in the incident or at least on those who might have participated in the attack. Otherwise, they threatened to take me for the usual ‘ride’.

The questions that began in a friendly and even sweet tone were gradually becoming more hostile. The theatrical environment could not have been less consistent with the nature of the interrogation. Dalmau hovered over me with his sarcastic smirk, Calero was playing with a dagger, and various other persons stood around in different postures. On the table, a little more than a meter away from me, was a very bright light that was shining in my face. The rest of the room was in total darkness.

The policemen were all asking me questions at the same time. At the same time, in the darkness, behind a screen, the voice of my accuser claimed that he saw me on the day of the attack in a private automobile in front of the Palace of Justice. In response to my continuous requests that he show his face, he refused, alleging that he was afraid that I would take vengeance on him in the future.

The spectacle would have shattered even the strongest nerves. Exhaustion, weakness, questions, insults, the bright light, the dagger, were all mixed up in my mind in a mad dance. Finally, desperate, and convinced that they would end up killing me anyway, wanting to end this nightmare as soon as possible, I confessed: “Yes, it was me.” This declaration, however, was of no interest to the policemen.

They knew perfectly well that I was not involved in the assassination. What they wanted to know was the name of the real perpetrators. And so they continued to badger me with questions about their identity. My response was blunt: “Yes, it was me, with Azaña and Companys.” This dashed all their hopes. They had to admit they were beaten. The time had come to employ different procedures.

Dalmau got up. “You know what you have to do,” he told his subordinates. The policemen took their pistols and loaded them. That was the beginning of the end. Calero tried to handcuff me with my hands behind my back. My watch got in the way. I calmly removed my watch and gave it to Calero: “Take it, so that you can give me the coup de grâce as soon as possible.”

We went downstairs to the second floor. They brought me to the bathroom. I assumed that they wanted to prevent the noise of their gunshots from being heard on the street. But the policemen did not seem to be in a hurry. They tossed a bar of soap in the bathtub and opened the faucets. It was a French brand of soap. And it was a very big bar of soap.

It must have weighed at least a kilo. I contemplated the scene without understanding their real intentions. The loud and monotonous sound of the running water instilled me, in my exhausted condition, with a crazy wish to go to sleep.

Once these preparations were concluded, the interrogation resumed. A mixture of threats and advice. “Don’t be stupid, confess, you only have a few minutes to live.” The idea of death was in every word. I wanted the whole thing to end once and for all. I had a real desire to feel the cold touch of the policemen’s pistols on my temples. But my interrogators had more subtle intentions. Why didn’t I understand them sooner? After half an hour the water had filled the bathtub. After one last question, he said to his comrades: “We’ll have to dunk him, don’t you think?” And all of a sudden I was in the air, held upside down. Then the real torture began. Another question, while my head was raised up out of the water. Naturally, the answer was the same as all the previous ones. And I could hardly remember anything anymore. My head was plunged into the water so deep that it hit the bottom of the tub.

I remember that I felt a terrible pain in my wrists, which were pinched by the tight handcuffs. I must have put up a stupid and unconscious attempt to escape from their clutches. At the bottom of the bathtub I tried to resist the unspeakable. I held my breath for a few seconds that seemed like centuries. Then I could not hold out for even one more second. I needed air. I began to take in water. Everywhere. In my mouth, in my nose, in my ears. I had the sensation that the water was even getting into my brain. I lost control over my will. All that was left was my instinct for self-preservation, brutally and passionately expressed.

I have a faint memory that they began to beat me all over my body, on my head, on my shoulders, on my arms. I lost consciousness. I have no idea how long this lasted. When I came to, I was out of the tub, stretched out on an upholstered chair, my feet hanging over one end and my head over the other. I had vomited a lot.

The soap was an excellent emetic. My whole body ached. My head was spinning as if I were drunk. When I began to articulate thoughts in my head again, the policemen returned to harass me with their questions…. In view of the failure of the interrogation, I was dunked in the bathtub again, while I was insulted and sworn at by the policemen. This time it only took a few seconds for me to lose consciousness. When I came to, I was vomiting, lying on the chair. The policemen had also lost control over themselves and displayed all the brutality that they were capable of.

They punched me and kicked me, and showered me with vulgar insults….

A little more calmly this time, they carried on with their monotonous questions. I was so devastated inside and out that I could not even answer them at all. Ready to bring it all to an end once and for all, marshaling the little energy that remained to me, I got up and fell heavily into the bathtub. It would be better to die by drowning than to continue to endure such torments.

When I regained consciousness I was in a different room. The policemen had taken off my clothes and had thrown me on a mattress. They brought my clothes and shoes. I stayed there for four days. During that period I could not eat and it took me eight days before I could even get out of bed. That is how physically broken I was. The policemen would not accept defeat. For eight days they came every hour or half hour to my room to record my confession. I think every Cheka agent came to see me, all with similar questions and with the same implication: the bathroom.

During the course of these visits I could see that the policemen had taken possession of my best clothes and my personal belongings. One was wearing my bracelet, another my ring, a third my belt, and a fourth was lighting his cigarettes with my lighter….

No doubt about it: besides being executioners, they were also just so many common thieves….

Once I had recovered somewhat I was once again taken to the third floor to confess. The whole procedure was repeated two more times. My nerves were shattered, and I was convinced that these confessions would come to a fatal conclusion in the bathroom. Fortunately, I was mistaken. One night I was ordered to get into a private car. I was going, according to the policemen, to meet my accuser face to face. I understood what this meant. The car turned down Salmerón Street and proceeded towards La Rabasada. Outside of Barcelona, we came upon another car that was stopped in the middle of the road. Surely, it was waiting for us. I was forced to get out of the car. They brought me to the ditch; the road was dark. The headlights of the cars lit up the side of the road. I clearly saw that I had come to the end.

Then three men got out of the other car and came toward us. One of them said he had seen me on the day of the assassination in a private car that was stopped in front of the Palace of Justice. The policemen laughed, satisfied. He was the witness that I had demanded to see face to face. Giving me a push in the back, they said: “You can prepare to die.” I responded angrily: they could kill me whenever they wanted to. Then the organization would know what to do.

I told them that, as we were passing by the cells in the Police Station, I had seen some of our comrades and they were able to notify the Juridical Commission and my group.

I said that my death was unimportant. The loss of my person was of little importance for the movement.

And, besides, I told them that I was sure that my comrades would waste no time in avenging my death.

They offered me one last chance to save my life: inform on the perpetrators or my accomplices, as they said. If I refused, they would have to shoot me, and kill me like a dog.

I remained unperturbed. If I had come this far, I might as well go all the way to the end.

They forced me to get back into the car and we returned to Barcelona. They had found the formula: “We are going to give you another day to recover….”

Something had begun to sink into their heads, by various pathways. It was impossible to kill this man without provoking the vengeance of his friends. He was transferred from one jail to another and then once again found himself in Barcelona, where he was held in an official government prison and where he wrote the above account, which circulated clandestinely with other documents of the same kind, and some copies were sent to the authorities.

As a result of a violent incident involving the communist, Cazorla—Minister of Public Order in the Madrid Defense Committee, the same person who, while he was governor of Guadalajara, had made it impossible for all the other parties and organizations to operate openly, and was the inspiration behind the special brigade of Santa Ursula—our comrades in the Center Region spoke out and shed the light of publicity on the outrages committed against the prisoners under his authority, the return of the methods of Martínez Anido and Arlegui, the arrests of noncommunist anti-fascists, the kidnapings, the assassinations. Once it was claimed that there were no government prisoners during the period when Cazorla was Minister of Public Order, and the men of the libertarian movement provided detailed statistics concerning the prisoners in Ventas, San Anton, Porlier, Duque de Sexto, and Alcalá de Henares. These prisons contained the following numbers of prisoners:

Furthermore, as of February 10, 1937, there were 348 female prisoners; on February 26, there were 255.

They also provided detailed figures of the number of prisoners who had been evacuated from Madrid, unaware of their fate, but certain that they were done for. But they were not all fascist prisoners; there were just as many noncommunist anti-fascists as notorious supporters of the military revolt among them. If there was any difference in the way these prisoners were treated, it was the fascists who received better treatment, as they were protected and pampered as long as they could buy better treatment and even their freedom.

These police procedures were defended by those who applied them. We publicly protested that this kind of behavior would only lead to victory for Franco, since we were depriving ourselves of the help and support of the people. Nor were we mistaken. If anything specific was known about these methods, it was thanks to our efforts. The other parties and organizations, although horrified, remained silent, because, they said, the war required them to remain silent. We understood that the war called for just the opposite: the end of these horrors that were inspired and organized by the Russian communists and the immediate punishment of those who had furthered them, from government positions or as mere tools, and dishonored our war and our revolution.

It was no legitimate excuse that the situation was even more horrible in Franco’s zone; the descriptions that have reached us[29] are truly devastating; but the use of the same procedures under the flag of the Republic fills us with shame, even though we have not ourselves committed such crimes and even though we are not even guilty of the crime of remaining silent about them.

The greater part of the navy remained under the control of the Republic, but certainly not due to anything that government did, but rather due to the efforts of the sailors. Each ship had a small clandestine group, which was in contact with the groups on the other ships, forming a Central Council with its headquarters on the cruiser, “Libertad”.

These core groups were composed of between five and ten petty officers and sailors, socialists and anarchists, and above all, each man was in contact with his respective national organization.

Already on July 12 these clandestine groups foresaw that the military revolt was likely to take place on July 20. This information triggered a meeting of the groups on July 13 in El Ferrol, attended by representatives from the “Libertad”, the “Cervantes”, the “Cervera”, the “España”, the “Velasco”, the Arsenal and the naval colleges. The resolutions of the meeting were communicated to the “Jaime I”, which was at Santander, and to the fleet of destroyers at Cartagena.

The revolt broke out on July 17 in Morocco, and the Government of the Republic, without any information at all regarding the position of the navy, issued orders to two cruisers to set sail from El Ferrol towards the South. The ships were not lost because the sailors were aware of what was going to happen and seized control of the cruisers and arrested their pro-Franco officers, under orders they received by radio, always outside of Government channels, at the initiative of the radio operator, Balboa. With the units of the navy that were in El Ferrol, this base belonged to the anti-fascist cause, but with the departure of the two cruisers for the South, the crews of the “Cervera” and the “España” were left defenseless.

A company was mobilized and marched into the street from the Arsenal under the command of Major Manso; but El Ferrol was a strong fortress with 8 regiments in its garrison, and the “Cervera” and the “España” could not use their artillery because the former was in dry dock, and the latter did not have any ammunition. The “Canarias” and the “Baleares”, which were slated to be mothballed, were there as well. This great naval base fell into the hands of the rebels.

Somehow or other, the sailors saved a good part of the navy, and retained possession of a battleship, the “Jaime I”, three cruisers, 10 destroyers, 12 submarines (6 type B and six type C), the supply ships “Lobo”, “Tofino”, and “Artabro”, three torpedo boats, 4 coast guard cutters, etc. The rebel fleet possessed one battleship, 3 cruisers, a destroyer, 2 torpedo boats, and some German and Italian submarines.

At first we had the advantage of controlling the Strait of Gibraltar, due to the two cruisers that were sent to put down the revolt in Morocco, even though they lacked the necessary bases for their activities. Then, however, the Government ordered these cruisers that were guarding the Straits to head north, and the enemy took the Straits from its bases in Cadiz and Ceuta. When the navy was in the hands of the sailors and the loyal technicians, they asked the Minister of the Navy, Indalecio Prieto, to fortify Malaga as a base for naval operations in the Strait; their request was not granted, and they had to use Cartagena as a base.

We were therefore not in such an unfavorable position; we actually had an advantage over the enemy with regard to our navy. With this difference in our favor: we benefited from the salutary heroism and audacity of the new captains of the squadron, fervent revolutionaries, capable of any sacrifice.

The libertarian movement had the support of the majority of the sailors. Immediately, a crusade was launched against those who had saved the ships we possessed from the enemy. They were gradually removed from their commands and positions, and already by the middle of 1937 they were openly being expelled from their ships, leaving onboard almost exclusively communists and their sympathizers, although Prieto had a trusted Fleet Commissar on each vessel.

The Russians immediately set to work to take over the navy. The Minister of the Navy, who did not have a personal adviser, was actually ignored and the Russians operated in accordance with the plans for Moscow rule, and placed commanders of their choice on every ship and base.

After the first few months, we retained no initiative with respect to naval affairs, and we only experienced one setback after another, until we lost our majority in the navy. They spoke to us of indiscipline when the ships were in the hands of those who had saved them from Franco, but the whole history of our navy during the war was a constant series of arbitrary decisions and stupendous mistakes. We lost our best ships because of the disobedience of the Russians and their protégés (the case of the “Ciscar” at El Musel, as related by Prieto himself, the Minister of Defense), through the sabotage of fascist elements who had been exposed a thousand times and were nonetheless protected by the Russians and by the Government of the Republic (the case of the battleship, “Jaime I”), through the incompetence and cowardice of their commanders, and due to the absurd orders issued by the highest authorities of the Navy (the “J. L. Diez”).

Under the protection of the Russians—there were eight Russians whose activities were most notorious, one on the General Staff at the base in Cartagena, another in the Ministry of the Navy in Valencia, another in the squadron of destroyers, etc.—and of Prieto’s agents, the champions of “discipline”, there were even more elements that sympathized with the rebels in the fleet, at the port and the base at Cartagena, and in the naval high command, than there were in the army. In order for these elements to continue to operate on behalf of the enemy, however, it was necessary to almost totally erase the influence of the old Navy of July 19 on the ships, and it was even more important to undermine the authority of the noncommunist anti-fascist officers. On December 15, 1938, the General Staff of the Navy was composed totally of communists, except for the second-in-command, captain J. Sánchez, an excellent naval technician. Here is the breakdown of the composition of this General Staff, which followed the orders of the Russian known as “Nicolás”:

Chief of Staff: Pedro Prados, who was a lieutenant, promoted to colonel; Manuel Palma, office assistant, promoted to colonel; José Santana, office assistant, promoted to captain; Tomás Martín, office assistant, promoted to captain; López Rugero, office assistant, promoted to captain; Mariano Pérez, fireman, promoted to captain; Magallanes, artillery petty officer, promoted to captain; etc., etc.

As you can see, the argument originally directed against the sailors running the ships was a very weak argument, insofar as office assistants and firemen who had been promoted to colonels and captains were now in charge of the Naval High Command.

One naval officer, a libertarian anti-fascist, submitted the following report, dated September 5, 1938, on the situation onboard the ships of the navy:

The fleet has gone through the following phases:

During the first few months of the movement it fought effectively and with determination. The Cantabrian Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea were completely under its control. It was our misfortune that we did not have an organized and competent General Staff or a Minister who knew what he was doing.

The rebels’ small fleet was bottled up in the Cantabrian Sea, a circumstance that our enemies were later able to circumvent, due to the fact that, with the passage of time, they reinforced their fleet, and finally repaired the battleship, the “España”, which was later sunk, and the “Canarias”, and it was significantly strengthened by a cruiser that the Germans had rehabilitated in Cádiz, which used to be called the “Republic” (now it is the “Navarra”) and by three destroyers given to Franco’s forces by Italy, the “Sanjurjo”, the “Melilla” and the “Teruel”. These ships, with the destroyer, the “Velasco” and the cruiser, the “Almirante Cervera”, composed the rebel fleet, plus the submarines that Italy and Germany placed at their disposal.

In that first phase the fleet was not used rationally, and we therefore saw some ships operating in isolation in the Strait, and others in Africa, and others in the middle of the Mediterranean or in the Cantabrian Sea, as if they were seeking to cover every front on the sea, yet performing no positive functions at all, apart from retaliatory and surveillance operations, which were conducted without rhyme or reason. It occurred to us to ask: If, within the two first months of the movement, the battleship, the “Jaime I”, the cruisers, the “Cervantes”, the “Libertad”, and the “Méndez Núñez”, the ten destroyers that we had and the troop transport ships, had been used in earnest in one day against Mallorca, would that island now be in the hands of the rebels and the Italians? In less than twenty-four hours, Mallorca, which was defenseless, would have surrendered or else not one stone would have remained standing on another…. But let us not dwell on an analysis of past mistakes, since this would only expose the ineptitude of our political leaders.

The fleet was reorganized in Cartagena after almost one year of war; the command over the fleet was given to a certain Buiza, in alliance with several Russians and Bruno Alonso. They instituted a reign of terror against the ‘undisciplined’, but the fleet did not do much of anything. Its stagnation and its disorientation were much greater now than before any of these elements had so much as set foot on a deck of a ship, despite the fact that the fleet had been reinforced with four destroyers that had been under construction. The fleet was used to escort convoys from Russia or from North Africa, but was not used for any other purpose. Two factors played a part in this situation: the fear and incompetence of the naval commanders and the manifest incapacity of their Russian advisers. This stagnation continued until Buiza and the Russians were deprived of their commands in the fleet and escorted off the ships. The current commander of the fleet, Luis González Ubieta, issued the orders to engage in the battle of Cabo Palos, where the enemy lost the cruiser, the “Baleares”. Then the fleet returned to Cartagena, about six months ago, and has not seen action since then. What happened in Cartagena? We have oil, we have ammunition, we have torpedos, and we have crews. The enemy is there, weaker due to the loss of the ‘Baleares’. So, why don’t we engage the enemy fleet in battle? Why do we not pursue and destroy it? Not because it is in hiding. It is active every day. In the offensive to cut Spain in two in Levante at Vinaroz, our fleet did not leave Cartagena, while the enemy fleet operated with impunity. The day that Castellón was taken by enemy forces, our fleet was anchored in Cartagena and the fascist fleet was in full battle array.

Our land forces overran Motril and our fleet did not leave Cartagena to cooperate in the campaign. While the rebel fleet bombarded Rosas, Valencia and Barcelona, our fleet remained immobilized at its base. Was this the fault of the fleet? Or the fault of its onboard commanders? No. The fleet goes where it is ordered to go, even if this implies the ultimate sacrifice. The fault, then, does not lie with the fleet itself. Who gives the orders to the fleet? The Naval High Command in Barcelona. Who is the Chief of Staff of the Naval High Command? Pedro Prado Mendizábal, a communist, under the protection of the Russian embassy, and the most incompetent officer in the Navy. He was the captain of the “Méndez Núñez” for a brief period, and he turned it into a communist cell. He was in Russia as a member of a commission and in return for his loyalty to Stalin we saw him suddenly transformed into the Chief of Staff of the Naval High Command. It is not at all surprising that people like this do not know what to do with the fleet. They only use it to ship gold and silver from Cartagena to Barcelona.

The last mission of the fleet was to evacuate numerous staff officers of the navy, air force and army, when the Numantines of the Negrín Government were failing in their last attempt to continue their work of destruction in the zone of Levante and the Center, after having annihilated Catalonia.

There were numerous suggestions relating to how we could regain the initiative in naval warfare, to improve the fleet and to make it more effective. The Russians did the same thing in this branch of the military that they did in the Air Force and the Army: they performed very good work in political recruitment for their policy of party hegemony, but nothing at all with respect to successfully engaging the enemy.