The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

In the central zone during the war the fugitives grouped themselves in the mountains of Toledo under a former socialist mayor, Jesús Gómez Recio, and the communist José Manzanero, who had also escaped from prison, in his case on the day he was due to be executed after terrible tortures. From 1941, after many of the groups had been broken, the Civil Guard became the principal force engaged in anti-guerrilla operations. The guerrillas, having to survive by stealing food, often alienated the local population and helped the Franquist regime in its attempts to brand them as common brigands. The police also sent agents, pretending to have escaped from prison, to infiltrate their groups.

After the liberation of France in 1944 the Spanish Communist Party prepared a double plan for its ‘reconquest’ of Spain–one was to invade across the Pyrenees, the other was to send small detachments of guerrillas into Spain to link up with other groups and organize a more co-ordinated resistance. The vain hope was that this would encourage the victorious Allies to take a more robust line against Franco’s regime. In September 1944 the communist leader Jesús Monzón gave the order to attack from the Valle de Arán, and from there advance on Lérida, with the idea of establishing a bridgehead in which a ‘government of national union’ could be set up to lead a mass rising across Spain. The operation was entrusted to the so-called 204th Division, which consisted of less than 4,000 men, under the command of Colonel Vicente López Tovar.

On 19 October, at six in the morning, they crossed the frontier while other diversionary attacks were carried out at different points along the Pyrenees. In this first stage the invading force managed to penetrate several dozen kilometres into Spain, occupying small villages, capturing a few Civil Guard posts and taking 300 prisoners. But following the usual republican mistake, they spent time laying siege to Viella, the main town of the Valle de Arán. Once again the nationalists reacted rapidly, sending in 40,000 Moroccan troops under Generals Yagüe, Garcia Valiño, Monasterio and Moscardó. López Tovar gave the order to withdraw back across the frontier on 28 October. The operation ended in a resounding defeat, with the loss of 200 killed and 800 taken prisoner. Another 200 managed to slip away into the interior of Spain.⁹ Similarly, the attempt to produce a rising, with so-called ‘corps’ and ‘guerrilla armies’, inside Spain failed dismally. But guerrilla activity still carried on. In Galicia it continued until 1950. In Asturias the movement was split by disagreements between socialists and communists. In Levante and upper Aragón the guerrilla groups were kept going by more small detachments crossing the French border to join them.

An attempt was made by Jesús Monzón in Madrid to set up a guerrilla army of the centre and operations started in urban areas, such as an attack on the Falangist headquarters in Cuatro Caminos. But the pitiless methods of the Civil Guard and the secret police took a heavy toll. In Catalonia the communist PSUC set up another ‘guerrilla army’, but this too was broken up in 1947, with 78 members tried before the largest court martial ever assembled in Spain. The most famous guerrillas in Catalonia, however, were anarchists such as Francisco Sabaté Llopart (‘El Quico’), Ramon Vila Capdevila (‘Caraquemada’), Luis Facerías and Marcelino Massana. Massana managed to flee to France in 1950. Facerías took refuge in Italy in 1952, but returned to Barcelona where he was killed by the police in August 1957.

‘Quico’ started his guerrilla activity in 1945, when on 20 October he managed to free three anarchist prisoners escorted by police. He spent periods in Spain, then rested in France before crossing the border again. In March 1949 he organized an attempted assassination of the brutal police commissioner Eduardo Quintela, but he attacked the wrong car and killed its occupants. On his return to France he was arrested by gendarmes and imprisoned until 1955. Later, towards the end of 1959, he returned to Spain, but in January 1960 the Civil Guard surrounded him and some companions in a farmhouse in the province of Gerona. The exchange of fire left a number wounded, including ‘Quico’ himself, yet he managed to break through the encirclement. He hijacked a train a few days later and escaped again, but his wound had become gangrenous. He sought medical help, but was recognized and was killed on 5 January. ‘Caraquemada’, his comrade, was surrounded on 6 August 1963 and shot by civil guards.¹⁰