Some of the Libertarian Guerrilla Bands Operating in the Cádiz-To-Málaga Area

Today we will be taking a look at the groups operating in the Serranía de Ronda, Sierra Blanca and Sierra Bermeja districts. An area much given to guerrilla operations and where the libertarian influence was strong.

Back again, gang, with another little snatch of libertarian, underground guerrilla information and all the stuff of interest to us. I was just about to embark on an article about dirty dealings within the Spanish Libertarian Movement (MLE) in France and then I reconsidered. I think I might have been a bit hasty as there is a lot that I have still to sift through and find additional info, before getting to grips with any of our “sacred cows” and giving my already battered ideology a further thrashing.

So, having to look elsewhere for a bit, my gaze fell upon one of the overlooked theatres of the libertarian epic.

For a start, I will own up to my own part in that overlooking. Even though several of the entries I have been writing for the Ni cautivos ni desarmadas blog are generalist, in that they talk about places and people from all parts, ever since the blog relocated from El Diagonal to El Salto, I have found, to my surprise, that I have devoted a mere four entries (out of upwards of 90 published) to the bands or groups that operated in Andalusia.

Whilst starting from an acknowledgment that the main areas where the anarchist resistance operated were Catalonia and Andalusia, or Andalusia and Catalonia, I have to recognize that I have spent much more time talking about the Catalonian maquis (or the maquis operating in Catalonia) than to those active within Andalusia. And not because of any dearth of information about the latter, because in recent years a lot of varied information has come to light about them.

So it is with eyes downcast, a feeling of shame and a rather more than belated apology that today we are going to follow the footsteps of one small part of the libertarian resistance in Andalusia. 

The first thing I need to do is to express my gratitude to José Antonio Jiménez Cubero, as his research will form the basis of what you are about to read. Nor must I forget José María Azuaga, Jorge Marco, Lucía Prieto or Romero Navas, the curators of the memory of the guerrilla war in the south.

Let me say that today we are going to get to grips with just a few of the very many small anarchist groups and promise readers that the blog will be carrying additional entries over the months ahead. So let us get to it!

The “Casares” Group

The first group up for discussion today is the “Casares” group. The man in charge of it was Germinal Mateos Berenguer aka Casares, but the group’s name derived, not just from his nickname but also from the fact that several of its members came from the village of Casares in the sierras above Málaga. Alongside Casares, we find Francisco Contreras Blanco aka Robles, Agustín Gavira Romero aka Razones, José Gil Gavira aka Tejerina, José Macías Muñoz aka Totoarre, Francisco Mateo Bernal aka Paco Bernal, Juan Ortiz Carrasco aka Calera, José Quirós Quirós aka Sastre, Juan Rojas Vargas aka Cachita, Juan Ruiz del Río aka Niño Bermejo, Bartolomé Sánchez Delgado aka Pacheco and Manuel Uceda Lucas aka Gordito. Not forgetting one guerrilla known to us only by his nickname El Vinagre de Casares. According to Jorge Marcos, the group grew to have as many as 16 members, most of them CNT members. They operated in the Sierra Bermeja and areas adjacent to the province of Cádiz and their main camp was in the Garganta del Arroyo del Medio in the Estepona (Málaga) municipal district. They also had another base in the Cerro del Gato, up in the Sierra de Utrera.

The band was up and running from 1937 to 1941. Unfortunately, we only know about its brushes with the Civil Guard rather than any operations they mounted during their period of activity. On 10 April 1940, Francisco Mateo Bernal was killed in a skirmish with the Civil Guard in San Pablo de Buceite. Agustín Gavira was killed on El Cerro del Gato after a clash on 24 March 1941. On that same date, Juan Ortiz Carrasco was arrested on El Cerro Majada Vieja. We know that on 8 June the same year they raided a farmhouse, as Germinal Mateosa was shot in the face and was picked up the following day on El Cerro Majada Vieja. In late 1941 some of the group turned themselves in to the Civil Guard, whilst the remainder joined the “Los Morenos de Cortes” band.

The “el Dios de Istán” Group

This band was led by the Málaga libertarian Manuel Granados Domínguez aka el Dios. With him in the mountains were Antonio Escamilla Martín, Joaquín Gil Fernández aka Palmero, Francisco Guerrero Tineo aka Guerrillero, Juan Macías Ortega aka Hornero, Antonio Merchán Martín, Juan Montes López and Agustín Vidales Morales. Palmero and Guerrillero at least were of an anarchist persuasion; as to the rest, we do not know. 

As a rule, the group operated in the Sierra Blanca, from 1937 to 1944. They were accused of, among other things, a raid on José Merchán’s mill in 1940 and also of having had something to do with the reprisals enforced by the men in the sierras, following the murder of the Istán socialist guerrilla, Antonio Muñoz Osorio on 8 February 1941. A few days later, a guerrilla group ambushed a couple of Civil Guards in La Loma de Retamar, leaving Civil Guard Antonio Prieto Gallego dead and Civil Guard Antonio Gómez Sánchez badly wounded. On 19 March, 5 armed men raided José Beltrán’s café in the centre of Istán in broad daylight, locking up all present and making off with all they could find. Towards the end of the month, three men from the band gave themselves up to the civil Guard who had for some time been carrying out a campaign to encourage voluntary surrenders, promising lenient sentencing. Those who came down from the hills were Hornero, Antonio Merchán and Agustín Vidales. Also that March, guerrillas kidnapped the son of the businessman who owned the timber factory in Istán; he was then freed after payment of a 6,000-peseta ransom. In June 1943, the pharmacist Juan Lavigne received a message demanding 25,000 pesetas. He coughed up 17,000. The odd thing was that the cash was discovered by some kids out bird-hunting and not by the men from the hills. In April 1944, the Dios band abducted Pedro Morales Ortiz and this time the ransom was 15,000 old pesetas. It also looks like it had a hand in the abduction of Juan Villarrubla Fernández on 29 June 1944. The day after that, both Palmero and Dios were surprised by the Civil Guard out by the Puerto Rico mine and, after a fierce gun-battle, Palmero was killed and Dios badly wounded, dying a few days later.

The Caracoles band

This band was led by the Los Barrios (Cádiz) libertarian Juan Toledo Martínez aka Caracoles. His partners in its ups and downs were José Gil Gavira aka Tejerina (who had previously been with the Casares band and who later moved on to the Los Morenos de Cortes band before ending up with the Caracoles band), Juan González Agüera aka Bizco Agüera and José Guerra Galván aka Guerra, Juan Martos aka Melenas (who had also been with Los Morenos de Cortes), plus Andrés Partal Navarro aka Churrete, Enrique Torres González aka Valenciano and Luis aka El de La Linea. Bear in mind that the Los Morenos de Cortes was another essentially libertarian group.

The Caracoles band was to operate between 1943 and 1945, at which point its members decided to join the National Council of Antifascist Guerrilllas, Southern Sector (JNGASS). As a rule they operated in the Serranía de Ronda and its environs. In 1944, Moorish troops claimed the life of El de La Linea after a clash in the Genalguacil area. In early 1945 Andrés Partal Navarro was the person killed following a further shoot-out with the Civil Guard in the Ronda area.

A strange comment regarding Caracoles has been left to us by the man who would later become a comrade of Juan Toledo Martínez – the guerrilla known as Currito: it affords us a glimpse of what life was like in the sierras: “We were camped out in a location that was overrun with mice and rats which swooped hungrily on breadcrumbs or bits of food that had fallen in the ground. Caracoles woke up one morning and when he lifted a hand to his ear he found that the rats had been nibbling at it and the poor fellow, fast asleep, had not even been aware of it! … It was the laughter and teasing from his comrades that had woken him up.”

As I remarked earlier, the surviving members of the band joined the guerrilla agrupaciones set up in the Cádiz-Málaga area, intially the JNGASS and later the Fermín Galán Agrupación. 

Which is as far as we can go in this look at some of the Andalusian libertarian bands. I hope to write another entry about them before too long. 

Best wishes go out to the folks who spend a bit of time reading these lines.

SOURCES: 

La guerrilla antifranquista en Andalucía. Censo y relación de guerrilleros – J. A. Jiménez Cubero
Los últimos de Sierra Blanca – Lucía Prieto Borrego
Resistencia armada en la posguerra. Andalucía oriental 1939-1952 – Jorge Marco Carretero
Plus https://paisajesdelaguerrilla.blogspot.com/2010/03/currito-el-guerrillero-2.html 

Image: The town of Casares, birthplace of the guerrilla group of the same name. [Source: Imanol]

Translated by: - Imanol.