History of a Guerilla Band: The three Jubiles brothers

The three Jubiles brothers took to the hills in late March 1939 and marauded through the hills around Villaviciosa, Almodóvar and Hornachuelos, before settling in the Montoro highlands.

The Bujalance district of Córdoba province, where the CNT predominated, happened by a freak to escape the army’s Rising on 18 July 1936. In Bujalance the Civil Guard confined itself to staying in barracks and never lifted a finger, in spite of pressures from local rightists doubtless afraid of the power of the anarcho-syndicalist labour organisation. In the end, on 25 July, the Civil Guard placed itself at the disposition of the Popular Front. The garrison was shipped out to Jaén or to Madrid, except for one sergeant and two Guards accused of having implemented the ley de fugas (shooting ‘escaping’ prisoners) in the Cañetejo ravine back in December 1933; these were executed in Cañetejo on 25 July.

From the very outset, a Popular Front was established: it was made up of nine members, three of them from the CNT: these were Francisco Garcia Cabello (aka El Niño del Aceite) who had been sentenced to death following the revolutionary events of December 1933, Bartolomé Parrodo Serrano and Ildefonso Coca Chocero (aka El Viejo).

Among the best known CNT militants in Bujalance, we might mention the brothers Francisco, Juan and Sebastián Rodríguez Muñoz, known collectively as Los Jubiles, organisers of the confederal militias and of the 38th Division’s 88th Mixed Brigade, of which Francisco was the commander and with which many of Córdoba’s anarchists served during the civil war. Another anarchist who saw to the co-ordination of the CNT militias from Castro and Bujalance was Alfonso Nieves Nuñez, who was of Argentinean extraction: then there were the brothers Manuel and Luis Ramón Haro Manzano: Germinal García (the son of El Niño del Aceite), Manuel Haro Aguilar, Tomás Martínez Fresco, Francisco Pozuelo Minaya, Antonio Suárez Moreno (Pañete) Cristobal Nieto Reyes, Pedro Buenosvinos Galiano, Manuel Borrego Belmonte, Antonio Alharilla Morales (Pavano), Antonio Cantanero Pérez (El Reondo), Antonio Jiménez Venzalà (El Joyito) and Antonio Cantanero Aragón (Peñalver).

Spared the upheaval of the battlefront for five months, Bujalance carried out yearned-for libertarian changes. […]

In addition to the Popular and Labour Front Committee which set up shop in the town hall with three CNT members, two socialists, one Communist and one Izquierda Republicana representative, a Defence Committee was established to oversee everything relating to weaponry and warfare and it comprised of three CNT members.

Likewise established were a Supplies Committee and an Agricultural Committee, each of them made up of CNT militants plus one Central Committee representative, likewise a CNT member. A so-called Labour Management Committee operated inside the (La Armonía) One Big Workers’ Union and its function was to supply labour to the farms and industries.

Solidaridad Obrera of 2 October 1936 carried an interview that Francisco Cabello El Niño del Aceite gave to the paper’s Bujalance reporter Antonio Vidal on 25 September 1936, detailing the libertarian achievements in the town.

In December 1936, Francoist forces launched a big push aimed at investing all the provincial towns that had remained in the hands of the Republic.

On 18 December, Bujalance came under heavy air raids from Francoist planes. All day long squadrons of three aircraft arrived to bomb Bujalance to pieces and this was repeated the following day, so it was determined that the population should be evacuated. By 20 December very few people were left in Bujalance. In the first air raid alone on 14 December, 100 people perished and 200 buildings were demolished.

Francoist forces attacked the town from the East and North to cut its communications and outflanking the existing fortifications located south and west of the town: the anarcho-syndicalist militias withdrew in the direction of Villa del Rio and Montor, as did the civilian evacuees. By 21 December, Francoist forces had complete control of Bujalance.

Without dwelling overmuch upon the civil war, let us just state that on 28 March 1939 the last remaining village in the north of Córdoba fell to the Francoists. Many fighters fled into the highlands above Córdoba.

These first fugitives absorbed escapers from the jails, deserters from the Disciplinary Labour Battalions, concentration camps and defectors from the Francoist ranks, runaway recruits and others fleeing from conscription.

The three Jubiles brothers took to the hills in late March 1939 and marauded through the hills above Villaviciosa, Almodóvar and Hornachuelos, and then settled in the Montoro highlands. Los Jubiles took to the sierra from Villanueva de Córdoba, where many troops had retreated to at that point and carried off a substantial armoury into the mountains, including mortars. The first engagement by the band of which we have knowledge came in the Montoro district on the road from Villa del Rio to Cardeña. Civil Guard Antonio Guerrero and trooper Gonzalo Vázquez perished in the skirmish.

On 8 July 1940, in a gunfight in Obejo, landlord Antonio Pedilla Olivares and Falangists Edmundo Cano Juárez, Pedro González Herruzo and Juan Herrera Herruzo were killed. On the guerrilla side, El Aceituno, anative of Marmolejo (Jaén) was wounded and died later of his injuries. His corpse was discovered on 21 July on a nearby farm, La Dehesa de la Abuela, in La Candelera.

On 26 September 1940, part of the Los Jubiles band sustained a further loss: in the Alcaracejos district they ran across, and as evening fell, engaged the Civil Guard and guerrilla Alfonso García Gavilán from Bujalance (a war-time commander) lost his life.

In 1941 guerrilla Francisco Parrado too was killed in the Montoro district as a result of information given and on 4 March 1941 Manuel Alcalá Rodríguez (a 54 year old collier) and Francisco Cobos Benitez (36) died on the Cañete bridge near Bujalance in an ambush laid by the Civil Guard undercover of the dark.

The presence of Foreign Legion troops and Regulares in the hunt for the guerrillas, a very common phenomenon in 1940, faded as the Civil Guard took over after 1941. Another ambush claimed the life of Eugenio (El Moreno) who had only recently joined the guerrillas after his work asa liaison had been discovered, and Francisco Cabello Milla (Paco Simón), brother-in-law to the Jubiles, wasarrested. He was taken to the prison in Jaén and shot there.

On dates unknown, Felipe García Flores, Manuel Martínez, Manuel Alcaraz and his two sons Antonio Vanzalá Soriano and Bartolomé El Chivito lost their lives. The Los Jubiles band was wiped out at dawn on 6 January 1944 in the Mojapié farmhouse in the Montoro district.

One survivor from the Los Jubiles band was JoséMoreno Salazar El Quincallero who was only 16 in 1940. He had initially been a courier for the band and later, when his cover was blown, joined the band proper on 16 December 1942.

About twenty fugitives served with Los Jubiles at one time or another, not to mention their connections with the bands of Perico El Manco, Adamuz and El Portugués from Marmoloejo. In addition to the three Jubiles brothers, the core of the band was made up of Tomás Martinez Luque, Antonio Castilla Bigotín, Manuel Jiménez El Gato, and the brothers Alcalá Cabanilla. In its last year it was joined by survivor José Moreno Salazar, Miguel Morales and Francisco Jiménez El Churro. Another survivor from the band was Cristobal Nieto.

From: Polémica (Barcelona), no. 70, January 2000. Translated by: Paul Sharkey.