Los Pataletes: the Story of a Libertarian Band Operating in the Malaga Area
The “supporters of fascism” would have us believe that we had it better under Franco. Well, let us put a bit of a counter-argument to that by telling them how their elders lived. The adventures and misadventures of Los Pataletes.
Back again, gang. Here we go with out article for September 2025 and, as announced in the previous one, our eyes have now to be turned towards the south. Anybody who follows this blog will know that for some time now, I have been focusing more on libertarian activities in France than within Spain. We have been tracking activities within the Resistance there as well as underground skullduggery after that.
Anyway, today we hark back to beginnings. Back to the guerrilla war against Franco and to a group with a libertarian flavour and an area where the anarchist resistance was outstanding in terms of its numbers, activity and persistence. Today we look back to Andalusia, but don’t go expecting me to talk about Moreno Capillas or his mariachis from Vox. Jumped up little lords will be mentioned, of course, as they were always a part of the problem, like the Civil Guards, but pride of place today goes to the Los Pataletes band. But let us get down to brass tacks.
Before we get into it, I would say that the band’s name was borrowed from the Castillo Vera brothers – Juan and, above all, Jose, who was in charge – and they were known as Pataletes. Both brothers came from the village of Alora in Malaga, as did other members of the group and several of the people who acted as their couriers.
The band operated from late 1944 into 1946-47, at which point its surviving members first joined El Rubio de Brecia’s band, before moving on to the Malaga-Granada Guerrilla Agrupacion. During their days as an autonomous band, their theatre of activities consisted mainly of the area between the towns of Alora, Ardales and Valle de Abdalajis, with their main bases in the Sierra del Hacho and the Sierra de Antequera.
The group members of whom we know were Jose and Juan Castillo Vera aka Pataletes, Jose Carrion Gallega aka Panzaburra, Gabriel Ortega Espinosa aka Rubio de las Mellizas, Fernando Martos Aldana and Antonio Aranda Guitica. There were another three members known to us only by the nick-names – Bosque, Monta and Romero; it looks as if they transferred in from the Los Tabarritos group.
Both Jose and Juan were country teachers, offering reading and writing lessons to neighbours of both sexes. Both had been to jail on various occasions prior to their being released in 1944. As there was no let-up in the persecution and the mistreatment targeting them, they began to meet up with the odd neighbour who was in the same position. And that, gang, was the beginning of the story of the Pataletes.
Between October and November 1944, before taking to the hills, they were to send out two anonymous letters aimed at raising funds. In one of these they demanded 25,000 pesetas from their neighbour Pedro Perez Rodriguez and in the other, they asked Antonio Lopez Porras for 16,000.
The group took to the hills in January 1945. For the most part, Jose was the group’s leader. It looks as if Jose Carrion Gallego aka Panzaburra was with them at that point.
In March 1945 they abducted Antonio Castillo Castillo from Arroyo de Colmenar. The gang was to receive the 50,000 peseta ransom demanded for his return.
Gabriel Ortega Espinosa, from Guarroman (Jaen), but living away from home in the Las Melizas district in Alora, was to leave his home and take to the hills on 23 April 1945 and joined the Los Pataletes band.
On 1 April, the Los Pataletes had paid a visit to Andres Bravo on his estate: he was a relation of the brothers Pataletes. He kept goats for their milk. By then the group numbered between 10 and 12 people, all of them with access to long arms; the Castillo Vera brothers carried double-barrelled shotguns.
That same month, the band kidnapped Jose Navarro Vila aka Paco el Grande. Aged just 14, he came back with two mules laden with sacks of flour and on nearing the Don Rodrigo farmstead he was accosted by a man. He was taken to where the rest of the group were and told that he was being abducted. One of the band’s runners brought a message to his father in Rancho Grande with a demand for a 150,000-pesetas ransom. The gang treated the boy well. The word came that everything had gone off well, the ransom was delivered, Jose Navarro was released and the band split up into small groups.
On 1 May 1945, the Castillo Vera brothers and Gabriel Ortega kidnapped the son of Juan Hidalgo from the La Ventilla estate, who was asked to pay a ransom of between 20,000 and 30,000 pesetas. In the end, a 20,000-peseta ransom was paid.
That same month, another two anonymous letters in Alora were chalked up to the Pataletes. 150,000 pesetas were demanded of Juan Espildora. As for the other letter, we know that it was sent to Pedro Vila Gamero, but not the sum of money demanded.
On 18 May 1945, on the estate known as El chopo de abajo, the Los Pataletes band demanded 150,000 pesetas from Jose Castro Navarro; in the end, all they got was 30,000 and a warning was issued that they would be back for the rest.
On 24 May, the Civil Guard turned up unexpectedly and this thwarted efforts to collect the rest of the swag that had not been handed over the week before. The farmhouse held 8 or 9 members of the band plus the estate owner’s family. Outside, the sentries posted warned of the approach of the Civil Guards. According to Civil Guard sources, the raiders left empty-handed. But the teams that set off after them also got nowhere.
On 8 July, somebody blabbed. Two guerrillas were hiding out on the Finca de Rando in Alhaurin el Grande. The estate owner was the first person to spot the Civil Guards and he tipped off his “guests”, telling them that they were surrounded. A further clash ensued leaving more lives lost. The two guerrillas perished in the clash. We do not even know the name of one of them, but the other was Juan Castillo Vera aka Patalete. Of the householder we know nothing. Was he killed? Jailed? Did he go missing?
On 10 July it was Jose Castillo that showed up that night at the home of a well-known Alora resident, to demand 5,000 pesetas of him. The neighbour handed over a little more than 3,000, which was all he had at home.
Between 18 and 19 July, the band, in conjunction with some other guerrilla groups (as a rule the band worked in concert with Mandamas’s and Rubio de Brecia’s people), tried to work out its plans for the future. The escalating repression and tracking of the bands prompted them to speculate about relocating to Gibraltar or France. While they were meeting up in the Sierra de la Fiscalia, the Civil Guard stumbled upon them. A huge deployment was orchestrated and the guerrillas were attacked. There was tough fighting for an hour before the guerrillas, seeing that they were getting the worst of it, decided to withdraw. They broke through the cordon in small groups, but behind them they left the body of the libertarian Fernando Marcos Aldana, slain inside a cave by Civil Guard gunfire.
In the wake of the deadly clash in the Sierra de la Fiscalia, one of the groups – the one that included Panzaburra, el Rubio de las Mellizas, el Bilbaino, Riverita and three others – managed to make it out to the Alfarnate area where they ran into another clash on 1 August. This time a Civil Guard corporal was killed and a guerrilla was wounded. The group split up again in order to slip away more easily.
On 4 August they were found again, gunfire erupted and they were forced to take cover inside a cave near Colmenar. Rafael Mallabia-Barrena Oyarzabal aka el Bilbaino was gunned down before he could get there. There was some tough fighting that lasted for about two hours. The outcome was terrifying. A corporal from the Regulares was killed and a trooper wounded. On the guerrilla side, not only was el Bilbaino killed but two of the comrades he had with him committed suicide inside the cave. According to the historian Eusebio Rodriguez, they were Gabriel Ortega Espinosa and Jose Carrion Gallego, both of them from the Los Pataletes group.
By July 1946, the Los Pataletes group was holed up in a cave in the Sierra del Torcal. In the middle of the month, they tried to abduct the son of Chocolate in Los Lagares, but the lad escaped in the end.
In late August 1946, it looks as of the remnants of the Los Pataletes band swapped over to el Rubio de Brecia’s band. That past July, the Civil Guard from Alora had rounded up several locals because of their supposed links with those up in the hills. In response, el Rubio de Brecia’s band, together with Jose Patalete – about 10 men altogether – swooped down on the village one night. They were to scale the walls of the barracks, steal all the chickens and set them loose again a short time later. Those chickens, which, may we remember, live along military lines, lined up and all made for the door to the corral in the barracks. By the time the patrol got back at 6.00 a.m., it was to find lots of the locals laughing and whispering with all the hens standing guard at the door and the cockerel crowing inside. And to cap it all, the guerrillas had hung a placard around the cockerel’s neck that read: On my own since three o’clock this morning.
The tittle-tattle spread like wildfire because back then people relished the sight of the despised Civil Guard being humiliated so simply. And as if that was not laughable enough, the Civil Guard wrote the incident up as an “attack on the barracks premises”. No comment.
The band then split up again, with el Rubio de Brecia moving away to the Valle de Abdalajis, whilst the group that included Patalete headed for El Toracal de Antequera.
On 3 December on the La Granadilla estate in the Valle de Abdajalis, a hide-out for one of the afore-mentioned groups, there was a fierce clash resulting in the deaths of Francisco Brecia Burgos aka el Rubio de Brecia and Juan Calderon Ramos aka Zoilo, as well as of three Civil Guards. This was followed by a ferocious crackdown in the area, with many arrests made among the families helping the guerrillas. These received lengthy prison sentences, Antonia Romero Gonzalez was sentenced to death and – as in the case of Francisco Gordillo Alba aka Camison – the odd courier was targeted using the ley de fugas ploy [executed ‘whilst trying to escape’].
At what point Jose Castillo Vera joined the PCE-orchestrated Guerrilla Agrupacion, we do not know. From Jorge Marco’s research we know that the Communist Party (PCE), found its efforts to unify the large number of autonomous bands operating in Andalusia and, above all, to gain ascendancy over them very challenging. In spite of the Party’s propaganda efforts and the official academic historiography, only 9 out of the 43 groups identified by Marco in Eastern Andalusia warmed to the idea of surrendering their autonomy and joining the Agrupaciones. A further 13 raised objections or finished up agreeing in the face of threats and 21, which is to say, almost half of them, took a clear stand against that. The fact of the matter is that el Rubio de Brecia’s band was one of the 9 to come out in support of the idea. Indications are that contacts were established sometime between September and October 1945.
In case there is anyone puzzled or shocked at the idea of some groups having ended up by joining under threat, let us look at one example. El Costeno’s group was one of the first to be contacted, but displayed a reluctance to join. Afredo Cabello, one of the leaders sent in by the PCE to handle guerrilla-related matters spent two months with them up in the sierras just to observe how they operated and to try to win them over to the official line. He failed. To borrow directly from Jorge Marco’s thesis: “In which case, Via and Cabello concluded that ‘Costeno’ and his lieutenant were nudging the local armed group in the direction of banditry and indeed that its presence was an impediment to the peaceable absorption of the group into the Guerrilla Agrupacion, and thus that the only way out was to eliminate the both of them. This was an operation that had to be mounted discreetly; any indication that the PCE had a hand in the matter had to be avoided. Meddling by an outside force would not have gone down well with its membership, and so their deaths had to look like the results of an internal squabble.” They were executed by a member of their own group who took issue with the way in which they were leading it.
Some time after that, Cabello was arrested on 21 May 1946 and Ramon Via was gunned down in a fire-fight 4 days later, leaving the Agrupacion leaderless.
When Jose Castillo got involved in the abduction of Antonio Rodriguez Castro in late August 1948, the letter he send including the instructions to be followed carried the signature of the Guerrillas of Andalusia Agrupacion. As a result of the abduction, the Civil Guards arrested, interrogated and tortured a fair number of Jose’s family members. Now Jose, who was not one to stand on ceremony or to let the grass grow under his feet, cashed in on the fact that Captain Barrios did not sleep in the barracks overnight but in a private home and one night he removed some rooftiles and struts, made a small hole and squeezed himself through He remained hidden and when the captain and his wife went to bed, he emerged from his hiding-place, placed his pistol against the Civil Guard captain’s head and told him: “You either leave my family alone or I’ll put a bullet in your head. On more than one occasion I have spared your life by abiding by the gentlemen’s agreement between us but you have now trampled all over that. I have spotted you lots of times in position in the hills with your men and you never even knew about it. I am perfectly well aware of where you have your look-out posts and I can kill you any time I choose.”
Between this incident and the next item of news regarding Jose Castillo, some time passed. In fact the Civil Guard gave it out that he had fled to Tangiers.
On 14 January 1950, Jose Castro Navarro received a letter demanding 50,000 pesetas; it has been sent and signed by none other than Patalete. The money was meant to fund his exit from the country and withdrawal from the life he had been leading. Naturally, Jose Castro opted instead to speak to the Civil Guard and alert the hounds, to see if they might finally catch the man they referred to as a bandit. Captain Barrios made his arrangements, but something went awry and there was no show by Jose Castillo.
Two days after that, Jose Castro received another letter, setting out the reasons for the confusion and another demand for 50,000 pesetas. Castro reported this once more and the Civil Guard laid their ambush. On 21 January the rain was coming down in buckets. The man riding the white mule left the cash in the appointed place and rode on. Shortly after which somebody showed up to collect the package. Despite the storm, the person who had shown up smelt a rat. He adjusted his burden and fled. At that very moment gunshots rang out and a hand grenade flew towards the point where just a moment earlier the person and the package had been. By the time the Civil Guards arrived on the scene, expecting to find a corpse, there was no one there; just an umbrella.
The person who had gone to pick up the second instalment was not Jose Castillo but a runner of his Antonio Aranda Arjona aka Guitica. Jose Castillo, the libertarian Sebastian Garcia Garcia aka Tabarrito (who was away in Zaragoza doing his military service) and Guitica had planed to make for France, but needed some money for their safe escape. Whilst Patalete and Tabarrito, in military clothing smuggled out of the barracks by the latter, headed for San Sebastian, Guitica scuttled away as if his life depended on it. He was injured and his injuries were serious enough to preclude his heading into the village for treatment. Antonio Aranda’s gunshot wound meant that no one was prepared to break the law and treat him and so he decided to make for Madrid on 26 January. The Civil Guard were on his tail and closing in on him and in the end they managed to trace him to the train bound for the capital. He was to be arrested as he stepped down in the Atocha station. He was questioned and beaten and found in possession of a piece of paper with the address where his comrades were lying low in the capital of Guipuzcoa. Antonio Aranda was to be fetched back to his village.
On 28 January, he was to be murdered by the Civil Guard using the usual ley de fugas ploy in the vicinity of El Quebradero near Alora. As was customary in cases of the ley de fugas, shortly after the patrol had left with Guitica in tow, some men ventured out from the village dragging a stretcher behind them.
Meanwhile, Patalete and Tabarrito were under arrest in San Sebastian. They had been hiding out in No 14, Calle Amara, in the home of one Taboada Puig. It is worth pointing out here that the PCE made no provision for escape lines for its guerrillas, (regarding them as deserters if they wanted to pack in the struggle, in which case it might well bump them off), whereas the CNT did. Bearing in mind how the Agrupacion Roberto was petering out by then, we can be more than sure that they relied upon old libertarian connections to get them out to France. After they were arrested they spent a night in the cells and the very nest day were taken away to Malaga. When they stopped for dinner between Malaga and Granada, Jose Castilla gave the table a mighty push, knocking the guards over and took off running. And the two Guards outside also failed to hit him with their gunfire. Sebastian Garcia was left behind, but Patalete had vanished without a trace (although we know that at that point he was lying low in the home of his partner Maria Orsi in Malaga city).
Not long after that the entire story came to its tragic finale, on 31 March. Jose Castillo made contact with Jaime Jimenez. The latter borrowed a car from his boss and they both headed for the farmstead of an old acquaintance, Jose Castro Navarro, whom they had robbed before back in 1945 and attempted to bribe prior to leaving for San Sebastian; they had it in mind again to ask him for the money to get them out of the country. As they neared the estate, a shotgun blast left Patalete dead. The Civil Guard’s story was the usual nonsense about bombs and burst of machine-gun fire, even though there was no trace of anything of the sort.
As it happens, no one ever mentioned Jaime Jimenez’s name again, not did they search for him. Draw your own conclusions.
El Salto, 29 September 2025 https://www.elsaltodiario.com/ni-cautivos-ni-desarmados/pataletes-historia-una-partida-libertaria-tierras-malaga
Image: Juan Castillo Vera, murdered by the Civil Guard [source: Imanol]
Translated by: Paul Sharkey.