The Crackdown on Women in the Guerrilla Orbit

How fascism and patriarchy did their worst by way of reprisals against the women supportive of the anti-Franco guerrillas [This is grim reading: KSL]

Hello again, readers. Here I am again and this time I have a very sour article to present to you. For some time now I have been dabbling in gender issues and their connection with the guerrilla campaign and people following this blog will be aware that I have produced a few articles on the subject. Whether related to the role of women in the anti-Franco guerrilla war, inside the resistance or in the escape lines, there was the entry about “women who took up arms” and I touched upon sexuality and the guerrilla campaign.

As I was saying, for some time I have been toying with ideas, not so much about female involvement in the guerrilla war as well as in support groups, but about the few options all those women had when disaster came knocking at their door. Men and women could see the escalating political violence and how a cruel civil war had been unleashed and they could see that war being lost by the Republic and they could all – men and women alike – see how that war was ending. At which point men and women from the losing side were faced with a serious issue, as they had supposedly picked the wrong side to fight on or to show sympathy for. They could see that the supposed winning side did not regard the war as being over, as the flat-out violence carried on, as did the jailings, the informer activity, the torture, the midnight or high noon ‘strolls’, the thievery, the rapes, the shootings … 

And so they faced a dilemma. What to do? Stay put and put up with everything they already knew about thanks to rumour (or the corpses that were turning up ever more frequently), no matter whether they had or had not been active in the fighting, or go to ground, or take to the hills, since not everybody lived near the border with France, which at least held out some hope of salvation. 

And then along came the repression, a brutal crackdown that came knocking at the doors of those on the losing side, even though the war was supposed to be over. And this is where my ramblings come into play.

The fact is that the menfolk had some choice in the matter. Or so I reckon. They had already chosen a side and whilst they were out trying to change history or make revolution, the women were better advised to stay at home, looking after the household and the family. The men could choose to stay at home, in the village and surrender to the wave of violence that was about to crash down on them, or they could leave. But the women had no such options. They had to stay at home, looking after the family and the elders and the sick and the younger boys and girls and the household which was, in most cases, impoverished. In the mindset of the time, not all that different from our own these days, the women had played no part in the war, so they had nothing to fear.

Did the husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, partners or comrades actually believe that, when they packed up their stuff, said their painful goodbyes and headed for the hills, cities or far-off countries? Did it really never occur to them that the blows were going to land on whoever was left at home? And if they thought like that, where does that leave us guys? What would we do today should the emboldened right win an absolute majority and decide to do a bit of ‘housekeeping’? What would I do with my father and him suffering from Alzheimers? That’s a hard one.

The women stayed. They stayed put and they paid the price. Paid the price for all of the menfolk who had left.

Today we shall be looking at all the nameless women who suffered the wrath of the victors just because they were poor, left-wing, and, of course, because they were women. Besides, they were not up in the sierras, armed and ready to trade blow for blow. They were at home, with lots of work needing done and less money than they might have liked and heaps of problems, responsible for several people and they had loads more courage than the fascist rabble making their lives impossible were expecting. Let us start with a horror movie and a gallery of monsters.

María Miralles Segarra suffered the same fate as many another woman, albeit that she was, all in all, lucky. Her husband, a member of the CNT, had taken to the hills in 1938 after the collapse of the Aragon front. They came looking for him but found only her, so she was initially arrested and then jailed. I said that she was lucky as her partner, once he found out, came down from the hills and turned himself in. He too had luck on his side; they did not murder him, but they did sentence him to 20 years for having fought on the wrong side. 

Let us look elsewhere now, to Asturias. There in Grado there was a chapter of the Falange helping the Civil Guard go after the men in the hills. The shit who was in charge of the Civil Guards took one guerrilla’s mother, father and two sisters as hostages to force the family to say where he was hiding out. As they said nothing, this shit lifted his rifle, perhaps to frighten them? One, two, three, four shots rang out. Four people dead, each with a bullet in the head. A man and three women, names unknown and now lifeless too. But remember, “life was better under Franco” …

Leontina Rubio González was also Asturian and the sister of guerrillas. Among her statements we find this: “They came for my mother and for me. They took us to Gijón with some other women from the area who had been arrested … Delmira, Maruja from La Mosquitera, Rosa from El Sogueto and Francisca, known to us as Pacha. They placed us in a horse corral. My mother they took somewhere else. They tied us up like animals. After a few days they moved us to the jail in El Coto and later to the prison in Oviedo. Needless to say, we were mistreated: beaten and kept hungry, not to mention jailed.”

As we rove around the country, the location might change but the stories are the same. This time we are in Granada and here is what Manuel García, a guerrilla liaison, had to say: “They grabbed a family member from every family with someone up in the sierra. In my home, you see, for a while an aunt of mine held the key, because my sister was up in the sierra, my mother was in prison on account of my brother, my sister was in prison because of her husband, who was also up in the sierra and they hauled me off to prison for delivering food to the boys up in the sierra.”

In the very same province, we will run into the anarchist guerrilla Juan Garrido Donaire aka Ollafría, but as he was hard to locate, we might do better to head for his home in Colomera; there might be someone there. His wife – Leonor Martín Pajares – was arrested and ferociously tortured before being tried and sentenced to 8 years in prison. And as if that was not enough, her daughter was insulted and humiliated and had to spend long hours in front of the barracks.

Needless to say, the women’s prisons were filled to overflowing during the years when the guerrillas were active. 

On now to Seville; the years may have passed but the repression persists. Carmen Caballo Granados was a courier for the Andalusian CNT’s Regional Committee and the daughter of a guerrilla. She was arrested with her mother on 23 August 1950. She was tried and sentenced to four years in prison in Seville. Caballo’s husband – Isabel Granados Sánchez – suffered the same fate. [This Isabel is male: KSL.]

Again Andalusia, but a different province this time. The nightmare now descends on Córdoba and off we go to the home of Francisco Milla, a guerrilla with the libertarian Los Jubiles band. Since they could not lay hands on him, the oh-so-courageous Civil Guards decided to kick his mother and sister to death. Yes indeedy, “anything for the fatherland”.

Since we dealing with Los Jubiles, let it be said that Rosario Rodríguez Muñoz aka ‘la Jubila’ was imprisoned time and again Her crime was that she had three brothers up in the sierra and her cell-mate, who was a member of the CNT and the Mujeres Libres, Emilia Salazar Coca, mother to some of the guerrillas belonging to the band, took a ferocious beating from the Civil Guard, as did the sister of guerrilla Manuel Jiménez, losing the unborn child that she was carrying after a beating. Julia Martínez Pérez, the partner of the guerrilla ‘Béjar’ did a 6-year prison stretch for loving him. In addition, all of these women, once released, had to report to the barracks in Bujalance daily. 

In the same province, Josefa Gómez, the wife of a renowned guerrilla, was arrested in February 1940 to get her to betray her husband. Since she refused and even though she was several months pregnant, she was given a tremendous beating and when she still refused to talk, she was subjected to a mock shooting. Real pro-lifers, those supporters of the regime.

Moving on to Jaén province, they did not mess about there either. On 7 July 1949, sisters María and Antonia Pantoja Carrillo were found by the Civil Guard in a cave, intending to supply food to guerrillas. No questions were asked. They were eliminated “on the spot”.

If we look at Catalonia we can find countless cases there too; take the Rubí district. María Antonia Teresa Martí lived there. Her partner was a member of the Catalan libertarian underground but his cover was blown and he was forced to move abroad. She stayed behind with their three young children. The Francoists were not happy that their intended prey had eluded them so they took it out on her. She was arrested, manhandled and repeatedly beaten and tortured, as well as having to serve four years in prison. As a result of the beatings she had to have a kidney removed. And what the female guerrilla “Chela” was told by her father is revealing: “If this goes badly for you, if you are ever injured, left badly wounded or whatever, kill yourself and do not let them take you alive. At any rate do not let them take you alive.” You can imagine how things were if a father was saying this to his daughter. Consuelo Rodríguez López (AKA ‘Chela’) started off as a runner and after her cover was blown she joined the León-Galicia Guerrilla Federation. She managed to get out to France. Which must be the only good news in this article. Luckily she was not the only one.

Elsewhere in León, in the village of Castrillo, we find Carmen. Whether she had someone up in the sierra I do not know, or was quite simply treated as if she had. The fact is that there were a few guerrillas billeted in one of the houses in her village and those Civil Guards, so manly and fearless when faced with unarmed people, sent Carmen ahead of them as a human shield, carrying her 9 month old daughter in her arms. They pushed her in front as they brought up the rear. And when the shooting started the little 9 month old girl was hit and died in her mother’s arms. As the Civil Guard Corps motto has it: “Honour is my watchword.”

Searching for the nameless, we come to a house in Santa Mariña in Lugo. It was one of the safe houses for the local guerrillas, but unfortunately, the Civil Guard stumbled upon it. When the Civil Guards arrived, an elderly woman came out, going about her business. She started coughing, that being the coded warning of danger. The three guerrillas inside the house darted outside, only to be wiped out. Shortly after that it was the old woman’s turn along with the two women with whom she shared the house. This was in late August 1944. 

Travelling north we go from bad to worse. Another instance of a well to-do little Spaniard of good family, God-fearing and a real family man and supporter of law and order – the notorious Bravo Montero. So far we have not brought sex into the repression, but plainly, with folk like these, powerful brothel-creepers, it had to happen sooner or later. As a taster, here is a little gem from Babas [ie drooling] Montero, sorry, Bravo Montero: 

“The women would offer themselves – playful, blushing, healthy, rotten and vindictive peasant women; one – poor little thing – threw herself under a train rather than be brought before me; another slashed the veins of her own hands in her cell in an attempt at suicide, having concealed a sharp blade in her brassiere – the only place not patted down – for use against herself or against me; another one injected herself with a serious disease and approached me, intent on passing it on to me as well. Great, sublime enemy women who sacrificed themselves for a revolutionary ideal rather than SING. In short, Spanish women. Not that I ever laid a hand on them. I remained chaste and went on my way, content with my Empire, my jails and my Law, and bending the knee to none but the God in Heaven.”

As to his remaining chaste, we would need to go ask Isabel García Suárez who threw herself from a train after having been raped and tortured by Montero and his henchmen in 1942. They twisted her breasts, burned her with cigarettes just because she had a family member up in the hills. Just to be sure, they had previously killed her father and mother. So much for these “well-bred Spaniards” and their concern for other people’s families. 

On now to León where the guerrillas gave the forces of repression so many headaches and where those unrivalled heroes went for the easy option when it came to striking back. Let us start with Carmen Jérez Rodríguez, the partner of one libertarian guerrilla. The Civil Guard arrested her in July 1946 and she was taken to Rua Petín where she was held for two months before spending another 9 months in custody in Ponferrada. She was tortured and repeatedly raped in both locations, over some months, until her corpse was finally discovered out by Montearenas, in a condition of well-advanced pregnancy.

We return to the counter-gangs operating in Asturias, which deserve a chapter to themselves. The Caudal counter-gang was commanded by Civil Guard sergeant Alfonso Padilla Ortega. He used to brag: … ‘of having killed 36 fugitives with his own hands and of having raped the prettiest women in Mieres.’ The scum from Vox would be delighted to run him as a candidate for any post. 

For cooperating with the runaways, Celso Álvarez Martínez’s mother was raped, whilst his sister was forced to mop up the blood spilt by those tortured in the barracks. The Falangist Captain Hilario Martínez Fernández, posted to Asturias, was a habitual rapist of the family members of those up in the sierra. Drunk most of the time and brandishing his pistol, he abused lots of women in the townland of Ibias throughout 1938.

Turning back to Galicia, we run smack dab into the death of Rosario Hernández Diéguez, although she had at least been able to go to ground. She came from Vigo and had attracted too much attention as a leading socialist. This was in the summer of 1936. The Falangists tracked her down after 40 days. She was tortured and repeatedly raped and she too sampled the Francoist custom of having her breasts cut off before they eventually murdered her. To top things off, they stuffed her into a skiff and anchored her corpse to one of the iron mooring posts on the nearby Cies islands. Her body was never recovered from the sea. She was 20 years old.

Emilia Cabaleira Amoedo, from Redondela, who was aiding the Galician guerrillas, as was her son Antonio, met her end at the age of 54. On 13 February 1937, her home was surrounded by Civil Guards and Falangists. In addition to Emilia and Antonio, there were four guerrillas inside. Only Fernando Castro made it out alive – wounded, but alive. The rest of the bodies were discovered three days later. Tortured and murdered. With, of course, the fascists’ macabre calling card: Emilia’s breasts had been cut off. Not content with that, they had cut off her son’s penis and testicles and stuffed them in his mother’s mouth.

It does not surprise me that they are reluctant to dig deep into our memories and see all the shit that is there. The families of all these folk still enjoy positions of privilege in this country and they should, at the least, face up to the shame of what their fathers and grandfathers did.

And since we dealing with the sexualization of the repression, there is this, which is unrelated to the guerrilla war, but is just an exposé of Falangism’s and the people in power’s “no holds barred” attitude: “Don Teodoro Inglott used to abuse some of us girls who worked in his home; we were all village girls, the daughters of poor families, offered a way out by the bosses like they always had done. But in the wake of the coup attempt on 18 July, things turned nastier. In a sort of a free-for-all, they even swapped the girls, many of whom were under age. Don Teo, as he was known to us, owned half of Tafira and was a close pal of Eufemiano, the tobacconist boss of the Falange who was master in Las Meleginas, La Angostura, La Calzada and the Lower and Upper Dragonal district. They were both rapists and they would both abuse all of the girls that fell into their hands, one of them on his estate and the other in his factories and torture centres. I was one of the ones taken by force by Don Teo and I had two children by him. That was his droit de seigneur and you could not marry anyone; all you could do was spend day after day in the clutches of this scumbag who stank of shit.  And you could not leave because either you or your relatives would pay for that with your lives. If they felt like it, they might accuse you of being a communist and dump your body in some pothole or drag your siblings away and put four bullets into the backs of their heads before dumping their bodies down some well. That is as much as I can tell you. I do not want to go into greater detail, but everything that I might say is filthy and ugly and I never knew a moment’s pleasure, just pain and humiliation. Even all these years later my skin crawls as if a spider or that criminal’s infection had gotten under my skin … “

From the testimony of Fefita Troya Robaina, who was a maid in several homes belonging to members of the Franco regime in the central area of Gran Canaria island and who lives in the San Roque district in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria.

To round up this topic and on the basis that fact is always stranger than fiction, the fascist scum never cease to surprise us and were capable of taking their sexual and patriarchal denigration right to the graveside. This was something of which I was completely unaware, but after a visit to the La Voragine bookshop in Santander, for a launch of my book on Manolo Huet, they made me a present of the “Atlas of Forcible Disappearance in Andalusia”, to which they had contributed. And in that atlas, to my surprise, I stumbled upon a section headed “Buried like a whore”. Because yes, those fans of family unity and religion in the schools came up with something brand new when it came to burying certain women who were “reds”: “We gave her a whore’s burial. With a dead male on top of her and another underneath. Penetrating her, or simulating that, in a sinister choreography.” The victim there was Antonia Regalado, raped and murdered by the followers of the patriotic crusade. Not that she was the only one. Having been systematically raped and then executed, it turns out that several women in Fregenal de la Sierra (Badajoz) were buried, naked, sandwiched between two men …

Alida González Arias aka la Penca, the partner of the legendary guerrilla from Leon, Manuel Girón, suffered a different sort of repression. Unlike the other women mentioned in this article, she did not have physical violence used against her by the Civil Guards; no, they ruined her life a different way. They pinned on her the blame for the murder of Manuel Girón, actually the handiwork of a Civil Guard infiltrator. She was pointed out as the traitor. Tried and given a light jail sentence, she ended up moving away to Switzerland, carrying the stigma of having caused the death of her partner. Not until many years later did the facts come to light. 

Right. As you might imagine, thousands more articles could be written without repeating a single name among the victims, although I am sure that the names of their killers would pop up again from time to time. Finally, more reading to be done next month and I can assure you that the outlook will be less bleak next time. 

El Salto, 22 June 2024 https://www.elsaltodiario.com/ni-cautivos-ni-desarmados/represion-mujeres-entorno-guerrillero

Image: Antonia and Consuelo Rodríguez López “Chelo“, liaisons and later guerillas. Source: Imanol

Translated by: Paul Sharkey.