With this, the first in our edition of anarchist pocketbooks, we are opening the way to a series of instruments for use by anarchist comrades and all those who have decided to make their desire for freedom become reality. The series will be as many-faceted as anarchism itself, offering a critique of the great institutions of oppression: religion, economics, authority, ideology, even in their most subtle forms; a look at the field of art and aesthetics; at moments in the past where freedom was fought for and won, trying to see where things went wrong and what we can still apply today; proposals of new methods of struggle to be discussed and experimented.

We are doing this as a contribution to the struggle that is always in course, not as something separate to be set aside and chewed upon while we wait for better times. The value of this contribution to the great task of revolution depends therefore not only upon our own efforts and constancy, but also on the comrades we reach: that you do not treat these pages as a commodity, but enter into a living dialogue where words and deeds confuse themselves in the great turmoil of destruction and creation that knows no bounds and which with reason and passion we call anarchy.

The present volume is therefore not a history book full of mummies to be taken out, dusted, then returned to the order of the past. On the contrary, a dynamic reading of the experiences of Sabaté and others could be a force in the moving of the somewhat still waters of the present.

Elephant Editions

Introduction

This book tells of the life, the action and the death of an anarchist guerilla.

Many things have happened since it was first published at the end of the sixties, and experience of armed struggle in Europe is no longer limited to that of the comrades who carried on the struggle against Francoist Spain. But that does not in the least detract from the theoretical and practical importance of Sabaté’s actions, and the value of this book in particular.

The discourse could be a long one, but let us try to shorten it so as not to complicate things.

It would seem that all anarchists should agree on certain points; not hold exactly the same opinion, but at least be without any major contradictions. The first such issue is that of attacking the class enemy (i.e. the exploiter), both in the macroscopic aspect of the State and in the microscopic one of the individuals responsible for exploitation. Yet when a comrade organises to pass from words to deed, those who come forward with doubts, perplexity, suspicion, uncertainty, are never lacking. There are always some anarchist comrades who have turned their anarchism into a kind of wind-shield to hide their own weakness and compromise. They obviously cannot approve of anyone who contributes to unmasking them with their actions, of who, by attacking the enemy rouses the still waters of sleep, often attracting the attention of the forces of repression.

Such criticism as, “The time isn’t right”, “These things are only done when the revolution is near”, “We must wait to be sure the masses are with us”, are constantly aimed at the comrade who intends to act now, right away.

As far as Sabaté’s actions are concerned, he, in practice, was left alone with only a few comrades who from time to time united with him individually to continue the struggle. But these actions had to take place inside Spain. When it came to wanting to do something outside to strike the fascist regime, there was a flood of disagreement. And also, later, when there was recourse to international collaboration (for example the kidnapping of monsignor Ussia), there were more than a few dissenters. The fact that the action was to be seen in the light of its exceptional objective of saving the lives of comrades who had been sentenced to death was also underlined.

The reader will realise that little or nothing has changed since the time when Sabaté carried out his struggle in complete isolation. Even in very recent times, when anarchists have organised to attack, the so-called ‘official’ movement has preferred to remain silent, that is, when it has not come out with declarations of doubt or outright condemnation.

Is this the ineluctable destiny of all organisations? We do not believe so. An organisation that defines itself as custodian of the anarchist movement’s ideological traditions must necessarily become conservative and regard all initiatives of attack — especially when not under its control — with preoccupation and suspicion. On the contrary, an organisation born as a structure of attack, capable of modifying itself according to the needs of the moment, that avoids bureaucratisation and has no intention of keeping any ‘memory’, can become the indispensable basis for revolutionary action. And, basically, it is towards this kind of organisation that Sabaté’s efforts went, as with any other anarchist revolutionary who intends to attack the class enemy.

It is precisely on either side of this separating line that two different models of intervention develop.

On the one hand, the counter-informative model as an end in itself, a structure eternally repeating itself, that survives in its own image, from time to time supplying more advanced opinions on what the forces of power decide to circulate.

On the other hand, a minimal structure organising in order to act, that keeps itself well documented on reality, but only in order to bring about projects of intervention and revolutionary actions, not to distribute it for consumerism. In this perspective everything takes on a different light. In the first place the availability of means. Whoever limits themselves to counter-information bases themselves on the good will of comrades and their subscriptions. Whoever has a precise project of attack must go further, expropriating the necessary finance from the capitalists. But then the level of engagement is also different, in the latter case complete and total.

Of course there are risks. Not so much of life, which for a revolutionary is always at stake in all his decisions, as of separation, isolation.

The imbecility of others, their bad faith in not wanting to understand, their tepidness: all these wound mortally, often more than the enemy’s bullets. Interested sympathy is also harmful, as is morbid curiosity.

And Sabaté was wounded by all these painful thorns in his side before being killed by the Guardia Civile.

But he never stopped, never drew back. He never let himself be overcome by doubt. And let it not be said (as it has been said) that things were easier for him because we all agree about combating fascism. That is all right for the hypocrites who disguise themselves as revolutionaries, certainly not for anarchists. Fascism is always before us, even when it wears the multi-coloured clothing of Mrs Thatcher’s relatively permissive welfare State.

Everyone understands that quite easily. Less easily do they decide to act. That is why a book of this kind is always useful: because reading it pushes one to action, arouses enthusiasm. Because it shows the thousand and one ways in which it is possible to strike the enemy, because it gives no space to resignation and doubt.

It is necessary to understand that we cannot wait for others — not even for other comrades — to give us the sign to act, the final indication. This must come from us. Each one of us, taken individually, must find his or her own comrades and constitute small affinity groups which are the essential element for giving life to the organisation of attack that we need. Actions will come easily, as a natural consequence of the decision to act together against the common enemy. Grand words, declarations to go down in history, the great organisations of the glorious past and vast programs for the future are all useless if the will of the individual comrade is lacking.

And in this perspective Sabaté was never alone. His struggle is still continuing.

Alfredo M. Bonanno

1. Sabaté

Manuel Sabaté belonged to the Guardia Urbana in the little town of Hospitalet de Llobregat , which, with its seventy thousand inhabitants, is part of the great sprawling complex of Barcelona. His wife, Madrona Llopart, self-denying, hard working, completely dedicated to the care of her house and family, was a typical Spanish housewife.

They had five children. Three of them play a part in our story: José, the eldest, born in 1910; Francisco, born on 30 March 1915; Manuel, born in 1927. The fourth Juan, and a sister, Maria, never took part in the brothers’ activities. Francisco, better known by the Catalan diminutive of his name Sisco, Sisquet or Quico, was self-confident and showed strength of character even as a boy.

The parents, completely ignorant of conditions in the reformatories of the day and badly advised, decided to send their indomitable boy to the Duran Home in Barcelona when he was only seven years old. This institution, controlled by friars, was really a penitentiary establishment for minors. The Duran Home became a nursery school for rebels. Another of its pupils was Mariano Rodriguez Vazquez, known by the diminutive of Marianet, who later became General Secretary during the Spanish Civil War of the National Confederation of Labour, the CNT , the most important of all trade unions in Spain.

During the Civil War the Duran Home was razed to the ground and the community of friars dissolved. After the war they re-re-formed and bought the farm Torre Vilana, in one of the most aristocratic suburbs of Barcelona, complete with modern fixtures. The discipline, however, remained on the familiar lines of the old building.

At the time El Quico was there its prison discipline, with its many humiliations and corporal punishment, touched off a chord in him, and for ever after he fought for justice and liberty. It did not take long for him to reach the end of his tether, and one day the boy climbed the wall of the yard, using a tree and improvised rope, and returned home. On his knees he begged his parents not to send him back to the Institution, saying that if they did he would immediately escape again — this time forever. He promised to be a ‘good’ boy if only they would not take him back and, between pleas and threats, it did not take long for him to get his own way.

Education in Spain at this time was of little concern to the government. National schools were scarce, and the private fee-paying schools were in the hands of monks and Marists, out of the reach of ordinary workers, more so those with large families like El Quico’s. Schoolteachers in Spain were not held in great social esteem. There was no humour in the popular phrase ‘to be as hungry as a school teacher’—it was not a profession one sought. For thousands of children, the only school was the street, and later, the workshop, where they went as apprentices at the age of ten or less. El Quico was no exception to the rule and his apprenticeship as a plumber was a normal one: the greater part of it consisting of cuffs and abuse, which he took badly.

At the first opportunity he joined the General Union of Hospitalet, affiliated to the CNT, and it was to this organisation that he remained faithful for the rest of his life—in spirit if not in discipline. He joined just before the Proclamation of the Republic in 1931. The ‘workers’ Republic was everything except what its name indicated. It inherited all the vices and corrupt institutions of the monarchy. It took over the Army, which was always ready to intervene in political life and which abhorred all democratic institutions. It made room for the absolute church, with its countless religious orders and their obscurantist mentality, sworn enemy of culture and progress. It tolerated feudalism on the land where landlords and aristocrats lorded it over the most frightful misery of half Spain. It maintained a sterile and corrupt bureaucracy.

The Proclamation of the Republic gave rise to riotous popular demonstrations of support. It was thought to be the advent of a new era; two days later, however, on 16 April, the Minister of the Interior, Miguel Maura, said to reporters: ‘I should like you to make it understood in your newspapers that I am not prepared to allow for one more hour any further demonstrations in the streets. The people are getting out of hand! Everything is degenerating rapidly into an unacceptable public scandal!’

Maura’s arrogant behaviour on this occasion cannot be put down to a simple case of nerves: throughout his career he showed symptoms of being a chronic pathological case. This Catholic and Republican gentleman demonstrated to the world his true character when, a few weeks later—on 23 July, he ordered the Army to destroy the Anarcho-Syndicalist meeting place in Seville, a bar called Casa dc Cornelio situated in La Macarena. Three artillery pieces fired twenty-two high ex plosive shells into the old bar, reducing it to ruins.

The new Republic took an immediate stand against the people who had for years demanded major changes in the economic and social life of Spain. It turned viciously against the very people who had brought it to life. The social agitation in Spain during the period of the Republic need not be described here in detail, but in order to give some idea of the revolutionary spirit of the people (later to become the first in Europe to rise against fascism) we may mention the insurrectionary movement of 18 January, 1932 in the mining area of Alto Llobregat y Cardoner in the Catalan Pyrenees. The Anarcho-Syndicalists in Figols and Sallent declared for libertarian communism, abolishing all private property and the circulation of money in their villages. However, within five days the revolutionary workers’ movement had been destroyed after a bitter struggle. The last bulwark of the revolution, Cardoner, fell on 22 January. The repression that followed throughout Catalonia was bitter. In the dark dawn of 11 February the ship Buenos Aires sailed for Bata in Spanish Guinea from Barcelona with 104 confederal militants aboard, among them Buenaventura Durruti Dumanger and Francisco Ascaso Abadia. Meanwhile, throughout the northern provinces the Army and the Police applied the ley de fuga, filling the cemeteries and prisons with their working-class victims.

Popular protests against the deportations and police violence were expressed by many strikes throughout Spain, and sometimes even by new insurrections, such as that which took place at Tarrasa on 14 February, where the people took to the streets and for some hours were in full control of the situation; taking over the Town Hall, arresting the Mayor and all the reactionary functionaries they came across. The red and black flag of the CNT-FAI flew proudly over the Town Hall. Troops were quickly sent from Barcelona, however, and soon managed to regain control of the town. Forty-two men were arrested and charged under military law. When they were brought to trial the prosecutor demanded forty-two sentences of death.

The peasants of Hospitalet also went on strike at this time in protest against the feudal conditions under which they were being forced to work. The landlords would not give way and the strike dragged on. With no money coming in the labourers and their families were literally starving. El Quico and another young Anarchist comrade decided to help in the defence of the peasants—in their own way. They robbed one of the most important of the local landlords, taking every peseta he had in his possession. The money collected was given to the strike committee to be distributed to the families most in need.

Reaction soon hit back. The news that General José Sanjurjo y Sacanell, Head of the Carabineros, and the ex-head of the Guardia Civil was preparing a military uprising was common knowledge. The Sanjurjo conspiracy exploded on 10 August, 1932 in Madrid and Seville, but two months previously, on 9 June, in a question to the Cortes about the situation in Seville, Deputy Miguel García Bravo Ferrer read out a leaflet which had been circulating in the Andalusian capital and was signed by the Committee of Revolutionary Workers and Soldiers:

The Guardia Civil under the criminal Sanjurjo is preparing to establish in Spain a murderous dictatorship. Citizens, prepare yourselves for the hour of struggle has arrived. Soldiers, citizens and workers — together we shall fight against Sanjurjo and the Guardia Civil. Grasp the gun which you have in your hand and fulfil your obligations. People: Viva la anarquia!

In Madrid, however, the rising was successful only in gaining control of the Ministries of War and Communication.

Castilblanco was a village of four thousand inhabitants in the province of Badajoz. On 1 January, I932 five hundred striking peasants held a demonstration there, which was broken up by the Guardia Civil with volleys of rifie-fire. Enraged, the villagers attacked the defenders of the absentee landlords and at the end of the day the tally was four guards and one peasant killed, with a number of demonstrators badly wounded. The villagers charged with the deaths of the Guardia Civil were sentenced to death, but public protest was so great that the authorities were forced to commute their sentences, and they were eventually granted an amnesty.

In Arnedo (Logroño) on 5 January the Guardia Civil once again attacked a demonstration with rifie-fire. Women and children were present on the demonstration, and the result was a veritable slaughter. Six people died—among them four women—and thirty-two people were wounded. The indignation throughout Spain was unanimous, and this was the prime cause of Sanjurjo’s dismissal. The man who took his place, General Miguel Cabanellas, was another equally perfidious figure in the history of Spain.

In Seville, the Anarcho-Syndicalists declared a General Strike, and stormed the barracks. Thus, ironically, they saved the Republic that had so cruelly persecuted them. It was in this period of permanent social unrest that Sabaté formed, along with other young men, one of the first action groups—‘Los Novatos’. The eldest of the group was José, El Quico’s brother, who was then twenty-two years of age. Los Novatos was affiliated to the local Federation of the Iberian Anarchist Federation. The group went into major action almost immediately. On 8 January 1933, there erupted a new revolutionary movement inspired by the FAI to protest against the systematic and tenacious political persecution of the workers by the government, led by Manuel Azaña y Diaz, an adept and capable persecutor. In Zaragoza and Barcelona numerous arrests were made before there was any hint of revolution. However, the protest movement erupted in many places. In Ribarroja and other villages of the Levante, libertarian communism was declared and other attempts followed in Andalusia.

In Casas Viejas, in the Cadiz area, the Republic acted with a savagery rarely equalled in its history. A seventy-year-old peasant, Francisco Cruz, better known as ‘Seisdedos’ (‘six fingers), refused to surrender to the Assault Guards. Together with his family and like-minded libertarians who desired social justice, he barricaded himself in a farmhouse. The Republican mercenaries bombarded the building and killed them all, women and children as well, in accordance with the orders of Prime Minister Azaña:

‘Do not spare the wounded, do not take prisoners. Shoot them down like dogs’

As a result of this order by the future President, of the twenty-four who fought, twenty-four were left dead.

In the summer of 1933, Sabaté’s group attended one of the many meetings organized by the FAI. It was a place well known to them, Fuente del Oso, on a mountain near Esplugas, in the district of San Feliu de Llobregat, and it was there that they met to practise arms-drill and the handling of explosives. While the meeting was in full swing the sentries at the access to the site warned of the approach of two truckloads of Guardia Civil and Mozos de Escuadra—the Catalan militia, organised by the Generalitat from among gamekeepers, to put down poachers and trespassers. The meeting broke up. Some escaped easily through the nearby pinewood, while others, to divide their forces, ran quickly through open country. Among the latter was El Quico. The chase went on for over half an hour with constant shooting, but happily the faistas suffered no losses or wounds. It was the baptism of fire for Los Novatos. Next day, the CNT central trade union daily Solidaridad Obrera published a front-page article under the title ‘Empty bag at the pine-wood’.

At about this time the elections were announced for 19 November 1933. The CNT urged total abstention in the voting. During the pre-electoral period the Confederation poured out an immense amount of propaganda and in the final period organised a mass meeting in the monumental Plaza de Toros in Barcelona, in which well-known militants of the CNT/FAI, such as Buenaventura Durruti, participated. The slogan of the anti-election campaign was ‘power to the people—not politicians’. The right wing won the election, and the CNT carried out its promise. On 8 December, 1933 insurrection broke out again in Barcelona, Zaragoza, Valencia, and Granada, however, the heat of the revolution was in the Aragón and Rioja regions where once again the red and black flag flew above the villages which had declared for libertarian communism. Los Novatos, who had made intense preparations to participate in the revolution, launched themselves into the streets, where they easily overcame the government force in Hospitalet, taking control of every official centre in the town, and collecting all the records and files they could lay their hands on (these latter provided exceptionally good fuel for the many bonfires organised during the festivities which followed). The insurrection was eventually put-down on the 14th, but only after many dead and wounded had thinned the ranks of the workers. Thousands of cenetistas went to prison. In Zaragoza, the whole of the National Committee of the CNT was arrested, as was the Revolutionary Committee, which included Buenaventura Durruti, Cipriano Mera Sanz and Isaac Puente Amestoy.

Solidaridad Obrera was banned, although it had suffered its first governmental suspension in 1933. Between then and 1934 (the day before the insurrection of the Generalitat) it was suspended three times, once for 104 days. Single editions were impounded thirty-four times.

The Sabaté brothers managed to escape the repression, but the prisons of Spain were filled with anarcho-syndicalist militants.

Nevertheless, the repression did not prevent the calling of many more bitter strikes, and an unequalled rise in the feeling of resistance. The most outstanding was the General Strike in Zaragoza. May Day was celebrated in the Aragón capital with a complete and total withdrawal of labour. The employers sacked all their workers. The Trade Unions then declared a General Strike to demand the reinstatement of the dismissed men, and, as neither side would give in, the city remained paralysed for thirty-six days. The strikers were reduced to complete misery. The editor of Solidaridad Obrera, Manuel Villar Mingo, organised a subscription to send the children of the strikers to Catalonia to alleviate their distress and help their parents win the battle. The subscription had an unprecedented success and within a few days the offices of ‘Soli’ had accumulated what was, for that period, a considerable sum of money. The people of Barcelona prepared to receive the first influx of children from Zaragoza, due to arrive at the headquarters of the confederal newspaper at six o’clock on a Sunday evening. A large number of people gathered outside the print shop to await their arrival. To prevent this act of solidarity the Generalitat stepped in. Without any previous warning they stopped the buses bringing the children and opened fire on the demonstrators—any of them women and children—killing one workman and wounding others. As a result of the public outcry Solidaridad Obrera was banned by government decree yet again. The buses were diverted and did not arrive in Barcelona until after a long delay. The children were then handed over to the workers’ families who had been waiting to receive them.

In reply to this act of provocation, the Catalan Regional Committee of the CNT decided as a protest to call a twenty-four-hour General Strike in the capital of the principality. The decision announcing the General Strike was to be made in a public manifesto. Francisco Sabaté and another youth were given the job of collecting the documents. They were to meet in the bar ‘La Tranquilidad’ in the centre of Barcelona, the Paralelo. When the two friends arrived at the prearranged spot, comrades there told them that the manifesto had to be collected from a bar in Montjuich. While they were waiting at this bar the police arrived, arresting everyone present. El Quico experienced for the first time a taste of prison. He spent a night in the cells of the commissariat of Pueblo Seco, and a day in the Palacio de Justicia where his case was heard, followed by two days in the Model Prison of Barcelona. The charge ‘clandestine meetings’ would not stick, and after seventy-two hours everyone was released.

On 6 October, 1934, insurrection broke out again and for fifteen victorious days all the forces of the Left in the Asturias joined under the common slogan, ‘unite, proletarian brothers!’ (UHP), but in Catalonia the rising was a disaster, as it was Nationalist in inspiration and the CNT-FAI made no attempt to intervene. The Los Novatos group dedicated itself to collecting the arms that had been dumped in the streets and sewers by the men of the Generalitat. It was these arms that later helped crush the fascist uprising in Catalonia in July 1936. El Quico received his conscription papers in 1935, but as a convinced anti-militarist he did not present himself, and was posted as a deserter. It was also about this time he carried out his first act of expropriation to help the funds of the Political Prisoners’ Aid Committee at the expense of the Bank of Gava, a village of 6,000 inhabitants in the county of San Feliu de Llobregat, just outside Barcelona. Towards the end of 1935 he met Leonor Castells Marti, the woman who was to be his companion throughout the years to come. Soon after he met her, after a bare six months of peaceful life, Spain exploded. It was 18 July 1936.

Leonor says in one of her letters:

I remember it as though it were yesterday. After many days of meetings, without sleeping and almost without any meals the comrades came to the little house we had built with love and hard work. Francisco, always active and courageous went from my side, one could almost say forever... The revolution had started — Francisco hugged me and I held him in my arms for a few moments and then he was gone.

2. The Civil War

On 18 July 1936, the fascist uprising broke out and the militants of the CNT-FAI immediately made their preparations for the confrontation. Francisco and José joined the local Defence Group and Revolutionary Committee of Hospitalet, which had anticipated the rising, and on their own initiative raided the houses of known fascists and sympathisers a few days before the pronunciamiento. That way they managed to collect arms and also cut off the possible roots of support for the uprising in the area. In a day they had the situation in Hospitalet well in hand, and were free to help their comrades in Barcelona on the I9th. The military rebellion was put down in Catalonia within a few days and the majority of Sabaté’s group, Los Novatos, left for the Aragón front on the 24th with a column led by Buenaventura Durruti, whose military adviser and second-in-command was Enrique Pérez Farras.

On 27 August José and Francisco also left for the Aragón Front with Los Aguiluchos, the first column organised by the CNT-FAI in conjunction with the Militia Committee. This column was organized by Juan Garcia Oliver and later, after the formation of the People’s Army, it helped to make up two Confederal divisions under Miguel García Vivancos and Gregorio Jover Cortes. José Sabaté was made a centurion (responsible for one hundred men), while El Quico was made responsible for twenty men. The brothers’ activities were neither more nor less outstanding than those of the thousands of others prepared to sacrifice their lives at the front rather than live under fascism. El Quico, anticipating the Cuban barbudos on the Sierra Maestra, grew his hair and beard long, saying he would not cut it until the peoples’ triumph was complete throughout the peninsula. He did not get home leave in Barcelona until December. There, when he did arrive finally, he caused a minor sensation in the Plaza de España when he parked his car. The Russians had come! Everyone assumed him to be a sovietico—he never laughed more than he did that time when Militiamen of all nationalities approached him trying out their recently acquired Russian phrases.

Here we can mention how it came about that the Francoist Press could label Francisco after his death, as a car thief. At that time the forces at the front, especially the confederal forces (those of the CNT-FAI) were always short of transport. It was the custom to pick out groups to go back to town to ‘requisition’ some of the huge quantity of vehicles used by the bureaucracy, and take them back to the front, where they were incorporated into the units. Sabaté was then attached to the 126th Brigade, 28th Division (Ascaso), and it was his job to carry out this mission. One day, together with some of his friends in the 4th Battalion then at the Huesca Front (Almunia), Sabaté ‘requisitioned’ a beautiful De Soto parked outside the Air Ministry and returned with it to the Brigade H.Q., where he was met with laughter and cheers by his comrades in arms. His friends pointed out that obviously such a magnificent machine would be spotted the moment it went into service, but El Quico had his own ideas on the subject and went ahead, ignoring the jokes. He stripped the rear of the car with an oxy-acetylene torch and welded to it the body of a disused service truck. A few coats of paint later and the beautiful De Soto was transformed into a serviceable van. Soon afterwards Sabaté was transferred to the 25th Division (ex-Ortíz Column) and, in his rank of armourer, took ‘his’ van with him.

In the middle of 1937 the Communist Party began its drive to seize control of the Army commands throughout Spain. The watchword of Moscow was ‘who controls the army dictates the political orientation of the country’. The attempt was resisted strongly by the overwhelming majority of Spaniards, but unfortunately for the Spanish working class, the Party had its way, having used every possible means to put this dictum into effect.

At that time many young men were leaving for the Soviet Union to train as pilots. El Quico too, wanted to become a pilot, as he realized that the Air Force would prove to be the most decisive military arm of the war.

The Air Force, however, was totally controlled by the Communist Party and to become a pilot it was necessary to be a member of the JSU (United Young Socialists), or at the very least have a special recommendation as a. persona grata. El Quico thought at one time of joining the JSU, if there was no other way; after all, as he said, ‘the habit does not make the monk’. However, he was unable to put this idea into practice owing to a cataclysmic series of events, which, as we shall see shortly, were to force him into anonymity for the rest of the war.

The ‘Nationalist’ campaign in the north ended with the conquest of Bilbao, Santander and Gijon. At that time the front stretched for over 1,800 kilometres—from the Pyrenees in the north, just east of Canfranc—right down to Motril on the outskirts of Granada on the Mediterranean coast. Along this front there were a number of important individual Nationalist strongholds, such as that in the area of Teruel.

On 15 December Republican forces attacked the capital of Lower Aragon, Teruel. The Chief of Staff for the central area, Lt-Colonel Vicente Rojo, prepared a force of approximately 100,000 men together with the necessary artillery, transport and aerial support for the offensive. Teruel finally surrendered to the Republican troops on 7 January, thus ending the offensive phase of the battle.

The Francoist counter-offensive developed rapidly and Sabaté, who was one of the Republican troops sent to reinforce the sector being held by the 116th, 117th and 118th Mixed Brigades of the XXth Army Group, originally destined as one of the reserve units based in the small village of Corbalan, near Teruel, was redirected into the front line in order to contain the sudden advance of the National Armies.

One of the many methods used by the Communist Party in its struggle for complete control of the Army was to try literally to annihilate the Confederal forces. The tactic employed was usually that of sending Anarcho-Syndicalist units into the most dangerous positions, almost always headlong ‘kamikaze’ attacks which were certain to result in the slaughter of the libertarian troops. The major advantage of these mass murders, from the point of view of the Communist Party in its power struggle against the numerically stronger Anarcho-Syndicalist trade unions, was its legality. During one of these ‘liquidation’ operations, a Confederal company led by Communist officers lost eighty per cent of its combat force. The men were so furious that the General Staff were forced to recall the Captain and the Company Commissar, a man by the name of Ariño, to demand an explanation.

However, Sabaté and three of his comrades were not content with official reprimands, and wanted to settle accounts properly. They prepared to waylay them—the ‘mandarins’, as Communist officials were derogatorily named by the troops—on their return from company headquarters. Commissar Ariño was first to return and, when he found his way blocked, he took out his gun prepared to force his way through. El Quico, always loath to shoot first, reacted quickly and shot him with one bullet, leaving him dying in the snow.

On their return to the battalion, the four friends realised that they might have been seen and seriously risked facing a firing squad, and so, Teruel already having been retaken by the Nationalists on 22 February, they decided to desert and set out for Barcelona. The war was as good as lost— the Republican defeat at Teruel, together with the enormous losses at the Battle of the Ebro some months later, had decided its course.

The four made their way to Barcelona, taking with them the De Soto. Two of Sabaté’s comrades were from Almudebar in the province of Huesca, one by the name of Matías and the other Alejandro—the third one’s name is unknown to us. In Barcelona El Quico presented himself to the Regional Committee of the CNT and informed them of the incident with Commissar Ariño and requested that he be sent to a different Confederal unit where he could remain in safety. This was accepted but could not be done immediately, and he had to wait for some time in the Catalan capital. While he was in Barcelona the Defence Committee of the Young Libertarians asked him to undertake some risky missions—one of which was to liberate a comrade belonging to the Control Patrols, who had been wounded and later arrested in a gun-fight with the forces of the Generalitat. The ‘Checa’ was waiting for him to recover sufficiently before submitting him to their ‘interrogation’. Sabaté, together with Jaime Pares Adán—known as El Abisinio because of his Afro-type hair—carried out the rescue operation with complete success.

Another task which Sabaté carried out successfully was organising the escape of four comrades arrested following the ‘events of May, I937’, while they were being transferred from Barcelona’s Model Prison to the Castle of Montjuich.

Another action of Sabaté at this time was an attentat against the locally hated fascist, Justo Oliveras of Hospitalet. When the fascists rose, Oliveras, a man without scruples, managed to save his life by various devious stratagems and by going into hiding at the most crucial moment. In Hospitalet, it should be pointed out in passing, very few people were shot. Oliveras remained in hiding for a long period during which the people expropriated his haulage business. Later, when all the young people of the village and surrounding area were at the front, and the others setting to work trying to build a free society, Oliveras sensed that the moment of danger had passed and returned once again to circulation. He set out to regain and double all that the revolution had taken from him. He did this quite openly and brazenly, exploiting the people by supplying the necessities of life at exorbitant prices, and which only he could say how he had acquired.

Oliveras paid no attention to the constant warnings he received advising him to stop this barefaced robbery of the people and, eventually, unable to stop him by any other means, El Quico paid him a visit. Sabaté called at Oliveras’ premises as he was closing his shop for the evening. Locking the door from the inside, Sabaté left a comrade outside to stand guard, having made up his mind that Oliveras would never again return to exploit the people. The death of the black marketeer was never attributed to Sabaté.

Another action in which Francisco took part had tragic consequences for one of the Los Novatos group, Francisco Aleu—better known as El Nano de Sans. One day Sabaté met a friend of his from Hospitalet, a father with a large family, who had just received his conscription papers. He was full of despair at the idea of abandoning his children. Sabaté, always anti-militarist and bitter about the revolutionary setbacks of the war and the course it had taken, and indignant at the temporising attitude taken by the Spanish Anarchist Movement before the ever-encroaching Communist hegemony imposed by Moscow, decided to help him avoid the call-up. He told him he would supply him with forged documents, which would allow him to remain in the rear with his family. A friend of El Quico who ran a small print shop undertook to print the false documents. Unfortunately, however, the police, suspecting the man, raided his workshop and caught him in the act of printing the forgeries. The printer was forced to confess the names of his customers and was obliged by the police to make a rendezvous with these people on some pretext. Suspecting nothing, two comrades—El Nano de Sans and F ontanet, both members of Los Novatos, attended the rendezvous to see what the trouble was. El Nano was shot down the moment he set his foot in the door by a burst of machine-gun fire, but Fontanet managed to escape with only a bullet in his leg. Unfortunately for Sabaté the police found his photograph in the pockets of the dead El Nano, as well as a list of addresses frequented by him. The police set out to arrest Sabaté and finally ran him to ground coming out of a cinema one evening. Although armed, he found himself surrounded by police and could put up no real defence. This time he found himself in the hands of the SIM (Servicio Información Militar), who had searched for him relentlessly in order to settle accounts for the death of Commissar Ariño.

Sabaté realised that this was no laughing matter as, only a few days previously, Alejandro, one of the friends who had deserted with him, had been identified in Barcelona and shot down without warning or hesitation. Arriving at the police station—the Sans Commissariat—the SIM agents, who knew all about Sabaté, decided to play a little game with him. In the interrogation room they had left one of their sub-machine guns on top of a table. They removed his handcuffs and made as if to leave the room but, as they had foreseen, El Quico fell for the bait and grabbed the weapon. As he did so, they rolled about on the floor with laughter. Foolishly, he realised that the gun was not loaded. They then proceeded to give him one of the worst beatings of his life.

When the Regional Committee of the CNT heard of Sabaté’s arrest they used all their influence to get him transferred to the Model Prison in Barcelona. They knew that in the cells of the ‘Checa’ he would be murdered without trial. However, as the result of Sabaté’s arrest and the finding of some personal letters in his possession, the whereabouts of Matías, the third of the deserters came to light. Matías was in hospital in Aguas de Ribas, in Gerona, as the result of a wound received at the front. Luckily, in the next bed to him there was another comrade in the same battalion, Alejandro T., who, on seeing the ‘Checa’ arrive to arrest Matías, immediately telephoned the Secretary of the Catalan Regional Committee of the Libertarian Youth Movement, Ramon Liarte Siu. The immediate reaction from this quarter forced the ‘Checa’ to return Matías to hospital. Matías, knowing of Sabaté’s arrest and the death of Alejandro, did not believe the doctor would release him and managed to escape from his guarded hospital bed, taking refuge in the Confederal Remiro Battalion, where he remained until the end of the war, then escaping to France.

Once in prison, Sabaté’s sole idea was to escape. There was a convenient cellar under his cell and whenever the opportunity presented itself he crawled through in an attempt to excavate a tunnel. This went on for weeks—slowly and patiently digging through the walls and foundations on his way to freedom. Just as he was on the point of completing his escape route the prison authorities barred up the entrance to the cellar, placing it out of his reach. Resignation was a sentiment beyond the understanding of El Quico—‘so much work for nothing?—never!’

As the cellar was directly below his cell he set himself the task of opening up a direct access to it. He succeeded and could now continue his clandestine digging. He waded through sewers—almost drowning in one of them—and broke his way through solid walls. At long last he thought his efforts had been rewarded. According to his calculations the only thing that stood between him and freedom was one wall, but when he finally broke through he found himself in an abandoned cistern—still inside the prison. Without wasting any time he searched for another exit, and hacking open a manhole cover, was confronted by a ray of light shining in his face. He intended to wait until night to effect his escape but that same day a patrol discovered his patient labour and El Quico was taken before the prison governor.

‘They warned me to be careful of you but I did not pay enough attention to them,’ said the governor. ‘What you have done is absolutely frightening and if I had not seen it with my own eyes I would have never believed it possible. You must surely see it is my job to make sure you don’t try again.’

Sabaté was transferred to the punishment prison of Vic. His failure in Barcelona did not make his chance of escape any easier, so he decided to change his tactics. El Quico was receiving plenty of assistance from the outside in the way of money and food. He thought that the most practical idea was to gain the confidence and friendship of his warders through their greed. He began to give large tips to the warders for the slightest service. One day he bribed them to allow him to embrace his wife. From then on her visits became more and more frequent until the warders got used to seeing her and did not bother to search her in the usual way. Finally a prison officer suggested that for a small consideration he could allow Sabaté to spend a few hours with his wife in an unoccupied cell. They agreed upon it, and the prison officer put a little bed in the cell as well. From then on he met his wife completely alone.

Seeing what an atmosphere of confidence he was building up, he suggested to Leonor that on her next visit she should bring with her a pistol and a hand-grenade. No sooner said than done. With the weapons in his possession he immediately began preparing an escape plan with three other comrades who were to go with him.

On the day planned for the escape, Sabaté called the orderly, a Moorish ex-boxer called Ali, and when he arrived the four escapees pounced on him. There was a short struggle and Ali was overpowered. The noise, however, brought a nearby prison officer who was also quickly silenced. They removed his pistol, and tied and gagged them both. They then locked up some of the ordinary prisoners who did not want to escape to avoid compromising them in the attempt. An Italian who worked in the prison office and who knew what documentation was required to leave the prison was one of those involved in the escape. They edged into the office and easily overpowered the two auxiliary warders and one prison officer who were sitting playing cards. As it happened it was the same prison officer who had arranged Sabaté’s meetings with his wife. In the office they picked up another two pistols. Once they had tied up the three they made their way to the governor’s office, where they found the governor, sitting talking to his French wife, who was pregnant at the time. Sabaté, gun in hand, explained that he had no intention of using violence but that he was going to leave jail, and nothing or no one would prevent him doing so. Everyone was locked up in a cellar below the office. However, the most difficult part remained: to get through the armed guards at the entrance to the prison. For that one needed a special pass from the governor. They found the necessary papers in the office and Sabaté took them to the governor.

‘We know we’re risking our lives, but that’s a chance we’ll have to take,’ he said. ‘Now sign this and don’t try to fool us because we won’t forget it if you do. Sign correctly and remember your life depends upon it.’

The governor signed. Everything went through without a hitch. One of the prisoners handed his paper to the officer on guard duty and no one stopped him. A few minutes later, Sabaté and the other two did the same. They were free!

The escape was not discovered until the evening meal was being given out late that afternoon. The Regional Committee of the CNT was in for a surprise! Sabaté was once again in Barcelona!

The Regional Committee sent the two young Spaniards who escaped with him to the 133rd Brigade of the 24th Division. (Later they deserted and were executed by the Communists before they could reach Barcelona.)

It was obviously necessary to take Sabaté out of circulation for a time. If he were discovered again no power on earth could save him from a firing squad. He was advised to go to a children’s colony on Masqueta, in the district of Igualada, which was run by the CNT under the care of a comrade named Batista Albesa, in whom they had complete faith. There he could remain for a time in complete security. Sabaté agreed, but to avoid any incidents on the way decided to do the forty miles or so by foot. He went with his brother-in-law, Castells Martí. Travelling by night the two comrades wandered into a gunpowder store without realizing it. There they slept for some hours. At daybreak, when they went to start their journey again, they realised they were in an extremely difficult situation. They noticed they were surrounded on all sides by barbed wire. Carefully they slipped out of the mousetrap into which they had foolishly walked, but, after going only a short distance, a Carabinero patrol ordered them to halt. They were dirty, unshaven and wore leather jackets with their haversacks on their backs. Obviously they could not help but look suspicious to the patrol.

The Carabineros decided to take the two to the nearby command post—not without a great deal of protest on their part. For El Quico the situation was more than critical. If he allowed himself to be taken to the command post it would mean identification and certain death—about that there was no doubt. What could he do? Sabaté tried to convince the guards to allow them to continue their journey and told them repeatedly they were on home leave and were returning to the villages but had lost their way in the dark. He protested so angrily to the Carabineros that one of them asked him for his papers.

‘Naturally,’ said Sabaté, ‘you should have asked us that first.

It was the question for which he had been waiting. Sabaté opened his jacket, brought out his pistol, and shot the four carabineros before they knew what was happening. Once more he was free—the dilemma of killing or being killed had been resolved, but this time at the expense of four men carrying out their duties. It seemed as if Sabaté was doomed to a life of trouble and violence. Even when he went out of his way to look for peace, trouble came looking for him. This time it was so great that even provisional refuge was out of the question. As they fied from the area Sabaté remembered, too late, that he had left behind his haversack. Inside were a number of books he had bought from the Libertarian Bookshop in Hospitalet before leaving on his journey. In one of the books was a receipt made out in his name. He might as well have sent a written confession to the Hijos de Negrin.

For greater security, the two separated, and Sabaté once more set out for Barcelona. Whenever danger threatened, Sabaté always put his faith in Barcelona. He left by train from a station near Martorell. This time, strange for one who usually took too many precautions, he was over-confident. He did not believe they would be waiting for him in the city so soon. Coolly, but alert, he got off at the Francia station. Walking along the platform, he saw a large number of police and security men examining their papers. He immediately dashed into one of the passenger coaches and out across the railway lines. However, he was spotted by one of the guards who gave immediate chase. He managed lo shake them off by leaping on and off trains and across the tracks, but outside the station he saw they were sending out patrols to cut off his access to the city. Due to the scarcity of petrol, horse-drawn carriages were in vogue in Barcelona at that time. His lucky star shone on him, for at that moment one of the carriages drove by with passengers inside. He jumped in beside the coachman as it passed. The driver, a pistol between his ribs, passed the cordon thrown round the area with no questions asked.

This time El Quico managed to join, without further mishaps, the 121st Brigade of the 26th Division (Durruti) where he was among comrades, and able to resume the struggle against fascism. In the last few days of the war he took part in the desperate resistance at Montsech—winning the Medal for Valour—where entire sections were killed on the parapets as the enemy gunfire took its toll. With his division he travelled the length of the River Segre towards the Sierra de Gadi, where they intended to prepare a last-ditch resistance. This idea, however, was rejected by the High Command and also by the Confederal committees, who were already making their way into exile in France.

On 10 February 1939 the forces of the 26th Division entered France through the Puigcerdá sector. They were the last organized units to leave Barcelona. Sabaté and his comrades of the Division were interned in the concentration camp of Vernet d’Ariège.

As we have seen El Quico was not the type of man to remain behind barbed wire for long, and at the first opportunity he made his escape. Strangely enough, however, this man who knew no fear nor accepted the authority of the State, did an unexpected thing. After wandering around in the Pyrenees, hungry and suffering from chest trouble, he returned voluntarily to the concentration camp—this time to the infirmary where he accepted his fate with resignation. France depressed him: ‘You talk and talk and no one understands what you’re saying, you hear them talk and you don’t know what they’re saying!’

3. The Second World War

When World War II was officially declared on 3 September 1939, one of the first consequences in France was the opening of the concentration camps in which the Republican Army languished after many months of inglorious battle against hunger, smallpox, lice and dysentery.

Thousands and thousands of Spaniards were incorporated in the production battle, generally in the factories involved in the war economy such as munitions, aviation, explosives, or in the associated activities such as the construction of dams and roads.

Some 50,000 ‘rojos’ (‘reds’, as they were referred to), were organized on military lines into labour battalions. Others, after being examined as though they were in a slave market, were enlisted into the Foreign Legion or the Pioneer Corps, to be used as shock troops on the Eastern Front. Cannon fodder was so abundant that the recruiting officers threw out anyone with a suspicious scar or even a bad tooth.

Sabaté left the camp in December 1939 and was sent to the building site of a gunpowder factory at Angoulême.

The war did not begin in earnest for the French until 10 May 1940. For more than eight months the two belligerent camps watched each other closely then, suddenly, everything happened at once. A hurricane of steel and fire swept over France. On 14 June German troops of the XVIIIth Army under Von Kuchler entered Paris, and, only thirty-six days after the offensive began on the Dutch frontier, swastikas flew over the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.

When the French Front disappeared, Sabaté attempted to escape, but realised the German Panzers could move faster than he. He decided to adapt himself as best he could to the existing situation.

At first the victors set up the illusory ‘free’ and ‘occupied’ zones. The latter ran the full length of the Atlantic coast down to the Spanish frontier, where the first German units arrived on 27 June.

Sabaté in the meantime took a job in a factory producing charcoal burners (for ersatz petrol), and in 1941 his first daughter, Paquita was born.

At about the same time the first Resistance groups, escaping the German labour camps, took to the mountains, and within a short time became known as the ‘Maquisards’, ‘Maquis’ or franc-tireurs. In the cities sabotage units were organised, but the Germans later wiped out most of these.

We do not know exactly what Sabaté’s activities consisted of during this particular period of clandestine struggle, but certainly he was directly involved with the Resistance movement from its inception.

On 10 December 1942 two warehouses, full of explosives, belonging to the Poudrérie Nationale d’Angoulême (National Gunpowder Factory), were destroyed in a daring act of sabotage. A number of Frenchmen were arrested on suspicion of having been involved in the explosions, and one of these men had in his possession a photograph of a group that included Sabaté. Needless to say, this was the same gunpowder factory in which Sabaté had worked on leaving the French concentration camp in 1939.

Once again, his tranquil interlude was over: Sabaté, accompanied by his wife and child, moved to Perpignan in 1943—not without difficulty as he had neither prospects of work awaiting him, nor papers. However, he was lucky enough to meet the Mayor of Prades, a good friend and sympathiser of the Spanish refugees, who got him the necessary papers.

This problem solved, Sabaté realized he could take up the struggle once again. Here was the Spanish border staring him in the face. He vowed to himself he would renew the interrupted fight. How better than by establishing himself in this area?

Together with his wife and daughter, El Quico moved into the little village of Comes, north of Prades, which had been deserted for some time—the only other occupants being a Spanish family. From the start Sabaté and his family were at loggerheads with their new neighbours and, after a short time in this unbearable atmosphere, Sabaté decided to move once again and rented a small house in Eus near Prades.

He bought some plumbing tools and set to work doing minor repairs and household jobs in the small cottages of the Pyrenean foothills. This way he got to know every inch of the surrounding countryside in the region of Vallespir and later, for a short time, joined a group of resistance guides escorting refugees from occupied France into Spain. This enabled him to gain an intimate knowledge of the Pyrenean mountains and passes which he was later to use with great frequency. The main route he used through the Pyrenees, and which he came to know like the back of his hand, was that through Cerdanya.

One day, while walking through the streets of Perpignan, he met an old friend from the 26th Division, nicknamed El Roset. This chance meeting proved to be a decisive one in Sabaté’s life, as it catalysed all his ideas, giving him a definite goal at which to aim. The spirit that had united these two comrades during the battle of Almudebar in November 1936 now united them in the clandestine struggle against the Francoist regime.

4. Hopes

The first Congress of Local Federations of the Spanish Libertarian Movement was held in Paris in May 1945. It was undoubtedly the most important working class gathering in the history of the Spanish emigration.

The two wings of the libertarian movement—those who were opposed to, and those who had supported, participation in the Republican Government during the war, appeared at last to have sunk their differences and agreed to dedicate all their activities to the struggle against Franco. In the months that followed a number of delegates were sent into the interior.

To escort the first delegation the National Committee nominated a skilled Aragonese guide, Antonio C.G., accompanied by José C. and Valero G. This delegation was made up of two comrades: Angel Marin Pastor (twenty-eight years) a member of the National Committee, and Lucio G. Francisco Sabaté, Emilio C., Jaime Pares Adán (El Abisinio) and El Roset acted as bodyguards for the delegation on their way to the capital. The job of the commission was to set up a communications group to organize closer contacts between the Organization in Spain and the exile movement, under the National Committee of the Interior, whose secretary, at that time, was Cesar Broto Villegas. They arrived safely in Barcelona at the beginning of October 1945. Sabaté’s main reason for going to Spain on this occasion was to establish bases for future guerrilla activities in the Interior.

Having arrived in Barcelona without incident Sabaté set about the task of establishing his own contacts in the city. The first meeting took place in the mountains of San Pedro Martír, just outside the municipal boundary of Esplugas. This meeting-place was known of old to the anarchist militants, having been used frequently for this purpose during the periods of Republican repression. Sabaté arrived at the rendezvous armed to the teeth, with a submachine-gun, pistol and two hand-grenades. He informed the comrades assembled there that he had been entrusted with the task of reorganising the areas of Alto and Bajo Llobregat, and also that he was preparing a number of actions for the near future. However, he continued, he did not want to compromise any of the comrades who were already on police files or under surveillance.

The local comrades, having heard what Sabaté had to say, gave him a run-down of the infrastructure of the organisation in the area: all co-ordination meetings consisted exclusively of a group of delegates and printed local clandestine editions of the confederal papers—CNT and Solidaridad Obrera. Sabaté was also told the names of comrades murdered in the area by the fascists and the names of those responsible for their deaths.

In order to carry out his plans, amongst which figured prominently ‘atentados justicieros’ (reprisals), the first thing Sabaté required was money to buy transport and to hide the necessary arms and explosives, organise operational bases and set up an efficient propaganda printing and distribution service.

Together with ‘the Abyssinian’ and one other comrade, therefore, he carried out a number of robberies in his hometown of Hospitalet. One of the first victims was Juan Panellas Torras, an extremely rich man. Another was Manuel Garriga Pugador, a well-to-do businessman who owned a large store in the Calle del Generalissimo Franco. After tying-up both Garriga and his wife, the three comrades took with them two typewriters, 30,000 pesetas and two sack loads of food. Before leaving the premises Sabaté left his victims a note that said:

We are not robbers, we are libertarian resistance fighters. What we have just taken will help in a small way to feed the orphaned and starving children of those anti-fascists who you and your kind have shot. We are people who have never and will never beg for what is ours. So long as we have the strength to do so we shall fight for the freedom of the Spanish working class.

As for you, Garriga, although you are a murderer and a thief, we have spared you, because we as libertarians appreciate the value of human life, something that you never have, nor are likely to, understand.

The next victim was one of the leading fascists of Hospitalet, a man by the name of Canary. Sabaté and the comrades broke into his house at four in the morning and, after tying-up Canary and his wife, made off with 25,000 pesetas, a sack of beans and a sack of potatoes. Before leaving he left a note similar in style to the one already mentioned.

Following these initial ‘expropriations’, the name of Sabaté became well known and respected among the people in the streets, factories and the clandestine meeting-places.

Apart from sympathy, these acts also gave the group an initial capital of over 90,000 pesetas. Among other things handed over to the organisation was one of the typewriters taken from Garriga’s house. This found its way into the hands of José G., a member of a recently-arrived delegation from France, which had been escorted across the Pyrenees by the veteran guerrilla fighter, Francisco Denis, better known to his friends as ‘El Catalá’.

The group took great care in establishing themselves and preparing their plans, for their immediate enemy was Commissar Eduardo Quintela Boveda who led a highly-organised, efficient and ruthless intelligence service, and was capable of the most devious machinations.

The efficiency of Sabaté’s organization did not take long to show results. One of its most outstanding early achievements was the freeing of a group of prisoners carried out in conjunction with the Defence Secretary of the CNT Relations Committee, who was, incidentally, an Italian named Antonio Pereira. The prisoners concerned were two comrades facing capital charges and who were about to be transferred to another prison together with a third man, a member of the Communist Party. With information obtained for them by another comrade, Victorio Gual Vidal which proved exact in every detail, the group prepared their plan. Sabaté, El Roset and El Abisinio, took charge of the operation.

The release operation took place on 20 October 1945. El Quico and El Roset approached the two Guardia Civil escorting the prisoners, and when they drew level with them, took out their guns and disarmed the surprised Guardia. As they held them covered, El Abisinio remained at the wheel of a car parked a few yards away with a sub-machine gun, to protect the rear. Everything seemed to be going off smoothly, without violence, when suddenly one of the guards being watched by El Roset drew his pistol and aimed at Sabaté. The latter hesitated for a moment—which could have cost him his life—but El Roset, quite calmly, fired at point-blank range and the guards fell, badly wounded. The other guard fled, abandoning his prisoners. The incident taught Sabaté a lesson: never bandy words with a policeman or Guardia Civil, without disarming him first. Prisoners and liberators ran towards the get-away car in which El Abisinio was waiting. The nearby Guardia Civil, hearing gunfire, came running and opened fire on the group. El Abisinio let off a few rounds from his sub-machine gun, which cooled the spirits of the guardians of public order. They turned and fled. The operation was a complete success, except that the third prisoner, the Communist, refused to follow his liberators and returned voluntarily to prison.

The police were not hard put to discover the identity of the robber in Hospitalet. The victims were well known to Sabaté and he to them. Perhaps this was why he chose them to be his first targets. He never operated anonymously. His normal behaviour from then on was to approach his victim or victims and say the three magic words, ‘Soy el Quico!’ (I am El Quico). It was sufficient to paralyse most people. Civilians and military alike offered no resistance.

From 30 October 1945 onwards the Barcelona police began a wholesale campaign of repression, arresting many militants, among them José G., the recently arrived delegate from France to whom Sabaté had presented the typewriter taken from Garriga’s house in Hospitalet. The custom was whenever a number of comrades were arrested each individual would admit responsibility for a part of the accused actions, thus reducing the total collective charge. José G., who confessed to ownership of the machine, could never have imagined what he was bringing upon himself. He was beaten-up unmercifully, but of course could give no explanation to the police concerning the origin of the typewriter, as he was completely ignorant of its history. Not that it would have done any good explaining matters to the police—so far as they were concerned, Sabaté, delegations and the organisation were one and the same thing.

It has often been argued that the activity of the armed urban guerrilla groups was counter-productive from a revolutionary standpoint as it invariably had disastrous consequences for the political side of the organisation dedicated to propaganda and industrial action. Such arguments have never been reasoned closely—what was undoubtedly disastrous was not the armed actions, but the deficient structure of the clandestine organisation. This is a theme outside the scope of the present book but some points should be made, as it is relevant to the struggle being fought to this day—and not only in Spain.

The Spanish Libertarian Movement never adopted a clear and concrete position in the struggle against Franco, and neither did it attempt to separate the activities of the political and guerrilla wings within its ranks. People took part in the planning of guerrilla actions who had not the remotest intention of participating in the operations themselves; the ‘legal’ political organisation (in France) controlled the formation of the armed groups—stubbornly ignoring the fact that within its ranks were to be found informers, charlatans and hypocrites of every shape and size; while the administration was in the hands of political bureaucrats—a lunacy of the highest order, even ignoring for the moment the obvious dangers such a situation could (and did) give rise to—as the ‘committee men’ had a predilection for inventing what they called ‘methods of action’ and ‘activities’ which led inevitably to inaction and inactivity.

These errors, briefly outlined above, cost the movement dear. They were paid for with the blood and lives of some of its most outstanding comrades. The members of the action groups argued continually but unsuccessfully, within the organisation hoping to rectify this sorry state of affairs and create an autonomous resistance organization through which the men and groups involved could claim responsibility for their actions and avoid, among other things, the effects of repression felt by those comrades involved in propaganda and industrial action. The MLE, however, never compromised itself in regard to the action groups—it had become a servant of legality in exile. Within the Spanish Libertarian Movement nothing was totally authorised and nothing totally condemned —the standing of the action groups within the organization was in a constant state of flux. For example, men who at any given moment belonged to the urban guerrilla groups could pass to occupy responsible positions within the organisation, and vice versa. This problem, perhaps the most important of all, was never faced openly, in spite of the disgraceful events which resulted with increasing frequency as the years passed—bringing with them demoralisation and confusion.

5. Confusion

Franco’s ‘National Liberation’ was carried out with an orgy of blood—a murderer’s fury that lasted many months. From Barcelona to Seville, from Corunna to Valencia and Madrid, the blood of the Spanish anti-fascists ran in the gutters. Night and day the execution squads worked full-time. One accusing finger was enough to send a man to his death. After this period of mass extermination there followed another, no less efficient and as arbitrary as the first, the Councils of War.

Probably the victors thought that in a ‘civilized’ country they should at least cover their crimes with a cloak of legality. It was, after all, the defence of Christianity they were celebrating. Where the mass outrages ceased they carried on with raids. Eighty or a hundred people were often dealt with in the one swoop. It did not matter if the accused knew each other or not—most had never seen each other in their lives before they set foot in the courtroom. The prosecutor read out only the most outstanding deeds of the different accused and the sentence was always passed immediately— death!

How many Spaniards were murdered in this way between 1939 and 1942? The exact figure will never be known, although it must run into hundreds of thousands. Then, tiring of so much bloodshed, the Falangists changed their tactics. They began to try persuasion. They went as far afield as France in search of likely material amongst the émigrés. By various methods, which included coercion, they strove to enlist militant workingmen into the so-called National Syndicalist ’ Centre (CNS). They even had the effrontery to approach such men of integrity as Juan Peiro Belis and José Villaverde who were both murdered when they refused to prostitute their principles by collaborating with the fascists. So it was not strange that they should attempt to do the same with men of less merit, and less dignity.

In this new phase the Franco police agents not only tried to incorporate militant syndicalists and those experienced in labour relations into the CNS; they also tried to force them to submit to the will of the authorities after giving them the impression that they would enjoy complete independence. This happened, for instance, with the founders of the so-called Labour Party, which drew its members from various sources including the CNT and the Syndicalist Party, founded by Angel Pestaña in April 1933.

Because of their record, their contacts and their knowledge of the medium in which they had been so active for many years, these men were a serious obstacle to the development of the revolutionary movement after the Republican defeat—the more so when they managed to gain control of the reins of the clandestine organization in Catalonia. Pretending to help comrades who found themselves in difficulty, they played a treacherous game that proved disastrous for the whole working-class movement. Their favours included the freeing of prisoners and the dismissal of pending cases. In this way they managed to convince some credulous people in the organisation that they were sincere and doing a worthwhile job when, in fact, they were the despicable instruments of the Police Headquarters. In particular one should mention Eliseo Melis Diaz and Antonio Seba Amoros, whose activities in this respect were particularly vile.

Melis was an ex-militant from the Textile and Fabric Syndicate in Barcelona who had been active in the Shop Stewards’ Committee between 1931 and 1935 and had often contributed articles to the confederal newspaper Solidaridad Obrera. He was intelligent and active but, though well known, he had never occupied any important position during the Civil War. His later activity permits us to suppose that even then, in the years prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, he was in contact with the Directorate General of Security (DGS). At the end of the war Melis remained in Barcelona and very soon began to appear in public with Quintela. Nevertheless, he was still able to convince some guerrilla comrades that he was working for the benefit of the CNT from inside the Police HQ. He even managed to become Secretary of a clandestine Regional Committee and, when he was voted out of this post, continued to intervene actively in the organization by claiming to be a member of a fictitious anarchist group.

His main function was to gain the confidence of comrades in order that the police could break up the clandestine organisation if ever they felt matters were getting out of hand. The Catalan Police should give eternal thanks to Melis—as a result of his work, the setting up of an efficient resistance movement was set back many years.

Quintela, who has only recently died, always preferred to see an embryonic organisation of the CNT where he could be completely informed of its activities and new members; above all, to know the intentions of the members. The one thing that worried the head of the Secret Political Police (Brigada Politico Social—equivalent to our Special Branch) was the formation of groups such as Sabaté’s, which did not come under any control.

‘The weekly union stamp doesn’t worry me in the slightest,’ he used to say.

Antonio Seba was another obnoxious character, though less so than Melis. His principal activity—though that was quite enough—was to act as Melis’s lieutenant, and he became at various times secretary of different Regional Committees in Catalonia. During the Civil War Seba was chief of the 153rd Mixed Brigade, or the ‘Land and Liberty’ Column, as it was known prior to militarisation. With men of the 25th Division he helped to take Belchite and also took part in the battle of Segre in August 1938.

Antonio Seba, suffering from a bullet wound, fled from Barcelona to Valencia in February 1949 following a clean-up operation led by the Los Maños Group under Wenceslao Jiménez Orive. The wound was not particularly serious, but it made him understand that his reign was at an end.

This confused situation made life extremely difficult—especially so for an underground movement. The credit for finally clearing matters up must go to the Libertarian Youth, who had particularly bitter experience of the subject. One of the first Regional Committees of the FIJL, Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth was brought down completely in March 1943 thanks to Melis, and one of its members by the name of Pallarols was shot on the 8th of the same month without any legal proceedings having been taken against him. Pallarols belonged to the Libertarian Youth of La Torrasa.

One thing that spurred on the young Catalans at this time was the organisation in France, in 1945, of the Libertarian Youth in exile, who held their first National Congress in Toulouse that April. Immediately following this congress, some of the finest elements in the Catalan Libertarian Youth Movement returned to Spain to renew the struggle, many being subsequently killed or imprisoned. To conclude these pages on the position of the Libertarian Organisation in Catalonia, and the confusion caused by certain elements, we may mention Angel Marín, a delegate from the National Committee in France, whom Sabaté accompanied to Barcelona. He was arrested in October 1945 and by agreement with Quintela, made contact with Melis. The result of this meeting was that in December, Marin left prison to go on ‘outside business’. He was said to have escaped. In a circular from the National Committee—MLE in France, sent round to the Regional Committees in 1946, it was stated:

For some days we have awaited with anxiety the arrival of the delegation sent to Spain. Once in the Interior we received news that the Franco Police had information as to its whereabouts, but, happily, they managed to avoid the Security Services and return without incident. Apart from meeting comrades and collecting information the delegation had the job of ascertaining the whereabouts of comrade Marin and delivering to him a letter from the National Committee, informing him that he should return to France without delay. The delegates were instructed that once they had found him in Spain, they should discover why he had remained in Spain and whether he intended to remain there permanently or not — basically in order to decide what should be done about him. They were also instructed to allow him the necessary money to return to France. This delegation has now returned and informs us they were unable to make contact with Marin without going through Melis and Seba. Knowing the relationship of these two with the police it would have been suicide to attempt this course of action.

Angel Marin did in fact return to France accompanied by another comrade, Juan Farre, soon after this on 17 March 1946. He was expelled from the National Committee and never again given any position of responsibility in the organisation. Another very similar case was that of comrade Evangelisto Campos, a delegate sent by the MLE to Barcelona, in April 1945, to make preparations for the Youth Congress scheduled to take place in Paris that May. During a police raid on a Regional Committee meeting in Barcelona in March 1946, Campos was wounded as he tried to flee. Later, however, while in police custody, he made contact with Melis who arranged his ‘escape’.

6. Action

The first job undertaken by Sabaté and his group was to seek out active supporters and collaborators, not only in Barcelona but also in the surrounding villages and along the whole length of the road between Barcelona and the French frontier. He began to organise bases in the mountains and the city that would serve as refuges for the comrades, and also as arms depots and supply posts.

It would be no exaggeration to say that between 1945 and 1946 El Quico got to know almost every tree in every village and mountain in Catalonia. In February of 1946, while he was in Barcelona, he received a telegram informing him that Leonor had given birth to twins the day before. Without losing a minute, he immediately set out to return to France. Despite the heavy snow— waist deep in places—he crossed the border by way of Bañolas and Coustouges, finally arriving in Perpignan where his wife was still in the clinic. One of the little girls died a few days later, but the second survived and was named Alba.

The Sabaté family had moved to Marquixanes shortly before this, abandoning their home in Eus (between Prades and Vinta). Sabaté remained a few days in the Roussillon capital and then moved with his family to their new home, La Clapére, on the banks of the River Tech, about two miles from Prat-de-Mollo.

Once settled in La Clapére, Sabaté then rented a small casa de campo further up the mountainside on the opposite bank of the river, hoping thus to make access to outsiders a little more difficult. The local inhabitants knew this small cottage as ‘La Soranguera’, and it was here that El Quico organised his first operational base for his journeys across the frontier. To cover his clandestine activities at this base he rented a small nearby wood and arranged to have it worked by a group of five comrades. Sabaté had the idea of building a commune on this spot, finding it amusing that it should be within rifle range of Spain, but the attempts to fulfil this dream were in vain. The people he approached defrauded him completely and in the end he was forced to abandon the idea.

The organisation took advantage of El Quico’s visit to France and asked him to undertake an important mission transporting a huge quantity of arms into Catalonia. On 21 April, therefore, he left with a group of comrades (all veterans who had endured their baptism of fire), among them Ramón Vila Capdevila. The material, which consisted of sub-machine guns, ammunition and explosives, was to be taken to a pre-arranged spot inside Spanish territory. It was then to be transported to the Geronese village of Bañolas where it would be kept by a comrade in whom they had complete confidence. The group of five decided to split up in Bañolas and meet later in Barcelona. Two of them left on the morning bus to Gerona on 25 April, while another two intended to leave by the same way that afternoon. Sabaté himself was making his own way the following day in a lorry, with the arms carefully concealed under a tarpaulin.

The afternoon bus left Bañolas at two o’clock. As there was a fair that day the village was full of travellers, which made things easier for the group as, in a crowded street, they were less likely to be noticed. After lunch the three friends left the inn where they had been staying, Sabaté chatting to one, Ramón Vila following a short distance behind. As they made their way to the bus station, two Guardia Civil suddenly approached the first two comrades and demanded their papers, which were duly produced and handed over for inspection.

It is hard to say what aroused the suspicion of the officers, possibly it was because the papers were made out to persons from Logroño whereas these two had pronounced Catalan accents. They ordered the two comrades to accompany them to the barracks. Sabaté began to protest while Ramón remained watching quietly in the background.

Some citizens gathered round, looking on at the argument with some surprise. One of the Guardia Civil, with less patience than his colleague, or perhaps deciding to end the argument once and for all by showing his authority, drew his pistol. Ramón Vila, whose eyes missed nothing, saw how the situation was developing and jumped forward, shooting the Guardia Civil, José Godo García, dead on the spot. The second, who had been the more fervent in the discussion, had scarcely got over the shock of seeing his colleague killed when he found the barrels of three guns pointing in the direction he should take. He prudently took off like a rocket in the direction indicated, while the resultant panic in the market place allowed the three to make good their escape.

For what it is worth, it may be mentioned here that it was not Sabaté who fired the fatal shot on this occasion (as was inevitably stated by the Spanish press), but Ramón Vila. To this fact the best witness would have been the Guardia Civil who ran for his life, but it was no doubt a matter of prestige with him to have his colleague’s death attributed to the notorious Sabaté himself, whom he later, no doubt, identified from photographs.

Ramón Vila and the other comrade took refuge in the mountains. Sabaté returned, cautiously, to the inn, for he was still responsible for the material that lay in two large trunks now in Bañolas. Arriving there, he took with him a sub-machine gun and the necessary ammunition, hiding the rest in a pile of manure at the back of the tavern yard where dealers and small traders left their horses and carts. At nightfall he abandoned the inn and took refuge in a cottage belonging to a reliable and trusted comrade.

Bañolas was only a small village, at that time, of 6,000 inhabitants. The police and Guardia Civil busied themselves furiously among the villagers, making individual and house-to-house searches, setting up patrols and roadblocks. Above all, the Guardia Civil wanted to avenge the honour of the Corps.

Sabaté managed to escape the search by a retreat in which he received, he said later, the biggest fright of his life. The woman of the house where he was hidden gave him some peasant clothes and a scythe, and, with the tool on his shoulder, he passed through the cordon of guards controlling the exits out of Bañolas. Beside him the woman walked carrying a large food basket in which was hidden the sub-machine gun. It was the first and last time Sabaté went unarmed.

Meanwhile, the innkeeper, worried at the intensive activity of the police, and seeking to remove any possible suspicion from himself, went to the authorities to report the disappearance of a suspicious character who had been lodging in his premises. It was not such a bright idea as he thought because the police, realising that the innkeeper’s suspicions were probably well founded and that the real bird had flown, decided to make of him the example they needed to vindicate their ‘honour’. They put him through the most terrible tortures to make him confess, leaving him crippled for life. Meanwhile they ordered a search of the inn and discovered the secret cache of arms in the dung pile.

Sabaté, in his peasant’s disguise, continued on his journey to Barcelona, while Ramón and his friend returned to France to report what had happened.

As a result of police enquiries following the incident in Bañolas, one of the comrades in Gerona was arrested. He had acted as go-between for the action groups operating in Barcelona, particularly with that of Sabaté. We do not know exactly what led to his arrest, although previous events in Gerona suggest an explanation. It is certain that when Sabaté accompanied the delegation from the MLE in October 1945, contact had been established in Gerona with a local resident. When he returned to France, the ‘local’ gave him a number of important documents, which, apart from minor matters, gave the complete disposition of Franco’s border troops. When these documents were examined in France it was discovered they had been typed on the machine belonging to Melis.

It does not take much imagination, therefore, to assume that the contact was being used—consciously or not—by the Barcelona informer. Naturally all relationship with the ‘local’ was cut off. However, it left a difficult problem, for this man now knew many things and, living in the same district, could not fail to know the identity of his successor. At all events the arrest of this successor was a major police victory. He attempted suicide, but was prevented from doing so. Subjected to extreme interrogation the police obtained from him the address of a house in Barcelona frequented by the Sabaté group—a dairy in the Calle Santa Teresa. The house was placed under close surveillance, in order to identify everyone who came and went, with the object, at the appropriate moment, of destroying them once and for all.

With his customary caution, Sabaté arrived in Barcelona on 2 May, having made the journey from Gerona on foot. He was unaware that the contact in Gerona had been arrested, and his first objective was to search out the comrades who had preceded him to the Catalan capital. For various reasons he was unable to meet them and so decided to call at the dairy to find out where they were.

On 7 May the woman who owned the dairy managed to inform Sabaté that her place was under observation and that the police had probably identified some of the comrades who had called there, including El Abisinio, who had appeared the previous day. Sabaté reflected on the consequences of the police knowing about the dairy. To prevent any comrades falling into the trap prepared for them he had to sabotage the machinery being set-up by police HQ. Discreetly examining the neighbourhood of the shop he saw a group of four workmen who appeared to be holding a heated discussion among themselves. Calmly El Quico walked straight up to them. Still apparently preoccupied with their discussion, the four men started to walk towards Sabaté. When he was only a few yards away from the suspicious looking group, he drew his Mauser pistol and pointed it at them as though he were about to shoot. It is impossible to describe the look on the men’s faces as they turned and ran as if all the devils in hell were after them.

El Quico, being an excellent marksman, could have killed them all had he so wished, but was not given to gratuitous violence. Once it appeared they were safely out of range the disguised policemen turned and opened fire with their pistols, but Sabaté did not want to get involved and disappeared hastily. The important thing now was to inform his comrades that the dairy was a death trap!

As he knew, several members of the group had already been identified, including ‘the Abyssinian’. He had been followed discreetly, and was in imminent danger, as the police knew his address—that of his sister, who lived in the Travesera de Gracia, near the San Pablo Hospital. Now, following their brush with Sabaté the police guessed that nobody would fall into the trap, so they decided to act swiftly before everything they hoped to achieve was lost.

The whole family living in the dairy was arrested, and it may have been through them that the police managed to discover the addresses of Sabaté and El Roset. Normally the discovery would not have mattered in the least since, with his customary caution, Sabaté did not set foot in the house again, even to collect his belongings. Unfortunately, however, the trail led ultimately to the downfall of El Roset.

El Abisinio was the first of the group to fall. On 9 May, 1946, as he was entering his home, the police shot him down in a hail of gunfire on his own staircase. Jaime Pares died without being able to put up the least show of resistance.

Following the murder of Jaime Pares, ‘the Abyssinian’, another comrade was imprudent enough to pass the street where the dairy was situated and was immediately taken to the cells of Police Headquarters.

El Quico did not, of course, go home, but he kept a close watch on his house under the very noses of Quintela’s men as they went in to prepare an ambush for him on his return. Sabaté had the daring idea of meeting the police in an open fight. He went with El Roset to meet the MLE contact, at that time Antonio López, to ask him to join them in taking the house by storm and giving the police the fright of their lives.

López, sensibly, did not agree. He thought it suicidal and pointless, to which viewpoint Sabaté and El Roset had to agree.

On 26 May Sabaté and El Roset split up, as the former wanted to go to Hospitalet to see how his parents were faring. He knew that his brother, José, was about to arrive from Valencia. José had been in charge of a battalion in 1938 when the Republican Zone was cut in two, and at the final disaster had been taken prisoner in the fall of Alicante. He had been detained in the concentration camp of Albatera and in the Cartagena Penitentiary. Finally he was released on ‘provisional liberty’, and wrote to his family saying he would like to visit them.

Meanwhile El Roset, despite innumerable warnings from Sabaté that his house would certainly be under surveillance, decided to go home for a time. Quintela’s men were waiting for him on his arrival, and took him off under close arrest.

Sabaté knew how dangerous it was for him to go to Hospitalet, but he dearly wanted to see his brother again. Drawing on all his knowledge and experience of police methods, he examined carefully the surrounding area before finally going to the house in the afternoon. There was no one at home, so he scribbled a note to José, which only he would understand, and left immediately through the back door to spend the night under the stars.

Next day, at dawn, he looked round cautiously to avoid meeting anyone he knew and noticed some unusual activity in the vicinity of his home. He turned the first corner he came to hoping to get as far from the house as possible—and walked straight into the arms of the Policia Armada! It was impossible to retreat without arousing their suspicions, so he plucked up courage and like any good citizen walked past the parked police cars cheerfully whistling to himself. It was not until much later that he learned how close he had been to death that morning. The police had orders to shoot him on sight without warning, and, sitting handcuffed in one of the cars, El Roset and the Gerona contact were waiting to identify him. His parents’ house had been closely watched, and it is possible he had been seen entering the day before. At all events, when Sabaté passed the cars and buses packed with police, all guns were trained on him, his life hanging by a slender thread.

However, both the contact and El Roset courageously affirmed to their captors that the man passing was not Sabaté.

The same day his father, while leaving for work, was stopped by the Policia Armada who used him as a shield to enter the house. This was to be a common occurrence in the years to come.

José and Francisco, the two brothers, were reunited a few days later, in the mountains. El Quico, told José about his activities and present and future plans. José had to return to Valencia to clear up some personal matters, but promised his brother they would meet shortly in France and there discuss plans for future actions. A week later José arrived in France and gave himself over fully to the struggle.

In June 1947 El Quico met a childhood friend, Juan P., on a bridge near San Baudilio de Llobregat. The meeting was not fortuitous—Sabaté had sent word to Juan that he would like to discuss some matters with him. Juan P. had only recently moved to the little Catalan town of Gava following the death of his only son. When El Quico explained that he had planned a number of projects which centred around Gava and required Juan’s assistance the latter agreed to help him in everything necessary, and the two men went their separate ways having agreed to meet a few days later. Juan’s house was situated some 300 metres from the Gava barracks of the Guardia Civil and it was here Sabaté came a few days later to spend the night and the following day, a Sunday, with his friend and family. They could not discuss much on the Saturday night as Juan, who worked in the nearby textile factory, did not finish work until nearly midnight and his wife worked as a day labourer in the fields, the only person in the house when El Quico arrived being the fourteen-year-old daughter. However, most of Sunday was spent in deep discussion. Sabaté’s plan was to isolate the village by cutting off all communications to the village, storm the barracks of the Guardia Civil for arms, and to rob the Bank of Vizcaya.

He also wanted to deal with some of the local fascist leaders who played an important part in the repression that followed the ‘National’ victory. Such a daring plan obviously required detailed information and it was Juan’s task, together with other local comrades, to obtain this. The project was never carried out, however, as in July Commissar Quintela’s right-arm, Eliseo Melis Diaz, was executed and the resultant repression forced Sabaté and his group to return to safety in France. The police also became suspicious of Juan P., who was on parole from prison, which caused him to seek refuge, together with his family, in France. The Gava plan was therefore shelved for the moment.

The nature of Eliseo Melis Diaz’s activities has been described in previous pages. The idea of eliminating this informer had been discussed many times and approved by all the resistance organizations. In April 1945 three comrades had travelled to Spain to effect the assassination but were unable to carry it out as a result of warnings being leaked to the police. Manuel Pareja, another comrade from the action groups, also went into Spain with this sole objective in mind, and had it not been due to the intervention of Angel Marín (the MLE delegate who ‘escaped’ from police custody with the assistance of Melis), would have been executed.

Previous to this, in October 1945, the National Committee of the CNT led by César Broto was arrested and the Committee which succeeded it, whose Secretary was Lorenzo Iñigo, was also arrested at the beginning of April 1946. The Secretary of the new National Committee of the CNT visited Pareja on two separate occasions, insisting that it was of the utmost importance that Melis be eliminated as soon as possible.

In March 1947 the Spanish Libertarian Resistance Movement in Barcelona (MLR) was formed with the idea of separating all organisational and propaganda activities from the purely guerrilla actions. From now on it was intended that the MLR should be the military wing of the Libertarian Movement. The idea came from the comrades in the ‘Interior’ and was agreed by a new delegate from France. Later, however, the movement in exile disagreed with this decision and disavowed their delegate. Nevertheless, the movement in Spain decided to act on its own initiative and received the support of many excellent and experienced comrades including the group of Manuel Pareja. This collaboration bore fruit.

It was decided that the mere elimination of Melis was not enough. They were convinced that there were more people, not only in Spain but also in France, doing the same thing, quite unknown to anyone. A plan was prepared which, it was hoped, would help unmask the traitors inside the organisation once and for all.

The operation was given the code name ‘Plan H’ and was perfected down to the last detail. At noon on 12 July, 1947 Manuel Pareja, Antonio Gil (better known as Antonio Sancho Agorreta) and another comrade, made their way into a café in the Plaza Buensuceso where Melis was playing billiards, in his shirt-sleeves. Pareja went up to Melis unnoticed and touched him on the shoulder, telling him to come outside and not to offer any resistance. Melis, who already knew through Angel Marín what Pareja’s intentions were, put on a brave front. He collected his jacket and left the cafe escorted by the three men.

In the street Pareja told him briefly that, more than his life, he wanted all the documents and papers he had in his possession and he would go with him to collect them. Melis realised he was in a position from which there was no escape, the more so, when going into the street, he found that in addition to the three beside him there were another three comrades waiting, Pedro Adrover Font, known as El Yayo, Ramón González Sanmartí, and one other. Before they set out Antonio Gil wanted to frisk Melis but Pareja insisted that it was not necessary. Pareja hoped by this to convince Melis that if he handed over the documents his life would be spared. This was to have tragic consequences.

Melis was convinced that he was taking the last walk of his life, so he showed no resistance—but all the time waiting for the first opportunity to get out of his terrible predicament. Suddenly, as they left the Calle Elisabets (where Adrover and the others had joined them) and went into the Galle Montalegre, Melis pushed violently against his two captors, managing to escape through a doorway and up the staircase. Pareja rushed after Melis, but as he paused in the darkness, Melis—who was already on the stairs—had a perfect view of his silhouette. He drew out his pistol and ired in the narrow passageway hitting Pareja, who fell fatally wounded. He had the presence of mind, however, to fall face down, and crawled towards Melis, firing rapidly. Melis fell limply and Gil, stepping into the doorway, delivered the coup de grâce to the traitor.

Meanwhile, the four in the street had placed themselves strategically to prepare for any eventuality and protect the retreat. Gil soon reappeared with the news that Pareja was badly wounded and would have to be carried. In seconds they hi-jacked a passing milk lorry, guns in hand, and ordered the driver out. González took the wheel and the others helped Pareja a