Memorial plaque to Gabriel Lee, St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin

This modest plaque in St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin is dedicated to the memory of Gabriel Lee ‘who died fighting with the Christian Forces in Spain’.  

The son of a policeman, Lee was born in Kilcormac, County Offaly, in 1904. He fought with the Irish Republican Army and National Army during the Irish Revolution. 

Like many of Franco’s Irish volunteers, Lee was active in the far-right Blueshirts during the mid-1930s. A member of the opposition Fine Gael party’s national executive, he opposed General O’Duffy’s more militant faction when the Blueshirt movement split. Consequently, Lee’s motivations for joining the Irish Brigade presumably stemmed from religious or ideological convictions rather than loyalty to O’Duffy. 

Lee died on 19 March 1937, a week after sustaining injuries from shellfire during the Brigade’s unsuccessful advance on Titulcia. Although the Brigade’s refusal to follow orders during this operation destroyed its reputation, leading to its departure from Spain, Lee’s death provided a valuable propaganda opportunity for Franco’s Irish supporters. Describing the battle as ‘the greatest offensive of the war’, the Irish Brigade depicted Lee and his fallen comrades as martyrs: ‘We know their motives, and we know that the souls of these men are with God because they died for God.’ 

At his funeral on 31 March, Lee was mourned by his father, four sisters, and brother. Although this ceremony was attended by leading Fine Gael politicians, a memorial Mass the following month highlighted tensions between Blueshirts loyal to Fine Gael and General O’Duffy’s fascists (who wore green shirts). O’Duffy denounced Fine Gael for making ‘political capital out of brave lads who have suffered the supreme sacrifice’. The press was reminded that O’Duffy ‘alone was the first public man in Ireland to offer support and sympathy to the Christian forces of Spain’, and that Lee had ‘died in Spain not for the blue shirt, not for any political party, but for God’. In his subsequent memoir, O’Duffy claimed that Lee’s final request had been to be buried in a green shirt ‘in respect to my leader’. 

It is not known when this plaque was installed or by whom. However, press reports of the solemn High Mass and Te Deum celebrated by the archbishop of Dublin in April 1939 to mark ‘the victory of the Catholic Cause in Spain’ noted that some Brigade veterans, rather than sitting in the prominent place of honour reserved for them by General O’Duffy, chose to sit in the side aisle bearing Lee’s plaque. 

Lee was one of six Irishmen killed fighting with the Irish Brigade. Four Irishmen who remained in Spain after the return of the Brigade were also killed in action. Another twenty or so volunteers died from injuries or diseases attributed to their service in Spain. Despite these fatalities, this plaque remains the only memorial dedicated to a member of the Irish Brigade. In striking contrast to the extensive commemoration of the Irishmen who fought on the losing side, no memorial honours the Irish Brigade as a whole, or any of the Irishmen who fought among the ranks of the victors.