Cabo Quilares prison ship

In September 1936, rebel airplanes began intensive aerial bombings of the province of Vizcaya, and especially the capital, Bilbao. The response to these attacks on the civilian population were two assaults on the prison ship Cabo Quilates which was tied up at the Portu dock in Barakaldo. The first assault, on 25 September, led to the execution of 50 prisoners; the second, on 2 October, which was motivated by the sinking of the Republican destroyer Almirante Ferrándiz, claimed the lives of 31.  

These events were overshadowed by the events of January 4, 1937 when, in the largest slaughter of prisoners in the history of Bilbao, more than two hundred people held in the city’s prisons were killed, most of them shot, in revenge for rebel aerial bombardments. Around 3 o’clock that afternoon, twenty German planes attacked Bilbao. Since the fall of the province of Gipúzkoa, the city had received large numbers of refugees, and the goal of the attack, in which seven people were killed, was to demoralize the population. Republican planes shot down one of the Junker bombers. Two of its crew escaped by parachute. One of them was captured by locals and immediately lynched. They then paraded his body through the streets of the city.   

This inflamed the population, some of whom decided to exact vengeance against right wingers held in a number of the city’s jails. In an atmosphere of extreme hostility, civilians and militiamen gathered in front of the Larrinaga provincial prison and two nearby convents that the Basque government had converted into prisons. The guards on the gates eventually let the crowds in and the attacks began. When they were over, 255 prisoners were dead. 

This event violated the Basque government’s policy of not seeking reprisals.  For its part, Francoist propaganda took advantage of these events to spread stories of the outrages committed by what it called the “red separatists”. 

AOM/UB/MJV