List of People Given Asylum in the Brazilian embassy

As a signatory to the 1928 Havana and 1933 Montevideo Conventions, Brazil recognized the right of asylum and from the outbreak of the conflict, its embassy in Madrid took in citizens who felt endangered. This involved committing serious breaches of diplomatic protocol, since it did not officially inform the government of Spain until March 1938. Having taken in 70 people, the embassy was forced to rent an adjacent house. The massive concession of asylum by many of the diplomatic posts generated a space problem which gave rise to the famous “annexes” of embassies and legations. 

An analysis of the extensive diplomatic correspondence and Javier Rubio’s work on diplomatic asylum during the Civil War leads to the conclusion that Brazil’s diplomatic representatives dealt with this question incompetently. Ambassador Alcebíades Peçanha’s failure to provide a list of people requesting asylum to the government of the Republic was one of the factors that contributed to the growing tensions between the embassy of Brazil and the Spanish Ministry of State, as it resulted in Brazil being excluded from the negotiations that allowed other embassies to evacuate their asylum seekers. 

The issue of asylum seekers got even more complex when Carlos da Silveira Martins Ramos, who took up his post as chargé d’affaires in 1938, discovered that the “annex” contained not only Brazilian citizens, as Peçanha had claimed, but also military men and clergy. Their presence made it unlikely that the government of the Republic would authorize the evacuation everyone.  

Ramos’ notes indicate that foreign minister Oswaldo Aranha advised him to negotiate the evacuation of the asylum seekers to France and their subsequent internment in Brazil. The Republic refused, since asylum seekers in other embassies who had been sent to France had fled to parts of Spain under Francoist control. Martins Ramos called attention to the damage being done to Brazil’s reputation due to the many irregularities which ended up showing a lack of respect for the government of Spain. He didn’t hold back from criticizing the foreign ministry itself for its handling of policy towards Spain. In his opinion, Brazil should have acted consistently with its position as a country that maintained diplomatic relations with the Republic. 

About three dozen people evacuated the Brazilian embassy before the end of the war. Members of the clergy and the military and likely left only after the Francoists has entered Madrid.