The Military Rebels and the Coup

The coup of 18 July 1936 was an act of violence led and executed by a small group within the senior command that acted using a structure, form and logic typical of the military world. Their goal was to take the power that was in the hands of the government of the Republic, which is why it began with attacks on civil and Republican authorities. Through different strategies of persecution and annihilation, violence would later be directed at the rest of society with the goal of subduing it and forcing it to become part of the rebellion.

The rebels used declarations of war as a means of fitting the coup into the framework of a false appearance of legality, seizing power, ending the individual constitutional rights established in 1931, and subordinating the armed forces, justice, and public order and civilian power to the authority of the rebels. In line with this strategy, territory was organized along military lines into stations and military commands, to which the civil authorities were subordinate.

The conquest of territory started from the big cities, where the largest garrisons were located. In Galicia, the headquarters of the 8th Division—A Coruña—and the Northern Maritime Department—Ferrol—were key to the way events played out. The senior Republican military authorities all suffered a similar fate: the rebels executed them. General Enrique Salcedo Molinuevo, commander of the 8th Division, General Rogelio Caridad Pita, commander of the 15th Infantry Brigade and military governor of A Coruña, were arrested during the coup, charged with treason, condemned to death, and executed in early November 1936. Vice-Admiral Antonio Azarola Gresillón, head of the Ferrol Arsenal and former Navy Minister,was accused of “rebellion” by a military court, sentenced to death and executed at the start of August 1936. 

If we see the Coup as the act of taking power, in Galicia it lasted only a few days. But after this short period until well into the autumn of 1936, the rebels employed a broad repertoire of actions appropriate to a wartime military strategy. For this reason, we talk about an ongoing Coup in which the forces of public order provided services “as the circumstances demanded”, the new local governments functioned in a provisional and unstable way, the “rides” and military justice reached their greatest levels of intensity, and the first local armed militias were created.

CLS