French stamp honouring Cristino García Granda

This French stamp issued in 1946 honours Cristino García Granda, one of the thousands of Republican exiles who joined the Resistance after the fall of France in June 1940. The text on the seal says that he was “murdered” by Franco.

The French Resistance began in a disorganized manner among a small number of people following the country’s defeat in June 1940. The military catastrophe caught hundreds of thousands of Spaniards in the country, many of whom were political militants and had military experience. They would be harassed and persecuted, often facing the threat of being deported to a concentration camp or murdered by the new Vichy authorities or the Nazis. For the Spaniards, joining the Resistance was as much a way of surviving as an ideological choice to fight fascism.

The incorporation of Spaniards into the Resistance began in the Foreign Labour Companies. These groups formed spontaneously and were connected by their ideological affiliation.  The formal relations between Communists on the one hand and anarchists and socialists on the other were very poor, although this was not always the case on a personal level. Their initial activities focused more on protecting people who were escaping the Germans, who were looking for forced labourers, or were otherwise in danger than on confronting the Petain regime. They coordinated their actions with their French comrades, although until June 1941, the official policy of the French Communists, which was dictated by Moscow, was not to resist.

The guerrilla struggle was extremely bloody. One of the most brutal episodes came in early 1944 when the Germans, backed by the Vichy militia, defeated the maquis in the region of Annecy (Alpes). The attempted “liberation” of the area by a group of 465 guerrillas, of whom 56 were Spanish, produced 155 dead including five Spaniards. Another 175, of whom six were Spanish, were captured and later murdered.

The reorganization of the Resistance as a guerrilla fighting force called the maquis came only in the winter of 1942-1943. Three large zones for guerrilla combat were designated in regions with mountains or harsh terrain: the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Massif Central. Some 14,000 Spaniards fought, most of them in the Pyrenees. By then, the Spaniards had become experts in intelligence and helping persecuted civilians and Allied soldiers escape into Spain. The first exclusively Spanish guerrilla unit was created in April 1943.

The euphoria produced by the liberation of France led the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) to decide that the fall of the Francoist regime was imminent. To speed it up, in October 1944, the PCE sent 7,000 Spanish veterans of the maquis to invade the Arán Valley. Franco’s army responded quickly and effectively, and the incident led to 129 partisans being killed and almost 600 wounded. Those taken prisoner were tried and many were executed.

Cristino García Granda, who had gained experience in guerrilla combat during the Civil War, became a celebrated Resistance commander and was recognized by the French government as a Hero of France. He was part of the force that invaded the Valle de Arán in 1944.  He was arrested in Madrid in 1945 and executed the following year.