Monument to the Memory of General Mola

Two airplane accidents changed the fate of rebel Spain, and perhaps that of the entire country.

The first occurred on 20 July 1936. Lieutenant General José Sanjurjo died when the small De Havilland DH.80 Puss Moth that was to carry him from Cascais, Portugal to Salamanca, crashed on crashed upon takeoff from a racetrack. Sanjurjo had been the "caudillo," as the sympathetic press called him, of the Spanish anti-Republican right, despite his inept leadership of the failed coup attempt in August 1932. After being sentenced to death and having his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, he was released by the conservative government in April 1934. He used his exile in Portugal to conspire against the Republic. He died just as, according to the conspirators' plans, he was about to take command of the rebellion and, if successful, of the subsequent dictatorship. His right-hand man was to be another figure who had died exactly a week earlier, the politician José Calvo Sotelo.

The other decisive aviation accident took place on 3 June 1937 and claimed the life of General Emilio Mola, the true mastermind behind the military conspiracy. Unlike Sanjurjo, the austere Mola was a meticulous planner. He was well acquainted with the structures of the army and the police, having served as Director General of Security in the final months of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship. Like Sanjurjo, he broke his oath of loyalty to the Republic and even falsely gave his word of honor to his superior, the loyal General Domingo Batet, on 16 July1936, assuring him that he would not rebel. Batet was later executed by the rebels.

The plane carrying Mola, an Airspeed AS.6 Envoy, went down in the municipality of Alcocero (Burgos) during a storm while he was on his way to inspect the front. On 3 June 1939, the dictatorship inaugurated a monument to Mola’s memory - partially built by prisoners from the concentration camp at Miranda del Ebro, some of whom were members of the International Brigades - at the crash site. The photo shows the ceremony. The regime also renamed the town Alcocero de Mola.

Sanjurjo’s death opened the door for Franco to become the leader of the rebel forces, while Mola’s ensured that there were no serious rivals to the consolidation of his personal power. The official memory of the new regime reduced both men to the role of mere collaborators of the Caudillo in the preparation of the National Movement when, in reality, Franco’s role had been secondary and at times ambiguous. This falsification of history was necessary to create an image of the dictator as the supreme savior of the fatherland, chosen by God and by history.