The Executioners

Rebel violence took two forms that coexisted from the first days of the coup. One was the more than 15,000 trials held by military courts between 1936 and 1939. The most common charges against the accused were “military rebellion”, “assisting the rebellion”, or even “treason”. The courts sentenced people to death or life in prison, but there were also some not guilty verdicts.

This process involved people who acted as part of a military judicial machinery in which the military lawyers and prosecutors had limited legal training. The determination of the accusation and the very fate of the accused lay in their hands. Like other parts of Spain that were in the rebel rear guard from the beginning, Galicia served as a laboratory for such proceedings. Some 1500 people were sentenced to death and executed by 1939. The firing squads were generally made up of men from the security forces, the Civil Guard, Assault Guards, and soldiers called up in the successive drafts.

The trials were a way to involve large sectors of the population in the violence because of the massive demand for witnesses. In the absence of a large number of denunciations, statements by the Civil Guard or the military served as the match to ignite this spectacular military-judicial display, the goal of which was to destroy the accused.

The trials also covered up the other violence that was taking place: the “rides” that were described as “anonymous” or “uncontrolled” in comparison to the process of military justice.  In the photograph we see a group of Falangists from Cangas in front of their headquarters. They used the car to arrest people, transport them to prison, and also to take them for “rides”. These murders, which took place without any death sentence having been passed, were committed by the so-called “second line” militias: the Falange and the JAP (Popular Action Youth), frequently in the presence of the Civil Guard or the military.  Repression was most intense between August and December 1936, although they continued their activities until the end of the war.

Unlike the military trials, these murders left very few documentary traces and only people’s memories have preserved the names of the principal perpetrators from the oblivion they sought. Some of the interviews collected by Nomes e Voces testify to the social ostracism to which some of the leading perpetrators of this type of violence were subjected by their communities. This included the stigma of the “Bad death (mala norte): dying in awful circumstances or completely alone as a sort of symbolic punishment for their actions.

AMM