Martyred Guinea

Ángel Miguel Pozanco, secretary to the deputy governor of Continental Guinea, was a witness to and one of the protagonists of the outcome of the Civil War in the colony. His book Guinea Mártir. Narraciones, notas y comentarios de un condenado a muerte (Martyred Guinea: Stories, Notes and Comments by a Man Condemned to Death), the cover of which we reproduce provides his account of these events. 

The arrival of the ship Ciudad de Mahón in the Bay of Bata, its subsequent bombardment of the vessel Fernando Poo and the administrative buildings, and the landing of rebel troops in the main settlement of Continental Guinea, marked the end of the Republic in Guinean territory. It was also the beginning of exile for those who opposed the rebels.

Pozanco relates how those loyal to the Republic, lacking everything necessary to confront the invaders, fled to take refuge in French Gabon, and from there attempt to obtain weapons to counter the rebel occupation—but they did not succeed. The French colony, in accordance with the Non-Intervention Pact, remained scrupulously neutral in the Spanish conflict.

In ten chapters Pozanco tells us everything: what the colony was like when he arrived; what its inhabitants—both white and Black—were like; the pre-war atmosphere once news of events in the Peninsula reached them; the unfolding of the conflict; the repatriation to Spain via France of most of these refugees aboard the ship Banfora; and his belief, before departing on the ship Foucauld, that this colony should have followed a different path—comparing it to French Cameroon—not as a Martyr, but more humane, carried forward by a free Spain.

FSL