The role of the Civil Guard on July 18, 1936, was crucial in tipping the balance toward one of the sides, whether the insurgents or the Republic. Many authors believe that in places where the armed institute remained loyal to the democratic republican institutions, the military coup did not succeed. This was the case in Spain’s two main cities, Madrid and Barcelona, where civil guards shared the trenches with the workers’ forces.
In the Canary Islands, most of the Civil Guard commanders did not defend the republican institutions, even though the general director, General Sebastián Pozas Perea, a Catholic and conservative, had sent clear instructions from Madrid to obey the democratic government. His orders to the 35,000 members of the “benemérita” across Spain were explicit: “absolute loyalty to the regulatory precept of remaining faithful to their duty for the honor of the institution.”
However, the armed institute in the Canary Islands was heavily influenced by the conspiratorial networks set up months before the coup. Franco, as the general commander of the islands, had convinced almost all the commanders in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife to join the conspiracy, with some exceptions mentioned later. The situation was very different in the province of Las Palmas. Here, Franco’s influence was less, mainly due to the power of his second-in-command in the archipelago, the military governor of the province, General Amado Balmes Alonso.
This point requires reflection, which explains, to a large extent, Balmes’ assassination. Had Balmes been part of Franco’s conspiracy in the province of Las Palmas, there would have been no problem in incorporating the Civil Guard, as happened in the sister province. But this was not the case. The key figure was the highest provincial authority of the “benemérita,” Lieutenant Colonel Emilio Baraibar Velasco. Balmes died from a very suspicious gunshot to the abdomen on July 16, and if we assume he was with the conspirators, he would have had enough time to convince Baraibar to support the uprising.
But none of this happened. According to the court-martial sentence that condemned the lieutenant colonel, first to death and then to life imprisonment, Baraibar “was not prepared for the realization of the National Movement.” This is significant. How is it possible that he knew nothing if Balmes was in the conspiracy? Or perhaps Balmes was not involved, and what happened on July 16 was an assassination ordered by Franco and executed by the military conspirators in Las Palmas, as Ángel Viñas claims. All this further supports the thesis of the crime.
Some historians deny the evidence or fail to understand today that conservative and Catholic military officers, many with an Africanist past, defended the Republic on July 18. But this happened frequently throughout Spain, and many paid with their lives for defending constitutional order.
Everything that happened at the Civil Government of Las Palmas between July 18 and 19, 1936, is intriguing. By following the court-martial sentence of May 14, 1938, one can get an idea of the events. The civil governor of Las Palmas, Antonio Boix Roig, ordered contact with Emilio Baraibar, who was found and went to the Government headquarters on Triana Street between 3:30 and 4:00 a.m. The governor informed him that the state of war declared by the insurgent military was illegal according to the Madrid government, and Baraibar did not hesitate to follow his orders.
This position was reiterated in the presence of the coup general Orgaz when he went to the Civil Government to convince the resistants to surrender. But the command of the “Benemérita” hesitated more than it seemed, as he instructed a detachment under his command to go and defend the Civil Government but told them to unload their rifles and not confront the Army surrounding the civil power headquarters in the province. He also spoke with Franco between 10 and 11 a.m., or at least heard him speak on the phone.
The first question was: “Aren’t you under my orders?”; and Baraibar maintained a prudent silence, simply not responding. The insurgents tried another maneuver. Franco ordered the colonel of the Civil Guard’s Tercio, residing in Tenerife, to remove the lieutenant colonel. They notified him of his dismissal, but he continued resisting, arguing that the General Inspection in Madrid ordered otherwise and that the Tercio colonel had no authority to remove the command of a Command without consulting superiors.
The following day, Sunday, July 19, the resistants of the Civil Government of Las Palmas began to falter, starting with the Civil Guard forces themselves. Let’s say that the partial success of the coup in some places emboldened the insurgents, but the loyalty of nearly all the major Spanish cities to the Republic encouraged their defenders. Probably, Baraibar’s ambiguous position is explained by the uncertainty of the time, torn between his professional commitments to the legal government and the momentum of a large part of his fellow soldiers.
What happened that morning was worthy of a farce. Orgaz returned to the site, urged them to surrender, and ordered all resistant armed forces to the military Command, then promised to release the military and civilians. This is the so-called ‘Orgaz commitment,’ which would be cited two years later in the court-martial and possibly influenced the mitigation of sentences for the resistants of the Civil Government of Las Palmas. Orgaz left, and another of the Las Palmas rebels, Colonel Jesús Ferrer Jimeno, arrived to execute the verbal agreement.
However, the three main commanders of the Civil Guard – Baraibar, Commander Joaquín Laurerio Pérez, and Captain José García Silva – did not want to assume the command for the surrender of the civil guards, citing the dismissal telegram they had previously rejected. This defiance against the insurgents by the three main commanders waned when they all went to the Military Government. There, Orgaz charmed them like a father with his wayward children, confirming all the Civil Guard resistants in their positions.
Even Baraibar himself would serve as the public order delegate for over two months. But Franco’s relentless justice did not forgive. Naturally, the commitment was worthless regarding the freedom of those involved. All the civilians were arrested and prosecuted. The same happened to the three civil guards months later. Baraibar was sentenced to death in a court-martial, but it was commuted to life imprisonment. The other two officers who supported their chief were sentenced to 30 years of major imprisonment. All three were expelled from the corps and spent years in prison.
In La Gomera, things did not go as planned. In the town of Vallehermoso, in the northwestern tip of the island, the five-member Civil Guard detachment remained loyal to the Republic. It was led by Sergeant Francisco Mas García, aged 46, born in Carcer (Valencia), and married, living with his wife and children in a rented house; also Francisco Bernal Cano, born in Prado del Rey (Cádiz), aged 31; Pedro Campoy Gómez, born in Vera (Almería), aged 26; Guillermo López Gallardo, born in Montalvo (Cuenca) aged 27; and Francisco Durán Sánchez, born in Magacela (Badajoz), 42 years old.
On July 18, Lieutenant Soler, head of the La Gomera Line, who in turn received instructions from the Civil Guard’s lieutenant colonel in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, contacted Mas by phone, but Mas told him that the Madrid government had declared the state of war illegal and that, according to the Public Order Law, he had to maintain order. Days later, on the 23rd of that month, they called again to instruct him to remove the town’s mayor and disarm the population, but the sergeant responded: “I won’t do that.” To other ultimatums, this time from a military detachment that arrived outside the town, he replied in the same way, stating that he did not recognize any government other than the Popular Front, that order was being maintained in the town, and that it was armed and ready to defend itself against the Army. The next day, the confrontation occurred. First, the insurgent Lieutenant Soler, who was on horseback accompanied by his orderly, was arrested by three civil guards and 25 to 30 armed locals. They were taken to the Vallehermoso Civil Guard House and detained, though Mas guaranteed their physical integrity. But the tension continued to rise. As an armed column approached the Civil Guard’s headquarters, shots began firing from within, supported by others from nearby houses. The skirmish lasted over two hours, injuring the bugler and the head of the military detachment that came to occupy the town. The soldiers retreated to Hermigua.
But the next day, July 25, developments accelerated. New military forces, led by Isidro Cáceres and Ponce de León, the first provincial chief of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Provincial Civil Guard Command, surrounded Vallehermoso and urged the resistants to go to Hermigua to negotiate. They agreed to do so and agreed to surrender the following day. And indeed, the civil guards and armed locals were disarmed and arrested on July 26, eight days after the coup declared the state of war. On August 19, the summary court-martial began at the San Carlos Barracks in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. It was upside-down justice: those who had opposed the rebellion were accused of rebellion. Three death sentences were handed down, to Sergeant Mas and also to the town’s mayor Ramón Cabrera Bernal and the local Workers’ Federation president Manuel Quintana Florentino. This time there were no pardons. On August 27, all three were executed, not without Mas first writing: “I die with great satisfaction, having fulfilled my duty… and for harboring blind faith and hope in the triumph of republican legality, as it is just and receives the support of those who suffer and that of God Our Lord” (letter reproduced in García Luis, R.: The Justice of the Rebels, p. 33).
There is another interesting case. It involves a Civil Guard who became a captain defending the Republic. His name was Francisco Martínez Fortes, born in 1910. His father, with the same name and De Aguiar as a second surname, was also a Civil Guard, born in Almería, with rightist ideology. He supported the coup. He even managed logistics during the civil war in Tenerife, using the seized Hotel Camacho in Tacoronte for such purposes. However, his son was not the same as his father, perhaps due to a generational issue, but he supported the Republic unconditionally, and his friends in Tenerife were all republicans. Francisco was born in Málaga and moved with his family to Tenerife. He studied at the Seminary for four years, then worked at Correos, but eventually chose his father’s profession. He was transferred to Tarragona and married his Tacoronte girlfriend, Ana Rosa Pérez Morales, in 1934. Shortly before the military rebellion broke out, he decided to send his pregnant wife with their second child back to Tenerife so her family could care for her during the birth. –It’s this daughter, Pilar Martínez Pérez, who informed us about this case, along with her brother Jesús–. He returned to Catalonia and got caught up in the war’s turmoil. They wouldn’t see each other again until 1942, over six years later.
Little is known about his tribulations during the war, only that he was on the Teruel front, was shot in the right thigh, and was captured by the rebels on March 28, 1939. A Civil Guard captured by Franco for being a republican had little hope of escaping with his life, but his father likely intervened for his son, as he went to the Peninsula to see him shortly after the war ended. However, Franco’s relentless revenge continued. He was in several military prisoner concentration camps: Medinaceli concentration camp (Soria), prison in Soria capital, then to Mozarifar concentration camp (Zaragoza) and in Montjuic Castle. Finally, in 1940, he was court-martialed and sentenced to 12 years and a day in Tarragona, staying in Pilatos Prison until mid-September 1942. He was transferred to Fyffes prison in Tenerife and, on December 1, definitively released. But he was expelled from the “Benemérita” and couldn’t work in any profession linked to the State. His prison ordeal ended, but not the survival struggle for his growing family. They had six children, and thanks to her family’s properties in Tacoronte, they managed to get by.
This is the story of some Civil Guards who paid with their lives or their freedom for respecting the corps’ ideals and remaining loyal to the flag they swore to obey.
