The cold and despair were palpable. On February 1, 1939, under a symphony of bombs, 62 deputies gathered in the stables of the Castle of San Fernando in Figueres held the last session of the Republican Courts. They were few; Very few. Barely 13% of the 473 who formed the Congress after the 1936 elections. The rest, both from the left and from the right – which also existed, although revisionism insists on ignoring them – had been forced into exile or, as explains the professor of Contemporary History and academic of the RAH Octavio Ruiz-ManjonThey had been assassinated, victims of the repression.
Ruiz-Manjón talks to ABC on a special day: the one in which he presents ‘The deputies of the Second Republic‘ in Congress. He speaks calmly, not an iota of nervousness is visible; rather he transmits the serenity of the soldier who savors the honey of a fulfilled duty. Not that he’s new to this. The first lights of his investigation were seen two years ago. And now, at last, he can boast of having counted, analyzed and contextualized the deaths of his lordships. Most violent and shocking. “Since the Civil War began, 179 deputies have been assassinated. During the conflict 71 from the left and 75 from the right died; the rest, 33, later », he confirms from the other end of the phone.
Previous barbarism
Restrained and even-tempered are the adjectives that best define Ruiz-Manjón. Each word is the result of months in the archives, orphans of experts in a world that tends to rehash history. His conclusion is not intended to benefit ‘Huns’ or ‘Hoters’, it is what it is: «My final reflection is that disproportionate violence was unleashed against parliamentarians on both sides». Although, before diving fully into the central thesis, he prefers to start at the beginning, as a good chronicler. “I have also analyzed what happened to them, from July 18, 1936, to the 1,007 deputies who had been elected in the elections of 31, 33 and 36”, he adds.
In that initial list he includes José Calvo Sotelo, the member of Renovación Española whose murder on July 13, 1936 led to the outbreak of the Civil War. “Shouldn’t it be number 180?” we asked. “Nope. It is merely a chronological issue. As important as he was for the future of the conflict, he was assassinated five days before it began », he insists. Although he does not deny that he was “the first great victim of the deputies of the time”; some politicians who had aroused both hatred and passion for leading a parliamentary life that was quite violent in the dialectic. “There were insults, punches and the display of a pistol in Congress,” she adds.
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After July 18, that cosmetic tension mutated into palpable barbarism. “The first phase of the war, between July and November, was a period of extreme violence against deputies,” explains the expert. the same Manuel Azana recorded the outrages perpetrated in the Model Prison in Madrid against political rivals: “The militiamen seized the registry, […] looking for them one by one through the maze of cells. Then they took them down to a basement and shot them.” Ruiz-Manjón, who is not at all fond of exhaustive concepts such as ‘demolishing myths’, corroborates in this case that one should not speak of uncontrolled violence: “As much as some historians repeat, the hotheads on both sides had the complicity or support of the authorities”.
and extreme violence
In this sense, the academic also denies that the main targets were the most extremist politicians. What prevailed were the positions and proper names. “That summer a radical was not killed, a local leader or the head of a relevant party was killed,” he adds. The clearest example was the murder of Melquíades Álvarez. A convinced Republican, an even-tempered person and a close friend of intellectuals like José Ortega y Gasset and Azaña himself was shot by a group of militiamen in the basement of the Model Prison in August. “With him, the moderate Spanish republican tradition was assassinated,” Ruiz-Manjón completes.
Alcalá Zamora, after being sworn in as President of the Republic, wears the necklace of Isabel la Católica imposed moments before
After the rise to power of Largo Caballero on the one hand, and Francisco Franco on the other, the initial violence ran out of steam. Though that doesn’t mean he stopped dead. The repression continued and included, as the author explains, deputies with strong religious beliefs: “Some were persecuted simply because they were practicing Catholics.” As if that were not enough, the end of the conflict gave birth to two new types of victims: those parliamentarians persecuted, hunted and prosecuted after the victory of the coup plotters and many others who were never able to return to Spain. «Niceto Alcala-Zamora and Azaña are two examples of this”, sentence.
The last question is a must: “What do you think of the Democratic Memory Law?” Once again, Ruiz-Manjón is not altered. The answer is concise: “He insists on emphasizing a type of behavior and the victims of only one side.” The academic knows well what he is talking about, since he has participated in several commissions related to the subject. «I had the opportunity to comment on the proposal of the previous municipal government to raise a tombstone in Madrid in honor of the victims. I opposed it because the perpetrators were also included », he completes. You shouldn’t mix churras with merinos or assassins with assassins. The maxim, he finishes it, must be a reconciliation for which characters like Salvador de Madariaga have already begun to work.