Luis María Cazorla: «The Second Republic failed because it was not able to overcome the violent front»

The 1936 coup d’état took place on July 18 on the Peninsula, but it had already begun in territories such as Melilla the day before. This data does not usually go beyond the mere anecdote in the history books and rarely goes deeper into what happened there where the Africanists walked as owners and lords of the city. The professor, academic, jurist and novelist Luis María Cazorla has written the fiction ‘Melilla 1936’ (Almuzara) precisely to narrate the months prior to the coup and the tension that ended up exploding in July. Months of conspiracy, forging between the living forces of the city and just men caught in the middle. The novel uses the real case of Joaquín María Polonio Calvante, “a cultured career judge”, as the master of jurists Joaquín Garrigues called him, to narrate from the eyes of a member of the third Spain, the one that bothers both extremes so much. How events unfolded. «He realized that in the face of unleashed force, brute force, the law is a weak and very insufficient instrument. He believed in the law. And when I say the law, it is the republican law, but also the law in general, ”explains Cazorla to ABC, who learned the story of this judge of first instance and instruction on a visit to the Purísima cemetery. Blas Jesús Imbroda , dean of the Melilla Bar Association, warned the writer that there, in front of a not very shiny niche, a good man was buried, one run over by the tragedy of Spain. ‘Melilla 1936’ File: Publisher: Almuzara. Author: Luis Maria Cazorla. Price: 21 euros. Pages: 350. From then on, as if moved by “an irresistible force”, the author of other works of fiction such as ‘La ciudad de Lucus’ or ‘La rebelión del general Sanjurjo’ immersed himself in the ambitious task of reconstructing the last days of this judge since his arrival in the city, shortly after the victory of the Popular Front in February 1936, until his death sentence for trying to stop the military uprising. Unlike his other novels, in ‘Melilla 1936′ all the characters are real. Using the summary of his death sentence, the novelist not only draws the noise of sabers, but also tries to answer the question of why the blow was brought forward there. «When the delivery of arms to the Falangists and to civilians by the Army was discovered, everything had to be accelerated» «The Civil War could have been avoided in general if the faction of Indalecio Prieto had won in the Socialist Party or if some politicians right-wingers would not have listened to certain military rebels. It could have been stopped, but in the specific case of Melilla the plot was already very mature and formed. When the delivery of weapons to the Falangists and civilians by the Army was discovered, everything had to be accelerated. Polonium appeared as a very surmountable obstacle for those who conspired, “says the writer. – What are the challenges that the judge faced when he landed? -When he arrives, he has a professional challenge and another of judicial policy. The professional challenge was to update the court, which was very abandoned, and even tidy up the facilities. From the point of view of judicial policy, what he wanted was to open the court to society. And when I say society is the whole society and, therefore, he presented himself to all the political and union forces, causing great astonishment. This idea of ​​opening the court to the living forces collided with many, of course… -How did the arrival of the Popular Front in power affect Melilla? -The Popular Front won comfortably in February 36 in Melilla, after which there was a bakers’ strike that had the city in check. A large part of the population were soldiers, particularly legionnaires and regulars, which concentrated, in a very closed place, a brutal tension. The legionnaires and regulars, a very brave troop, were even described as assassins due to their role in the Asturias Revolution of 1934. With which the tension was maximum. Polonius suddenly found himself in the middle of that tension passing sentences and struggling to apply the law. – Did the role of a judge have any political background? -Polonio was a 100% professional judge, who won his oppositions and who was in his third destination. He had already been practicing for a few years, he was a doctor in Law and had had scholarships abroad by the Ministry, something that was not common at that time. He was an eminently professional judge and jurist who tried to apply the law. He was not a political figure, but he was a judge caught in a political situation. According to the law, when the governmental delegate, equivalent to the civil government, left the city, he was replaced by the first judicial authority. This led him to face extreme situations without preparation, without being his job and without having the springs of experience in political matters. Luis María Cazorla, in his office. José Ramón Ladra – Can you be ideologically placed somewhere? – He was a jurist who had to enforce the law without political affiliation and who passed judgments in favor of both right and left parties. If we dig deeper, we could classify him as a reformist liberal, an open-minded, educated person who liked to read and had experience abroad, who had seen the French republican experience at the Sorbonne, but with no particular political affiliation. –Have a more public profile played against him? – He Undoubtedly he played against him, because later those who rose up accused him, particularly Colonel Luis Soláns Labedán and Lieutenant Colonel Juan Seguí. They did not understand Polonius; they saw him as a strange judge, a judge who pretended things that others had not done, someone who was not on his side. –Why was the Second Republic not able to establish strong legality? -The Second Republic failed, in my opinion, because it was not able to overcome the violent confrontation and the denial of the opposite. When Azaña and the Socialists ruled, they denied the status of true republicans to part of the right. In other words, there was an inability to integrate the two great republican currents into a unitary formula for the alternation of peaceful power. Both sides believed that problems could be solved through violence. What happened in 1934 demonstrates this, let alone 1936. –Why did the military think that they had to strike a blow against the Second Republic? -Well, fundamentally because they considered that they were attacking Spain, its values, the Army, the homeland, religion… The values ​​on which they believed that a society should be organized were continuously violated by, in particular, the Government who was born in February 1936. They felt entitled to act because they considered that the basic values ​​on which their lives were based had been betrayed. So clear. They considered themselves offended by Republican politics. This is what legitimized them and gave them strength within. Melilla, April 1933. Plaza de España. Salvador Zarco. -The judge is sentenced to death for rebellion, when he justly tried to prevent the military rebellion. Did the process against him have any legal guarantee? -The law before the unleashed force has nothing to do. The process against him demonstrates that a legal appearance can be achieved when, in substance, irregularities are being committed to pass a sentence that was predetermined from the beginning. In the trial, the presumptions and certain interpretations were given an excessive, disproportionate evidentiary scope and without real basis. From the beginning, the judge was sentenced to life imprisonment, to life imprisonment and, later, on appeal, to death. -He is a man who did not stand out politically, why so much effort in shooting him at any price? -It’s not understood. Only because he was considered a symbol or, in other words, a scapegoat to show that those who opposed the uprising, and particularly if they were significant figures, risked death. In other words, he was a symbol in Melilla, a very prominent person with whom they wanted to set an example precisely because of the aggravation of his social significance. Keep in mind that he was the only judicial authority in Melilla. One more member of the third Spain who was caught in the middle by the war. -There are those who are bothered by the end of the third Spain. -There are many examples of unique characters and this is one of them, in my opinion, belonging to the third Spain, the one that was overwhelmed by barbarism on one side and the other. In this case he had to suffer violence from one side, but in other places it happened from the others. – Are the laws of Historical and Democratic Memory necessary to remove these characters from anonymity? -I don’t think that this legislation of the Historical Memory serves to extol these characters. In any case, I have not written a novel to extol a character, but a work of fiction that is part of a trilogy of mine about the war and where the situation in Melilla is described the days before the uprising and a fictionalized explanation is given , but with a historical basis, why it started on July 17. We have all heard it: it began in Melilla on July 17, but it is not usually known why and how… Related News standard Si The unjust fame that persecuted the Regulars after the Disaster of Annual César Cervera awarded after the combats, three were destined to soldiers of the Regulars for their heroic actions, among them two laureates –When it comes to building the characters there is a lot of documentary base in this case, but how have you filled in the rest? -I met very strong and curious characters, such as Lieutenant Fernando Arrabal, who was shot dead, father of the playwright who was born in Melilla. To get into Polonio’s head, I read his legal book, the prologue by Joaquín Garrigues, and gradually formed an idea of ​​the character.