2023-07-12 08:13:43
Luis de Armiñán told ABC that, in 1953, his “old friend” Antón Heredia made an appointment with him at the Café Lion d’Or, the same establishment on Calle Alcalá where Valle-Inclán, Eugenio d’Ors, José María de Cossío or Edgar Neville held their gatherings and in which the military and politicians such as Queipo de Llano and the entire Primo de Rivera family met. Once there, this “friend and adviser of the Madrid aristocracy” gave him the farewell letter that his nephew José Antonio Primo de Rivera sent him the day before he was executed in Alicante jail, on November 20, 1936. .
We are talking about one of the letters that the founder of the Falange wrote before he died and that had been hidden for almost twenty years. When the two of them opened it together in the aforementioned cafeteria, Heredía wondered aloud, as if sharing his doubts with Armiñán: «These straight lines, this identical, harmonious and clear handwriting, with the correct punctuation, almost academic, are they from a man who Is he going to die later?” And, after the two of them read it aloud together, he made a surprised gesture and affirmed: “The desire to live overflows, but the conformity of a Christian beats, who with hope and sweet fear prepares to appear before God.”
That same day, however, he wrote several more missives which he sent all together to his sister-in-law Margot Larios, confined in the reformatory for adults in Alicante, with the aim that they could circumvent the censorship of the Republic and that it could later distribute them to their recipients: Rafael Sánchez Mazas, Raimundo Fernández Cuesta , to his aunt Carmen, who was a nun; to her goddaughter Lola, to the future Minister of Foreign Affairs of the dictatorship, Ramón Serrano Suñer; her brothers Rosario, Pilar and Fernando, and all of his uncles, including the aforementioned Antón, among others. “Do me the favor of keeping them and not giving them any further action unless the sad occasion for which they have been written arrives,” the founder of the Falange warned Larios.
He told his friend Carmen Werner, a sympathizer of Nazi Germany, that November 19: «I have on the table, as my last company, the Bible that you had the good sense to send me to the Madrid jail. I read parts of the Gospels from her in these last hours of my life». To her aunt Carmen from her: “Two letters to confirm the good news that I am prepared to die well, if God wants me to die, and to live better than up to now.” To Sancho Dávila: «A few words, because perhaps I don’t have much time: thank you very much for your loyalty». He commented to his brothers: “I confess that it horrifies me to die struck down by the whiplash of the bullets, under the sad sun of the executions, in front of unknown faces and doing a macabre pirouette.”
“My Last Hours”
The letter to Heredia read as follows: «Dear uncle Antón: I say goodbye to you with great affection, to all my mother’s family. Do me a favor and tell everyone without forgetting anyone. […]. Do not leave out any of the cousins and her husbands and wives. I won’t tell you anything about my nephews because they are so young that they would hear the news like someone who hears it rain. I don’t write to any of them because I would have to write to everyone, and I don’t want to dedicate much of the time that I have left to letters to letters, unless God still allows it to be extended.
And he continues: «Believe me, I would be glad if that were the case, but, in case it is not so, I try to prepare myself as well as possible for the judgment of God. Yesterday I confessed to a nice old priest who is a prisoner here and today I am full of peace, still largely because the hope of living excites me. In short, forgive me for what may have bothered you and through you all receive strong hugs from your nephew who loves you very much ».
A day before, on November 18, 1936, the Madrid and republican edition of ABC published the news of his sentence: «The hearing of the case against José Antonio Primo de Rivera has ended. He has been sentenced to the death penalty. His brother Miguel, 30 years old, and his wife, six ». Four months had passed since the start of the Civil War and the founder of the Spanish Falange was accused of supporting Franco’s rebellion. The origin of this trial must be found on March 14, during the Second Republic, in which Primo de Rivera was a deputy for the conservative monarchist coalition.
José Antonio Primo de Rivera, at a Falange rally, in 1935 Albero and Segovia
The detention
That day he was arrested along with other Falange followers for having ignored the ban on using a center that, according to the press, had been closed two weeks earlier after the police discovered inside “some forgotten pistol, some charger and some baton ». That is, for illegal possession of weapons. He from the street went to the offices of the General Security Directorate to be interrogated and, shortly after, he was already occupying a cell in the Modelo prison in Madrid. From there he was transferred to the Alicante prison during the early hours of June 5-6, for fear that he would escape.
The coup took place when José Antonio was in his new destination. That was also the reason he was tried for the second and last time, although this time for conspiracy and military rebellion. The founder of Falange had had a placid bachelor life during the first third of the 20th century. He had lost his mother when he was five years old and his relationship with his father had been intermittent and distant due to his military assignments outside of Madrid.
He unsuccessfully presented himself for deputy in the first legislature of the Second Republic, but did not succeed until the second. He obtained a certificate for Cádiz on the right-wing lists in November 1933, a month after founding the Falange, and despite his totalitarian drift, he held conversations with moderate socialist personalities such as Indalecio Prieto and Manuel Azaña, who at that time appreciated him. as a person, even if they disagreed on politics. This, however, did not help him at trial in the midst of the Civil War.
his last years
In the early morning of November 20, 1936, some witnesses and biographers highlighted that José Antonio Primo de Rivera faced the moment with dignity and serenity, just as Antón Heredia commented to Luis de Armiñán. They say that he even dropped his coat in his first steps as he walked towards the wall next to two Falangists and two Requetés from Alicante. Some say that he encouraged the shooters with a “Come on!” and others with a “Up Spain”, according to the two most reliable versions.
In ‘Las últimas horas de José Antonio’ (Espasa, 2015), José María Zavala provided a series of unpublished documents that revealed that the execution of Primo de Rivera had not been a simple act of compliance with the capital punishment, then in force in Spain in the military sphere. According to this statement, it was not preceded by the statutory “fire” order, but rather “the shots were fired on a whim” and repeatedly in several discharges “at three meters away,” the journalist and investigator told EFE.
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