Trintxerpe, the so-called ‘fifth Galician province’, was one of the Basque towns that provided the most troops to the Republican battalions that fought Franco’s Army in Euskadi. A book that has just been published by the Pontevedra Provincial Council points out that at least 2,000 Galicians, most of them residents of the Pasaitarra neighborhood, formed the ranks of the forces commanded by the Basque Government that stood up to the rebels. The publication, ‘Galician Army of Euzkadi 1936-1937’, the work of the Galician historian Sergio Balchada, rescues a little-known facet of the resistance to Franco’s troops in Basque territory.
Trintxerpe did not have a very good press among the sectors of Gipuzkoan society that coldly received the news of the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931. The neighborhood that had welcomed at the beginning of the last century the thousands of Galicians who had left their land of origin in search of a better future was frowned upon by traditionalism. The fishermen who had come from the west not only had little attachment to religion -some newspapers of the time were scandalized that only 7% of them attended mass on Sundays-, but also exhibited a strong class consciousness that was reflected in a high rate of union membership.
“It is true, Trintxerpe had a bad reputation among the wealthiest San Sebastian society,” says historian Sergio Balchada. The author of the book recalls that on the eve of the Civil War, ideologies such as socialism, communism and anarchism had taken root among the workers of the sea in Pasaia. «The mobilizations to improve working conditions, especially the one that ended with the shooting death of seven workers, many of them Galician, in a demonstration in Ategorrieta in May 1931, contributed to making the residents of Trintxerpe aware of the need to make a common front”, continues Balchada. Unions such as the Unión Marítima and La Polar, linked to the UGT, and above all El Avance Marino, of the CNT, acquired great strength in the port of Pasaia thanks to the Galician workers.
The union groups linked to the fishing industry were the first to mobilize in Gipuzkoa when the July 1936 coup took place. «They were very combative people who did not hesitate to take to the streets to defend the Republic as soon as they saw the threat that it was coming on top They did not take long to organize militias setting up checkpoints and armed patrols that assumed a major role in the defense of San Sebastián when the military uprising of the Loyola barracks took place.
One of the most bizarre episodes of that defense took place on July 22, when militiamen from Trintxerpe took control of a Navy torpedo boat docked in the port of Pasaia with the purpose of forcing the abandonment of the capital’s buildings. that had been taken by the rebel troops. The militiamen guided the ship to the bay of Donostia and opened fire on the Yacht Club and the Gran Casino (current Town Hall), which had been occupied by the military, but had to withdraw due to the harassment of the Ametzagaña batteries.
Militiamen from Pasaia in July 1936, the bou ‘Navarra’ and militiamen from the Celta battalion in a trench. /
Far from giving up their purpose, the militiamen headed for the mouth of the Urumea, from where they tried to shoot at the rebel forces that had barricaded themselves in the María Cristina hotel. «They had no military training and they did not know how to handle cannons, so instead of hitting the María Cristina theater they shot at the Victoria Eugenia, where those on the same side were. In any case -adds the historian- the presence of the torpedo boat made a dent in the morale of the rebels, who after a few hours ended up taking down white sheets and surrendering the hotel».
Anticlericalism
Balchada maintains that the Galicians of Trintxerpe, especially those who were part of the anarchist union El Avance Marino, played a major role in the failure of the first attempt to take the city by the supporters of the uprising. “The Galician militiamen were the main force in the battles that were waged against the rebellious soldiers,” he insists. When in September the columns of the requetés of the Mola army definitively took control of Pasaia and San Sebastián, the Galicians joined the contingent of the population that left the capital of San Sebastian and headed for Bilbao.
The creation at the end of October of the so-called Euskadi Army put an end to the militia movement. The Galicians, adds the historian, were integrated into two battalions: the CNT number 1 Bakunin and the CNT number 6 Celta. Those who came from Trintxerpe were the majority, although there were also natives from Galicia who worked in industries on the left bank of the Nervión and deserters from the Franco Army. «The fishermen of Pasaia, in addition, had a significant presence in the crews of the Auxiliary Navy of the Basque Country, made up of fishing boats and artillery bous. About 10% of the men who enrolled in that naval unit were originally from Galicia.
The Bakunin battalion was assigned to Amurrio, on the Álava front. The residents of the town of Alava were not only struck by the Galician accent of its members, but also by the fact that some of them appeared dressed in ecclesiastical clothing that they had stolen from a church. «They displayed a militant anticlericalism and that cost them more than one confrontation with the Basque Government commanders, who opposed, for example, actions such as the burning of churches, which were the daily bread on other fronts where anarchist troops fought» , points out the historian Balchada.
Both the Bakunin and the Celta suffered a string of casualties in the fighting against the rebel troops on different fronts. When the military commanded by Franco took Bilbao, the two ‘Galician’ battalions withdrew towards Cantabria together with the rest of the diminished troops of the Basque Government. The signing in August 1937 of the so-called Pact of Santoña between those responsible for the winning and losing troops meant in practice the dissolution of the Euskadi Army. The Galicians of Bakunin and Celta dispersed: some would continue towards Asturias and Catalonia to continue defending the Republic while others would become victims of the repression of the victors. “Each one went their own way, but those who returned to Trintxerpe had to face a very hostile environment because they were very marked by their union activity in the years prior to the uprising,” Balchada notes.
Bakunin’s militiamen defending a position. /
A Galician ensign for the Celta battalion
The components of the Celta battalion, which, together with the Bakunin, included the largest number of Galicians in the troops that confronted Franco’s Army in Basque territory, called themselves “Galician anti-fascist militias”. One of its captains, Manuel Lampón Ríos, published a request in the communist newspaper ‘Euskadi Roja’ in December 1936: he demanded a standard “bearing as an emblem something that symbolizes the Galician region” for the battalion. “I have not been able to find out if in the end the captain got away with it and got a flag, but it is an anecdote that reveals the identity feeling of those militiamen,” says historian Sergio Balchada.
The writer has collected testimonies both in Galicia and Euskadi to write the book. «I have not managed to find survivors of those battalions for obvious reasons, but I have rescued interesting experiences of people like Josetxo Fariña, whose father, who was originally from Corme, died in the war fighting in the Celta battalion». Fariña, a deceased resident of Trintxerpe who had compiled a huge amount of information about the Galicians who fought in the Civil War, was a valuable source when reconstructing some of the stories that appear in the book. Its author, Sergio Balchada, plans to present it next Sunday the 8th in Trintxerpe (Act Hall of the Mayor’s Office, 12:00).