Bill Alfonso Basallo (Zaragoza, 1957) in this new History podcast that his grandfather “did not remember that episode as something glorious, but with tremendous suffering.” «When we were little, all the grandchildren used to ask him how many Moors he had killed in Annual, but he didn’t even answer, because what he felt proud of was his humanitarian work. Of having saved children and cured many people. He also did not talk about the dishonorable facts, such as the fact that the head of his position, who was Dar Quebdani, paid money to the Rif people to try to save himself, but they did not fulfill the pact and… they put 900 men to the knife! My grandfather was one of the few survivors.
His grandfather was Sergeant Francisco Basallo Becerra and the hell he experienced in that small town in the north of Morocco, between July 22 and August 9, 1921, is still considered today as the worst defeat suffered by the Spanish Army throughout throughout the twentieth century. According to the historian Juan Pando: «Until that moment, contemporary Spain had never lost a complete army, en bloc and in such a frightful way. Mostly killed after they had surrendered and handed over their positions.”
«That last massacre was a huge demoralization for my grandfather, an episode that he never wanted to talk about. In fact, I had to investigate it on my own. He felt a mixture of pride, for having saved people; love, for having made endearing friendships, some of which died in his arms, and the desire to want to leave all that behind. Therefore, when he was rescued, and despite being received as a hero, he decided to leave the Army. When he died in Zaragoza at the age of 92, practically no one remembered him, ”says this journalist and author of ‘The prisoner of Annual’ (Planeta, 2021).
In the two weeks that the Annual disaster lasted, it is estimated that between 10,000 and 13,000 soldiers of the Spanish Army died, although some British researchers, such as Geoffrey Regan, raised that figure to 20,000. An unprecedented massacre that no government wanted to talk about in 75 years, and that thanks to the few testimonies collected by some journalists, by the famous ‘Picasso File’ and by descendants like Alfonso Basallo, we can now reproduce in the following podcast.
credits
Screenplay and production: Israel Viana.
Editing : Laura Odene.
Locution: Israel Viana, Patxi Fernández, Pablo Ortega, David Conde and Javier Nadales.
Collaboration : Alfonso Basallo.
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