Juan José Primo Jurado, author of ‘History of the Legion’, tells for this new ABC podcast that on January 7, 1921 the drums did not beat or the piccolos whistled. The soundtrack of the small unit of the Third of Foreignersgerm of the future spanish legion, who was defending his position in Beni Hasan, was formed by the whistle of seven rifle shots. Not one more, not one less. The skirmish did not last long. Faced with Spanish fire, the Rif people fled in panic.
Behind, however, was the inert body of an Andalusian waiter who was only twenty years old: Baltasar Queija de la Vega. Death united him forever with his girlfriend, who had died days before. Although he left one last memory. When his companions rummaged in his warrior they found some simple verses that made them shudder. The myth tells that, on this little poem, the ‘boyfriend of death, the most famous anthem of the Spanish Legion. More than a century later, the song resonates every time this elite unit parades.
Truth or legend? The story of Baltasar Queija was squeezed to the extreme by the founder of the Spanish Legion, Joseph Millan-Astray, the same man who said he based himself on the Tercios and the samurai code to shape this new shock unit. “He knew how to surround those men with mysticism, and, of course, also the story of the first deceased of the body, Queija himself,” reveals Primo Jurado. For him he was a perfect martyr; a mirror in which future recruits would have to look at themselves.
What is undeniable is that Quieja’s death allowed the officer to make the Legion known. A unit whose foundation was a milestone in the military history of a country that the colonial tragedy of 1898 had plunged into bitterness and that saw in Africa the last link with that old empire on which the sun never set. A Spain that yearned for the days of glory lived centuries ago, but that had breakfast every morning with the death of reservist soldiers and lower-class kids whose little experience in combat led them to fall in pairs before the snipers of the kabilas.
credits
Screenplay and production: Manuel P. Villatoro.
Editing: Andrea Carrasco.
Voice : Andrea Carrasco, Patxi Fernandez, Manuel P. Villatoro.
Collaboration: Juan José Primo Jurado.
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