Francisco Franco invaded Spain and split it forever as two parallel and irreconcilable realities. A story that can be told in two photos and two characters. Of the same name. On one side of the trench is Raphael Medina. An officer depicted by Robert Capa in a picture known as Death of a militiaman, Probably the warrior icon of the 20th century. A photo taken in the Mirror on September 5, 1936, and not in Serro Muriano, made the Hungarian journalist a world-renowned war reporter. Medina was an ally of Capa and commanded a militia detachment guarding the municipality, which fell to Franco a few days after the famous photo. Medina was captured and arrested and shot in 1940.
On the other side of the trench is another Rafael Medina. Neighbor of Seville, Duke and Phalangist of Medina. And the author of the memoir by title past simple (1971), where he finds in his first forty pages close contacts with other phalanxists and retired and active soldiers with whom he plots against the Second Republic. Raphael took up arms, accompanied the military uprising, and was part of one of the most devastating organizations, the Civil Guard (led by Commander Alfredo Ercizia), an expert unit in rear repression that spread terror in the cities of Huelva and Seville. In the first years of the Civil War.
Luis Medina’s grandfather, the commissioner of masks and substandard tests of the Madrid City Council, is the protagonist of one of the most horrific photos of the war. Just as Robert Capa acted on the Republican front, Juan Jose Serrano from Avila acted in the Francoist avant-garde and rear guard, and at the end of the conflict he continued to work in St. Louis. ABC.
In a photo taken on August 4, 1936, a month before Capa, Rafael Medina is identified as a person wearing a white jumpsuit and walking in front of the Civilian Guard near one of the towns. Uelva. He was a frightening companion of Ramon de Caranza in the repression of the city of Aljarafe in Seville. Rafael Medina after his active participation in the Franco uprising became part of the pillar of terror, which is integrated into the so-called. This paramilitary group traveled from Huelva in Seville to carry out “clearing” tasks in the southwestern cities from August 1936 to March 1937, when the convoy moved to the phalanx.
Historian Paco Espinoza has studied this moment and character in depth. He says that this mix of landowners, bourgeois lords and aristocrats gathered in the mountain police and marched to occupy the agricultural lands. “Cleaning cities from red people,” says the historian. “For a long time,” adds Espinoza, a researcher on repression in southwestern Spain. The official documents themselves refer to them as “cleaning operations”. They wore khaki uniforms, riding boots and a corduroy hat. In the gloom of this gloomy riding body read “Stop,” a motto that read, “Stop the enemy, for Jesus’ heart goes out to me.” They believed this would free them from danger and legitimize barbarism in the cities they wanted to control.
The column, created by Raphael Medina in collaboration with Ramon de Carranza, consisted of the agrarian bourgeoisie, the Kaki, discussing what had happened to their lands. The first thing they did was to remove the authorities from the cities and replace them with those who wanted to regain control of the cities. “These people were covered by African forces, legionnaires and regulars. “Once they took Huelva, they continued their journey to Ayamonte at the end of July 1936,” Espinoza recalled. Medina herself writes in her memoir, published in the midst of a dictatorship: “These operations of conquest of the people were undoubtedly of great interest and were most relevant to the cause of liberation and domination. . “Also for the possession of lands of cities such as Aznalkazar, Pilas, Vilamanrica, Carion de los Cespedes and Castilea del Campo.
The Francoist press called these “black detachments” “uncontrolled groups.” They participated in the first stage of “political cleansing”. Dionysio Ridrujo, director general of propaganda at the Interior Ministry, called their actions “informal or spontaneous repression.” They were the origin of sacks and “walking” (or “paseíllo”). The one who has achieved the greatest notoriety is the Black Squad that killed Federico Garcia Lorca. The Duke of Medina also served as his appointed mayor of Seville from 1943-1947 and as a court lawyer. In Huelva, before the start of military trials in March 1937, 2376 men and 86 women were killed.
In one of the cities of Huelva, one day fascists killed all the detainees, named Manuel, simply for the pleasure of creating terror, Espinoza said. Raphael Medina’s column managed and destroyed everything that the Republic had brought about by the power of the death penalty in order to regain control and power. “These people remained in their place during the dictatorship and during the transition period they lost nothing, untouched since 1936. No one has stopped their history to hold them accountable,” Espinoza said.
Paul Preston, in Spanish Holocaust (2011), tells more about the role of the commission agent’s grandfather, who took advantage of the corovirus and worried that the prosecution was “on the left”. According to the British Spaniard, hatred between landless peasants and farm property managers has become part of everyday life in the South. It tells the story of Raphael Medina, a famous landowner from Seville, who wrote, “On the Misunderstanding of the Above and the Envy of the Above,” about the distance between those who rode espadrilles and those who traveled by car. And he stops at this anecdote: When Raphael and his father drove past the day laborers on a secondary road, they noticed “a horrible look, such a deep disgust and such a pronounced dissatisfaction that he had the power. Lightning. ”
Preston continues the history of the close relationship that existed between landowners and their military rescuers. This became apparent when Caipo de Lano instructed Rafael Medina to raise funds for the cause of the rebels. After months of complaints about the destruction of agriculture, which led to them criticizing Republican reforms, Medina’s attempt was expected to fail. But no. On the first day, he collected one million pesetas among Alcala de Guadira’s olive exporters.
The same day, in Dos Hermanas, the owner asked him where the money would go. Medina said they were hoping to buy the plane and the landlord asked what it would cost. Medina replied, “About a million pesetas.” The landowner immediately issued him a check for this amount. “In the days following the uprising, village lords were able to form and finance their own militia, such as the Pillars of Ramon de Carranza and the Mora Figueero brothers,” wrote Paul Preston.
Source: El Diario
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