On this date in 1936, the Spanish Republic executed Gen. Manuel Goded Llopis, who mounted an unsuccessful nationalist attack in the heart of Republican Spain, Barcelona.

Goded (English Wikipedia entry | Spanish) was born of Catalan ancestry in Puerto Rico. His family moved back to the mother country when the United States stripped that territory away in the Spanish-American War.

Goded advanced rapidly through the armed forces, becoming dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera‘s chief of staff by 1927. He was dismissed from this post for intriguing against the government, but soon found his way back to command and became (Spanish link) one of the circle of officers conspiring to check the advance of the left.

When the anti-Republican military mounted the revolt that became the Spanish Civil War, Goded was in Catalonia — freshly arrived on a mission to snatch Barcelona for the fascists at the revolt’s outset. Forces loyal to the Republican government, however, defeated Goded in the streets of Barcelona on 19 July. The general himself was captured on 11 August. A Republican court had him shot at Montjuic the very next day, along with another officer, Alvaro Fernandez Burriel.

His defeat, in the long run, might have been a gift by the Republicans to their conquerors: Goded was a partner but also a rival of Francisco Franco’s, and Goded’s presence in the postwar settlement among the nationalist victors might have introduced a fault line into the Franco regime.

On this day..

• 1469: Andrea Viarani
• 1335: Prince Moriyoshi, imperial martyr
• 1875: Joseph Le Brun, the last public hanging
• 1896: Mirza Reza Kermani, assassin of the Shah
• 1806: Josiah Burnham, despite Daniel Webster's defense
• 1895: Minnie Dean, the only woman hanged in New Zealand
• 1912: Sing Sing's seven successive sparks
• 1469: Richard Woodville, father of the queen
• 2008: Leon David Dorsey, the Blockbuster Killer
• 1527: Jacques de Beaune, baron de Semblançay
• 1952: Night of the Murdered Poets
• 1833: Captain Henry Nicholas Nicholls, sodomite