Tag Archives: valencia

1939: Manuel Molina, Valencia socialist

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Spanish trade unionist Manuel Molina Conejero was shot in Paterna on this date in 1939. Expect Spanish-language links throughout this post.

A longtime labor activist and (in 1910) co-founder of the mechanical sawmills union, Molina won election as a deputy of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) in 1936 — the left-wing electoral victory that triggered General Francisco Franco’s rebellion and the start of the Spanish Civil War.

Molina was part of PSOE’s moderate faction, led by Indalecio Prieto, and was appointed civil governor of Valencia when Prieto’s rival Francisco Largo Caballero was forced to resign the presidency during the chaotic Barcelona May Days.

He was arrested by the Francoists upon their victory in the civil war.

There’s a street named for him in his home city.

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1822: Francisco Javier de Elio

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On this date in 1922, Spanish royalist Gen. Francisco Javier de Elio was garroted in Republican Valencia.

Elio (English Wikipedia link | Spanish) was a career Spanish officer noted for being the last Viceroy of the Rio de la Plata in South America.

The Rio de la Plata forms the border between present-day Uruguay and Argentina, and by the time Elio self-proclaimed his viceregal rank, the May Revolution had confined Spanish authority to Uruguay.* He maintained the Spanish monarchy’s power in Montevideo until revolutionaries routed his forces at the Battle of Las Piedras** and Elio had to return to Spain.

This was just in time for the Spanish crown, as that country’s liberals had answered the chaos of the French invasion by promulgating in 1812 one of Europe’s most forward-thinking constitutions. King Ferdinand VII wholly repudiated this constitution upon his re-enthronement at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and this soon led to yet another liberal revolt in 1820† and yet another French invasion.

Elio, who administered Valencia with a rough hand for Ferdinand, was such a ferocious monarchist that revolutionaries took him prisoner in the 1820-1823 “Liberal Triennum”. The attempt by a group of mutinous cannoniers in 1822 to place Elio at their head (with or without the general’s foreknowledge) led to his condemnation by a military court.

The September 26 London Times preserves two accounts by opposing partisans of Elio’s end.

EXECUTION OF GENERAL ELIO

The infamous General Elio has at length suffered the pain of death (by the garotte). His execution took place this morning at 11 o’clock, after having been publicly divested of his rank and honours. The General was not condemned on account of his conduct as Captain General, but in consequence of the revolt of the cannoniers who occupied the fort of Valencia, on the 30th of May. Being tried before an ordinary Court Martial on the 2d of June, at which General Villa-Campa presided, he was on the 27th of August adjudged to the most ignominious death known to the Spanish laws, that of the garotte. This sentence, submitted to the Auditor of War to be revised, was not only approved, but the Auditor demanded its immediate execution, comformably to the martial law of the 17th of April, 1821. The arrival of the Brigadier Espina, who was provisionally invested with the military command of this district was regarded as the signal for the execution. If it had been retarded, we should have broken into the prison, and ourselves have conducted the victim to the scaffold. The people maintained that demeanour which becomes an heroic nation, and accompanied the culprit to the scaffold with shouts of — ‘To death with Elio! his blood will cement the constitutional edifice.’

And a contasting version …

The scaffold on which General Elio was strangled at Valencia, on the 4th instant, was erected close to a delightful garden which belonged to him when he was all-powerful in that town. It appears that this spot was selected in order that his tragical end might be marked by a circumstance which was calculated to make him regret life. One of our journals, which is at all times distinguished for its violence, affirms that General Eio, previously to walking to the scaffold, knelt down and asked pardon of the authorities who were present, for all the mischief he had occasioned — this is wholly false. Above 12,000 persons were witnesses of the firmness which he showed on this sad occasion, and of the last words which he pronounced. The General protested his innocence in the face of God and man; he declared that he had only carried into execution the orders which he had received from the Government during the period of his command; that he was utterly unconnected with the revolt of the cannoniers; and, finally, that he begged of God to pardon his murderers, as he himself forgave them. ‘I wish,’ he added, ‘that my blood may be the last which is shed in Spain. Spain will one day do justice to the purity of my intentions, and repeat the cry which is now my last prayer — ‘”Long live the King and religion.”‘

* When a Spanish colony, Uruguay was known as the Banda Oriental.

** The date of this decisive battle, May 18 (1812), is still kept as a Uruguayan national holiday.

† Guess what happened to the guy who led that 1820 revolt.

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1522: Vicent Peris, of the Revolt of the Brotherhood

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On this date in 1522, the leader of the Revolt of the Brotherhood came to his grief in Valencia.

Spain circa 1519-1520 was a powder keg. The rival kingdoms Aragon and Castille had of late been joined by a personal union of Ferdinand and Isabella, but now that couple was several years dead, and the scepter held by an irritating Flemish youth who had just popped in to hike everyone’s taxes so he could fund the bribe campaign necessary to become the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

These tensions triggered the Revolt of the Comuneros in Castile, whose consequent executions we have already dealt with; in Aragon, they launched the Revolt of the Brotherhoods. The “brotherhoods” in question were the germanias, urban artisan guilds. Those guilds stepped into a power vaccuum in Valencia when a 1519 plague triggered anti-Moslem riots and sent the nobles scurrying for the safety of their country estates. (Charles was busy in Germany being crowned Holy Roman Emperor.)

This was more than fine by the salty Valencia townsfolk, who much detested the overweening aristocracy.

[G]entlemen (caballeros) were regarded with the greatest hostility by the masses of the people. Argensola and Sandoval relate a story which places this hostility in a conspicuous light. One day, as a gentleman passed through a certain street, a woman called upon her son to look at him, and mark his appearance carefully. The child inquired the reason. The mother replied, “In order that when you become a man you may be able to say that you had seen a gentleman; for long before that time the whole race shall have disappeared, and been as completedly destroyed as the Templars were. (Source)

A “Council of Thirteen” — one representative from each of Valencia’s principal guilds — took over the city’s government.


La pau de les Germanies (The Peace of the Germanias) by Marcelino de Unceta.

Vicente Peris (English Wikipedia entry | Spanish), a firebrand weaver, soon came to be the first among this leading baker’s dozen. He enjoyed some military successes in 1521, and took advantage of them wherever possible to impose forced conversions, property expropriation, or summary execution on any Muslims he could lay hands upon.

No surprise but this alarming situation drove the hated caballeros into organized counterattack, just as the Valencian factions started breaking apart over how far to push the revolution. After they were thrashed at the Battle of Oriola in August 1521, they didn’t have to worry about that question any more.

Peris was caught slipping back into now-royalist-controlled Valencia on February 18, 1522, apparently hoping to stir up his old comrades in arms once more, and caught only after a running street battle that night that ended with him being smoked out of his house as it was burned around him.

As addenda to his execution this date, that house was entirely razed and the ground salted over, with a decree that nothing should ever be built there again. Peris’s descendants were anathematized as traitors to the fourth generation.

* The island of Mallorca followed Valencia’s lead in revolt, and by 1523, followed its unhappy fate as well.

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