The Anarchist Who Shared My Name

by PABLO MARTÍN SÁNCHEZ

  “Let me go,” Pablo says to the brothers of Peace. “I have enough strength to walk on my own.”

  The two holy men grant his request, and shortly the group stops before a small door at the end of the corridor. Opening it, a footbridge crosses the ravine of the north wing to reach staircases that lead to the ring road, where the execution platform has been set up. The first squadron of soldiers goes out the door and crosses the bridge, followed by the authorities and the witnesses, then Gil Galar and Julián Santillán do the same, accompanied by their respective brothers and priests. And then, when it is Pablo’s turn, something unexpected happens, which surprises the few people remaining on the landing: with a sudden, abrupt motion, he breaks free from the brothers accompanying him, violently shoves the guard behind him and runs into one of the offices. In two strides he reaches the first window he finds, opens it, and leaps out headfirst like an Olympic diver, his shackled hands pointed ahead.

  The two brothers of the Peace and Don Alejo Eleta stand there paralyzed, waiting for the dull thud of the body hitting the ground, as a few soldiers enter the office shouting and leaning out onto the windowsill, their rifles at the ready. The commotion reaches the head of the procession and several come back across the bridge, including the warden and the investigating judge. They all lean out the window, but down below, in the gully covered with brush and shadows, they cannot make out Pablo’s body.

  “Go down and see what happened!” warbles Don Daniel Gómez Estrada, but several soldiers are already running downstairs.

  “Let’s go down too,” suggests the magistrate to Dr. Echarte. “I’m afraid you might have some work to do.”

  Meanwhile, at the other end of the footbridge, Gil Galar and Santillán are surprised and disturbed by the commotion.

  “What happened?” the former civil guard asks Chaplain Maisterrena, who returns from the office making the sign of the cross over and over.

  “Martín Sánchez—he jumped out the window,” says the priest, his voice afflicted. “May God have mercy on his soul.”

  “But, did he die, Father?” asks Gil Galar, his eyes like dinner plates.

  “I don’t know, my son, I don’t know.” responds Don Alejandro, making the sign of the cross again.

  “Well done, Pablo,” Santillán murmurs to himself.

  Not three minutes have passed before Don Bartolomé Clarés removes their doubts, arriving accompanied by Dr. Echarte, who corroborates the judge’s words with nervous nods, as if trying to play the drum of his sternum with his little beard:

  “The prisoner has died. His skull is smashed. Continue on,” he orders laconically.

  And the group continues on, even more distraught, if such a thing is possible. A rooster finally crows in the distance and his cackle dimly reaches the procession, like an improvised elegy. A chorus of hogs replies from the slaughterhouse, completing the liturgy. It appears, little Pablo, that you’ve managed to get away with it. It appears you have managed with your last flight to keep the vile garrote from squeezing your neck and having your death serve as a morbid spectacle to this city of Pamplona and this Spain of Sancho Panzas, cowardly and gluttonous, incapable of grasping any idea from beyond its manger. Too bad your peers no longer have the courage of a Don Quixote to launch themselves into the void. But poor, poor Angela, Pablo, poor Angela when she hears the news, now that she has found you again. And poor Paula, also, who in a single day has regained her father only to lose him again. Although, as the Bishop of Pamplona would say, pro optimo est minime malus: the best is the least bad; indeed, the best is the least bad. In any case, it won’t do any good for us to stand here looking forlornly through the window. Let us leave the brothers of Charity praying to Heaven for your impious soul, and follow the procession to learn the fate that awaits your partners in misfortune. Let’s not miss the end of this magnificent farce.

  At six minutes past seven o’clock, the procession reaches the base of the platform. It has been decided that Gil Galar will be the first to be executed, so they take Santillán to a nearby vacant lot so he will not have to witness the death of his companion. Unable to stand on his own, assisted by two brothers of Peace, Enrique ascends the steps to the platform, his eyes bugging out of his contorted face. Once they have seated him on the wooden bench, the chubby executioner from Burgos fits the iron band around his neck, while a guard comes up to remove his handcuffs and Don Alejandro Maisterrena prays, entrusting the wretch’s soul to God. Most of those present respond to the incantatory prayer by kneeling on the ground. With a thick rope, the executioners tie the prisoner’s hands and feet, binding him firmly to the apparatus and covering his head with a black cloth.

  “Don’t cover my face,” Gil Galar sobs. “I’m a martyr.”

  But the executioner from Madrid pays him no mind, perhaps remembering the spit he received in the face recently at the Modelo prison of Barcelona, while his colleague is already starting to turn the handle and the prisoner repeats again and again, beneath the makeshift funeral shroud, “Dear Jesus, have compassion for me. Mother, forgive me.” The sound of the vertebrae cracking is drowned out by Gil Galar’s shrieking as he writhes like a leech on the chair. The terrible shaking and convulsions last a few minutes, until finally the body lies lifeless at seven twenty-one. The executioner from Burgos turns the crank in the opposite direction and releases the band that holds the dead man’s head, and two brothers quickly take the body away and put it in a rough pine coffin behind the curtain. The executioner from Burgos wipes down the contraption with a yellow cloth, as he speaks with his colleague from Madrid about which of the two apparatuses to use for the next condemned man.

  “If you like we can use this one again, it’s smooth as silk,” the man from Burgos offers, “that way we don’t have to get yours dirty.”

  Just then a prison functionary comes running, waving a telegram. More than one person thinks it is the pardon, arriving fatefully late, including Don Daniel Gómez Estrada, who breathes a ridiculous sigh of relief when he reads the contents:

  “It’s from Gil Galar’s mother,” he says, and in response to the tense anticipation, he reads: “Having lost all hope, let my son pray to the Virgin of Carmen, as we are doing. Last hugs. Your mother and brothers.”

  But Enrique no longer has ears to hear the appeals of his venerable mother. Unlike the former civil guard Santillán, who hears the reading of the telegram as he is going up the steps of the platform, with a firm and sure foot, looking serenely at the people around him.

  “Can I say a few words of gratitude?” he asks Judge Clarés as his handcuffs are removed and the executioners tie him to the post.

  “You may speak,” allows Don Bartolomé.

  “I would like to give thanks with all my heart to the people of Navarra for their efforts to get us pardoned. And I want them to know that I die, that we die, victims of tyranny. Because that’s what triumphed today, not justice, but tyranny!”

  “Anything else?” asks the judge, visibly uncomfortable.

  “Yes,” he says, looking for someone among the crowd. “I would also like to thank our defense attorney, Don Nicolás Mocholi, who did everything he could for us.” Not finding him in the crowd, he finishes: “Well, you can tell him for me. Oh, one last thing: I have a photograph of my family here in my shirt pocket. I would like you to place it over my heart in the coffin.”

  An emotional silence spreads through the crowd.

  “And you,” he says to the executioner disdainfully, “try not to make me suffer.”

  “No, sir, you won’t feel a thing,” says the executioner from Burgos, getting ready to cover his head with the black cloth.

  “No, don’t cover my face,” Santillán complains energetically. “Why bother? Let the people of Navarra see what you’re capable of. Long live the Revolution! Long live free Spain!”

  But the last exclamation catches in his throat, because the executioner is already turning the handle and the former civil guard’s face contracts in a rictus of te
rror in view of all of those present, who respond with shouts of horror or turn their heads not to see the awful spectacle that the justice of Primo de Rivera is offering us this morning. It is seven thirty-eight on Saturday the sixth of December, 1924, when the last awful scream passes Julián Santillán’s lips. Shortly thereafter, his heart stops beating. The portly executioner unscrews the handle and releases the band, allowing the dead man’s head to flop against the post and remain staring at the firmament with empty eyes, face turned purple, tongue out, mouth filled with white foam, in a posthumous gesture that seems to be asking who in heaven will pay for the injustices that men commit on the face of the earth.

  “Consummatum est,” says Chaplain Don Alejandro Maisterrena, making the sign of the cross.

  And in the nearby slaughterhouse, a few hogs respond with their last grunts, ignorant of the fate that awaits them.

  EPILOGUE

  WHAT A GREAT IDEA, THE EPILOGUE, this port where ships finally arrive and can take stock of the journey. It is a chance to fasten the ropes and tie up the loose ends, and apologize to the passengers for the turbulence of the trip. And so the moment has arrived, dear reader, for you to breathe deeply and collect your luggage and get ready to cross the gangway to terra firma. I only hope you will not reproach me for the abrupt and tragic end of this adventure, because what else could I do but be faithful to the truth, as unpleasant as it may be? I too would have preferred a less cruel fate for my anarchist namesake and his unfortunate fellow travelers, but history is not an à la carte menu where you can choose whatever dessert catches your eye. It is true that I regret not having been able to hear from Teresa’s mouth her own version of the dramatic ending, and that I cannot help but wonder what the semi-reliable old woman was referring to when she said she had a final “little surprise” for me. Who knows if it would have added a new twist to the whole thing? But hold me back, dear reader, don’t let me go on building castles in the air. It is time now to take advantage of this final sigh, while the stevedores finish tying up the boat, to tell you a few details that you might want to know before you step onto the dry earth and disappear forever inland.

  After the legal murder, as some called it, at the Provincial Prison of Pamplona, the lifeless bodies of Julián Santillán and Enrique Gil Galar were brought directly to the cemetery, in a hearse flanked by several civil guards and a good handful of onlookers. However, Pablo’s body, according to official sources, did not leave the prison until the next day. It seems that he remained in the hospital room until the medical examiner, Don Joaquín Echarte, proceeded to perform the autopsy on the evening of Sunday, December 7, 1924. Shortly afterward, a hearse accompanied by several pairs of mounted civil guards left the jail, transporting a rough pine coffin decorated with a cross made of tin foil. Throughout the weekend, as a sign of mourning, all soccer games in the capital of Navarra were suspended.

  The more leftist elements of Spanish society did not hesitate to start issuing their criticism, albeit from exile. Le Quotidien, for example, offered this headline in its edition of December 7: “Alfonso XIII and the Directory commit a triple murder,” and ended the article with a prophecy: “The civilized world can never forget this crime.” The next day, several French newspapers printed the letter written by Don Miguel de Unamuno, Don Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, and Don José Ortega y Gasset to the Marquis of Magaz, the acting interim president of the government, because Primo de Rivera was in Morocco spurring on his troops. The letter was blunt and left no room for doubt about the anti-dictatorial stance of the three intellectuals, although they distanced themselves from direct participation in the revolutionary insurgency in Vera de Bidasoa. It read:

  In our name, and in the name of the many Spanish people who, deprived of freedom, cannot do so themselves, we protest the cruel travesty of justice that the Directory has just committed by executing the three men put on trial for the events of Vera.

  The statements made on the record were not read to the defendants so that they could confirm or deny them; the arrests were not made in flagrante delicto, but several hours after the fact; the detainees were not put through a lineup to be recognized by witnesses.

  The prosecutor of the Supreme Council himself, when formulating his accusation, understanding that it was based on arbitrary evidence, recognized its deficiency, and built his argument on moral convictions as if in a medieval court; this same judicial authority sought to mitigate the terrible ritualism of the prosecution, and while asking for the death penalty, noted that a plea for pardon is applicable in such a case.

  Finally, the defense counsel, in a very clear statement that should be an inspiration to even the most skeptical and passionate soul, ends by saying: “I swear to you on my conscience and my honor, after having meditated extensively on the contents of the briefs in this trial, that I do not find a single piece of evidence, neither sufficient nor even merely indicative, that three men should suffer the most irreversible of punishments.”

  The Directory found it convenient to foster belief in a revolutionary organization, and invented the absurd fable, which even a moron could not possibly believe, of a communist plot, instigated by Republican elements and with the purpose of giving power to a monarch, the Count of Romanones. To dress up this farce, they did not hesitate to throw around our names, and what is worse, to taint them with the blood of three innocents.

  For our part, we consider legitimate everything that is done to overthrow a dictatorship that debases us and degrades us in front of the world, and when we believe that we have sufficient means for this purpose we will fulfill our obligation without ostentation and also without hesitation. But that is what will indicate to us our duty, not those who try to discern in us the disloyal faith of a few adversaries unchecked by justice or even respect for the honor of their fellow man.

  Now we shall meet the obligation of the moment, by protesting as fervently as we can the death of the innocent; the facts lead us to call it murder. Given the prosecutor’s petition for pardon, the blood falls entirely on the foreign government now oppressing our country. We also protest that such acts provoke the discredit of Spain in the eyes of civilization, and we beg the world not to judge our country for the work of a tyrannical minority, who are the least prepared and the least competent to govern it. Spain demands to be governed, like all modern people, by the sincere and spontaneous expression of the national majority.

  Signed:

  VICENTE BLASCO IBÁÑEZ,

  MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO,

  JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET

  A few days later, Unamuno dedicated a poem to Pablo, Enrique, and Julián: Sonnet XCVIII of what would end up being his book De Fuerteventura a París, accompanied by a note strongly criticizing Alfonso XIII and all of his cohort of stupefied idiots, as he had begun calling them. These were the lines that he dedicated to them posthumously:

  Gain, real gain, is all in vain

  and its path will lead to nothing,

  but understanding stops at ‘but’ …

  and everything is left for tomorrow.

  “We have to act!” shout the sane:

  “Stick! Stick!” looking at the slaughter.

  Who cares if the cattle is a sheep

  or a wolf? Our law treats all the same!

  A few poor boys go to the garrote

  “With no blood spilt,” oh, such mercy!

  in Vera they were caught, and the throat

  of the village gave nary a groan; their patience

  is waiting for the Riffian to overthrow

  the vile dictatorship of our dementia.

  Around the same time, Blasco Ibáñez managed to inundate Spain with his leaflet Una nación secuestrada, without managing to turn it into una nación liberada, as Durruti aspired. One hundred thousand copies were smuggled into the country during the month of December 1924, in an operation you might almost say was conducted by land, sea, and air. Since the pamphlets were distributed for free, they found their way into the houses of the bourgeoisie, the nobil
ity, and even the churches. It caused a stir of such magnitude that the authorities ordered all plaques in honor of the Valencian writer taken down; all of his property was seized, his books were banned (some were even burned in public squares), and there were some who clamored to have his citizenship revoked. To all this, Blasco responded with a boast from his fortress on the Côte d’Azur: “The pamphlet was the artillery. Now we fire the machine guns.” But, at the moment of truth, the renowned writer’s powder got wet, and he ended up dying in 1928, one day after his seventy-first birthday, completely estranged from politics. So he did not live to see the advent of the Republic he so yearned for. However, he left for posterity the foreboding words of the executive Pablo Dupont, a character in his novel La bodega, which clairvoyantly predict what will end up happening to the rebels of Vera: “A little fright in the first moment, and then Boom! Boom! Boom! The lesson they need, the prison, and even a little touch of the garrote, so they remember to watch their step and leave us in peace for a while.”