Tío Pepe and the Rebel Column

By Emilito
Rev. 2005-02-27

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Emilio & Carmen's 1936 trip to Spain
Esta página en español

This is a story of Emilito's tío Pepe, Jose SIGNES GARCÍA, brother of Emilito's father Emilio, during the Spanish Civil War.  It was told to Emilito by his first cousin Julián SIGNES QUEROL, tío Pepe's son.

Tio Pepe and family in 1934
Tio Pepe and his family (wife Trini, sons Julián & Pepet) in 1934

Pepe had been a Civil Guard (Guardia Civil) since 1919. During the Civil War (probably 1938) he was part of a Republican Civil Guard column that went from Castellón to the front (somewhere in the vicinity of Teruel).  There were trucks, wagons, and on foot, 2000-3000 members of the Civil Guard.

Together with the professional Civil Guards there were 3000-4000 volunteers - militiamen of the left, very young, perhaps 17 or 18 years of age.   They were wearing old clothes,
alpargatas [canvas rope-soled sandals], etc.

During their voyage (in the town of Valverde), several officers got together and decided to switch to Franco's side.  They killed the colonel and possibly the lieutenant colonel.  Then they began to kill all the youngsters that they could.

Tío Pepe didn't know what was going on, as he was sleeping.  At 3 or 4 AM, he heard shots - "pim pom pim pum!"; he got up and saw the Guards killing the youngsters.  He reckoned they killed at least 200 or 300 while the rest escaped.

The column went immediately to Franco's side.

Pepe heard a one of the guards say "We didn't see Guard Signes shoot anyone."

Pepe ran away.

He fled through the small (communist) towns in the area.  In the town of Pitarque, province of Teruel, he found a family that he asked to lend him clothes, because in his Guard's clothes he would have been killed.  They gave him some of their father's clothes - clothes in which they planned to bury him - clothes that looked like they may have come from a Goya painting.  Pepe promised to return the clothes (a promise he never kept).

Then he went towards Morella (his wife's hometown in the province of Castellón) through all the communist towns en route.  They captured him in the town of Alcoriza (province of Teruel), and put him in jail where they were going to execute him.  While in jail, he was put to work as a construction laborer.  When the young volunteers of the column arrived they were able to verify that "This person had nothing to do with what happened."

They turned him free, and he went to Morella.  Morella was then either in Franco's hands or on the verge of becoming so.  [Emilito's note: Morella fell to Franco in April 1938.]  He then fled with his family to his hometown of Gata de Gorgos (Alicante), still in Republican hands.  He lived in a little house called the "Pou de Pedreguer"  (which at that time belonged to his brother Emilio [Emilito's father], who was living in the US).

Approximately at the war's end, the Civil Guard of Morella [now Franco's Civil Guard] notified the authorities in Gata that Civil Guard Signes was a leftist and that he had deserted his column.

The Civil Guard of Gata, although they liked Pepe, had no other option but to put him in jail (probably in 1939).

He was taken to Alicante, and later Valencia, and was in jail for nearly two years.

He was lucky not to be executed - it helped him that his father was on the political right (and by the end of the war, so was Pepe!)

"The Communists were going to kill my father," said Julián, "and so was Franco."

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This is the story the way Julián told it to Emilito.  Emilito, in February 2005, discovered the following web page, which tells the story of what happend to what has to be the same column (the year is 1937).  [Emilito promises to translate this - sometime.]

http://www.alasbarricadas.org/ateneo/modules/wikimod/index.php?page=Columna%20de%20Hierro

La primera columna republicana que se lanzó contra Teruel procedía de Castellón e iba bajo el mando del coronel de carabineros Fernández Bujanda, el capitán Luis Sierra y el teniente Joaquín Oset Merlo, y tenía como delegado político al diputado socialista por Castellón Francisco Casas Salas. Esta fuerza la integraban un millar de milicianos, más de cuatrocientos guardias civiles y algunos carabineros, procedentes de Valencia, Castellón y Cuenca. El eje de partida fue Sagunto, dirección Teruel. La noche del 28 de julio llegó a Barracas, pueblo situado en la carretera general. Y para poder seguir hacia Sarrión, la columna se dividió en dos partes: una parte, bajo el mando del capitán Sierra y del diputado Casas Salas, marchó sobre Mora de Rubielos, que fue ocupada sin tener que hacer un solo disparo; la otra, dirigida por Fernández Bujanda, salió en dirección a La Puebla de Valverde el 29 de julio.
 
Una vez llegada la columna a La Puebla de Valverde, la noche del 30, los guardias civiles se sublevaron, apresando a los jefes de la expedición, militares y políticos, y a numerosos milicianos, incluidos los que volvían de Mora, dispersando a los restantes y apoderándose de todo el armamento. Acto seguido se pasó a las fuerzas nacionales que defendían los accesos de Teruel por aquella carretera. La expedición Bujanda terminó así, convirtiéndose en un poderoso refuerzo para la escasa guarnición de la plaza». [11]

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11. José Manuel MARTÍNEZ BANDE, op. cit., p. 92. Ramón Salas, en su Historia del Ejército Popular de la República amplía con más detalles lo que sucedió en Puebla de Valverde: «La columna de guardias civiles y milicianos dirigÍda por Fernández Bujanda salió de Valencia el 25 de julio, se unió en Sagunto con otra que venía de Castellón, y siguieron hasta Segorbe, donde se les añadieron milicianos y guardias civiles de los pueblos de la comarca. Setecientos milicianos y cuatrocientos guardias en total. Allí la columna se dividió en dos agrupaciones; una se dirigió a Teruel por Puebla de Valverde y la otra a Mora de Rubielos. Al llegar, el 30 de julio, a Puebla de Valverde, los guardias civiles les tendieron una emboscada mientras reposaban, matando a 72 milicianos y apresando a 47, incluidos el jefe de la expedición, Bujanda, y los mandos, Casas y Sierra, que acudieron desde Mora a parlamentar. Los detenidos fueron conducidos a Teruel y fusilados".



Map of Places in Tio Pepe Story
Location of places discussed on this page

 
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