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and welcome to the history page. We will pick up the thread of our story this
week on 7th August, 1936 and the uncontested Republican capture of Formentera
in a joint military operation launched from Barcelona and Valencia. As readers
will remember, our last instalment ended at the critical juncture when Commandant
Mestre had just rejected Captain Bayo’s overture, issued by cable from Formentera,
inviting the commandant to surrender willingly or else face sure defeat. Mestre,
though woefully unprepared to meet Bayo’s well-provisioned troops in combat,
was determined not to hand over Ibiza as glibly as his subordinate; Miquel Tuells
had done in Formentera. Bayo responded to Mestre’s refusal by departing immediately
for the larger Pitiusa, bent on reducing the Nationals into submission …
which he did. The puny resistance offered by Ibiza’s ill-armed and scantly
manned militias was no challenge for the thousand-strong Republican invasion.
It is also worth noting that Mestre’s last words to Bayo, “The blood
you wish to shed will be shed,” proved to be a chillingly accurate forecast
of events to come. Republican Disembarkation: 8th
August (Sant Ciriac) The two destroyers that carried
the republican troops landed at two separate points on the north coast of the
island, Pou des Lleó and Santa Eulària, and immediately proceeded
to make their way on foot to Ibiza Town. During the course of this march, Bayo’s
troops met with resistance on two occasions, the first incident occurring in Sant
Carles where the village chaplain, Antoni Tur i Costa, and his father endeavoured
to halt the invaders by the use of firearms. Naturally, they were overcome and
their small group of resisters became the first victims of a rather bloody five-week
Republican occupation. The second point of resistance took place at the mines
of s’Argentera where the Republican troops encountered a small company of
National soldiers dispatched from Vila. Though rather forgettable, this skirmish
stands out as the only instance of open combat in the Pitiuses between the opposing
sides of war. Despite numerous deaths among the Republicans, their progress was
not hindered in any crucial way and they pressed on toward Vila, making their
entrance the following day, 9th August. Well before the
dawning of that day, news of the National defeat had reached the city, unleashing
havoc at both the civilian and military level. All rightwing sympathizers who
still remained in town (the magnate Matutes and Bishop Cardona, to name but two)
quickly dispersed into the countryside, as did Commandant Mestre. Captain Garcia
Ledesma (the island’s maximum military leader prior to the outbreak of war)
and the prison warden, Vicente Belenguer, both committed suicide. Conversely,
all of the leftists who had been in hiding, including the illustrious literati,
Rafael Alberti and María Teresa León, began to emerge from the caves
and forests where they had subsisted for the previous three weeks. Destruction
and Persecution In the days following the republican
seizure of power there ensued a small reign of terror, the brunt of which fell
upon the clergy. Readers will remember from our overview that one of the keynotes
of Republican ideology was anti-clericalism and that attacks on Church property
and its members had been rife all over Spain long before the war. However, being
essentially acts of popular vandalism, such attacks had never occurred in Ibiza,
for the simple reason that the vast majority of Ibicencos loved the Church as
much as they loved life. It was therefore quite a collective
shock when the marauding masses of Republican soldiers fell upon the island, systematically
burning churches and killing off any clergy they could find. Of the approximately
fifty clergymen living in the Pitiuses, twenty-one were killed by the invaders
and the rest would no doubt have met the same fate had they not sequestered themselves
into secret nooks and crannies provided by their loyal flocks. In Formentera,
where the authorities had surrendered without so much as a peep, the Republican
troops went straight for the Sant Francesc parish priest, killed him and his father
on the spot, and threw their bodies into the sea. The vicar at Sant Ferrán
(Formentera) was also arrested that day, sent off to be incarcerated in the castle
in Dalt Vila, and subsequently shot in the September Massacre of which we will
speak next week. Even the Bishop’s head carried a price and, as in the days
of the Wild West, numerous posters sported the logo: “Bishop Cardona - Wanted
Dead or Alive”. Holocaust Most
of the island’s churches were burned and all of their contents, archives
and artwork destroyed, leaving nothing behind but four smouldering walls and sometimes
a roof. Of the twenty odd religious structures that existed in Ibiza only four
survived the holocaust: the Cathedral of Santa María, the Dominican convent
(currently the Eivissa Town Hall), and the two rural churches of Sant Antoni and
Jesús. The former escaped desecration thanks to the cleverness of the Sant
Antoni villagers who, when the marauders began to sack and burn their church,
made a big show of being Republicans themselves and joined in the pillage. The
locals then told the soldiers to carry on down the war path while they finished
off the job. Needless to say, as soon as the soldiers were safely out of earshot,
the folk of Sant Antoni began to dismantle and hide the most precious works of
art, which they restored to the church several weeks later. In the case of Jesús,
Bayo’s troops must at least be commended on their appreciation of the exquisite
altarpiece that graced this church. Miraculously, a ray of sanity pierced their
war-making and they allowed the work of art to be saved. The altarpiece may still
be seen today at its home in Jesús. Another point,
on which the Republicans must be commended, despite their otherwise largely atrocious
behaviour, is on the sparing of Isidor Macabich’s life. For, despite the
fact that this great scholar and historian was known to be a staunch right-wing
sympathizer and activist, Macabich’s intellectual brilliance placed him in
that special category of gifted beings and so found immunity from the ravages
of war. Closing So there
we have the first three days of Republican occupation in the Pitiuses. Perhaps
not quite what we’d expected from the shining ideals of the Second Republic.
But it just goes to show that the highest-minded social aspirations can sink nefariously
low under the yoke of human cruelty. Join us next week when we will be speaking
with the author, Rafael Sainz, on his soon to be published book on the Civil War
in the Pitiuses. Until then.
Emily Kaufman
emilykaufman@ibizahistoryculture.com
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