Arnedo Events is the name given to the events that occurred in the town of Arnedo (La Rioja) on January 5, 1932, in which eleven people were killed by bullets fired by the Civil Guard and thirty were injured.
Arnedo Events is the name given to the events that occurred in the town of Arnedo (La Rioja) on January 5, 1932, in which eleven people were killed by bullets fired by the Civil Guard and thirty were injured.
Six days after the tragic events in Castilblanco on December 31, 1931, with one peasant and four Civil Guards dead, a new confrontation took place in the La Rioja town of Arnedo between the local population and the Civil Guards. In the town there was a shoe company owned by the Muro family that had fired several workers. As after long talks, with the intervention of the Civil Governor, the fired workers were not reinstated, their coworkers began a strike on Tuesday, January 5 and the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) strike committee invited "all conscientious citizens" to join the "run over" workers and "to ask for our bread and that of our children, which those heartless bosses want to snatch from us”. That same day the civil governor, the mayor, several councilors, the head of the Civil Guard command met some employers at the Town Hall with the employers agreeing to reinstate the dismissed workers. [2]
In the Plaza de la República (previously called Plaza de Nuestra Señora de Vico) a crowd of workers on strike gathered with their families and neighbors who accompanied the union delegates who were going to meet at the town hall with the employers to sign the agreement. When the crowd saw the Civil Guard, they apparently burst into hostile shouts against them, calling them "lackeys of capitalism" and asking for the dissolution of the body. The response of the 25 civil guards who were in the square under the command of a lieutenant was to shoot into the crowd without giving any kind of warning. [3] According to some versions, it all started with a worker trying to defend his daughter, a 15-year-old girl who had been beaten by a guard. During this workers' fight with the guards, a guard fell to the ground and the police opened fire on all those gathered, making at least three discharges. [4]
The shooting did not stop until the commander of the Civil Guard who was in the Town Hall went down to the street and ordered the lieutenant to stop shooting. The result was six dead men and five women (among them a mother and her four-year-old son, and a seventy-year-old woman); eleven women and nineteen men injured (including a five-year-old boy whose leg had to be amputated and several elderly people), of whom five were rendered useless for work; and a civilian slightly wounded by a bullet. [2]
Public opinion reacted with indignation and the sympathy that it had shown towards the Civil Guard after the events in Castilblanco turned into hostility, because it was not the first time that the Civil Guard had fired at point-blank range. In the Parliament, opposition deputies called for the immediate dismissal of the general director of the Civil Guard, general Sanjurjo. But a month later, the government gave in to the pressure and replaced him with general Cabanellas, and Sanjurjo went on to lead the Carabineros Corps, which Sanjurjo interpreted as disavowal and degradation by the government (five months later he would lead the first coup attempt to overthrow the Republic). [5] In the conversation that Sanjurjo had with the President of the Government, Manuel Azaña, in which the latter informed him of his dismissal as director of the Civil Guard, Sanjurjo did not speak of the atrocities committed by his subordinates in Arnedo, but instead blamed the “socialist town halls”, where “the worst of each house” had gotten into, “undesirable” people who “encourage disorder, intimidate owners, cause damage to properties and necessarily clash with the Civil Guard”. The socialists, Sanjurjo told Azaña, should not be in the government, "because their presence encourages those who favor excesses". [6]
The military court that on January 30, 1934, tried in Burgos the lieutenant of the Civil Guard who gave the order to shoot in Arnedo acquitted him "of the crime of homicide and injuries due to reckless negligence due to lack of sufficient evidence to appreciate what he had committed" noting that " the same circumstance exists with respect to charges on the Civil Guard force under his orders". [6]
Arnedo is the third largest town in La Rioja, Spain. It is located near Calahorra, and has a population of about 15,000 people.
Manuel Azaña Díaz was a Spanish politician who served as Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic, organizer of the Popular Front in 1935 and the last President of the Republic (1936–1939). He was the most prominent leader of the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939.
Miguel Cabanellas Ferrer was a Spanish Army officer. He was a leading figure of the 1936 coup d'état in Zaragoza and sided with the Nationalist faction during the Spanish Civil War.
José Sanjurjo y Sacanell was a Spanish general who was one of the military leaders who plotted the July 1936 coup d'état that started the Spanish Civil War.
The Battle of Badajoz was one of the first major engagements of the Spanish Civil War, resulting in a tactical and strategic Nationalist victory, however at a significant cost in time and troops. After several days of shelling and bombardment, Nationalists stormed the fortified border city of Badajoz on August 14, 1936, cutting off the Spanish Republic from neighbouring Portugal and linking the northern and southern zones of Nationalist control.
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions, which was long affiliated with the International Workers' Association (AIT). When working with the latter group it was also known as CNT-AIT. Historically, the CNT has also been affiliated with the Federación Anarquista Ibérica ; thus, it has also been referred to as the CNT-FAI. Throughout its history, it has played a major role in the Spanish labor movement.
Castilblanco is a municipality located in the province of Badajoz, Extremadura, Spain. According to the 2005 census (INE), the municipality has a population of 1146 inhabitants.
The Berones were a pre-Roman Celtic people of ancient Spain, although they were not part of the Celtiberians, they lived north of the Celtiberians and close to the Cantabrian Conisci in the middle Ebro region between the Tirón and Alhama rivers.
The Pellendones were an ancient pre-Roman Celtic people living on the Iberian Peninsula. From the early 4th century BC they inhabited the region near the source of the river Duero in what today is north-central Spain. The area comprises the north of Soria, the southeast of Burgos and the southwest of La Rioja provinces.
The Cartagena uprising took place 4–7 March 1939 during the Spanish Civil War. The troop transport SS Castillo de Olite was sunk during the revolt.
Luis González de Ubieta y González del Campillo was an admiral of the Spanish Republican Navy during the Spanish Civil War. He died in exile as the captain of the Panamanian merchant vessel Chiriqui, refusing to be rescued when the ship under his command sank in the Caribbean Sea not far from Barranquilla.
The Revolution of 1934, also known as the Revolution of October 1934 or the Revolutionary General Strike of 1934, was a revolutionary strike movement that took place between 5 and 19 October 1934, during the black biennium of the Second Spanish Republic. The revolts were triggered by the entry of the conservative Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA) into the Spanish government. Most of the events occurred in Catalonia and Asturias and were supported by many Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and General Union of Workers (UGT) members, notably Largo Caballero, as well as members of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). Historians have argued that the incident sharpened antagonism between the political Right and Left in Spain and was part of the reason for the later Spanish Civil War. Around 2,000 people were killed during the uprising, which was repressed by Spanish government forces.
The First Biennium, also known as the Social-Azañist Biennium, the Reformist Biennium, or the Transformer Biennium, was the period between the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic on April 14, 1931, and the 1933 Spanish general election.
Sanjurjada was a military coup staged in Spain on August 10, 1932. It was aimed at toppling the government but not necessarily at toppling the Republic. Following brief clashes it was easily suppressed in Madrid. Hardly any action was recorded elsewhere except Seville, where local rebel commander general José Sanjurjo took control for some 24 hours but acknowledged defeat when faced with resolute governmental response. Due to his brief success and attention given during following trials, the entire coup has been later named after him.
Ángel Viñas Martín is a Spanish economist and historian. He has published many works dealing with the Spanish Civil War focusing on the war finance as well as the international relations aspects of the conflict.
The anarchist insurrection of January 1933, also known as the January 1933 revolution, was the second of the insurrections carried out by the National Confederation of Labor (CNT) in the Second Spanish Republic, during the First Biennium.
The anarchist insurrection of December 1933, also known as the December 1933 Revolution, was a revolutionary general strike accompanied by the action of armed militias that had its epicenter in the city of Zaragoza, and in general in Aragón and La Rioja. It tried to implement libertarian communism, and that it extended by points of Extremadura, Andalusia, Catalunya and the mining basin of León. December 1933 was the third and last of the insurrections carried out by the CNT during the Second Republic.
The Anarchist insurrection of Alt Llobregat was a revolutionary general strike which took place in the north of Catalonia, Spain, in January 1932, principally organized by Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) unions in the mining and textile sectors. It was the first of the three insurrections carried out by the CNT during the time of the Second Spanish Republic, followed by the anarchist insurrections of January and December 1933.
The Castilblanco events were a confrontation between local peasants and the Civil Guard that took place in the Spanish town of Castilblanco on 31 December 1931.