For the Spain they believed to be better:
in Santa Catalina cemetery
In July 1936, General Francisco Franco took command of the Spanish Army of Africa and rebelled against the Spanish republican government; his military uprising led to the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939. Franco transported troops to mainland Spain in an airlift using transport aircraft supplied by Germany and Italy. The Spanish Army of Africa which included a considerable number of Moroccan troops (regulares), under the command of Francisco Franco, became the core of the Spanish Nationalist Army.
Ceuta became one of the first casualties of the uprising: General Franco's rebel nationalist forces seized Ceuta, while at the same time the city came under fire from the air and sea forces of the official republican government.
According to Francisco Sánchez Montoya “in Ceuta, and in the western area of the Protectorate in Morocco, more than war, we should speak of repression, since there were no combats or military operations.”
268 victims were killed in Ceuta by Franco’s repression from 1936 to 1944. According to him “the month of August 1936 becomes the most tragic of all the repression in Ceuta, with 73 victims, of which only seven are carried out after the respective councils of war; the rest, sixty-six, were due to the “sacas” at dawn. By political militancy, the largest number of people shot were the anarcho-syndicalists and by professions the military was the most punished, especially in 1938. After the beginning of the repression, with the passing of time, the number of executions gradually diminished. In the first five months a total of one hundred and twenty-eight executions were registered, almost 50% of those carried out during the entire repression. In 1937, ninety-six were registered, to continue down to forty-one in 1938, and until six years later, in August 1944, when the last three executions were carried out in Ceuta”
In April 2014 representatives from The UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores / General Union of Workers), the major Spanish trade union and historically affiliated with the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) inaugurated a memorial mausoleum to their mates from the Union, killed for defending freedom in Santa Catalina cemetery in Ceuta.
These photos were taken in April 2018 and show this memorial and Santa Catalina cemetery.
