Gonzalo
Queipo de Llano
was born in
Tordesillas, Spain, on 5th February, 1875.
He was educated in a seminary but he runaway and joined the Spanish
Army as a gunner. He later became a cadet in the Royal Cavalry Academy.
As a cavalry officer he fought in Cuba and Morocco, where he got a
reputation for his swashbuckling cavalry charges.
In 1923 Queipo de Llano
reached the rank of brigade general. He was highly critical of the
Spanish Army and as a result Miguel Primo de
Rivera relieved him of his command and had him imprisoned.
Queipo de Llano was released
from prison in 1926. He continued to criticize the government and
in 1928 he was dismissed from the army. Two years later he became
leader of the Republican Military Association. He also became associated
with the National Revolutionary Committee, a group plotting to overthrow
Alfonso XIII.
The revolt failed and Queipo de Llano fled to Portugal.
When the king abdicated
in April 1931, Queipo de Llano returned home and was given the important
post as commander of the 1st Division in Madrid.
Later he was appointed head of the military staff of president Niceto
Alcalá Zamora.
Queipo de Llano supported
the Popular Front and in April 1936 became
director-general of the Customs Guards. However, he was critical of
some of its policies including the agrarian reforms that penalized
the landed aristocracy. Other measures included
outlawing the Falange Española
and granting Catalonia political and administrative autonomy. On
the 10th May 1936 Niceto
Alcala Zamora was
ousted as president and replaced by the left-wing Manuel
Azaña.
Soon afterwards Queipo
de Llano, Emilio
Mola,
Francisco
Franco,
and José
Sanjurjo,
began plotting to overthrow the Popular Front government. This resulted
in the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War
on 17th July, 1936. Queipo de Llano, with only 200 men, successfully
took control of Seville.
On 17th January 1937, General
Queipo
de Llano and
the Nationalist
Army launched
an attack on Málaga. It eventually
fell to the Nationalists on 8th February. Over the next few weeks
an estimated 4,000 supporters of the Popular
Front government were executed. He also distributed the lands
of these people to supporters to the Nationalists.
At the end of the Spanish
Civil War he was promoted to lieutenant general and General Francisco
Franco
sent him as head of the
Spanish Mission to Italy. Gonzalo
Queipo de Llano died
at his country estate near Seville on 9th March, 1951.
(1)
Luis
Bolin, Spain, the Vital Years (1967)
During the latter part of King Alfonso's reign. General Queipo de
Llano had been an open critic of the Monarchy. When the Republic was
established he enjoyed the confidence of its first President, Alcala
Zamora, whose son had married one of his daughters, and whose successors
in due course appointed him. Inspector General of the Carabiniers,
or Coastguards, a post of some importance which he still held when
the time came to rebel against the Republican Government. Strongly
as Queipo de Llano may have believed that a republic was the best
possible solution, when the regime went from bad to worse he joined
those who wished to overthrow it. In Andalusia, where he was sent
by the leaders of the revolt to investigate the existing possibilities,
he found a small minority determined to act and a majority unwilling
to do so, but despite the highly pessimistic account which he gave
of the situation he was chosen to lead the rising in southern Spain,
a decision probably influenced by a widespread confidence in his resourcefulness.
(2)
Arthur
Koestler, Dialogue
With Death (1942)
For the last six weeks there had been a lull in the fighting.
The winter was cold; the wind from the Guadarrama whipped Madrid;
the Moors in their trenches caught pneumonia and spat blood. The passes
in the Sierra Nevada were blocked the Republican Militiamen had neither
uniforms nor blankets and their hospitals had no chloroform; their
frozen Sneers and feet had to be amputated without their being put
to sleep. At the Anarchist hospital in Malaga a boy sang the
Marseillaise while they sawed away two of his toes; this expedient
gained a certain popularity.
Then spring came and all
was well again; the buds on the trees opened and the tanks started
on the roads. Nature s benevolence enabled General Queipo de Llano
to launch, as early as mid-January, his long-planned offensive against
Malaga.
This was in 1937. General
Gonzales Queipo de Llano, who not so long ago had conspired against
the Monarchy and proclaimed his sympathies with communism to all and
sundry in the cafes round the Puerta del Sol was now in command of
the Second Division of the insurgent army. He had a microphone installed
in a room at his G.H.Q. in Seville and talked into it every night
for an hour. "The Marxists;" he said, "are ravening
beasts, but we are gentlemen. Senor Companys deserves to be stuck
like a pig."
General Queipo's army consisted
of approximately 50,000 Italian troops, three banderas of the Foreign
Legion and 15,000
African tribesmen. The rest of his men, about ten per cent, were of
Spanish nationality.
(3)
The Manchester Guardian (14th
December 1936)
Seville, the future capital of Spain according to the
rebel authorities, is full of life. The factories are working day
and
night. General Oueipo de Llano, who spends half an hour before the
microphone every night passing judgement on international politics
and advising Great Britain and France to follow the example of Italy
and Germany, is one of the principal diversions of the people of Seville,
educated and uneducated alike. I sought in vain for a room in any
of the splendid modem hotels of Seville. They are all full of Germans
and Italians - diplomats, aviators, press agents, and, above all,
future soldiers in Franco's army. Hitler and Mussolini have sent to
Seville and Salamanca their best technicians in the field of propaganda.
The Fascist emissaries from Rome are giving instructions to the Spanish
'Falangistas' on the organisation of syndicates and on the technique
of the conquest of power. They say that neither Hitler nor Mussolini
was satisfied with the Spanish Fascist movement, which is too revolutionary,
too violent, too much inclined to the elimination of political enemies
by death.
Last updated: 18th August, 2002
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