Ernesto Carratalá is a 97-year-old man who lived through the Spanish Civil War and recalls his experiences. As a young man, he joined the Republican side and fought against the fascist Nationalists. He was eventually captured and nearly executed, spending years in prison until his release in 1943. Ernesto went on to teach linguistics and have a career in academia under Franco's dictatorship. In his later years, he was cast in a small role in a film about pre-Civil War Spain due to his acting experience. Ernesto shares his first-hand account of the Republican resistance to fascism and the atrocities committed by the Nationalists in an effort to educate others about what really occurred during this

1. A special kind of louse
Ernesto Carratalá is one of a diminishing number of people who
remember what life was like during the Spanish Civil War. The
war, a military revolt against Spain’s democratically elected civil-ian
government, began in July 1936 and ended on April 1st, 1939,
with victory for Franco’s Falangists, the military-backed fascist party.
At 97 years old, Ernesto shares his story after reading British historian
Paul Preston’s book: The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and extermination in
twentieth-century Spain.
Ernesto Carratalá is known by kids around the neighbourhood as
Papa Noel: Santa Claus. His impressive snow-white beard has been a
feature around Barcelona’s Gothic quarter for over 20 years. But few
would guess at the story this striking old man has to tell.
We sit in Ernesto’s study and he starts reciting a line from The Impor-tance
of Being Earnest. We continue talking for a while, following his dis-jointed
trajectory of words, wisdom, and wisecracks: “You will be hard
pushed to find an old bugger like me. I tell you, hard pushed all right!”
he bellows in Castilian as he rummages through his sprawling library
seeking out a tome on Barcelona University. For 20 years he taught in
the linguistics department there, and his former students describe him
as a “legendary” teacher. Pulling down the right book he points to the
section that confirms his reputation: “… in the linguistics department
Dr. Ernesto Carratalá left his distinct mark.”
However, he prefers the title piojo, which means louse, and doesn’t
just refer to the miserable insects that infested his clothes during his
long incarceration. Calling himself a louse underlines his claim to be-ing
an insignificant speck in the universe, just another grain of sand
that got bloodstained in the long, brutal history of Spain. The nick-name
also refers to the title of his memoirs: Memorias de un piojo Repub-licano,
(Memories of a Republican nobody). But there sure are some
extraordinary nobodies in Spain; in a country where everyone knows
there was a ‘Spanish holocaust’ but nobody talks about it.
“One of the achievements of Franco was to instil terror, a real living
fear in the Spaniards. We were spooked, completely terrorised. There
is no way we would talk about the war,” Ernesto says.
Franco left a lasting impression on the country, ruling with an iron
fist until his death in 1975—the war is still a taboo topic in Spain.
Ernesto, however, is not afraid to voice his opinion. Having recently
finished Paul Preston’s book, The Spanish Holocaust, he says the details
are horrific, but a necessary read for those who want to know what re-ally
went on. Preston’s book brings to light the hidden horrors of the
Civil War: 200,000 men and women murdered without trial behind
the lines, as many as those who fell at the battlefronts. Ernesto knows
first-hand there were murders on the government’s Republican side
and the Nationalist side; murder painstakingly detailed in Preston’s
work. But he says the difference was the lack of restraint with which
the Nationalists killed.
“They were assassins, absolute ruthless murderers. They were out to
exterminate anyone associated with socialism, communism and Free-masonry,”
Ernesto remarks. “The main difference between the Nation-alists
and Republicans was that the Republican philosophy prohibited
persecution and murder, while the Nationalists did the opposite: they
commended it, they advocated it, they applauded it.”
Ernesto believes that without an understanding of the resistance to
fascism in Spain, you cannot understand modern Europe. “The Re-publican
government wanted to create a more humane system, while
the fascists, all they wanted was power and control. And with God on
their side, they got it.”
The military uprising in Morocco on 17 July 1936, led by Francisco
Franco, threw Spain headfirst into catastrophe. At the age of 17, Er-nesto
had to live through the autopsy of his slain father, a military of-ficer
who defended the Republican government. After that he travelled
to the frontlines to serve in the communist youth brigade.
“I was travelling in a truck with other volunteers. An oncoming truck
stopped us dead in our tracks, and I got out and committed the blunder
of asking: ‘Who is in charge here?’ The reply came: ‘We don’t have a
leader.’ That is anarchism.”
The only places where the Republican (a mixture of anarchist, socia-lis
and communist) reprisals matched those of the Nationalists was in
Barcelona and Madrid. This ‘red terror’ involved the murder of upper-class
stalwarts, conservatives and church figures. The fascist backlash
during and following the Civil War is dubbed the ‘white terror’.
After only a few hours on the frontline, Ernesto was wounded in
an ambush and fell into fascist hands. He was thrown in prison and
condemned to death by firing squad. The first 35 of his company were
shot, but for some reason they decided to leave the final five. A few days
later they returned to finish the job, but miraculously an officer who
had known Ernesto’s father refused to sign off on his second execution.
His final close shave came in 1938 during a large-scale prison break
from the San Cristobal penitentiary. Following the break-out, Ernesto
persuaded several other prisoners to turn back, insisting they would
never make it to France. Hundreds of the escapees were eventually
rounded up and executed. Only three made it to the border. When
Ernesto was finally released from Barcelona’s Modelo prison in 1943,
28 FEATURE
97-year-old Ernesto Carratalá recounts his memories of the
Spanish Civil War. By Jamie Melbourne-Hayward
Ernesto Carratalá in his study.
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2. FEATURE 29
1936
February: Left-wing coalition Popular Front wins national
elections.
March: Fascist Falange party banned.
July: Military uprisings against the Spanish government
in Morocco then in parts of mainland Spain. Franco takes
command of the army in Morocco.
August: First International Brigade volunteers arrive in
Spain.
September: Rebel leaders appoint Franco as commander
of the Nationalist forces.
October: The first aid from Russia arrives for the Repub-licans.
November: Germany and Italy recognise Franco as head
of Spain’s government.
1937
February: Nationalists start a major offensive against
Madrid.
March: Battle of Guadalajara. Italian ‘volunteers’ de-feated.
This leads to Franco abandoning any attempt to
take Madrid.
April: Guernica is destroyed by aerial bombing.
May: Divisions between Republican groups in Barcelona
cause serious weaknesses in the city.
June: The Vatican recognises Franco’s regime.
July: Spanish bishops endorse Franco as legitimate ruler
of Spain.
1938
April: Catalunya is cut off from the rest of Republican
Spain.
July: Start of the collapse of the Republican army after
the Battle of the Ebro.
October: International Brigade withdraws from Spain.
1939
January: Barcelona falls to Franco.
February: Britain and France recognise the legitimacy of
Franco’s government.
March: Madrid falls to Franco.
April: Republicans surrender unconditionally to Franco.
he decided to revive some of his previous passions.
Just weeks before the start of the war, Ernesto had met Spanish poet
Federico García Lorca, and had been accepted to study at his theatre
company in Madrid. The murder of García Lorca by fascist forces
in Granada at the beginning of the Civil War is still a tender point
for Spaniards. Renowned Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno
describes the fascist assassins as “degenerate Andalusians with the pas-sions
of syphilitic perverts and frustrated eunuchs.” Ernesto laments,
“Poor Federico, it was a political crime of the illiterate against a man
of letters.”
Now a free man, Ernesto tried to get his acting career off the ground.
His theatre group staged the first public performance of García Lorca’s
last drama La Casa de Bernarda Alba. The show was given under authori-sation
by the timid Cultural Bureau, and the entire performance had
to be delivered sitting down. Nevertheless, it was an underground hit
in 1949 in a Barcelona devoid of meaningful theatre. But genuine art
during Franco’s era was a dead end, so Ernesto poured his energy into
another love: language. One highlight from his exemplary language
studies was at the State University of New York in 1976, where he
spoke about his close shaves with death and that of García Lorca’s real
one. He recited several of Lorca’s poems, including the line:
Between people there are spider webs, which over time become wires and, even
more, steel bars. When we are separated by death a bloody wound remains in the
place of each thread.
Ernesto continued, in his own words, “A bloody wound for every
Spaniard. A bloody wound all over Spain, that was the Civil War.”
In the twilight of his life, a superb twist of fate gave Ernesto the
chance to put his acting skills to work. While he was living in the village
of Allariz, in northern Spain, the production crew of La Lengua de las
Mariposas (The Butterfly’s Tongue)­—
a popular film depicting pre-Civil
War Spain—rolled into town. Whilst chatting with a production assist-ant
Ernesto got a shock when the producer José Luis Cuerda arrived
and asked him if he was the double for Fernando Fernández Gómez,
the film’s main protagonist. Mischievous by nature, he replied that he
was and showed the director his obsolete, fascist work permit— obliga-tory
to carry in his day— noting him as a registered actor.
“They said they would think about it. And the next day there was
a knock on my door and I was offered a small part—a cameo role,”
he laughs. Ernesto played the role of a music teacher and gave such a
stirring performance the director exclaimed: “Professor, you sir chose
the wrong career!”
Spanish Civil War timeline
CIVIL WAR TOURS
British resident, Nick Lloyd, runs a highly-acclaimed Spanish
Civil War tour, which visits places in the city that were key to
events between 1936 and 1939. The tour gives an overview of the
Civil War and covers themes such as anarchism, George Orwell,
and the realities of daily life and bombing.
The tour lasts three hours and costs €20.
Contact Nick at nick.iberianature@gmail.com
Barcelona residents flee the city during the Civil War.
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