12-09-19 Dispatch de Barcelona - the passing away of Communist leader Santiago Carrillo is mourned by King Juan Carlos

The conservative El Pais daily gave it a large picture above the fold, and a full section inside with photos of the King and Queen on a condolences visit to the family. A statement released by the King says that Carrillo was a key person for democracy in Spain...

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Veteran Spanish Communist leader Carrillo dies

 

File photo of historic Spanish Communist Party leader Carrillo arriving for a lunch at Madrid's Parliament to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Spanish failed coup attempt (SERGIO PEREZ, REUTERS / September 18, 2012) 

Elisabeth O'LearyReuters

12:00 p.m. CDT, September 18, 2012

MADRID (Reuters) - Veteran Communist leader Santiago Carrillo, Spain's last surviving public figure to have taken an active part in the civil war, has died at age 97, sources close to the family said.

The sources did not know the cause of his death but said he had been suffering from illness.

Although he lived in exile for decades, mostly in France, Carrillo was a central figure in Spanish politics during much of the tumultuous 20th Century and a player in the difficult transition to democracy in the late 1970s after dictator Francisco Franco died.

Carrillo put his longevity down to continued active participation in Spanish political life, writing essays and making contributions to public seminars and a weekly nationwide radio debate well into his 90s.

"I am a politician with a sense of reality," he told Reuters in an interview, explaining his career.

"If you can say anything good about me, it's that I have lived many years and actively participated in many episodes of Spain's history," he said, presenting a documentary in 2009.

An image firmly embedded in the nation's memory is that of Carrillo and Adolfo Suarez, another of modern Spain's founders, refusing to take cover when Civil Guards opened fire in the Spanish parliament in 1981 as part of a thwarted coup.

CIVIL WAR

The son of a union organizer, Carrillo's activism began in 1931, when, at the age of 15, he began reporting for the Socialist Party newspaper and joined crowds to cheer King Alfonso XIII fleeing to exile and the declaration of Spain's Second Republic.

In 1936 he joined the army to defend the Republic from a military revolt which turned into a bloody civil war lasting almost three years and ended up installing Franco as dictator.

Carrillo, by now a Communist, was named a public order official in a defense committee set up in Madrid in November that year just as rebel troops were approaching the capital and the Republican government had fled to safety in Valencia.

After Franco's forces won in 1939 with the help of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Carrillo went into exile, from where he helped organize resistance to the dictatorship.

In 1960 he became general secretary of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), and began to draw criticism from the Franco regime for his alleged role in the 1936 massacre of several thousand supporters of the military revolt, for which far-right Spaniards blame Carrillo to this day.

The supporters were evacuated from a city jail to Paracuellos, on the outskirts of Madrid, to prevent them from joining Franco's forces which came close to taking the capital, but were then killed en masse rather than incarcerated.

Carrillo always protested his innocence, saying he had little influence as a young and minor official and had no idea what was happening in a chaotic and lawless city under siege, whose people were enraged by bombings and atrocities.

British historian and Civil War specialist Paul Preston spent a year researching Paracuellos for his 2011 book "The Spanish Holocaust" and concluded that while the massacre itself was most likely the work of anarchists and soldiers assessed by Soviet military advisers, Carrillo did help organize the evacuation.

"Carrillo was an important part in the second phase (organization), and his many statements that he knew nothing and it was all the anarchists' fault are not truthful," Preston said at a conference in Madrid in 2011.

"This does not mean that Paracuellos is his work alone. He was one, and a very important one of many who did this terrible collective deed."

In all, Preston estimates 50,000 Spanish civilians were killed in the Republican rearguard, and another 150,000 behind Franco's lines.

Carrillo had to wait until after Franco's death in 1975 to return to Spain. In 1977 he became a member of parliament in the first elections held in Spain since 1936, but the PCE did poorly and he was expelled from the party in 1982.

(Editing by Fiona Ortiz)

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"EL TONTO NO DESCANSA": S. M. El Rey de España el primero en acudir al domicilio de Santiago Carrillo.

  

S.M. El Rey de España entrando en el domicilio del genocida fallecido

Ha muerto el dirigente comunista Santiago Carrillo responsable de la matanza de Paracuellos del Jarama (Madrid) en otoño de 1936 (4.200 asesinados totalmente identificados)

Don Juan Carlos y Doña Sofía acudieron rápidamente al domicilio del finado para dar el pésame al la familia del antiguo secretario general del Partido Comunista: Click  

EXTRACTO DE 'PARACUELLOS-KATYN'

Las pruebas contra Carrillo en Paracuellos

Después de décadas de debate, el ensayo de César Vidal Paracuellos-Katyn arrojó luz sobre la responsabilidad de Carrillo en la matanza de Paracuellos.

Libertad Digital 2012-09-18

Santiago Carrillo no es el único que tuvo responsabilidad en la matanza de Paracuellos del Jarama (Madrid) en otoño de 1936 (4.200 asesinados totalmente identificados) pero la investigación histórica que realiza César Vidal en Paracuellos-Katyn (Libros Libres 2005) aporta datos esclarecedores sobre la implicación directa de Carrillo en estos horribles crímenes. En el momento de la matanza, Carrillo era responsable de seguridad de la Junta de Madrid.

 

Vidal explica que "ninguno de los que supieron, en noviembre de 1936 lo que estaba sucedieron" tuvieron dudas sobre "la responsabilidad ejecutora" de Carrillo en la matanza. Entre los textos que apuntan en esta dirección destaca el del nacionalista vasco Jesús de  Galínd