Excerpts from ANARCHISTS IN THE SPANISH REVOLUTION by José Pierats #8

During the first days of June, 1909, serious incidents took place near Melilla, in Spanish Morocco. The local people were violently opposed to the construction of a mine railway, which they saw as an encroachment on their sovereignty. A Spanish military counterattack was beaten back with heavy losses at Barranco del Lobo. On July 11, 1909, the government called up the reserves.

The Moroccan campaigns had always been unpopular in Catalonia. Spontaneous demonstrations broke out in the port district of Barcelona when the reservists were leaving. Workers¹ Solidarity called a general strike, which the people turned into an uprising. The people threw up barricades in the streets and burned 17 churches and 23 convents and other religious establishments, The government proclaimed martial law and cut off Catalonia from the rest of Spain with troops. A heavy repression followed. Reactionary civilians formed Councils of Civil Defense and a special judge was charged with indicting those responsible for the uprising. The official press undertook a campaign of slander against the people and centred the blame on the founder of the Modem School, Francisco Ferrer. They brought out his prior revolutionary activities in France and Spain as militant anarchist and enemy of the nation, the army and the Church. The government produced false witnesses who testified they had seen him direct the uprising from the barricades. Some of these perjurers departed for America after being paid for their testimony.

On August 31, Ferrer was arrested and accused of leading the rebellion. A public hearing was held for anyone wishing to testify against him and police, aristocrats and Carlists took advantage of the opportunity. The edict of the judge in charge of the case made no mention of those who might testify in his favour. This public appeal for witnesses shows that the government had no proof of Ferrer's guilt. The Captain General of the garrison ordered the military judges to select "all indications, evidence, and charges against Ferrer" from the transcripts "and forward them to the instructing judge, Raso Negrin. "Thus all evidence and testimony in favour of the prisoner was eliminated.

The government had previously banished all close friends of the prisoner. Three of his longtime associates, Soledad Villafranca, Cristóbal Litrán, and Anselmo Lorenzo, were sent to Teruel. The letters they sent the judge asking to testify were mysteriously lost or "delayed." On one of these "delayed" letters Raso Negrin wrote, "The case has already been sent to court, and because in court only those witnesses may testify who have testified in the hearing, to my great regret I cannot allow this testimony." Nevertheless, the case was taken to court October I and two days later a new witness was permitted to testify against Ferrer. From then on the trial picked up unusual speed. It was very clear that, come what may, Ferrer was to be shot. And yet the uprising had been leaderless. Ossorio y Gallardo, the governor at the time, admitted as much.

But because the government needed a well known person as a scapegoat for the recent events, they fixed on Ferrer, a man already marked as an agitator by the military and clergy. Ferrer was a good catch for the reactionaries. He had succeeded in escaping unpunished from the investigation of the attack on the royal couple in 1906. Besides being a revolutionary, Ferrer was a dangerous innovator in education and therefore profoundly disliked by the clergy. With convents and churches gutted by flames, the clergy could not bring themselves to forgive the people for the events of July, 1909.

Francisco Ferrer was condemned to death according to plan and executed in Montjuich on September 13, 1909. To mitigate the effect of the execution other more obscure citizens were also shot: José Miguel Baró, Antonio Malets, Eugenio del Hoya, a night watchman, and Ramón Clemente.

The Maura government was unable to survive the protests throughout Spain and abroad during and after the trials. Ferrer's statue stands in Brussels; Maura's career was ruined by the crime. In 1910 he was wounded in Barcelona by an anarchist, Manuel Possa. (In 1904 another attempt on his life had been made by the anarchist Joaquin Miguel Artal.) At the beginning of 1911 there was a widespread movement to reopen the Ferrer case. Although the case was never reopened, the verdict was in effect reversed by a series of brilliant speeches in Parliament.