Four months of barbarity. Mallorca under fascist terror 3. Manuel Pérez

  

 CONTENTS:

1 Prologue

2 Four Months of Barbarity: Mallorca Under Fascist Terror 

3 The Great Responsibility of the Rulers

4 Why Fascism Triumphed in Palma de Mallorca

5 The Murderers Take to the Streets

6 5,250 People Have Been Executed

7 The Auto-da-Fé (Death Machine)

8 With the Men Eliminated, the Women Are Persecuted

9 After the Terror: Hunger and Economic Ruin

10 Theft: A Method of Governance

11 The Accompaniment of Banknotes

12 Bayo's Expedition

13 The Italian Occupation

14 Count Rossi's Propaganda

15 Rossi Threatens France

16 Universal Conscience Is Atrophied

17 The Great Mistake of France and England

18 The Reconquest of Ibiza 19 How the Bishops Speak.

20 Fascist Barbarity and the Generosity of Our Militiamen.

21 Difference in Treatment.

22 Worse Than Hyenas.

23 The Arrest of the Ciutadella and the Bombing of Roses.

24 The Ciutadella.

25 Our Escape from Mallorca.

26 Heroic Menorca.

27 Epilogue

14 THE PROCLAMATIONS OF COUNT Rossi

When there were military parades, Count Rossi would ride at the head of the fascist militias on horseback. He spoke every week from the microphone of Ràdio Mallorca. He attended theater performances, giving fiery speeches in which he expressed his deep hatred for the Catalan people. Later, he was tasked with traveling from town to town on a fascist propaganda mission. In a speech he gave in the town of Sóller, he said the following:

"...Italy and Spain are sisters of race, of ideas, and of religion. Culture, civilization, and the advancement of the Latin race demand that we exterminate every last Marxist, and, if necessary, we will kill fathers, mothers, and children, so that this cursed seed does not bear fruit..."

15 Rossi Threatens France

In another speech, delivered in the town of Manacor, he made this statement, which is extraordinarily serious and known to all the people of Mallorca, as it was published in fascist newspapers:

"...We have reconquered Ibiza, then we will conquer Mahón, and finally we will seize Catalonia. Once Catalonia is conquered, we will establish the fascist regime throughout Spain. Then," Count Rossi continued, "with fascism triumphing in Spain, we will place democratic France in a critical situation, because between Germany, Italy, and Spain we will form an iron circle and restore to Europe the ancient Roman Empire, which was the pride of an entire race."

"... 16 UNIVERSAL CONSCIENCE IS ATROPHIED

Universal conscience has refused to acknowledge these truths, despite knowing them, because in Palma there are representatives from England, France, and the United States, and like me, or even better than me, because they were completely free, they could observe the maneuvers of Italian fascism, which threaten every principle of culture, civilization, and everyone.

Let's see: France is the land of democracy. France had the Revolution of 1789, beginning with the storming of the Bastille, promulgating the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. France had the Revolution of 1848 and later, in 1871, marked a glorious epic with the Paris Commune, drowned in blood by the fateful Casimir Thiers. France is governed, as of July 19th, by a government headed by Léon Blum, who calls himself the representative of the French workers.

And that France, forgetting its glorious past, did not stand with the Spanish workers from the very beginning, as was its duty.

Even from an international perspective, and defending its own interests, France should have understood that the triumph of fascism in Spain would be a death blow to its own independence.

And it would place it, as Count Rossi said in Mallorca, in a critical situation. What could France do if fascist Germany, Italy, and Spain tried to attack it and destroy it as a free country?

17 THE GREAT ERROR OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND

Well, even considering these fundamental reasons, based on their own instinct for self-preservation, France and England did not stand with us to definitively crush the imperialist ambitions of fascism. These hesitations on the part of both countries, already demonstrated in the League of Nations when Mussolini embarked on the Ethiopian adventure, determined Germany's occupation of the Canary Islands and Italy's seizure of Palma de Mallorca.

The Italians want England and France to recognize their conquest of Abyssinia as legitimate, and the way to force France and England to recognize the new Empire is to jeopardize their interests. Why? Because Italy knows, and England knows too, that Gibraltar, Malta, and the Suez Canal would be of no use to the British Empire if the Balearic Islands were in Italian hands.

And France also knows that if the island of Menorca falls to the Italians, its relations with its African colonies are at risk.

This hesitant behavior of France and England has led Italy and Germany to take their audacity to the extreme of sending their soldiers to Spain and Morocco, further aggravating the situation, since they endanger not only peace in Europe, but also the whole world.

18 THE RECONQUEST OF IBIZA

A brutal act that eloquently demonstrates Italy's blatant intervention in favor of the fascist rebels.

Shortly after our forces abandoned the island of Mallorca, the fascist General Staff announced with great vengeance that its forces were preparing to reconquer the island of Ibiza, which was still occupied by the people's militias. Let's see how the island of Ibiza was reconquered by the rebels:

There were three merchant ships belonging to the Trasmediterránea Company in Palma de Mallorca. They were the "Ciudad de Palma," the "Jaime I," and the "Mallorca." These three ships were painted black and affixed with the Italian flag. The "Ciudad de Palma" was renamed "Calabria," and Falangists and forces from the Mallorcan Tercio, made up of all the island's outcasts, boarded it.

At night, with their lights off, these ships left Palma de Mallorca, escorted by three Italian warships, which protected and accompanied them to the aforementioned island. But they didn't merely escort them, since we can affirm—and this is fully confirmed—that in Ibiza, in addition to the Falangists and the Terç, Italian sailors landed under the command of Count Rossi. I recall that two days after the occupation of Ibiza, the fascist newspaper "La Última Hora" published a statement that read:

"Our brave troops, supported by the sailors, after a brilliant action, have reconquered the sister island of Ibiza, which was subjected to red barbarism."

Signed "Count Rossi."

No clearer proof of Italian intervention could be presented to the international community.

19 HOW BISHOPS SPEAK

It is a well-known fact throughout Mallorca that the distribution of weapons to fascist elements on the island took place inside churches and convents. After the movement triumphed in Palma, they placed almond trees on the towers and rooftops of these buildings, which were heavily decorated by soldiers and Falangists. In the Casa del Pueblo (People's House), transformed into the headquarters of the Spanish Falange, masses were celebrated daily, and the Bishop of Palma would attend to bless his hostages of murderers. At the end of one of these masses, the renowned Bishop delivered the following address from the microphone of Radio Mallorca: "If we want to honor God and defend the Holy Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Religion, it is necessary that, setting aside sentimentality, we exterminate every last Marxist, because they are not just any Marxist, they are Spanish Marxists."

20. FASCIST BARBARITY AND THE GENEROSITY OF OUR MILITIAMEN

The fascists, in their propaganda, always claimed that abominable crimes were being committed in the regions we occupied. The Correo de Mallorca even went so far as to say in one of its chronicles that in Barcelona children were being murdered and hung from balconies, nuns were being raped and burned alive, that robbery and pillaging were our only concerns, and many other things that terrified those who read them.

The conduct of our militiamen during their time in Mallorca clearly demonstrated the falsity of these claims, whose sole purpose was to discredit our cause.

The day after our men landed in Porto Cristo, seven nuns who served in a convent in that town arrived in Palma. The arrival of these nuns surprised the fascists, who believed our men would kill them.

When asked how they had managed to escape the Red fury, they spontaneously replied:

“When they landed in Porto Cristo, they gathered us together at seven o’clock, asking if we wanted to stay with them to serve as nurses in the field hospitals, or if, on the contrary, we wanted to return to Palma de Mallorca. We expressed our desire to return to Palma, and they, without the slightest insult or offense, left us completely free, offering each of us a glass of coffee with milk before leaving.”

Our men showed the same kindness to the peasants they found in Porto Cristo, Son Carrió, and Son Servera, and the generosity of the local militiamen was so great that most of these peasants voluntarily accompanied them to Mahón when the retreat was ordered.