Who is Juan Guiterrez




Juan Gutierrrez gives a talk in CNT-AIT Granada during October Rojo Y Negro 2010

A memory is just a reflection. When is the right time for reflections for an 80 year old man who remembers his experience as a six year old boy during the tumultuous time of the Spanish revolution and civil war between 1936-1940. What impression of the Anarchist collectives of Alhama is left in a 6 year old child when the price for a dream is a dead father killed by fire squads and a mother who committed suicide.
Until the day the republic was formed out of response of a Feudal Society built for almost 1000 years, the workers were servants. Spain’s imperial power was being justified and encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church and rose from the conflict of the Islamic occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. Xenophobia, but also the inquisition used against the “new Christians”, was not just a Christian development, but the expulsion of the Jews began in Toledo, Granada and Cordoba, at the 12th Century, by revival of Islamic Fundamentalism.
The British companies had interest in mine production in Andalusia of the 1930´s, they encourage and demanded the government to be neutral, but it was the British Government who brought Franco from the Canary Islands to the Spanish Armies during their occupation in Morocco. Franco became leader of the rebellion by the Spanish Army with support of the Roman Catholic Church, and Franco allies including Hitler supported Franco with the “Condor Division”, well know for the aerial attack of Guernica and Mussolini provided weapons and men power to the Franco regime.
Franco’s repayment during WWII provided the Nazi Regime with 50,000 Men to the Russian front “the Blue Division” (the blue used by the Spanish Fascist was the symbol of the working clothing of the working class). Later one of the leaders of the Blue Division attempted a new coup de eta against the new democracy arising from the Fascist dictatorship of Franco in the 1980´s.
Franco not just provided military support to the Axis regimes, but determined the fates of many prisoners of the republic such as Anarchists or Communists who were brought to work camps and concentrations camps in Nazi Germany like Sachsenhausen.
Franco established a system of concentrations camps which were run up to the 1940´s. Franco was never brought to justices for crimes against humanity, and neither was the Roman Catholic Church, not just for the fact that it was the Roman Catholic Church who was the first to recognize diplomatic relations with the National Socialist Regime of Germany in 1933. It was also the Roman Catholic which after the war provided Vatican Passports to people who implemented the final solution against 6 Million European Jews and the transit point for Argentina was through Spain.
Against this background Juan Gutierrez recalls his memories, born in 1930 and six years old in the herald of the new dawn with the New Republic. At that time the Nobility and the upper classes sensed the changes and moved to big cities, which in the case of Alhama, was Granada.
Months before and after the declaration of the Republic, the land owners tried to undermine the newly created Republic by prohibiting the individual renters to work the land, on the other hand, the day laborers even had no land, since the land was concentrated in the hands of a few noblemen and land owners, and the new Republic was involved in the internal inner fights about the land reform. At that time the socialist union UGT (Union General del Trabajo) and the CNT (Confederacion National del Trabajo) had about 2.0 Million members.
In the beginning of the conflict, in every town in Spain the day laborers rose and took over. Alhama is located about 75 km from Granada and marks an important pass to Malaga from Granada. At that time many of the day laborers were members of the UGT and CNT. In Alhama initially the UGT together with the CNT began the collectivization.
Juan Gutirrez described, “we where hungry one evening and the next day and after the Republic had been created we had wealth, we had food.” The revolution was born in these days for the laborers out hungry. The collectivization took place in houses of the wealthy. In many cases they were being used due to their huge sizes for storages and since now the land owners could not hold food from the laborers, they had everything.
The land was worked for everyone and individuals who did not wanted to be part of the collectivization could hold the land that themselves or their family could work the land, but could not hire outsiders to exploit them, nor they did wanted to return back to the exploitation system built in the previous 500 years.
The collectives provided with credit for everyone and every citizen had access to the product, a confederation of free collectives and cities created a confederation of Municipalities.
But the reality of the conflict of Franco just two weeks after his initial rebellion against the Republic overtook Granada, where in Alhama located in the Mountain Passes and the operational zone of the Battalion of Granada of 900 Men, members of the CNT-FAI and UGT were able to hold Fascist forces from June 1936 to February of 1937.
Many of the collective’s members fled to the Republic zone, but with little support from the west and the Soviet Union, only taken the Gold of the Republic to Moscow, weapons of second hand. The Communist Party in Spain made a conscious decision to dismantle the workers militias from the CNT and UGT by force.
At the end of the conflict, the Fascist dictatorship with the support of the Roman Catholic Church, told Spain if they would not take arms against the new regime they could return, but the majority of Spanish workers ended up in either camps or jails. The sympathizers of the Fascist and their new regime took revenge in the case of Juan Gutierrez: the local Medical Doctor outed Juan Gutierrez’s father, and Lucas Gutierrez Lopes was singled out and executed by a fire squat in the Cemetery of Granada, in the hill bottom of Alhambra in 1937. Lucas Gutierrez Lopes had served under Franco in 1926 in Morocco.
The summary executions were not just political but also social motivated. Garcia Lorca was executed for being homosexual. Behind Lorca’s execution it was provided by Lorca’s family.
After the conflict the six year old Juan Gutierrez, born into the working class, was being assigned a job by the new regime to take care of pigs. When he returned from the farms he found his mother in black mourning for his father and his brother who had lost a leg due to gangrene and subsequent amputation, who had been treated by the same doctor who did point out his father. In the 1940´s Juan’s mother hang herself in the orchard. Eventually, like many Spaniards crossing the border to France and living as members of the CNT-AIT in exile, Juan received an education in France which Spain had denied him.
Late in his 80´s Juan wrote a memoir for his 3 daughters and grandsons not to forget the fámily roots where they are coming from. His memoires “La Revolution y las colectividades en Alhama de Granada” is in the process to be translated in English. Juan is currently working on a book about the fate of 3,000 Spanish workers from Andalusia’s who where send to the concentration camps in Nazi Germany.