Life and Death in ‘an Atmosphere of Terror’

Emilio Silva Faba

This is the story of his grandfather that Emilio Silva has managed to piece together.

Emilio Silva Faba was born in 1894 into a family of farmers in the village of Pareje, in northwest Spain. At 21, he left for the Americas, first Argentina, then New York, then Connecticut.

Had fate been kind, he would have stayed in Connecticut, fallen in love, married, had children. All those things happened, but not in Connecticut. Silva dreamed of opening a store to sell Spanish items there to immigrants like himself. He returned to Spain in 1925 intending to sell some land his parents owned and return to the United States with the money. Instead, he fell in love with a girl 10 years his junior. They married, settled and opened a general store in nearby Villafranca.

Emilio Silva Faba had a soft heart. He had a reputation for forgiving his clients’ debts, and when the Second Republic was born, he joined the moderate left party of the prime minister. He became a party activist, campaigning above all for schools at a time when more than a quarter of Spaniards were illiterate. The Republic had set out to replace the exclusive church-run schools with public ones. A photo shows Silva’s father as a child holding a protest sign: “We want a school.”

When area conservatives wrote a column in the local newspaper questioning the calls for equality under the Republic, Emilio Silva Faba shot back. “With all the force of my lungs and all my strength I ask, for all the Spanish lovers of order and progress: Equality in the schools! Equality in Justice! Compassion for all those hunched over in their labor!”

His attitude mirrored the spirit of change that swept Spain under the Republic. When the civil war erupted, his views put him in danger. When rebel troops arrived in Villafranca, they met no resistance. The rightwing Falange militia took control. Emilio Silva Faba was called to city hall and, like others in town, he pledged to pay the Falange for deadly night patrols and their aid to the army. That army, according to the typewritten paper he was forced to sign, represented “the salvation of Spain from the hands of communist Russia.” Silva wrote his signature in an elegant, exacting script. The mayor signed and stamped it.

Deadly roundups were happening across nationalist Spain. Military leaders knew that although they had the weapons, they were vastly outnumbered by laborers who opposed them. The church approved of the killings, so long as any victim who received a trial also got last rites. Most got neither.

“It is necessary to spread an atmosphere of terror,” ordered General Emilio Mola, who commanded the northern forces. “Anyone who is overtly or secretly a supporter of the Popular Front must be shot.”

Over the next two months, Falangists executed some 162 civilians in Villafranca. On October 16, Emilio Silva Faba was called to city hall again. He appeared at the door with his son Ramón, the second of six children. The youngest, Carmela, his first daughter, had been born just three months before. By nightfall, he was still being held with other victims of informants. His wife and their son Manuel came with dinner and a change of clothes. Only Manuel was allowed in. His father handed his young son his pocket watch and ring.

That night, a beverage truck pulled up in front of town hall. Behind it came a car with four Falange gunmen. They loaded the prisoners into the truck and drove away, picking up more men from their homes. Emilio Silva Fava knew what awaited them. He asked to be shot first. He didn’t want the other men’s deaths to be the last sight his eyes would see.

Some men began to plot. When the truck stopped, they would dash for their lives. Silva’s grandfather declined. At 42, he felt too old to run for his life. The convoy came to a stop at a farm at the edge of a village. Two men ran. The Falangists, unprepared, shot into the night, waking the neighbors. They caught one, beating him severely as they dragged him back with the others. The other escaped into the darkness.

Fourteen prisoners were lined up on the roadside. Emilio Silva Faba knew the gunman and asked to be spared. His wife, he said, would be left alone with six children to care for. The man pulled the trigger. Each of the prisoners was shot once in the head, then a second time: the tiro de gracia.

Their bodies were buried under a hill by the roadside, ignored for decades, but never quite forgotten. As with thousands of graves like this across Spain, the site remained a silent reminder of the atrocities of a war between “the two Spains.” Rich and poor. Right and Left. Catholic and secular. “A Spain that dies and another Spain that yawns,” wrote poet Antonio Machado before he died in exile. “One of the two Spains may freeze your heart.”

This entry was posted on March 29, 2011 at 6:00 am and is filed under Spain, Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.