Battle for Mallorca

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Battle for Mallorca
Coastal fortification from the time of the civil war on the east coast of Mallorca on the Caló d'en Rafalino south of S'Illot
Coastal fortification from the time of the civil war on the east coast of Mallorca on the Caló d'en Rafalino south of S'Illot
date August 16, 1936 to September 4, 1936
place Mallorca ( Spain )
output Nationalist victory
consequences With the exception of Menorca, the Balearic Islands remain under the control of the nationalists
Parties to the conflict

Flag of the Second Spanish Republic.svg republican

Bandera del bando nacional 1936-1938.svg Nationalists

Commander

Alberto Bayo Giroud

Emilio Ramos Unamuno , Luis García Ruiz

Troop strength
8,000 republican militiamen , including soldiers, members of the Guardia Civil , CNT / FAI , UGT and JSU , 1 battleship, 1 light cruiser, 2 destroyers 1200 regular soldiers
300 Carabineros and Guardia Civil
2000 Falangist volunteers
Military operations during the
Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)

The Battle of Mallorca was an amphibious landing by the Republican army between August 16 and September 4, 1936 during the Spanish Civil War , to bring the island of Mallorca back under the control of the Second Spanish Republic . However, after initial successes, the company failed. In total, there were at least 1,500 casualties on both sides .

prehistory

Military coup against the republic

The Spanish Civil War began with a military revolt under General Francisco Franco on July 17, 1936 in Spanish Morocco , which expanded into a military uprising against the government of the republic in other parts of Spain. On Sunday, July 19, the military commander of the Balearic Islands , General Manuel Goded Llopis , sided with the insurgents and announced the military support of the nationalist putschists around Franco. At 7.30 a.m. that day he proclaimed martial law and then appointed Lieutenant Colonel Luis García Ruiz instead of Antonio Espina, who was appointed by the Republican government, as civil governor. On the same day Goded flew with his son and some officers in a seaplane to Barcelona to take over the leadership of the uprising. However, he was unsuccessful and was arrested on the afternoon of July 19th. Sentenced to death by a court martial on August 11, 1936 , Goded was shot dead on August 12 .

In contrast to the other islands of the Balearic Islands, the supporters of the Spanish Republic were able to maintain their position on Menorca . The regions of Catalonia and Valencia also remained republican. The plans for an attack on the Balearic Islands seem to have arisen among various militia groups of the republican army independently of one another in the days after the defection of Ibiza , Formentera and Mallorca to the Francoist coup plotters. Palma de Mallorca and Cabrera were bombed on July 23 . On August 1, 1936, Republican troops from Menorca landed on Cabrera with a troop transport ship and two submarines and captured the island's garrison , which was equipped with 20 men, but then gave it up again.

Beginning of the invasion of the Balearic Islands

On August 2nd, Republican militias from Barcelona arrived in Menorca under the command of the naval aviators stationed there , captain of the infantry and the Spanish air force Alberto Bayo Giroud . Bayo took over the command of the invading forces for the Balearic Islands. The following day, August 3rd, Palma was bombed again by the Republican Air Force. By August 6th, the logistical preparations for the occupation of the Balearic Islands had been completed. The Central Committee of the Antifascist Militias of Catalonia (Comité Central de Milicias Antifascistas de Cataluña) and the Catalan regional government supported the planning. The government of the Spanish Republic in Madrid had no objection to the development.

On August 7th, Formentera was occupied by a republican unit from Valencia under the captain of the Guardia Civil, Manuel Uribarri Barutell . Bayo's attack on Ibiza began on August 8th. Supported by the Uribarris militias, Ibiza was captured after a few days. The administration of the island was transferred to an "anti-fascist committee" (Comité Antifascista de Ibiza) , which was subordinate to Antonio Martínez of the Communist Party . Before the Republican attack, Ibiza and Formentera only had a nationalist garrison of 100 soldiers, carabineros (police officers) and members of the Civil Guard.

On August 13, 1936, over 400 Catalan FAI (Federación Anarquista Ibérica) militiamen occupied the island of Cabrera, apparently without consulting Bayo or Uribarri. Both could not agree on how to proceed with regard to Mallorca, which is why the Uribarris units were moved back to the mainland. In the early morning hours of August 15, Bayo went from Mahón , Menorca to Cabrera, where he proposed to the FAI militiamen that they occupy the island of Dragonera as a diversion . But after seven hours of unsuccessful talks, he flew back to the republican naval base in Mahón after the anarchist committee (comité anarquista) refused to take part in the planned operation because of Bayo's sympathy for the communist camp of the republic. Instead, the FAI militiamen crossed to the east coast of Mallorca on their own the following day, without Bayo knowing anything about it and even before he landed on the island with his troops.

Combat operations in Mallorca

Landing of the Republicans

In July 1936 in the Balearic Islands under the control of the nationalists (blue) and republicans (gray)
Maximum territorial gains by Republicans in the Balearic Islands in early September 1936

At dawn on August 16, 1936, a Sunday, the republican units landed with the help of their fleet over a length of seven kilometers on the east coast of Mallorca. The republican fleet consisted of the destroyers Almirante Miranda , the staff ship Bayos, and Almirante Antequera , the gunboat Xauen , the torpedo boat 17 , the freshwater tanker 3 , the transporters Ciudad de Cádiz and Mar Negro , the cargo ship Mar Cantábrico , the post and Wounded transport ship Ciudadela and the hospital ship Marqués de Comillas . The disembarkation of the peninsula Punta de n'Amer , to the north of Cala Nau and in the south near Sa Coma , carried out by means of barges K-12 and K-26 . In addition, the Bayos units had the three submarines B-2 , B-3 and B-4 and six seaplanes of the type Savoia-Marchetti SM.62 . The landing was supported by the firepower of the battleship Jaime I and the light cruiser Libertad , as well as some of the ten seaplanes Macchi-Castoldi MC.18 from Barcelona. Shortly after 5 a.m., the more than 400 fighters of the anarchist FAI disembarked at Cala Anguila and Porto Cristo . In total, the various units of the republican landing forces had a total strength of up to 8,000 men.

The headquarters of the invading forces was set up on the Sa Coma estate , which also included the Punta de n'Amer peninsula. Today's Sa Coma did not exist back then. A hospital was also set up in the Cases de sa Coma . Alberto Bayo took up residence in a windmill in front of it. The manager of the estate, Miguel Adrover, was left unmolested. However, he and the workers of the estate had to look after the billeted troops. When the Cases de sa Coma was occupied , the buildings were damaged by the previous bombardment, wages were stolen by the landing forces and church symbols were destroyed. During the occupation, the 200 sheep on the estate were requisitioned and slaughtered to supply the troops.

Farthest advance of the invasion troops

On the day their troops landed, the Republicans suffered their first defeats against the outnumbered defenders of Mallorca. The nationalists had about 2,000 Falangist volunteers, about 300 Carabineros and members of the Guardia Civil, and only 1,200 regular soldiers, but they were well trained. The anarchist militiamen who went ashore in Porto Cristo wasted valuable time and celebrated their landing success. They renamed the place Porto Rojo (“Red Harbor”), looted the houses abandoned by the civilian population and tried to set the church on fire. When they decided to advance to Manacor at 11 a.m., a hundred of the Legión de Mallorca brought in from Palma , supported by Falange fighters, Carlist requetés and forces from the Guardia Civil from Manacor and other communities in the east of the island, were at the caves of the Coves dels Hams repulsed.

The anarchists withdrew to Porto Cristo, where the militias who had landed at Cala Anguila have since arrived. In the valley of the Torrent des Riuet they came under fire from the heights , pursued by nationalist units from the Felanitx area , where the Francoist military alone had occupied three positions with heavy machine guns. The anarchist militias were completely wiped out. On August 17th, the nationalist island defenders stood on the outskirts of Porto Cristo. The Franquists stormed the Hotel Perelló, which was used as a hospital, and shot the wounded there including three nurses. House fighting broke out in the village until the Republicans withdrew from Mallorca. Until then, they were only able to hold the cliffs on the beach at the villas Can Blau , Can Riche and Can Servera without restriction despite constant shelling. They were called El Parapeto de la Muerte ("shelter of death") by the fighters .

The Republican advance also came to a halt at Son Servera in the northwest. A naval unit of about 50 men of the "Black Guard", which had previously played a major role in the conquest of Ibiza , was ambushed by Francoist soldiers and civil guards not far from the railway line below the hill na Penyal on the first day . Three of the survivors were taken to Son Servera and shot there. A fourth, 18-year-old Domingo López from Barcelona, ​​survived the shooting and, thrown into a pit with the dead, escaped at night through the pine forests to his command in Sa Coma. The republican associations then succeeded in taking the hills surrounding the valley of Son Servera, which they kept under almost constant control until they withdrew to the ships. In doing so, they advanced up to seven kilometers into the interior of the island. Most of the civilians in Son Servera, which has a population of around 900, fled the fighting. Military units took up positions in their homes. The headquarters of the Franquists was in the basement of today's Café S'Oratge on the church square of Son Servera. Almost every day the local area was under fire from landed artillery, bombs dropped from planes and from ship guns of the republican navy, but could not be captured by Bayo's troops.

On Wednesday, August 26, 1936, the Republicans pushed forward from three sides to Son Carrió , with an association of the anarcho-syndicalist union CNT, from the east via Finca Sa Torre Nova , which then served as a field hospital, and further soldiers on the southern land route Porto Cristo and about 500 militiamen on the southeast path from S'Illot . After bombing by planes and ship guns, the Francoist defenders vacated their positions in the town center, on the adjacent hills and the windmills to the east. Many villagers fled to Son Servera, Sant Llorenç or Manacor. After the occupation of the place, the houses were searched for food and valuables and looted. In the church, the anarchist militiamen tore the holy figures from the main altar and the side chapels. The statues of Christ , the Virgin Mary and the equestrian figure of Santiago Matamoros were smashed. In addition to a bomb hit on the right behind the main altar, which caused a hole in the outer wall, damage was also caused by target practice on the church building. Son Carrió was the only place in Mallorca that could be completely captured by the republican troops and held for over a week.

Italian support for the nationalists

On August 18 and 19, the nationalists received military support from Italy . These were three Savoia-Marchetti S.55X seaplanes , from which only hand grenades could be dropped . They were unable to break the Republicans' air superiority. One of the aircraft was damaged by a Republican SM.62 and had to be repaired in Palma. The other two were withdrawn after just a few uses. Shortly afterwards, a German Junkers Ju 52 attacked the battleship Jaume I and forced it to flee to Cartagena . On August 27, further military and technical personnel with war material from Italy arrived in Palma on the freighter Morandi , in particular three Macchi M.41 seaplanes and three Fiat Aviazione CR.32 fighter planes . As early as August 28, the Italians' planes under the direction of Luigi Cirelli came into action and shelled the Bayos positions on the east coast of Mallorca. Lieutenant Rinaldi shot down a Republican SM.62 near Capdepera with his M.41 . The other seaplanes of the landing forces were unusable after the air raids by the Italians. On September 2, the Republican ammunition depot in a former quarry on the south coast of the Punta de n'Amer peninsula was destroyed.

Along with the Italian officers who supported the Mallorcan nationalists as pilots, the Italian Foreign Minister Gian Galeazzo Ciano also sent the fascist activist Arconovaldo Bonacorsi , who called himself Conte (Castilian Conde , Catalan Comte ) Rossi or Aldo Rossi, as military advisor and organizer of the Falange to Mallorca. He arrived in Palma on August 26, 1936 and built a unit of 52 men who called themselves Los Dragones de la Muerte ("The Dragons of Death"). With her he moved to Manacor on August 27th or 28th, where he set up his headquarters at the Plaça de sa Bassa . On September 3, 1936, the Dragones de la Muerte were significantly involved in the capture of the Puig de Son Corb hill in the east of Son Servera, which was previously held by the Republicans . Bonacorsi took part in the repressions of the Falange against parts of the civilian population of Mallorca who were close to the Republicans, and was responsible for the killing of numerous Republican prisoners from the fighting with the invading forces of Bayo. Since the night of August 30, 1936, Lieutenant Colonel Luis García Ruiz had been given supreme command of the nationalist troops at the front near Manacor in place of Colonel Emilio Ramos Unamuno . In this capacity he commanded the capture of the Puig de Son Corb and planned a major attack against the Republicans for September 4th.

Republicans withdraw

The new government in Madrid under the government president and war minister Francisco Largo Caballero and the naval and air force minister Indalecio Prieto refused to support the republican landing troops on Mallorca on September 3, 1936. Captain Bayo was forced to withdraw from the island because of this and the heavy losses. The embarkation of the approximately 3,000 men of the republican units who were in Mallorca at that time took place in the night of September 3rd to 4th. To cover the retreat, the battleship Jaime I and the light cruiser Libertad returned off the east coast of the island at Punta de n'Amer.

In addition to a large number of weapons and equipment, including two seaplanes with a destroyed drive, the invasion troops left over 240 militiamen who could not get on the ships in time or who the order to withdraw did not reach. A total of 100 to 200 of them killed the advancing nationalists on the coast or took them to Manacor to shoot them there. Medical personnel were not spared either. For example, five nurses who fell into the hands of the Franquists on September 4th at a first aid station at the front near Son Carrió were first locked up in the school in Manacor, then put on public display on the Plaça de sa Bassa as " prostitutes ". before she was tortured, abused and raped that night in the basement of Arconovaldo Bonacorsi's headquarters and executed on September 5 at around 11 a.m. on the wall of the Son Coletes cemetery .

aftermath

On September 13, 1936, the nationalists recaptured the island of Cabrera, off the south coast of Mallorca. On the same day, Ibiza was bombed from Mallorca. The republican associations of Ibiza and Formentera then withdrew, which enabled the occupation of the two islands by the nationalists on September 19 and 20. Menorca, however, remained republican. Captain Bayo arrived in Barcelona on September 6, 1936. There he was summoned before the Comité de milicies antifaixistes de Catalunya ("Committee of the Antifascist Militias of Catalonia") under the direction of Juan García Oliver . Bayo was accused of incompetence and failure, but had no power to impose penalties like a court-martial. A member of the committee, Vicente Guarner , telephoned Indalecio Prieto, Minister of the Navy and Air Force, of the hearing, leading to a meeting between Prieto and Bayo in Valencia, where Bayo was being placed under guard. The minister absolved Bayo of responsibility and appointed him his personal assistant. Prieto saw the cause of the defeat in the responsibility of the Catalan regional government and in the intervention of the Italian air forces.

The strategic location of Mallorca was underestimated by the central government of the Spanish Republic. After repelling the republican invasion, the nationalists expanded the coastal defense with bunkers and shelters for machine guns. At the same time, Son San Juan Airport was expanded southeast of Palma. Two large runways were created with lighting for night flights, protected by an air defense. It was here that the Italians stationed their l'Aviazione Legionaria delle Baleari with modern aircraft, which began bombing the port facilities and inner cities of Valencia and Barcelona on October 25, 1936 with attacks on Menorca in the following years. On Barcelona, ​​the Italian and German planes from Mallorca flew almost 200 attacks, in which 2500 to 3000 people were killed. The heaviest attacks took place from March 16-18, 1938, with a little under 1000 dead. The last air raid on the city took place on January 24, 1939, two days before the Francoist troops captured Barcelona.

On March 6, 1938, the Balearic Islands came again into the focus of military action during the civil war, when the 15-month-old heavy cruiser Baleares was hit by the Republicans at 2.20 a.m. southwest of Ibiza, in the Battle of Cabo de Palos Torpedoes was sunk. Together with two other cruisers he formed the escort of a freighter convoy from Palma de Mallorca to Cádiz . The republican fleet had left Cartagena to attack the cruisers of the Franquists ( Baleares , Canarias and Almirante Cervera ) in their base in the port of Palma . As a result of the meeting of the two opposing associations of Ibiza died in the fighting and the sinking of the Baleares 788 people, mostly recruits from Galicia , Andalusia and the Basque Country , but also Falangist volunteers from the Balearic Islands, mainly from Mallorca. 435 men survived the sinking of the warship. A monument was erected to the dead in the Sa Faixina Park in Palma from donations from the Mallorcan population, which is controversial today because of its Francoist symbols.

Alberto Bayo Giroud, commander in chief of the republican landing forces in Mallorca, later became a member of the Communist Party and after the Battle of Brunete in the summer of 1937 promoted, so that he rose to lieutenant colonel. At the end of the civil war he had to emigrate to Mexico in 1939 , where he became a professor at the flight school in Guadalajara . There he documented his memories of the military operation for the conquest of Mallorca in 1944 in the book Mi desembarco en Mallorca: de la guerra civil española . In the 1950s, Bayo met the young Cuban lawyer Fidel Castro in Mexico . At Rancho Las Rosas he trained guerrilla fighters for the Cuban revolution , including Ernesto Guevara de la Serna , known as Che Guevara. Alberto Bayo died in 1967 with the rank of General in the Army of the Republic of Cuba.

literature

  • Alberto Bayo: Wed desembarco en Mallorca: de la guerra civil española . Miquel Font, Editor, Palma 1987, ISBN 978-84-86366-31-5 (Spanish).
  • Juan Negreira Parets: Mallorca 1936 . La sublevación militar y el desembarco republicano. Lleonard Muntaner, Editor, Palma 2006, ISBN 978-84-96242-53-1 (Spanish).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 'Por la huida de las hordas marxistas' . La retirada de honores a Franco y al coronel García evoca el triste y cruel pasado bélico. In: Diario de Mallorca . Editorial Prensa Ibérica, Palma May 6, 2009 (Spanish, online [accessed October 30, 2011]).
  2. ↑ El Desembarco en Mallorca del Capitán Bayo. html.rincondelvago.com, 1998, accessed October 17, 2011 (Spanish).
  3. ↑ Eduardo Connolly: Els fatxes forasters del PP i del CírCULO Balear celebren el cop d'estat del 18 de juliol del 36. www.lobbyperlaindependencia.org, July 17, 2011, accessed on October 25, 2011 (Spanish). Published in: Última Hora , Palma , 18./19. July 2006.
  4. ↑ Manuel Goded Llopis (1882-1936). Biografías del Bando Nacional. www.guerracivil1936.galeon.com, accessed October 26, 2011 (Spanish).
  5. ^ A b Jeroni F. Fullana, Eduardo Connolly, Daniel Cota: El crucero "Baleares" (1936–1938) . Lleonard Muntaner, 2000, ISBN 978-84-95360-02-1 , Mallorca base naval (Spanish, online [accessed October 23, 2011]).
  6. ^ Alberto Bayo Giroud (1892–1967). Biografías del Bando Republicano. www.guerracivil1936.galeon.com, accessed October 17, 2011 (Spanish).
  7. ↑ The rebublican invasion of Majorca 16th August 1936. A simple guide to (most of) the battles of the Spanish Civil War 1936-1938. Retrieved October 18, 2011 (English).
  8. ^ Hugh Thomas : The Spanish Civil War . Harper & Row, New York 1961, ISBN 0-06-014278-2 , pp. 414 (English).
  9. ↑ a b Breve historia de Ibiza. www.losmejoresdestinos.com, accessed October 12, 2011 (Spanish).
  10. ↑ a b c d e f g La expedición a Mallorca. www.fideus.com, accessed October 19, 2011 (Spanish).
  11. ↑ Manuel Tuñón de Lara: La España del siglo XX. (Vol. I) . La quiebra de una forma de estado (1893-1931). Ediciones Akal, Madrid 2000, ISBN 84-460-1105-0 , La expedición a Mallorca y la Lucha el Norte, p. 585 (Spanish, online [accessed October 19, 2011]).
  12. ↑ a b c Alexander Sepasgosarian: Fighting and dying in Sa Coma. Mallorca Magazin, September 1, 2011, accessed October 14, 2011 .
  13. ↑ a b c d e Javier Arrimada: Los otros frentes de 1936 a 1937. El desembarco republicano de Mallorca. www.fjavier.es, 2010, accessed October 20, 2011 (Spanish).
  14. ↑ a b c Alexander Sepasgosarian: A trench of death. Mallorca Magazin, September 29, 2011, accessed October 14, 2011 .
  15. ^ Cases de Sa Coma. Mallorca Magazin, August 31, 2011, accessed October 15, 2011 .
  16. ↑ Alexander Sepasgosarian: My grandpa hid us. Mallorca Magazin, September 1, 2011, accessed October 11, 2011 .
  17. ↑ a b M. Elena Vallés: Bayo, el hombre que ganar Quiso la Guerra de Mallorca . In: Diario de Mallorca . Editorial Prensa Ibérica, Palma October 24, 2010 (Spanish, online [accessed October 28, 2011]).
  18. ↑ Alexander Sepasgosarian: Boiling crater of a volcano . In: Mallorca Magazin . No. 35/2011 . Palma September 1, 2011, p. 26/27 ( online [accessed October 17, 2011]).
  19. ↑ Alexander Sepasgosarian: They got drunk and sang . In: Mallorca Magazin . No. 34/2011 . Palma August 25, 2011, p. 26/27 ( online [accessed October 17, 2011]).
  20. ^ A b Pep Vílchez: El sainete italiano de García Ruiz. www.diariodemallorca.es, May 12, 2009, accessed October 24, 2011 (Spanish).
  21. ↑ a b c d Alexander Sepasgosarian: The hour of the victors. Mallorca Magazin, October 6, 2011, accessed on October 11, 2011 .
  22. ↑ El Conde Rossi (retrato de un fascista). www.fideus.com, accessed October 23, 2011 (Spanish).
  23. ↑ Arconovaldo Bonacorsi "conde Rossi". Gran Enciclopèdia de Mallorca, accessed October 23, 2011 (Catalan).
  24. ↑ a b Dragons de la mort. Gran Enciclopèdia de Mallorca, accessed October 23, 2011 (Catalan).
  25. ↑ a b Alexander Sepasgosarian: A repulsive episode . In: Mallorca Magazin . No. 36/2011 . Palma September 8, 2011, p. 26/27 ( online [accessed October 23, 2011]).
  26. ↑ Luis García Ruiz. www.fideus.com, accessed October 28, 2011 (Catalan).
  27. ↑ Miguel Valverde Espín: Logico y catastrófico final. Guerra Civil española. www.islabahia.com, accessed October 30, 2011 (Spanish).
  28. ↑ El Paralelo en la Guerra Civil (1936-1939) (II). www.fundacioelmolino.org, accessed October 30, 2011 (Spanish).
  29. ↑ Alexander Sepasgosarian: Flame inferno on the night sea . In: Mallorca Magazin . No. 10/2008 . Palma 2008, p. 29 .
  30. ↑ "Mallorca-Zeitung" No. 409, 6. – 12. March 2008, p. 3.
  31. ^ Entrenador de la guerrilla de Castro y ajedrecista que se midió con el Che . In: Diario de Mallorca . Editorial Prensa Ibérica, Palma October 24, 2010 (Spanish, online [accessed October 28, 2011]).

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