Architects of Terror by Paul Preston

Author:Paul Preston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-12-01T22:57:20+00:00

7

The Psychopath in the South: Gonzalo Queipo de Llano

During the civil war and in its immediate aftermath, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano y Sierra enjoyed limitless adulation. His first biographer discovered ‘in his energetic and uncomplicated soul, in his pure yet droll spirit, in his flexibility and bravery, in his complex good looks, the style of a thoroughbred soldier’.1 For other hagiographers, he was simply ‘a noble Spaniard’, ‘the archetype of the Spanish soldier’.2 The journalist Enrique Vila dedicated his account of the conquest of Seville to ‘General Queipo, gigantic protagonist of the epic of Seville that saved Spain’.3 None of these toadies would ever outdo the man himself. Although with false humility he would talk of the pain it caused him ‘to betray his sincere modesty’, he constantly referred to himself as ‘the initiator of the movement that saved Spain’.4 Yet this same paragon was, throughout his life, a chronic malcontent, erratic, unreliable, unstable and volatile, irascible and always ready to resort to violence. Obsessed with his prestige and the symbols thereof in terms of medals and titles, he was a bully, a sneak who informed on his comrades and a sycophant who lavished adulation on his superiors. After he took over Seville, his daily radio broadcasts, an inexhaustible fount of what today is known as ‘fake news’, spewed forth incitement to murder and rape. Under his jurisdiction, more than 60,000 people were murdered in Andalusia and Extremadura. The contrast between the hagiography and the reality could not be more acute.

Born on 5 February 1875 in Tordesillas on the banks of the River Duero, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano was the fifth son of the town magistrate Gonzalo Queipo de Llano y Sánchez and the rather aristocratic (and immensely proud of it) Mercedes Sierra y Vázquez de Novoa. The magistrate had gambled away the family’s once considerable land holdings. Accordingly, when Gonzalo left school at the age of fourteen, his parents placed their hopes on his becoming a priest. However, he rebelled against the harsh discipline of the seminary just as he had earlier rejected that of his school. The crisis came after only four months when, as a painful punishment for one of his escapades, he was obliged to kneel in prayer on a sack of chickpeas. With three companions, he fled the seminary, pelting with stones the priests who tried to stop them. He hid in the home of an aunt in El Ferrol. His mother was appalled but his father accepted that Gonzalo might be better suited to military life. His ambition was to join a cavalry regiment, but he was too young. As a temporary measure, he joined the regimental band of the artillery in July 1891. Totally devoid of musical ability, his career as a bugler did not prosper. In 1893, his father used his political influence to secure Gonzalo’s admission to the Academia de Caballería at Valladolid, where his intellectual mediocrity saw him fail important examinations. What he lacked in intellect, he made up in energy and aggression.

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