Hondarribia, 18 November 1944, night. The first five members of the Basque guerrilla group have reached the beach by boat on the boat of Hendaia. The delegation is headed by Communist commander Pedro Barroso Segovia. The objective is to try to locate and disseminate the machines in Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia.

It would be the last trip for them. Especially for Pedro Barroso. The group, composed of ten men and one woman, was arrested by the Francoist police a few days after the arrest. Although at first it was a matter of condemning the majority to death in the war trial held at the Loiola de San Sebastian headquarters, the maximum penalty was finally imposed on the commander.

“The last time I saw Barroso before the trial, we were in the courtyard with the rest of the prisoners. She was sure they would smoke him. After the trial, he was sentenced to death and we both talked only about mors from one cell to another. I met the director of El Día, a nationalist, in jail and asked him to try to commute the death penalty, but he was unable to do anything,” said Marcelo Usabiaga, 98, a former Maqui of that group.

However, the fascists had a big problem in fusing him. "As it was summer, they had to be brought to Vitoria-Gasteiz, since those months passed in Donostia-San Sebastián both Caudillo and all international diplomatic representatives. That shooting could be an international shame and was killed in a ‘discreet’ way,” explains Mikel Rodríguez, historian and Maquis. The Basque guerrillas. Authors of the book 1938-1962.

“Barroso wanted to spend the last night with the priest of Ondarreta prison, because he was a very good, nationalist person. So it was, and when he returned from Vitoria, the priest said that Barroso had been an honored and courageous person until the end,” says Usabiaga, recovering these last moments.

Vanguard of Basque machines

“We were waiting for the arrival of a special group of machines. In Eibar that was our only concern, to help them. We were about ten and we met on the street.” This is the words of the late communist Ignacio Gaspar Álvarez, a teammate of the Eibarresa guerrilla support team at the time. The night after the Barroso and Usabiaga team entered Gipuzkoa, the smuggler Bernardo Zamora Iriarte BEÑAT joined the other six members aboard the lifeboat.

Thus, the first group to provoke the guerrilla revolt was sent to Gipuzkoa in two halves. All of them carried a photograph taken at Iparralde to make false documentation as they passed to the South. “I left the mustache to camouflage it,” says Usabiaga. Then, in Gipuzkoa, the pelotaris have already taken the road to Donostia, Eibar and Bilbao, divided into three groups.

“Otxabiña, Huerga and González Suárez came to Eibar and kept them in the missing Sautxi farmhouse. Since they had no documentation, I gave mine to González Suárez. So we fell, at full speed… The cops and the other slept at home,” says Álvarez. They all fell into the hands of the police – some, including Barroso himself, were tortured by the famous Meliton Manzanas. One of them managed to escape. Specifically, José Gandía.

In particular, Pedro Barroso was arrested in Bilbao on 3 December, after being charged with murder. Born in 1916 in Toledo (Spain), he was a bricklayer of craft in Barcelona. Communist, a member of the PSUC, was captain of the 1946 War and a member of the Toledo People's Court. He was arrested and imprisoned in La Modelo prison in Barcelona with a 30-year sentence. However, in July 1944 he managed to escape to the North, and soon after Maki entered, 102. As a division commander, he was finally arrested at the border with a special group of guerrillas. A guerrilla who had a role in giving names, surnames and charges to his colleagues was enough for the Francoist judge to condemn Barroso to death. “I told them again and again not to take the data or the papers. In the end, what for us was salvation – I told the judge that I was a simple soldier – was the end for Barroso,” Usabiaga says.

Machines in the South

In 1944, guerrillas against Franco began to enter Navarre. However, in the face of the great defeat, in which the Francoists joined their armed and police forces, they began the invasion of the Aran Valley within the framework of Operation Reconquista in Spain. In these groups there were eleven Basques, as well as anti-fascist foreigners. However, Aran’s brutal attack was also a mistake, as many guerrillas were killed.

After these two defeats, the anti-Francoists decided that the fighters would be integrated into small groups, which they would not repeat again. Thus, within the organization of the Spanish machines in France, they founded the Association of Guerrillas of the Basque Country, presided by the Victorio Vicuña Lasartearra. The apparatus to cross the border was directed by Asensio Arriolabengoa, who walked by the sea and especially by Navarre. “In the direction of the Spanish guerrillas there were many Euskaldunes, but it is not known exactly how many Basques were in the models, because they were mixed everywhere; much documentation of the PCE of the time does not exist or is very deteriorated. Moreover, it is not enough to see the lists of names,” says Rodríguez. And how many friends does the Basque Guerrillas have? “The Pyrenees Low Brigade, for example, liberated the mountainous areas of Iparralde from the Nazis, and they were about 300 people,” explained the number of Basque machines. Usabiaga has also noted the same number: About 300.

Its intention was clear and clear: Act rooted in Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa in mountain areas between Navarra and Gipuzkoa. “But because the mountains are very crowded here, they are not enough to store the machines. For this reason, an attempt was made later to implement the urban guerrillas in Bilbao,” explains the historian.

However, the guerrillas did not take root in the Basque Country. First, because "the Police and the Army arrested the detainees and the deaths were eleven." Usabiaga said that in Ondarreta prison, for example, "there were 80 or 90 machines" in the situation. The second reason was the lack of citizen collaboration: “Due to the fear of the people in the South,” says Rodríguez, some machines returned to the North, others deserted and went to their villages to make normal life, and others went to the European Mountains. They had great difficulties in adapting in the Basque Country”.

Differences between the two parties

The Basque guerrillas who were in the North were very much encouraged: “As soon as I got to Iparralde, I met Eibarresa Otxabiña and told me that in a few days we were going to take the Eibar. I was amazed at him, because I escaped from Gipuzkoa and knew what the situation was like,” says Usabiaga talking about his teammate Víctor Lecumberri Otxabiña. “It’s the key to desertions: many guerrillas didn’t think that there were going to be such struggles, even thought that they would enter allies behind them and that the people would rebel against the dictatorship. The international democracies, moreover, thought they were going to do something with Franco. And they found a very different situation when they were heading to the South: no help, terrible persecution… However, Barroso’s team knew that Franco was not going to fall from one day to the next,” adds Rodríguez.

Among the inhabitants of the south, panic was very great. The old Maqui confirmed this: “After arriving we went to Donostia, but at that time there was a lot of fear in society and we did not find a house to hide. Going to friends and nobody wanted us.” This was something else that had to be
tied to: the infiltrates. "Often, civilian guards and soldiers crossed the border, sometimes dressed in civilian clothes and trying to infiltrate the models, and other times in uniform, ready to shoot. Several guerrillas were shot dead in Iparralde,” Rodríguez stressed. Usabiaga, precisely, remembers the case of a spy very well: “I met a certain Zulueta in the North, with whom I drank some beers. After we stopped, he appeared with the police in Ondarreta prison; he met us all! While we were in jail, Barroso told me that he was caught and tortured until he managed to escape: Zulueta admitted that there were 50 infiltrators in the machines.” According to Rodríguez, Zulueta seemed to be the brother of the keeper of the Real Sociedad Zulueta, who served as a military officer.

At first, a lot of ideology.

Many have thought that the guerrillas as a whole were communist, but that was not the case, at least at the beginning. In the summer of 1944, when France was liberated from the Nazis, the Germans were confronted with a considerable number of guerrillas. “They did not bear the name of communists, they were only under the UNE (Spanish National Union),” the historian explains.

The machines included many people who wanted to combat the Germans, to whom many new ones were added: “There were socialists, also people from the PNV, perhaps not very convinced, but because it was the only way to fight fascism, and also quite a few members of ANV,” said the model expert. However, some of them emerged from the guerrillas forming the Gernika Battalion, created by the PNV, and in 1945 fought against the Nazis on the Atlantic coast.

As the guerrillas gained a more communist tone, “little by little many Basques left the machines”, although in early 1945 there were still wrestlers who were not communists: “Sometimes, even if it sounds like a lie, it was the only way to bring life forward. In fact, if you were a foreigner in France these times and didn’t work, you didn’t even have where to go,” adds Rodríguez. However, only the Communists remained in these groupings from 1945.

Basque guerrillas with asturians

In mid-1945, the PCE discovered that the activity of the Association of Guerrillas of the Basque Country was not effective and adhered to the guerrillas of the European Mountains. Thus, among the Asturian machines were two groups of Basque guerrillas.

These two groups of machines tried to act in Bizkaia in 1946. “At that time some guerrillas will not dare to go down from the Asturian mountains. In the end, only five or six machines headed to Bilbao, under the direction of Mateo Obra, but were immediately arrested by the police.” From then on, the PCE will fight at different points in the Basque Country, among them, some kidnapping, but it will not be effective. The Association of Basque Guerrillas, at least actively, could be considered as missing.

Since 1947 armed guerrillas against the dictatorship were not organized, but a network for people to move to Iparralde. “They had guides to send representatives and guerrillas of the Communist Party to France.”

Specifically, the last Maki movement on Basque lands dates back to 1962. The “non-orthodox” communist group El Campesino entered by Iparralde in Navarra and met the Civil Guard and fought. "From the chronological point of view, some military actions continued to be carried out, but they are no longer those of the Basque Guerrilla. They are Andalusian or Asturian macas who try to return to France by shooting with police and soldiers,” said Rodríguez.

“I have done everything with joy”

Victorio Vicuña, Eduardo Aparicio, Carmen Eixarch, Marichu Guridi, José Larreta, Ramón Santamaría, Vicente Arizaga… Many have been drivers or helped the guerrillas. “Some are very vitalistic, totally convinced that you have to risk life for ideals, and there are others who have lived rather sad in recent years, who think about the meaning of this whole struggle. The fall of the Soviet Union left the majority without a North. In any case, you can learn a lot from everyone,” says the historian who has met some of them closely.

They are certainly people who have made a great effort for freedom, but society has abandoned them: “Communists are the biggest losers in history: none of the things they did have media support. With the advent of democracy, the PSOE gathered its myths, the PNV its people, and the communists had only died to shake them… Unfortunately, they have ended up being forgotten old.”

To the disgrace of oblivion comes another: that of death, which is less and less among us: “I don’t regret anything and I would do everything again,” Marcelo Usabiaga clearly acknowledges us. Also the late Victorio Vicuña said: “Look, I’ve always been where I had to be. I knew I was playing life, but I've done everything with joy."