The remains of Francoist General Queipo de Llano have just left the Basilica of Macarena in Seville. The fact that the bones of the person who drove the genocide in the city during the 1936 War are buried in a place of honor and come out in a coffin a few hours a night.

The operation has been carried out almost covertly, knowing that the step that the movement against the crimes of Franco had long demanded on the basis of the Memory Law was going to take a long time to speak. Some relatives of the Queipo de Llano have applauded their remains, but in the dark they hear the cries of Paqui Maqueda, president of Our Memory, for the victims and against the Franco murderers:

Honra Queipo de Llano genocida frankismoy contempt for the victims. Grande @PaquiMaqueda pic.twitter.com/5shqgE2Qf5

— CeAQUA (@Ce_AQUA) November 3, 2022

Queipo de Llano was during the War of 1936, especially during the first months, one of the most important people who passionately stimulated deaths, shooting and other barbarities. He led the coup in Seville and expanded the repression, in which only over 3,000 people were shot. It was popularized by messages issued by the radio Unión Radio Sevilla, which used their words to expand their terror. Researchers believe it was responsible for 50,000 deaths.

But besides promoting the most terrible repression and barbarism, the general was enriched in the shadow of Franco. Among them he took over the large finca or cortijo called Gambogaz, near the Guadalquivir River. A kind of palace.

While living there, he used the slaves with profusion to cultivate 500 hectares of land, for which the historian José María García Márquez investigated, commissioned by the Civil Governor who took republican prisoners from the territorial jail in Seville.

Recently, in May, another historian, José Villa, was able to demonstrate through a document that the Banco de España financed the sale of the property: He gave him 100,000 pesetas to set up a “benevolent patriotic” company. To do so, he was assisted by a notary from Malaga: Fulgencio Echaide Aguinaga.

Who was Fulgencio Echaide?

At the beginning of the century, Father Salvador Echaide, anti-Carlist and founder of the Euskara Association, visited the nationalist atmosphere of Navarra. Fulgencio was also a Vascophilous, the same we will find on St. Andrew's day giving lectures on the Basque renaissance, or in the Naphar Buru Batzar's mittens, in Urroz, in Tafalla or in Ujué. Echaide is in Seville years later. And as the 1936 War broke out, notaries appeared to proliferate along with Francoists.

He signed on December 24, 1937 the sales document that he gave to Gambogaz Queipo de Llano, and according to the historian it was fundamental, making use of legal engineering, specifically founding a foundation, to hide that the genocidal took over the estate in a truly irregular way, and not through the citizens’ money contributions for “saving Seville”, as the Franco’s account explained for decades.

As with the Meiras Pacific of Francisco Franco, in this case also the memorial groups wish to return with the Gambogaz platform to the people of Seville, occupied by the SAT union in 2018, for which a new path has been opened.