The Maquis (; ; also spelled maqui) were Spanish guerrillas who waged an irregular warfare against the Francoist dictatorship within Spain following the Republican defeat in the Spanish Civil War until the early 1960s, carrying out sabotage, robberies (to help fund guerrilla activity) and assassinations of Francoists as well as contributing to the fight against Nazi Germany and the Vichy regime in France during World War II. They also took part in occupations of the Spanish embassy in France.
The Maquis activity in Spain had its heyday towards 1946, after which the resistance fighters were heavily repressed during the (1947–1949), with instances of White Terror such as paseos, and applications of the Ley de fugas (extralegal executions based on the simulation of the escape of detainees) taking a heavy toll among the combatants and their supporters. Following its decline, it fully disappeared in the 1960s.
Overview
Referring to the contribution of the Spanish Maquis to the French resistance movement, Martha Gellhorn wrote in The Undefeated (1945):
Also during World War II, Spaniards were involved in the assassination of Julius Ritter, an SS Colonel in charge of recruiting forced labor, as well as in the planned assassination of General Ernst Schaumburg. In October 1944 a group of 6,000 maquis including Antonio Téllez Solà invaded Spain via the Aran Valley but were driven back after ten days. Few details of the maquis' actions in Spain have been made public because of the secrecy of the Franco government, but guerrillas, including Francesc Sabaté Llopart, Jose Castro Veiga, and Ramon Vila Capdevila were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Guardia Civil (Civil Guard) officers, and uncountable acts of industrial sabotage. Between 1943 and 1952, 2,166 maquis were reported arrested by the Civil Guard, nearly wiping out the movement.
Etymology
The term maquis comes from the French term maquis, which in turn comes from the Corsican term macchia, the maquis shrubland, a type of biome found in the Mediterranean basin, mostly associated with Corsica.
In France, the term was first used to refer to a group of guerrillas of the French resistance against the German occupation of France during World War II. The resistance fighters in these encampments were referred to as maquisards.
History
The so-called first originated already in 1936, when many people fled from the Rebel faction to the mountains after becoming isolated in places such León, Galicia, Extremadura, and the province of Huelva. Those in Extremadura and Huelva were rapidly annihilated by Rebels, with only those in the North of the country managing to survive past the war.
The outbreak of World War II so soon after the civil war surprised a large part of the Spanish Republican exiles in France; many of them joined the French Resistance. By 1944, with the German forces in retreat, many of the guerrillas refocused their fight towards Spain. Despite the failure of the invasion of the Val d'Arán that year, some columns continued to progress into the Spanish interior and to connect with the groups that had remained in the mountains since 1939.
The apogee of guerrilla action was between 1945 and 1947. After this, the repression from the Franco government intensified, and one by one the groups were destroyed. Many of their members died or were incarcerated. Others escaped to France or Morocco. In 1952, the last important contingents evacuated from Spain. After that, those who resisted in the forested and mountainous regions refusing to choose either exile or surrender, fought only for their own survival.
Beginnings
The origins of the maquis in Spain lie with those who fled the advancing forces of Franco's Nationalists. The insecurity engendered by the repressive tactics of the Nationalist insurgency turned their political opponents—even many who were not politically active but simply known to sympathize with the republic—into fugitives. At first many hid in relatives' homes, but some sought refuge in the mountains. Their numbers were enhanced by deserters and by escapees from prisons and concentration camps. These constituted the nucleus of those who decided to keep fighting from the forests and mountains.
The political character of the guerrillas was as varied as that of the Popular Front, containing communists, socialists, and anarchists. Despite the diverse ideologies, due to the organizational persistence of the Communist Party of Spain until 1948, the Communists dominated the other currents.