Esporles, 'little Russia' repressed

PalmaLocated at the foot of the Tramuntana mountain range, 14 kilometers from Palma, at the beginning of the 20th century Esporles was known as the 'little Russia' of Mallorca. Its six textile factories had managed to forge a strong proletarian consciousness. The inauguration in 1930 of the Casa del Poble would be a reflection of that class pride. Already in the municipal elections of April 12, 1931, the municipality would be one of the few on the island where the left triumphed. Two days later, King Alfonso XIII went into exile and the Second Republic was proclaimed.

On July 18, 1936, the day of the military uprising, a group of armed workers did not hesitate to mobilize to defend the constitutional order. However, three days later, the Falangists already had the Esporles town hall under control and the Casa del Poble, converted into their headquarters – before that they had burned a large part of the library. Supporting them was the doctor Mateu Palmer Ferrer (1908-1986), who would be provincial head of Militias, and the rector, Mateu Tugores Maimó from Felanitx (1870-1953), who provided a black list with names to consider. Some of the 'marked ones' ran to hide in the Serra, in nooks they knew well thanks to smuggling. The fascists went out to 'hunt' them with dogs. From Navarra, the orders of General Emilio Mola, the 'director' of the insurrection, were clear: "Terror must be sown, the feeling of dominance must be left, eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think like us."

Crucified Mayor

The brutality exercised in Esporles during the Civil War and the postwar period can be traced in the book Les petjades dels oblidats, which in 2016 was published by Guillem Mir, Arnau Alemany and Bartomeu Garau, members of the municipality's historical memory group. It is an inventory of the biography of 157 repressed individuals based on documentation found in judicial proceedings and archives. Many were tortured, imprisoned, and victims of property confiscation. Fifteen were exiled to the La Savina prison center in Formentera, among them, Sebastià Coll Xigues, the last republican mayor. Others, about twenty, were murdered.

Often the horror began in the form of denunciation. This was the case of the socialists Miquel Seguí Seguí, 37 years old, brother of Tomàs, en Ramellí (the first republican mayor), and Josep Comes Ferrà, alias Largo Caballero, 27, father of a son only one month old – in 1933 he had returned enthusiastically from a trip he took to the USSR. Both were captured one night when they came down from the mountain to the village. They were immediately taken to the Casa del Poble in Palma. In 2005, Rafel Nadal Bestard, son of a repressed person, detailed in an interview with Margalida Capellà the ordeal they suffered: “[To Seguí] they cut out his tongue for not confessing where his brother was [...]. [To Comes] they removed a tattoo [he had on his chest] by tearing off his skin [...]. Later [on October 14, 1936], in the cemetery of Palma, they shot them”. Llorenç Capellà's Red Dictionary gives more information about Comes' last hours: “They say that, before killing him, he had been terribly tortured. They told him: ‘Say 'Viva España’. And he said 'Viva Rusia’. Three years later, in 1939, after a court-martial, his brother Bartomeu, 36, would also be executed.

Another victim of fascist madness was Joan Canyelles Capllonch, from

The heroines of misfortune

Another victim of fascist madness was Joan Canyelles Capllonch, from Can Manent. He was a 31-year-old stonemason, affiliated with the socialist group and father of two young daughters. His 'disappearance' has marked the life of his grandson, Guillem Mir, 63 years old. “He hid – he assured – in the woodshed at home, from where he would come out to eat when no one was there. In December, the day before Christmas, two civil guards and a falangist went to look for him at home, alerted by a neighbor. Upon hearing them, he ran back to the woodshed. At that moment, however, my mother, who was two years old, met him and said 'daddy, daddy'. Immediately, the agents insisted that if he revealed his father's hiding place, they would give him a candy. That's how they ended up arresting him. My mother always felt guilty about it. They took him handcuffed to the Town Hall. On the way, he met his eldest daughter, four years old, who was leaving school. That scene impressed her a lot”.

(‘stone that makes you travel’) in memory of his godfather. Two more were also placed dedicated to the marriage of Jaume Nadal Ensenyat, “Leave it alone”

From his childhood, Mir only remembers tears. “My grandmother and mother always started crying when I asked them about my grandfather. They would even pull their hair out”. Upon turning 17, the young man from Esporles became obsessed with repairing that family trauma and consulted files in all possible archives. “My mother always told me: ‘Leave it be, leave it be’”. In 2006, hopes increased with the establishment of the Association Memòria de Mallorca. A year later, the socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero approved the first State Law of Historical Memory.

In 2010, with Francesc Antich's second Pact of Progress, the first map of common graves in the Balearic Islands began to be compiled. In 2014, Francina Armengol's Executive carried out the first exhumation, in Sant Joan. In 2016, it was the turn of the cemetery in Porreres. Then the earth revealed the truth sought for three decades. “One day –Mir recalls with a broken voice– Maria Antònia Oliver, the president of the Association Memòria de Mallorca, called me. She assured me, all emotional, that they had found my grandfather's bones. His DNA samples matched mine. I could do nothing but cry. At that time, my mother had senile dementia and no longer understood anything”. At the moment of seeing the remains, there was no solace. “I hugged my grandfather's skull and kissed it twice. He had two bullet holes in the back of his neck. There were two others in his legs. He was found tied to another victim with a string in his hands”.

On January 14, 2018, the ceremony of the return to the cemetery of Esporles of the box with the remains of Joan Canyelles Capllonch and those of the mayor Tomàs Seguí Seguí, who had also been identified in the exhumation in Porreres, took place. That same year, Armengol's government would give the green light to the first Law of democratic memory and recognition of the Balearic Islands, which completed the Balearic Law of Graves, approved in 2016. Now the PP Government of Marga Prohens, instigated by Vox, has just repealed it. "From Vox - says the Esporles resident - nothing surprises me. More sad is the role of the PP, a theoretically moderate right-wing party, which at the time partially supported the norm. For the second time they want to erase the victims of Francoism from collective memory".

Since last week, Mir has felt more satisfied with his fight against amnesia with the placement in Esporles of a Stolpersteine ('stumbling block') in memory of his grandfather. Two more were also placed dedicated to the married couple Jaume Nadal Ensenyat, en Pino, and Margalida Bosch Bestard. He died in 1953 due to the sequelae of a beating three years earlier, and she in 1936 was savagely tortured for refusing to say where her then-partner was. They shaved her head and made her drink castor oil. She died in 1952 due to an illness.