Carillo betrayed the Republican cause and was probably responsible for the worst atrocity committed by the Left during the Civil War

Stalin's Spanish bezzie

by JP O'Malley

During the Spanish civil war the single greatest atrocity perpetrated by the Republicans was known as ‘Paracuellos’. This was the village where an estimated 2,500 prisoners loyal to Franco were executed by leftish militiamen between November and December 1936.

Even though the facts of this massacre are now widely known, one question still remains: who ordered the killings? In his latest book The Last Stalinist,Paul Preston claims that it was Santiago Carrillo who played a crucial role in signing the death warrants. (Carrillo, who died in 2012, always denied any involvement in the incident).

It is worth mentioning this mass murder because history tends to catch up with power-hungry leaders devoid of moral integrity. With Carrillo, however, this hasn’t been the case. It is even proposed that a street in Madrid be named after him, for his contribution to the restoration of democracy in Spain.

Santiago Carrillo was the leader of the Spanish Communist Party (Partido Comunista de España) for two decades, and his politics — with a penchant for authoritarianism, doublespeak, supreme self-confidence, irresponsibility and Soviet-style interrogation methods — was driven by an unquenchable thirst for power. And while he may have always been the number one enemy of Spain’s far right, he shared with Franco, according to Preston, ‘a dedication to the constant rewriting and improving of his own life story’.

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