Julián Grimau
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Julián Grimau García (1911, Madrid—April 20, 1963, Madrid) was a Spanish Communist militant.
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[edit] Political activities
Initially active in the Federal Republican Party and the Republican Left, he joined the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Grimau spent the war years in Barcelona, where his father had been a police inspector. When the Second Spanish Republic was crushed by Francisco Franco's armies (in 1939, he took exile to Latin America, and then settled in France.
Grimau became one of the PCE leaders, a member of its Central Committee after the Congress it held in Prague (1954). In 1959, he decided to take over direction of the "internal" wing of the Party - the clandestine one in Francoist Spain, and resided illegally in the country at various intervals.
Subsequently, Grimau became one of the most sought-after enemies of the regime - which is why many who have looked into his life story wonder about the reason for his ill-fated 1962 arrival in the capital, an episode which has not found a reasonable explanation. Former members of the PCE leadership, such as Jorge Semprún, have suggested that general secretary Santiago Carrillo had wished Grimau removed from the leadership position, and had created circumstances for his arrest in November.
[edit] Arrest
Julián Grimau was ambushed while traveling by bus, the only other two passengers being members of the Spanish secret police. He was taken to the Puerta del Sol headquarters of the General Security Directorate (DGS, nowadays the seat of the Comunidad de Madrid administration). Grimau fell from second-storey window, causing himself grave lesions on his skull and both of his wrists. He later explained to his lawyers that he had been subject to torture while in the building, and actually flung arms-forward by his investigators. The Minister of the Interior Manuel Fraga Iribarne replied that Grimau had been treated with care, and had thrown himself out the window for an "unexplainable" reason - which appears to be highly improbable[citation needed].
[edit] Trial
Surprisingly, Grimau was not placed under investigation for his activities in the clandestine movement (which would have attracted imprisonment), but rather for his role in the Civil War - prosecutable as the crime of "armed rebellion". The accusation was in contrast with the 25 years statute of limitations, and it was attempted to establish that criminal actions would have been continued beyond the legal date (as a provision necessary for the penalty to apply). Grimau was investigated on hearsay that he would have acted as torturer and executioner in a checa (political detention center) while in Barcelona. Incidentally, the charge was backed by anarchists - who accused Grimau of being a prominent member of the Republic's Servicio de Información Militar (SIM), and of having directed repression against trotskyists after the latter were accused of murdering SIM agent Leon Narwicz in 1938. Such charges were not only not backed by evidence, they also contradictory placed Grimau's activities in Madrid. Nevertheless Jorge Semprun (Federico Sanchez), member of the Executive Committee of the PCE, wrote in his well-known Autobiografia de Federico Sanchez the following, which leaves little room for doubt about the kind of Grimau's involvement in the Communist bloody repression in Barcelona:
- "Following Grimau's arrest, and above all after his murder, when I took part in the preparation of the book [Julián Grimau — El hombre — El crimen — La protesta, Éditions Sociales, 1963] that the Party dedicated to Grimau's memory, I gradually knew some details of Grimau's biography that I was unaware of while I shared with him our underground political work in Madrid [in 1962]. I did not know, for instance, that Julian Grimau a few weeks after the beginning of the [Spanish] Civil War [in July 1936], while he was still a member of the Federal Republican Party -he joined the Communist Party in October- became a policeman, working initially in Madrid Criminal Brigade. One day, while Fernando Claudin and I worked in the preparation of the aforementioned book, he, quite disconcerted and with obvious unease and displeasure, showed me a testimony, just received from Latin America, about Grimau. There, somebody stated with quite a detail the activities of Grimau in Barcelona, fighting the fifth columnists, but also, and this was what caused Claudin's unease, fighting the [chiefly trotskyist] POUM. I did not keep a copy of that document, and I do not remember every point of what the Latin American witness reported to the last detail quite naturally. I only can swear that Grimau's involvement in the repression against the POUM was clearly established by that testimony, that was softened and censored in its most problematic aspects before being published, very shortened, in the book."[1].
Since Grimau was tried by a military tribunal, and there were few military jurists available, his prosecutor was a man of limited experience - in fact, Manuel Fernández Martín had never studied law, and could hide the fact (as many other Francoist lawyers did) by stating that he had studied as the war went on (the claim was proven false only three decades later, after which Fernández Martín was jailed). Grimau's defender, Alejandro Rebollo, was the only person with legal experience in the courtroom.
The trial opened in Madrid on Thursday April 18 1963, in front of a room packed with journalists. Rebollo argued that the trial was null and void in accordance with the laws of the time. The charges were never backed by evidence: witnesses for the prosecution declared that they knew of his actions "by hearsay", the rumors never being confirmed. It was only proven that Grimau had been a policeman. The continued rebellion charge was made improbable by the fact that he had spent more than 20 years in exile; the prosecutor intervened to cut short testimonies by Grimau and pleas of his lawyer, while the latter's conclusions were disregarded altogether. After less than five hours of trial, Grimau was sentenced to death, without deliberation.
The law applied (Ley de Responsabilidades Políticas, "Political Responsibilities Law") had been created especially for prosecuting Republic supporters (in 1938), and had not been consistently applied ever since the years immediately following the war. Moreover, the government had just approved the creation of a Public Order Tribunal (on April 1), which was to replace the old legal institutions created during the war. Franco himself ordered for the law to be postponed until after Grimau's shooting.
[edit] International pressure
Spain's claim to the outside world that the war's legacy had been left behind was contrasted with the events of Grimau's trial. An international protest ensued: the press campaigned in his favor, and numerous rallies took place in European and Latin American capitals. Stevedores in several ports refused to unload cargo from Spanish ships, and over 800,000 telegrams were sent to Madrid, asking for the dismissal of the kangaroo court. Nonetheless, Franco stood by his theory of "a freemason-leftist conspiracy against the political establishment". The trial coincided with the presentation of Not on Your Life in the Venice Film Festival, a Spanish black comedy about death penalty.
After the court's decision, the only legal solution the commuting of Julián Grimau's sentence into a prison term by Franco himself. Various chiefs of state appealed to the Spanish Caudillo, including Pope John XXIII and Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev (a notable event in itself, since it was the first time a Soviet politician addressed the Spanish regime). The pressure was echoed in Spain itself, with several personalities asking for clemency. The government reunited on April 19, in a session that lasted ten hours: although Fernando Castiella, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, declared himself in favor of the pardon (taking in mind consequences on Spain's image), his opposition was timid. Franco imposed voting on the matter, and the final verdict was unanimity for Grimau's execution.
[edit] Death
The firing squad he faced was to be composed of Guardia Civil members, who refused to carry out the order. The Madrid captain-general (apparently on direct orders from Franco) resorted to a second option, and called on enlisted soldiers. Young and inexperienced, these fired 27 bullets without being able to kill Grimau. Their commanding lieutenant was ordered to complete the act, and shot him twice in the head. He later confessed that the macabre experience made him seek the help of a psychiatrist.
Julián Grimau was buried in Madrid's civil cemetery.
[edit] Legacy and exoneration dispute
With Spain's transition to democracy (from 1975), the possibility of Grimau and other victims' reassesment arose. Nevertheless, agreements such as those concluded in the Palacio de la Moncloa effectively imposed a moratorium - paradoxically, one favored by the PCE. In generic terms, there was an attempt at leaving behind the more obscure aspects of the previous regime, and the burial of legacies left by the Republic and the Civil War. In the 1980s, according to PCE members and people close to Grimau, the Madrid City Council, during a session led by Socialist Enrique Tierno Galván, had discussed renaming the Avenida del Mediterráneo Julián Grimau, only for the proposition to be rejected by the communists. Several avenues and public buildings in Spain are named after Grimau nowadays.
The new climate of the 1990s brought forward public debate about the fate of Franco's adversaries. Numerous attempts originated with the Izquierda Unida, a coalition joined by PCE after it ousted Carrillo. On April 15, 2002, it presented an initiative to the Cortes Generales for Grimau's "public and democratic exoneration", which was backed by all parties represented, with the exception of the conservative People's Party (PP); since the latter had absolute majority, the proposal was not passed into law. The PP opposed exoneration on the grounds that it went against the moratorium. It also resented the shadow the proposal cast over the figure of Fraga, who had in the meanwhile become a founding member of the PP.
In May 2005, Izquierda Unida launched a similar process within the Community of Madrid Assembly, one blocked yet again by the PP (majority party in the Community).
Grimau's death is the subject of a song by Violeta Parra, as well as of one by Thanos Mikroutsikos (lyrics by Wolf Biermann).
[edit] Notes
- ^ Jorge Semprún. Autobiografía de Federico Sánchez. Editorial Planeta, Barcelona, 1978. Pages 210-211
