Gonzalo de Aguilera Munro

Gonzalo de Aguilera Munro

Lieutenant-Colonel Gonzalo de Aguilera Munro, 11th Conde de Alba de Yeltes (December 26, 1886, Madrid – May 15, 1965), was a Spanish aristocrat and military officer who served with the nationalist faction of the Spanish Army during the Spanish Civil War. He served as the press officer for General Francisco Franco and General Emilio Mola. He inherited the title of Conde de Alba de Yeltes (Count of Alba de Yeltes) in 1919.

Gonzalo de Aguilera Munro was born in Madrid on December 26, 1886, the son of Lieutenant Colonel Agustín Aguilera y Gamboa of the Spanish Cavalry, the thirteenth Conde de Alba de Yeltes. His mother, Mary Monro, was Scottish. He was educated in England, first at Wimbledon College and then at Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit public school in Lancashire where his father had been a pupil.[1]

It is alleged that Aguilera carried out many atrocities during the Spanish Civil War.[2]:3, 10, 103-104, 148 At the outbreak of the war, according to his own account, Aguilera lined up the labourers on his estate and shot six of them as a lesson to the others.[3]

As the press officer of the nationalist faction during the Spanish Civil War, Aguilera worked with war correspondents covering the war, including Sefton Delmer and Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker.[4]

As he got older, Aguilera seemed to suffer increasingly from mental instability. On Friday, 26 August 1964, he shot dead both his adult sons in the family mansion near Salamanca.[2]:527 He was subsequently incarcerated in an asylum in Salamanca, where he died the following year, having never stood trial for killing his sons.[2]:527-528[5]

References

  1. ↑ Preston, Paul (September 2004). "The Answer Lies in the Sewers: Captain Aguilera and the Mentality of the Francoist Officer Corps" (PDF). Science & Society. 68 (3): 15. doi:10.1521/siso.68.3.277.40298. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 Preston, Paul (2013). The Spanish Holocaust : Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-century Spain. London: HarperPress. ISBN 978-0006386957.
  3. ↑ Kemp, Peter (1957). Mine Were of Trouble. London: Cassell. p. 57. Reported in Preston, Paul (September 2004). "The Answer Lies in the Sewers: Captain Aguilera and the Mentality of the Francoist Officer Corps" (PDF). Science & Society. 68 (3): 1. doi:10.1521/siso.68.3.277.40298. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  4. ↑ "Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca presenta la biografía de Gonzalo de Aguilera Munro, XI conde de Alba de Yeltes" (in Spanish). University of Salamanca. 10 May 2013. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  5. ↑ "El Conde de Yeltes fallecio en el Psiquiátrico de Salamanca" [The Count of Yeltes has died in Salamanca Psychiatric Hospital]. El Diario vasco (in Spanish). San Sebastián, Spain. 16 May 1965. p. 3. Retrieved 9 January 2017.

Further reading

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