José del Castillo Sáez de Tejada (29 June 1901 – 12 July 1936) was a Spanish Police

Guardia de Asalto The Cuerpo de Seguridad y Asalto ( en, Security and Assault Corps) was the heavy reserve force of the blue-uniformed urban police force of Spain during the Spanish Second Republic. The Assault Guards were special police and paramilitary units cr ...

(Assault Guard) lieutenant during the

Second Spanish Republic The Spanish Republic (), commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic (), was the form of government in Spain from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931, after the deposition of King Alfonso XIII, and was dissolved on 1 ...

. His murder by four

Falangist Falangism ( es, falangismo) was the political ideology of two political parties in Spain that were known as the Falange, namely first the Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FE de las JONS) and afterwards the Fal ...

gunmen on 12 July 1936 led to a sequence of events that helped precipitate the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...

Early life and military career

José Castillo was the son of a lawyer of liberal political views. His mother came from an aristocratic family and was distantly related to General

Miguel Primo de Rivera Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, 2nd Marquess of Estella (8 January 1870 – 16 March 1930), was a dictator, aristocrat, and military officer who served as Prime Minister of Spain from 1923 to 1930 during Spain's Restoration era. He deepl ...

(Spanish dictator 1923–30). After attending school in Granada, Castillo entered the Infantry Officers' Academy in Toledo, in 1919. After graduation he became a junior officer in the 1st

Regulares The Fuerzas Regulares Indígenas (" Indigenous Regular Forces"), known simply as the Regulares (Regulars), are volunteer infantry units of the Spanish Army, largely recruited in the cities of Ceuta and Melilla. Consisting of indigenous infantr ...

(Moroccan colonial troops). He saw active service in the

Rif War The Rif War () was an armed conflict fought from 1921 to 1926 between Spain (joined by France in 1924) and the Berber tribes of the mountainous Rif region of northern Morocco. Led by Abd el-Krim, the Riffians at first inflicted several de ...

, rising to the rank of Lieutenant. In 1925 he transferred to a Peninsular regiment of regular infantry,

Under the Republic

Following the overthrow of the Monarchy in 1931, José Castillo was appointed to the newly raised Assault Guards, a para-military force intended to maintain security in urban areas and provide a counterweight to the long established and conservative

Guardia Civil The Civil Guard ( es, Guardia Civil, link=no; ) is the oldest law enforcement agency in Spain and is one of two national police forces. As a national gendarmerie force, it is military in nature and is responsible for civil policing under the au ...

. Officers of the ''Asaltos'' were selected for their perceived loyalty to the new Republic. Castillo had partaken in the failed rebellion of October 1934. Castillo was a member of the Union Militar Republicana Antifascista (UMRA), an

anti-fascist Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers wer ...

organization for military members, and also worked in training the

militia A militia () is generally an army or some other fighting organization of non-professional soldiers, citizens of a country, or subjects of a state, who may perform military service during a time of need, as opposed to a professional force of r ...

of the

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

youth. In April 1936, he commanded the Assault Guard unit which forcibly put down the riots that broke out at the funeral of Guardia Civil lieutenant Anastasio de los Reyes; for this, he was marked for death by the Falange. (The Guardia de Asalto were generally in favor of the Republic, the Guardia Civil more connected to what was to become the insurrectionary

right-wing Right-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that view certain social orders and Social stratification, hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this pos ...

opposition.)

Assassination

Castillo had been placed on a Falangist blacklist after he was incorrectly blamed for the death of José Antonio Primo de Rivera's cousin, Andrés Sáez de Heredia. Heredia had been killed during shootouts during the funeral procession of the Civil Guard officer Anastasio de los Reyes, who had been killed in unclear circumstances during a military parade on April 14. While Reyes had no known political views, the Spanish left-wing blamed his killing on fascists, while the Spanish right-wing claimed him as one of their own and held a large funeral for him as a political demonstration against the government. Shots were fired on the funeral procession (it had been prohibited from marching through the city but had insisted on doing so anyway) and three people, including Heredia, were killed, while many more were injured, before Reyes was finally buried. In June 1936, Castillo had married and his wife had received an anonymous letter threatening that he would soon be a corpse. He had begun training a socialist militia in the aftermath of the Reyes funeral riots. On the evening of 12 July, Castillo left his home in central Madrid to take up night duty. On the pavement outside he was killed by four men with

revolver A revolver (also called a wheel gun) is a repeating firearm, repeating handgun that has at least one gun barrel, barrel and uses a revolving cylinder (firearms), cylinder containing multiple chamber (firearms), chambers (each holding a single ...

s who had waited for him through the late afternoon; the bullet holes on the surrounding wall are still visible today. The gun men escaped in the confusion amongst the late Sunday crowds and were never identified. Castillo was the second military officer with known socialist sympathies to have been murdered within five weeks (Captain Carlos Faraudo, an engineer who had been helping to train socialist militia, was killed in May). Nine Falangists were arrested in the aftermath.

Aftermath

In retaliation, that night at around 03:00, Castillo's close friend Police Captain Fernando Condés and other police officers and leftist gunmen, drove to the home of José Calvo Sotelo — leader of the monarchist party and a rival of

José Antonio Primo de Rivera José Antonio Primo de Rivera y Sáenz de Heredia, 1st Duke of Primo de Rivera, 3rd Marquess of Estella (24 April 1903 – 20 November 1936), often referred to simply as José Antonio, was a Spanish politician who founded the falangist Falang ...

for leadership of the Spanish far-right — and asked him to come down to the station for

interrogation Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful inf ...

. Driving with Calvo Sotelo in a police van of the Assault Guard, police officer and socialist gunman Luis Cuenca shot him in the back of the neck. (According to Hugh Thomas, although Cuenca was an "intimate friend" of Condés', Condés mostly likely had no idea that Cuenca intended to kill Calvo Sotelo; as the officer with his name on the paperwork for Calvo Sotelo's arrest, Condés considered killing himself; both Condés and Cuenca were soon arrested without incident). Calvo Sotelo's dead body was given to a municipal undertaker, without informing the undertaker of who it was. Cuenca then drove to the offices of newspaper ''El Socialista'' and told them what had occurred. As a deputy in the

Cortes Cortes, Cortés, Cortês, Corts, or Cortès may refer to: People * Cortes (surname), including a list of people with the name ** Hernán Cortés (1485–1547), a Spanish conquistador Places * Cortes, Navarre, a village in the South border of ...

Sotelo had constitutional immunity from arrest and it is difficult to understand what other purpose than murder his kidnapping could have served.Stanley G. Payne 2006 The collapse of the Spanish Republic 1933-36 Both Castillo and Calvo Sotelo were buried 14 July; fighting between Assault Guard and fascist militias broke out in the streets surrounding the cemetery of Madrid, resulting in four deaths. Three days later on 17 July, the army uprising began in

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to A ...

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