Juan Yagüe prepared the final advance on Badajoz. At approximately 3:00am on 13 August, the Army of Africa followed the main road west along the Guadiana valley. The objective was Badajoz itself and than occupying every settlement in force, Yagüe intended to keep his column moving, accepting the surrender of towns wherever possible and leaving newly appointed local authorities to establish Nationalist control.

The column reached Lobón at about 5:00 am. The town offered virtually no organised resistance, and the Republican authorities lost control almost immediately. Nationalist forces installed a right-wing municipal commission before continuing west without delay. The occupation nevertheless marked the beginning of the local repression. Men including José Mendoza Muñoz and Manuel Mata Sánchez were killed on 13 August, their deaths recorded as occurring during the Nationalist entry into the town. No documented Civil War mass grave has been identified in Lobón, and surviving evidence suggests that the number of victims was considerably smaller, though the population of the town was only around 1,500 at the time. Nevertheless, the executions formed part of the wider campaign of repression that accompanied the Army of Africa’s advance across western Extremadura, removing Republican supporters as Nationalist control was established.

The Army of Africa reached Puebla de la Calzada 6km soon after leaving Lobón. By the time Yagüe approached, the Republican municipal authorities had already fled the town. Rather than committing his entire force to an urban occupation, Yagüe positioned artillery on nearby high ground and demanded Puebla’s surrender under threat of bombardment. The town capitulated without a battle, and a Nationalist Gestora immediately replaced the elected Republican council. Before the Nationalist occupation, the local Popular Front committee had arrested a number of right-wing residents, but these prisoners were not executed, but following the occupation, arrests of Republican supporters began almost immediately. Falangists and the new authorities detained agricultural labourers, socialist activists, trade unionists, municipal officials, and other people associated with the Popular Front. Local historical studies attribute the deaths of more than 30 people to the repression in Puebla de la Calzada. One commonly cited breakdown identifies twenty-nine men and one woman executed by Falangist forces during the weeks after the occupation. The woman was reportedly shaved, forced to drink castor oil, publicly humiliated, raped, and then shot, while other Republican women in the town suffered similar public humiliation even though they survived.

The documented victims include several prominent members of the local labour movement. Manuel Labadiño García, president of the local Socialist Association, had previously intervened to prevent the execution of imprisoned right-wing residents while Puebla remained under Republican control. His efforts did not protect him after the Nationalist occupation and he was caught and executed on 31 August 1936. Other identified victims include Pedro Parejo Lechón, Victoriano Álvarez González, Francisco Pérez Mendoza, and Cristóbal Melchor Pérez, and many more. As repression spread across the district, prisoners arrested in Puebla de la Calzada, together with detainees from Lobón, Montijo, and Talavera la Real, were transported under Legion and Regulares escort towards Badajoz. The campaign transformed a town that had surrendered without military resistance into another community marked by executions, imprisonment, and the systematic destruction of its Republican political leadership.

On 13 August, Nationalist forces entered Montijo, ending almost four weeks of Republican control. During that period, the local Committee for the Defence of the Republic had assumed responsibility for maintaining order and detained a number of right-wing residents in the Convent of Santa Clara. Although some prisoners were assaulted and there were attempts by armed civilians to attack the convent, committee members prevented their execution. No documented killings of local right-wing prisoners occurred before the town fell. Before entering the town, Yagüe telephoned the Town Hall from Lobón. The Republican mayor and councillors had already fled, leaving municipal secretary Rafael González Castell as the senior official still present. Yagüe warned that Montijo would be bombarded unless it surrendered immediately. González Castell accepted the demand and agreed to meet the Nationalist commander on the bridge between Lobón and Montijo at 8:30 am, where he formally handed over the keys to the town.

The new authorities appointed Francisco Rodríguez Cavero, who had served as mayor during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, restoring conservative control of the town. The occupation marked the beginning of one of the largest campaigns of repression in the Mérida–Badajoz corridor. From the first day, arrests targeted elected councillors, trade unionists, members of the Popular Front, agricultural labourers, teachers and other people associated with the Republic. Contemporary accounts describe Nationalist soldiers destroying the left-wing newspaper kiosk owned by Juan Rodríguez Pérez in the town square as a symbolic demonstration that Republican political life had ended, and the former mayor Miguel Merino was executed days later.

According to the research of José Martín Bastos, later incorporated into the Extremadura Mapas de Fosas project, 111 people from Montijo were killed as a result of Francoist repression. More than 100 were extrajudicial executions, alongside one death in prison and three recorded disappearances believed to have ended in execution. Many victims were buried in two mass graves in the municipal cemetery, where families were unable to recover their relatives until after the restoration of democracy.  The town also suffered the systematic removal of its Republican civic leadership. Teachers were dismissed, imprisoned or executed, left-wing organisations were dissolved, and families associated with the Republic faced arrests, public humiliation, imprisonment or exile. The violence extended well beyond the first days of occupation and permanently altered the political and social life of one of the largest communities between Mérida and Badajoz.

In 1980, two mass graves were located along the northern wall of the municipal cemetery, where the victims had been buried at a depth of approximately 1.5 metres. As the graves were opened, investigators recovered not only the skeletal remains but also the personal belongings that had been buried with them. Among the objects found were rubber shoe soles, buttons, clothing fragments, coins, wick lighters, and other everyday possessions, preserving a final glimpse of the people who had been arrested, executed, and buried in hurried graves. The exhumation was filmed by Mario López Delgado using Super 8 film, creating one of the earliest surviving visual records of a Spanish Civil War mass grave being excavated after the end of the Franco dictatorship. The work relied heavily on the knowledge of local families, who identified the burial sites and helped reconstruct the identities of those recovered. Because many executions had never been entered into the Civil Register or had been concealed under vague official causes of death, relatives compared memories, oral testimony, cemetery records, and surviving documentation to determine who had been buried in the graves.

In 1981, the recovered remains were reinterred in a collective grave within the municipal cemetery. The monument bears the names of the identified victims and stands as one of the earliest public memorials to Francoist repression erected in democratic Spain. Although the two cemetery graves did not necessarily contain every victim of the repression, the exhumations represented a landmark in Spain’s efforts to recover those murdered during the Civil War. Long before the historical memory movement gained national prominence, the people of Montijo had already begun documenting the dead, recovering their relatives, and restoring the identities that the dictatorship had attempted to erase.

The final town before Badajoz was Talavera la Real. Like the previous settlements, it did not become the scene of a major battle, but violence erupted before the Army arrived. The town did not become the scene of a major battle, but violence erupted before the Nationalists arrived. As news spread that Yagüe’s column was approaching, Republican militiamen executed 18 imprisoned right-wing supporters. When war correspondent Fernando Fernández Albarrán entered the town with the Nationalist troops, he described seeing the parish priest and another ten or twelve civilians lying dead in a roadside ditch, all killed shortly before the occupation.

The Army secured Talavera la Real and continued its advance towards Cerro Gordo, leaving the new authorities to consolidate Nationalist control. The repression that followed proved far more deadly than the fighting itself. Local historical research attributes more than 300 executions to the Nationalist occupation and its aftermath, making Talavera la Real one of the hardest-hit municipalities in the Badajoz district. The victims were predominantly agricultural labourers, small farmers, socialist and UGT members, Republican supporters, municipal officials, and other people associated with the Popular Front. Executions began within days of the occupation and continued through the following weeks and months. Many death registrations concealed the true circumstances by recording the cause simply as “Movimiento Nacional,” a formula commonly used by Francoist authorities for victims of extrajudicial execution. Identified victims include Aquilino Moreno Larra, a labourer executed on 15 August 1936, and José Sánchez González, another labourer executed on 21 September 1936. The repression that followed proved far more deadly than the fighting itself. Local historical research attributes more than 300 executions to the Nationalist occupation and its aftermath, making Talavera la Real one of the hardest-hit municipalities in the Badajoz district. The victims were predominantly agricultural labourers, small farmers, socialist and UGT members, Republican supporters, municipal officials, and other people associated with the Popular Front. Executions began within days of the occupation and continued through the following weeks and months. Many death registrations concealed the true circumstances by recording the cause simply as Movimiento Nacional, a formula commonly used by Francoist authorities for victims of extrajudicial execution.