• Ferrol, A Coruña, Galicia

On 23 September 1936, Josefa Gómez Mera was executed in Ferrol after being accused of using her position in the port to provide employment to women associated with the political left. Her case shows that the Nationalist repression in Ferrol extended beyond arrests of politicians, trade union leaders and naval personnel into something much more immediate for working families who could still obtain a day’s work and earn a wage.

Gómez Mera worked among the women employed in loading and unloading ships in the port of Ferrol and acted as their delegate. Female dock labour was physically demanding and often insecure, with employment distributed according to the labour required when ships arrived. The person involved in organising or allocating workers could consequently influence which women obtained paid shifts.

Before the military uprising, Gómez Mera had been active in the Socialist movement. After the Nationalists took control of Ferrol in July, political affiliation could affect employment as well as personal safety. Left-wing organisations were suppressed, their officials and activists arrested, and workplaces increasingly came under the supervision of authorities and employers operating within the new Nationalist political system.

Gómez Mera was accused specifically of favouring women who had previously belonged to left-wing organisations when distributing dock work. It was not a question of whether the unions could organise, as the political histories of individual women could determine whether they were considered suitable for employment, while someone who continued giving work to former left-wing activists could herself be accused of political disloyalty.

Her previous Socialist activity made her particularly vulnerable. The Nationalist authorities treated her conduct at the docks not merely as a dispute over employment but as evidence that she continued to favour people associated with the defeated political and trade-union organisations. She was summarily executed on 23 September.

While sailors were being prosecuted for resisting the July uprising and large groups of prisoners were being taken for execution, political control was also entering the shipyards, docks and hiring arrangements on which working-class households depended. For women employed on the waterfront, the consequences of the Nationalist takeover could include not only the destruction of their political organisations but exclusion from the work through which they supported themselves and their families.

• Ávila, Old Castile

During the initial military coup of July 1936, the provincial capital of Ávila quickly fell under Nationalist control. But a highly unusual and tense tactical situation developed just outside the city gates, as for much of the early conflict and into September 1936, Republican troops successfully held the strategic mountain pass of Puerto del Boquerón, situated just 12km south of Ávila city. Despite holding this critical high-ground position right on the doorstep of a major Nationalist stronghold, Republican forces would famously fail to exploit the position to launch a decisive assault to retake the provincial capital, and it would become one of the most glaring tactical missed opportunities of the early Spanish Civil War. 

By late September 1936, the Nationalist high command moved to permanently neutralise this threat. Rebel units, including the Columna Nevado and forces under Commander Julián Velao, launched a counter-offensive from the area. They captured neighbouring towns like El Herradón and San Bartolomé de Pinares, securing the Nationalist flank and closing off Republican access to Ávila. The opening days of September 1936 had been defined by escalating violence from the air and brutal political purges on the ground. On 1 September 1936, a Republican aircraft struck the town of Arévalo (50km north of Ávila city), killing one civilian and wounding three others. Nationalist fighter planes pursued the aircraft and shot it down nearby at Adanero. In turn, Republican planes also bombed Ávila city in immediate, brutal retaliation for these air raids, Nationalist authorities in Ávila city extracted roughly 30 Republican and political prisoners from the local jail and executed them.

At the same time, in the southern reaches of the province, Nationalist forces rounded up four prominent Republican figures from the town of Mombeltrán. The prisoners included the local town pharmacist, the night watchman, a telegraph worker, and the town secretary.  They were driven to a secluded spot known as Las Añaíllas near Cuevas del Valle, where they were summarily executed and buried in unmarked graves.

At the same time, Nationalist troops were strengthening the mountain line to the west. Their positions extended through Artiñuelas, Mata de San Blas, Cabeza Renales, La Cepeda, and the Boquerón de Las Navas del Marqués. The purpose was to prevent Republican troops operating from the Peguerinos area from infiltrating further into Nationalist-held territory and threatening communications behind the Alto del León front. The locations formed a contiguous geographic ridge line along the border zones of Ávila, Segovia, and Madrid. Had the Republicans successfully broken through from Peguerinos, they could have cut off the vital supply roads and logistical arteries feeding the main Nationalist positions at the Alto del León pass, which was the central gateway to Madrid. (This defensive belt remains one of the best-preserved architectural legacies of the war, with dozens of stone and concrete trenches, pillboxes, and machine-gun nests still visible along hiking trails across Las Navas del Marqués and Peguerinos.)

The Republican forces had decided to establish a highly active base of operations in the densely forested heights of Peguerinos. From there, Republican guerrilla and militia units could launch frequent raids to disrupt Nationalist movements. The isolated mountain village, perched over 1,300 metres high in the Sierra de Guadarrama, served as one of the most aggressive, resilient, and chaotic Republican frontier bastions threatening Nationalist-held Ávila. Unlike the highly structured military columns nearby, the Republican garrison at Peguerinos was the traditional mix of loyal regular soldiers and ideological militias, managed by elements of the Mangada Column (led by the eccentric Republican Colonel Julio Mangada) alongside urban trade union militias travelling up from Madrid. Also, forces from the elite communist Batallón de Acero and the Octubre nº 1 militia were deployed to this rugged terrain, and because of the dense pine forests surrounding the village, the force operated heavily as a guerrilla outfit. They knew the mountain passes intimately, allowing small units to slip past Nationalist lines undetected. Their constant raids forced the Nationalists to pull hundreds of front-line troops away from the assault on Madrid just to guard their rear flanks along the Artiñuelas-Cabeza Renales line. Following intense artillery bombardments and close-quarters infantry, the Nationalist forces broke through, and upon on capturing Peguerinos, the Nationalist forces systematically burned and destroyed most of the village to deny the Republicans a forward base. The human cost was devastating; remaining militias were executed on the spot, and the town’s civilian infrastructure was utterly ruined, leaving it a ghost town for the remainder of the mountain campaign.

The Nationalists had also deployed a heavy concentration of Falangist militias and regular troops under the Columna Iruretagoyena to reinforce the ridge lines. Around 10 September, intensive military movements had seen both sides clashing over the ultimate high ground flanking Peguerinos, Cueva Valiente (the highest peak in the Malagón sierra at 1,903 metres) and Cerro Valiente.  By securing these peaks, they constructed a massive defensive network of stone trenches, artillery emplacements, and parapets that completely dominated the view of the valley below.

But the Republicans had refused to give up, and on 16 September,  moving in small guerrilla formations, elements of the Columna Mangada and incoming trade union militias from Madrid continually pushed up through the ravine networks, where Nationalist units were drawn into dense woodland ambushes, reportedly leaving substantial casualties in the Peguerinos sector. By the final week of September, the heavy troop movements slowed into a bitter, static stalemate. The Nationalists held the surrounding high peaks (preventing a Republican march on Ávila), while the Republicans held the eastern access points leading toward Madrid, setting the frontline in stone for months to come.

But on 23 September 1936, Puerto del Boquerón witnessed the critical turning point of the local mountain campaign. Having recognised that the Republican presence just 12km from Ávila city was an unacceptable vulnerability, the Nationalist High Command officially formed and mobilized a dedicated counter-offensive strike force (the Columna de operaciones) directly inside Ávila city. This specific troop movement on 23 September altered the frontline dynamics, as up until this date, the Nationalist command in Ávila did not possess a sufficiently organised, firm defensive or offensive force to dislodge the Republicans entrenched at the pass. But by 23 September, the arrival of newly organised Nationalist military units allowed them to formally establish an offensive column under a unified operational command. Approximately 800-1,000 men formed the vanguard of the assault column. The column drew heavily from professional colonial troops and provincial garrisons arriving in Ávila. It included Tabor de Larache Moroccan Regulares, a company from the Regimiento de La Victoria, originally arriving as a garrison from nearby Salamanca, a company of Assault Guards, a group of Guardia Civil, and 30 Carlist Requetés. The goal was to permanently push back the Republican forces who had failed to exploit their close proximity to the provincial capital. The mobilisation on 23 September served as the direct catalyst for the heavy fighting that erupted over the next 48 hours.

Historical research indicates that at least 38 educators were killed within the province during the war. The vast majority, 32 of them, were executed by the Nationalist coup forces, while six were killed by anarchist militias in the highly contested southern valleys. When Nationalist authorities executed a group of roughly 30 Republican prisoners at the wall of the Ávila city cemetery in retaliation for regional bombings, the group included prominent educational leaders who were seen as ‘poisoning’ the youth with secular, progressive values. Conrada María López Santos was a local schoolteacher from the Ávila village of Navaluenga who was affiliated with the socialist teachers’ union (FETE-UGT). Miguel Tejerina Fernández and Francisco Agustín Rodríguez were highly respected regional Inspectors of Primary Education (Inspectores de Primera Enseñanza). They were executed alongside Conrada López Santos. In a stark display of institutional bureaucracy, the Nationalist rectorate of Salamanca formally issued a decree suspending both dead men from their jobs and salaries two months after they had already been shot. Throughout September, schools reopened across Nationalist-held Ávila with a radically altered staff. Roughly 25% of the province’s entire teaching force was permanently purged, blacklisted, or driven into forced internal exile. They were systematically replaced by Catholic clergy, Falangist loyalists, and Nationalist veterans to enforce a strict regime of religious and military obedience.