Born in Valladolid in 1890, Elpidia Polo Ovejas studied education at the Escuela Normal de Valladolid, graduating as a national primary school teacher in 1911. Before the war broke out, she moved to Madrid, where she ran her own school, the Escuela Nacional Unitaria de niñas nº 41, in the Chamberí neighborhood. She was highly active in the labor movement, joining the Federación de Trabajadores de la Enseñanza (FETE-UGT) to fight for public education and social justice.
When the fascist military coup struck Spain in July 1936, Elpidia abandoned her peaceful classroom in Madrid to march directly to the dangerous war front in Extremadura. She was stationed at the Comandancia General de Don Benito (the Republican general headquarters), serving from August 1936 to January 1937. In a heavily male-dominated military structure, Elpidia quickly proved herself indispensable. Contemporaries described her as a striking woman with curly hair under her military cap and bright green eyes.
Though officially working as an administrative clerk, nurse, and cook, Elpidia took complete charge behind the lines. She single-handedly managed the headquarters’ kitchen and pantry, assisted doctors treating wounded soldiers, took up a pistol when necessary, and managed logistical administration. For her extraordinary leadership and versatility, she was promoted to the rank of Corporal (Cabo).
It was during her intense months at the Don Benito headquarters that she was famously bestowed the title of ‘el dios penate de la Comandancia General.’ In ancient Roman religion, the Penates were household gods tasked with protecting the pantry, ensuring the survival of the household, and guarding the domestic hearth.
By calling Elpidia their dios penate, the soldiers and commanders were recognizing her as the true guardian spirit of the headquarters. While men mapped military defenses against Franco’s approaching African Army, Elpidia was the literal lifeline keeping the command centre fed, organised, and alive.
When the Republic fell in April 1939, Elpidia was arrested by Nationalist forces in Alicante. Due to her fierce wartime loyalty, a Francoist military court classified her as a dangerous militant and sentenced her to death. The court files specifically cited her for ‘wearing a miliciana uniform, carrying a pistol, and exposing a nationalist spy hidden within the headquarters.’
Fortunately, her execution was commuted to a 30-year prison sentence. She survived the brutal post-war prison system, spending time alongside other prominent female political prisoners in notorious facilities like the Saturrarán Central Prison. Elpidia outlived the Franco dictatorship entirely, passing away peacefully in Madrid in 1988 at the age of 98.
Locations are approximate due to map limitations. Red is Republican, Blue is Nationalist, Purple is the frontline areas where the towns immediately behind were in Republican control, Orange marks the area where the Nationalists broke through in the early part of September 1936
Guadalajara, New Castile
By late August 1936, the Spanish Civil War was barely a month old, yet its front lines were rapidly hardening into a brutal war of attrition. For the Nationalist forces under the strategic oversight of General Emilio Mola, the historic city of Sigüenza, perched 120 kilometres northeast of Madrid, represented a vital tactical objective. The city was a crucial knot in the transportation spine of the region, anchoring the highway and rail corridors that connected the Republican capital to Soria and Zaragoza. For the Republic, holding Sigüenza was essential to bottle up the rebel advance. For the Nationalists, breaking it open would destabilise Madrid’s secondary supply networks and clear a path toward the capital.
Rather than risking a bloody, frontal assault against a fortified city, Mola’s commanders opted for a systematic pincers movement. They assembled a highly structured strike force of roughly 1,200 to 1,500 active combatants, drawing regular army troops, Falangist militiamen, and battle-hardened Carlist Requetés from the Nationalist military garrisons of Zaragoza and Calatayud.
Awaiting them inside the sector was a fragmented, poorly coordinated Republican defensive force of approximately 800 people. It was a volatile mix of 500 militia fighters. representing the anarchist CNT-FAI, Marxist factions, and a handful of loyalist government soldiers, alongside 300 fleeing civilians. Among them was the prominent Argentine international volunteer commander, Mika Etchebéhère. They possessed fierce ideological conviction, but lacked unified military command, heavy weaponry, and anti-aircraft defence.
On 1 September 1936, the Nationalist offensive had commenced. The operational plan relied on a methodical sweeping of the rugged terrain surrounding Sigüenza, systematically devouring the network of protective outlying villages to sever the city’s lifelines. Over the first eleven days of September, the Republican peripheral buffer disintegrated in a cascading retreat, first in the Northern and Western Flanks, where Nationalist columns drove through key communication hubs and small hamlets, capturing Horna, Huérmeces del Cerro, La Bodera, Riofrío del Llano, and the outpost of Bujalcayado. This stripped the Republican defenders of their northern visibility and lookouts. Also, pushing into the Central Outer Perimeter: Pushing deeper into the valleys, rebel forces overran Torre de Valdealmendras, Mojares, Guijosa, Rebollosa, and Santiuste. These swift takedowns isolated local Republican militia detachments, preventing them from reinforcing one another.
Republican soldiers on top of the cathedral, via Wikimedia Commons
Thirdly, Nationalist took the Southern Highway Access, blocking any incoming reinforcements traveling from Madrid, Nationalist forces seized a final arc of villages of Torresaviñán, Pozancos, Alcuneza, Jodra, Angón, El Atance, Carabias, and the historic fortified enclave of Palazuelos. With 18 peripheral strongholds firmly in Nationalist hands, the geographical buffer was gone. Sigüenza stood entirely exposed, its rural hinterland cut away.
The tactical operation culminated rapidly on the morning of 12 September 1936. Nationalist motorized units and infantry launched a coordinated, heavy push that successfully pierced the remaining Republican lines just beyond the village of Barbatona. By advancing past Barbatona, the Nationalist columns consolidated their flanks and seized absolute operational control over the primary highways leading toward Soria and Madrid. The steel trap snapped shut. The operational encirclement of Sigüenza was complete. Every road, rail track, and footpath out of the city was now monitored by Nationalist guns. Food, medicine, and ammunition could no longer get in; the defenders and civilians inside were trapped.
With the net secured, the nature of the battle shifted from a war of movement to a punishing siege. The Nationalists deployed total air superiority, utilising fascist Italian air detachments and the German Condor Legion. Having spent the early weeks bombarding the outer ridges of the 18 outlying villages, the rebel aircraft now turned their payloads directly onto Sigüenza’s historic city centre. The planes systematically pounded the city’s high strongholds, forcing the remaining defenders and terrified civilians to retreat into the massive, thick stone walls of the Sigüenza Cathedral complex.
The conditions inside the makeshift cathedral fortress quickly became catastrophic. Weeks of shelling and dwindling supplies took a heavy toll. On 29 September, a devastating direct air strike completely destroyed the local bishop’s hospital and hospice inside the city, killing approximately 70 people and wounding 150 others. By mid-October, the siege reached its breaking point. On 15 October 1936, a final, desperate breakout attempt by the defenders was met with overwhelming firepower, resulting in the immediate deaths of all 300 remaining barricaded fighters. Out of options, out of ammunition, and surrounded by rubble, the survivors threw down their weapons. A total of 738 Republican prisoners surrendered to the Nationalist forces.
For those who survived the weeks of bombardment, surrender did not mean safety. The Francoist regime immediately processed the 738 prisoners through a brutal system designed to purge ideological opponents. Wartime secrecy deliberately obscured their fates for decades, but modern historical research has revealed the bleak reality of their custody. A cross-reference of Nationalist military prisoner manifests drafted back-to-back in October 1936 revealed that 157 prisoners completely ‘vanished ‘within days of surrender. These individuals, including teenagers like 19-year-old tailor apprentice Aureliano Nieves Mora and 19-year-old day labourer Antonio Ballesteros Burgueño, were separated from the main group. They were trucked to the neighbouring province of Soria, summarily executed by firing squads, and buried anonymously in roadside trenches and clandestine mass graves. The remaining survivors were marched into provisional concentration camps set up in Soria and Almazán. There, they faced intense ideological screening by classification tribunals. Anyone identified as a political organizer or officer was directed toward military tribunals, which frequently ended in execution. Those categorized as rank-and-file soldiers were forced into Batallones de Trabajadores (Forced Labour Battalions) . In a twist of wartime irony, the captive survivors of Sigüenza were used as slave labour to rebuild the very infrastructure destroyed during the fighting. For years, they cleared rubble, repaired the broken railways, and began the early structural restoration of the heavily shelled Sigüenza Cathedral, the very fortress that had served as their final stand.
The Battle of Sigüenza was highly significant to the early trajectory of the Spanish Civil War, as it severed Madrid’s northern supply lines, it refined the Nationalist tactic of urban encirclement, and it provided a powerful propaganda symbol for the Francoist regime.
Sigüenza Cathedral after the bombing
Santuario de Nuestra Señora de la Cabeza, Jaén
When the July 1936 military coup failed to instantly seize the province of Jaén, the local Civil Guards who supported the Nationalist uprising found themselves completely surrounded in Republican territory. Led by Captain Cortés, they retreated up into the rugged Sierra Morena mountains. They converted the historic, thick-walled Santuario de Nuestra Señora de la Cabeza into a highly defensible mountain fortress, taking over 1,000 civilian family members with them.
By September, Republican forces had fully encircled the mountain but were hesitant to launch a costly infantry assault up the steep, rocky terrain. Instead, they utilised air superiority out of the nearby Andújar airfield. On 12 September, Republican planes flew over the peak and dropped thousands of leaflets. These proclamations urged the Civil Guards and civilians to lay down their arms peacefully, offered guarantees of safety for the women and children inside, and delivered a stern ultimatum that if they refused to surrender, the Republic would unleash a full-scale artillery and aerial bombardment against the sanctuary.
Captain Cortés fiercely rejected the ultimatum, hiding the leaflets from many of the civilians to maintain morale. True to their warning, the Republican forces began their launched eight-month siege involving heavy artillery and continuous aerial bombing.
Santuario de Nuestra Señora de la Cabeza on top of the mountain before the siege
Binéfar, Huelva
The town of Binéfar fell under the control of these local revolutionary bodies during the summer of 1936. Following a period of detention in local holding facilities, twelve prisoners were selected for removal on 12 September 1936. Under the administrative practice known as a saca, where prisoners were removed under the pretext of a prison transfer or upcoming trial, the men were instead transported across provincial lines into Catalonia. The truck arrived at the Municipal Cemetery of Lleida (Lérida), where a revolutionary firing squad executed all twelve men. Their bodies were buried on-site in mass graves.
The extraction of political prisoners from Binéfar continued three days later. On 15 September 1936, four additional prisoners were removed from detention and subjected to the exact same procedure. Transported to the walls of the identical cemetery in Lleida, they were executed via firing squad and buried alongside their fellow townsmen. These executions represent a documented instance of early wartime violence carried out by uncontrolled militias before the Republican government managed to re-impose centralized judicial oversight later in the war. Today, the Municipal Cemetery of Lleida serves as an official site of democratic memory, with plaques and historical markers preserving the names of these 16 individuals from Binéfar as victims of civil war repression.
Alicante, Valencia
In the chaotic weeks following the failed July 1936 military coup, the province of Alicante remained under Republican control. Local militias and security forces began actively purging suspected nationalist sympathizers. The specific contingent of prisoners executed on 12 September had been arrested by the Assault Guard in the rural Vega Baja del Segura region—a stronghold for right-wing political factions and Falange organisers.
Rather than a standard judicial proceeding, the prisoners were subjected to a popular wartime tribunal. Between 7 and 11 September, the men faced an accelerated political trial in Alicante. During this phase of the war, these tribunals operated under immense pressure from local anti-fascist committees, leaving the accused with virtually no legal protections. The vast majority of the cohort was sentenced to death for treason and rebellion against the Republic.
On the morning of 12 September 1936, the prisoners were moved from their holding cells. Roughly 50 to 52 men were taken to the local cemetery grounds and executed by firing squad. Their bodies were buried on-site. This tragic event set a grim precedent for rearguard violence in Alicante, which later escalated sharply into retaliatory sacas following Nationalist aerial bombings later that winter.
Siétamo in ruins, September 1936
Siétamo, Huesca
The Republican advance continued around Huesca during the first half of September. On 4 September, pressure on Siétamo increasingly cut the Nationalist troops there off from the defensive position at Estrecho Quinto. The fighting continued for more than another week as Republican forces sought to remove the Nationalist positions protecting the eastern approaches to Huesca.
On 9 September, Republican forces occupied Quicena, further isolating Estrecho Quinto and Montearagón, which were now increasingly separated from the other Nationalist positions around Huesca. The Republican advance brought the siege closer to the city and reduced the Nationalist defensive perimeter. The struggle for Siétamo reached its final phase on 12 September. After several days of renewed fighting, the Nationalist troops withdrew towards Estrecho Quinto, while Republican forces entered the town. Contemporary Republican newspapers announced the complete capture on 12–13 September. Several centurias belonging to the Durruti Column’s José Mira grouping had reinforced the Republican attack.
With ñ and Quicena in Republican hands, the Nationalist positions at Estrecho Quinto and Montearagón were becoming increasingly isolated. The fighting shifted towards the remaining defensive positions immediately east of Huesca.
Republican gather after the win at Siétamo, September 1936, via Ahora, Biblioteca de España
Calahorra, Logroño (La Rioja)
On 12 September 1936, ten prisoners held at the Beti-Jai prison in Calahorra were taken out by men carrying out the Nationalist repression and transported along the road towards Viana, west of the city. They were shot and killed after their removal from the prison. The victims were already prisoners in Nationalist-controlled territory and were not killed during fighting between the two sides of the war. Among the ten was Ángel Gómez Ramos, a Socialist agricultural worker originally from Pradejón who was living in Calahorra. The surviving account of his death states that he was taken from Beti-Jai with another nine prisoners and killed with them on the Viana road.
The Calahorra victims were dug up privately on 18 May 1980, and are commemorated on that date each year, via Mapa de fosas de la Comunidad Autónoma de La Rioja
CAROLINE ANGUS 
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