On August 13, 1940 began what would become a dark chapter in the history of Catalunya. The Franco regime was about to perpetrate a unique crime: the murder of a democratically elected President. Six men stormed the residence of Lluís Companys, President of the Catalan government, at La Baule in Brittany. He was captured by four men in German Nazi police uniforms and two civilians. One of them was Pedro Urraca Redueles, officially a police attached in the Spanish embassy in Paris, in reality a spy paid by the Franco regime to serve as liaison with the Gestapo and the Vichy Regime and to coordinate in part the repression of Spanish republican exiles in France. On that day Lluís Companys started a journey that would end tragically two months later, on October 15, 1940, with his execution in Montjuïc, Barcelona, after an illegal summary trial.
I was lucky enough to investigate Pedro Urraca and his activities. After a thorough archival research and finding his son, a dozen of diaries where the policeman describes his personal and professional life came into my hands. These personal writings and other archives he kept in his house revealed crucial information to help understand not only what happened in the Companys affair, but also the web of forty years of Franco’s repression abroad, initially against republicans and later also against communists and supposedly Basque activists. Even worse, these files prove that Pedro Urraca was also paid by a democratic country like Belgium to spy and detain members of the communist party.
It would be inaccurate to define Urraca as a criminal that was a fervent believer in the Franco regime, as was the case of his good friend Serrano Súñer, a belligerent defendant of fascist propaganda until the end of his days. Urraca was cynical and opportunistic, ready to defend any cause, even if it included criminal action, in order to satisfy his lust of power and recognition. He rarely expressed his vehement support of activities by the Franco regime or the Nazis.
Without a doubt, Lluís Company´s “hunter” was a perfect product of the Franco dictatorship, which the democratic system assimilated and integrated without the slightest scruple until 1982. A pact of silence amongst the political class prevented a real break with the past, a genuinely democratic transition able to remove from society Franco politicians, policemen with a repressive past like Urraca, corrupt judges and military courts; instead, they were never disturbed nor asked to provide explanations. Not those who still live, not those already dead, protected by legislation that shields the documents that may expose their involvement in the Francoist repression and war crimes. During the transition there was a pact between the old regime and the pre-democratic forces to bury the historical memory of the republican period and the illegitimate origins of the monarchy.
Indeed, Pedro Urraca Rendueles’ story could only belong to a Spaniard. Any other country would not be able to provide a context as brutal as a war against the republican legality, forty years of dictatorship and an unfinished transition that still to this day protects war criminals and humiliates the victims of Franco’s repression by refusing to invalidate illegal summary trials. Any other democratic country would not tolerate active supporters of a former dictatorial regime.
Nowadays, three decades after what the main Spanish parties considered to be the end of the transition, President Lluís Companys and thousands of anti-Francoist fighters are sullied by the shameful stain of a court martial that the Spanish state refuses to invalidate. Meanwhile, Pedro Urraca remains protected by the legality established during the transition from the final days of the Franco dictatorship to the current democratic regime. Spain has to repair the national and democratic humiliation of keeping resolutions and decisions by Franco’s legal apparatus into force; the damage caused by sinister individuals like the main subject of this investigation and the chain of command of the regime he served must be restored.
Moreover, the dictatorship’s files must no longer be considered state secrets.
Gemma Aguilera
Journalist and author of 'Agent 447, l’home que va detenir el president Companys' [Agent 447, the man who arrested President Companys]
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