Emilio Mola

Emilio Mola Vidal (Placetas, July 9, 1887-Alcocero, June 3, 1937) was a Spanish soldier who played an important role during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the Second Republic.. Brigadier general, he was called "the Director" of the 1936 coup d'état, which, after its initial failure, gave rise to the Civil War. Once the war began, he stood out in the direction of military operations under the command of the Northern Army, especially in the area of the Basque Country.

His figure has gone down in history for having been the meticulous planner of the failed coup d'état that would give rise to the civil strife, but perhaps more for his famous secret guidelines, in which he established the methods of repression aimed at all sympathetic members of the Popular Front, which would then be applied to their ultimate consequences. Once the war had begun, and as Franco's rival in the leadership of the rebel forces, his accidental death has always been a source of discussion and speculation regarding the possible role played by Franco, who of course benefited from his disappearance, but whose participation never occurred. has been accredited.

Biography

Early years

Mola was born on July 9, 1887 in Cuba, still a Spanish province, where his father, Emilio Mola López, captain of the Civil Guard, was stationed and where he had married a Cuban, Ramona Vidal Caro, daughter of the emigrant Catalan Salvador Vidal Tapia and the Cuban María Rosario Caro. On his maternal line, he was the nephew of the insurrection leader Leoncio Vidal Caro. After the Spanish disaster of 1898, the family settled in Spain. On August 28, 1904, Mola entered the Toledo Infantry Academy, thus beginning his military career.

Morocco Wars

After his training and graduation as a lieutenant in 1907, a time when Colonel José Villalba Riquelme directed the academy, he was assigned to the Bailén Infantry Regiment No. 60 and later served in the Melilla War, in the regiment. of Melilla Infantry, where he received the Individual Military Medal for the 1909 campaign and where he became an authority on military affairs. After the start of the Rif War, on August 1, 1911 he joined the Indigenous Regular Forces as an officer, with which he participated in the operations on the Zaio plain. In May 1912 he was seriously wounded in the right thigh, for which he received his first promotion, to captain, for war merits.

When he recovered, he was sent to the Ceriñola Infantry Regiment No. 42, with which he returned to Izhafen, Imarufen and Talusit, and also fought in the Tetouan area, where he achieved his second promotion, in this case to commander, also for war merits. In 1915 he was assigned to the hunters battalion of the Alba de Tormes Regiment No. 40 in Barcelona and, two and a half years later, he passed through Madrid and then to Ceuta as Judge of Causes of this command. general. Commanding the Group of Ceuta Regulars No. 3, he participated in various battles in October 1919 and in 1920 in Spanish Morocco: Malalien, Wad Ras, Alcázar seguir, Kudia Tahar, Wad Lau, Kobba d & # 39; Arsa, etc. In June 1921 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and assigned to the Andalusian Infantry Regiment in Santander. Three months later he was called to fill the vacancy at the head of the Melilla regulars, where he once again participated in important military operations, such as Dar Accoba, thanks to the evacuation of the Larache area. Mola was promoted to colonel for war merits and reached command of the Melilla Infantry Regiment No. 59, with which he participated in the landing of Alhucemas. In 1927, at the age of forty, he was promoted to brigadier general and the following year he took charge of the General Command of Larache, one of the main places of the Protectorate.

In the General Directorate of Security

At the beginning of the Dictablanda of General Berenguer Mola, he was appointed general director of Security on February 13, 1930, a political position where his conservative ideas made him very unpopular among the socialist and republican opposition. He maintained a long-lasting relationship with the International Anti-Communist Entente - an organization that began its propaganda activity in Spain in 1924 - and, apparently, was obsessed with the supposed power of Freemasonry in Spain, behind which, according to Mola, were "the Jews", like The following paragraph from his Memoirs would demonstrate it:

When I was obliged to serve, I studied the intervention of the Lodges in the political life of Spain, I realized the enormous strength they represented, not by themselves, but by the powerful elements that moved them from abroad: the Jews.

One of his most relevant tasks in office was the reorganization of the government police. According to a royal decree of November 25, 1930, a new police regulation was approved. Through this decree, the government police were placed under the direct and sole command of the Director General of Security (dependent on the Minister of the Interior). The police were made up of two bodies: the Surveillance Corps and the Security Corps (the seed of the later Assault Guard), both of which were civilian in nature. However, the Security Corps was governed by military regulations and its components were subject to the Code of Military Justice.

Before the so-called Jaca uprising occurred, which the Spanish republicans attempted in 1930 to proclaim the Second Spanish Republic by force of arms, he addressed his companion Fermín Galán with the aim of dissuading him from his coup intention:

Madrid, 27 November 1930

Sr Don Fermín Galán – JACA

My distinguished captain and friend:
Without other titles to direct me to you that of companion and friendship that offered me in gratitude for my intervention in the violent incident of Cudia Mahafora, I write to you. The government knows and I know its revolutionary activities and its purposes of revolt with troops from that garrison: the matter is serious and can cause irreparable damage. The current Government has not assailed the power, and none of its members can be blamed for taking part in movements of rebellion: they have free hands to let the Code of Military Justice inflexibly apply, without remorse of having been treated with less rigor. That, on the one hand; on the other, remember that we owe not one or another form of government, but to the Homeland, and that the men and weapons that the Nation has entrusted to us must use them only in their defense. I beg you to meditate on what I say to you, and, in solving it, do not be guided by a passing passion, but by what your conscience dictates. If you make a trip to Madrid, I'd appreciate the kindness of seeing me. It is not the price to the defense that I made to General Serrano, not less an order; it is simply the desire of your good friend who truly appreciates and embraces you.

Emilio Mola

The Jaca uprising, however, finally broke out and ended in resounding failure: captains Fermín Galán and Ángel García Hernández were shot, and six members of the "revolutionary committee" ended up in prison. They were tried in a court martial on March 20, but they were only sentenced to six months, so they were immediately released and when they left the Cárcel Modelo in Madrid they were cheered by the crowd.

But the demonstrations in favor of amnesty did not cease, reaching their most dramatic moment during the serious incidents that occurred at the Faculty of Medicine of Madrid (San Carlos) on the 23rd, 24th and March 25, which resulted in several injuries and two deaths from gunshot wounds - a civil guard and a student. The left held General Mola responsible for the events and requested his dismissal as head of the General Directorate of Security, but the Government kept him in office, despite the general's criticism of the "softness" of the government and the contempt that felt for some of its members, starting with Admiral Juan Bautista Aznar, its president, whom he considered a "puppet of Romanones", Minister of State (de García Prieto, Minister of Grace and Justice, wrote: "I perfectly understand that General Primo de Rivera kicked him. Very justified!" The incidents occurred only eighteen days before the 1931 Spanish municipal elections were held that would lead to the fall of Alfonso XIII's monarchy and the Proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic on April 14.

Second Republic

On April 14, 1931, the Republic was finally proclaimed. His past weighed on the new Republican Government, which immediately removed him from office. After the failed uprising of General Sanjurjo in 1932 - and despite the fact that, apparently, he had not had any intervention - the Government of Manuel Azaña passed him on to the second reservation. The financial problems that arose from the suspension of his salary led him to make toys and write in different media to get some money. In that time he wrote four books. The first three were successive volumes of his Memories of my time at the General Directorate of Security, titled What I knew; Storm, calm, intrigue and crisis; and The collapse of the Monarchy. In them he was very critical of politicians, especially those who, "in order to satisfy individual ambitions, precipitated the collapse of what they had the inexcusable obligation to defend." In the fourth book, The past, Azaña and the future. The tragedies of our military institutions , he made a staunch defense of the autonomy of the army against civil power, considering it the maximum personification of patriotism. In it he harshly criticized the military reform of Manuel Azaña and considered the Republic as an anti-Spanish regime, precisely because of the policy that he considered contrary to the army. He maintained this militaristic and nationalist line of thought in the book that was published after his death titled Dar Akobba. Pages of blood, of pain and of glory, a song of praise to the army in Morocco and where he deepened his definition of what is Spanish and what is anti-Spanish.

In May 1934 Mola was amnestied and returned to the Army, collaborating in the Central General Staff of the Army with General Francisco Franco and others. In August 1935 he was appointed general chief of the Eastern Circumscription of Morocco, with headquarters in Melilla. During that period he corresponded with General Sanjurjo who, after being amnestied, had gone into exile in Estoril. In the six letters that he sent her between June 3, 1934 and September 27, 1935, Mola made his political thoughts clear. In the letter of August 12, 1934 (therefore prior to the October Revolution) he said that the radical government supported by the CEDA, which he recognized had ministers who "I believe have energy and know what they are up to", "sooner or later, he will have to fight socialism and affected or sympathizing organizations if he does not want Spain to fall into the unfortunate situation of the Russian people." A month later he also includes "separatism", which together with socialism, "will bring great evils to Spain. These are two national diseases. In that letter he also made reference to "the recruitment work that [socialism] is doing among children because most of the current teachers, due to their origin from the lower social strata or because they were appointed during the government's time, de Azaña, are furious extremists: we will see how youth manifests itself after ten or fifteen years. After the defeat of the October Revolution and the entry into the government of the CEDA, and especially of its leader José María Gil Robles at the head of the Ministry of War, he writes to Sanjurjo:

I firmly believe that if Gil Robles follows a long season and finds no great difficulties in Parliament we will finally achieve a modest army, but with morals and apt to ensure the integrity of the homeland and the security of the state. I'm afraid last October's revolutionary movement will not be the last to provoke the extreme left.

At the end of 1935 he arrived at the Headquarters of the Moroccan Military Forces, based in Tetouan (capital of the Moroccan Protectorate). After the Popular Front Government came to power, in February 1936, several military commanders were transferred to try to dismantle the budding military conspiracy. Mola was appointed military governor of Pamplona in command of the 12th Infantry Brigade, as the Navarrese capital was considered a remote place where he would remain outside of political affairs.

Military conspiracy

Mola soon joined the group of officers planning a coup to overthrow the Second Republic. Thus, the change of destination caused several high-ranking military personnel to meet in Madrid at the beginning of March and hold a meeting in which generals Francisco Franco and Emilio Mola, among others, participated. After the failure of an attempted uprising promoted in Madrid, in mid-April, by generals Rodríguez del Barrio and Varela, at the end of that month Mola assumed the leadership of a military movement aimed at overthrowing the Popular Front Government by force.. The first of the directives highlights the exclusively military nature of the coup. In the second, dated May 25, 1936, Madrid was already set as the objective. The plan drawn up is centripetal in nature (unlike the previous plans of the Board of Generals, which were centrifugal in nature). In it, Madrid would be attacked from the garrisons of Valencia, Zaragoza, Burgos and Valladolid. On July 1, the last of the guidelines closed, indicating the support of the political parties of the time. The plan was already drawn up and the date of July 19, in the early hours of the morning, was the agreed upon one.

Through the mediation of Raimundo García García, Garcilaso, deputy and director of the Diario de Navarra, in May the Carlists contacted Mola, with whom the military man maintained tough and tense negotiations. The main obstacles were the regime that would emerge after the military coup and the flag that the rebels would carry, since Mola planned to carry the republican tricolor, while the Carlists demanded to carry the monarchic bicolor. On the first point, the Carlists flatly refused to accept a republican military dictatorship proposed by Mola in his circular of June 5 and asked that the new regime get involved with the traditionalist and Catholic doctrine of Carlism, that is, the suppression of all political parties and the establishment of a non-democratic Government, with Sanjurjo as president. Although Mola himself knew that the participation of the Navarrese and Basque requetés was essential for the coup d'état in Navarra to succeed, he described the Carlists' requests as inadmissible in the confidential report that he sent on July 1. In the aforementioned document, Mola himself said that "the enthusiasm for the cause has not yet reached the necessary degree of exaltation" and pointed out that "the agreement with a very important national force indispensable for action in certain provinces is about to be finalized," which which was a clear allusion to the Carlists. Sanjurjo himself, from Navarre and of Carlist origin, tried to mediate in the negotiation between Mola and the Carlists from his Portuguese exile, even sending a letter to the general, who rejected it, considering it false.

The final break between Mola and the Carlists took place on July 9, after an unsuccessful exchange of letters between the general and Manuel Fal Conde, leader of the Carlists. This fact would lead to the cancellation of the plan for the uprising that was planned for July 12 in Pamplona. Mola sends a note to Fal Conde in which he tells him: «We turn to you because we only have uniformed men who cannot be called soldiers. "If we had had them, we would have handled ourselves." When the situation was at the point of no return, the previous leader of the Carlists, but head of Navarrese Carlism, the Count of Rodezno, contacted Mola and recommended that he negotiate directly with the Navarrese requetés, disregarding the national leadership, which They were willing to revolt, ignoring Fal Conde's orders, and they made it known to him on July 12. The murder of Calvo Sotelo, by Luis Cuenca, Indalecio Prieto's bodyguard, on July 13 precipitated the events and the Carlists agreed to postpone the discussion on the status of the new regime, leaving it in the hands of General Sanjurjo.

On July 16, at the Irache monastery, he met with his superior, General Domingo Batet, who asked him directly if he had anything to do with the imminent uprising and even asked for his word of honor that he would not participate. in it, which Mola actually gave him saying: "What I assure you is that I am not embarking on any adventure." Batet, convinced that Mola would not revolt, informed the Government. It was Mola who, under the pseudonym "Director", sent the secret instructions to the units involved in the uprising. After several delays, July 18, 1936 was chosen as the date to begin the coup. Despite the success of the rebellion in the protectorate of Morocco and the declaration of a state of war in the Canary Islands, Mola waited until July 19 to rise in Navarre, where he would have the decisive support of the Carlists. His approach to starting the coup d'état, and once started, is reflected in his reserved instructions. This is stated in reserved instruction No. 1, signed by Mola in Madrid on May 25, 1936, which said:

It will be taken into account that action must be extremely violent to reduce the enemy as soon as possible, which is strong and well organized. Of course, all the leaders of political parties, societies or trade unions will be imprisoned, applying exemplary punishments to those individuals to strangle rebel movements or strikes.

Spanish civil war

The failure of the coup d'état

It was expected that the uprising in Navarra would have significant popular support, so no opposition was expected. However, there were some and it was the commander of the Civil Guard in Navarra, José Rodríguez-Medel, who opposed supporting the uprising from the first moment. Mola called him on the phone and confirmed that he would remain faithful to the government. When Medel formed his men in the barracks, he verified that they did not follow his harangues and that they were on Mola's side. He tried to flee, but in a shootout he ended up dead. On the night of July 18 to 19, Diego Martínez Barrio (president of the Government for a few hours), during a telephone conversation, asked Mola to adhere to the strictest discipline to avoid the horrors of a war that was beginning to end. be unleashed, even offering him the Ministry of War in a Government of military concentration. Mola did not agree, arguing that it was too late and he could not turn back. On July 19, 1936, when the coup began, Mola gave another of his directives:

It is necessary to create an atmosphere of terror, you have to leave a sense of dominion by eliminating without scruples or hesitation to anyone who does not think like us. We have to make a big impression, anyone who is open or secretly a defender of the Popular Front must be shot.

General Mola: Instruction Reserved. Base 5.a

On July 18, General Batet was arrested by his subordinates for not acceding to the request of Colonel Moreno Calderón, his chief of staff, to lead the uprising of his organic division. Mola replaced him as head of the VI Organic Division, which included under its military jurisdiction the provinces of Santander, Burgos, Palencia, Logroño, Álava, Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa and Navarra. But the coup failed in its objective of controlling most of Spain; although a good part of the Army supported it and the situation quickly evolved into a civil war, leaving two areas delimited: those territories that remained under the control of the constitutional Government and those that became under the control of the rebel troops. Mola was left as the maximum leader of the northern zone (which extended through Old Castilla, Cáceres, Galicia, Oviedo, Álava, Navarra and most of Aragón. To make matters worse, General Sanjurjo died in a plane crash on July 20, when he was trying to take off from Estoril (Portugal) to assume leadership of the uprising. Now, that it had become clear that the coup had failed, the leader who was supposed to coordinate it also disappeared and left a great power vacuum.

After the death of Sanjurjo in Portugal, Francisco Franco was named head of the Army of Africa, the military unit that the rebels had the best chance of breaking the status quo that had been reached.. A few days after the start of the war, Mola, as the former director of the uprising that had failed, became the top leader of the rebellious northern zone and of all the military forces. The rebellious forces in the northern area were grouped around the supreme command of Mola, who was named commander-in-chief of the new rebellious Army of the North. For his part, Franco managed to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, arriving, in a very rapid campaign, on the outskirts of Madrid. On October 1, due to his recent popularity and military successes, he was promoted by his colleagues on the National Defense Board to the position of head of state and generalissimo of the Operational Armies. Definitely, the military and political direction of the uprising had slipped out of Mola's hands.

The fight in the Guadarrama mountain range

Despite the failure of the uprising in Madrid, Barcelona and other points, Mola continued with what was planned. As was already foreseen in his plans, all the rebel forces should fall on Madrid, so the units dependent on the VI and VII organic divisions quickly headed south. But the troop movements approaching Madrid from the north were detected by the Madrid General Staff as early as July 20. Colonel José Gistau with his column from Burgos lost ground in the port of Somosierra and Mola sent an order to García-Escámez's column so that, via Atienza, it could help Gistau's positions. The three columns that advanced to the mountains from the north were the only hope for Mola. The V Organic Division of Aragon under the command of General Cabanellas was paralyzed defending the positions of its territory without being able to offer help to Mola's plan.

Between July 21 and 23, the ports were occupied by the heavily equipped republican columns while they defeated the garrisons composed of Falangists, Carlists and monarchists who had come from Madrid days before in order to ensure their control until their arrival. of the columns of Mola. The arrival of militiamen commanded by Valentín González (known as 'El Campesino') with artillery reinforced the positions. On the 24th, García-Escámez's column of three battalions arrived at the port of Guadarrama and by surprise they took over the Cebollera and Gargantones hills, putting their defenders to flight. The newly appointed Undersecretary of the Ministry of War, General Carlos Bernal, decides to increase troops in the area and deploys them at the foot of the port, next to Buitrago. Escámez's troops continue the attack using the Burgos highway as the main axis of the offensive until the advance stops at the Puentes Viejas reservoir. In another place in the mountains, in the port of Guadarrama, the head of the railway regiment, Colonel Castillo, stands out along with Enrique Líster in command of militiamen and Regular Corporal Juan Guilloto León. On July 22, the Valladolid column under the command of Colonel Serrador arrives in San Rafael and reinforces forces already present in the area. With these forces, Serrador crowns the port. On the 24th, Líster and Modesto try to retake their positions but are rejected.

Finally, the situation reached a stalemate on July 27. This situation revealed, already at the end of July, that Mola's initial plan could be considered completely unsuccessful, as far as the conquest of Madrid from the north was concerned (which by then was the only hope the Director had left). The Army of Africa would be the next in charge of conquering the Spanish capital.

The Fifth Column

In the autumn of 1936 the rebel forces were advancing firmly on Madrid and it seemed that the capital was really going to fall. In a radio address, when referring to the advance of the rebel troops in the Spanish civil war towards Madrid, the general mentioned that while under his command four columns were heading towards the capital (the one advancing from Toledo, the one on the Extremadura highway, that of the Sierra and that of Sigüenza) there was a "fifth column" formed by sympathizers of the coup d'état who within the capital worked clandestinely for the victory of the rebels. According to other authors, such as Mijail Koltsov, correspondent of the Moscow newspaper Pravda and Stalin's personal envoy to Spain, it was General José Enrique Varela who uttered the phrase. The expression became part of the military vocabulary and It has been used since then to designate, in a situation of war confrontation, a sector of the population, generally a minority, that maintains supposed loyalties towards the enemy side, due to religious, economic, ideological or ethnic reasons.

In command of the Northern Army

From the first days of the war, Mola had already been in charge of directing military operations against the northern strip that had remained loyal to the Republic, trying to gain control of Guipúzcoa, especially through the Irún border crossing that It kept this area connected to France (and the communication route it provided for the purchase of weapons and supplies). At the beginning of September he managed to conquer Irun and the border crossing, extending his dominion to all of Guipúzcoa by the beginning of the autumn of 1936, but the resistance of the Basques and Republicans prevented him from entering Vizcaya. He had to face some attempts, all failed, by the Basque militias to reconquer the Basque territories that had revolted or had been conquered. Once the campaign stopped, the rebellious troops were reorganized and structured militarily, being framed in the new Northern Army under the orders of Mola, which extended its military authority to the entire Cantabrian strip although it had its headquarters in Pamplona.

However, its main objective continued to be the conquest of Vizcaya and the main city of the Republican north, Bilbao. On March 31, the great attack was launched: after an intense and well-coordinated bombardment by aviation and artillery, Colonel Alonso Vega advanced on the right of the front to conquer the mountains of Maroto, Albertia and Jarindo. North of Villarreal, in the center of the front, there was violent fighting around Ochandiano. The particularly violent fights around this town continued until April 4. Faced with the harsh and unexpected resistance offered by the Basques, Mola decided to stop the operations, taking advantage of the arrival of bad weather and reorganize his troops; General Von Sperrle complained about this measure. On April 20, a new nationalist advance began in Vizcaya; When the artillery fire and aerial bombardment had ceased, the Basques began to emerge from the shallow trenches in which they had taken refuge, they heard the machine guns of the Navarrese. Shouting "We are overwhelmed!", many defenders retreated in disorder, as would have already happened in Ochandiano. There was a climate of pessimism (at that time it seemed that the collapse of the front was unstoppable and that it was a matter of days before Mola arrived in Bilbao, although the situation would later change) and panic in the face of what was identified as a general defeat.

The troops withdrawing from the front had to cross Guernica to reach the positions of the Iron Belt. The town of Guernica was the cultural and historical capital of the Basques; Before the attack, it had a population of about 7,000 people, to which must be added a large number of troops, who were withdrawing to prepare the defense of Bilbao, and refugees who were fleeing the advance of Franco's troops. At that time it did not have any type of anti-aircraft defense, although it did have three weapons factories, one of them for aviation bombs. The attack began at 4:30 in the afternoon on April 26, 1937 and although it was later said that the The objective of the operation was the simple blowing up of a bridge, the real fact is that both the bridge and a weapons factory, located on the outskirts of the town, were intact. However, the attack was devastating: the bombers dropped a large number of 250 kg medium bombs, 50 kg light bombs and more than three thousand 1 kg aluminum incendiary projectiles on the urban area of the city. The Heinkel He 51 fighters, meanwhile, fired low-flying shots at the troops fleeing the scene. The attack provoked great international rejection, as well as a reinforcement of the attitude of resistance of the Basques; Mola was disgusted with the attack, and although it was the work of Germans and Italians, his level of knowledge on the matter has not been fully established.

The advance of the rebels continued, although Basque resistance remained unbreakable. Meanwhile, bad weather had been delaying Mola's operations against Bilbao. By mid-May the Basque troops had retreated almost to the height of the Iron Belt, while the bombings continued and the Condor Legion experienced the launching of incendiary bombs on the forests to force the Republican soldiers to withdraw..

Accidental death

On June 3, 1937, General Mola died in a plane accident. The plane in which he was traveling, an Airspeed Envoy, crashed on a hill in the Burgos town of Alcocero during a strong storm. The reason for the trip was the republican offensive of La Granja, which had alarmed Mola, and it was for this reason that he insisted on moving from Vitoria to Valladolid in order to supervise the operations closer to the front. From the day of his death, there emerged rumors surrounding it, given that his death clearly favored Franco by eliminating the former Director as a rival. However, it should be noted that Mola used this plane quite frequently to carry out his movements and, beyond the rumors, the truth is that there is no evidence that there was sabotage.

The fact is that the deaths in plane crashes of Sanjurjo and Mola left Franco as the only undisputed leader of the coup military. General Dávila, head of the State Technical Board, succeeded him as head of the Northern Army. For the Carlists, Mola's death was a hard moral blow, because despite the initial disagreements between him and the traditionalists, with During the course of the war, a strong bond of collaboration had been established between the two. Bilbao finally fell on June 19, but Mola was never able to see what had been one of his objectives since the beginning of the war.

He was buried in the Pamplona cemetery in 1937 and later, in 1961, his remains were transferred to the monument to the Fallen that was built in this city. In Alcocero a memorial monument was built in his memory and the town was renamed in his honor as Alcocero de Mola. Later, Franco awarded him, on the same date as the day of his death, the Grand Laureate Cross of San Fernando. In 1948, he also received, posthumously, the title of Duke of Mola with Greatness of Spain. At the end On August 24, 2016, the Pamplona city council decided to exhume the mortal remains of generals Mola and Sanjurjo that were in the crypt of the Monument to the Fallen of the Navarrese capital. On October 24, 2016, their remains were exhumed from the crypt and, later, they were cremated.

Posthumous image

After the war was over, a large number of monuments were erected in his honor throughout the dictatorship. Many streets, avenues and public places were renamed in memory of the former general and did not begin to recover their previous names until the constitutional regime of 1978 was consolidated. In Madrid, Príncipe de Vergara Street changed its name to General Mola, as did the Metro station located below this urban road. In Barcelona, the current San Juan promenade was called General Mola promenade in the section between Diagonal and Travesera de Gracia, between March 7, 1939 and December 21, 1979, and the currently called Verdaguer de la Metro's local network was called General Mola from its creation in 1970 until 1982. The same happened with the Vitoria airport, which after the civil war was renamed General Mola airport.

The Chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner in 1971, Pablo Neruda, dedicated one of his fiercest poems to the general in his book España en el corazón (1937), which is part of Tercera residence: It is titled “Cool in hell.”

Posthumous indictment for crimes against humanity and illegal detention

In 2008, he was one of the thirty-five senior officials of the Franco regime charged by the National Court in the summary conducted by Baltasar Garzón for the alleged crimes of illegal detention and crimes against humanity that were supposedly committed during the civil war. Spanish and the first years of the Franco regime. Judge Garzón declared Mola's criminal responsibility extinguished when he received reliable evidence of his death, which had occurred more than seventy years earlier. The investigation of the case was so controversial that Garzón was accused of prevarication, tried and acquitted by the Supreme Court, which considered Garzón's instruction an error.