Valentin Gonzalez

Valentín González González, popularly known as El Campesino (Malcocinado, November 4, 1904 – Madrid, October 20, 1983), was a Spanish communist soldier who had an outstanding participation in the Spanish civil war at the head of various units of the Republican Army.

Biography

Early Years

Although the various sources are not unanimous in the biography of his youth, the data presented here are considered quite probable by historians.

Valentín González González was born in 1904 in the Badajoz town of Malcocinado, in one of the poorest regions of Spain at the beginning of the century XX. His father was an anarchist day laborer and militant of the National Confederation of Labor (CNT), who was executed with a vile garrotte along with his daughter by the insurgents in 1937.

He barely attended school during his childhood, his family needing his work as a day laborer or muleteer. Around the age of eight, his family moved to the north of the province of Córdoba to work in the mines in the area, and Valentín González was able to alternate work with school. It was then that he discovered the figure of Juan Martín Díez "el Empecinado" —hero of the War of Independence against Napoleonic troops, and later hanged by the reactionary regime of Fernando VII—, for whom he felt special admiration.

At this time he starred in various confrontations with law enforcement, particularly the Civil Guard, and earned his nickname El Campesino after his first attack —at the age of 16—, against the police station in Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo police. Four civil guards were killed in the attack, and González was forced to hide in the mountains with his partner El Virulente . They would eventually be captured, imprisoned and tortured, the first managing to survive, although his partner died in the Fuente Obejuna prison.

Upon reaching the age of majority, he was assigned to the Army of Africa, involved in the Rif War. He joined the Navy but, after a boat accident in the port of Larache, he is reassigned to the Spanish Legion, which is an excellent war school and guerrilla training for him. Imprisoned for killing a sergeant who had slapped him, he escaped from prison and deserted to Abd el-Krim's Riffian troops. He is captured again, and only avoids the firing squad thanks to the amnesty of 1926, on the occasion of the end of the conflict.

During 1929 he traveled through Andalusia, Castilla and Extremadura, with the purpose of politically mobilizing its inhabitants. Around 1930 he left the CNT and joined the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), also emigrating to Madrid to work as a self-employed bricklayer at the head of a small gang.

After the proclamation of the Second Republic, he continued his political activity within the PCE, in which he was renowned among its still few militants. He forms a militia, which he trains in the handling of weapons and combat tactics with the intention of repeating the Asturian Revolution of 1934 in Madrid. When the attempt failed, he was interned in the Modelo prison in Madrid, where he made contact with various leaders. republicans. Beneficiary of the amnesty after the general elections of 1936, he continued to form a unit of militiamen with whom, once the coup d'état of July 1936 had taken place, he adhered to the defenders of the Republic.

Spanish Civil War

Before the war, he is known to have had a late marriage from which three children were born, but he lost contact with them during the civil war and left them for dead. During the conflict, he joined the Fifth Regiment, and later commanded the 10th Mixed Brigade and the 46th Division, participating and being wounded in the battles of Guadalajara, Brunete and Belchite. He gained notoriety in the Republican ranks, although he received accusations of brutality with his subordinates and prisoners, and even his superiors —Líster, Modesto...— took him for a coward and braggart. In the last moments of the battle of Teruel, when The fall of the Teruel capital to the rebels seemed close, he left the city during the night without putting up much resistance, which was the reason for not a few criticisms from his comrades. His subordinates remained, after the capture of Teruel by Franco's forces, dispersed and unarmed along the roads, having left behind the wounded in the course of the withdrawal imposed by El Campesino, which caused more than 400 troops to be taken prisoner by the enemy. Valentín González reacted by accusing Modesto and Líster of having abandoned him to his fate in Teruel, receiving in response an accusation by Líster of having deserted the battlefield and abandoned his men.

After this disaster, at the end of March 1938 he returned with his division to the devastated Aragon Front, but his low morale —and pretending to be ill— led him to be relieved of command of the 46th Division by Commander Pedro Mateo Merino, who led the division in the defense of Lérida. Although he could not prevent the city from succumbing as well, the division managed to delay Franco's advance, and for its good behavior in combat it was decorated.

He was scheduled to participate as a lieutenant colonel in command of the 46th Division in the battle of the Ebro, but he was dismissed on July 26, once the offensive had begun by which the Army of the Ebro crossed the river at twelve points Although he claimed to be ill, his superior Líster visited him at his command post, and later stated that the Campesino had only had a panic attack at the idea of crossing the river. Therefore, he was relieved of command and replaced by Domitiano Leal at the head of the division.With his dismissal, he also ended his military activity during the Republic.

Period in exile

At the end of the war in 1939, he escaped on a ship from the port of Adra with a briefcase of 160,000 pesetas in banknotes bound for North Africa, where he was interned in the Boghar concentration camp (Algeria). Later After this journey, he would end up settling in the Soviet Union, and entered the Superior War College with the rank of сombrig (brigade commander). After various problems with the Soviet authorities, he tried to flee from the USSR to Iran, but was returned to the first country by SMERSH, which led to his being interned in the Gulag labor camp in Vorkuta (Komi Republic). He finally managed to escape from the USSR in 1949 across the border Iranian to live in exile in France, although it is possible that he initially marched on behalf of the Soviet secret services. Be that as it may, he soon began to make anti-Stalinist allegations.

El Campesino was able to return to Spain in 1977, declaring himself a sympathizer of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party and showing his support for Felipe González. He also discovered that his wife and children, whom he had presumed dead decades before, were still alive. He died in Madrid in 1983.

Work

• Life and death in the USSR (1939–1949) (autobiography) (1950).
• Communist in Espaňa and Anti-Stalinist in the USSR (1952).
• I chose slavery (Plaza & Janés, 1976).