Eusebio Rodríguez Salas
Encyclopedia
Eusebio Rodríguez Salas was a Spaniard known for being the Commissar-General of the police forces of Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...

 (aka PSUC
Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia
The Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia , was formed on July 23, 1936 through the unification of four left-wing groups; the Catalan Federation of Spanish Socialist Workers' Party , the Partit Comunista de Catalunya , the Unió Socialista de Catalunya and the...

 Councilor for Public Order in the Generalitat) who played a central role in the ignition of the Barcelona May Days
Barcelona May Days
Barcelona May Days were a period of civil violence in Catalonia, between May 3 and May 8, 1937, when factions on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War engaged each other in street battles in the city of Barcelona.Clashes began when units of the Assault Guard – under the...

.

Biography

Salas was born in Valladolid
Valladolid
Valladolid is a historic city and municipality in north-central Spain, situated at the confluence of the Pisuerga and Esgueva rivers, and located within three wine-making regions: Ribera del Duero, Rueda and Cigales...

. He had been an Anarchist during the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. It was during this time that he lost an arm while raiding the Bank of Tarragona. As a railroad worker, he joined the Organizing Committee of the First Provincial Congress of the CNT
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...

 of Tarragona (April 11–13, 1920), where he served as Secretary of the Bureau at its first meeting and spoke at the closing ceremony. He also served as Secretary of the Maritime Transport Union of the CNT in 1921, and held other CNT positions throughout the 1920s.

His politics however began to move away from Anarchism. He eventually joined Joaquín Maurín
Joaquín Maurín
Joaquín Maurín Juliá was a Spanish Communist politician and revolutionary, leader of the Workers and Peasants Bloc and of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification...

's Workers and Peasants' Bloc
Workers and Peasants' Bloc
The Workers and Peasants' Bloc was a "Right Opposition" communist group in Spain. BOC was founded in Barcelona in 1931, as the mass front of the Catalan-Balearic Communist Federation , after the merger of the Catalan Communist Party into FCCB...

, serving on its central committee. He then left in 1935 to join the Socialist Union of Catalonia
Socialist Union of Catalonia
Socialist Union of Catalonia , a socialist political party in Catalonia, Spain. USC was formed through a split in Spanish Socialist Workers' Party in 1923. The main leader of USC was J...

, which in 1936 became the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia
Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia
The Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia , was formed on July 23, 1936 through the unification of four left-wing groups; the Catalan Federation of Spanish Socialist Workers' Party , the Partit Comunista de Catalunya , the Unió Socialista de Catalunya and the...

. Known for his fearless and outspoken persona, he rose quickly within the ranks of the PSUC and was appointed in December 1936 Commissar-General by Interior Security Minister Artemio Aiguadé to replace the less aggressive (though also anti-anarchist) Martín Rauret.

Salas was unpopular with the CNT-FAI due to his Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 leanings. During an internal government crisis in April 1937, an article in the CNT newspaper Solidaridad Obrera
Solidaridad Obrera (periodical)
Solidaridad Obrera is a newspaper, published by the Catalonian/Balearic regional section of the anarchist labor union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo , and mouthpiece of the CNT in Spain....

on the 17th stated that "[The] way to prevent the sacrifices of our comrades from being reduced to naught is... to create an army that will guarantee victory in the war and the Revolution and to remove from the public life of Catalonia, Comorera, Aiguadé, Rodríguez Salas, etc." On April 24, 1937 an attempt was made on his life, followed by the successful assassination of PSUC member and Secretary of the UGT
Unión General de Trabajadores
The Unión General de Trabajadores is a major Spanish trade union, historically affiliated with the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party .-History:...

 Municipal Workers' Federation Roldán Cortada a day later. Salas condemned the assassination of Cortada and attributed it to "uncontrollables"; agent provocateur
Agent provocateur
Traditionally, an agent provocateur is a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act...

s
who were hostile to the Popular Front
Popular Front (Spain)
The Popular Front in Spain's Second Republic was an electoral coalition and pact signed in January 1936 by various left-wing political organisations, instigated by Manuel Azaña for the purpose of contesting that year's election....

. Salas ordered a raid in the Anarchist stronghold of the Hospitalet
L'Hospitalet de Llobregat
L'Hospitalet de Llobregat or briefly L'Hospitalet is a city to the immediate southwest of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain, and the second largest in Catalonia by population...

 under the pretext that Cortada's killers may have been there.

Telefónica Incident

The Telefónica building in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

 was a center of telecommunications. It "allowed for the monitoring of any government or army communique between Valencia and the Generalitat and the frontier." As part of the October 24, 1936 Catalan decree giving unions control of large commercial and industrial concerns seized by them during the opening days of the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

, the Telefónica (telephone exchange), owned by the Compañía Telefónica Nacional de Espafia (a subsidiary of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation), was nominally controlled by a joint CNT-UGT committee with an additional Catalan government delegate. The Anarcho-Syndicalists
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...

, however, dominated the building's affairs. The Republican Government was concerned with the control that the Anarchists exercised over conversations. On May 2, 1937, for example, a call from Republican President
President of Spain
Today, Spain is a constitutional monarchy. King Juan Carlos I, the current monarch, is Head of State. The Head of Government has the official title of President of the Government....

 Manuel Azaña
Manuel Azaña
Manuel Azaña Díaz was a Spanish politician. He was the first Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic , and later served again as Prime Minister , and then as the second and last President of the Republic . The Spanish Civil War broke out while he was President...

 to Catalan President Lluís Companys was interrupted by the Anarchist telephonist who said that the lines were being used for more important matters. Companys would later state that "all the telephone calls of the Generalitat authorities, of the President of Catalonia and of the President of the Republic were intercepted."

PSUC Secretary Juan Comorera condemned the Anarchists over this, saying that, "All the interior controls of the telephone exchange were in the service, not of the community, but of one organization, and neither President Azaña nor President Companys, nor anyone else, could speak without an indiscreet controller overhearing." In defense of the policy, Diego Abad de Santillán
Diego Abad de Santillán
Diego Abad de Santillán , born Sinesio Vaudilio García Fernández, was an author, economist and leading figure in the Spanish and Argentine anarchist movements.-Early years:...

 said it was used to be aware of any attempts by the government to conspire to "whittle away the people's rights" and for the CNT to act accordingly. It is likely that many in the Catalan Government (with the exception of CNT members) advocated action against the Anarchists, though none were aware in advance of Salas' actions. José Tarradellas, according to Azaña's memoirs, was critical of Salas' actions; calling them "hazardous" due to a lack of government resources with which to prepare for any resistance, and advocated negotiations without the sending of forces to the building.

On the afternoon of May 3, 1937 Salas, possibly acting on the orders of the Communist-supported Interior Security Minister Aiguadé, visited the building in the middle of the Plaza de Cataluña with three truckloads of Assault Guards
Guardia de Asalto
The Guardia de Asalto , usually shortened to Los Asaltos or just Asaltos, were the blue-uniformed urban police force of Spain during the Spanish Second Republic. It was the urban analogue to the green-uniformed Guardia Civil which patrolled the countryside. The Assault Guards were special police...

 and accompanied by the Generalitat representative on the Telefónica committee. Salas ordered the building's sentries to disarm and told the door guards that he was there to take charge of the building's afffairs in the name of the Government. He then entered the Censors Department on the first floor, and at that point CNT members within the building began using a machine-gun nest to open fire on Salas' men. Salas phoned in for help, with a company of Assault Guards arriving along with FAI members Dionisio Eroles and José Asens. Eroles called on the CNT workers within the building to cease shooting and to surrender their arms. As the Anarchist workers within the building fired their guns into the air shortly before agreeing to surrender their weapons, the events in the days ahead now referred to as the Barcelona May Days
Barcelona May Days
Barcelona May Days were a period of civil violence in Catalonia, between May 3 and May 8, 1937, when factions on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War engaged each other in street battles in the city of Barcelona.Clashes began when units of the Assault Guard – under the...

 had begun.

CNT councilors demanded the resignation of both Salas and Aiguadé. With this demand came additional calls for the dismissal of all PSUC members within the Catalan Cabinet, but neither Catalan Premier Tarradellas nor Home Secretary Ayguades complied. As part of the new provisional government agreed upon days later to stop the fighting in Barcelona, Salas was to remain head of the general commissariat (though Aiguadé sacked) until the arrival of Antonio Escobar, a Catalan delegate appointed by Valencia. On the Sixth, new CNT Minister of Justice Juan García Oliver
Juan García Oliver
Juan García Oliver was a Spanish Anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary, and a leading figure of Anarchism in Spain....

 noted in secret discussions via teletypewriter to Mariano Rodríguez Vázquez that "The minister of the interior has ordered the immediate dismissal of Rodríguez Salas."

Later life

After the end of the Civil War, Salas fled to Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

and in 1942 was expelled from the PSUC. He was then director of the magazine Conciencia Ferroviaria and contributed to the newspaper Fructidor, signing articles with the pseudonym of "Rafael Olmedo."
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