That summer’s dead – as novelist Carlos Casares titled his 1987 book – appeared in ditches, graves, forest paths and irregular cemeteries. Manuel Coto Chan, born in Cuntis (Pontevedra) in 1896, saw several. “They littered the roads that cross Galicia in all directions,” he wrote on the back of his butcher’s inspection book, “with the corpses of these poor unfortunates who were not only murdered, but also martyred.” The gentlemen, “who looked more like nuns than men”: “They shouted and encouraged some fanatics so that, with the guards, they would pursue us and kill us. » He escaped. He spent two years and four months, first in the mountains then at home out of solidarity. His story, not very detailed but shocking, preserved in the military trial opened against him after his arrest by a Phalangist band on November 28, 1938, is today a book, published by the Deputation of Pontevedra, with additional context. It is titled Memoirs of an Outlaw.
“How far the doctrine of Jesus Christ is from those modern Christians,” continued the author, “who rob and murder with their hands, then kneel and ask for forgiveness, as if thereby they were forgiven for the injustices that ‘they commit.’ times. » and everywhere. But Manuel Coto Chan’s notes are not only a list of accusations made against his persecutors, those who took up arms against the Second Republic, but also the trace of the daily life of the fugitives. Hunger and cold, dens camouflaged among the ferns, terror at the slightest unidentified noise, sleeping until midnight in the morning to save breakfast, survival as an obsession. And, in the background, the incomprehension of what was happening: “I and my inseparable companion Manuel Vázquez retired together and found ourselves in Portela, waiting for this state of things to end and for there to be have peace and forgiveness for all the victims. “that we were innocent.” This never happened.
Prison and plunder in the Black Domain
When Alphonse He was not even active in the left wing of republicanism. But when the Asturian Revolution broke out, with the right in government, he was arrested, accused of participating in sabotage actions. In Estrada (Pontevedra), where Coto Chan ran a butcher’s shop, found itself without telephone or telegraph connection in the early hours of October 5 and 6. The Asturian revolt, recalls Marcos Borrageros Vilela in the historical essay To life you give memories which accompanies the writings of Coto Chan in the edition of the provincial entity of Pontevedra, was only one of the most visible episodes of the general strike called by the UGT against the reactionary government. The fact is that the butcher and two other colleagues were sentenced to one year, eight months and 21 days in prison by the Pontevedra Emergency Court.
“During the time he spent in prison, first in the cell of A Estrada, then in the town of Pontevedra and finally in El Dueso (Cantabria),” explains Adrián Coto Couceiro, great-grandson of Manual and author of the volume’s prologue. elDiario.es, “they plundered their carnage”. Their livelihoods have disappeared. He did not serve his entire sentence, it was reduced due to work and, in February 1936, a crowd received him in his town, Borrageros says. Manuel Coto Chan then had two children, Lolita and Gerardo. The electoral victory of the Popular Front, the left-wing alliance that would put an end to the conservative regime and the Black Biennale, meant amnesty for those accused of the events of 1934. The reaction did not stop, however.
Journal entries began on July 18, 1936. “News [del golpe de Estado fascista] It spread like wildfire and elements of the Popular Front began to arrive in avalanches, so that by eight o’clock in the evening there were already around a thousand men armed with rifles and pistols to defend the Town Hall from a possible factional attack. he said. Coto Chan was appointed delegate for Public Order. The post lasted no more than four days. “During this time, no neighbor was disturbed, the most absolute order and the greatest respect for all citizens reigned without distinction of political nuances.” That didn’t last either. The fascists took control and Coto Chan fled to the mountains. “I was left alone, not knowing where to go. I had food for a day, but two days passed and hunger was already conquering me,” he begins his story.
The Republican lasted two years and four months. They arrested him at the end of 1938. Borrageros Vilela recounts his arrest. The Civil Guard received information and “a certain Antucho Rey” told them where Coto Chan was hiding, with Xosé Silva Rey and Hixinio Carracedo Ruzo: in Castro Ramiro, a place in the parish of Somoza, in A Estrada. The next day, November 28, a group of 25 Phalangists and four members of the Benemérita appeared on the scene. According to the arrest warrant, Coto Chan, hidden in a false bottom, was carrying a loaded musket, a pistol, a book of titles Defense against clericalism and the inspection notebook in which he had written his escape memoirs. These were used as evidence against him, remembers his great-grandson Adrián Coto, within the War Council which would sentence him to death. But before that, he suffered all kinds of humiliation and torture. “After the arrest, the Phalangist faction tied Coto Chan to the tail of a mare ridden by a Civil Guard sergeant,” says Borrageros, “beaten, bloodied and covered in all kinds of excrement, he was dragged in the streets of A Estrada”.
Accused of “military rebellion”
Coto Chan was court-martialed in March 1939 and sentenced to death for the crime of “military rebellion.” Those who had rebelled against republican democracy were now those who accused the persecuted of doing so. Six months later, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In October 1941, he entered the Brunete workers’ penitentiary camp (Madrid). He was released three years later. But the aftereffects of years of persecution, torture, imprisonment and forced labor have not disappeared. On February 11, 1946, at the age of 49, he died of tuberculosis. “I obviously didn’t know him,” says Adrián Coto, “but what he asked of his son, my grandfather and his descendants remained in the family memory: not to get involved in politics. ”
Are Memoirs of an Outlaw They survived among the papers and documents of the military trial that sentenced him to death. Professor Xoán Carlos Garrido Couceiro discovered them a few years ago. The edition of the Pontevedra Deputation includes the text, initially written in Spanish, translated into Galician, the facsimile reproduction of the butcher’s notebook, the introduction of his great-grandson Adrián, the historical contextualization of Borrageros Vilela and a literary story by the writer Estrada. David Knoll. “It is above all an emotional restitution of his memory. Basically, we are lucky, because many families do not even know where the remains of their loved ones are,” concludes Adrián Coto.
