There are still those from Santander who still go to La Zanguina when they want to have a beer at the Tivoli. 88 years have passed since the murder of the journalist Luciano Malumbres but, even if the place has changed its name, the city has not lost the memory of an event that caused enormous emotion in June 1936. A few weeks before, on May 9, a group of Falangists gathered by Manuel Hedilla, successor to José Antonio Primo de Rivera, met at the Zahara café in Madrid. An uncomfortable journalist nicknamed “El sapo” was publishing embarrassing information in a Santander newspaper, so they agreed to hire a gunman to silence his voice.
The bullets accomplished their tragic task a month later. The day Luciano Malumbres was killed in the La Zanguina bar in Santander. For some time, two policemen had been guarding the door of the Cantabrian newspaper La Región to guarantee the safety of this small director with myopic round glasses, an affable character and an inoffensive appearance. “A small man magnified by the courage of his pen”, according to the publicist Eulalio Ferrer. In front of a blank page, Malumbres had a determined verb, a severe, hard and sometimes even imprudent pen against despotism and corruption.
Some of the information he published before the civil war generated deep unease and, more and more frequently, he received anonymous threatening letters. The notices also reached other members of the editorial staff of the local Falange milieu. He was in danger, but Malumbres led a normal life, perhaps with the deep conviction that his enemies would not dare to move from threats to action. Previously, he had already suffered a minor attack and attacks on the headquarters of a newspaper, which had a modest circulation.
He was a small man magnified by the courage of his pen, according to the publicist Eulalio Ferrer. In front of a blank page, Luciano Malumbres had a determined verb, a severe, hard and sometimes even imprudent pen against despotism and corruption.
Due to his strong commitment to the left, he practices critical journalism in the service of workers. Curiously, Luciano Malumbres Francés had a late journalistic vocation. It was more about telling and revealing what everyone knew in Cantabria but that no one dared to put on paper. That fateful afternoon, biographies recall how the man who was dying in the Valdecilla hospital arrived in Santander at the age of 26. He was born in 1890 in Palencia where one of his relatives, the priest Constantino Malumbres, ran a Catholic newspaper. However, his first vocation was military, he joined the army and was stationed in Madrid and Melilla before becoming a non-commissioned officer of the Valencia Regiment in Morocco, from where he began to send columns to the newspaper El Cantábrico.
Back in Santander, he worked as a sales agent and directed the insurance company La Paternal while his social and cultural concerns led him to preside over the Ateneo Popular. Finally, in 1932, he decided to buy the property of the newspaper La Región and for four years became the most influential journalist in Cantabria.
Complaints in the newspaper
In the months before the assassination, the newspaper had denounced the attacks carried out by young right-wing extremists to whom the police and judges turned a blind eye, the existence of clandestine slaughterhouses and information questioning the exploits of the aviator Juan Ignacio Pombo during his transoceanic voyage. vol. In addition to articles on the deception of the farmers of the SAM dairy cooperative – owned by the Catholic agrarian unions – which discredited the reputation of some influential families and local leaders. “These honest Catholics who have spent the peasants’ money on recreational trips and even in some cabaret, intend to spare their responsibility by forcing the peasants to pay interest. If they had not spent the sweat of the peasants on banquets and festivities, there would be money available to pay the interest of the Bank of Spain,” denounced the issue of April 29, 1936.
Malumbres himself, after a long campaign of denunciation of the alleged frauds, wrote: “Thanks to the existence of La Region, the SAM is known, not everything will be done with money.” But the journalist had even more enemies. One of them, Carlos Pombo, was publicly identified some time later as the alleged organizer of the assassination to avenge the harm caused to his family by the fact that the newspaper had questioned the feat of the aviator Juan Ignacio Pombo, who had tried to unite by air the city of Santander with the capital of Mexico and thus become the first Spanish aviator to land in the Aztec capital.
Two point-blank shots
On the afternoon of that Wednesday, June 3, 1936, Malumbres left the newspaper offices on Gómez Oreña Street in Santander and entered, as usual, the nearby bar La Zanguina, on the corner of Martillo and Pedrueca Streets. A place that is still open today with the Tivoli sign, although there is nothing to recall that original establishment. He ordered a coffee and chatted for a while with some of the people present. Then he sat down to play a game of dominoes. At four twenty in the afternoon, an individual in a brown suit opened the door of La Zanguina, approached the table, took a pistol out of his pocket, fired two shots at Luciano Malumbres and fled. Several people started chasing him, shouting “murderer, murderer!”
At four twenty in the afternoon, an individual in a brown suit opened the door of La Zanguina, approached the table, took a pistol out of his pocket, fired two shots at Luciano Malumbres and fled.
The shooter entered a bar in the Plaza de Mariana Pineda – today Plaza del Príncipe – and came out hidden under a raincoat. The trick was of little use to him. A woman recognized him and alerted a group of workers who were looking for him in the area. When he found himself cornered, he pulled out his gun. One of his pursuers did the same and fired first. They took him wounded to the Casa de Socorro where they certified his death. They searched his clothes and found no indication of his identity. During those first hours, no one knew who he was.
Malumbres, injured
When the two shots started the domino game at the La Zanguina bar, Luciano Malumbres put his hand on his chest: “That scoundrel hurt me,” he said in a broken voice. While some of the people running after the shooter, the owner of the café and several customers took the journalist by car to the Maison de Secours where they gave him initial treatment and, given the seriousness of his condition, he was transferred by the Red Cross to the Valdecilla hospital. The president of the Provincial Council, municipal authorities and union leaders appeared there. The first bullet pierced his stomach and the second injured his left hand. They operated on him once, gave him a blood transfusion and he had to undergo another operation.
The news of the attack shook the city like a cramp. Groups of workers marched through the streets calling for the closure of bars, shops, workshops and factories in protest. The blinds were immediately lowered due to the unrest caused. Hundreds of people gathered in front of the People’s House waiting for news. The newspaper’s phone number has been receiving constant calls and expressions of support have come from many groups and from various parts of the country.
News of the attack spread through the city like a cramp. Groups of workers marched through the streets calling for bars, shops, workshops and factories to close in protest. Blinds were immediately drawn due to the commotion.
Malumbres was married to Matilde Zapata, a journalist affiliated with the Socialist Party who, after learning of the tragedy, took over the editorial office to denounce the attack in the next day’s newspaper. Around two in the morning, Malumbres’ condition worsened and they went looking for him. “They’ve already succeeded, Matilde.” “They’ve already hunted me down,” he told her as he entered the room. The journalist resisted that night in the midst of immense pain that the painkillers they gave him barely managed to stifle. In the afternoon, aware of the imminence of the end, the wounded man asked to be left alone so that no one would witness his suffering. He didn’t even allow Matilde to stay in the room.
Death of the journalist
Malumbres left at a quarter to two and Santander erupted in an impressive duel of silence around the burning chapel, set up in the meeting room of the Casa del Pueblo on Magallanes Street. The next morning, all the establishments and workshops closed for two hours as a sign of respect to accompany the funeral procession that gathered 25,000 people.
Meanwhile, more than 500 Santander residents paraded past the body of their murderer in the Casa de Socorro until an Electra de Viesgo employee recognized him as Amadeo Pico Rodríguez, a young Falangist from Castro Urdiales. In this bloody task, he was allegedly helped by three other young men, also Falangists: Abel Incera Gutiérrez and Lucas Sañudo Gómez – who died a few months later on the Alfonso Pérez prison ship – and Arturo Arredondo.
It is said that Luciano Malumbres did not break for nothing. “He who is afraid must stay at home,” the editorial staff shouted. His wife, Matilde Zapata, who shared the same courage, directed the newspaper after his death and La Región continued to provoke the anger of the Falangists.
When Malumbres died, a typewritten note appeared in his jacket pocket. A letter that denounced that “the SAM cooperative had hired a Falangist leader for 900 pesetas to organize a union to continue exploiting the ranchers.” The beneficiary was Manuel Hedilla. The one who called a meeting of the Falangists in Madrid to organize the assassination of Malumbres. Matilde Zapata had the audacity to publish his name.
Franco’s troops entered Santander in 1937 and Matilde was shot in front of the wall of the Ciriego cemetery, at dawn one day in the spring of 1938. The newspaper La Región remained silent.
