Events of Yeste

Because of its mountainous character and peripheral location, bordering La Mancha, Murcia and Andalusia and away from major communication routes, it remained an extremely remote and poor community; Yeste was its only urban settlement, with some smaller villages scattered around.

[3] In line with its policy of heavy investments in infrastructure, mostly roads and hydro-electricity, in 1929 the Primo de Rivera regime commenced construction of the reservoir on the Segura river.

[7] Following the electoral triumph of Popular Front in February 1936 new provincial Albacete authorities tried to address the problem by making some state landholdings accessible, yet it barely improved the position of local farmers and jornaleros, living in the neighbourhood of the Segura reservoir.

[8] With the spring weather conditions setting in, rural workers from villages depending upon timber were working on two public estates made accessible by the provincial authorities, known as Dehesa de Tus and La Solana del Río Segura.

[9] Then, following incoming news about farmers occupying private property in other locations of the province, some time in mid-May[10] a large group of males, numbering between 50 and 80, commenced logging of pine trees on the estate known as Umbría del Río Segura, on the southern bank of the water reservoir.

However, the commander in Yeste and the alcalde got wind of the developments and made it to La Graya, where the mayor, Germán González Mañas from PSOE, tried to pacify the locals.

At the same time José Prat, Amancio Muñoz de Zafra (both PSOE) and Antonio Mije (PCE) arrived in Yeste and carried out interviews with the city dwellers.

[18] The Cortes session dedicated to the Yeste massacre lasted less than an hour and was surprisingly brief compared to days spent on debates in 1933, when the chamber discussed the Casas Viejas carnage.

The Republican MP, former Minister of Public Works, claimed that during his tenure he drafted a plan to address the Segura reservoir issue, but it has not been acted upon by the following cabinets.

The Guardia Civil NCO commander in Yeste, Félix Velando Gómez, who was wounded in the head during the melee, remained in hospital until mid-June, when promoted to alférez, he was transferred to Comandancia de Oviedo.

The 170-page booklet monograph by Manuel Requena Gallego (1983) dedicates 6 pages of text to the actual event;[39] the rest focuses on social and political background and the aftermath.

Some 3 page are dedicated to the actual episode, and the remaining text highlights social conflict, firm grip of large landholders on provincial political life, caciquismo, position of the Alfaros, efforts to block the investigation, and alleged blackout imposed upon the incident during Francoism.

[40] Paul Preston (1994, 2011) puts social conflict on the foreground and largely repeats arguments of La Graya farmers, pointing to “old communal grounds” and influence of the Alfaro, “most powerful local cacique”;[41] he notes that earlier attempts to sort out the problem “had infuriated the local Right”,[42] which led to the tragic climax, and that afterwards the restraint on part of FNTT, the socialist agricultural syndicate, prevented “bloodshed on a large scale”.

[46] Stanley G. Payne (2020) discusses Yeste as part of his narrative on breakdown of public order during the spring of 1936, though he points also to extreme poverty and desperation in some sections of the rural population, its increasingly aggressive and radical stance following the Frente Popular electoral victory, and Guardia Civil having been a formation neither trained nor equipped properly to deal with cases of such unrest.

[49] The authors present the incident as resulting from grave social problems, militant stand of the working masses, encouraged by perceived radical political change, and deficiencies in organisation of security forces; they also highlight the policy of Frente Popular governments and their Ministers of Interior, in their opinion increasingly tolerant and permissive when it comes to left-wing violence.

[50] Some scholars draw far-reaching conclusions, e.g. for Edward Malefakis (1971) the restrained response of radical Left after the matanza is the proof that there were no plans for immediate revolution in place, as otherwise the episode would have been an excellent justification for a proletarian rising.

[52] During the July coup the Yeste Guardia Civil sided with the rebels and detained local authorities in the castle, but the place was soon seized by the loyalists.

[53] During civil war and early Francoism Yeste recorded an extraordinarily high rate of repression, both by the Republicans and Nationalists, compared to the neighbouring municipios; a contemporary historian tends to view it as related to the May 1936 episode.

[56] In 1963 Juan Goytisolo visited Yeste and intended to interview people, but he encountered the wall of silence; the locals spoke in murmurs and evaded the questions.

[60] Militant left-wing sites clearly and with no reservations present the episode as unprovoked slaughter by repressive police forces in service of bourgeoisie and capital,[61] and some evoke the civil war logic by claiming that the conflict began precisely in Yeste.