Sabaté brothers

The maquis descended from exile in the French Pyrenees to the Barcelona area, attacking Francoists and continuing vigilante robberies as a form of propaganda by deed.

The Sabaté brothers, Quico, Pepe and Manolo, were raised in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, a Barcelona suburb at a time when anarchist organizations played more regular and practical roles in day-to-day living than government.

[3] During those two decades, expropriators banded together in action/affinity groups in a time of pistolerisme ("gun law"), in which armed anarchist, urban guerrillas committed small-scale violence against the bourgeoisie with vigilante justice against their enemies.

[7] Through 1949, the decade after the war,[8] Republican guerrillas maquis lived in exile in the French Pyrenees and would regularly return to Spain to expropriate money and assassinate Francoist loyalists.

[9] The maquis of Barcelona treated their social role with some theatricality and were known to have a level of friendliness and respect even while robbing people in their hometown.

[11] After one robbery, the Sabaté group left a note indicating that they are "anarchist resisters" and not "robbers" and would redistribute the food to children of killed anti-fascists and continue fighting for freedom.

[20] During his clandestine sojourns into Catalonia, Spain, Sabaté was known to make personal effort, at considerable risk, to visit and maintain friendships with his former neighbors of L'Hospitalet.

Pep[26] or Pepe Sabaté, was sighted while exiting a tram in Barcelona's Plaça Urquinaona in late 1949.

He pursued his dream of becoming a matador, spending his late teens in Andalucia, but later abandoned this pursuit and traveled to Eus in the Pyrenees mountains to join his brothers as a maquis.

Manuel defied them and convinced Ramon Vila Capdevila and an Italian anarchist to let him ride alongside in 1949.