"He also told the American reporter Hubert R. Knickerbocker:[6] We are going to execute fifty thousand people in Madrid.

And it doesn’t matter where [President] Azaña and [Prime Minister] Largo Caballero or the rest of them try to escape to, because even if it takes us years hunting them down around the entire world, we’ll catch them and kill every last one of them... What you fail to understand is that any stupid democrat, or whatever they want to call themselves, blindly serves the goals of the red revolution.

In our state, people will have the freedom to keep their mouths shut.After the war, he broke ties with the Franco regime when he made it clear to the dictator that he had fought for the monarchy and expected the king to return.

He retired to his large estate in Salamanca, where he continued writing and annotating every book in his extensive library.

On 26 August 1964, he shot dead his two adult sons Gonzalo and Agustín in the family mansion near Salamanca, aged 47 and 39.

[2]: 527  He was subsequently incarcerated in an asylum in Salamanca, where he died the following year, having never stood trial for this murder.