Repression, Rivalry and Racketeering in the Creation of Franco’s Spain: The Curious Case of Emilio Griffiths

This article charts the personal history of Emilio Griffiths Navarro, a key individual in the Francoist administration in the Campo de Gibraltar (Cádiz province) during the early months of the Spanish Civil War. Griffiths is used as a case study to analyse the dynamics of Francoist repression in Southern Spain, and in particular the construction of what Rúben Serém has referred to as the ‘kleptocratic state’ that Franco’s fellow conspirator, General Queipo de Llano, constructed in the South. The article reaffirms the degree to which personal networks, personal rivalries and personal gain played a role in the Francoist repression. As a local case study, it also notes the unique conditions provided by rebel Spain’s border with British Gibraltar, and how this shaped the nature and extent of that repression. The article charts Griffiths’ own demise, from senior rebel official to arrest and unexplained death at the hands of Francoist security forces just 10 months later, and uses the mystery to further speculate as to rivalries and repression in early-Francoist Spain.

In mid-November 1936, a Gibraltarian named Abraham Bensusan wrote two letters to the British Secretary of State for the Colonies in London. His subject was the Spanish Civil War, which had, by then, already been raging for three months. Bensusan described how deeply the war in Spain had affected 'The Rock'. In both letters he hinted darkly at the 'fascist' elements in Gibraltar and potentially suspect loyalties amongst the civilian population. 2 But his principal aim was to highlight the appalling atrocities being committed by the military rebels in the surrounding region of Spain, the Campo de Gibraltar. Bensusan alleged that civilians, including Gibraltarians, were under threat of arrest or execution in the Campo, often for the most trivial offences, such as carrying a pair of shoes in a 'communist' newspaper. In the first letter, having urged that 'England should formulate a formal protest to the authorities of La Linea . . . and specially protect Gibraltarians', Bensusan singled out one man as responsible for the repression in the neighbouring Spanish towns: 'I am told that a man called Griffith born in Gibraltar is Chief of Falange Espan˜ola (Fascists) at La Linea, this young man apparently seems to be the murderer over at La Linea . . .'.
Bensusan returned to his theme in a second letter, four days later. He alleged further executions -highlighting, for example, the case of one man, a tailor, who had been found with red ties in his stock -and suggested that even Gibraltarians were being 'fichado' (marked) by the new Spanish authorities in the Campo. Again, Bensusan singled out one man as responsible: If anyone is caught reading the 'Porvenir' he is noted by Griffins or Griffith's spies in Gibraltar, he is a communist and is 'fichado' and if he goes to Linea the murderer Emilio Griffin or Griffiths has the man or woman shot without trial . . . the other day the murderer Griffin of La Linea shot seven without trial, as you saw in the Gibraltar Chronicle, he deliberately came to Gibraltar, and I saw him, in Main Street talking to Mr Gulloch, Chief of Police of Gibraltar, and he went back again to Linea at his pleasure . . . Griffin is the murderer. He has spies in Gibraltar, some Gibraltarians, some Spaniards or anybody who hates another in Gibraltar for the sake of competition . . . As we will see below, Emilio Griffiths escaped the wrath of Abraham Bensusan, and indeed avoided any official protest on the part of the British government against the treatment of British subjects in the Campo. Griffiths did meet a very violent end, however. On 6 May 1937, he was arrested by Francoist security forces in La Lı´nea and taken to prison in Seville to await trial. Before any judicial proceedings were started, it was reported that Emilio Griffiths had died on 24 June 1937 'in an attempt to escape arrest', after falling from the fifth storey window of a military building in the city. 3 The curious, not to say mysterious case of Emilio Griffiths is but one of thousands of compelling individual stories from the Spanish Civil War.
Thanks to a burgeoning and increasingly diverse historiography of the conflict, and thanks in no small part to the tireless efforts of local historians and 'memory' groups to recover personal and local histories of the war, it is now commonplace to see fruitful dialogue between the personal and the general experience of the civil war. 4 Indeed, this dialogue has enabled us to see the Spanish Civil War in its (more realistic) complexity; if not necessarily achieving the lofty aim of total 'detachment' and 'objectivity', then certainly moving beyond tired historiographical binaries to develop our understanding of the conflict further. 5 Griffiths' case is certainly interesting, in and of itself, for the historian of the Spanish Civil War, but in following his story we can also shed light on several areas of historiographical interest.
First, Griffiths speaks to continuing interest in Britain's role in the Spanish Civil War. 6 Not only does his conduct once again raise question marks over Britain's purported impartiality in the conflict, it also highlights specifically the way that British policy operated 'on the ground', that is to say in the British colony and fortress of Gibraltar. 7 More teasingly, particularly for those prone to looking for historical conspiracy theories, the Griffiths case once again hints towards the possibility that British intelligence agencies were engaged with Spain's military rebels from the outset. 8 As we shall see, Emilio Griffiths was accused of being a British spy.
The second area where Griffiths illuminates broader historiographical enquiries is in reminding us that the rebel coalition was prone to similar tensions and divisions as those that befell the defenders of the Spanish Republic. 9 It has become something of a commonplace to read that Franco's coalition held firmly to its purpose, while the Republic's defeat can be explained in no small measure by political divisions between republicans, socialists, anarchists, communists, and so-forth. 10 Griffiths' brief career in the Campo de Gibraltar and his subsequent demise reminds us that the rebel coalition faced its own rivalries and competing priorities. This was true both on a 'national' and a local level.
Despite numerous problems with the testimony of Abraham Bensusan, as we shall see, Griffiths was indeed a key figure in the rebel repression in the Campo. And so a third historiographical contribution is made by this personal history. Griffiths' case certainly adds weight to a growing body of literature on the nature and causes of repression in the Francoist South. 11 But it also provides further demonstration that the personal and the local are often just as important for understanding the repression as the political and the ideological. More broadly, Griffiths' case contributes decisively to our understanding of the role and the rule of one of the most infamous personalities from the Spanish Civil War, General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano. Historians have long since recognized the brutality of Queipo's 'justice'; indeed his desire to punish perceived enemies of the rebel coup was self-publicized in gory nightly radio broadcasts from Seville from the very first days of the war. 12 Recently, however, the 'Radio General' has been recast as an enlightened and forward-thinking ruler of Seville, whose pathfinding economic policies would be copied throughout rebel Spain with great success. 13 Such arguments are convincingly rebutted by the work of Ru´ben Sere´m, who has not only confirmed the scale of Queipo's physical repression of the so-called 'anti-Spain', but has pointed to the importance of theft, intimidation and extortion in funding the rebel war economy. Emilio Griffiths' brief tenure in the Campo de Gibraltar offers us an illuminating case study of Queipo's 'kleptocratic state' in action. 14

Problematic Sources
By the time that Bensusan's letters arrived in London, the British government was not lacking in reports of the most appalling atrocities taking place in rebel Spain, including in the Campo, nor that that many British subjects had been victims of rebel violence. Even so, the allegation that an individual born in Gibraltar was responsible for executions in the neighbouring town, and that British subjects inside Gibraltar were under threat, might have been expected to pique the interest of the Secretary of State, William Ormsby-Gore. Instead, he remained distinctly uninterested. Ormsby-Gore simply instructed Gibraltar's Colonial Secretary, Colonel Beattie, that in future any letters from Gibraltarians should be forwarded to London through him. 15 Unlike Ormsby-Gore, Colonel Beattie was already aware that Bensusan had a history of mental illness, and had spent time in medical institutions in Gibraltar, Spain and Britain. 16 Bensusan had tried to contact the Colonial Office a year earlier 'to look for some work for him ''in boxing'' so that he can come to London'. 17 Gibraltar's Governor, General Sir Charles Harington, commented that '[Bensusan] imagines himself to be ''the licensed heavyweight champion of Gibraltar'' but in actual fact he has been singularly unsuccessful in the few occasions on which he has appeared in the ring'. 18 It might be tempting, therefore, to dismiss the letters of Bensusan as the ravings of a madman, or at the very least those of a fiercely emotional partisan. 19 If feelings were running high throughout the world in response to the Spanish Civil War, in Gibraltar such political and social tensions were particularly acute. 20 A similar denunciation of British insouciance in the face of rebel atrocities, and similar warning as to the political loyalties of certain locals, had been sent from the colony in October 1936 by Agustin Huart, a local trade union leader. Huart too claimed that 'prominent Gibraltarians' were spying on British citizens for the neighbouring rebel authorities: The rebels across the frontier are thus very familiar with the names of all British newspaper correspondents so much so that the 'Daily Herald' correspondent Mr Stephen Wall appears first in the black list . . . for a possible dose of castor oil or shooting by accident, by accident is the term used by the rebels for the shooting of any British subject.
Huart himself had been 'quietly informed and warned' not to travel into rebel Spain. Having singled out two prominent Gibraltarians, Lionel and Joseph Imossi, as working on behalf of the rebels in numerous capacities and travelling regularly to La Lı´nea and Algeciras, Huart noted: . . . the return of those visits by a Mr. Emilio Griffiths the Dictator of the Neighbourhood and the Chief Governmental Delegate in Andalusia appointed by ex-General Queipo de Llano can also be seen practically daily coming into Gibraltar . . . it is simply scandalous. 21 Like Bensusan, Huart hardly stands as the most reliable source by conventional historical standards. Huart was fiercely and unashamedly partisan on behalf of the Second Republic, at one stage appearing in a Republican newspaper on the front lines of battle with a revolver in his hand. 22 Unlike many on the Gibraltar left, his commitment to Spanish republican refugees, who had fled to the Rock after July 1936, as well as his bitter opposition to the Franco regime, remained unwavering, even into the 1950s. 23 24 In a similar way, the description that both sources offer of Emilio Griffiths can be tested against corroborating evidence. What emerges is a picture of a man who did indeed hold significant power in the Campo de Gibraltar, who did indeed oversee mass executions in the area, and who enjoyed regular and cordial visits to officials and businessmen on the Rock as he did so.

Who was Emilio Griffiths?
Emilio Griffiths Navarro was born in 1890 in Jerez de la Frontera. It is possible that he lost both parents at a very early age. By the time he was 11, Griffiths was living in Gibraltar with his grandmother, herself a widow and native of the town, then aged 60. Several sources concur that Griffiths had at one stage had British nationality. 25 Shortly after his 18th birthday in 1908, Griffiths moved to the neighbouring town of La Lı´nea, where he would spend the next five years, among other things organizing bullfights in the town. 26 In October 1913, Griffiths moved to Madrid and within five months he had applied for a post in the police. Bureaucratic hurdles, not least confusion as to his nationality, held up the process of appointment, but Griffiths' Spanish nationality was officially granted on 5 January 1915 and just a few days later he was appointed to the police force with an annual salary of 1500 pesetas. 27 Griffiths had joined the Cuerpo de Vigilancia in Madrid; a plain-clothes branch of the force, in which he would rise quickly, becoming an agent second-class within five years, and more than trebling his salary to 5000 pesetas by June 1921. 28 As the equivalent of a detective, he was also licensed to carry a firearm. 29 While living in the capital, Griffiths retained his interest in bulls, and he was mentioned as an 'aficionado' in a Madrid periodical devoted to the spectacle in May 1926. 30 It is possible that the interest was partly professional, since curiously, in addition to his job in the police, Griffiths was working as a 'sub-delegate' of veterinary medicine in the city. 31 His combination of two public-sector posts was expressly forbidden by the rules of the Cuerpo de Vigilancia. Nonetheless, he sustained both posts throughout the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, though not without controversy. Griffiths was accused, for example, of regularly failing to pay his subscription to the Asociacio´n Nacional de Veterinaria Espan˜ola (National Spanish Veterinary Association), and, more seriously, of acting as a police informant against veterinary colleagues during a student strike in 1925. 32 Notwithstanding unpopularity within the veterinary profession, Griffiths was given a prestigious posting as veterinarian in the royal stables in 1926. 33 Combined with his police salary of 5000 pesetas, at a time when officers' pay was a persistent cause of low morale in the force, Griffiths was doing well enough, by contrast, to buy himself a Renault car in the following year. 34 His veterinary work for the king continued until the last days of the monarchy. In March 1930, for example, Griffiths travelled down to the site of his upbringing, Gibraltar, to take charge of seven special-breed horses, which Alfonso XIII had had shipped from Bombay to use in a polo match. 35 By January 1931, Griffiths had been promoted to agent first-class in the police. 36 The arrival of the Spanish Second Republic on 14 April 1931 did not lead to a revolutionary shift in the state's attitude to policing and public order, even though many republican politicians had themselves been subject to police investigation, incarceration or exile in the preceding years. Certainly, reforms were attempted by the new regime, but they were piecemeal. 37 The force in which Griffiths served, the Cuerpo de Investigacio´n, is a case in point. Under the monarchy and dictatorship, this body had been tasked not only with investigating crimes post facto, but also with the investigation, surveillance and arrest of political 'undesirables'. Certainly, this category had been applied to many republican politicians before 1931, but more broadly it covered prominent trade unionists, anarchists and 'radical' students. Griffiths' work as an informant during a strike of veterinary students in 1925 is thus illustrative of the corps' modus operandi. Rather than attempt root-andbranch change, the first governments of the Republic saw the priority as addressing the relatively low pay of the force, and more broadly trying to instil 'republican' values within it. The Cuerpo de Investigacio´n had the words 'y Vigilancia' added to its title, but its remit remained as it had under the previous regimes. That is to say, Griffiths and his colleagues spent much of their time investigating, surveilling and arresting political and social 'undesirables'. For good measure, in 1934 the right-wing Radical-CEDA government revived the old Brigada de Barrios (Neighbourhoods Brigade) to act as a network of officers to gather intelligence and run informants on behalf of the Cuerpo. 38 The timidity of the Republic's police reforms was perhaps a disappointment to many citizens who invested hope in the new regime, even before incidents such as Casas Viejas highlighted the extent to which the Spanish state still relied upon extreme violence in the face of public disturbance. 39 Even members of the police force could be critical, however. In a reflective study published in exile in 1945, three former officers remarked: The Cuerpo de Investigacio´n y Vigilancia on balance, save for a small number of officers recruited by the Republic, although not all of them, derived from the time of the Monarchy, and what is undoubtedly worse, the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and its successor; a time in which to be republican, to think as a republican was a crime . . . the outlook of most of its officers was monarchist. 40 Continuity of service from Dictatorship to Republic, and consequently a latent hostility to the new regime, was particularly marked in the upper echelons of the Cuerpo. 41 It is therefore no surprise that Emilio Griffiths retained his post in the Madrid police force after April 1931. Indeed, Griffiths prospered, and under the Radical-CEDA administration was promoted to Inspector second-class in December 1934, with a salary of 7000 pesetas. 42 According to the Marque´s de Tamaro´n, Jose´de Mora Figueroa, who was later astonished to see Griffiths assuming a prominent role in rebel Andalucı´a during the civil war, the inspector had also been a confidant and bodyguard of the Left Republican Santiago Casares Quiroga, Prime Minister in the weeks leading up to 18 July 1936. 43

Queipo's Man in the Campo
Friendship with the former Prime Minister did not save Griffiths from dismissal within weeks of the outbreak of the civil war. The military coup brought about an immediate collapse of the Republican state apparatus, not least owing to understandable doubt over which state officials, civil servants, military officers, civil guards, policemen and so forth had remained loyal. In areas where the coup failed, power had often passed into the hands of the dominant local political groups and workers' militias. The 'revenge' that they enacted upon individuals suspected of taking part in the coup, sympathizing with it, or simply standing as symbolic shorthand for perceived enemies of the Republic, was often brutal. 44 In blood-soaked irony, and in direct contradiction to the claims of its propagandists, the coup had not saved Spain from imminent revolution, but had in fact precipitated violence in many of the areas where the military rebels were defeated.
Faced with the uncertain loyalty of its functionaries, and pressed 'from below' for decisive action in defence of the Republic, it is not surprising that the government began a rapid and thorough reorganization of the forces of 'public order'. One historian of Republican Madrid has recently described the 'purge' of the capital's police force, as if individuals were removed from posts, or even murdered, indiscriminately and vindictively. By this argument, the Republic wittingly or unwittingly allowed diehard revolutionaries to infiltrate the force and facilitate an easier and violent repression of perceived class enemies. This interpretation often pours scorn on the long-standing and visceral hatred of the police amongst large swathes of the population, particularly the urban working classes, for whom daily interaction with the forces of 'law and order' was inherently antagonistic and repressive. Similarly, whilst correctly recognizing the fluidity and complexity of loyalties amongst the forces of law and order in response to the coup, it tends to play down the understandable suspicion that many citizens and officials loyal to the Republic had of the members of the security apparatus. 45 As we have noted, even police officers under the Republic could be critical of the residual monarchism in the force, particularly in the higher echelons. The perception of an 'unreformed' Cuerpo and antagonism towards the Republic amongst its veterans might account for the relative violence meted out to its senior ranks in the summer of 1936. Julius Ruiz cites a post-war Francoist investigation, which listed 229 policemen from the Cuerpo (30% of the pre-war force) as 'murdered . . . during the red domination' in Madrid. Of these, 171 came from the senior ranks. 46 Emilio Griffiths did not escape this purge. He was officially dismissed from the Cuerpo on 19 August 1936, by which time he was already working openly for the military rebels in the Campo. 47 Until the very last days of the Republic, Griffiths had ostensibly been working loyally for the regime. In late June 1936, for example, Jose´de Mora Figueroa had spotted Griffiths in Ca´diz, where he had been sent at the behest of the Republican government to investigate a British vessel alleged to be carrying arms to Spanish military plotters. 48 Griffiths spent at least some of the next two weeks conducting his investigation in Gibraltar and the Campo, and it is possible that this is where he became aware of preparations for a military coup. 49 Certainly, he appears to have met Queipo de Llano in Algeciras on 10 July, where an indiscreet speech by the general to local carabineros (customs guards) gave some clue as to the impending military rising. 50 Griffiths returned to Madrid and later gave a fantastical account of his escape from the capital in the first days of the civil war. Given the violence meted out to officers of the Cuerpo in Madrid, the decision to flee was understandable, but Griffiths' rapid ascent to a position of authority in the rebel zone suggests that he had already committed himself to the coup some time ago.
We cannot date Griffiths' arrival in the Campo -not least because the local rebel hierarchy was never able to confirm the exact date -but he certainly arrived within the first ten days of August 1936 and immediately began work as delegate to the military administration in the area. 51 On 21 August, Eduardo Valera Valverde, a retired Lieutenant Colonel recently appointed as Civil Governor for Ca´diz province by Queipo de Llano, visited the Campo to inspect the local administration. It was reported that 'he had particular praise' for Griffiths, who was 'carrying out his duties in a highly likeable and creditable manner'. 52 One historian has claimed that Griffiths' role was not formalized as Delegado Gubernativo (Government Delegate) until 26 August, but he was already issuing orders under that authority as early as 16 August. 53 When the appointment was finally announced across the border in Gibraltar over two weeks later, the garrison newspaper remarked with a degree of pride that the new delegate was 'well-known in Gibraltar'. 54 Multiple sources concur that Griffiths was appointed at the instigation of General Queipo de Llano, who was then de facto the rebel overlord in western Andalucı´a. Griffiths himself was sure to highlight the fact. 55 His arrival in the Campo and subsequent elevation to Delegado Gubernativo both corresponded neatly with two significant developments in the way the rebels administered the Campo. The first concerned the use of the Gibraltar-Spain frontier. Already on 8 August, the rebel authorities had ordered the closure of the frontier on the pretext that the colony was being used 'by Communists for supplying information etc. to the communist Government forces'. Panicked by the prospect of losing access to Spanish workers, not to mention supplies of fresh food and water from Spain, the Gibraltar authorities had immediately sought to placate the new masters of the Campo. That same day, the Colonial Secretary of Gibraltar travelled to Algeciras to propose a new identity card system for Spanish workers on the Rock. This would allow the rebel Spanish authorities to monitor the allocation of (British) work permits and prevent 'undesirables' from securing employment in the colony. 56 The frontier was duly re-opened, but on 19 August, Queipo de Llano issued an edict which prohibited the exportation of capital from Spain, and more broadly any attempt to carry 'contraband' across the border. Those caught committing this 'crime' would be 'pasados por las armas' -a euphemism for being shot. 57 On 30 October, Queipo issued a similar edict, this time aimed specifically at residents of the Campo de Gibraltar. The prohibition on the carriage of silver and gold currency across the frontier was restated. As an additional measure, Spanish workers in Gibraltar were now compelled to change their wages, paid in sterling, into Spanish currency at a rate of 40 pesetas to the pound. 58 A comparable rate of exchange in Gibraltar would have been 80 pesetas to the pound. The edict was a good example of what Ru´ben Sere´m has referred to as Queipo's 'kleptocratic state'in this case a means to extort money from ordinary citizens on behalf of the rebel war effort. 59 Spanish workers were also forced to pay a small tax to have their permits renewed. 60 The edict of 30 October also clarified the role and authority of Emilio Griffiths in this regard. Griffiths was given sole authority to issue permits for those wishing to cross from Spain to Gibraltar, including the approval of (Spanish) work permits for the Rock. Anybody caught attempting to circumvent the prohibition against export of capital would at the very least have their permit revoked, in addition to 'the corresponding penalty'. Queipo's edict reminded residents of the Campo of 'the necessity, for the good of the Patria, to ease the work of my Delegate for civil matters in the Campo and I warn that he will take the most energetic measures against those who, in any manner whatsoever, make that work more difficult'. 61 To judge by the available evidence, Griffiths had long since been overseeing 'the most energetic measures' against local residents. The second development in the administration of the Campo that corresponds to Griffiths' arrival in early August concerns the repression unleashed by the rebels.
The Campo de Gibraltar had fallen very quickly to rebel forces after the coup. Confusion reigned in the area after news of an army uprising in Morocco first came through on 17 July. Politically, the region was staunchly republican, and candidates of the Popular Front parties had won comfortably in each municipality bordering Gibraltar in the February elections that year. 62 The respective civilian representatives worked hard to organize units of the military, carabineros and Guardia Civil in response to the news of the coup, but they were hampered by the prevarication of local military commanders. 63 The matter was solved quickly and decisively by the arrival of Moroccan units in Algeciras from across the Strait on 18 July. Algeciras fell that same afternoon, with La Lı´nea largely occupied by the evening of 19 July. 64 Los Barrios fell on 23 July. San Roque did see an attempted Republican counterattack on 27 July by anarchist militiamen from Ma´laga, but it was quickly repulsed. In their brief stay, the anarchists had killed six local rightists, including the man named as mayor by the rebels, Jose´Sa´nchez Velasco. The intervention of local republicans had prevented further executions, but this did not stop the rebels unleashing terrible reprisals against captured anarchist militiamen as well as suspected 'leftist' residents of San Roque. 65 As with so much of Spain, there is still much that we do not know about the number and location of victims of rebel executions in the Campo de Gibraltar. Some earlier estimates clearly seem to have been exaggerated. San Roque resident Carlos Castilla del Pino, for example, suggested a figure of 2000 for La Lı´nea alone, with 'some 200 women (daughters, wives of prisoners or of those executed). . . shot in the course of two or three days in La Lı´nea, San Roque, Algeciras and Los Barrios' in October 1936. 66 The tireless work of local historians, archaeologists and members of 'memory' associations has afforded us a much more accurate picture of Francoist repression in the Campo. Based largely on civil registers of deaths in the municipalities immediately adjacent to Gibraltar -Algeciras, Los Barrios, La Lı´nea and San Roque -and cross-referenced where possible with information in registers of burials, a minimum figure of 411 executions has been compiled. 67 San Roque suffered at least 100 victims that we know of, from a population of around 10,610. In Algeciras, experts have offered a minimum figure of 131 victims from a population of 21,341. One study estimates between 350 and 500 victims in the city. 68 Various methodological problems plague attempts to be more exact. 69 In Algeciras, for example, Luis Alberto del Castillo found that widows were paid 25 pesetas to attest in the official death registers that their husbands had succumbed to heart attacks, starvation and other natural causes. He was further hindered by the fact that the civil register in the city ceased to record deaths during the civil war after 22 August 1937. 70 The largest urban settlement in the Campo in 1936 was La Lı´nea. 71 Here an estimate of at least 150 executions had been offered, of whom at least 148 have been identified through registers of burials in the local cemetery. If we allow for the very real possibility of victims lying unburied, and thus unregistered, within the municipal boundaries, the true figure is likely to be higher. A single and immediate bloodletting was recorded on 21 July, when 26 burials were registered in the town. No further executions were recorded in the register until 10 August, almost three weeks later, although a group of Spaniards trying to cross the border into Gibraltar were shot at on 29 July, three of whom were killed. 72 Even if we accept the minimum estimate of 411 executions in the four municipalities closest to Gibraltar, this would represent 13.4% of the total confirmed executions in the province of Ca´diz during the civil war. 73 This is all the more extraordinary if we consider that up to 10,000 inhabitants of the Campo were able to cross the frontier into Gibraltar before the arrival of rebel troops. 74 Many hundreds more were able to flee towards Ma´laga. 75 In both cases, those most likely to flee were those most likely to face rebel 'justice'. By contrast, the rebels' own post-war investigations recorded just six individuals killed by the 'reds', all of whom died in San Roque, as mentioned above. 76 Given what historians have long since known about other parts of Spain, the fact that the inhabitants (and soldiers) of the Campo offered minimal resistance to the military coup does not make the subsequent scale of rebel executions particularly surprising. 77 Indeed, for moral and 'patriotic' as much as for political and ideological reasons, the inhabitants of the Campo were viewed with disdain by the new occupying forces. Not only were they deemed suspect by a long tradition of anarchism, republicanism and anticlericalism in the area, but they were also deemed guilty by association because of their economic dependence upon the national 'shame' of Gibraltar. In other words, the local working classes were viewed largely as smugglers and prostitutes. 78 The proliferation of masonic lodges in the Campo -also blamed upon proximity to Gibraltar -did not help either. One Francoist report of 1936 described La Lı´nea as: A town whose council was entirely masonic, a Chamber of Commerce where all its members and symbolism were masonic, and a Mercantile Club which in its bosom harboured all the scattered amalgam, nine masonic lodges established strategically throughout the city, more than thirty extremist centres plotting with impunity. And to counteract all of these monstrosities, just one small Church with capacity for 150 or 200 people, a single small club where half a dozen decent people met . . . Not once did the parties of the right win elections, and in the last they received just 800 votes, costing more than 20,000 pesetas . . . 79 In addition to mass executions, mass incarceration of civilians proceeded apace in the Campo in the first weeks of the civil war. As of 8 August, the day when the rebels first closed the Gibraltar frontier, 280 Spaniards employed in the naval dockyard on the Rock had failed to appear for work. 80 Notwithstanding its masonic symbolism, the rebels had converted the town's Circulo Mercantı´l into a makeshift detention and torture centre. 81 And despite question marks over the testimony of Abraham Bensusan, the almost-flippant reasons he cites the rebels using to justify arrests of civilians in the Campo are perfectly consistent with other documentary sources. One Gibraltarian named Juan Villa was arrested by the rebels on 7 December 1936, for example, and sentenced to 21 days in prison for saying 'Franco will never take Madrid' in a cafe´in La Lı´nea. 82 The fiercely pro-rebel British Vice-Consul of La Lı´nea, a Gibraltarian businessman named Joseph Patron, rather optimistically suggested that a Spaniard would have received a sentence of 'six months trench digging' for a similar remark. 83 In May 1937, a Spanish dockyard worker named Manuel Jurado was arrested in La Lı´nea because he 'appeared pleased' when hearing about rebel setbacks at the front. He was sentenced at first to execution, but after intercession from the Gibraltar authorities the sentence was commuted. By this point, even another fiercely pro-Franco British official, the Admiral in command of naval forces at Gibraltar, James Pipon, demanded that something be done to encourage leniency for such 'absurdly trivial' offences. 84 He was to be disappointed.
If executions in La Lı´nea were temporarily halted after 21 July 1936, they resumed and became regular after 10 August, which is to say at the same time as Emilio Griffiths arrived in the Campo with the blessing of General Queipo de Llano. Three executions were listed in the register of burials on 10 August, four on the following day, and then eight on both the 15 and 16 August respectively. On 20 August, the day before the Civil Governor of Ca´diz visited the Campo and praised the work of Griffiths, six further executions were registered, with five more on the day that the visit was publicized in the rebel press on 22 August. Also heavily implicated in the executions was Servando Casas, a retired army doctor and Falangist, who was named mayor of La Lı´nea on 26 August. Coming just a few days after his arrival, it is inconceivable that Griffiths did not approve the appointment. 85 Indeed, on 12 September Griffiths issued a decree, backed by the authority of Queipo, demanding that all local civilian officials had to report to his office within 10 days to have their posts confirmed. 86 Within the emerging rebel hierarchy in the area, this new edict was clearly a show of strength, but it also served a second purpose. The decree provided a veneer of legitimacy for Griffiths to forcefully expropriate the property of those republicans 'absent' from their posts, either because they had taken a sensible decision to flee the region in the face of the military coup, or else had 'disappeared' in its wake. On the same day as the edict, '24 farms' belonging to Antonio Galiardo Linares, a former republican mayor of San Roque, were expropriated and registered in the name of the Junta de Defensa Nacional de Burgos. 87 That is to say, they were stolen and 'donated' to the rebel war effort in absentia. Galiardo was a moderate member of the Izquierda Republicana party of the Spanish President Manuel Azan˜a, a freemason and a lawyer by trade, who had managed to evade capture in July. 88 He was described in the rebel press, by contrast, as a 'renowned Marxist and resident of San Roque' in order to justify the expropriation. 89 Meanwhile, the rebels conducted a further 12 executions in La Lı´nea that day.
By the time that Abraham Bensusan wrote his first letter, a minimum of 102 people had been executed by the rebels in La Lı´nea, 76 of these since Griffiths' arrival. The report in the Gibraltar Chronicle to which Bensusan referred in his second letter claimed that seven people had been executed in La Lı´nea, including two women and two Spanish grocers who had businesses on the Rock. 90 The Chronicle was not immune to sensationalizing news from across the border, but in this case its report, and the testimony of Bensusan, matches the registered burials in La Lı´nea following executions on 15 November. The following day, a right-wing Spanish refugee in Gibraltar, Carlos Crooke-Larios, was beaten and stabbed by at least three men 'for signing the execution papers', including those of a small girl. 91 With tragic regularity, the executions would continue throughout the winter in La Lı´nea. A sharp increase in killings followed the fall of Ma´laga in February 1937, with 35 recorded that month, before registers of burials ceased in La Lı´nea for the duration of the civil war on 24 February 1937. As in neighbouring Algeciras, where records end on 22 August 1937, the absence of registers of deaths and burials should not lead us to conclude that executions in the Campo had now ceased.
It is understandable that executions behind the lines, in both the Republican and the Rebel zones, have attracted a great deal of scholarly attention in recent decades, not to mention fierce controversy as part of Spain's 'memory wars' since the mid-1990s. 92 But historians have long since understood repression to cover much more than the act of killing, and once again the Campo de Gibraltar is no different. 93 Here, as elsewhere, Francoist repression aimed not only to eliminate or punish political and ideological opponents, and subjugate the remaining population into quiescence; the aim was also to reverse, both practically and symbolically, the reforms of the Spanish Second Republic and the discourse of rights and justice that underpinned them -'killing change', as Helen Graham has described it. From the start, the military rebels also encouraged civilian participation in the repression, binding citizens to the emerging regime in a 'pact of blood'. 94 Physical punishments and the invasion of private space were commonplace, and were quickly made the work of local civilians as well as local military units. One resident of La Lı´nea recalled how a local rightist, Alfonso Cruz Herrera, proceeded from house to house with a bayonet in his hand to conduct searches. 95 Women, in particular, were open to intimidation, rape and physical humiliation. One woman caught returning from Gibraltar with bread concealed in her clothes explained that she had done so because her children were hungry. A Falangist present at the frontier search took her to the Cı´rculo Mercantı´l and served her two fried eggs, before administering a purgative, having her head shaved and making her parade through the street. Isabel Á lvarez, another eyewitness from La Lı´nea, recalls that this treatment of women at the Cı´rculo and public humiliation in the adjacent Calle Real was frequent. 96 Physical searches at the frontier gave officials every opportunity to sexually harass women passing to and from Gibraltar, and those caught with contraband were particularly open to sexual abuse in exchange for turning a blind eye. 97 Meanwhile, young Falangists sang proudly as they paraded down the Calle Real in La Lı´nea: 'By the authority/And by the order of the mayor/We're going to give you a purgative/And shave off your hair!' Other songs boasted about raping widows. 98 Fear of execution, incarceration or physical violence were exacerbated by the control that the rebels now exercised over the Gibraltar frontier. We have already noted the edicts of Queipo in this regard and the role of Griffiths' in enforcing them. In a region that was already infamous as one of the poorest in Spain, and was now witnessing thousands of families deprived of their principal breadwinner through execution or forced exile, the threat of losing permission to cross into Gibraltar for work, and perhaps to augment income through recourse to smuggling, was potentially catastrophic for those left behind. In this way, economic desperation served as a further means of ensuring civilian acquiescence. As in Queipo's Seville, poverty was in no small part welcomed for this very purpose. Not only did it instil fear, but it also forced the remaining republican families into the care of the relief organizations being set up by the emerging Francoist state, such as the Falange's Seccio´n Femenina or the Auxilio Social. 99 Charity came at the price of conformity. One republican couple that returned to La Lı´nea after the civil war were refused a milk ration for their child by Auxilio Social on the grounds that they had not been married in a Catholic Church. To feed their child, they reluctantly had to 're'-marry and have the child baptised. 100 One further aim of the repression, which was pioneered in the territory held by Queipo and quickly mimicked throughout the rebel zone, was to sustain the rebel war effort economically through theft, intimidation and extortion. Expropriation of property belonging to executed republicans and those in exile added to the coffers of the emerging Francoist state, in the same way that the looting of bodies and houses often filled the pockets of individual rebel executioners. 101 We have already noted Griffiths' confiscation of the properties of the mayor of San Roque above. The 'kleptocratic state' did not just target its perceived enemies, however, but also its nominal supporters. There is absolutely no reason to doubt that many people gave money and goods enthusiastically in support of the rebel cause after 18 July 1936, but as Sere´m had demonstrated amply for Queipo's Seville, 'donations', even from groups and individuals supportive of the rebellion, were often nothing of the sort. 102 To this we can add that thousands of previously staunch republicans felt that donation was the better part of valour in proving their credentials to the new authorities, and thus avoided arrest or execution. Similarly, it has long been known that thousands joined the Falange in the hope that the blue shirt would act as 'life jacket'. 103 The brother of Francisca Aguilar of La Lı´nea was advised to do just this in the summer of 1936, but opted instead to flee to Tangier. Many others in the town chose the blue shirt. 104 In the Campo de Gibraltar, Emilio Griffiths proved himself to be an extremely capable administrator of Queipo's 'kleptocratic state' in the South. In April 1937, one Republican newspaper published a long piece about life in the Campo. Describing economic destitution, the report claimed that theft was widespread, including burglaries of houses belonging to foreigners, and even thefts committed against 'notorious fascist shopkeepers' and several local businessmen. The perpetrators were said to be family members of the local civilian hierarchy, but their actions were 'covered up so as to avoid a scandal'. Meanwhile, 'Falangists, Requete´s, Civil Guards and officials . . . get drunk in bars and don't pay . . . in the brothels they beat and rob the wretches'. The article spoke of 'corruption at every level', with chauffeurs selling petrol and car parts on the black market, and officials allowing the passage of money, tobacco and other articles across the frontier to line their own pockets. Widespread rape was also alleged, with perpetrators said to be killing victims to cover up the crime. Singled out at the end of this litany of accusations was Emilio Griffiths: A man of very shady conduct . . . as Delegate it is under his authority to stop all these scandals. This said man, not only has not put an end to such abuses, but is making the most of them and living the good life, at the expense of those others he sends out to steal. 105 A similar charge sheet had been compiled by another Republican newspaper, Democracia, a month earlier. This time Griffiths, 'the buddy of Queipo' (compadre) was alleged to be working alongside Captain Ferna´ndez Sa´nchez, the Chief of the Falange in La Lı´nea, and a local cacique from Campamento, Lieutenant Justo Lo´pez. All three were accused of overseeing mass executions in the Campo with a group of 'twenty-five scoundrels' performing the killings. Moreover, they were engaged in 'robberies, lootings and violent expropriations from the local population'. So bad had the situation become that some elements of the local hierarchy had arrested one of their collaborators, another member of the Falange, Lieutenant Carlos Calvo Chozas. Collectively, the newspaper claimed they had committed 'more than ninety murders with the exclusive object of looting the houses of the victims'. Having forced Calvo to confess, it was reported that Justo Lo´pez had been arrested and taken to prison in Algeciras. 106 Manifestly, both reports were pieces of propaganda. Nonetheless, we can compare such pen pictures with what we know from other sources about life in the Campo under Griffiths' watch. Francisca Aguilar recalls that 'they robbed everything' from her uncle at the start of the civil war, who later died 'in disgust' at the way he had been treated. She also spoke of Falangists stealing indiscriminately from the people of La Lı´nea and keeping a house 'full of everything they had taken from others'. Aguilar went so far as to name Jose´Pe´rez Ponce, who later went on to be mayor of the town, as one such thief. 107 Maruja Gil, another resident of La Lı´nea, recalled that the Moroccan troops who occupied the town after 19 July were 'looting everything they found in their path . . . they took almost everything from us'. 108 We know from the Falange's own newspapers that a month after Griffiths' arrival in the Campo, members of the Military Command in Algeciras travelled in person to see Queipo in Seville and hand over 8 kilogrammes of gold as a 'contribution' from the local population. This was an impressive donation to the rebels' cause, given that the parties of the right in the Campo had struggled to secure even 10 per cent of the vote in the elections of February that year. 109 More conclusively, one of the few extant documentary records of Emilio Griffiths' tenure as Delegado Gubernativo supports many of the charges made in the two newspaper stories quoted above. In November 1936, the High Commander of the Francoist Police launched an investigation into Griffiths' conduct in the Campo following a series of official complaints against him by members of the local Francoist hierarchy. The investigating judge in the case collected 14 written depositions from police officers in Ca´diz, Algeciras, La Lı´nea and Ronda, as well as further depositions from four military officers in the Campo and a carabinero serving on the Gibraltar frontier. Given that most of the witnesses had direct or indirect involvement in the savage Francoist repression in the Campo, their collective assessment that Griffiths' conduct was 'irregular and licentious' and 'creating a situation of disharmony' in the region was telling. Amongst a litany of accusations, Griffiths was denounced for ordering police officers to find women 'for his carnal enlargement' and for blackmailing at least two young women for sexual favours in return for guarantees of the safety of loved ones. The delegado was reported to be ordering the arrest of individuals in the Campo for 'the sole aim of settling scores or desires of a personal nature', but he also stood accused of intimidating local Francoist officials by ordering gratuitous searches of their houses and threatening them too with arrest. Finally, several witnesses claimed that Griffiths was engaged in shady financial conduct. Following the rebel capture of Castellar de la Frontera, for example, Griffiths allegedly confiscated a large herd of cattle and placed it at the discretion of a 'Delegation of Agrarian Reform' that he had created in La Lı´nea, from where at least fifty cattle disappeared 'to destination unknown' and were later found on the property of one of Griffiths' friends. 110 Griffiths also raised eyebrows more than once for bullying and abusing officials and customs guards on the Gibraltar frontier. On 30 September 1936, for example, when travelling to Gibraltar with a resident of San Roque, Griffiths was asked to get out of his car at the frontier by a carabinero, who explained that the frontier was closed on the Spanish side by military order. According to one witness 'Griffiths responded that he had to comply with urgency with an order received moments before by telephone from . . . Queipo de Llano'. The guard having let him pass, Griffiths returned some time later from Gibraltar with his friend from San Roque and proceeded to the La Lı´nea Police station, where he unleashed a torrent of abuse about the 'shameless scum' who made up the local police force. 111 The authority and confidence placed in Griffiths by Queipo was supposed to spare him the need to answer to anybody in the local Francoist hierarchy, save for the Military Governor of the Campo. Quite possibly, friendship with Queipo spared Griffiths any repercussions from the investigation launched against him in November 1936. Despite ample and compelling testimony, no charges were raised against Griffiths once the National Chief of (Francoist) Police received the final reports on the case on 27 January 1937. 112 Griffiths continued to act in Queipo's name for some time and was not shy in advertising the fact, even if this, as much as his ensuing conduct, earned him enemies within the local Francoist hierarchy.

Arrest and Death
On 6 May 1937, Emilio Griffiths was arrested in La Lı´nea. The story made the New York Times, where it was suggested that the arrest was made 'following orders from Salamanca'. 113 The newspaper went further on the following day and reported that various Gibraltarians had received 'confidential information' not to cross the frontier, where they faced arrest. A number of other arrests were also reported, including the mayor of San Roque, a lawyer, a photographer and a civil judge from La Lı´nea. The reason given was 'to discourage the border traffic and to tighten up Insurgent censorship'. 114 The Republican press gleefully picked up the story, quoting a report posted from Gibraltar by Daily Herald correspondent Stephen Wall. The journalist had form in exaggerating his reports from Gibraltar, and this occasion was no different. 115 Wall's report had Griffiths being taken directly to Salamanca, with accusations of trafficking large amounts of currency, from which he had made large profits. Queipo de Llano was also thought to be implicated. Wall claimed that Griffiths had been arrested whilst in bed by 'the personal guard of Franco'. Griffiths had shouted 'Get out! You can't arrest me' and struck the captain who had brought the arrest warrant. The report also claimed that Griffiths had sent for help to the offices of the local Falange, but that nobody had been willing to intervene, given that Griffiths' illegal activities were notorious. 116 The available sources are contradictory, but Griffiths was in fact most likely taken to prison in Seville. On 25 June 1937, the Gibraltar Chronicle reported that Griffiths had been killed as a result of a 'fall' from a fifth storey window of a 'military building in Seville . . . in an attempt to escape arrest'. 117 Accounts of Griffiths' incarceration and death are also contradictory. The leading military plotter in Seville before the civil war, Major Jose´Cuesta Monereo, claimed that Griffiths had been taken to the Comandancia de Marina building. By contrast, Jose´de Mora Figueroa has Griffiths taken to the Parque Maria Luisa in Seville, which had been set up as a temporary prison at the start of the civil war. Cuesta has Griffiths being arrested on Good Friday (26 March) in the streets of Seville, nearly six weeks before the arrest was actually made, and in the wrong place. Mora Figueroa has Griffiths arrested in July 1937 in Algeciras, which is long after his death was reported. 118 We also know that Griffiths was buried in the San Fernando cemetery in Seville on 28 June. 119 Where the two sources coincide is in stating that Griffiths committed suicide. Both men are also quite clear that the arrest was the result of Griffiths being discovered to be a British spy, an accusation resurrected in the 1960s by the Francoist court historian, Ricardo de la Cierva. 120 Suspicion was seemingly aroused by the fact that Griffiths had such easy access to Gibraltar, including to key officials. It will be recalled that Bensusan reported Griffiths talking to William Gulloch, Gibraltar's Chief of Police, just hours after he had supposedly overseen a round of executions in La Lı´nea. Huart described Griffiths visiting the Rock 'almost daily'. Meanwhile, Mora Figueroa 'knew through trustworthy sources that he was going into Gibraltar how and when he liked . . . at the same time he had contact with red Spanish refugees'. 121 Certainly Griffiths paid regular visits to Gibraltar and seems to have held the respect of its colonial hierarchy. Shortly after Griffiths' arrest, the Colonial Secretary lamented that 'the delegate in La Linea who has been most helpful in recent months has just been removed from his post, and replaced by authorities who are not nearly so courteous or obliging'. 122 On more than one occasion Griffiths was given space in the Gibraltar Chronicle to offer 'news' from the other side of the frontier. On 3 February 1937, for example, Griffiths reported that the rebels had impounded a Spanish motorboat, before going on to encourage residents of the colony to visit the Campo. 'Gibraltar residents were daily visiting the neighbourhood by motorcar', he claimed, 'while others went to play polo and golf . . . There were a large number of British and other foreign residents living in La Linea and adjacent Spanish towns, where complete tranquillity prevailed'. 123 The following day, at least four people were executed in La Lı´nea.
Many years later, the British intelligence services on the Rock offered their own explanation for what had happened to Griffiths. They singled out a Spaniard called Jose´Garcı´a Sa´nchez as responsible for denouncing Griffiths to the rebel authorities. Garcı´a Sa´nchez had been a pronounced rightist, who had 'changed his sympathies' when the Second Republic was declared in 1931. He had attempted to join a masonic lodge and been refused, and so began to keep photographs of masonic meetings which he later used in the civil war to denounce individual freemasons to the rebel forces. Garcı´a Sa´nchez was also very friendly with Griffiths at the start of the civil war and worked as his secretary in La Lı´nea. Things turned awry when Garcı´a Sa´nchez had tried to implicate Griffiths as a British spy, and the latter ordered Garcı´a Sa´nchez to be sent to a concentration camp for four months. Upon his release, Garcı´a Sa´nchez 'did his best to ruin Griffin [sic]' and shortly afterwards Griffiths was arrested and taken to Seville. This report added that Garcı´a Sa´nchez had been helped by Manuel Ferna´ndez Jime´nez in the plot to unseat Griffiths. 124 Ferna´ndez Jime´nez went on to become a high ranking and 'staunchly anti-British' member of Spanish intelligence in the Second World War. During the civil war, he earned the nickname 'agenta poliglota' (multilingual agent) in rebel Seville, and specialized in rooting out leftists who had enrolled in the Falange and the Spanish Foreign Legion in the city to evade arrest. He also worked periodically in Gibraltar as a spy for the rebels. 125 If there was any record of Griffiths actually working for the British, the operative in Gibraltar who wrote the report on his demise was giving nothing away.
There is one further plausible reason for the arrest of Griffiths, even if the source of the information is deeply problematic. Five days after Griffiths' death, the anarchist newspaper Solidaridad Obrera published a long and blithesome piece on the subject. The newspaper placed Griffiths 'in that class of adventurers around Europe who make money out of war', and described him as 'a great expert in questions of banking and the stock market'. It alleged that Griffiths was using his contacts to move back and forth into Gibraltar at will, as well as to London, in order to 'hide money in foreign banks' for his master Queipo de Llano. When Griffiths expanded his operations to 'do the same for rich Andalucians to save them money from the financial rules of Queipo', he was discovered. Solidaridad Obrera claimed that although Queipo had been forced to order the arrest, he was keenly aware that Griffiths 'knew all his secrets'. In jail, Griffiths first pleaded with Queipo to secure his release, before turning to threats that he would denounce Queipo 'first to Franco, then to the world'. The newspaper conceded that Griffiths' fall from a fifth storey window 'could have been' a suicide, but questioned whether 'it is inside the realms of possibility also that it was a crime, a murder committed to disappear someone who knew how much money Queipo had made in these ways?' 126 Years later, even Cuesta was forced to ask the rhetorical question 'what secrets might have been uncovered, which died with this suicide?' 127 Queipo has recently been painted as something of an economic pioneer for the rebel war effort, not least due to his early and stringent imposition of currency controls and his ability to raise 'donations'. 128 Sere´m's picture of a 'kleptocratic state' is much more convincing. But one does not have to be convinced by Solidaridad Obrera to advance the thesis that individuals stood to gain personally from the systematic theft, extortion and intimidation in the rebel zone. We have noted above how the 'kleptocratic state' worked in practice in the Campo de Gibraltar, and the allegations made against Griffiths and others of making personal gains from the situation. The Campo also offered a singular opportunity for corruption in the form of the frontier with Gibraltar, and the truly industrial smuggling trade that it had facilitated for well over a century. Corruption amongst carabineros and local officials was infamous. 129 Queipo de Llano's last post under the Republic had been as head of the Cuerpo de Carabineros, a position that had brought him more than once to inspect arrangements around Gibraltar. More than most, therefore, Queipo must have been aware of the opportunities for exploiting the contraband traffic at the Gibraltar frontier. In this light, it is at least possible that Queipo's edicts in relation to the carriage of currency over the frontier, and the forced exchange of pounds for pesetas at half their worth, were motivated by thoughts other than the health of the rebels' wartime economy. Mora Figueroa unwittingly confirmed one of the allegations of Solidaridad Obrera by stating that Griffiths was known to be 'trafficking in foreign exchange' before his arrest. 130 For his part, Queipo obtained a reputation in the Campo as a shameless smuggler. Vicente Ricardo Badillo, a resident of La Lı´nea, recalled that the general was 'known as much for smuggling as for military skill'. He further recalled a visit of Queipo to La Lı´nea several years later, where the general: . . . made a very long list of goods for his chauffeur: penicillin, brandy, spark plugs . . . he found them all [in Gibraltar] and packed them in the car. At the customs post they gave him the military salute and he took them all back to Seville. 131 One named victim of rebel violence in the Campo was the chemist Evaristo Ra´mos Cadenas, executed by the rebels in August 1936. This may have been because Evaristo was a freemason, or perhaps because he was known to offer free treatments to the poorest residents of the town. It may also have been simple revenge. Months before the civil war, Evaristo had remonstrated with an embarrassed Queipo de Llano, then head of the carabineros, because he objected to dogs loaded with contraband from Gibraltar crossing over his property on their way to handlers in La Lı´nea. Queipo had seemed strangely reluctant to order his officers to stop the practice. 132

Conclusion
On 19 December 1937, the Republican edition of ABC reported the death of Emilio Griffiths, almost six months after the fact. At the same time, it stated that his 'former associates' had been rounded up by the rebel authorities. Emilio Villar, a Falangist, had been condemned to 13 years in prison; the Delegate of Propaganda and Press in Algeicras received almost 15 years. Eighteen 'other fascists of secondary order' were also arrested, and another local Falangist captain had been 'disappeared'. 133 The purging of Griffiths' 'network' is confirmed by other sources, but probably took place much earlier. 134 The chaos caused within the local rebel hierarchy by the exposure of Griffithswhether as spy, thief or smuggler -highlights the fact that the rebel coalition had its own tensions, rivalries and rifts. Griffiths was, in effect, exposed by members of his own side for something terrible enough to warrant imprisonment and death. When the time came for his arrest, nobody in the rebel-held Campo was prepared to come to his aid. Similarly, at a higher level, one does not need to determine whether Griffiths was arrested by Queipo's men, or by men sent by Franco himself from Salamanca. To paraphrase George Orwell, Griffiths was assuredly Queipo's man, even though Solidaridad Obrera said he was. Implicated or not in Griffiths' activities, the arrest would have been a profound embarrassment to Queipo, and doubtless a source of mirth for Franco as he strove to exert total authority over the rebel coalition. The forced unification of the various political forces in rebel Spain had only taken place on 19 April 1937, just over a fortnight before Griffiths' arrest. 135 Similarly, we do not need to prove that Queipo was involved in the activities leading to Griffiths' arrest, in order to conclude that Griffiths' tenure in the Campo de Gibraltar represents a perfect example of the 'kleptocratic state' that Queipo had built in the South. Theft, expropriation and intimidation in the Campo were widespread, while Queipo and Griffiths were able to use control of the Gibraltar frontier to raise levies against Spanish workers in Gibraltar, and to force them to exchange currency at half its worth. Given what we know of Queipo's 'donations' elsewhere, it is not at all surprising that allegations were made that local businesses and even rebel sympathizers in the Campo were the subject of robberies. With or without Queipo's new frontier restrictions, there is also no doubt whatsoever that mass smuggling still took place across the Gibraltar frontier during the civil war. Despite their own professions of impartiality, and despite the presence of observers for the international Non Intervention Scheme, the British authorities at Gibraltar were fully aware of this. They were also aware of the scale of executions taking place across the frontier. 136 Rather than suffering moral qualms at the prospect of dealing daily with the man overseeing this panorama of terror and grift, they seemed genuinely sad to see Emilio Griffiths go.
Finally, therefore, Griffiths' story offers a window into an all-too-familiar case study of Francoist 'justice' in the South. Like most regions falling to the rebels in those first months of the civil war, the people of the Campo suffered brutal repression. This went far beyond the 411 people executed, at a minimum, in the four municipalities closest to Gibraltar, and extended to mass incarceration, torture, physical punishment and intimidation, sexual harassment and rape, and exile for thousands who were able to escape. After the war, the region hosted mass battalions of republican forced labourers. 137 As in other areas of Francoist Spain, public space was dramatically refashioned to extirpate all signs of the Republican period and glorify the new regime. Crosses to the 'Nationalist' fallen were erected in prominent spaces in each town, while most of those republicans registered as buried in local cemeteries were interred in mass and unmarked graves. Many more were simply described as 'disappeared', their loved ones keeping their memories alive during the four decades of dictatorship with photographs and other small mementoes to prove that they had lived. 138 In recent years the work of historians, archaeologists and civilian 'memory' associations has done much to offer some form of memorial to their lives and deaths. Ironically, Emilio Griffiths Navarro appears in one such list, as a victim of Francoist violence in the Campo. 139