Andrés Saliquet

Andrés Saliquet Zumeta, Marquis of Saliquet (b. Barcelona, March 21, 1877 - d. Madrid, June 23, 1959) was a Spanish soldier who participated in the failed military coup against the Second Republic, which gave rise to the Spanish Civil War. During the war he took charge of the Army of the Center,[1] a unit that contained troops of the Nationalist faction from the Tagus River to Madrid, Guadarrama and the Universal Mountains.

Andrés Saliquet Zumeta
Born	21 March 1877 Barcelona, Spain
Died	23 June 1959 Madrid, Francoist Spain
Buried	Madrid, Spain
Allegiance	Kingdom of Spain  Nationalist Spain  Francoist Spain
Battles/wars	Spanish–American War Rif War Spanish Civil War

Life

Saliquet entered the Toledo Infantry Academy on 29 August 1893, and graduated on 24 June 1895.[2] Shortly after he participated in the Cuban War and later in the Moroccan Wars, where he rapidly rose through the ranks. During the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, he was appointed Civil Governor of Santander (1928), on 8 February 1930 he was appointed Military Governor of Cádiz.

In 1923, he was promoted to Brigadier General, and by 1929 he was Major General. After the proclamation of the Second Republic, the Military Government of Cádiz was dismissed.

Spanish Civil War

He went into retirement with Azana's reforms, but joined the conspiracy organized by General Emilio Mola, who commissioned him to take command of the VII Organic Division. For this reason, on 19 July 1936, he deposed General Molero by force and proclaimed a state of war in the province of Valladolid, taking control of the VII Organic Division and all its dependent territories.[3] For this reason, he was one of the soldiers that the Republican Government discharged from the Army on 22 July 1936 in the hope of putting a stop to the military rebellion. He was a member of the National Defense Board that is formed in Burgos, a kind of provisional government that will initially govern in the rebel zone. He was part of the group of generals who elected Franco as head of the Government and Generalissimo of the Armies. He continued to command the VII Division and later reconverted the unit into VII Army Corps.

On 4 June 1937, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the newly created Army of the Center. This unit covered the front from the Alto Tajo to the Cáceres front, passing through Guadarrama, the Madrid Front and Toledo. At the end of the war, in 1939, both he and his subordinate units participated in the Madrid Victory Parade. On 17 May, he was promoted to Lieutenant General.

Serrano Suñer describes him as "a nice, honest, good-natured man, not infatuated, doggedly faithful to command."

Francoist Dictatorship

After the immediate end of the war, on 5 July, he was appointed Captain General of the I Military Region (Madrid).[3] However, on 21 July, he was placed in charge of the II Military Region (Seville), replacing General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano. A month later, on 19 August, he was reappointed in command of the captaincy general of Madrid. In May 1940, by virtue of a delegation of powers from the dictator, Saliquet became the main person in charge of the Francoist repression in the capital, signing hundreds of executions of death sentences dictated in summary war councils. In March 1941, he served as president of the Special Court for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism,[4] a position he would hold until his death.

During the military dictatorship, he was State Councilor and Attorney at the Cortes. Between 1945 and 1946, he held the presidency of the Supreme Council of Military Justice, after his transfer to the reserve for reaching the regulatory age. He was granted the Marquis of Saliquet by Franco.

2008 Judicial Indictment

In 2008, he was one of thirty-five high-ranking officials of the Franco regime charged by the National High Court in the summary brought by Baltasar Garzón for the alleged crimes of illegal detention and crimes against humanity that supposedly would have been committed during the Spanish Civil War and the early years of the Franco regime. The judge declared Saliquet's criminal responsibility extinguished when he received reliable evidence of his death, which had occurred almost fifty years earlier. The investigation of the case was so controversial that Garzón was accused of perverting the course of justice, resulting in him being tried and acquitted by the Supreme Court.

Awards

• The Military Medal, in 1940.
• Crosses of Military Merit, in 1943.
• Order of Isabella the Catholic, in 1944.

References

1. "GEN. ANDRES SALIQUET". timesmachine.nytimes.com. 24 June 1959. Retrieved 2020-08-25.
2. Redondo, Pablo Bahillo (18 July 2020). "El General Saliquet y la represión de la masonería". EL OBRERO | Defensor de los Trabajadores (in Spanish). Retrieved 2020-08-25.
3. Ruiz, Julius (2005). Franco's justice : repression in Madrid after the Spanish Civil War. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 57. ISBN 1-4237-7104-4. OCLC 68623465.
4. Preston, Paul (2012-04-16). The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-23966-9.

Predecesor: -	Capitán General of the I Military Region (Madrid) 5 - 21 July 1939	Sucesor: ??
Predecesor: Gonzalo Queipo de Llano	Capitán General of the II Military Region (Seville) 21 July - 19 August 1939	Sucesor: Fidel Dávila Arrondo
Predecesor: ??	Capitán General of the I Military Region (Madrid) 19 August 1939 - ??	Sucesor: ??