Hello, and welcome to cool People did cool stuff. You're a weekly reminder that we can choose to do noble and wonderful things with our brief lives that do earnest, that earnest.
Just earnest enough, in my opinion.
Okay, I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. Today's guest it's Garrison. Hi, Garrison.
Hello, I'm about to take the sincerity pill.
Oh no, I'm sorry you allergic?
Uh No, I don't think I'm allergic to any medication.
Oh okay, that's that's that's how I phrase it. Whenever I go into the doctor, they're like, you allergic to anything, and I'm like, I don't know. I hope not. I hope it's not whatever you're about to give me, right. Garrison Davis is a podcaster.
I have. I have made a few podcasts now.
Yeah. Our producer is Sophie, who also makes podcasts like.
So fucking many, so fucking many some with Garrison, which is nice.
It's true.
And you know who else makes podcasts. It's Ian are our audio engineer.
Ian and I have made some beautiful podcasts together.
This is true, Yeah, including this one you're listening to. Hi, Hi, hyen.
Garrison Garretson.
Oh hi, Ian, Yes, sorry, I forgot that I'm involved and I'm included in that.
Yes, yeah, you are in everyone's.
I'm so happy Garrets here.
And our theme music was written for us by Unwoman. So this week the cool people are Garrison. Have you ever heard of.
People like the concept?
Yeah?
I have, I have heard of it. I don't think I believe in it, but I have. I am aware of the concept.
Yes, okay, okay, what about the people of Spain?
Is this gonna be a is this okay? Is this gonna be like a Spanish Civil War thing?
You know? For once, We're actually not talking about the Spanish Civil War?
Okay, I just know it's it's come up so much on this on this show.
Oh yeah, no, now it's what happened after the Spanish Civil War adjacent yeah yeah, the sequels post.
Same same, same like universe, different season.
Yeah, same antagonists and protagonists. Today's protagonists, though, well, this week's protagonists are basically the people of Spain who fought against their fascist dictator Franco after he became their fascist dictator. Usually we talked about them before he became their fascist dictator, but last week and this week we're talking about what heck time after we've talked about this guy Franco a bunch before. I assume you've heard of him at this point.
Yeah, I'm familiar with mister Franco.
Yeah, he's the guy who invaded Spain overthrew a democratic republic and said quote I'm it is a paraphrase quote because I forgot to look up the actual quote. It's basically this, I'm willing to kill half of Spain to rule the other half. And then he lived up to that quote, while the quote unquote great powers of democracy not only stood by and let it happen, but, as
we're going to explore this week, actively enabled it. Last week we talked about an anarchist bank robber named al Kiko who funded militias, and okay, during that I suggested that Kiko might be a pun. It's short for Francisco if it's spelled a different way Kiko, but his name was spelled q u I CEO has pronounced the same and I was like, I think this is a pun, and an astute listener told me it is, and Eli Kiko means the cute. So he was a bank robber
who was the cute. He would show up to people and say so Aliqiko, and then they would have to give him all of their money because he showed up and said I am the cute.
That's pretty funny.
I know.
I was going to say that's super cute, but.
That is, yeah, super cute. I don't don't know cattalan to say super cute. Okay, so before we talk about the people fought Franco, we're gonna talk a little bit about Franco. This isn't like a like, we're not gonna talk about where he was born.
We need the context, Magpie, That's.
What exactly needed, I know. So Franco is often painted as the nice fasci fascist dictator of Europe. You know, it's like he's the good one. Yeah, exactly, exactly. He hasn't been spoiled by the bad apples of Mussolini and Hitler.
He made the fascists wear gay little outfits.
Oh they did have the best outfits they did.
Which is honestly hard because all of the fascists paid a lot of attention to fascism. So sorry, get a lot of attention to fashion fashion fascism. But yeah, that'll be the Spanish ones definitely went went pretty hard.
Yeah, although I was I was reading this historian and by that I mean twitter person talking about how actually the average fascist just looked like a tool with like sure of course, you know, like but anyway, they were capable of some good fashion and the idea.
Of aesthetics that is a big part of fascism. It doesn't like, like you say, like most American fascists look like shit. They look like, they do not look good, but there is like an ideal of fashion that that that they do that they do go towards right.
And Franco he ends up being the sort of like we'll talk about this more, I think in the next half of this, but he ends up the like national Catholic and so it's like very like trad wifey a lot of what folks are doing, which is a shame because tradwife is a nice aesthetic and a terrible concept. Okay, anyway, so Franco, we're not talking about his clothing choice for other people. We're talking about how he murdered a lot of people. He was a fucking monster. He was not
the nice fascist. He was a bad fascist who lived longer than the other fascists. Author Murray Bukchin estimated that he systematically slaughtered between seven hundred thousand and eight hundred and eighty thousand people during and after the Spanish Civil War, so like the nineteen thirty six to early nineteen forties era, and reduced the executions only once Hitler started losing World
War Two. Basically at that point Franco was like, oh, we should look good, because before that he was like trying to look good to Hitler, and then he was like, actually, oh.
Hitler's gonna be kind of going out of style. I now have to appeal to the liberal democracies. Yeah, yeah, that is that's Franco in a fucking nutshell. So he stopped mass executing quite as much in like nineteen forty three or so. More conservative estimates say that he only systematically murdered like two hundred thousand people. But he was a dictator for decades who put an incredible amount of
effort into covering up his crimes. That's like one of the things that he's actually like, really it at like Stalin does this too, right, But Stalin's sort of it's like almost the joke where it's like everyone's like disappearing out of the.
Photos or the pictures. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Franco was really fucking good at covering up crime in Madrid. He had five permanent courts after the Civil War, he had five permanent courts trying and executing people in batches of twenty five to thirty or trying and sentencing to death people in batches of twenty five to thirty. Basically anyone who is accused of being involved in a leftist organization or Freemasonry. You really hated Freemasonry.
A lot of the fascists do. It's weird because the Freemasons aren't like sometimes they're kind of fasci I know.
It is a politically neutral thing to be a Freemason. There are people on the right and the left who are Freemasons, but not in fascist Spain, then there's just no Freemasons because you just get murdered. Prisons were filled the fourteen times capacity, which is impressive of coming from the United States, which is notoriously full of overfilled, overcrowded prisons. People spent years on death row and they were executed in bashes of at least three hundred at a time.
And this is some like national Catholic bullshit. They spent their last night in the prison chapel on like a stone floor, just like forced to sit in this chapel before they die at dawn. They were bound and gagged so no one could hear their last words lest people revolt when they hear people saying Viva anarchy or whatever the fuck you know. Yeah, they were marched single file across a gang plank I believe, like over a mass grave.
But just like in a graveyard where they would be killed, they were executed by machine gun officers with revolvers finished off any survivors. It was not nice to be in Spain under Franco's rule.
And.
A lot of them were A lot of people were killed were sort of random, right, like the Freemasons. I don't know, maybe maybe by the time, maybe I'm going to be doing a whole episode about like how Freemasons like brought down Franco or something. I don't know, but but a lot of the people that he killed were
fighting back. Because the thing is, and the more I do this research, a lot of people fought back against this guy, right, A lot of people from different parts of Spain and different like ideological backgrounds, were like, actually, we don't like having a fascist dictatorship. Resistance in these first years of his rule. In the words of Frank, one of Franco's right hand man, it quote disrupted communications, demoralized folk, wrecked our economy, shattered our unity, and discredited
us in the eyes of the outside world. And it didn't kill Franco. And so people tend to like think of it as like not successful. And that's like the main that's my thesis.
Of this.
Is this show that I totally didn't really go to college. That is my thesis statement is that the people brought down Franco cheologically.
Thank you to you.
I had this nightmare the other day, or I was sort of a regular dream, but I had this nightmare where I decided I was going to get a doctorate. Oh scary, yeah, I know. And in the dream I was like, I don't have an undergrad degree. Why am I doing this? And the only reason I came up with was then people would have to call me doctor.
Many such cases.
Listen, all the cool people I know that have doctor degrees don't want to be called doctor and like only bring it up when absolutely necessary. It's very funny.
Yeah, no, I I woke up without that desire anyway. That's what we're here to talk about is Margaret goes to school. It's possible that this resistance not to Margaret going to college, but this resistance to Franco's fascist regime is part of why Franco later had to open up the economy, which led to the death spiral of Spanish fascism.
So it was actually very effective. So the fighting really started in earnest in nineteen forty three, when gorillas in the hills were like, oh shit, maybe Hitler's going to lose, and everyone got really excited. It will not Franco. Franco didn't really get excited by Franco's own admission, and he had every reason and the capacity to downplay this. There were at least two thousand battles between the Civil Guard his cops or whatever, his stormtroopers, and the resistance between
nineteen forty three and nineteen fifty two. So there's two thousand battles during that time period. At least, I didn't know it went on that hard for so long.
Yeah, that's.
That's one of the things that really I get really excited about. Tens of thousands of people this part isn't exciting. I mean, the good guys lost, right. This is like Star Wars, only Empire wins for a very long time. But tens of thousand people were arrested during this for connection to the resistance. At least one thousand civil guards
died on active active duty during that time. There's like not really good records like Franco's like, oh, they killed like a hundred of us or something, and then like historians later have to sit there and be like, there's like a thousand extra deaths here. We think that this is you know, civil guards who died. Yeah, fascists whatever. Fascists would never lie about their numbers. No, that they're very upstanding, honest, fourth right people. They've told me that themselves, Third Right people.
Yeah.
So nineteen forty three, it kicks off with the gorillas in the Hill, but there's like tens of thousands of anarchists and communists and other Spanish refugees in France who are busy fighting for France's liberation from the Nazis. Then in nineteen forty four, the anarchists liberated Paris and the Spanish exiles came back to Spain ready to function up.
That is one big difference. Whenever I'm i I have a few friends in the European continent region, and I'm always shocked at how close everything is together, Like oh, you can just like go to other countries in like a day, or like you like multiple countries in a day. And here I am like planning a cross country road trip. I'm like, I'm crossing so much more territory that like ednyone would ever cross in Europe.
Oh totally, yeah, no, this is like people can walk these distances.
Yeah, you know, no, it's wild, like there's there's so much more options for like like cross pollination. Yeah, that just there's always it always surprises me being like, oh, you could take the train to five different countries in like two hours. Yeah. Oh wow.
You live in Connecticut and New York is at war, so you're like, well, I guess I'm gonna go to New York.
Down in New York. I'll just bike over and kill some fascists and bike back.
Yeah, totally. There is a mountain range in the way, but like you know, people can move through it. So the first thing that they did or one of the first things that they did in nineteen four before is that the Communist Party, the exiled Spanish Communist Party in France. They organized three thousand guerrillas to invade Fascist Spain and the attack was repulsed. But it was actually and I think we talked about this a little bit last week, but the plan was actually really good and it was
two attacks. In my mind when I first read this, I was like, they thought they were going to take Spain with three thousand people. They just like lost it with like substantially more than three thousand people. But their whole goal, their whole strategy, was, well, fascism is losing. There is no way that the Western powers are going
to allow fascism in Western Europe. All we have to do is go put in a like basically build a beachhead into Spain that invaded two different areas, will set up a government in exile and will recreate the republic.
Right, and then they'll get backing from other liberal democracies and they'll be able to take over the country.
Yeah, okay, And unfortunately Franco was ready for them, and so they did not even succeed at stage one of setting up a successful beachhead and a government in exile. But more than that, the other governments were like, we don't fucking care. Fuck you, we're tired.
Just yeah, that makes sense.
And I don't know whether it's I don't know what to agree, it's they're tired into what degree they're like, we don't care. Franco is sort of neutral, and that was like, and everyone's a little bit starting to cozy up to him. It's like kind of blurry. We'll talk about this over the course of like basically, the Western powers slowly start accepting him, but more in the fifties than the forties.
As long as he keeps the machinery of capital going, then it's it's mostly fine, Yeah.
As long as people in Spain are buying TVs and show who fucking cares and well and also increasingly making the TVs. But okay, so these attacks fail, but the people who do that, they bolster the gorillas who are in the hills and have been there and have been fighting since nineteen forty three. They took like a four year break to not get murdered, and they start fucking shit up as the Spanish monkey, as we talked about last time. And so you know, Western powers don't help.
I want to quote an anarchist political prisoner from this time period about this. His name is Miguel Garcia. Garcia quote. When we lost the war, those who fought on became the resistance. But to the world, the resistance had become criminals, for Franco made the laws, even if when dealing with political opponents he chose to break the laws established by the constitution, and the world still regards us as criminals.
When we are imprisoned, liberals are not interested, for we are quote terrorists.
Yeah, well, good thing we learned our lesson there.
I know, I know, everyone is aware that laws are written by the victors and have no relevance to morality. They're entirely unrelated. Crime is not inherently good. Following the law is not inherently good. Everyone knows that.
So true, Just me and all my friends agree.
So the Western world wasn't going to help end Spanish fascism. It took the Spanish people, plus some French and Italian comrades here and there to bring him down. In the end. Okay, in the end, it took Parkinson's disease to bring down Franco.
Comrade disease. Yeah, support to Parkinson's disease. So I almost wrote that.
And then I was like, oh, my granddad died like a couple of years ago, parkins and stuff. No, no, I mean like, but I still I was trying to figure out with Yeah, anyway, surprised there wasn't TV.
I'll take the hit. I'll take the hit for you there, all right, all right?
Thanks.
Usually usually it's comrade tuberculosis.
I know.
But you know, one hundred years, one hundred years earlier, he would have gone out from TV. But okay, So the people paved the way for the end of the dictatorship, and they did a damn fine job of it. This time, we're going to focus a little less on the bank robberies and the fundraising, because we talked about that last week with the Francisco Sabote fascists. We're gonna talk about some other folks instead. Fascists gave no fucks about morality,
and the counter operations against the gorillas were brutal. By nineteen forty seven, you get counter gorilla bands who dressed like gorillas and murdered the gorillas and also went around doing like false flagshit like murdering random people and blaming it on the gorillas. By nineteen fifty two, the gorilla portion of the resistance was mostly done, with just tons
and tons of dead resistance fighters. The last gorilla standing was Jose Castro Viega el Pilato, the pilot I believe, who died in combat against fascism in March nineteen sixty five.
But night.
By nineteen fifty three, the US signed a military and economic assistance treaty with Franco. By nineteen fifty five, franco Is welcomed Franco as Spain was welcomed into the United Nations. And it's a good thing. Gorilla fighting wasn't the only thing that happened.
Yeah, it's it's I it was interesting you were talking about the the the counter gorilla forces and like the and like the gorilla psyops. Yeah, which is I know, people of people have like there's always like sometimes like conspiracies about like this person in block is a secret infiltrating the person's matching these windows is actually of blah blah blah blah whatever, which is usually all take a nonsense. Yeah,
but it has been has been interesting. There are there are certain like there are certain white white power groups that are that that have been adopting more black block like clothing, not to like impersonate Antifa, but just because it's a good taxtic.
Yeah, it's a very good tactic.
Yeah. So we're seeing like Nazis in there, like Nazi Block versus versus like anti fascists in black bloc. Yeah, I think Rubbert Rundo's groups and some I mean some of Patriot Front, but there's there's there's is a bit more dorky. But some of some of the more like Fight Club Rubber Rundo sque groups have been have been using stuff that's more more similar just to like black
block or gray block. There was another group like a month ago that was doing a drag protest in all all black, but they had like they had like red masks on.
Yeah.
Yes, it's interesting after after you know, years of coverage of black block being pretty pretty popular in like national news, we're seeing some of the right adopt some of those tactics right now.
Yeah, it's a very effective tactic. And you know, I guess if you if if the government figures out that if you like live in the hills, you can hide and shoot people effectively, then at some point some people in the government or me, be like, we can hide in the hills and shoot people effectively too, you know. But if you want to hide in the hills, run and shoot run the.
Door salesman who's going to sell you these products and services the chance, so you don't need to shoot him. Instead, you can just listen here, Yeah, thus thus de escalating any future conflict with solicitors coming to your door.
Yeah, unless you subscribed to the Apple Premium version of the show, then there.
Is no hope for you. Yeah, because if you listen to the Apple Premium version of the show where you don't get ads, you're still gonna get ad transitions.
One day the Casper mattress man's gonna walk up to your house. You're like, nope, I'm paying to avoid those ads. Sorry, mister, you're just gonna blast a shotgun through the door, and they're good at prison for like fifteen years.
Except that Casper mattresses are bullet I don't think I can say that.
Just make sure holding it over your vital regions when you're carrying the box to the door. As long as you have a turn a kit, you can save your libs. But as long as you have your tour so covered. Yeah Jesus Christ. Okay, your ads or not ads.
Depending on your preference. And we're back and we're talking very seriously. Okay, So speaking about people's vital organs and their continued existence.
Wow, what a podcast transition today.
Let's talk about let's talk about some assassination attempts.
Oh, I am always down to talk about assassination attempts. I always One of the things that I think about more often than I should is why is it there're more political assassinations? Because it seems I don't know how much solid question, but like I am not on this, it seems to be a pretty effective tactic.
So okay, I will say historically and again, historically, political assassinations attend tots, as I sometimes get called, are a roll of the dice.
Yes, yes it is.
It is a complete crapshoot about whether what comes after is better or worse.
You're introducing a chaos variant, you don't know, like it's yeah, yeah, but when you have Franco shoot the Archduke Fransford to Dad, I don't know what's gonna happen next.
Yeah, that one didn't go great?
Worst second, what's the worst that could happen.
That one didn't go great. Later this week we're going to talk about one that goes really well. But first we're gonna talk about someones that didn't make things worse. They just didn't succeed because yeah, spoiler or alert, only Parkinson's assassinates Franco successfully. So let's talk about the anarchist air Force of nineteen forty eight. This is not the most successful thing that anarchists have ever done, but it's interesting.
I mean, if you told me there was an anarchist air force, I wouldn't immediately think, oh, yeah, that's gonna go well, that's good, that's gonna hey.
I think my main reason we didn't have an anarchist air force in the Spanish Civil War is that the Soviets were the only people who were providing planes and like training pilots. And actually read about some anarchists who were like, can I can I just like join the Communist Party for a minute, just learn how to fly in Soviet Union and then come back. But oh god, that's actually probably how the well, let's just tell the story. So there are tens of thousands of anarchists in exile
in France. They said up a bunch of organizations. These are very much the organization type of anarchist. Half of the history books about this are like basically reading the meeting notes of these fucking organizations, where they're like, of course, oh well, this three letter acronym didn't really like the thing that the committee of the such and such of the other three letter acronym did, and I'm like, I do not care about that.
Oh. Imagine if all of like the anarchist org signal chats just got turned into these like fifty years and someone started like sort through and decipher what these meeting notes are, yeah, and then decides to present it as if that's what's interesting instead of I'm gonna tell you about some people who got a plane and try to blow up Franco. That's interesting or interesting.
Yeah. So one of these organizations they set up a quote conspiratorial commission, which is the commission.
Okay, all right, that sounds.
Right now. Mostly apparently this group, and this might have just been some some ship, some shade that was being thrown by the historian who I think knew these people. Mostly they set around at coffee and were like, hmm, we should have a revolution don't you think that's also what I do in my conspiratorial coalition.
I know.
And then these people have also like seen thousands of their comrades die and have personally charged at machine gun nests. So they can sit around at coffee and talk some bullshit. I feel that way, and I've been like shot with less lethals and spent a couple of nights in jail.
You know, they're not going to get hit with the armchair anarchist allegations.
No, no, except by some of the historians who have also charged a machine gun nests. But I am not in a place to say such. Okay, So there is one guy in the group, and his name is Lariano Serata Santos, and he's cool. He was in his forties at this point, and he had a plan, and he
was his old working class anarchist. He'd spent his life working on the railroad and fementing anarchist revolution and at this point, at least after the fall of the Spanish Republic, he's a forger and that's his like main deal, like a like metal forging. No, no, like during the Nazi occupation, he printed hundreds of official documents for juice cool. Yeah, he've printed money, printed ideas, he printed whatever you needed. This guy's providing it and so probably more impactful than
anything else he did in his life. But like something that's like a lot of the anarchists participation in the resistance is like less documented, right, But he printed hundreds of hundreds official documents for Jews and France. He altered their racial identity on their legal papers and saved their lives. So already he's like in into the cool people heaven.
Absolutely.
But now it's nineteen forty eight. World War two has been over for a bit. Franco hasn't yet legitimized his authority over Spain, right, because everything is still very much in play. So Sonata comes up with a plan. His plan's very simple. You get an airplane and you drop a bunch of bombs on Franco. Step one, yeah, get an airplane, right, So step one is getting airplane in a pilot, and so they pick this tiny little plane because they figure there's this boat race, this fancy regatta.
I had to look up regatta and it means fancy boat race, which is what I thought, but I wasn't sure. Not a regular part of my daily life.
Yoh, you don't hang out at the regatta every weekend.
No, not as much, not anymore, okay, not since I'm an immortal vampire and I went to this one.
You don't hot hoist the black flag at the regatta.
And so they get this like fancy bougie tiny plane, right, or that's their plan. They're like, we want this fancy bougie tiny plane because it'll fit in with all the other like tiny planes hanging out among the boats at the regatta that Franco Is gonna officiate. Sure, they picked a pilot named Primativo Perez Gomez who'd been a fighter pilot during the Civil War, so there was anarchists thank you flying okay anyway, yeah, yeah, sure. They picked a plane that they could buy in Paris, and for a
tiny little plane, it was very modern. It could land in only one hundred and sixty meters, which is fucking ridiculous, Like currently the runway for a small plane, like a tiny plane is two thousand meters. And wow, now it's not to say that this plane is like designed to land in one hundred and sixty meters. Sure, sure, sure, Why when they go on like a test flight. They're like, hey, h could you just We're like totally not sketchy when we're buying this, but could you just like land it
really really short, just as short as you can. I just want to see how short it's coming fun for fun. Yeah, And the guy's like that's illegal, and they're like, we won't buy it unless you do it, and he's like okay, okay, based based yeah, and uh so they're like, all right, now we have a plane that is a perfect plane for doing a murder and then ditching in a field because you can land in a fucking field. They get one more person along for the ride El Valencia. This
was not a small conspiracy. At least twenty people knew what was happening. No snitches, this entire plan.
Whoof for twenty people, that's pretty solid, and there's like okay, So they bring in a French guy as the buyer, since they need a French citizen to be the one to buy the plane.
They spent one point six million francs on the plane. I did not successfully find the value of this old money, but it's not a small amount of money. The anarchists have a fair I mean they were running a good chunk of a country immediately before this. Right, they're all like working class and working. It's like ironmongers and shit, but they like have access to some money. There's also bank robbers and shit like that funding them. Right, So
they buy the plane. A pilot at the local airfield when they go and buy it, recognize the Spanish anarchists from their bravery or during the French resistance, because the guy who's just like flying around in the bougie little airfield plane place where the pilots hang out, and.
Then you see then someone recognizes you, which idea which was probably a nightmare scenario.
Oh yeah, and he takes them aside. He's like, hey, I want to talk to you really quick. And he's like, hey, you might want to be careful flying over the Pyrenees into Spain. They're watching the shit out of that and I'll shoot you down. And they're like, whoa, why would we clearly a bunch of Spanish anarchists be planning on taking this plane to Spain. We would never never do such a thing. Still, no snitches, everyone knows what they're doing.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah, they refitted the plane with bomb doors by involving yet another guy a mechanic, and I guess fabricator. They have a whole bunch of bombs because they'd fought in the French resistance and the whole time with the French resistance is happening, especially I think a lot of these bombs come when the Italians retreated, but then also when the Germans would retreat, the anarchists would be like and mine, and mine and mine, and just go pick up all
the bombs, just like go dumbstirring for spare boss. Yeah, and like machine guns and shit. They decide in the end not to bring the machine gun. You know, they're like looking through and picking which bombs to bring. The morning of three anarchists, four incendiary bombs and twenty shrapnel bombs get on the plane. One of the rebels flying one of the anarchists was the propagandist whose job was to drop handbills over the crowd. And also it just
said camera. I don't know whether it was film or photograph, but they were going to photograph or film them blowing up Franco based journalist.
Yeah, based journalists piloting the ball plane. Yeah.
And then there's another guy whose job is to have binoculars and like look out for everything. And then there's the pilot that's pretty funny. And in the morning they're like, all right, we're gonna cover up the French flag on the plane so we better fit in with the small planes that we're expected to mingle with. But they don't have time and they're running late, so they don't cover This saves their lives.
What this could be such? This could be such a good like suspense thriller, like no with the guy at the airfield recognizes you and you're like, oh no, we're we're we're about to get gone, and then you could give it a piece of crucial advice. Yeah, and then you're like, we don't have enough time to paint over the French flag, and then it turns out to actually be the thing that saves you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And they don't fly over the Pyrenees, and I don't know whether it was because that guy's advice or not. They fly over the water and partly because they're trying to go to the north coast of Spain. Anyway, it's a pretty logical way to do it. They approach Spain over the water and there's two battleships standing guard over the regatta and they're tracking the plane with their guns,
their anti aircraft guns. And then there's no small planes over the race at all, and instead there's a ton of fighter pilots everywhere, like circling the sky to make sure no one tries to blow up Franco.
Yeah, pretty freaky.
And the reason that they know there were no snitches is that, well, say that they don't get shot down.
Sure, yeah, no one knows exactly what they're up to, it seems.
Yeah.
So the fighter pilots come for the anarchists to get a closer look. And if they hadn't had the French flag on the plane, they probably would have just opened fire. But instead they're like, oh, we shouldn't open fire on these random French people, right.
They're just flying. They don't know what they're doing.
Yeah French, Yeah totally, that's a white flag, the classic French flag. And so the pilot just dives at the water, dives to within a few feet of the water, and just gets the fuck out of there, just like fucking runs.
Yeah, which is the right spot? It is too hot? The spot's too hot jack b Yeah, they.
Like keep going for a while, they're like, oh, the battleships are after us, and they're like, oh, there's a couple of fighter pilots. And then there's like it's all fighter pilots, no small planes. Gotta go. So they make it back to France and they're like all right, you want to go back tomorrow. They're like, yeah, let's go back tomorrow.
They try the same thing the next day.
Well, they have a new plan. The new plan is we know what hotel he's in. Let's just bomb hotel.
Oh okay, there's like there's like other people at the hotel.
Yeah, I don't know, but like probably fascist. Yeah, I don't know. I I'm not a big like collateral damages. Fine person, but I don't fucking know.
But frank. Yeah.
So then they, uh, they go out at four in the morning and they have a new plan. They're going fly low to the water in the middle of the night, hugging the coast, which is like the most dangerous way to fly this kind of plane, apparently. Yeah, they plate full of balls, yeah, and some pamphlets. Oh good, rain keeps them from going it. The airfield is completely mud when they go out at four in the morning, and they just flee.
Abandoned the plane.
Interesting, and a few years later, as best as I can, peace out the rest of this saga, the pilot was arrested. He later died a freeman. No one else was arrested. I actually don't know if he was arrested for this, for his arrested for something else. Some other folks were investigated, but.
It certainly sounds like he could have been arrested doing other things.
Yeah, yeah, all of these people liked crime. Yeah, Serata the forger I was talking about, he went back to forging.
He was.
He was pretty good at that. He got caught a bunch of time, once with like just a ton of fake money, and like another time for printing IDs and shit. His last arrest was in nineteen seventy, when he was sixty seven years old. He was held for a few months, and he was all set to like die in bed, an old man. He's like he made his seventy you know whatever seventy four when a fucking police informant in the anarchist movement murdered him in the street.
Weird.
That sucks, probably because he was going to reveal that the guy was a police informant. Interesting, So then the police smuggled that guy to Canada, where he probably lived out happily the rest of his fucking days.
The murderer not our finest moment.
Yeah, Sarada had a quote about his attempt on Franco's life, and I think it actually nails the moral question we were talking about. Quote personal attentats. Assassinations are effective to a degree determined by powers wielded by the victim. To take the life of a constitutional king through conspiracy and not through revolution is to change nothing except for his air. But if someone had eliminated, say Adolf Hitler in nineteen thirty nine, which of us can say that his death
would not have been of benefit to Europe. When we tried to liquidate Franco back in nineteen forty eight, we were persuaded that in doing so we would be changing the course of Spanish history utterly.
Yeah, No, I mean, it's a certainly, it's certainly an interesting thing in terms of like what if the next guy that comes in is just as bad or worse, or you'd you can'tate fate is weird? You can't, you can't you can't defnate these things very easily.
No, totally and we're going to talk about one more wacky failed anarchist bombing of Franco that I think I already said failed, it did not succeed, that almost changed the world.
See.
The thing I love about these stories, Margaret, is the suspense of knowing if it's going to succeed or not.
Yeah, did Franco die in the seventies or what we did die in the seventies. Did Franco die in the sixties, fifties? I'll get to that part in the script. I think it's the sixties.
I think there could also be a good Tarantina movie here where it's like an alternate history of them actually succeeding and killing Franco. Yeah. And then and then we get a get a look at what Spain could have been been, like like an exaggerated lens.
But still, and we find out that that Parkinson's bit was actually just somebody's code name.
Oh nice. Yeah, yeah, So, Sophy, do not say anything else. Screenwriters are going to be snatch your ideas from you. You got to keep your lips sealed until you have the full pitch ready.
Yeah, good to know no one's listening to us. It's just us here. But if either of you two want great deals, have I got some great deals for you the advertisers. Even though no one listens to the show it's private recording. Don't worry.
You can say whatever you It still has advertisers. I actually, Margaret just plays four minutes of ads for us. We have to sit here and listen to them with you. Actually, I know. We don't get to skip forward ten seconds. We have to sit here as Margaret plays them and waiting for it to be over so we can continue talking about Yeah.
Uh, Franco and I make like a funny face, just Robert Evans on a loop going mid mobile, mid mobile, over and over again for four minutes, and then Margaret apologizing. And I do this when I talk to my friends on the phone. If I talk to my friends more than twenty minutes, I run an ad break.
See I actually do this sometimes, not joking. What I actually do these types of bits in real life?
You do? Oh yeah, no, that makes sense because I mean we spend a lot of our time anyway. Here's some ads that support us eating food or not.
If you've subscribed to the previous figures, here's us coming back.
Right away, and we're back we're going to talk about a Scottish anarchist with a kilt and bombs. A Scottish anarchist. Yeah, okay, We're going to talk about Stuart Christie. Stuart Christie was an anarchist, historian and author and translator, and would be assassin of Franco. He died in twenty twenty. I never actually had a pleasure of knowing him. I've like a lot of the people I've worked with him, worked with through publishing, know him because he stayed engaged his entire life.
Spoiler alert. He grew up in Scotland and became an anarchist when he was sixteen. He says his grandma's good influence made him an anarchist. He wrote a book quote or quote. The name of the book is Granny made Me an anarchist?
Pretty solid title.
Yeah, no, totally. As he put it, quote basically, what she did was provide a moral barometer which married almost exactly with that of libertarian socialism and anarchism. And she provided the star which I followed. And then this other part that was a quote from his grandmother that I just really like, which is just we are not bystanders in life.
Nice, nice, that's a solid one.
Yeah. So in nineteen sixty two, when he was sixteen years old, he joined the Anarchist Federation in Glasgow. In nineteen sixty four, he was eighteen years old, he had moved to London. He was doing sheet metal work and iron mongerie, the other kind of forgery for gene, I guess. Yeah, he met a bunch of Spanish anarchists in exile and he was like, oh shit, I could probably help. I bet a random Scottish kid he can get through some borders more easily than some Spanish anarchist exiles. Yeah.
Maybe he was right about all right.
He got himself over to Paris. He told his family he was off to go pick some grapes. So true, he did not pick any grapes. He also didn't speak any French.
I mean it's barely intelligible as a language anyway.
Yeah, and the French are famous for not minding that people don't speak French when they're there. So he met up with some anarchists in a group called Defensa Interior and I have a feeling the French anarchists weren't like, oh, you don't speak French. He's like, I'm Scottish and I'm willing to carry some bombs. They were like yeah, fuck.
Yeah, okay, sure, yeah, yes, let's fucking go.
Yeah. They gave him some plastic explosives and his job.
I like it. You just go to France to be given some plastic explosively. Yeah, here, take these, have fun. Yeah.
His job was to ferry them into Madrid and give them to a forty year old anarchist carpenter whose job was to turn Spain's fascist dictator from a regular guy into an exploded guy with a regular guy, but in a lot more pieces. Yeah, using one neat trick that
they don't want you to know about. And the way that Christy Uh was going to signal to his conspirator who he was was that he wore a bandage on his hand, like oh, I fucked up my hand, and that was like his like like one Spanish phrase he learned was like my hand it is hurt or whatever. And he knew even less Spanish than he knew French. Okay, so he's off to transport bombs. He strapped them to his body and he threw on a hand Knitz sweater. I think that his grandma made. But I'm not entirely sure.
That's adorable.
Yeah, he also wore a kilt. I've heard that he wore the kilt to help him catch rides while he was hitchhiking. I don't know exactly, yeah, basically.
Yeah.
So later the press said that the assassin was quote a Scottish transvestite. Holy shit based Yeah, yeah, they're just like me.
That's crazy, I know.
Except according to another source, the kilt thing was a francoist police fabrication to say, oh no, it's not that we had an infiltrator. It's that he drew attention to himself by wearing a kilt. Who's to say, there's no way to know whose word to take here? Well, what's a kind of an annoying as If I've done this couple of years ago, I would have been like, dear Stuart Christie, did you wear a kilt? Also, he's probably
written this. I don't have time to read every fucking book before I like, you know, it is a better story if he wore a kilt and I have more sources. It's like two to one the sources that I've got, and he wore a kilt. There's only one problem unlike the airplane conspiracy of nineteen forty eight, this group had been infiltrated, and Stuart Christie was arrested in Madrid and forced to watch his carpenter would be friend be tortured. Ah, what's funny is I mean it hadn't been infiltrated, they
might have exploded. Who knows, Franco might have gone out eleven years early. So Stuart Christie is forced to sign a confession and is convicted of quote banditry and terrorism because all of the anti Franco rebels were called bandits. This is like their main method of delegitimize unrest. It's like the outside agitators for Spain. Yeah, it didn't matter that he literally didn't rob anyone.
That's it's just like a colloquial term, meaning this is not like a real person that you need to care about.
Yeah, exactly exactly. He could have been executed. He was facing execution. He would have been garroted, garroted whatever choked or the story did Yeah, garrotted.
I don't know either. I'm just saying that. So one of us probably got it right.
Yeah, probably. And and if you're listening and you know the answer.
Dm me at I write okay on Twitter, Yeah.
Yeah, exactly with a voice memo. Indeed anyway, Ah, they gave him twenty years instead, probably because he was like a nice Scottish boy or whatever. So true, he goes to prison, his co conspiratus thirty years I think, or maybe ends up serving thirty years. What year does he go to prison sixty four two? So in prison he's a hero. There's plenty of anarchists still in Spanish prison.
They like him, and then an international campaign gets underway to free our our poor young Scottish boy is as far as I could tell, it's like the equivalent of like, like everyone involved in this story is white, but it's still somehow like the it's like, well, you're like Western European,
you're uke in you're like actually white. Yeah, And so there's international campaign underweight of or because he's just like young, and like his defense in court is like I thought I was just transporting flyers or whatever.
Me too, me too, Yeah.
And also his confession had been tortured out of him.
Yeah.
The campaign involved bretand Russell, a famous public intellectual guy, and Jean Paul Sart, a famous existentialist author and most importantly his mom.
That's nice.
And after three years he was released.
That I assumed he was going to wait until Franco was gone.
No, he Yeah, the international campaign gets a lot of steam and Franco is like, oh, I couldn't say no to a mom who's worried about her kid. But it's like Franco was kind of scared, I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting his co defendant wasn't released until nineteen seventy six and supposedly was Franco's last political prisoner.
That kind of makes sense.
Yeah. Stuart has a quote about what he accomplished through the failed attempt, which was that quote, the most beneficial thing was that my arrest provided a focus for what Franco was doing. He was trying to pass himself off as an old, avuncular gentleman on a white charger, while in fact he had all these political prisoners, thousands of whom were tortured and some killed. And yeah, I mean it's like it's basically it's like Western Ice start seeing what's happening.
You know.
Stuart gets out, he goes back to the UK. He becomes a gas fitter, which means a plumber for gas and I like that because Savat last week's protagonist was also a plumber, because plumbers hate Franco. Because here's my theory. I think Franco is a Bowser.
Does this makes sense?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean there are definitely some Francoist elements in modern depictions of Bowser. That yeah, that certainly tracks.
Yeah, so.
Stuart.
Later he gets arrested when the UK government cracks down on the probably future friends of the Pod. The Angry Brigade. The Angry Brigade was, and I'm not going to go into them super detail. They were an anarchist communist gorilla group who never killed anyone, but they like blowing up symbols of power in the early seventies in the UK.
Wait, isn't Mario a monarchist though.
Well, they made an adaptation. They took real, real people's stories and turned them into monarchist propaganda.
Yep, hmmm yeah. I don't know, Margaret, I don't know if I can support pro monarchist propaganda. Oh no, that's not true. I like Lord of the Rings anyway.
Continue, all right, so the Angry Brigade they like blowing stuff up, they never kill anyone, Okay, huh.
Do they do? They successfully blow things up though, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, the Angry Brigade spends a while blowing stuff up in the UK.
They're like, we're angry and they blow stuff up, like fuck you thing. I clearly haven't read the book about it. Yeah, he pretty much got arrested because they were like, well, some anarchists blew some stuff up. We know an anarchist who once tried to blow some stuff up.
I mean yeah, that is like, that is definitely like an OPSEEC concern being like, well he was a brigade.
Oh okay, oh he was all right, but he was friends with them all. So the other reason he got arrested, yeah, is that after they arrested them, he like showed up at their house and so they arrested him. But he was like, well, he's just friends of them, because they're the anarchists in the UK, like the Clash only anyway sex pistols I know, punk I swear anyway. So there's a six month trial for the Angry Brigade. It gets called the longest trial trial in UK history. This is not true.
Also six months, I mean yeah, I'm used to like American trials which are like, I know, he's oh wow, the six months trial. That's so convenient.
I know.
I read that and I was like, holy shit, they're really fast over there. I thought one of our whole things was right to a speedy trial. And I like Google like longest trial and there's like just a lot of answers that aren't the Angry Brigade. Sure whatever, there's a long trial and during it eight thousand people bought in war pins that said I'm in the Angry Brigade.
Amazing. Yeah, that's great, that's that's fun.
Yeah.
Stuart Christie stayed involved in anarchism his whole life. He helped restart an old an organization, the Anarchist Black Cross, which is more than one hundred years old. Now it's a prisoner support organization. He campaigned for the release of other Spanish anarchists prisoners and got a bunch of them out to London, organizing with them there. He married another comrade. They had a kid. He lived on a tiny island for a while and they ran that island's newspaper. In
twenty twenty. He died of lung cancer at the age of seventy four, and I'll end this chunk with a quote from him that I like, without freedom there would be no equality, and without equality, no freedom, and without struggle there would be neither. And so I don't know, rest in peace to it, Christie.
It sounds like he lived kind of like an ideal anarchist life almost like he did he got to do, He got to be involved in a lot of really cool things to try out, a lot of pretty cool things. Didn't spend that much time in prison altogether. Yeah, it got to like die of like relatively like natural causes at age, like seventy four, seventy two, seventy four, seventy four, Like that's yeah, that's pretty good. Like what more can you hope for?
Yeah? Now, he he did a fucking ton of stuff too, like his writings, his translations. He actually did the translation of the book Sabote that I was the main source for last weeks.
So I guessing he eventually learned other way.
Yeah, I'm willing to bet the three years in Spanish prison maybe taught him a little bit of it Spanish and Codzalan.
Yeah.
Yeah, but there is an award for best assassination during the Franco regime. It might win the award for best assassination period and it goes This award goes to the Boss Separatists and specifically it goes to the Bosque Space Program And I'm going to tell you about them on Wednesday on.
The next episode. Oh wow, yeah see. And now I have to sit here for like a day and a half just in this chair. Yeah, well, Margaret, watch is me al via my video feed here until we can talk about it again. So I know, I have to just wait as long as you guys have to.
Yeah, So if you'll be here keeping his company, we'll order in always we'll use do we have an advertiser who's like, a, we'll just use our gold coins? Yeah?
I bet, I bet? I bet it can trade my ranking coin for for currency with the you know, like door ash will calm be like, hey, can I can use this as a tip, And he'll be like, what are you doing? Get away from me, and then that'll be a nice exchange.
Yeah, and you'll just walk towards the door going chut chut chut chumba. I don't know if I'm allowed to do that. I guess I did. We'll find out, but we know what else we'll find out, Garrison Davis, We'll find out your plugs.
Oh well. As people probably know, I work on a
podcast called it Could Happen Here. I've been the past few months have been covering the happenings in Atlanta related to the Stop Coop City movement, so so that that is still ongoing as a time of recording, as the time of publishing, probably a lot has actually changed because there's the city council gooes to a proof funding on the fifth, So who knows what I'll be there, but I'll keep I'll keep keep giving updates on the cauld Happen Here podcast in these next few months as that develops.
And then also you can find me posting mostly mostly not very good jokes on Twitter at Hungry bow Tie.
Sophie. What do you got ah?
If you did not know, we now have an AD pre version available of all of our cool Zone Media podcasts. It's exclusively on Apple podcasts. It is called Cooler Zone Media. It'll be linked on social media, maybe episode description or just search cooler Zone Media on Apple Podcasts if you would like to subscribe. Free version still available everywhere with ads.
I know what I want to plug. I want to plug the number city. How have you already been hearing?
Absolutely?
But this very month, I'm kickstarting a tabletop role playing game, and as of this recording, we met our kickstarter goal and have exceeded it within like three hours of posting it this morning.
And but Margaret, do you have any stretch goals? We do have stretch goals. Oh boy. Yeah.
If we reach twenty thousand dollars, which we probably will by the time that I go to bed tonight, we'll add three new character classes to the tabletop role playing game. Do you want to play a Clacker?
Wait?
Actually, don't remember which classes we're going to add. I don't have my notes in front of me.
I never do.
But if we reach forty thousand dollars, I have to write a novella based in the world. So if you like tabletop role playing games and you like trying and failing to turn dictators into multiple smaller pieces, you might like this game. Because you can't go to prison for playing it. You can probably play it in prison.
I don't know about that, Margaret. They are they are pretty strict on on what books can be let in.
Yeah, a lot of people do play role playing games in prison, But it might involve making a different version of it for it anyway, that's what I have to. Just google the number city Kickstarter and you'll find it and we'll see you on Wednesday when we talk about the Space program.
They Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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