Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to cool People did cool stuff. You're
Speaker 1: a weekly reminder that we can choose to do noble
Speaker 1: and wonderful things with our brief lives that do earnest,
Speaker 1: that earnest.
Speaker 2: Just earnest enough, in my opinion.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. Today's guest it's Garrison. Hi, Garrison.
Speaker 3: Hello, I'm about to take the sincerity pill.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm sorry you allergic?
Speaker 3: Uh No, I don't think I'm allergic to any medication.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, that's that's that's how I phrase it. Whenever
Speaker 1: I go into the doctor, they're like, you allergic to anything,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I don't know. I hope not. I
Speaker 1: hope it's not whatever you're about to give me, right.
Speaker 1: Garrison Davis is a podcaster.
Speaker 3: I have. I have made a few podcasts now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Our producer is Sophie, who also makes podcasts like.
Speaker 2: So fucking many, so fucking many some with Garrison, which
Speaker 2: is nice.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 1: And you know who else makes podcasts. It's Ian are
Speaker 1: our audio engineer.
Speaker 2: Ian and I have made some beautiful podcasts together.
Speaker 1: This is true, Yeah, including this one you're listening to. Hi, Hi, hyen.
Speaker 2: Garrison Garretson.
Speaker 3: Oh hi, Ian, Yes, sorry, I forgot that I'm involved
Speaker 3: and I'm included in that.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, you are in everyone's.
Speaker 3: I'm so happy Garrets here.
Speaker 1: And our theme music was written for us by Unwoman.
Speaker 1: So this week the cool people are Garrison. Have you
Speaker 1: ever heard of.
Speaker 3: People like the concept?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I have, I have heard of it. I don't think
Speaker 3: I believe in it, but I have. I am aware
Speaker 3: of the concept.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, okay, what about the people of Spain?
Speaker 3: Is this gonna be a is this okay? Is this
Speaker 3: gonna be like a Spanish Civil War thing?
Speaker 1: You know? For once, We're actually not talking about the
Speaker 1: Spanish Civil War?
Speaker 3: Okay, I just know it's it's come up so much
Speaker 3: on this on this show.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, now it's what happened after the Spanish
Speaker 1: Civil War adjacent yeah yeah, the sequels post.
Speaker 2: Same same, same like universe, different season.
Speaker 1: Yeah, same antagonists and protagonists. Today's protagonists, though, well, this
Speaker 1: week's protagonists are basically the people of Spain who fought
Speaker 1: against their fascist dictator Franco after he became their fascist dictator.
Speaker 1: Usually we talked about them before he became their fascist dictator,
Speaker 1: but last week and this week we're talking about what
Speaker 1: heck time after we've talked about this guy Franco a
Speaker 1: bunch before. I assume you've heard of him at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm familiar with mister Franco.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the guy who invaded Spain overthrew a democratic
Speaker 1: republic and said quote I'm it is a paraphrase quote
Speaker 1: because I forgot to look up the actual quote. It's
Speaker 1: basically this, I'm willing to kill half of Spain to
Speaker 1: rule the other half. And then he lived up to
Speaker 1: that quote, while the quote unquote great powers of democracy
Speaker 1: not only stood by and let it happen, but, as
Speaker 1: we're going to explore this week, actively enabled it. Last
Speaker 1: week we talked about an anarchist bank robber named al
Speaker 1: Kiko who funded militias, and okay, during that I suggested
Speaker 1: that Kiko might be a pun. It's short for Francisco
Speaker 1: if it's spelled a different way Kiko, but his name
Speaker 1: was spelled q u I CEO has pronounced the same
Speaker 1: and I was like, I think this is a pun,
Speaker 1: and an astute listener told me it is, and Eli
Speaker 1: Kiko means the cute. So he was a bank robber
Speaker 1: who was the cute. He would show up to people
Speaker 1: and say so Aliqiko, and then they would have to
Speaker 1: give him all of their money because he showed up
Speaker 1: and said I am the cute.
Speaker 3: That's pretty funny.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 2: I was going to say that's super cute, but.
Speaker 1: That is, yeah, super cute. I don't don't know cattalan
Speaker 1: to say super cute. Okay, so before we talk about
Speaker 1: the people fought Franco, we're gonna talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about Franco. This isn't like a like, we're not gonna
Speaker 1: talk about where he was born.
Speaker 2: We need the context, Magpie, That's.
Speaker 1: What exactly needed, I know. So Franco is often painted
Speaker 1: as the nice fasci fascist dictator of Europe. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like he's the good one. Yeah, exactly, exactly. He
Speaker 1: hasn't been spoiled by the bad apples of Mussolini and Hitler.
Speaker 3: He made the fascists wear gay little outfits.
Speaker 1: Oh they did have the best outfits they did.
Speaker 3: Which is honestly hard because all of the fascists paid
Speaker 3: a lot of attention to fascism. So sorry, get a
Speaker 3: lot of attention to fashion fashion fascism. But yeah, that'll
Speaker 3: be the Spanish ones definitely went went pretty hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, although I was I was reading this historian and
Speaker 1: by that I mean twitter person talking about how actually
Speaker 1: the average fascist just looked like a tool with like
Speaker 1: sure of course, you know, like but anyway, they were
Speaker 1: capable of some good fashion and the idea.
Speaker 3: Of aesthetics that is a big part of fascism. It
Speaker 3: doesn't like, like you say, like most American fascists look
Speaker 3: like shit. They look like, they do not look good,
Speaker 3: but there is like an ideal of fashion that that
Speaker 3: that they do that they do go towards right.
Speaker 1: And Franco he ends up being the sort of like
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this more, I think in the next
Speaker 1: half of this, but he ends up the like national
Speaker 1: Catholic and so it's like very like trad wifey a
Speaker 1: lot of what folks are doing, which is a shame
Speaker 1: because tradwife is a nice aesthetic and a terrible concept. Okay, anyway,
Speaker 1: so Franco, we're not talking about his clothing choice for
Speaker 1: other people. We're talking about how he murdered a lot
Speaker 1: of people. He was a fucking monster. He was not
Speaker 1: the nice fascist. He was a bad fascist who lived
Speaker 1: longer than the other fascists. Author Murray Bukchin estimated that
Speaker 1: he systematically slaughtered between seven hundred thousand and eight hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty thousand people during and after the Spanish Civil War,
Speaker 1: so like the nineteen thirty six to early nineteen forties era,
Speaker 1: and reduced the executions only once Hitler started losing World
Speaker 1: War Two. Basically at that point Franco was like, oh,
Speaker 1: we should look good, because before that he was like
Speaker 1: trying to look good to Hitler, and then he was like, actually, oh.
Speaker 3: Hitler's gonna be kind of going out of style. I
Speaker 3: now have to appeal to the liberal democracies. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that is that's Franco in a fucking nutshell. So he
Speaker 3: stopped mass executing quite as much in like nineteen forty
Speaker 3: three or so. More conservative estimates say that he only
Speaker 3: systematically murdered like two hundred thousand people. But he was
Speaker 3: a dictator for decades who put an incredible amount of
Speaker 3: effort into covering up his crimes. That's like one of
Speaker 3: the things that he's actually like, really it at like
Speaker 3: Stalin does this too, right, But Stalin's sort of it's
Speaker 3: like almost the joke where it's like everyone's like disappearing
Speaker 3: out of the.
Speaker 1: Photos or the pictures. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Franco was really
Speaker 1: fucking good at covering up crime in Madrid. He had
Speaker 1: five permanent courts after the Civil War, he had five
Speaker 1: permanent courts trying and executing people in batches of twenty
Speaker 1: five to thirty or trying and sentencing to death people
Speaker 1: in batches of twenty five to thirty. Basically anyone who
Speaker 1: is accused of being involved in a leftist organization or Freemasonry.
Speaker 1: You really hated Freemasonry.
Speaker 3: A lot of the fascists do. It's weird because the
Speaker 3: Freemasons aren't like sometimes they're kind of fasci I know.
Speaker 1: It is a politically neutral thing to be a Freemason.
Speaker 1: There are people on the right and the left who
Speaker 1: are Freemasons, but not in fascist Spain, then there's just
Speaker 1: no Freemasons because you just get murdered. Prisons were filled
Speaker 1: the fourteen times capacity, which is impressive of coming from
Speaker 1: the United States, which is notoriously full of overfilled, overcrowded prisons.
Speaker 1: People spent years on death row and they were executed
Speaker 1: in bashes of at least three hundred at a time.
Speaker 1: And this is some like national Catholic bullshit. They spent
Speaker 1: their last night in the prison chapel on like a
Speaker 1: stone floor, just like forced to sit in this chapel
Speaker 1: before they die at dawn. They were bound and gagged
Speaker 1: so no one could hear their last words lest people
Speaker 1: revolt when they hear people saying Viva anarchy or whatever
Speaker 1: the fuck you know. Yeah, they were marched single file
Speaker 1: across a gang plank I believe, like over a mass grave.
Speaker 1: But just like in a graveyard where they would be killed,
Speaker 1: they were executed by machine gun officers with revolvers finished
Speaker 1: off any survivors. It was not nice to be in
Speaker 1: Spain under Franco's rule.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were A lot of people were
Speaker 1: killed were sort of random, right, like the Freemasons. I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe maybe by the time, maybe I'm going
Speaker 1: to be doing a whole episode about like how Freemasons
Speaker 1: like brought down Franco or something. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: but a lot of the people that he killed were
Speaker 1: fighting back. Because the thing is, and the more I
Speaker 1: do this research, a lot of people fought back against
Speaker 1: this guy, right, A lot of people from different parts
Speaker 1: of Spain and different like ideological backgrounds, were like, actually,
Speaker 1: we don't like having a fascist dictatorship. Resistance in these
Speaker 1: first years of his rule. In the words of Frank,
Speaker 1: one of Franco's right hand man, it quote disrupted communications,
Speaker 1: demoralized folk, wrecked our economy, shattered our unity, and discredited
Speaker 1: us in the eyes of the outside world. And it
Speaker 1: didn't kill Franco. And so people tend to like think
Speaker 1: of it as like not successful. And that's like the
Speaker 1: main that's my thesis.
Speaker 3: Of this.
Speaker 1: Is this show that I totally didn't really go to college.
Speaker 1: That is my thesis statement is that the people brought
Speaker 1: down Franco cheologically.
Speaker 3: Thank you to you.
Speaker 1: I had this nightmare the other day, or I was
Speaker 1: sort of a regular dream, but I had this nightmare
Speaker 1: where I decided I was going to get a doctorate.
Speaker 1: Oh scary, yeah, I know. And in the dream I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't have an undergrad degree. Why am
Speaker 1: I doing this? And the only reason I came up
Speaker 1: with was then people would have to call me doctor.
Speaker 3: Many such cases.
Speaker 2: Listen, all the cool people I know that have doctor
Speaker 2: degrees don't want to be called doctor and like only
Speaker 2: bring it up when absolutely necessary. It's very funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I I woke up without that desire anyway.
Speaker 1: That's what we're here to talk about is Margaret goes
Speaker 1: to school. It's possible that this resistance not to Margaret
Speaker 1: going to college, but this resistance to Franco's fascist regime
Speaker 1: is part of why Franco later had to open up
Speaker 1: the economy, which led to the death spiral of Spanish fascism.
Speaker 1: So it was actually very effective. So the fighting really
Speaker 1: started in earnest in nineteen forty three, when gorillas in
Speaker 1: the hills were like, oh shit, maybe Hitler's going to lose,
Speaker 1: and everyone got really excited. It will not Franco. Franco
Speaker 1: didn't really get excited by Franco's own admission, and he
Speaker 1: had every reason and the capacity to downplay this. There
Speaker 1: were at least two thousand battles between the Civil Guard
Speaker 1: his cops or whatever, his stormtroopers, and the resistance between
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three and nineteen fifty two. So there's two
Speaker 1: thousand battles during that time period. At least, I didn't
Speaker 1: know it went on that hard for so long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: That's one of the things that really I get really
Speaker 1: excited about. Tens of thousands of people this part isn't exciting.
Speaker 1: I mean, the good guys lost, right. This is like
Speaker 1: Star Wars, only Empire wins for a very long time.
Speaker 1: But tens of thousand people were arrested during this for
Speaker 1: connection to the resistance. At least one thousand civil guards
Speaker 1: died on active active duty during that time. There's like
Speaker 1: not really good records like Franco's like, oh, they killed
Speaker 1: like a hundred of us or something, and then like
Speaker 1: historians later have to sit there and be like, there's
Speaker 1: like a thousand extra deaths here. We think that this
Speaker 1: is you know, civil guards who died. Yeah, fascists whatever.
Speaker 1: Fascists would never lie about their numbers. No, that they're
Speaker 1: very upstanding, honest, fourth right people. They've told me that themselves,
Speaker 1: Third Right people.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So nineteen forty three, it kicks off with the gorillas
Speaker 1: in the Hill, but there's like tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: anarchists and communists and other Spanish refugees in France who
Speaker 1: are busy fighting for France's liberation from the Nazis. Then
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty four, the anarchists liberated Paris and the
Speaker 1: Spanish exiles came back to Spain ready to function up.
Speaker 3: That is one big difference. Whenever I'm i I have
Speaker 3: a few friends in the European continent region, and I'm
Speaker 3: always shocked at how close everything is together, Like oh,
Speaker 3: you can just like go to other countries in like
Speaker 3: a day, or like you like multiple countries in a day.
Speaker 3: And here I am like planning a cross country road trip.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm crossing so much more territory that like
Speaker 3: ednyone would ever cross in Europe.
Speaker 1: Oh totally, yeah, no, this is like people can walk
Speaker 1: these distances.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, no, it's wild, like there's there's so
Speaker 3: much more options for like like cross pollination. Yeah, that
Speaker 3: just there's always it always surprises me being like, oh,
Speaker 3: you could take the train to five different countries in
Speaker 3: like two hours. Yeah. Oh wow.
Speaker 1: You live in Connecticut and New York is at war,
Speaker 1: so you're like, well, I guess I'm gonna go to
Speaker 1: New York.
Speaker 3: Down in New York. I'll just bike over and kill
Speaker 3: some fascists and bike back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. There is a mountain range in the way,
Speaker 1: but like you know, people can move through it. So
Speaker 1: the first thing that they did or one of the
Speaker 1: first things that they did in nineteen four before is
Speaker 1: that the Communist Party, the exiled Spanish Communist Party in France.
Speaker 1: They organized three thousand guerrillas to invade Fascist Spain and
Speaker 1: the attack was repulsed. But it was actually and I
Speaker 1: think we talked about this a little bit last week,
Speaker 1: but the plan was actually really good and it was
Speaker 1: two attacks. In my mind when I first read this,
Speaker 1: I was like, they thought they were going to take
Speaker 1: Spain with three thousand people. They just like lost it
Speaker 1: with like substantially more than three thousand people. But their
Speaker 1: whole goal, their whole strategy, was, well, fascism is losing.
Speaker 1: There is no way that the Western powers are going
Speaker 1: to allow fascism in Western Europe. All we have to
Speaker 1: do is go put in a like basically build a
Speaker 1: beachhead into Spain that invaded two different areas, will set
Speaker 1: up a government in exile and will recreate the republic.
Speaker 3: Right, and then they'll get backing from other liberal democracies
Speaker 3: and they'll be able to take over the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, And unfortunately Franco was ready for them, and
Speaker 1: so they did not even succeed at stage one of
Speaker 1: setting up a successful beachhead and a government in exile.
Speaker 1: But more than that, the other governments were like, we
Speaker 1: don't fucking care. Fuck you, we're tired.
Speaker 3: Just yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: And I don't know whether it's I don't know what
Speaker 1: to agree, it's they're tired into what degree they're like,
Speaker 1: we don't care. Franco is sort of neutral, and that
Speaker 1: was like, and everyone's a little bit starting to cozy
Speaker 1: up to him. It's like kind of blurry. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about this over the course of like basically, the Western
Speaker 1: powers slowly start accepting him, but more in the fifties
Speaker 1: than the forties.
Speaker 3: As long as he keeps the machinery of capital going,
Speaker 3: then it's it's mostly fine, Yeah.
Speaker 1: As long as people in Spain are buying TVs and
Speaker 1: show who fucking cares and well and also increasingly making
Speaker 1: the TVs. But okay, so these attacks fail, but the
Speaker 1: people who do that, they bolster the gorillas who are
Speaker 1: in the hills and have been there and have been
Speaker 1: fighting since nineteen forty three. They took like a four
Speaker 1: year break to not get murdered, and they start fucking
Speaker 1: shit up as the Spanish monkey, as we talked about
Speaker 1: last time. And so you know, Western powers don't help.
Speaker 1: I want to quote an anarchist political prisoner from this
Speaker 1: time period about this. His name is Miguel Garcia. Garcia quote.
Speaker 1: When we lost the war, those who fought on became
Speaker 1: the resistance. But to the world, the resistance had become criminals,
Speaker 1: for Franco made the laws, even if when dealing with
Speaker 1: political opponents he chose to break the laws established by
Speaker 1: the constitution, and the world still regards us as criminals.
Speaker 1: When we are imprisoned, liberals are not interested, for we
Speaker 1: are quote terrorists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, good thing we learned our lesson there.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, everyone is aware that laws are
Speaker 1: written by the victors and have no relevance to morality.
Speaker 1: They're entirely unrelated. Crime is not inherently good. Following the
Speaker 1: law is not inherently good. Everyone knows that.
Speaker 3: So true, Just me and all my friends agree.
Speaker 1: So the Western world wasn't going to help end Spanish fascism.
Speaker 1: It took the Spanish people, plus some French and Italian
Speaker 1: comrades here and there to bring him down. In the end. Okay,
Speaker 1: in the end, it took Parkinson's disease to bring down Franco.
Speaker 3: Comrade disease. Yeah, support to Parkinson's disease. So I almost
Speaker 3: wrote that.
Speaker 1: And then I was like, oh, my granddad died like
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, parkins and stuff. No, no,
Speaker 1: I mean like, but I still I was trying to
Speaker 1: figure out with Yeah, anyway, surprised there wasn't TV.
Speaker 3: I'll take the hit. I'll take the hit for you there,
Speaker 3: all right, all right?
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 2: Usually usually it's comrade tuberculosis.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: But you know, one hundred years, one hundred years earlier,
Speaker 1: he would have gone out from TV. But okay, So
Speaker 1: the people paved the way for the end of the dictatorship,
Speaker 1: and they did a damn fine job of it. This time,
Speaker 1: we're going to focus a little less on the bank
Speaker 1: robberies and the fundraising, because we talked about that last
Speaker 1: week with the Francisco Sabote fascists. We're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: some other folks instead. Fascists gave no fucks about morality,
Speaker 1: and the counter operations against the gorillas were brutal. By
Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven, you get counter gorilla bands who dressed
Speaker 1: like gorillas and murdered the gorillas and also went around
Speaker 1: doing like false flagshit like murdering random people and blaming
Speaker 1: it on the gorillas. By nineteen fifty two, the gorilla
Speaker 1: portion of the resistance was mostly done, with just tons
Speaker 1: and tons of dead resistance fighters. The last gorilla standing
Speaker 1: was Jose Castro Viega el Pilato, the pilot I believe,
Speaker 1: who died in combat against fascism in March nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 3: But night.
Speaker 1: By nineteen fifty three, the US signed a military and
Speaker 1: economic assistance treaty with Franco. By nineteen fifty five, franco
Speaker 1: Is welcomed Franco as Spain was welcomed into the United Nations.
Speaker 1: And it's a good thing. Gorilla fighting wasn't the only
Speaker 1: thing that happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's I it was interesting you were talking
Speaker 3: about the the the counter gorilla forces and like the
Speaker 3: and like the gorilla psyops. Yeah, which is I know,
Speaker 3: people of people have like there's always like sometimes like
Speaker 3: conspiracies about like this person in block is a secret
Speaker 3: infiltrating the person's matching these windows is actually of blah
Speaker 3: blah blah blah whatever, which is usually all take a nonsense. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but it has been has been interesting. There are there
Speaker 3: are certain like there are certain white white power groups
Speaker 3: that are that that have been adopting more black block
Speaker 3: like clothing, not to like impersonate Antifa, but just because
Speaker 3: it's a good taxtic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very good tactic.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So we're seeing like Nazis in there, like Nazi
Speaker 3: Block versus versus like anti fascists in black bloc. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think Rubbert Rundo's groups and some I mean some
Speaker 3: of Patriot Front, but there's there's there's is a bit
Speaker 3: more dorky. But some of some of the more like
Speaker 3: Fight Club Rubber Rundo sque groups have been have been
Speaker 3: using stuff that's more more similar just to like black
Speaker 3: block or gray block. There was another group like a
Speaker 3: month ago that was doing a drag protest in all
Speaker 3: all black, but they had like they had like red
Speaker 3: masks on.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's interesting after after you know, years of coverage
Speaker 3: of black block being pretty pretty popular in like national news,
Speaker 3: we're seeing some of the right adopt some of those
Speaker 3: tactics right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very effective tactic. And you know, I
Speaker 1: guess if you if if the government figures out that
Speaker 1: if you like live in the hills, you can hide
Speaker 1: and shoot people effectively, then at some point some people
Speaker 1: in the government or me, be like, we can hide
Speaker 1: in the hills and shoot people effectively too, you know.
Speaker 1: But if you want to hide in the hills, run
Speaker 1: and shoot run the.
Speaker 3: Door salesman who's going to sell you these products and
Speaker 3: services the chance, so you don't need to shoot him. Instead,
Speaker 3: you can just listen here, Yeah, thus thus de escalating
Speaker 3: any future conflict with solicitors coming to your door.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unless you subscribed to the Apple Premium version of
Speaker 2: the show, then there.
Speaker 1: Is no hope for you. Yeah, because if you listen
Speaker 1: to the Apple Premium version of the show where you
Speaker 1: don't get ads, you're still gonna get ad transitions.
Speaker 3: One day the Casper mattress man's gonna walk up to
Speaker 3: your house. You're like, nope, I'm paying to avoid those ads. Sorry, mister,
Speaker 3: you're just gonna blast a shotgun through the door, and
Speaker 3: they're good at prison for like fifteen years.
Speaker 1: Except that Casper mattresses are bullet I don't think I
Speaker 1: can say that.
Speaker 3: Just make sure holding it over your vital regions when
Speaker 3: you're carrying the box to the door. As long as
Speaker 3: you have a turn a kit, you can save your libs.
Speaker 3: But as long as you have your tour so covered.
Speaker 3: Yeah Jesus Christ. Okay, your ads or not ads.
Speaker 1: Depending on your preference. And we're back and we're talking
Speaker 1: very seriously. Okay, So speaking about people's vital organs and
Speaker 1: their continued existence.
Speaker 2: Wow, what a podcast transition today.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about let's talk about some assassination attempts.
Speaker 3: Oh, I am always down to talk about assassination attempts.
Speaker 3: I always One of the things that I think about
Speaker 3: more often than I should is why is it there're
Speaker 3: more political assassinations? Because it seems I don't know how
Speaker 3: much solid question, but like I am not on this,
Speaker 3: it seems to be a pretty effective tactic.
Speaker 1: So okay, I will say historically and again, historically, political
Speaker 1: assassinations attend tots, as I sometimes get called, are a
Speaker 1: roll of the dice.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes it is.
Speaker 1: It is a complete crapshoot about whether what comes after
Speaker 1: is better or worse.
Speaker 3: You're introducing a chaos variant, you don't know, like it's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: but when you have Franco shoot the Archduke Fransford to Dad,
Speaker 3: I don't know what's gonna happen next.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that one didn't go great?
Speaker 3: Worst second, what's the worst that could happen.
Speaker 1: That one didn't go great. Later this week we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about one that goes really well. But first
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about someones that didn't make things worse.
Speaker 1: They just didn't succeed because yeah, spoiler or alert, only
Speaker 1: Parkinson's assassinates Franco successfully. So let's talk about the anarchist
Speaker 1: air Force of nineteen forty eight. This is not the
Speaker 1: most successful thing that anarchists have ever done, but it's interesting.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you told me there was an anarchist
Speaker 3: air force, I wouldn't immediately think, oh, yeah, that's gonna
Speaker 3: go well, that's good, that's gonna hey.
Speaker 1: I think my main reason we didn't have an anarchist
Speaker 1: air force in the Spanish Civil War is that the
Speaker 1: Soviets were the only people who were providing planes and
Speaker 1: like training pilots. And actually read about some anarchists who
Speaker 1: were like, can I can I just like join the
Speaker 1: Communist Party for a minute, just learn how to fly
Speaker 1: in Soviet Union and then come back. But oh god,
Speaker 1: that's actually probably how the well, let's just tell the story.
Speaker 1: So there are tens of thousands of anarchists in exile
Speaker 1: in France. They said up a bunch of organizations. These
Speaker 1: are very much the organization type of anarchist. Half of
Speaker 1: the history books about this are like basically reading the
Speaker 1: meeting notes of these fucking organizations, where they're like, of course,
Speaker 1: oh well, this three letter acronym didn't really like the
Speaker 1: thing that the committee of the such and such of
Speaker 1: the other three letter acronym did, and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: do not care about that.
Speaker 3: Oh. Imagine if all of like the anarchist org signal
Speaker 3: chats just got turned into these like fifty years and
Speaker 3: someone started like sort through and decipher what these meeting
Speaker 3: notes are, yeah, and then decides to present it as
Speaker 3: if that's what's interesting instead of I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 3: about some people who got a plane and try to
Speaker 3: blow up Franco. That's interesting or interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So one of these organizations they set up a
Speaker 1: quote conspiratorial commission, which is the commission.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, that sounds.
Speaker 1: Right now. Mostly apparently this group, and this might have
Speaker 1: just been some some ship, some shade that was being
Speaker 1: thrown by the historian who I think knew these people.
Speaker 1: Mostly they set around at coffee and were like, hmm,
Speaker 1: we should have a revolution don't you think that's also
Speaker 1: what I do in my conspiratorial coalition.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 1: And then these people have also like seen thousands of
Speaker 1: their comrades die and have personally charged at machine gun nests.
Speaker 1: So they can sit around at coffee and talk some bullshit.
Speaker 1: I feel that way, and I've been like shot with
Speaker 1: less lethals and spent a couple of nights in jail.
Speaker 3: You know, they're not going to get hit with the
Speaker 3: armchair anarchist allegations.
Speaker 1: No, no, except by some of the historians who have
Speaker 1: also charged a machine gun nests. But I am not
Speaker 1: in a place to say such. Okay, So there is
Speaker 1: one guy in the group, and his name is Lariano
Speaker 1: Serata Santos, and he's cool. He was in his forties
Speaker 1: at this point, and he had a plan, and he
Speaker 1: was his old working class anarchist. He'd spent his life
Speaker 1: working on the railroad and fementing anarchist revolution and at
Speaker 1: this point, at least after the fall of the Spanish Republic,
Speaker 1: he's a forger and that's his like main deal, like
Speaker 1: a like metal forging. No, no, like during the Nazi occupation,
Speaker 1: he printed hundreds of official documents for juice cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he've printed money, printed ideas, he printed whatever you needed.
Speaker 1: This guy's providing it and so probably more impactful than
Speaker 1: anything else he did in his life. But like something
Speaker 1: that's like a lot of the anarchists participation in the
Speaker 1: resistance is like less documented, right, But he printed hundreds
Speaker 1: of hundreds official documents for Jews and France. He altered
Speaker 1: their racial identity on their legal papers and saved their lives.
Speaker 1: So already he's like in into the cool people heaven.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: But now it's nineteen forty eight. World War two has
Speaker 1: been over for a bit. Franco hasn't yet legitimized his
Speaker 1: authority over Spain, right, because everything is still very much
Speaker 1: in play. So Sonata comes up with a plan. His
Speaker 1: plan's very simple. You get an airplane and you drop
Speaker 1: a bunch of bombs on Franco. Step one, yeah, get
Speaker 1: an airplane, right, So step one is getting airplane in
Speaker 1: a pilot, and so they pick this tiny little plane
Speaker 1: because they figure there's this boat race, this fancy regatta.
Speaker 1: I had to look up regatta and it means fancy
Speaker 1: boat race, which is what I thought, but I wasn't sure.
Speaker 1: Not a regular part of my daily life.
Speaker 3: Yoh, you don't hang out at the regatta every weekend.
Speaker 1: No, not as much, not anymore, okay, not since I'm
Speaker 1: an immortal vampire and I went to this one.
Speaker 3: You don't hot hoist the black flag at the regatta.
Speaker 1: And so they get this like fancy bougie tiny plane, right,
Speaker 1: or that's their plan. They're like, we want this fancy
Speaker 1: bougie tiny plane because it'll fit in with all the
Speaker 1: other like tiny planes hanging out among the boats at
Speaker 1: the regatta that Franco Is gonna officiate. Sure, they picked
Speaker 1: a pilot named Primativo Perez Gomez who'd been a fighter
Speaker 1: pilot during the Civil War, so there was anarchists thank
Speaker 1: you flying okay anyway, yeah, yeah, sure. They picked a
Speaker 1: plane that they could buy in Paris, and for a
Speaker 1: tiny little plane, it was very modern. It could land
Speaker 1: in only one hundred and sixty meters, which is fucking ridiculous,
Speaker 1: Like currently the runway for a small plane, like a
Speaker 1: tiny plane is two thousand meters. And wow, now it's
Speaker 1: not to say that this plane is like designed to
Speaker 1: land in one hundred and sixty meters. Sure, sure, sure,
Speaker 1: Why when they go on like a test flight. They're like, hey,
Speaker 1: h could you just We're like totally not sketchy when
Speaker 1: we're buying this, but could you just like land it
Speaker 1: really really short, just as short as you can. I
Speaker 1: just want to see how short it's coming fun for fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the guy's like that's illegal, and they're like, we
Speaker 1: won't buy it unless you do it, and he's like okay, okay,
Speaker 1: based based yeah, and uh so they're like, all right,
Speaker 1: now we have a plane that is a perfect plane
Speaker 1: for doing a murder and then ditching in a field
Speaker 1: because you can land in a fucking field. They get
Speaker 1: one more person along for the ride El Valencia. This
Speaker 1: was not a small conspiracy. At least twenty people knew
Speaker 1: what was happening. No snitches, this entire plan.
Speaker 3: Whoof for twenty people, that's pretty solid, and there's like okay,
Speaker 3: So they bring in a French guy as the buyer,
Speaker 3: since they need a French citizen to be the one
Speaker 3: to buy the plane.
Speaker 1: They spent one point six million francs on the plane.
Speaker 1: I did not successfully find the value of this old money,
Speaker 1: but it's not a small amount of money. The anarchists
Speaker 1: have a fair I mean they were running a good
Speaker 1: chunk of a country immediately before this. Right, they're all
Speaker 1: like working class and working. It's like ironmongers and shit,
Speaker 1: but they like have access to some money. There's also
Speaker 1: bank robbers and shit like that funding them. Right, So
Speaker 1: they buy the plane. A pilot at the local airfield
Speaker 1: when they go and buy it, recognize the Spanish anarchists
Speaker 1: from their bravery or during the French resistance, because the
Speaker 1: guy who's just like flying around in the bougie little
Speaker 1: airfield plane place where the pilots hang out, and.
Speaker 3: Then you see then someone recognizes you, which idea which
Speaker 3: was probably a nightmare scenario.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and he takes them aside. He's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you really quick. And he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you might want to be careful flying over the Pyrenees
Speaker 1: into Spain. They're watching the shit out of that and
Speaker 1: I'll shoot you down. And they're like, whoa, why would
Speaker 1: we clearly a bunch of Spanish anarchists be planning on
Speaker 1: taking this plane to Spain. We would never never do
Speaker 1: such a thing. Still, no snitches, everyone knows what they're doing.
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they refitted the plane with bomb doors by involving
Speaker 1: yet another guy a mechanic, and I guess fabricator. They
Speaker 1: have a whole bunch of bombs because they'd fought in
Speaker 1: the French resistance and the whole time with the French
Speaker 1: resistance is happening, especially I think a lot of these
Speaker 1: bombs come when the Italians retreated, but then also when
Speaker 1: the Germans would retreat, the anarchists would be like and mine,
Speaker 1: and mine and mine, and just go pick up all
Speaker 1: the bombs, just like go dumbstirring for spare boss. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like machine guns and shit. They decide in the
Speaker 1: end not to bring the machine gun. You know, they're
Speaker 1: like looking through and picking which bombs to bring. The
Speaker 1: morning of three anarchists, four incendiary bombs and twenty shrapnel
Speaker 1: bombs get on the plane. One of the rebels flying
Speaker 1: one of the anarchists was the propagandist whose job was
Speaker 1: to drop handbills over the crowd. And also it just
Speaker 1: said camera. I don't know whether it was film or photograph,
Speaker 1: but they were going to photograph or film them blowing
Speaker 1: up Franco based journalist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, based journalists piloting the ball plane. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there's another guy whose job is to have
Speaker 1: binoculars and like look out for everything. And then there's
Speaker 1: the pilot that's pretty funny. And in the morning they're like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna cover up the French flag on
Speaker 1: the plane so we better fit in with the small
Speaker 1: planes that we're expected to mingle with. But they don't
Speaker 1: have time and they're running late, so they don't cover
Speaker 1: This saves their lives.
Speaker 3: What this could be such? This could be such a
Speaker 3: good like suspense thriller, like no with the guy at
Speaker 3: the airfield recognizes you and you're like, oh no, we're
Speaker 3: we're we're about to get gone, and then you could
Speaker 3: give it a piece of crucial advice. Yeah, and then
Speaker 3: you're like, we don't have enough time to paint over
Speaker 3: the French flag, and then it turns out to actually
Speaker 3: be the thing that saves you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they don't fly over the Pyrenees, and I don't
Speaker 1: know whether it was because that guy's advice or not.
Speaker 1: They fly over the water and partly because they're trying
Speaker 1: to go to the north coast of Spain. Anyway, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty logical way to do it. They approach Spain
Speaker 1: over the water and there's two battleships standing guard over
Speaker 1: the regatta and they're tracking the plane with their guns,
Speaker 1: their anti aircraft guns. And then there's no small planes
Speaker 1: over the race at all, and instead there's a ton
Speaker 1: of fighter pilots everywhere, like circling the sky to make
Speaker 1: sure no one tries to blow up Franco.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty freaky.
Speaker 1: And the reason that they know there were no snitches
Speaker 1: is that, well, say that they don't get shot down.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, no one knows exactly what they're up to,
Speaker 3: it seems.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the fighter pilots come for the anarchists to get
Speaker 1: a closer look. And if they hadn't had the French
Speaker 1: flag on the plane, they probably would have just opened fire.
Speaker 1: But instead they're like, oh, we shouldn't open fire on
Speaker 1: these random French people, right.
Speaker 3: They're just flying. They don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah French, Yeah totally, that's a white flag, the classic
Speaker 1: French flag. And so the pilot just dives at the water,
Speaker 1: dives to within a few feet of the water, and
Speaker 1: just gets the fuck out of there, just like fucking runs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is the right spot? It is too hot?
Speaker 3: The spot's too hot jack b Yeah, they.
Speaker 1: Like keep going for a while, they're like, oh, the
Speaker 1: battleships are after us, and they're like, oh, there's a
Speaker 1: couple of fighter pilots. And then there's like it's all
Speaker 1: fighter pilots, no small planes. Gotta go. So they make
Speaker 1: it back to France and they're like all right, you
Speaker 1: want to go back tomorrow. They're like, yeah, let's go
Speaker 1: back tomorrow.
Speaker 3: They try the same thing the next day.
Speaker 1: Well, they have a new plan. The new plan is
Speaker 1: we know what hotel he's in. Let's just bomb hotel.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, there's like there's like other people at the hotel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, but like probably fascist. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I I'm not a big like collateral damages.
Speaker 1: Fine person, but I don't fucking know.
Speaker 3: But frank. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then they, uh, they go out at four in
Speaker 1: the morning and they have a new plan. They're going
Speaker 1: fly low to the water in the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: hugging the coast, which is like the most dangerous way
Speaker 1: to fly this kind of plane, apparently. Yeah, they plate
Speaker 1: full of balls, yeah, and some pamphlets. Oh good, rain
Speaker 1: keeps them from going it. The airfield is completely mud
Speaker 1: when they go out at four in the morning, and
Speaker 1: they just flee.
Speaker 3: Abandoned the plane.
Speaker 1: Interesting, and a few years later, as best as I can,
Speaker 1: peace out the rest of this saga, the pilot was arrested.
Speaker 1: He later died a freeman. No one else was arrested.
Speaker 1: I actually don't know if he was arrested for this,
Speaker 1: for his arrested for something else. Some other folks were investigated, but.
Speaker 3: It certainly sounds like he could have been arrested doing
Speaker 3: other things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all of these people liked crime. Yeah, Serata
Speaker 1: the forger I was talking about, he went back to forging.
Speaker 4: He was.
Speaker 1: He was pretty good at that. He got caught a
Speaker 1: bunch of time, once with like just a ton of
Speaker 1: fake money, and like another time for printing IDs and shit.
Speaker 1: His last arrest was in nineteen seventy, when he was
Speaker 1: sixty seven years old. He was held for a few months,
Speaker 1: and he was all set to like die in bed,
Speaker 1: an old man. He's like he made his seventy you
Speaker 1: know whatever seventy four when a fucking police informant in
Speaker 1: the anarchist movement murdered him in the street.
Speaker 3: Weird.
Speaker 1: That sucks, probably because he was going to reveal that
Speaker 1: the guy was a police informant. Interesting, So then the
Speaker 1: police smuggled that guy to Canada, where he probably lived
Speaker 1: out happily the rest of his fucking days.
Speaker 3: The murderer not our finest moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sarada had a quote about his attempt on Franco's life,
Speaker 1: and I think it actually nails the moral question we
Speaker 1: were talking about. Quote personal attentats. Assassinations are effective to
Speaker 1: a degree determined by powers wielded by the victim. To
Speaker 1: take the life of a constitutional king through conspiracy and
Speaker 1: not through revolution is to change nothing except for his air.
Speaker 1: But if someone had eliminated, say Adolf Hitler in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, which of us can say that his death
Speaker 1: would not have been of benefit to Europe. When we
Speaker 1: tried to liquidate Franco back in nineteen forty eight, we
Speaker 1: were persuaded that in doing so we would be changing
Speaker 1: the course of Spanish history utterly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I mean, it's a certainly, it's certainly an
Speaker 3: interesting thing in terms of like what if the next
Speaker 3: guy that comes in is just as bad or worse,
Speaker 3: or you'd you can'tate fate is weird? You can't, you
Speaker 3: can't you can't defnate these things very easily.
Speaker 1: No, totally and we're going to talk about one more
Speaker 1: wacky failed anarchist bombing of Franco that I think I
Speaker 1: already said failed, it did not succeed, that almost changed
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 4: See.
Speaker 3: The thing I love about these stories, Margaret, is the
Speaker 3: suspense of knowing if it's going to succeed or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did Franco die in the seventies or what we
Speaker 1: did die in the seventies. Did Franco die in the sixties, fifties?
Speaker 1: I'll get to that part in the script. I think
Speaker 1: it's the sixties.
Speaker 3: I think there could also be a good Tarantina movie
Speaker 3: here where it's like an alternate history of them actually
Speaker 3: succeeding and killing Franco. Yeah. And then and then we
Speaker 3: get a get a look at what Spain could have
Speaker 3: been been, like like an exaggerated lens.
Speaker 2: But still, and we find out that that Parkinson's bit
Speaker 2: was actually just somebody's code name.
Speaker 3: Oh nice. Yeah, yeah, So, Sophy, do not say anything else.
Speaker 3: Screenwriters are going to be snatch your ideas from you.
Speaker 3: You got to keep your lips sealed until you have
Speaker 3: the full pitch ready.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good to know no one's listening to us. It's
Speaker 1: just us here. But if either of you two want
Speaker 1: great deals, have I got some great deals for you
Speaker 1: the advertisers. Even though no one listens to the show
Speaker 1: it's private recording. Don't worry.
Speaker 3: You can say whatever you It still has advertisers. I actually,
Speaker 3: Margaret just plays four minutes of ads for us. We
Speaker 3: have to sit here and listen to them with you. Actually,
Speaker 3: I know. We don't get to skip forward ten seconds.
Speaker 3: We have to sit here as Margaret plays them and
Speaker 3: waiting for it to be over so we can continue
Speaker 3: talking about Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh, Franco and I make like a funny face, just
Speaker 1: Robert Evans on a loop going mid mobile, mid mobile,
Speaker 1: over and over again for four minutes, and then Margaret apologizing.
Speaker 1: And I do this when I talk to my friends
Speaker 1: on the phone. If I talk to my friends more
Speaker 1: than twenty minutes, I run an ad break.
Speaker 3: See I actually do this sometimes, not joking. What I
Speaker 3: actually do these types of bits in real life?
Speaker 1: You do? Oh yeah, no, that makes sense because I
Speaker 1: mean we spend a lot of our time anyway. Here's
Speaker 1: some ads that support us eating food or not.
Speaker 2: If you've subscribed to the previous figures, here's us coming back.
Speaker 1: Right away, and we're back we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: a Scottish anarchist with a kilt and bombs. A Scottish anarchist. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about Stuart Christie. Stuart Christie was
Speaker 1: an anarchist, historian and author and translator, and would be
Speaker 1: assassin of Franco. He died in twenty twenty. I never
Speaker 1: actually had a pleasure of knowing him. I've like a
Speaker 1: lot of the people I've worked with him, worked with
Speaker 1: through publishing, know him because he stayed engaged his entire life.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert. He grew up in Scotland and became an
Speaker 1: anarchist when he was sixteen. He says his grandma's good
Speaker 1: influence made him an anarchist. He wrote a book quote
Speaker 1: or quote. The name of the book is Granny made
Speaker 1: Me an anarchist?
Speaker 3: Pretty solid title.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, totally. As he put it, quote basically, what
Speaker 1: she did was provide a moral barometer which married almost
Speaker 1: exactly with that of libertarian socialism and anarchism. And she
Speaker 1: provided the star which I followed. And then this other
Speaker 1: part that was a quote from his grandmother that I
Speaker 1: just really like, which is just we are not bystanders
Speaker 1: in life.
Speaker 3: Nice, nice, that's a solid one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So in nineteen sixty two, when he was sixteen
Speaker 1: years old, he joined the Anarchist Federation in Glasgow. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, he was eighteen years old, he had
Speaker 1: moved to London. He was doing sheet metal work and
Speaker 1: iron mongerie, the other kind of forgery for gene, I guess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he met a bunch of Spanish anarchists in exile and
Speaker 1: he was like, oh shit, I could probably help. I
Speaker 1: bet a random Scottish kid he can get through some
Speaker 1: borders more easily than some Spanish anarchist exiles. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Maybe he was right about all right.
Speaker 1: He got himself over to Paris. He told his family
Speaker 1: he was off to go pick some grapes. So true,
Speaker 1: he did not pick any grapes. He also didn't speak
Speaker 1: any French.
Speaker 3: I mean it's barely intelligible as a language anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the French are famous for not minding that
Speaker 1: people don't speak French when they're there. So he met
Speaker 1: up with some anarchists in a group called Defensa Interior
Speaker 1: and I have a feeling the French anarchists weren't like, oh,
Speaker 1: you don't speak French. He's like, I'm Scottish and I'm
Speaker 1: willing to carry some bombs. They were like yeah, fuck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, sure, yeah, yes, let's fucking go.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They gave him some plastic explosives and his job.
Speaker 3: I like it. You just go to France to be
Speaker 3: given some plastic explosively. Yeah, here, take these, have fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: His job was to ferry them into Madrid and give
Speaker 1: them to a forty year old anarchist carpenter whose job
Speaker 1: was to turn Spain's fascist dictator from a regular guy
Speaker 1: into an exploded guy with a regular guy, but in
Speaker 1: a lot more pieces. Yeah, using one neat trick that
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know about. And the way
Speaker 1: that Christy Uh was going to signal to his conspirator
Speaker 1: who he was was that he wore a bandage on
Speaker 1: his hand, like oh, I fucked up my hand, and
Speaker 1: that was like his like like one Spanish phrase he
Speaker 1: learned was like my hand it is hurt or whatever.
Speaker 1: And he knew even less Spanish than he knew French. Okay,
Speaker 1: so he's off to transport bombs. He strapped them to
Speaker 1: his body and he threw on a hand Knitz sweater.
Speaker 1: I think that his grandma made. But I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 3: That's adorable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he also wore a kilt. I've heard that he
Speaker 1: wore the kilt to help him catch rides while he
Speaker 1: was hitchhiking. I don't know exactly, yeah, basically.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So later the press said that the assassin was quote
Speaker 1: a Scottish transvestite. Holy shit based Yeah, yeah, they're just
Speaker 1: like me.
Speaker 3: That's crazy, I know.
Speaker 1: Except according to another source, the kilt thing was a
Speaker 1: francoist police fabrication to say, oh no, it's not that
Speaker 1: we had an infiltrator. It's that he drew attention to
Speaker 1: himself by wearing a kilt. Who's to say, there's no
Speaker 1: way to know whose word to take here? Well, what's
Speaker 1: a kind of an annoying as If I've done this
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, I would have been like, dear
Speaker 1: Stuart Christie, did you wear a kilt? Also, he's probably
Speaker 1: written this. I don't have time to read every fucking
Speaker 1: book before I like, you know, it is a better
Speaker 1: story if he wore a kilt and I have more sources.
Speaker 1: It's like two to one the sources that I've got,
Speaker 1: and he wore a kilt. There's only one problem unlike
Speaker 1: the airplane conspiracy of nineteen forty eight, this group had
Speaker 1: been infiltrated, and Stuart Christie was arrested in Madrid and
Speaker 1: forced to watch his carpenter would be friend be tortured. Ah,
Speaker 1: what's funny is I mean it hadn't been infiltrated, they
Speaker 1: might have exploded. Who knows, Franco might have gone out
Speaker 1: eleven years early. So Stuart Christie is forced to sign
Speaker 1: a confession and is convicted of quote banditry and terrorism
Speaker 1: because all of the anti Franco rebels were called bandits.
Speaker 1: This is like their main method of delegitimize unrest. It's
Speaker 1: like the outside agitators for Spain. Yeah, it didn't matter
Speaker 1: that he literally didn't rob anyone.
Speaker 3: That's it's just like a colloquial term, meaning this is
Speaker 3: not like a real person that you need to care about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly exactly. He could have been executed. He was
Speaker 1: facing execution. He would have been garroted, garroted whatever choked
Speaker 1: or the story did Yeah, garrotted.
Speaker 3: I don't know either. I'm just saying that. So one
Speaker 3: of us probably got it right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably. And and if you're listening and you know
Speaker 1: the answer.
Speaker 3: Dm me at I write okay on Twitter, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly with a voice memo. Indeed anyway, Ah, they
Speaker 1: gave him twenty years instead, probably because he was like
Speaker 1: a nice Scottish boy or whatever. So true, he goes
Speaker 1: to prison, his co conspiratus thirty years I think, or
Speaker 1: maybe ends up serving thirty years. What year does he
Speaker 1: go to prison sixty four two? So in prison he's
Speaker 1: a hero. There's plenty of anarchists still in Spanish prison.
Speaker 1: They like him, and then an international campaign gets underway
Speaker 1: to free our our poor young Scottish boy is as
Speaker 1: far as I could tell, it's like the equivalent of like,
Speaker 1: like everyone involved in this story is white, but it's
Speaker 1: still somehow like the it's like, well, you're like Western European,
Speaker 1: you're uke in you're like actually white. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: there's international campaign underweight of or because he's just like young,
Speaker 1: and like his defense in court is like I thought
Speaker 1: I was just transporting flyers or whatever.
Speaker 3: Me too, me too, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also his confession had been tortured out of him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The campaign involved bretand Russell, a famous public intellectual guy,
Speaker 1: and Jean Paul Sart, a famous existentialist author and most
Speaker 1: importantly his mom.
Speaker 3: That's nice.
Speaker 1: And after three years he was released.
Speaker 3: That I assumed he was going to wait until Franco
Speaker 3: was gone.
Speaker 1: No, he Yeah, the international campaign gets a lot of
Speaker 1: steam and Franco is like, oh, I couldn't say no
Speaker 1: to a mom who's worried about her kid. But it's
Speaker 1: like Franco was kind of scared, I think, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: interesting his co defendant wasn't released until nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: and supposedly was Franco's last political prisoner.
Speaker 3: That kind of makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Stuart has a quote about what he accomplished through
Speaker 1: the failed attempt, which was that quote, the most beneficial
Speaker 1: thing was that my arrest provided a focus for what
Speaker 1: Franco was doing. He was trying to pass himself off
Speaker 1: as an old, avuncular gentleman on a white charger, while
Speaker 1: in fact he had all these political prisoners, thousands of
Speaker 1: whom were tortured and some killed. And yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's like it's basically it's like Western Ice start seeing
Speaker 1: what's happening.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Stuart gets out, he goes back to the UK. He
Speaker 1: becomes a gas fitter, which means a plumber for gas
Speaker 1: and I like that because Savat last week's protagonist was
Speaker 1: also a plumber, because plumbers hate Franco. Because here's my theory.
Speaker 1: I think Franco is a Bowser.
Speaker 3: Does this makes sense?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean there are definitely some Francoist
Speaker 3: elements in modern depictions of Bowser. That yeah, that certainly tracks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so.
Speaker 3: Stuart.
Speaker 1: Later he gets arrested when the UK government cracks down
Speaker 1: on the probably future friends of the Pod. The Angry Brigade.
Speaker 1: The Angry Brigade was, and I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: into them super detail. They were an anarchist communist gorilla
Speaker 1: group who never killed anyone, but they like blowing up
Speaker 1: symbols of power in the early seventies in the UK.
Speaker 3: Wait, isn't Mario a monarchist though.
Speaker 1: Well, they made an adaptation. They took real, real people's
Speaker 1: stories and turned them into monarchist propaganda.
Speaker 3: Yep, hmmm yeah. I don't know, Margaret, I don't know
Speaker 3: if I can support pro monarchist propaganda. Oh no, that's
Speaker 3: not true. I like Lord of the Rings anyway.
Speaker 1: Continue, all right, so the Angry Brigade they like blowing
Speaker 1: stuff up, they never kill anyone, Okay, huh.
Speaker 3: Do they do? They successfully blow things up though, yeah, yeah, okay, okay,
Speaker 3: the Angry Brigade spends a while blowing stuff up in
Speaker 3: the UK.
Speaker 1: They're like, we're angry and they blow stuff up, like
Speaker 1: fuck you thing. I clearly haven't read the book about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he pretty much got arrested because they were like, well,
Speaker 1: some anarchists blew some stuff up. We know an anarchist
Speaker 1: who once tried to blow some stuff up.
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, that is like, that is definitely like
Speaker 3: an OPSEEC concern being like, well he was a brigade.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, oh he was all right, but he was
Speaker 1: friends with them all. So the other reason he got arrested, yeah,
Speaker 1: is that after they arrested them, he like showed up
Speaker 1: at their house and so they arrested him. But he
Speaker 1: was like, well, he's just friends of them, because they're
Speaker 1: the anarchists in the UK, like the Clash only anyway
Speaker 1: sex pistols I know, punk I swear anyway. So there's
Speaker 1: a six month trial for the Angry Brigade. It gets
Speaker 1: called the longest trial trial in UK history. This is
Speaker 1: not true.
Speaker 3: Also six months, I mean yeah, I'm used to like
Speaker 3: American trials which are like, I know, he's oh wow,
Speaker 3: the six months trial. That's so convenient.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 1: I read that and I was like, holy shit, they're
Speaker 1: really fast over there. I thought one of our whole
Speaker 1: things was right to a speedy trial. And I like
Speaker 1: Google like longest trial and there's like just a lot
Speaker 1: of answers that aren't the Angry Brigade. Sure whatever, there's
Speaker 1: a long trial and during it eight thousand people bought
Speaker 1: in war pins that said I'm in the Angry Brigade.
Speaker 3: Amazing. Yeah, that's great, that's that's fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Stuart Christie stayed involved in anarchism his whole life. He
Speaker 1: helped restart an old an organization, the Anarchist Black Cross,
Speaker 1: which is more than one hundred years old. Now it's
Speaker 1: a prisoner support organization. He campaigned for the release of
Speaker 1: other Spanish anarchists prisoners and got a bunch of them
Speaker 1: out to London, organizing with them there. He married another comrade.
Speaker 1: They had a kid. He lived on a tiny island
Speaker 1: for a while and they ran that island's newspaper. In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. He died of lung cancer at the age
Speaker 1: of seventy four, and I'll end this chunk with a
Speaker 1: quote from him that I like, without freedom there would
Speaker 1: be no equality, and without equality, no freedom, and without
Speaker 1: struggle there would be neither. And so I don't know,
Speaker 1: rest in peace to it, Christie.
Speaker 3: It sounds like he lived kind of like an ideal
Speaker 3: anarchist life almost like he did he got to do,
Speaker 3: He got to be involved in a lot of really
Speaker 3: cool things to try out, a lot of pretty cool things.
Speaker 3: Didn't spend that much time in prison altogether. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: got to like die of like relatively like natural causes
Speaker 3: at age, like seventy four, seventy two, seventy four, seventy four,
Speaker 3: Like that's yeah, that's pretty good. Like what more can
Speaker 3: you hope for?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Now, he he did a fucking ton of stuff too,
Speaker 1: like his writings, his translations. He actually did the translation
Speaker 1: of the book Sabote that I was the main source
Speaker 1: for last weeks.
Speaker 3: So I guessing he eventually learned other way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm willing to bet the three years in Spanish
Speaker 1: prison maybe taught him a little bit of it Spanish
Speaker 1: and Codzalan.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there is an award for best assassination during
Speaker 1: the Franco regime. It might win the award for best
Speaker 1: assassination period and it goes This award goes to the
Speaker 1: Boss Separatists and specifically it goes to the Bosque Space
Speaker 1: Program And I'm going to tell you about them on
Speaker 1: Wednesday on.
Speaker 3: The next episode. Oh wow, yeah see. And now I
Speaker 3: have to sit here for like a day and a
Speaker 3: half just in this chair. Yeah, well, Margaret, watch is
Speaker 3: me al via my video feed here until we can
Speaker 3: talk about it again. So I know, I have to
Speaker 3: just wait as long as you guys have to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if you'll be here keeping his company, we'll
Speaker 1: order in always we'll use do we have an advertiser
Speaker 1: who's like, a, we'll just use our gold coins? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I bet, I bet? I bet it can trade my
Speaker 3: ranking coin for for currency with the you know, like
Speaker 3: door ash will calm be like, hey, can I can
Speaker 3: use this as a tip, And he'll be like, what
Speaker 3: are you doing? Get away from me, and then that'll
Speaker 3: be a nice exchange.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you'll just walk towards the door going chut
Speaker 1: chut chut chumba. I don't know if I'm allowed to
Speaker 1: do that. I guess I did. We'll find out, but
Speaker 1: we know what else we'll find out, Garrison Davis, We'll
Speaker 1: find out your plugs.
Speaker 3: Oh well. As people probably know, I work on a
Speaker 3: podcast called it Could Happen Here. I've been the past
Speaker 3: few months have been covering the happenings in Atlanta related
Speaker 3: to the Stop Coop City movement, so so that that
Speaker 3: is still ongoing as a time of recording, as the
Speaker 3: time of publishing, probably a lot has actually changed because
Speaker 3: there's the city council gooes to a proof funding on
Speaker 3: the fifth, So who knows what I'll be there, but
Speaker 3: I'll keep I'll keep keep giving updates on the cauld
Speaker 3: Happen Here podcast in these next few months as that develops.
Speaker 3: And then also you can find me posting mostly mostly
Speaker 3: not very good jokes on Twitter at Hungry bow Tie.
Speaker 1: Sophie. What do you got ah?
Speaker 2: If you did not know, we now have an AD
Speaker 2: pre version available of all of our cool Zone Media podcasts.
Speaker 2: It's exclusively on Apple podcasts. It is called Cooler Zone Media.
Speaker 2: It'll be linked on social media, maybe episode description or
Speaker 2: just search cooler Zone Media on Apple Podcasts if you
Speaker 2: would like to subscribe. Free version still available everywhere with ads.
Speaker 1: I know what I want to plug. I want to
Speaker 1: plug the number city. How have you already been hearing?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: But this very month, I'm kickstarting a tabletop role playing game,
Speaker 1: and as of this recording, we met our kickstarter goal
Speaker 1: and have exceeded it within like three hours of posting
Speaker 1: it this morning.
Speaker 3: And but Margaret, do you have any stretch goals? We
Speaker 3: do have stretch goals. Oh boy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If we reach twenty thousand dollars, which we probably will
Speaker 1: by the time that I go to bed tonight, we'll
Speaker 1: add three new character classes to the tabletop role playing game.
Speaker 1: Do you want to play a Clacker?
Speaker 4: Wait?
Speaker 1: Actually, don't remember which classes we're going to add. I
Speaker 1: don't have my notes in front of me.
Speaker 4: I never do.
Speaker 1: But if we reach forty thousand dollars, I have to
Speaker 1: write a novella based in the world. So if you
Speaker 1: like tabletop role playing games and you like trying and
Speaker 1: failing to turn dictators into multiple smaller pieces, you might
Speaker 1: like this game. Because you can't go to prison for
Speaker 1: playing it. You can probably play it in prison.
Speaker 3: I don't know about that, Margaret. They are they are
Speaker 3: pretty strict on on what books can be let in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of people do play role playing games
Speaker 1: in prison, But it might involve making a different version
Speaker 1: of it for it anyway, that's what I have to.
Speaker 1: Just google the number city Kickstarter and you'll find it
Speaker 1: and we'll see you on Wednesday when we talk about
Speaker 1: the Space program.
Speaker 4: They Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
Speaker 4: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
Speaker 4: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out
Speaker 4: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 4: your podcasts.
Speaker 3: You'll have been