The Repression of Freemasonry in Spain

If you happen to be near the Iberian Peninsula, this sounds like an excellent event to attend.

From the Gibraltar Chronicle (from the Wayback Archive)…

Talks on the history of Freemasonry in Spain will be held at the John Mackintosh Hall on 28th June at 7pm. The talks will be delivered by Professor Dr. Jose Antonio Ferrer Benimeli and Professor Dr. Juan Jose Morales Ruiz. They are experts on the history of Freemasonry in Spain. Professor Ferrer Benimeli and Professor Morales Ruiz are not Freemasons.

Prior to his retirement, Jose Antonio Ferrer Benimeli was professor of Contemporary History at the Universidad de Zaragoza. Professor Ferrer Benimeli is an internationally renowned authority on the history of Freemasonry, especially that of Spain and Latin America. He has participated in some 300 international conferences and has delivered over 500 talks in Europe and America. Professor Ferrer Benimeli is the founder member of the ‘Centro de Estudios Históricos de la Masonería Española’ and was its president from 1983 to 2009. At present, he is honorary president. He was also vice-president of the ‘Centro de Estudios del Siglo XVIII Español’ for a period of ten years. Professor Ferrer Benimeli has published more than five hundred monographs and forty six books.

Professor Juan Jose Morales Ruiz received a doctorate in Information Science from the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona. He also has a Degree in journalism from the School of Journalism in Madrid. Professor Morales Ruiz currently works at the ‘Centro de Estudios Históricos’ of the Universidad de Zaragoza, where his research includes the history of Freemasonry in Spain. Professor Morales Ruiz is the author of a number of books and research papers on the subject of Spanish Freemasonry, with a particular emphasis on its role during the Spanish Civil War and its subsequent suppression under the regime of Francisco Franco.

Professor Ferrer Benimeli will talk on ‘La Historia de la Masonería Española’ and Professor Morales Ruiz will talk on ‘La represión de los masones durante la Guerra Civil (1936-1939), Franco y la Masonería’. The talks will be in Spanish. The general public is invited to attend. Admission is free. The talks promises to be of great interest to the general public as well as to Freemasons.

The talks are sponsored by the District Grand Lodge of Gibraltar, English Constitution.

About the Spanish Repression of Freemasonry – from Wikipedia:

It is claimed that the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera ordered the abolition of Freemasonry in Spain. In September 1928, one of the two Grand Lodges in Spain was closed and approximately two-hundred masons, most notably the Grand Master of the Grand Orient, were imprisoned for allegedly plotting against the government. It is certainly true that Masonic lodges provided a convenient forum for those critical of the dictator, regardless of their political persuasion.

Following the military coup of 1936, many Freemasons trapped in areas under Nationalist control were arrested and summarily killed, along with members of left wing parties and trade unionists. It was reported that Masons were shot, tortured and murdered by organized death squads in every town in Spain. At this time one of the most rabid opponents of Freemasonry, Father Jean Tusquets, began to work for the Nationalists with the task of exposing masons. One of his close associates was Franco’s personal chaplain, and over the next two years, these two men assembled a huge index of 80,000 suspected masons, even though there were little more than 5,000 masons in Spain. The results were horrific. Among other countless crimes, the lodge building in Cordoba was burnt, the masonic temple in Santa Cruz, Tenerife, was confiscated and transformed into the headquarters of the Falange, and another was shelled by artillery. In Salamanca thirty members of one lodge were shot, including a priest. Similar atrocities occurred across the country: fifteen masons were shot in Logrono, seventeen in Ceuta, thirty-three in Algeciras, and thirty in Valladolid, among them the Civil Governor. Few towns escaped the carnage as Freemasons in Lugo, Zamora, Cadiz and Granada were brutally rounded up and shot, and in Seville, the entire membership of several lodges were butchered. The slightest suspicion of being a mason was often enough to earn a place in a firing squad, and the blood-letting was so fierce that, reportedly, some masons were even hurled into working engines of steam trains. By 16 December 1937, according to the annual masonic assembly held in Madrid, all masons that had not escaped from the areas under nationalist control had been murdered.

After the victory of dictator General Francisco Franco, Freemasonry was officially outlawed in Spain on 2 March 1940. Being a mason was automatically punishable by a minimum jail term of 12 years. Masons of the 18º and above were deemed guilty of ‘Aggravated Circumstances’, and usually faced the death penalty.

According to Francoists, the Republican Regime which Franco overthrew had a strong Masonic presence. In reality Spanish Masons were present in all sectors of politics and the armed forces. At least four of the Generals who supported Franco’s rebellion were Masons, although many lodges contained fervent but generally conservative Republicans. Freemasonry was formally outlawed in the Law for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism. After Franco’s decree outlawing masonry, Franco’s supporters were given two months to resign from any lodge they might be a member of. Many masons chose to go into exile instead, including prominent monarchists who had whole-heartedly supported the Nationalist rebellion in 1936. The common components in Spanish Masonry seems to have been upper or middle class conservative liberalism and strong anti-clericism.

The Law for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism was not abrogated until 1963. References to a “Judeo-Masonic plot” are a standard component of Francoist speeches and propaganda and reveal the intense and paranoid obsession of the dictator with masonry. Franco produced at least 49 pseudonymous anti-masonic magazine articles and an anti-masonic book during his lifetime. According to Franco:

“The whole secret of the campaigns unleashed against Spain can be explained in two words: masonry and communism… we have to extirpate these two evils from our land.”