They were told they would be set free. Loaded onto trucks in Madrid's overcrowded prisons, the men -- political prisoners, captured rebel soldiers, Catholic priests, and civilians accused of sympathizing with Franco's Nationalists -- were driven to open fields near the towns of Paracuellos del Jarama and Torrejon de Ardoz. There, before dawn on 7 November 1936, as Nationalist forces closed in on Madrid during the early stages of the Spanish Civil War, the killing began.
By November 1936, Madrid was in crisis. Nationalist armies were at the outskirts, and the Republican government had fled to Valencia. Roughly 5,000 political prisoners and rebel military personnel were being held in the capital's jails, and fear gripped both sides. According to the British historian Antony Beevor, the order to kill the prisoners most likely came from the Spanish communist Jose Cazorla Maure, or more indirectly from the Soviet advisor Mikhail Koltsov. The logic, if it can be called that, was grimly pragmatic: with the Nationalists at the gates, the Republic could not afford to leave potential enemies in its rear. What followed was not a battle but a systematic execution.
The first shootings began before dawn on 7 November and continued rapidly for three days. On 10 November, they stopped -- but only because an anarchist named Melchor Rodriguez Garcia, who opposed the executions, had been appointed head of Madrid's prison system. Rodriguez's moral courage bought the prisoners a reprieve. When he resigned on 14 November, the killings resumed. They did not stop again until Rodriguez returned to the post in early December. During those weeks, truckload after truckload of prisoners was driven to the fields outside Madrid, shot, and buried in mass graves. Foreign diplomats protested, including the Norwegian consul Felix Schlayer, but the executions continued.
On 8 December, a plane carrying Dr. Georges Henny, an envoy of the International Red Cross, was shot down over Pastrana as he flew back to France. Henny carried a report on the massacres that he intended to present at the League of Nations in Geneva. The Republican authorities blamed the Nationalist air force, but on 21 December it was revealed that Soviet-built planes with Soviet pilots had attacked the aircraft. Henny spent four months in the hospital and never delivered his report. Louis Delapree, a French journalist aboard the same plane, died of his injuries weeks later. He had blamed General Aleksandr Orlov, the Soviet NKVD's station chief in Spain, for the attack. The truth about Paracuellos was not merely suppressed on the ground -- it was shot out of the sky.
The exact death toll at Paracuellos remains bitterly contested. Estimates range from around 1,000, cited by historians Gabriel Jackson and Paul Preston, to 2,000-2,750, favored by Hugh Thomas, Ledesma, and Julian Casanova. A right-wing journal claimed 12,000 in 1977, but that figure is not supported by most modern scholarship. The victims included people from every walk of life: Federico Salmon, a former conservative labor minister; Monchin Triana, a footballer who had played for both Atletico de Madrid and Real Madrid; Pedro Munoz Seca, a famous writer; and the 18th Duke of Penaranda, a wealthy nobleman. Many are buried at the Cementerio de los Martires de Paracuellos, a quiet cemetery northeast of Madrid where the graves speak of a chapter both sides of Spain's political divide have found difficult to face honestly.
Located at 40.505N, 3.530W, approximately 15 km northeast of central Madrid near the town of Paracuellos del Jarama. The area is flat agricultural land along the Jarama River valley, now partly developed as suburban Madrid. Madrid-Barajas Airport (LEMD) is immediately adjacent to the south. The Cementerio de los Martires is visible from low altitude as a walled enclosure. Best viewed at 2,000-4,000 ft AGL.