Francisco Mares Sánchez

Spanish construction worker, anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist member of the MLE and CNT. Executed by firing squad in Paterna. He began working as a construction labourer at 10 whilst attending night school. He soon joined the construction section of the CNT in Valencia. At the beginning of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, he emigrated to Cuba, returning in 1931 with the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic. He later became associated with the Sindicats d'Oposició of the trentista tendency of the CNT. In November 1933, he was one of those arrested in connection with the death of Francesc Puchades Xulià, president of the Torrent polling station, and a member of the Valencian Regional Rights party during the elections on November 19 that year. When the fascist coup of July 1936 occured, he was living in Barcelona and was a member of the local Comitè Executiu Popular (Popular Executive Committee) plus one of the organisers of the Iron Column. After militarisation, the column became the 83rd Mixed Brigade of the Republican Army and he was appointed commander of the Second Battalion of the Brigade (73 Division) and Brigade Commander, replacing the wounded Josep Pellicer Gandia, fighting on the Teruel and Extremadura fronts. In 1939, with the triumph of Franco, he was taken prisoner at the port of Alicante and was interned in the Albatera and Los Almendros concentration camps, but escaped and joined the first National Committee of the CNT in Valencia. In late 1939, on his way to France after completing a mission in Barcelona, he was arrested by the police and sent to the Modelo prison in Barcelona, though the Francoist press did not announce his capture until May 5, 1940. After a time in the Modelo prison in Valencia, he was sentenced to death in an emergency summary trial by the Military Court in Valencia. On August 20, 1941, he was shot by firing squad at the Camp de Tir in Paterna alongside Francisco Cano Alcaraz, director of the EA5A.D Radio Torrente republican radio station.