The sad tribute to the forgotten of the Ifni war: Ángel has waited 64 years to receive € 1,000

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“When our paratroopers managed to take the mountain… The commanders had warned that it was full of Moors, but they did not have time to warn that we were already there. Then the bombs began to fall. Our. The bodies bounced around like logs. There they stayed. All dead. We spent the night picking up corpses and pieces and standing guard next to the piled up bodies so the animals wouldn’t eat them, because of the smell of blood, you know. That was never published by anyone. As it was a real disaster, that episode is not recorded anywhere. “

Angel Ruiz he tells the anecdote, to call him in some way, as if it had been yesterday. At 86 years old, he says that he remembers everything vividly, that even at night he continues to dream of this or that battle. Although it does not clarify if the memories haunt him or are mere flashbacks, it does not hurt that someone remembers what happened. Ángel was one of the Spanish soldiers in the Ifni war, Spain’s last international conflict and a contest that everyone rightly calls “the forgotten war.”

To understand it well, you have to put yourself in perspective. It was 1957 and Morocco was undergoing a process of decolonization that had begun a year before and took it with the Spanish presence in the southwest of the country, especially in the Sahara and in the colonies of Ifni. From November of that year to June 1958 a conflict broke out against Moroccan guerrillas in which the Spanish fell like flies. And it is that most of the Spanish soldiers were young people who had not left their town, who they were forced there to do the military and that a war broke out in their faces when they had only known for three months that the rifle is loaded through that slot.

The Spanish Government, now, 64 years after all that, has proposed to amend the memory of all those people and it is going to grant a grant of 1,000 euros. The measure comes too late for a group that is now between 80 and 90 years old and in which many have already died. But it comes, at least, to repair in some way a conflict that, as a disaster as it was, much was never known because the Franco regime did not report it. The payment will be a one-time payment and around 1,100 people will benefit (just 10% of the 10,000 who participated in the contest).

“It is a war that continues to be, to this day, in the second drawer of history,” he explains. Gustavo Adolfo Ordoño, author of the book The Ifni War. “Although it was Carmen Sevilla, in plan Marilyn Monroe, to animate the troops, the information was dosed a lot. It was not open and it was not allowed to go to foreign media. All there was was propaganda to encourage the military, but it was not said that there were 100 lost prisoners out there, of which only 50 returned. And now … aid is the least that democracy has worried about this issue “, assures.

For all this, EL ESPAÑOL talks to several veterans of the Ifni war to tell them how that was. Although there are few left, at least, that are well remembered.

Vicente, 85 years old

Vicente Cambralla he arrived in Sidi Ifni, the capital of the province, in February 1957. Forced, like everyone else, to join the military. Now he remembers it calmly, already retired after spending his life working in the Post Office, talking on the phone at his home in Valencia. “Pff, we had no military experience at all, we were 20 years old,” he says. “It was a difficult war because it was a guerrilla war. It was not one government against another. The Moors did not show their faces. You saw the Spaniards dying all the time and we didn’t kill any of them. Also, they knew the terrain perfectly. “

In the short year that the conflict lasted, 300 Spaniards died, 574 were injured and 80 disappeared. Vicente was on the verge of being part of the statistics of the dead, but luck would have it that he was only in that of the wounded.

“I was carried out first and I was leading a platoon of nine people, of whom seven died. One day, on a mountain, a Moor came up behind me with a knife. Luckily the captain told me. He told me Be careful! and when I turned around he lunged at me, stabbing the knife under my left arm. I unloaded the entire charger and it didn’t go any further. They took me to the hospital and after eight days they sent me back to the mountain, ”he says.

“How was it, for someone like you, who had no prior military experience, to kill a person?”

“I killed many.” At first it’s weird, a very bad feeling. Because you are not used to it. Then you realize that it is you who can fall and that if you save yourself it is a miracle.

That was the great problem of the Ifni war. That almost no one there was a professional and they were met with the utmost harshness without even knowing what to do. Gustavo Adolfo Ordoño tells in his book the case of an ensign who, as he had university studies, was put to command a column. His mission was to rescue one of the besieged towns, but he did not know how to move forward and was surrounded without any problem. The ambush they laid on him was one of the bloodiest days of the war.

Vicente matured in Ifni by force. But it seems that he was not bad, because when he finished the military, a colonel offered him to stay in the Army. “He told me that I could go to the Canary Islands to take a course and become an ensign. But I didn’t want to. I had not seen my family or my girlfriend for 15 months. When the time came, I wanted to go home, ”he adds.

“Do you feel like it’s been a forgotten war?”

—Yes, it is not to forget and they have forgotten it; the Government and also the citizens. We have been organized in associations for years, asking in writing that they recognize us for the time we have been there. At last now they have. The 1,000 euros are a pittance, but it is positive that they give it to us for what it symbolizes. Although there are few of us left, very few.

Angel, 86 years old

The Angel who tells his testimony in the paragraph that opens this report is Angel Ruiz, also Valencian, although born in Albacete. Within three months of arriving in Sidi Ifni, everything exploded. He remembers that first night perfectly. Despite the fact that he has witnessed things that continue to appear from time to time, he believes that he was not completely traumatized, that there was something that did not finish hooking him.

“I don’t know if it was because we were young and we didn’t appreciate things, I don’t know,” he says at 86 years old. The dead seemed to slip off him. However, he does have a saved moment that has been with him all this time. “Some Spanish soldiers entered to search a house and took out a woman who was screaming and crying. One shouted ‘my lieutenant, don’t let us search her, what do we do?’ And the officer responded that they do whatever they want, ”he continues, before saying that the soldiers began to shake hands with the woman and laugh at her.

“That crossed my mind and made a very big impression on me. I realized that people then had very little value. They are things that only happen in war”, He reflects.

“Were you militarily prepared for that war?”

—Most of us were people who hadn’t left town, who didn’t even know the train. Many were also still illiterate.

“Was your effort recognized?”

“Never, no one, not now or before.” We have been forgotten. It was the forgotten war. The issue of pay is … it’s very good, but when is it going to arrive? We have been with this topic for 20 years.

After the war, Ángel returned to Valencia and a Civil Guard sergeant offered him to join the Benemérita. It turns out that due to his military experience, he no longer needed to do tests or anything like that. However, he refused, he wanted peace of mind once and for all and he joined the Valencian Municipal Transport Company and continued there until he retired.

Nazario, 85 years old

“That, looking at it carefully, was a silly and absurd war that was useless. Because, after several hundred companions died, the territory was finally handed over to Morocco. That is why they could have handed him over before they killed us, “he explains. Nazario Sellés, on the verge of turning 86 years old.

And it is that 10 years after the conflict, the Government of Francisco Franco decided to hand over the Ifni colonies to Morocco again. The Spanish flag stopped flying in the territory on June 30, 1969.

“Since Franco came from the Africanist Army, he took that war personally. Furthermore, Spain had been there for 25 years. Today it would be like Ceuta or Melilla ”, explains the historian Ordoño. “In the end, they handed it over because the regime wanted to modernize and it was what could make the most sense,” he says.

About what Nazario says, Ordoño thinks it was generalized. “Most have a sense of worthlessness, of wasted effort. It is that they were doing military service in a somewhat exotic destination and it became a nightmare. It was a disastrous thing. It shows in their attitude. It is not a patriotic disaffection, but they were citizens who were doing the military and the brown caught them ”.

And we asked Nazario: “We were ignorant. What were we going to know what war was. I remember that when we were getting ready and we had to throw ourselves to the ground during the exercises, many of them threw themselves gently so as not to hurt themselves. The officers told us that ‘you will see when the Moors come how quickly you will drop to the ground’ ”. And he laughs.

“It was a terrible experience. There was bad food and we had no toilet of any kind. I did not wash anything for two months, because water was scarce. They gave us two canteens a day and most of them were for drinking… Then the war part. Watching one partner die after another, when you’re 22 and you were talking to him quietly half an hour ago. That was unfortunate, “he sums up.

More than 60 years have passed since all that and finally something is recognized for all these men. Pay is late, but at least it comes, so they all say. However, they do not want it for economic reasons, but because it is something that proves that yes, they were there and fought for their country, something that has been forgotten for so long.

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