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Iruña-Pamplona, Navarra.  Thanks to the Basque Identity 2.0 blog and historian Pedro Oiarzabal, we found out about an exciting story that links what was possibly the largest escape of modern history with the Basque community in California.

The escape was from the San Cristobal fort, on May 22, 2938, but was silenced for many years by pro-Franco propaganda. Other similar experiences, such as the 76 Allied prisoners who escaped from the German Camp Stalag Luft III in Poland, in 1944, were the source for mythical films such as The Great Escape (1950).  If historians succeed in localizing this fourth prisoner, it would confirm that Ezkaba was more successful than that one. Why?  Let’s go step by step.

Anti-Franco prisoners

This May 22 will mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the escape from Fort San Cristobal, situated on Ezkaba, near Iruña.  During the Franco regime, most of the prisoners kept there were republicans, militant workers or people who were opposed to the regime kept in inhumane conditions.

According to prisoners’ testimonies, overcrowding, lack of food and torture were common practices, to the point of becoming intolerable.  It was then that the escape was planned by prisoners, Leopoldo Picó Pérez (#319) and Baltasar Rabanillo Rodríguez (#1012) – communist militants from Bilbao and Valladolid respectively – who managed to liberate a third of the prisoners.

Brutal repression

In the days following the escape of the 807 prisoners, 28% of them were brutally assassinated near the prison, and the rest of those who were captured were punished with 40 days of solitary confinement and inhumane treatment.

Thirteen of the leaders of the escape, including Baltasar, were sentenced to death.  Leopoldo was captured and shot on the spot.  Another 46 prisoners that were captured died in the fort between 1938 and 1943 due to illness and the cruel treatment that they received.  Only three men —Valentín Lorenzo Bajo, José Marinero Sanz, and Jovino Fernández González— managed to cross the French border 50 kilometers from the fort.

A fourth man in California

However, the story doesn’t end there.  Apparently in 1998 a man from California visited the zone, recalling the escape that took place 60 years before.  All that remains of the visit is the testimony of at least six people who met him.  The man told them that he was born in Azagra (Nafarroa), in 1918, and that he had been a prisoner in Ezkaba until he escaped in 1938.  He made it to the border where he found refuge at Martin Urrels farm in Banka.  There he found about Martin’s two brothers, Michel and Jean, who were working as sheepherders in Cedarville, California.

The mysterious man left from France to Mexico where he crossed the border to get to California.  There he worked for the Urells brothers for a few years.  The man explained that he enlisted in the US army during the Second World War and that he was part of a battalion of tanks in Europe.  After the war, he started a trucking business that his children inherited.

In search for the mysterious man

This is the story that was told by those who met that man from California, who at the age of 70 decided to revisit his past.  His identity continues to be a mystery, but his testimony corroborates the existence of a fourth escapee who managed to get away successfully, which would convert the Ezkaba escape into the most successful in contemporary European history.

Historian Fermin Ezkieta, author of comprehensive research on the subject, is following the track of the fourth escapee on his webiste: The Escapees of Ezkaba 1938.

Ezkieta and historian Pedro Oiarzabal are now asking for help from the Basque Diaspora in order to try and localize this person.  If you have any information on this person, or if you know this story, please contact Ezkieta or Pedro by sending a message or writing a comment on the Basque Identity 2.0. blog.

This search is part of the task of recovering the historical memory of the prisoners of Fort San Cristobal that has been carried out since 2000 by the Txinparta association.  In 2006, Iñaki Alforja directed a documentary about the escape that can be seen here: Ezkaba, the Great Escape from Franco’s Prisons.