"Ana Gutiérrez, a forgotten resistance hero"

My friend, the wonderful British writer and journalist David Baird shared his knowledge of the maquis in the Frigiliana area of Malaga province (where he has lived since the 1970s) to help with this radio documentary.

From the source:

"The protagonists of history do not always appear in textbooks. Some have joined the ranks of those who anonymously give the best of themselves to change the course of life. This is the case of Ana Gutiérrez, "la Tangerina," tireless fighter for freedom in the darkest of the Francoist night.

RNE [Spain's Radio National] explores her eventful life and her whose determination in the defense of her ideals, like something out of a movie script.

Born in Tangier, Ana Gutiérrez was already a member of the Unified Socialist Youth before she came of age as an adult. For this she was arrested and paid for it with two years in prison and exile.

Forced to leave her hometown, she took refuge in Malaga, where she continued her militancy and took on more risky assignments, including spying and propagandist. Another two years in prison were the price to pay for her insistence on maintaining her struggle.

After being freed, Tangerina returned to the underground, this time as a supporter of the maquis settled in the mountains of the Axarquia in Malaga. There she also experienced a romance with Roberto, the legendary leader of the anti-Francoist guerrillas. For her it meant again two years in jail; but for Roberto, the [execution] wall.

After leaving prison, Ana Gutiérrez, still young, decided to rebuild her life, went into exile in Switzerland, got married and started a family. 

She lived there until, after her retirement, she returned to Spain and went to live in Nerja, in a house whose terrace overlooks the mountains where she risked her life for her ideals.

This documentary, with the agreement of Ricardo Aguilera, has had the invaluable collaboration of Salvador Magaz, son of Ana Gutiérrez, who has preserved a valuable body of documentation, key to the development of our work, and which is already the object of desire of historians. 

We are also accompanied by José María Azuaga, professor and researcher of the anti-Francoist guerrilla. 

In addition, we have counted with neighbors in the area and experts in the history of the maquis, as Adolfo Moyano or the British journalist and writer David Baird, both based in Frigiliana, who expand our knowledge about the guerrilla and its international context. 

The writer Mariví Ledesma, author of "La memoria olvidada" (Forgotten Memory), explains the harshness of those years. Vicky Fernández, neighbor of El Acebuchal, one of the villages that suffered the most repression during the war against the Maquis, gives us her testimony, as well as other elders of the area such as José Ávila, from Cómpeta, and Sebastián Martín, from Frigiliana, who keep a vivid memory of all that.

Thanks to all of them we have been able to recreate the circumstances in which Ana Gutiérrez, the Tangerina, wrote her story of courage and dedication that does not appear in any book."

Review of "Between Two Fires" by David Baird

This book is exactly the kind of thing you would hope to find when you are aimlessly looking through the shelves in that slowly dying place called a bookshop.


Focusing mainly on the area around his adopted home town of Frigiliana, David Baird has used immaculate research to write in compelling detail about the "people of the sierra" - those who took to the mountains, some to escape, some because they had little choice and some because they had strong political opinions that could then only be expressed in a way that led them to be tagged by Franco's cronies as "bandits."


Here, we find a Spain that is almost impossible to recognise in the modern version of this country. As Baird points out, at the start of the 20th century the average person there lived not much longer than 30 years. 

It was an almost feudal land where even subsistence farming was only for the lucky ones. There was no public hospitals or public transport and mules and donkeys were the only way of getting any distance without walking in bare feet or simple shoes. 

It was a time of smugglers, travelling repairmen, mass illiteracy and child labour (often starting at 6 years of age.) Progress took the form of a single 30 watt bulb being installed in a house. After Franco's victory this part of the country also became the land of night-time curfews where anyone found in the streets after dark was automatically arrested.


It is unsurprising then that there was a significant level of support for the men who fought against authority. While some townspeople were kidnapped for ransom by the rebels it was the civil guard who were more hated but both sides were feared, and for good reason. 

To help the guerrillas, such as providing them food or clothes, was enough to be thrown in prison but to not help them at times meant to the outlaws that you were collaborating with their enemy and could then be a target for recriminations. It is in this sense that ordinary people were caught "between two fires."


Apart from the clarity of Baird's writing and his even-handed approach (which is a relatively rare thing in the highly-politicised arena of Spanish history) half of the book is given over to those who were intimately involved in the events of the time to simply tell their own versions. Their first-hand accounts are vivid, illuminating and often poignant.


In short, this book plays a crucial part in making sure that this war is not a forgotten one, at least to English language readers. 


This review was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2014.

[...and also published at Good Reads and Amazon books.]