The guerrilla in the Serranía de Cuenca

A war that continued in the hills

After the Civil War, armed men who did not accept Franco’s victory remained in the inland mountains. The Agrupación Guerrillera de Levante y Aragón operated in the Serranía de Cuenca, with bases in Cuenca, Teruel, Castellón and Valencia. Memoria Democrática de Castilla-La Mancha describes it this way and identifies Santa Cruz de Moya as one of its areas of activity in the 1940s and 1950s. According to the same source, actions increased from 1944; in 1945 and 1946 economic raids for survival predominated, and San Martín de Boniches was one of the first villages seized in the Serranía.

The village seizures

On 19 September 1946 the group led by «Capitán» entered San Martín de Boniches. It gathered the mayor, his family, the corporal of the somatén (an armed civilian militia), the secretary’s assistant and another villager; held a rally, distributed propaganda, painted the square’s walls and took a shotgun, the town council’s seals and some belongings. After a tip-off, the Guardia Civil located the Cabeza del Royo camp, surrounded the hill and assaulted it on the 28th: guerrilla Miguel Pérez Lloria, «Peluquilla», died and Warrant Officer Federico Alastuy Lanas was wounded.

On 15 February 1947 the groups of «Capitán» and «Vargas», from the 11th sector, reached Manzaneruela, in Landete: about fifteen men who took food, clothing, weapons and money, distributed propaganda and burnt a consignment of flour and tobacco. This is a secondary reconstruction yet to be checked.

The supporters and repression

A guerrilla cannot survive without villagers. Memoria Democrática de Castilla-La Mancha records a Guardia Civil raid in Santa Cruz de Moya in which about fifty enlaces, local supporters, were arrested. Some were killed under the ley de fugas, the pretext of attempted escape, others were tortured and some took to the hills for fear of reprisals. The source gives no date for the raid.

Cerro Moreno

At dawn on 7 November 1949 the Cerro Moreno camp was assaulted and twelve of its thirteen guerrillas died, according to La Gavilla Verde, which organises a commemorative walk there every year. Cañete Town Council’s chronology gives 1958 as the end of the anti-Franco guerrilla.

The death certificates of those killed at Cerro Moreno were dated 3 December 1949 and, according to Salvador F. Cava, contain errors of identity: what the civil register says is not enough to establish who the twelve were.

The graves

In 2006 three graves containing guerrillas were opened in mountain cemeteries. In March, ARMH-Cuenca arranged an exhumation in the cemetery of Arcos de la Sierra, with remains attributed to two guerrillas killed by the Guardia Civil in 1950. On 29 October another grave was exhumed in Huélamo, with remains attributed to two others killed in clashes in 1949. And in the civil cemetery of Fuertescusa an AGLA guerrilla was exhumed; the study’s authors compare the Guardia Civil archive, death certificate, a local account and testimonies, and note discrepancies in the date and circumstances of his death. Names are not published here: these are attributions, not genetic identifications.

A different grave, that of Republican soldiers from the El Cañizar military hospital, is in Pajaroncillo.

Living memory

La Gavilla Verde, established in 1998, has organised the «El Maquis en Santa Cruz de Moya» (the maquis in Santa Cruz de Moya) events in early October for twenty-five years, and on 5 October 2024 opened the Centro de Interpretación de la Guerrilla del AGLA there. Visit places of memory respectfully: do not enter camps independently or search for anything in the hills.

In July 2026 La Gavilla Verde signed an agreement with the University of Castilla-La Mancha to organise and study the centre’s collection, with more than two hundred oral testimonies, without taking it out of the village. On the 1946 seizure of San Martín de Boniches, ethnographer Eduardo Bollo records that it was carried out by «Paisano» and notes that other texts say «Capitán».