San Celoni Cemetery, 5 January 2012
Francesc Sabaté Llopart (Hospitalet de Llobregat, 30 March 1915 – San Celoni, 5 January 1960), better known as Quico Sabaté or El Quico, was (along with José Lluis Facerias) probably the best known of the Catalan-based anti-Francoist urban guerrillas.
‘What is referred to as the “Spanish republicans’ defeat” is crucial to any understanding of the life of Quico Sabaté who crossed the border with his brigade on 10 February 1939. They were the last organised troops to quit Catalonia. At that point QS did not consider himself defeated, and promised himself that he would resume a struggle that had been being momentarily interrupted. As far as QS was concerned, the war was not over — and Franco thought so too: Franco’s was – as Antonio Téllez put it – “a tyrannical rule during which thousands of Spaniards enjoyed some hypothetical freedom of choice only in the manner of their dying”.
’1939 was not, as far as QS was concerned, the beginning of an irreversible exile, because he could not conceive of life for him and his family other than in his homeland (my father rejected our becoming French citizens, an option offered by the French authorities to the French-born offspring of Spaniards.) His only thoughts were of action in his chosen theatre of operations, i.e. Spain, because QS felt closely connected with the Spaniards in Spain proper.
