:09:02
he visited his mother's
and Antonio's graves
:09:05
and probably met up with José.
:09:08
They talked.
:09:10
Two days later
he returned to Burgos.
:09:14
At the same time, in the Collell
church, in northern Catalonia,
:09:17
another poet, Rafael Sánchez Matas,
faced a firing squad.
:09:22
A close friend ofJosé Antonio, and
founder of the fascist Falange party.
:09:27
Mazas'fortunes in the war
are shrouded in mystery.130
:09:30
He was arrested
in Barcelona early in 1938,
:09:33
but when Franco arrived there
he was moved to the Collell,
:09:37
near the French border.
:09:39
There he faced a firing squad
:09:41
in what was a mass
and probably chaotic execution.
:09:44
The war was near its end and the
Republicans fled to the Pyrenees,
:09:48
so they may not
have known he was
:09:50
one of the Falange's founders
:09:53
and a friend of
José Antonio Primo de Rivera.
:09:56
In the confusion
Sánchez Mazas ran off,
:09:59
and managed to hide
in a hollow in the forest.
:10:02
It is said that a Republican soldier
searching the area found him,
:10:05
that the two looked at each other,
:10:08
and then another
Republican soldier called out,
:10:11
'Is he there? '
:10:12
Without taking his eyes off
Sánchez Mazas, the man called back,
:10:17
'There's no one here.'
:10:18
Then he turned around
and walked away.
:10:22
We shall never know who it was
that saved Sánchez Mazas' life
:10:26
or what went through
his mind at that moment.
:10:29
Or what José
and Manuel Machado said
:10:32
in front of their mother's
and brother's graves.
:10:35
In both may lie
some essential secret
:10:38
of the Spanish Civil War."