New Developments in Bolaño Studies (Patreon)

In premium episode 69, I discussed Roberto Bolaño’s novel The Third Reich. In that discussion, I was accompanied by Dani and Rodolfo. For those who don’t recall, The Third Reich was about the German war game enthusiast Udo Berger vacationing in an increasingly ominous Spanish resort town on the Costa Brava. Udo Berger found himself involved in an extended match of the war game ‘The Third Reich’ with a mysterious Spanish man nicknamed ‘El Quemado’, or ‘the Burn Victim'.

At the time of recording, I think I half-recalled that Bolaño lived in a coastal quasi-tourist town similar to the one in the novel. In fact, he lived in Blanes which is on the Costa Brava and which would presumably have served as a model.

Beyond that, Dani, Rodolfo, and I had speculated about El Quemado. I don’t think we ever thought he could be a real person, but like more the avatar for the victims of Nazism, a stand-in for the proletariat of oppressed nations, something like that. That’s still a strong reading, and more or less correct, I think, but then I found someone who sounded quite a bit like El Quemado. 

Everyone talks about the Japanese holdouts, but fewer people know a similar, more heroic phenomenon occurred in Spain. Ramon Vila Capdevila aka Caracremada aka Caraquemada ("burnt-face") was the last of the Spanish Maquis. From 1932 to 1963, over thirty years, Ramon Vila was always fighting a war of one kind or another. 

Ramon Vila Capdevila aka Caraquemada

Ramon Vila was born in Berguedà, Catalonia on April 2, 1908. When he was a young boy, he was on a picnic with his mother when they were both struck by lightning. This killed his mother and left him with facial scars, hence the nickname Caraquemada - burnt-face.

Ramon was also nicknamed Jabalí, or Javelina, due to his solitary individualistic character, discretion, and shyness. He was, like the fictional El Quemado, a large and strong man, of “Herculean constitution” according to one of his comrades, the former guerrilla and historian Antonio Téllez.

Ramon Vila was a miner. In 1928 or 1928 he joined the CNT, Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Labor). Vila engaged in machine sabotage when the plant he worked at laid off its workers, for which he was given an eight year prison sentence. In 1931, he was freed from prison in a general amnesty when the Second Spanish Republic was declared. Vila continued working as a miner.

Ramon Vila participated in the workers insurrection of Figols in 1932 for which he was briefly imprisoned. He was released and had to move around to avoid getting murdered by the Spanish Republic’s ‘Special Branch’. In addition to his burned face, Vila had a large facial scar which was said to have come from his constant battles with the Guardia Civil and other authorities.

In April 1936, the police attempted to kill Vila under the ‘ley de fugas’ system of extrajudicial killings. In response, Ramon and his cousin opened fire on the police officers, killing one. Vila worked for a time as a lumberjack and participated in the Valencian Trolly Strike of 1932, for which he was imprisoned.

In July 1936 he was freed from prison by the workers during the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Ramon Vila participated in many of the events of revolutionary Spain, and fought in the Tierra y Libertad Column at the front lines. He was also sent behind enemy lines in Zaragoza.  At other points during the war, he was head of a power plant, and also a police commander.

WWII

When Catalonia fell to Franco’s forces in 1939, Ramon Vila escaped across the border to France and interned at the Argelès-sur-Mer concentration camp ran by the French. The conditions at this camp were horrific.

In 1940, Vila returned to Spain to work with comrades to organize armed action against Franco’s regime. This necessitated returning to Vichy France, and he was arrested there and handed over to the Nazis. They imprisoned again in another concentration camp. After some time, the Todt, the Nazi civil engineering organization, sent him to work in a bauxite mine at Herault. At another point, he was in an aluminum mine.

By 1944, Vila escaped and fought with the French Resistance under the name Captain Raymond. He worked with the Menessiers network. He commanded as many as 200 men carrying out sabotage activity with explosives. His battalion was incorporated into the Free French 2nd Armoured Division.

Vila’s other role was to guide people, primarily POWs, but also Jews and Allied servicemen, across the Pyrenees into Spain. He led thousands across the border, and was one of the most sought-after guides.

In April 1945, several of the last German strongholds in France such as Royan and Pointe-de-Grave, were liberated with the participation of the Libertad Battalion, which was headed by Ramon Vila

After WWII

After WWII, Vila joined in the Spanish resistance movement based in Toulouse, and continued to travel back and forth, waging his solitary war against fascism.

Ramon Vila continued his work as a saboteur. Téllez wrote, “[Villa’s] incredible ability with explosives was on display in the sabotage on the 4th of August of 1951, with the tunnel at Santa Mans for the Barcelona-Zaragoza line, which provoked the derailment of two train locomotives without causing a single death”.

Ramon Vila frequently blew up electrical towers and substation; there’s a long list of various sabotages attributed to him. He also continued to be one of the best guides, constantly taking Spanish Maquis back and forth across the Pyrenees. 

On July 25, 1953, there was a carjacking by two men dressed in blue overalls armed with machine guns (one was likely Vila). In the car was a British dermatologist, his wife, and a driver. The armed men attempted to hijack the car, but those in the car likely did not understand, and so the hijackers opened fire, killing the wife and injuring the doctor. The doctor survived and identified Caraquemada from police photos.

This provoked an international incident. The Spanish anarchists suspected this incident was a set-up by Franco’s security forces, to isolate the Spanish Libertarian movement in exile, which was bleeding out due to Franco’s White Terror in Spain and France’s lack of support, though to be sure they likely did carry out the action. 

Ramon Vila became an international fugitive. He took the name Ramon Llaugi Pons. He had to distance himself from his Anarchist friends for their sakes, but he continued his work as a guerrilla.

Death

On August 7, 1963, shortly after midnight, three Guardia Civil soldiers approached a house near the castle at Balsareny where a man was staying - Ramon Vila. According to the police, Vila opened fired at them, and they returned fire, hitting him in the heart. According to them, they killed him instantly.

Years later, however, the doctor who performed the autopsy of Vila stated that Vila did not die immediately, and that Vila had actually been shot twice - once in the neck and once above the knee. This doctor, Jose Maria Reguant, said that Vila died of hemorrhage and lack of treatment - that Ramon Vila actually bled to death. Vila was 55 years old.

According to Antonio Téllez, Ramon Vila died with the following items on his person:

“In his wallet he had his entire fortune: 5,702 pesetas and 100 French francs. His clothing consisted of blue pants, a khaki shirt and mountain boots. He was carrying a backpack, a bag, and a backpack. In his luggage they found all the material necessary to carry out sabotage, including a metal saw and a drilling machine.”

They also found four plastic canteens, a wine bottle, a lunch box full of mashed chickpeas and potatoes, a can of Nescafe, a transistor radio, a book of arithmetic, tobacco and a lighter, a nine special Parabellum pistol with a magazine and 39 loose bullets, a .45 Colt pistol with 38 cartridges and three clips. On his belt was a hand pump, a roll of slow-burning black fuse, insulating tape, and a bunch of keys of different types. He also had a zippered sleeping bag and a raincoat.

Ramon Vila’s body was identified by his sister Josefa, and was buried in an unmarked grave. The Francoist dictatorship published a bulletin:

“El Caraquemada (27 years dedicated to crime and looting), killed by Guardia Civil"

In the year 2000, a plaque was put at his burial site in Figols which reads:

Here lie the remains of Ramon Vila Capdevila. Militant of the CNT and the last of the Catalan anarchist maquis, he was involved in the proclamation of libertarian communism (1932), the civil war (1936-39), and the French Resistance (1939-45) and, for a further 18 years, the fight against Francoism. In memory of him and of all who gave their lives for freedom and the anarchist ideal

Analysis

On the one hand, Bolaño’s novel does say El Quemado wasn’t from Spain but from Latin America. On the other hand, the similarities between El Quemado and Caraquemada are too many to say this is entirely unrelated. Ramon Vila was certainly active in the regions of Spain where Bolaño lived in. Bolaño moved to Blanes in 1977 - only 14 years after Vila had been gunned down, so well within living memory. Bolaño wrote the Third Reich in 1989, 26 years after Vila’s death. In today's terms, it would be like discussing something that happened in 1998 - not a huge stretch.

I do not think that Bolaño intended for El Quemado to literally be Caraquemada. The novel’s roughly set in the early 90s and Vila would have been in his eighties. Further, there’s still a metaphorical element to El Quemado. Even still, I thought it was fascinating to learn about the last guerrilla to fight Franco.

Sources:

Franco’s Prisoner: Anarchists against the Dictatorship by Miguel García García

Sabaté: Guerrilla Extraordinary by Antonio Téllez

Facerías: Guerrilla urbana (1939-1957) by Antonio Téllez