Arcollas Cabezas, Joaquín (Juan Arcoyas)

Joaquin-arcollas-UL1

Joaquín Arcollas Cabezas, alias Magarza, was one of the people killed on August 17 or 18, 1936 along with Federico García Lorca by the pro-Franco military who had taken Granada. The anarchist banderilleros (bullfighters) Arcoyas Cabezas and Francisco Galadí, the teacher Dióscoro Galindo and the poet were taken together to Víznar, to La Colonia (building where prisoners went before being shot without trial) to later be killed somewhere on the road from Víznar to Alfacar. Eduardo Molina Fajardo in his book The Last Days of García Lorca identifies him as Juan Arcoyas Cabezas.

He was one of the people killed on August 17 or 18, 1936 along with Federico García Lorca by the pro-Franco military rebels who had taken Granada.

Joaquín Arcollas was an anarchist and belonged to the CNT construction union, so he must have been a bricklayer by trade (it also seems that he was a day laborer), although he was known in Granada, in the bullfighting world, for being a famous banderillero. According to the 1935 census, he lived in Horno de Vidrio, 3, at the entrance of the Albaicín, the only neighborhood that resisted Franco’s uprising, with his widowed mother. Along with Francisco Galadí, he was defending the Albaicín when the coup took place in Granada (the neighborhood resisted several days against the coup army). Seeing that the defense was impossible, they fled, but in Huétor Santillán they clashed with a sergeant of the Civil Guard who supported the coup and died in the shooting. Arcollas and Galadí were discovered and arrested. They were taken to La Colonia, where they remained for several hours together with Galindo and García Lorca.

Along with Arcollas and Galadí, Dióscoro Galindo, a national teacher from Pulianas who was missing a leg, was also shot. Galindo represented the Popular Front in the 1936 elections. Molina Fajardo adds two other individuals to the group of those arrested and shot along with Federico: two petty thieves whose exact affiliation is unknown, except that one of them was nicknamed The Terrible.

RELATED CHARACTERS AND/OR PLACES

See all related Flight, Death and Repression