Castilla Carmona, Virgilio

Virgilio-Castilla_1

Merchant and politician born in Granada on July 14, 1888. He was a member of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party), delegate of the Granada Socialist Association in the PSOE Congress of 1931 and vice president of the provincial federation. He was a Freemason. He was a councilman of the Granada City Council in the municipal elections of 1931 and president of the Diputación de Granada in two periods.

In his public actions, the promotion and improvement of communications and investment in policies to boost employment in the most depressed areas stand out. After the military uprising he was arrested in Granada on July 20, 1936 and tried in a summary court-martial on August 1 along with other personalities from Granada. The sentence condemned him to two death sentences for military rebellion, provocation, inducement and instigation to rebellion and insults to the armed forces. The sentence attributed him to be the ringleader of “a broad subversive movement to implant in the city the most advanced Russian-Marxist doctrines by means of terror”. None of the charges were proven.

Virgilio Castilla
In the same trial, also without guarantees, was condemned Juan José Santa Cruz and Garcés de Marcilla, deputy in the Constituent Courts from 1931 to 1933; Antonio Ruz Romero, leader of the Socialist Federation of Granada and retired officer of the Artillery Corps of the gunpowder factory of El Fargue; José Alcántara García, bricklayer and socialist leader, and Enrique Martín Forero, lawyer of the Republican Left and Red Aid parties. All of them were shot in the cemetery in Granada on August 2, 1936. Many of his collaborators, including Manuel Fernández-Montesinos Lustau (mayor of Granada in 1936), also lost their lives as victims of Nationalist repression.

Despite having taken his life, he was fined by the Court of Political Responsibilities and sentenced to pay 250,000 pesetas seized from the family estate. The family obtained the reparation of his memory by resolution of the Ministry of Justice in 2007 although they did not get the requested compensation.

RELATED CHARACTERS AND/OR PLACES

See all related Flight, Death and RepressionSee all related Politicians