Misplaced Pages

Miguel Buiza
Birth name	Miguel Buiza Fernández-Palacios
Born	25 January 1898 Sevilla, Andalusia, Spain
Died	23 June 1963(1963-06-23) (aged 65) Marseille, France
Buried	Hyères graveyard, Var
Allegiance	Spanish Republic France
Service / branch	Spanish Republican Navy French Foreign Legion
Rank	Commander of the Fleet
Battles / wars	Spanish Civil War Battle of Majorca Battle of Cape Cherchell Tunisia Campaign
Awards	War Cross

Miguel Buiza Fernández-Palacios (25 January 1898 – 23 June 1963) was a Spanish Navy officer best known for being the commander of the Spanish Republican Navy during the Spanish Civil War. He died in exile in Marseille in 1963.

Miguel Buiza is often referred to as an admiral, owing to his high-profile role leading the Spanish Republican Armada, but there are sources that claim that he never rose above the rank of captain (Capitán de Navío)

Early life

Miguel Buiza was born in a wealthy family of factory owners in Seville. In 1915, Buiza entered the Naval Academy at San Fernando. By 1932, he had reached the rank of lieutenant commander (Spanish: Capitán de Corbeta) of the Spanish Republican Navy. Four years later, when the Spanish Civil War started, he was in command of the military tugboat Cíclope (RA-1) and refused to join the July 1936 pro-Fascist coup, remaining loyal to the republic. His brother Francisco, a commander of the Spanish Republican Army, joined the rebel faction after the coup and was killed in action in the front near Madrid early in the Civil War.

Civil war

In early August 1936, at the beginning of the war, Miguel Buiza took part in the blockade of the Strait of Gibraltar as commander of the light cruiser Libertad. Later in the same month, he saw action in the Battle of Majorca in support of the failed Republican landing operation at Porto Cristo.

On 2 September, Miguel Buiza was named Captain General of the republican fleet by Indalecio Prieto, the Navy and Air Minister (Ministro de Marina y Aire), while keeping the command of the Libertad. Buiza was only 38 years old at the time. In the dire 1936 post-coup reorganization of the Spanish Republican Armed Forces, Prieto did away with the Navy 'ship committees' and sought to create a structure that would reimpose discipline after the bulk of the top commanders had defected to the rebels.

Following the disappointing defeat of the Spanish Republican fleet on 27 September 1938 at the Battle of Cape Cherchell, when a series of tactical mistakes on the part of the Republican command resulted in the loss of two cargo ships, Miguel Buiza was relieved of his duties as commander of the Navy and replaced by Captain Luis González de Ubieta who was promoted to admiral. President Manuel Azaña acknowledged in his memoirs his disappointment in the indecisiveness of the commander of the Spanish Republican Navy, despite having a greater number of ships. After being demoted, Buiza was transferred from one post to another, such as Inspector of naval bases, Chief of staff of the Navy and then also secondary posts such as naval personnel director, until he was reinstated to Captain General of the Republican Armada in February 1939.

Shortly thereafter, on 5 March 1939, Spanish Republican Army Colonel Segismundo Casado launched an anticommunist coup and proclaimed a National Defence Council (Consejo Nacional de Defensa) in order to seek an armistice with the rebels and end the fratricidal war, a measure that Miguel Buiza favored. On the same day, the Nationalist Air Force bombed the harbour of Cartagena, the main base of the Republican Navy, sinking the destroyer Sanchez Barcaiztegui. Following the bombing and the unrest in the city, where a rebellion was under way between adversaries and supporters of the continuation of the civil war, Miguel Buiza decided to evacuate the seaworthy units of the Republican fleet. As soon as night fell, at least three cruisers, eight destroyers and two submarines left Cartagena harbor, speeding for the high seas.

The fleet took an eastward course, led by Miguel Buiza aboard the cruiser Miguel de Cervantes, and reached Algerian waters. Off Oran, Buiza asked for permission to anchor, but the naval authorities of French Algeria would not allow him to lead the Spanish Republican ships into their main base. They directed him to Bizerte in the French protectorate of Tunisia, where the fleet arrived on 7 March. Not long after anchoring, the fleet was impounded by the French authorities. Except for a few crewmen who were put on guard duty on the ships, the Spanish Republican seamen and their officers were interned in a concentration camp at Meheri Zabbens, near Meknassy, in an abandoned phosphate mine. Miguel Buiza refused any special treatment and asked to be interned together with the other sailors.

Exile

In May 1939, after the Spanish Republic had already lost the civil war, Miguel Buiza asked the French government for permission to join the French Foreign Legion (Légion étrangère), where he was admitted as foreign officer with the rank of captain. At the beginning of World War II, Buiza had been promoted to commander, but in mid 1940, he resigned following the Second Armistice at Compiègne between Nazi Germany and the Third French Republic. Certain sources claim though that he was forced out of the French Foreign Legion by the new authorities of Vichy France because of his antifascist past.

Miguel Buiza settled in Oran, where he worked as an accountant in a hotel. In 1947, he was recruited by Zeev Hadari, one of the representatives in France of the Hamossad Le'aliyah Bet, the Haganah branch in the British Mandate of Palestine that facilitated Jewish immigration to Palestine in violation of British restrictions.

Under the name "Moshé Blum", Buiza became the commander of the merchant vessel Geula, the former USS Paducah. On 2 October 1947, the ship was intercepted while trying to run the British blockade and bring Jewish refugees to Palestine. Buiza was arrested by the British authorities and interned in a concentration camp near Haifa.

After regaining his freedom, Miguel Buiza returned to Oran. In 1962, following the Évian Accords and the independence of Algeria, he joined the exodus of the Pieds-Noirs and went to France as a refugee.

Miguel Buiza died in exile in Marseille on 23 June 1963, barely a year after his arrival from Algeria, without having been able to return to Seville, the city of his birth. He is buried at the graveyard in Hyères, in the Var department. Less than two months after Miguel Buiza's death his widow published a short obituary in the Spanish ABC newspaper.

See also

• Cartagena Uprising
• Spanish Republican Navy
• Aliyah Bet

Bibliography

• Graham, Helen. The Spanish Civil War. Oxford University Press. 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-280377-1
• Jackson, Gabriel. The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931-1939. Princeton. Princeton University Press. 1967. ISBN 0-691-00757-8
• Preston, Paul. The Spanish Civil War. Reaction, revolution & revenge. Harper Perennial. London. 2006. ISBN 978-0-00-723207-9 ISBN 0-00-723207-1
• Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War. Penguin Books. London. 2003. ISBN 978-0-14-101161-5

References

1. Sevillanos ilustres (in Spanish)
2. Javier García Fernández (coord.), 25 militares de la República; "El Ejército Popular de la República y sus mandos profesionales", Ed. Ministerio de Defensa, Madrid 2011
3. Remolcador de Altura Cíclope, RA-1
4. Almirante Buiza, Forum "El Gran capitán"
5. Orden, circular, creando un Comisariado general de Guerra con la misión que se indica (PDF). Vol. Año CCLXXV Tomo IV, Núm. 290. Gaceta de Madrid: diario oficial de la República. 16 October 1936. p. 355.
6. Manuel Azaña, Diarios de Azaña, Vol. IV, p. 620
7. Diario Oficial de la República, núm. 860, 26 de diciembre de 1937
8. Diario oficial de la República, núm. 22, 22 de enero de 1939
9. Juliá, Santos; Casanova, Julían; Solé i Sabaté, Josep Maria, Villarroya, Joan; and Moreno, Francisco. Víctimas de la guerra civil. 2006. Ediciones Temas de Hoy. Madrid. p.266
10. Beevor, Antony. The Battle for Spain. The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. Penguin Books. 2006. London. p.391
11. Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War. Penguin Books. 2001. London. p.877
12. Almirante Valdés (VS o AV)
13. Serapio Iniesta, Flon Flon. Los Republicanos Españoles en la Legion Extrangera Francesa, Ed. Bruguera, Barcelona 1972.
14. Joaquín Mañes Postigo, Españoles en la Legión Extranjera francesa, Col. Historia Inédita (2009), ISBN 978-84-92400-44-7
15. Evelyn Mesquida, La Nueve, 24 août 1944. Ces républicains espagnols qui ont libéré Paris, Paris, Le Cherche-Midi, 2011, collection « Documents ». ISBN 978-2-7491-2046-1, p. 308
16. Zeev Hadari, Second Exodus: The Full Story of Jewish Illegal Immigration to Palestine 1945–1948, Valentine Mitchell, London (1991), ISBN 978-0853032199
17. Murray S. Greenfield and Joseph M. Hochstein, The Jews' Secret Fleet: The Untold Story of North American Volunteers who Smashed the British Blockade, Gefen Publishing House (2010), ISBN 978-9652295170
18. Webmar - Forum Marinas Mercantes
19. Moshé Blum

External links

• Picture
• Comunidad El Pais - Miguel Buiza y Fernández Palacios
• Foro Historia Naval - La flota republicana en Túnez (1939)
• Ha'Mossad Le'Aliya Bet

v t e Chiefs of Staff of the Spanish Navy
Restoration 1874–1931	Zoilo Sánchez de Ocaña y Vieitiz 1895–1896 Fernando Martínez de Espinosa y Echeverri 1896 Segismundo Bermejo y Merelo 1896–1897 Ismael Warleta y Ordovás 1897–1898 Manuel Mozo y Díaz Robles 1899–1902 Pascual Cervera y Topete 1902– Federico Estrán y Justo 1908–1909 José de la Puente y Bassave 1909–1910 Joaquín María de Cincúnegui y Marco 1910–1912 Francisco Chacón y Pery 1912–1913 Antonio Perea y Orive 1913–1914 Orestes Gracía de Paadín y García 1914–1915 José Pidal Rebollo 1915–1918 Adriano Sánchez Lobatón 1918–1919 José María Chacón y Pery 1919–1920 Gabriel Antón Iboleón 1920–1924 Ignacio Pintado Gough 1924 Juan Carranza y Garrido 1924–1927 José Rivera Álvarez de Canero 1927 Juan Cervera Valderrama 1927–1931 Francisco Javier de Salas González 1931–1936
Republic 1936–1939	Valentín Fuentes López 1937 Miguel Buiza Fernández-Palacios 1937–1938 Pedro Prado Mendizábal 1938–1939 Julián Sánchez Erostarbe 1939
Dictatorship 1936–1975	Juan Cervera Valderrama 1936–1939 Transferred to the Ministry of the Navy 1939–1942 Alfonso Arriaga Adam 1942–1951 Rafael Estrada Arnaiz 1951–1952 Juan Pastor Tomasety 1952–1956 Felipe José de Abárzuza y Oliva 1956–1957 Santiago Antón Rozas 1957–1963 Jerónimo Bustamante de la Rocha 1963 Fernando Meléndez Bojaro 1963–1966 Rafael Fernández de Bobadilla y Ragel 1966–1967 Adolfo Baturone Colombo 1967–1969 Enrique Barbudo Duarte 1969–1972 Gabriel Pita da Veiga y Sanz 1972–1973 José Ramón González López 1973–1975
Contemporary 1975–present	Carlos Buhigas García 1975–1977 Luis Arévalo Pelluz 1977–1982 Saturnino Suanzes de la Hidalga 1982–1984 Guillermo Salas Cardenal 1984–1986 Fernando María Nárdiz Vial 1986–1990 Carlos Vila Miranda 1990–1994 Juan José Romero Caramelo 1994–1997 Antonio Moreno Barberá 1997–2000 Francisco José Toerrente Sánchez 2000–2004 Sebastián Zaragoza Soto 2004–2008 Manuel Rebollo García 2008–2012 Jaime Muñoz-Delgado y Díaz del Río 2012–2017 Teodoro Esteban López Calderón 2017–2021 Fausto Escrigas Rodríguez (Acting) 2021 Antonio Martorell Lacave 2021–2023 Antonio Piñeiro 2023–present

• 1898 births
• 1963 deaths
• Spanish naval officers
• Spanish military personnel of the Spanish Civil War (Republican faction)
• Spanish Republican Navy
• Military personnel from Seville
• Exiles of the Spanish Civil War in France
• French Army personnel of World War II
• Officers of the French Foreign Legion
• Spanish people imprisoned abroad
• Spanish military personnel of World War II
• Prisoners and detainees of France
• Prisoners and detainees of the British military