Cabo Quilates prison ship

Description of events

Date : –
Address : Docked at the Portu Dock

In Barakaldo, the people who had stood against the Government of the Republic and against current legislation, or had positioned themselves against the Basque nationalist or worker movement, or in favor of the church had ended up in prison and were imprisoned in the prison ship Corporal Carat awaiting trial. In all, there were an estimated 700 prisoners.

As of September 1936, the planes of the national side began to bombard the civilian population with greater frequency and insistence. In retaliation for these bombings and as Koldobika López tells us, Corporal-Cailates was attacked.

There were two assaults; the first was on September 25, 1936, as a result of the rebellious aviation bombing against Bilbao and cost the lives of 50 prisoners, the second, was on October 2 and was incited by the sailors of Jaime I, after learning that the Francoist ships Canarias and Almirante Cervera had attacked and sunk the republican destroyer Almirante Ferrándiz on September 29. This second assault caused the death of some 31 prisoners.

One of the deaths caused in the first assault was Fernando María de Ybarra, Marquis of Arriluce, precisely on a boat belonging to his family, the Ybarra company.

The prison ship Cabo Cailates was docked in the Portu dock, in Barakaldo. At present there is a monument in homage to the prisoners killed in the Cabo Cailates Prison Ship.

SOURCES :
LÓPEZ, Koldobika (2016). The Civil War in Barakaldo. Eleven months of resistance. Bilbao: Beta Editions.