Carlos Romero Gimenez (7 November 1890-11 September 1978) was a General of the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. Gimenez was a veteran of the Rif War as a general of the Kingdom of Spain and fought with the French Resistance during World War II. He died in exile in Mexico, considered one of the heroes of the siege of Madrid.
Biography[]
Carlos Romero Gimenez was born on 7 November 1890 in Madrid, Spain of Andalusian and Spanish descent. He joined the Spanish Army on 2 December 1908 and participated in the Rif War against Abd el-Karim's rebels, and Gimenez was awarded the Laureate Cross of Saint Ferdinand as an award for his services. Gimenez was arrested for a rebellion against Miguel Primo de Rivera's fascist dictatorship after the insurrection of Jaca, but he was released in an amnesty by Damaso Berenguer and took over a regiment at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands, where he remained until 1931.
When the Spanish Republic came to power, Gimenez became an attache to Portugal and helped the people that were oppressed by Portuguese dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar and became the Vice-President of the Spanish League for Human Rights. At the onset of the uprising that began the Spanish Civil War, he rejoined the Spanish Army and assisted in the fight against the Spanish Nationalists under Francisco Franco and Emilio Mola. It was he who commanded the defenses of Madrid against Franco's socialist soldiers in 1939 in the final action of the war, the Siege of Madrid, and he invented the "Mina Romero" anti-tank mine. However, the city eventually fell on 28 March 1939 and he fled Spain. He was twice sentenced to garroting in absentia by Franco's government, with the charges being his affiliation with the Freemasons and the other being his fighting against the Nationalists in the civil war.
He lived in Paris, France in exile at the start of World War II, when he assisted the French Resistance from 1940 to 1942 in fighting Nazi Germany in Bordeaux. He was captured by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Fort du Ha in Bordeaux, but Mexico's human rights consul Gilberto Bosques saved him from the Gurs concentration camp. He fled for Casablanca in Morocco and then to Mexico, where he died in 1978.