Brutally Frank: “The Alcázar Does Not Surrender”

     With the Obamunist regime about to occupy
the White House for another four years, surely with increasingly aggressive
attacks against our religious freedom, I can’t help thinking of the Siege of
the Alcázar during the Spanish Civil War.

     Liberals typically spit the name of General Francisco Franco like a curse. To them he’s a posterboy for “fascism,” not that I've run across any liberals who can provide a proper political definition for the term, primarily because in his fight for
Spain, he accepted military aid from Adolf Hitler way before Hitler’s true nature was evident. The simple fact of the matter is that Franco defended Spain against Soviet-backed communism and preserved Catholicism in Spain. Upon his death in the 1970s, Franco provided for the restoration of the Spanish monarchy under a constitutional system.

     Colonel José Moscardó, a devout Catholic fighting under the command of Franco, was holding the Alcázar, a stone fortification in the highest part of Toledo, the old residence of the Spanish monarchs. The siege by communist forces commenced and Colonel Moscardó held out for seventy days beginning in July of 1936. Communist forces captured Moscardó's 16-year-old son, Luis. They called the Alcázar on the telephone and Moscardó himself  picked up the receiver. The political officer told him that unless he surrendered the Alcázar, his son would be shot. Moscardó asked to speak to his son.

     “Commend your soul to God," he told his son, "and die like a patriot, shouting, ‘Long live Christ the King!’ (¡Viva Cristo Rey!) and ‘Long live Spain!’ The Alcázar  does not surrender.”

     “That," answered Luis, “I can do.”

     Luis, as courageous in sacrifice as his father, was shot. God bless them both. In the difficult times ahead, may the Lord grant us the graces of absolute sacrifice, even to the point of embracing martyrdom.