Alfredo Valenzuela | Seville (EFE).- The Afghan mountain ranges proved to be an insurmountable obstacle for the Soviet advance, whose strategists decided to commission a group of Andalusian communists who, between 1981 and 1982, sent them a hundred male Spanish donkeys to obtain the mules they needed to end its war against Afghanistan.
The details of that assignment, which would have surpassed even the imagination of someone as accustomed to seeing the most unexpected side of war as Gila, have been told to EFE by the leader of that operation, Francisco Gordo, a 76-year-old communist veteran who was organization secretary of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) of Camas (Seville) 20 years ago.
The idea, according to the account of Francisco Gordo, was to mate the Spanish donkeys with mares to obtain the mules with which to lighten the load of a war that seemed to be entrenched and that, in effect, lasted up to ten years, with doubtful results for the invaders.
The order came through the PSUC, the sister Catalan communist organization of the PCE that in 1982 was directed by Gregorio López Raimundo and to which the communist party of the Soviet Union carried out the order to obtain the donkeys.
“Spanish” donkeys from Portugal and Guijuelo
“In the game nothing was asked; and I did not say anything about my trips in search of donkeys or my wife”, Francisco Gordo recalled his trips to the towns of Seville, Badajoz, Cáceres and Salamanca -“Guijuelo was the furthest place we went to pick up a donkey ”, he has specified-, while those who bought in Portugal passed them at night across the border to avoid any inspection that would ruin the transfer.
“We made the transfers with a truck that we rented because none of us had an appropriate means of transportation, and we almost always put gasoline out of our pocket,” he pointed out, to emphasize that the operation was carried out for strictly ideological reasons, for obedience to the party and in solidarity with the Soviets.
Three million pesetas for the purchase of donkeys
According to Gordo, the PSUC sent some three million pesetas for the purchase of the donkeys, which were calibrated by the cantaor José Domínguez Muñoz, El Cabrero, since the donkeys, according to the demand of the Soviets, could not be more than five years old. and a height of “six fingers” as it is called in livestock slang one meter and a half plus six fingers to the withers of the animal.
El Cabrero was part of a team in which no more than half a dozen communist militants carried out the operation, for which they had the complicity of a rancher from Guillena (Seville), known as Juan el Gitano, who he lent them his farm to gather the donkeys, as long as he did not have to take care of their upkeep.
“Juan the Gypsy is the most honest and formal person I have ever met in my life, he was always dressed in black and with his wide-brimmed hat,” said Gordo, accustomed to dealers of all stripes, since for many years he was commercial of Campofrío and seller of pigs, after having been an administrator of the Sevillana Company in his youth and having been educated in the Seminary.
Our friend the communist
An enterprising man, Gordo also opened a small restaurant in his hometown, El Ronquillo (Seville), to promote meetings of farmers, a means by which it was easy for him to obtain information on which towns had a donkey for sale.
Now he humorously recalls that his small restaurant became a meeting place for aristocrats such as Manuel Prado and Colón de Carvajal, the Count of La Maza and other landowners and ranchers who, when they planned to have gatherings there, would say: “Tomorrow we are going to eat at home.” of our friend the communist”.
When, after several months of comings and goings, they managed to gather the hundred male and young donkeys on the farm of Juan el Gitano and were already awaiting instructions from the PSUC to prepare their shipment to the USSR, African horse sickness was declared and they were forced to suspend the operation.
“We had to sell all the donkeys to recover the money, which was fully repaid to the PSUC and, since we sold them well, there were three or four left over that we gave to Juan the Gypsy, who accepted them in exchange for the help he had given us. ”, Gordo concludes a story that had never come to light, perhaps because of the discretion that the communists inherited from hiding.
“We communists never spoke or told anything, and if we could not see things, we preferred not to see them, so if they questioned us later, the less we knew the better; once when I came back from a trip to buy donkeys, they asked me at home where I came from and I answered: That is party policy”.