Lisardo Doval Bravo

Lisardo Doval Bravo (La Coruña, 1888 – Madrid, 15 October 1975) was a Spanish soldier and officer of the Spanish Civil Guard, where he became a general.

He was well known for being one of the main responsible for the repression of the Asturian Revolution of 1934, in which he used brutal methods that were denounced to the government of Alejandro Lerroux. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936-1939, he joined the side of the rebels and in May 1937 he was appointed by Francisco Franco as Head of Security at the Generalist Headquarters in Salamanca.

Career in the Civil Guard He was born in a small village in the province of La Coruña in 1888. When he was a child, he met Francisco Franco, who was four years younger than him, in El Ferrol and later they met at the Infantry Academy in Toledo. He joined the Civil Guard as an officer and served in Oviedo from 1917 to 1922.

He participated in General Sanjurjo's failed coup d'état of August 1932, for which he was suspended, but benefited from the amnesty granted by the radical government of Alejandro Lerroux, supported by the CEDA of José María Gil Robles, on 24 April 1934.1 He was chosen by Gil Robles to train the paramilitary squads of the Juventudes de Acción Popular (JAP), the youth branch of the CEDA. When the news reached the Falangist militias composed of Onésimo Redondo's followers ready to avenge his death, supported by a military unit under the command of commander Doval, he went to Salamanca where he carried out the repression of the leftists who had already been arrested. Many of them were taken out of their cells by the Falangists and executed. Among them were the city's mayor, Casto Prieto Carrasco, professor of radiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Salamanca, and the socialist deputy José Andrés Manso.

On May 14, 1937, he was appointed by Franco as Head of Security of the residence and headquarters of the Generalissimo in Salamanca, taking command of "the European and Moroccan forces in charge of the H.E. guard".

Once the civil war was over, he presided over the war councils against the defeated in Tortosa. In two trials held on 10 August 1939, involving 14 and 15 men respectively, the defendants were only able to speak to the military man appointed as defence counsel on the day of the trial, and the whole process did not last half an hour.

Around 1953 he retired with the rank of general of the Guardia Civil. He died 22 years later at the age of 87 at the Gomez Ulla Military Hospital in Madrid on October 15, 1975, one month before the death of Franco.