José Valdés Guzmán, born in Logroño in 1891, was an army major when the military uprising of July 1936 succeeded in the city of Granada, surrounded by territory that remained loyal to the Republic. On 20 July he became civil governor, a post he held until April 1937. Under his authority, the rebel authorities in Granada carried out a systematic repression against Republicans, trade unionists, left-wing politicians, teachers and intellectuals. Executions took place night after night at the walls of the San José cemetery and in the ravines around Víznar and Alfacar; historians have counted several hundred dead at the cemetery in the month of August 1936 alone. On 16 August, Federico García Lorca was arrested at the house of the Rosales family, where he had taken refuge, and taken to the civil government building. According to the reconstruction of his biographer Ian Gibson, accepted by the historian Paul Preston, Valdés received the denunciation against the poet and consulted General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano about what to do with him. Lorca was shot on the road between Víznar and Alfacar at dawn, most probably on 18 August 1936. Valdés died in Granada on 5 March 1939, of an illness aggravated by a war wound.
// The theoryKilling as a procedure
Albert Bandura described the mechanisms by which people with moral standards can do terrible harm without self-condemnation: moral justification, euphemistic language, displacement and diffusion of responsibility, distortion of consequences and dehumanization of victims. He insisted that these mechanisms operate above all in institutions that provide an authorized framework for harm. In Crimes of Obedience (1989), Herbert Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton identified three processes that make mass violence possible: authorization, when acts are ordered or approved by legitimate authority and the individual feels absolved of choosing; routinisation, when killing is organized as a series of procedures and tasks; and dehumanization, when victims are defined as enemies or less than human. Historians of political violence in civil wars have shown that the three appear together wherever a repression is organized from offices.
A repression with paperwork
The repression that Valdés directed had the features Kelman and Hamilton describe. Authorisation: the uprising’s military command declared a state of war and gave the civil government the power to arrest and dispose of suspects; those who carried out the shootings acted under orders. Routinisation: detentions, lists, transfers and executions followed one another night after night, with squads, lorries and fixed places, until killing became part of the administrative work of the city. Dehumanisation: victims were defined as “reds”, enemies of Spain, and in Lorca’s case, according to the report of the regime’s own police in 1965, as a socialist and freemason to whom homosexual practices were attributed. The man at the top of that system did not need to fire a shot. His role was to receive denunciations, sign, decide and keep the machine running.
// The subjectWhat is known and what is disputed
Valdés’s role in the general repression of Granada is well documented. His exact role in Lorca’s death is the subject of historical debate. Gibson, after decades of research, concluded that the decision passed through him, after consultation with Queipo de Llano; Preston accepts that reconstruction. Other versions attribute more weight to other actors, or to rivalries among the factions that controlled Granada, and some have tried to absolve Valdés of the specific decision. In 2015, the radio network Cadena SER and the newspaper eldiario.es published a 1965 report by the Granada police which confirmed, from within the regime itself, that Lorca had been shot after his arrest. Valdés was never tried: he died in 1939, a month before the end of the war, as a figure of the victorious side.
José Valdés Guzmán
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// The crackA theory of mechanisms, not a verdict
Moral disengagement and crimes of obedience explain how a repression is organized and sustained by ordinary people. They do not settle the historical questions about who decided what. A case about a real person must keep both levels apart: the system Valdés presided over is documented; his personal decision about Lorca is a reconstruction accepted by major historians but still debated. The theory also risks diluting responsibility, the very mechanism it describes: saying that a system killed can sound like saying that nobody did. Bandura and Kelman insisted on the opposite. The mechanisms explain how people do harm; they do not excuse them.
There is also the question of the film. La bola negra (2026) is not about Valdés; it evokes Lorca’s world and his death through fictional stories. This case belongs to the history that the film presupposes. The repression of Granada was directed by people who chose to sign, order and carry it out. What the theories add is an account of how that choice was made bearable: by turning killing into work.
Memory and the graves
The ravines of Víznar and Alfacar still hold an unknown number of victims of the repression of 1936. Lorca’s own grave has never been found: the excavation carried out in 2009 at the site traditionally indicated found no remains, and later searches have not been conclusive. Historical memory laws have tried to support the exhumation of mass graves and the recognition of victims, against decades of silence. Understanding how the repression was organized—who signed, who ordered, who carried out—is part of that work. The film tells the story of the people the repression erased; the history behind it has names, and some of them are still being looked for.
Three key ideas
- Bandura’s moral disengagement and Kelman and Hamilton’s crimes of obedience (1989) explain mass violence through authorization, routinisation and dehumanization: the processes that allow killing to be organized from an office.
- José Valdés Guzmán, civil governor of Granada from 20 July 1936, directed a repression that executed hundreds at the San José cemetery and in Víznar. According to Gibson’s reconstruction, accepted by Preston, he received the denunciation of Lorca and consulted Queipo de Llano. Lorca was shot, most probably, on 18 August 1936.
- The crack: his role in the general repression is documented; his personal decision about Lorca is a debated reconstruction, and he was never tried. Even so, the repression was directed by people who chose it.
Sources · further reading
- Gibson, I. (1971). La represión nacionalista de Granada en 1936 y la muerte de Federico García Lorca. Ruedo Ibérico.
- Preston, P. (2011). The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain. HarperPress.
- Kelman, H. C. and Hamilton, V. L. (1989). Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility. Yale University Press.
- Bandura, A. (1999). “Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities”. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(3), 193-209.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is José Valdés Guzmán?
José Valdés Guzmán (“Gobernador civil de Granada”) is a villain from The Black Ball, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. Every night lorries left for the cemetery and for the ravines of Víznar.
Why does José Valdés Guzmán (Civil governor of Granada) become a villain?
José Valdés Guzmán and moral disengagement: the army major who governed Granada in the summer of 1936 directed a repression that filled the cemetery walls with the executed, and according to historians’ reconstruction he was the one who decided the fate of Federico García Lorca. Albert Bandura explained how authority, routine and language allow people to kill without feeling like murderers. The real history behind La bola negra.
Which criminological theory explains José Valdés Guzmán?
José Valdés Guzmán's case is analysed through Moral disengagement. Albert Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement (1986, 1999), and Kelman and Hamilton’s study of crimes of obedience (1989), explain how ordinary people take part in killings: authority dilutes responsibility, bureaucratic routine turns death into procedure and language turns victims into enemies. José Valdés Guzmán (1891-1939), civil governor of Granada from 20 July 1936, directed one of the most intense repressions behind the rebel lines, and according to Ian Gibson’s reconstruction, accepted by Paul Preston, he was the one who received the denunciation of Lorca and decided his fate. This case sticks to what is documented and flags what remains disputed.
