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A short time ago I had the opportunity to write an article about one of the most illustrious sons of Argamasilla de Alba. I am referring to Mr. Ayala, journalist, politician and lawyer with a brilliant career and praised talent. By then he had already spent some time researching the life of another prominent, as well as unknown, character from our town: Captain Sánchez Alcántara. To this officer of the Spanish army belonging to the infantry arm, one of the most central streets, the old and well-known Argamasilla de Alba, is dedicated under the title of Captain Sánchez Alcántara Street, which embraces the emblematic and historic Casa de Medrano on its southern façade.
Both Eugenio Sánchez Alcntara and Anequera y Ayala, both born in the second half of the century, have maintained that outstanding Phone Number Database honor despite the numerous vicissitudes and historical and social changes that have occurred to this day in the last century, but what do we really know? of this argaasillero military man Eugenio Sánchez Alcntara will die young, at the age of when he was actively participating in one of the campaigns that the Spanish army was carrying out in Africa during the Moroccan war.
His death will not be, despite the many occasions on which it could have been, a direct consequence of the numerous combats in which our protagonist participated in the Rif War, but rather it will be one of the many that will be exacted by the harsh conditions that they will have to endure. the Spanish combatants in a totally hostile and implacable terrain for them. Not being a public man like Benedicto Antequera was, it is more difficult to locate the sources that allow us to know at least briefly the details of the life of this Spanish army officer.
Eugenio Sánchez was one of the six children of the marriage formed by Antonio Sánchez Rodrigañez, a native of de Alba, and Carmen Fernández, a native of Madrid. Although his paternal grandparents were from de Alba, on the maternal line his grandfather was originally from Laujar (Málaga) and his grandmother from Tembleque (Toledo). He was born on March 26, 1889 into a family whose head of the family works as an assistant to the de Alba City Council, while his mother will be a teacher at the public girls' school in our town.
The third of six siblings (three of them will die before reaching their first birthday), Eugenio will grow up on La street and then on La Plaza street along with his brothers and . All three will die single and without children. It so happens that his brother Orosio, ordained priest, will also die too young just ten years after Eugenio did in another war context, when he was parish priest of the parish of San Juan Bautista de de Alba. Barely two months after the start of the Spanish Civil War and after receiving an ultimatum to leave the town, he was detained by militiamen at the Cinco Casas station and then shot. will be the last member of the family to die in .
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Focusing on our protagonist, Eugenio Sánchez Alcántara will complete his Baccalaureate studies at the General and Technical Institute of Ciudad Real, obtaining his bachelor's degree in 1908. He will soon link his destiny with the Spanish army. In 1910, at the age of , he took the exams for entry into the military career, competing during the months of May and June of that year simultaneously for the engineers (Guadalajara) and infantry (Toledo), achieving admission as a cadet. at the Toledo Infantry Academy on August . He will swear the flag in the parade ground of the Alcázar on October, a year after the first clashes of what is known as the Rif War or the Second Moroccan War began. During his stay at the infantry academy, his mother died in August .
According to the Army Annual Yearbook of , Cadet Sánchez Alcántara will be enrolled in the second section of the first course of the Toledo Infantry Academy. During his stay at the Toledo infantry academy, he will coincide with relevant classmates such as Agustín Muñoz Grandes, a prominent Africanist soldier who entered the infantry academy at the age of 14 and would reach the rank of general in a meteoric career with various promotions. for war merits. After the Spanish Civil War where he fought on the coup side and already in the middle of World War II, Muñoz Grandes held supreme command of the Blue Division, sent by General Franco to fight on the side of Nazi Germany on the front of the Soviet Union. against Stalin's Soviet troops.
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