The Pamplona City Council square had never been so crowded with people. That afternoon of April 14, the voice of Mariano Sáez Morilla was irrigated over the others: “Navarros! Pamploneses! Today is a big day for Spain. In Madrid and in all Spanish towns and cities, the Republic has been proclaimed with a delusional enthusiasm, as we do at this time, ”began its short and historic speech. This teacher of teachers, who always defended public education and the separation between Church and State, had no six years left. After the beginning of the civil war, the Carlists murdered him in Navarra. Your body is still missing.
The historian Eduardo Martínez Lacabe has just published Mariano Sáez Morilla. Proclamator of the Second Republic in Pamplona. Life and death between red boina (Pamiela, 2025), the first biography that recovers from oblivion to this Albacete who played a key role in both the republican advent and throughout his years of councilor in the Pamplone Consistory. “He was a normal school professor, taught future teachers,” introduces the author of the monograph.
Sáez arrived in Pamplona in the summer of 1921 for love. His wife, with whom he married that year, María Ángeles Fernández de Toro, obtained a place as an inspector of Education in the Navarre capital. He was in Galicia, asked for the transfer and the two settled in Pamplona. Despite having passed to posterity as a teacher, Sáez was an enlightened law graduate and with studies in philosophy. Also journalist: he was director of The Navarro Magisteriumthe official body of teachers in the region; editor in The Navarro peopleof liberal cut that eventually tended to monarchism; and correspondent of the Republican header Freedom.
With a deep concern for the reality of his time, after the First World War Sáez defended pacifism in talks and conferences. “I His concern for training made him deserve a scholarship of the Study Expansion Board (JAE), like his wife, which led him to study the pedagogical systems of England.
Sáez decided to take sides at the institutional level in 1929, when he joined the PSOE. “For him, Pablo Iglesias was a reference, not so much for his socialism but for his humanism. Already in Madrid, he joined in 1933 on the republican left of Manuel Azaña, ”says Martínez.
The proclamation arrives: “Citizens, Long live the Republic!”
That afternoon of April 14 came preceded by the municipal elections held two days before, when the Republican forces won in most cities in the country. “Pamplona was an oasis. Here the monarchists, Carlist and Jaimists triumphed, but the military governor saw that many cities were already proclaiming the Republic, ”concretizes the historian. The Republican-Socialist Committee was summoned, formed by three of the first and two of the seconds. That day in the square was the five: Serafín Húder, Mariano Ansó, Emilio Zaraola; and Tiburcio Osácar and Sáez himself.
Accompanied by a great demonstration, they arrived at the City Council of Pamplona after 6:30 p.m. to greet the new democratic regime from the balcony. “We imagined this place like this on Chupinazo Day, but so far there had never been so many people in it,” Martínez himself illustrates. The first republican proclamation was carried out by Serafín Húder, president of the aforementioned committee, in the same session in which his father, Francisco Húder, became the first Republican Mayor of the city in the First Republic, in 1873.
There is no written testimony of what Húder shared with the attendees. On the other hand, up to three media in the region picked up one by one the words of Sáez, the only one of the five that was exposed from the balcony: “The Spanish people begin to govern themselves under the flag of the Republic that symbolizes the Freedom, culture and tolerance and respect for the ideas and feelings of all citizens, ”he said after his first words.
Thus he continued: “We will gradually get all the sad memories of our political struggles and the shameful dictatorship, and let’s join all Spaniards to work for the aggrandizement and prosperity of the homeland.” His last words ended a with a living: “Salud with patriotic emotion to these flags of the national militia, of the workers and of the Republic, because they all guide us towards an ideal of freedom and justice. Citizens, live the Republic! ”
At that time, the five Adalides of the Republic in Pamplona also called for calm. “They greeted the new regime, but they also tried to reassure those present because in Pamplona they were surrounded by wolves. This was a Carlist and Jaimist island, as it was seen later by becoming a conspiracy center during the civil war, ”adds the historian.
His work as a councilor in favor of public education
Sáez became one of the 29 councilors of the Pamplona City Council in June 1931, after the second round of the April elections challenged by the right -wing forces. “He was a trustee councilor, the most important position after the mayor,” adds Martínez. During its stage as a mayor, Sáez’s policy was characterized by two issues: the defense of public education and the separation between Church and State.
“He defended a motion to build a school in the center of Pamplona, where teachers would also be instructed and in which they could do practices. I did not want the children of the poorest people to have to go through the religious yoke to receive their education, ”he develops the biographer. At the time, Sáez proposed that the center be called Alcalá-Zamora or Pablo Iglesias. The project was never finished, which was executed. Currently, his name is that of Vázquez de Mella, an ideologist of Spanish traditionalism and Carlism totally far from Sáez’s ideas.
Separating civil and religious life from the City Council was not an easy company. “At that time, even the Consistory paid the speakers of the sermons during Holy Week and San Fermín, the candles and the candles of the processions,” Martínez exemplifies. Sáez’s courage led him to defend that everything related to religious cult should be paid by the parishioners themselves.
Sáez had to leave his councilor’s minutes in 1933, since his position was incompatible as an official at the Pamplona School of Arts and Crafts with the performance of a public office. He got a pedagogy professor in Madrid at the San Bernardo School, where he arrived in September, and left the town hall, although officially his place was deserted in 1934.
The war in Ávila, death in Navarra
By avatars of destiny, Sáez was not in the capital at the beginning of the contest in July 1936, but in Ávila, a city where his wife was an inspector of Education. That month, Sáez was part of an opposition court. On July 19, Ávila fell into the hands of the rebels and the teacher decided Education of Navarra, truffled by Carlistas, published a letter that publicly condemned Sáez for having escaped from justice, ”adds Martínez.
Sáez’s name was not the only one that appeared in that Carlist text. So did that of his wife, María Ángeles Fernández de Toro, monarchical right -wing, daughter of a Carlist from Don Carlos’s army and very traditional, so much that their five children were educated in religious schools.
The news of his location arrived in Navarra, from where two requests left in search of Sáez. They crossed part of the Peninsula, in full war, from Pamplona to Ávila. “They led him to the College of the Escolapios, a detention center in Pamplona managed by the Carlists, they had to take a statement and just days later he was killed,” the biographer tells the end of his days.
According to the documents, Sáez died on February 10, 1937, an Ash Wednesday. His widow registered Sáez’s death in the Civil Registry of Ávila on May 10, 1938. In the cause of death it consists that he died from “internal hemorrhage.” In the place of death appears “Eibero-Pamplona”, even if you refer to the town of Ibero.
On the other hand, for many years it has been thought that his body rested in Ripa (Odieta): “It seems that they told the woman, very Catholic, to be calm. In 2023 let’s urge two bodies in Ripa, but the DNA did not correspond to that of Sáez, ”says Martínez. Later they thought that his body could be in Ostiz, although Martínez is currently argued that most likely, Sáez’s body can be between two locations very close to the capital: Ibero and Etxauri.
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