Felipe Sandoval

Felipe Emilio Sandoval Cabrerizo (26 May 1886 - 6 July 1939) (also known as "Doctor Muñiz") was a Spanish bricklayer, career robber, a killer and spy who associated with anarchist activities in France and very prominently in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

Biography

He was born in the poor former suburb of Las Injurias in Madrid. His mother had moved from Torrelaguna to the capital to escape hunger and she worked as a washerwoman in the ''Manzanares'' district. He did not know his father. Sandoval spent his childhood in an orphanage. In his youth, he worked as a bricklayer but also began his criminal career. In 1919, he was imprisoned in ''cárcel Modelo de Barcelona'' (Barcelona Model Prison) after committing a robbery. An unsuccessful escape attempt resulted in a severe beating on Christmas Eve which permanently disfigured his face. He was regarded variously by fellow prisoners as a man of no beliefs or ideas, a professional criminal or simply a killer or thug. He left Spain and settled in Paris, where from 1926 he would attend meetings of the anarchist Juan García Oliver, a founder of the armed group ''Los Solidarios'' which had been organized to counter oppressive practices by employers and government sectors against the unions in Barcelona; at these meetings he would find other anarchists who'd fled Spain. ''Los solidarios'' was also a precursor to the '' Federación Anarquista Ibérica'' (FAI) in Spain, which became allied to the ''Confederación Nacional del Trabajo'' (CNT), a grouping of anarcho-syndicalist trade unions.

He didn't espouse any statements of anarchism, his interest being manifested in a series of attacks and robberies which he organised with a premise of financing anarchism after his return to Madrid. In 1932, he stole 35,000 '' pesetas'' from the home of Agapito Velasco whom he accused of withholding funds from the canteens of the ''Asistencia Social''. He robbed a branch of the Banco de Vizcaya, taking 40,000 ''pesetas''. After stealing an arsenal of weapons, he was captured and sent to Colmenar Viejo prison but escaped after injuring a prison officer. At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, in July 1936, he was recovering from a bout of tuberculosis in the ''cárcel Modelo de Madrid'' when prisoners were released, many joining anarchist groups. He was released two weeks later. Some local CNT members were integrated into the informally-titled ''checa de Fomento'' checa'' taken from revolutionary Russia to mean a committee or unit">Cheka.html" ;"title="he word ''Cheka">checa'' taken from revolutionary Russia to mean a committee or unit It was officially called the ''Comité Provincial de Investigación Pública de Madrid'' (CPIP), which received Spanish state funding to unify and control repression of the Francoist Spain">Nationalist