The Moroccan
sniper of the regulars Tabor, who belonged to the Coronal Saens of the
Bruaga Corps under the command of General Barrera, a Franco insurgent,
shot a Republican militiaman running down a hillside. It was at 10:30 a.m. on September 5, 1936 in Cordoba, about a month after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. When the Moroccan sniper, who had been hiding in a trench, pulled the trigger, a Mauser rifle's Mauser round of approximately 7x57mm caliber was fired ruthlessly at about 730 meters per second on an updraft. Federico Borrell Garcia, an anarchist military militiaman from Alicante, was killed instantly by a bullet through the heart while running down the slope of Cerro de la Caja (above). War photographer Robert Capa, who was a few meters to the left of the sniper, took the famous "The Falling Soldier" war photo at close range from inside the trench with his 35 mm Leica III. In 1996, he discovered the identity of a militiaman who had fallen backwards after being shot with a Mauser rifle. To the right of the militiaman, who died instantly from a bullet through the heart, can be seen a mountain near the beginning of a small ravine on the eastern slope of Cerro de la Caja hill. The identity of the other Second Republic militiaman who was killed by sniper fire on La Coja Hill is unknown to this day (below).
On July 17, 1936, General Franco and his Iberian generals revolted against the Republican government, which had been democratically formed in the general elections of February 6, and the Spanish Civil War broke out. Robert Capa, whose real name was Endre Enrey Friedman, was a Budapest-born Jewish-Hungarian photographer In 1935, the Deput Agency ordered Capa to travel to Spain to take photographs for a German magazine. In 1935, the Depto Agency ordered Capa to travel to Spain to take photographs for a German magazine; in 1936, Capa photographed the French Popular Front's post-victory rallies, etc. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, the French luxury photography magazine Vu ordered Capa to photograph the Spanish Civil War; on September 23, 1936, "Popular Front Soldiers at the Moment of Death" was published in Vu.
Arriving in Barcelona on August 5, 1936, Capa found that the rebels had been defeated in Barcelona and armed militias of workers and anarchists had seized power. Thousands of militiamen boarded trains bound for the Aragon front. They arrived at Cerro Muriano, in the northern suburbs of Cordoba, the capital of the Guadalquivir Highlands, where the Republican army had launched a major offensive.
On August 20, 1936, about 5,000 Republican troops invaded Cordoba, which was defended by rebel forces. Fierce fighting ensued, and the insurgents inflicted heavy casualties on the Republican militia due to the firing of African Moroccan specialists. About 10,000 Republican troops dispersed to villages in the province of Cordoba, and around the village of Cerro Muriano, the Republican troops set up a solid defensive position after two weeks.
The rebels avoided the industrial areas and invaded Andalusia and Extremadura. On September 5, both the rebels and the Moroccan militia destroyed the Republican forces in the northern suburbs of Cordoba. The Republican militia, the majority of whom had picked up rifles for the first time about a month and a half earlier, including civilians and laborers, charged the regular African army and the rebels in the village of Cerro Muriano, north of Cordoba. The two armies fired at each other with all kinds of weapons, including artillery and machine guns. After numerous casualties began to occur and weapons fire, the fighting became so fierce that on September 5, 1936, the insurgents completely overwhelmed the Republican militia.
