Manuel Cortés Quero, the last republican mayor of Mijas, spent thirty years in hiding, hiding from everything and everyone, after the Civil War. Known as the mole of Mijas, he was one of the so-called mole men, republicans who buried the best years of their lives, fearful of being victims of Francoist reprisals. Cortés survived by rolling esparto to contribute to the family economy, with the only company of his wife, his only daughter, whose wedding he could not attend, and the radio.
This is what gives him the good news on April 12, 1969: the Franco regime has promulgated amnesty for all crimes committed during the Civil War, a magnanimity that is nothing more than the political and media exploitation of its mandatory statute of limitations at thirty years. . The moles are free at last.
