Anarchist banderillero who, with Juan Arcollas Cabezas and the teacher Dióscoro Galindo, was shot alongside Federico García Lorca.
Francisco Galadí Melgar and Juan Arcollas Cabezas were well known in Granada as anarchists and, in the bullfighting world, enjoyed well-earned fame as banderilleros. They both belonged to the CNT union, fought against a bosses’ union that did not respect workers’ rights and did not hesitate to finance the military uprising against the Republic. According to his grandson, Francisco Galadí Córdoba, he had been a tinsmith or plumber, a caster of water pipes, although vocationally he was a “silver-dress bullfighter by profession and an anarchist at heart.”.
It has been taken for granted that Lorca was shot and is buried next to the banderilleros and maestro Galindo. In fact, the various searches for the remains have been undertaken at the request of Galindo’s and Galadí Melgar’s relatives.
He was married to Paca Calleja Usero with whom he had three children. Along with Arcollas, he organized the defense of the Albaicín when the military uprising took place in Granada in 1936 (the neighborhood resisted only two days before the coup army, as they were poorly armed). Seeing that defense was impossible, they escaped, but Galadí wanted to say goodbye to his family before crossing to the Republican zone and this turned out to be a trap, according to his grandson. There are several versions of their capture, but all agree that they were arrested and taken to La Colonia in Víznar, an old mill that had served as a summer resort for the children of Granada and that the rebels transformed into a place of transit for those condemned to death. There they met Galindo and Lorca.
It has been taken for granted that Federico García Lorca was shot and is buried next to the banderilleros and the teacher Galindo. In fact, the various searches for the remains of Lorca and his fellow executioners have been undertaken at the request of the relatives of Galindo and Galadí Melgar. Eduardo Molina Fajardo adds two other people to the group of those shot: two petty thieves, one of them nicknamed El Terrible (The Terrible).
