Geri Halliwell, one of the members of the Spice Girls, has family roots in Córdoba. Her great-grandfather, Emiliano Hidalgo Fernández, was the republican mayor of Dos Torres during the Second Republic and was shot by firing squad on 27 December 1940, at the age of 61, in Córdoba’s La Salud cemetery.
Hidalgo was arrested in May 1939 and court-martialled because of his socialist activism and his role during the Civil War. The 116-page case file describes him as "founder of the Socialist Party" in Dos Torres and as someone whose actions were "destabilising and revolutionary".
The charges also identified him as one of the leaders who opposed the 1936 military coup.
The indictment states that he was a "Marxist leader" who acted against what the Francoists called the "glorious movement". However, the file itself notes that some of the accusations could not demonstrate his direct responsibility for certain events.
The court ultimately sentenced him to death for the offence of "adherence to the military rebellion", a sentence carried out on 27 December 1940. The entry recording his death states that he was executed "by firing squad" against the cemetery walls.
The family’s connection with Córdoba does not end with Emiliano Hidalgo. His son Máximo was also arrested after the Civil War and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In prison he met one of the women working as guards, with whom he would go on to start a family, a story that years later would be linked to Geri Halliwell.
His story might have been lost among the thousands of republicans punished in Córdoba after the Civil War. However, decades later, his name resurfaced in connection with one of the great global pop phenomena, the Spice Girls, through his great-granddaughter Geri Halliwell.
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