The Maquis (; ; also spelled maqui) were Spanish guerrillas who waged an irregular warfare against the Francoist dictatorship within Spain following the Republican defeat in the Spanish Civil War until the early 1960s, carrying out sabotage, robberies (to help fund guerrilla activity) and assassinations of Francoists as well as contributing to the fight against Nazi Germany and the Vichy regime in France during World War II. They also took part in occupations of the Spanish embassy in France. The Maquis activity in Spain had its heyday towards 1946, after which the resistance fighters were heavily repressed during the (1947–1949), with instances of white terror such as paseos, and applications of the ley de fugas (extralegal executions based on the simulation of the escape of detainees) taking a heavy toll among the combatants and their supporters. Following its decline, it fully disappeared in the 1960s. Overview Referring to the contribution of the Spanish Maquis to the French resistance movement, Martha Gellhorn wrote in The Undefeated (1945): Also during World War II, Spaniards were involved in the assassination of Julius Ritter, an SS Colonel in charge of recruiting forced labor, as well as in the planned assassination of General Ernst Schaumburg. In October 1944 a group of 6,000 maquis including Antonio Téllez Solà invaded Spain via the Aran Valley but were driven back after ten days. Few details of the maquis' actions in Spain have been made public because of the secrecy of the Franco government, but guerrillas, including Francesc Sabaté Llopart, Jose Castro Veiga, and Ramon Vila Capdevila were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Guardia Civil (Civil Guard) officers, and uncountable acts of industrial sabotage. Between 1943 and 1952, 2,166 maquis were reported arrested by the Civil Guard, nearly wiping out the movement. Etymology The term maquis comes from the French term maquis, which in turn comes from the Corsican term macchia, the maquis shrubland, a type of biome found in the Mediterranean basin, mostly associated with Corsica. In France, the term was first used to refer to a group of guerrillas of the French resistance against the German occupation of France during World War II. The resistance fighters in these encampments were referred to as maquisards. History The anti-Franco guerrilla resistance in Spain began before the 1939 end of the Spanish Civil War. The outbreak of World War II so soon after the civil war surprised a