The July 1936 military uprising in Melilla occurred at the start of the Spanish Civil War. The rebels seized the main garrisons of the Spanish Army in Africa and by 18 July had crushed the resistance of the army officers loyal to the Republican government. The supporters of the Second Spanish Republic were detained or shot. Background One of the main goals of the Spanish coup of July 1936 was to secure Spanish Morocco, because the Spanish Army of Africa was the main shock force of the Spanish Republican Army. Their members were Spanish regular soldiers, the Spanish Legion, and Moroccan mercenaries, Regulares. Most of their officers supported the plot and rejected the liberal democracy. Only a handful of officers, such as General Manuel Romerales, the commander-in-chief of the Spanish Army in Morocco, General Gomez Morato, and the high commissioner, Placido Alvarez Buylla, were loyal to the Republic, and the Spanish workers in Morocco had no weapons and were isolated from the Moroccan population. Coup 17 July: Melilla The leader of the plot, Emilio Mola, had ordered the Army of Africa to revolt at 5 a.m. on 18 July, but the plan was discovered by Republican officers of Melilla on 17 July, and the leader of the plot in the city, Colonel Segui, decided to start the rising on Melilla and arrested General Romerales. The rebels seized the radio station and proclaimed the estado de guerra. The Legionnaries, the Regulares, and the Assault Guards in Melilla joined to the rising. Seizing key buildings, they crushed the resistance in the working class quarters. General Romerales, the major of Melilla, the government delegate, the aerodrome commander, Virgilio Leret Ruiz, and all those who resisted the rebellion were shot. When General Morato discovered the rising, he took an airplane to Melilla, but he was arrested by the rebels as soon as he landed. 17 July: Ceuta and Tetuán Seguí then telephoned Ceuta and Tetuán and sent a telegraph to Franco at Las Palmas. Colonel Juan Yagüe Blanco, with the II Battalion of the Spanish Legion, seized Ceuta while Colonel Saenz de Buruaga, with the V Bandera of the Spanish Legion, took Tetuán. The rebel troops in Ceuta occupied the working class districts and killed prominent unionists and the major of the city, and in Tetuán, the Foreign Legion seized the Casa del pueblo and executed the union officers and all persons found with