| Unit Name: | 17th 17.ª B.Mixta |
| Dates: | 1936–1939 |
| Country: | Spain |
| Branch: | Spanish Republican Army |
| Type: | Infantry division |
| Role: | Home Defence |
| Command Structure: | Toledo Autonomous Group (1936) 3rd Army Corps (1936 - 1938) 8th Army Corps (1938-9). |
| Battles: | Spanish Civil War
|
The 17th Mixed Brigade was a unit of the Popular Army of Madrid, took part in the Battle of Jarama and the fronts of Guadalajara.(Spanish; Castilian: 15.ª División)[1] This was a division of the Spanish Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War. which was involved in the Battle of Jarama —and great part of the Battle of Madrid, suffering grievous losses in both battles.
The 17th Mixed Brigade was constituted, at the end of 1936, in Villarrobledo and the command was given to Lieutenant Colonel of Infantry Germán Madroñero López, having as commissar Manuel Simarro Quiles, of the PSOE. Madroñero was at the outbreak of the war, commander in the Wad-Ras Regiment No. 1 of Madrid. In mid-January 1937, the unit was mobilized and stationed in Ocaña with the intention that it would intervene in a planned offensive for Brunete, which will take time to complete. On 7 February, in the Battle of Jarama the Brigade was entrusted with the defense of the Titulcia Bridge until they were replaced with the Chorda Group. The Nationalist forces managed to pass through another route, avoiding the destruction of the bridge, which resulted in the 17th mixed brigade to close the gap and in relief of the 23rd WB. The unit was then transferred to the 15th division to aid in their reinforcement and assign new competences in the front of Madrid until that in December 1937.
The brigade was officially created on 29 July 1936 while the militias of the Fifth Regiment were militarized and organized in the provinces of Madrid, Toledo, Cuenca and Guadalajara, with some soldiers assigned to the latter. The first commander of the unit was the eldest of the Lieutenant Colonel of German Infantry Madroñero, then the war arrives in Madrid and the jarama and is appointed political commissar, Angel Maynar Cebrián. The unit was framed in the 13th Division of the III Army Corps.
The 17th mixed brigades had begun with the reservation.[2] In June the division became part of the Madrid Operations Army, which was formed by the 15a.[3]
In mid-January 1937 he concentrated on Morata, preparing for an offensive test in Brunete that had to be delayed. After being a reserve unit and relay in the defense of Madrid, after a brief rest in the rear, Alcalá de Henares, it mobilized to intervene as a buffer force of the regular forces of Buruaga, in the vicinity of The hill of Suicide and white house. With the duties of the battle of Jarama, he was entrusted with the conquest of Pingarrón in the first moments. It intervened in the Battle of Jarama attacking the hill of El Pingarrón in February, the unit was decimated and in first line, after being eliminated many soldiers, it is the moment in which Luis Alcázar is a new sergeant of this unit.
On 12 February he attacked the Cuesta de la Reina and, two days later, he faced the Pingarrón Vertex. The next day, it was framed in the "B" Division commanded by the Yugoslav general Gal, participating with her, again, in bloody battles around the Pingarrón. During these actions, Madroñero was relieved by the infantry commander Hilario Cid Manzano who, on 18 July 1936, was a retired captain in Madrid.
At the end of the fight in the Jarama, the 17th Brigade joined the 13th Division and with it in front of Madrid, with a command post in Morata de Tajuña, under the command of a forgotten character: Lieutenant Colonel Julián del Castillo Sánchez. He was a 72-year-old infantry lieutenant, retired in Madrid and winner of the Cruz de San Fernando prize in the Cuban War.[4]
The 17th mixed brigade spent the rest of the war in a trench war, without fighting to be prominent, except for an attempt to break the front, to the desperate Francoist, to try to paralyze the national in the offensive Peñarroya, in January 1939 On 28 March, when the Madrid front surrendered, the Brigade closed its history.