In 1932, Carrillo joined the Executive Commission of the Socialist Youth and became editor of its newspaper,
Renovación. Carrillo belonged to the left wing of the organisation. In 1933, as the Socialist Youth was becoming more radical, Carrillo was elected as General Secretary. From October 1934 to February 1936 he was jailed, due to his participation in the
failed 1934 leftist coup (Carrillo was a member of the National Revolutionary Committee). After his release, in March 1936, Carrillo and the executive of the Socialist Youth travelled to Moscow to meet the leaders of the
Young Communist International and prepare the unification of Socialist and Communist youth leagues. The result was the creation of the
Unified Socialist Youth (
Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas). After the outbreak of the
Spanish Civil War, Carrillo joined the Communist Party and did so on the day the government left Madrid in November. During the war, he was intensely pro-
Soviet. On 7 November 1936 Carrillo was elected Councillor for Public Order in the
Defence Council of Madrid, which was given supreme power in besieged Madrid, after the government left the city. During his term, several thousand military and civilian prisoners were killed by republican groups in the
Paracuellos massacres at
Paracuellos del Jarama and
Torrejón de Ardoz (the biggest mass killings by the Republican side during the Civil War). The dead were buried in common graves. Carrillo denied any knowledge of the massacres in his memoirs but some historians like
César Vidal and
Pío Moa maintain that Carrillo was involved. In an interview with the historian
Ian Gibson, Carrillo set out his version of events concerning the massacre. In the preface of the second edition of his book, Ian Gibson maintains that Cesar Vidal twisted and misrepresented his sources in order to indict Carrillo. Fernando Hernández, José Luis Ledesma, Paul Preston and Ángel Viñas argued that Carillo can't claim ignorance of knowing the fate of the prisoners because he was present at the few meetings where the
sacas(taking out of prisoners) were discussed and received oral instructions. Although they say
Pedro Checa and
NKVD agents are primarily responsible. Julius Ruiz echoed similar sentiments and also argued that Carillo provided logistical and political support for the killings. In March 1939 Madrid surrendered after
Casado's coup against the
Negrín administration and its close ally, the Communist Party, which sought to continue the resistance until the expected outbreak of the World War. Carrillo's father, Wenceslao, a member of the PSOE, was among those who led the coup and was a member of Casado's Junta. Some weeks before, Carrillo's mother had died. Carrillo then wrote an open letter to his father describing the coup as
counter-revolutionary and as a betrayal, reproaching him for his
anti-communism, and renouncing any further communication with him. In his memoirs, Carrillo states that the letter was written on 7 March. However, journalist and historian Carlos Fernández published the letter in 1983, as it had been published in
Correspondance International; it was dated 15 May. After the military collapse of the
Republican Government, Carrillo fled to
Paris and worked to reorganise the party. Carrillo spent 38 years in exile, most of the time in
France, but also in the
USSR and other countries. == Exile ==