José Escudé Claramunt (Peñíscola, 1843 - Varese, 1909) was a Spanish soldier, captain of the Carlist troops. Biography
Born in Peñíscola in 1843, he was the son of a wealthy landowner, who also worked in the cattle business. At the age of 29 in 1872, after a strong family discussion with his father, he joined a party of fourteen men, called "de la manta", directed by Pascual Cucala and with it he launched himself into the forest.
When, at the beginning of the Third Carlist War, troops were missing that faced him in the Levant, they fought together with the Carlist troops against the Liberals who supported King Alfonso XII throughout the Spanish Levante and also in Catalonia. He reached the rank of captain in the Carlist army. He stood out for his sagacity to avoid direct encounters with the Army forces and for the guerrilla activity he carried out, destroying railway and telegraph lines, intercepting mails and collecting contributions in all the towns of the numerous provinces for which he extended his actions.
With Pascual Cucala he arrived at the gates of Valencia and took part with Palacios in the failed takeover of Liria. He attended the taking of Cuenca. Harassed by the forces of Brigadier Calleja in 1873, in Minglanilla, when Cucala was seriously wounded, he was saved from certain death in a heroic act that would later be worth the concession of the Marquesado de Claramunt by a grateful Carlos María de Borbón, who would accompany in his exile.
He already married in his old age with the young courtesan Elvira Pérez Espinosa, daughter of a marshal of the Carlist army, also in exile. He died in Varese in 1909, the same year as his King Charles VII of Spain.
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