The PCE persecuted Communists in northwestern Spain during those years. In 2008 Victor Garcia found the body of his father partially buried in a wooded area of O Deza (Pontevedra). He had been shot in the head. Garcia's father had not fled Spain after the defeat of 1939; he stayed behind and helped to organize a guerrilla force of 947 fighters in Galicia. Around the year 1944 the central committee of the PCE, then living in France and headed by Ibárruri and Carrillo ordered his execution. After it was carried out in 1948, the regional PCE liaison wrote, "At last we have hunted him down. This riffraff withstood us like a leech. We managed to catch him in Lalin from where he directed certain adventurous, uncontrolled groups. He is a provocateur who has given us many troubles; though belatedly we have eliminated him."