Spain was so deathly afraid of Jose Rizal that, in snuffing out his life past 7 a.m. on 30 December 1896, it assembled several companies of soldiers, eight of which it arrayed behind his back to carry out the death sentence by firing squad.

After cutting short Rizal’s trip to Cuba, where he offered to serve as a field doctor to treat Spanish soldiers trying to quell a parallel revolution there, Spain formed a kangaroo court with the sole purpose of convicting him.

The charge: Masterminding or, at the very least, inspiring the rebellion started by Gat Andres Bonifacio and his Katipunan, with the revolutionaries sometimes using Rizal’s name as a password during their clandestine meetings.

Prevented from presenting his witnesses, Rizal was found guilty after a one-day trial, and on the morning of 29 December, or 24 hours before his appointed time to meet his Maker at Bagumbayan (presently the Luneta or Rizal Park), he would be informed of his sentence.

Rizal’s family and Jesuit professors from the Ateneo came to snatch whatever time they could with the condemned man, thereby providing him the chance to hand to a sister his poetic masterpiece, Mi Ultimo Adios, hidden inside an alcohol burner.

Floated, too, was the off chance that the Jesuits might just convince the civil authorities to stay his execution if he would turn his back on freemasonry, return to the bosom of the Catholic Church, and retract all that he had written and said against Spain.

Indeed, a retraction would be published belatedly in a Spanish newspaper, something that Rizal’s detractors would say was proof that he was a lesser hero, if he was one at all.

A forgery, perhaps? Certainly, that had been vigorously posited for decades after his death, with a handwriting expert from the National Bureau of Investigation even tasked with authenticating it, without arriving at a definitive conclusion.

Aside from the controversial retraction, it would be claimed by no less than Josephine Bracken, with whom Rizal had a stillborn child while in exile in Dapitan, that they had a Catholic wedding hours before his death. The “officiating” priest would back Bracken’s claim.

Later, fighting the Rizal family for his worldly assets (mainly P3,000 worth of books and the paintings given to him by Juan Luna), Bracken, the “widow,” would be unable to prove their marriage had taken place.

Bracken, whom Rizal asked his mother to consider as her own daughter, would be denounced by no less than her adoptive father, George Taufer, for making up fantastic tales like allegedly killing a Spanish soldier while under the protection of General Emilio Aguinaldo.

Still, the retraction and the wedding, together, would have proven Rizal’s return to the fold of the Church. But if they would ultimately be proven to be factual, would this have made him undeserving of the respect of Filipinos as a national hero? That’s a judgment that each one of us must make.

There’s no debate, though, that Rizal twice turned his back on offers by the Katipuneros to spring him from exile in Dapitan and when he was held prisoner aboard a ship in Manila while waiting to board another vessel going to Cuba.

In both instances, Rizal would tell Bonifacio’s emissaries that it was not yet time for Filipinos to arm themselves against Spain, probably seeing how bloody futile the Cuban revolution was and the many similar uprisings waged in the North American territory.

Fears of the Katipuneros rescuing Rizal during his death march from his cell at Fort Santiago within the walls of Intramuros probably fueled that Spanish show of force of assembling several companies of soldiers to execute just one man.

Two years after the shots that killed Rizal were fired, Spain would see its over three centuries of rule in the Philippines come to an end with the Philippine and Cuban revolutions — two events closely linked to Rizal — being joined as historical events.

The United States would step into the Cuban carnage and touch off the Spanish-American War that in 1898 would bring US forces to Philippine shores to wage an acoustic war against the Spaniards just so the latter could stage a face-saving “battle” before surrendering the islands.

Rizal, as a purported “pacifist,” had been dubbed an American-made hero, one that the United States wanted instead of someone like the arms-wielding Bonifacio as it waged its campaign of assimilation and pacifism to keep the Philippines a colony.

He was, from where this Contrarian sits, a pragmatic man who did not say not to rise in arms against Spain, but rather that in confronting an enemy, one must bide time if victory is to be achieved. Holds true then; holds true now.