Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War

by Vaill, Amanda

  In December 1957, Barea began complaining of stomach problems, and on Christmas Eve had to miss a BBC broadcast (something he almost never did) due to illness. Ilsa, too, was down with bronchitis, and during the afternoon the two of them lay on their bed, exhausted, “like a crusader and his wife on a tomb,” as Ilsa described it. But she got up to do the Christmas baking with her niece Uli, who was visiting from Austria and was a great favorite of Barea’s, and to decorate their Christmas tree. That night, in bed, Barea suddenly complained of pressure in his chest, then excruciating pain. He clutched at Ilsa and went limp in her arms: undiagnosed cancer had put pressure on his lungs and helped to touch off a fatal heart attack. His body was cremated, and Ilsa intended to scatter his ashes on the graves of her parents, Valentin and Alice Pollak, who were buried in Faringdon churchyard. But when she went to do this, her hands, by now crippled with arthritis, proved unable to open the urn. She had to go back to Middle Lodge and get her niece Uli to help her prise up the lid.

  Moving to London, Ilsa struggled on alone, writing, translating, editing, working as an interpreter for international conferences, and publishing and promoting Barea’s work in England and abroad. In 1963, Kim Philby, her former colleague from her and Leopold Kulcsar’s Viennese cell, who had been working for British intelligence under cover as a journalist, was unmasked as a Soviet double agent and fled to Moscow. News accounts of his defection mentioned his service with Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War; if she hadn’t realized it before, Ilsa now understood how vulnerable her knowledge of his socialist past, which would have betrayed him to Franco, had made her to those whose job it was to protect him at all costs.

  But by now she had left politics behind. For some years she’d been researching a social and cultural history of her native Vienna, a graceful and lively book that was published to admiring reviews in 1966; two years later, when she retired, she returned to the city she’d left as an exile so long ago, intending to write a biography of Schubert and to work on her memoirs. Neither project came to fruition: in 1972, she died of kidney failure, and all of the papers she had with her in Vienna disappeared. In some ways she had never recovered from the loss of her husband fifteen years earlier. “It is meaningless to say he is dead,” she wrote then. “Nobody can take away from me what I had. And what I know he had. It is beautiful after all. I am grateful.”

  * * *

  By the time Franco’s troops entered Madrid on March 27, 1939, the Hotel Florida was virtually empty. The foreign correspondents, the International Brigaders, the fliers of Malraux’s Escuadrilla España, Hemingway’s “whores de combat”—probably even Don Cristóbal and his stamp collection—were all long gone.

  During the Franco years, however, the Florida stayed open, even as its end of the Gran Via became a little shabbier, a little less elegant, with the passage of time. In 1955, Hemingway returned to the hotel, bringing his new wife, Mary, to the room he had shared with Martha Gellhorn; but the Florida’s days as the center of a universe of danger and excitement were over. And no one in Franco’s Spain—where the official Civil War memorial was the gigantic stone cross and underground mausoleum, built by imprisoned Loyalists, at the Valley of the Fallen near the Escorial—was interested in preserving this monument to the Siege of Madrid. In 1964 the wrecker’s ball accomplished what Nationalist shells could not: the Florida was demolished to make way for a department store, Galerias Preciados—named for a nearby street, and not for anything valued or precious. Today that building is occupied by a branch of Spain’s largest retail chain, El Corte Inglés.

  If the Hotel Florida is gone, the Telefónica remains, just up the Gran Via, tall and white as a wedding cake. The wires and cables and switchboards have disappeared: in their places are the sleek exhibition rooms and offices of the Telefónica Foundation, showcasing art, culture, and technology of the twenty-first century. Instead of correspondents filing stories, there are concerts and art shows and lectures. But the view from the Telefónica’s tower terrace is remarkably unchanged, despite the new construction of the past seventy-five years. You can still look across the Manzanares at the Casa de Campo and the hill of Garabitas where the Nationalist guns hurled their shells into the Gran Via. And on a bright autumn day the shining peaks of the Guadarrama seem so close you feel you could put your hand out and touch them.

  NOTES

  The page numbers for the notes that appeared in the print version of this title are not in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for the relevant passages documented or discussed.

  Unless otherwise noted, translations in these pages are those of the cited source.

  PROLOGUE

  On July 18: Luis Bolín, Spain: The Vital Years, pp. 20–46.

  “This young and eager Spain”: Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (henceforth SCW), p. 32.

  Although the government managed: Nigel Townson, The Crisis of Democracy in Spain, p. xiv.

  “The war in Morocco”: Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge (henceforth SCW), p. 79.

  By the time reconquest was achieved: Thomas, SCW, p. 136; Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939, p. 32. According to Thomas, the official Ministry of the Interior figures, released on January 5, 1935, listed 1,335 killed and 2,951 wounded. Nigel Townson, in an e-mail, points out that those killed included “priests, professionals, landowners, Catholics etc, not just those on the left.”

  one of them: Thomas, SCW, p. 137.

  In February 1936: Hugh Thomas, Stanley Payne, and others refer to this confederation as the National Front; but current writers on the period (the historian Nigel Townson and others) prefer the term Anti-revolutionary Coalition.

  “the discipline of the army”: Thomas, SCW, p. 189.

  however, he suggested: Preston, SCW, p. 96.

  So when the hired Dragon Rapide crossed: Bolín, Spain, p. 49.

  “Once more the Army”: Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain, p. 61. This proclamation was in fact issued by Franco before leaving the Canary Islands, which he placed under martial law; but it wasn’t publicly released until several days after the uprising had taken place.

  “There can be no compromise”: Jay Allen, Chicago Daily Tribune, July 28 and 29, 1936, quoted in Paul Preston, We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War (henceforth WSSD), p. 299.

  PART I: “THEY ARE HERE FOR THEIR LIVES”

  Arturo Barea lay: In reconstructing Arturo Barea’s experience of the war I have relied extensively on his own account of it in his autobiographical trilogy, The Forging of a Rebel (henceforth FR in notes), supplementing and corroborating it where possible with other documentation. Many people in it are given pseudonyms or partial names (in part to protect them from reprisal during the Franco years) and some incidental characters may be composites. Again, where possible, I’ve supplied their actual names.

  “I’m no use”: Barea, El Centro de la pista, quoted (and translated) by Michael Eaude, Triumph at Midnight of the Century, p. 11.

  the radio was playing: Thomas, SCW, p. 215, n. 1.

  leaving his nostrils full: Barea, FR, pp. 315–16.

  So he’d spent all night: Ibid., p. 529.

  his politics stood in the way: Ibid., p. 407.

  “too many of those black beetles”: Ibid., p. 525.

  It was thought that the officers: Thomas, SCW, p. 233, provides a fairly full account of the siege of the Montaña Barracks, which corroborates Barea’s own in FR.

  On Wednesday night, the government: In FR, Barea uses fictional names for his brothers (who were still in Spain when the book was written and published and might have been endangered by being identified); so, for example, Miguel is referred to in the book as Rafael.

  “We led them out like sheep”: Barea, FR, p. 542.

  But when you’re someone’s houseguest: Caroline Moorehead, Gellhorn: A Life, p. 94.

  an unusually favorable contract: Carl Rollyson,
Beautiful Exile, p. 55.

  “a constant supply”: MG, letter to Gip Wells, April 26, 1983, quoted in Moorehead, Gellhorn, p. 96.

  He called her “Stooge”: Moorehead, Gellhorn, p. 92. One of the letters in MG’s papers at Boston University shows a naked Wells preparing to be spanked by a disapproving Gellhorn.

  privately admitted she was flattered: H. G. Wells correspondence notes, Martha Gellhorn collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University (henceforth BU).

  There she’d embarked on a four-year affair: Although some American news stories about Gellhorn at this period referred to her as being married to de Jouvenel, and although one biographer, Carl Rollyson, states that a ceremony was performed in Spain in the summer of 1933 “at the home of Colette’s old friend” the muralist José Maria Sert (Rollyson, Beautiful Exile, p. 42), this marriage was almost certainly a fiction maintained for the sake of propriety in puritanical America. De Jouvenel never divorced his “first” wife, and Gellhorn does not seem to have ever divorced de Jouvenel, so if a wedding indeed took place, that marriage, as well as Martha’s subsequent ones, was bigamous. Sert, it should be noted, was fiercely conservative, and would later be a supporter of the Franco rebellion: not Martha’s kind of person at all, it would seem.

  “there are two kinds of women”: Moorehead, Gellhorn, p. 52.

  “Franklin, talk to that girl”: Martha Gellhorn, “The Thirties,” The View from the Ground, p. 70.

  “It has meant more to me”: MG to BdeJ, December 2, 1934, quoted in Moorehead, Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn (henceforth Selected), p. 31.

  “write great heavy swooping things”: MG to Hortense Flexner, April 10, 1935, in Moorehead, Selected, p. 33.

  “not then or ever”: Gellhorn, “The Thirties,” The View from the Ground, p. 68.

  Wells loved the piece: Moorehead, Gellhorn, pp. 94–95. Gellhorn told two versions of the story’s genesis: in the first, contained in a November 11, 1936, letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, she says she never saw any lynchings at all during her time in the South, but “just made [this story] up” and sent it to her agent for submission; in the second, recounted in the 1990s to the English publisher John Hatt, the story is “based closely on fact” and Wells is alleged to have submitted it for publication without consulting Gellhorn. By that time, of course, Gellhorn had a reputation to protect, and Wells was dead and couldn’t refute her; the more contemporary version seems closer to the truth.

  “making a terrible sound”: MG, “Justice at Night,” in The View from the Ground, p. 8.

  in North Carolina: MG to Eleanor Roosevelt, November 11, 1936, in Moorehead, Selected, p. 42.

  “the mortal enemy of our nation”: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Manheim, trans. (Houghton Mifflin, 1971), p. 367.

  “the dictatorship of the proletariat”: “Le ministère des masses,” Le Temps, June 9, 1936, p. 1.

  she found the atmosphere: MG to Allen Grover, August 6, 1936, in Moorehead, Selected, p. 38.

  There were too many “gloomy rich”: Gellhorn, “Going Home,” The New Yorker, December 12, 1936.

  Signs everywhere announced: Gellhorn, “Ohne Mich: Why I Shall Not Return to Germany,” Granta 42, Winter 1992, pp. 201–8.

  Disgusted, Martha decided: Moorehead, Gellhorn, p. 99.

  “Europe is finished”: MG to Allen Grover, October 4, 1936, in Moorehead, Selected, p. 41.

  “company, laughter, movement”: Moorehead, Gellhorn, p. 99.

  the feeling that the War to End War: Gellhorn, “Going Home.”

  the trip had done her good: MG to Allen Grover, August 4, 1936, quoted in Moorehead, Selected, p. 39.

  On Sunday, July 12: There are three ways Capa could have got to Verdun: automobile (unlikely, since he didn’t have a car and couldn’t drive—he failed the French license test three times, according to Whelan, Capa, p. 160); bus (also unlikely, since these were chartered by veterans or Peace Pilgrim groups); or train. The last-named seems the only possible method.

  on a gray, chilly July day: G. H. Archambault, “20,000 Veterans Bow at Verdun in Oath for ‘Peace of the World,’” New York Times, July 13, 1936; and Whelan, Capa, pp. 88–90. The Germans were photographed by Capa (photo at ICP).

  Capa caught them: RC vintage prints and clippings, Robert Capa archives, International Center of Photography (henceforth ICP).

  Der Welt Spiegel gave his dramatic pictures: Der Welt Spiegel, December 11, 1932, p. 3.

  even if he had to ask: Leon Daniel, interview with Josefa Stuart, ICP.

  “Why work at little things”: Fred Stein, interview with Josefa Stuart, ICP.

  When he did make money: Henri Cartier-Bresson, interview with Richard Whelan, ICP.

  “like a fox”: Martha Gellhorn, “Till Death Us Do Part,” The Novellas of Martha Gellhorn, p. 302.

  “I just have to wiggle”: GT (Gerta Pohorylle) to Meta Schwarz, n.d., quoted in Irme Schaber, Gerda Taro, pp. 59 and 61. All quotes from this source come from its French edition and appear in my translation.

  “the last of the great race”: John Dos Passos, 1919, p. 10.

  he’d written Gerta a letter: RC to GT, n.d., ICP.

  When they returned: Kati Horna, interview with Josefa Stuart, ICP.

  “Never before in my whole life”: Whelan, Capa, p. 74.

  “It’s impossible”: Eva Besnyö interview, Richard Whelan notes, ICP.

  Together they found a modern one-room apartment: RC to Julia Friedmann, October 22, 1935, ICP.

  “It has a part in it”: RC to Julia Friedmann, undated, ICP.

  she spent one: RC to Julia Friedmann, November 13, 1935, ICP.

  she had a clever gynecologist: Schaber, Taro, p. 135.

  he was upset: Kati Horna, interview with Josefa Stuart, Capa archives, ICP; Gellhorn, “Till Death Us Do Part,” The Novellas of Martha Gellhorn, p. 303.

  Others thought she was pressuring him: Maria Eisner, Cornell Capa, interviews with Richard Whelan, ICP.

  “What, you don’t know”: Eva Besnyö, interview with Richard Whelan, ICP.

  If anyone wanted: John Hersey, “The Man Who Invented Himself,” 47, The Magazine of the Year, September 1947.

  “It is like being born again”: RC to Julia Friedmann, April 8, 1936, ICP.

  Not surprisingly, Lucien Vogel: Henri Daniel, interview with Josefa Stuart, ICP.

  who had been shooting pictures herself: She also had a press pass, issued in February 1936 by the ABC Press Service in Amsterdam (in the Capa archives at ICP), but the name on the card is missing, so it’s unclear what name she was using for it; and there are no records of where she published photographs, if at all. It’s possible they were sold and published under the Capa byline.

  Ilse’s father, a mild-mannered school headmaster: Valentin Pollak, untitled and unpublished English-language memoir in the Ilsa and Arturo Barea Papers (henceforth BP), pp. 284–86 ff.

  There was the business of the money: Sheila Isenberg, Muriel’s War, p. 77, and Stephen Spender, World Within World, p. 217.

  speaking of a comrade: Muriel Gardiner, Code Name “Mary,” p. 62.

  The green-shuttered stone house: The total purchase price of the house is somewhat unclear, as are the details of exactly where all the money to pay for it came from. Baker and Reynolds put the asking price, which included back taxes, at $8,000; Meyers says the total paid was $12,500. This may include construction costs, and since these were considerable, I’ve chosen to go with Meyers’s figure. No one disputes that Gus Pfeiffer paid at least $8,000 of it, and possibly more.

  “a crazy mixture”: Katy Dos Passos to Gerald Murphy, June 20, 1935, in Linda Patterson Miller, Letters from the Lost Generation, pp. 131–32.

  any money in the debit column: Maxwell Perkins to EH, December 9, 1936, JFK.

  “Bull in the Afternoon”: Max Eastman in The New Republic, quoted in Baker, Ernest Hemingway (hereafter EH), pp. 241–42.

  “You must finish”: MP to EH, July 9, 1935, quoted in Reynolds, Hemingway: The 1930
’s (hereafter Reynolds), p. 205.

  Why didn’t he write: Granville Hicks, “Small Game Hunting,” New Masses, November 19, 1936.

  Although he had written: Ernest Hemingway, “Who Murdered the Vets?: A First-hand Report on the Florida Hurricane,” New Masses, September 17, 1935.

  “so much horseshit”: EH to Paul Romaine, July 2, 1932, in James Mellow, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences, p. 477.

  He wasn’t going to become: ER to Ivan Kashkin, August 19, 1935, in Baker, EH, p. 479.

  Set in a shabby, corrupt Key West: EH, notes for To Have and Have Not, item 211, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Library and Museum (henceforth JFK).

  “What I like to feel”: Arnold Gingrich to EH, July 16, 1936, JFK.

  the accounts of the storming: EH to Prudencio de Pereda, July 23, 1936, JFK.

  But he decided: EH to John Dos Passos, September 22, 1936, JFK.

  Julia had always had an intensely close relationship: Interview with Gladys Berkowitz, Capa’s maiden aunt, Richard Whelan notes, ICP. He did, however, begin letters to her, “My dear mother.”

  Once Julia had taken in: Cornell Capa, interview with Richard Whelan, ICP.

  Lucien Vogel had acquired an airplane: Whelan, p. 92. Michel Lefebvre, coauthor of Robert Capa, Traces of a Legend, disputes this on the grounds that Vogel did not consider Taro a journalist; but John Hersey, in an article for the magazine 47 entitled “The Man Who Invented Himself,” says that Vogel “took the ridiculous boy and Gerda with him” on the plane ride to Spain, and that while Vogel broke his collarbone when the plane crashed, “the boy and Gerda broke nothing.”

  On the road, they passed: Descriptions of Barcelona are drawn from Capa’s and Taro’s prints and negatives, ICP.