Despite friction, despite differences between the anarcho-syndicalist and socialist positions, the CNT and UGT were able to reach agreement on the fundamentals: the nature of workers’ control, the extent and aims of the revolution at that moment (neither libertarian communist nor orthodox state-run socialist), the types of property they would recognize (‘nationalized; state-controlled; cooperative; private’), and the overriding need for proletarian pressure to achieve the ‘complete social revolution’ which must not be postponed. The problem of power had been resolved: the proletarian organizations controlled the Council of Asturias, on which the petty bourgeoisie was represented by only two out of fifteen councillors. Thanks to the revolutionary positions of the socialist and communist38 masses, and the revolutionary realism of the Asturian libertarians, both the need of revolution in order to win the war, and the practicable extent of the revolution within the limits of the war, were defined.
But on two crucial issues, the organization of warfare and the means of overcoming localism, the Asturian revolution was no more immediately successful than elsewhere. On both these matters, the communist party took issue with the libertarians and socialists.
By mid-September 1936, two relatively small insurgent columns had captured nearly half Asturias and advanced to within 25 km of Oviedo, which was still under siege. In the mountainous terrain of the interior, where the only roads wound through deep ravines and over high passes, the revolutionary miners had been unable to stay the advance of the two columns from Galicia and León. In October 1934, they had pinned down government troops for a fortnight in the Vega del Ciego; Alberto FERNANDEZ, a socialist youth member, had been wounded there; but the feat was not to be repeated. Suffering from pleurisy, he had left his sick-bed to fight the advancing Galician column. In an action on the heights opposite Candamo, when their ammunition ran out, he and the militiamen fought with stones. But nothing, not even the Narcea and Nalón rivers, could keep the enemy from advancing on Oviedo. The militiamen fought bravely, but tended to retreat when there was any threat of being cut off. Another October veteran, José MATA, a socialist miner, was wounded as the enemy advanced.
—We were all volunteers; there was no military discipline. We got demoralized at the enemy’s constant advance. We kept saying, ‘Let them advance, we’ll get into boats and disembark behind them.’ But we didn’t; it would have taken a real army to do that …
The Asturian Popular Front was handicapped by an even greater lack of trained armed forces than elsewhere: not a single army or civil guard unit had remained loyal, and the majority of the assault guards were with the insurgents in Oviedo. There was a great ammunition shortage, a lesser but also serious shortage of arms. The resistance of Simancas barracks in Gijón had tied down militiamen who should have been combating the advancing enemy. When at last, on 21 August, the barracks fell, Rafael HERNANDEZ, the socialist railwayman and member of the Gijón war committee, believed that an all-out attack on Oviedo should have been launched immediately. Even without military organization, if they had attacked en masse, wave upon wave, they could have taken the city, he thought.
—But it was argued that it would cost too many casualties; the besieged were organized, and we would have to organize also. Capt. José Gállego, an army officer who was on holiday in Gijón, and reported to me on the war committee, stressed the need for military organization. At one level, that was correct. But an army officer is as good as the material he has to work with; he’s trained to command a militarily structured unit. If he hasn’t got that he’s like a chauffeur who’s been given a cart to drive …
The problem had another aspect, as Dr Carlos MARTINEZ, former parliamentary deputy who was now acting as an ‘unofficial liaison man’ between the war committee and Capt. Gállego, soon saw. While the committee trusted Gállego, amongst the militiamen there was a certain lack of confidence in all army officers. Nothing discouraged an officer more than to know that he was not trusted by the men he was trying to lead. ‘He needed support, wanted me, as a republican, to bear witness to his conduct, his loyalty and courage which were all quite remarkable.’
In the absence of a nucleus of trained military units, the revolutionaries would have to invent new tactics, new forms of fighting. It was a problem common to all fronts, and it was one which the ad hoc militia units, formed in the first days, were nowhere able to resolve. Not even in Asturias where some prior experience existed and where, even more importantly, the terrain was admirably suited for defence.
—All we had was guerrillas. By which I mean groups of men who went where they wanted. Someone would shout, ‘Heh, a woman says the Galicians are down there and we’re surrounded.’ They’d pick up their stuff and get out, remembered Ramón ALVAREZ, representing the FAI on the Gijón war committee. That was why the insurgent columns could advance.39 It was only when we gave up guerrilla fighting and formed an army – however bad it was, however late in being created – that we had some victories …
The communists had been pressing hard for militarization; the concept of guerrilla warfare was discredited. The majority of the CNT – though not the majority of La Felguera militants – agreed on the need to form a regular army. But before it could be achieved it was decided – against communist advice, which believed that all forces must be directed against the Galician columns – to stage an all-out assault on Oviedo.
Ten thousand militiamen, perhaps more, were laying siege to the city which, with its arms factory, had been the natural objective of the October revolution. Never fully captured then, taken by Col. Aranda’s guile now, the city was becoming something of an obsession. This time it must fall. But the logic of one situation was not necessarily that of the next. Oviedo’s capture was of little strategic importance, apart from the arms it might yield. A blockade that neutralized Aranda’s small force in the city and released thousands of men to attack the advancing columns, or to strike into the enemy’s rear, would have been a more appropriate revolutionary revanche for October 1934. (What fear there had been in Old Castile of the Asturian miners in the first days of the war! Their frustrated attempt to reach Madrid then was not to be repeated; Oviedo absorbed their attention for seven of the fifteen months of the war in the north, and they launched no other major offensives except for those on the city.)40 Localism was again to be proven the leitmotif of the Spanish revolution.
*
Ever since he had been appointed military commandant of Asturias after the October insurrection, Col. Aranda had believed that he would be called upon to defend Oviedo once more against the revolutionaries storming in from their mining villages. Surrounded on almost all sides by heights, Oviedo was no easy city to defend. Moreover, Aranda had been disappointed (as had others in cities where the insurgents had won easy victories) by the relatively low number of volunteers in the first moments. The centre of the city was bourgeois and predominantly right-wing;41 memories of October 1934 had not been erased; the colonel had expected more than the 856 volunteers who reported to the Pelayo, Rubín and Santa Clara barracks.
In all, he had some 3,000 men to defend a city of 60,000 inhabitants. Of these, nearly 900 were civil guards ordered into the city from their posts in the province. But Aranda’s carefully studied plan of defence depended less on men than on fire-power: just under 100 Hotchkiss machine-guns which he sited in five strategic nuclei around the 15-kilometre perimeter to lay down ‘curtains of fire.’ There was no initial shortage of machine-gun or rifle ammunition: 2 million rounds were in store. (As a result of the October insurrection, the government had reinforced the Oviedo and Gijón garrisons.) ‘Aranda’s tactics were something absolutely new for the time,’ one of his officers recalled. ‘A city as vulnerable as Oviedo could be defended against a numerically far superior force by fire-rather than man-power.’ The shortage of defenders meant, however, that he could not hold the whole of Mount Naranco, which rises to a height of 600 metres above the city, leaving the besiegers a privileged position.
Throughout A
ugust, while life continued normally in the city, Aranda improved his positions with offensive thrusts which kept the besiegers in doubt as to his intentions, though no one believed a break-out was possible. Even so, as José ALVAREZ, a grocer’s lad, discovered, the perimeter was by no means impenetrable. Having from one day to the next found himself in an insurgent city, separated from his girlfriend 5 km away in a village in the Popular Front zone, he determined not to let the geographical vagaries of the civil war deter his courting. For over two months, he crossed the lines frequently. It wasn’t difficult.
—The first time I even walked past a guardia civil machine-gun post on the main road in full daylight, with my UGT membership card in my pocket, moreover, and no one said a word. I came back from Colloto a different way, through the Mercadín barrio, where I crossed from then on …
It was, he had to admit, a sentimental rather than a political act. He never took out political messages or engaged in spying. Once in a while the republican besiegers would ask him questions, but they seemed well enough informed by the many people crossing the lines.
On Mount Naranco, the positions were little more than 200 metres apart. As dark began to fall the opponents shouted across at one another.
—‘This is radio Panchito,’ we’d call through the megaphones we’d made. ‘Calling Arturín of La Felguera – ’ ‘What do you want?’ ‘Arturín, would you like some cake?’ ‘What cake? You lot are dying of hunger – ’ ‘Coño, Arturín, you’re a good man, come over to our side.’ ‘Shit on the mother who bore you.’ ‘Don’t use that sort of language, you sons of whores.’ ‘And you – you call yourselves Catholics and you swear worse than us.’ ‘Well, give us a song then,’ we’d shout. And they’d start to sing Asturian ballads …
One day, as Ricardo VAZQUEZ-PRADA, a falangist journalist, recalled, his side suggested swapping newspapers in no-man’s-land. For half an hour the next day, while they exchanged papers, they talked; there were people they knew amongst the attackers. Aranda put an end to the practice.
From the first days, the besiegers had cut off the city’s water supplies, leaving only the contents of the reservoir, which formed one of the strong points of the perimeter; water was strictly rationed and there was none for sanitation. Old wells had to be re-opened, all water had to be boiled; but even this precaution was to prove insufficient. This, however, was the only serious hardship until the beginning of September; there was little fighting, the cafés remained open, people were able to stroll in the evening paseo along the Calle Uría. The warehouses of Oviedo, which traditionally supplied a large part of the province, were full; there was no immediate shortage of food.
From early September, however, air raids and artillery bombardment became intensive. On 4 September, the defenders estimated that 1,500 bombs were dropped on the city; the gas, light and telephone systems were cut and the city blacked out. Four days later, supported by an armour-plated steamroller, the besiegers launched their first heavy attack at San Esteban de las Cruces, the most distant outpost, on the road leading to the Nalón and Caudal mining valleys. In an attempt to drive off the Popular Front planes, the defenders set up an artillery field piece on sandbags to fire as an anti-aircraft gun. After twelve hours of fighting the attack was beaten off.
Jesús-Evaristo CASARIEGO, student, journalist and requeté, had left his house in his reserve officer’s uniform to report to the barracks as soon as Aranda had risen. As he left home, his mother embraced him.
—‘I am sorry to have to say farewell to you and to know where you are going; but I would be sorrier to see you stay.’ Then my wife, who had recently borne us a daughter, said: ‘I would prefer my daughter to become an orphan rather than that her father should prove himself a coward’ …
In saying that, he thought, she had fulfilled the words of the Bible, the words of Ruth: ‘Your God shall be our God and your people shall be our people,’ for her father was a socialist, albeit a moderate one. On opposite sides, both loyal to their respective ideals, just one more of the many politically divided families.
Despite Aranda’s alleged republicanism, his friendship with Prieto, the rumours that he was a mason, CASARIEGO had confidence in him. As long as he had been in Asturias he had acted as an officer loyal to the honour of the army. There had never been any real doubt that he would rise. But if he hadn’t, the requetés and falangists would have taken to arms. ‘We knew we would be killed in any case if the reds took the city. We would die fighting’ … 42
As it was, the air raids and artillery shelling were hitting not those manning the perimeter but the civilian population in the town. The mortality rate among children and the aged, caused by living in unhealthy cellars without proper sanitation because of the water shortage, rose very considerably. However, the outcome of the bombing and shelling was not the one the attackers expected. ‘Instead of lowering the defenders’ morale, it stiffened their will to resist, inspired a hatred of those who bombed targets of no military value.’ VAZQUEZ-PRADA, the falangist journalist, saw people he knew to be Popular Front supporters pick up a rifle and join the defenders after an air raid. In particular, a socialist whose family was wiped out.
—‘Those aren’t revolutionaries, they’re criminals,’ he said as he joined us. He fought very bravely. It was more dangerous to be in the city than at the front. The bombing and shelling were counter-productive for the reds; we never had to fear a rising among the civilian population’ …
A large mass of the inhabitants was neutral, CASARIEGO thought. A very rough idea could be got by estimating that some 2,000 out of perhaps 10,000 men between the ages of sixteen and forty volunteered in the course of the siege. The more militant left-wingers had fled or been imprisoned. ‘Those who still lived in hope of the left’s triumph were too small in number to give cause for fear of a rising; the time was hardly ripe for anything like that.’
José ALVAREZ, the grocer’s lad, believed that the lack of any such threat stemmed rather from lack of organization. Taking advantage of a Popular Front offensive, a rising in the city could have been staged with decisive results.
—Half the population wanted the town bombed to force the defenders to surrender and put an end to the whole thing. Once you’d got used to the air raids there was little to fear; it was the artillery shelling which was much more accurate and deadly. But there was no organization, I don’t even believe that spying was systematically organized …
By the end of September he was finding it more difficult to get out of the city to see his girlfriend. He continued to work in the grocer’s shop, no attempt being made to oblige him to volunteer for the city’s defence (although the military obliged all able non-volunteers to spend two or three days a month working as labourers on fortifications). Supplies were becoming restricted: meat, potatoes, eggs, milk, cider – Asturian staples – were now unobtainable. Professors began making petrol from coal in university laboratories to supply military vehicles. Typhoid grew to epidemic proportions and José ALVAREZ fell victim. For those in good health, the epidemic was not particularly dangerous, but the old and feeble were unable to resist. Sickness, during the ninety-day siege, took an estimated 1,000 civilian lives, the same number as were killed in air and artillery raids. But one form of death Oviedo was almost unique in being spared, despite the bombardment, despite the memories of October 1934: no political prisoners were executed, no paseos took place, no vendetta assassinations were committed while the siege lasted. Given what was happening everywhere else – and what would happen later in Oviedo itself – this was perhaps the most remarkable achievement of the defence in a city where the loyalty of a part of the population could not be automatically assumed.
—It wasn’t the moment to be executing people, thought Salvador GARCIA, an advertising agent and one of the few non-party men to volunteer from the first day. Our aim was to defend the city, not to shoot prisoners. Even a case of sabotage in my artillery barracks, when a soldier was accused of causing an ammunition store to blow u
p, was not punished by death …
GARCIA had lived through the October revolution in Oviedo. He was a man who ‘liked law and order’, who thought politics was divisive and that the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera had been a ‘perfect time’. Under the republic there had been nothing but disorder, which had got even worse after the Popular Front electoral victory. There was going to be another revolution, he had seen the plans. Though he had never joined a party in his life, he had had no hesitation when the moment came. ‘I knew what I had to do.’
*
At dawn on Sunday, 4 October, the Popular Front offensive on Oviedo began. The next day would be the second anniversary of the October rising. The Galician columns, which had been reinforced with legionary and Moroccan units, and were now commanded by Col. Martín Alonso, were only 25 km away; but they had been held there for the past fortnight by a resistance which at last was beginning to coalesce. The Popular Front aim was to take Oviedo before the columns could advance. Commanding a group – there were no formal military commands – José MATA, the socialist miner who had already been wounded fighting the Galician column, believed it important to take the city to capture the large store of rifles and machine-guns and to give a boost to the militiamen’s morale.
The offensive had been hastily organized, thought Manuel SANCHEZ, an Oviedo cabinet-maker. A communist party member, he had been among those who had set off for Madrid on 19 July at Aranda’s suggestion. That had been a mistake, as comrade Lafuente, a party militant had warned. Was this offensive also an error?
—We had had virtually no training, we were all still volunteers, still wearing overalls. We went into the attack with ancient single-loading Czech rifles which we had just received …
From the south-east at San Esteban de las Cruces to the north-west on Mount Naranco, the offensive unfurled. Aranda’s front line strength in men and ammunition had already been halved by the rigours of the past month’s fighting. The advance position on Mount Naranco, the Loma del Canto, fell after four days’ bitter fighting and heavy artillery barrage from the Popular Front field pieces barely 1,000 metres higher up the slopes by the sanatorium. Between the two lay the beautiful ninth-century church of Santa Maria del Naranco.
Blood of Spain Page 36