The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  19

  By 22 July, meantime, there was war in Spain rather than rebellion, or resistance to it. Everywhere, the exultation which had followed the defeat (or the victory) of the rising gave way to a fear that armies were on the march against the fête révolutionnaire of the Left or of the Right. The militias of the unions and parties, even in the smallest towns, began to think of themselves as soldiers as well as street-fighters alongside the police, assault guards and civil guard or regular army. Similarly, the generals organized ‘columns’ after the model of what they had been used to in the Moroccan Wars, to complete, as they hoped, the destruction of the revolution. Thus, as early as 19 July, Mola sent his adjutant, the Andalusian colonel García Escámez, south with 1,000 men, mainly volunteers, two companies of requetés and one of falangists, to relieve Guadalajara. This he might have accomplished, if he had not halted to secure the victory of the rising at Logroño, where the military governor had been unwilling to commit himself. Mola had vehicles, petrol and men, but little ammunition: if he were to win, it had to be fast. As it was, this first striking-force of the war reached a point twenty miles from Guadalajara, before finding it had fallen to militias and regular troops from Madrid. So García Escámez withdrew to the north side of the Somosierra Pass, across the Guadarrama, the most easterly of the northern gates to Madrid. Here, the railway tunnel had been held for the nationalists by a group of young Madrid monarchists under the brothers Miralles, since 19 July.1 Against them, republican forces which had earlier taken Guadalajara were now advancing.

  9. The fighting in the Guadarramas, July–August 1936

  To the north-west of Madrid, at midnight on 21 July, a mixed column, perhaps two or three hundred strong, of regular soldiers and falangists, under Colonel Serrador (an ex-plotter of 1932) set out from Valladolid, also for Madrid via the Guadarrama, amid scenes of wild enthusiasm. It made for the pass known as the Alto de León. This force was accompanied by Onésimo Redondo, the founder of the JONS at Valladolid, recently freed from gaol at Avila, and another young falangist leader later of importance, José Antonio Girón. The Alto de León had been occupied by a militia force from Madrid. The rebels realized the importance of holding their enemy beyond that point. Both these two passes, critical for the defence of Madrid, were won by the rebels on 22 July and 25 July respectively. Thereafter, shortage of ammunition caused Mola to halt. In the next few days, this shortage seemed desperate. At the same time, though, Mola had dispatched three more columns from Pamplona under Colonels Beorlegui, Latorre, and Cayuela, requetés, falangists, and regular troops (the volunteers predominating) in the direction of the Basque provinces. These troops amounted to 3,430 men,2 leaving ‘in an atmosphere of fiesta more than of war’.

  Twelve hundred Carlists also went down to Saragossa from Pamplona. Their presence enabled the nationalists to undertake several punitive expeditions against surrounding Aragonese towns. No general offensive against Barcelona was contemplated. But two columns, on the other hand, set out from Barcelona to ‘liberate’ Saragossa. They were followed by others. Perhaps 20,000 men left Barcelona for the ‘front’ in the first days of the war, some by train, for the railway-lines were soon in good use, under control of the workers.1 The first column of 2,500 anarchists was led by Durruti, to whom the success of the revolution had brought self-confidence and dreams of grandeur. This column set out on 24 July with such excitement that they were two hours away from Barcelona before discovering that they had forgotten their supplies. Thus it was that (as a propaganda pamphlet put it) ‘“The Free Man” was launched into the struggle against the fascist Hyena in Saragossa’. Durruti had as military advisers one of the heroes of 1934, Major Pérez Farras, and an ex-sergeant, José Manzana.2

  All the columns which set out from Barcelona so bravely had a political component: anarchist; Catalan or Esquerra; POUM; socialist and communist, usually combined. Famous anarchists of past years, renowned for astonishing crimes, came now to the front, in both senses of the word, as commanders. In addition to Durruti, there were, for instance, his old comrades of the solidarios: Domingo Ascaso (brother of the recently dead Francisco), Gregorio Jover, García Vivancos, and Antonio Ortiz, while García Oliver remained in Barcelona as the animator of all the columns. Another of the solidarios, Ricardo Sanz, arranged training for anarchist militiamen at the Pedralbes barracks.3 The columns included regular soldiers as well: perhaps 2,000 out of the 20,000 who went up into Aragon from Catalonia at this heady time.

  By the beginning of August, the advanced positions of the republic were at Tardienta (the headquarters of 1,500 men of a PSUC column) and Siétamo, taken by the loyal Barbastro garrison, both near Huesca. The main POUM column of 2,000 men had their headquarters at Leciñena, to the north-east of Saragossa in the Sierra Alcubierre. Along the Ebro, at Osera and Pina, the anarchists were established under Durruti. At Montalbán, in the south, a carpenter, Ortiz, commanded a heterogeneous group, with anarchists predominating. Durruti’s column, increased to about 6,000, was the most formidable of these forces, having advanced through Caspe, Fraga, Peñalba to Bujaraloz, within striking distance of Saragossa. There, Colonel Villalba, commander of the Barbastro garrison and now in official, if vague, command of the whole front, persuaded Durruti to halt for fear of being cut off; and there, within reach of Saragossa, the column remained, the lights of the town twinkling tantalizingly at night ‘like the portholes of a great liner’, as George Orwell later put it, for another eighteen months.1 Villalba’s advice was probably wrong; the nationalist line could not have been held by more than 10,000 men at most, and the anarchists and republicans numbered twice that. Further, the arms of the revolution must have been superior; there were at least 100,000 rifles in Barcelona, together with some 150 pieces of artillery.2 But the regular 5th Division, at Saragossa, was still an organized fighting force, while the old 4th Division, at Barcelona, had disintegrated.

  The front consisted of an advanced, partly fortified position on high ground, with about three hundred men in the village behind. Such a group, with about six light field-guns and two howitzers, would have little or no contact with the column based in the next village, or on the next hilltop. Ignorant of war, discipline and even geography, the anarchists were reluctant to admit that battles needed organization. Hence, confusion reigned. In all the pueblos traversed by the militias of Barcelona, a helping hand had, however, been given to the revolution. Thus the people of Lérida had decided to spare their cathedral from the flames. Durruti soon put an end to such lukewarm behaviour. The cathedral burned. Durruti’s violence, however, made him loathed by the peasants of Pina,3 though, in some other places, there were even monarchists who testified to the tolerance of the anarchist leader.4 The only place where there seems to have been serious fighting was at Caspe, where the civil guard commander, Captain Negrete, held out desperately for many hours.1 Durruti made no secret of his revolutionary expectations:

  10. The Catalan invasion of Aragon, July–August 1936

  It is possible [he told the Russian journalist Koltsov, at his headquarters in an abandoned country house between Bujaraloz and Pina] that only a hundred of us will survive, but, with that hundred, we shall enter Saragossa, beat fascism and proclaim libertarian communism … I will be the first to enter Saragossa; I will proclaim there the free commune. We shall subordinate ourselves neither at Madrid nor Barcelona, neither to Azaña nor Companys. If they wish, they can live in peace with us; if not, we shall go to Madrid … We shall show you, bolsheviks, how to make a revolution.1

  The structure of the command was vague: theoretically under the Councillor of defence in the Catalan government, Colonel Díaz Sandino, the real organizer in Barcelona was García Oliver. Colonel Villalba’s authority did not run far. The commanders of columns attended, or were represented at, the ‘Delegació del Front d’Aragó’, together with some regular officers, but this was not effective. There were no reports to Madrid; strategic direction was nil.

  Opposite, the nationalists were inst
alled in similar positions, although their officers ensured military discipline. The requetés and falangists, headed by Jesús Muro, the local jefe territorial, were possessed of a fury as great as that of their opponents. They were further angered when a solitary republican bomber dropped a bomb which struck the famous effigy of the Virgin of the Pillar at Saragossa, but did not explode.2 It was not simply a matter of religious outrage: the Virgin had been solemnly named captain-general of the city. Aviation played a modest part in these skirmishes: an occasional republican Fokker, Nieuport or Breguet clashed with nationalist machines of the same type, scarcely affecting the fighting but causing alarm.

  In the centre of Spain, a different drama was under way. Faced with Mola’s thrusts from over the Sierras, the republic and the revolution were defended by the remains of the regular army and by the militias, uneasily yoked together, and directed, equally uneasily, by a war ministry staffed by radical officers, assisted by some others of neutral or even secretly disloyal character. A large number of officers remained formally loyal to the republic, including numerous generals, and two commanders of divisions (one other remained in the republican zone to be dismissed). Of the officers loyal to the republic, probably half of them rationalized the accident of being in republican territory at the time of the rising into loyalty to the government. Others had become men of the Left, socialists, republicans, or even communists. Some were anarchist sympathizers. The politization of Spain had thus affected the army. Among those who probably supported the government by chance rather than conviction was the easy-going General Miaja, commander of the infantry brigade in Madrid. Others felt bound to support the republic because of their oath to it, such as Major Vincente Rojo. Colonel Hernández Sarabia, a republican who had been chief of Azaña’s military household in 1932, worked as general co-ordinator to the war minister, General Castelló, with Major Menéndez as his adjutant. Due to Castelló’s melancholia at the turn of events,1 Hernández Sarabia became in effect the war minister (he obtained the formal appointment in early August). General Riquelme, who had taken part in a famous conspiracy against Primo de Rivera in 1926, was appointed to general field command at Madrid, and attempted to gain a governmental hold over the militia forces by appointing loyal regular officers to lead them or at least advise their leaders. The two brothers Galán, Francisco and José María, lieutenants in the civil guard and carabineers respectively, both communists, brothers of the ‘hero of Jaca’ of 1931, led the militia north to the pass at Somosierra, alongside anarchist columns directed by prominent men of the CNT in Madrid, such as Cipriano Mera, or Teodoro Mora.

  A further force advanced in the direction of Avila, to cut off that town from the pass at Alto de León. This was led by Colonel Mangada—an eccentric poet-officer (vegetarian, nudist and theosophist), well known in the army for his radicalism. Though he captured several pueblos where the civil guard had declared for the nationalists, Mangada did not get further than Navalperal, twelve miles short of his objective, since, though popular, he feared to lose communication with Madrid. His failure to advance upon the then poorly defended city of St Teresa was explained by the nationalists as being due to the appearance of the saint herself who allegedly (but surely untypically) misled Mangada by saying that Avila was ‘full of armed men’. Nevertheless, Mangada’s advance was enough to cause his men to carry him in triumphal procession to the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, and to elect him to the rank of general. He was opposed by a force led brutally if incompetently by Major Lisardo Doval, and Doval’s failure gave Mangada a reputation he scarcely deserved.1

  In the meantime, the battles of the Alto de León and Somosierra, the first real conflicts of the civil war, were fought with ferocity. The republic should have had the upper hand, for though the numbers of men must have been about equal, they had Madrid’s three artillery regiments, and their closeness to the capital made for logistic superiority. They possessed some 100,000 rifles and probably had an advantage in the air. The government had released by decree all soldiers from their duty to obey their officers (helping to leave the rebel officers without troops) and had then called for the formation, under regular officers, of twenty volunteer battalions which would include ex-soldiers, and which would fight alongside the militia. But difficulties between military commanders’ and political leaders’ interests were incessant. Thus the anarchists abandoned a post which controlled the reservoirs and water of Madrid, because of differences with the republican command.2

  On both sides, prisoners were shot.3 The aerial combats were slight, as in Aragon, and, indeed, it seemed little use having so many fighters as the republic had, if there were few enemy aircraft to attack, and few pilots capable of exerting much effect on the battle on the ground.4 The small number of nationalist aircraft had a definitely demoralizing effect.

  How many died in these days will never be known; for no one knows how many or who set out to fight: certainly not more than 5,000. Judging from the large numbers of regular officers who died on the republican side, captains of the civil guard or the assault guard, the militia losses must have been high, due to the confusion between militia groups and regulars, and also to the naïve courage of the militiamen. (The falangist Onésimo Redondo was killed by militiamen who had penetrated behind the lines, in an ambush at the village of Labajos on the Madrid high road.) On the republican side, Colonel Castilló, in command at Alto de León, was either killed by his own men or killed himself after his son had died in action. But it was not easy for an officer to lead a body of men who insisted on a show of hands before an attack. Both Captain Condés and Luis Cuenca, the men responsible for the death of Calvo Sotelo, found their own deaths here, with many others of their generation in the assault guards and in the socialist youth movement.

  Like the armies which had gone out from Barcelona, the Madrid militiamen (probably in August 40,000 in all) were organized in columns of approximately three hundred men each. These assumed distinctive names, many of them evocative of old revolutions and far-off street-battles, such as ‘Commune de Paris’ or ‘October No. 1’. Others took the name of contemporary political leaders, such as La Pasionaria. There were several units known as the Steel Battalion, so-called because it was assumed to be the picked corps of the union of political parties which had formed it. Columns organized by the war ministry were led by regular officers, but militia battalions were not. The most famous republican militia in the Sierras was that organized by the communist party, the Fifth Regiment.1

  This force was based upon the communist militia, the MAOC; but others joined as a result of a recruiting drive led by La Pasionaria, the first headquarters being the Salesian convent of Francos Rodríguez in Madrid.2 By the end of July, 1,000 members of ‘the Fifth Regiment’ had gone to the front.3 It had its own reserves, system of supplies, and artillery. It also adopted the use of political commissars employed by the Red Army in the Russian Civil War, with the aim of making clear to the soldiers what they were fighting for. In theory, in the Fifth Regiment, as in the Red Army, commissars were attached to commanders at all levels down to that of company commander. Also, in theory, the counter-signature of commissars was necessary for every order. But neither of these stipulations was fulfilled.

  The first commander was a young communist named Enrique Castro Delgado.1 But the moving spirits were the communist deputy for Cádiz, Daniel Ortega, and the Italian communist Vittorio Vidali (‘Carlos Contreras’). The latter was an indefatigable, ruthless and imaginative professional revolutionary. While, for instance, he early gained a reputation for shooting cowards, he also made the Fifth Regiment march in step by chartering the band of the Madrid UGT, under the direction of the composer Oropesa.2 Under Carlos’s guidance, certain famous military leaders appeared—notably Enrique Lister, once a quarryman, and Juan Modesto, an ex-woodcutter who had been an organizer of the MAOC since 1933 and a corporal with native troops in Morocco. Lister had been taken from Galicia while a boy to Cuba, had learnt politics on the building-sites of Havana, in the
days of the dictator Machado, had joined the communists in an Asturian gaol in 1931, had spent three years in Moscow, following courses, and working on the underground, and had returned the previous September. Probably the men who really trained the Fifth Regiment were a Portuguese exile, Captain Oliviera, and ‘Captain Benito’ Sánchez, one of the officers condemned for rebellion after the events of 1934.

  Another communist leader to appear (though not in the Fifth Regiment) during the battles of the Sierras was Valentín González, ‘El Campesino’ (the Peasant), being notorious for his beard, volubility and physical strength. His enemies said that his name, as well as his beard, was given to him by the communists to attract the peasants to the communist party. He himself said that he had been known by this sobriquet ever since the time when, aged sixteen, he had blown up four members of the civil guard in a lonely Estremadura sentry-box and then taken to the hills. Later he had fought in Morocco—on both sides, according to himself. He was a brilliant guerrilla leader, if scarcely suited to his subsequent command of a brigade and a division.

  The most celebrated incident of this period in the Spanish war occurred at Toledo. From Madrid, the minister of education, the minister of war, and General Riquelme had been furiously telephoning the 58-year-old infantry colonel, Moscardó, commander of the nationalist garrison still holding out in the Alcázar, in an attempt to persuade him to surrender. Finally, on 23 July, Cándido Cabello, a republican barrister in Toledo, telephoned Moscardó to say that if Moscardó did not surrender the Alcázar within ten minutes, he would shoot Luis Moscardó, the Colonel’s 24-year-old son, whom he had captured that morning. ‘So that you can see that’s true, he will speak to you,’ added Cabello. ‘What is happening, my boy?’ asked the colonel. ‘Nothing,’ answered the son, ‘they say they will shoot me if the Alcázar does not surrender.’ ‘If it be true,’ replied Moscardó, ‘commend your soul to God, shout Viva España, and die like a hero. Good-bye my son, a last kiss.’ ‘Good-bye father,’ answered Luis, ‘a very big kiss.’ Cabello came back on to the telephone, and Moscardó announced that the period of grace was unnecessary. ‘The Alcázar will never surrender,’ he remarked, replacing the receiver. Luis Moscardó was not, however, shot there and then, but was executed with other prisoners in front of the Tránsito synagogue on 23 August, in reprisal for an air raid.1 This heroic tale became a legend in nationalist Spain. Subsequently, the accusation has been made that the telephone had been already cut by 23 July, and that no one recorded the telephone conversation at the time. Some exchange of this sort, nevertheless, assuredly occurred.