The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  Among other contenders for authority, ex-King Alfonso remained in central Europe and hesitated to support openly his friends in this struggle. Nor did anyone ask him to come back. His son and heir, Don Juan, did attempt to come and fight. But he only got as far as Pamplona. There Mola virtually arrested him and escorted him back across the frontier on the explanation that his life was too valuable to risk. The Infante Alfonso had similar difficulties in volunteering as a pilot but he succeeded in 1937. Clearly, monarchy would have as difficult a path in the new Spain as democracy. Even so, by September the local Carlists were in semi-independent control of the province of Navarre, and were busy reintroducing religion to education there.

  By this time, Franco as well as the commander of the nationalist navy, Captain Moreno Hernández, had joined the junta formed by Mola in July. A meeting of this committee occurred on 21 September, on an improvised airfield on the estate of a bull breeder, Antonio Pérez Tabernero, at San Fernando, near Salamanca. Generals Orgaz and Kindelán proposed the idea of a single command. Mola supported the suggestion with a fervour that raised doubts as to his sincerity. General Cabanellas was the only general who disliked the plan. Kindelán, supported by Mola, proposed that Franco should be the general at the head of the single command. That was agreed, though Cabanellas did not vote. The generals then separated. For about ten days, however, nothing more was done.2 Kindelán was a monarchist and a friend of the King. He believed that Franco would in the end support a restoration. Others around Franco, pressing him and themselves forward at his headquarters in Cáceres, were his 45-year-old brother, Nicolás; Yagüe, temporarily unemployed despite his victories in Estremadura, having given up his command over the decision to relieve Toledo; and Franco’s old commander in the Legion, Millán Astray. The monarchist professor Sainz Rodríguez had the impression in early August that Franco had not thought of becoming head of government at that time.1

  General Cabanellas continued for some days longer as president of the junta. He knew as well as anyone the differences between his fellow generals and saw that sooner or later they would have a bad effect on the war. He would, however, have preferred a junta of three generals so as to avoid the threat of a dictatorship. Though he recognized Franco’s military qualities, having commanded him in Africa, he suspected that he would never give up power if once he obtained it.2 Consequently, Cabanellas sought to avoid the implications of the vote of 21 September. But by now, Franco, the victorious general in (if not of) the south, was the hope of all the middle class and all on the Right in a nation which, if anyone stopped to think of it, was plainly in full catastrophe. Calvo Sotelo, Sanjurjo, José Antonio, and Goded were either dead or unavailable. Mola was discredited by the failure of the conspiracy to achieve its objectives, and had been the bitter opponent of the republic who had treated him harshly; at the same time, he was looked on as a republican by monarchists. Queipo and Cabanellas had rebelled against Primo de Rivera. Only Franco had remained politically neutral in the past. Loyal to King Alfonso, Franco had worked for the republic. In mid-September 1936, furthermore, armies under his command were gaining victories. Mola had no sympathy at all for the Falange and its ideas, and, vigorous though he was, could not have made an appropriate Caudillo for the falangists, new or old. Many people too thought that he was still too much of a policeman. Queipo, with his rhetoric, his personalist approach, his bull-fighter friends and his nineteenth-century style, seemed a purely Andalusian leader, something of a figure of fun in Burgos and Salamanca, despised for both his coarseness of language and his republican past by the well-bred, conventional monarchist officers around Franco such as Kindelán.

  During the next two weeks, Kindelán, working with Nicolás Franco, the general’s brother, and Colonel Yagüe, the best-known combat commander, made headway with their schemes. On 27 September, Yagüe appeared on a balcony in Cáceres to talk to a cheering crowd which had assembled to greet the news of the relief of the Alcázar. The colonel told the crowd that the Foreign Legion needed a supreme commander, and one whom they could trust.1 Of course, Franco was the outstanding candidate, and the victory at Toledo was enough to decide waverers. Some maliciously said that the diversion to Toledo from the road to Madrid was decided upon by Franco to assist his political designs. Although Franco would, no doubt, have been capable of such an action, it is hard to believe that it was necessary, or that he could have been certain that it would have worked to his advantage. At all events though, the day after Toledo fell, on 28 September, the generals of the junta and some others travelled to Salamanca by air. On their arrival, Franco was hailed as ‘Generalísimo’ by an escort of falangists and Carlists ordered to act in this way by Nicolás Franco. To the assembled company, Kindelán read a decree which he and Nicolás Franco had prepared. It stipulated that the armed forces should be subordinate to a generalissimo, who would also be head of state for the duration of the war. But this time the generals assembled were cool to the proposal. Why add political, to the military, responsibilities of the Generalissimo? Cabanellas said that he wished for time to consider the decree. The conference was suspended for lunch, after which, by a mixture of veiled menace and flattery—the details are not clear—Kindelán succeeded in establishing Franco as he wished. Yagüe, too, was present, and hinted that the Legion wanted Franco. Queipo and Mola did not go back to the meeting after the lunch. The draft of the decree, as accepted by the generals on the 28th, spoke of Franco as ‘Head of Government of the Spanish state’, without a time limit. But in the decree as published, Franco was named as assuming ‘all the powers of the Spanish state’. Later, Franco, nevertheless, spoke of himself as Head of State in his decrees—from his first government order, in fact.2 ‘Why did you vote for Franco?’ Queipo de Llano was once asked by the monarchist, Vegas Latapié. ‘And who else could we nominate?’ Queipo answered. ‘Cabanellas was impossible. He was a decided republican and everyone knew that he was a freemason. If we had named Mola, we should have lost the war. And I—I was greatly diminished in prestige.’1

  Cabanellas had to sign the decree naming Franco as Generalissimo, but he did not do so before leaving Salamanca. He returned to Burgos alone, and decided to sign only after telephone conversations during the night with Mola and with Queipo. The former was cautious, but said that, if one faced facts, Franco had to be nominated. The latter spoke coarsely and was hostile. Mola thought Franco had no political ambitions and would give up his authority when the war was won. Cabanellas thought that he had to sign, in the interests of winning the war. He did so at midnight.2

  On 1 October, Franco was installed in Burgos. Cabanellas handed over to him full powers of the junta, reading out a text slightly different once again from the published decree.3 Franco gave his first public speech from a balcony on the town hall in Burgos on the subject of the future of Spain: the ballot box would be eliminated in favour of a ‘better way of expressing the popular will’; labour would be guaranteed against the domination of capital; the Church would be respected, taxes revised, and the independence of peasants encouraged. In so far as the speech had any theoretical basis, it was founded on the more harmless aspects of the Falange’s programme. Much more important were the exultant if quite untheoretical appeals to nationalism. To them the crowd in the square beneath the general responded with cries of ‘Fran-co, Fran-co, Fran-co’, as others had only a year before been crying ‘Je-fe, Je-fe, Je-fe’ for Gil Robles. Henceforward, posters all over nationalist Spain proclaimed the virtue of having ‘One State, One Country, One Chief’. Franco began to be described as ‘Caudillo’—the Spanish for ‘leader’, or, should one say, Führer, or Duce. The remark ‘Caesars are always victorious generals’ was sporadically scrawled on the walls of nationalist Spain.4 Franco maintained the ambiguity as to whether he was head of government or head of state, and if either for how long, so that monarchists could still fight for him.

  The Falange accepted this change without protest, for the time being. They had not been consulted, however, and those l
eaders most interested in keeping green the memory of José Antonio—Agustín Aznar, for instance—were angry. The Carlists had been preoccupied, at this moment, by the death of the old Pretender, Alfonso Carlos, in Vienna on 28 September. Last of the original line of Don Carlos, his remote cousin and nephew by marriage, Prince Xavier, would act as regent till a new member of the Bourbon dynasty could be found who would really pledge himself to ‘Dios, Patria, Rey’, and the implacable principles of anti-democratic traditionalism. Fal Conde and other Carlist leaders were on their way to Vienna for Don Alfonso Carlos’s funeral, when Franco was gaining the ‘crown’ at Burgos.1 One epoch of Spanish authoritarian politics ended as another began.

  On 2 October, a new junta técnica, or provisional government, at Burgos, was named to carry on the nationalist administration, headed by an associate of Mola’s, General Dávila, the officer who had ensured the success of the rising in Burgos. Nicolás Franco, a ‘great friend of Germany’, as the German diplomat Dumoulin reported,2 stayed by his brother’s side as ‘secretary-general’. General Orgaz, ‘resolute and irascible’,3 became high commissioner in Morocco, with the Arabist Colonel Beigbeder as his secretary-general, an important job concerned with keeping the natives happy, and the supply of volunteers constant. The diplomat José Antonio Sangroniz, another friend of Franco’s from Moroccan days, was in effect foreign minister, with the name of ‘head of cabinet’, while Juan Pujol, a monarchist journalist who had prepared Sanjurjo’s manifesto in Seville in 1932, became chief of propaganda and press. He did not last long, however, and was replaced by Millán Astray.4 Cabanellas, as a sop, was given the title of inspector-general of the army. With Franco named as ‘Generalísimo’ (with his headquarters at Salamanca), the two main armies already formed, that of the north and that of the south, were confirmed in the names of Mola and Queipo de Llano. The latter, however, continued to do what he could to discomfit Franco, from his private kingdom of Seville. For his nightly broadcasts continued, though he had ceased to cry ‘¡Viva la República!’ at the end of them.

  On 6 October, Franco gave a reception for Count Dumoulin, the German counsellor in Lisbon, who had arrived with Hitler’s congratulations on becoming Head of State. Franco expressed ‘complete admiration’ for Hitler and the new Germany. He hoped to be able to hoist his own flag beside the banner of civilization that the Führer had already raised, and thanked Hitler for ‘his valuable material and moral help’. A dinner followed, attended by the highest-ranking German pilot in Salamanca, and by Nicolás Franco and Kindelán. Franco, reported Dumoulin, ‘permitted not even a moment of doubt as to the sincerity of his attitude towards us, being very optimistic as to the military situation, counting on taking Madrid in the near future’. On the future political organization of Spain, Franco said that a restoration of the monarchy could not at present be discussed; but it was essential—‘though proceeding with kid gloves’—to create ‘a common ideology among the co-fighters for liberation’—army, Falange, Carlists, orthodox monarchists, and CEDA;1 and that indeed was beginning to take shape.

  An equally important consideration, so far as nationalist morale was concerned, was that the new cruiser Canarias had been completed at El Ferrol and brought into action, and that that single ship had transformed the situation at sea, as a naval battle off Gibraltar on 29 September had shown: the republican destroyer Almirante Fernández was sunk, the other republican vessels withdrew, and the republican blockade of the Straits was at an end.2 Henceforth, the balance of sea power was with the rebels, particularly when the other new rebel cruiser, the Baleares, entered into service as well. Given effective nationalist superiority in the air, the war seemed as good, or as bad, as over. But trouble was brewing internationally which destroyed this rebel optimism.

  26

  These changes among the rebels constituted a real coup d’état by General Franco, even though few noticed it as such, in the tumult of emotion which swept nationalist Spain after the relief of the Alcázar. On the revolutionary or republican side of the battle, changes were continuous, dramatic, tortuous but less decisive. No doubt a new state authority was there in the making but it arose hesitantly out of the ruins of the old régime and took many months more to be generally accepted.

  On 27 September, the anarchists, having held the reality of authority in Barcelona since the rising, accepted it formally by entering the Generalidad; one of their intellectuals, García Birlán, became responsible for health; Juan Domenech for supply; and Juan Fábregas councillor for economics. The anarchists admittedly referred to the Catalan government as the ‘Regional Defence Council’, to avoid giving to their already alarmed followers the impression that they had joined a real state, but their entry into this formal organization signified the failure of their previous effort to have the government of Madrid replaced by a National Defence Council. Ironically, this first entry of an anarchist movement into a political authority signified the beginning of the end of anarchism as a political force in Spain. The puritanical figure of the cripple Escorza saw his influence waning; the star of the more realistic García Oliver rose.

  The POUM also joined the Generalidad, its experienced leader, the controversial Andrés Nin, becoming councillor for justice. The PSUC leader, Juan Comorera, was in charge of public services. The PSUC’s foothold was, however, still tenuous. Three Esquerra members (Tarradellas, prime minister; Ventura Gassol, education; Artemio Ayguadé, the interior) had more important posts. Colonel Díaz Sandino, another ‘Catalanist’, was the councillor for defence. The Anti-Fascist Militias Committee, the driving-force of the first weeks after the defeat of the rising, was, however, dissolved on 1 October, and its sub-committees merged with the appropriate Catalan government departments. The FAI leader, Abad de Santillán, wrote later that ‘Time and time again we were told that to get arms we would have to abandon the Anti-Fascist Militias Committee and enter the government’.1 This decision further disturbed the anarchist movement, even though García Oliver, as secretary-general of defence, ran the Aragonese army, and the anarchist Aurelio Fernández, secretary-general at the interior, was more powerful than his minister, Ayguadé. Another anarchist, Dionisio Eroles, still led the ‘patrol controls’, which survived as an independent source of anarchist power for months.2 These reckless half idealists and half terrorists still terrified Barcelona, driving the middle class—shopkeepers, private businessmen, or even ambitious workers—more and more into the hands of the only shelter that seemed available to them, the communists of the PSUC.

  If relations between anarchists, communists and Catalan nationalists, not to speak of the POUM, were bad, contact hardly existed between Barcelona and Madrid. Yet there were accusations that Madrid was starving Catalonia: the Catalan Economic Council sent a mission to Madrid to ask credit of 800 million pesetas, another of 30 million to buy war material, another of 150 million francs to buy raw material; the requests were refused.3 Madrid complained of Catalonia’s inexplicable inaction. The legendary Durruti, however, preserved his idealism at the front. ‘I do not expect any help from any government in the world,’ he told a journalist, Pierre van Paassen. The Canadian replied: ‘You will be sitting on a pile of ruins if you are victorious.’ Durruti answered: ‘We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall—we shall know how to accommodate ourselves for a time … We can also build. It is we who built the palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build cities to take their place. And better ones—we are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. The bourgeoisie may blast and ruin their world before they leave the stage of history. But we carry a new world in our hearts.’1

  The presence of Durruti and the other anarchist columns in Aragon made possible there the establishment of a purely libertarian society. This was disturbing from the point of view of the central government, the Catalan government, the communists, and, indeed, of everyone apart from the CNT and FAI. But there was nothing that they could do about it. The collective
s established in Aragon—the CNT later claimed that there were 450 of them—held a conference in late September, at Bujaraloz, near Durruti’s headquarters. They set up a regional ‘Council of Defence’, composed of CNT members, and presided over by Joaquín Ascaso, a cousin of the famous anarchist killed in July. This had its seat at Fraga, and thence exercised supreme power over all revolutionary Aragon.2 Its organizers announced that rural Aragon had become the ‘Spanish Ukraine’ and that it would never be crushed by Marxist militarism, as Russian anarchism had been in 1921.3

  There was yet another fragmentation that autumn in the republican side. A rump meeting of the Cortes assembled to approve a statute of Basque autonomy. José Antonio Aguirre pledged the new Basque republic (to be known as Euzkadi), of which he was to become president, to stand by the government of Madrid ‘until the defeat of fascism’.4 On 7 October, all municipal councillors of the three Basque provinces who could attend voted in the sacred village of Guernica for the presidency of the ‘provisional government of Euzkadi’ to govern during the civil war. Aguirre was elected. He then named a government, which was sworn in under the celebrated oak tree. The civil governor of Bilbao, and the presidents of the juntas of defence of Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa, who had exercised authority since July, handed over power to Aguirre. In his ‘cabinet’, there were four Basque nationalists, holding the posts of the interior, justice, defence, and agriculture. This first Basque government included also three socialists, one communist (the secretary-general of the party in the Basque province, Astigarrabía, who was minister of public works) and one member each from the two republican parties. There were no anarchists in the cabinet. The new government’s first action was humane. They evacuated 130 female political prisoners on the British ships Exmouth and Esk to France, through Dr Junod of the International Red Cross.1 The Basque civil guard and assault guards were also reorganized, the former being altered into a people’s guard under Luis Ortúzar. All this force were Basque nationalists, and all over six feet in height.2