The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  On 28 April, Durango and, on 29 April, meantime, Guernica, fell to the nationalists, without much resistance. General Solchaga executed the captured Basque commander, Colonel Llarch, with three of his staff, after a summary court-martial. Foreign journalists with the nationalists were told, and shown, that, while ‘a few bomb fragments’ had been found in Guernica, the damage had been mainly caused by Basque incendiarists, in order to inspire indignation.3 On 4 May, a new nationalist report said that Guernica naturally showed signs of fire after ‘a week’s bombardment by artillery and aircraft’. It agreed that Guernica had also been intermittently bombed over a period of three hours. Ten days later, the word ‘Garnika’ was found in the diary for 26 April of a German pilot shot down by the Basques. The pilot explained, unconvincingly, that that referred to a girl whom he knew in Hamburg. Some months later, another nationalist report admitted that the town had been bombed, but alleged that the aeroplanes were republican. The bombs, it was said, had been manufactured in Basque territory and the explosions caused by dynamite in the sewers. But in August a nationalist officer admitted to a reporter from The Sunday Times that Guernica had been bombed by his side:1 ‘Certainly we bombed it and bombed it and bueno why not?’ Years later, the German air ace Adolf Galland, who shortly afterwards joined the Condor Legion, admitted that the Germans were responsible.2 He argued, however, that the attack was an error, caused by bad bombsights and lack of experience. The Germans, said Galland, were trying for the bridge over the river, missed it completely, and by mistake destroyed the town. That idea is supported by other Germans including some who took part in the raid.3 The wind, they said, caused the bombs to drift westwards.

  In fact, Guernica was a military target, being a communications centre close to the battle line, almost within sight indeed of the nationalist columns some miles to the south. Retreating republican soldiers could only escape westwards with any ease through Guernica, since the bridge just outside across the river Oca was the last one before the sea. But if the aim of the Condor Legion was primarily to destroy the bridge, why did von Richthofen not use his accurate Stuka dive bombers, of which he had a small number at Burgos? Why too was such a specially devastating expedition mounted? At least part of the aim in his mind (if not in his diary) must have been to cause panic among civilians as well as among soldiers. The use of incendiary bombs proves that some destruction of buildings or people other than the bridge must have been intended, even though von Richthofen may not have known that the fires would spread so fast through Guernica’s narrow streets and even though dust and smoke from the explosions caused by the Heinkels may have prevented the pilots of the Junkers from seeing the bridge clearly. The machine-gunning of people running out of the town could hardly be part of the business of destroying the bridge.

  The diary of von Richthofen also makes clear that Colonel Juan Vigón, Mola’s chief of staff, knew of the raid beforehand: the two are said to have conferred on both 25 and 26 April ‘without reference to higher authority’.1

  At the same time, however, it is fair to recognize that the raid was connected with the campaign under way; and that there is no direct evidence that the Germans knew of the importance of Guernica in the minds of the Basques, nor that any nationalist Spanish officers, who would of course have known of that place in the Basque mind, realized that the raid would be so horrifying. There is no evidence even that Vigón knew that the raid would be so devastating, nor that Franco, Mola or even Sperrle discussed the planned raid beforehand: at that time, as will be seen, Franco was preoccupied with the problems of the Falange and Hedilla.2 Mola, it is said, was shocked when he got to Guernica on 29 April.3 It has also been suggested that Franco was furious with the Germans when he knew of the consequences of the raid.4 That may be so since there were no similar raids later on in the Basque country of a Guernica type and indeed the Condor Legion never again attempted anything in the nature of ‘area bombing’ of defenceless towns.5

  An international controversy soon raged over Guernica. The painter Picasso had, earlier in the year, been commissioned to paint a mural for the Spanish government building at the World’s Fair in Paris.6 He now began work on a representation of the horrors of war expressed by the destruction of Guernica.7 Exhibited in Paris in 1937 for the first time, it went to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Shock at what they had done, and anxiety about the repercussions, meantime, caused the nationalist command and the Germans to mount an elaborate campaign of concealment. No such concentrated raid had after all occurred before. Propagandists on both sides took up positions from which they never departed. If one correspondent of The Times, George Steer, was prepared to write so explicitly the Basque side of the story, James Holburn, the correspondent of the same English paper on the nationalist side, cabled, after entering the city with the baggage train of Solchaga: ‘the few craters I inspected were caused by exploding mines’.1 Twenty Basque priests, of whom one was an eye-witness of the bombing, and including the vicar-general of the diocese, wrote to the Pope telling him who had destroyed Guernica. Two of them, Fathers Pedro Menchaca and Agustín Isusi, preceptor of Vitoria and priest of Santos Juanes in Bilbao, went to the Vatican with this letter. It was delivered, but they were only received by Cardinal Pacelli, the papal secretary of state, on the condition that they did not mention the subject which had brought them to Rome. When they were received, the two Basques could not restrain themselves from speaking of Guernica, and Pacelli, coldly remarking, ‘The Church is persecuted in Barcelona’, showed them to the door.2

  The nationalist version of this event was maintained for a generation. Those who told the story at the time, such as Captain Luis Bolín, lived on.3 It was only when they had died, or had ceased to be influential, and when government documents began to be available, that, in 1970, the admission was made that Guernica was bombed from the air.4 Even then, it continued to be often maintained that the Basques had finished what the Germans had merely begun.5

  On 30 April, ten days after the international non-intervention control had begun and when the British Foreign Secretary had therefore believed that he would have been free for a while from considering what he thought of as the ‘War of the Spanish Obsession’, Eden told the House of Commons that the cabinet were considering what could be done to prevent another Guernica. In the Condor Legion itself, ‘great depression’ followed the attack.1 On 4 May, Lord Plymouth suggested to the Non-Intervention Committee that it should call on both Spanish parties not to bomb open towns. Ribbentrop and Grandi disingenuously argued that the subject could not be discussed apart from a consideration of the general humanitarian aspect of the war. Maisky protested against such a extension of the area of debate.2 A conference of Church of England leaders, including William Temple, archbishop of York, made a formal protest to Eden against the bombing of non-military targets. The crisis served to divert attention from the large shipments of military equipment which were then coming to the republic from Russia.3 Similarly, on 29 April, Franco had signed an agreement to buy from Italy two old submarines, the Archimedes and the Torricelli, to supplement his fleet. This also passed unnoticed.

  The Basque collapse behind the destroyed city, meantime, was staunched, although the fishing port of Bermeo was captured on 30 April by the Black Arrows, numbering 4,000. On this day, Basque morale was given a fillip by the sinking of the battleship España, apparently by one of the rebels’ own mines off Santander, the crew being saved. On 1 May, Mola attacked all along the front. The Italians in Bermeo were surrounded, and forced to beg relief. Bombing had now lost some of its terror for the Basque militia, since they had observed that the noise it caused was worse than its effects.

  While Guernica occupied the headlines, events almost as dramatic were occurring in the Sierra Morena, the magnificent range of mountains which divides the tableland of Castile from Andalusia. On two mountaintops around the shrine of Santa María de la Cabeza, 250 civil guards from Jaén, most of their families, 100 falangists, and about 1,000 members of the b
ourgeoisie of Andújar had held out for the rising for nine months. Throughout most of the early part of the war there had been no attack launched against this nationalist enclave in the heart of republican Spain. Indeed, for a time, the Popular Front committee of Andújar had been uncertain whether the civil guard in the sanctuary were friends or enemies. After living in this equivocal security for some time, and after they had gathered a good supply of food, the rebels decided that it was morally impossible not to let the ‘reds’ know where they stood. So they dispatched a letter by hand giving a declaration of war. Major Nofuentes, who wanted to surrender, was deposed from command in the sanctuary, though his life and that of certain other pro-republican officers was respected. A siege then began. A captain of the civil guard, Santiago Cortés, whose wife and family were political prisoners in Jaén, led the defenders. Carrier pigeons communicated news and exultant messages to the nationalists at Seville. Nationalist pilots, such as the brilliant Major Carlos de Haya, trained specially in order to drop supplies into the small area which was being defended—a technique which they found to be similar to dive-bombing. Altogether 160,000 pounds of food were sent from Seville and 140,000 from Córdoba. More delicate supplies (such as medical appliances) were dropped by turkey, a bird whose flight is heavy, majestic, and vertical. Inside the sanctuary, schools and hospitals were improvised. Although a force of Queipo de Llano’s was only about twenty miles away at Porcuna (captured on 1 January 1937) the nationalists made no real effort to relieve the garrison.

  In early April, the republic decided to crush this island of resistance, and dispatched a large force under the communist deputy, and now lieutenant-colonel, Martínez Cartón. After fierce fighting, the small encampment of defenders was divided into two. Lugar Nuevo, the smaller encampment, sent its last pigeon to Captain Cortés to say that it could no longer hold out. Torrential rain followed and, during the night, Lugar Nuevo was evacuated without loss, all the defenders, including two hundred women and children, being taken into the sanctuary. Next, Franco gave permission to Cortés to surrender should resistance become impossible. He also gave orders for the evacuation of women and children, under the guarantee of the Red Cross officers, who had recently arrived. But Cortés and the defenders, inflamed by the passions which it had been necessary to arouse in order to carry on resistance, doubted the power of the Red Cross to fulfil the task. Still the defenders were surrounded by 20,000 republicans. Doubts arose. The attack began again. Cortés was wounded on 30 April, and sent a last message by carrier pigeon, while, on 1 May, the republican army broke into the sanctuary. Cortés’s last orders to his men were: ‘the civil guard and the Falange die, but do not yield’.1 The sanctuary burned. Flames engulfed the Sierra. Eventually, the majority of the women and children were taken away in lorries, and the remaining defenders taken prisoner. Cortés died of wounds in hospital. Cortés took with him to the grave the secret of where the effigy of the Virgin of La Cabeza itself had been buried for safe-keeping.

  36

  During the spring of 1937, the two embattled Spains were consolidated. Henceforth, the country contained what seemed to be more two states than a single one divided by class. Franco, on the one hand, achieved a crushing victory over the falangists and the Carlists, the two movements which alone had survived. The nationalist cause was strengthened by the crisis of April 1937, and the authorities in Salamanca were everywhere respected, though such men as Queipo continued in Seville and Cañizares in Badajoz to have much freedom of action. The consolidation of power in the republican zone of Spain was a more drawn-out affair and, although the state emerged victorious, the victory brought demoralization, so that it was pyrrhic.

  The crisis behind the nationalist lines stretched back to the preceding winter when the Carlist ‘delegate-general’, Fal Conde, had been exiled by Franco to Portugal.1 The Carlists had been angry at the harsh measure. This discontent on the part of the Carlists struck a responsive note in the breasts of certain falangists out of sympathy with General Franco. Fal Conde in Lisbon received an invitation from the Falange to discuss the idea of a unification between the two parties. The invitation was accepted.1 After all, the two parties agreed on the diagnosis of Spain’s troubles, even if they differed on the cure.

  These negotiations lasted three weeks. They produced no result.2 The Carlists concluded that the falangists were aiming at consuming the whole nationalist movement. The two parties, therefore, parted, amicably, at the end of February. The way to a resumption of discussions was to be kept open by the amenable Conde de Rodezno. But the idea of a unification was taken up by General Franco himself, who had heard of these developments, presumably through Rodezno, whose principled support for the old cause had always been tempered by dislike of Fal Conde, as was seen in the talks with Mola before the war. Since he had assumed power, Franco successfully manipulated the disparate supporters of the national movement as if they had been the warring chieftains of the Rif during his early manhood. Would not a simple unification, from above, lead to that amalgamation of ideologies of which he had hopefully spoken to the German diplomat Dumoulin five months before?3

  One other influential person supported this plan: Ramón Serrano Súñer, the Generalissimo’s thirty-six-year-old brother-in-law, who before the war had been the CEDA’s deputy for Saragossa and a vice-president of that movement. This ambitious lawyer had escaped from republican Spain. Though he had been Franco’s closest associate in political circles, the rising had surprised him in Madrid. He had been imprisoned in the Model Prison, where he had observed the shooting of his friends, Fernando Primo de Rivera and Ruiz de Alda. His hatred of the republicans was also sharpened into continuous rage by the death of his own two brothers at their hands. Since they had died partly because they had been refused asylum in the French Embassy, he nursed a particular hatred of France, bolstering a growing contempt for democracy. These appalling experiences marked him for life. There was now little left of the politician of the CEDA which he first had been. His speech at the famous rally of the JAP, in the sleet, at El Escorial, in April 1934, had anyway been a fulmination against the degeneracy of democracy. He had been a friend, since their days at the university, of José Antonio.1 Henceforward, this dandy with prematurely white hair and blue eyes was the dominant influence on his brother-in-law. The easy-going Nicolás Franco, with his unpunctuality, and odd working hours, became less and less important until he was quietly posted away as ambassador to Portugal. Serrano Súñer owed his political success to his cleverness, powers of decision, ruthlessness, and his charm; but while he pleased a small circle, he alienated the mass. He seemed sensitive, revengeful, arrogant and mercurial—‘quick as a knife in word and deed’, a British opponent would say of him—as much a contrast to the reserved Franco as to the expansive bon-homme, Nicolás Franco.2 The close relations between Franco and Serrano were maintained by their two wives, Zita and Carmen, who met constantly. Thus began in Spain the rule of what was referred to as Cuñadismo—brother-in-lawship.

  To begin with, the Cuñadísimo (supreme brother-in-law) had no official position. From the moment of his arrival in Salamanca though, on 20 February, Franco used him as a political guide. Serrano occupied himself in trying to find a theoretical and, if possible, juridical, basis for the new nationalist state. He wanted to save his brother-in-law from setting up a military and personal régime in the style of General Primo de Rivera; equally, he did not want a party state. He talked to monarchists, falangists, churchmen, and generals. He saw Cardinal Gomá, the Conde de Rodezno, and General Mola. Afterwards, he took a walk one day with Franco, in the garden of the bishop’s palace at Salamanca. He told the Generalissimo that his discussions suggested that none of the existing parties in nationalist Spain met the needs of the moment. Even so, something had to be done. The army was the basis of the existing power. But ‘a state of pure force’, he said, could not be indefinitely prolonged. The national movement had been in the beginning a negative reaction against the ‘criminal weakness’ o
f the republican government, and against the menace of a communist revolution. A return to parliamentary government was impossible. ‘In other places, thanks to an intelligent series of conventions, democracy may give effective results. But, in Spain, it has been amply indicated that it is only possible in a raw or explosive shape, and in a form which leads to suicide.’ Here surely was an opportunity of creating a state free of all commitments, precedents, and burdens, a state truly new, the sole state of this kind which had ever been able to appear. Was not the position in Spain in 1937 much as it had been in the fifteenth century (as the now murdered Carlist, Pradera, had put it) at the start of the reign of the Catholic kings?1

  All new ideas on the Spanish Right seem to lead back to Ferdinand and Isabella. So it could not have been surprising to Franco when Serrano spoke to him in this style, one spring afternoon in 1937. This was the first of many such talks between the two men. Franco busied himself with studying the statutes of the Falange, of which, of course, he was not a member. He read José Antonio and Pradera. But, even in the militarist society of ‘White Spain’, political life was not quite dead. There were many underemployed falangists anxious for preferment. Six months of parading with armed escorts was enough. They wanted power. In March, those falangists who had taken the lead in the abortive negotiations with the Carlists plotted the overthrow of Hedilla, the provisional leader of the Falange. This was the so-called Madrid group, all friends or relations of Primo de Rivera’s, of whom the prominent members were Agustín Aznar; Rafael Garcerán, José Antonio’s law clerk who had managed to make himself secretary of the junta of the Falange; José Moreno, jefe provincial in Pamplona; and Sancho Dávila, a cousin of José Antonio’s, who had escaped from a republican gaol to lead the Falange in Andalusia. These men were admirers of José Antonio, and, like many others, kept up the fiction of refusing to accept that he was dead. (There were stories that he was alive: in England, in hiding in Alicante, already secretly in nationalist Spain. His death had not been announced and some believed that he was indeed still alive.) They disliked Hedilla, for they thought that he was trying to establish himself as the new leader, and one of an excessively proletarian type. These men had little following, but they were influential in Salamanca.