The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  On 3 January 1939, the nationalist armour eventually told against Lister, who was forced to abandon his line of defence to the Italians. In the north, García Valiño and Muñoz Grandes, supported by Moscardó, captured the communications centre of Artesa de Segre. On 4 January, the wrecked town of Borjas Blancas fell to the Navarrese and Italian armies. The front was open. Gambara was wounded, but he did not abandon his command. Several Italians were captured by Lister, however, to be shot after interrogation.3 Ciano, noting that the only danger seemed the possibility of French intervention, instructed his ambassadors in Berlin and London to say that that contingency would bring ‘regular’ Italian divisions to Spain—even if this should ‘unleash world war’.1 But, with the British cabinet bent on appeasement (Halifax told Ciano in Rome on the 12th that he hoped Franco ‘would settle the Spanish question’),2 there was no likelihood that Daladier’s cabinet would act to save the Spanish republic. The republican commander-in-chief, Hernández Saravia, informed Azaña that he had only 17,000 rifles left for all Catalonia.3 If that were so—and Hernández Saravia was an honest man—it indicates the confusion in the armies, since there should have been far more than that number of arms available. The battle of Catalonia became a rout. The reorganized Italian mobile divisions astonished the republicans. Too late did Rojo try to get men and material sent up by boat from Valencia. Uselessly did the government extend the draft to men of forty-five. Successive defence lines (L.1, L.2, L.3) were hardly manned. The only successful counter-measure of the republic was a diversionary campaign on the borders of Andalusia and Estremadura. This advance (‘Plan P’, as Rojo knew it) was led by General Escobar, the civil guard colonel of 1936 in Barcelona, with Colonels Ibarrola and García Vallego, in command of large if not very disciplined armies; the other armies of the central zone, led by General Moriones and Colonel Casada, also began some local actions. The territory occupied was quite large, but militarily that meant little. For, on 14 January, a sudden and imaginative advance by Yagüe from Gandesa along the Ebro took him to the sea to capture Tarragona. There he met Solchaga, with his Army Corps, proceeding north along the coast. The first mass for two and a half years was held in the cathedral, while the proscription began in the city.

  34. The campaign in Catalonia, December 1938–January 1939

  The French government opened the frontier again to allow into Catalonia some of the new war material bought in Russia, but it was too late. The streets and squares of Barcelona were filled with refugees. The city wore a desperate air. Soldiers, bourgeoisie, and anarchists thought only of how they could escape to France. Air raids were continuous, especially on the port. These aimed to destroy vessels which might assist those who desired to flee. The government, preoccupied with the question of evacuating children, did not move until the last moment. In one of the last entries in his diary, Azaña recorded a visit to Hernández Saravia’s headquarters: ‘Enormous disaster. The army has disappeared. The men of the Ebro [collapse] almost without fighting. Worse than April.’1

  The battle drew nearer to Barcelona, with little fighting; the advance was almost as fast as the advancing columns could have managed had there been no opposition at all. On 24 January, Yagüe, by the sea, Solchaga, twenty-five miles inland, and Gambara, seven miles farther to the north, had reached the Llobregat, the river which runs roughly from north to south to flow into the Mediterranean a few miles to the west of Barcelona. The same day, García Valiño captured Manresa, and turned north-east to attempt to cut off Barcelona from the border. Negrín, Azaña, the government, the communist leaders, the chiefs of the army and of the civil service now moved from Barcelona to Gerona, along with the Catalan and émigré Basque governments. (Azaña was left to shift for himself.)1 In the Catalan capital, there was no spirit of resistance, and the communist demand that the Llobregat should become ‘the Manzanares of Catalonia’ was mere persiflage. The republican chief of staff, Vicente Rojo, remarked that ‘though not exhausted by suffering and hunger, the people were tired of the war’.2 The Catalan capital could have been defended, and García Lacalle, the commander of the republican fighters, expressed to his chief an astonishment that it was not.3 The central government’s feud with the Generalidad paid its toll, since it had broken Catalonia’s desire to resist the nationalist armies. The communist campaign against the POUM and anarchists had had the same effect.4 Those foreigners who remained either joined the flood of refugees, which fled north, or tried to find a ship to evacuate them. The streets of the great city were filthy after the flight of the municipal cleaners. Mobs began to pillage food shops.

  In Rome, Barcelona was held so certainly to be lost that Lord Perth was already asking Ciano to try to prevent reprisals by the nationalists.5 In France, a debate raged for a week in the National Assembly, in the course of which Daladier and Bonnet said that it was too late to try to save Spain, while Blum and the united Left, including the communists, denied that all was lost. Yet Blum’s criticism of the Daladier government for continuing even now to maintain non-intervention could have applied to his own governments, at least after February 1937. On 25 January, Yagüe, followed by Solchaga and Gambara, crossed the Llobregat. Resistance was isolated, and without plan. By the following morning, the north and west of Barcelona had been invested. The Navarrese and Italians established themselves on Mount Tibidabo and Yagüe on Montjuich (where he liberated 1,200 political prisoners). At midday, the occupation of the city began. On the first tank which entered Barcelona, a laughing German Jewess was perched, giving the fascist salute. She had recently been in the women’s prison at Las Cortes as a Trotskyist.1 The incongruity of the spectacle gave a mocking commentary to the vivas of triumph at the ‘liberation’ of Catalonia. The streets were empty. Almost half a million persons had left for the north by all means possible. By four o’clock, the main administrative buildings were occupied, untouched by incendiaries. In the evening, those citizens of Barcelona who had all the time secretly supported the nationalists came into the streets to rejoice.

  Others came out with a different purpose: there were five days of paseos, during which the surviving falangists of the city, embittered by suffering, killed whom they liked with impunity.2 General Gambara, commander of the Italian troops, reported to Ciano that Franco had ‘unleashed in Barcelona a very drastic purge’. Mussolini, hearing that many Italian exiles had been captured, and asked for his views, said, ‘Let them all be shot. Dead men tell no tales.’3 There followed a more regular procedure carried out by councils of war organized by the new military governor, General Alvarez Arenas, who was also responsible for the full restitution of the old order: de-nationalization, de-collectivization, new bank notes, new salutes, the washing off of posters and slogans and, under the orders of Colonel Mut, the ‘withdrawal’ of all Marxist, anarchist and Catalan separatist books. Henceforth, Catalans would speak, and read, ‘the language of empire’.4 New newspapers or old ones came out anew, Vanguardia as Vanguardia Española: one of its collaborators, Carlos Sentís, described the collapse of Catalonia as simply the ‘end of a gangster film’. It was to innumerable people the end of a world, as well as of a dream. Catalan autonomy was rescinded; the dancing of the Sardana, the Catalan national dance, banned; and the Catalan tongue (henceforward referred to always as a ‘dialect’) prohibited as an official language. Those who published even business prospectuses in Catalan were fined, Spanish had to be used in churches on all occasions, and even Catalan Christian names were prohibited. Shortly afterwards, an order came to remove the inscriptions, on tombs in the cemetery of Montjuich, commemorating Durruti, Ascaso and the anarchist schoolmaster Ferrer, shot in 1909. Catalonia had finished with all that, as with fifty years of vigorous cultural endeavour.

  It had not gone forwards to fascism, however; when Ridruejo, director-general of propaganda, arrived with propaganda for the Falange written in Catalan, it was confiscated. He was not permitted to hold a series of meetings in favour of reconciliation between conquerors and conquered; and the military govern
or, Alvarez Arenas, told him that the gravest problem ‘was to … restore altars to the city’.1 The Bible, not José Antonio, gave the text for the punishment of the old ‘red city’, seat of anarchism and separatism, which had, like Sodom or Gomorrah, to be ‘purified’.2

  49

  The Flight From Catalonia

  The conclusion of the campaign of Catalonia was not an offensive but a victory parade preceded by a flight. The world was astonished at the swiftness of the collapse, which had been caused by war-weariness as much as by the depletion of men and material on the Ebro. Duncan Sandys expressed the views of many sympathizers with the republic (or at least the enemies of Franco’s allies) when he urged upon the ambassador in London, Azcárate, that some further resistance was necessary in upper Catalonia for the world to suppose that the war was not over.1 Henry Stimson, ex–secretary of state, wrote a long letter to the New York Times citing legal and political reasons for lifting the embargo on arms to Spain.2 A correspondence on the subject ensued, none the less passionate for being too late to be of assistance. The White House received a letter saying: ‘For God’s sake! Lift that embargo on Spain. Look what happened to us!’ The signature was ‘Ghost of Czechoslovakia’.3 On 27 January, at a cabinet meeting, President Roosevelt said that the embargo ‘had been a grave mistake … The President said that we would never do such a thing again … He agreed that this embargo controverted old American principles and invalidated established international law.’1 But this did not then help. Nor was it much comfort to the republic to know that, in England, seventy-two persons out of a hundred questioned in a public opinion poll supported them, against only nine for Franco.2

  Catalonia to the north of its capital was in disorder. The republican government had made no provision for the crisis which now occurred; the state fell apart; and the minister of the interior was himself reduced to try, pistol in hand, to regulate the traffic on the main road to France.3 The government, including Azaña, moved north from one temporary residence to another, quarrelling as they went. The commander of the fighters in Catalonia, García Lacalle, had no idea of the whereabouts of the commander of the air force, Hidalgo de Cisneros.4 The flights from Irún, Málaga, Bilbao—all those movements of a terrified population—paled into insignificance when compared with the flight from Catalonia along what even the Baron von Stohrer recognized to be a ‘road of suffering’.5 This was a movement of panic, for only a small percentage of those who fled would have been in mortal danger if they had remained in Catalonia. But the whole of Catalonia seemed to be on the move—and many of those who were fleeing were already refugees, from Estremadura or Andalusia. The traffic jam of official and private cars and lorries was continuous. All the towns on the way to the French border were filled. At night, the pavements were choked with hunger-stricken, shivering human beings, of all ages. Characteristic of the chaos was the fate of the prisoners who were members of the POUM—Gorkin, Andrade, Gironella and others. Their captors, who were members of the SIM, had wanted to leave them behind in Barcelona to the tender mercies of Franco. Then, however, most prisoners were moved northwards. At a certain point near the French border, their gaolers placed themselves at their disposal. Once in France, they were, however, first turned back to go to Spain. Only some days later did they escape in truth, hurrying out of the road when by chance they saw the judge who had condemned them, José Gomís, passing in a black car. The refugees’ difficulties were worsened by aerial attacks from the Condor Legion, apparently against Franco’s wishes.1

  At first, the French government had refused, for political as well as for financial reasons, to permit the entry of refugees. France had spent 88 million francs on aid to Spanish refugees since the start of the war. They proposed instead a neutral zone on the Spanish side of the frontier, where refugees could be maintained by foreign relief. The nationalists, however, refused to consider this plan. So the French government permitted the opening of the frontier, at first only to civilians and wounded men. Under these conditions, the first crossings began at midnight on 27–28 January. Fifteen thousand crossed on 28 January. On the succeeding days, this figure was exceeded. In the first week of February, it became evident that the retreating republican army had no intention, and no means, of resisting the nationalist advance, despite the arrival of two new squadrons of I-15B fighters (Superchatos) from Russia.2 The French, therefore, were faced with a choice between permitting the entry of the soldiers, or resisting them by force. On 5 February, the French government decided to admit the army, subject to the surrender of their arms. Thus, to the 10,000 wounded, the 170,000 women and children, and the 60,000 male civilians who had crossed since 28 January, there were added 220,000 men of the republican army, between 5 and 10 February. Even so, the nationalists captured some 60,000 prisoners.3

  The frontier was a scene of tragedy. The fugitives were worn out. Their clothes were damp from rain and snow. Yet there were few complaints. Crushed by disaster, the majority of the Spanish republicans walked erect into exile. Children carried broken toys, the head of a doll or a deflated ball—symbols of a happy childhood which they had lost. At the border, what laughter, what happiness! But what disillusion!1

  The Spanish side of the frontier was controlled by a certain José Ramos, head of one of the murderous revolutionary tribunals of the early days in Barcelona, afterwards commandant of the gaol at Ordenes. He behaved as a brigand.2 On the French side of the frontier, a camp was opened as a clearing centre at Le Boulou. There was no shelter, though most of the women and children were removed, along with some wounded soldiers, to other parts of France. Families were separated who had never before been apart, even in the disaster of the flight. Camps were established at Argelès, at St Cyprien, at Barcarès, and at four smaller places in the area, for the reception of the republican army. These were simply open spaces of sand dunes near the sea, enclosed by barbed-wire, from which the inmates were prevented from leaving. Men dug holes for themselves like animals, to find some shelter. There were eventually fifteen camps, guarded by Senegalese and members of the garde mobile. Some refugees crossed the border with a handful of earth which they had taken as they left their villages. One garde mobile forcibly opened one of these clenched hands and scattered the earth of Spain in disdain into a French ditch.3 Among those who crossed was a phantom gathering of international volunteers who had been regrouped (or had regrouped themselves) under the direction of a Pole (Henrik Torunczyk): among them were still Ludwig Renn, Heinrich Rau, Mihály Szalvai (the ‘Spanish Chapaiev’) and the Italian Giuliano Pajetta, as well as André Marty. Malraux, who had been filming L’Espoir in Catalonia, was there; c’était toute la révolution qui s’en allait’. True, and the hopes for ‘anti-fascism’ outside received a harsh setback.4

  In the camps, for ten days, there was no water or food supply, and those wounded who stayed with their comrades were left uncared for. Among these was the great poet Antonio Machado, who shortly died in a pension at Collioure, due to the recurrence of an asthmatic complaint, exacerbated by the pains of the evacuation.1 Food was later secured, but there was no sanitation or shelter, and meagre medical services. The French government was criticized for permitting these conditions but the difficulties of providing for about 400,000 refugees at short notice were, after all, herculean. France was never given much recognition for admitting the refugees at all. No doubt the French government hoped, by neglect, to force as many as possible of the refugees to throw themselves on Franco’s mercy. But callousness was also shown by persons comfortable in America or England: Herbert Matthews, for example, was told by the editor of the New York Times not to send him too many emotional reports of the conditions of the camp.2 The cost of providing for one refugee was 15 francs a day and, for the wounded, 60 francs. The French government gave 30 million francs for this purpose early in February. At the same time, they not unnaturally asked other governments to help with the burden. The Belgians agreed to accept 2–3,000 Spanish children, but to begin with the British and Russian go
vernments would not accept any refugees. Russia’s attitude was widely commented on, particularly in the right-wing French press. Later, Britain agreed to the entry of a selected number of leaders, and Russia gave £28,000 for aid to the refugees, Britain £50,000 to the Red Cross for work in the camps.3

  There were several settlements of private scores in these camps. In the camp at Argelès, for example, Astorga Vayo, of the hated SIM, sometime commandant of a large republican prison camp at Omells de Nagaya in Lérida, was one day greeted by several acquaintances from earlier in the war.4 He walked with them for a while discussing old times. Suddenly he realized that they had led him to an unfrequented part of the camp. Before him he observed a deep trench dug beneath some pine trees. He turned in dismay. His companions smiled grimly. They buried him alive.1

  Meantime, on 1 February, a rump of sixty-two members of the Cortes, elected almost three years before with such enthusiasm, met in a dungeon of the old castle of Figueras, the last town in Catalonia short of the border. Diego Martínez Barrio sat at a table draped with the flag of the republic. Negrín made a speech naming only three conditions for peace: a guarantee of Spanish independence; a guarantee of the right of the Spanish people to choose their own government; and freedom from persecution. Nobody opposed these conditions, although it was certain that they would not be accepted by General Franco, and that, therefore, the government was, in effect, recommending the continuance of the war.2 The Cortes broke up. Its members left for France. Some, indeed, had spent the previous night there. Negrín approached Ralph Stevenson and Jules Henry, the British and French ministers, to try and arrange with the nationalists a mediation on the conditions of the speech at Figueras. The diplomats agreed to try and do so. Negrín added that, if the terms were rejected, the republic would continue the war from Madrid.3 He had long before resolved to do that. Alvarez del Vayo busied himself with the safe conduct from Figueras of the paintings of the Prado. They were taken in lorries to Geneva, where they were held on behalf of the Spanish people by the secretary-general of the League. The refugees stood aside, while the canvases of Velázquez, Goya, Titian, Rubens passed. Azaña (echoing one of the characters in his Velada en Benicarló) remarked to Negrín that all notions of monarchy and republic were not worth a single Velázquez. Negrín agreed.4 Neither, of course, believed it.