The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

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  ZYROMSKI, JEAN, Ouvrez la frontière! (Paris, 1936).

  Bibliographical Note

  The Spanish Civil War, and its origins, has by now a large bibliography. See J. García Durán, Bibliografía de la guerra civil española (Montevideo, 1965), or Ricardo de la Cierva, et al., Bibliografía sobre la guerra de España (Madrid, 1968). Neither are, or could be, complete; and both already betray their age. Some errors of the latter are pointed out by Herbert Southworth, ‘Los Bibliófobos’, Cuadernos de Ruedo Ibérico, No. 2. A good bibliographical essay on modern Spanish history is contained in Raymond Carr, Spain 1808–1939 (Oxford, 1966). Other bibliographical material can be found in the series of Duadernos bibliográficos de la guerra de España 1936–1939 (published by the University of Madrid, 1966 onwards).

  I. COLLECTION OF DOCUMENTS

  The most important texts of the republic are contained in María Carmen García Nieto and Javier M. Donézar, Bases documentales de la España contemporánea, vols. 8 and 9, La Segunda República (Madrid, 1974). Texts for 1936 can be seen in Ricardo de la Cierva, Los documentos de la primavera trágica (Madrid, 1967). For the war, there is Fernando Díaz-Plaja, La guerra de España en sus documentos, 2nd ed. (Barcelona, 1966).

  II. INTRODUCTORY

  (1) The best history of modern Spain is that of Carr (see above). For an admirable introduction to the twentieth century, see Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth (Cambridge, 1943). Other general works include Manuel Tuñón de Lara, La España del siglo XX (Paris, 1966), and Antonio Ramos Oliviera, Politics, Economics and Men of Modern Spain (London, 1946); both emphasize economics. The first half of Salvador de Madariaga’s Spain (London, 1946, and subsequent editions) remains useful. Paul Preston’s Comrades (London, 1999) has several useful pen portraits of the leading politicians of the 1930s.

  (2) The best political history of the Restoration is Melchor Fernández Almagro, Historia política de la España contemporánea, 2 volumes (Madrid, 1959). For the Institución Libre de Enseñanze, see the book of that name by Vicente Cacho (Madrid, 1962). For Alfonso XIII, see Julián Cortés Cavanilla’s Alfonso XIII (Madrid, 1959). For the war in Morocco, see David Woolman, Rebels in the Rif (London, 1969). For 1909, see Joan Ullman, The Tragic Week (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1968). For the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, see Juan Velarde Fuertes, Política económica de la dictadura (Madrid, 1968): there is no satisfactory biography. For the Army throughout the period, see Stanley Payne’s Politics and the Military in Modern Spain (Stanford, 1967).

  (3) A useful general analysis of constitutional issues is Carlos Rama, La crisis española del siglo XX (Buenos Aires, 1960).

  III. THE EARLY HISTORY OF WORKING CLASS MOVEMENTS

  (1) For anarchism, see Casimiro Martí’s excellent Los orígenes del anarquismo en Barcelona (Barcelona, 1959); Josep Termes, Anarquismo y sindicalismo en España (Barcelona, 1972); Anselmo Lorenzo, El proletariado militante (Mexico, 1940, and other editions), a personal account; José Díaz del Moral’s famous Historia de las agitaciones campesinas andaluzas—Córdoba (Madrid, 1929); the first volume of José Peirats, La CNT—la revolución española (Toulouse, 1951); and Diego Abad de Santillán, Contribución a la historia del movimiento obrero español, 2 volumes (Mexico, 1962). Useful or interesting information on anarchism can also be found in the work of Joan Ullman (see above, section II [2]); in Joaquín Romero Maura’s meticulous study of the Barcelona working class movements in the early years of the century, La rosa del fuego (Barcelona, 1974); and dotted about the three volumes of Maximiniano García Venero, Historia de las Internacionales en España (Madrid, 1956). Brenan (see above, section II [1]) is excellent on Andalusian anarchism, and such works as Angel Pestaña, Lo que aprendí en la vida (Madrid, 1932), Manuel Cruells, Salvador Seguí, el Noi del Sucre (Barcelona, 1974), and Abel Paz, Durruti: le peuple en armes (Paris, 1972), add personal views. The best introduction to anarchism as an international phenomenon is James Joll, The Anarchists (London, 1964).

  (2) Socialism is less well served, though see Gerald Meaker’s excellent The Revolutionary Left in Spain, 1914–1923 (Stanford, 1974), Julián Zugazagoitia’s Pablo Iglesias (Madrid, 1926), the slight Mis recuerdos of Largo Caballero (Mexico, 1954), and Andrés Saborit’s episodic Julián Besteiro (Buenos Aires, 1967).

  (3) The unimportant history of the communists before 1936 is well introduced by Meaker (see above, section III [2]) and Elorza and Bizcarrondo (see below, section VIII [5]). See also José Bullejos, Europa entre dos guerras (Mexico, 1944), Enrique Matorras, El comunismo en España (Madrid, 1935), V. Reguengo, Guerra sin frentes (Madrid, 1954), and the appropriate chapters in Jules Humbert-Droz, Mémoires, 3 volumes (Neuchâtel, 1969–1972).

  (4) For a general review, see Stanley Payne’s uneven The Spanish Revolution (New York, 1970).

  IV. THE REPUBLIC

  (1) Among comprehensive studies, Joaquín Arrarás’s Historia de la segunda república española, 4 volumes (Madrid, 1956–1964), is the most detailed; it favours the Right. The first half of Gabriel Jackson’s The Spanish Republic and the Civil War (Princeton, 1965) is a warm-hearted and well-written account, favouring the liberals. José Plá’s Historia de la segunda república española, 4 volumes (Barcelona, 1940–1941), can still be read with profit. The essays in Raymond Carr’s The Republic and the Civil War in Spain (London, 1971) include interesting revisionist arguments.

  (2) The best study of the fall of the monarchy and the formation of the republican movement is in S. Ben-Ami’s The Origins of the Second Republic (Oxford Ph.D., 1974).

  (3) Jean Bécarud’s La Deuxième République Espagnole (Paris, 1962) is good on elections. See also on that theme José Venegas, Las elecciones del Frente Popular (Buenos Aires, 1942), and a meticulous study, Javier Tusell’s Las elecciones del Frente Popular, 2 volumes (Madrid, 1971). There is, too, Manuel Ramírez Jiménez, Los grupos de presión en la segunda república española (Madrid, 1969). There is no study of foreign policy other than the Memorias (1921–1936) of Salvador de Madariaga (Madrid, 1974).

  (4) The economic history of the republic can be studied in Alberto Balcells Crisis económica y agitación social en Cataluña (1930–1936) (Barcelona, 1971), and in the first half of Ramón Tamames’s La república, la era de Franco (Madrid, 1973)—a provocative work of political economy.

  (5) Edward Malefakis’s Agrarian Reform and Peasant Revolution in Spain (New Haven, 1970), is the best study of agrarian problems. There is illuminating mat
erial in three studies of three very different villages: Julian Pitt-Rivers’s People of the Sierra (London, 1954), Gerald Brenan’s South from Granada (London, 1957), and Carmelo Lison Tolosana’s Belmonte de los Caballeros (Oxford, 1966).

  (6) The liberal challenge is badly served by historians or memoir-writers, apart from Manuel Azaña’s unique diary contained in volumes III and IV of his Obras completas (Mexico, 1966), and in the stolen pages edited by Joaquín Arrarás in 1938 as Memorias íntimas de Azaña (Madrid, 1939) and published in 1997 as Diarios 1932–1933 (Barcelona, 1997). Two lives of Azaña also help a little: Cipriano de Rivas-Cherif’s Retrato de un desconocido (Mexico, 1961), and Frank Sedwick’s The Tragedy of Manuel Azaña and the Fate of the Spanish Republic (Ohio, 1963). See also Miguel Maura’s Así cayó Alfonso XIII … (Mexico, 1962), and Marcelino Domingo’s Mi experiencia del poder (Madrid, 1934).

  (7) The best general study of the Spanish Right is that by Richard Robinson, The Origins of Franco’s Spain (Newton Abbot, 1970), and there are useful memoirs by José María Gil Robles (No fue posible la paz, Barcelona, 1968) and Joaquín Chapaprieta (La paz fue posible, Barcelona, 1971). Alejandro Lerroux’s La pequeña historia (Madrid, 1963) is not trustworthy. The most informative life of Calvo Sotelo is that by Aurelio Joaniquet (Santander, 1939). The monarchists are studied in Santiago Galindo Herrera, Los partidos monárquicos bajo la segunda república (Madrid, 1956) and, much more critically, by Paul Preston in several analyses (e.g., The Spanish Right under the Second Republic, Reading, 1971, and ‘The Moderate Right and the Undermining of the Second Spanish Republic’, European Studies Review, vol. III, no. 4 [1973]). Monarchist nostalgia can be seen in José María Pemán, Mis almuerzos con gente importante (Madrid, 1970), or Juan Ignacio Luca de Tena, Mis amigos muertos (Barcelona, 1971). Javier Tusell gives a methodical study of the CEDA in his Historia de la democracia cristiana en España, 2 volumes (Madrid, 1974). See also José Gutiérrez Ravé’s Antonio Goicoechea (Madrid, 1965).

  (8) The Carlist revival is presented by Luis Redondo and Juan de Zavala’s El requeté (Barcelona, 1957), and Jaime del Burgo’s Conspiración y guerra civil (Madrid, 1970). For a balanced general study, see Martin Blinkhorn, Carlism and Crisis in Spain (Cambridge, 1975).

  (9) The best history of the Falange is the work of that name by Stanley Payne (Stanford, 1961). Also worth exploring are David Jato, La rebelión de los estudiantes (Madrid, 1953), Felipe Ximénez de Sandoval’s life of José Antonio—the Biografía apasionada (Barcelona, 1941), Francisco Bravo’s Historia de la Falange Española de las JONS (Madrid, 1940), and Hacia la historia de la Falange by Sancho Dávila and Julián Pemartín (Jerez, 1938). José Antonio’s complete works have appeared in various editions, e.g., Obras completas (Madrid, 1942). (For the Falange in the war, see below, section VII [1].)

  (10) For the working class movements under the republic, there is little to add to the list in section III (1) to (3) above. On anarchism, the works of Peirats, Abad de Santillán, García Venero, Brenan and Paz might be supplemented by John Brademas’s Anarcosindicalismo y revolución en España (1930–1937) (Barcelona, 1974). Prieto’s various essays of journalism (in Convulsiones de España, 3 volumes [Mexico, 1967–1969], De mi vida, 2 volumes [Mexico, 1965–1970] or Palabras al viento [Mexico, 1942]), give the moderate socialist attitude.

  (11) Regional problems under the republic have been inadequately studied. Unlike the struggle for autonomy, the working of the Catalan Generalidad has not received much attention. E. Allison Peers’s Catalonia Infelix (London, 1937), though old, is still the only introduction in English. There is an unsatisfactory life of Companys by Angel Ossorio y Gallardo: Vida y sacrificio de Companys (Buenos Aires, 1943). See for general background García Venero’s Historia del nacionalismo catalán (Madrid, 1967) and Jesús Pabón’s Cambó, 3 volumes (Barcelona, 1952–1969), the best political biography in Spanish. The Lliga has received extensive treatment in Isidre Molas’s Lliga Catalana (Barcelona, 1972). Balcells (see above, in section IV [4]) deals in detail with the economy. As for Basque nationalism, Stanley Payne’s El nacionalismo vasco (Barcelona, 1974) is a good, short, rather sceptical, introduction, which replaces García Venero’s Historia del nacionalismo vasco (Madrid, 1945), though that contains useful information.

  (12) The church under the republic is dealt with competently by José Mariano Sánchez in Reform and Reaction (Chapel Hill, 1964), and more passionately by Juan de Iturralde in El catolicismo y la cruzada de Franco (Bayonne, 1955). See also Arxiu Vidal i Barraquer, Església i estat durant la segona república espanyola 1931–1936, vol. I (Montserrat, 1971). There is, of course, material on this subject in Gil Robles’s, and others’, memoirs.

  V. THE CIVIL WAR AS A WHOLE

  General works include the second half of Gabriel Jackson’s book (see section IV [1] above) and of Raymond Carr’s collection. A general history from a Trotskyist angle is Pierre Broué and Émile Témime’s La Révolution et la guerre d’Espagne (Paris, 1961). Julián Zugazagoitia’s Historia de la guerra en España (Buenos Aires, 1940, subsequent reprints) is a vivid account by a Socialist minister. More critical of the republic is Ricardo de la Cierva’s handsome but uneven Historia ilustrada de la guerra civil española, 2 volumes (Barcelona, 1970). The brutalities behind the lines are summarized by Carlos Santos Juliá, et al., in Las Víctimas de la Guerra Civil (Madrid, 1999) which gives no references. Robert Brasillach’s well-written Historie de la guerre d’Espagne (Paris, 1939) is a period piece only. The enormous Historia de la cruzada española, 35 folios (Madrid, 1940–1943), directed by Joaquín Arrarás, is useful on the rising. Guillermo Cabanellas’s La guerra de mil días (Barcelona, 1973) is a well-written if prickly account by a socialist son of General Miguel Cabanellas, whose part is here well presented. Personal accounts are very well put together by Ronald Fraser in Blood of Spain, an Oral History of the Spanish Civil War (New York, 1979).

  VI. MILITARY, NAVAL AND AIR ASPECTS

  (1) There is as yet no adequate study of the creation and character of the nationalist army. Numerous autobiographies and memoirs have, however, been written by or about commanders in that force: among the first, General Kindelán’s Mis cuadernos de guerra (Madrid, 1945), and the same author left other papers published after his death (La verdad de mis relaciones con Franco (Madrid, 1981); General García Veliño’s Guerra de liberación española (Madrid, 1949); and General Martínez de Campos’s Ayer, 1931–1953 (Madrid, 1970). Among the second are José María Pemán’s life of General Varela, Un soldado en la historia (Cádiz, 1954), the biography of Mola by his ADC, Colonel José María Iribarren (El general Mola, Madrid, 1945), and numerous lives of Franco. The most complete life of Franco is that of Paul Preston, Franco (London, 1993). See also the lives by Tusell, Fusi, and Bennasar. Brian Crozier’s Franco (London, 1967) is uncritical. There are some interesting insights in George Hills’s Franco (also London, 1967). The life of Yagüe by Juan José Calleja (Yagüe, un corazón al rojo, Barcelona, 1963) avoids all the difficult subjects.

  (2) The monumental study of Ramón Salas Larrazábal on the Republican Army (Historia del ejército popular de la republica, 4 volumes, Madrid, 1974) is a mine of information and publishes many interesting documents in the appendices. More manageable and less parti pris is Michael Alpert’s The Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War (Reading Ph.D., 1973). Memoirs by republican officers are legion: for example, General Vicente Rojo’s Alerta los pueblos (Buenos Aires, 1939), Así fue la defensa de Madrid (Mexico, 1967) and España heroica (Buenos Aires, 1942); Julián Henríquez Caubín’s La batalla del Ebro (Mexico, 1944); José Martín Blázquez’s well-written I Helped to Build an Army (London, 1939); Colonel Casado’s unreliable tale of his coup d’état, The Last Days of Madrid (London, 1939); and the testimony of five senior communist officers—Enrique Lister’s Nuestra guerra (Paris, 1969), Juan Modesto’s Soy del quinto regimiento (Paris, 1969), Antonio Cordón’s Trayectoria (Paris, 1971), Manuel Tagüeña’s excellent Testimonio de dos guerras (Mexico, 1973), and Ignacio Hidalg
o de Cisneros’s Memorias, 2 volumes (Paris, 1964).

  (3) The two earliest military histories, Manuel Aznar’s Historia militar de la guerra de España (Madrid, 1940) and Luis María de Lojendio’s Operaciones militares de la guerra de España (Barcelona, 1940) are still useful for the nationalist army, but much the most satisfactory general military history is now that contained in the numerous volumes edited by Colonel Martínez Bande for the Servicio Histórico Militar (Madrid, 1968 onwards), even though they are excessively discreet about many aspects of nationalist decision-making. There is also much interesting information in Salas Larrazábal (see [2] above).

  (4) Naval matters are covered encyclopedically in José Luis Alcofar Nassaes’s Las fuerzas navales en la guerra civil española (Barcelona, 1971). See also, for the nationalist operations, Admiral Cervera’s Memorias de guerra (Madrid, 1968) and Admiral Moreno’s La guerra en el mar (Barcelona, 1959). A republican naval memoir is Bruno Alonso’s La flota republicana y la guerra civil de España (Mexico, 1944) and a suggestive journalistic account can be found in Manuel Benavides’s La escuadra la mandan los cabos (Mexico, 1944). The Russian contribution to the republic’s naval presence is well summarized in Admiral Kuznetsov’s contribution to Bajo la bandera de la España republicana (Moscow, probably about 1970).

  (5) The best history of the war in the air is Jesús Salas Larrazábal’s La guerra de España desde el aire (Barcelona, 1969). See also General José Gomá’s La guerra en el aire (Barcelona, 1958). A republican pilot’s view is contained in Colonel Andrés García Lacalle’s Mitos y verdades (Mexico, 1974). Less comprehensive is F. Tarazona’s Sangre en el cielo (Mexico, 1960). The Escuadra España receives epic treatment in Malraux’s wonderful novel L’Espoir (Paris, 1937). Other still interesting memoirs by republican fliers are the books by Oloff de Wet, Cardboard Crucifix (Edinburgh and London, 1938), and F. G. Tinker, Some Still Live (New York, 1938). Nationalist memoirs include those of J. García Morato’s episodic Guerra en el aire (Madrid, 1940), Antonio Ansalado’s ¿Para qué? (Buenos Aires, 1951), and José Larios’s Combat over Spain (London, 1966).