Franco

by Enrique Moradiellos

  Blessed is the sovereign who sees in you the most solid supporter of the social order, the surest foundation of public peace, the most determined defender of institutions, the strongest basis for the welfare and happiness of the fatherland.18

  As a direct result of that doctrine of national militarism as well as the brutal personal war experiences in Morocco, much of the Spanish military (the so-called Africanistas for having served in the Army of Africa) were developing a determined authoritarian and anti-liberal mindset, blaming that liberal ideology, the parliament and the party system for the prolonged decline suffered by Spain since the War of Independence (1808–14) and throughout the nineteenth century, culminating in the disaster of 1898. As was rightly appreciated by the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset in 1922: ‘Morocco made of the dispersed soul of our army a clenched fist, morally ready for the attack.’19 Over time, and especially after the decisive three years of the Civil War, Franco would be the most genuine representative of this political worldview, prevalent among a large part of the Spanish military. In fact, at various times in his life, and throughout the 1950s, he would reiterate in public his furious criticism of liberalism as ‘alien’ and ‘anti-Spanish’ as well as his contempt for a ‘decadent’ and ‘catastrophic’ century:

  The nineteenth century, which we would have liked to erase from our history, is the negation of everything Spanish, the inconsistency of our faith, the denial of our unity, the demise of our empire, all the generations of our being, something foreign that divided us and turned brother against brother, destroying the harmonious unity that God had placed on our land. […] The consequence of liberalism was the decline of Spain. The neglect of the needs of the Spanish soul, which kept undermining us during the nineteenth century and a large part of the twentieth century, cost us the loss of our empire and a disastrous decline. While the other global powers of those times were able to forge their might, we have buried ourselves with a dream for more than 100 years.20

  After completing his studies in Toledo with a mediocre result (he only managed to be ranked 251 in a class of 312 cadets), Franco was assigned to the garrison of El Ferrol as a second lieutenant, where he remained in service for a year and a half. During that time, through the influence of his mother, he confirmed his religious convictions to the point of entering the Adoración Nocturna (Nocturnal Adoration Society, a Catholic lay association for nightly devotion to the Virgin). At the beginning of 1912, he was transferred to the Spanish protectorate in Morocco. The difficult conquest of this elongated, narrow region from 1904 (with the signature of the first Hispano-French Treaty for the division of Morocco) until 1926, in the face of fierce resistance offered by the native tribesmen, cost the lives of more than 17,000 soldiers, commanders and officers of the Spanish army.21 It was, in essence, a ruthless guerrilla war over mountainous terrain where armed indigenous Moroccan tribes harassed Spanish columns and positions, who then responded by bombing their enemies and advancing inch by inch over the territory with harsh reprisals.

  During his stay in Morocco, where he would remain for more than ten years (only interrupted for short periods by postings to Oviedo in 1917 and 1920), Franco proved to be a serious, meticulous, brave and effective officer obsessed with discipline and the fulfilment of duty. He was the archetype of the Africanista officer, so different from the sedentary military bureaucracy that thrived in the quiet mainland barracks and who was opposed to all forms of promotion that were not through mere seniority in the service (the so-called junteros for their support of the embryo of professional unions known as Juntas Militares de Defensa). These qualities and courage shown in combat (he survived a severe wound in June 1916) gained Franco rapid promotion for bravery in combat.22 By then, his name had acquired some notoriety on the mainland due to the publication of a small work entitled Marruecos. Diario de una bandera (Morocco, Diary of a Battalion) at the end of 1922 in which he recounted directly and simply his war experiences as second-in-command of the Legion (or Tercio de Extranjeros), a newly created shock unit under the command of Lieutenant Colonel José Millán Astray, an eccentric commander repeatedly wounded in combat. The text of the book, in addition to being a proud description of a special military corps, was also a sincere reflection of the extreme brutality of the conflict:

  The campaign in Africa is the best practical school, not to say the only one for our army, due to its shaping of its values and merits, and the bravery of the officer corps that fights in Africa must one day be the heart and soul of the peninsular army. […] At noon I get permission from the general to punish the villages from which the enemy harassed us. The work is difficult yet beautiful; to our right the terrain descends to the beach and at the foot is a long stretch of small houses. Meanwhile a section opens fire on the houses, covering the manoeuvre, lets themselves down a small steep gorge and surrounds the settlement, killing the inhabitants. Flames rise from the roofs of the houses and the legionaries chase the inhabitants.23

  His extensive service in Morocco, in the midst of a ruthless colonial war and in command of a crack force like the Legion, reinforced Franco’s hardline political convictions and contributed largely to the hardening of his character. From either fighting or negotiating with the rebel Moroccan leaders, the young officer learned well the tactics of ‘divide and conquer’ and the effectiveness of terror (imposed by the Legion) as the perfect military weapon to achieve the paralysis and submission of the enemy. In addition, his long experience in colonial Africa, where a de facto state of war prevailed and the military performed a wide range of administrative functions, confirmed in practice the alleged right of the army to exercise command without restrictions, superior to the distant and weak civilian authorities on the peninsula.24 Indeed, thereafter, Franco always understood political authority in terms of military hierarchy, obedience and discipline, referring to it as ‘command’ and considering dissenters and adversaries as little more than ‘seditious’. At the end of 1938, already virtually victorious in the Civil War, he recalled the influence of his time in Morocco on himself and his comrades in arms:

  My years in Africa live within me with an incredible force. There was born the possibility of rescuing a great Spain. There was formed the ideal that redeems us today. Without Africa, I can scarcely explain myself, nor can I explain myself to my comrades in arms.25

  Promotion to the rank of general in 1926 and his subsequent appointment (in January 1928) as the new director general of the Military Academy of Zaragoza marked a notable shift in the trajectory of Franco’s career. Thereafter, the daring and brave officer of Morocco would become an increasingly cautious and calculating military leader, aware of his own public standing, jealously guarding his professional interests and the advance of his career. Without a doubt, his marriage in Oviedo on 22 October 1923 to Carmen Polo Martínez-Valdés (1902–88), a pious and proud young woman from a wealthy, bourgeois Oviedo family, accentuated this change and his previous conservative and religious inclinations. Franco had met his wife in the summer of 1917 during his brief posting to the mainland, and he remained committed to her and their marriage until the end of his life. September 1926 saw the birth of his only child and beloved daughter ‘Nenuca’ (Carmen Franco Polo), who grew to be ‘the only person who can understand his personality’.26

  The remarkable change of character experienced by Franco even manifested itself physically: his adolescent appearance, small stature (1.64 metres), extreme thinness and high-pitched voice would be transformed into a military commander with a tendency to plumpness and markedly overweight at the waist. His family and daily life remained relatively austere and humdrum. He did not smoke, rarely drank and although his appetite was remarkable it was not distinguished by its culinary refinement (‘he is not demanding and eats everything you give him,’ subsequently declared his personal physician Vicente Gil – called ‘Vicentón’ in Franco’s family circle – of almost 40 years). He also cultivated an unusual habit from his African years: he never took a siesta or dozed at his des
k; instead he used the time to chat with his few military friends, to walk alone or in company and to do some light exercise (horse riding or tennis, at the beginning; fishing and hunting during the holidays; and in his later years, golf).27

  At this stage of his life, Franco remained on the margins of the day-to-day politics of the liberal parliamentary system of the Bourbon Restoration (1874–1923), the pseudo-democratic wrapping for the pairing of ‘oligarchy and caciquismo as the real form of government’ angrily denounced by Joaquín Costa and the fin-de-siècle Spanish regenerationist writers. Presided over by King Alfonso XIII, the country had undergone a rapid economic development since the colonial crisis of 1898, generating broad social and cultural contrasts. Above all, there had been sustained demographic (24 million people in 1930) and urban growth (43 per cent of the population lived in towns in 1930) that showed the strength of the industrial and tertiary economic modernization process, which was more intense in the north and east of the country than in the centre and south (an area of predominantly stagnant agriculture). Furthermore, cultural indicators (literacy, education) revealed that for the first time most Spaniards could read and write, resulting in a vigorous and diverse publishing and journalism industry.28

  The monarchy under Alfonso XIII was a classic socio-political liberal system similar to those prevailing in the rest of Europe and, despite its forced neutrality, had undergone hard tests in the Great War of 1914–18.29 Since the country’s crisis of the summer of 1917, Spain was subject to growing internal tensions that undermined its traditional stability: intense labour disputes over galloping inflation and unemployment amongst both agricultural and industrial workers, increasing pressure from rising Catalan and Basque nationalism to reform administrative centralism, the demands for democratization by the petty and middle bourgeoisie to give real meaning to existing legislation, and popular resistance to the bloody and endless Moroccan war. With the paralysis of the oligarchic liberal order and frightened by the revolutionary spectre of Bolshevism in Russia, in September 1923, the King took a gamble with a new solution to the prolonged crisis through the implementation of a military dictatorship headed by General Miguel Primo de Rivera and supported with unanimity by all the army.

  During the entire dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera (1923–30), Franco was an enthusiastic supporter of the military regime as it succeeded in pacifying Morocco by means of a victorious joint offensive with French troops in September 1925. Franco himself led troops of the Legion who were at the forefront of the landing at Alhucemas Bay and achieved there his last and greatest military victory in Morocco. This triumph guaranteed his promotion to brigadier in February 1926, at the age of 33, thus becoming ‘the youngest general in Europe’, honoured with this annotation in his service record: ‘He is a positive national asset and surely the country and the army will derive great benefit from making use of his remarkable skills in higher positions.’30 In addition, the dictator rewarded him with appointment to director of the Military Academy of Zaragoza in 1928, where Franco imposed a Decálogo del cadete (Cadet’s Ten Commandments) for the training and education of the students inspired directly by the text of the ‘Credo legionario’ (‘Legionnaire’s Creed’) which underlined the extreme importance of always observing the ‘ten commandments’: Love for the Fatherland and King, Cultivation of Great Military Spirit, Fulfilment of Duties, Volunteering for Every Sacrifice, Noble Comradeship and Bravery, and others.31 He also continued to benefit from the King’s public favour, appointed a Gentleman of the Bedchamber and receiving royal patronage on the occasion of his wedding.

  It was during the dictatorship that Franco started to receive and devour the anti-communist and authoritarian literature sent by the Entente Internationale contre la Troisième Internationale, an organization formed in Geneva by anti-Bolshevik Russian and far-right Swiss forces in order to alert leaders across Europe to the danger of the universal communist conspiracy. This reactionary and Manichaean literature would be key in the formation and evolution of the fantastic, obsessive ideas of Franco on the hidden and divisive power of Freemasonry and the existence of a universal Judaeo–Masonic–Bolshevik conspiracy against Spain and the Catholic faith.32 His firm conviction of anti-Freemasonry (a case of so-called ‘conspiracy obsession’ and ‘paranoid style in political perception’) very soon became ‘second nature’ to Franco and would transform his life into ‘an anti-Freemason crusade’ on which he did not allow ‘any discussion’.33 In all likelihood, that same literature encouraged his instinctive suspicion of intellectuals and the subtleties of contemporary socio- political thinking, for which he always showed a clear lack of interest and open contempt (a much-used phrase of his was: ‘with the characteristic arrogance of intellectuals’). As recognized by one of his favourite ministers, economist and military lawyer Mariano Navarro Rubio: ‘Franco was not exactly an intellectual. He never tried nor presumed to be one. His political doctrine consisted of a few ideas, basic, clear and rich, but he stuck rigidly to them.’34

  Given his background, Franco felt concern at the removal of Primo de Rivera in January 1930 and the subsequent fall of the monarchy after the municipal elections of April 1931. The consequent peaceful proclamation of the Second Republic would essentially result from the monarchical regime’s inability to adapt to the rapid modernizing changes experienced by the Spanish economy and society in the first third of the twentieth century. Those changes had demanded permanent and innovative solutions to enhance the political integration of the liberal-democratic new bourgeoisie and the working classes organized in trade unions and mostly reformist parties, whose numbers grew in line with economic, urban and cultural modernization. The consecutive failure of parliamentary liberalism (until 1923) and executive militarism (until 1931) had allowed the growth of interclass republicanism as an alternative formula for the democratization of Spain, based on the cooperation of bourgeois republican parties and the powerful, reformist socialist movement.

  Prudence and Patience during the Second Republic

  The Republican democracy was established on 14 April 1931 and evolved through several phases as rapid as they were convulsive: first a reformist two-year period (1931–3), then a second rightist/moderate stage (1934–5) and the government of the Popular Front in the first half of 1936. In essence, over those years, the socio-political dynamics were determined by a triangular struggle between mutually exclusive models which reproduced on a small scale the existing Europe-wide struggle: crude competition between democratic reformism, authoritarian reaction and social revolution to take power and reshape society. Ultimately, the transcendental peculiarity of the Spanish case would mean that, unlike in the rest of Europe, none of those projects would be strong enough to impose itself decisively on the others. In fact, between 1931 and 1936, Spain reached an unstable equilibrium, a virtual stalemate between the fragmented forces of reformism and their reactionary counterpart, with the presence of a third revolutionary force able to undermine and undercut the others. In these circumstances, the political dynamics of the Second Republic seemed to appear as a kind of pincer with two arms and one goal: reaction and revolution against reform. To make matters worse, with the passing of the years, the forces for reform saw their strength undermined as the economic crisis deepened and precipitated the political polarization that was favourable to both extremes.35

  The arrival of democracy in April 1931 marked a noticeable blip in the hitherto brilliant career of Alfonso XIII’s favourite general. In some personal notes written for unknown reasons in 1962, Franco recorded his critical judgement on the unexpected political transition, without excluding from criticism a king who had abandoned his dictator or the civilian politicians and military commanders who had ‘surrendered’ power without resistance:

  It is necessary to recognize the illusion with which large sectors of the Spanish nation received the Republic, one that no one expected, and that was a direct result of the political mistakes of the monarchist political parties in recent years. Th
e ingratitude of the monarchy to General Primo de Rivera, who had served so effectively for seven years, had managed to pacify Morocco and raise the level of the nation in all aspects, and the spectacle offered by the monarchist political parties, liberals, constitutionalists, revanchists at the core, that did not forgive the sovereign his collaboration with the dictatorship – all these factors had sickened and separated the people from the institutions. They created the crisis of prestige which influenced the vote of major provincial capitals.36

  In any case, during the Republican–Socialist government of 1931–3, with Manuel Azaña at the head of the Cabinet and the War Office, the caution and Galician shrewdness of General Franco meant he managed to avoid any open conflict with the new authorities while keeping his distance from the established regime: ‘I never cheered for the Republic,’ he recalled proudly in 1964 to his cousin and military aide since 1927, Francisco Franco Salgado-Araujo, known as ‘Pacón’.37 The closing of the Military Academy of Zaragoza, the review of the promotions he had gained during the dictatorship, the campaign for political responsibilities during the dictatorship, and the progressive and anti-clerical leanings of the government reinforced Franco’s alienation. But they did not lead him to reckless conspiracy, which had been the reaction of his superior in the Protectorate, General José Sanjurjo, head of the frustrated military coup in August 1932 that sought to block parliament’s approval of the Estatuto de Cataluña (Statute of Catalonian Autonomy) and of the Ley para la Reforma Agraria (Law for Agrarian Reform). In fact, when required by Sanjurjo to act as his advocate in the subsequent court martial, Franco refused to accept the order with a resounding argument: ‘I don’t defend you because you deserve death; not for having rebelled but for having lost.’38 That prudence and cold caution that was already beginning to be proverbial (his own sister acknowledged that ‘cunning and caution define his character’) motivated Sanjurjo’s caustic comment on his former subordinate: ‘Little Franco is a crafty so-and-so who only looks out for himself.’ This did not stop him from considering Franco one of the best Spanish military leaders of the time: ‘He is not Napoleon, but given what there is …’ Perhaps for that reason Azaña believed by then that ‘Franco is the most fearsome’ of the potential military conspirators that the Republican regime would have to face.39