Soon after becoming leader, Franco prepared the expected final offensive on Madrid, which would begin on 8 November 1936. His troops, close to 25,000 men, very weary after their long march from Seville, faced some 40,000 militiamen, ill-equipped and incapable of tactical manoeuvring, but willing to fight in an urban environment more suitable for resistance than the open countryside of Andalusia or Extremadura. In any case, Franco planned a frontal assault from the south-west flank of the city, disregarding the changes brought about by the enemy: the militarization of the militias and their adaptability to the urban battleground; the effective defensive system designed by Colonel Vicente Rojo (which earned him his title of general and leading Republican strategist); and the arrival of the first contingent of International Brigades and weapons sent from the Soviet Union. As a result, Franco’s assault barely managed to open a wedge in the Madrid defences of the Ciudad Universitaria and had to be suspended on 23 November because the attackers were exhausted.59 The first phase of the Battle of Madrid ended in triumph for the defenders. Although the capital remained under siege, it had not been occupied. The brief war that everyone had expected, inside and outside Spain, almost imperceptibly became a protracted conflict.
After the failure of the frontal assault on Madrid, Franco’s strategy focused on trying to besiege the city through surrounding offensives in order to cut its communication with the rest of the Republican zone. At the beginning of January 1937, his troops had tried to penetrate the north-west area (in the Battle of La Coruña Road). Throughout the month of February he had continued the attacks in the south (the Battle of Jarama). Finally, in March, an offensive took place in the north-east sector (the Battle of Guadalajara) with an appalling intervention by the Italian contingent. Largely thanks to renewed Soviet military aid and the formation of the Popular Army of the Republic, these operations again failed: Madrid resisted the siege and maintained an eastern corridor of communication with the rest of the government territory (along the road to Valencia) until the end of the war.
The failure of repeated offensives to take Madrid from November 1936 to March 1937 forced Franco to focus on the political issues raised by the consolidation of his absolute personal authority. He had the good fortune to have the political and legal support of Ramón Serrano Suñer, who had escaped from Madrid and arrived in Salamanca (the headquarters of the Generalissimo) in February 1937. The so-called ‘Cuñadísimo’ (supreme brother-in-law) would soon become a dominant figure. He had evolved politically into a fervent Falangist, settled down to live in the episcopal palace in Salamanca and rapidly displaced Nicolás Franco as chief political adviser (until, a year later, he was sent to Lisbon as ambassador to Salazar).
With Serrano Suñer as mentor, Franco proceeded to take a crucial step in the institutionalization of his new state: on 19 April 1937, without consultation or negotiation with those concerned, the Caudillo decreed the forced unification of all right-wing parties, ‘under my leadership, into a single national political entity, which will be named Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista’ (FET-JONS). The purpose of this ‘great party of the state’ was, ‘as in other totalitarian regimes’, to serve as a link ‘between society and the state’ and promote ‘the political virtues of service, hierarchy and brotherhood’.60 The measure was dutifully accepted by monarchists, Catholics and Carlists (supporters of a rival dynastic faction led by Don Carlos since 1833) and was only subject to reservations, soon silenced, from a reduced faction within the Falange that was badly weakened by the disappearance of José Antonio Primo de Rivera and the failure to appoint a successor acceptable to all. The measure was beneficial to both parties, as the German ambassador appreciated: ‘Franco is a leader without a party, the Falange a party without a leader.’61
From then on, the new unified party, rigidly controlled by the General Headquarters of the Generalissimo, would become the second institutional pillar (after the army) of a personal dictatorship properly qualifying as Franquismo – Francoism. Serrano Suñer was the architect of this transformation from ‘a military camp state’ into a ‘regime of single command and party that assumed some of the universal external features of other modern regimes’. Inspired by him and the political fascistization of the times, FET had much more of the ancient Falange than of old Carlism, the CEDA or monarchism: ‘the choice of symbols, terminology and doctrine, gave preference to the Falange.’62 The official greeting became a Roman salute with arm raised, the emblem a ‘yoke and arrows’, the anthem the Falange’s ‘Cara al Sol’, the uniform that of the Falange’s blue shirt (with the Carlist red beret), and the official programme the Falange’s ‘26 points’. The process of fascistization prevailed in the selection of new leaders too: Franco named six Falangists and four Carlists on the first political executive of the FET (whose secretary was Serrano Suñer) and ‘only in nine provinces was the leadership of the party given to a former Carlist, compared to the 22 provinces where it was held by a Falangist.’63 Despite the modern trappings, the incipient Franco regime always reflected the simple political philosophy of its leader: anti-communist, anti-liberal, anti-Masonic and determined to protect national unity and the existing social order through a military dictatorship. In 1937, Manuel Azaña had already noted the lack of modernizing forces within the Spanish right:
There are or might be in Spain all the fascists you want. But there will not be a fascist regime. If force triumphs against the Republic, we would fall back under the power of a traditional ecclesiastical and military dictatorship. No matter how many slogans are translated and how many mottos are used. Swords, cassocks, military parades and homages to the Virgin of Pilar. The country can offer nothing else, as can already be seen.64
This reactionary and traditionalist orientation of the regime was firmly underpinned by its third institutional pillar, the Catholic Church. The military uprising had very soon been able to count on the crucial assistance of the Spanish episcopal hierarchy and the masses of faithful Catholics. In line with its previous hostility to the secular programme of the Republic, and terrified by the anti-clerical fury unleashed in the government zone (with nearly 7,000 victims), the Spanish Church resolutely sided with the military. As reported privately to the Vatican at the beginning of August 1936 by Cardinal Gomá: ‘It can be said that it is a fight between Spain and Anti-Spain, religion and atheism, Christian civilization and barbarism.’ Only a month later the bishop of Salamanca would openly apply the Augustinian image of ‘the two cities’ to defend the cause of Franco, ‘the celestial city’ for the ‘love of God’, facing a Republic of an ‘earthly city’ in ‘contempt of God’. Catholicism rose to become one of the main national and international supporters of the rebel war effort, exalting it as a crusade in the faith of Christ and the salvation of Spain from communist atheism and Anti-Spain.65
Its resolute support transformed the Catholic Church into a social and institutional force of great influence, second only to the army and ahead of the Falange, in shaping the political structures which sprouted in insurgent Spain under Franco. The recompense for this vital support could not have been more enthusiastic or generous. A flood of legislative measures revoked Republican reforms (secular education, the elimination of state funding, secular cemeteries, etc.) and gave back to the clergy control of civil society and the intellectual and cultural life of the country. For its part, given Franco’s fervent Catholicism, the Spanish episcopacy did not take long to bless him as homo missus a Deo cui nomen erat Franciscus (the man sent by God whose name is Francisco), responsible for the triumph of the crusade ‘for God and Spain’, ‘Caudillo of Spain by the grace of God’. This would be no mere formality used by Franco for public consumption (despite the domestic and diplomatic benefits it brought him), but a deeply rooted conviction that led him to consider himself a new ‘hammer of the heretics’ in the style of Felipe II, and he would later try to replicate the royal residence El Escorial with his own pharaonic temple, the Valle de los Caídos.
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This conviction was fully revealed by the transfer of the Generalissimo’s headquarters to the city of Salamanca. With the blessing of Bishop Pla y Deniel, Franco settled himself into the episcopal palace in the shadow of the cathedral and recruited Father José María Bulart, the cardinal’s private secretary, as his confessor and chaplain (a post he filled until 1975). He also took Mass often and performed the Rosary every day with his family, if duties allowed.66 It is revealing of his Tridentine Catholic devotion that from February 1937 and throughout the rest of his life, Franco had in his bedroom the relic of the incorruptible hand of Santa Teresa de Jesús (the ‘saint of the Race’), which he never left behind even during his travels throughout the country.67
This conversion of the military dictatorship into a personal regime in the process of fascistization occurred in the spring of 1937 when the course of the war suffered a noticeable change. With the confirmation of the failure of the direct assault on Madrid, from April 1937 Franco gave a crucial twist to the war strategy: he abandoned the idea of a quick victory with the conquest of the capital and opted to fight a long war of attrition on other fronts, with the objective of gradually defeating a badly supplied enemy through the systematic destruction of its capacity to resist, given the material and offensive superiority guaranteed by Italo-German supplies. Convinced of the effective resistance of the enemy in the Spanish capital, the new military strategy represented a gamble on what his advisers called ‘the clash of rams’: massive attacks on the weakest front, taking advantage of the fact that ‘Republicans lack sufficient reserves of men and material to feed the fight’.68
The immediate effect of this strategic shift was the beginning of a powerful offensive against the northern Republican zone, which was gradually conquered between June (the fall of Bilbao on the 19th) and October 1937 (the occupation of Gijon on the 21st), with episodes of huge international impact – such as the destruction of Guernica by the German air force on 26 April, in the first example of the bombing of targets without military value for the purpose of demoralizing the civilian rear.69 To better direct operations, Franco decided to move his headquarters (whose code name was ‘Términus’) from Salamanca to Burgos, where he installed himself at the Palacio de la Isla for the remainder of the war. Among other reasons, the death of General Mola in a plane crash on 3 June imposed a visible change in Franco’s travel arrangements: he cancelled all flights and only made journeys by road or railway.
The new strategy of a long war of attrition waged by Franco reactivated the previous doubts of his German and Italian allies about the military capabilities of the Spanish leader and his strategic and tactical skills. In December 1936, following the failure of the offensive against Madrid, General Wilhelm Faupel, newly appointed German ambassador to Franco, confidentially informed the authorities in Berlin:
General Franco personally is a ruthlessly brave soldier, with a strong sense of responsibility, a man who is likable from the very first because of his open and decent character, but whose military training and experience do not fit him for the direction of operations on their present scale. […] Franco owes the successes of the first few weeks to the fact that his Moroccan troops were not opposed by anything of equal quality, and also to the fact that there was no systematic military command on the Red side.70
In Rome, there were also serious doubts about the military capability of the Generalissimo to conduct the nationalist war effort effectively, according to modern military strategies. Count Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law and his foreign minister, noted in his journal on 20 December 1937:
Our generals [in Spain] are restless, quite rightly. Franco has no idea of synthesis in war. His operations are those of a magnificent battalion commander. His objective is always ground, never the enemy. And he does not realize that it is by the destruction of the enemy that you win a war. After that it is a simple enough matter to occupy territory.71
However, on this controversial topic, a crucial aspect must be remembered: the exultant Caudillo was not acting under mere military considerations, nor did he want a quick victory in the style of blitzkrieg (lightning war) or guerra celere (fast war), as sought by the German and Italian leaders and strategists. His aim was wider and more profound; he wanted military operations to achieve the total physical removal of an enemy considered the Anti-Spain and as racially despicable as the rebel tribesmen in Morocco. In the telling words of Franco in February 1937 to Lieutenant Colonel Emilio Faldella, deputy head of the Italian military forces serving under his command:
This is a war of a special kind, which has to be fought with exceptional methods so that such a numerous mass cannot be used all at once, but would be more useful spread out over several fronts. […] In a civil war, a systematic occupation of territory accompanied by the necessary purge and cleansing (limpieza) is preferable to a rapid rout of the enemy armies which leaves the country still infested with enemies.72
Just two months later, at the insistence of Mussolini to speed things up and streamline operations, Franco repeated to the Fascist ambassador, Roberto Cantalupo, the reasons for his new military strategy, subordinated to the political purpose of ‘cleansing’ and ‘redemption’ of enemies and the disaffected:
We must carry out the necessarily slow task of redemption and pacification, without which the military occupation will be largely useless. The moral redemption of the occupied zones will be long and difficult because in Spain the roots of anarchism are old and deep. […] I limit myself to partial offensives with certain success. I will occupy Spain town by town, village by village, railway by railway […] Nothing will make me abandon this gradual programme. It will bring me less glory but greater internal peace. That being the case, this civil war could still last another year, two, perhaps three. Dear ambassador, I can assure you that I am not interested in territory but in inhabitants. The reconquest of the territory is the means, the redemption of the inhabitants the end. […] I cannot shorten the war by even one day […] It could even be dangerous for me to reach Madrid with a stylish military operation. I will take the capital not an hour before it is necessary; first I must have the certainty of being able to found a regime.73
For these reasons he insisted on waging, with tenacity and perseverance, a slow war of attrition that literally decimated the ranks of a more poorly equipped enemy and approved a ruthless crackdown on the disaffected rearguard, which stifled resistance and paralysed all opposition among the vanquished for many years to come. At the beginning of the insurrection, the intention of such repressive violence had been the physical elimination of the most prominent enemies and the creation of an atmosphere of paralysing terror that prevented active resistance among the disaffected. Franco later confessed an unusual personal distance from the phenomenon: ‘the authorities had to anticipate any backlash against the Movement by leftist elements. For this reason they shot the most prominent.’74 However, with the extension of the war and the rise of Franco, the initial repression became a persistent policy of purification, ‘redemption’ and ‘cleansing’, so the informal executions and the less organized early murders were replaced by summary trials in severe military courts. The ‘redeeming’ social and political purpose of this repression was responsible for a high number of deaths, which probably reached a figure close to 90,000 during the war (with another 40,000 after the victory and in the immediate postwar period), compared to 55,000 victims of repression in the Republican zone.75
By giving his full consent and legitimization to such ruthless repression, Franco received a huge political benefit: ‘a pact of blood’ which would permanently secure the blind allegiance of his supporters to the Caudillo of the Victory for fear of the possible vengeful return of the bereaved and vanquished. That same bloodletting also represented a useful political ‘insurance’ against the defeated Republicans; those who had not died in the process were silenced and paralysed with terror for a long time.
With the army as an instrument for victory, with National Catholicism as the
supreme and all-pervading ideology and the Falange as a means to organize supporters and discipline civil society, Franco built his own dictatorial regime between 1936 and 1939 and victoriously waged a war against liberal democratic reformism and subversive social revolution.
At the end of January 1938, on the eve of the great military offensive on the eastern front that would divide the Republican territory into two, Franco confirmed his status as supreme and final arbiter of the anti-Republican coalition through the formation of its first regular government. It was a balanced executive of 11 members, with representatives from all the ‘political families’ prior to unification: four ministers from the military (in defence, public order, industry and foreign affairs), three from the Falange in ‘social’ portfolios (including Serrano Suñer at the Home Office), two monarchists, a Carlist and a right-wing technician with no clear political allegiance.76 In tandem with the formation of the government, Franco adopted the Ley de Administración Central del Estado (Law of the Central Administration of the State), linking the government president to the head of state and ratifying his status as dictator with full executive and legislative powers with no limits. According to Article 17: ‘The head of state, who assumed all powers by virtue of the decree of the Junta de Defensa Nacional on 29 September 1936, has the supreme authority to instigate and enact legal rules of a general nature.’77
By then, it was already evident that the Caudillo did not conceive of his dictatorship as an interim measure but for life and that he had no intention of restoring the monarchy. On 17 July 1937 he gave the first public indication of this in an interview published by the Seville newspaper Abc: ‘If the time for the restoration came, the new monarchy would be, of course, very different from that which fell on 14 April 1931.’78 Thus began the long journey towards the ‘establishment’ of a Francoist monarchy as an alternative to the mere ‘restoration’ of the previous overthrown and exiled dynasty.
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