Franco
Page 15
The return of the word ‘caudillo’ to the public arena can be followed in proclamations, rants, speeches and statements made by the leaders and rebel officers from the beginning of the war. It can also be tracked in the news, articles and interviews printed in the newspapers and media favourable to the insurgents and immediately subjected to their control. As a result of the declaration of the state of war by the junta of Burgos, on 28 July 1936 military court martial and summary punishment were dealt out to authors guilty of the offence of rebellion: ‘Those who impart false or biased news in order to damage the prestige of the armed forces and those that cooperate in providing services to the army’.40 The censorship of all communications and information was immediately complemented by directives and propaganda slogans for compulsory inclusion as well as the removal, deportation and elimination of all hostile personnel or media.
Just a few days after that key measure of the militarization of information policy, on 5 August the Burgos junta instituted a press office to undertake ‘suitable work relating to this field’. No doubt forced by the progress of the war, on 24 August the press office was renamed the Office for Press and Propaganda and its powers increased to make it a ‘body exclusively responsible for all services related to information and propaganda by means of printing, photocopying and others such as radio’.41 From the outset, the office was led by two key figures: right-wing journalists Juan Pujol Martínez (who had been a CEDA member of parliament and director of the Madrid newspaper Informaciones before the war) and Joaquín Arrarás Iribarren (who had worked as a correspondent for El Debate in Morocco, was a member of the authoritarian monarchist group Renovación Española and would be the first official biographer of Franco). As Gustau Nerín wrote: ‘the rebel generals […] immediately turned to those journalists who had written eulogies to the colonial army in the 1920s.’42
While the Burgos team was taking shape, Franco also assumed the task of controlling the press and propaganda through the services of Luis Bolín Bidwell, former correspondent of Abc in London, who had organized his flight from Las Palmas to Tetuán at the start of the uprising, accompanying him and performing various international tasks. Bolín was soon joined by two other figures: the famous General Millán Astray and the physician and journalist Víctor Ruiz Albéniz (who had been the chronicler of colonial campaigns under the pseudonym El Tebib Arrumi – ‘Christian Doctor’ in Arabic). Both joined the team of assistants to Franco when he moved his headquarters from Tetuán to Seville at the beginning of August 1936 following the victorious advance of his troops towards Madrid via Extremadura and the Tagus Valley. After the election of Franco to single supreme command at the end of September, the Office for Press and Propaganda would move to Burgos and be strengthened by new additions such as the eccentric writer and literary critic Ernesto Giménez Caballero, an early admirer of Mussolini and precursor of Spanish fascism in his book Genio de España (1932).43
Completing the initial team of insurgent propagandists were the staff of the daily royalist Abc of Seville: the editor Juan Carretero; his uncle and the newspaper’s proprietor, Juan Ignacio Luca de Tena; Manuel Sánchez del Arco, editor-in-chief; Juan María Vázquez, Antonio Olmedo, Tomás Borrás, José María Pemán and Luis de Galinsoga as permanent or occasional columnists. This prestigious journal and group, which no doubt well remembered the monarchist loyalty of Franco (in contrast to the Republicanism of Queipo or disregard of Mola), would become an influential platform for the insurrectionists (its circulation widely exceeded 100,000 copies per day) and inclined to promote the figure of Franco: ‘Abc of Seville, the leading newspaper of Nationalist Spain’ and ‘the journal which assigned more space to Franco’.44
This national newspaper, printed daily in Seville (its counterpart in Madrid was seized by the Republicans, who radically changed its editorial line), initially gave priority to the figure of General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano for obvious reasons (he was the leader of the revolt in Andalusia), attributing to him the title of ‘caudillo’ on several occasions, as it had to the late General Sanjurjo.45 However, its pages gave increased prominence to General Franco due to his crucial importance at the head of the decisive Moroccan troops and his history of military successes during the occupation of Extremadura and advance through the Tagus Valley to Madrid.
The first mention of Franco in the Seville Abc occurred on Wednesday 22 July 1936, when it was clear that the military coup had become a civil war. There were several quotes from the radio proclamations and telegrams of General Franco, introduced as the ‘head of the Army of Morocco’, all of them underlining the success of the military movement (‘Greater success could not have been achieved’), assured of the next triumph (‘The end is near’) and indicating that the enemy would be beaten soundly (‘the red anarchy that tyrannized us, transforming our glorious home into a miserable Russian colony’). The next day, 23 July, the cover of the journal printed ‘the patriotic address by General Franco at the beginning of the Movement’, which was nothing more than the speech of 18 July in Las Palmas on the occasion of the declaration of a state of war. Three days later, on 26 July, also on the cover and inside pages, Franco figured prominently with the publication of the speech made the day before in Tetuán to the Spanish military under the heading ‘Patriotic Speech of the Caudillo’ (the first time in the war the term was used to refer to him). That speech of 25 July included the words ‘caudillo’ and ‘crusade’ in its original text: ‘And since I speak to the military or professionals of the army, to the armed forces, I have to recommend faith in the crusade, the firmness of the caudillo, without losing heart for a single instant.’
On 28 July 1936 Franco flew to Seville to prepare for the arrival of Moroccan troops who were going to start the march on Madrid. On the same day, the newspaper, aware of his presence in the city, pronounced him ‘General Franco, distinguished head of the liberating movement’. A day later, before his return to Tetuán, the cover of the newspaper reproduced his statements with this informative preamble:
Yesterday General Franco was in Seville. It is not necessary to describe this illustrious caudillo, one of the organizers of the military movement to save Spain. General Franco, that brave captain of the Regulars, the commander of the Legion, whose heroic spirit is second to none, does not require presentations or praise. Franco’s name is famous in all households in Spain.
On subsequent days, the newspaper followed the activities, statements, speeches and manifestos of Franco, always presenting him as ‘His Excellency, the general’, ‘most Spanish caudillo’, ‘distinguished general’ or ‘illustrious caudillo’ (examples from copies of 30 July, 3 August and 16 August). His progressive rise over the rest of the generals, a direct result of the success of his troops on the march to Madrid (compared with the stagnation of Queipo and Mola in their respective areas), can be seen on the cover of the paper from 23 August 1936. Under a large full-page photograph which showed Franco accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Yagüe (who commanded the columns in the field), a caption identified him as: ‘General Franco, head of the Movement to save the fatherland’. A couple of weeks later, on 10 September 1936, the daily repeated almost the same iconic and lexical formula: a huge picture of Franco on the balcony of his headquarters in Cáceres with a caption that read: ‘General Franco, chief of the forces of the national army’. That promotion of him was complemented by a call for the strongest national unity under military guidance that entailed, by pure logic, a personal single command of all military and political operations. On 9 September an editorial by Luca de Tena (‘Before the New Spain’) pointed out that ‘military authority is right in wanting to nip in the bud any differences, wherever they originate.’ Two days later the journalist Francisco Cossío reiterated this in a prominent article entitled ‘National Front’:
Who can sum up in these moments the common yearning for national salvation that we all desire? Only the army. It imposes a rigid discipline that binds together all Spaniards. […] The army should be the great binding
of this enterprise of national solidarity.46
When the powers of the Burgos junta were transferred to the new head of state and supreme commander, the paper did not hesitate in giving that act preferential attention insofar as it met its demands for a seamless and single command to overcome the enemy. The news of the appointment of Franco to both posts on 30 September was completed with a short biography (one of the first to appear in the Spanish press) which stressed his bravery as an Africanist officer, with this climax: ‘The rest of the history of the Caudillo is so current, it need not enter in these composite notes. Hopefully the judgement of history will compare General Franco with the geniuses of war.’
Tributes were endlessly lavished on the new ‘caudillo’, ‘supreme commander’ and ‘head of state’ (so called in the accounts of 2 October, describing the ceremony of the transfer of power in Burgos). It was also appreciated (in a report of 3 October) that this concentration of powers was so total that it well deserved the label of ‘dictatorship’ in the most positive sense (as the term had been used by the right during the government of Primo de Rivera): ‘In this way the Junta becomes an official government, under the presidency of General Franco, who is the only leader and gathers in his hands power at least the equal of any dictator.’
The Seville daily was correct in this judgement and that same accurate assessment would be reflected in the reporting of the same act published on 2 October by La Gaceta Regional of Salamanca, where the cover bore a large headline bringing the news of the transfer of power with these words: ‘The New Dictator of Spain Addressed an Overwhelming Crowd’. And in its main report, also on the cover, it reiterated without lexical remorse and with conceptual precision the term ‘dictator’, which was not then an ominous word for the military rebels and their civilian supporters, even if it was edged cautiously for the benefit of others:
The bands play, but the music fades and the sound of the instruments are muted by the applause of the crowd. Cheers and thunderous ovations that the people, the true people, offer to the new head of the Spanish state, dictator. […] The dictator reviews the troops and militias. […] Here we will only give an impression of the vibrant words of the heroic general, today dictator of Spain. […] Above, overlooking the crowd, with the gesture of Caudillo [sic.], the man who will assume full power within a few minutes. Below, the confused people and the army, ready to respond with their lives and properties to the words of the dictator. […] In the Plaza de Alonso Martínez is today represented healthy Spain, the Spain that stands up, and in front of it, as undisputed commander, a serene and firm leader: a dictator, General Franco. Long live Franco! Long live Franco! Long live Franco! Long Live Spain! Long Live Spain forever!
From that founding moment, the use of the word ‘caudillo’ gradually diminished in the official rhetoric of insurgent Spain when refering to other military chiefs, for obvious reasons. Symptomatically, a biography of Franco and other ‘distinguished soldiers of the new Spain’ (Mola and Varela) that came to light in January 1937 in Melilla still called the three men ‘caudillos of the war’. Still, the author tended to emphasize the pre-eminence of ‘Franco, the Generalissimo of our armed forces’, stressing that Spain was ‘under the unique and supreme direction of our Caudillo’. The plural gave way to the singular and lower case to upper case. That transformation had a reason well underlined with a unique bombastic style:
General Franco Bahamonde has reached the highest post of the nation, haloed with lights of immortality because, apart from his morality, he is the personification of the heroic Spanish army, to whom we owe the bliss of having saved Spain from that fixed-date of inevitable ruin. 47
Indeed, on 1 October in Burgos, the Franco regime was born in the midst of a bloody civil war and on the back of a collegiate military dictatorship which had opted to deliver all its absolute powers to one of its members, for life. The recipient until then had no reservations about being called a ‘good dictator’ or considered an ‘authentic dictator’.48 He was a dictator who would soon become, simply, the ‘Caudillo of Spain’, giving birth to a corresponding body of ideological doctrine that would try to legitimize this new absolute, sovereign, constituent and providential ruler.
The Political Culture of the Spanish Anti-Liberal Right on the Eve of War
As recalled in a classic work by Manuel García-Pelayo, all societies in history have developed various political orders which rest on ‘ideas and belief systems intended to maintain the values that supported them, to consolidate the structure in which they operated and to provide guidelines (to their members) for orientation and action’.49 This set of ideals, values and guiding principles of all human political society, however much integrated, respected or violated, forms the basis of the different conceptual categories that attempt to describe its essence, role and functioning: ‘forms of political power’ (understanding ‘power’ as the ability of men to force the conduct of others according to his will, in the words of Hans Gerth and Charles Wright Mills); ‘types of legitimate authority’ (‘authority’ being a power considered ‘legitimate’ because its ‘strength’ becomes ‘right’ and ‘obedience’ becomes a ‘duty’, according to Max Weber); ‘forms of social and institutional domination’ (which presuppose ‘relations of interaction’ between rulers and ruled that demand at the very least prestige for the superior and subordination of the inferior, in the argument of Georg Simmel); or underlying patterns of ‘political culture’ (considered as a system of ideas that have effects on the socio-political dynamics, according to Gabriel Almond, Sidney Verba or Lucien Pye).50
The diverse forces and socio-political trends that in Spain organized and executed the July 1936 military uprising, fought and won the Civil War and established a victorious institutional regime that lasted almost 40 years, of course had their own ‘political cultures’ that sustained different types of legitimate authority and supported ‘forms of political power and domination’ that are well outlined and known. Further, as clearly demonstrated in several recent works (in particular the comprehensive studies of Ferran Gallego on the formation of the political culture of the Franco regime and Ismael Saz on Francoist Nationalism), the war led to a rapid convergence of interests and principles among all those political cultures of the anti-liberal Spanish right, for the simple reason that it imposed the need to remain strongly united against the enemy to overcome the challenges of war, achieve victory and survive without any subsequent risk of regression.51
On the eve of the Civil War, the socio-political culture of the Spanish anti-liberal right (also called ‘Spanish reactionary thinking’ or ‘counter-revolutionary front’) registered at least four operational currents that were well established but unevenly rooted amongst the Spanish population. Of course, as several analysts have stressed, each of these currents had their respective repertoire of doctrines refined by years of tradition, prestigious names, ancient or modern organizations and formulas of socio-political action of varying effectiveness, with their own groups of followers, loyal militants and activists.52
First, the immense weight of political Catholicism should be highlighted, heir of the veteran ‘Augustinian politics’ promoted by the Church hierarchy and its intellectual spokesmen in multiple forms, responding to the ancient and essential theological premise that ‘all authority comes from God’ – with its corollary of the subordination of the human order to the superior and prior divine order. A movement articulated during the Second Republic by the CEDA, whose political profile was clearly religious, corporate, hierarchical and conservative, despite its legalist and pragmatic political strategy during the five Republican years and up to its debacle in the general elections of February 1936. The failure of that possibilist strategy and the outbreak of war wrecked the political capital of the CEDA as a party and of its leader, José María Gil-Robles, who would only cooperate with the insurrection from the sidelines in Portugal. But the movement would not disappear, much less its doctrinal heritage, political staff or the masses of followers of
Spanish political Catholicism. On the contrary, the ideology of National Catholicism and the idea of a ‘crusade for God and for Spain’ would arise as a powerful ideological formula for the legitimization of the uprising and the new state.53
Second, in terms of popular support (but not in terms of able political personnel), was Alfonsist authoritarian monarchism, which had just suffered the collapse of the Primo de Rivera military regime and maintained a symbiotic relationship with political Catholicism only broken by the different degrees of loyalty to the monarchy as an institutional formula. After the debacle of 1931, monarchism became more critical of the liberal-democratic tradition and moved in favour of targets such as the end of political parties and parliaments, the establishment of detached and strong technocratic governments, the rebirth of integral nationalism and the restoration of the identity of throne and altar in corporate and disciplined state projects. It was the alternative that would encourage with singular doctrinal coherence the journal Acción Española (in the wake of Charles Maurras’s Action Français movement), whose illustrious spokesman was José Calvo Sotelo, a former supporter of the dictatorship who would be killed on the eve of the revolt of 1936, eliminating one of the most prestigious leaders of the authoritarian monarchic movement.54
Third, in some geographical areas (above all, the Basque provinces and Navarre), there remained the political culture of the old Carlist tradition, the oldest of the anti-liberal political currents and the most restrictive on religious and moral issues. Rejuvenated since the beginning of the twentieth century by figures such as Juan Vázquez de Mella and Víctor Pradera, traditionalism offered a true source of political and ideological alternatives to the exhaustion of the liberal system and the dissolution of the national idea and moved progressively closer to the new principles of Alfonsist monarchism and Catholic corporate authoritarianism. Its reduced territorial base, coupled with the secular failure and weakness of its dynastic candidates and the limited national prestige of its leaders, diminished its power and manoeuvrability. However, the crisis opened by the proclamation of the Republic in April 1931 seemed to corroborate in retrospect the correctness of its anti-liberal intransigence and its belligerent Catholicism.55