—Because it wasn’t only the military, the clergy, the large landowners who were our enemies; it was the very people who had brought in the republic, the representatives of capital …
He and a companion decided to ‘expropriate’ a car. As they were driving from the Plaça Bonanova, they saw some young women. ‘Stop the car.’ The women looked to CERCOS like nuns in civilian clothes; each was carrying a small suitcase. He jumped out. The women started to run.
—‘Stop! Stop! I want to see what’s in your suitcases.’ ‘We’ve got nothing – nothing at all.’ They opened them to show us. Bras, sanitary towels, a bit of make-up, that was all. Seeing they weren’t carrying arms, we let them go. They were very frightened. And then we drove on, making for where we could hear shooting …
The military were not yet defeated. At midday, General Goded had flown in from the Balearic Islands to take command. It was late. The insurgents had captured none of their strategic objectives – not even the two radio stations, each within a few hundred metres of the Plaça de Catalunya. All morning the radio had broadcast news encouraging the defenders. Artillery units had risen without infantry support and been defeated before they could be properly positioned; insurgent units had failed to link up; no satisfactory overall direction had been given. The guardia civil had entered the battle, on the wrong side; and now Divisional HQ was under attack.
A captured field piece was being manhandled by workers to fire on the HQ where Goded had established himself. Each time the cannon fired, it careered violently back across the pavement; there was nothing to hold it in position. Other workers, including Ramón FERNANDEZ, the carpenter and POUM militant, crept along behind an iron fence until they were directly in front of the massive building on the Passeig de Colón. After keeping it under steady fire for an hour, a white sheet appeared, and they leapt over the fence and charged.
Protected from the enraged civilians by police forces, the officers were brought out. General Goded was taken to see President Companys who persuaded him to broadcast a statement admitting his defeat. Though the military still held out in three isolated points, the rising in Barcelona was crushed.
OVIEDO
Standing on the pavement of the Calle Uría, the city’s main street, the grocer’s lad saw lorry-loads of civil guards approaching. They were giving the clenched fist salute and shouting, ‘¡Viva la República!’ An old middle-class man next to him began angrily expostulating: ‘It’s intolerable, this is treachery. When has anything like this happened before?’ Alarmed and outraged, he walked away. The lad could hardly believe his eyes. The guardia civil, only eighteen months after the October revolution, giving the clenched fist salute here, in Oviedo! ‘What a change has come over them,’ he heard a passer-by say.
In the civil government building, close to the Campo de San Francisco, Popular Front politicians were in meeting with the recently appointed civil governor. Dr Carlos MARTINEZ, former radical socialist deputy to the Cortes, was driving into the city from Gijón, his home town 27 km away on the coast, to attend the meeting. Outside the La Vega arms factory he noticed that the guard were wearing steel helmets instead of caps, as they had been yesterday. Then the atmosphere had been relatively calm. In the civil government building, he had found socialist deputies and leaders of the powerful Asturian mineworkers’ union gathered with republicans around Col. Aranda, the military commandant of Asturias. Aranda was pointing at a large map, indicating the routes by which contingents of miners could be sent southwards to cut off the rebel military forces that might march on Madrid. From the capital, Prieto, the socialist leader, was urging their dispatch; with Aranda’s approval, a column of miners had set off for Madrid.
While they had been meeting, a young republican opened the door, beckoned to one of the politicians and whispered that Aranda should be arrested immediately because he was a traitor.
—No one was prepared to believe it. I remembered a conversation I had had with Aranda only a couple of months earlier when I had been interim civil governor for a few weeks. He had protested most vehemently when I asked if he didn’t expect a military rising. ‘That would be a catastrophe too bloody to consider,’ he answered. Aranda was an intelligent, calm, cultivated man who had made a good impression on me …
The young republican repeated his gesture several times to no avail. After midnight, Col. Aranda returned to the military commandant’s building, despite protests from CNT and communist party representatives, who argued that he should not be allowed to leave the civil government offices. They had also protested at the dispatch by train and lorry of over 2,000 workers, the majority of them unarmed, who were heading south from Oviedo and the mining villages for Madrid. Meanwhile, Dr MARTINEZ drove home to Gijón, determined to return later in the day, a promise he was now fulfilling.
—When I reached the civil government building I saw people running back and forth, holding hurried discussions. Aranda had risen. Were the military about to make a sortie on the civil government? No one knew …
PAMPLONA
Carmen GARCIA-FALCES had gone to say farewell to her novio, requeté Captain Mario Ozcoidi. The column was about to set off.
—He said they were all off to Madrid, said it as though they were going on an outing. One of his friends was dressed in his ordinary clothes and white shoes. None of us gave it a second thought, they’d all be back soon …
General Mola had reviewed the column of troops, requetés and falangists. ‘Ala, lads, we’re going to save Spain,’ Antonio IZU, peasant requeté, heard him say as he passed down the ranks smiling, with his hand in the air.
—‘Neither draw your sword without reason nor sheath it without honour,’ he added, referring to an old Spanish army maxim, recalled Rafael GARCIA SERRANO, a falangist volunteer. Then he told us we were setting out for Madrid. That had always been the idea for us falangists – the decisive moment. We were much influenced by Mussolini’s March on Rome …
Mario OZCOIDI didn’t share his novia’s optimism that they would be returning so soon. Even if they took Madrid in a couple of days, it would take a lot longer to organize the new regime. The Carlists had risen to defend religion; there would have been no rising if the republic had not persecuted religion, he thought.
—Neither political, economic nor dynastic questions carried sufficient weight to justify starting a war. Law and order, the unity of the fatherland, the threat of a communist rising – which was due to take place a fortnight later, I had seen the plans – were factors. But religion was the crux of the matter; the war in Navarre was a crusade …
As the column set out, mothers attached crucifixes around their sons’ necks. ‘Don’t stain your hands in blood if you can help it, don’t steal, be good … ’ As it was Sunday, most of the career officers were in dress uniform, OZCOIDI’S commander was shortly in such pain from his dress boots that they had to be cut from his feet. Every lorry and bus had been requisitioned to carry the men. Dubious of the reliability of the ordinary conscripts, Asturian in the main, General Mola was glad of the requeté and falangist strength.
BARCELONA
As night fell, the euphoria of victory turned into a festival – a festival of the masses in the streets of the city. Expropriated cars, painted with the initials CNT–FAI, careered through the streets hooting horns – da-da-da-daah – in imitation of the hastily painted initials. Here and there an assault guard, even a civil guard, could be seen in a car, tunic unbuttoned, in shirt-sleeves, giving the clenched fist salute.
Commissioner Escofet saw the danger looming. Fearful that the situation was escaping his control, he sent a company of civil guards to the artillery depot of Sant Andreu where 30,000 rifles, as well as other war material, were stored. A short while later the captain in command of the company returned to report, tears in his eyes: it was too late.
Andreu CAPDEVILA, a CNT militant textile worker, and other libertarians had stormed the artillery barracks next to the depot, which they had been harassing all day and whic
h had been bombed by loyal planes. Most of the officers in the depot had managed to escape when they heard General Goded’s surrender broadcast. As the libertarians charged in, they were followed by a mass of people.
—They started taking whatever arms they could lay their hands on. More and more began to arrive from all over the city, in cars, lorries, any form of transport. Everyone was mad to get arms …
When Josep CERCOS, the libertarian metalworker, arrived, the ransacking was in full swing. A man came staggering out with a box which he put into a very small car. Then another.
—‘These are all mine,’ he told us. At that moment, the weight broke the bottom of the car and the boxes fell through. One smashed and we saw what it contained: rifle bolts! That’s what he was so carefully taking away – bolts for rifles he didn’t have. I didn’t know much about weapons myself but I had a good look at what I was taking. Five rifles. I set off for Aragon with one of them three days later …
The situation was getting out of hand, thought CAPDEVILA.
—‘We don’t know who these people are,’ I said to my companions. ‘They may be fascists for all we know.’ By now they were taking not only arms but typewriters and anything else they could move. There was total disorder. We formed a commission, and thereafter all arms were handed out only to revolutionary organizations.
Ten thousand rifles, I calculate, as well as some machine-guns, were taken. That was the moment when the people of Barcelona were armed; that was the moment, in consequence, when power fell into the masses’ hands. We of the CNT hadn’t set out to make the revolution but to defend ourselves, to defend the working class. To make the social revolution, which needed to have the whole of the Spanish proletariat behind it, would take another ten years at least, we believed. But the Catalan proletariat had been thoroughly inculcated with anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary propaganda. For so many decades had it been ingrained in the workers that any possible chance to make the revolution must be seized, that when the chance came they seized it. But it wasn’t we who chose the moment; it was forced on us by the military who were making the revolution, who wanted to finish off the CNT once and for all …
MADRID
Capt. ORAD DE LA TORRE, retired artillery officer, had set up the two 75mm field pieces in the Calle Bailén. Less than 500 metres away, the rectangular pile of the Montaña barracks, on a slight prominence, stood out in the dark. At the same time last evening as the radio was broadcasting Goded’s surrender statement from Barcelona to the jubilation of the Madrid crowds, his brother and an army officer had come to fetch him from home. They had given him news of the uprising, its successes and failures. Seville, Córdoba, Cádiz in insurgent hands; Pamplona, Burgos, Valladolid also – as was to be expected. Saragossa, the CNT stronghold, as well – that was a surprise; and now Oviedo where Aranda had risen. But Barcelona was safe, there was no fighting in Bilbao, Valencia was uncertain but the troops had not moved. In the Montaña barracks in front of him there were 45,000 rifle bolts which the military had refused to hand over.
There had been problems in getting war ministry permission to bring out the field pieces. He had to go to the National Palace – just behind him and the emplaced cannon now – to secure President Azaña’s permission.
—‘But what batteries?’ Azaña asked. ‘I’ve been told there are no field pieces equipped with range finders.’
‘Mi presidente,’ I replied, ‘that’s no problem. I am going to set the cannon up here in the Calle Bailén and I shall aim direct. I can’t miss. Moreover, that will put heart into the people.’
‘And the people?’ he asked. ‘What state are they in? What are they doing? What will happen if the military rise in Campamento?’12
I reassured him; Col. Mangada already had militiamen posted behind trees. ‘Everyone will resist for as long as possible.’
‘Very good then,’ he replied, shaking my hand. He didn’t appear shattered, though he was obviously worried. So were we all; everyone felt that we had already lost …
* * *
Militancies 1
REGULO MARTINEZ
Left republican schoolmaster
Some hours earlier, President Azaña, founder of the left republican party, had received him and a delegation of Madrid party members in the National Palace; there had been no protocol, it had been like a family visit. Thanking them for coming, expressing confidence in their opinion as left republicans, Azaña had not hesitated to tell them immediately that the thought of war appalled him. He did not want to arm the people; instead, he proposed that loyal officers and troops be given the task of fighting the enemy, while those civilians who wished could volunteer to join them. He was frightened that arming the people would lead to assassinations and pillaging.
—‘Remember, the Spanish people have great virtues but also great defects. Since the time of the Romans they have been known as people who, when they weren’t at war, in Pliny’s words, invented wars in order to fight them. Don’t forget that, with nations frightened of both communism and fascism, propaganda about crimes committed here will do untold harm to the republic. I am convinced that by now many republicans have fallen where the military have triumphed. But it will have been done coldly, methodically, with an air of legality.’ He had already received a telephone call informing him of what was happening in a certain city taken by the insurgents. ‘There are some things that are better not said,’ he continued. ‘The people will find out, of course, but if they learn of it now it will only inflame passions and they may respond criminally’ …
He saw tears coming to Azaña’s eyes.
—Normally a cold intellectual, he was unable to restrain the tears, couldn’t hide them, as he surveyed the nation’s prospects. He wasn’t frightened, he was simply appalled. A war would be long and bitter; the uprising would not be put down amidst scenes of popular joy by the storming of a few barracks. He knew only too well the strength the military enjoyed in certain regions of the country and the support it would receive from the church. His whole preoccupation was with the nation – he even went so far as to say: ‘If the solution lies in installing a democracy without a republic, I will not stand in the way; and that despite the fact that it is my duty and obligation to defend the republic. Had I not believed that democracy in Spain under a monarchy was an impossibility, I would not have struggled to bring in a republic.’ He foresaw the likelihood of foreign intervention. ‘That is what I fear, they will intervene in their favour. And all the more readily if crimes are committed on this side. That is why I oppose arming the people.’
‘There is no other solution,’ I said. ‘Don Manuel, you no longer carry the responsibility of the republic on your shoulders. The republic’s enemies, those who have refused to await their chance at the polls, have torn it from you. It is they who bear the historic responsibility for whatever happens now. The republic’s only friends are the people. And you are their representative – the representative of the people who elected you to your position of responsibility. You have never deceived them, never attempted demagogically to pull the wool over their eyes. Your popularity obliges you at this moment –’
‘You’re probably right,’ he replied, bowing his head. We too, I continued, feared that in arming the people there would be cases of personal vengeance and crimes – but had not the enemy merited it? The repressive measures might not, in the strictest sense of the word, be legal, but they would represent an historic justice. ‘Let time pass and we shall see … ’
They took their leave of the president. The country had its back to the wall, he thought; the only hope lay in the people. They had reacted heroically so far. He wasn’t frightened, he had always been on the people’s side. He remembered his father, a doctor in a small Toledo village, and one of his phrases which had made such an impression on him as a youth: ‘I should be writing out prescriptions for the bakery and the butchers instead of for medicines.’ The peasants lived on a few olives and a bit of bread. When he, Régulo, was ordained and s
ent to a rural parish in Guadalajara province in 1918, his first act had been to set up a Catholic agrarian trade union to help the peasantry, whose exploitation by usurous money lenders and caciques angered him. Soon his house, with its large living-room, became something like a casa del pueblo where peasants came to smoke a cigarette and chat after their work in the fields.
Although his faith in the priesthood had weakened while still a theology student, he had remained in Guadalajara for four years, believing that he was carrying out a useful Christian task. But when the opportunity arose of becoming a schoolmaster in a Madrid school for doctors’ orphans, which his father was active in setting up, and his parents returned to the capital, he seized the opportunity to leave. Cardinal Segura, primate of Spain and archbishop of Toledo, ordered him to return to his parish; he refused. The cardinal threatened to defrock him; he argued face to face with the prelate that St Thomas Aquinas asserted that natural law took precedence over ecclesiastical and divine law, and natural law required that he be with his parents. Moreover, his spiritual state did not advise him to return to his parish. Despite further threats, the cardinal took no definitive action against him.
Politics replaced the priesthood. First, the organization called ‘Agrupación al servicio de la república’ (At the Service of the Republic), which prestigious intellectuals and writers like Ortega y Gasset, Dr Marañon and Pérez de Ayala had founded before the advent of the republic. But when the republic was proclaimed he came to believe that their interest in the new regime was too platonic; after hearing Manuel Azaña speak, he realized that here was a great politician and Spaniard, and joined his party. He did not regret his decision, despite the events he came to witness. There had been mistakes, committed by the party, not least on the religious question.13 But other parties – the socialists, for example – had made their full share of errors too. The October 1934 rising, for instance: violence could only lend support to the enemies of the people. Sincere democrats had to be willing to wait to win back at the polls what they had lost at the polls. Had not Azaña himself, during the recent Popular Front electoral campaign, told the mass rally at Comillas that if people hoped to advance to power through violence he would be the first to oppose them?
Blood of Spain_An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War Page 8