If one looks at two or three recent dictatorships, one sees that they have certain facets in common. Franco’s dictatorship, for example, was a direct result of blindness, disunity and disagreement among all the political parties before his rise to power. These parties were all too ready to talk about their own freedom while oppressing that of their neighbours. They were willing to defend their doctrinaire and absolutist ideas by fire and the sword, but they were not open to rational argument, nor did they show any tolerance for the opposition. When the Right was in power it took advantage; when the Left dominated it would trample autocratically over its opponents. As a result, a third force emerged which overcame both the Left and the Right with its motto ‘Order, peace and respect’. Salazar’s dictatorship in Portugal occurred for the same reasons, as did Marcos Pérez Jiménez’s coup d’état in Venezuela, where endless battles between the Adecos and Copeyanos, the nation’s two most prominent political parties, brought about such a confused state of affairs that Jiménez had to intervene to restore order.
Those who impose a totalitarian regime argue in the same breath about their love for their country, their faith in its destiny and their hope for ‘peace, progress and bread’. But they hate an adversary who gets in their way, who detracts from their own glory. Authoritarian by nature, they detest opposition and will not accept censure or criticism. They are all for efficiency and obedience: crime has to be punished unceremoniously and at once. Unfortunately, this is a relief to many people, who then support the dictator, for the great majority crave law and order, which can be harder to achieve in a democracy – where punishment is tempered with justice – than under a dictatorship.
The Count of Maistre once said, ‘Every nation has the government that it deserves,’ which is a profound truth. But if only the politicians who governed us would concentrate more on their democratic role, not just with honeyed words but with specific deeds, then we would not have to deplore the way they curtail our freedom. Philosophers and writers such as Seneca, Goethe and Cervantes, to name but a few, clearly define the guilt incurred by any free man who unwittingly crushes freedom. Once a man has lost his freedom through incompetence, dogmatism, sectarianism or lack of appreciation, he will mourn that loss like Abderramán, the last Moorish king on Spanish soil, ‘who cried like a child over what he did not know how to defend as a man’.
There are various ways of fighting absolute rulers: man to man, by clandestine methods, in dumb silence and finally through retreat. But dying in battle does not bring down tyrannies. The efforts of those who give their lives to regain lost freedom is never enough. Violence breeds further violence. Those who have sacrificed their lives are followed by others who are tortured and persecuted.
Despite all this fighting and dying, it is my firm belief that no liberating changes occur until and unless men use their brains, teach, argue and produce practical solutions for regaining the freedom that has been lost. Pio Baroja once said: ‘The sublime moment, the heroic act is more of an exaltation of the intellect than of the will.’
Balzac wrote a brief note, which he put under a picture of Napoleon, which read: ‘What he was unable to secure by the sword, I will attain by the pen.’ Such an outlook has greatly influenced mankind. For it is not enough to fight with weapons of destruction and annihilation; it is essential to fight with ideas: powerful arguments can destroy whole empires, dominions and tyrannies. History is full of examples showing that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword. I too believe this sincerely and absolutely. I have devoted the greater part of my life to this ideal, using all my talents, all my convictions, all possible schemes, machinations and stratagems. The Second World War was a decisive moment in the human epic: it gave birth to the story of GARBO, the central character in this book.
I can assert with pride and a clear conscience that I have never fired a rifle, nor any other gun for that matter, with an enemy in front of me. My feelings, my scruples, even my morals would not allow me to take the sublime gift of life away from my neighbour.
In 1936 I was managing a poultry farm twenty miles north of Barcelona, at Llinars del Vallès. On that ill-fated day, Sunday 18 July, I had arranged to go on an excursion to Mont Montseny with some friends of mine from the Catholic Club in Plaça Trilla, but all my plans kept collapsing like a house of cards. Early in the morning I learned from my radio that there had been an attempted military coup. I rang my friends and relations to try to find out what was happening. ‘People are fighting and killing each other in the streets,’ said one. ‘They are putting up barricades of paving stones in the main square and in the avenues,’ said another. News spread like wildfire. Many, who were frightened, did not dare come out onto the streets. Others hung white sheets over their balconies, ostensibly to show their neutrality. Most of us stayed glued to our radios, which were transmitting messages and speeches from both sides, from the Nationalist rebels and from the Republicans.
I plucked up courage and decided to walk to my girlfriend’s house in Carrer Girona. I spent the whole of that Sunday with her and her family, listening intently to the radio and hoping that order would soon be restored. However, the situation grew worse as the hours went by; it was clearly no ordinary military coup d’état, but nobody had yet realised that it was the beginning of three long years of civil war.
The days that followed were filled with fear. Columns of smoke rose everywhere: convents, churches and local party political headquarters were being set on fire all over Barcelona. No one reported for work as all the unions had decreed an indefinite general strike. We were afraid to walk down the streets as armed militia were shooting at random at anything that moved. Food soon became scarce; people were forced to go out to augment their rapidly dwindling larders. They would creep to the nearest shop after careful reconnoitring only to find that many shopkeepers had put up their shutters; others only opened to those they knew. If a car loaded with militia happened to be passing just as the owner opened the door, the soldiers would dash in, ransack the shop and then drag off the shopkeeper, charging him with strike breaking.
Utter confusion reigned. Neighbour denounced neighbour, paying off old scores. Some accusations were made in order to earn the ‘right’ to become a revolutionary, others to obtain a union card or in order to be thought a political radical. In this suspicious atmosphere everyone mistrusted everyone else: threats bred bewilderment and insecurity.
Catalans had backed the dictator General Primo de Rivera until he had tried to curtail Catalonia’s desire for autonomy; after that they had tried to undermine his rule. Now, six years later, the people were tired of dictatorships and coup d’états; they longed for stability and, with this in mind, had backed the Republicans. At first it looked as if the Republicans would easily retain control, for they seemed to have kept a grip on the situation in Barcelona and to have retaken those barracks where the soldiers were in revolt. But just as they appeared to be about to gain a crushing victory, they made an unforgivable political error: they gave orders for all the public prisons in the city to be opened up and for all those awaiting trial, be they political prisoners, convicted criminals or thieves, to be let out. This soulless, callous mob joined up with the paramilitary militias and roamed the city intent on plunder. The majority of these malcontents had no particular political convictions; all they wanted to do was steal. They burst into people’s houses pretending to search for hidden reactionaries and counter-reactionaries. Terror spread throughout the city and thousands died.
The Nationalist rebels now declared that a fifth column or secret group of Franco sympathisers was hiding in the city, which brought about an even bloodier series of reprisals. This time the victims were not just the comfortably off but those who, while not going the whole hog in support of Republican doctrines, were too frightened to join the opposition. Such middle-of-the-roaders were known as Radishes, red (or Republican) on the outside but white on the inside. Many Radishes were Catholics who had seen their churches and cathedrals sacked and burnt, t
heir priests and nuns mocked and ridiculed before being murdered. Now their only hope was to go into hiding. The violence and the lawlessness destroyed people’s morale; it was no longer a matter of defending a cause or fighting for a belief, it was just a matter of defending oneself and one’s family against extremists.
My younger sister Elena had been engaged to be married but, during one of the house searches, her fiancé was carted off in the name of the Republic by a self-appointed policing unit. No doubt he was charged with presumed membership of the fifth column. Later, Elena and my mother were themselves arrested as counter-revolutionaries, but thanks to a relative in the anarcho-syndicalist trade union, the CNT or Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, they were snatched from certain death and eventually released. When they were arrested it wasn’t just they who felt fear: the whole family trembled.
The Republicans, who considered themselves to be the legitimate government, now called up all officers in the reserves in order to replace those soldiers who had joined the rebels. It was therefore my duty to report to my regiment, but I was loath to take sides in such a fratricidal fight; I had no desire to participate in a struggle whose passions and hatred were so far removed from my own ideals. But by not reporting, I became a deserter, absent without leave. I had to hide.
Hopes that hostilities would soon end faded by Christmas. I therefore decided to stay permanently with my girlfriend. I had always felt close to her mother and father, who were old friends of my own parents, our two families being bound together by ties of affection and friendship.
One evening, just before Christmas, I was making such a noise in their kitchen, cracking hazelnuts and walnuts with a hammer, that I failed to hear a knock at the door and so did not realise that a police patrol had arrived to inspect the premises. (Evidently, we had been reported by one of those many ‘friends’ one couldn’t trust, though we never found out who it was.) The police made straight for the threshold of one of the doors and started levering up the wood with a chisel. They seemed to know the exact place where my girlfriend’s father and brother had gouged out a secret hole for hiding jewellery and gold coins. The father was an agent for a large textile firm in Torrassa and had many contacts, so that as well as his own valuables, he had also hidden other people’s. As a result, both father and son were arrested and so was I. For the police had continued searching the flat and had entered the kitchen only to find me with a raised hammer, my ear glued to the door leading to the dining room, trying to find out what was going on.
We were taken by car to the Metropolitan Police Station in Via Laietana, a great stroke of luck because it meant that we had fallen into the hands of one of the more popular militias, or I am sure I would not now be telling this tale.
I was kept in prison for a week, despite repeatedly protesting my innocence. I kept assuring the police that I had only been in the house because I was engaged to the eldest daughter, but they continued to question me remorselessly, for as far as they were concerned I was a deserter. I was petrified, fearing that I might have to pay with my life. ‘Going for a walk’ was a common experience in those days.
Meanwhile, my girlfriend had got in touch with one of the units of Socorro Blanco, a secret organisation which endeavoured to assist those who were being persecuted for idealistic or religious reasons. One of their girl helpers posed as a revolutionary and arranged for me to be let out of the prison at dead of night. Free, I joined the ever-growing number of those leading a clandestine existence. I went into hiding again.
Remembering my position then makes my hair stand on end. The only way I can view it calmly is if I look upon it as an old bill I discounted forty-five years ago. But at the time I was all too aware that I had, unwillingly and unwittingly, become a criminal. I had no papers and would be in even worse trouble if the police caught me again.
I spent the next year in one of those sordid, narrow streets in the sleazy working-class area of Barcelona down by the harbour. The rented flat I was hiding in belonged to a taxi driver who lived there with his wife and son, a shrewd boy of about nine. The taxi driver was away most of the time, ferrying recruits to the Aragon front. He told me that the shortage of arms was so great that newcomers had to get their guns from those who’d been killed or wounded. Men complained bitterly that everyone had a gun at the rear but up at the front line they were expected to fight for democracy without them.
Food was hard to get and there were long queues everywhere. One day, when the taxi driver’s wife was out shopping, the police knocked at the door and demanded entry. In a split second, which seemed like a century, I signalled to the boy that I was going to hide under his bed. He then opened the door and with complete sangfroid began to tell the police that his mother was out hunting for food and his father was at the front, fighting the ‘factious rebels’. The police asked him various questions as they searched through the different rooms. When they came to the one I was in the boy threw open the door with great aplomb, switched on the light and announced that this was his room. The police then left; the boy’s studied casualness had convinced them he had nothing to hide.
I was so grateful for what he had done that I spent hours giving him lessons, for the schools had all been closed. He was a quick learner and I much enjoyed teaching him; the lessons added a new dimension to my life and left me less time for worrying.
A few months later the taxi driver took his wife and son to join her parents in Lleida. I was now entirely alone in the flat, but as the neighbours were under the impression that it was empty, I was unable to move around in case I gave myself away. Three times a week a girl brought me food; otherwise I just sat there tormented with fear of discovery. I became so depressed and withdrawn, so utterly miserable, that I lost over twenty kilos. I began to look like a decrepit old man of forty although I was only twenty-five.
As I grew weaker, I became desperate and knew I could not hold out much longer. The girl who brought me food finally managed to obtain some false identity papers from the Socorro Blanco making me out to be too old for the army.
An old friend, who was secretary to one of the many branches of the General Workers’ Union, suggested that I go and see some people who were running poultry farms in the area. When I found them, I was delighted to discover that several were old friends from my Royal Poultry School days.
I asked if I could join their union and was duly enrolled without any problem. At first I hung around attending the endless meetings they were always calling, but I soon tired of these and asked for an assignment. They suggested that I become the manager of a farm they’d taken over at Sant Joan de les Abadesses in northern Catalonia. I accepted with alacrity for it was a long way from Barcelona and only about twenty-two miles from the French border.
My family had all been scattered by the civil war. Elena’s fiancé had been taken away during a house search, Joaquin had had to join the Republican army, and my mother and Elena had gone with Buenaventura and her husband Frederic to Aiguafreda, so there was no one to whom to say goodbye.
Upon arrival at Sant Joan, I reported to the municipal council, who had requisitioned all the farms, factories and houses in the area when the civil war broke out, forcing the owners to flee. By the time I appeared on the scene none were working well, for they lacked technical expertise and direction. Everyone gave orders: no one wished to obey. There was much resentment and workers complained that, instead of one boss, they now had committees of seven or more.
Nobody seemed to mind that I had no proper identity papers; I was merely asked to report once a week to the municipal council, which consisted of representatives of most of the parties and unions in the area. It was a very easy life: I lived in the local hotel, I was paid regularly and found the work undemanding for there were less than a thousand beaks to look after. Every afternoon I walked to Ripoll and back, a round trip of about thirteen miles, in order to get fit, for I was planning to cross into France. One Sunday I went even further; rising at the crack of dawn, I climbed to the t
op of Mount Puigmal, from where I could see the ‘promised land’. Then I set off at a brisk pace down to Ribes de Freser, on to Ripoll and back to Sant Joan by sunset, about forty miles.
But man proposes and God disposes. A few days after my mammoth walk, I heard that a fairly large expedition had been intercepted while trying to cross the border illegally with the help of some guides; some had been arrested, others wounded and several killed. As a result, the border guards had been strengthened.
I was now afraid to cross over by myself, nor did I know how the French authorities would react to my arrival. Would they hand me straight back to the Spanish authorities? If so, it would mean certain death, for orders about escapees were unequivocal.
It was now 1938 and, being a man of restless nature, I was becoming impatient. The civil war continued its macabre course. Every day each side claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on the other; they would give figures for the numbers killed, wounded and taken prisoner, issuing grandiloquent communiqués about towns, villages and hamlets destroyed. The price paid was immaterial so long as glory was achieved in action: the greater the havoc and the desolation, the more splendid the victory. How long, dear God, I wondered, could this continue? Was there to be no end to the sacrifice? The war seemed to rage with increasing intensity, which filled me with a deep depression compounded of fear and apathy. I was appalled that once-civilised men were now obsessed with spreading their obnoxious ideas by fire and the sword. Spaniards were destroying each other in their lust for power while the country’s youth died unsung and unrecorded.
The poultry farm was not a success. To put it bluntly, its profits were non-existent. There were too few hens – a thousand was not an economic number – which were too old to lay well, and my wages were too high, for I could have looked after two or three times the number. Overhead, wages and capital investment divided by the number of hens led to negative profit. I asked the local councillors if they would increase their investment in the farm by expanding the premises and buying more chickens of a higher quality so that I could achieve better returns, but they just wanted more profits from the existing set-up. I was not prepared to keep being told off while they did nothing to put the business on a sounder economic footing. Our consultations grew increasingly acrimonious.
Operation Garbo Page 3