The Spanish Civil War (118 page)

1.
Letter from Melchor Ferrer, 7 August 1961.

2.
Victor Alba,
Sísifo y su tiempo
(Barcelona, 1996), p. 127.

1.
Azaña,
La revolución abortada,
in
Obras,
vol. III, p. 500.

2.
See Raguer,
El General Batet,
285. A similar case is that of General García Aldave, military governor of Alicante, also executed for being neutral, though this time by a left-wing execution picket.

1.
Ruiz Vilaplana, p. 225.

2.
Gil Robles, p. 729, fn. 74.

3.
Ruiz Vilaplana, p. 45.

1.
Lawrence Dundas,
Behind the Spanish Mask
(London, 1943), p. 56.

2.
J. Salas, p. 73. See Rafael Abella,
La vida cotidiana durante la guerra civil, I, La España nacional
(Barcelona, 1973), p. 27f., for photographs of newspapers announcing Azaña’s arrest in Santander, the fall of Madrid, etc., in the first week of the war.

3.
Ruiz Vilaplana, p. 219.

1.
Diario de Navarra,
16 August 1936.

2.
Broué and Témime, pp. 90–91.

3.
Malefakis, p. 386 fn. 76. Even the 1932–6 laws were eventually undone, in 1941.

4.
García Venero,
Falange,
pp. 172–3.

1.
GD,
p. 88. See below, p. 405.

2.
He visited Spain and saw Mola in August.

3.
Payne,
Falange,
p. 121n.

1.
Gil Robles, p. 734, fn. 79.

2.
Bahamonde, pp. 20–21.

3.
See Iturralde, vol. II, pp. 55–70.

4.
Bahamonde says he was shot. I find no confirmation of this. There were 700 executions in Carmona, according to
O Seculo,
the Portuguese newspaper, in August.

5.
Iturralde, p. 71.

1.
Iturralde, vol. II, p. 279. Dr Múgica was a monarchist and a conservative who had been almost as much a
bête noire
of the republic as was Cardinal Segura. He left Vitoria on 14 October. Before this, he had been put on a black list to be killed by a group of falangists, who were probably backed by the local nationalist authorities. See his memoir,
Imperativos de mi conciencia
(Buenos Aires, no date) and the criticisms of it in del Burgo, pp. 88–9.

2.
Iturralde, vol. II, pp. 261–5.

3.
The text is in Iturralde, vol. II, pp. 454–6. At the same moment, ten miles away on the slopes of the Pyrenees, fifty-six men were being shot, being confessed in groups of seven—except the last seven: ‘
Coño,
’ said the chief of the Falange squadron charged with the execution, ‘let them be killed without confession; I have not yet dined’ (
op. cit.,
vol. I, p. 74).

4.
Op. cit.,
vol. II, p. 299. Monsignor Olaechea admitted that he was ‘not of the stuff of martyrs’ and gave general support to the ‘Crusade’.

5.
Dundas, p. 48.

6.
See almost any newspaper published in nationalist Spain in late July or August—especially those covering the Feast of St James (25 July) and the Assumption (15 August).

1.
Bahamonde, p. 77.

2.
See below, p. 339.

3.
Del Burgo, p. 34.

1.
Actually ‘Lluch’, in
La velada en Benicarló,
Azaña’s socratic dialogue written in the course of the war: see
Obras,
vol. III, p. 394, and his article
La revolución abortada,
in vol. III, p. 500.

1.
Mikhail Koltsov,
Diario de la guerra de España
(Paris, 1963), p. 51.

2.
Tagüeña, p. 122.

3.
Circulation of these three was 40,000, 40,000 and 35,000 a day in 1936.

4.
The communists gained greatly in prestige also from their efficient organization of their so-called Fifth Regiment.

5.
Mundo Obrero,
9 August;
Claridad,
22 August; both quoted Payne,
Spanish Revolution,
p. 232.

6.
See Ibarruri, p. 283.

1.
According to
The General Cause,
p. 390, the confiscation of money and securities amounted (in all Spain throughout the war) to 330 million pesetas (£8 million) and of gold and jewels to 100 million pesetas (£2 ½ million).

2.
The monarchist
ABC
was run as
ABC de Madrid
for the Republican Union, the Carlist
Siglo Futuro
was captured by the CNT, and so on.

3.
The Times,
21 July 1936.

4.
Barea, p. 124.

1.
The nationalists paid the usual 3 pesetas a day to their soldiers as before July.

2.
Alfonso Peña Boeuf,
Memorias de un ingeniero político
(Madrid, 1954), p. 166f. Peña Boeuf became minister of public works under Franco in 1938 after he had been exchanged with a republican in nationalist hands.

1.
See below, p. 536f., for a detailed study of the collectives.

2.
Borkenau, p. 149.

3.
It was three litres in Albalate de Cinca, five quarts in Calanda (Teruel).

4.
This again is Calanda (Teruel).

5.
The former was common, the latter at Mazaleón (Aragon) (Agustín Souchy,
Colectivizaciones,
Barcelona, 1937, p. 87). (These instances are given here of what was occurring from July onwards, but the process was not complete till much later in the year.)

1.
Though, as has been seen, all the Barcelona parties were represented on it, in approximate proportion to strength, as they were on its economic council (constituted 10 August) and the committee of education. On the ‘patrol controls’, responsible for public order and detentions, the anarchists had the commander, José Asens, and 325 out of the 700 men enrolled: the others were from the Catalan parties, the POUM and the socialists or communists.

2.
The majority of Barcelona factory owners were either shot or had fled. Those who remained were chiefly those who had a good name for labour relations. The Ford and General Motors works were seized in Barcelona, in early August. After a protest by the American government, the Spanish government undertook compensation. In general, the republic tried not to offend other countries by requisitioning foreign concerns, and the CNT issued a list of eighty-seven British firms which were to be left untouched (Peirats, vol. I, p. 177).

1.
CNT-FAI bulletin no. 3 of 10 August, p. iv. See also Frank Mintz,
L’Autogestion dans l’Espagne révolutionnaire
(Paris, 1970); Josep María Bricall,
Historia económica de la Generalitat,
vol. I (Barcelona, 1970); Albert Pérez Baro,
Trenta mesos de collectivisme a Catalunya
(Barcelona, 1970).

1.
The UGT bank clerks said (to the POUM actually), ‘You can shoot us if you like but we will not give you the keys’ (Manuel Benavides,
Guerra y revolución en Cataluña,
Mexico, 1946, p. 211).

2.
Peirats, vol. I, pp. 364–9, gives decrees of collectivization. Cinemas and theatres were both open in early August, both collectivized, after a short gap.

1.
Peirats, vol. I, p. 200.

2.
CNT-FAI bulletin, 25 July. See also
Solidaridad Obrera,
30 July and 31 July, qu. Payne,
The Spanish Revolution,
p. 227.

3.
Peirats, vol. I, p. 182.

1.
See Azaña’s conversation in September 1937 with Carlos Pi y Súñer on this matter in Azaña, vol. IV, p. 796; and with Comorera in October 1937,
op. cit.,
p. 821.

2.
Azaña, vol. IV, p. 707.

3.
CNT-FAI bulletin, 10 August. The document continues by recalling that the people in the French Revolution defied the world, but Napoleon’s uniformed army led to Waterloo.

1.
Bolloten, p. 113. Vidiella had once been an anarchist, being the CNT representative on the communist-anarchist-Esquerra discussions in 1925.

1.
Azaña, vol. IV, p. 702.

2.
Ibid.,
p. 704.

1.
Sometimes, as in the village of L’Hospitalet, the CNT would take their hostility to the nationalist parties to the point of placing notices banning Catalan (Jaume Miravitlles in
La Flèche,
24 February 1939).

2.
Richard Rumbold,
The Winged Life
(London, 1953), p. 146.

1.
Borkenau, pp. 93–4.

1.
Hans Erich Kaminski,
Ceux de Barcelone
(Paris, 1937), pp. 118–22. Cf. also
Colectividades de Castilla
(Madrid, 1937); Agustín Souchy,
Entre los campesinos de Aragón
(Valencia, 1937), p. 92.

2.
Broué and Témime, p. 123n. Manuel Buenacasa (
L’Espagne livrée,
reprinted Paris, 1971) gives a bloodcurdling account.

1.
See Ronald Fraser,
In Hiding,
pp. 133–4; see also Ronald Fraser,
The Pueblo
(London, 1973).

2.
Julian Pitt-Rivers,
People of the Sierra
(London, 1954), pp. 18–19.

3.
Fraser,
The Pueblo,
p. 56.

4.
See Díaz del Moral, p. 252ff.

5.
Borkenau, p. 167.

1.
Juan Martínez Alier,
La estabilidad del latifundismo
(Paris, 1968), p. 139.

2.
Martínez Alier, p. 140.

1.
Brenan,
Personal Record,
p. 289.

2.
Louis Delaprée,
Mort en Espagne
(Paris, 1937), p. 70.

3.
España Libre,
19 July 1947, qu. Lorenzo, p. 198.

4.
R. Salas Larrazábal, vol. I, p. 288.

1.
Lizarra, p. 62.

2.
Though 3,000 political prisoners were held in prison ships and fortresses, among them many women and children.

3.
Le Clergé basque,
p. 25f.

4.
Text in Montero, pp. 682–7. The background of this letter is discussed in Iturralde, vol. II, pp. 302 and 328. For Múgica, see above, p. 287. Múgica later confirmed that he had signed the letter freely (see his letter to the
Gaceta del Norte,
of 25 July 1937, qu. Iturralde, vol. II, pp. 326–8). Later still he excused himself, since he did not know the facts (
Imperativos de mi conciencia
).

1.
See the interview between Manuel Irujo, the Basque who later joined the republican government, and Prince Hubertus von Loewenstein (Hubertus von Loewenstein,
A Catholic in Republican Spain,
London, 1937, pp. 90–104).

1.
See Jellinek (p. 300) and Koltsov (p. 127), describing visits to Gijón, a little later; see also C. Lorenzo, p. 172; and Fernando Solano Palacio,
La tragedia del norte
(Barcelona, 1938).

2.
Jellinek, p. 415. Written from a Marxist point of view, this publication of the Left Book Club is invaluable for its detailed social and economic analysis of life in the republic. Jellinek was correspondent of the
Manchester Guardian
in Spain.

3.
Thus Jellinek, in conversation, Geneva, 1960.

1.
‘El cojo de Málaga’ deserves a careful investigation. Equally independent were Ruca at Port Bou, and André Lerghaf and Sagaró at Le Perthus.

2.
La velada en Benicarló,
p. 426 (in
Obras,
vol. III); the speech of 23 July is in the same book, pp. 607–9.

3.
Azaña’s head of military household in 1936, Major Casado, who would play a decisive part in the last weeks of the civil war (see below, p. 858) and who broadly shared Azaña’s view of politics, in the end blamed Azaña most directly for the outbreak of the civil war; ‘to decry, offend and depreciate the army … in order to gain the applause of the masses’ was mad and provocative (see Casado,
Así cayó Madrid,
Madrid, 1968, p. 157).

1.
Manuel Aznar,
Historia militar de la guerra de España
(Madrid, 1940), pp. 113–14. These young monarchists included the constitutionalist leader of later days, Joaquín Satrústegui.

2.
Aznar, p. 128:
Cruzada,
XIII, pp. 529–30. The Beorlegui column of 2,000 men was: three companies of the (regular) regiment of América; a section of assault guards; two
‘centurias’
of
requetés;
four companies of
requetés;
two
tercios
of Falange; the machine-gun section (regular); the mortar section; and one 105-mm battery. Cayuela had 830 men, and Latorre had 600. During the first week of fighting, eleven columns were organized in Pamplona ranging between 200 and 2,000 in size. Seven left for Guipúzcoa, four for Madrid (De la Cierva, in Carr,
The Republic,
p. 196). Who were these Vendéans of the Spanish revolution? They were the peasant proprietors of Navarre, the sons of the bourgeoisie of Pamplona and Estella, and no doubt too of the working class of the region. Cf. too del Burgo, p. 23, and Luis Redondo and Juan de Zavala, p. 417.

1.
Peirats says that 150,000 volunteered (vol. II, p. 135). Surely an exaggeration. Sanz has 20,000 (p. 83), and see also Colonel Martínez Bande,
La invasión de Aragón
(Madrid, 1970), p. 276. Who were they? Anarchists to begin with, afterward people from other parties. Probably a large number put their names down, fewer went, fewer still stayed.

2.
Paz, pp. 331 and 340. The organization of the column is there described. Basically, the unit was the
‘centuria’
of a hundred men.

3.
For Ricardo Sanz, see his
Los que fuimos a Madrid
(Toulouse, 1969).

1.
George Orwell,
Homage to Catalonia
(London, 1938), p. 38.

2.
See Sanz, p. 123 and R. Salas, vol. I, p. 329. There were some 18,000 militiamen in Aragon in August. But many of these may have been soldiers or old soldiers. The nationalists in Saragossa probably had 4,000 men in the army, some 18 companies of civil guards and carabineers, some 1,500 Carlists, about 2,000 falangists, and perhaps 1,000 other volunteers in the first week. By 22 August, there were some 14,000 men on the nationalist side on the front from the Pyrenees to Teruel (Martínez Bande, p. 98).

3.
Borkenau, p. 109.

4.
The question is discussed by Jackson, p. 292; Paz, p. 337; and C. Lorenzo, pp. 146–7, and I received contrasting opinions in Saragossa.

1.
For a ferocious picture, see Sebastián Cirac Estopañán,
Héroes y mártires de Caspe
(Saragossa, 1939).

1.
Koltsov, p. 29. See this interview analysed in Paz, pp. 362–3.

2.
I saw this bomb, unexploded still, in the fender of Fal Conde’s library in Seville in 1960.

1.
He soon gave up, and Hernández Sarabia (on 6 August) succeeded him. His melancholy was impelled by the death of his brother José at the hands of the anarchists in Estremadura (Sánchez del Arco, p. 65).

1.
Antonio Cordón,
Trayectoria
(Paris, 1971), p. 242. The farouche character of Mangada’s famous column, with an army of hangers-on from the cafés of Madrid (including prostitutes), caused it to seem a force out of the middle ages more than the twentieth century. His wife persistently importuned the ministry in Madrid for pens, waterproofs, even whistles.

2.
Azaña, vol. III, p. 489.

3.
Tagüeña, p. 128. Doctors on both sides had difficulties in preventing even the wounded from being shot on their stretchers.

4.
See Hidalgo de Cisneros, p. 299.

1.
For this, see the books by Castro Delgado; Lister,
Nuestra guerra
(Paris, 1966); and Modesto; also the study of the Fifth Regiment by E. Comín Colomer,
El quinto regimiento
(Madrid, 1973); and Martínez Bande,
La ofensiva sobre Segovia
(Madrid, 1972), p. 18f.

2.
Ibarruri, p. 285; Castro Delgado, p. 275.

3.
Martínez Bande (
loc. cit.,
p. 19, fn. 5) estimates that the total in the Fifth Regiment eventually reached 22,250.
International Press Correspondence
(Inpreccor), vol. XVII, No. 6, 6 February 1937. But see R. Salas in Carr,
The Republic,
p. 187, where a figure of 15,000 in all is suggested for those
trained
by the Fifth Regiment. Other sources are Modesto, pp. 25–6 and Lister, p. 40. Salas (vol. I, pp. 222–3) argued that the Fifth Regiment’s maximum was 3,500 (in October–November).

1.
A romantic account of the organization is in Castro Delgado, p. 275f.

2.
Lister, p. 67. Vidali, son of a workman of Monfalcone near Trieste, had been one of the animators of the ‘Arditi rossi’ of Trieste in the years of near civil war in Italy. He emigrated to the USA and then to Mexico, went to a party school in Moscow, undertook a mission in Germany and had apparently been in Spain since 1934 as organizer of ‘International Red Help’. Castro Delgado (p. 293) describes ‘Carlos’ as almost a monster, but there is no doubt of his competence. He came accompanied by his wife, Tina Modotti, a beautiful Italian communist with whom he had been entangled in the mysterious affair of the murder of the Cuban communist Julio Antonio Mella in 1929. See P. Spriano,
Storia del partito comunista italiano
(Turin, 1970), vol. III, p. 86. He later wrote an interesting diary of his time at the XXth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956.

1.
Moscardó did not know this till late September. The telephone call seems to have taken place despite some assertions to the contrary. The fact that the son was not killed for some weeks makes the story seem a little less dramatic. On the telephone call and the Alcázar generally, there is a large literature. See Herbert Southworth,
El mito,
p. 53f., for a fascinating inquiry, and also Antonio Vilanova,
La defensa del Alcázar de Toledo
(Mexico, 1963); Luis Quintanilla,
Los rehenes del Alcázar de Toledo
(Paris, 1967); and Cecil Eby,
The Siege of the Alcázar.
Cf. too Vila San Juan, p. 83f. De la Cierva,
Historia ilustrada,
I, p. 455, records a story of a man who heard the telephone call taking place. The telephone call between the Moscardós is one of the most famous incidents of the civil war. Equally pathetic was the fate of the son of General Cruz Boullosa, under-secretary for war from 14 May until 22 July. On 19 July, Cruz Boullosa discovered that his son, a cadet on holiday from the Alcázar, had made his way to Toledo to rally to the rising. The father secured the return of the son to Madrid, but the latter rallied to the rising in the Montaña barracks. The general telephoned Colonel Serra in the barracks and pleaded with him to let him go. The colonel said that that was up to the cadet in question and the son decided to remain with his comrades in the barracks. He was killed in the assault. (Cf. García Venero,
Madrid, julio 1936,
p. 383). Cruz Boullosa’s brother was a general in the civil guard in Valladolid, and he himself was dismissed as disloyal in 1938. The interesting character in both these stories is, of course, the telephone.

1.
See, e.g., Lister,
Nuestra guerra,
p. 58.

1.
Huelva had fallen to the nationalists after a delayed rising by the civil guard, whose officers had first refused to lead an expedition against Seville.

2.
Nosotros
(
Journal of the Iron Column,
12–13, 15–17 March 1937); qu. Bolloten, p. 264.

1.
Fraser,
The Pueblo,
p. 41.

2.
I am grateful to Michael Alpert for his help in analysing these figures. See also R. Salas, vol. I, p. 185; Hills, p. 240; and Payne,
Politics,
p. 346, for contrasting figures.

1.
For an amazing variety of estimates, see R. Salas, vol. I, p. 185; Hills, p. 240; De la Cierva,
Historia ilustrada,
pp. 201–2; and Azaña, vol. III, p. 487.

1.
There were 18 postal aircraft, large Douglases, belonging to LAPE (Línea Aero Postal Española).

2.
One squadron of Dornier war seaplane bombers made in Cádiz; three squadrons of torpedo aircraft (Vickers Vildebeest, made by CASA in Getafe); one training squadron (Hispano-Suiza E.30 made in Guadalajara); one squadron of old Martinsydes; a flotilla of Savoia 62 reconnaissance aeroplanes from Italy; and a squadron of Macchis M.18 and some more Martinsydes in the naval air school for pilots in Barcelona.

3.
The fighters were: Nieuport 52s, made by Hispano-Suiza at Guadalajara, under French licence; three Hawker Spanish Fury fighters (reconstructed at Tablada in Spain); and six old naval Martinsydes. There were some ninety Breguet XIX reconnaissance aircraft, all that remained of a purchase from France arranged by Primo de Rivera. The bombers were a few Fokker VIIs, some De Havilland Dragons, and some Douglas DC2s.

4.
De la Cierva (
op. cit.,
vol. I, p. 298) says 207 to the government, 96 to the rebels. See analysis in Jesús Salas, pp. 56–63; cf. also R. Salas, vol. I, pp. 194–5; Hidalgo de Cisneros, vol. II, p. 286; Miguel Sanchís,
Alas rojas sobre España
(Madrid, 1956), p. 8.

5.
There were 50 Nieuport 52s, 3 Hawker ‘Spanish Furies’ and the old Martinsydes.

1.
See José Larios’s
Combat over Spain
(London, 1966). De la Cierva (
op. cit.,
p. 300) goes rather too far in suggesting that the republican air force was headed by a ‘handful of aristocrats’, while their enemies were the most progressive officers in the country. Actually, Ramón Franco had been a powerful influence taking the air force towards the Left.

2.
Soon renamed the
Navarra.
Both the battleships
España
and
Jaime I
were of 15,500 tons and laid down before 1914. They carried 700–850 men. Of the cruisers, the
Libertad, Miguel de Cervantes
and
Almirante Cervera
were 7,500-ton ships, launched in the late 1920s. The 4,500-ton
Méndez Núñez
was launched in 1923 and the
República
(once the
Reina Victoria Eugenia
) of 4,800 tons was launched in 1920. The two new cruisers,
Baleares
and
Canarias,
were to be 10,000-ton ships, with a company of 765. Spain’s navy was completed by 21 destroyers, 11 torpedo boats, 12 submarines, 9 coastguard sloops and 8
guardapescas.

1.
Valencia, Málaga, Murcia, Bilbao, and Cartagena. Saragossa, Seville, Granada and Córdoba were with the rebels.