The Spanish Civil War (57 page)

But there were dissensions within the church. The difficulties caused by the bishops of Pamplona and Vitoria have been described. The bishop of Vitoria, Monsignor Múgica, had been now several months in Rome and, when news came that certain Basque priests who had sympathized with, or acted as chaplains to, the Basque nationalist forces had been shot, he wrote a full, reasoned and convincing report to the Pope.
³
He saw Pius XI on 24 November, and the subsequent papal representation to Franco was one reason why the shootings of Basque priests—there had already been fourteen of them—came to an end.
⁴

All these priests had been shot precipitously without trial, and buried without coffins, funeral services, or official registration. One of those shot was a Carmelite monk, the rest parish priests; one of them, Father José Aristimuño, was an active Basque nationalist writer (though he had apparently opposed the alliance of Basque nationalism with the Left), and another a priest deservedly famous locally for his piety, Father Joaquín Arín, arch-priest of the little steel town of Mondragón.
⁵
Later, Cardinal Gomá tried to explain the deaths of these priests by saying that they had brought their troubles on themselves: a view
which, expressed in an open letter to President Aguirre, brought another denunciation by Monsignor Múgica before the Pope. (He had already told Gomá to his face that Franco and his soldiers would have done better to have kissed the feet of the venerable Father Arín than to shoot him.)
¹
A third letter, to Cardinal Pacelli, in March, would follow when the archbishop of Burgos, Manuel Castro, sought to excommunicate those priests of the Basque provinces who continued loyal to the Basque nationalist movement. Monsignor Múgica, each day more partisan, prevented that condemnation, and continued to support the Basque cause from Rome.

Similarly, the archbishop of Tarragona, Cardinal Vidal y Barraquer, saved from assassination by Companys, withdrew into a Swiss exile with a silence that everyone knew signified condemnation of atrocities on both sides in the war.
²
Finally, the crusaders had their disputes with those foreign Catholics of distinction who, like Bernanos, Mauriac and Maritain (‘the Jew Maritain’, nationalist propaganda inaccurately tried to call him) and those who, like the bishop of Dax in southern France, tried to mediate, or to arrange the exchange of prisoners. (The latter bishop went to Bilbao in September to try to comfort right-wing prisoners, who were confined in a horrible prison ship, more or less as hostages; subsequently, he sought to arrange an exchange. But the authorities in Salamanca could not accept that any authority of the church could have contact with the ‘reds’.)

The nationalist leaders feared disturbances at the rear, and still caused to be shot enemies of the régime as part of the
limpieza,
the ‘cleaning’ of Spain of its foreign imported diseases, including, haphazardly, prisoners. Of course, there were some guerrilla actions in, for example, Galicia or the Gredos mountains inspired by revolutionaries or government sympathizers who had hidden after the nationalist conquest of the area concerned. Cantalupo, the first Italian ambassador to nationalist Spain, began his mission by asking for an end of the slaughter of prisoners. Franco told him that the shooting of prisoners had stopped.
³
That was not so. The failure of humane democracy in Spain
had given power to one of the coldest-hearted men, a man intolerant of human foibles, humourless but able, calm and determined. One day that winter, Bernhardt was lunching with Franco (whom he admired). The question came up as to what to do with four militiawomen, captured, armed with rifles. Franco believed that all women captured in arms should be shot. ‘There is nothing else to be done’, he said, ‘shoot them’, without changing the tone that he would use for discussion of the weather.
¹
To Colonel Faldella, chief of staff of the Italian troops who began to arrive in large numbers in the course of the winter, Franco made clear that his policy was not to defeat armies, but to conquer territory, ‘accompanied by the necessary purges’.
²

Two stages may be traced in the character of nationalist executions. At the beginning, shooting occurred without any judicial proceedings whatever. After a while, these terrible
autos-da-fé
of informal repression gave way to courts-martial, without, however, much greater guarantees for the victims, for the presiding judges were often young lieutenants who, after a while, thought no more of condemning men to death than ‘shooting rabbits’.
³
The ‘crimes’ committed by some who were shot had been, it is true, sometimes odious; while some, such as republican officers, particularly of the civil guard, must have known that death was likely for them if they had opposed the rebellion. Spies and people who had taken part in church burnings, or killing in the republican zone, were likely to be executed in any such war. But the list of persons offered the last rites in, for example, the gaol of Torrero, in Saragossa, is astonishing; not only were most people shot who had actively taken part in the republican war effort (for example, Colonels
Encisco, one of the founders of the group of republican officers UMRA, and González Tablas, both captured at the front), but also Jaime Pérez, the grave digger of a small village (Blesa, Teruel), whose ‘crime’ was merely to have buried prominent people of the Right. Another man was shot because, when the legal records of the village of Blesa were being burned, in the middle of the street, he stirred the fire with a stick. Many complicated hatreds and conflicts of evidence came to light and were disposed of arbitrarily. Accusations might be made that so-and-so (a maid in a hotel, a bus conductor, or a soldier) had betrayed such-and-such a person of the Right. Once, a political commissar captured on the Teruel front was accused by a brother republican officer, also captured, of having killed a militiaman who had wanted to desert. The commissar said that he had reported the lieutenant for theft, but nevertheless he was shot, telling the priest who gave him extreme unction that he blamed nobody for his death; society alone was evil.
¹
In Córdoba victims of Colonel Cascajo or Major “Bruno” might be sent to the ‘agrarian reform’: that meant they would go to the six feet of ground where they would be buried. The numbers of those who, in one way or another, were condemned and shot continue to be difficult to estimate, but they could not have been much less than 1,000 a month, and sometimes, as when a city was captured, many more.

Innumerable republicans, revolutionaries and prisoners-of-war, Basque priests, separatists of every kind, found themselves in the crowded gaols of the nationalist rearguard, at the mercy of prison governors and warders who were often pedantic, frivolous, and cruel. Prisoners might be shot on the spot for giving a
viva
to the republic, they might be punished by having letters from their wives torn up, or be forbidden to receive letters from, or write to, fiancées. ‘When hearts understand each other, bars do not exist’, wrote one wife to a husband; the prison official asked the husband if he believed that any decent woman could write in such a manner.
²
In Córdoba, Colonel Cascajo forbade mourning.

For those who escaped death or imprisonment, there was the risk, if the person concerned had been in any way a friend of the Left, of loss
of employment. Civil servants had a hard time even if they had merely served the government between February and July 1936, unless they had taken a positive part at the time of the rising. Magistrates, schoolmasters, town clerks, even employees of the post office who continued in those tasks after July in the republican zone and were subsequently ‘liberated’ had a difficult time securing their livelihood.
¹

A few voices were raised on behalf of toleration: one of them was Hedilla, the falangists’ leader, in his Christmas speech of 1936: speaking to falangists who were concerned with investigations, he said, ‘Prevent with all energy anyone from satisfying personal vengeances, ensure that nobody punishes or humiliates the man who, out of hunger or desperation, has voted for the Left. All of us know that, in many places, there were—and are—people of the Right who are worse than the reds …’ He ended this speech by opening his arms ‘to the worker and to the peasant: let none of the social benefits achieved by the workers stay on the drawing board without producing an effect and without being converted into reality’.
²
But Hedilla was not in a position to put these fine thoughts into action. Furthermore, if he, and some others, such as Dionisio Ridruejo, the new head of the Falange in Valladolid, might think like that, many of their comrades in the Falange thought more of their requisitioned cars, their escorts (armed to the teeth), and their own political futures.

Economically, nationalist Spain was in good shape. Their peseta was quoted internationally at double the rate of that of the republic. They possessed nearly all the food that they needed, and were backed by most of the old Spanish financiers and bankers. Their credit continued good for essential supplies, including oil. During the winter of 1936–7, a new currency was printed by the firm of Gieselke in Leipzig, on the initiative of Johannes Bernhardt, that gradually superseded the old notes. It was backed simply by the will to victory on the nationalist side, and not at all by gold.
³
Control of prices was rendered formal on 13 October, and provincial committees to ensure this were established
under the civil governors, with representatives of the Falange and the army. The branches of the National Bank of Spain at Burgos and at Seville acted as the central banks of the country. The funds available there to the rebel authorities (500 million pesetas) were supplemented by luxury taxes of 10 per cent on tobacco and wine, and also by a levy on all incomes over 60,000 pesetas. Accounts of Popular Front parties were confiscated and the assets of some foreign companies taken over, if only temporarily. All debts owed to anyone in the republican zone were declared void. Externally, the nationalist peseta was fixed at 42.50 pesetas to the pound. These measures were much more effective than comparable measures in the republic but, even so, a modest inflation continued.
¹

It has been already suggested that, in August 1936, the area of Spain controlled by the rebels produced only about one-third of Spanish taxes. By December, the capture of San Sebastián and of the Tagus valley had increased the area ‘liberated’, but it still produced less than two-fifths of the national taxes before the war. At the same time, spending by the new authorities was running at a rate greater than a normal Spanish government in the whole country in time of peace. How was this money raised? First, the reliance on Germany and Italy for arms meant that the largest single item of expenditure was secured, like oil, on credit (that also had the effect of giving Germany and Italy, as well as Texas, a strong interest in Franco’s victory). Second, subscription schemes played a great part, even if they sometimes degenerated into opportunities for intimidation. There were constant appeals for gifts of jewellery, gold or cash: indeed, in November 1936, the authorities insisted on the exchange of all gold in private hands for cash.
²
It does not seem, however, that this raised much. But similarly, all foreign money in private hands or the hands of companies had theoretically to be handed over. This stipulation affected foreign companies as well, except for German or Italian ones. Nearly all the money that was so collected in the early months of the civil war went into the hands of Bernhardt’s HISMA. No money was allowed to be taken abroad by private citizens, interest on the national debt was suspended,
while another scheme to raise money was the so-called
Plato Unico,
an innovation of Queipo de Llano’s, copied from Germany, whereby clients at restaurants received one course, but paid for three, the balance being paid to the authorities. (It became in the end, however, merely a tax on meals.) Ineffective though this may have been, it was more successful than the days
Sin Postre
and
Sin Cigarro
(without pudding, and without tobacco).

Some of the subscription schemes had an odd air about them. What, for instance, is to be made of the appeals for money for a chalet for Colonel Cascajo, the brutal governor of Córdoba? Certainly, too, there must have been schemes which resulted in the immediate benefit of other officials.

No scheme for bonds was introduced in the course of the civil war. The consequence was that the rich, who invested little, merely increased their bank deposits. Private commerce naturally continued, though, since the shopkeeper class had been divided in politics, many small businesses were adversely affected. Booksellers, in particular, suffered, since books even distantly relating to forbidden themes were prohibited. This literary
limpieza
was extended to public libraries and schools. Fires were made of these books, many mistakes and countless arbitrary acts occurring, as usual on such demented occasions. Some blackmailing and protection rackets were carried on. Bars, cafés and other places of resort were supposed to close early, very early by Spanish standards, but these austere rules were more likely to be in force in the north than in Andalusia, where, in Queipo’s unpredictable viceroyalty, a more free atmosphere prevailed. External commerce continued in the nationalist zone, but in January, each civil governor was ordered to set up an import and export regulating committee to supervise all exports originating in areas under their control; another decree, of 22 January, forbade the export of all important goods (olive oil, wine, hides, wool, iron ore, pyrites, mercury, zinc and copper), unless approved by the newly organized National Committee on Foreign Commerce. This gave the nationalist authorities greater power over exports than any previous Spanish government, though, because of Queipo’s presence, the export-import committee in Seville worked almost independently of Burgos.