The Spanish Holocaust (79 page)

As the trend of the war worsened, however, the work of the Special Court expanded beyond Irujo’s original intentions. Those found guilty of espionage or sabotage ran the risk of execution, yet far fewer death sentences were passed than were demanded by prosecutors and even fewer were implemented than actually passed. In Catalonia, whose courts were by far the most active, 166 such sentences were carried out between December 1937 and 11 August 1938, although only seven were shot thereafter. Unlike the military courts in the rebel zone, the Special Court often found the accused not guilty. Moreover, many who were found guilty had their sentences reduced or quashed on appeal. Those suspected of more minor fifth-column offences, of defeatist propaganda and black-market activities were interned either in prisons or in the work camps created by García Oliver. As the military situation got worse throughout 1938, deserters and draft-dodgers were imprisoned.
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With the fifth column getting more confidently aggressive, the SIM became more ruthless and several notably brutal individuals came to the fore. Ramón Torrecilla was one. Another individual who brought immense disrepute to SIM was Loreto Apellaniz Oden, a former post office official, who became a police inspector in Valencia after running the notorious Checa de Sorní. The Brigada Apellaniz spread terror with its activities in the area around Játiva. He later became a much feared chief of the SIM in Valencia from August 1937 to the end of the war. Accused of robbery, torture and murder, he was alleged to have taken instructions directly from Orlov. He was captured by the Francoists in March 1939 and shot.
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From April 1938, the SIM ran six work camps in Catalonia where the conditions were reputed to be harsh and the discipline fierce. There were cases of prisoners shot for trying to escape. Nonetheless, in stark contrast with the rebel zone, literacy and other educational classes were provided and prisoners were freed at the end of their sentences.
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The largest prison camp in the Republican zone was at Albatera in the province of Alicante. With the mission of draining 40,000 hectares of saltmarshes
and converting them to arable production, it had been opened in October 1937.
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As food shortages became ever more prevalent in the Republican zone, conditions in all the camps also became progressively worse, although they never reached the levels of overcrowding, malnutrition and abuse that characterized the rebel camps.
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By March 1938, the Republic was in dire straits, demoralized and suffering badly from a drastic lack of food and armaments. Indeed, so bleak did the prospects seem that Negrín’s friend and ally Prieto had come to believe, as did Azaña, that all was lost. Prieto advocated a negotiated peace to avoid the senseless loss of more lives. At tense cabinet meetings on 16 and 29 March, Prieto supported Azaña in proposing a request to the French government to mediate an end to the war. Negrín had reasserted his conviction that the war should go on precisely because he was aware of what would befall the defeated Republic at the hands of the vengeful Francoists. Appalled by the demoralizing impact of Prieto’s words and determined that the Republic would continue to resist, Negrín removed Prieto from the Ministry of Defence on 5 April. Ten days later, the rebels reached the Mediterranean.

Resistance meant combat not only at the battle front but also in the rearguard. The determination to follow judicial procedure did not stop the war on spies and saboteurs. A significant success of the SIM took place that April in Barcelona with the discovery and arrest of several fifth-column networks. The British and French diplomatic staff appealed for mercy, but the cabinet voted seven to five for the execution, at the end of June, of ten fifth columnists. The British Chargé d’Affaires, John Leche, commented, ‘I fear repercussions on the other side may be serious, and gave the government serious warning to this effect, but the president of the council and his supporters in the Cabinet are pitiless, and now seem to have as little consideration for their people in the hands of Franco as the latter has for his supporters here.’ The ten prisoners were shot on the morning of 25 June.
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As the battle of the Ebro raged, the militarization of society was intensified. Control of the rearguard became ever more implacable against those suspected of sabotage or espionage. This provoked the severe discomfort of those who felt that the democratic values of the Republic were being compromised by wartime necessities. Thus, on 9 August 1938, there was a cabinet crisis when Negrín forced through approval for the execution of a further sixty-two fifth columnists the following day. Now Minister without Portfolio, Irujo complained of irregularities in the investigation carried out by the SIM. Negrín lost his temper and
accused him of ‘legalistic drivel’. In contrast to the rebel practice of rarely reporting executions, the full coverage by the Republican press of this decision led to a considerable scandal. President Azaña was mortified. The Francoists replied immediately by executing sixty-six people.
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The next day, when Irujo said that the SIM had used torture, Negrín undertook to ensure that it ceased forthwith. Irujo resigned, albeit not over this issue. He did so, obliged by an agreement between the Generalitat and the Basque government in exile, in support of Jaume Aiguader’s resignation in protest at further limits on the powers of the Generalitat.
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In the spring of 1938, the British had set up an exchange commission under Field Marshal Sir Philip Chetwode. Denys Cowan, a former vice-consul to Havana and both a Conservative and a Catholic, was the Commission’s liaison officer with the Republican authorities. He arrived in Barcelona on 20 August and immediately met Álvarez del Vayo, Giral, Negrín and Azaña. Two days later, he reported that the Republican government was prepared to go to ‘almost any lengths’ to exchange all prisoners ‘provided they could receive proper reciprocity from the other side’.
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Indeed, so willing were the Republican ministers that Leche felt the need to protect them from themselves and suggested to the Chetwode Commission that, in view of the Francoists’ ‘previous intransigence and bad faith it would be better that first proposals should come from them’.
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Cowan approached Álvarez del Vayo to seek a suspension of executions, telling him that it would create a better atmosphere for the Republic. Del Vayo passed the proposal to Negrín and the cabinet agreed to suspend executions until 30 September, as the basis for negotiation of a general amnesty on both sides. There was to be no reciprocity from Burgos, merely a radio communiqué stating that Franco’s system of justice was so pure that there was no reason to make a similar concession. Nevertheless, to facilitate Chetwode’s work, Negrín undertook to maintain the suspension of executions until 11 October. Although the Burgos authorities still refused to reciprocate, Negrín told Cowan just before the 11 October deadline that he would extend the suspension to the end of the month and would authorize no further executions without lengthy prior notice to the Chetwode Commission.

One problem was that there were fewer than three hundred persons under sentence of death in the Republican zone but many thousands in rebel territory. Negrín suggested that all death sentences on both sides be commuted, but Burgos refused. Throughout the period after the Republican suspension of executions, the Francoists continued to implement death sentences. Cowan was inevitably worried that this would
provoke Republican reprisals. He reminded Negrín that he had declared that his policy was one of ‘clemency ad infinitum’. Negrín responded by undertaking to recommend to the cabinet that there be no reprisals.
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The moratorium on executions was extended until the end of December. On Christmas Eve 1938, Negrín made a broadcast in which, referring to ‘the norms of tolerance and civility that are the essence of our fundamental law’, he appealed to Franco to ‘stop unnecessary ferocity!’ Pointing out that the Republic had suspended executions four months previously, he called on Franco to reciprocate.
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In Burgos, Chetwode met the Conde de Jordana, Franco’s Foreign Minister, who claimed falsely that ‘only those persons were executed by his side who had committed abominable felonies and had been convicted after fair trial in a court of law’. To support this fiction, Jordana produced the chief of Franco’s military juridical corps, Lieutenant Colonel Lorenzo Martínez Fuset, who declared that the Burgos regime had executed nobody for their political opinions, or even for taking up arms, but ‘only because they had committed crimes which in common law would have been worthy of death’. Accordingly, he said, Franco could not interfere and was prepared to risk Republican reprisals.
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Chetwode wrote to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, in mid-November:

I can hardly describe the horror that I have conceived of Spain since my interview with Franco three days ago. He is worse than the Reds and I could not stop him executing his unfortunate prisoners. And when I managed to get 140 out of the Cuban embassy in Madrid across the lines the other day, having got them across, Franco frankly refused to give anyone for them in spite of his promise. And when he did send people down nearly half of them were not the people he had promised to release but criminals who had been in jail, many of them, since before the war started.
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Yet again, Franco reneged on an exchange agreement after the Republican government had already made it possible for many of its prisoners to cross into insurgent territory.
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Meanwhile, as the war drew to a close, Franco refused to exchange forty or fifty senior officers in return for his supporters in the embassies. According to Chetwode, Franco was gambling, successfully as it turned out, on the Republicans being able to prevent any harm coming to them.
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In a speech to the Standing Committee of the Cortes six months after coming to power, Negrín had referred to his own efforts, and those of
Zugazagoitia and Irujo, to maintain legal norms. Essentially, his speech was a hymn of praise to the re-establishment of normality by successive Republican governments.
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Nevertheless, there had been considerable tension between Negrín and Irujo over the eventual trial of the POUM executive committee members and the investigation into the death of Nin.
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When the trial took place in October 1938, Irujo was no longer Minister of Justice. The summary procedures of the Special Court saw it referred to jokily as the ‘fotomatón’ (photo machine). There were complaints that lawyers could not properly represent their clients, that police evidence was given without police witnesses being identified or that the only evidence presented was confessions secured by the SIM. The fact that such complaints could be published and heard constituted another dramatic contrast with the rebel zone.
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Irujo had been replaced as Minister of Justice by Negrín’s friend the Republican Mariano Ansó. Nevertheless, Irujo remained in the cabinet as Minister without Portfolio, having ensured that any death penalties imposed by the Special Court would have to be ratified by the cabinet. The trial of the seven POUM executive committee members eventually proceeded in an atmosphere of great tension during the final stages of the decisive battle of the Ebro. Nevertheless, it was conducted, as Irujo had promised Katia Landau, with full judicial guarantees. Irujo was in Paris at the time but returned in order to appear in court, as Julián Zugazagoitia also did, as a witness. Their declarations were a crucial element in the prosecutor withdrawing the demand for the death penalty. Two of the accused were acquitted and five given prison sentences. All escaped from Spain at the end of the war.
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After defeat on the Ebro, with Franco’s forces pouring into Catalonia, the bulk of prisoners held by the Republic were evacuated on 23 January 1939. Thousands crossed the border into France. At Pont de Molins, however, Negrín ordered the transfer of several of the more important ones to the central zone, where they could be used for prisoner exchanges. They included Bishop Anselmo Polanco, who had been captured when Republican forces took Teruel in January 1938. Polanco was first imprisoned in Valencia but was soon moved to Barcelona, where he remained for the rest of the war. He was kept in comfortable circumstances and permitted to carry out his spiritual exercises and to say Mass for his fellow prisoners. The government wanted to avoid the scandal of anything happening to Polanco, but Franco blocked Prieto’s efforts via the Red Cross to exchange him for General Rojo’s fourteen-year-old son.

As the remnants of the defeated Republican Army headed for an uncertain exile, harassed by rebel supporters within the civilian population, Negrín’s orders for the safety of the prisoners were ignored. A truck containing thirty soldiers, under the command of Major Pedro Díaz, arrived at Pont de Molins and took charge of the prisoners, ostensibly in order to transfer them to the port of Roses. The convoy stopped near a ravine at a place called Can de Tretze and the prisoners were shot. Their corpses were soaked in petrol and ignited. The forty-two victims included most of the captured rebel top brass from Teruel: Bishop Polanco and his vicar general, the military commander Colonel Rey d’Harcourt, the head of the Civil Guard and the police chief. Twenty-one Italians and one German who had been taken prisoner at Guadalajara were among those killed. This senseless act of revenge became a symbol of red barbarism. Polanco was eventually beatified by the Vatican in 1995.
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