The Battle for Spain Read online

  The Civil Guard joined the rebels as soon as they saw the surrender of the Assault Guard. It was only then that the workers started to react. A general strike was ordered over Radio Seville and peasants were called in from the surrounding countryside to help. Barricades were constructed in desperate haste, but the feud between anarchists and communists undermined the organization of an effective counter-attack. The workers withdrew into their own districts of Triana and La Macarena around the perimeter of the town where they prepared their defence. The rebels captured the radio station, which was used by Queipo to broadcast threats of violence against those who resisted him and, more important, to deny government claims that the revolt had been crushed on the mainland. The rising of 18 July 1936 was the first modern coup in which radio stations, telephone exchanges and aerodromes were of major importance.

  On 22 July General Queipo de Llano declared over the radio that he ‘was not playing politics’ and that what the generals wanted was to ‘reestablish order subverted by foreign powers, and that the Marxist conglomerate had deformed the character of the Republic’. He added, ‘As a Spaniard, I regret the blind obstinacy of those who with weapons in their hands oppose this movement of liberation. This obliges me to be implacable in punishing it.’11

  In Málaga the workers were strong but they had no weapons. Their leaders maintained contact with the Assault Guard, the only government force they felt they could trust. On the afternoon of 17 July, when the news of the rising in Melilla arrived, a rash young army officer, Captain Agustín Huelin, had led his company out towards the centre of the town. On the way they ran into a strong force of Assault Guards, who attacked at once. The soldiers came off worse. The senior officer in Málaga, General Paxtot, felt that he had no option but to move immediately. The rest of the garrison was marched out, but their commander changed his mind and marched them back to barracks. The colonel in charge of the Civil Guard was, most unusually for that corps, arrested by his own men when he also declared for the rising. The workers then surrounded the army barracks and set fire to a number of buildings. The garrison surrendered immediately.

  In Almería the civil governor refused to arm the workers, using the argument that he did not wish to provoke the military into open revolt. He later claimed that he had no weapons to issue anyway. Only the arrival on 21 July of the destroyer Lepanto with a loyal captain secured the port for the Republic. Its guns were trained on the headquarters of the Civil Guard, which surrendered immediately. The threat of shelling proved a strong factor in many towns.

  The civil governor in Jaén took a more positive approach. He called in the Civil Guard and persuaded them to lay down their weapons, even though they protested that they were loyal to the Republic. He then gave the weapons to the UGT and CNT for distribution and the town was secured. Obviously many more towns would have been saved if such a course had been followed, but there were few governors prepared to admit the total ineffectiveness of normal channels.

  In the naval port of Cádiz, Colonel Varela was freed from prison by the local garrison and took command of the rising there. His troops attacked the comandancia, which was defended by the civil governor and members of an improvised workers’ militia. The town hall was another centre of resistance, but artillery was brought up. Then at first light on the next day, 19 July, the destroyer Churruca arrived with the first reinforcements from the Army in Africa. The insurgents had captured a major naval port on the Andalucian coast.

  The rebels were also to secure most of the coast to the Portuguese frontier, including Algeciras, La Línea (where the Carlists shot 200 Freemasons) and Jeréz. The repression was savage. Professor Carlos Castilla del Pino, who was then thirteen years old, described the killings in his birth place of San Roque. ‘They took an anarchist couple, whose son was a friend of mine at school, off to a village 25 kilometres away and shot them there. Later, a Falangist who witnessed the execution told me that before being executed, the wife was raped by all the Moroccan soldiers who made up the execution squad…Five wounded carabineros were dragged from their hospital beds. The Moors seized them by their arms and legs and threw them into the back of a lorry…When they got them out to the highway, there was no way that the wounded could stand up to be shot, so the Moors bayoneted them.’12

  In Huelva, however, the left retained control for the first few days. The Civil Guard commander in Madrid ordered the local detachment to attack Seville but it joined Queipo’s forces immediately on arrival.

  In the capital Casares Quiroga resigned as prime minister at four o’clock in the morning of 19 July. The atmosphere in Madrid had been very tense throughout the night. Even the backfiring of a car would lead people to think that the rising had started there too. During the hot night the cafés stayed open and the streets were noisy. Popular frustration and anger at the government was increased by contradictory news items broadcast on the wireless. The UGT and CNT were beginning to suspect treachery.

  On receiving Casares Quiroga’s resignation, Azaña asked his friend, Diego Martínez Barrio, the president of the Cortes, to form a government. His cabinet was composed of republican parties only and purposely ignored the left-wing elements of the Popular Front alliance, since it was the new prime minister’s intention to achieve a reconciliation with the right. This moment of crisis revealed the crucial division between the liberal government of the Popular Front and the left.

  Nevertheless, Martínez Barrio’s peace overture to General Mola by telephone was firmly rejected. ‘It is not possible, señor Martínez Barrio,’ said Mola. ‘You have your people and I have mine. If you and I should reach agreement, both of us will have betrayed our ideals and our followers.’13 It was perhaps ironic that a rebel general should remind the prime minister that he was the representative of those voters to whom he owed his appointment. The workers were furious with what they regarded as an utterly fainéant, if not treacherous, government. ‘Large demonstrations are formed simultaneously,’ an eyewitness wrote. ‘They move towards the interior and war ministries like avalanches. The people shout “Traitors! Cowards!”’ Militants shouted, ‘We’ve been sold down the river! We’d better start taking them out and shooting them!’14

  Martínez Barrio’s government collapsed instantly. He described the event himself: ‘Within a few minutes the political demonstration had brought about the ruin of my government. It was senseless to ask me to combat the military rebellion with mere shadows, stripped of authority and ludicrously retaining the name of ministers.’15 His ministry had lasted just a few hours.

  Azaña asked yet another personal friend to form a government. José Giral, a university professor, was the only liberal politician who realized that the politicians of the Republic could not refuse to face reality any longer. During the morning of 19 July he dissolved the army by decree and ordered that arms should be given to the workers’ organizations. Julian Marías, who went to mass with his fiancée Lolita in the Church of the Carboneras near the Puerta del Sol, did not imagine that it would be the last one held there until April 1939. When they emerged on to the street afterwards, it seemed as if the city had changed hands during the church service. Requisitioned motorcars decorated with red or red and black flags careered around with rifles pointing out of the windows. The weapons had been handed out from the Assault Guard barracks in the Calle del Correo nearby.16

  Even so, there were governors and officials who refused to carry out this instruction. In Madrid the government had to order General Miaja point-blank to comply with the order. More than 60,000 rifles were then delivered in lorries to UGT and CNT headquarters, where the heavy grease was cleaned off with party newspapers. Only 5,000 of them had bolts; the remainder were stored in the Montaña barracks where Colonel Serra, who was one of the conspirators, refused to hand them over.

  David Antona described the scene inside CNT headquarters, which the government had closed only a few weeks earlier: ‘A narrow dark room. We could hardly move. A jabber of voices, shouts, rifles–many rifles. Th
e telephone never stopped ringing. It was impossible to hear yourself speak. There was only the noise of rifle bolts from comrades who wanted to learn quickly how to handle them.’17

  The loyalists were lucky that there was also confusion among the conspirators in Madrid. Nobody seemed certain who was to take command, until eventually General Fanjul assumed this ill-fated responsibility. The rebel generals had known how hard it would be to seize Madrid at once. But considering that their strategy was based on a holding action until reinforcements arrived from Pamplona, Saragossa and Barcelona, astonishingly little preparation had been made for a siege.

  Late in the afternoon of 19 July Fanjul went to the Montaña barracks, where he addressed the officers and those Falangists who had come to help. But when they attempted to march out, they found that they were hemmed in by crowds of madrileños who had been directed there by the UGT and CNT. Fire was exchanged and the troops withdrew into the barracks. The rebels’ action had more the air of a ritual than a military operation. Outside, La Pasionaria’s speech on the radio calling for resistance was relayed over loudspeakers, then the besiegers settled down to wait for the morning.

  While the fighting on the mainland intensified during the afternoon of 18 July, the Dragon Rapide aeroplane, organized by Luis Bolínin London, collected General Franco in civilian clothes. The English pilot was supposed to match half a torn playing card with its counterpart in his passenger’s possession. Franco dispensed with such a trivial touch of amateur conspiracy; perhaps he felt it beneath the dignity of a man of destiny. Sanjurjo may have been accepted as the figurehead, but Franco had an unshakeable belief that his own abilities were indispensable to the success of the rebels’ great undertaking.

  Franco flew to Casablanca, in French Morocco, where Luis Bolín awaited him, but first he needed to be sure that the Army of Africa was in control. He telephoned officers in Larache who advised him not to land in Tangier. At dawn on 19 July he left for Tetuán, changing into uniform in mid flight. Senior rebel officers were waiting for him at the airport. They included Yagüe, Solans, Seguí, Sáenz de Buruaga and Beigbeder.18 A conference was held around the aircraft. Franco learned that the rising had not been entirely successful. He decided that Bolín should leave at once with an authorization to ‘purchase aircraft and supplies for the Spanish non-Marxist army’–a somewhat bland description for the forces of what was later to be called La Cruzada.

  The second decision which Franco took in Tetuán that day was to order that those loyal to the Republic should be held in a concentration camp near the city and in the castle of El Hecho in Ceuta. After a rapid selection, Falangists came each morning to shoot them in groups.19

  Reinforcements were needed urgently on the mainland and, since the rising in the fleet had failed, aeroplanes were essential to carry the Army of Africa to Spain. On 22 July the German consul in Tetuán passed on to the Wilhelmstrasse a message from Colonel Beigbeder, a former Spanish military attaché in Berlin: ‘General Franco and Lieutenant Colonel Beigbeder send greetings to their friend, the honourable General Kühlental, inform him of the new nationalist Spanish government, and request that he send ten troop-transport planes with maximum seating capacity through private German firms. Transfer by air with German crews to any airfield in Spanish Morocco. The contract will be signed afterwards. Very urgent! On the word of General Franco and Spain.’20

  On the northern coast of Spain, the port of Santander was secured for the Republic without bloodshed on the morning of 19 July, when the 23rd Infantry Regiment refused to rise. But in Oviedo the left was too confident after the strength it had demonstrated in the Asturian rebellion of 1934. The local military commander, Colonel Aranda, had managed over the previous months to convince the civil governor and most of the workers’ leaders that he was loyal to the government. Aranda, insisting that he acted on Madrid’s orders, refused to hand over any weapons. The civil governor, reassured by his promises of loyalty, described him to the workers’ leaders as a man of honour. Aranda suggested that he hold Oviedo while the miners form a column to go and help in Madrid. But as soon as they had left, he declared for the rising. The trusting governor was among the first to be executed once Aranda’s troops and civil guards secured the town. After the workers realized that Aranda had tricked them, they surrounded the town and a long and furious siege began.

  In Gijón, the rising failed thanks to the decisive action of dockers who confronted the troops under the command of Colonel Pinilla. They withdrew to the Simancas barracks, where they were besieged for over a month until dinamiteros blew up the buildings.

  Events were much less dramatic in the Carlist city of Pamplona. On the morning of 19 July General Mola, the ‘Director’, scrupulously followed his own timetable and declared a state of war in Navarre. There was little resistance in this stronghold of traditionalism, often described as the Spanish Vendée. Those in the casas del pueblo who tried to resist perished in a massacre.21 All that day a continual stream of Carlist farmers arrived in the main square to volunteer. Wearing their large scarlet berets, they shouted the old battle cry, ‘Viva Cristo Rey!’ A French observer of the scene said that he would not have been surprised to see an auto-da-fé of heretics organized at the same time. A total of 8,000 requetés assembled, singing:

  Give me my beret,

  Give me my rifle,

  I’m going to kill more reds

  Than there are flowers in April and May.22

  Navarre had voted to reject the statute of Basque autonomy offered by the Republic, so the Basques were well aware of the threat posed by the Carlists joining the military rebellion. On 19 July the nationalists also captured the city of Vitoria, heart of the southern Basque province of Alava, but in Bilbao the civil governor managed to intercept Mola’s telephone call to the military commander.23 A council of defence for the province of Vizcaya was set up, the fortress of Basurto was surrounded and the soldiers were disarmed.

  In Basque territory to the east, the initiative came almost entirely from working-class organizations, such as the UGT in Eibar and the CNT in San Sebastián. In San Sebastián events resembled those which had taken place in Oviedo. Colonel Carrasco declared that he was loyal to the government, so a column was sent off to help at Mondragón. When the colonel eventually showed his hand, his men were besieged in the María Cristina Hotel and the Gran Casino Club. San Sebastián, the summer capital and the most fashionable seaside resort in Spain, contained a considerable number of right-wing supporters, but they were unable to withstand the workers’ unexpectedly ferocious attack. In their defence of the María Cristina the rebels were alleged to have used live hostages as sandbags in the windows, but this was probably an example of the exaggerated rumours of the time being used as propaganda. The anarchists seized the weapons in the Loyola barracks, since they were not certain that the Basque nationalist party would oppose the rising. This, and their subsequent shooting of some right-wing prisoners, worsened relations with their Basque Catholic allies in the PNV.

  In Old Castile, Burgos, the city of soldiers and priests was ‘nationalist to the very stones’, as the Countess of Vallellano said later to Doctor Junod of the Red Cross.24 There was virtually no opposition, but that did nothing to lessen the mass executions once names and addresses had been obtained from police headquarters. Generals Batet and Mena, who stayed loyal to the government, were among the first to be shot. The most prominent right-wing civilians in the conspiracy–Sáinz Rodríguez, Goicoechea, the Count of Vallellano, Vegas Latapié, Yanguas, Zunzunegui and the Marquess of Valdeiglesias–had already gathered at Burgos to welcome General Sanjurjo as the new head of state, but they waited in vain. His aeroplane from Portugal had crashed on take-off and the ‘Lion of the Rif’ was killed instantly, burned in the wreck along with his dress uniforms and decorations.

  In Valladolid, the heart of that austere Castile romanticized by José Antonio, the Assault Guard rebelled against the civil governor, Luis Lavín, and seized Radio Valladolid and the post office. The
governor was arrested and the rebel officers he had locked up were freed. Generals Saliquet and Ponte entered the headquarters pistols in hand to take command of the rising. General Nicolás Molero and those loyal to him fought back and in the exchange of fire, three men were killed and five wounded, including Molero himself, who was executed several days later. Saliquet proclaimed a state of war and ordered the troops into the street. The railwaymen of the UGT fought with great bravery, but were soon annihilated. The 478 people who had sought refuge in the casa del pueblo were imprisoned.25

  The failure of the left to secure Saragossa, the capital of Aragón, was a major disaster, especially for the anarchists. The government, suspicious of General Cabanellas’s intentions, sent a friend of his, General Nuñez de Prado, to confirm his loyalty to the Republic. Cabanellas declared for the rising and had Nuñez de Prado and his ADC shot. There were about 30,000 CNT members in Saragossa, but their leaders insisted on working through the civil governor, even though he gave them no arms. Troops led by Colonel Monasterio marched into the streets at dawn on 19 July and the virtually defenceless workers suffered a fearful massacre.

  Barcelona presented a very different story, even though it had been regarded by the military conspirators as the most certain conquest of all. The nationalists, relying on UME officers who were right-wing and anti-Catalan, had 12,000 troops to bring in from their barracks to dominate the central area. General Goded was to fly in from Majorca, once the island was secured, and take command. The plotters, however, never took into account the determination of the workers’ organizations, nor did they foresee that the Assault Guard and, more surprisingly, the Civil Guard, would oppose them.