The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 Page 2

  Some are strongly tempted to consider that the Spanish Civil War could not have been avoided. This contravenes that informal yet important rule of history that nothing is inevitable, except perhaps in hindsight. On the other hand, it is very hard to imagine how any form of workable compromise could have been achieved after the failed left-wing revolution of October 1934. An increasingly militant left could not forgive the cruelty of the Civil Guard and the colonial troops, while the right became convinced that it had to pre-empt another attempt at violent revolution.

  Other even more unanswerable questions remain important, if only because they can provoke us into seeing issues from an unaccustomed perspective. The ideals of liberty and democracy formed the basis of the Republic’s cause abroad. Yet the revolutionary reality on the ground, the impotence of the Spanish parliament, the Cortes, and the lack of respect for the rule of law on both sides, must be looked at carefully.

  Republican propaganda during the civil war always emphasized that its government was the legally appointed one after the elections of February 1936. This is true, but one also has to pose an important question. If the coalition of the right had won those elections, would the left have accepted the legitimate result? One strongly suspects not. The socialist leader Largo Caballero threatened openly before the elections that if the right won, it would be open civil war.

  The nationalists tried from the very beginning to pretend that they had risen in revolt purely to forestall a communist putsch. This was a complete fabrication to provide retrospective justification for their acts. But for the left to claim that the nationalists had launched an unprovoked attack against law-abiding democrats is disingenuous. The left had often shown as little respect for the democratic process and the rule of law as the right. Both sides, of course, justified their actions on the grounds that if they did not act first, their opponents would seize power and crush them. But this only goes to show that nothing destroys the centre ground more rapidly than the politics of fear and the rhetoric of threat.

  Some argue that words cannot kill. But this becomes less and less convincing the more one looks at the cycle of mutual suspicion and hatred, all enflamed by irresponsible declamation. In fact, the right-wing leader Calvo Sotelo was assassinated because of his own deliberately provocative speeches in the Cortes. It is also important to consider whether the rhetoric of annihilation tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. General Queipo de Llano threatened in one of his notorious broadcasts from Seville that the nationalists would execute ten republicans for every one of their own men killed. This proved in the end to be not that far from the mark.

  One must also not forget Largo Caballero’s declaration that he wanted a Republic without class warfare, but to achieve that a political class had to disappear. This was an obvious echo of Lenin’s openly stated intention to eliminate the bourgeoisie. But would a victory of the left in say 1937 or 1938 have led to a comparable scale of executions and imprisonment as under Franco? It is, of course, impossible to tell, and one cannot judge entirely by the Russian civil war, but it is still a question which must not be brushed aside. The winner in any civil war, as several historians have argued, is bound to kill more because of the cycle of fear and hate.

  All these complex and interrelated issues show how it is impossible to separate cause and effect with scientific precision. Truth was indeed the first casualty of the Spanish Civil War. The subject has suffered from more intense debate and more polemics for longer after the event than any other modern conflict, including even the Second World War. The historian, although obviously unable to be completely dispassionate, should try to do little more than understand the feelings of both sides, to probe previous assumptions and to push forward the boundaries of knowledge. As far as is humanly possible, moral judgements should be left to the individual reader.

  POLITICAL PARTIES, GROUPINGS AND ORGANIZATIONS

  NATIONALISTS

  MONARCHIST (ALFONSINE)

  Acción Española

  Renovación Española

  The Alfonsine monarchists supported the descendants of Queen Isabella II, the daughter of Ferdinand VII, as opposed to those of his brother, Don Carlos. Thus the monarchists in the twentieth century were those who backed King Alfonso XIII and then his son, Don Juan, the Count of Barcelona and the father of the present King Juan Carlos. The monarchist faction was strong among conservative army officers and it saw itself as the natural leadership for ‘Old Spain’. Popular support was marginal.

  CARLIST

  Communión Tradicionalista

  Requetés (the Carlist militia)

  Pelayos (Carlist youth movement)

  Margaritas (Carlist women’s service)

  The Carlists supported the rival Borbón line of Don Carlos, and stood for the idea of a traditionalist ultra-Catholic monarchy as opposed to Alfonsine monarchism, which they felt had been corrupted by nineteenth-century liberalism. The leadership, particularly the Count of Rodezno, tended to be court-orientated, while the base of mainly Navarrese smallholders was populist.

  FALANGE

  Falange Española de las JONS

  Flechas (Falangist youth movement)

  Auxilio Social (Falangist women’s service)

  The Falange was a small fascist-style party founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera in 1933, which then merged in 1934 with the more proletarian JONS (Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista). There was tension between the ‘modern reactionaries’, who followed José Antonio and who believed in the nationalist ideals of Old Spain above everything else, and the socialist wing, which resented the way its anti-capitalist ideology was overridden by the upper class señoritos. The ‘leftist’ faction was even more disadvantaged by the vast influx of opportunists in 1936 and 1937. Its influence was crushed when Franco institutionalized the movement, amalgamating it with the Carlists.

  Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS (FET)

  This amalgam of the nationalist political movements, principally the Falangists and the Carlists, was ordered by Franco in April 1937. He became its chief. The uniform of the movement combined the dark-blue shirt of the Falange and the red beret of the Carlists.

  PRE-WAR RIGHT

  Confederación Española de Derechas Autonomas (CEDA)

  Acción Popular (AP)

  Juventudes del Acción Popular (JAP)

  Popular Action Youth

  Partido Agrario (mainly Castilian landowners) CEDA, the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right was a political alliance of right-wing Catholic parties, brought together under Gil Robles. It won the election of 1933, but its failure to win in February 1936 led to its rapid disintegration. JAP, its youth movement, went over to the Falange en masse during the spring of 1936.

  Partido Republicano Radical (PRR)

  Led by Alejandro Lerroux, a former revolutionary and anti-cleric, who swung to the right, the party was reputed to be the most corrupt of the period. In 1934 its liberal wing broke away under Diego Martínez Barrio to form Unión Republicana.

  Derecha Liberal Republicana (DLR)

  The Republican Liberal Right party of conservatives, such as Miguel Maura and Niceto Alcala Zamora, who had turned against the monarchy.

  Lliga Catalana (LC)

  The Catalan League was the Catalan nationalist party of the grande bourgeoisie, and represented the dissatisfaction of Barcelona industrialists with the centralism and taxation of Madrid.

  REPUBLICAN

  POPULAR FRONT PARTIES AND AFFILIATED ORGANIZATIONS

  Unión Republicana (UR)

  Martínez Barrio’s Republican Union was a centre-right party that broke away from Lerroux’s Radicals (who had formed the government of 1934–5 with CEDA participation). It thus represented the right wing of the Popular Front alliance assembled for the February 1936 elections. Its support came from the liberal professions and businessmen.

  Izquierda Republicana (IR)

  Azaña’s Republican Left party came from the fusion in April 1934 of his R
epublican Action, Casares Quiroga’s Galician autonomy party and the radical socialists.

  Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya

  Lluís Companys’s Republican Left Party of Catalonia was the Catalan counterpart to Azaña’s Izquierda Republicana.

  Partido Socialista Obrera de España (PSOE)

  The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party

  Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT). The General Union of Workers was the trade union affiliated to the socialist party.

  Juventudes Socialistas (JJSS). The Socialist Youth amalgamated with the Communist Youth in the spring of 1936 to form the United Socialist Youth, but then the whole organization was brought under communist control by its leader, Santiago Carrillo, when the civil war began.

  Partido Comunista de España(PCE)

  The Spanish Communist Party

  Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas (JSU), the United Socialist Youth, Partido Socialista Unificado de Cataluña (PSUC). The United Socialist Party of Catalonia was an amalgamation of Catalan socialist parties in the spring of 1936, which was completely taken over by the communists.

  Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM)

  The Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification was led by Andreu Nin (Trotsky’s former secretary from whom he was now disassociated) and Joaquin Maurin. The party was not ‘Trotskyist’ as the Stalinists claimed, but had more in common with the left opposition in the Soviet Union.

  ALLIES OF THE POPULAR FRONT

  The Libertarian Movement (anarcho-syndicalist and anarchist) Confederación Nacional de Trabajo (CNT). The National Confederation of Labour was the anarcho-syndicalist trade union.

  Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI)

  Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL) Mujeres Libres (the anarcho-feminist organization)

  BASQUES

  Partido Nacionalista Vasca (PNV)

  The Basque Nationalist Party of conservative Christian Democrats. Acción Nacionalista Vasca (ANV)

  Basque Nationalist Action was a much smaller social democrat splinter from the PNV.

  Solidaridad de Trabajadores Vascos (STV)

  Solidarity of Basque Workers. The Basque nationalist Catholic trade union.

  INITIALS

  PART ONE

  Old Spain and the Second Republic

  1

  Their Most Catholic Majesties

  On an unsurfaced road in Andalucia or Estremadura, one of the first automobiles in Spain has broken down. In the photograph a young man grasps the steering wheel. He is not very good-looking, due to a large nose and enormous ears. His brilliantined hair is parted in two and he has a moustache. The driver of the car is King Alfonso XIII.

  On either side, men are pushing hard at the mudguards. Their faces are burned a deep brown by the sun and they are poorly dressed, without collars or ties. They are making a big effort. In the background, three or four figures dressed in suits and hats observe the goings-on. A rider, perhaps a local landowner, has reined in his horse. On the right, a landau drawn by two horses, the reins held by a uniformed coachman, waits ready to rescue the monarch if the car’s engine fails to restart. The caption announces that the king’s greatest wish is to maintain ‘direct contact with his people’. Few images better represented the extremes of the social and economic contrasts of Spain in the early part of the twentieth century. But perhaps the most striking aspect of the photograph is the way the peasants and the king must have seemed like foreigners to each other in their own country.

  Spain, with its stern tradition of rule from Madrid, was becoming increasingly turbulent at that time, both in the countryside and in the big cities. So not even the tidy-minded could say later that the Spanish Civil War simply began in July 1936 with the rising of the ‘nationalist’ generals against the republican government. That event signalled the greatest clash in the conflict of forces which had dominated Spanish history. One of those antagonisms was evidently between class interests, but the other two were no less important: authoritarian rule against libertarian instinct and central government against regionalist aspirations.

  The genesis of these three strains of conflict lay in the way the Reconquista of Spain from the Moors had shaped the social structure of the country and formed the attitudes of the Castilian conquerors. The intermittent warring against the Moors, begun by Visigoth warlords in the eighth century, finally ended in 1492 with the triumphal entry into Granada of Isabella of Castile and her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon. For the Spanish traditionalist that event marked both the culmination of a long crusade and the beginning of the country’s civilization. This idea permeated the nationalist alliance of 1936, which continually invoked the glory of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic monarchs, and referred to their own struggle as the second Reconquista, with liberals, ‘reds’ and separatists allotted the role of contemporary heathen.

  With a feudal army forming the prototype of state power, the monarchy and warrior aristocracy retook possession of the land during the fight against the Moors. In order to continue the Reconquista, the aristocracy needed money, not food. The cash crop which could provide it was Merino wool. Common land was seized for sheep grazing, which not only had a catastrophic effect on the peasants’ food supply, but also led to soil erosion, ruining what had once been known as the ‘granary of the Roman empire’. Few people were needed to tend the sheep and the only alternative to starvation was the army and, later, the empire. In the Middle Ages Spain was estimated to have a population of about fourteen million. At the end of the eighteenth century it was a little over seven million.

  Castilian authoritarianism developed from a feudal-military emphasis to one of political control by the Church. During the seven centuries of the Reconquista’s uneven course, the Church’s role had been mainly that of propagandist for military action, and even of participant. Then, in Isabella’s reign the warrior archbishop was superseded by the cardinal statesman. Nevertheless, the connection between Church and army remained close during the rapid growth of Spain’s empire when the crucifix was the shadow of the sword over half the world. The army conquered, then the Church integrated the new territories into the Castilian state.

  The power which was exerted over the population was an irresistible force, backed by the threat of hell and its earthly foretaste in the form of the Inquisition. A single denouncer, an anonymous whisper from a jealous enemy, was often enough for the Holy Office, and the public confessions extracted before autos-da-fé provided a striking foretaste of the totalitarian state. In addition the Church controlled every aspect of education and placed the entire population in a protective custody of the mind by burning books to keep out religious and political heresy. It was also the Church which vaunted Castilian qualities such as endurance of suffering and equanimity in the face of death. It encouraged the idea that it was better to be a starving caballero than a fat merchant.

  This Spanish Catholic puritanism had been guided by Cardinal Ximénez de Cisneros, the ascetic friar promoted by Isabella to be the most powerful statesman of the age. It was basically an internal reformation. The papacy was being rejected because of its corruption, so Spain had to save Europe from heresy and Catholicism from its own weakness. As a result the clergy practised what it preached, with the exception of forgiveness and brotherly love, and sometimes issued pronouncements on property which were almost as subversive as the original teaching. Nevertheless, the Church provided spiritual justification for the Castilian social structure and was the most authoritarian force in its consolidation.

  The third strain of conflict, centralism against regionalism, also developed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The first major revolt against the united kingdoms had a distinctly regionalist element. The rising of the comuneros in 1520 against Isabella’s grandson, the Emperor Charles V, was provoked not only by his use of the country as the treasury of his empire and by the arrogance of his Flemish courtiers but also by his disregard for local rights and customs. Much of the country had been assimi
lated into the Castilian kingdom through royal marriage and the Spanish Habsburgs preferred to let the Church act as the binding force of the realm.

  These three determining attributes of the Castilian state, feudal, authoritarian and centralist, were strongly interlinked. This was particularly true when it came to the regional question. Castile had established a central authority in Spain and built the empire, but its administration rigidly refused to acknowledge that feudal economic relationships were growing out of date. The wars in northern Europe, the fight against the French in Italy and the destruction of the Armada meant that the imperial power, developed in less than two generations, had started to decline almost immediately. Castile had the unbending pride of a newly impoverished nobleman, who refuses to notice the cobwebs and decay in his great house and resolutely continues to visualize the grandeur of his youth. This capacity for seeing only what it wanted to see made the Castilian ruling order introverted. It refused to see that the treasures from the Americas in the churches fed nobody and that the vast quantities of precious but useless metal only undermined the country’s economic infrastructure.

  Catalonia, which was made part of the kingdom of Aragon during the Middle Ages, was very different from the rest of the peninsula. Not surprisingly, friction developed later between Madrid and Barcelona. The Catalans had enjoyed a considerable amount of power in the Mediterranean. Their empire had included the Balearics, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and the Duchy of Athens. But as it had been the Castilian Isabella, not Ferdinand of Aragon, who financed Columbus, they did not have direct trading access to the Americas.

  In 1640 Catalonia and Portugal rose against Philip IV of Spain and his minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares. Portugal won its independence but Catalonia acknowledged Louis XIII of France as its king, until Barcelona fell to Philip IV in 1652. Then, after the death of the last Spanish Habsburg in 1700, the War of the Spanish Succession started and Catalonia sided with England against Louis XIV’s grandson, Philip of Anjou. The Catalans were betrayed by the English in the Treaty of Utrecht, and the Bourbon Philip V abolished Catalonia’s rights, after it was reduced in 1714. The castle of Montjuich was built to dominate the city and remind the Catalans that they were ruled from Madrid. With this beginning Philip proceeded to implement the centralist idea of his Sun King grandfather. The unifying force of the Church had waned, so a new centripetal strength was needed if the monarchy was to control non-Castilians. The twentieth-century Basque philosopher Unamuno, who was no separatist, stated that ‘the aim was unity and nothing else; unity stifling the slightest individuality and difference…It is the dogma of the ruler’s infallibility.’ But ruthlessness did not solve the problem; it only stored up trouble for the future.