The Battle for Spain Page 56

  Even by the standards of many prison systems, the corruption among warders and indeed senior officials was striking. In the penal colony of San Simón in Pontevedra provisional liberty was sold and, most appalling of all, a death sentence could be given to somebody else if a very large sum was paid. The family of a doctor from Vigo struggled desperately to raise the 400,000 pesetas which a senior official had demanded for this service.28 Those captured after 1 April 1939 were known as the ‘posteriores’. They were often political militants or members of the guerrilla resistance to the regime. Many of them were subjected to terrible tortures, near-drowning in ‘la bañera’ or electric shocks, to force them to give the names of others in their organization. Both posteriores and anteriores were sometimes lined up on identity parades for widows of nationalist victims, accompanied by Falangists. Any suspected of having been involved in the death of a husband were simply ‘disappeared’.

  The notion of a bolshevik infection, as an explanation of left-wing views, was given a spurious scientific basis. Major Antonio Vallejo Nágera, a professor of psychiatry at Madrid University, had founded in the summer of 1938 a centre of psychological investigation with fourteen clinics in the nationalist zone to study the ‘psiquismo del fanatismo marxista’. His conclusions were that the only way to prevent the racial dissolution of Spanishness was the removal of children from suspect parents to be schooled in nationalist values. In 1943 there were 12,043 children taken from their mothers and handed over to the Falangist Auxilio Social, to orphanages and to religious organizations. Some of these children were passed on for adoption to selected families, a pattern followed thirty years later in Argentina under the military dictatorship there.29

  Nationalist Spain was little more than an open prison for all those who did not sympathize with the regime. Various departments of secret police were set up. Franco’s obsession with Freemasonry even led to the creation of the Servicio de Información Especial Antimasónico in March 1940. Freemasons, in his view, were responsible for the loss of the Spanish empire, the fall of the monarchy and numerous ‘state crimes’ during the period of the Republic. On 29 March 1941 a law for the ‘Security of the State’ was introduced, which targeted illegal propaganda, criminal association including strikes and the spreading of rumours unfavourable to the regime, all of which were regarded as tantamount to ‘military rebellion’. Later, in April 1947, the law for the Repression of Banditry and Terrorism, aimed at the guerrilla resistance, represented a further turn of the screw on individual liberties.

  The mania for total mastery of everything extended even to the nationalist movement itself. The state political movement combining the Falange and Carlists, the FET y de las Jons, was given a crucial role in the network of repression and social control. Serrano Súñer made sure that the ‘old shirts’, with their anti-capitalist rhetoric, should not offend the military and the rich. Franco was given total authority–‘before God and History’–to direct its ideology. Prominent Falangist ‘old shirts’ were sent abroad as ambassadors or given out-of-the-way posts in Spain. Candidates for membership of the national council of the movement were carefully chosen for their blind obedience to the Caudillo. At the end of the civil war in 1939, the party had 650,000 members. By 1945 this figure had almost doubled. As in Germany and the Soviet Union, it was essential to become a member if you wanted promotion within the bureaucracy which directed every aspect of national life.

  In September 1939 the Spanish University Union was founded, to which every student in higher education had to belong. The universities themselves were turned into an extension of the state bureaucracy. Youth and even employers’ organizations were treated in a similar fashion. The Falangist trade union, the Organización Sindical, which wielded immense power, had little interest in the rights of workers. Its task was to ensure that the labour force ran on almost military lines in the service of the state. Women, meanwhile, were expected to stay at home, unless they were involved in the Feminine Section, an evolution of the Falangist charity, Winter Help, copied from the Nazi Winterhilfe. The primary role of such an organization was to train women in their household tasks and obedience to their husbands. In a counterpart to national service in the armed forces, young women had to work for Auxilio Social for six months, either looking after the children in its institutions or serving in the equivalent of soup kitchens.30

  The defeat of the republicans also obliged them to submit themselves to the authority of the Church as well as to their temporal masters. Franco had been extremely generous in restoring all the Church’s privileges and wealth, as well as its power in education, but in return he expected the priesthood to act virtually as another arm of the state. With Church control over primary schools re-established, Franco’s minister for education purged thousands of teachers and hundreds of university lecturers and professors who were thought to have fallen under Masonic, Jewish or Marxist influences. Universities were controlled by the Falange, but with strong guidance from ecclesiastical authorities. The precepts of the nationalist movement were imposed on all subjects from history to architecture. Censorship of cultural life in all its forms was also rigorously exercised. This had started with the Law of the Press in 1938. Military and ecclesiastical censors went through libraries, destroying forbidden works.

  Those republicans who had not been arrested and those freed from prison discovered that their life was still severely restricted. Many found it impossible to take up their previous employment. Priority was always given to former members of the nationalist armies. And there was also the risk of being denounced to the authorities by a jealous neighbour or a rival. The population was encouraged to accuse people as part of its patriotic duty. Concierges and caretakers became police spies, as in every dictatorship, and priests noted those who did not turn up to mass. They were regarded as part of what was called ‘the sixth column’, traitors to the cause by thought rather than by identifiable deed.

  All this made the struggle for survival even harder. For example, those regarded as politically unreliable were not allowed to open a shop. Unable to scrape a living in their home town, many emigrated to the larger cities where they were unknown. The post-civil war years formed a period of great suffering and little hope of change. Franco’s regime appeared impregnable.

  36

  The Exiles and the Second World War

  The 450,000 republicans who crossed the French frontier in February 1939 as Catalonia fell were not the first refugees from the civil war.1 Nor were they the last. Another 15,000, who managed to escape from Mediterranean ports in March during the final collapse of the Republic, reached the French colony of Tunisia, where they were interned in the camps of Getta and Gafsa near Tunis, and in others near Bizerta and Argelia. The conditions were described as sub-human. The French colonial authorities did not welcome this influx of ‘reds’. One of the many prisoners there was Cipriano Mera, the former bricklayer who had became commander of IV Corps and Casado’s military companion in the coup. Like many other republicans, Mera was handed over to nationalist Spain after the fall of France in 1940, but his sentence of death was commuted.2

  Those refugees who had crossed the frontier in February and March 1939 were divided between the women, children, the old and the sick on one hand, and soldiers and men of military age on the other. The former, some 170,000, went to camps at Prats de Molló, La Tour-de-Carol, Le Boulu, Bourg-Madame and Arles-sur-Tech, and later were spread over 70 French départements. The latter were interned in improvised camps mostly on the beaches of south-west France.

  The places to which the defeated republicans were sent consisted of stretches of coast, wet, salty and without any protection from the wind. The first camp to open, in the middle of February, was at Argelès-sur-Mer. It was little more than a marshland divided into rectangles of a hectare apiece and surrounded by a perimeter of barbed wire guarded by Senegalese troops. There was a shortage of drinking water, many resorted to drinking sea water, and nothing was done to provide washing facilities
or latrines. The food they received was scarce and of bad quality. The men suffered from scabies and lice. The 77,000 refugees, many without proper clothing, belongings, money or food, had to build huts for the sick and wounded. The rest dug into the sand to shelter from the wind. Only after the first few weeks were they given drinking water in cans and wood to make latrines next to the sea.

  Emil Shteingold, the Latvian International Brigader, described the largest, Saint-Cyprien, where up to 90,000 men were herded. ‘Imagine a gloomy sandy spit of land with no vegetation, which was about two kilometres long, and about 400–500 metres wide. It was washed by the Mediterranean Sea on one side and ended up in a swamp on the other. This area was fenced by barbed wire and divided into square corrals. Machine-guns were placed along the perimeter of the camp. A latrine was erected on the beach, which consisted of a long log fixed on piles, under which the tide flowed back and forth. This was how we were welcomed by republican France with its socialist government. As a sign of gratitude for this warm welcome, we decided to call the latrine area “The Daladier Boulevard”…The sand looked dry, but it was only dry on the surface. We had to sleep out on it in groups of five to ten men. Some of the greatcoats and blankets we put underneath, and with other coats and blankets we covered ourselves. It was not a good idea to turn from one side to another, as the wet side would freeze in the cold wind, and this could lead to pneumonia…Wounded and sick men were brought here, too. The mortality was very high, it reached 100 people every day.’3

  The other camps in the south were fairly similar and new ones opened up. In April, Basques, aviators and International Brigaders were transferred to Gurs. Barcare`s was slightly better, because the people sent there had indicated their willingness to be repatriated to Spain. The much smaller Bram, near Carcassone, was one of the very few good ones. It even had a sanatorium of 80 beds. In an attempt to improve the wretched conditions in the large camps, the French authorities tried to move some of their inmates to the initial sorting camps of Arles and Prats de Mollo in the mountains, but they had to stop the practice because too many died literally of cold.4

  The camp of Vernet-les-Bains, situated between Saverdun and Foix, was a punishment camp from the First World War cut off from the outside world. About 50 hectares in area, and divided into three sections all surrounded by barbed-wire fences, it held those republicans the French authorities considered ‘a danger to public safety’, among them the survivors of the 26th Division, the old Durruti column and 150 International Brigaders segregated in a sector known as the ‘leper colony’. Under the Vichy government the camp passed to the Germans, who rebuilt it according to their own concentration camp guidelines. Yet Arthur Koestler wrote that ‘from a point of view of food, installations and hygiene, Vernet was worse than a Nazi concentration camp’.5 In such conditions it was predictable that many thousands of refugees should have died. Suspected male political activists in other camps were transferred to the Templar castle of Collioure and women militants to the camp of Rieucros.

  The French authorities had never prepared for such an influx, but even when the scale of the human disaster was apparent, they were very slow and reluctant to move. This was not entirely surprising since the cost of looking after so many refugees rose to seven million francs a day. The right-wing press constantly attacked Daladier’s government for having allowed in so many left-wingers and Candide complained about feeding them.6 The French authorities encouraged refugees to return to Spain and surrender themselves to the nationalists. Only those with relations in France and who were prepared to sign a form that they would never ask for state aid were allowed out of the camps. The alternatives, apart from returning to Spain, were re-emigration to the New World or any other country that would accept them; or to ‘volunteer’ for the French Foreign Legion or the labour battalions, which were being used on improving fortifications and other projects as the threat of war increased.7

  By the end of 1939 between 140,000 and 180,000 had decided to go back to Spain and take their chances.8 Some 300,000 chose exile in France, in other European countries or in Latin America. The Mexican government of President Lázaro Cárdenas had already welcomed children evacuated from the republican zone. Thousands more of all ages were to follow in different waves, including José Giral and General Miaja. Some went to Chile, then under a popular front government, others to Dominica and then on to Venezuela and Cuba. Argentina allowed in only 2,500, giving priority to Basques. In Europe Belgium took 5,000, but Britain restricted immigration to only a few hundred. The Soviet Union took no more than 3,000 and most of those were senior members of the Spanish Communist Party. Of the 50,000 to 60,000 who stayed in France, most were enrolled in Companies of Foreign Workers, a semi-militarized organization, which put them to work in the mines, war industry or in agriculture.9

  Republican leaders seldom suffered the same rigours and frustrations of the ordinary exiles. Azaña, badly stricken with heart disease, died at Montauban on 4 November 1940. Juan Negrín and Indalecio Prieto, the former friends who had become bitter enemies, continued their struggle in France. Although Negrín had summoned a meeting of the permanent delegation of the Cortes in Paris on 31 March 1939, Prieto organized another on 27 July to dissolve formally the government of the Republic, but Negrín refused to accept the vote.

  The confrontation became increasingly bitter when Prieto and the permanent delegation set up the JARE, the Council for Aid to Spanish Republicans.10 Prieto demanded that Negrín hand over control of the valuables and currency which the republican government held in Europe and North America, among them the famous ‘treasure’ of the yacht Vita. Negrín had allocated this to his own organization, the SERE, the Service of Evacuation for Spanish Republicans. The treasure–jewels, bonds and other valuables worth some $300 million–came from the confiscations ordered against nationalist supporters by the People’s Tribunal of Civil Responsibilities. It was stored on the Vita, which had been Alfonso XIII’s private yacht and was guarded by a detachment of Negrín’s carabineros.

  The Vita sailed from le Havre for Mexico and reached Veracruz a few days earlier than expected. As a result, Dr José Puche, a confidant of Negrín’s, was not at the dockside to take charge of the contents. Enrique Puente, the commander of the carabineros, telephoned Prieto to ask him what he should do and Prieto seized the whole consignment with the approval of President Cárdenas. The treasure was taken to Mexico City under the control of the JARE, and thus Prieto made off with it from under the noses of Negrín and the communists.

  Yet even after this blow, Negrín and his associates never exactly found themselves in a state of poverty. He personally controlled a trust made up of funds confiscated under his government and was able to buy a large country house near London where he lived until 1945, providing lodgings there for up to a dozen republican politicians. Other leaders were not nearly so fortunate. Once France was occupied by German troops in the summer of 1940, General Franco asked Marshal Pétain to extradite 3,617 republican leaders. The Vichy regime agreed to very few, but it did hand over to the Gestapo seven leaders, including the president of the Generalitat, Lluis Companys; Joan Peiró, the former anarchist minister; Francisco Cruz Salido and Julian Zugazagoitia. These four were executed, the other three sentenced to life imprisonment. Largo Caballero was captured by the Gestapo and, after being interrogated in Berlin, was sent to the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen. He was barely alive at the liberation in 1945 and died soon afterwards.

  Foreign communists in France followed Comintern orders and were obliged to remain silent when the Nazi–Soviet pact was signed in August. Those left in Spain tried to set up underground organizations, but the Franquist secret police managed to smash one network after another, usually as the result of extracting names under torture.

  The Second World War was to put Franco’s statecraft to its greatest challenge. When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Franco issued a decree imposing ‘the strictest neutrality on Spanish subjects’. Yet two months late
r, on 31 October, he summoned the Junta de Defensa Nacional to announce that he had decided on an ambitious plan to rearm the forces and increase the army to 150 divisions through conscription. This would mean a target of two million men under arms. He ordered the general staff to prepare to close the Straits of Gibraltar by concentrating artillery on the coast there. He also wanted them to reinforce the army in Morocco in readiness to invade the much larger French zone. The navy was to prepare a blockade of French maritime traffic in the Mediterranean, including their North African ports and to interrupt British shipping, if necessary by blockading the Portuguese coast as well.11

  Spanish coasts and territorial waters were put at the disposal of the German Kriegsmarine, which apart from its base in Cádiz, was to resupply 21 submarines from Vigo. Tankers and supply ships would come and go replenishing the U-boats. Italian ships and submarines, watching the Straits of Gibraltar, routinely used Spanish territorial waters, both on the Mediterranean and Atlantic sides.12

  In April 1940 Mussolini decided to enter the war on the German side. On 12 June, during the Fall of France, Franco changed from neutrality to a state of ‘non-belligerency’. Forty-eight hours later he ordered the occupation of Tangier. That same day, in a meeting with the German ambassador von Stohrer, he passed a message to Hitler expressing his desire to enter the war if the Führer had need of him. In mid July he sent General Vigón to see Hitler and Ribbentrop, then at the Chaâteau de Acoz in Belgium, to communicate his desire to enter the war on the side of the Axis. He wanted to negotiate the conditions. As well as arms, fuel, ammunition and food, he wanted in compensation: ‘Morocco, Oran, the Sahara as far as the twentieth parallel, and the coastal zone of Guinea as far as the Niger delta’.13