The Battle for Spain Read online

  Viñas, á ngel, Guerra, dinero, dictadura. Ayuda fascista y autarquía en la Españade Franco, Barcelona, 1974——, La Alemania nazi y el 18 de Julio, Madrid, 1977——, El oro de Moscú, Barcelona, 1979——, Franco, Hitler y el estallido de la guerra civil, Madrid, 2001

  Viñas, á ngel and Collado Seidel, C., ‘Franco’s request to the Third Reich for Military Assistance’ in Contemporary European History, Cambridge, 2002

  Viñ as, ngel; viñ uela, j.; eguidazu, f.; pulgar, c. F.; and florensa, s., polý tica Commercial exterior en españa (1931–1975), 2 vols, madrid, 1979

  Vinyes, Ricard, Irredentas. Las presas politicas y sus hijos en las cárceles de Franco, Madrid, 2002

  Watson, Peter, Historia intelectual del siglo XX, Barcelona, 2002

  Whitaker, John, We Cannot Escape History, New York, 1943

  Wintringham, Tom, English Captain, London, 1939

  Woolsey, G., Málaga en llamas, Madrid, 1998

  Wulff, Fernando, Antigüedad y franquismo (1936–1975), Málaga, 2003

  Zugazagoitia, Julián, Guerra y vicisitudes de los españoles, Barcelona, 1977

  SOURCES

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  1 ‘Estamos perdidos. Cuando Marx puede más que las hormonas, no hay nada que hacer.’ (Julián Marías, Una vida presente Memorias I, p. 188.) I am most grateful to Javier Marías for sending me his father’s memoirs.

  CHAPTER 1: Their Most Catholic Majesties

  1 For this development in the Spanish army, see Julio Busquets, El Militar de Carrera en España, Barcelona, 1971, pp. 56–61.

  2 78.7 per cent of all properties in Galicia were less than ten hectares. At the other end of the scale, the large landholdings of Andalucia (more than 100 hectares) occupied 52.4 per cent of the land. See Edward Malefakis, Reforma agraria y revolución campesina en la España del siglo XX, Barcelona, 1971.

  3 These statistics are taken from Albert Carreras y Xavier Tafunell; Historia económica de la España contemporánea, Barcelona, 2004; Manuel Tuñónde Lara (ed.) Historia de España, vol. viii., Revolución burguesa oligarquía y constitucionalismo (1843–1923), Barcelona, 1983; Jordi Palafox, Atraso económico y democracia. La Segunda República y la economía española, 1892–1936, Barcelona, 1991; and Merce` Vilanova and Xavier Moreno, Atlas de la evolución del analfabetismo en Españade 1887 a 1981, Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Madrid, 1992.

  4 See Carreras and Tafunell, Historia económica de la España contemporánea, pp. 201–4. Banks took such an active role in the financing of industrial companies that in 1921, the seven largest banks in Spain controlled half the capital of all Spanish limited companies.

  5 Company profits reached four billion pesetas. A large part of this, converted into gold, sat in the reserves of the Banco de España. See Francisco Comín, Historia de la hacienda pública, Il (España 1808–1995), Barcelona, 1996, pp. 81 and 133.

  CHAPTER 2: Royal Exit

  1 Following an armed clash, the conservative government of Antonio Maura decided to send reservists to Morocco. In Barcelona, this produced spontaneous protests and a general strike lasted from 26 July to 1 August 1909, during which barricades were erected and 42 convents and churches were damaged or destroyed. See Joan Connelly Ullman, La Semana Trágica, Barcelona, 1972.

  2 José Luis García Delgado and Santos Juliá (eds), La España del siglo XX, Madrid, 2003, pp. 309–11.

  3 Javier Tusell (ed), Historia de España. 2. La Edad Contemporánea, Madrid, 1998, pp. 252–3.

  4 Figure for 1915, Julio Busquets, El militar de carrera en España, Barcelona, 1967, p. 37.

  5 Santos Julíá (ed.), La España del siglo XX, Madrid, 2003, p. 18.

  6 This company which supplied electricity to Barcelona and the trams was in fact called the Barcelona Traction Light & Power company, but was known by its original name of la Cañadiense.

  7 Between 1921 and 1923 some 152 people were killed in Barcelona. In 1923 the labour lawyer Francesc Layret and the anarcho-syndicalist Salvador Seguí were assassinated, and also the Archbishop of Saragossa, Cardinal Soldevilla.

  8 Juan Díaz del Moral, Historia de las agitaciones campesinas andaluzas, Madrid, 1973, pp. 265 ff.

  9 Between 1917 and 1923 there were 23 major government crises and 30 lesser interruptions.

  10 Using the Patronato del Circuito Nacional de Firmes Especiales, the dictatorship improved 2,500 kilometres of highway. For the hydroelectric projects, it set up the Confederaciónes Sindicales Hidrográficas del Ebro, Duero, Segura, Guadalquivir and Eastern Pyrenees, although only that of the Ebro went ahead under the supervision of the engineer Manuel Lorenzo Pardo, and the direction of the minister concerned, the Count de Guadalhorce. See Jose´ Luis García Delgado and Santos Juliá (eds), La España del siglo XX, pp. 319ff.

  11 The exact results are not certain. See M. Martínez Cuadrado in Elecciónes y partidos politicos en España, 1808–1931, Madrid, 1969, vol. 2, pp. 1,000–1. In Madrid the republicans received three times more votes than the monarchists and four times more in Barcelona.

  12 ‘Una fiesta popular que tomó el aire de una revolución’, Santos Juliá (ed.), LaEspaña del siglo XX, Madrid, 2003, p. 15.

  13 ‘Mucho, antes de su caída, la Monarquíasehabía evaporado en la conciencia de los españoles’, Miguel Maura, Así cayó Alfonso XIII, Barcelona, 1966, p. 329.

  CHAPTER 3: The Second Republic

  1 The provisional government consisted of: Niceto Alcalá Zamora (DLR), president; Miguel Maura (DLR), minister of the interior; Alejandro Lerroux (PRR), minister of state; Diego Martínez Barrio (PRR), minister of communications; Manuel Azaña (AR), minister of war; Santiago Casares Quiroga (FRG), minister of marine; Lluís Nicolau d’Olwer (PCR), minister for economic affairs; álvaro de Albornoz (PRRS), minister of development; Marcelino Domingo (PRRS), minister of education; Fernando de los Ríos (PSOE), minister of justice; Indalecio Prieto (PSOE), minister of finance; Francisco Largo Caballero (PSOE), minister of labour and social security.

  2 Exports fell by nearly half between 1930 and 1933, and industrial production declined by 17 per cent (Carreras and Tafunell, Historia económica de la España contemporánea, pp. 251–2.

  3 For example in Italy, Portugal, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and soon in Germany.

  4 Between 1 April and 30 June 1931, 13 per cent of the total deposits in banks were transferred. The peseta fell 20 per cent in value.

  5 Prieto introduced a tax on share dealings, investigated the flight of capital and arranged the import of cheaper oil from the Soviet Union instead of from US oil companies (Gabriel Jackson, La República española y la guerra civil, Barcelona, 1976, p. 54).

  6 Those who took advantage of the ‘Azaña law’ included 84 generals and 8,738 officers. The plan was for the new army to consist of 7,600 officers and 105,000 men in the Peninsula and 1,700 officers and 42,000 men in North Africa(Michael Alpert, La reforma militar de Azaña, 1931–1933, Madrid, 1982).

  7 The men of this 30,000-strong force, commanded by army officers, were never posted to their home province. Forbidden to mix with the local population, they were regarded as an occupying force of outsiders, which protected only the interests of the landowners and the clergy.

  8 The Church had declared property to the value of 244 million pesetas, but its real wealth was in fact much greater. It possessed a well-organized structure of cultural institutions, media outlets, charities, societies and educational centres. It controlled primary education, part of secondary education and higher education through technical schools and universities. Between 1909 and 1931 under the monarchy, the Church had built 11,128 primary schools. The Republic in its first year built 9,600 (Jackson, La República española…, p. 74).

  9 See Miguel Maura, Así cayó Alfonso XIII, pp. 293ff.

  10 The Socialists obtained 117 seats; the Radicals, 94; the Radical-Socialists, 58; Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, 26; ORGA, 21. In all, the left and centre-left occupied 400 of the 470 seats in the Cortes (Nigel Townson, The Crisis of
Democracy in Spain, Brighton, 2000, p. 57).

  11 The Company of Jesus in Spain was finally dissolved on 24 January 1932. It had some 2,500 members in the country and considerable wealth in property and shares. Only its lawyers, of whom the Catholic politician Gil Robles was one, knew the exact size of its portfolio (Jackson, La República española…, pp. 71–2).

  12 On 3 June 1931, Pope Pius XI published his encyclical Dilectissima nobis, which compared the situation in Spain with the persecution the Church had suffered in Mexico and the Soviet Union (Callahan, La Iglesia católica en España, p. 239).

  13 See Pascual Carrión, La reforma agraria de la Segunda República y la situación actual de la agricultura española, Barcelona, 1973.

  14 Manuel Azaña (AR), prime minister (president of the council of ministers) and minister of war; Jose ´ Giral (AR), minister of marine; Luis Zulueta (indep.), minister of state; Jaume Carner (AC), minister of finance; Santiago Casares Quiroga (ORGA), minister of interior; álvaro de Albornoz (PRRS), minister of justice; Marcelino Domingo (PRRS), agriculture, industry and commerce; Fernando de los Ríos (PSOE), education; Indalecio Prieto (PSOE), public works and Francisco Largo Caballero (PSOE), minister of labour.

  15 In October 1931, the Alfonsine monarchists, headed by Antonio Goicoechea, set up Acción Nacional (which later became Acción Popular). Carlist monarchists, who supported their own pretender, Alfonso Carlos, belonged to their own organization, the Traditionalist Communión. Goicoechea later set up Renovación Española with other monarchists, such as Ramiro de Maeztu, Pedro Sáinz Rodríguez and José María Pemán. Gil Robles, who later split from Acción Nacional in March 1933, formed the major parliamentary Catholic coalition of the right, known as the CEDA, Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas.

  16 The first manifestations of fascism in Spain existed in two reviews: La Gaceta literaria, edited by Ernesto Giménez Caballero, and La conquista del Estado, directed by Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, and published by a group which joined itself with the very Catholic and conservative Juntas Castellanas de Acción Hispánica, founded by Onésimo Redondo. This union made up las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (JONS). There was also a strange fascist party, although Catholic and monarchist, the Partido Nacionalista Español, founded by Dr Jose´ María Albiñana, which almost immediately merged with the Bloque Nacional of Calvo Sotelo. Jose´ Antonio Primo de Rivera, Rafael Sánchez Mazas and Julio Ruiz de Alda started the Movimiento Español Sindicalista which in October 1933 would be refounded with the name: Falange Española.

  17 Azaña appointed General Miguel Cabanellas as head of the Civil Guard in Sanjurjo’s place.

  18 Emilio Esteban Infantes, General Sanjurjo, Barcelona, 1957, p. 235.

  19 The law of agrarian reform applied only to Salamanca, Extremadura, La Mancha and Andalucia, where estates of more than 250 hectares accounted for more than half of all land. The slow process, opposed at every turn by landowners, exasperated the landless peasants. By the end of 1934 no more than 117,000 hectares had been expropriated and only 12,000 families out of the 200,000 planned for in the programme had been resettled (Carrión, La reforma agraria…p. 129).

  20 Manuel Azaña, Discursos políticos, Barcelona, 2004, pp. 179–219.

  21 Jerome R. Mintz, Los anarquistas de Casas Viejas, Diputación Provincial, Cádiz, 1994.

  22 The CEDA obtained 24.4 per cent of the votes and the Partido Republicano Radical 22 per cent. In total, the right won 204 seats and the centre 170. The left won only 93, largely because of the weighting given in the electoral law to favour coalitions (Julio Gil Pecharromán, Historia de la Segunda República Española (1931–1936), Madrid, 2002, p. 179).

  23 El Socialista, 3 January 1934, quoted Payne, The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union and Communism, London, 2004, p. 46.

  24 Payne, ibid.

  25 In 1933, both Salazar in Portugal and Dollfuss in Austria had introduced corporatist regimes, strongly influenced by Catholicism, and had suppressed socialist organizations. It was not surprising, therefore, that the PSOE should suspect Gil Robles, who had assumed some of the fascist imagery then fashionable, of similar intentions. But Largo Caballero completely rejected the warnings of moderates within his own party. Gil Robles, although initially impressed by Hitler and National Socialism in Germany, rapidly turned against it.

  26 A. Saborit, Julián Besteiro, Buenos Aires 1967, pp. 238–40.

  27 Azaña, Obras completas, vol. iv, Mexico, 1967, p. 652.

  28 Marías, Una vida presente, p. 175.

  29 ‘La aparación del juvenilismo, y por tanto de la violencia, en la política española.’ ibid. p. 148.

  30 La Federación Nacional de Trabajadores de la Tierra (FNTT).

  31 Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, London, 1977, p. 133.

  32 Santos Juliá, ‘Fracaso de una insurrección y derrota de una huelga: los hechos de octubre en Madrid’ in Estudios de historia social, 1984, p. 40.

  33 Franco wrote in 1956: ‘La revolución de Asturias fue el primer paso para la implantación del comunismo en nuestra nación…La revolución había sido concienzudamente preparada por los agentes de Moscú’ (Jesús Palacios, La España totalitaria, Barcelona, 1999, p. 29).

  34 Jackson, La República española y la guerra civil, Barcelona, 1976, p. 141.

  35 The Spanish Foreign Legion (Tercio de Estranjeros) contained fewer foreigners than its French counterpart. Its basic unit was the bandera of several hundred men with their own light artillery. Its counterpart for Moroccan colonial troops serving as regulares was the tabor, which had only 250 men.

  36 Quoted Bartolomé Bennassar, La guerre d’Espagne et ses lendemains, p. 51.

  37 General Goded was made head of the air force and General Mola was given command of the army in Morocco.

  38 Two Dutch businessmen, Strauss and Perl (whose two names created the new word ‘estra-perlo’) patented a game of roulette which they wanted to introduce to Spain. Since games of chance had been prohibited since the dictatorship of Primo Rivera, they tried to obtain authorization through bribery. The affair involved corrupt members of the Radical Party such as Sigfrido Blasco Ibáñez (son of the writer) and also Lerroux’s adopted son Aurelio.

  39 This scandal involved payments by the entrepreneur Antonio Tayá who obtained a government contract which was not respected.

  chapter 4: The Popular Front

  1 Quoted Bennassar p. 51.

  2 José María Gil Robles, No fue posible la paz, Barcelona, 1968, p. 404. In Catalonia the alliance was represented by the Front Català d’Ordre which included the Lliga, Acció Popular de Catalunya, Renovación Española, Carlists, and Radicals.

  3 ‘Armamento de la canalla, incendio de bancos y casas particulares, reparto de bienes y tierras, saqueos en forma, reparto de vuestras mujeres’ (Paul Preston, La destrucción de la democracia en España, Madrid, 1978, p. 279).

  4 William J. Callahan, La Iglesia católica en España(1875–2002), Barcelona, 2002, pp. 262ff.

  5 Ibid., pp. 263–4.

  6 The Frente Popular included Izquierda Republicana, Unión Republicana, Partido Socialista Obrero Español, Juventudes Socialistas, Partido Comunista de España, Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, the Partido Sindicalista and the Unión General de Trabajadores. In Catalonia, the Esquerra Republicana, Acció Catalana Republicana, Partit Nacionalista Republicà Català, Unió Socialista de Catalunya, Unió de Rabassaires and the small communist groups made up the Front d’Esquerres. The PNV also applied, despite pressure from the Vatican to join the Bloque Nacional. In Galicia the Partido Galeguista joined the Popular Front without suffering a split with its right wing.

  7 The figures vary bewilderingly. The left in Spain has always convinced itself that there were 30,000, but Stanley Payne has calculated that it was closer to 15,000. See La primera democracia española, p. 305, n. 21.

  8 Diego Martínez Barrio, Páginas para la historia del Frente Popular, Madrid, 1937, p. 12.

  9 See Payne, The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet
Union and Communism, New Haven, 2004, pp. 67–8.

  10 Ibid., p. 81.

  11 Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern, New York, 1997, p. 132.

  12 ‘Decisión sobre la cuestión española’, RTsKhIDNI 495/18/ quoted in Daniel Kowalsky, La Unión Soviética y la guerra civil española, Barcelona, 2004, p. 23.

  13 Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, 23 July 1936, RGASPI 495/18/1101, pp. 21–2.

  14 Quoted Radosh and Habeck, Españatraicionada p. 8.

  15 14 October 1936, RGASPI 495/74/199, p. 63.

  16 Estimates of union membership figures vary considerably. Some historians put the UGT at 1.5 million and the CNT at 1.8 million, but others attribute much lower numbers to CNT and much higher to the UGT, for example Ramo ´ña, vol. vii, Madrid, 1973, p. 29.

  17 The results were as follows based on a total number of voters of 9,864,783, which represented 72 per cent of the electoral register:

  Popular Front: 4,654,116

  Nacionalistas vascos: 125,714

  Centre: 400,901

  Right: 4,503,524

  Of the more important parties, the PSOE won 99 seats; Izquierda Republicana (an amalgam of Acción Republicana, Partido Republicano Galeguista and the radical-socialists of Marcelino Domingo) 87 seats; Unión Republicana of Martínez Barrio (an offshoot from Lerroux’s Radical Party) 38; the Spanish Communist Party, 17; and Esquerra Republicana of Catalonia, 21. On the right, the CEDA kept 88 seats, the monarchists of the Bloque Nacional won 12; the Carlist Traditionalists, 10; the Catalan Lliga, 12; and the Radical Party, 5. In the middle, the Centrist Party of Portela Valladares won 16 seats and the Basque Nationalist Party, 10 (Javier Tusell, Las elecciónes del Frente Popular, Madrid, 1972, ii, pp. 190 and 243).

  18 Miguel González, ‘La conjura del ‘36 contada por Franco’, El País, Madrid, 9 September 2001.

  19 Manuel Azaña, Diarios completos, Barcelona, 2000, p. 933.

  20 Teodoro Rodríguez, quoted in Callahan, op. cit., p. 259.