The Spanish War of 1936-1939
What is quite possibly the most famous painting of the 20th century hangs in Madrid’s Reina Sofia Museum, across the street from the Prado. In addition to its aesthetic qualities, Picasso’s masterpiece “Guernica” has a remarkable history behind it. In January 1937, the Republic invited the artist to paint a mural for the Spanish Pavillion at the Paris World’s Fair in June. Picasso began doing preliminary drawings, but the project had not really come into focus.
Then, on April 26, a swarm of German planes bombed and strafed a defenceless Basque village. Guernica was nearly levelled and hundreds of civilians were killed during a three-hour rain of explosives and incendiary bombs. This was not just any village, but the traditional home of Basque liberty which was guaranteed by Spanish kings in an oath sworn beneath a famous oak tree. On hearing the news, Picasso decided to make this brutal attack the subject of his painting.
More than fifty prepatory studies on display at the Reina Sofia preview the kind of powerful images - a mother gripping her dead child, a screaming horse, a soldier’s fingers clutching a broken sword - that the artist would employ in “Guernica.” Many were motifs from earlier works such as the “Minotauromachy.” The huge painting itself does not convey its message by using blood and gore, or even the passionate colours of Goyas “Third of May.” It is surprisingly cool in tone, its baffling images rendered in black, white, shades of gray, and a faint, rinsed-out blue. Even so the painting’s, distorted, agonized human and animal figures perfectly transmit the brute force and sheer terror unleashed at Guernica. Whereas Goya’s masterpiece did not quite escape from the “history genre” of painting, Picasso soared above it, using one small incident in a much larger conflict to give the world something truly universal: a profound protest against war and violence.
For two generations of Spaniards “Guernica” was much more than a painting, and smuggled prints were snapped up and hung in quiet, secret defiance. Unwanted in Francoist Spain, Picasso’s masterpiece lived an exile’s life for 44 years, residing most of the time at New York’s Museum of Modern Art until “coming home” in 1981 (it had never actually resided in Spain). The work became a symbol of all the shattered dreams and mindless brutality of the Spanish Civil War.
Calvo Sotelo’s murder did not cause the military revolt of 1936 - there had been plotting for months - but it may have been the last straw for one reluctant rebel who would rise to supreme power in Spain. Serious planning had started soon after the February elections and the decision to transfer grumblers such as Franco to distant posts. The conspiracy’s nominal head was old General Sanjurjo, exiled in Portugal, but the real leaders early on were generals Goded and Mola. Franco straddled the fence, doubting the chances for success and fearing a rupture within the army.
In March, several high-ranking officers met at the home of a Madrid financier. They agreed to support a golpe (military rising) if Largo was named prime minister, if the civil guard was disbanded, or if anarchy overwhelmed the country. By a stroke of luck or foolishness, Mola was deemed trustworthy by the government and transferred from Morocco to Pamplona, heart of Carlist country where a pretender to the throne was waiting in the wings. General Emilio Mola was a stone-faced puritanical type who wore spectacles and looked like a stern schoolmaster. Soon he took over planning in earnest.
By late spring everyone, including the government, knew something was up. Calvo Sotelo and José Antonio were not made privy to details, but pledged their support. Mola’s plan called for a classic rising of army garrisons around Spain to form a national government under military command. But the sympathies of regional commanders were by no means clear, and Mola was eager for the highly respected Franco to commit to the cause. Continuing to hesitate, he was dubbed “Miss Canary Islands 1936” by some cynics.
In an act that may redeem Franco in history, the reticent general wrote to the prime minister in June and warned - in carefully vague terms - of the dangers of anarchy and its effect on “the discipline of the army.” The letter fell somewhere between an ultimatum and a final attempt at conciliation. Ill at the time, the prime minister did not respond, and sometime shortly after Franco joined the plot. Another recent convert was a flamboyant loudmouth named Queipo de Llano, a former Republican who switched sides after the sacking of President Alcalá (Queipo’s son was married to Alcalá’s daughter).
By July lit was only a question of fixing a date. Plans calling for the revolt to start during San Fermines (the running of the bulls) at Pamplona were scrapped when word leaked out. Finally, Mola sent out telegrams reading “On the 15th last, at 4 a.m., Helen gave birth to a beautiful child.” This meant that the revolt would start in Morocco on July 18 at five a.m., followed by garrisons throughout Spain. Plotters hoped that their pronunciamiento would come off, as so many others, quickly and with relatively little bloodshed. But this time it would be different.
Due to a last minute change, the Melilla garrison rose up a day early, and a certain colonel Segui arrested and shot the loyal commander, General Romerales, and any others who resisted. Martial law was immediately declared. The insurgents had lists of all members of suspect groups - trade unions, left-wing parties, masonic lodges - and quickly made arrests and some executions. It was a pattern soon to follow throughout Spain.
After hearing of events in Morocco, Franco proclaimed the reasons for the coup in his Manifesto of Las Palmas, which ended on an incredible note by appealing to “Fraternity, Liberty, and Equality.” In slightly different order, these were the ideals of the French Revolution, everything Franco professed to despise. On July 11, the Dragon Rapide, an aircraft chartered by Mallorcan tycoon Juan March, had departed from Croydon Airport near London. It followed a circuitous and secret route destined for the Canary Islands and the eagerly waiting Franco. On the 19th he boarded the chartered aircraft bound for Tetuan and his expectant legionnaires, a trip that would culminate in supreme power over Spain for four decades.
Who was this remarkable creature? Forty-three at the time, Franco had a distinguished army career behind him, but only a psychic would have predicted his breathtaking rise. Francisco Franco Bahamonde was born in 1892 at the naval base of El Ferrol in rainy Galicia, whose residents are known for their thriftiness and unnerving patience. Franco came from a family of navy men (his philandering father was a paymaster) and yearned to enroll in the naval cadet school. And yet, in one more reverberation from the disaster of 1898, enrollment was cut back and Francisco was forced to enlist instead in the infantry academy at Toledo. He was to be a soldier instead of a sailor, and Franco always blamed politicians who had “lost the war” for his fate.
Francisco was just 15 years old when he entered the academy, and his small stature and high-pitched voice made him the butt of pranks. His academic performance was mediocre (ranking 251st out of 312 graduates), hardly indicative of a career that would make him the youngest general in Europe since Napoleon Bonaparte. After graduation he volunteered for Moroccan service and rose rapidly, winning 13 medals and other honours for leadership, discipline, and bravery. The Moroccans claimed he had baraka, a phenomenal luck, and entering a battle on his white charger he incarnated the ideal of a dashing commander. First with the regular army and later with the Legion, he became (in succession) the youngest captain, major, colonel, and general - the last at 33.
Franco was army to the marrow. Unlike most officers he did not smoke, drink, or hang out in seedy Moroccan brothels, preferring to spend evenings pouring over maps or supply lists. Shy around women, he apparently remained aloof from worldy temptation prior to his marriage to Carmen Polo in 1923. But though self-righteous by nature, he was not especially religious until later, when the influence of his pious wife began to seep in. His values were military ones: patriotism; belief in the unity of Spain; hostility to politicians; and exaggerated concepts of honour, integrity, order, and discipline. Above all discipline.
Franco was known as the scourge of slackers, especially Catalans. One time while he was inspecting the troops, a legionnaire unhappy with the quality of the food threw the contents of his mess kit into Franco’s face. He betrayed no emotion, calmly wiped his face and continued the review. After dismissing the men, he had the offending soldier arrested and shot. Then he gave orders that the food be improved.
Except for the Second World War, the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) is the most written about military conflict in history. For many observers it was the dress rehearsal for the larger European conflict to come (it ended just five months before the invasion of Poland). It was “the good fight,” the battle to stop fascism, a death struggle between the forces of light and darkness. Wrote George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia: “The question is very simple. Shall the common man be pushed back in the mud, or shall he not? That was the real issue of the Spanish war.."
Nevertheless, though the war did have its universal qualities, it was essentially a Spanish struggle, springing from the army’s peculiar political role since the last century. When news of the rising first came, many people shrugged it off as just another café conspiracy, especially after hearing that Sanjurjo was involved. Madrid radio announced “No one, absolutely no one on the Spanish mainland, has taken part in this absurd plot.”
After Spaniards called in foreign aid (which they grew to detest), the struggle took on its much discussed European implications. But Franco was not the “fascist” of enemy propaganda, nor was he doing battle with “reds” (at least in the beginning) as his supporters claimed. It was a Spanish affair, a rebellion that started no better or worse than scores of others since 1820, but which grew into something incredibly ugly and frightful. It was almost as if the old anarchist dream of one final outburst of violence “to end all violence” had finally arrived - but in a way no anarchist imagined.
News of the impending war was greeted with wild enthusiasm by extemists on both sides, who viewed it as a battle between good and evil. Yet it was in fact a complex struggle between classes (peasants vs. landlords, workers vs. factory owners, anti-clericals vs. the clergy), between ideologies (at least a dozen political parties and two monarchist factions as well as fascists and communists), and between regions (roughly western vs. eastern Spain, a division that dates back to the days of Celts and Iberians). And yet for all its myriad aspects, the war itself transformed complex issues and tensions into one simple choice - to attack the Republic or defend it.
A man’s loyalty sometimes depended on where he happened to be at the time of the rising. The rebels quickly captured Spanish Morocco, the Canaries, Galicia, Navarra, and most of Old Castilla and Aragon. In Sevilla, Queipo de Llano bluffed the entire city into surrender with just 150 men. First he rounded up all the loyal officers and shouted at the top of his lungs “You are all my prisoners!” (They meekly complied.) Next he captured the radio station and bombarded the city with news that a huge army from Africa was advancing, and that anyone resisting would be “shot like dogs.” His handful of men darkened their faces with walnut juice (to look more like the dreaded Moors), jumped into lorries, and drove round the city repeatedly to create the impression of overwhelming strength. The ruse worked, and Sevilla fell with hardly a shot fired.
Wherever the populace and security forces supported the government, or where the military was divided or hesitant, the rising failed. In Madrid rebel General Fanjul dallied too long, and a crowd stormed the Montana Barracks and overwhelmed the insurgents, killing many. (A group of officers committed collective suicide.) In Barcelona, armed workers and loyal guardias and asaltos took to the streets and defeated the rising even before its leader, General Goded, had arrived from Mallorca. Goded was soon shot, and Sanjurjo died in Portugal when his plane crashed on takeoff (he had insisted on bringing two heavy trunks loaded with dress uniforms). That left Franco, Mola, and Queipo in charge, each acting as a kind of independent warlord.
The revolt had not failed, but it had not succeeded either, which meant only one thing: civil war. A week after the rising, the rebels’ situation looked hopeless; they had failed in five of Spain’s six largest cities and held less than a third of the mainland. The Republic also controlled about 75 per cent of Spain’s industry and commerce. Contrary to myth, at least half of the army and security forces remained loyal to the Republic. This included most of the generals (many recently appointed) and half the lower officers. Both Mola’s and Queipo’s forces were weak, so Franco’s Army of Africa seemed to be the decisive factor. But it was stuck in Morocco; most of the navy and air force had remained loyal, dashing rebel plans for transporting troops to Spain, something essential to any hope of success.
From the outset the Republic enjoyed a wave of popular support. In Madrid, a delegation of drivers offered 3,000 taxis “to fight fascism,” and there were other similar gestures. But Azaña’s government seemed to slip into paralysis by refusing to hand out arms to the workers. Weak leadership in Madrid in these early days meant that soon there were not just two Spains but two hundred, each acting in a vacuum. Local power fell to the strongest political party or union; in Catalonia the mantle was shared between the Generalitat and the CNT. The Basque provinces were bitterly divided over the rising, but Vizcaya and Guipuzcoa went with the Republic upon being promised an autonomy statute. From that point the Basques governed as an almost independent state.
The first days and weeks after July 18 unleashed a fury of popular violence seldom seen or imagined before this century Wild stories circulated among the panic-stricken middle class and foreign community, like the one about reds crushing naked nuns with steamrollers in the streets of Malaga. But each case of hyperbole was matched with cold fact. Barcelona’s bourgeoisie virtually vanished as a class overnight, many killed and the rest suddenly converted into workers. To wear a coat and tie or carry a briefcase was to invite physical attack. In the Andalusian town of Ronda, about 500 members of the middle class were herded to the Tajo gorge and hurled hundreds of metres to their deaths. (Hemingway adapted the scene for his novel For Whom The Bell Tolls.)
The clergy stood out as the most-hated symbol for the “uncontrollables” of the so-called Red Terror. About 7,000 priests, monks, and nuns (as well as 12 bishops) perished in the bloodbath. In one case, rosary beads were forced into a monk’s ears until the drums were perforated; another monk was thrown into a ring of fighting bulls and goared into a bloody pulp. In Barcelona, a crowd set fire to the Carmelite church and machine-gunned priests as they ran out. Hundreds of churches were destroyed during the summer outburst, but much valuable petrol was wasted trying to burn Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, made of stone and mortar.
Estimates of political murders behind Republican lines vary widely, from 20,000 to over 50,000, with most coming during the first three months. Body counts on the Nationalist side - as the insurgents came to be called - were even higher, and the executions lasted far longer. Having little popular support in most areas, the desperate rebels knew they must terrorize residents into submission. This was especially true in regions that had voted for the Popular Front such as Andalucla. From Sevilla Queipo conducted wicked nightly radio broadcasts, threatening the terrified populace with brutal murder and rape by Franco’s Moroccan soldiers.
Sure candidates for Nationalist death-lists were ioyal officers, labour union or party leaders, Popular Front deputies, and anyone else suspected of belonging to “anti-Spain.” Sometimes there were summary trials lasting a few minutes; others were executed without pretense. Among them was Spain’s literary genius Garcia Lorca, shot gangland-style near Granada, a town in precarious rebel control. (In a seldom remembered counter-crime, Loyalists - as supporters of the Second Republic were known - killed right-wing intellectual Ramiro de Maetzu, a member of the Generation of ‘98.)
As in most civil wars, family loyalties came second to political ones as brother fought brother and father battled son. Even Franco had his own cousin shot when he arrived at Tetuan.
At least 50,000 died at the hands of Nationalist death-squads during the first six months, perhaps twice that number before the war ended. Most were shot or hanged, although there were more imaginative techniques: some prisoners were beaten to death with crucifixes (a tradition from the Carlist wars) or buried alive with mocking final eulogies about agrarian reform. (“Here is your piece of ground, you son of a whore!”) Captured Loyalist militiamen were often shot en masse, with little exchange of prisoners. When approached with the idea a startled General Mola replied, “How can you expect us to exchange a Spanish gentleman for a red dog?”
The revolt’s success hinged almost entirely on Franco’s getting his crack troops - about 30,000 strong, chiefly legionnaires and Moroccan mercenaries - across the strait and into Spain. He decided to seek foreign help, and by July 25 his agents were in Rome negotiating with Mussolini for planes. Things were speeded along by the presence in Italy of Juan March, who arranged credit, and a call from a foreign resident of note, Alfonso XIII. About the same time, Hitler agreed to send aircraft: twenty JU-52 transport planes and six Heinkel-51 fighters to support them.
In the first major airlift of troops in history thousands of men crossed over to Algeciras (in the shadow of Gibraltar) on several hundred flights during August and September. (Said Hitler: “Franco ought to erect a monument to the glory of the Junkers-52.”) More men were ferried across later, after two German battleships in Spanish waters prompted the Loyalist navy to retire to port. Franco himself flew to Sevilla on August 6 to take charge of the Nationalist campaign.
This was not to be a fumbled coup d’etat, after all, and Loyalists immediately had to think about creating a fighting force to meet the threat. The Republic still had thousands of loyal officers, but they were regarded with suspicion by some and not used effectively. Instead, militia units began forming under control of the anarchist or socialist parties and often acted independent of the war ministry. One of the first Republican counterattacks involved militia from Barcelona (led by the famous terrorist Durruti) which tried to retake Zaragoza without any artillery or battle plan. The quality of the militias started to improve after Largo Caballero was named prime minister in September to rally worker support. Even the CNT abandoned anarchist principles of non-involvement and joined the coalition.
Generally speaking, it was a “pauper’s war” for both sides, with a shocking lack of modern weapons and equipment. When the war started the army did not have a single tank or modern airplane. Even the Legion had to use old machine-guns with defective firing pins. On the other hand, the war was the first to make effective use of inventions like the radio and telephone and, with foreign involvement, such military innovations as rapid tank deployment and aerial bombing of cities.
Lacking the proper means to fight a war, both sides immediately turned to other nations, whose response did much to decide the final outcome. French president Blum at first seemed enthusiastic about the Republic’s appeals, but a trip to London made him aware of Britains cool attitude. Foreign secretary Anthony Eden warned that if French involvement south of the Pyrenees (in what he called “the war of the Spanish obsession”) led to conflict with Germany, Britain would step aside.
By July 31, Britain introduced a unilateral ban on arms shipments, and Blum followed suit and closed the French border in August. Thus the Republic was denied the internationally accepted right of a government to purchase arms to defend itself from rebellion. But then, this was the age of non-intervention and appeasement. Two years later, the infamous Munich Pact would extinguish the Republic’s last faint hope of receiving help from the western democracies.
Nevertheless, France unofficially provided more aid than is generally recognized. About 25,000 of its citizens fought in Spain, and the Nationalists brought down more than a hundred French aircraft. Far more important was military assistance from the Soviet Union, especially critical during the first few months. This included planes, tanks, and artillery as well as hundreds of trained advisers. These “commissars” would later help whip the chaotic militias into a real army.
In one of the war’s most-debated incidents, Largo and his finance minister, Juan Negrin, decided to move most of Spain’s huge gold supply (the world’s fourth largest) to Russia. Their reasons were twofold: fear that it might fall into rebel hands and the need to pay for arms purchases. In October 7,800 boxes of gold bars, valued at about half-a-billion U.S. dollars, were loaded onto four Soviet steamers bound for Odessa. There is a story that when the shipment arrived, Stalin held a banquet and announced: “The Spanish will never see their gold again, just as one cannot see one’s own ears.” (When Spain tried to reclaim the gold in 1956, the Russians said there was none left, and claimed an additional $50 million owed by the Republic.) Although Russian aid was substantial, it already began to dry up by mid-1937. More important in tipping the scale for the Nationalists was aid from Germany and Italy. Like the Soviet Union, they had accepted a nonintervention pact, but all blatantly ignored it, offering only feeble excuses. Mussolini daimed that the 70,000 Italian troops in Spain were “volunteers” without government sanction and tried to deny that Mallorca was virtually an Italian base throughout the war. (Palma’s main street was renamed Via Roma.)
The Germans were eager to test new equipment and strategy in the field. Spain also provided “a convenient sideshow” (as Hitler put it) to distract Britain and France from Germany’s skullduggery in central Europe. Although their numbers were far fewer (about 5,000 maximum) than the Italians, Germans provided technical advisers and the best air unit in Spain, the renowned Condor Legion. Consisting of about one hundred planes and pilots and commanded by a General Von Sperrle, the legion helped transform Salamanca into “a German military camp,” according to the American ambassador at the time.
Speaking of the Americans, president Roosevelt and his government, despite some sympathies for the Republic, toed the non-intervention line. The policy was nearly reversed in 1938, but a last-ditch effort by Joseph Kennedy, American ambassador at the Court of St. James (and father of the famous Kennedy brothers), convinced Roosevelt to back down. There were just too many Catholic voters in America.
By August the Nationalists held most of south-western Andalucla, as well as Córdoba and Granada, and the bulk of north-western Spain, except for the Asturian and Basque coasts. Franco decided to push north through Extremadura and link up with Mola’s army, then attack Madrid to end the war quickly. In the first such raids in history, German bombers were already softening up the capital. Staying close to the Portuguese frontier, the African Army sliced through resistance and soon reached the border town of Badajoz in Extremadura.
Here transpired one of the war’s most disgusting spectacles, which shocked world opinion and gained much sympathy for the Republic. Legionnaires, singing “I am the fiancé of death,” and Moroccan regulares entered the town, and vicious hand-to-hand fighting soon degenerated into a bloodbath. Among the dead were two defenders slain on the steps of the cathedral’s high altar and about 2,000 Republicans rounded up and shot in the bullring. As was Moroccan custom, corpses were castrated and strewn throughout Badajoz that night.
The next objective was Madrid, but first another drama waited to be played out in Toledo. There the revolt had fizzled, and about 1,300 conspirators and 700 non-combatants retreated to the old Alczar fortress under the command of a Colonel Moscardó. The Loyalists tried every means to dislodge them, including tunneling under and dynamiting one tower, but the defenders held out like true Iberians.
One day early on, someone phoned Moscardó and announced that he had ten minutes to surrender or his son would be shot. When the captive son came on the line, the colonel (much like Guzman El Bueno centuries earlier) responded: “My son, commend your soul to God, shout Viva España! and die like a hero.” The son was shot, but not until a month later, and the incident was endlessly recalled by Nationalist supporters for the next forty years.
Franco saw the Alcázar’s propaganda value and decided to divert his attack from Madrid to relieve the defenders from the two-month siege. The Nationalist army under General Varela reached Toledo on September 27, captured the historic town, and began a reign of bloody reprisals. Realizing their fate, a group of 40 anarchists got roaring drunk on anisette and set fire to the building they were holding. All perished in the flames.
The war saw many such incidents. A lesser-known last stand took place near Jaen at Santa Maria de Ia Cabeza, where about 350 insurgents and their families held out for nine months before being overwhelmed. During the siege, supplies - including delicate medical instruments and bottles of wine - were air-dropped by a most ingenious form of parachute: live turkeys, which landed gently after a largely vertical flight.
There was also the ultimate statement made during the war’s first month at Gijon, where a group of 180 desperate rebels faced certain defeat. Finally, a message was sent to a Nationalist ship lying offshore: “Defense is impossible. The barracks are burning and the enemy are starting to enter. Fire on us!” The request was honoured and all were killed.
The crucial delay caused by the siege of Toledo allowed madrileños time to shore up defenses, a task made more difficult by the widespread refusal to dig trenches, a tactic viewed as cowardly. Four Nationalist columns were marching on the city; and Mola coined a phrase now used in every language by stating that a “fifth column” (of Nationalist supporters) was already in Madrid. He remembered that almost half the residents had voted for the National Front a few months before. The city was surrounded, but Franco left a wide corridor open to the southeast, believing (as Madariaga wrote) in the Spanish saying that “a fleeing enemy should have a bridge of silver.” Indeed, Largo and his government soon moved to Valencia, and defense planning fell to General Miaja and a Colonel Rojo, considered the Republic’s finest military mind.
The ten-day battle of Madrid became the civil war’s central epic, as the world’s attention suddenly riveted on Spain. Women and children threw up barricades and shouted No pasarán! (They shall not pass!) and “Madrid will be the tomb of fascism!” La Pasionaria toured the streets with a loudspeaker, urging wives to prepare boiling oil for the invaders. And just as the attack began, another heroic element was added with the dramatic arrival of the first men of the famed International Brigades.
Although the initial group of 1,900 were mostly French and German, delirious crowds greeted them with cries of” Viva Rusia!” This was because - despite the presence of many idealists and adventurers - the International Brigades were conceived, organized, and manned by communists. The whole concept sprang from a Comintern meeting a few days after July 18; even Largo viewed the brigades as a potential tool of Stalin.
Recruiting of these “armed tourists” remained in communist hands, and no one of questionable political background was supposed to be admitted. Of the 30,000 or so who came to Spain, most were from working-class backgrounds and were either party members or sympathizers.
The British Batallion contained mostly unemployed industrial workers plus 174 Welsh miners experienced at fighting police. The American Abraham Lincoln Batallion, on the other hand, consisted mainly of students and sailors and was not as politically motivated as others. Many were bitterly disillusioned upon realizing they were pawns in a planned communist takeover. Casualties were also extremely high among the brigades, as much as half in some units.
Nevertheless, the brigades’ presence at the battle of Madrid was not only inspirational, but decisive in holding back the assault. Fighting took place west of the city in the Casa del Campo and university campus (the pride of Alfonso XIII). Here the Nationalists attacked in force, but Madrid’s defenders had captured a battle plan the day before and were ready. After fierce fighting the lines were drawn and would not move more than 100 metres in either direction for more than two years. One final note on the battle of Madrid: for some reason the attackers never thought of cutting off the city’s water supply, which would have ended the siege in short order.
After the “victory” of November 1936, Madrid took on the appearance of a communist city, with red flags and pictures of Lenin everywhere. Cinemas played films about the Russian Revolution instead of more popular MGM musicals. Workers with clenched fists roared around in lorries shouting “No pasarán!” and La Pasionaria’s “Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.” Communist party membership in Spain rose dramatically in the weeks after the battle to a million by mid-1937. It seemed as if Franco’s wild rhetoric about fighting “the reds” had become self-fulfilling.
The civil war unleashed a spontaneous yet profound social revolution in much of Spain during the second half of 1936. Seventy per cent of Catalan factories were seized outright by the unions, the CNT controlled all public services, and in the country farms were collectivized or parcelled out and property records destroyed. Debts and even money were abolished with the stroke of a pen, and luxury hotels and private residences were converted into schools or hospitals.
Writer George Orwell arrived in December to join a Trotskyist militia unit (not the International Brigades) and later described Barcelona: “Even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted [anarchist] red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal..."
Barcelona became much more proletarian than Madrid and displayed a passion for equality. Everyone said tu (you) rather than the more formal usted and Salud replaced Adios in this classless, godless world. Women in particular experienced tremendous liberation under anarchist “rule” by taking jobs and responsibilities previously denied them. Righteous reformers opened “anti-brothels” where repentant prostitutes could learn to cook and sew. Bars were closed, and coffee and alcohol outlawed. There were no private cars or well-dressed people any more; even judges and doctors wore blue overalls, and a Russian diplomat was denounced for wearing a hat. The obsession with rejecting the “class tyrrany” of clothing reached comic extremes with the Mangada Column of militia, organized by the eccentric vegetarian and nudist, Colonel Mangada. Lorries filled with his half-naked male and female followers could be seen roaring aimlessly around Barcelona in troop transport vehicles as bewildered spectators gaped.
The policy of the well-disciplined communists was to create a strong central government and army and to concentrate on winning the war. However, the anarchists of Barcelona and Valencia had other ideas - to launch the long-awaited social revolution that would smash the old order. To extremists, the Republic was “not worth a single drop of a worker’s blood.” Many anarchists joined Catalan Nationalists in calling for a complete break with Madrid and washing their hands of Spain once and for all. After Luis Companys declared himself “president of Catalonia,” a power struggle was sure to come.
The splintering of the Republic must have bemused General Franco, who had successfully consolidated his own power and that of the Nationalists at Salamanca in October. With the sullen consent of Mola and Queipo, the insurgent officers agreed to a single command under Franco, the generalisimo (highest of all generals). Soon after, he also claimed to be head of state and began using the title caudillo (an awkward translation of duce or führer). Much like Julius Casear two millennia before, Franco was making himself dictator. Some protested, but when a colonel Yagüe, “the hyena of Asturias” and one of Franco’s strongest supporters, threatened to launch a coup within a coup, the muttering abruptly ceased. In August, Franco had stated that Spain would remain a republic, but one based on law and order, and the bombastic Queipo ended his broadcasts on a confusing note with “Viva Ia república” Suddenly such references vanished, and Nationalist posters read “One state, one country, one chief.”
The insurgents won the war because they united to create a more efficient, better-trained and equipped military force than the Republicans. From their new headquarters at Burgos, Nationalist generals began to build a huge army around a nucleus of veterans. Middle-class youths became temporary second lieutenants, but casualty rates were so high that a popular saying soon went: “temporary second lieutenant, permanent corpse.” The rank-and-file came from the tradition-bound peasantry of northern and central Spain, pious and city-hating.
At some point the Nationalists began to view their struggle as a holy crusade like the ones that had expelled the Moors and baptized millions of native Americans. Said one new crusader: “We fight for love and honour, for the paintings of Velazquez, the plays of Lope de Vega, for Don Quijote and the Escorial.” The previously indifferent Franco began attending Mass regularly, and the clergy thundered from their pulpits about a “war of extermination.”
After a winter lull, fighting resumed in the spring of 1937. Black-shirted Italian troops spearheaded the ignominious defeat of Malaga, which was followed by gruesome Nationalist reprisals and pillage. Among the booty was the reputed hand of St. Teresa, a treasured relic that Franco kept at his bedside for the rest of his life. The battle of Jarama near Madrid, at which the Lincoln Batallion saw its first action, ended in a stalemate. But near Guadalajara, the Republican army gained a rare victory by routing a largely Italian force, the first of many mishaps for Il Ducés “volunteers.”
Later that spring, the action shifted north to the isolated coastal strip still under Loyalist control. From the war’s outset the Catholic and conservative Basques had been going their own way, deeply suspicious of the revolutionary, anti-clerical bent of their “allies” elsewhere. Generally, Basque units refused to fight outside Euzkadi, and when they did would often withdraw from battle at critical moments.
Perhaps the war’s best-known event occurred during the Nationalists’ big push north. Monday, April 26, was market day in the quiet town of Guernica, historic home of Basque liberties but with no strategic value. Suddenly and without warning, a swarm of German aircraft descended on the town with wave after wave of bombs and machine-gun fire. Flying with the Condor Legion that day was a colonel Von Richthofen, cousin of the legendary Red Baron.
Most of the town was levelled and about a thousand civilians killed during the three-hour nightmare, and Guernica became a worldwide symbol of fascist terror and the horrors of modern warfare. Reacting to the international outcry, Nationalist leaders claimed they had no prior knowledge of the attack and revised the death count to twelve. Later they explained that it never occurred, but that Guernica was destroyed by retreating Basques. But there were too many witnesses who knew better.
Summer brought more bad news for the Republic, with the fall of Bilbao, Santander, and Asturias, the last collapsing “like meringue dipped in water,” according to the Nationalist commander. The short-lived Basque republic was soon just a memory, and firing squads were kept busy dealing with Catholic “traitors,” among them many priests. Franco’s Catholic supporters worldwide suddenly became very confused about the Crusade. The capture of Basque iron ore and industry was vital for the Nationalist effort. Their “alternate” economy was in good shape, with enough food, a steady supply of armaments, and the backing of most Spanish and European financiers. The ubiquitous Juan March alone chipped in 15 million pounds sterling. By 1937, the Nationalist peseta had a higher rate of exchange than Republican money.
Another important event of the northern campaign was the death of General Mola, Franco’s only serious rival, in a plane crash. All evidence points to an accident, but for many years after a man in Valladolid kept two loaded pistols with him at all times, ready for the man who killed his son, the pilot. Said Hitler: “The real tragedy for Spain was the death of Mola; there was the real brain, the real leader..."
Loyalist counterattacks near Madrid (Brunete) and on the Aragón front failed to halt Franco’s war machine. Adding to the Republic’s woes was an internal crisis that had been simmering for months; the multi-headed revolutionary hydra was about to devour itself. The Spanish communist party, by then taking direct orders from Moscow, was determined to seize control of the war effort by crushing troublesome anarchists and a new player, an anti-Stalinist (Trotskyist) group of Marxists called the POUM. The communists were also determined to dump the dour and incompetent Largo, who had outlived his usefulness.
The crisis came in May over control of Barcelona’s Telefónica, the main telephone exchange, held by the CNT and POUM. On May 2, an operator interrupted a conversation between two important Republican leaders, stating that the lines should be used for more important things. It was just one of many incidents that prompted the government to take control and some unidentified gunfire coming from the building unleashed a furious battle that spread through the city. About five-hundred persons were killed. Largo was bitterly discredited by this shadow civil war and resigned after refusing to punish the POUM for its role in the outburst. The Revolution was over; the communists had won.
Looking around for a new puppet, the party of Stalin found Dr. Juan Negrin and managed to convince Azaña - by then a mere whisper of his former self - to name him prime minister. Negrin was a respected scientist with many admirable qualities, but his earlier decision to export half of Spain’s assets left him tied to Moscow with a “golden chain,” as he would soon find out. Negrin inherited a disastrous state of military affairs and vowed to put all effort into winning the war, the not unreasonable communist policy. With the help of Russian advisers, the ragtag Loyalist army began to shape up. But something seemed to go out of the Republic after the events of May. Workers’ collectives were disbanded, and Catalan dreams of independence shoved aside in favour of unity. The last flicker of Catalan separatism was snuffed out by November, when Negrin moved his government from Valencia to Barcelona.
A darker side of the Negrin regime soon emerged. These were precisely the months of Stalin’s infamous show-trials in Moscow, at which political opponents confessed to crimes as “fascist spies.” Stalin’s paranoia spilled over into Spain through his agent Colonel Orlov and a dreaded new security force intent on rooting out communist rivals. This particular reign of terror climaxed with the brutal murder of POUM head Andres Nin, who was former secretary of Stalin’s arch-foe, Leon Trotsky. Nin was tortured mercilessly in a secret communist prison in Madrid, but refused to “confess” and was killed. Negrin did nothing to stop or condemn the outrage and lost his last shred of respectability. Wrote a disillusioned Orwell: “This war, in which I played so ineffectual a part, has left me with memories that are mostly evil.”
Meanwhile Franco grew stronger. One possible rival had been José Antonio, but the falangist leader was executed in November 1936. (Largo’s son was shot in revenge.) The young fascist had actually despised Franco as an unreformed “reactionary,” but agreed to support the rising nonetheless. The Falange’s so-called socialist wing, which hated capitalism as much as international communism, survived with the “old shirts” of Manuel Hedilla. But a phenomenal increase in “new shirts” (a million by 1937) threatened to swamp the Falange’s original ideals.
Inevitably, power struggles and anti-Franco plots began to brew in Falange circles, and the generalisimo used one violent incident as an excuse to arrest Hedilla. He spent the next four years in solitary confinement. At the insistence of his brother-in-law, Serrano Suñer, Franco used the trouble to cement his position as Spain’s once-and-future caudillo. In yet another “coup,” he created a single political umbrella called the Falange Española Tradicionalista (FET) that embraced all groups on the right and neutralized their often contradictory philosophies.
The original Falange, for example, was socially revolutionary, anti-monarchist, and merely tolerant of religion. Carlists and Alfonsists each had a would-be king and were intensely Catholic. Franco needed to rein them in if he was to survive as dictator after the war. His decision to retain the name Falange for the movement, along with important symbols such as blue shirts and the fascist salute, did much to foster the myth that he himself was a fascist. But Franco was never more nor less than one thing - a Francoist. His tactic of unite-and-conquer toward the feuding Nationalist factions laid the foundation of his forty years in power, and the base was rock solid because all army officers were obliged to join FET.
The new coalition (later called “the Movement”) issued 26 points, mostly lifted from the Falange, defining the future state. Spain would be totalitarian, unitary anti-capitalist, anti-Marxist, and fervidly Catholic. There was one important omission: no mention of the monarchy. This obvious slight upset supporters of Alfonso, who had settled into a life of polo and bridge in Rome, and his heir Don Juan. But the army had not lifted a finger to save Alfonso in 1931 and was not about to have him back. When Don Juan showed up in Spain during the war, Mola sent him packing.
Meanwhile Don Carlos, the Carlist pretender and last of the original line, had died, leaving a distant relative named Francis Xavier as heir to the great lost cause. Aside from their red berets (now worn with falangist blue shirts) as part of the Movement’s uniform, very little of Carlism survived in the FET. And despite all the fascist claptrap, members of the old Falange had to settle for mostly ceremonial rewards, like the officially sanctioned cult of José Antonio, henceforth called “the absent one” at all party functions.
Franco’s power-play really marked the victory of ultra-conservative Spain, its principles more akin to Fernando and Isabel than to anything in this century. (In one of the regime’s more curious propaganda feats, one ideologue of the Movement tried to claim that the Spain of the Catholic Monarchs was “fascist,” the genuine precursor of Mussolini’s Italy.) Franco and his followers yearned for the days of Spain’s glory and tried to root out foreign influences of the past two centuries. Much of the attitude was dangerous (calls for a new empire) and much merely silly (the banning of Russian salad and French omelettes). But the Movement now had its own myths to fight for - the glories of a Spain long gone - that seemed as powerful of any modern “ism.”
In December of 1937, the Republicans tried to derail the Nationalist juggernaut with a bold offensive at Teruel. Caught offguard, Franco dropped his own plans and managed a successful counterattack by February. Not a tactician of great imagination, Franco was actually held in contempt by his German advisers as a hopelessly hesitant plodder. Gaining ground and holding it seemed Franco’s style, rather than swift, mechanized warfare of the Third Reich. Franco’s approach - in military strategy as well as politics - was to wait cautiously for the right moment to attack, to wear down the enemy by attrition, above all to endure longer than his opponents.
In the spring of 1938 Franco’s army, with about 100,000 men, 1,000 planes, and 150 tanks, broke through the Aragón front and swept east to the Mediterranean, cutting the Republican zone in two. Confounding his advisers again, Franco then turned south toward Valencia rather than marching on Barcelona. The Catalan capital was weak, having recently suffered heavy bombardment by the Mallorca-based Italians, which drew more international protest. Mussolini boasted, “I am delighted to see Italians horrifying the world for a change instead of charming it with their guitar-playing skills.”
But Franco stubbornly turned south, and soon his army was bogged down along the coast. Using this turn of events, the Loyalist army enjoyed its last hurrah by launching a daring offensive in July along the Ebro River aimed at Franco’s rear. Wedged between the Pyrenees and Iberian ranges, the Ebro Valley is one of Spain’s two great geographical depressions (the Guadalquivir Valley is the other), and summer temperatures are brutal. Here the two armies massed for a bloody artillery duel and war of attrition that cost more than 50,000 casualties, including 20,000 dead. In its last action of the war, the British Batallion suffered staggering losses, with more than half killed. After three months Nationalist air superiority decided the battle, and the Republican army collapsed. “You could break our front with bicycles,” observed Negrin.
Even before the battle’s conclusion, the International Brigades were being disbanded and sent home, their ranks decimated and their propaganda value nil. Even the Lincoln Batallion had a majority of Spaniards by 1938. Yet their farewell parade in Barcelona equalled their inspiring entrance into Madrid. All stood while La Pasionaria gave her famous speech. “You gave us everything: your youth or your maturity; your science or your experience; your blood or your lives; your hopes and aspirations. You are history. You are part of our land. When the olive trees blossom again, come back.” (In 1988 about 300 original members did return to Barcelona on the 50th anniversary of their departure.)
In late December Franco finally attacked Catalonia, and a month later Nationalist troops, led by Carlist requetes and Moroccans, poured into Barcelona unopposed. It was more of a victory parade than a battle. In early February, Azaña, Negrin, and other leaders crossed the French border on foot, two days ahead of Nationalist troops. Hundreds of thousands of refugees were herded into France and told not to return. Many never did.
On February 27, Britain and France recognized the Franco government, and Azaña resigned as president the next day. Negrin, who remained as prime minister, pinned defeat on the western democracies for failing to help the Republic. Among the exiles, ideological feuds continued to flourish, old scores were settled (one security officer was buried alive), and everyone argued about who was to blame for the disaster.
The Loyalists still had half-a-million men under arms and held Madrid and Valencia. But the war was effectively over, and only Negrin and the communists wanted to fight on. The prime minister, who had returned to Spain, wanted to gain time to bargain with Franco over surrender terms. Others were taking the “Numantian posture,” vowing to fight to the last man in the manner of ancient Iberians.
This was the stage setting for the war’s bizarre finale in Madrid. While Nationalist forces gathered on the outskirts and waited, Republicans conducted their own mini-civil war to decide how to end the larger war. It began when a Colonel Casado staged a coup against the communist-run government, hoping to stop the fighting and elicit better terms from Franco. Claiming that the legitimate government and popular will were represented by the army rather than by politicians like Negrin, he “pronounced” in the name of the so-called National Council. To complete the irony, Casado claimed to be saving Spain from communism.
Six days of fighting broke out, leaving about 250 dead, but the communists were broken. After Franco’s promise of pardon for “all who are not criminals,” the Loyalist army seemed to melt away. On March 28, 1939, Franco’s troops entered Madrid through the rubble of University City, where they had been thrown back two years - and half a million lifetimes - before. Crowds of Nationalist sympathisers, many sheet-white from years of hiding, gave the fascist salute and shouted “Han pasado!” (They have passed!). On April 1 Franco announced that the war was over.
Supporters of the Republic around the world were stunned. Wrote the French philosopher Camus: “It was in Spain that men learned that we can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own reward. It is this, doubtless, which explains why so many men, the world over, regarded the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy.”
The Spanish Civil War was Spain’s share of the general breakdown of Europe and much of the world during the 1930’s and 40’s. Yet it was distinctly Spanish. Rather than a return to the 16th-century empire as Francoist propaganda would pretend, the victory of “traditional” Spain brought back the old moderado order. With greater power than ever before, the unholy trinity of church, army, and landowners made one final, desperate attempt to halt the forces of liberalism and modernization unleashed in the 19th century. And for another two decades they succeeded, largely through the efforts of one man and the state he created.