The Spanish Civil War Read online

  The ‘epic’ of Morocco plays an important part in the story of the collapse of the republic, for Generals Sanjurjo, Goded, Franco, Millán Astray, Queipo de Llano and Mola, to name the best-known knights of Africa, as well as some junior officers, such as Colonels Varela and Yagüe, looked on Spain itself as a Moroccan problem of a new kind: infested by rebellious tribes masquerading as political parties and demanding an iron, if fatherly, hand. The africanistas, though they might have home-postings by now, also recalled with affection the two special units which had helped them to win. These were the special, ruthless Foreign Legion, composed, despite its name, mainly of Spaniards, with some Portuguese, French, and Germans, which had been founded in 1920 by General Millán Astray as a shock force; and the Moorish Regulares, created by General Berenguer, Primo de Rivera’s eventual successor, who were native troops raised from 1911 onwards as half-soldiers, half-policemen, under Spanish officers, to destroy banditry.

  Many Spanish army officers saw, in their own traditions, a certain idea of a timeless, supremely Castilian Spain, without politics, creating order and banishing all things non-Spanish (by which they understood separatism, socialism, freemasonry, communism and anarchism). They could persuade themselves that their oath, as officers, to ‘maintain the independence of the country and defend it from enemies within and without’3 took precedence over their oath of loyalty to the republic. In Spain, as elsewhere, the young officer, when still supported by family money, was generally happy. He was happy too while his uniforms and handsome figure could still dazzle the marriageable girls of his family’s acquaintance. There followed a short engagement, promotion to captain, marriage. There were mounting expenses, appearances had to be kept up, yet pay remained low. The military zeal of youth departed. The high-spirited lion of the ballroom became an embittered employee of the state: really little more than a policeman in a provincial town. His wife was worn by the exigencies of incessant economizing. She pointed enviously at her husband’s once-scorned civilian contemporaries. The average Spanish officer was by middle life dissatisfied, irritable, and right-wing. These experiences might be part of the lot of officers in all countries. In Spain, there seemed a way out. The officer could dream of a pronunciamiento, which would place him in a position superior to his clever liberal and commercial contemporaries.1 Such action was fully in the tradition of Spanish politics and was not an entirely right-wing one either. Yet few officers ‘rose’ or ‘pronounced’ out of ambition in Spain, at least in the twentieth century; the would-be rebels were usually dedicated men, according to their lights, whose political restlessness was encouraged by the psychological willingness of their comrades to countenance rebellion on historical grounds.

  The Spanish army was, nevertheless, more politically divided than any other in Europe, though the establishment of military academies, during the era of the restoration, had caused the majority of officers to be more often conservative than liberal, as well as creating something of a caste spirit. The divisions within the Spanish middle class were, however, seen in the army as well as in other professions. In 1931, a small minority of officers were radical; a larger minority had strong right-wing views; another group again were loyal to the new republic without other political commitment; the remainder, perhaps half the total, were apolitical and opportunistic, if by education inclined to conservatism and to suspicion of civilians. Senior generals would often be surrounded by a permanent court of civilian admirers rather as if they were bullfighters.

  In 1932, passions were aroused among many officers by the passage of the Catalan statute. It was not only that the creation of a Catalan state seemed to threaten the integrity of the Spain which the officers had sworn to defend. Catalan home rule seemed a deliberate affront to the army itself, which between 1917 and 1923 had spent so much time maintaining Barcelona in a condition of martial law. Had not General Primo de Rivera been harder on Catalan nationalists than on any other of his critics? Further, most officers were Castilian or Andalusian in origin: few Catalans entered the army.

  At the same time, other anti-republican schemes were prospering. The meetings which had begun in the Calle Alcalá in May 1931 were continuing, with an ever-widening group of participants. At the end of 1931, King Alfonso in Paris abandoned his discouragement of his would-be insurrectionary followers. This followed his own condemnation in the Cortes to exile for life, and the confiscation of his property in absentia. A pact was now signed between his party, the orthodox monarchists, and the followers of his distant Carlist cousin. The ‘Alfonsists’ had now few constitutional prejudices to dispute with the Carlists, who now called themselves ‘traditionalists’. So in September 1931, the two groups formally agreed to cooperate. Some future Cortes fainéant would no doubt decide who would be absolute king.

  The Carlist movement in 1931, for it was no mere political party, had maintained its identity, though little more, since its last defeat in 1876. Like many apparently lost causes, it had split and its members had attacked each other with increasing venom as their numbers dwindled. The Carlist claimant, Don Jaime, was happy to make concessions to ex-King Alfonso, in return for a quiet life. He was a bachelor and his only male heir was his octogenarian uncle, Alfonso Carlos.1 Alfonso Carlos, though married, had no children. Who knew what would happen to Carlism after these two princes had died? The idea of a monarchy with power exercised by a council of notables, a corporatively elected Cortes, and regional devolution might survive, under more promising circumstances, now that the Carlists’ other cause, that of Catholic direction of education and culture, was being challenged so vigorously by republicans. The coming of the republic, indeed, revived Carlism at its grass roots in Navarre, to a lesser extent in Castile, Valencia and Catalonia, in a way which surprised its claimant and its old leaders. The various strands of the movement came together again; a Carlist writer, Víctor Pradera, founded a new journal, a daily newspaper, El Siglo Futuro, flourished in Madrid and, while Don Jaime made friends in Paris with Don Alfonso, young middle-class Carlists began to appear in places, such as Seville, where the cause had never flourished before. Money and members were alike found by an Andalusian lawyer, Manuel Fal Conde, who, for the first time, brought organization to Andalusian Carlism. His recruits were usually young and sometimes working-class and, since there were few family links with Carlists of the 1870s, there was greater emphasis on planning. When Don Jaime died in late 1931, his successor as claimant, Alfonso Carlos, broke off relations with the Alfonsine monarchists. The Carlists were, indeed, happier denouncing the errors of the constitutional monarchy than collaborating with it. Some Carlists, such as the Conde de Rodezno, Carlist secretary-general from 1932 onwards, a Navarrese aristocrat, hoped still to capture all monarchists for Carlist views. But the Navarrese youth movement wanted an end to gentlemanly plots in grand hotels; they wanted action, and not to stay forever, as one of them strangely put it, ‘hard-hearted ombre players, assiduous frequenters of cafés’.1 As in the nineteenth century, the Carlists’ greatest strength remained in the north, especially in Navarre. Though technically a Basque province, and though Basque was spoken in many Navarrese villages, the political accidents of the past, and the economic developments of the present, caused Navarre to follow the Carlist, rather than the Basque nationalist, path. For the Navarrese were a contented group of peasant proprietors nestling in the foothills of the Pyrenees. The reason for their majority against the Basque statute was that Navarre had no bourgeoisie anxious to be free to carry on a western, commercial life. Navarre was zealously Catholic, with nothing to cause its priests to modernize christian doctrine. A journey to Navarre was still an expedition in the middle ages. Needless to say, the clerical reforms of the republic caused peculiar resentment in Navarre, and would have been enough by themselves to rekindle the old spirit in those Pyrenean valleys—and elsewhere, for, by mid-1932, there were few large towns which did not have a Carlist branch, usually directed by some polite and aristocratic man of violence.

  The political i
deas of the Carlists were primitive. Some years later, a group of politicians were discussing the idea of a return of the monarch in the presence of the Conde de Rodezno, who then led the traditionalist party in the Cortes. One of the politicians turned to Rodezno and asked who would be Prime Minister if the King should come back. ‘You or one of these gentlemen, it is a matter of secretaries.’ ‘But what would you do?’ ‘I!’ exclaimed the count. ‘I should stay with the King and we should talk of hunting.’1 The politique of the chase was, indeed, the essence of the Carlist view of society. The orthodox monarchists, the Alfonists, were rich landlords or financiers. The Carlists were to be found among poorer aristocrats, peasants, artisans, and shopkeepers, particularly in regions forgotten by the central government.

  There was nothing fraudulent about the Carlists’ religious, semi-mystical hostility towards the modern world (especially liberalism and the French Revolution) and their fervent loyalty towards Dios, Patria, and Rey. Yet, while the anarchists thought that a pistol and an encyclopedia would give them a new world, the Carlists put similar faith in a machine-gun and a missal. Others, it is true, were seeking to give the new Carlism a more intellectual colour. Thus Víctor Pradera wrote El estado nuevo, an attempt at a new utopia which introduced a strong element of corporativism; but the author admitted that, in the end, ‘the new state’ was nothing more than the old one of Ferdinand and Isabella.2

  The conspiracies against the republic which had begun so soon after the republic had been born came to a premature head in the pronunciamiento of General José Sanjurjo, in August 1932. This officer was then the most famous soldier in Spain. It was he, ‘the Lion of the Rif’ who, as military governor of Melilla and in charge of the successful landing at Alhucemas Bay, had brought back victory to Spain in 1927. Subsequently, he had been a competent high commissioner in Morocco. He was a brave, hard-drinking philanderer, whose sensuous face indicated a mixture of indolence and strength. In 1931, he, as commander of the civil guard, had told the King that he could not count on that corps to support the monarchy. In 1932, when he had been transferred, to his annoyance, to the less important post of commander of the carabineers (customs guards), he was easily persuaded by his friends that it was his duty to rise against the republic. ‘You alone, my general, can save Spain,’ they told him.1 He had doubts about the matter and hardly gave adequate attention to the plot’s organization. Apparently, he had been appalled by the village tragedies the previous winter. He had visited Castilblanco soon after the events themselves, and had heard eye-witnesses describe how the women of the village had danced round the corpses of the civil guard.

  Several Carlist leaders, including Rodezno and Fal Conde, were involved in this plot of 1932. A number of aristocratic officers, however, formed the backbone of the conspiracy—including most of those who had been meeting intermittently since May 1931.2 The rising was partly a bid for the restoration of the monarchy, partly an attempt to overthrow the ‘anti-clerical dictatorship of Azaña’. Alfonsists, such as the Conde de Vallellano, Pedro Sainz Rodríguez and Antonio Goicoechea, and Generals Goded and Ponte, were also implicated, while General Emilio Barrera who, having been the general who had put down the Andalusian anarchists in 1917–18, had been Primo de Rivera’s ‘viceroy’ in Catalonia, and was the chief, if incompetent, coordinator of the plot.3 The plan envisaged the capture of the main governmental buildings by prominent officers in about a dozen cities. The plot was organized in a box in the Comedy Theatre in Madrid. In his manifesto, at Seville, Sanjurjo made use of precisely those words which had been employed by the makers of the republic two years before: ‘A passionate demand for justice surges upwards from the bowels of the people, and we are moved to satisfy it …’4 Before the rising occurred, a young monarchist airman, Major Ansaldo, was dispatched to try and gain the support of the Italian régime. Ansaldo saw Marshal Balbo; promises of diplomatic help in the event of victory were forthcoming.5 Inside Spain, a fledgling fascist group, the so-called nationalist party, of Burgos, led by a fanatical lawyer of modest importance, Dr Albiñaña, also gave support.

  The affair was a fiasco. Azaña and the government knew—apparently through the treachery of a prostitute—what was afoot. Indeed, the matter had been talked about in the cafés for weeks. One of the conspirators, José Félix de Lequerica, a one-time ‘Maurista’, and newspaper proprietor, was asked by the judge who tried him how he knew the date fixed for the insurrection. ‘From my concierge,’ was the reply. ‘For weeks he has been saying that the date was being postponed. At last, yesterday, he declared solemnly: “It is tonight, Don José Félix.”’ General Sanjurjo was briefly triumphant at Seville, but in Madrid everything went wrong. Most of the would-be rebels were captured, after a scuffle in the Plaza de la Cibeles. Azaña ostentatiously watched the battle, a cigarette at his lips, from the balcony of the ministry of war, the old palace of Albas.1

  In Seville, both communists and anarchists declared a general strike, and several upper-class clubs were burned.2 Sanjurjo was persuaded to flee to Portugal. Apprehended near the border at Ayamonte, he was brought back to be tried with 150 others, mostly officers and including two scions of the House of Bourbon. The first rising against the republic thus ended in the discomfiture of its opponents. It also resulted in the seizure, without compensation, of the lands of the conspirators; and, illogically also, the immoderate confiscation of the lands of grandees of Spain, if those were above the limits laid down for expropriation under the Agrarian Reform Law. Those lands too would not be paid for. In the heat of the moment, the government, and then the Cortes, made a special exception in its agrarian policy which could scarcely be justified even by rough justice: who of the grandees had actually supported Sanjurjo? Only two, out of 262.3

  8

  Azaña and his government weathered the rest of the year 1932 without much difficulty. For much of the time, the right-wing papers ABC, El Debate, and Informaciones were suspended. There were an ominously large number of preventive arrests of monarchist politicians and officers, not all of whom were brought to trial. A purge of the civil service was discussed to remove those ‘incompatible with the régime’. The autumn session of the Cortes was occupied with the passage of the Law of Congregations, which enacted the religious clauses of the constitution. Many Jesuits had already left Spain, but much work was still needed to discover which schools they owned and what other undertakings they had: the Society were masters of camouflaging ownership. Laws were prepared naming dates for the end of all clerical salaries, by November 1933,1 the end of religious teaching and the beginning of the other restrictions on the orders: ecclesiastical primary schools were to close on 31 December 1933, and their secondary schools and colleges or institutes of higher education three months before. That would mean that, in a country where there were already too few schools, another 350,000 children would have to be educated. Herculean efforts were, however, already being made by Fernando de los Ríos, now minister of education, and Rudolfo Llopis, the director of primary education, to realize this part of the republic’s ideals. Seven thousand schools were quickly built and the annual income of teachers raised to 3,000 pesetas.1 Travelling schools were sent into remote provinces. By the end of 1932, 70,000 children were being educated in secondary schools in place of the 20,000 three years before. Thereafter, the pace of school building slowed, due to doubts raised about the capacity of some new teachers and the desire of later governments to balance the budget.2

  The nation was engaged by the trial of the Majorcan millionaire Juan March, probably the richest man in Spain from his monopoly for distributing tobacco in Morocco, granted by Primo de Rivera. March was convicted of fraud; but he later bribed his way to a sensational escape from Alcalá prison and, thereafter, apparently used his considerable wealth (valued at £20 million sterling) to try and sabotage the currency of the republic, which, nevertheless, maintained itself in these years at more or less the same rate: about 55 pesetas to the pound.3

  The uneasy peace of the winter w
as also broken by a new series of agrarian revolts—one of them in Castellar de Santiago (Cuidad Real), where right-wing farmers killed the local socialist trade unionist leader in appalling circumstances; and then, in January 1933, by an almost mortal thrust from the Left. Libertarian communism was proclaimed at Sardanola-Ripollet. There were sporadic risings throughout the Levante and Andalusia. The best-known anarchist rising, however, occurred at Casas Viejas in the province of Cádiz. Though the mayor gave in, the civil guard did not, and telephoned for help from nearby Medina Sidonia. The anarchists were briefly masters of the village. The black and red flag waved in the wind. Nobody, however, appears to have been killed, though there were many upper-class families in the town. The priest survived. Reinforcements shortly arrived in the shape of a detachment of the guardia de asalto (assault guards). This corps, more efficient than the older civil guard, had been founded after the May riots in 1931 as a new special constabulary for the defence of the republic. Led by Colonel Agustín Muñoz Grandes, an able commander known for his evacuation in 1924 of Spanish troops from Gomara in Morocco, who created the new body out of nothing in three months, the assault guards were made up of officers and men supposed to be loyal to the new régime.1 They drove the anarchists out of Casas Viejas, and some of them established themselves on a small hill outside. Meantime, a joint unit of the civil guard and assault guards embarked on a house-to-house search for arms. One veteran old anarchist, nicknamed ‘Seisdedos’ (literally, six fingers), refused to open his door. A siege began. Seisdedos, with his daughter-in-law, Josefa, acting as gun-loader, and accompanied by five others, declined to surrender. Two assault guards were shot. Machine-guns were brought up. But the firing continued. Night fell. Seisdedos held his fire. One of Seisdedos’s daughters, Libertaria, and a boy escaped from the house. The next morning the forces of the government, furious at being for so long kept at bay, placed petrol round the house and set it ablaze, killing those within. Afterwards, some fourteen prisoners were shot, and the captain of the assault guards concerned, Captain Rojas, told the press that he had had orders to take no prisoners and to shoot these men ‘in the guts’.2 Though Azaña and Casares Quiroga, minister of the interior, had plainly never given such an instruction, they never recovered from the consequences of this outrage. They were accused by the Right, with a certain hypocrisy, of ‘murdering the people’. The radical Martínez Barrio denounced the government for creating a régime of ‘blood, mud, and tears’. Ortega y Gasset openly proclaimed that the republic had disappointed him. ‘It was not for this’, he said, ‘that we worked in the days of the monarchy.’ Azaña’s majority sank in the Cortes to a low figure.