The Spanish Civil War Read online

  1. Regions and provinces of Spain

  The third crisis of the régime derived from the colonial wars in, first, Cuba, then Morocco. The Cuban War of 1895 turned into the Spanish American one of 1898; all was lost, save honour. The defeat inflamed the Catalan problem, since Cuba had been the best market for Catalan textiles. The loss of Cuba was also of psychological concern since many Catalan fortunes had been based on Cuban commerce.2 In addition, the loss of the last vestige of empire caused a national crisis. It gave force to old causes of discontent, and fired new ones. The year of defeat, 1898, was thus a turning-point: Spaniards were forced to think of themselves as a poor European country with few resources.

  Morocco, however, offered a new chance of empire. But it caused new upheavals too. Spain had held the two northern Moroccan ports of Melilla and Ceuta for several hundred years. She had tried to extend her rule there in the 1860s, and there had been further fighting, near Melilla, in the 1890s. Spain was understandably reluctant to allow any other European power to establish herself on the north coast of Africa facing her. In 1904, as part of the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France, France and Spain divided Morocco into zones of influence, Spain taking the smaller, northern part. Morocco was then backward, lawless, and ripe for European interest, if not investment, though the tribes of both zones had a formal loyalty to a sultan at Fez. The ill-informed Spanish populace was probably as critical of these high-handed arrangements as was the indolent sultan; neither was consulted. Business, however, followed the flag: the iron mines of Morocco were rich. A gradual extension of Spanish commerce followed, partly the reflection of similar French action (had Spain shown no interest, France would have absorbed the whole of Morocco). A Spanish colonization company was founded, and it bought land in the wake of the troops. But then the advances stopped; Moroccan tribesmen closed ranks; a series of setbacks forced the army to call for reinforcements; in 1909, there were serious defeats; by September of that year, the Spanish army was 40,000 strong in Morocco. But it was by then committed to an imperial adventure whose only end could be the conquest of north Morocco at a cost which the country could not afford.

  2. Spanish Morocco

  Already there were, in 1909, horrible repercussions at home when Antonio Maura’s government called up 850 reservists, some from Catalonia, all from north-east Spain. When the men went reluctantly to their ships in the harbour at Barcelona, a general strike was called in protest. A week of rioting ensued, the Semana Trágica, the Tragic Week, of Barcelona. Radicals, socialists and anarchists collaborated in the burning of churches that followed. Some hoped that a national revolution would ensue. But, bereft of real political direction, the rioters spent themselves in pointless destruction. While the leaders hesitated, radical women, clerks, criminals, boys and prostitutes terrified nuns out of nunneries, burned their possessions, killed their domestic animals and chickens, and disinterred bodies. A handsome coalman danced with one disinterred corpse outside the house of the rich Marqués de Comillas, ‘delighted to be of use as a revolutionary’. Eventually, the army resumed control; some 120 people had been killed,1 three clergy among them; the rioters had wanted to destroy ‘property and illusions’, not life. About fifty churches or other religious buildings were burned.

  This disaster was a shock which seemed to show how violent a nation lay underneath the surface of constitutional rule. The authorities were less disturbed by the revolutionary expectations of the radicals or the anarchists than by the apparently meaningless destruction caused by the populace once their blood was up. The Tragic Week was a setback to the idea that a parliamentary democracy might gradually be established: if the masses were as they showed themselves in 1909, the political class of the day thought, real democracy would result in ruin. Henceforward, politicians avoided general elections if they could and tried to arrange coalitions out of groups of parliamentarians already in the legislature. The international demonstrations of outrage against the execution of the anarchist schoolmaster, Ferrer, accused of being the prime organizer of the riots,2 also had a contra-productive effect: the upper classes saw in these protests the hypocritical, as well as hysterical and ill-informed, reactions of a mysterious coalition of international busybodies and freemasons soon to become sadly famous as ‘anti-Spain’.

  The Prime Minister, Maura, who as a result of international complaints was dismissed by the King and abandoned by conservatives, believed that this ‘surrender in the Cortes’ after the ‘victory in the streets’ doomed the régime, since it had been seen to have given way to disorder, propaganda and malice. Thereafter the conservative party, which had held together since the 1870s, followed the liberals into disintegration. Maura moved into the wings of politics as the focus of a movement of young men angry with parliamentarianism, anxious for regeneration, but unable to gain a majority for a government. In Maurismo there were to be seen the springs of fascism—evident in other countries before 1914 as well (with Déroulède and Maurras in France, D’Annunzio in Italy, and even the Ulster volunteers). Maura promised a ‘revolution from above’. The malicious said that he merely desired a ‘revolution without a revolution’.

  The Moroccan war continued. Tangier, north Morocco’s best port, was excluded from the Spanish protectorate in 1912, as an international city, and the tribes refused to accept the Spanish ‘civilizing’ presence. Men, money, food and emotion continued to be poured into the country by a Spain that could only afford the first. The tribes had never been subject to the sultan; only Spain gave them a unity. In seeking an empire, Madrid thus helped to inspire nationalism.

  The three main problems in modern Spain (working-class unrest, the regional question, and the colonial wars) ruined the restoration settlement. Perhaps anyway that political edifice was too fragile to be able to outlive for long the gifted conservative historian, Cánovas, its main architect, and Sagasta, the ‘old shepherd’, his liberal opponent. Personalities count in modern politics as much as they did in the epoch of kings. Cánovas was assassinated, Sagasta died. Maura failed as a potential successor to Cánovas as much through the strength of his personality as through the weakness of his programme. Sagasta’s ultimate successor, José Canalejas, was, it was true, a journalist, orator and reformer of the first order. His government between 1910 and 1912 seemed a time of battle against the clerical control of education and the freedom of the orders to organize schools without inspection. In fact, Canalejas revised the system of taxation to benefit the poor, temporarily solved the Catalan question by the grant of Mancomunidad (limited self-government), and reached a compromise with the church in the Ley de Candado (Law of the Padlock) which limited the growth of religious orders, unless they had government permission. Canalejas also abolished the practice whereby the rich could buy themselves out of military service. Well might an English historian celebrate him as ‘the only liberal who got things done’.1 He was assassinated by an anarchist in 1912. His successors as liberal leaders (the Conde de Romanones, García Prieto, Santiago Alba) had neither Canalejas’s energy nor his gifts.

  The First World War brought the problems of restoration Spain to a climax. The conflict benefited all neutral nations, and in Spain it created wealth, contrasting with surviving poverty. Basque ships, Catalan textiles, Asturian coal, zinc and copper gained high prices. The consequent inflation was felt most by the working class, though wages went up too and, in some jobs, outstripped prices. Huge numbers of workers were, as it were, sucked up to Barcelona on the train from Murcia and Almería which became known as the transmiseriano. The atmosphere was confused by sterile arguments as to which side Spain should support in the war. (The Left were mostly pro-Ally, the Right mostly pro-German; so that the King could say that only he and ‘the rabble’ hoped that Britain would win.) Meantime, the government of the Conde de Romanones (who personally preferred the Allies) was turning a blind eye to the activities of terrorists financed by German agents who attacked pro-Allied industrialists. Romanones himself resigned on the issue of whether G
erman submarines should be allowed to use Spanish bases to refit in the battle of the Atlantic.

  The army now re-entered politics. Their position had been complicated by the growth of juntas de defensa, professional associations of junior infantry officers protesting against the low pay which, like that of the agricultural workers, had not kept pace with inflation. The juntas also disliked promotion by ‘combat merits’ or royal favouritism which was enjoyed by the officers fighting in Morocco. The juntas were founded in Barcelona and spread all over Spain. In May 1917, their leader, Colonel Benito Márquez, a foolish, deaf officer, was arrested for insubordination, with some colleagues. Other junteros asked to be arrested too. The King ensured the release of all of them and the government fell. All politicians were shocked at this apparent new surrender. But the press liked the juntas and gave publicity to the notion that they might take the first step in a nationwide movement of regeneration. Cambó, the financier who was leader of the Catalan movement, the Lliga Regionalista (founded in 1901), thought so too.

  Meantime, in the south of Spain, the intoxicating news of the Russian Revolution inspired widespread unrest including occupations of land and intimidation of rural guards, these actions being mostly inspired by anarchists; while, in Barcelona, the anarchist unions believed that the crisis offered them a new opportunity.

  In the face of this multi-sided challenge, a new government, headed by a conventional conservative, Eduardo Dato, suspended constitutional guarantees and closed the Cortes. The more progressive politicians, outraged, responded by convening an alternative ‘Assembly’ of Catalan nationalists which met in Barcelona to ‘renovate’ the Spanish constitution. The government declared this seditious, and introduced censorship. The ‘Assembly’ movement might have gone far had it not been for reckless action by the Left. The socialists, caught up in the mood of the moment, had, in 1916, deserted their cautious reformism, and prepared a general strike aiming at revolution: their programme provided for the end of the monarchy; a seven-hour working day; the abolition of the army and its substitution by a militia; separation of church and state; nationalization of land; the closure of monasteries and nunneries; and, important in 1917, no declaration of war unless there were a plebiscite.1

  Dato took a firm stand. He first defined a railway strike as a threat to the state and treated it accordingly (the government had encouraged the railway companies to take a hard line). Playing on the knowledge that the junteros also opposed any alteration of the social order, and that the Catalan progressive bourgeoisie, however truculent, desired anything rather than revolution, the government met the general strike with force.

  The socialists thought that for once they had made a satisfactory alliance with the anarchists, as with some politicians of the Centre. But their tactics had not been well coordinated, and the strike failed. The army directed the subsequent repression, the junteros being deaf to the appeals of socialists. Seventy people were killed (mostly in Barcelona, fighting to keep, or to prevent, the trams running), and the Catalan Lliga, shaken by the upheaval for which they had been partly responsible, agreed to participate in a coalition government, led by Maura, which bought off the junteros with promotions. The unofficial parliamentary assembly did meet again, in Madrid, but the mood was cautious: it called for a constituent Cortes to rewrite the constitution and was not heard of again. Cambó now entered the government as minister of development. It was his great opportunity and he showed himself as able a planner as he had been a money-maker. But the administration did not last. Nor did any other. For nearly five years, a series of conservative governments failed even to resolve quarrels in the conservative party. They were quite unable to deal with the consequences of a post-war economic recession accompanied by continuing setbacks in Morocco and working-class violence in both Andalusia and Barcelona. The wonder is not that the constitution was overthrown in the end, but that it lasted as long as it did in a country where military intervention had occurred so often. Perhaps it did not last really after 1917: a democracy can hardly be said to exist if several provinces are only kept from revolution by the brutality of the civil guard,1 and the largest industrial city from civil war by counter-terrorism sponsored by industrialists, and winked at by the police.

  Perhaps the world economic situation was partly to blame. During the war, Spanish employers had expanded their enterprises, but had now to contract. They would fight labour now, since there was a glut of workers; in the war, there had been a shortage. But in the clash of labour and capital, between 1917 and 1923, a class war was to be seen which often came close to outright conflict, and over issues other than economic: employers believed themselves threatened by bankruptcy if not revolution, the anarchists believed that they were on the brink of the millennium. Since, whatever the views of the central government, the local military authorities usually agreed with the employers, and often arrested strikers, the character of the conflict became more and more violent. The rule of General Martínez Anido (previously known as a sanguinary governor in Melilla) as civil governor of Barcelona from 1920 to 1922 was ruthless: a type of repression not seen in Spain for generations. He gave support to the sindicatos libres, free syndicates, which seemed more and more an employers’ union of strike breakers, though they had some backing from Catholic social reformers. Gunmen infiltrated them, and terrorism flourished among the anarchists. In other parts of Spain, there were similar tragic events: in Andalusia, anarchist committees seized municipal governments, landowners left, increased wages were won; but the army overcame the strikers. In Madrid, where there were also severe strikes in 1921, socialists and anarchists fought each other, each regarding the others as traitors.

  In the end, the anarchists ruined their chances of revolution, such as those were, by internal disputes. Many leaders were murdered. So, too, was the conservative Prime Minister, Dato. By 1923, the CNT was exhausted. So was Spain. Violent reactions had been shown to be increasing on every side in public life, and enmities had been made which would never be forgotten. Not for the last time, the anarchists helped to wreck a system which, for all its faults, was susceptible of peaceful change, and whose successor would be less to their liking.

  The Moroccan wars continued to tie down the Spanish army. After some minor victories, a slow campaign against the Riffian tribes, led by the brilliant Abd-el-Krim and his brother, culminated in the defeat at Anual in 1921. There, General Fernández Silvestre, a romantic, popular, but imprudent officer, a friend of the King’s, was overwhelmed, with all his staff. The army in east Morocco panicked, one Spanish fort after another fell, and the Riffians reached the outskirts of Melilla. At least 15,000 Spanish citizens and soldiers were killed.1 The disaster was shocking: even more so, the inquiry, directed by General Picasso, which revealed a fearful state of unpreparedness, impossible to overlook. Abd-el-Krim’s rebellion and the virtual achievement of a Riffian state (despite the 150,000 Spanish troops seeking his defeat) proved that, while the French under the great Lyautey had achieved much in Morocco, the Spaniards had done little in their zone. Furthermore, the King was believed to have given Silvestre encouragement, by telegram, for his rashness.2

  All this, and the ‘responsibility’ for the disaster, was expected to come into the open in the autumn of 1923. The Cortes adjourned for the summer. It never met again in the same way. By 1923, the constitutional monarchy seemed bruised to death, even though one threat, that of the junteros, had been removed by their dissolution a year before. Partly because of the local power of the caciques, the political parties of the restoration had failed to develop much beyond semi-social gatherings which met in cafés around a single figure. Some of the politicians, such as those in the Republican Reformist party, were democrats. But public opinion had no love for this Cortes. The politicians, for their part, knew that the army would not resist a popular general. There was thus no will to oppose an ultimatum, presented in the nineteenth-century style, by the chosen leader of a group of important generals, General Miguel Primo de Rivera, capt
ain-general of Catalonia:

  We have reason on our side and, therefore, force, though so far we have used force with moderation. If an attempt is made to trick us into a compromise which our conscience considers dishonourable, we shall demand greater penalties, and impose them with greater severity. Neither I, nor the garrisons of Aragon, from whom I have just received a telegram in support, will agree to anything but a military dictatorship. If the politicians make an attempt to defend themselves, we shall do the same, relying on the help of the people, whose reserves of energy are great. Today we are resolved on moderation, but, on the other hand, we shall not shrink from bloodshed.

  The dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera followed. King Alfonso acquiesced, knowing beforehand what was planned.1 He was exasperated with politicians and liked soldiers. This new system lasted until January 1930. ‘My Mussolini’, was how King Alfonso presented Primo to King Victor Emmanuel of Italy. But the general was no fascist. He was already fifty-three in 1923, white-haired, though tough. He possessed neither a mass following nor an expansionist foreign policy. He would have given up Morocco if he could have done so. The movement which he tried to create, the Patriotic Union,1 an association of ‘all men of good will’, never gathered weight. Although he used officers to run the municipal governments for three years, imprisoned or exiled those who opposed him, and banned political parties, there were no political executions during his six and a half years of power.2 His pronunciamiento was even welcomed at first by intellectuals such as José Ortega y Gasset, who thought that an ‘iron surgeon’ was needed for Spain’s illnesses. So did both surviving junteros and officers serving in Morocco, agreeing for once. The minister of the interior and the director general of security (always an important official in Spain) were, however, Generals Martínez Anido and Arleguí, the ruthless rulers of Barcelona between 1920 and 1922. These officers kept political parties out of sight. Meantime, an ambitious programme of public works (new dams, railways, rural electrification, and roads) gave the dictatorship the appearance of prosperity. The terms of trade improved, as everywhere in the late 1920s, and both production and commerce increased 300 per cent.3 The socialists agreed to collaborate and the UGT, unlike their anarchist rivals, bid fair to become a kind of official trade union such as was found in Sweden. The financial policy of the young José Calvo Sotelo gained for Primo the support of Spanish capital, and banks for the first time interested themselves in development through credit. (Maura’s influence was indirectly considerable on this régime to which he gave no formal backing.)4 It was an era of wonderful schemes, in Spain as elsewhere: a great waterway project was begun in the Ebro and Douro valleys; and there was a famous industrial exhibition in Barcelona. Vast stadia were built, preparing the way for the rise of football and the expansion of bullfighting. Production was successful in light industry. Above all, the dictator miraculously brought to a successful conclusion the running sore of the Moroccan War, although Abd-el-Krim had really beaten the Spaniards before the French were drawn into the conflict. Abd-el-Krim went into captivity in Réunion Island, and it seemed—and seeming was what mattered—that Spain had won a military victory, for the first time in many generations.1