The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (14 page)

That night the CNT and UGT declared a general strike over Unión Radio. It was the nearest they could get to ordering mobilization. The news coming in showed the administration’s statements to be a mixture of contradictions, lies and complacency. The workers began to dig up weapons hidden since the Asturian events of October 1934 and, although Casares Quiroga’s government finally began to understand what it faced, its basic attitude did not change. ‘His ministry is a madhouse,’ an observer remarked, ‘and the maddest inmate is the prime minister. He is neither sleeping nor eating. He shouts and screams as if possessed. He will hear nothing of arming the people and threatens to shoot anybody who does it on his own initiative.’
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When the rising was successful in a town, the pattern of events usually started with the seizing of strategic buildings, such as the town hall. If there was no military garrison, the rebel forces would consist of civil guards, Falangists, and right-wing supporters armed with hunting rifles or shotguns. They would proclaim a state of war in official terms, and in several places confused townsfolk thought that they were carrying out the orders of the Madrid government.

The response of the CNT and UGT was to order a general strike and demand weapons from the civil governor. Arms were either refused them or were unobtainable. Barricades were rapidly constructed, but workers who resisted the rebels were massacred, and potential opponents who survived, from the civil governor down to the lowest union official, were executed. On the other hand, if the troops wavered or delayed in coming out of their barracks, and the workers were ready, the outcome was usually very different. An immediate attack, or an encirclement of the barracks, was enough to ensure the rebels’ surrender.

A very important factor was the decision of the paramilitary forces, who were much better trained and armed than the conscript infantry. But it was wrong to say that their loyalty or disloyalty to the government was the crucial element. Like the general population, they were often unsure in their own minds, and only the most dedicated would fight when the battle was obviously lost from the beginning. They often hung back to see which way things were going before committing themselves. If the workers’ organizations took immediate and firm action, then they usually remained loyal, although the Civil Guard often revealed their true colours later on. Of the two corps, the Assault Guard showed more loyalty to the government than the Civil Guard, but then they tended to be an urban force and the big cities had a better prepared working class.

The city of Seville was of great strategic importance in the plans of the rebels as a base for the advance on Madrid. The intelligent chief of staff there, José Cuesta Monereo, was the true brains behind the coup which enthroned General Queipo de Llano, the commander of the
carabinero
frontier guards, as the ‘viceroy’ of Andalucia. Queipo was irreverent, cynical, unpredictable and possessed a macabre sense of humour. Early on the morning of 18 July, accompanied by his ADC and three other reliable officers, he marched into the office of the commander of the military region, General José Fernández de Villa-Abrille, who was given no time to recover from the surprise intrusion. When told to decide immediately whether he was with the rising or against it, Villa-Abrille dithered. Queipo arrested him and had a corporal guard the door with orders to shoot anyone who attempted to leave the room.

Queipo next went to the San Hermenegildo infantry barracks where he found the 6th Regiment drawn up on parade, fully armed. He went straight to the colonel to congratulate him on joining the rising. The colonel replied that he was for the government. Queipo suggested that they should discuss the matter in his office. Once inside, he arrested him too. He then tried other officers to see if they would lead the regiment, but Sanjurjo’s failure was evidently strong in their thoughts. Eventually a young captain, who was a Falangist, volunteered and all the other officers were locked up.

With the infantry on his side, Queipo managed to persuade the artillery regiment to join him as well. Falangists, who arrived to help, were given weapons from the armouries. Nationalist legend claimed that Queipo seized Seville with only a small force, when in fact he had some 4,000 men.
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An artillery salvo ensured the surrender of the civil governor and the Assault Guard. Then, despite Queipo’s promise to save the lives of those inside if they gave in, they were all shot. Just before the chief of police was due to be executed, he was told that his wife would be given his full salary if he handed over the secret files on the workers’ organizations. He explained where they were hidden, but his widow probably received nothing after he was shot.

The Civil Guard joined the rebels as soon as they saw the surrender of the Assault Guard. It was only then that the workers started to react. A general strike was ordered over Radio Seville and peasants were called in from the surrounding countryside to help. Barricades were constructed in desperate haste, but the feud between anarchists and communists undermined the organization of an effective counter-attack. The workers withdrew into their own districts of Triana and La Macarena around the perimeter of the town where they prepared their defence. The rebels captured the radio station, which was used by Queipo to broadcast threats of violence against those who resisted him and, more important, to deny government claims that the revolt had been crushed on the mainland. The rising of 18 July 1936 was the first modern coup in which radio stations, telephone exchanges and aerodromes were of major importance.

On 22 July General Queipo de Llano declared over the radio that he ‘was not playing politics’ and that what the generals wanted was to ‘reestablish order subverted by foreign powers, and that the Marxist conglomerate had deformed the character of the Republic’. He added, ‘As a Spaniard, I regret the blind obstinacy of those who with weapons in their hands oppose this movement of liberation. This obliges me to be implacable in punishing it.’
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In Málaga the workers were strong but they had no weapons. Their leaders maintained contact with the Assault Guard, the only government force they felt they could trust. On the afternoon of 17 July, when the news of the rising in Melilla arrived, a rash young army officer, Captain Agustín Huelin, had led his company out towards the centre of the town. On the way they ran into a strong force of Assault Guards, who attacked at once. The soldiers came off worse. The senior officer in Málaga, General Paxtot, felt that he had no option but to move immediately. The rest of the garrison was marched out, but their commander changed his mind and marched them back to barracks. The colonel in charge of the Civil Guard was, most unusually for that corps, arrested by his own men when he also declared for the rising. The workers then surrounded the army barracks and set fire to a number of buildings. The garrison surrendered immediately.

In Almería the civil governor refused to arm the workers, using the argument that he did not wish to provoke the military into open revolt. He later claimed that he had no weapons to issue anyway. Only the arrival on 21 July of the destroyer
Lepanto
with a loyal captain secured the port for the Republic. Its guns were trained on the headquarters of the Civil Guard, which surrendered immediately. The threat of shelling proved a strong factor in many towns.

The civil governor in Jaén took a more positive approach. He called in the Civil Guard and persuaded them to lay down their weapons, even though they protested that they were loyal to the Republic. He then gave the weapons to the UGT and CNT for distribution and the town was secured. Obviously many more towns would have been saved if such a course had been followed, but there were few governors prepared to admit the total ineffectiveness of normal channels.

In the naval port of Cádiz, Colonel Varela was freed from prison by the local garrison and took command of the rising there. His troops attacked the
comandancia
, which was defended by the civil governor and members of an improvised workers’ militia. The town hall was another centre of resistance, but artillery was brought up. Then at first light on the next day, 19 July, the destroyer
Churruca
arrived with the first reinforcements from the Army in Africa. The insurgents had captured a major naval port on the Andalucian coast.

The rebels were also to secure most of the coast to the Portuguese frontier, including Algeciras, La Línea (where the Carlists shot 200 Freemasons) and Jeréz. The repression was savage. Professor Carlos Castilla del Pino, who was then thirteen years old, described the killings in his birth place of San Roque. ‘They took an anarchist couple, whose son was a friend of mine at school, off to a village 25 kilometres away and shot them there. Later, a Falangist who witnessed the execution told me that before being executed, the wife was raped by all the Moroccan soldiers who made up the execution squad…Five wounded
carabineros
were dragged from their hospital beds. The Moors seized them by their arms and legs and threw them into the back of a lorry…When they got them out to the highway, there was no way that the wounded could stand up to be shot, so the Moors bayoneted them.’
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In Huelva, however, the left retained control for the first few days. The Civil Guard commander in Madrid ordered the local detachment to attack Seville but it joined Queipo’s forces immediately on arrival.

In the capital Casares Quiroga resigned as prime minister at four o’clock in the morning of 19 July. The atmosphere in Madrid had been very tense throughout the night. Even the backfiring of a car would lead people to think that the rising had started there too. During the hot night the cafés stayed open and the streets were noisy. Popular frustration and anger at the government was increased by contradictory news items broadcast on the wireless. The UGT and CNT were beginning to suspect treachery.

On receiving Casares Quiroga’s resignation, Azaña asked his friend, Diego Martínez Barrio, the president of the Cortes, to form a government. His cabinet was composed of republican parties only and purposely ignored the left-wing elements of the Popular Front alliance, since it was the new prime minister’s intention to achieve a reconciliation with the right. This moment of crisis revealed the crucial division between the liberal government of the Popular Front and the left.

Nevertheless, Martínez Barrio’s peace overture to General Mola by telephone was firmly rejected. ‘It is not possible, señor Martínez Barrio,’ said Mola. ‘You have your people and I have mine. If you and I should reach agreement, both of us will have betrayed our ideals and our followers.’
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It was perhaps ironic that a rebel general should remind the prime minister that he was the representative of those voters to whom he owed his appointment. The workers were furious with what they regarded as an utterly
fainéant
, if not treacherous, government. ‘Large demonstrations are formed simultaneously,’ an eyewitness wrote. ‘They move towards the interior and war ministries like avalanches. The people shout “Traitors! Cowards!”’ Militants shouted, ‘We’ve been sold down the river! We’d better start taking them out and shooting them!’
¹⁴

Martínez Barrio’s government collapsed instantly. He described the event himself: ‘Within a few minutes the political demonstration had brought about the ruin of my government. It was senseless to ask me to combat the military rebellion with mere shadows, stripped of authority and ludicrously retaining the name of ministers.’
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His ministry had lasted just a few hours.

Azaña asked yet another personal friend to form a government. José Giral, a university professor, was the only liberal politician who realized that the politicians of the Republic could not refuse to face reality any longer. During the morning of 19 July he dissolved the army by decree and ordered that arms should be given to the workers’ organizations. Julian Marías, who went to mass with his fiancée Lolita in the Church of the Carboneras near the Puerta del Sol, did not imagine that it would be the last one held there until April 1939. When they emerged on to the street afterwards, it seemed as if the city had changed hands during the church service. Requisitioned motorcars decorated with red or red and black flags careered around with rifles pointing out of the windows. The weapons had been handed out from the Assault Guard barracks in the Calle del Correo nearby.
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Even so, there were governors and officials who refused to carry out this instruction. In Madrid the government had to order General Miaja point-blank to comply with the order. More than 60,000 rifles were then delivered in lorries to UGT and CNT headquarters, where the heavy grease was cleaned off with party newspapers. Only 5,000 of them had bolts; the remainder were stored in the Montaña barracks where Colonel Serra, who was one of the conspirators, refused to hand them over.

David Antona described the scene inside CNT headquarters, which the government had closed only a few weeks earlier: ‘A narrow dark room. We could hardly move. A jabber of voices, shouts, rifles–many rifles. The telephone never stopped ringing. It was impossible to hear yourself speak. There was only the noise of rifle bolts from comrades who wanted to learn quickly how to handle them.’
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The loyalists were lucky that there was also confusion among the conspirators in Madrid. Nobody seemed certain who was to take command, until eventually General Fanjul assumed this ill-fated responsibility. The rebel generals had known how hard it would be to seize Madrid at once. But considering that their strategy was based on a holding action until reinforcements arrived from Pamplona, Saragossa and Barcelona, astonishingly little preparation had been made for a siege.

Late in the afternoon of 19 July Fanjul went to the Montaña barracks, where he addressed the officers and those Falangists who had come to help. But when they attempted to march out, they found that they were hemmed in by crowds of
madrileños
who had been directed there by the UGT and CNT. Fire was exchanged and the troops withdrew into the barracks. The rebels’ action had more the air of a ritual than a military operation. Outside, La Pasionaria’s speech on the radio calling for resistance was relayed over loudspeakers, then the besiegers settled down to wait for the morning.