The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (15 page)

While the fighting on the mainland intensified during the afternoon of 18 July, the Dragon Rapide aeroplane, organized by Luis Bolínin London, collected General Franco in civilian clothes. The English pilot was supposed to match half a torn playing card with its counterpart in his passenger’s possession. Franco dispensed with such a trivial touch of amateur conspiracy; perhaps he felt it beneath the dignity of a man of destiny. Sanjurjo may have been accepted as the figurehead, but Franco had an unshakeable belief that his own abilities were indispensable to the success of the rebels’ great undertaking.

Franco flew to Casablanca, in French Morocco, where Luis Bolín awaited him, but first he needed to be sure that the Army of Africa was in control. He telephoned officers in Larache who advised him not to land in Tangier. At dawn on 19 July he left for Tetuán, changing into uniform in mid flight. Senior rebel officers were waiting for him at the airport. They included Yagüe, Solans, Seguí, Sáenz de Buruaga and Beigbeder.
¹⁸
A conference was held around the aircraft. Franco learned that the rising had not been entirely successful. He decided that Bolín should leave at once with an authorization to ‘purchase aircraft and supplies for the Spanish non-Marxist army’–a somewhat bland description for the forces of what was later to be called
La Cruzada
.

The second decision which Franco took in Tetuán that day was to order that those loyal to the Republic should be held in a concentration camp near the city and in the castle of El Hecho in Ceuta. After a rapid selection, Falangists came each morning to shoot them in groups.
¹⁹

Reinforcements were needed urgently on the mainland and, since the rising in the fleet had failed, aeroplanes were essential to carry the Army of Africa to Spain. On 22 July the German consul in Tetuán passed on to the Wilhelmstrasse a message from Colonel Beigbeder, a former Spanish military attaché in Berlin: ‘General Franco and Lieutenant Colonel Beigbeder send greetings to their friend, the honourable General Kühlental, inform him of the new nationalist Spanish government, and request that he send ten troop-transport planes with maximum seating capacity through private German firms. Transfer by air with German crews to any airfield in Spanish Morocco. The contract will be signed afterwards. Very urgent! On the word of General Franco and Spain.’
²⁰

On the northern coast of Spain, the port of Santander was secured for the Republic without bloodshed on the morning of 19 July, when the 23rd Infantry Regiment refused to rise. But in Oviedo the left was too confident after the strength it had demonstrated in the Asturian rebellion of 1934. The local military commander, Colonel Aranda, had managed over the previous months to convince the civil governor and most of the workers’ leaders that he was loyal to the government. Aranda, insisting that he acted on Madrid’s orders, refused to hand over any weapons. The civil governor, reassured by his promises of loyalty, described him to the workers’ leaders as a man of honour. Aranda suggested that he hold Oviedo while the miners form a column to go and help in Madrid. But as soon as they had left, he declared for the rising. The trusting governor was among the first to be executed once Aranda’s troops and civil guards secured the town. After the workers realized that Aranda had tricked them, they surrounded the town and a long and furious siege began.

In Gijón, the rising failed thanks to the decisive action of dockers who confronted the troops under the command of Colonel Pinilla. They withdrew to the Simancas barracks, where they were besieged for over a month until
dinamiteros
blew up the buildings.

Events were much less dramatic in the Carlist city of Pamplona. On the morning of 19 July General Mola, the ‘Director’, scrupulously followed his own timetable and declared a state of war in Navarre. There was little resistance in this stronghold of traditionalism, often described as the Spanish Vendée. Those in the
casas del pueblo
who tried to resist perished in a massacre.
²¹
All that day a continual stream of Carlist farmers arrived in the main square to volunteer. Wearing their large scarlet berets, they shouted the old battle cry, ‘
Viva Cristo Rey!’
A French observer of the scene said that he would not have been surprised to see an auto-da-fé of heretics organized at the same time. A total of 8,000
requetés
assembled, singing:

Give me my beret,

Give me my rifle,

I’m going to kill more reds

Than there are flowers in April and May.
²²

Navarre had voted to reject the statute of Basque autonomy offered by the Republic, so the Basques were well aware of the threat posed by the Carlists joining the military rebellion. On 19 July the nationalists also captured the city of Vitoria, heart of the southern Basque province of Alava, but in Bilbao the civil governor managed to intercept Mola’s telephone call to the military commander.
²³
A council of defence for the province of Vizcaya was set up, the fortress of Basurto was surrounded and the soldiers were disarmed.

In Basque territory to the east, the initiative came almost entirely from working-class organizations, such as the UGT in Eibar and the CNT in San Sebastián. In San Sebastián events resembled those which had taken place in Oviedo. Colonel Carrasco declared that he was loyal to the government, so a column was sent off to help at Mondragón. When the colonel eventually showed his hand, his men were besieged in the María Cristina Hotel and the Gran Casino Club. San Sebastián, the summer capital and the most fashionable seaside resort in Spain, contained a considerable number of right-wing supporters, but they were unable to withstand the workers’ unexpectedly ferocious attack. In their defence of the María Cristina the rebels were alleged to have used live hostages as sandbags in the windows, but this was probably an example of the exaggerated rumours of the time being used as propaganda. The anarchists seized the weapons in the Loyola barracks, since they were not certain that the Basque nationalist party would oppose the rising. This, and their subsequent shooting of some right-wing prisoners, worsened relations with their Basque Catholic allies in the PNV.

In Old Castile, Burgos, the city of soldiers and priests was ‘nationalist to the very stones’, as the Countess of Vallellano said later to Doctor Junod of the Red Cross.
²⁴
There was virtually no opposition, but that did nothing to lessen the mass executions once names and addresses had been obtained from police headquarters. Generals Batet and Mena, who stayed loyal to the government, were among the first to be shot. The most prominent right-wing civilians in the conspiracy–Sáinz Rodríguez, Goicoechea, the Count of Vallellano, Vegas Latapié, Yanguas, Zunzunegui and the Marquess of Valdeiglesias–had already gathered at Burgos to welcome General Sanjurjo as the new head of state, but they waited in vain. His aeroplane from Portugal had crashed on take-off and the ‘Lion of the Rif’ was killed instantly, burned in the wreck along with his dress uniforms and decorations.

In Valladolid, the heart of that austere Castile romanticized by José Antonio, the Assault Guard rebelled against the civil governor, Luis Lavín, and seized Radio Valladolid and the post office. The governor was arrested and the rebel officers he had locked up were freed. Generals Saliquet and Ponte entered the headquarters pistols in hand to take command of the rising. General Nicolás Molero and those loyal to him fought back and in the exchange of fire, three men were killed and five wounded, including Molero himself, who was executed several days later. Saliquet proclaimed a state of war and ordered the troops into the street. The railwaymen of the UGT fought with great bravery, but were soon annihilated. The 478 people who had sought refuge in the
casa del pueblo
were imprisoned.
²⁵

The failure of the left to secure Saragossa, the capital of Aragón, was a major disaster, especially for the anarchists. The government, suspicious of General Cabanellas’s intentions, sent a friend of his, General Nuñez de Prado, to confirm his loyalty to the Republic. Cabanellas declared for the rising and had Nuñez de Prado and his ADC shot. There were about 30,000 CNT members in Saragossa, but their leaders insisted on working through the civil governor, even though he gave them no arms. Troops led by Colonel Monasterio marched into the streets at dawn on 19 July and the virtually defenceless workers suffered a fearful massacre.

Barcelona presented a very different story, even though it had been regarded by the military conspirators as the most certain conquest of all. The nationalists, relying on UME officers who were right-wing and anti-Catalan, had 12,000 troops to bring in from their barracks to dominate the central area. General Goded was to fly in from Majorca, once the island was secured, and take command. The plotters, however, never took into account the determination of the workers’ organizations, nor did they foresee that the Assault Guard and, more surprisingly, the Civil Guard, would oppose them.

On the evening of 18 July Companys, the president of the Catalan Generalitat, refused to issue arms to the CNT, even though news of events in Morocco and Seville had reached him and he had been given documentary proof of plans for the rising in Barcelona. Catalan police arrested anarchists carrying arms, but they were released after vigorous protests by the CNT regional committee.

The anarchists, who knew very well what awaited them if the army seized the city, decided not to leave their fate in the hands of politicians. During that night the CNT local defence committees went ahead with full preparations for war. Isolated armouries were seized (a couple with the active assistance of sympathetic NCOs) and weapons were taken from four ships in the harbour. Even the rusting hulk of the prison ship
Uruguay
was stormed, so as to take the warders’ weapons. The UGT dockers’ union knew of a shipment of dynamite in the port, and once that was seized, home-made grenades were manufactured all through the night. Every gun shop in the city was stripped bare. Cars and lorries were requisitioned and metal workers fixed crude armour plating while sandbags were piled behind truck cabs. Vehicles were given clear identification with large white letters daubed on the roof and sides. The vast majority were the anarchist initials, CNT-FAI, but POUM and PSUC were also in evidence. Some bore the letters UHP (United Proletarian Brothers), the joint cry of the workers’ alliance in the Asturian revolt.

The atmosphere of that hot night was highly charged. The Popular Olympiad (organized as a boycott of the Olympics in Nazi Germany) was due to open the next morning. The event was forgotten in the threatening crisis, and the foreign athletes waited uneasily in their hotels and dormitories. (Many of them joined the fighting the next day alongside the workers and around 200 later joined militia columns.) Companys, realizing he was superfluous for the moment, went for a walk on the Ramblas, a felt hat pulled down over his eyes to avoid being recognized. The streets were crowded and noisy, with loudspeakers attached to the trees playing music interrupted by announcements. In the favourite anarchist meeting place, the Café La Tranquilidad, CNT members were dashing in and out to hear the latest news and report on the arming of the workers. The members of the regional committee, such as Buenaventura Durruti, Juan García Oliver and Diego Abad de Santillán, maintained a close liaison with the Generalitat despite Companys’s decision. In fact a few assault guards ignored the Generalitat’s instructions and handed out rifles to the CNT from their own armoury.

Just before dawn on 19 July, the soldiers in the Pedralbes barracks were given rum rations by their officers, then told that orders had been received from Madrid to crush an anarchist rising. Falangists and other supporters wearing odd bits of uniform joined the column as it set off up the Diagonal, one of the major thoroughfares of Barcelona.
²⁶
Almost immediately factory sirens all over the city sounded the alarm. Also at about five in the morning, the Montesa cavalry regiment moved out of its barracks in the calle Tarragona, the Santiago regiment of dragoons left the Travessera de Gràcia barracks and a battery of the 7th Light Artillery Regiment marched forth from the Sant Andreu barracks, where more than 30,000 rifles were held.

The deployment of troops into the streets was badly co-ordinated. The infantry regiment from the Parque barracks was vigorously attacked and forced to make a fighting retreat back behind its own walls, while the Santiago cavalry regiment was scattered at the Cinc d’Oros. Some units never even broke out into the streets. Those that did manage to march out, advanced to seize strategic buildings near the Plaza de España and the Plaza de Cataluña. They barricaded themselves in the Hotel Colón, the Ritz and the central telephone exchange. Detachments attacked en route made barricades to defend themselves, but these were charged by heavy lorries driven in suicidal assaults. The soldiers were also attacked with home-made bombs lobbed from rooftops and by snipers. Barricades to bar their way to the centre were constructed by almost everyone who could not take part in the fighting. Those made with paving stones could withstand light artillery if properly laid, as the workers knew from the street fighting during the Semana Trágica in 1909.

At about 11 a.m. General Goded arrived from Majorca by seaplane. The island had been easily secured for the rising, although Minorca, with its submarine base at Port Mahon, was won for the left by soldiers and NCOs who resisted their officers. Goded went immediately to the
capitanía
(the captain-general’s headquarters), where he arrested the loyal divisional commander, Llano de la Encomienda. It was not long, however, before all the rebel-held buildings in the centre of the city were besieged. The black and red diagonal flag of the CNT-FAI appeared on barricades, lorries and public buildings. Loudspeakers in the streets continued to relay news, instructions and exhortations throughout the long hot Sunday. Churches were set on fire after reports of sniping from church towers (not by priests, as rumour said, but by soldiers who had occupied the belfries of los Carmelitas and Santa Madrona). Summary executions were carried out, including a dozen priests in the Carmelite convent wrongly accused of firing at people from its windows.