The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (89 page)

23
El Socialista
, 3 January 1934, quoted Payne,
The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union and Communism
, London, 2004, p. 46.

24 Payne, ibid.

25 In 1933, both Salazar in Portugal and Dollfuss in Austria had introduced corporatist regimes, strongly influenced by Catholicism, and had suppressed socialist organizations. It was not surprising, therefore, that the PSOE should suspect Gil Robles, who had assumed some of the fascist imagery then fashionable, of similar intentions. But Largo Caballero completely rejected the warnings of moderates within his own party. Gil Robles, although initially impressed by Hitler and National Socialism in Germany, rapidly turned against it.

26 A. Saborit,
Julián Besteiro
, Buenos Aires 1967, pp. 238–40.

27 Azaña,
Obras completas
, vol. iv, Mexico, 1967, p. 652.

28 Marías,
Una vida presente
, p. 175.

29 ‘La aparación del juvenilismo, y por tanto de la violencia, en la política española.’ ibid. p. 148.

30 La Federación Nacional de Trabajadores de la Tierra (FNTT).

31 Hugh Thomas,
The Spanish Civil War
, London, 1977, p. 133.

32 Santos Juliá, ‘Fracaso de una insurrección y derrota de una huelga: los hechos de octubre en Madrid’ in
Estudios de historia social
, 1984, p. 40.

33 Franco wrote in 1956: ‘La revolución de Asturias fue el primer paso para la implantación del comunismo en nuestra nación…La revolución había sido concienzudamente preparada por los agentes de Moscú’ (Jesús Palacios,
La España totalitaria
, Barcelona, 1999, p. 29).

34 Jackson,
La República española y la guerra civil
, Barcelona, 1976, p. 141.

35 The Spanish Foreign Legion (Tercio de Estranjeros) contained fewer foreigners than its French counterpart. Its basic unit was the
bandera
of several hundred men with their own light artillery. Its counterpart for Moroccan colonial troops serving as
regulares
was the
tabor
, which had only 250 men.

36 Quoted Bartolomé Bennassar,
La guerre d’Espagne et ses lendemains
, p. 51.

37 General Goded was made head of the air force and General Mola was given command of the army in Morocco.

38 Two Dutch businessmen, Strauss and Perl (whose two names created the new word ‘estra-perlo’) patented a game of roulette which they wanted to introduce to Spain. Since games of chance had been prohibited since the dictatorship of Primo Rivera, they tried to obtain authorization through bribery. The affair involved corrupt members of the Radical Party such as Sigfrido Blasco Ibáñez (son of the writer) and also Lerroux’s adopted son Aurelio.

39 This scandal involved payments by the entrepreneur Antonio Tayá who obtained a government contract which was not respected.

chapter 4
: The Popular Front

1 Quoted Bennassar p. 51.

2 José María Gil Robles,
No fue posible la paz
, Barcelona, 1968, p. 404. In Catalonia the alliance was represented by the Front Català d’Ordre which included the Lliga, Acció Popular de Catalunya, Renovación Española, Carlists, and Radicals.

3 ‘Armamento de la canalla, incendio de bancos y casas particulares, reparto de bienes y tierras, saqueos en forma, reparto de vuestras mujeres’ (Paul Preston,
La destrucción de la democracia en España
, Madrid, 1978, p. 279).

4 William J. Callahan,
La Iglesia católica en España(1875–2002)
, Barcelona, 2002, pp. 262ff.

5 Ibid., pp. 263–4.

6 The Frente Popular included Izquierda Republicana, Unión Republicana, Partido Socialista Obrero Español, Juventudes Socialistas, Partido Comunista de España, Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, the Partido Sindicalista and the Unión General de Trabajadores. In Catalonia, the Esquerra Republicana, Acció Catalana Republicana, Partit Nacionalista Republicà Català, Unió Socialista de Catalunya, Unió de Rabassaires and the small communist groups made up the Front d’Esquerres. The PNV also applied, despite pressure from the Vatican to join the Bloque Nacional. In Galicia the Partido Galeguista joined the Popular Front without suffering a split with its right wing.

7 The figures vary bewilderingly. The left in Spain has always convinced itself that there were 30,000, but Stanley Payne has calculated that it was closer to 15,000. See
La primera democracia española
, p. 305, n. 21.

8 Diego Martínez Barrio,
Páginas para la historia del Frente Popular
, Madrid, 1937, p. 12.

9 See Payne,
The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union and Communism
, New Haven, 2004, pp. 67–8.

10 Ibid., p. 81.

11 Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew,
The Comintern
, New York, 1997, p. 132.

12 ‘Decisión sobre la cuestión española’, RTsKhIDNI 495/18/ quoted in Daniel Kowalsky,
La Unión Soviética y la guerra civil española
, Barcelona, 2004, p. 23.

13 Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, 23 July 1936, RGASPI 495/18/1101, pp. 21–2.

14 Quoted Radosh and Habeck,
Españatraicionada
p. 8.

15 14 October 1936, RGASPI 495/74/199, p. 63.

16 Estimates of union membership figures vary considerably. Some historians put the UGT at 1.5 million and the CNT at 1.8 million, but others attribute much lower numbers to CNT and much higher to the UGT, for example Ramo ´ña, vol. vii, Madrid, 1973, p. 29.

17 The results were as follows based on a total number of voters of 9,864,783, which represented 72 per cent of the electoral register:

Popular Front: 4,654,116

Nacionalistas vascos: 125,714

Centre: 400,901

Right: 4,503,524

Of the more important parties, the PSOE won 99 seats; Izquierda Republicana (an amalgam of Acción Republicana, Partido Republicano Galeguista and the radical-socialists of Marcelino Domingo) 87 seats; Unión Republicana of Martínez Barrio (an offshoot from Lerroux’s Radical Party) 38; the Spanish Communist Party, 17; and Esquerra Republicana of Catalonia, 21. On the right, the CEDA kept 88 seats, the monarchists of the Bloque Nacional won 12; the Carlist Traditionalists, 10; the Catalan Lliga, 12; and the Radical Party, 5. In the middle, the Centrist Party of Portela Valladares won 16 seats and the Basque Nationalist Party, 10 (Javier Tusell,
Las elecciónes del Frente Popular
, Madrid, 1972, ii, pp. 190 and 243).

18 Miguel González, ‘La conjura del ‘36 contada por Franco’,
El País
, Madrid, 9 September 2001.

19 Manuel Azaña,
Diarios completos
, Barcelona, 2000, p. 933.

20 Teodoro Rodríguez, quoted in Callahan, op. cit., p. 259.

21
Ahora
, Madrid, 21 February 1936.

22 Pedro C. González Cuevas,
Acción española. Teología política y nacionalismo autoritario en España
, 1913–1936, Madrid, 1998, pp. 172–4.

23 Ismael Saz,
Mussolini contra la Sunda República
, pp. 139ff.

24 Sheelagh Ellwood,
Historia de Falange Española
, Barcelona, 2001, pp. 65ff.

25 Martin Blinkhorn,
Carlismo y contrarrevolución en España, 1931–1939
, Barcelona, 1979, p. 288.

26 Ibid.

CHAPTER 5
: The Fatal Paradox

1 Francisco Comín, Mauro Hernández and Enrique Llopis, op. cit., p. 285.

2 See M. Requena Gallego,
Los sucesos de Yeste
, Albacete, 1983.

3 Edward Malefakis,
Reforma agraria y revolución campesina en la España del siglo XX
, Barcelona, 1971, p. 434.

4 Unemployment in Spain at this time was around 17 per cent, but it was closer to 30 per cent in Andalucia. In the summer of 1936 out of a total population of 24 million, 796,341 were unemployed and of those 522,079 (65 per cent) were agricultural workers, (Ibid., p. 331).

5 ‘Cuando querrá el Dios del cielo que la justicia se vuelva/y los pobres coman pan y los ricos coman mierda’.

6 ‘¿No habéis oído gritar las muchachas españolas estos días “¡Hijos, sí; maridos, no!”?’ Jose´ Antonio Primo de Rivera, ‘Carta a los militares de España’ in
Obras completas
, pp. 669–74.

7 Indalecio Prieto,
Discursos fundamentales
, Madrid, 1976, pp. 272–3.

8 There was an unusually high turnout of 70 per cent, with nearly a million votes in favour and little more than 6,000 against.

9 Pedro Gómez Aparicio,
Historia del periodismo español
, Madrid, 1981, vol. iv, p. 467. Gabriel Jackson argues that the figure given for burned churches, considering that they were buildings made of stone, is highly improbable. In some cases people had merely lit a pile of newspapers on the steps as a gesture (Gabriel Jackson,
La República española y la guerra civil
, Barcelona, 1976, pp. 202–3).

10 José Antonio Primo de Rivera,
Obras completas
, pp. 645–53. These parallels seem bizarre, since if followed through, they suggest that General Franco would have fared little better than General Kornilov, whose failed
coup d’état
helped trigger the bolshevik revolution.

11 Gabriel Cardona, ‘Las operaciónes militares’ in M. Tuñón (ed.),
La guerra civil española 50 años después
, Barcelona, 1985, p. 205.

12 The majority of the plots were being organized by members of the Unión Militar Española (UME), founded in 1933 by Captain Barba Hernández (the one who had accused Azaña over the Casas Viejas affair) and by a Falangist, Lieutenant-Colonel Rodríguez Tarduchy. The UME consisted of serving and retired officers. They did not represent more than 10 per cent of the officer corps, but maintained excellent relations with the Carlists, with Renovación Española, with the Juventudes de Acción Popular, with the Falange and with plotting generals. The UME held aloof from the ridiculous plot which Colonel Varela had planned for 19 April. Varela ended up in prison in Cádiz and General Orgaz who supported him was confined in Las Palmas (Carlos Blanco Escolá,
Falacias de la guerra civil. Un homenaje a la causa republicana
, Barcelona, 2005, p. 72).

13 Sanjurjo was to be known as the chief–‘el Jefe’–and Valentín Galarza as the‘Técnico’.

14 ‘Instrucciónes y directivas para el arranque de la conspiración, primero, y de un posible alzamiento, después’, Felix Maiz,
Mola, aquel hombre
, Barcelona, 1976, pp. 62–4.

15 For details on Franco’s military career, see Paul Preston’s
Franco, caudillo de España
, Barcelona, 1994 and the highly critical Carlos Blanco Escolá,
La incompetencia militar de Franco
, Madrid, 2000, p. 21.

16 See also Juan Pablo Fusi,
Franco
, Madrid, 1985, p. 26, and Herbert R. Southworth,
El lavado de cerebro de Francisco Franco
, Barcelona, 2000, pp. 187ff.

17 The organization was created at the end of 1935 and its leading spirit was Captain Díaz Tendero, who was to die later in the concentration camp of Mauthausen.

18 Julio Busquets and Juan Carlos Losada, op. cit., pp. 63ff.

chapter 6
: The Rising of the Generals

1 Juan Campos, quoted by Ronald Fraser,
Recuérdalo tú y recuérdalo a otros
, p. 49.

2 Gustau Nerín,
La guerra que vino de áfrica
, Barcelona, 2005, p. 178.

3 Hugh Thomas,
La guerra civil española
, Barcelona, 1976, i, p. 239.

4 General Romerales would be sentenced to death by a court martial on 26 August, accused of ‘sedition’ and ‘treason’, J. Casanova et al.,
Morir, matar, sobrevivir
, Barcelona, 2002, p. 62.

5 Luis Romero,
Tres días de Julio
, Barcelona, 1967, p. 12.

6 José Millán Astray,
Franco el Caudillo
, Salamanca, 1939, pp. 22–6.

7 J. Casanova et al., op. cit., p. 62.

8 Quoted in Manuel Tuñón de Lara,
La España del siglo xx
, Paris, 1966, p. 429.

9 Julián Zugazagoitia,
Guerra y vicisitudes de los españoles
, Barcelona, 1977, p. 58.

10 See Francisco Espinosa,
La columna de la muerte. El avance del ejército franquista de Sevilla a Badajoz
, Barcelona, 2003, p. 4.

11
ABC
de Sevilla, special supplement of 22 July 1936.

12 Quoted by Fraser,
Recuérdalo tú
…, pp. 205–6.

13 Quoted in Burnett Bolloten,
La Revolución española
, Barcelona, 1979, pp. 205–6.

14 Eduardo de Guzmán,
Madrid rojo y negro
, Barcelona, 1938, p. 37.

15
Hoy
, México, D.F., 27 April 1940.

16 Marías,
Una vida presente
, pp. 190–1.

17 José Peirats,
La CNT en la Revolución española
, Paris, 1973, vol. i, p. 182.

18 On the subject of the time Franco took to reach Morocco out of prudence, see Carlos Blanco Escolá,
La incompetencia militar de Franco
, pp. 216–18 and also Paul Preston,
Franco
, pp. 187–90.

19 Carlos Blanco Escolá,
Falacias de la guerra civil
, p. 120.

20 DGFP, Wegener to Foreign Ministry, pp. 3–4.

21 Manuel Tuñon de Lara,
Historia de España
, vol. xii, pp. 456–9.

22 ‘Dame la boina/dame el fusil/que voy a matar más rojos/que flores tienen/mayo y abril’.

23 Gabriel Jackson,
La República española
…, p. 215.

24 Marcel Junod,
Warrior without Weapons
, New York, 1951, p. 98.

25 Ignacio Martín Jiménez,
La guerra civil en Valladolid, 1936–1939
, Valladolid, 2000, pp. 47ff.

26 There cannot have been very many. According to Josep Fontana no more than 346 civilians in Barcelona took up arms against the Republic (
Visions de guerra de reraguardia
, Barcelona, 1977, prologue).