So when anarchist groups in the countryside started occupying unused rural land owned by wealthy landowners, alarms went off not only among the farmers whose fields were being forcibly expropriated, but among the liberals in government, who were pursuing a slower pace of reform. The anarchists posed a double threat, both through their own actions and as a potential trigger for a conservative backlash.
Things came to a head in an incident near Jerez at a small town called Casas Viejas. After an anarchist-inspired land takeover, the police went in hard, and in a subsequent shoot-out several locals were killed. It caused a scandal and the Socialists of the PSOE, who until then had been propping up the liberal republicans in power, pulled their support, causing the government to fall. Elections soon followed and the results brought in right-wing parties with very different ideas about social change.
The Second Republic was still alive, but it was about to be very seriously tested.
1 As my own father-in-law, an orange farmer from Valencia born in 1929, has told me, horse-drawn carts were an innovation at the time; his own father’s generation had had to transport everything on mules and donkeys, with very short distances in modern terms taking up a whole day’s travel or more.
ABOUT TURN
Much of the energy bound up in the creation of the Second Republic was centred on hope. After the decline of empire, and with a feeling of being left behind by its European neighbours, many wanted Spain finally to take leaps forward and become a democratic and progressive state, free of the shackles of the past. This desire for reform can be seen in the mass school-building programme begun at the time, in which around twenty thousand new schools were set up in rural areas, filling a gap left by the Church in the nineteenth century and in many cases bringing education to parts of the country for the first time. A large number of these structures can still be seen dotting the landscape today, easily recognised because they are virtually identical, although few, if any, are now used for their original purpose.
A similar sentiment led to the establishment of La Barraca, a travelling theatre group which crossed the countryside bringing classic Spanish plays by writers such as Calderón de la Barca and Lope de Vega to largely illiterate backwaters. Far-right groups attacked the troupe as a propaganda tool for the Republican government, and even sabotaged some of its performances, but La Barraca was a powerful symbol both domestically and internationally of the new Spanish government’s intentions. One of the group’s originators and early directors was poet and playwright Federico García Lorca.
Another reform came with advances in women’s rights. Equality of the sexes was recognised in the constitution, a liberal divorce law was passed, and women over the age of twenty-three got the vote. But this last step backfired. At the time several leading female politicians argued against it, insisting that Spanish women would need to perceive the benefits of the Republic before being allowed a say on who governed. In the elections of 1933 they were proved right: nuns and other religiously minded, conservative female voters appeared to tip the balance against the parties who had emancipated them, bringing in right-wing groups who quickly put a brake on the new reforms (the anarchists’ decision not to vote, as well as divisions between Socialists and Republicans, also contributed to the change in government).
The result was what became known as the ‘black biennial’ by the Left (or the ‘rectifying biennial’ by its supporters), a period of two years in which a coalition of parties that defined itself as ‘anti-Marxist’ formed one short-lived government after another. And the Republic came under enormous strain not least because the party with the largest number of seats was authoritarian, anti-democratic and anti-republican. The CEDA was a coalition of right-wing groups established by its leader, José María Gil-Robles, after a visit to Germany during the early months of Nazi rule there. Inspired by what he saw at a Nuremberg rally, Gil-Robles returned to Spain and decided to follow Hitler’s example of using the ballot box as a Trojan Horse to bring down democracy and set up a totalitarian regime. He styled himself el jefe (‘the boss’) as a Spanish equivalent of führer or Mussolini’s duce, and spoke of a ‘March on Madrid’ to take power. The voice of religious conservative authoritarianism – which had existed in Spain over centuries in various guises, from the Almohads to the Inquisitors – was now expressed through the CEDA.
Gil-Robles, however, never realised his ambition of becoming dictator of Spain. Despite having the largest number of seats in parliament, he fell far short of a majority and baulked at the idea of sharing power. While for the Republic, to have given control of government to a party which was overtly intent on bringing down democracy would have been an act of suicide. So right and centre-right parties cobbled together coalitions which staggered along in highly unstable fashion. It was unsustainable, and the explosion came in October 1934.
The October Revolution is one of the most divisive moments in Spanish history, second only to the Civil War itself. And just as with the Second Republic, views on it are entirely tied up with opinions on the events of subsequent years. In fact, in many ways it was a dress rehearsal for the full-scale conflict which broke out less than two years later.
On 4 October, a new government was announced which included three CEDA ministers for the first time. Giving power to a party opposed to the Republic was unacceptable to Socialists and other left-wingers, who immediately declared a ‘revolutionary strike’ in response. The hope was that ordinary soldiers would join their ‘brother workers’ in an insurrection which would overthrow the new government. But the authorities declared a state of war and in just a few days managed to crush the uprising. Leading opposition politicians (including former prime minister Azaña, who was not involved), were thrown in jail, as well as the president of the Catalan region, Lluis Companys who, following a predictable pattern, had taken advantage of the chaos to declare another independent Catalan republic (while simultaneously ensuring no weapons fell into the hands of the revolutionaries whose movement he was jumping on the back of).
The only part of the country where the revolution enjoyed any success was in the mining area of Asturias, the one region where the Anarchists had joined what was a largely Socialist-organised rebellion. Here the strikers held out for almost two weeks in what became a mini civil war. In Madrid, the government called in one of the army’s up-and-coming stars, Franco, now a general, who ordered in his fiercest troops – Legionaries and Regulares from Spanish Morocco – to crush the rebels. The result was a bloodbath in which over a thousand people died and two thousand were wounded. On 18 October, the strikers surrendered and the revolution came to an end.
October 1934 marks a ‘before’ and ‘after’ in the Second Republic. Since General Sanjurjo’s coup attempt in 1932 (and arguably even before), it had been evident that conservatives were prepared to use violence to defend their vision of Spain, traditional, united and dominated by the Church. But now Socialists and other left-wingers had shown their hand and declared that they, too, would use violent means. Their justification was that it was in defence of the Republic, but the effect was the same: the creation of an abyss of fear and mistrust within the political sphere which would only worsen. Many large and mutually antagonistic groups were now advocating the use of arms for political advantage, not only Anarchists and right-wing generals, but the Socialist movement and also the far-Right, which had a new voice, even more extreme than the CEDA, in the shape of the Falangist party, inspired by Mussolini’s Fascists and led by José Antonio Primo de Rivero, son of the former dictator. At a time when European countries were struggling with radicalism on all sides, the chances of a peaceful future were waning. Each ‘Spain’ saw the threat of its own annihilation in the shape of the ‘other Spain’: Santiago the Slayer was roused once again into action.
A further step towards the darkness came with Franco’s use of colonial troops against Spanish civilians. The Legionarios were members of a death cult which glorified brutality; running a close second were the Regulares,
mostly Moroccan fighters who had been given their own regiment in the Spanish army. Both would become highly effective frontline troops in the Civil War, when they would again be deployed against untrained militias. But by then any taboo against their use on the Spanish mainland against ordinary people had already been broken.
The CEDA used the October Revolution to its advantage, pressing over the following months for more cabinet members, which it got. Corruption scandals weakened the centre-right coalition governments, however, and when in late 1935 Gil-Robles, now minister of war, demanded to be made prime minister, the President of the Republic refused. Gil-Robles had placed like-minded generals in the top jobs in the military, and one of them, General Fanjul, offered to stage a coup on his behalf. Gil-Robles declined, aware that there still wasn’t enough support for his cause, but already the Republic was beginning to strain under pressure. For months, other far-right groups had been talking to Mussolini, who had given his support for a future insurrection.
In early 1936, the last of the bienio negro cabinets fell and a new general election was called. It would bring in a new left-wing coalition of Socialists and Republicans, united once more, and with the tacit support of the Anarchists in return for the release of their incarcerated comrades.
For a moment it seemed as if the Spanish Republic might survive. Behind the scenes, however, plots to bring it down went into full operation.
PRELUDE
The Spanish Civil War started when, in July 1936, a conservative, military coup against the democratically elected government failed to take control of the entire country, splitting the nation in two and provoking a bloody conflict which lasted almost three years.
Variations on this statement have become the new orthodoxy, and while essentially true, it is also only partially true in its implication that left-wing republicans were somehow innocent victims of a one-way act of aggression. The October Revolution of 1934 demonstrated that the Socialists were as prepared to use violence for their own ends as were reactionary elements in the armed forces, or the Anarchists. Huge numbers of Spaniards – probably the majority – were getting on with their lives, at one remove from the politics of black-and-white thinking taking hold around them. That the situation was more nuanced for many is hinted at by the curious friendship which developed shortly before the war between the Falangist leader José Antonio and the poet García Lorca. But equally the fact that these two men felt a need to keep their meetings secret suggests how politically sensitive even social contacts across the political divide were becoming.1 By 1936, years of bubbling tensions and outbreaks of violence meant that one Spain could barely look the other in the eye, so deep was the mutual hatred becoming. Each saw in the other the embodiment of their darkest fear: for one side, the spectre of a fascist-style takeover and dictatorship; for the other, a Soviet-style revolution.
The elections of early 1936 saw defeat for the Right and returned the centre-left parties and Socialists who had governed during the first two years of the Republic. As the results came in on the night of the polls, elements within the outgoing conservative government considered staging a coup to hold on to power. The military chief of staff, General Franco, was consulted, but turned the opportunity down: memories of the failed military coup of 1932 were still fresh and he thought there would not be enough support across the country to ensure success.
But as the new government, labelled the Popular Front, came into office, other generals and their supporters got to work on new plans for a rebellion. By the early summer, these were coming to fruition. The preceding months had seen an escalation of violence, with José Antonio’s Falangists engaged in an increasing number of gun battles with their opponents, both Anarchist and Socialist. (The Spanish Communist Party at this stage was still very small, but organised and disciplined and already preparing the ground for the huge rise in its popularity and power once the war started.) Against a backdrop of more strikes and attacks on opponents’ buildings and headquarters, the street violence escalated in the middle of July when right-wing gunmen murdered a Socialist policeman in the centre of Madrid. Later that night, colleagues of the dead officer murdered a leading right-wing politician, Calvo Sotelo, in reprisal. It was a Rubicon, both sides feeling that the other had crossed a line. In effect, the first shots of the Civil War had been fired.
Calvo Sotelo’s murder was of crucial historical importance because it convinced Franco, living in semi-exile in the Canaries as a perceived threat to the Popular Front government, that he should join the military coup which his colleagues had been planning for several months. Until that moment he had vacillated, but the assassination convinced many on either side that war was now inevitable. On 17 July the rebellion began when army officers took control of the city of Melilla in Spanish Morocco. The next day Franco landed at Tétouan, where he took control of the Army of Africa and secured the colony for the uprising.2 The insurgents had the best military formations under their control, the Legión and the Regulares.
And now the Spanish Civil War had begun.
1 Albeit Lorca’s politics were complex; he insisted he was apolitical, and had friends of many persuasions. He would be murdered by right-wing rebels in his home town of Granada during the early days of the conflict.
2 Not least through an agreement with local Moroccan leaders not to interfere too much in their affairs: for years Spanish Morocco enjoyed liberties, such as relative press freedom, which were absent in Franco’s Spain.
DURING
NO ONE’S SPAIN
With its twentieth-century Civil War, Spain once again plays its traditional role of harbinger of things to come elsewhere. The fighting which was to scar the country for two and a half years acted as an antechamber for the new World War which would follow within months of its ending. Blitzkrieg techniques, mass aerial bombardments of civilians (most famously at Guernica), the use of revolutionary German Stuka and Messerschmitt Bf 109 planes, of Soviet T-26 tanks, and a military clash based on political ideology, were all prefigured on Spanish soil. Not only that: Hitler’s intervention in the Civil War laid bare his aggressive intentions for all to see, striking a blow to the Appeasement policy adopted by Prime Ministers Baldwin and Chamberlain, and eventually paving the way for Britain to ‘stand alone’ against the Third Reich by May 1940. And although the Nazis and the Soviets supported opposing sides during the Civil War, the fact that Britain and France failed to come to the Republicans’ aid during the conflict eventually distanced Moscow from London and Paris (Stalin had been trying to forge an alliance with the liberal democracies), paving the way for the Nazi–Soviet Pact of August 1936, which was the immediate trigger for the German invasion of Poland.
The parallels and precedents for the Second World War are striking enough, but the Civil War even gives a taste for the Cold War that followed, being, in one sense, a proxy war manipulated by world powers unwilling to engage in a direct fight themselves. In that way Spain’s conflict also prefigures the Korean and Vietnamese wars, and the myriad battles between the Soviet Union and the West which continued long after 1945.
By that time, the country was again the ‘backward’ place it is more commonly seen as, remote, impoverished and isolated. But for a time, the eyes of the world (when not distracted by Edward VIII’s marital complications) were focused on Spain, as if for a fleeting moment it was understood that what happened there would have important ramifications for what happened in the rest of Europe in the years to come. As left-wing propaganda posters coming out of Spain declared next to photos of dead babies and toddlers, ‘If you tolerate this, your children will be next.’
Initially, the situation at the start of the war was very unclear. Franco met precious little resistance in Morocco, but on the Spanish mainland the uprising was less successful. The first days of the coup were chaotic, but it eventually emerged that the rebellion had taken control of Seville and part of Andalusia, as well as a swathe of territory in the north stretching from Saragossa to Galicia. The rebellion had
failed, however, in most major cities, including Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Bilbao, centres of the country’s industry and most of its wealth. This was less to do with any organised response on the part of the government, however, but thanks largely to spontaneous action by unions and other groups who managed to arm themselves and put a halt to the rebel takeover. The result was that in many areas which hadn’t fallen to the coupists, social revolution broke out in which, for a time, the authority of central government was practically annihilated and armed militias were in charge. One Spain slipped back into an authoritarian, Catholic-dominated society in which reforms such as divorce and co-education were abolished (the Church didn’t wait long to give the rebellion its blessing, dubbing it nothing less than a ‘Crusade’), while the other revelled in near anarchy, embracing free love, collective property ownership and the abolition of money (in some areas), and decision-making by committee. What united the two Spains, however, was the unchecked violence and bloodletting which now broke out in both areas.
The first months of the Spanish Civil War
For the first few months of the war, thousands who found themselves on the wrong side of the new territorial divide were murdered. Within rebel-held areas, targets included unionists, known left-wingers and even schoolteachers, symbols of the educational reforms of the Second Republic. On the other side, priests and nuns in particular were singled out, but so were wealthy landowners or even men caught wearing ‘bourgeois’ clothes such as jackets and ties. (Such items of clothing soon disappeared from the streets, with blue workers’ overalls becoming a kind of uniform and sign of solidarity with the proletariat.) In the Spain of the ‘Nationalists’ – as the rebels called themselves – Falangists and others would drag their ideological opponents out and shoot them, dumping their bodies in unmarked graves or by the side of the road. And in loyalist territory the story was practically the same, the men pulling the triggers calling themselves Anarchists, Socialists or Communists. Republican Madrid at this time was not unlike Chicago in the 1920s, with the different militia groups acting like gangs, roaming the streets in requisitioned cars in search of enemies and not infrequently getting into gunfights with each other. Bars and restaurants put up polite notices asking their newly armed customers to drop off their guns at the door, or failing that not to fire them off inside. Ironically, many of the films showing at the cinema at the time were gangster movies, and their vocabulary was co-opted for the new violent environment on the streets: to take someone out and kill them was referred to, Al Capone-style, as ‘taking them for a ride’ (darle un paseo).
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