We Saw Spain Die

by Preston Paul

  In March 1938, Hemingway, another young correspondent, Jim Lardner, son of the novelist Ring Lardner, and Jimmy Sheean had all visited the press office situated in the broad avenue of the Diagonal in Barcelona. As with most other buildings in the city, the windows were criss-crossed with strips of gummed paper to prevent splintering from bomb blasts. Constancia de la Mora arranged hotel rooms for Sheean and Lardner. Feeling inadequate as a correspondent, Lardner would soon join the International Brigades and be killed at the battle of the Ebro.88 Despite rebel advances through Aragón and the recent appalling bombing raids in Barcelona, Sheean found Constancia de la Mora as cheerful and busy as ever. After the rebels broke through to the Mediterranean in mid-April, he was pleasantly surprised to note the deference with which the credentials issued by Connie’s office were treated in both halves of the Republican zone. His work faced few restrictions:

  One time I went off to the front for three or four days by myself (rather against the advice of the local press attaché) and never had a moment’s trouble. The boys who drove trucks of food or munitions were always ready to give me a lift; the military commanders were affable and informative; I could always find a place to sleep and a blanket to cover me.

  In the ferocity of rebel attacks, ‘the Republicans were inclined to assume that anybody who came up to the front was a friend. I never heard of a war in which a stray foreigner could roam about so freely, even with press credentials.’ Far from being threatened, as was the fate of correspondents in the Nationalist zone, Sheean and others found themselves being invited to share the soldiers’ meagre rations.89

  In mid-1938, with the situation for the Republic worsening dramatically, Cedric Salter, who had worked for both the Daily Telegraph and the News Chronicle in Spain, was hoping to get a job representing the Daily Mail. Since Lord Rothermere’s paper was notorious for its doggedly pro-fascist views, it seemed unlikely that it would want a correspondent in Spain or indeed that the Republican authorities would grant permission. However, Salter was persuaded by the Reuters correspondent, Bill Williams, to try his luck. The first part of the operation would be to persuade the Republican press office that to have relatively objective reporting in the hitherto ferociously Francoist Daily Mail would be to the infinite benefit of the Republic. The second part of the operation would be to persuade the editor of the Daily Mail that the inevitable fall of the Republic told from the inside would be a tremendous news story which, with no correspondent as things stood, they would be unable to report.

  Accordingly, Salter went to see Constancia de la Mora, whom he described as ‘the dictator of the Foreign Press Department’. Although he was suspicious of her commitment to the Communist Party, he was in awe of her:

  Few people and no other woman have ever impressed me with the same sense of latent mental power. She was in the middle thirties, rather masculine in manner and clothes, and had a nice taste in pretty secretaries. Everything that she did and said was quietly efficient, passionless, and far-seeing.

  He argued the case that it might help the Republican cause to get a hearing in the Daily Mail. She granted her approval, albeit not without making it clear that she knew that he was motivated by the need for another job after being replaced as the News Chronicle correspondent by William Forrest: ‘I always left Constancia feeling that she was at least three jumps ahead of me.’ With her permission secured, Salter hastened to London and persuaded the Daily Mail to take him on as their first, last and only correspondent in Government Spain. He began his mission of reporting on the final days of the Republic at the beginning of June 1938.90

  After Willie Forrest had returned to Spain in the spring of 1937, he impressed all who met him with his courage. According to Cedric Salter, Forrest never showed the slightest awareness of danger, ‘strolling about happily with bullets whining uncomfortably close, and not bothering even to duck’. Apparently, the only sign that he recognized danger was that his Scottish accent intensified noticeably. During one of the most notorious artillery bombardments to affect the Hotel Florida, on 22 April 1937, Josephine Herbst described him as a sheep-faced man, ‘behaving very well with grayish look’. However, it was his sensitive and realistic reporting that impressed every bit as much as his bravery. When Willie had been in Madrid during the worst days of the siege, Geoffrey Cox had recognized his uncanny ability to capture the intensity of the moment in his articles by the use of some concrete detail. Not all journalists were as impressed as Cox. Certainly not the interpreter assigned to Willie by the press office, the Swedish Kajsa Rothman. Not appreciating how he worked, she complained to Herbst that Willie ‘always wants to know unimportant things’. Constancia de la Mora, however, shared Cox’s appreciation of Forrest, regarding him as

  one of the best all-round correspondents covering the war. He had a fine Scotch sense of humour, which turned up at the most difficult moments. I never saw him flustered or worried. I never heard him complain. Bombardments never gave him the jitters, defeats never shook his faith in the Spanish people. He knew Spain intimately and used his knowledge to give his dispatches an informative and understanding tone few reporters achieved. He moved slowly around Valencia and Barcelona, apparently never in a hurry, never worried. Yet his dispatches were always on time and they always covered more facts than many reporters who stirred up lots of dust and trouble and got nothing for their pains.91

  In acknowledging the bravery of some of the correspondents, an International Brigade veteran, Bernard Knox, commented that the one vital distinction between war reporter and soldier is that one can come and go when and where he chooses while the other must remain where he is ordered.92 Nevertheless, several correspondents in the Republican zone increasingly found themselves in dangerous situations, chose to stay and frequently demonstrated a courage that went far beyond their immediate professional obligations. Cedric Salter remarked on the particular physical courage of Herbert Matthews, claiming that while in normal conditions he could often be short-tempered, under fire, he became ‘one of the kindest, gentlest, and most considerate of men. If things were really bad he would go about doing little kindnesses and smiling amiably at anyone within sight. I formed the impression that only under circumstances of real danger was he really, deeply at peace with himself and his fellow men.’93 There was no shortage of situations in which the correspondents’ courage was put to the test.

  Joseph North of the American Daily Worker recalled a revealing incident on May Day 1938. On the winding mountain roads around the Ebro, he, Matthews and Hemingway were in a car driving along behind a truck full of young soldiers singing Republican songs. Matthews was driving and

  even he, somber and taciturn, seemed moved. Suddenly, as the truck rounded a sharp bend, the driver lost control and it somersaulted before our eyes, the scene of gaiety changed to horror as bodies lay bleeding on the ground. Matthews jammed the brakes on, we leaped out; I can never recall where Hemingway found a medicine kit, but he was on his knees bandaging the injured and solacing them. We worked away together, the blood of the dying on our hands. I noticed that Matthews strode among the bodies, bending down, not to help, but to interview the dying, jotting notes in a little notebook. After all, he was first and foremost, ‘a Times man’, and deadlines to even the most humane of Times men, were more urgent than death or life. To every man his loyalties. Hemingway started at the sight: ‘You sonofabitch’, he roared, ‘get out or I’ll kill you’. After this I felt a regard for him, a warmth, which has lasted to this day, for, I felt, thinking about it afterward, I had seen the real man; despite his tough-guy pose, here was a humanist, a partisan of humanity.94

  Herbert Matthews, Jimmy Sheean, Robert Capa and Willie Forrest were among the last correspondents to leave Catalonia before the Francoists reached the French frontier. Sheean, Matthews, Buckley and Hemingway had been involved in a hair-raising crossing of the Ebro in a boat which was nearly smashed against some spikes. They were saved by Hemingway’s brute strength and impetuousness.95 They had then followed t
he retreating Republican army as it was bombed and strafed from Tarragona to Barcelona. In one of his most moving despatches, Matthews described the terrifying scene as streams of refugees were bombed near El Vendrell: ‘We four correspondents and our chauffeur, as well as everyone else in the region, lived through the sort of hell that modern war brings to all and sundry.’96 When the publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, wrote to congratulate him on the article, Matthews replied: ‘Thanks for the kind words about the Tarragona story, but I trust that you also noted that the desk preferred to front page Carney’s story from faraway Burgos, meanwhile cutting my piece up.’97

  Constancia de la Mora entered the press room in the Hotel Majestic on the night of 24 January 1939 and dramatically announced that, at noon the following day, the last cars would be leaving to evacuate the remaining correspondents. She solemnly took her leave, shaking hands with each of them. On the next day, William Forrest and O. D. Gallagher of the Daily Express loaded their luggage and set off. Cedric Salter, safe in the knowledge that the correspondent of the right-wing Daily Mail was unlikely to be molested by the Francoist occupiers, remained to be the last British correspondent in Barcelona. He quickly managed to ingratiate himself with the conquerors and sent out an eye-witness account of the fall of the city.98 Gallagher, after crossing the French frontier, somehow managed to get to Madrid, where he was to be the last correspondent remaining when the Francoists took the capital.

  As Barcelona fell, Negrín’s government was installed in the fortress at Figueras in northern Girona. Herbert Matthews interviewed the prime minister, who declared his determination to fight on. Matthews was deeply impressed by the efforts being made by the Republicans to deal with the problems faced by the starving refugees who were sleeping in the streets of Figueras in the midst of regular rebel bombing raids.99 After the last meeting of the Cortes on Spanish soil, Negrín remained in the fortress at Figueras until the last units of the Republican army had crossed the frontier on 9 February. Around the courtyard, the cabinet was installed in a room with the words ‘council of ministers’ roughly chalked on the wall next to the door. The town square, where the office of press and propaganda had been installed in a requisitioned house, was heaving with refugees. Luisi, Álvarez del Vayo’s wife, was organizing food for the staff and the remaining journalists. The situation was chaotic, the office was noisy and dirty, with reporters coming then going around the clock on their way to the French border. Anyone who had ever had anything remotely to do with the Foreign Ministry or had a relative who had once worked there headed for the flat where the press office had been installed. Correspondents and government officials squeezed in together, sharing what little food that could be obtained, sleeping on the floor. It was a symbol of the solidarity that had been established between many of the reporters and the Republic.

  Sheean crossed the border in the bleakest mood imaginable and sent his last chronicle on the war from Perpignan. Like Herbert Matthews, like Henry Buckley, like Jay Allen, like Ernest Hemingway, like Martha Gellhorn, like Louis Fischer, like Willy Forrest, like so many foreign correspondents, Jimmy Sheean had become emotionally attached to the Spanish Republic. They had been inspired by the spirit with which the Republican population fought against overwhelming odds. They had shared some of their hardships and they left knowing that, since fascism had not been stopped in Spain, its aggression would now be felt by France, by Britain and eventually by the United States. Within five weeks Hitler had entered Prague and Neville Chamberlain declared that he was shocked and would no longer be able to take the Führer’s word for anything. They had all of them – Fischer, Matthews, Allen, Sheean – argued passionately that the passivity of the democracies was paving the way to fascist victory. Now, it was with some bitterness that Sheean wrote:

  This strange, tardy awakening on the part of the Prime Minister was of no worth in the scales of history, and will do little to blind even his contemporaries to the true value of a man who has consistently put the interests of his own class and type above those of either his own nation or of humanity itself.100

  Herbert Matthews, Willy Forrest and William Hickey of the Daily Express had crossed the border to send out stories but came back into Spain, although they too would have to leave shortly after. On the following day, Matthews wrote his last despatch. He had witnessed heart-rending scenes of the sick and the wounded crossing the frontier only to be thrown into rapidly organized and totally unhygienic concentration camps.101 He looked back over his work in the previous two years’ during which time he had written honestly while hoping for a Republican victory:

  The story that I told – of bravery, of tenacity, of discipline and high ideals – had been scoffed at by many. The dispatches describing the callousness of the French and the cynicism of the British had been objected to and denied. I, too, was beaten and sick at heart and somewhat shell-shocked, as any person must be under the nerve strain of seven weeks of incessant danger, coming at the end of two years’ campaigning. For a few years afterwards I suffered from a form of claustrophobia, brought on by being caught, as in a vise, in a refuge in Tarragona during one of the last bombings. So I was depressed, physically and mentally and morally. […] But the lessons I had learned! They seemed worth a great deal. Even then, heartsick and discouraged as I was, something sang inside of me. I, like the Spaniards, had fought my war and lost, but I could not be persuaded that I had set too bad an example.102

  5

  The Rebel Zone: Intimidation in Salamanca and Burgos

  Kate Mangan was struck by the extent to which her colleagues, in the Republican press office in Valencia, tried to facilitate the work of foreign journalists.1 Such assistance was experienced in the rebel zone only by the correspondents from Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Portugal. This was a reflection not only of the prevailing military mentality, but also of the personnel chosen to oversee relations with the world’s press. Anticipating his own future eminence, within a few days of arriving in Seville, Franco had set up a press and propaganda service. This Gabinete de Prensa was established on 9 August under the monarchist journalist, Juan Pujol Martínez, with practical responsibility for journalists being taken by Luis Antonio Bolín. Pujol was the choice of General Sanjurjo, having been involved in the preparation of his abortive military coup in August 1932; he had also been with him in Lisbon shortly before his death in an aircraft accident.2 Pujol had worked for ABC before becoming editor of the right-wing Informaciones, where he accepted subsidies from the Third Reich in return for pro-Nazi and ferociously anti-Jewish articles, including one by Hitler himself entitled ‘Why I am anti-Semitic’. He had opened its pages to leading Falangists and other Spanish fascist sympathizers. He was also a Cortes deputy for the Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas for the Balearic Islands. His deputy was Joaquín Arrarás, a member of the ultra-rightist monarchist group, Acción Española, and close friend and first biographer of the Generalísimo himself. The Gabinete’s name was changed on 24 August to Oficina de Prensa y Propaganda. Bolín, the one-time London correspondent for ABC, had attracted the attention of Franco because of his part in hiring the Dragon Rapide used to transport the rebel leader from the Canary Islands to Morocco. He would run the foreign press offices successively in Sevilla, Cáceres and Salamanca, and during the assaults on Málaga and Bilbao.3 Ironically, his eventual counterpart in the Republican zone would be his sister-in-law, Constancia de la Mora.

  When General José Millán Astray, the founder of the Spanish Foreign Legion, arrived in Seville, Franco quickly recruited him to propagate his cause throughout the Nationalist zone. He was installed at Franco’s side along with his immediate staff in the Palacio de Yanduri in Seville.4 Millán Astray devoted himself to the insistent proclamation of the future Caudillo’s greatness. This adulation was sufficiently gratifying to Franco to persuade him, in the chill autumn of 1936, to replace the altogether less charismatic Pujol with his one-time mentor. Millán was placed in official charge of the expanded
Oficina de Prensa y Propaganda in its improvised offices in the Instituto Anaya, an old palace which housed the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Salamanca.5

  At first, a few correspondents were allowed to accompany the columns of the African Army, which advanced in early August from Seville towards Madrid. However, close control was quickly established since it was felt that the trail of slaughter was not something to be broadcast internationally. Accordingly, under the overall authority first of Pujol, and later of Millán Astray, responsibility for foreign correspondents was placed with Luis Bolín. Those who knew him as an Anglophile monarchist were taken aback to find him in Salamanca boasting the title Captain Bolín and living with other senior members of Franco’s cuartel general in the Palacio de Monterrey, which had been loaned by the Duque de Alba. He could barely bring himself to talk to his old friends. Now, having been granted an honorary captaincy in the Foreign Legion as a reward for accompanying Franco on his journey, he had taken to dressing up as a legionnaire. Wearing breeches and high boots, against which he rapped a riding crop, he would strut menacingly through the press office glaring imperiously at the assembled journalists waiting for passes or other documentation. Although other Legion officers regarded him as a comic figure since he knew nothing of matters military, he exercised his spurious authority by making the correspondents line up as if they were soldiers at his orders. He strode menacingly among them with a fierce scowl.6 During the Málaga campaign, Noel Monks of the Daily Express was shocked by Bolín’s cruel streak: ‘Whenever we saw a pathetic pile of freshly executed “Reds”, their hands tied behind their backs – usually behind a farmhouse in every newly taken village – he would spit on them, saying “Vermin”.’7