Blood of Spain

by Ronald Fraser

  Lost, frightened of wandering back into the nationalist lines, they spent the night in the open; it was several degrees below zero. At dawn, carrying a small Italian hand-grenade in each clenched fist, they moved towards some trenches in front of them. ‘Camaradas, ¡Viva la República!’ A soldier appeared, then another.

  —But they didn’t shout back. They simply gestured to us to approach. We couldn’t tell which side they were on. Clutching our grenades, we advanced with our hands up. The soldiers came up to the wire, their rifles at the ready. Still they said nothing. I was trying to make out their insignia. At 30 metres I still couldn’t see it properly. Suddenly I couldn’t stand it; I started to run forward. I was ready to sell my life dearly. I was looking at those badges. When I was almost up to them I saw we were all right. They were republican troops – Catalan at that. They didn’t speak a word of Spanish nor we of Catalan. We handed over the grenades and they found an officer who spoke some Spanish …

  The ‘deserters’ were able to inform the republican command of the nationalist troop dispositions. Throughout his time in the Legion, the schoolteacher had taken note of air fields, aeroplanes and other military installations, and CALVO had learnt them by heart. But their ordeal was not yet at an end.

  Taken to Madrid, they were interrogated so severely that the communist from Santander nearly lost heart; what was the point of risking their lives crossing the lines to have to face this? ‘But I understood; we could have been spies.’ It was easier for CALVO; he had been in hiding in Madrid after the October 1934 rising, and could get people to vouch for him. Cleared finally, and after a few days’ leave, they were told at the recruiting office in Barcelona that they would be posted to the army of Andalusia which was short of men.

  —‘We’ve been caught by the Franquistas once, we’re not going to be caught again. Here in Catalonia we can get across the border,’ the others said. ‘We’re fighting for the republic and we’ve got to defend it wherever we’re sent,’ I replied. ‘We’ve got to be disciplined.’ I was convinced we would win the war, and I took the train to report to my new unit. But the others didn’t. I never saw them again …

  * * *

  Episodes 13

  Execution

  The men were drawn up on parade in the main square of Bolea, on the Huesca front. General Urrutia, commander of the nationalist forces, had ordered every man not on duty in the front line to be on parade. The night before, a villager had been arrested, suspected of helping Basque nationalists manning the narrow corridor into Huesca to cross the lines. The number of Basques deserting the Franquista army which they had volunteered or been called up to join after the defeat of Euzkadi was causing the general staff serious concern. Civilians in Bolea must be involved in the nightly desertions, incited by the republicans using loud-hailers from their positions only a couple of kilometres away.

  At noon, as the tension grew amongst the men on parade, Lt Juan Ignacio MALZAGA, a Bilbao industrialist who had volunteered for the nationalist army when Bilbao fell, saw the general, accompanied by his staff, gallop into the square on a splendid charger, its mane tressed with the Spanish colours. They came to a halt with a clatter. The officer commanding the parade brought the troops to the general salute. Without dismounting the general ordered the prisoner brought out. The old-looking man, wearing corduroy trousers, was brought from the guardia civil barracks. The general bellowed: ‘Step out of the ranks the soldier who denounced this man.’ The soldier, a Navarrese whose father had been assassinated by the ‘reds’, had come the previous evening to Lt MALZAGA’S unit and reported the villager to his battery commander. The soldier stepped forward. ‘At your orders, mi general.’ The general looked down on the prisoner and the soldier.

  —‘Soldier, do you believe in God?’ ‘Yes, mi general.’ ‘Do you swear by God’ – all this in a sepulchral silence with the whole parade and the village listening – ‘Do you swear by God that what you have said is the truth?’ ‘I swear, mi general.’ ‘Execute the prisoner.’ …

  A firing squad was drawn up immediately; MALZAGA’S battery commander, a falangist captain, commanded it. The procession set off for the cemetery. All the village followed, including the man’s relatives. The priest walked beside the prisoner.

  —The old man was put up against the white cemetery wall. The firing squad took up position. For the first time, very suddenly, the old man reacted. ‘Me cago en dios, ¡Viva la República!’ he shouted. The volley rang out and he fell to the ground. But so great was his strength that four shots from the officer’s pistol still did not kill him. He kept struggling to rise. Finally, the captain succeeded.

  I couldn’t get over the directness of what had happened. On one man’s orders another man could be put up against a wall and shot. Then I remembered the body of one of our soldiers who had been killed a couple of days before by an anti-personnel booby-trap; as one soldier picked up the corpse by the arms and another by the legs each was left holding half the body. These were the two visions I had of this war – the incredible impossibility of finding a means whereby the people of this country could understand each other and live together. Civilization is measured by the capacity of compromise, not by the Spanish idea that one must defend one’s ideals to the death …

  A judgement of God by a cavalry general; the desertions ended.

  * * *

  The National-Syndicalist Organization of the State will be inspired by the principles of Unity, Totality and Hierarchy.

  The vertical trade union is an instrument at the service of the State …

  The State recognizes private enterprise as the source of the Nation’s economic life … All forms of property will be subordinated to the supreme interests of the Nation, as interpreted by the State.

  Gradually, unremittingly, the workers’ standard of living will be raised in the measure in which the Nation’s superior interest permits …

  Labour Charter (Burgos, March 1938)

  * * *

  * * *

  Today it is not the government which needs public opinion, but the reverse: public opinion needs the government so as to prevent a return to political parties …

  The civil governor of Seville

  and national councillor of the FET y de las JONS,

  Pedro Gamero del Castillo (April 1938)

  * * *

  Article 1. The organization, vigilance and control of the national press is the duty of the State …

  Press Law (Burgos, April 1938)

  * * *

  After the Italian defeat at Guadalajara, in the spring of 1937, Franco unified and took over the political forces in his zone. It was after another setback, the republican capture of Teruel, that he formed his first regular cabinet. Its composition faithfully reflected the forces in the nationalist zone: four military men, including Franco, four of the new single party (only one of whom came from the pre-war Falange), two monarchists and two technicians who were personally close to the Caudillo. The minister of public order was General Martínez Anido, who had been responsible for the repression of the CNT in Barcelona in the 1920s. The construction of the strong state, on which the bourgeoisie had wagered, was being given a new impetus.

  Meanwhile, a national council of the single party had been founded. Its fifty members were all appointed directly by Franco. Its task, under the party’s statutes, was to consider ‘all the great national questions which the head of the movement may submit to it’: the major lines of state and trade union structures, important international questions, etc. Both Dionisio RIDRUEJO, the falangist propaganda chief, and Eugenio VEGAS LATAPIE, the former editor of Acción Española, found themselves among the new members.

  —It served no purpose. Spain was being run by Franco and his brother-in-law, Serrano Suñer, observed VEGAS LATAPIE. The latter imagined he was going to play Hitler or Mussolini to Franco’s Hindenburg or Victor Emmanuel. They thought we were going simply to sit there and applaud whatever was said. I maintained on the contrary that it was nec
essary to say loyally what I really thought …

  He put forward a motion which would have restricted all important posts in the nationalist zone to people who had participated ideologically or practically in the uprising’s preparation. The motion was aimed at Serrano Suñer, a former CEDA deputy, who fitted neither category. ‘Although I was assured of the vote of some twenty of the fifty councillors, the motion never got that far. I was dimply dismissed.’

  Shortly afterwards, VEGAS LATAPIE, whom Serrano Suñer had appointed secretary-general of press and propaganda, resigned that post and enlisted as a private in a Falange bandera and later in the Foreign Legion.

  After a few formal sessions, the national council began discussion of the labour charter which the new Burgos government proposed to adopt. The original draft was ‘so pale and paternalistic’ that a commission, of which RIDRUEJO was a member, rejected it and drafted a new one.

  —The charter had very concrete origins: the Italians demanded it, maintaining that it was necessary to give the new state a more progressive social look and to remove suspicion that it was simply a reactionary regime. It was one of the very few times that the Italians intervened in the internal politics of the new regime, unlike the Germans.16

  The latter’s main concern was repayment of their aid. I heard Serrano Suñer relate privately how German pressure became so great at one time that Franco said he would renounce German aid entirely and, if need be, fight the war as a guerrilla operation. ‘We shall win the war in whatever way we can, for I am not prepared to sell any part of the national territory.’

  RIDRUEJO defended a maximalist position on the labour charter, trying to ensure that his syndicalist ideas were put into effect.17 His proposals were – ‘of course’ – defeated.

  As adopted, the charter clearly delineated the structure of labour relations in the new state, basing them on the maintenance of private property and state intervention in work norms and wages. The business enterprise was to be organized hierarchically under its owner who would be responsible to the state; class trade unions were prohibited; in their place, a corporative-type vertical syndicate, based on the principles of ‘Unity, Totality, Hierarchy’, and including workers and employers, was set up. Any individual or collective acts that prevented ‘normal production’ (strikes, go-slows, etc.) would be considered treason. The syndicate – ‘an instrument at the service of the state’ – was to have as its leadership only militants of the single party.

  —As a result of the national council’s refusal to accept the original government draft, the council was never again called to meet as a deliberative organ, only to listen …

  The following month, the nationalist press was ‘redeemed’ from its ‘capitalist servitude to a reactionary or marxist clientele’ and declared ‘authentically and solemnly free’, by Serrano Suñer’s new press law. The latter gave the state the right to determine the number of newspapers and periodicals published, to intervene in the appointment of editors, to oversee everything published and to establish the rules governing the journalistic profession.

  Primary school norms were revised. Under the rubrics, Religion, Patriotic Education and Civil Education, the following enjoinders to schoolteachers were circularized:

  ‘Saturate all teaching with a religious spirit. Instil in the children the social catholic doctrine contained in the Encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Quadrésimo Anno … Exalt the Fatherland in the study of History. Permeate the school with a patriotic ambience, with popular songs and patriotic anthems … Instil an austere concept of life, which is the art of soldiery. Develop a spirit of brotherhood between all Spaniards. Display without fail the Caudillo’s portrait in the classroom. Create, in girls’ schools, a very feminine atmosphere, using the work tasks appropriate to the home … ’18

  During this Second Triumphal Year (as the new terminology had it), while the state apparatus was being reinforced and the ideological bases of the new state defined, Franco did not capitalize on his recent victories which had taken the nationalist army to the borders of Catalonia. Instead of advancing on Barcelona – and to final victory, as it appeared to many in the nationalist zone – he swung his forces southwards on Valencia. The offensive was thwarted by the heavily fortified XYZ line built into the Sierra de Espadán.19 The end of the war, which had seemed so close in the spring, receded. There were rumbles of discontent which reached to the top of the nationalist command. At a falangist banquet, General Yagüe, who had led the Army of Africa’s advance on Madrid, praised the republicans’ fighting qualities, attacked the Germans and Italians as ‘beasts of prey’ and called for a revision of the repressive policies which were keeping thousands of men in gaol ‘for having belonged to a party or to a trade union’ – men who could be incorporated into the nationalist movement …

  There were many, among them RIDRUEJO, who believed that Franco was waging the war with deliberate slowness. In his opinion, Franco knew that a rapid war would not provide him with the means of destroying the enemy totally, or of establishing himself solidly in power.

  —A short, rapid war inevitably meant negotiations and concessions to bring it to an end. A long war meant total victory. Franco opted for the more cruel but effective solution from his own point of view. The repression bore testimony to that …

  Undoubtedly, as Paulino AGUIRRE, the philosophy student who had been caught in no-man’s-land at the start of the war, observed, many people in the nationalist zone naïvely believed that the army could advance at will and criticized it for not doing so. As a junior nationalist army officer, he knew that this was impossible.20 And yet he could not rid himself of the idea that Franco was proceeding with a studied slowness because he did not want to have to absorb too rapidly large areas of newly conquered territory with a large proportion of republican sympathizers. He wanted the republican regime’s complete destruction, its unconditional surrender. It suited his inherent caution, his determination always to be on firm ground.

  —Moreover, if the nationalist army, whose resources were not unlimited, had suffered any severe reverses, demoralization in the rearguard would have been very great indeed. My view was confirmed by Franco’s insistence always on unconditional surrender, by the way the war ended …

  On the night of 24–25 July, the republican army in Catalonia, which three months before had appeared on the verge of defeat, launched one of the most ambitious offensives of the war. A newly-formed army of the Ebro under communist commands crossed the Ebro river under cover of dark and established a large bridgehead on the western bank. The aim was to divert the enemy from Valencia and, if possible, to re-establish land communication with the central zone.

  The nationalists were taken by surprise. Second-lieutenant Juan CRESPO, the monarchist youth from Salamanca, was ordered to lead the van of his Moroccan regulares battalion on a forced march to hold back the republican bridgehead at Mequinenza. In the 50 km from Gandesa covered at night, eight of his Moorish troops died of exhaustion. His sergeant lay on the ground unable to get up. CRESPO raised his riding crop. The sergeant rolled over and showed his feet – the hemp soles of his boots were worn through and his feet were a bloody pulp. He lowered the whip; he had never had to use it in battle to make his men get up to advance. As long as you led them from the front where they could clearly see you upright, they would follow. The casualty rate among subalterns was commensurately high; ‘after three months you were a veteran.’

  His company took up its new positions; he was raising himself off the ground to start the advance when a bullet hit him in the stomach. It was his second wound in three months.

  The Ebro turned into a bloody, four-month battle of attrition.

  * * *

  Episodes 14

  Survivor

  He had been classified as ‘indifferent’; how could anyone in this war be indifferent, he thought, as he reported for service in the republican army. It was just another sign of the regime’s naïvety; you were classified as either an ‘antifascist’, a ‘f
ascist’ or ‘indifferent’. Well, what did it matter if it kept him out of danger? The only thing he was determined to do in this war was to survive.

  It had been a close thing to date. The war was barely a month old when Joan MESTRES was arrested in Barcelona. A born monarchist, an admirer of Dollfuss’s social Catholicism, a pre-war member of Gil Robles’s CEDA, he had been left on the street when the insurance company office, where he was a sub-manager, was taken over by a committee. His arrest followed. Someone denounced him. His hope of surviving, of simply living through whatever happened, vanished before he had time to work out how best his aim could be achieved.

  Expecting to be assassinated at any moment, he had hardly been surprised when a FAI militant came to the gaol to demand that he be handed over to him. The man drove MESTRES to the CNT woodworkers’ union headquarters, explaining en route that he had seen MESTRES’S parents, a modest couple living in a working-class quarter, crying because of his arrest. As a result he had decided to take matters into his own hands.

  At union headquarters, the FAI man, who lived in the same part of the city as MESTRES, went up to the union’s president and began haranguing him. He had rescued MESTRES because he was born poor and lived in a poor barrio.

  —‘He is a son of the people. He is a special case, and it is unjust that he should be in prison. His only fault was to be taken in by religious propaganda; his only sin was religion. He didn’t leave his house on 19 July –’

  The president looked at me. ‘Get up on this table,’ he said. Hesitantly I climbed up. ‘Silence,’ shouted the president. The noise, the people milling about, the confusion that had met me when we first came in, immediately stilled. The president began addressing them as though he were holding a political meeting. ‘This man didn’t take up arms against the people. We believe he should be given a chance to live. A chance to purify his life, rid himself of his mistaken religious beliefs.’ The crowd shouted agreement, turning immediately to other matters. Ignored, I got down from the table and went out, ‘free’ …