by Hugh Thomas
The most resilient of ministers in the face of these difficulties was Prieto who, when moved from the ministry of finance to that of public works, devoted much time and investment to dams, irrigation schemes and reforestation, assisting agriculture as well as hydroelectric power. He electrified some railways, began underground central terminals in Barcelona and Madrid, completed Primo’s scheme for a Guadarrama train tunnel, and built many roads. It is easy to imagine how large a part schemes of this nature would have played in any government of the centre which he would have directed.
Agricultural figures were more encouraging in the first years of the republic. Production of wheat, maize and rice either maintained past levels, or even showed an advance. Fish caught off Spanish coasts increased by a third.1 The area devoted to production of oranges between 1931 and 1935 was nearly half as much again as it was in 1926, while exports of oranges also rose to a record high figure in the years of the republic—reaching (principally to Britain) over 20 per cent of Spanish exports.2 (The increase was chiefly due to the decline in other exports, such as wine and olive oil.) Nevertheless, as expected, overall export figures in the middle thirties were only about a quarter of the levels obtained in 1930.
Such figures need to be reckoned against the consistent rise in population—nearly 1 per cent a year—so that conditions were worse for a larger population.3 100,000 emigrant workers also returned in the 1930s, chiefly from Cuba or South America, and further emigration was impossible.1
The economy of Spain was, therefore, marked by mildly declining industrial production, a severe decline in the mines, static or mildly increasing agricultural production and rising population. Prices remained fairly constant: food was cheap in relation to lodging, as were clothes. But political circumstances naturally dominated the consequences. Between 1931 and 1933, for example, wages rose as a result of Largo Caballero’s measures and of a wave of strikes with which the employers felt they had no alternative save to settle, for political reasons.2 The eventual result after 1933 was layings-off, dismissals, closing of factories—and higher unemployment: indeed, unemployment rose steadily during the republic. Figures are not easy to decide upon; but if, as seems probable, the unemployed numbered 400,000 after the republic had been in existence for nine months in December 1931, they had probably risen to 600,000 by December 1933.3
The situation changed during the bienio negro, the two years of radical, centrist, and CEDA government between late 1933 and early 1936. Employers now had no political anxiety about standing up to wage demands. They had the police, the civil guard and the army behind them, and the workers knew it. So, not only did wages not go up, but they were lowered in many places, without any commensurate drop in prices. The consequence, as has been seen, was the agricultural strike of early 1934, followed by the revolution and general strike of October 1934. Political feelings were thereafter worsened beyond cure, particularly since so many workers’ leaders were imprisoned. But the rate of increase at least in unemployment was lowered. After February 1936, the stock exchange declined, production fell and, this time, the crisis affected agriculture. Landlords and employers found themselves not only raising wages and cutting working hours but, particularly in the country, as has been seen, yielding to demands for labour not only from those sacked between 1933 and 1936, and from those who had been in gaol, but from those who had never had jobs. Even so, unemployment still rose—in June 1936 reaching 800,000. It can easily be imagined how many of these must have sought to be embraced, if not fed, by one or other of the paramilitary organizations. Indeed, the ‘little civil war’, as the events between February and July 1936 has been not unfairly described, might be interpreted as having many characteristics of a raid by unemployed pistoleros, of both sides of the political spectrum, on the lives and possessions of the salaried.
The hatreds caused since 1934, the combination of falling production, high wages (obtained by intimidation), the collapse of business confidence, and rising unemployment left the country with only three alternatives: revolution, counter-revolution, or civil war. Gil Robles and Azaña now seemed irrelevant. In the first half of 1936, only Calvo Sotelo and Largo Caballero had any solution to offer: both had collaborated with democratic politics, both had served Primo de Rivera, both now offered authoritarian policies. The momentum in one direction or the other was difficult for men of the centre to withstand.
The twentieth century had admittedly seen an astonishing reawakening of the Spanish spirit: the political volatility of the years between 1898 and 1936, and most intensely between 1931 and 1936, was the expression of a vitality which extended through most spheres of national life. The first part of the twentieth century was richer in artistic achievement, for example, than any since the seventeenth century. The most famous names, Picasso, Dalí and Miró; García Lorca, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Antonio Machado; Pío Baroja, Buñuel, de Falla, Casals, Unamuno and Ortega—these mark only the peaks of a brilliant period. Spain, in the early twentieth century, was certainly coming out from her long decline. This renaissance was to be seen on the Right as well as on the Left, in education as in art. The harmonious rationalism of the Free Institute of Education was complemented by an already reviving Catholicism. Catalan and Basque nationalism were political expressions of both economic and cultural renaissance. The anarchist movement, which continued to grow in numbers until the 1930s, proved that the working classes had also been awakened. The intellectual revival was reflected in a vigorous press: not only every party but every shade of opinion had its own newspaper and often a journal or two as well. Alas, the clash of those, and other, regeneratory hopes could not be contained within the old structures. Thus the midsummer of 1936 saw not only the completion of Lorca’s masterpiece The House of Bernarda Alba, but the culmination of a hundred and fifty years of passionate quarrels in Spain.
In 1808, the old monarchy had collapsed and, from 1834, war was waged for five years over the question of a liberal constitution. In 1868, a corrupt monarchy was expelled by the army, and the country dissolved into a conflict which was at once religious and regional, while new working-class organizations were founded by the representatives of Bakunin. In 1898, the Spanish American War brought back the over-large army from the last colonies to unemployed frustration in Spain, surrounded by innumerable reminders of past glory, while a valiant group of middle-class young men sought to prepare the intellectual renaissance of the country by ‘placing a padlock on the Cid’s tomb’.1 In 1909, class hatred, exacerbated by both Catalan nationalism and anti-militarism, brought a week of bloody rioting in Barcelona, which vented itself in particular against the church. In 1917, a revolutionary general strike was crushed by an itself half-insurrectionary army, while the military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, established in 1923 after five years of semi–civil war in Barcelona, was the government which gave the country its longest rest from political murders, strikes, and sterile intrigues. The ‘liberals’, whose protests brought the expulsion of both the dictator, in 1930, and the King, in 1931, proved unable to create a democratic habit powerful enough to satisfy the aspirations of either the working, or the old governing, classes, while the new rulers themselves mortally angered the latter, when not strong enough as well as not radical enough to please the former. In 1932, a section of the Right attempted to overcome their electoral defeat by a pronunciamiento in the old style, while, in 1934, a part of the Left, after their own reverse at the polling stations, impelled by their own impatience, as well as by continent-wide fears of fascism, also staged a revolt, which, in Asturias, temporarily established a working-class dictatorship. In February 1936, the two sides which by then had taken shape, and which both referred to themselves by the ominously military word ‘front’, put their quarrels again to the voters. The narrow victory of the Popular Front over the National Front had brought in a weak if progressive ministry, regarded by its own socialist and communist supporters as the precursor of far-reaching social change. Most of the leading men of Spain in 1936 had live
d through a generation of turbulence, and many of them, such as Largo Caballero, Calvo Sotelo, and Sanjurjo, had played important, if equivocal, roles throughout (Largo had served Primo de Rivera, Sanjurjo had deserted the King). Now the old masters of economic power, led by the army, and generally supported by the church, that embodiment of Spain’s past glory, believed that they were about to be overwhelmed. Opposed to them were the ‘professors’—the enlightened middle class—and most of the labour force of the country, maddened by years of insult, misery, and neglect, intoxicated by the knowledge of the better conditions enjoyed by their class comrades in France and Britain and by the mastery which they supposed that the working class had gained in Russia. The Left were frightened by fascism, the Right by communism. The Right supposed, too, that, unless they proceeded to a counter-revolution, they would be smashed by revolution. The anarchists meanwhile had been in a state of war with society for a generation; and the government’s response had been that of a desperate wartime administration, scarcely that of a government at peace. The situation was summed up sharply if haughtily by the French military attaché, Colonel Morell, some months later:
A parasitical aristocracy, a bourgeoisie little concerned with the public good, a people without leaders. The prestige of the clergy vanished, the system of caciquismo enfeebled, the populace has been the prey to agitators and politicians. The bourgeoisie menaced by revolution has, by conviction, or calculation, taken up the cause of rebellion.1
Another explanation for the conflict was that Spain was a conservative country in which an under-exploited economy was kept backward by a stagnant social structure, while a sophisticated political education and the pressure of population made the old system unworkable. There had to be political change if the resources of the country were to be creatively employed. But while radicals were prepared to overthrow the social structure to secure changes, conservatives were prepared to use force to shore up what they judged good in the old world. Some of the Left were impatient, the Centre could not hold.
The Second Spanish Republic failed because it came to be rejected by powerful groups both to the Left and to the Right. To the anarchists, the first government of Azaña and the socialists had seemed ‘slow and legalistic’.1 Many socialists agreed with the anarchists on this matter by 1936. But in attempting to solve the most pressing problems which then faced Spain (and whose existence had led to the collapse of previous régimes), the republic estranged many who had at first, with whatever reluctance, contemplated collaboration with it. The five and a quarter years between April 1931 and July 1936 were thus a time when two sides were taking shape in Spain powerful enough to prevent each other from winning immediately, if swords should be drawn. There had been three main quarrels in Spain since the collapse of the monarchy in 1808: that between church and liberals; that between landowners and, later, middle class, on the one hand, and working class, on the other; and that between those who demanded local rights (notably in Catalonia and in the Basque provinces) and the advocates of central direction by Castile. Each of these three disputes had fed, or been superimposed, onto each other,2 so that any desire for moderation on the part of one group of contestants was quickly extinguished by a renewed violence on the part of the other.
The problems of Spain were posed also by the question as to whether the democrats, the socialist revolutionaries or the authoritarian Right would be responsible for the modernization and industrialization of the country. The principles of, and hatred for, the French and Russian Revolutions were equally at stake. The desire for renaissance, and the knowledge that Spain was capable of it, was widespread: ‘We declare war on black capitalism, exploiter of the poor … more religion and less Pharisaism; more justice and less liturgy’; thus a founder-member of the CEDA.1
The republic was a failure, despite much promising legislation and many good schemes begun (such as, for example, the irrigation and resettlement programme of the Badajoz plan, carried through years later under very different political auspices). A liberal historian is tempted to blame individuals: Azaña, for excessive pride and an occasional frivolity; Gil Robles, for vacillation, rhetoric and lack of candour; both Largo Caballero and Calvo Sotelo for incendiary speeches and disdain for their opponents. Lerroux was indolent and corrupt; Alcalá Zamora meddlesome and vain. Leaving aside lesser persons such as Miguel Maura or Giménez Fernández, Prieto was the outstanding figure who knew what was the right course, even if he was too mercurial to pursue it. In order to keep his standing with the increasingly revolutionary mainstream of the party, even he had to launch himself into impetuous projects, such as the arms smuggling in 1934 or the removal of Alcalá Zamora in 1936. A certain ambiguity and a certain pessimism also characterized him: ‘I am a weak man … I do not believe that there is anyone so insensate as actually to wish to exercise public power in Spain in these circumstances’, he wrote.2 In 1933, Azaña made a doleful comment that the difficulties of the republic derived less from its explicit enemies than from the men of the régime: their hatreds, ambitions and jealousies.3 Yet to blame individuals is to forget that politicians are the expression of public moods which are the masses’ collective dreams. The republic really fell for the same reasons that upset both the dictatorship and the restoration monarchy: the inability of the politicians then active to resolve the problems of the country within a frame generally acceptable, and a willingness, supported by tradition, of some to put matters to the test of force. ‘Already there are no pacific solutions’, said the falangist bulletin No Importa, on 6 June; ‘the state must disappear’, said Solaridad Obrera on 16 April. Spectres caused the war and, afterwards, ghosts dominated the country.
The country seemed constructed upon quarrels. There were now no habits of organization, compromise, or even articulation respected, or even sought, by all. Insofar as there were traditions common to all Spain, these were of disputes. Spain was invertebrate. As the years went by, all these disputes partook at the same time of half-religious, class, and regional characteristics. The youth of both the CEDA and the socialists were intoxicated by absolute visions of exclusive futures, they allowed those to swing against each other, and hence brought down the state. During the republic, the country had been drenched in politics.1 At the same time, also, many people wanted a ‘new Spain’ (which might mean a hundred different things) which would be worthy of Spain’s great past and, indeed, of the continuing qualities of her people. Such motives moved either superficially or profoundly many of those señoritos who sang the falangist hymn ‘Cara al Sol’ (‘Face to the Sun’):
Face to the sun, wearing the tunic
Which yesterday you embroidered,
Death will find me, if it calls me
And I do not see you again …
Arise [¡Arriba!] battalions and conquer—
For Spain has begun to awaken.
Spain—United! Spain—Great!
Spain—Free! Spain—Arise!2
Similar thoughts moved those passionate revolutionaries who sang the anarchist ‘Hijos del pueblo’ (‘Sons of the People’):
Sons of the people, your chains oppress you
This injustice cannot go on!
If your life is a world of grief,
Instead of being a slave, it is better to die!
Workers,
You shall suffer no longer!
The oppressor
Must succumb!
Arise
Loyal people
At the cry
Of social revolution!1
Book Two
RISING AND REVOLUTION
13
On 23 June, General Francisco Franco wrote from his banishment in the Canaries to the Prime Minister, Casares Quiroga. The letter showed a preoccupation with the divisions within the officer corps, themselves the reflection of the divided nation. Franco protested against the removal of right-wing officers from their commands. These events, said the general, were causing such unrest that he felt bound to warn the Prime Minister (who was also
war minister) of the peril ‘involved for the discipline of the army’.1 This letter was a final statement by Franco, ‘before history’, that he had done his best to secure peace, though he must have known that little could be done at that late hour. The Prime Minister did not, however, reply. Well on into this summer of 1936 (and despite his activities immediately after the elections) Franco seems to have been vacillating. ‘With Franquito or without Franquito,’ expostulated Sanjurjo in Lisbon, ‘we shall save Spain.’2 At the end of June, all that seemed necessary for a date to be given for the rising was an agreement with the Carlists. For, on 29 June, José Antonio sent orders to local Falange chiefs as to how to conduct themselves; Falange units were to maintain their identity; and only one third of any Falange party in a given locality could be placed under military control.3
Yet, on 1 July, Mola had to circulate a document to his co-plotters counselling patience. The army was still far from united, and he had to resort to threats: ‘He who is not with us is against us: with compañeros who turn out not to be compañeros, the triumphant movement will be inexorable’. Franco’s vacillations, if they were genuine, were presumably intolerable to him. The Carlists and the falangists were so full of demands. The Carlists’ obsession was with the colour of the flag under which the rebels should march, the falangists’ with problems of authority. Mola contemplated a withdrawal to Cuba, where he had been born; he even thought of suicide, or of killing Fal Conde, but he persevered.
In Morocco, the army of Africa began summer manoeuvres. The capital was in the grip of a building strike: the contractors, as well as the anarchist workers, refused to accept arbitration while the UGT did.1 So much for Largo Caballero’s hopes of achieving a workers’ alliance. There were also strikes by lift-workers, waiters, and bullfighters—the two former called by the left of the UGT. (The bullfighters’ strike, however, derived from the success that summer of two Mexican matadors who were fighting mano a mano. The press suggested that Mexicans were braver than Spaniards.) The socialists, meantime, were divided, as ever, particularly over the results of elections which had been held for the party presidency. González Peña, the Asturian miners’ leader but a friend of Prieto none the less, was elected in a low poll: the Caballeristas complained that the Prietistas had cheated, when it turned out that they had not unreasonably excluded all those who had not paid their dues in 1934.2
