The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  The junior emissaries named for negotiation by the republic were Colonels Garijo and Leopoldo Ortega, both of whom had been on the staff of the Army of the Centre for most of the war. Garijo was, as has been noted, a Fifth Columnist These two officers left for Burgos by air in the morning of 23 March, accompanied by Centaño and two other members of Franco’s intelligence service. The conditions which they brought with them were not even discussed by Colonels Gonzalo and Ungría, their nationalist co-negotiators, who merely handed them a document for transmittal to Casado. The nationalists’ document provided for the flight of the republican air force to nationalist aerodromes on 25 March. As for the army, there would have to be a cease-fire on all fronts, on 27 March. Commanding officers, with white flags, were to come to the nationalist lines, with documents describing the position of their forces. In addition, Franco named two ports on the Levante for their expatriation of those who wished to flee. He did not mind if British ships transported these refugees, and would put no difficulties in the way of the departure of these ships. But there was to be no pact, no signature of any document naming the concessions.

  The council of defence, Garijo then said, was not interested in saving criminals, but he wanted to know if the concept of crime in the nationalist mind corresponded to legislation before 18 July, if responsibility was to be considered collectively, if the benevolence which would affect officers who surrendered would also affect civilians, and if the safe conduct to those who wanted to leave could be assured. How many might want to leave? Perhaps 4,000, said Garijo; 10,000, thought Ortega.1 On 25 March, after anguished discussions in the council of defence, Garijo and Ortega returned to Burgos, to demand that the terms should be put in writing and that a delay of twenty-five days should be granted for the expatriation of those who wished to leave. The latter point was refused but the former was accepted. Garijo began to draw up such a document. There were some other points at issue. At six o’clock, however, Colonel Gonzalo bluntly announced that negotiations were considered broken off because the republican air force had not surrendered. Garijo and Ortega flew back to Madrid. The air force was, of course, important, if only because, by its offices, people could escape: on 25 March itself six aircraft flew from central Spain, carrying to France officials and others who feared reprisals.2

  Thus ended Casado’s ill-fated attempt to secure a more honourable end to the war than Negrín had been able to achieve. By his action, he had ruined the possibility of further republican resistance, although, for many of those who had taken part in the war on the republican side, continued fighting, however despairing, might have been more advantageous than unconditional surrender. Had the republic lasted intact, with Negrín and Casado still in one camp, for even so short a time as two weeks longer, their position might have altered. On 15 March, Hitler marched into Prague. Even Chamberlain spoke in protest, on 18 March. By the end of the month, the Anglo-French guarantee to Poland had transformed the international situation. A united republic could have taken advantage of the opportunity thus opening out. All that can be said for Casado is that his negotiations gained time for many republican leaders, though not for the rank and file, to escape. Meantime, the UGT executive, that unreliable body, which had played so curious a role in the history of the civil war, held a last meeting at Valencia: the discussion ended in uproar, dissension and fears of violence.1 The same day, Togliatti and Jesús Hernández left Cartagena for Mostaganem, in Algeria, by air.2

  Early in the morning of 26 March, Casado telegraphed to Burgos to announce that the air force would be surrendered the next day. In reply, Franco announced that the nationalist armies were about to advance. He demanded that units in the republican front line should show a white flag before the start of artillery and aerial bombardment.3 Yagüe, once again in Estremadura where he had won his first laurels in the war, advanced in the Sierra Morena. All day, his advance continued. Pozoblanco fell at noon, Santa Eufemia at dusk. Thirty thousand prisoners and 2,000 square kilometres were captured during the course of the day. In hundreds of villages, white flags were raised and, in town, monarchist red and gold ones. At four in the afternoon, Franco broadcast those ‘concessions’ which his two colonels had put forward at Burgos on 21 March. They sounded well enough. The council of defence met at six o’clock in the evening. Miaja, once a symbol, now a cypher, presided, but Casado was the effective chairman. Nobody suggested further negotiations. The council decided not to order resistance to the nationalist advance and to permit all who wished to return home. So there followed the self-demobilization of the republican army. The men abandoned the front for their homes, and their officers did not stop them. This spontaneous act, all along the front, was not halted by a description, on Madrid Radio, by the council’s secretary, José del Río, of the true story of the negotiations at Burgos.

  On 27 March, a nationalist advance began from Toledo. The Navarrese, under Solchaga, the Italians, under Gambara, and the Army of the Maestrazgo, under García Valiño, made a free passage of the Tagus. Here, as in the south, the republic abandoned the front. During the day, their Army of the Centre disintegrated. Matallana, in overall command of all these forces, told Casado that several units had gone over to the nationalists, and that soldiers of both sides were embracing each other in the Casa de Campo. By nine in the evening, the staff only of the first three army corps remained. Casado told the members of his council to leave for Valencia, whither Miaja had already gone. At ten o’clock, representatives of the UGT, the socialist party, the republican union and the CNT broadcast appeals for calm. Then, when not a single republican soldier remained in the front line save in the Guadalajara sector, Casado ordered Colonel Prada, the new commander of the Army of the Centre, and the officer who had commanded in Asturias at the end, to negotiate surrender with the nationalist commander in the University City. That officer accepted a rendezvous with the nationalist commander at the Clinical Hospital.

  Casado telegraphed to President Lebrun to beg that all republicans who wanted should be able to land in France (if they got there). He made the same request to President Cárdenas of Mexico. Next, he told Matallana to authorize retreats by all the republican armies in the manner of that of the central army. Then he flew to Valencia. He and his wife passed over streams of lorries and groups of republican soldiers going home. Santiago Carrillo was the last of the communist leaders to leave Madrid, on this same 27 March.1 Behind in the capital, Besteiro remained, enigmatic and resigned, along with Rafael Sánchez Guerra, now political secretary to Casado as he had once been to President Alcalá Zamora. The creeping optimism of Besteiro’s tubercular condition caused him to anticipate fair treatment just as, at the beginning of the war, Casares Quiroga’s similar state had persuaded him of too optimistic an interpretation of the events in the summer of 1936. On behalf of Matallana, Colonel Prada surrendered the Army of the Centre at eleven o’clock. Another nationalist army broke through the Guadalajara front, to meet those forces advancing from Toledo. In the capital itself, the Fifth Column emerged from its hiding places. At midday, the nationalist 1st Army, under General Espinosaa de los Monteros, who had for a time been a refugee in the French Embassy before being exchanged, entered Madrid, and occupied the government buildings. There was scarcely any resistance: almost the only casualty was the aged anarchist journalist Mauro Bajatierra, who engaged in a single-handed battle with the police who came to arrest him in his house. General Matallana was the most senior officer to hand himself over to the enemy, knowing that his life was guaranteed. Behind Espinosa, there followed both the representatives of Auxilio Social, and two hundred officers of the nationalist army’s Juridical Corps, with lorry-loads of documents relating to crimes allegedly committed in the republic. ‘¡Han pasado!’ (they have passed), cried the rapidly assembling pronationalist crowds. Those right-wing Spaniards who had passed the war behind the blinds of foreign embassies soon emerged into the light of day for the first time for two and a half years, blinking, with faces pale as ghosts. On the other front
s, in Estremadura, Andalusia and the Levante, mass retreats were also taking place.1

  Casado arrived at Valencia. He cabled the British government, begging them to send ships to take off 10,000 refugees to Oran or Marseilles, but Britain had neither the desire nor the means to help on so large a scale. At Valencia, at Alicante, at Gandia, at Cartagena and at Almería, perhaps 50,000 republicans gathered, clamouring for expatriation. But the ships of the Mid-Atlantic Company, the republican shipping line, established in London, refused to help, arguing that they had not been paid. The desertion of the republican fleet now told against thousands of republican soldiers and politicians. At noon the next day, 29 March, Casado, established in the old captaincy-general, was visited by the Valencian Fifth Column, who demanded their immediate establishment in the administrative buildings. The town was now running with persons making the fascist salute. Casado appealed for calm over Valencia Radio, and left for Gandia, where he embarked in the British naval vessel Galatea. He was only enabled to do so since the Foreign Office, realizing the enormous tragedy of the situation, instructed its somewhat hesitant consul there, Godden, to interpret his instructions ‘in as wise and generous a manner as possible’.1 During the day, Jaén, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Sagunto and Albacete were occupied by the nationalists. On 30 March, Gambara’s Italians entered Alicante, and Aranda entered Valencia. Women and children ran forward to kiss the hands of the conquerors, while roses, mimosa and laurels were flung from balconies of the middle class. On 31 March, Almería, Murcia and Cartagena were occupied. In all these coastal towns, thousands of those who had wished to leave their country were captured by the advancing armies. The scenes of fear before the nationalists’ entry were pitiful to see. There were several suicides. General Franco, suffering from a cold in Burgos, was at last informed by an aide that the nationalist troops had occupied their final objectives in the early evening of 31 March. ‘Very good,’ he replied without looking up from his desk, ‘many thanks.’2 The serenity with which he received the news of his victory was an appropriate commentary on his method of achieving it. A young cousin of King Alfonso, Álvaro de Orléans, wanted to fly that monarch’s heir, Don Juan, to Madrid and proclaim him; but his father, the general of the air force, the Infante Alfonso, forbade it.3

  Conclusion

  ‘In class wars, it is the side that wins who kills most.’

  GERALD BRENAN, SOUTH FROM GRANADA

  ‘Irony, which exists in everything, appears in a striking manner in the modern history of Spain, since it is “francoism” which has realized the communist programme—that is “the bourgeois revolution”. Certainly, like the ailing daughter of old syphilitics, this bourgeois revolution, born late, has not had, from its strange sisters, the gift of a cultural and social renewal, the increase of democratic liberties or the disappearance of ancestral prejudices … But, to use the language of modern Marxists, the economic basis of the bourgeois revolution has been created—even though Spanish Marxists deny it …’

  CARLOS SEMPRÚN MAURA,

  RÉVOLUTION ET CONTRE-RÉVOLUTION

  EN CATALOGNE

  51

  Conclusion

  The outstanding matters arising out of the Spanish war were soon settled. On 26 March, Spain had adhered to the Anti-Comintern pact and, on the 31st, a five-year treaty of friendship between Spain and Germany was signed at Burgos by Gómez Jordana and the Baron von Stohrer. Also on the 31st, a Non-Aggression Pact was signed between the new Spain and Portugal. Already too, Marshal Pétain, who had been French commander in Morocco in 1925, had arrived at Burgos as French ambassador. His reception by his ex-comrade-in-arms was icy, rendered more so by the French government’s delay in handing over the republican fleet gathered at Bizerta. He and Franco anyway had never been friends.1 The studied insults to Pétain from the régime would have maddened anyone else: as it was, Pétain kept his temper and consoled himself by saving from the police a republican who took refuge in his embassy garden in San Sebastián.2 Spanish objets d’art and money taken to France by the republic, together with arms, aircraft and rolling stock, were soon returned to Spain. The paintings from the Prado were sent back to Madrid from Geneva, after a brief exhibition.

  On 1 April, the United States recognized the nationalist régime. Russia was thus the only major power which had not done so. The American ambassador, Bowers, received, on returning home to Washington, the bitter consolation of being told by Roosevelt that he thought that, after all, the embargo policy had been wrong. On 20 April, the Non-Intervention Committee, which had not met since July 1938, solemnly dissolved itself.1On 19 May, a nationalist victory parade was held in Madrid. General Gambara’s Italians occupied a place of honour. On 22 May, the Condor Legion held a farewell parade at León. Four days later, the German officers and men embarked at Vigo for Hamburg. On 31 May, 20,000 Italians set off from Cádiz. Both Germans and Italians were fêted in their own countries: on 6 June, Hitler reviewed 14,000 members of the Condor Legion in Berlin. The Italians were welcomed at Naples by Ciano and King Victor Emmanuel. Escorted to Rome by a detachment of Spaniards, a further victory parade there was received by Mussolini and watched from a balcony by King Alfonso XIII. Tears sprang to Alfonso’s eyes as the soldiers of his fatherland, ‘distant but victorious’, marched past. By the end of June, the evacuation of German and Italian military forces from Spain was complete.

  As for the republican refugees from Mediterranean ports, many found asylum hard to come by. Eventually, after waiting on British or French ships in Marseilles or North African ports in disagreeable conditions, most found themselves on French soil, along with those 400,000 or more who had earlier fled from Catalonia. Most leaders found reasonable lodging, but the rest remained in the concentration camps of southern France. By April, conditions there had improved. Food supplies were now almost adequate. Sanitation and medical services were no longer non-existent. There had been no large-scale epidemics. But the inmates still had nothing to do save wait. They were not allowed to leave, being officially ‘interned’. Their general situation remained purgatorial. Many, perhaps 50,000, refugees and soldiers, soon agreed to go to nationalist Spain.

  The leaders of the exiles were by this time quarrelling. On 31 March, Negrín gave a hotly contested account of his activities since the fall of Catalonia to a pathetic meeting of the permanent committee of the Cortes in Paris. Martínez Barrio, Araquistain, La Pasionaria disputed, the latter proclaiming that her hands had ‘neither blood nor gold upon them’.1At the same time, the ship Vita left Boulogne for Mexico, piled with precious stones and other treasures, mainly confiscations from nationalist sympathizers at the start of the civil war.2Negrín was dispatching this hoard for the safe-keeping of the Mexican President Cárdenas, in order to finance the republic in exile. When, however, the Vita arrived in Mexico, Prieto, who had remained in South America after the inauguration of the new Chilean President, was there to receive it. He persuaded Cárdenas that he had a title to the treasure. This was a questionable manoeuvre. He set up a committee of the permanent committee of the Cortes, the JARE (Junta de Auxilio a los Republicanos Españoles) to administer the funds in question. Negrín, maintained as Prime Minister in exile by a narrow majority of the same permanent committee of the Cortes, placed the funds which he had saved in the SERE (Servicio de Emigración para Republicanos Españoles), administered by Dr Puché, the head of the army’s medical corps and rector of the University of Valencia, a friend of his. This group was increasingly compromised in the eyes of the world because of its support by the communist party. But the two groups, which quarrelled fiercely, did transport about 25,000 republican refugees to South America, especially Mexico and Argentina. (Perhaps 50,000 Spaniards in all went eventually to South America.) Most of the rest remained in southern France, to be eventually absorbed in the community of that area. Many of the able-bodied were shortly employed in the construction of French fortifications. In time, the French government made all male foreigners eligible for service in their army: the chief of
the republican fleet, Admiral Buiza, for example, was to enter the Foreign Legion.3By July, the population of the concentration camps had fallen to 230,000.1Russia welcomed about 2,000 Spanish communists, along with the 5,000 or so Spanish children whom they had accepted in the course of the war.2Two hundred republican leaders, including Colonel Casado and General Menéndez, were accepted in Britain.3But in 1940, there were still some 350,000 Spaniards in France, many of them soon to be dispatched to work for the Germans or even to extermination camps.4If one should acknowledge the generosity of France in receiving such a large quantity of refugees, one should note also the surprising narrowness of French officials, police, and politicians towards the majority of Spaniards who fled there.5

  A study of life in the French concentration camps in southern France scarcely shows human nature at its best. The quarrels among communists and anarchists in the war were not forgotten, nor were espionage, treachery and murder.6Some 4,700 are supposed to have died in the camps, while the Italian communist Chedini is said to have followed his assassination of Italian anarchists in Spain by suggestions for a list of ‘undesirables’ to the French authorities.7The communists once again obtained control, some Germans preferred to return to Germany than stay where they were, being apparently betrayed by a double-agent named Stephen Maas, while some Italian communists even preferred the risk of a return to Spain to remaining in France.8

  In Spain the victors were naturally exultant. In Madrid, for example, the middle-class population and the conquering army surged into the streets at night, filling the restaurants, the bars, eating and drinking up everything, while the officers of the army’s juridical corps went patiently about their bloody business of arrests, investigation and listening to informers. (In Madrid there were few unauthorized killings, unlike Barcelona.) At last, priests could wear their birettas again in Madrid, civil guards their three-cornered hats, Carlists their red berets. Streets quickly had their names changed; Alfonso XII Street became itself again after being, during the republic, Alcalá Zamora Street and then Agrarian Reform Street. ‘Rights of the Child Street’ had as short a shrift as the ‘Street of the United Socialist Youth Militias of the Home Front’ (Calle de la Milicias de Retaguardia de la Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas). But it was perhaps surprising to find Marshal Joffre Street in Barcelona becoming Bourbon Street. A flood of atrocity stories filled the newspapers and bookshops, while liberal or ‘Marxist’ books were ordered to be taken from even the private shelf. Symbolic book-burnings of Marxist books were carried out in large cities. A wave of victorious propaganda broke over the country leaving to the defeated, even if they had their lives, scarcely their private thoughts, much less their jobs. The tone was given in a broadcast on Radio Nacional on 2 April: ‘Spaniards, on the alert! Peace is not a comfortable and cowardly rest in front of History … Spain remains on a war footing.’1It was an accurate statement. For, as expected, a terrible proscription was undertaken. The already overcrowded prisons were supplemented by vast camps in which republican politicians, soldiers and officials were herded, often being brutally treated, and held for, in some cases, years. Many were sentenced to death by courts-martial and, though that penalty was often commuted, the term of imprisonment would usually be thirty years. Often, it is true, the sentence would be reduced to ten years, though some might be under a death sentence for two years. The new secretary-general of the UGT, Rodríguez Vega, who managed to escape from Spain in late 1939, estimated that some two million persons had passed through the prisons of Spain by 1942, many to work for years of hard labour, some on the Valley of the Fallen, a building intended to rival the Escorial in the Guadarramas and to house the dead of the civil war; and most being forced to give the fascist salute daily.