by Hugh Thomas
1. Anuario 1931; Ramón Salas Larrazábal, Historia del ejército popular de la república (Madrid, 1974), vol. I, p. 11.
2. Nineteenth-century figures were more absurd. In 1898 there was one general for every hundred men.
3. See the illuminating study by Joaquín Romero Maura, The Cu-Cut Incident: Catalonia and the Spanish Army, 1905 (Reading, 1976).
1. The word was used in a speech at Valencia, and the passage quoted in Maura, p. 227. A hostile account of Azaña’s reforms can be seen in the book of one of the republic’s greatest enemies, in the end, General Mola, El pasado, Azaña y el porvenir, in Emilio Mola, Obras completas (Valladolid, 1940).
2. Goded became inspector general of the army. See Azaña, vol. IV, pp. 414–18.
1. In 1932, officers were to be nominally 7,660 and 1,756 in Africa; other ranks, 105,367, and 41,774 in Africa, including 9,080 Moorish troops (Anuario, 1932).
2. Rosita Forbes, The Sultan of the Mountains (New York, 1924), p. 72.
1. General André Beaufre, The Fall of France, 1940 (London, 1965), p. 30.
2. Barea, p. 251. Serving as a sergeant in Morocco, Barea was scornful of pretensions: ‘Civilize the Moroccans?… we? We from Castile … who cannot read or write. Who is going to civilize us? Our village has no school …’
3. Article 2 of the Constitutive Law of the army.
1. Antonio Ruiz Vilaplana, Burgos Justice (New York, 1938), pp. 207–8. The officers now reaching the opportunities for high rank in the army had been at the Infantry Academy at Toledo at about the time of the Spanish American War.
1. See Jaime del Burgo, Conspiración y guerra civil (Madrid, 1970), p. 270f.
1. Luis Redondo and Juan de Zavala, El requeté (Barcelona, 1957), p. 250.
1. Ramón Serrano Súñer, Entre Hendaya y Gibraltar (Madrid, 1947), p. 59.
2. Víctor Pradera, El estado nuevo (Pamplona, 1934), p. 271.
1. Cruzada, vol. IV, p. 489. Sanjurjo had Carlist connections, since his father had been a brigadier in Don Carlos’s army and his mother’s brother had been Don Carlos’s secretary. He himself had been born in Pamplona in 1872, at the beginning of the Second Carlist War.
2. A large number of these plotters were either young officers who had only taken their oath of loyalty to the monarch in the years immediately before his departure, or were old generals who had served the monarchy for a long time.
3. Lerroux knew of the conspiracy. He was a friend of Sanjurjo and probably expected to be Prime Minister if the conspiracy was successful. See Azaña, vol. IV, p. 850, for a discussion.
4. Arrarás, Historia, vol. I, p. 464n.
5. Ansaldo, pp. 18–20.
1. See the ‘Memorias intimas’ de Azaña, ed. Arrarás (Madrid, 1939), p. 183f.
2. Peirats, vol. I, p. 52.
3. This debate marked, in fact, the final passage of the Agrarian Reform Law (9 September 1932). It might not have passed had not the Sanjurjo rising given the impetus needed.
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1. In 1931, the clerical budget had been 66 million pesetas. Bishops’ salaries had been suspended in April 1931. Stipends for 1932 were cut to 29.5 million pesetas and the total clerical budget was to be 5 million pesetas. The Church was thus faced with the serious problem of supporting 35,000 priests, of whom 7,000 were over fifty.
1. About £70 in the money of 1930.
2. See Jackson, pp. 60–65, for a good summary.
3. See Manuel Benavides, El último pirata del Mediterráneo (Madrid, 1933).
1. Maura, pp. 274–5.
2. See Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (Manchester, 1959), p. 123; José Plá, Historia de la segunda república española (Barcelona, 1940), vol. II, p. 188f; Peirats, vol. I, pp. 55–8. Rojas was tried and sentenced to twenty-one years’ imprisonment. He did not serve this. See also Jackson, p. 513f. Rojas, in an interview with Azaña, said that ‘we were hard, cruel if you like. Anyone who ran and did not raise his hands on our orders was shot. We fired at anyone who looked out of the windows. When they had shot at us from the chimney stacks, we replied with machine-guns.’ (Azaña, vol. IV, p. 452.) Libertaria was murdered in 1936 on the road to Medina Sidonia by a gang of falangists. (Antonio Téllez, La guerilla urbana en España, Paris, 1972, p. 7.)
1. See for this Sánchez, p. 50, and in particular the excellent study by Carmelo Lisón Tolosana, Belmonte de los Caballeros (Oxford, 1966), from whose work on an Aragonese pueblo some of these instances derive.
1. Malefakis, p. 280.
1. See Robinson, p. 113f., and Gil Robles’s No fue posible la paz. Gil Robles claimed that the CEDA had 730,000 members in 1933; if true, that would have made it Spain’s largest political party ever. This large membership, with some ‘high finance’ support too, enabled the CEDA to spend unprecedented sums in the campaign. The socialist party had still only some 75,000 members, with over a million members of the UGT (Robinson, p. 328).
1. In Sergio Vilar, La oposición a la dictadura, 1931–1969 (Paris, 1969), p. 516.
2. Gil Robles, p. 80.
1. Araquistain had observed the Nazi success as ambassador in Berlin. Madariaga sees these two brothers-in-law of middle-class extraction as the éminences grises who drove Largo Caballero, the solid, Fabian socialist, to revolution. There is much in this theory, and certainly their replacement of the more experienced, and disillusioned, Antonio Fabra Rivas as chief adviser to Largo Caballero assisted the swing to the Left.
2. Santiago Carrillo, Demain Espagne (Paris, 1974), p. 31.
1. See Stanley G. Payne, Falange, a Study of Spanish Fascism (Stanford, 1961). Some of Payne’s arguments are challenged by Herbert R. Southworth, Antifalange (Paris, 1967); see also Maximiniano García Venero, Falange en la guerra de España; la unificación y Hedilla (Paris, 1967).
2. Cruzada, III, p. 423.
3. Cruzada, loc. cit.
1. Cruzada, III, pp. 424–5.
2. El Debate, 28 June 1932, qu. Robinson, p. 77.
3. Robinson, p. 130.
1. Giménez Caballero in 1932 offered the supreme command of the fascists to Prieto (El Socialista, 19 May 1949). There are several lives of José Antonio, of which the most interesting is the Biografia apasionada of Felipe Ximénez de Sandoval (Barcelona, 1941). See my Selected Writings of José Antonio Primo de Rivera (London, 1972). The views of Gil Robles, with whom José Antonio was friendly, can be seen in No fue posible la paz, p. 436f.
2. José Antonio Balbontin, La España de mi experiencia (Mexico, 1952), p. 306.
3 Cruzada, vol. I, p. 594.
4. Ibid, II, p. 21.
1. José Antonio’s speech of 29 October 1933 (Obras completas, Madrid, 1942, pp. 17–28).
2. Letter of 2 April 1933 to Julián Pemartín, quoted in Sancho Dávila and Julián Pemartín, Hacia la historia de la Falange (Jerez, 1938), vol. I, p. 24.
3. The opponents of the Falange fired the first shot in a series of engagements—the first falangist killed being a JONSista in November 1933. But the Falange had invited this, since amongst their principles had been anticipation of force.
4. See Payne, Falange, p. 45, and references therein. Ledesma thought that unification with the Falange would give him a bigger platform; José Antonio thought the JONS would help him against the more bourgeois elements of the Falange. Only one member of the JONS seems to have resigned rather than unite with José Antonio—Santiago Montero Díaz, of the university of Santiago, an ex-communist.
1. See his strange article on the subject on his return, in Obras, p. 522f.
2. Sir Oswald Mosley, My Life (London, 1968), p. 421.
3. Payne, pp. 53–5. This disinclination to countenance violence was a bone of dispute between José Antonio and his more militant followers throughout 1934.
4. Payne gives the official February 1936 breakdown of the origins of the Madrid JONS as:
1. Communist membership was given as ‘nearly 25,000’ in an article by ‘A. Brons’ in Communist International, 15 December 1933.
2. Meaker is far the best analyst
of these developments.
3. See above, p. 65.
4. See Fernando de los Ríos, Mi viaje a la Rusia Soviética (2nd ed., Madrid, 1970).
1. Comín Colomer, Historia, vol. II, pp. 296–323.
2. Comín Colomer, op. cit., pp. 345–59; Julián Zugazagoitia, Historia de la guerra en España (Buenos Aires, 1940), p. 40.
3. Memorandum from Maurín, 10 September 1963. A fifth delegate was an ex-socialist carpenter, Jesús Ibáñez. See Meaker, pp. 422–3.
4. The affairs of Spain were, with those of Portugal, Mexico and South America, looked after by the sixth ‘national secretariat’ within the Comintern secretariat (ECCI). The whole secretariat included 400 in 1924, but it is anyone’s guess how many there were in the 1930s. See E. H. Carr, Socialism in One Country, vol. III, part II (London, 1964), p. 909. The first central committee members were César R. González (ex-socialist), secretary-general; Ramón Lamoneda (ex-socialist, who later returned to the socialists), labour secretary; Juan Andrade (sometime a radical, then a socialist and a future leader of POUM), director of the new communist periodical La Antorcha; Evaristo Gil (ex-socialist), Joaquín Ramos, José Baena, Luis Portela (from the socialist youth); and Antonio García Quejido, the best-known Spanish socialist after Iglesias, one of the printers who had founded the socialist party in the 1870s. García Quejido, Lamoneda and Anguiano soon returned to the socialists. Andrade, known for his ‘hard, cruel pen’, once wrote to a correspondent in Holland, touchingly, to ask if he could not send him a Dutch compañera: ‘I would enjoy talking with women who are not like the Spaniards, that is, very beautiful and very ignorant’.
1. M. N. Roy, Memoirs (Bombay, 1964), p. 234.
2. Cf. the interesting study by Meaker.
3. See Julián Gorkin, ‘My Experiences of Stalinism’, in The Review, no. 2, published by the Imre Nagy Institute for Political Research, October 1959.
4. Conversation with Julián Gorkin. See also Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (London, 1963), p. 158; Gunther Nollau, International Communism and World Revolution (London, 1961), p. 69.
1. See Jules Humbert-Droz, Mémoires (Neuchâtel, 1969), vol. I, p. 212; José Bullejos, Europa entre dos guerras (Mexico, 1944) pp. 111–12.
2. Bullejos gave 3,000 (p. 135); Communist International, of 15 March 1934, 120. The seventh congress of the Comintern said there were 800 members in 1931. Matorras, p. 84, gave 1,500 as the figure. Underground parties did not collect membership dues and figures are therefore bound to vary.
3. The best accounts of the Izquierda Comunista during the republic are to be found in Grandizo Munis, Jalones de derrota (Mexico, 1948), and Andrés Nin, Los problemas de la revolución española (Paris, 1971), ed. Andrade. I had also the benefit of talks and correspondence with Joaquín Maurín in 1963.
1. Humbert-Droz, vol. II, p. 405f.
2. Bullejos, p. 140.
3. Matorras, pp. 136–7; Bullejos, pp. 134–43, 164–5.
1. Yet he emerges as the hero of the book by the renegade Jesús Hernández, La Grande trahison (Paris, 1953), since, during the civil war, he evidently found many instructions too much for him.
2. Julián Gorkin, Canibales politicos (Mexico, 1941), p. 25. Manuel Tagüeña, Testimonio de dos guerras (Mexico, 1973), p. 356, gives a favourable picture.
3. Stepanov’s real name was S. Mineff and during his career in the Comintern he was also known as Lebedev, Dr Chavaroche and Lorenzo Vanini. He was one of the most experienced professional revolutionaries.
1. Balbontín, p. 123.
2. Probably more important than any secret agent in Spain for the spread of communist ideas were the tales told by Spanish workers who, after Asturias (see below, p. 129ff.), went to work on the Moscow underground. They thought this a miracle of engineering.
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1. President Alcalá Zamora tried to persuade him not to leave, saying that the radicals were ‘the base of the republic’. But Martínez Barrio feared that Lerroux would compromise him in some dishonourable action if he stayed. See his version in Azaña, vol. IV, p. 718.
1. The phrase ‘suicidal egoism’ was used by Gil Robles to describe these actions of his followers, in an interview in El Debate, 8 March 1936.
2. Places briefly in anarchist hands included: Barbastro, Alcalá de Gurrea (Huesca), Alcampel (Huesca), Albalate de Cinca (Huesca), Villanueva de Sigena (Huesca), Valderroboll (Guadalajara), Beceite (Teruel), Alcorisa (Teruel), Mas de las Matas (Teruel) and Calanda (Teruel).
1. Though the decree formally banishing them continued to be law.
2. Lisón Tolosana, p. 46.
1. See Azaña, vol. IV, p. 652, for the conversation with de los Ríos, and Marichal’s comments in Azaña’s Obras completas, vol. III, pp. xiv–xv.
1. José María Pemán, Un soldado en la historia (Cádiz, 1954), pp. 134–5. Neither Rada nor Varela had Carlist connections. Both were Andalusians. Varela was the son of a sergeant-major and had from the earliest age been a man of overpowering ambition. His bravery in Morocco was a byword. See Antonio Lizarza, Memorias de la conspiración (Pamplona, 1954), p. 33. His description of events is borne out by Felipe Bertrán Güell, Preparación y desarrollo del alzamiento nacional (Valladolid, 1939).
2. See Martin Blinkhorn, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. VII, nos. 3 and 4, ‘Carlism and the Spanish Crisis of 1934’.
1. Lizarza, pp. 23–5. News of this meeting was first revealed when certain documents were captured in Goicoechea’s house during the civil war. Goicoechea himself admitted the events in 1937. See Manchester Guardian, 4 December 1937, for Goicoechea’s admission. A photocopy of the agreement in Goicoechea’s hand is the frontispiece to José Luis Alcofar Nassaes, CTV (Barcelona, 1972).
2. Carlist Archives. From this time onwards Alfonso Carlos’s nephew, Xavier de Bourbon-Parme, acted in conjunction with Fal Conde as ‘national delegate’.
3. Qu. Robinson, p. 176.
1. The socialist youth tried to prevent trainloads of CEDA supporters from arriving at the Escorial by bending the railway lines. See Santiago Carrillo, Demain Espagne (Paris, 1974), p. 42.
2. See for this Paul Preston, European Studies Review, vol. I, no. 2.
3. See above, p. 79, for the origins of this problem.
1. These were arms bought from certain Portuguese revolutionaries in Galicia by the socialist deputy, Amador Fernández. The steamer left Cádiz with the destination ‘Jibouti’ pasted on the cases but was later diverted to the Asturias. See an article of Prieto’s in España Republicana of Buenos Aires, reprinted in his Convulsiones de España, vol. I, p. 109. Afterwards, Prieto fled to France, where he stayed till late 1935. It was not an honourable exile, and he was not allowed to forget it. (He had done the same in 1917 and 1930.)
2. Azaña, vol. IV, p. 904. The socialist journal Leviatán, edited by Araquistain, attacked Azaña for his moderation: ‘Either one renounces the revolution, friend Azaña, and gives oneself up to literature, or one renounces the law, and then law-abiding poets have no function’ (qu. Azaña, vol. III, p. xxi).
1. The CEDA’s three ministers were: Giménez Fernández (agriculture); Anguera de Sojo (labour); and Aizpún (justice). Salazar Alonso was dropped. Of these, Aizpún was the founder and organizer of the CEDA in Navarre; Anguera de Sojo had once been a Catalan nationalist, but had seemed to have betrayed his colleagues in 1931 as civil governor of Barcelona; and Giménez Fernández was an enlightened scholar, and would be the most socially responsible minister of agriculture under the republic. Anguera had been public prosecutor and as such had been responsible for many confiscations of El Socialista. Aizpún was close to the Carlists. Gil Robles’s comments are interesting (p. 138), and Azaña (vol. IV, p. 515) regards Anguera as au fond a loyal republican. By and large, the Left’s hostility to these three men as individuals was not justified.
2. Azaña’s old Republican Action party, together with Domingo’s Radical Socialists and Casares’s Gallegan Autonomy party, had been united, in April 1934, into the Izquierda Republicana (Repu
blican Left).
3. Gil Robles, p. 140.
1. The communists agreed to support this in the course of the meeting of their central committee on 11 and 12 September (Branko Lazitch, Los partidos comunistas de Europa, Madrid, 1958, p. 338).
2. Largo Caballero officially repulsed the communists when they offered help, according to La Pasionaria (Ibarruri, p. 175). See also discussion in ‘Andrés Suárez’, El proceso contra el POUM (Paris, 1974), p. 38.
1. The revolution in Asturias has now a substantial bibliography. See B. Díaz Nosty, La Comuna Asturiana (Madrid, 1974); J.A. Sánchez G.-Sauco, La Revolución de 1934 en Asturias (Madrid, 1974); and now Pío Moa, Los Origenes de la Guerra Española (Madrid, 1999).
2. ‘Working-class brothers, unite!’ The CNT dockers in Gijón were fervently for the alliance with the socialists, others (e.g., metal-workers in La Felguera) less so.
3. Qu. Peirats, vol. I, p. 79f.
1. Grossi, p. 25.
2. Peirats, vol. I, pp. 86–7.
3. La revolución de octubre, p. 40. Grossi speaks of 50,000 miners being under arms by the end of the revolution. Peirats says the CNT had some 22,000 organized workers in the region (vol. I, p. 83). See discussion in Jackson, p. 153.
1. General Masquelet, whom Azaña had appointed chief of staff in 1932, was transferred.
1. Sir Samuel Hoare, Ambassador on Special Mission (London, 1946), p. 46.
2. ABC, 21 April 1931.
3. John Whitaker, ‘Prelude to War’, Foreign Affairs, October 1942.
4. Information deriving from Dr Gregorio Marañón.
1. La revolución de octubre, p. 41.
1. Grossi, p. 218. Peirats, vol. I, p. 85, prints the revolutionary committee’s last communiqué.
2. A statement by the ministry of the interior on 3 January 1935 gave a casualty list for all Spain in October 1934 of 1,335 killed and 2,951 wounded; 730 buildings had been destroyed or seriously damaged. Fifty-eight churches had been burned. Oviedo was a ruin, and the cost of the rising was estimated at £1 million. No fewer than 90,000 rifles were captured, together with 33,000 pistols, 10,000 cases of dynamite, 30,000 grenades, and 330,000 cartridges.
