As soon as he heard the sirens, Ricardo SANZ picked up his parabellum pistol and set off. All night he and the others had been moving from one place to another in the city. Their weapons included a machine-gun, its tripod sawn off so as to fit into a suitcase, which had been smuggled out of the Asturias arms factory. They hadn’t drawn up any concrete plan. ‘We knew we had excellent CNT and FAI defence groups in all the districts; we were counting on them.’
In the main police station, Frederic Escofet, chief of police, heard the sirens’ wail with mixed feelings. He and Lluis Companys, president of the Generalitat, the Catalan government, had agreed not to arm the people. The CNT, in their eyes, posed as serious a threat to the republican regime as did – from the opposing camp – the military revolt. And what, moreover, if the CNT’s presence in the streets caused the guardia civil, whose attitude was uncertain, to join the rebellion?9
The distrust was reciprocated. The CNT had no faith in the Generalitat’s ability to deal with the rising. Had not the Catalan authorities capitulated to a small military force in a few hours during the abortive uprising in October 1934? Had they not, just the evening before, tried to disarm CNT militants who had managed to seize arms from a ship in the port? The 200-odd CNT and FAI defence groups, some 2,000 men, were determined to prevent a repetition of the October defeat; then they had not fought in the streets, but now they would.
The number 22 all-night tram rattled up the Passeig de Gràcia; the sky was lightening for another hot day. Josep CERCOS, a CNT metalworker and libertarian youth member, had left the small pistol they shared with his friend after the night’s vigil; nothing seemed to be happening. As the tram passed the Cine d’Oros, the junction of the Passeig and the Diagonal, he saw a company of assault guards moving out from the Café Vienès, shouting ‘¡Visca la República!’ He looked up the Diagonal, saw the soldiers, heard a shot and leapt off the tram.
—I rushed back to find my companion. ‘Come on, it’s my turn. Give me the pipa [pistol]. You go for the dynamite –’ He had expropriated some sticks from a quarry, and we had put them aside for the day the fascists rose. Not that we thought they’d dare, because we were going to crush them if they did …
In the Ramblas, a young man with red hair standing on end as though each hair were an antenna, pedalled his bicycle furiously, shouting in Catalan: ‘The soldiers are in the University square!’ José ROBUSTE, a book-keeper who belonged to the syndicalist party, saw the people beginning to run. ‘It was as if the lad had an enormous broom on the front of his bicycle which swept the people out of the Ramblas towards the University –’
From a rooftop, Ramón FERNANDEZ saw the soldiers coming into the square, shouting ‘¡Viva la República!’ He didn’t catch on. The troops, accompanied by falangists in civilian trousers and army tunics, continued to advance to the same cry. CNT and POUM militants left their rooftop positions to join the soldiers as they marched into the Plaça de Catalunya. Even though the POUM carpenter had just come out of the army, he was taken in like the rest. In the middle of the Plaça, an old, fat officer suddenly shouted: ‘Disarm all the civilians!’ FERNANDEZ ran.
—The bullets whistled round me and I took a flying leap and landed headlong next to the small marble statue of a woman on the Ramblas side of the Plaça. Assault guards began shooting at the troops. I got behind a newspaper kiosk and fired my little pistol at the soldiers …
By the time he got back to the Cine d’Oros, where he had jumped off the tram, Josep CERCOS found heavy shooting in progress. The assault guards, armed with carbines, were doing most of the firing; but behind every group there were half a dozen CNT militants, to whom, if they had no weapons, the guards had given their pistols.
Barricades of cobblestones were already being raised as sixteen-year-old Eduardo PONS PRADES ran through the streets to the CNT wood-workers’ union in Poble Sec. A young union militant, who lived opposite the Pedralbes infantry barracks, had been telephoning every hour to inform union leaders of the troop movements within, and had sounded the alert as the soldiers sallied forth.
—‘Now that the CNT has brought out its men, there won’t be another defeat like in October,’ everyone at union headquarters was saying. There was complete confidence everywhere that the military rising in Barcelona was going to be crushed …
At the Cine d’Oros, in the first decisive engagement of the day, the Santiago cavalry regiment, its colonel at its head, was driven back with heavy losses. But a new danger loomed: three batteries of the 1st mountain artillery were advancing on the docks. If they reached them, they would swing up into the old town while the infantry in the Plaça de Catalunya pressed down from the other side to capture the Generalitat, the Catalan government building.
By the docks, the solidly working-class Barceloneta district mobilized. ‘Arms! Arms! Not another 6 October!’ A police major began handing out rifles in exchange for trade union and party membership cards. Suddenly – whose idea was it? No one knew – dockworkers began shifting bales of recently unloaded paper to form a barricade. Electric trucks shuttled back and forth until 500 tons of paper formed a two-metre high barricade across the Icaria avenue. Police Commissioner Escofet noted that his forces were being aided by civilians, whose unexpected reinforcement ‘was appreciated by the guards and contributed to sapping the enemy’s morale’.10
The air force, which remained loyal, bombed and strafed the artillery barracks, demoralizing the rebels and cheering the defenders. By 10 a.m., the artillery batteries were defeated. In the final assault, civilians rushed forward, many without arms, to capture the field pieces. In an outburst of popular jubilation, men, women and children dragged the cannon along the avenue.
PAMPLONA
Wearing their red Carlist berets, the people streamed towards the Plaza del Castillo. At the entrance to the town the guardia civil had stopped the car and Dolores BALEZTENA’s nineteen-year-old nephew, rather cautiously, had pulled out his red beret. ‘Ah, very good,’ the guardia had said, saluting. ‘Forward … ’ At last – the red beret was a passport.
As she drove into the square, tears came to Baleztena’s eyes. Recognizing her, sister of the president of the Navarre regional Carlist junta, people stretched out their hands. She let go the steering wheel to grasp the hands. People were shouting, ‘Long live Religion! Long live the King! Long live brave Navarre!’ The people seemed delirious.
—Shouts of joy, happy faces. The population was sweeping in off the land. Lorries, tractors, farm carts bringing red berets from every side street into the square. Most of the people in their Sunday best. A man in shirt-sleeves leapt from a lorry crying: ‘Here we’ve come, confessed and communed, for whatever God demands.’ These were the real, authentic people determined to defend their ideals. The people who loved their land, their farms, who had a pride in their race, even if pride was no virtue …
Amongst those who had arrived was Antonio IZU, the Carlist peasant lad who hadn’t slept all night for joy that the shindy was about to begin. At dawn he had leapt out of bed; there was still a field of wheat to be reaped. After that – ‘like good peasants’ – he and his brothers returned home, had breakfast, washed, shaved and put on their Sunday suits. His youngest brother was to stay at home to look after the farm, for their mother and father had died by then. Had his father been alive, he thought, he would certainly have gone with them, for he had been a fervent Carlist. Little did he think, as he left the farm, that it would be three years before he would again be working the land.
In the Plaza del Castillo, the requetés were ordered to form up. The red and gold flag, which the republic had done away with, was hoisted on the provincial government building and the town hall to the frantic cheers of the crowds; and soon afterwards was ordered removed by General Mola. Izu had sent word to twelve men in his village to come to Pamplona; but only seven had joined him. The others made varying excuses. Then the requetés were ordered to report to army barracks in the town where they were equipped with army uniforms and ri
fles and sent out to lunch because there was not enough food for them in the army canteens.
SAN ROQUE (CADIZ)
It was noon. The thirteen-year-old boy looked out of the window of his house in the main square of the small town, some 8 km from Gibraltar and twice that from Algeciras, and saw Moroccan troops. They ran past the house and towards the infantry barracks at the end of the square. Wearing khaki trousers tied at the ankles and turbans, they took cover behind the trees, dropping on one knee and taking aim. After a moment’s parley, Carlos CASTILLA DEL PINO saw, they entered the barracks. Not a shot had been fired.
Two days before, on a trip to La Linea to buy an anatomy book, he had heard that the Moors had risen in Morocco. ‘Will they invade Spain like the Moors twelve centuries ago?’ ‘No, no, it’s nothing important,’ his friend’s father had replied. And now they were here! They had landed at Algeciras that morning.11
—They didn’t stay long. A new town council was appointed. My uncle Pepe, a monarchist like all my family, was made a member. Once the Moors had gone, the uprising seemed a passing event. My private tutor told me lessons would start again in a few days. Everything seemed to have returned to normal …
BARCELONA
In the Plaça de Catalunya, the military were still holding out. Their capture of the Telephone Exchange building meant communications between Police Commissioner Escofet and some of his units, including those in the Plaça de Espanya to the west, had been cut. Assault guards had earlier allowed insurgent cavalry to take over the square. Workers threw up a barricade at the entrance to the working-class district of Sants and started shooting.
Miquel COLL, a POUM textile worker, saw a detachment of dismounted cavalry making down the Paralelo, and set off; if they were allowed to get through they could reach the docks and the old town. With his hands up, he crossed the square, telling the soldiers who stopped him that he was going for a swim. He ran towards the Ramblas; on the corner of the Carrer Fernando, he saw that Beristaín, a sports and gunshop, was being ransacked for arms. He rushed in and grabbed a shotgun. A CNT man broke open the safe and pulled out wads of banknotes.
—Then he struck a match and set fire to the lot. He burnt every note. It was amazing – true proof of the honour that so many CNT militants like him displayed. I grabbed two bandoliers and strapped them across my chest, stuffed full of cartridges, and went out of there looking like one of those Mexican bandits you see in films. I was only twenty …
In the Ramblas they saw a man carrying piles of looted objects, and they nearly shot him on the spot. Instead, they decided to throw the lot down a sewer. As COLL ran towards the Plaça del Teatre, snipers opened up. He raised his shotgun and fired; the recoil spun the gun from his hands and knocked him down. As he was picking himself up, he heard a man shout ‘Atarazanas!’ and he ran towards the barracks of that name. There he saw Durruti coming out with a sergeant carrying several machine-guns. He pushed his way in – there were only a corporal and a few soldiers in that part – grabbed a couple of muskets and ran to the POUM headquarters in the Ramblas.
The troops from the Plaça de Espanya had advanced three quarters of the way down the Paralelo, Barcelona’s Montmartre. No police forces were positioned to stop them. Realizing the danger, Durruti, García Oliver, Ascaso and other CNT–FAI leaders gathered their defence groups and set off. García Oliver’s group took the women’s prison, a useful position to fall back on if the attack failed, and released all the prisoners, who left crying – elated, or hysterical, no one knew. The CNT defence groups forced the cavalry squadron to retreat to the Moulin Rouge bar; an insurgent machine-gun drove the anarcho-syndicalists back with heavy losses as they charged across the great width of the Paralelo. Breaking into the Chicago bar, the CNT militants set up their own machine-gun and, under cover of its fire, charged again. Already decimated, the troops surrendered with their weapons which included three machine-guns.
José ROBUSTE heard a voice shout: ‘They’re shooting from the top of the Santa Madrona church.’ The syndicalist party book-keeper set off. His wife was with him. When he had gone home for his pistol, she had flung her arms round him.
—‘I’m coming with you.’ ‘What, mujer?’ ‘Wherever you go –’ I had no choice but to take her. When we got to the church, we found men dragging out pews and trying to set fire to them. They poured petrol over them twice and each time only the petrol burned, though the wood was old and dry. A priest, dressed in civilian clothes, arrived. ‘ Muchachos, why are you trying to set fire to these? They may come in useful to you – ’ I turned to my companion. ‘That man is right, let’s have nothing to do with this,’ and we set off up the Ramblas …
Police Commissioner Escofet had laid his plans carefully; tapped telephones had kept him advised of the rebels’ plans. Madrid had been informed but had taken no action. Despite his efforts, however, the insurgents were holding on to the Plaça de Catalunya; attempts to dislodge them had failed. He decided on a bold step. He ordered two companies of assault guards to make their way underground along the Metro tunnels. At 1 p.m., they burst into the plaça; the rebels had not taken the precaution of occupying the underground entrances. Alejandro VITORIA, a socialist Treasury official, saw them emerging. From his position in the bank employees’ union premises in the Carrer Vergara, where he had been trapped all morning by the hail of fire from the square, he could hardly believe his eyes as he saw an assault guard officer leading his men forward with only a riding crop in his hand. ‘I began to realize how decisive it was that the police forces had remained loyal.’
Not decisive enough, however, to bring victory yet. The battle for the square had been raging for close on eight hours; the centre was littered with dead soldiers and civilians, dead horses and abandoned material under the harsh sunlight. Lying behind a low cobblestone parapet in the Porta de l’Angel a Catalan nationalist university student began to think that neither side could win. The assault guards made some progress, but the rebels were still ensconced in the Hotel Colón and the Military Club on the opposite side.
As soon as he had heard shooting, Manuel CRUELLS had jumped out of a window at home to evade his mother and run to the university. ‘Get that one with long hair!’ he heard someone shout. He began to run for his life towards the Ramblas as the shots whistled behind him from the insurgents who had taken the university. At the top of the Ramblas he ran into two youths, one a communist, the other a libertarian, and joined them. They had pistols, he was unarmed. Behind them, the width of the Ramblas led down to the port, opened the way to the heart of the old town, to the Generalitat. Just a few paces away was one of the city’s two radio stations. They were the only defence! ‘It seemed somehow symbolic that we three should be together there: a communist, an anarchist and a young Catalan nationalist with not very clear revolutionary ideas –’
After a time he had got a rifle from the police station and joined an assault guard and another youth in his position. Soldiers, sheltering behind a donkey, were crossing the square heading for the Telephone Exchange building. The assault guard scrambled to change places with CRUELLS to get a clearer shot; the donkey fell to the ground and the soldiers retreated. Almost immediately, a shot rang out and the guard doubled up, wounded in the stomach. A sniper had got him.
He tried to follow the assault guards’ progress in the square, feeling that both sides were on the defensive now, fearing that somehow they were going to be caught. He started at the sudden sound of movement behind him, changing position to see what it was. A large formation of civil guards was marching up the Vía Layetana in battle order. The sun caught their tricorns. They stretched as far as he could see down the street. They advanced with military precision, in perfect step.
—‘What’s going to happen now?’ I thought. All morning I’d been fearing a trap. The guardia – the people’s historic enemy! If they came out against us …
Expecting the worst, he watched. The green uniforms continued to advance. At their head marched their colonel. Th
ey reached the main police station; he saw them halt. The colonel turned towards the balcony, where President Companys was standing, saluted and shouted: ‘At your orders, señor presidente!’
—Then we knew they had come out on our side. It was unforgettable. Anyone who hasn’t lived that moment can’t imagine what it was like. The apotheosis of 19 July: the guardia civil on the people’s side! We knew we must win now …
All morning, as throughout the past days, Commissioner Escofet had been uncertain about which way the guardia civil would swing. Their commanders were loyal; but what of the captains and majors? It was this officer rank which formed the backbone of the rising amongst the military. Despite some defections, the bulk of the force had remained loyal.
Hundreds of civilians rushed into the Plaça de Catalunya as the guards crushed the last resistance. Filled with joy, CRUELLS went off with a couple of CNT lads who invited him to a meal in the Barceloneta where, earlier, they had won a great victory behind their paper barricade. In the narrow working-class street, a table was brought out and piled with food and drink.
—They treated me like a hero – simply because, as a student, I must come from a ‘good’ family, and yet had taken up arms on their side. It was a moment of great fraternity. From that moment, it became a question of making the revolution …
Josep CERCOS, CNT metalworker, hurried to his union branch in Gràcia from the Cine d’Oros where he had been fighting. The colonel and other survivors of the insurgent cavalry regiment had taken refuge in a Carmelite convent in the Carrer Lauria; they were surrounded and wouldn’t escape. In the union office he saw a group of men, evidently under arrest. They looked like monks or seminarists. Women were laughing at them, making jokes. He told them it was wrong; the men would be tried in due course and sentenced if found guilty. Meanwhile they should be left alone. As he was talking, they heard shooting from the direction of the Plaça Bonanova and he set out. Some men there had caught a priest dressed in his vestments and were taking him to a CNT office. Well, he thought, you couldn’t take suspects to a police station at a moment like this, especially when you knew that these people were your enemy. Now you had to defend yourself or run the risk of being killed.
Blood of Spain_An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War Page 7
