Blood of Spain_An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War

by Ronald Fraser

  Ever since the elections, the left wing of the socialist party, under Largo Caballero, had come out for revolution; it had only served to inflame the atmosphere. The ‘Spanish Lenin’, Caballero was called. Moreover, the UGT and CNT, the socialist and anarcho-syndicalist trade unions, were at logger-heads, with militants of each gunning down the other. The Falange had been responsible for political assassinations which had been replied to in kind. The world was becoming increasingly divided between fear of fascism on the one hand, fear of communism on the other. Although there were few communists in Spain, the atmosphere since the Popular Front elections, he thought, had become communistic, fellow-travelling. In the disorder precipitated by the military rising, the people had shown their eagerness for revolution and revenge. They were being led along by the parties and unions which were promising them the moon. Who, if not the communists, were most likely to benefit from all this?

  Back at party headquarters – he was de facto president of the Madrid party now – he heard that the new left republican prime minister, José Giral, had ordered the people to be armed.

  * * *

  Monday, 20 July

  MADRID

  Inside the Montaña barracks there was a certain confusion. The insurgents’ planning and coordination had been deficient in Madrid. Mola’s plans did not envisage the possibility of immediate success in the capital: the Madrid garrison was to remain on the defensive until, in a lightning offensive, columns from outside relieved it. At virtually the last moment – yesterday noon – General Fanjul, a leading conspirator, had gone to the barracks to take command of the 1,200 officers and men of the infantry and engineers’ regiments and a specialist unit quartered separately at the back. In addition, some 250 falangists had managed to reach the Montaña, and had been armed and given uniforms.

  As the night wore on, some of the falangists became increasingly worried: why weren’t they sallying forth to capture the city? The groups of militiamen, who had made access to the barracks so difficult for them earlier, appeared to have disappeared. ‘What are we doing cooped up in here?’ Eugenio LORTAN, a falangist student, asked.

  —The majority of us had never handled a rifle before, recalled Mario REY, a carpenter who had been a member of the JONS before its fusion with the Falange. But our morale was so high we’d have made a sortie as soon as we received the order. We couldn’t understand what we were waiting for. But that was how we’d felt ever since the Popular Front elections …

  Not all those in the Montaña were prepared to support the rising. A soldiers’ and corporals’ organization, with its own clandestine paper Soldado Rojo (Red Soldier), had been growing in strength; it claimed more than 200 members in the Montaña’s infantry regiment. A number of NCOs, as well as some officers, had been arrested by the insurgents in the barracks. Francisco SANPEDRO, a left republican student sapper, didn’t sleep in his bed that night, fearing arrest, although he belonged to no soldiers’ organization. Like other republican supporters he feared that the right-wingers knew where his sympathies lay.

  —At dawn, shooting broke out. But we received no orders; none of the company was paraded or posted to defensive positions. We were completely at sea …

  His arm in a sling from having fallen downstairs four days before and broken a finger, Capt. ORAD DELA TORRE set his cannon at 400 metres range. Then he looked down the barrel. The barracks were so enormous he could hardly miss. He had wanted to begin firing three hours before but no order had come. At first light air force planes had flown over, dropping leaflets on the barracks calling for surrender; loudspeakers on houses all round repeated the call. Soon the planes would return with bombs. Thousands of civilians, most of them unarmed, were milling about amongst assault and civil guards. An emissary was sent to the barracks demanding surrender within twenty minutes; the man returned with the message that the military would never surrender.

  —At 7 a.m. I gave the order to fire. The first round, in memory of Capt. Faraudo, fascism’s first victim, assassinated in the streets of Madrid only a month before. The second round in memory of Lt Castillo, gunned down but a week before … The third in the name of the Spanish republic. All fired straight at the barracks. I had only 138 rounds, and I couldn’t afford to waste any …

  The first round hit the main gate. The barrack walls were so thick that unless a round went through a window or door it made no impact. ORAD DE LA TORRE ordered rapid fire to make it seem there were double the number of field pieces. Volunteers from the auxiliary technicians’ corps and ex-artillerymen in the crowd served the guns. When he wanted the guns moved, civilians manhandled them through the streets.

  —The people were heroic. Not many had arms. The evening before when I brought the cannon out I ordered the lorry to pass through the Puerta del Sol, and there I addressed the crowds, urging them to accompany me to lay siege to the barracks. A mass of people ran behind the lorry, shouting ‘¡Viva la República!’ and ‘Long live honest army officers!’ …

  From first light the defenders inside the barracks were aware that they were besieged. Eugenio LORTAN could see assault guards in the houses along the Calle Ferraz preparing positions on the rooftops, placing mattresses on the balconies. He thought they ought to fire on them. But no orders came. Not that he had ever fired a rifle in his life. His ignorance of military matters was so great that when he put on his battledress top he tucked it into his trousers like a shirt instead of letting it hang. ‘There was a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of determination, but little experience.’

  Amongst the besiegers, he could see civil guards. ‘With them and the assault guards and the civilian militias there’s not much hope of being able to win,’ he thought. But why didn’t they attempt a sortie?

  Barely 200 metres from the barracks, Lt Vidal set up a 155mm field piece.

  —A pair of balls he had! He could nearly have been shot with a pistol at that range, thought Capt. ORAD DE LA TORRE. It caused them real panic in the barracks …

  A shell passed through an opening and wounded General Fanjul and the infantry colonel inside the barracks. Still having received no orders, the republican sapper, Francisco SANPEDRO, found himself by the main gate of the engineers’ barracks when, to his surprise, it suddenly opened. Without hesitation, he ran.

  —My only thought was to escape. I jumped down the four-metre-high retaining wall into the street. As I did, they opened fire on me from inside the barracks. But even so I glimpsed a white sheet that had been hung out …

  The cry went up amongst the attackers. ‘The white flag! They’re surrendering!’ Capt. ORAD DE LA TORRE heard Lt Moreno of the assault guards shouting at the people not to move; heedless, they began running forward.

  —There was a sudden lull in the firing from the barracks – a coincidence, no doubt, but one that was to become tragic for the defenders …

  Running like a hare towards the barracks went fifteen-year-old libertarian youth member, Manuel CARABAÑO; he was unarmed. Bullets began to whistle past him. He got to the retaining wall before a machine-gun opened up from inside the barracks. The people running forward from the Plaza de España stopped, then retreated. He could see dead and wounded lying on the ground. An assault guard pushed him back, asked what he was doing there. Another told him to leave the lad alone, he’d risked his life getting that far. Manuel stuck to them, they were in the front line of attack, they were the ones who had arms. Pedro SUAREZ, of the workers’ and peasants’ anti-fascist militia, also ran forward.

  —Everyone had seen the white flag. Then I saw Manías lying on the ground. He was dead. A communist youth member, he got his nickname because of his mania for crying out: ‘Down with the carcas and the clergy!’ when he sold left-wing newspapers. And now they’d killed him. I threw myself on the ground and got behind a soft drinks kiosk and there I stayed until the final assault half an hour or so later …

  At noon, officers ordered the falangists to withdraw to the interior of the barracks. Eugenio LORTAN had seen or heard nothing of t
he white sheet.

  —It had to be an attempt by those opposed to the rising to stage a counter-coup, he reflected later. As we withdrew to the interior, some military cadets were ordered to dismount a machine-gun they had been firing. Then we were ordered to abandon our arms; it seemed absurd …

  —‘The barracks are lost, you’d better make off,’ Mario REY heard someone shout. In the distance he could hear a hullabaloo. I took my battledress top off and walked out through the crowd. People had poured into the barracks after the assault and civil guards had taken it. Men were putting on soldiers’ helmets and grabbing rifles and shouting childishly. No one noticed me …

  Manuel CARABAÑO had followed the assault guards in. The first thing he saw was a rifle and he grabbed it. He was armed at last! He went outside and saw a group of men in shirt-sleeves who were trying to hide the fact that they were officers by crying ‘¡Viva la República!’ A group of militiamen surrounded them shouting ‘Fascists!’

  —Then I saw an unpleasant looking woman, who was with a wounded boy, point a pistol at the officers and fire. Shots rang out on all sides and that group of men was mown down like a field of wheat. It was the first time I’d seen people die – it remains the worst experience of the whole war for me …

  ‘By divine providence’ Eugenio LORTAN had managed to get out of the barracks unnoticed. The radio had announced that all soldiers were demobilized, so it surprised no one to see youths without uniform coming out of the Montaña. He made for home. Twice militia patrols stopped him, the second one of women with pistols. Where had he been?

  —‘In the Montaña.’ ‘What happened?’ ‘We killed all the fascists.’ I was still wearing army trousers. But happily they didn’t notice the moccasins I was wearing; they were hardly an ordinary soldier’s footwear …

  Capt. ORAD DE LA TORRE walked into the barracks. The courtyard was strewn with corpses. Defenders had been slaughtered. They had deserved their fate, he thought, because of what had happened with the white sheet. He walked on, passing an NCOs’ room where he saw a number of officers around the table.

  —I went in. At the head was a major with a bullet-hole through his heart; all the others were slumped with similar bullet-holes. They had sat down there, I supposed, when they knew all was lost, and the major had taken his revolver and committed suicide; his junior officers had followed his example. Among them were some I knew, brother-officers of mine …

  In all, of the 145 officers in the Montaña, ninety-eight died in action, before firing squads, massacred, or at their own hands.

  After the barracks’s fall, neither Campamento in Carabanchel, where a regiment of horse artillery and a battalion of sappers was stationed, nor the No. 1 infantry regiment in a barracks on the south side of the Retiro park, put up much resistance. Among the fatal casualties in the attack on Campamento were Capt. Orad de la Torre’s brother and fifteen-year-old nephew, both – like him – members of the socialist party.

  *

  The sound of cannon and machine-gun fire had been heard all over the city. Fernando TAFALLA, an architectural student, got up hurriedly, dressed in his normal clothes and went out to watch. The people’s enthusiasm, spontaneity and bravery were incredible; so, too, was their lack of expertise. He pointed out to a worker that he was mishandling his rifle, and the man looked him up and down, in his señorito’s clothes, as though to say – what’s this sort of person doing here?

  A communist party sympathizer, he understood the man’s attitude. The bourgeoisie had been doing everything possible to force the army to rise. They had been boycotting the republic. They would tell workers who had to go out to defend their legitimate interests to ‘Let the republic find you work.’ Faced with a boycott or lock-out, workers sometimes had to take over their work places. But that was a long way from pressing for revolution.

  Across the city, Marquess PUEBLA DE PARGA, a young monarchist, was also awoken by the sound of gunfire. He was not surprised. The day before, after going to mass, he had been sitting with friends at the café Roma when a car packed with militiamen armed with sub-machine-guns roared past. ‘¡UHP!’14 they shouted at the young bloods sitting there. ‘It’s started,’ he said to the others.

  Ever since the elections there had been a feeling of doom, a sensation that a catastrophe was about to occur. In the business and financial circles he frequented, dismay had turned to despair, not simply at the economic situation but because of the increasing social unrest. ‘Une certaine idée de la patrie’, as the French say, was threatened: religion had been under attack since the republic was proclaimed; patriotism, the unity of Spain, endangered by Catalan and Basque nationalism. To all intents and purposes, he thought, the war had begun as long ago as 1932. Constitutional legality had not been respected, law and order had become a problem almost immediately, convents had been fired and religious education suppressed. Both sides had soon become convinced that the situation could only end in war. Recently, the British attaché, with whom he shared a flat, had told him, in the strictest confidence, that the embassy had information that a left-wing revolution was about to break out. The UGT and CNT were gathering arms. His friend urged him to go with him to Pamplona but, occupied with his father’s inheritance, he had been unable to leave Madrid.

  With the gunfire still in his ears, he set off for the British embassy to secure authorization to put out the Union Jack and a notice on the door proclaiming that the flat belonged to a British diplomat.

  *

  In the Puerta del Sol, the military buses were having difficulty getting through the crowds. Andrés MARQUEZ, a civil servant and leading member of the left republican youth, had just left party headquarters in the Calle Mayor for the first time in two days. He saw the pale-faced rebel army officers being brought prisoner in the buses, heard the crowd shouting, ‘Traitors! Traitors!’ The scene was tumultuous. He feared the crowd would take the law into its own hands. Five years before he had stood on this very spot and watched the people display their joy at the proclamation of the republic. Now this! But, once again, the crowd showed its civic spirit; the buses were allowed to pass.

  —What would have happened if at that moment the crowd had known that republicans, whose only crime was to have wanted to be free, were being hunted down like wild animals in towns where the military had triumphed? In the name of fatherland and religion, the Spanish right was prepared to commit any crime to save its privileges. Its false sense of religion imbued it with a heartless indifference. More than a military, financial or political oligarchy, the Spanish right was rooted in clericalism. A religion that had nothing to do with Christianity …

  The republic’s attempt to introduce a new, modern political mentality to the country was what the right feared most, he thought; if the evolutionary process were allowed to continue another year it would be irreversible. Unfortunately, the socialist left had tried to turn the workers away from this process; the best-organized, numerically largest party in the country, which had been the republic’s firmest support at the beginning, had made a grievous error.

  Was it not rather the petty bourgeois liberal republicans, by their failure to satisfy the most elementary needs of the people, who had made the most serious errors, reflected Antonio PEREZ, a left socialist youth student. ‘A regime which, in its constitution, had declared itself a “republic of all the workers”, had left the Andalusian day-labourer to live without work six months of the year on bread and vinegar.’ The Spanish people were going hungry. This was the situation that had to be remedied. Constant pressure had to be kept on the republicans to ensure that they took action. It wasn’t a question of revolution: the socialist youth had no clearly thought out revolutionary programme; it was a matter of meeting elemental needs, of combating the violence which was on the increase. There was permanent fighting between members of the FUE, the university students’ federation, and the Falange at the commercial school where he was studying. What started as fist fights turned into stone-throwing, the use of clubs and fi
nally of pistols. Two falangist students at the school were killed in a shoot-out while trying, it seemed, to attack the communist party newspaper building. ‘Ever since the elections the coming struggle was plainly visible; there was no going back.’

  Violence had been in the air even longer, since the October 1934 insurrection; it had begun at the verbal level and had taken over Spanish politics, official and personal, thought Paulino AGUIRRE. A liberal arts student at Madrid university, son of a politician under the monarchy, he had not been involved in the frequent clashes at the university; but he had no illusions about the depths of the violence.

  —The idea that it was necessary to kill, to destroy in order to defend oneself was constantly expressed by ordinary people on both sides. It stemmed from the type of mentality that refuses dialogue and compromise. Verbal violence was a social fact. However, to the majority, it seemed inconceivable that the barrier between words and acts should be crossed. When a small minority did so – when things that had been said were actually done – a new situation arose. Verbal violence prefigured a war which was not generally expected, conditioned its outbreak, even hastened it …

  * * *

  SPANIARDS

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