The CNT, elements of which had made three insurrectionary bids to establish libertarian communism in 1932 and 1933, was now engaged in healing the split between the anarchist and syndicalist tendencies which had riven it for the past four years. At its Extraordinary Congress, which opened in Saragossa on 1 May, the proposal to create a libertarian militia to crush a military uprising was rejected almost scornfully, in the name of a traditional anti-militarism. Instead, much time was devoted to outlining what life would be like under libertarian communism.20
Thus, less than two years after the October 1934 rising, no working-class organization was ready to take pre-emptive action to prevent the enemy from seizing power even though it was evident that the unstable social equilibrium (which had underlain the monarchy’s crisis, and which in turn was the cause of the relatively weak republican governments) could not remain much longer unresolved. The hesitation of the working-class organizations reflected a dominant reality: it was not a revolutionary situation.21 One of the two fundamental conditions was absent. While the ‘lower classes’ (especially rural) did not want to continue ‘living in the old way’, the ‘upper classes’ were not yet unable to carry on in the ‘old way’. Fear that their power to do so was being threatened led them to take measures fully to restore – not the ‘way’ of the past five years but of the dictatorship which had preceded them: an authoritarian state which would render the working-class forces impotent. Means of restoring the ‘old way’ were at hand. In place of the parliamentary forces which had failed, there was the army. Alongside this was the ‘reserve army’ of falangists, Carlists and monarchists who were united in their determination to crush the threat of socialist revolution and separatism (united as well, in varying degrees, by their adherence to the concept of organic democracy22), if disunited in other spheres. The failure of five years of pre-revolutionary process to crystallize into a revolutionary situation was to be the measure of the counter-revolution’s success.
*
In Pamplona, General Mola planned the definitive operation. By June, the plans were well advanced. Many of the conspirators at his headquarters firmly believed that a Comintern-planned coup to install a Soviet regime under Largo Caballero was due to take place.23 Mola set the date for 12 July, but a serious stumbling-block arose. The Carlist leadership broke off relations with him because their minimal demands for joining the uprising had not been met: that they have political responsibility for the new state’s ‘organic and corporative’ reconstruction, and that the rising take place under the monarchist, not republican flag. Mola, whose plans were to retain a republican regime under a military directorate, could not afford to jeopardize other right-wing alliances by politically mortgaging the uprising to Carlism. On 12 July, still without agreement, he sent a legionary officer to Morocco with the message: ‘From 2400 hours on the 17th.’ The plan was now for the Army of Africa to rise first, followed by risings on the mainland, staggered from twenty-four to thirty-six hours later.
On the same day, in Madrid, Lt José Castillo, a left-wing assault guard officer, was assassinated. The riposte was immediate. Calvo Sotelo, the leading right-wing monarchist politician, was taken from his home by companions of the assassinated officer and murdered.
Responsibility for Sotelo’s murder rested with the republican anti-fascist military union, UMRA (Unión Militar de Republicanos Anti-fascistas). Two months earlier, Capt. Faraudo had been gunned down in the street on the pretext that he had been training socialist militia. In response Capt. ORAD DE LA TORRE, a retired artillery officer, drew up a statement on behalf of the anti-fascist military.
—The statement expressed our shock and warned that in the event of another such attempt we would reply in kind – but not on the person of an army officer, but on that of a politician. For it was the politicians who were responsible for this state of affairs. We sent the statement to the right-wing Spanish military union, UME (Unión Militar Española) …
When Lt Castillo was killed, the threat was carried out. A light assault guard truck set out with about fifteen men to look for Goicoechea, the monarchist leader, or Gil Robles. Unable to find either, they were passing down the Calle Velázquez when someone remarked that Calvo Sotelo lived there.
—The government was in no way involved – it was we of the UMRA24 …
Capt. ORAD DE LA TORRE, who had recently got married, played no role in the assassination; but he did not believe it was wrong, for had not the right murdered two left-wing officers?
Condemned immediately by the government, the assassination aroused a wave of stunned indignation on the right and amongst moderate republicans.
Alfredo LUNA, newspaper editor (UR): It was horrible. It shook the government. To retaliate for one murder by another, for Castillo’s by that of a leading politician – what justification could there be for it?
Father Alejandro MARTINEZ: A passer-by came up as I was on my way to the seminary where I taught. ‘It’s a good job he’s been killed, say what you will, all the right should be killed,’ he shouted at me. ‘Good, hijo,’ I replied, ‘each of us administers his own pocket and his conscience,’ and I walked on.
David JATO, falangist student leader (SEU): One assassination more or less at that moment wouldn’t have made much impact. But the fact that it was Calvo Sotelo and that he had been assassinated by the government’s police forces made people take a stand finally against the government. Many garrisons, many people who a week before had been doubtful or even opposed, now saw the need for a violent solution. Without the assassination, the military rising, I’m convinced, would have failed.
Antonio PEREZ, student, unified socialist youth (JSU): It seemed to us just one more of a long list of assassinations. The political implications appeared unimportant – it was another death.
*
Had it not been for Carlist intransigence, the rising would have already taken place. The assassination made agreement with the Carlists easier to reach. A pious letter from General Sanjurjo, who was due to take over the leadership of the uprising once he was able to return from exile in Lisbon, suggested a compromise which both Mola and the Carlists accepted. Dolores BALEZTENA drove with her brother Joaquín, president of the Carlist junta of Navarre, to San Juan de Luz in France. There Fal Conde, the Carlist leader, gave her some papers. ‘Hide them where you think best. They must not be found at the frontier.’ She hid them in her sandals. As they started back for Pamplona, her brother told her that they were the king’s instructions for the requetés to join the uprising.
Las fiestas están alegres
Y las chicas guapas son
Mas yo me voy pues me llama
Alfonso Carlos Borbón.
The fiestas are joyful
And the girls pretty
But I shall have to leave
Because I’m called by Alfonso Carlos Borbón.25
—When I heard a Carlist group singing this song in the streets on my return to Pamplona, I felt a tremendous sense of anguish, and I went into a doorway to cry …
In the Pamplona cinema, the announcement of a Paramount week beginning on 19 July was flashed on the screen. Half a dozen of the best Paramount films of the year. Rafael GARCIA SERRANO, a falangist student, felt an anticipatory pleasure. One of the films was The Bengal Lancers.
—A film of heroism, imperial adventure, fighting – a film our founder, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, particularly liked and recommended to us. ‘Coño, what a great film!’ I said to my companion. ‘Wonderful fighting –’ ‘It won’t be a bad film of fighting we’re going to have on the nineteenth ourselves,’ he replied in the dark …
* * *
ALEA JACTA EST!
THE ARMY RISES AGAINST THE POPULAR FRONT GOVERNMENT
DECLARES ITS PROGRAMME IS TO SAVE SPAIN FROM ANARCHY
GEN. FRANCO IS THE MILITARY LEADER OF THE MOVEMENT
Defensor de Córdoba, headlines (Córdoba, 20 July 1936)
* * *
¡VIVA
LA
REPUBLICA!
ABC, headline (Madrid, 21 July 1936)
* * *
The Victory Belongs to the Workers
The mortuaries are full of the corpses of proletarians mown down by the militarist scum … But there is no minister’s nor ex-minister’s, no former city councillor’s among them. Only proletarian flesh and blood …
Will the ministers and ex-ministers, the collaborators of the treacherous army, try to administer the victory won by the proletariat?
They had better not try. The proletariat is in the streets, arms in hand. The proletariat knows how to retain the conquests it has cost so much blood to win. The CNT will never surrender while an enemy of freedom remains before the proletariat.
Solidaridad Obrera, CNT (Barcelona, 24 July 1936)
* * *
1. For the figures, see Prologue, p. 44, n. 2.
2. In one respect Castrogeriz was an a-typical Castilian village in having a large proportion of landless labourers which tended, as everywhere, to increase social conflicts (see pp. 281–3).
3. See Points of Rupture, B.
4. See Points of Rupture, A.
5. See Points of Rupture, A.
6. After its initial refusal to declare itself unambiguously republican, the CEDA leadership had, for the past two years, agreed ‘to serve and defend the republic in order to serve and defend Spain’. The 1936 election campaign sharpened its enemies’ fears that, if victorious, it would at worst impose a totalitarian fascist regime, at best drastically reform the constitution. Gil Robles publicly advocated the latter. At the same time, its electioneering slogans of ‘All Power to the Chief’, the semi-fascist salute, its brown-shirted youth movement mouthing anti-semitic slogans led its opponents to believe that its real aims went even further. It was not forgotten that Hitler had come to power through elections. (See also Points of Rupture, E.)
7. The fundamental similarities were greater than the differences: both were fascist movements overlaid with Catholicism. ‘Authority, discipline, the subjection of the masses, control but not liquidation of capitalism, a corporative state, were common elements,’ in the words of Tomás BULNES, associate of the JONS co-founder, O. Redondo. The attempt to differentiate themselves from fascism stemmed from the fact that ‘as a very national movement, we did not want people to think we were imitating any foreign model. We had to look back to our own Golden Age, follow the example set by the Catholic Kings of the fifteenth century.’ (For further discussion of the Falange, see Militancies 10, p. 313.)
8. Socialist influence spread from the nearest town, Medina de Rioseco, which had a nucleus of socialist railway workers and was one of the few Old Castilian centres where the October 1934 insurrection had repercussions (see D. Ruiz, ‘Aproximación a octubre de 1934’, Sociedad, politica, y cultura en la España de los siglos XIX-XX, Madrid, 1973). In Tamariz, twenty-two people were arrested during the October events, charged with being in possession of illegal arms and petrol bombs, according to PASTOR.
9. Gil Robles, CEDA leader, wanted to reinforce Azaña’s authority, hoping that the latter would turn the government towards the centre. The CED A leader wanted a ‘government of material understanding, strong and authoritarian’, which could have been led by Prieto. The manoeuvre failed when the socialist party prevented Prieto from becoming prime minister in May (see R. Robinson, ‘The Parties of the Right and the Republic’, in The Republic and the Civil War in Spain (ed. R. Carr), London, 1971). The electoral failure had, moreover, weakened Gil Robles’s position; Calvo Sotelo, monarchist finance minister under the Primo de Rivera dictatorship which preceded the republic, now took over the leadership of the right.
10. This was not a year after the massacres of Castilblanco, in which peasants slaughtered four civil guards, and Arnedo, where the guardia shot down seven peaceful demonstrators, including four women and a child, and wounded thirty more. Only a few months after the Fuensalida shootings, in what became an immediate cause célèbre, some twenty peasants were massacred by assault guards in Casas Viejas.
11. See Points of Rupture, A.
12. For discussion of the communist party’s positions on the need to complete the bourgeois democratic revolution under the leadership of the working class and peasantry before moving on to the next historic stage – the socialist revolution – see Points of Rupture, E.
13. E. Malefakis, op. cit., p. 373. Press censorship makes it impossible to judge the exact dimensions of rural agitation. Moreover, new mayors appear to have been reluctant to report land invasions. In April, the left republican civil governor of Córdoba issued an order to them to do so, given the ‘repeated denunciations’ by landlords of various abuses (Defensor de Córdoba, 7 April 1936). The situation in Andalusia and elsewhere was worsened by the heaviest rains for a century which prevented landwork. Meanwhile, the foreign communist press published glowing accounts of land take-overs. The peasantry’s ‘revolutionary action’ was causing ‘absolute panic in government circles’ wrote the Comintern’s delegate, Cesar Falcón, in May (cited by B. Bolloten, The Grand Camouflage, London, 1968, p. 22).
14. For a description of the take-over, see Points of Rupture, A.
15. J. Díaz del Moral, Historia de las agitaciones campesinas andaluzas – Córdoba (Madrid, 1929, 1967), p. 329. A majority of the same congress also adopted a resolution stating that ‘we must demand of the powers that be that they hand over the poorly cultivated lands to the unions at their present taxable rates’. The contradiction between the two resolutions was symptomatic of the anarchist and syndicalist tendencies within the movement. (For further examination of these two tendencies, and their importance to the anarcho-syndicalist concept of the revolution, see Points of Rupture, D.
16. In fact, the agrarian reform law gave not the property of the land but its use to the recipient, who could not sell, mortgage or lease it. The property was retained by the state. The militant anarcho-syndicalists were opposed to both.
17. Díaz del Moral, op. cit., p. 355.
18. For further discussion of this theme, see Points of Rupture, B.
19. See A. Nin, ‘Después de las elecciones del 16 de febrero’, in Los problemas de la revolución española (Paris, 1971).
20. The trajectory of the anarcho-syndicalist movement, of crucial importance to the revolution, is outlined in Points of Rupture, D.
21. ‘For a revolution to take place’, wrote Lenin, ‘it is not enough for the exploited and oppressed masses to realize the impossibility of living in the old way, and demand changes; for a revolution to take place, it is essential that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. It is only when the “lower classes” do not want to live in the old way and the “upper classes” cannot carry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph’ (‘Leftwing Communism – An Infantile Disorder’, Collected Works, vol. 31, Moscow, 1966, p. 85).
22. For a consideration of this concept see n. 1, pp. 319–20.
23. The plot, ridiculed at the time by Claridad, Largo Caballero’s newspaper, is still given credence (see F. Maíz, Mola, aquél hombre (Barcelona, 1976); also J. del Burgo, Conspiración y guerra civil (Madrid, 1970)). Eduardo Comín Colomer, who was responsible for keeping the ‘plot’ alive in his history of the Spanish communist party (1965), retracted his earlier position. ‘I know that the plot was the work of right-wing people. Believing that Spain was going to fall into communist hands, they drew up the plan, basing themselves on the schema outlined by the 7th Comintern Congress, as a warning to the country. Caballero was already being called the “Spanish Lenin”. When I subscribed to the plot’s authenticity, I did so knowingly, believing that the time had not yet come to reveal the truth.’ (Statement to author, 26 September 1974.)
24. ‘When Major Díaz Varela, one of the prime minister’s military aides, informed the latter of the assassination, Casares Quiroga replied: “What a mess they’ve got us into” (En menudo lío nos han metido) – his literal words, often repeated to me by
Díaz Varela’ (ORAD DELA TORRE).
25. King of the Carlists and pretender to the Spanish throne, Alfonso Carlos was the last direct descendent of don Carlos. He died in September 1936, and was succeeded as regent by Prince Xavier.
July 1936
Monday, 20 July
By evening the situation was growing clearer. Industrial and urban Spain – five of the country’s seven largest cities – were in republican hands: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia (where, with troops confined to barracks, the government’s victory was not yet definite), Málaga and Bilbao. Seville and Saragossa (in both of which resistance was continuing) were the exceptions.
Peasant Spain was in insurgent hands. The wide arc, stretching east and west above Madrid from Saragossa to Salamanca and passing through the heartland of the medium and small Catholic peasantry, had risen against the republic. The insurgents’ reach stretched north-westwards into Galicia.
Latifundist Spain was divided. In the fourteen provinces where agrarian reform was to be applied first, seven provincial capitals (although not yet the surrounding countryside), four of them Andalusian,1 had fallen to the military.
Fighting continued everywhere; the position of the northern seaboard remained uncertain while military resistance continued in San Sebastián and Gijón. Beneath the fluid situation, the outlines of the two opposing camps could, none the less, be discerned: the landowning class and provincial petty bourgeoisie on the one hand (joined by the industrial bourgeoisie if it chanced to be in – or could reach – the insurgent zone); the industrial and rural proletariat, allied with the urban petty bourgeoisie, on the other. The fracture paralleled the previous social line of division. Of little import in a rapid coup, its correspondence to an urban/rural split was to have a significant consequence in a long war: the supply of food in the opposing camps.
Blood of Spain_An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War Page 13
