—Again, we were going to have coffee in Madrid. When we reached Navalperal, on the road from Avila, we were ambushed. They were firing at us from all sides. We threw ourselves on the ground; thereafter, it was a question of each for himself. I threw my rifle away and began to run. Only the civil guards with a couple of machine-guns put up any resistance. I started running at 11 a.m. and I reached Avila, 40 kilometres away, still running, at 6 p.m. A marathon! …
He slipped back to Salamanca. There he received another piece of unpleasant family news. Before setting out the first time for the front, his uncle, the mayor of Salamanca and an eminent university professor, doctor and left republican deputy, had been arrested and assassinated. His body had been found beside that of the socialist deputy, Manso, 30 km away on the road to Valladolid. Now, during his second absence, another uncle had been arrested. Coming from the village of Morasverdes, where he was the town hall secretary, to buy his eldest daughter a pair of white gloves for her wedding, he had been arrested in Salamanca ‘as a relative of my other uncle, Dr Casto Prieto’. Thrown in gaol and held without trial until May 1937, he was let out dying of a bladder complaint which received no treatment in prison.
—I decided to go to the village to visit my aunt who had brought me up for three years after my father died, and she asked me to stay on and take over my uncle’s work until a new town hall secretary was appointed …
Nothing had happened in the village, a small but relatively prosperous place in the south of Salamanca province where the land was well-irrigated. The local doctor took charge. Under the dictatorship, he had been a member of the dictator’s Unión Patriótica; in the opening period of the republic, a left republican thanks to his friendship with Crespo’s Salamanca uncle; in the next period, jealous of Crespo’s village uncle who occupied a more prominent post in the left republicans than he, he joined the CEDA. Now that times had changed, he became a falangist. But things on the village council, which he had appointed, were not turning out as he wished: the deputy mayor kept calling for votes and the doctor’s proposals were being defeated.
—So one day he went to Ciudad Rodrigo, the nearest big town, and returned with three or four falangists. They rang the town hall bell to summon the village to a meeting in the schoolhouse. The Falange chief sat in the teacher’s chair. ‘Strange things are happening in this village. Perhaps you don’t realize that democracy no longer exists. The only democracy is this –’ and he pulled out his pistol. ‘In view of this, be careful. The town council is hereby dissolved’ …
A new council was appointed, the vexatious deputy mayor thrown out. On 15 August, feast day of the Virgin, falangists turned up on a sinister mission ‘to get a few people’. As a couple of them were school-mates of Crespo they showed him the list of five people; one of them, the only woman, was his cousin, the daughter of his recently arrested uncle. From the names, he saw that it had been drawn up by someone from the village: ‘the former deputy mayor’s brother, in fact – another political turncoat, a man without an ounce of ideology. My aunt and uncle were his god-parents and here he was denouncing their daughter.’
Apart from arresting those on the list, the falangists intended to give a few others a ‘good fright’. The mayor told them who was in need of such medicine. One of these was Juan, the son of the village poacher. Juan and his brother, both socialists, had volunteered for the insurgent army at the time of the rising; but Juan had the misfortune to be in the village on leave. ‘I’m as patriotic as you – more than you,’ Crespo heard him shouting as they beat him in the town hall. ‘I’m in uniform – why are you beating me?’
—What irony there was in all this as the future would show! For the only two villagers killed in the war were Juan and his brother. Those two, who had poached everyone’s game, who had been socialists, now became heroes of the Movement. Their names were inscribed on monuments, celebrated in a mass for the fallen which I attended in the village: there was the priest, who had always been denouncing them for stealing his chickens and eggs, saying mass for them; the corporal of the guardia civil, who was always arresting them, at the head of the guard of honour; the mayor, who had organized their beating by the falangists, giving the ritual cries. A moment of delicious local historic irony! …
Meanwhile the business of arresting those they had come for was getting underway. The mayor added some names to the list. Crespo didn’t like the way things were going.
—In front of the town hall was the priest’s house. No one liked him; he’d had an affair with the sacristan’s wife and many approaches had been made to the bishop to get rid of him. I went in; he was having his siesta. I told his brother to wake him and I explained the situation. He heard me out and came with me to the town hall. As soon as he saw the falangists and the mayor, he said: ‘No one is leaving this village. I am the priest and only I know the villagers’ consciences. There may be some who don’t go to church but there are none who are criminals.’
The Falange chief looked at him. ‘Well, father, that’s your view because you’re the priest and it’s your duty –’
The next move surprised us all. The priest threw himself on the floor in front of the doorway. ‘Before any of my parishioners leave here, you’ll have to pass over my body.’
The Falange chief was moved. ‘Let’s see if this can be arranged. Father, get up, please. I promise you that no one will be killed. I give you my word as a Catholic that I will take these people to the civil governor, no more. I will not put them in prison. If you wish, you may come with us.’
They arrested the cart-maker and the schoolmaster, the latter being the head of the local socialists. One of the others due to be arrested had already fled to the mountains, and the doctor wouldn’t allow them to take my cousin because she had Malta fever. As they were taking the teacher to the car, his daughter, a very beautiful girl of twelve, threw herself at the Falange chief’s feet and kissed them. So moved was he that he told her to get up and returned her father to her. So only the cart-maker was taken – and the next day he returned on the bus. They were saved by the priest and, in truth, by the Falange chief who was a decent man at heart. Only one of those who came had been a falangist before the war – one of the thirty-three in Salamanca. The rest had donned the blue shirt since the uprising …
CRESPO now heard that Renovación Española, the monarchist party, was organizing a volunteer battalion in Burgos, and for the third time in little over a month he set off as a volunteer for the front. He left behind an uncle in prison, an uncle assassinated, and yet another uncle in hiding. (The last of these, a CEDA member, was mayor of the municipality where the corpse of Dr Casto Prieto, the Salamanca uncle, was found. Soon he, too, was receiving threats to his life and, riding his horse halfway across the province to a small village near Morasverdes, he hid in a charcoal burner’s hut. When he gave himself up he was clapped in gaol.)
—It was a civil war; the front was a sinuous line which divided friend from friend, brother from brother, which ran through many a particular home and even through bedrooms. In my family there were Carlists, liberals, republicans. My situation was by no means unique. I did what I could to alleviate the suffering of my relatives on the other side, did what I could to get my uncles out of gaol, but I went on fighting for my ideals. Not material interests, because I had none, but ideals: to end the chaos that the left and the CEDA had provoked; to restore law and order, authority and a national spirit. It had become a crime to cry ¡Viva España! The Catalan and Basque autonomy statutes were the last straw. They were simply going to lead to independence and the end of Spanish unity. Every time there’s a revolutionary situation in Spain, ‘cantonalism’ spreads like fungus. First Catalonia, then the Basque country, next Galicia – and in the end a village like Morasverdes – wants independence. Committees and juntas in every pueblo. There’s no end to it. The moment a strong power disappears, Spain dissolves. The Spaniard only does what he wants. He is a king to himself who wants to be the king of everyone else
. The Spaniard cannot be democratic – not because he lacks the education or culture, no – but because he is simply incapable of it. The republicans who believed the contrary were the most moronic of all. Without a world role, Spain had lost what Ortega y Gasset called ‘the stimulation of a common programme’; without such a programme, rivalries and domestic problems could not be overcome. Spain was lost …
Although a monarchist, his sympathies lay with the Falange. Ever since he had read José Antonio Primo de Rivera’s founding speech, he had been moved by his ‘poetic prose’ which, combined with the historic memory of Spain’s past greatness and to a lesser extent with the Falange’s social programme, influenced him strongly. Yet, for sentimental reasons, he remained a monarchist, believing that Franco was also one because, in the past, the king had favoured him; believing that the war would end in a dictatorship because ‘that was what everyone wanted’. No one was concerned about what sort of dictatorship as long as it brought a return of authority and national spirit.
—The one thing I wasn’t fighting for was the church. I fought on Franco’s side without believing in God. At the age of thirteen, in the religious boarding school I was sent to in Salamanca, I had a religious crisis and stopped believing. We were saturated with religion there, there was nothing but saints – day in, day out. The first thing that struck me was the difference between what the priests preached and their personal conduct. Many of the younger friars who were studying to be priests had homosexual leanings and divided us pupils into the ‘pretty’ and the ‘ugly’. The discipline was ferocious, it was just like a barracks. When I became an officer leading Moroccan troops – shock troops which, like the Foreign Legion, were full of adventurers and criminals – I was like a fish in water thanks to my training at school.
I became hostile to the church’s social function. Spain has been dominated by religion – a religion imposed from above and used for instrumental social objectives. The Spaniard has never had deep religious beliefs as a result. Intransigently, many Spaniards have believed themselves the right arm of God; religion has been an emblem people have worn – like a football club badge. We’ve spent our lives building churches and burning them. And sometimes it has been the same people doing both.
I was fighting to create a better Spain. That would require sacrifices. The things going on in the rearguard were one of these sacrifices needed in order that justice might win. It was a necessary, if painful, part of the war. But I was also aware that it was necessary for us to prove ourselves better than the reds whose atrocities filled our papers. So, when my uncle was assassinated, I couldn’t help wondering why a man who had done no one any harm, an eminent doctor and university professor, a man who had been elected to his position as deputy, should be killed for defending his ideals. How could we be making a better Spain if we were acting just like the other side?
But I went on fighting. The war went on. I didn’t think too much about the rearguard, it was better not to. If you did, you might find yourself doing something foolish like throwing down your rifle. The thing to do was to aim to kill …
* * *
MADRID
Régulo MARTINEZ, president of the left republican party in Madrid, was busy trying to find rooms for the refugees fleeing to the city from Estremadura and Toledo, now that the Army of Africa had reached the Tagus valley, 180 km from Madrid. In three weeks it had advanced nearly double that distance from Seville, meeting little serious resistance. The militia columns were proving no match for the legionary and Moroccan units.
The capital’s streets were jammed with peasant carts, herds of goats and sheep and peasant families. The week before, Badajoz had fallen. Rumours of the bloody massacre that had been wreaked on the defenders and civilian population of the Estremaduran capital immediately after the capture, were beginning to reach Madrid. Two days earlier, insurgent planes had bombed the capital.
At 9 p.m., MARTINEZ returned to party headquarters. The telephone rang; Marcelino Domingo, the party’s national president, was on the line.
—‘The people have stormed the Model prison and it is on fire,’ I heard him say. ‘The ambassadors of Britain and France have informed us that if the situation is not brought under control immediately, they will recognize Franco –’ ‘I see – But –’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re much better known in Madrid than I. The government has asked for representatives of all the Popular Front parties to go to the prison and meet General Pozas, the interior minister, to resolve the problem’ …
He set off immediately. The air raid, which had hit the barrio of Argüelles, in which the prison was situated, had caused a lot of damage. It was the first air raid on Madrid.30 There were civilian casualties, a young girl holding a doll was among the dead. The modern epoch of war had begun. The capital had no anti-aircraft defence (cinema projectors were later mounted on roofs as searchlights), there was no protection from raids. The people, thought MARTINEZ, wanted revenge. If they were being killed from the air, they were going to kill some of the right-wingers in the prison.
He had great difficulty getting through to the prison because control points had been set up everywhere. When he reached it, he found that more than twenty of the outstanding right-wing leaders being held there had been assassinated; but the fire was not burning so intensely.
As soon as General Pozas finished addressing the assembled Popular Front representatives, MARTINEZ asked for the floor.
—‘The left republican party says that it is inadmissible that anything be done which harms the republic. And that is what has happened here today.’ ‘What do you mean?’ people shouted. ‘If you want to kill people,’ I replied, ‘let me tell you something. Long before you became a democrat or whatever, I was serving the republican cause –’ Again there were shouts. I realized I had to take a new tack. ‘I demand the maximum punishment for the republic’s enemies. In return I demand the maximum good sense from those who maintain they are the republic’s friends. These sort of acts cannot be tolerated. You all know the threats that hang over the republic as a result of this assault and these murders –’
‘What are you proposing, then?’ the people cried. ‘The following. That none of us leave this room until we have agreed to set up tribunals on which, de facto and de jure, the people are represented through their political parties and organizations. This will ensure that the tribunals are not lenient in applying the law, the people will see to that. At the same time, the law will provide a counterweight to popular excesses. The Popular Front organizations must appoint their representatives and lawyers to this popular tribunal immediately.’
‘Good,’ said General Pozas. ‘I’ll inform the government that a popular tribunal is to be set up.’ I heard the sound of a whistle; people began to put out the fire …
As he prepared to leave, a FAI militant came up. ‘You’re a man of good faith,’ he said. ‘Shall we go and look at the fiambres [lit. cold meats, corpses]’. MARTINEZ agreed. It was necessary, he thought, to put out the story that they had been shot while attempting to flee in order to justify, in some measure, a crime which should never have been committed.
The first corpse they came across was a former pupil of his. The FAI man looked at him. ‘Do you feel sick?’ He explained that he had taught the young man from the age of eight until he went to the university; he had been one of his very few students to become a falangist, had been involved in the attempted assassination of Jiménez de Asúa, a leading socialist deputy and professor, only a few months before.
—‘I fully understand that he deserved his fate. But it affects me –’ We continued through the prison. We saw the corpse of Melquíades Alvarez. ‘But this man was a democrat,’ I expostulated. ‘You’re too honest,’ an old socialist, who was standing near by, replied. He went on to recall a time before the republic, when Alvarez, founder of the reformist party and one of the king’s councillors, had been met by a stony silence at a Bilbao political rally until he alluded to Pablo Iglesias, founder of the socialist
party, who was on the same platform. Everyone cheered, the two men embraced. ‘If you betray that embrace, the people will demand a reckoning,’ the old socialist who was in the crowd had shouted. ‘And he did betray it,31 and there you see him now’ …
The people, he thought, had the memory of an elephant. Every betrayal, every insult, every injury done to them – especially by their employers – was remembered. When they found themselves armed they took their revenge – not only on that person but on his father and grandfather, for it was an historic revenge.
—By 9 a.m. the next morning, the first Popular Tribunal was functioning. Its establishment put an end to the generalized wave of paseos; sporadic assassinations continued, but people could now see that their enemies were being tried. Before, they had felt that the republic was being too lenient …
The government instructed the population to lock their doors after 11 p.m. and call the police if unauthorized persons attempted to enter – further measures which helped put an end to the indiscriminate killings. Amongst so many others, the latter nearly took the life of Pablo Neruda, then Chilean consul in Madrid. While dining one night at Carmencita’s restaurant, ‘militiamen’ came to arrest him. He was saved by his friend, art professor Rafael SANCHEZ, who ran to the neighbouring security HQ, DGS (Dirección General de Seguridad), and called the police, who arrested the men, while offering profuse apologies to the Chilean poet.
Blood of Spain_An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War Page 24
