The Battle for Spain

by Antony Beevor

  There were sometimes long discussions and wrangles within the worker committees, but when the issues were clear, little time was wasted. Services such as water, gas and electricity were working under their new management within hours of the storming of the Atarazanas barracks. Using the framework agreed at the Saragossa conference, a conversion of appropriate factories to war production meant that metallurgical concerns had started to produce armoured cars by 22 July. Although not sophisticated, they were not all crudely improvised contraptions. The industrial workers of Catalonia were the most skilled in Spain. The Austrian sociologist Franz Borkenau also pointed out the great difference it made not to have technicians obstructed, as occurred in Soviet Russia.22

  After defeating the attempted coup in Barcelona and reorganizing production so quickly, the anarchists were angry at the Madrid government’s attempt to regain control through the denial of credits. A plan for seizing part of the Spanish gold reserves so as to bypass the central government’s denial of foreign exchange was considered, but rejected, by the CNT regional committee. Apart from finance, the other main weakness was the lack of co-ordination between co-operatives within a particular industry. However, government performance on industrial matters was such that it is doubtful whether ministers in Madrid would have done much better.

  At the same time as the transformation of industry, there was a mushroom growth of agricultural collectives in the southern part of Republican territory. They were organized by CNT members, either on their own or in conjunction with the UGT. The UGT became involved because it recognized that collectivization was the most practical method of farming the less fertile latifundia. It would perhaps also be true to say that in many places the socialists followed this course to avoid being usurped by the anarchists in what they regarded as their fiefs.

  In Aragón some collectives were installed forcibly by anarchist militia, especially the Durruti column. Their impatience to get the harvest in to feed the cities, as well as the fervour of their beliefs, sometimes led to violence. Aragonese peasants resented being told what to do by overenthusiastic Catalan industrial workers and many of them had fears of Russian-style collectives. Borkenau showed in an example how much more effective other means could be. The anarchist nucleus achieved a ‘considerable improvement for the peasants and yet was wise enough not to try to force the conversion of the reluctant part of the village, but to wait till the example of the others should take effect’.23 Not surprisingly, a collective begun in that way worked best. Overall, studies of the collectivization conclude that ‘the experiment was a success for the poor peasants of Aragón’.24

  There were some 600 collectives in Aragón but far from all villages were completely collectivized.25 The individualists, consisting chiefly of smallholders who were afraid of losing what little they had, were allowed to keep as much land as a family could farm without hired labour. In regions where there had always been a tradition of smallholding little tended to change. The desire to work the land collectively was much stronger among the landless peasants, especially in less fertile areas where small plots were hardly viable.26

  The only alternative systems to the free collectives for supplying the republican zone with food were either state collectives or dividing up the land into smallholdings. The nearest equivalents to state collectives were municipally organized farms. In the province of Jaén, for example, where the CNT was almost non-existent and the UGT weak, the municipality took over the land and organized it. Borkenau recorded that it employed the same braceros that the former landowners employed upon the same estates for the same endless working hours for the same starvation wages. ‘As nothing had changed in their living conditions so nothing had changed in their attitude. As they are ordered about as before and for the same wages, they start fighting the new administration of the estates as they did the old one.’27 Borkenau also described how self-managed collectives were much happier when no better off than before. What mattered was that the labourers ran their own collectives–a distinct contrast to the disasters of state collectivization in the Soviet Union, which the peasants had resisted by slaughtering livestock and sabotaging the harvest.

  The anarchists attacked the reparto, the division of land, because they thought that privately controlled land always creates a bourgeois mentality, ‘calculating and egotistical’, which they wanted to uproot for ever. But whatever the ideology, the self-managed co-operative was almost certainly the best solution to the food supply problem. The communists attacked the self-managed collectives as inefficient, but in Aragón production increased by a fifth.28 Not only was non-collectivized production lower, but the individualists were to show the worst possible traits of the introverted and suspicious smallholder. When food was in short supply they hoarded it and created a thriving black market which, apart from disrupting supplies, did much to undermine morale in the republican zone. The communist civil governor of Cuenca admitted later that the smallholders who predominated in his province held on to their grain when the cities were starving.

  The other criticism levelled against the collectives was their failure to deliver food to the front line in regular quantities at regular intervals. Obviously there were many cases of inefficiency, but overall the charge was unfair considering that all their vehicles and carts had already been commandeered. Whenever transport did arrive the peasants, not knowing when it would next be available, would pile on every possible foodstuff. The fault lay far more with the militia, who should have organized things the other way round and warned particular collectives of their needs in advance. The army and the International Brigades were also to suffer from bad distribution, often on an even worse scale.

  The central government was alarmed by the developments in Aragón, where the anarchist militia columns exercised the only power in the whole of an area predominantly libertarian in sympathy. In late September delegates from the Aragonese collectives attended a conference at Bujaraloz, near where Durruti’s column was based. They decided to establish a Defence Council of Aragón and elected as president Joaquín Ascaso, a first cousin of Francisco Ascaso who fell in the Atarazanas assault.

  Earlier that summer the government had tried without success to reestablish its control in Valencia by sending a delegation there under Martínez Barrio. It was brushed aside by the Popular Executive Committee, which consisted mainly of UGT and CNT members. Communist pleas for discipline and obedience to government orders went unheeded. Even so, the communists, who opposed free collectives, profited from local conditions in their recruiting drives. The rich Valencian countryside, la Huerta, was held in smallholdings by extremely conservative peasants, who were joined in their resistance to collectivization by many citrus farmers.

  Giral’s government in Madrid did not share the anarchists’ enthusiasm for self-managed collectives. Nor did it welcome the fragmentation of central power with the establishment of local committees. Its liberal ministers believed in centralized government and a conventional property-owning democracy. They also felt, along with Prieto’s wing of the socialist party and the communists, that only discipline and organization could prevail against the enemy. Above all, they were appalled at having no control over the industrial base of Catalonia. But, after Martínez Barrio’s failure in Valencia, Giral’s administration could do little for the moment except try to keep up appearances. For the future, its continued control of supply and credit held out the prospect that concessions might gradually be wrung from the revolutionary organizations as a first step towards incorporating them into the state.

  12

  The Army of Africa and the People’s Militias

  By the beginning of August battle lines had become much clearer. With the two sides developing such markedly different characters in the wake of the rising, it seemed as if two completely separate nations were at war. The rebel generals urgently needed to show rapid gains of territory at the beginning so as to convince a foreign as well as the domestic audience of their success. Having failed to achieve
a coup, they required the international recognition, credits and material which a war demanded. General Franco’s Army of Africa was to make the most conspicuous contribution to this necessary impression of victory.

  Although the forces under General Mola played a less conspicuous role, the ‘Director’ had rapidly sent three columns from Pamplona mainly made up of Carlist requetés. The first left immediately for Madrid, a second force of about 1,400 men moved south to Saragossa to reinforce the nationalist garrison in the third week of July and another, much larger, force was sent north towards the Basque coastline.

  The column of 1,000 men under Colonel García Escámez, who had set out for the capital on 19 July, found that Guadalajara had already been captured by armed workers from Madrid. García Escámez then tried another line of advance on the capital, swinging round to the north to cross the Sierra de Guadarrama by the main Burgos road over the Somosierra pass. His force came up against Madrid militias at the summit where, a century and a quarter before, Napoleon’s Polish lancers had opened the route to the capital with a suicidal uphill charge against artillery. García Escámez’s men captured the pass after several days’ fighting, but could do little except consolidate their position since they were virtually out of ammunition.

  A nationalist force from Valladolid commanded by Colonel Serrador was joined by some civil guards and part of a signals regiment which had fled from El Pardo.1 They managed to secure the other pass at the Alto de los Leones to the south-west, but they also suffered from a shortage of ammunition. It was surprising that the chief architect of the conspiracy had not built up reserves in Burgos or Pamplona during the previous months. Mola’s difficulties were solved only when Franco sent him large supplies from Germany via Portugal with the assistance of the Salazar regime (the nationalists referred to Lisbon as ‘the port of Castile’). Some supplies also arrived on the cargo boat Montecillo, when it reached Vigo. But by the time the nationalist columns were resupplied, the militia forces in the mountains had become less haphazard in their organization and had established a front.

  Mola’s largest force of 3,500 men attacked northwards from Pamplona. The plan was to thrust up the high hills of northern Navarre towards the coast to cut the Basques off from the French frontier, then to capture the summer capital of San Sebastián. On 11 August the column under Major Beorleguí drove a wedge between San Sebastián and the border town of Irún. Six days later the nationalist battleship España, the cruiser Almirante Cervera and the destroyer Velasco arrived to shell the seaside resort. The republican military governor threatened to shoot right-wing hostages if heavy civilian casualties were inflicted. The nationalists called his bluff. Their bombardment was followed by aerial attacks from Junkers 52s on both San Sebastián and Irún.

  The defence of Irún demonstrated that untrained workers, providing their defensive position was well sited and prepared, could fight bravely and effectively against head-on attacks backed by modern weaponry. The CNT had been the main contributor to the defeat of the rising in the province of Guipúzcoa, and its members joined with Asturians, Basque nationalists and French communist volunteers organized by André Marty (later the chief organizer of the International Brigades) to make a total force of 3,000 men. Beorleguí’s force was numerically weaker, but it had all Mola’s artillery, light German tanks and the Junkers 52s in support. In addition, Franco sent a bandera of the Foreign Legion 700-strong and a battery of 155mm guns.

  There was ferocious hand-to-hand fighting on the Puntza ridge to the south of Irún where positions were captured and retaken several times in the course of a week. The militia fought with remarkable skill and courage. They were aided by French peasants from just across the border signalling the positions of Beorleguí’s artillery.2 The convent of San Marcial was held to the end by a handful of Asturian dinamiteros and militiamen. During the final attack, when out of ammunition, they hurled rocks at the Carlists who were storming their position.

  In fact, the battle was lost partly because six ammunition trucks failed to reach the defenders after the French border was closed on 8 August. Telesforo Monzón, one of the Basque ministers, had travelled to Barcelona in search of weapons and ammunition. Unfortunately, he did not obtain more than a thousand rifles and six pieces of artillery. A few days later Miguel González Inestal, the head of the CNT fisherman’s union, had a meeting with García Oliver, Abad de Santillán and President Companys. They helped him with weapons and a train, which would be sent via France and Hendaye, but it was intercepted by the French authorities.3 Irún itself was left a burning ruin when the last of the workers withdrew, some of them having to swim to safety to reach French territory. A parting burst of machine-gun fire hit Major Beorleguí in the calf. The tough old soldier refused treatment and later died of gangrene.

  The anarchists in San Sebastián were angry at the lack of support from the Basque nationalists, especially when they heard that the governor was negotiating the surrender of the city with the enemy. They were extremely suspicious after the betrayals which had occurred in the first few weeks of the war, but despite its conservatism the Basque nationalist PNV had not the slightest intention of changing sides. Nevertheless, it was totally opposed to the anarchists’ scorched-earth policy, which had led to the burning of Irún during the withdrawal and now meant defending San Sebastián to the last. The PNV prevailed, once their militia shot several anarchists. The nationalists occupied the city on 14 September, which meant that they now surrounded the northern republican zone.4

  Without any doubt, the most important military development of the summer was the ruthlessly effective campaign of the Army of Africa. Its early arrival on the mainland was mainly due to the help of German and Italian aircraft. Not surprisingly, republican propaganda made much of this foreign intervention at such a vital stage of the war, but the vehement protests tended to obscure two uncomfortable truths. First, republican warships run by sailors’ committees seemed to lack the ability or desire for offensive action, especially with the German battleships Deutschland and Admiral Scheer screening the nationalist convoys across the straits. But they clearly had orders to avoid open conflict and in any case, as the senior Soviet naval adviser later stated, ‘The republican ships did not carry out their duty.’5

  On land, the republican medley of indolent regular officers, urban worker militias and peasants intent on staying close to their pueblo proved incapable of launching any effective counter-attack in the vital south-western sector before the colonial troops arrived in strength. The military importance of the airlift by the Savoias and the Junkers 52s must, therefore, not be exaggerated, even though the arrival of 1,500 men between 28 July and 5 August had an enormous influence both on the nationalists’ morale and on the international assessment of their chances of victory. Altogether, some 12,000 troops were transported in this way during the first two months of the war, before the nationalists had won absolute control of the straits.

  The airlift of legionnaires and Moroccan regulares from the Army of Africa was well under way during the first week of August. On 6 August Franco himself crossed to the mainland, leaving General Orgaz in command of the Protectorate. He established his headquarters in Seville, where he decided to split his forces so as to be able to secure Andalucia as well as advance rapidly on the capital.

  The main force under Colonel Yagüe was to drive north, parallel to the Portuguese frontier, then swing north-eastwards on Madrid. Yagüe was to prove the most aggressive of all the Nationalist field commanders. In many ways these qualities underlined the contrast between the Army of Africa and the apathetic metropolitan army. Colonial officers have always tended to be less fashionable and more professional, but in Spain this difference was even more pronounced than in either the British or French services. Nevertheless Franco, the supposedly archetypal africanista, was extremely conventional in contrast to his impetuous subordinate.

  A much smaller force of only 400 regulares was to secure southern Andalucia under Colonel Varela, a secret in
structor of Carlist requetés before the rising and the officer released from prison in Cádiz by the insurgents on 19 July. Colonial troops from Seville captured Huelva, before retiring to crush any remaining resistance southwards to Cádiz and Algeciras. Then, in the second week of August, Varela’s force moved eastwards to help the beleaguered nationalists in Granada. Once a salient to the city had been established, they prepared to attack Málaga and the coastal strip beyond the mountains: But Córdoba was threatened by a republican force of 3,000 men under General Miaja, so Varela moved rapidly on 20 August to reinforce Colonel Cascajo’s small force there. Once the Córdoba front was stabilized in the first week of September (it was hardly to change for the rest of the war), Varela marched southwards and captured Ronda on 18 September.

  General José Miaja, the republican commander of the southern front and later of Madrid during the siege, was one of those senior officers who probably stayed loyal from force of circumstance rather than from conviction.6 His force was composed of loyal regular troops, Madrid militiamen and local volunteers. The ineffectiveness of totally untrained men in conventional manoeuvres was to be expected, but the uselessness and sloth of the regular officers was extraordinary. Franz Borkenau visited the headquarters on 5 September, during heavy fighting which was going badly. ‘The staff’, he wrote, ‘were sitting down to a good lunch, chatting, telling dirty stories, and not caring a bit about their duty, not even trying to establish any contact with the fighting lines for many hours.’ Even the wounded were ignored.7