by Paul Preston
Despite these deaths, the Carlist press in Navarre demanded the extermination of Basque nationalists. The newly imposed Falangist Mayor, José María de Areilza, himself a Basque, gloated in victory, declaring on 8 July: ‘The revolting, sinister, heinous nightmare called Euskadi has been smashed for ever … You have fallen for ever, self-seeking, wretched, twisted Basque nationalist toady Aguirre, you who pretended to be someone during eleven months of crime and robbery while the poor Basque soldiers were being hunted down in the villages with lassos like four-legged animals, leaving their pelts scattered over the mountains of Vizcaya.’32 Areilza was active in the repression, denouncing many individuals who were then imprisoned.
The Basque Army retreated into Santander and stabilized the front along a line that ran south from Ontón on the coast. The rebel forces consolidated in Bilbao and did not pursue the Basques, missing the chance of a rapid sweep through the north as Franco dithered over preparations for the next stage of his war effort. Finally, an advance into Santander was planned through western Vizcaya. However, before it could be launched, the Republic had struck with a diversionary attack at Brunete on the Madrid front. Franco suspended the offensive in the north and sent two Navarrese brigades plus the Condor Legion and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria to Madrid. Despite the relative strategic insignificance of Brunete, Franco deployed massive numerical and technological superiority in order to destroy large numbers of Republican troops. In a bloody war of attrition, Brunete cost more than 20,000 of the Republic’s best troops and much valuable equipment, delaying the eventual collapse of Santander by only five weeks.33
The defence of Santander was always going to be difficult. The military coup in the province had failed because it was badly planned and poorly executed. Nevertheless, despite the existence of industrial areas such as Torrelavega, Polanco, Astillero, Reinosa and Castro Urdiales, the province and its capital city were deeply conservative.34 The provincial capital had barely experienced the war. Restaurants and cafés remained open and there were few shortages.35 However, while the province was under Republican control, nearly 1,300 right-wingers were killed. Considerable responsibility fell on Manuel Neila Martín, bizarrely appointed police chief by the Civil Governor, Juan Ruiz Olazarán. An ex-shop assistant and rifle-shooting champion, Neila became notorious for his cruelty and corruption. He delighted in torturing prisoners, stole from them and accumulated a significant fortune. On 27 December 1936, a sustained German bombing attack on the working-class Barrio del Rey killed forty-seven women, eleven children and nine men, seriously wounding fifty others. A vengeful crowd gathered in the harbour next to a ship, Alfonso Pérez, on which there were 980 right-wing prisoners. Hand grenades were thrown into the hold. Then, under the supervision of Ruiz Olazarán and Neila, summary trials were held on deck. Those identified as army officers, priests or militants of right-wing groups were shot. In total, 156 Falangists and other rightists were murdered that night.36
Tension was simmering in the city already when the arrival of almost 170,000 refugees caused massive social dislocation. Deep resentment was generated among the local population by dramatic food shortages and the sight of thousands of Basques, including wounded and mutilated soldiers, sleeping in the streets. A number of Basques were murdered by Neila’s own checa. Revenge attacks were carried out by Basque soldiers. A group of nearly forty Basque priests were rescued from being murdered by anarchists only after payment of a large ransom. The defence of the province was undermined not only by these divisions but also by the fact that neither the Basque nor the Asturian forces felt commitment to the task. Moreover, the second-in-command of these disparate forces, Colonel Adolfo Prada Vaquero, told Azaña that 85 per cent of those from Santander were conscripts of dubious loyalty. On 14 August 1937, an army of 60,000 troops, amply supplied with Italian arms and equipment and backed by the Condor Legion and the Corpo di Truppe Volontarie, began to encircle Santander. In brilliant sunshine, massive air and artillery support as well as numerical superiority ensured a virtual walk-over as they easily brushed aside the disorganized Republican forces and the remnants of the Basque Army. Prada claimed that the lack of resistance was manifested in the fact that the rebel forces advanced faster than on manoeuvres. Santander itself fell on 26 August. The commander of the northern forces, General Mariano Gámir Ulibarri, delayed ordering an evacuation, and so relatively few were able to escape. The Mayor, who remained to surrender the city, was immediately shot.37
The consequent repression was notably harsher than in the Basque Country. One of the most striking executions was that of Colonel José Pérez y García Argüelles. He had been Military Governor of Santander on 18 July 1936. Because of his involvement in the coup, he had been condemned to death by a Tribunal Popular, but his sentence had been commuted to imprisonment. When the rebels arrived, he was arrested because his indecision between 18 and 20 July was regarded as contributing to the failure of the coup. He was tried and sentenced to death on 25 October 1937 and executed on 18 November. More than 13,000 people were tried, of whom 1,267 were sentenced to death. A further 739 were murdered in extra-judicial paseos and at least 389 died of maltreatment in prison.38
In the meantime, the Basque forces, having dropped out of the fight altogether, had gathered at Santoña to the east of Santander. They believed that they would be evacuated to France on the basis of the so-called ‘Pact of Santoña’ negotiated with the Italians by the Basque Nationalist Party. This belief was based on an offer made on 23 July by Franco’s brother, Nicolás, of no reprisals and facilities for the evacuation of prominent figures if the Basques surrendered. After long delays, during which they might have been able to organize an earlier evacuation, the Basques finally agreed to surrender to the Italians at Santoña on 26 August. In accordance with the agreement made, 473 Basque political and military leaders embarked on two British ships, the SS Seven Seas Spray and the SS Bobie, under Italian protection. The next day, rebel warships blockaded the port on Franco’s orders and Dávila told the Italians to disembark the refugees. They refused and held the prisoners for four days until, on 31 August, Franco personally ordered the Italians to hand them over.39 After assurances that the surrender conditions would be respected, the Italians relinquished the captives on 4 September. To their horror, summary trials began at once and hundreds of death sentences were passed. Among the victims were the entire General Staff of the Basque Army. The prisoners tried in Santoña were taken to Bilbao for execution in December 1937.40
In addition to the executions, a significant element of the repression in the Basque Country was constituted by fines and confiscations. Many doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers had their licences to practise withdrawn. As elsewhere, schoolteachers were a prime target. The Basque President or Lehendakari, José Antonio Aguirre, was fined 20 million pesetas and his property seized. Many businesses and properties were handed over to rebel supporters and bank deposits confiscated. In 1939, the rebels imposed a fine of 100 million pesetas on the shipping magnate Sir Ramón de la Sota, who had died three years earlier. His family was stripped of all of his businesses and his entire property, including forty ships that had been used in the evacuation of Bilbao. A typical case was that of the Abando family. The seventy-seven-year-old businessman Julián de Abando y Oxinaga was arrested, although seriously ill, and hit with a fine of over 1 million pesetas. Two of his sons were arrested with him and condemned to long prison sentences. One of them, the distinguished gynaecologist Dr Juan Blas de Abando y Urrexola, had his clinic confiscated.41
Another element of the repression was directed against the Basque language. In his notorious speech when he took over as Mayor of Bilbao, José María de Areilza declared: ‘the great shame of the separatist clergy is finished for ever’. The close relationship between the Basque clergy and the people was targeted by the prohibition of the use of Basque language Euskera in all religious activities, whether collective prayer, sermons or the teaching of the catechism. Instructions from the ecclesiastical
authorities permitting the use of Euskera were overruled by General Severino Martínez Anido, Franco’s head of public order. Priests who spoke to their Euskera-speaking flocks in their native languages were given huge fines.42
Among the prisoners taken at Santoña were eighty-one priests from the Corps of Chaplains of the Basque Army, a unique body among the Republican forces, dedicated to providing Mass and the sacraments at the front. Three were condemned to death (although their sentences were later commuted). The others were given sentences ranging from six to thirty years in prison. One of these priests, Victoriano Gondra y Muruaga, was known as ‘Aita Patxi’ (Father Frank), having taken the name Francisco de la Pasión on joining the Passionist Order. Imprisoned, along with the other Gudaris (Basque soldiers), in the concentration camp at San Pedro de Cardeña near Burgos, he was sentenced with them to forced labour. Learning that an Asturian Communist sentenced to death for trying to escape was married with five children, Aita Patxi offered himself to be shot instead. He was told mendaciously that his request had been accepted and the Asturian pardoned, and subjected to a pretence of execution by firing squad. He learned the next day that the Asturian had been shot at dawn.43
In Asturias, the legacy of the repression after October 1934 ensured that the struggle would be extremely bitter. On 18 July 1936, the coup had failed except for the two rebel outposts of the Simancas barracks in Gijón and the city of Oviedo which was taken as a result of the duplicity of Colonel Antonio Aranda. Declaring his loyalty to the Republic, he convinced the local authorities that he approved of arms being distributed to the workers. However, claiming not to have enough weapons and ammunition in Oviedo for them all, he assured the local left-wing forces that he had arranged for supplies in León. On Sunday 19 July, about 3,500 unarmed miners and steelworkers confidently left the city for León, some by train, others in a convoy of trucks. About three hundred were given obsolete weapons with inappropriate ammunition and the entire group continued south, reaching Benavente in Zamora. Meanwhile in Oviedo, Aranda declared for the rebels and other workers awaiting arms were massacred. In Benavente, on 20 July, news reached the militia expedition of Aranda’s treachery and they decided to return to Oviedo. Those who had come by train had to return via Ponferrada, a town already in the hands of the Civil Guard. The poorly armed militia fought bravely there but suffered many casualties and retreated back to Asturias, many on foot. By 21 July, the miners travelling by truck from Benavente had returned and besieged Oviedo. The Asturian Popular Front Committee established its headquarters in Sama de Langreo under the presidency of Belarmino Tomás.44
In Gijón, the coup had failed in large part because of the indecision of the commander of the Simancas barracks, Colonel Antonio Pinilla Barceló. Besieged by the anarchists who dominated the local committee, Pinilla had overseen by radio the fierce bombardment of the city by the rebel battlecruiser Almirante Cervera. On 14 August alone, air attacks and naval artillery made direct hits on the railway station and a hospital leaving fifty-four dead and seventy-eight seriously wounded. Under the umbrella of the consequent popular outrage, a group of FAI militants, accompanied by some Communists, headed to the Church of San José where two hundred right-wing prisoners were being held. They selected the most prominent and murdered them. A second group of militiamen arrived in the evening and took away another batch, including twenty-six priests and religious. Other individuals were shot in the course of the night. In total, 106 right-wing prisoners were killed.45 The barracks was stormed from 19 to 21 August by the local militia. Facing defeat, Pinilla rejected offers that the lives of the defenders would be respected if he surrendered and requested that the rebel warship fire on the building. Assuming the message to be a trick, the commander of the Almirante Cervera did not fire. The barracks was overrun and Pinilla and his men were executed in the ruins.46
The siege of Oviedo lasted another two months. Inside the city, Aranda waged war on what he considered to be the internal enemy. He himself claimed that Republican supporters made up half of the city and one of his supporters put the figure at 75 per cent of the population.47 Aranda also told Webb Miller of the United Press that seven hundred prisoners were held as hostages.48 Republican sources put the figure at more than one thousand, including the wives of working-class leaders and parliamentary deputies for Asturias. Of many, nothing was ever heard again. Shortly after Aranda had taken over the city, he launched an attack on the loyal Santa Clara barracks of the Assault Guards. In the aftermath, twenty-five militiamen and two Assault Guards were shot. It has been suggested that the repression was limited by the rebels’ fears of reprisals if the city fell to the besieging miners. Certainly, Aranda himself kept at some distance from the repression, but an atmosphere of terror was nevertheless maintained by his Delegate for Public Order, Mayor Gerardo Caballero, who had been prominent in the repression after October 1934. Under his orders, Falangist squads hunted down leftists at night. Corpses were often found in the streets and more than sixty unidentified bodies, including twelve women, were deposited in local cemeteries. During the siege, prisoners were used as human shields.49
There could be little doubt that the relative restraint of the repression would change if the relief column from Galicia were to liberate the city. The column had nearly 19,000 men, having been reinforced at the end of September with a bandera of the Legion (five hundred men) and eight tabores of Regulares (two thousand men). Along the way, any militiamen captured were shot. Moreover, as the column had taken small towns along the way, there were numerous executions without trial of schoolteachers, including women, and others assumed to be Republican supporters. After the columns had moved on, squads of Falangists began the bloody task of what was euphemistically called ‘cleansing’. One group which operated in small towns like Luarca, Boal, Castropol and Navia murdered many including several young women. The gang was notorious for the ‘cangrejo’ (crab), the green truck in which they transported their victims to the remote areas where they were murdered. In addition to many extra-judicial murders, many people were subjected to the briefest summary trials in which they were sentenced to death for ‘military rebellion’.50
The fate of the hundreds of hostages in the Asturian capital was sealed as a result of the arrival, on 17 October 1936, of the Galician column just as Oviedo, without food, water or electricity, was about to fall to the besieging miners. The tenor of the rebel advance was revealed in the joyous comment the next day in ABC of Seville: ‘yesterday the victorious Nationalist columns entered Oviedo after inflicting a real butchery on the red miners who were besieging it’.51 Three hundred and seventy prisoners were executed without trial, many while allegedly being transported to prisons further to the west. Two expeditions, of forty-five prisoners in late October and another of forty-six in December, never reached their destination. At the same time, there was the pantomime of military trials. After the shortest procedures, many were immediately executed, among them the Assault Guards who had remained loyal to the Republic, the Civil Governor, the director of the miners’ orphanage, the miners’ leader and PSOE deputy Graciano Antuña and the rector of the University, Leopoldo Alas Argüelles. The latter was the son of the novelist Leopoldo Alas ‘Clarín’ whose novel La Regenta was a devastating dissection of the provincialism and hypocrisy of Oviedo’s high society. A distinguished lawyer, the novelist’s son had been deputy Secretary of Education and a parliamentary deputy in the Constituent Cortes. After a farcical trial, Leopoldo Alas was shot on 20 February 1937. It was believed in the city that he was executed less for his moderate politics than to satisfy the local bourgeoisie’s desire for revenge on his father.52
After the arrival of the relief column, Republican forces tried to recapture Oviedo. Although remaining dominant in the south and east of the province, their efforts were in vain. Once Santander had fallen, Asturias was in Franco’s sights and, to delay his expected onslaught, General Vicente Rojo now launched a ferocious assault aimed at capturing Zaragoza. Republican forces attacked t
he small town of Belchite. This time Franco did not take the bait as he had at Brunete but began a great three-pronged assault on a now encircled Asturias on 2 September 1937. Under the overall command of General Dávila and led in the field by Generals Antonio Aranda and José Solchaga, troops quickly moved through the rain-swept mountains. Anxious to finish the campaign before the winter, Franco imbued his staff with a greater urgency than was normally the case. Their efforts were greatly facilitated by the fact that the Republicans had virtually no air cover. Although Asturias was geographically a strong defensive redoubt, it was tightly blockaded by sea and remorselessly bombarded from the air. The defenders’ morale was shattered as the Germans perfected their ground-attack techniques with forays along the mountain valleys, using a combination of incendiary bombs and gasoline to create an early form of napalm.53
After the fall of Santander, the Asturians set up an independent government, sacked the Republican commander, General Gamir, and made Colonel Prada commander of military forces. In Gijón, the repression of the local right had been profound and often gratuitously vindictive, with small businesses and shops confiscated and children and adolescents imprisoned because their parents had been denounced as fascists. Prisoners were transferred to a prison ship docked in the port of El Musel to the west of Gijón. As the war effort disintegrated, the sacas increased. Many prisoners were shot, notably near Oviedo and, as the rebels advanced from Santander, in the east of the region, at Cangas de Onís.54 In the course of the war in Asturias, around two thousand rightist prisoners were murdered. The rebels’ revenge when Asturias was occupied saw them kill nearly six thousand Republicans.55
