Basque History of the World (25 page)

T
HE NEGOTIATIONS FOR
a Basque autonomy statute were difficult. The composition of the Republican government was constantly shifting, and becoming more authoritarian, less friendly to regional autonomy. In 1934, Madrid reduced the Basque taxlevying rights and, realizing the angry reaction this would probably provoke, canceled Basque municipal elections.

But then, on July 18, 1936, something happened that turned negotiations in the Basques’ favor—a coup d’état attempt.

The conspirators were not simply Fascists. Francisco Franco, who because of both political and military skills gradually came to be the leader of the uprising, was not a member of the Fascist movement. Because Franco was so nimble with ideologies, because he managed to direct a diverse coalition, not only of Fascists but of Carlists, monarchists, rightists, and clergy, historians have labeled his side in the Civil War after their founding act—the Rebels. His adversaries, those who refused to go along with his attempted putsch, have been labeled the Loyalists.

The uprising was largely a failure. Most senior officers remained loyal to the Republic, as did the great majority of the Spanish population. But the Assault Guard and the Guardia Civil were solidly behind the uprising, and in areas where these two armed factions were strong—a few pockets of the south and in Galicia and León in the north—the rebels prevailed. In Catalonia the Guardia Civil remained loyal, and the rebellion failed. Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa were safe because Aguirre, having foreseen the questionable loyalty of the Assault Guard and Guardia Civil, had managed to have them both disbanded in his region before the rebellion had occurred.

But the rebels did succeed in splitting the two Basques. Alava and Navarra supported the coup. Through the strange contortions of Spanish history, the Guardia Civil, which had been established to repress Carlist veterans was now allied with the Carlists, for whom the Republic was an unbearable assault on the Catholic Church. The Carlist stronghold, Navarra, may have been the zone where the rebels enjoyed the most solid backing.

The day after the coup, the two generals who had best established themselves were Francisco Franco, who ruled by terror with Moroccan tribal troops who looted towns, killed any men they captured, raped any women, and left behind sexually mutilated corpses, and General Emilio Mola, who took Navarra by popular acclaim. Mola was cheered in Pamplona, with Carlists lining the streets shouting “Long live Christ the King.” It was the kind of Catholicism from which Aguirre had tried to disassociate himself.

Securely behind rebel lines was Miguel de Unamuno, now seventy-two, master of sixteen languages—according to legend, he learned Danish because he wanted to read Kierkegaard—the venerated leading intellectual of Spain. He was professor of classical languages and rector of the university in rebel-held Salamanca. Franco’s headquarters was in the nearby bishop’s palace. Columbus Day, or “the day of the race,” as the newly empowered Spanish ultranationalists liked to call it, was observed in October 1936 at the University of Salamanca. A war hero was on the dais: General José Millán Astray of the Foreign Legion, veteran of too many Moroccan colonial campaigns, some fingers missing from his one remaining arm and wearing an eye patch. Also present was Salamanca bishop Enrique Plá y Deniel, who had taken to calling the Fascist rebellion “a crusade”; Doña Carmen, the wife of Franco; and assorted other Fascists and monarchists.

And with them, officially taking the place of General Franco, who was unable to attend, sat the slender, gray-bearded, bespectacled Rector Unamuno.

He didn’t want to be there, but he had gotten himself into this unlikely position. Many of the generation of ‘98, including Pío Baroja, initially supported the Republic. But Unamuno, who had opposed the previous dictatorship, refused to support the new republic that had allowed him back into Spain from political exile. He had reached the height of his international fame by opposing the dictatorship. The daring rescue of Unamuno from prison in the Canary Islands by means of a boat sent by a Paris newspaper,
Le Quotidien
, had been covered by much of the international press including the
New York Times
. But once back in Spain, Unamuno, the international literary hero, had openly admired leaders of the Falange and even contributed money to the Fascist cause. Several months after the rebellion, the ideophobic intellectual began to realize that he had made a mistake. He called the uprising “an epidemic of madness.” The previous week he had visited General Franco to plead, without success, for the release of several of his friends whom Franco’s forces had taken prisoner.

After numerous rousing speeches on Spain’s lost imperialist glory, Professor Francisco Maldonado, perhaps forgetting in whose company he was speaking, told of Spain’s epic struggle to preserve traditional values against the scourges of contemporary Spain: the reds, the Catalans, and the Basques. The Catalans and the Basques, argued Maldonado, were “cancers in the body of the nation.” Fascism was the surgeon that would cut into the body and exterminate these cancers. From the back of the university hall came a seemingly spontaneous cry, the slogan of the Foreign Legion, “
Viva la muerte!
” Long live death. What remained of Millán Astray, the battered Legion commander, then shouted “
España!
” to which he received the formulaic reply “
Una!
” The general shouted again, “Spain!” and got the reply “Great!” and to the third round the audience shouted back “Free!”

Several young, dark-shirted Fascists, stirred beyond self-control, rose, and facing photographs of Franco above the dais, gave the stiff-armed Fascist salute.

The room fell silent. It was time for the rector to close the meeting. But what would he say to all of this?

His exact words are unknown, because the press, which reported all of the other speeches the following day, made no mention of Unamuno’s words. But a number of accounts were later pieced together by historians of the Spanish Civil War.

Among other remarks, he said, “Let us waive the personal affront implied in the sudden outburst of vituperation against the Basques and the Catalans. I was myself, of course, born in Bilbao. The bishop, whether he likes it or not, is a Catalan from Barcelona.”

He turned to watch the bishop squirm. According to some versions, he now faced Millán Astray and said, “I am a Basque, and I have spent my life teaching you the Spanish language which you do not know.”

But that was not enough. “Just now, I heard a necrophilistic and senseless cry: ‘Long live death.’ And I, who have spent my life shaping paradoxes which have aroused the uncomprehending anger of others, I have to tell you, as an expert, that this outlandish paradox is repellent to me. General Millán Astray is a cripple.”

He corrected himself: “Let’s say it without any pejorative undertone. He is a war invalid. So was Cervantes. Unfortunately, there are too many cripples in Spain just now. Soon there will be even more, if God does not come to our aid. It pains me to think that General Millán Astray should dictate the pattern of mass psychology. A cripple, who lacks the spiritual greatness of a Cervantes, is likely to seek ominous relief in causing mutilation around him.”

The general had heard enough. “
Mueran los intellectuales!”
Death to intellectuals, he shouted. Falangists boisterously approved. Unamuno went on to explain: “You will win, because you have more than enough brute force. But you will not convince.”

His words were prophetic.

Had it not been 1936 in Spain, this farce might have been remembered as a comic moment. But this was the end of Miguel de Unamuno, a sad end for the Basque who loved Spain. Franco’s wife escorted him out of the hall where he was being booed, while the general’s men angrily trained weapons on him. He lost his university position and spent the remaining months of his life at home, rarely going outside, isolated, ostracized, and guarded. He died in December.

A large number of Falangists attended his funeral. In the 1960s, Franco was still expressing his annoyance with Unamuno over the incident. But in the official school primer for the third grade level, from which all schoolchildren learned Spanish history and culture in the 1960s, only four Basques are mentioned: Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Sancho III, king of Navarra who fought the infidels, and Don Miguel de Unamuno. The second-level book mentions only two: Felix María Samaniego from Alavan Rioja, who, children were taught, traveled a great deal and “corrupted his soul” but “at the end of his life repented and died a good Christian,” and Zumalacárregui, who died for Don Carlos. With none of the six was it mentioned that the man was Basque. About Unamuno, the primer said, “He was born in Bilbao in 1863. Professor and rector of the University of Salamanca for so many years, it could be said that Unamuno was a Salamancan. His style was proper, energetic, and impassioned.”

I
N DESPERATE NEED
of support, the beleaguered Republic at last came to terms with the Basques on a statute of autonomy. Navarra, under rebel control, narrowly rejected the proposed autonomy. The other three provinces approved it by 459,000 votes in favor to 14,000 opposed. The statute even got the make-to vote. The results were approved by the Cortes on October 1, 1936, the day the rebels declared Francisco Franco head of state.

In accepting the statute, Aguirre had made clear that it was only a “partial” victory, that the statute did not restore all the autonomy of the Fueros and that more would be demanded later. But for the moment, he pledged, “Until Fascism is defeated, Basque Nationalism will remain at its post.” Through horrors, defeat, and exile, he would steadfastly keep that promise.

On October 7, a Basque government was installed with Aguirre as
lehendakari
, leader. The vote for the thirty-two-year-old Basque Nationalist Party mayor of Getxo was unanimous.

Even the leftist representatives of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party and the Popular Front supported him. Explaining his youth, Aguirre later wrote, “The oldest people of Europe had on that day a 32-year-old head-of-government, as though to demonstrate that the years do not age a nation that remains young in its faith and hope.”

He took his oath under the oak tree at Guernica, saying in Euskera,

          
Humble before God
          Standing on Basque soil
          In remembrance of Basque ancestors
          Under the tree of Guernica, I swear
          to faithfully fulfill my commission.

It was a historic moment, one that had been dreamed of for several generations: the lehendakari, heir to Sabino Arana’s underground movement, standing in public, under the oak, pledging in Euskera to serve a Basque government.

And that is the way it is remembered. But the event was thickly veined with ominous signs. It is forgotten that the participants slipped into Guernica in secrecy, fearing an attack from armed Fascists who had been spotted in the mountains less than thirty miles from Bilbao. Days before the ceremony, the government-elect had procured arms and ammunition to put down the rebellion, purchased with gold from the Banco de Vizcaya. During the ceremony, a lookout was placed in a tower to warn the participants in the event of an attack.

There is a dreamlike quality to the 1936 Basque government, the fulfillment of a historic longing that was to be crushed only nine months later in carnage the scale of which had never before been seen on Earth. Aguirre, a man said to have perfect manners, who never made decisions without listening to his ministers, gave the appearance of a “good guy” struggling against the Fascist enemy, who so clearly appeared to be “bad guys.” Because the government lasted only nine months, snuffed out while still on its honeymoon, there was not time to go astray the way governments do, and so for decades it was remembered that in the worst of times there were nine months of good Basque government.

As soon as the Autonomous Basque Government was formed, it was ready with ideas for a budget, taxation, and extensive cultural and educational programs. For the first time in history, a Basque government ruled with a policy of promoting the Basque language. Even the Fueros of the Middle Ages had been written in Spanish, and Foral administration had encouraged the use of the Castilian language as a sign of culture and learning. But in 1936, the Basque Renaissance was in its sixtieth year. Ikastolas were well supplied with textbooks and dictionaries. In 1918, the Basque Academy of Language had been founded, and it was working on defining a standard Euskera from its eight spoken dialects. The new government’s cultural policy pursued what was called the “Sabinian school of Bascology,” following the linguistic ideas of Arana, which rejected Latin words and even Latin letters.
C
was changed to
k
,
ch
to
tx
,
v
to
b
, and
s
to
z
.

The Association of Basque Schools was formed with parallel organizations for Basque teachers and for Basque students. Publishing houses were established for nationalist books. In 1935, the Basque Nationalist Party published for the
Juventud Vasco de Bilbao
, the youth group headed by Aguirre, an official biography of Sabino Arana. The author, Ceferino de Jemein, presented in biblical Spanish the life of a saint. The darker sides of Sabino were carefully airbrushed. The book of some 200 pages spared no expense, from its green, red, gold, and chocolate Art Deco endpapers, to hundreds of photographs, etchings, and color reproductions of old Carlists, including several portraits of Tomás Zumalacárregui, numerous photographs of Carlist units in Vizcaya during the second war, documents and photos of Arana’s life, a reproduction of Sabino and Luis’s rough design for the ikurriña, and ending with 1930s photographs of rallies in support of the Basque autonomy statute.