The Spanish Civil War (28 page)

Similar orders, to distribute what arms there were, were given by telephone to all the civil governments in the provinces, although in many cases these instructions were too late: for this occurred just when, in the summer dawn of 19 July, the second wave of risings was about to break over Spain. It was at this moment also that Franco at last arrived on African soil, flown by the Dragon Rapide, to be greeted by Colonel Sáenz de Buruaga on the same Sania Ramel airfield at Tetuán where, the previous day, the last republicans, led by Franco’s own cousin, Major de la Puente,
⁴
had been overwhelmed; that the
Churruca
was landing at Cádiz the first unit of the Army of Africa to reach the mainland of Spain, 200 Moorish
Regulares;
and that the crews on the main fleet of warships sailing south to Algeciras were about to rise against their officers. Well might so tough a revolutionary as the communist ‘El Campesino’ later express his wonderment that a single day could have held so much ‘bloodshed and battle’.
¹

In Barcelona, recently quiet, the greatest battle of 19 July was fought. On the previous night, this magnificent city had run wild with rumours. Crowds had massed all the way from the central Plaza de Cataluña down the leafy avenue, the Rambla, with its bars and flowers, to the edge of the harbour at the Plaza Puerta de la Paz where Columbus’s statue, on its tall column, surveys the Mediterranean. The agile Companys had found documents proving the rebellious intentions of Captain López Varela, and had sent them to Madrid in the care of the youngest Esquerra deputy in the Cortes, Ramón Casanellas. The general commanding the 4th Division, based at Barcelona, Llano de la Encomienda, had warned his officers that, though personally a supporter of the Republican Union party, if circumstances should oblige him to choose between two extreme movements, he would not hesitate to back communism rather than fascism. Among those who heard this were the leaders of the rising planned to begin the next day—including General Fernández Burriel of the cavalry, who was to be in command till General Goded’s arrival from Majorca. Their plan was for the 5,000 or so troops in the various barracks on the periphery of the city to march in a central direction and join up at the Plaza de Cataluña. They supposed that it would then be an easy task to reduce Barcelona. But the plotters had failed to take adequate account of the lack of enthusiasm for revolt among the civil guard, the assault
guards, and the numbers and fighting qualities, in the city at least, of the anarchist workers. In the late evening of 18 July, Companys refused to give ‘Arms to the People’. Nevertheless, the CNT took by assault several arms depots including the old prison ship
Uruguay
in the harbour, called for a general strike the next day, and prepared for the struggle. Thus, in one moment, the anarchist leaders passed from the status of hunted criminals to—what? Certainly not defenders of democracy, but ‘leaders of the Anti-Fascist Revolutionary Alliance’.
Companys received news from Llano de la Encomienda that all was quiet in the garrisons. But the President was unable to sleep. At two in the morning, he and Ventura Gassol, the poet who was his counsellor of culture, walked out into the Rambla, Companys wearing a soft hat pulled low over his eyes, his companion with his customary large-brimmed hat, which gave him the air of a nineteenth-century violinist. The brilliant gaiety of a Saturday night of the Barcelona summer was slowly giving way to something in that city equally traditional: a revolutionary dawn. The crowds suddenly appeared to be less holidaymakers than armed workers and, on the loudspeakers, the dance music was giving way to stirring admonitions to action. At four in the morning, the news was brought to Companys that troops under Major López-Amor had left the Pedralbes barracks in the west of the city and were on their way to the Plaza de Cataluña.

7. Barcelona, July 1936

The men in the barracks had been roused early and given a generous portion of brandy, being variously told that they were being sent to crush an anarchist rising or to march round the town in honour of the ‘People’s Olympiad’, a left-wing festival arranged in opposition to the official Olympic Games about to open in Berlin.
¹
The People’s Olympiad had, of course, now to be cancelled, though some thousands of foreign visitors had already arrived. To puzzle the enemy, the soldiers were instructed to raise their hands in a clenched fist. Careful plans for communication between the rebels, for treatment of prisoners, and for action on reaching their destination were circulated.
²
But the junction between the different columns of rebels was never effected, since each was met by the resistance of the anarchists, the assault guards and the civil guard.
³
The police were also loyal, being headed by Colonel Frederic Escofet who, with Major Pérez Farras, had led the Mozos in 1934 in defence of the
Generalidad.
Some non-commissioned officers had allowed anarchists into the arsenals, and a large force of assault guards had, in a dramatic scene, given their arms
to the anarchists who had been beseeching them to do so.
¹
An infantry column under Major López-Amor did succeed in reaching the Plaza de Cataluña, and there capturing the telephone exchange by a trick, but they got no further. The officers directing the rebellion were unable to deal with the revolutionary unorthodoxy of their opponents; a second artillery detachment, for example, was overcome by a column of armed workers, who advanced with rifles in the air and, with ‘passionate words’, begged the rebels not to fire. They then urged the troops to turn their guns on their own officers.

Most of the battles of Barcelona were less easy. The secretaries of the Catalan united socialist youth (Francisco Graells) and of the POUM youth (Germinal Vidal), as well as the anarchist secretary in Barcelona (Enrique Obregón), were all killed in the course of the day. Goded arrived by hydroplane from Majorca (which he had secured with hardly a shot fired) in the late morning. He failed either to put enough heart into his men or to ensure the rebellion of the civil guard: General Aranguren, the civil guard commander, continued to affirm that he would only obey the orders of the
Generalidad.
Colonel Jacobo Roldán told Goded that the soldiers were fighting well, but ‘God alone knows what will happen when they discover that we are rising against the republic’.
²
As it was, the soldiers were unable to set up their artillery. Fighting continued all day, the Plaza de Cataluña being strewn with dead men and dead horses. The Barcelona aerodrome was kept loyal by its commander, Colonel Díaz Sandino. In the early evening, the old captaincy-general where Goded had set up his headquarters, near the harbour, was stormed. Goded (apparently saved from mob fury by a well-known Barcelona communist, Caridad Mercader)
³
was captured and induced to broadcast an appeal in dignified, but defeated, tones to his followers to lay down their arms, much as Companys had done in the revolution of 1934: ‘Destiny has been adverse, and I have fallen prisoner, so that I release from their obligations towards me all those who have fol
lowed me’.
¹
Goded spoke thus to restrain his followers in Majorca from sending the aid for which he had earlier begged. The voice of the general was heard all over Spain and gave heart to the republicans. By the evening, there only held out in Barcelona the Atarazanas barracks near the harbour and the San Andrés barracks with its armoury, some miles outside the city.
²
In these battles, the anarchists and the Catalan security forces (assault guards as well as civil guards) disputed the honours.

Elsewhere on 19 July, the day had been tumultuous. There were many unresolved conflicts. In Asturias, the sappers’ regiment of Gijón held out in the Simancas barracks under the military governor, Colonel Antonio Pinilla. In Oviedo, the centre of the revolution of 1934 and, since February 1936, in a perpetual state of revolutionary effervescence, a curious situation had arisen. The city had been considered lost for the rising. But Colonel Antonio Aranda, in command of the garrison, who had gained in Morocco the reputation of being one of the cleverest strategists in the army, first posed as ‘the sword of the republic’ to both the civil governor and the trade unions. He argued that the situation was not serious enough to necessitate the arming of the workers: González Peña, who had led the Asturian rising in 1934, was persuaded, together with Belarmino Tomás, the other socialist leader in the province, to agree with Aranda, whose political affiliations were not known. Four thousand miners, supposing Oviedo securely held, therefore left by train for Madrid. Then, at five in the evening and having spoken with Mola on the telephone, Aranda declared himself with the rebels. He was supported by the assault guards as well as the local members of the Falange and civil guard. But the remainder of Asturias was hostile to him and by 20 July he was closely besieged by a new force of miners.
³
It seemed outrageous to them that Oviedo, the heart of the revolution in 1934, should not rally to the Left in the greater crisis of 1936.

Along the coast, Santander was held for the republic without a
fight.
¹
In the Basque provinces, the third and southern province of Alava, whose capital is Vitoria, was captured without difficulty for the rebels led by General Angel García Benítez, helped by an old friend of Franco’s, Colonel Camilo Alonso Vega.
²
But the two other Basque provinces, Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa, were as easily held for the government. In Bilbao there was no rising. The military commander, Colonel Piñeiroa, refused Mola’s telephoned demand to support the rising, and the socialist leader Paulino Gómez succeeded in maintaining control. The local officers were dismissed, but not murdered.
³
In San Sebastián, Colonel Carrasco, the military governor, was arrested during the morning. He had been brought only recently into the conspiracy and was not trusted by Mola, though he was a monarchist. Prieto, meanwhile, telephoned incessantly from Madrid to try and make certain that the far from revolutionary Basque Nationalist Party would continue to support the government. But he need not have worried. By midday, both Bilbao and San Sebastián, together with all the mountainous and fishing villages of the two provinces, had undergone what seemed to be a universal, voluntary mobilization.
Juntas
of defence were set up in both cities, prominent right-wing persons were arrested, their motor-cars requisitioned. The Basque nationalist politicians, led by Manuel de Irujo, were the inspiration of these steps. The military plotters dilly-dallied. At last, a telephone call from Mola encouraged Colonel Vallespín, in the Loyola barracks in San Sebastián, to decisive action. Two cannon in these barracks were pointed at the civil government building, whose entire staff fled, allowing Colonel Carrasco, who was detained there, to escape. This he did, and established himself, with another group of right-wing people, in the María Cristina Hotel. Rebel civil guards also moved into the Gran Casino Club. This was the moment when the handsome summer capital of Spain could have been won for the rising. Everyone was nervous. When a pistol shot was heard over San Sebastián Radio, the announcer
had to explain, ‘The shot you have just heard was caused by a comrade falling down and loosing off his weapon. There is no victim.’
¹
Colonel Vallespín delayed, though Colonel Carrasco declared a state of war. During the night, a republican column from the nearby arms factory of Eibar began to make for the city.
²
In Galicia, there was no action whatever until 20 July: the conspirators, confused by the premature beginning of the rising in Morocco, held their hands, and the republican representatives their breaths. The naval base at El Ferrol and the two ports of Corunna and Vigo made that region important.

The rebels’ main victories on 19 July were in the centre and north of the country. At Burgos, the old capital of Castile, a grave, reserved, conservative city, the rising triumphed without difficulty and with scarcely a shot fired. ‘The very stones are nationalist here,’ the Condesa de Vallellano remarked proudly to Dr Junod of the Red Cross in August.
³
Colonel Marcelino Gavilán was the moving spirit of the rebels (General Gonzalo González de Lara, the military governor, having been arrested and taken away to Guadalajara prison the day before). Gavilán arrested the 64-year-old General Batet (commander of the 6th Division), and the equally loyal General Julio Mena, who had been under-secretary for war and had been sent to take over from González de Lara. The wives of the civil guard had earlier prevented the civil governor from giving arms to the people, saying that they would be used to kill their husbands. In this city, there were many prominent right-wing persons, such as Sáinz Rodríguez and Goicoechea, to celebrate the victory, waiting for Sanjurjo, perhaps to take part in his government.
⁴
In Saragossa, the troops went out into the streets at dawn, and were in command of the main points of the town before the trade unions could organize any resistance.
⁵
The powerful leaders of the CNT ‘wasted too much time talking to the civil governor’.
⁶
In the rest
of Aragon, Huesca and Jaca were as easily gained, though at ancient Barbastro, near the Catalan border, the commander of the garrison, Colonel José Villalba, who had apparently said earlier that he would back the rising, decided to support the republicans. (Mola explained, on Burgos Radio later, that Villalba had demanded 100,000 pesetas as a bribe to raise Barbastro for the rebels.)
¹
At Teruel, the capital of the southernmost province of Aragon, the leading rebel declared a state of war before seven soldiers only. The civil governor annulled it, but the civil and assault guards rallied to the rising. The consequent general strike was not enough to prevent the bloodless success of the rebels.
²

In Navarre, there was never any doubt about the nationalist victory. Mola declared a state of war at Pamplona with the enthusiastic support of the 6,000 Carlist
requetés
whom he had been promised, and, immediately, the whole province was in his hands. The scenes of religious enthusiasm, combined with warlike zeal, equalled the excitement in Navarre during the nineteenth-century Carlist Wars. In red
boinas,
old men and young poured into Pamplona from nearby villages, singing the old Carlist song ‘
Oriamendi
’ and demanding arms. No one knew, or cared, that the Pretender, Alfonso Carlos, had forbidden his followers to rise unless they had more explicit political guarantees than Mola had given. Mola had only 1,200 rifles from the Pamplona arsenal to give out but soon another 10,000 were sent up from Saragossa, to complete the Carlists’ equipment. Major Rodríguez Medel, the commander of the civil guard in Pamplona, had supported the Popular Front, but he had been murdered by his own men the previous evening.
³
The enthusiasm for war was such that the Pamplona newspaper
Diario de Navarra
came out with the same headlines two days running.
⁴
Major Martínez de Campos, of the corps of artillery, recalled how lorries, hired by the local mayors, began to arrive from the villages far and near. Each vehicle, as it circled the main square of
Pamplona, received an ovation from the crowds which, at the sound of the bugles, appeared at balconies hung with flags.
¹