The Spanish Civil War (72 page)

The ‘May Days’ of Barcelona showed that the anarchists could not be counted upon to respond as one to any situation: a gulf stretched
between their ministers, busy trying to win the war, and the youth movement. Such previously powerful influences as the cripple Escorza had lost their control over their followers. The crisis showed that there would be no truce between the POUM and the communists. The
Generalidad,
the communists, and the central government had shown themselves ready to act together, by force if necessary, against ‘extremists’. Finally, May in Barcelona marked the end of the revolution. Henceforward, it was the republican state which was at war with the nationalist state, rather than revolution against rebellion. The new director of public order in Barcelona, José Echevarría Novoa, soon restored normality to most of the prisons and court proceedings, doing away with the arbitrariness which had characterized the anarchist control over much of the judicial system. Unfortunately, however, the communists were thereby able to embark more easily on their limited, but ruthless, crusade against the POUM and other Marxist heretics.

The ‘May Days’ led, too, to the final stage of the communist attack upon Largo Caballero. The relationship between the Prime Minister and the communists had been made worse than ever by a dispute on strategy. Several republican officers of the high command proposed to test their new army by launching an attack in Estremadura, towards Peñarroya and Mérida. They rightly believed that the nationalists had few resources in that region, and that they might thereby divide the enemy territory into two.
¹
Largo Caballero supported the idea. The communists opposed it. The Russian chief adviser, General ‘Grigorovich’, whose real name was Shtern and who had replaced Berzin,
²
together with his colleague, the adviser to the Army of the Centre, General Kulik, proposed instead striking down from the republican positions along the Corunna road towards the little town of Brunete, cutting off the nationalists in the Casa de Campo and the University City.
³
Miaja, under communist influence, declared his disapproval of the Estremadura plan.
⁴
Finally, when the republican officers proved recalcitrant, the Russian advisers threatened to deny the use of their
aircraft for the proposed offensive.
¹
Nevertheless, Largo convinced himself that the plan which he wanted would go ahead.

Another difficulty between the Prime Minister and the cabinet was the former’s determination to go ahead with his old idea of arousing Spanish Morocco against Franco by ‘distributing money among some prominent Moors’.
²

This military quarrel merged into the larger communist feud with Largo Caballero. Galarza, the weak minister of the interior but an enemy of the communists, was denounced by them for permitting the Barcelona crisis—for failing ‘to see the open preparations for a counter-revolutionary putsch’.
³
(There existed neither ‘preparations’ nor a ‘counter-revolutionary putsch’, and Galarza had no jurisdiction in Barcelona over internal order, which was in the hands of the Catalan counsellor, and friend of Comorera, Artemio Ayguadé.) On 11 May, the POUM’s Valencian paper
Adelante
compared the government, because of its repressive measures, to one led by Gil Robles. Inter-city telephone calls were then forbidden—a measure often used in Spanish crises in internal order from 1909 onwards—and a stricter press censorship introduced. The Esquerra and the communists in Barcelona began to campaign for the ‘municipalization’ of urban transport, which meant destroying the tram, bus, and metro collectives. On 13 May, the government once again ordered the surrender of all arms, except those held by the regular army, within seventy-two hours. The Barcelona
civil guards, PSUC, and assault guards began to round up arms. Finally, also on 13 May, at a cabinet meeting in Valencia, Jesús Hernández and Uribe proposed the punishment of those responsible for the May Days, the POUM and CNT, as well as the cancellation of the Estremadura offensive.
¹
Largo Caballero called the communists ‘liars and calumniators’ and said that he was, above all, a worker, who could not dissolve a brotherhood of fellow workers, unless there were proofs against them. The anarchist members of the cabinet supported the Prime Minister and argued that the riots in Barcelona had been provoked by the ‘non-revolutionary parties’. The two communists thereupon walked out of the meeting. Largo Caballero tried to continue but the communists were soon followed by Giral, Irujo, Prieto, Alvarez del Vayo, and Negrín. Prieto said that the government could not continue without the communists. Largo Caballero was left in the cabinet room with two of his old friends, Galarza and Anastasio de Gracia, and four new ones—the anarchist ministers. The anarchists suggested to Largo that the government continue without the communists and the right-wing socialists, but the old Prime Minister refused. The cabinet crisis was thus open.

Largo went to Azaña, who was delighted to receive his resignation. But he did not accept it immediately. Some time that day, Hernández, on behalf of the communists, proposed to Negrín, the finance minister, that he should become Prime Minister. Negrín answered that he would do so if his party accepted the idea, adding that he was unknown and not popular. Hernández airily said that popularity could be created. If there were one thing which the communist party could do well, he added, it was propaganda. Negrín protested that he was not a communist, and Hernández answered that that was ‘all the better’.
²
At the same time, Prieto also apparently desired Negrín to be Premier, since Negrín had been for many years one of his friends.
³
The next day, 14 May,
Largo Caballero repeated his resignation to Azaña. The President asked the Prime Minister to remain in office until after the planned military operation—either at Brunete or in Estremadura. Largo Caballero agreed and began to plan a cabinet without the communists.

Supported by the executive committee of the UGT, he approached the anarchists with the idea of forming a purely trade-union cabinet, of CNT and UGT. The way to the pure syndicalist state seemed thus to be opened. At this point, however, Negrín, Alvarez del Vayo, and Prieto told Largo Caballero that the government could not do without the communists because of the need for Russian aid. The communists were now a power, too, in their own right. The right-wing of the socialists, inspired by Prieto and directed by the secretary-general of its executive, Ramón Lamoneda (at that time, a philo-communist), achieved what they had been wanting for many months: the removal of Largo Caballero. Since Azaña’s Left republican party shared the views of the
Prietistas,
it was obvious that Largo Caballero did not have enough support for maintaining a government.
¹

The communist party did admittedly send a message to Largo Caballero naming their conditions for support of a government headed by him. All problems of war would be dealt with by a supreme council. The Prime Minister would cease to be war minister. All the ministers would have to please all parties supporting the government (Galarza would therefore have to be dismissed). A chief of staff would plan the war. The political commissars would be responsible only to the war commissariat, though that body would be responsible to the war minister and war council. These conditions were rejected by Largo Caballero. He hoped to fight the communists and to use the ministry of war, purged, as a base. He was fully supported by his old anarchist enemies. Azaña, however, sought a compromise. Prieto had always seemed to him mercurial and too controversial, since his enmity with Largo Caballero was so longstanding, so personal and so well known. Negrín, whom the communists had let it be known that they would support, stood out as the obvious choice. The communists thought Prieto unsuitable on the ground that they would be unable to influence him as they thought that they could influence Negrín.

Juan Negrín came from a prosperous middle-class family of the Canary Isles. He was forty-eight. The family owned much of the outskirts of Las Palmas, and were religious: Negrín’s mother had lived many years at Lourdes, and his only brother was a monk. Trained as a doctor in Germany, he had been a pupil of the Nobel Prize winner for medicine Ramón y Cajal, one of the most remarkable of Spaniards, whom he succeeded, when still young, as professor of physiology at the University of Madrid. He had had much to do with the planning of the new University City. Married to a Russian, the language in his household was French. He also spoke both English and German. He was thus thoroughly a European. He did not join a political party, and had had little interest in politics, till the last years of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, when he became a socialist. Though he was a deputy under the republic, he did not take an active part in politics till the civil war. Almost the only political act which was remembered of him during the republic was his vote in 1932, in his party group, against a reprieve for General Sanjurjo.
¹

Despite this lack of political experience, Negrín was named minister of finance by Largo Caballero in September 1936. His enterprise in the university recommended him for this arduous post. He was also known to be indefatigable and generous (he had personally helped to finance the library of the Medical School and its laboratory). In July and August 1936, he had helped many people escape from the revolutionary
checas.
He disliked Largo Caballero and had done his best to avoid cabinet meetings over which he presided. At that time, he was a follower of Prieto.
²
In the ministry of finance, he was a successful administrator. He handled the complicated questions of paying for Russian aid with skill, and established good relations with the Russian economic attaché, the Pole Stashevsky. But he was a man without a personal following, and without apparent political prejudices, though the anarchists feared him as a vigorous enemy of collectivization: he had refused credit for collectivist projects suggested by anarchist ministers. The anarchists also accused him of building up the customs guards (carabineers) as a private
army under the ministry of finance. This, however, had been done by Negrín to ensure that the government received its proper taxes: it was a force now headed by the chemist Dr Rafael Méndez, a colleague at the university. Negrín was a man of the
grande bourgeoisie,
and a defender of private property, even of capitalism. That fact, combined with his efficiency and his academic background, seemed likely to recommend him to Britain and France and caused him to be accepted, without question, by many disparate groups, as the new leader of the republic. The politically experienced politicians of the republic (by no means only the communists) thought it would be comparatively easy to influence Negrín. He had failed to prevent inflation in the first nine months of the war, but he had been competent in his ministry, unlike the disorderly Alvarez del Vayo.

At the start of his premiership, Negrín told Azaña that, if he were to be Prime Minister, he would be so ‘one hundred per cent’.
¹
He insisted on so being for the rest of the war. The management of a war demanded different arts from the management of the Cortes, and Negrín was successful where his rivals failed. His arrogance, the inevitable consequence of the entry of such a first-class brain into politics, however, made him ten enemies a day. Other politicians were furious that such a newcomer should behave so dictatorially towards them, and be so contemptuous of their intrigues, and ambitions, as well as so intolerant of their failures. Members of Negrín’s cabinet were angered by his irregular habits of eating and drinking, and of calling conferences at all hours. Others accused Negrín of a lack of those Roman virtues which they said were necessary to win the war, and of having indeed Roman vices of gluttony and a taste for excess. No doubt, the new Prime Minister was incapable of working with a team of ministers, especially a coalition of such disparate individuals as was necessary in the republic. But he was a man for whom personal freedom was a passion. He was also insistent on his right to personal privacy. There was no sign that his lavish living, his pleasure in the company of women, and his gargantuan eating and drinking interfered with his work. Largo Caballero reported that, sometimes, when he sent for Negrín, he was told he was abroad; Largo said nothing, thinking that his mission had to do with arms purchases. In fact, Largo later al
leged, Negrín was driving about France with girls in fast cars.
¹
One should take such remarks with reserve since they were made by a puritan of seventy about a
bon viveur.
Yet Prieto recalls him dining two or three times the same night in different places.
²
‘Never have I seen the equal,’ said Azaña, of his appetite.
³
Nevertheless the President was initially pleased: ‘When I speak with the head of the government,’ he wrote in his diary on 31 May, ‘I no longer have the impression that I am speaking with a dead man … that is an advantageous innovation.’
⁴
Later, Azaña became disillusioned. Negrín and he lived in different worlds; Azaña was looking back, wondering what had gone wrong, and who was the most responsible; Negrín, with no political past, thought only of the future. The relation between the President, who theoretically could dismiss the Premier, and the latter, who had a duty to listen to the President’s advice though not to accept it, went through vicissitudes. ‘Karamazov’, Besteiro nicknamed the Prime Minister, in November 1938; at that time he alone believed in victory.
⁵

The policy of Negrín as Prime Minister was one of a realistic opportunism. A moderate socialist with a predilection for ‘planning’, he was ready to make any political sacrifice to win the war. That led him, as it had led Largo Caballero, into close relations with Russia, since, as before, Russia remained the main source of arms. Furthermore, the realism of the Spanish communist party, throughout Negrín’s ministry, caused it to seem the most useful political group in Spain. Thus Negrín had to accept things from the Russian military advisers, and from the Spanish communist party, which he disliked. As minister of finance, Negrín had been specially concerned with the dispatch of the Spanish gold to Moscow. His consequent relation with Russia resembled that of Faust with Mephistopheles.