The triumvirate of Sanjurjo, Mola and Franco could hardly have offered greater contrasts. They were then joined most surprisingly by a very eccentric character, General Queipo de Liano. He was assumed to have been a convinced Freemason and republican because he had taken part in a failed plot against the monarchy in 1930.
The left, in the meantime, was seeking allies within the army. They used their own secret society within the armed forces, the Unión Militar Republicana Antifascista (UMRA), but this was concentrated above all in the Assault Guard and the presidential guard.17 Its members were mostly connected to the socialist PSOE, but the communists, in the form of Vicente Uribe and Enrique Líster, tried to infiltrate it. At the beginning of July 1936 a group of 200 members of UMRA were preparing what they called ‘Operation Romerales’. This was a plan to kidnap or assassinate coup leaders in Morocco, but on 8 July the project was discovered and halted immediately by Casares Quiroga. The UMRA leaders met the head of government to warn him of the military plot, which was being prepared for 16 July. They gave him the names of Goded, Mola, Fanjul, Varela, Franco, Aranda, Alonso Vega, Yagüe and García Valiño. Casares Quiroga replied that there was not the slightest danger of a rising.18
The political involvement of young military officers on the left would lead to the most important incident before the rising. On 12 July Falangist gunmen murdered Lieutenant José Castillo Sería of the Assault Guard and a known member of the UMRA. He was the second socialist officer to be killed. Several of his comrades, including Captain Fernando Condés of the Civil Guard and the socialist Victoriano Cuenca, decided to take revenge. They first went to the home of Antonio Goicoechea, the head of the monarchist Renovación Española. He was away, so they tried the house of Gil Robles, but he was in Biarritz. Finally they drove in the middle of the night to the apartment of Calvo Sotelo, in the calle de Velázquez. They ordered him to dress and to accompany them. He was shot dead in their automobile and the body was dumped outside the entrance to the city’s eastern cemetry.
The uproar of the right was enormous, even though the government itself had obviously had nothing to do with the murder. Those who were soon to call themselves ‘nationalists’ always insisted that the assassination of Calvo Sotelo was the final straw. But this is misleading. By the time the event took place in Madrid, civilian conspirators such as Luca de Tena, Juan de la Cierva and Luis Bolín had hired in London, with Juan March’s money, a de Havilland Dragon Rapide. This aeroplane was already on its way towards las Palmas to collect General Franco to take him to Casablanca and then on to Tetuán to join the Army of Africa. In addition, Mola had sent detailed orders with instructions for a rising to take place between 10 and 20 July. For months Falangists had been coordinating in secret with rebel officers their involvement as soon as they received the codeword ‘Covadonga’–an emotive touch invoking the place where the Reconquista of Spain had started against the Moors. And on 29 June José Antonio had smuggled out the order from his prison cell that the Falange Española must join the rising.
On the other hand, nationalists can argue that even though the government bore no personal responsibility for the assassination of the leader of the opposition by uniformed police, this was hardly relevant. They were not rising so much against the elected government as against the total lack of government, which Calvo Sotelo’s murder so starkly demonstrated. And although the mechanics of the rebellion had indeed been set in motion already, the slaying of Calvo Sotelo made many more people support the rising than would otherwise have been the case.
Despite so much evidence of all these preparations, the republican leaders could not bring themselves to believe the terrible truth. Azaña and Casares Quiroga acted a little like Chamberlain faced with Hitler. The president of the Republic seems to have lost all political sense. He suffered moments of depression combined with outbreaks of euphoria. Both Azaña and Casares Quiroga even dismissed warnings from generals loyal to the Republic or from Prieto, or the communist deputy Dolores Ibárruri, always known as ‘la Pasionaria’, who tried to alert Casares Quiroga to Mola’s preparations in Pamplona. But the head of government insisted that ‘Mola is loyal to the Republic’. The ultimate paradox of the liberal Republic represented by its government was that it did not dare defend itself from its own army by giving weapons to the workers who had elected it.
Although the atmosphere was still very tense during that third week of July, life still tended to go on out of habit. For the middle classes, it was the time to go on holiday. Very few of them, however, imagined that their lives might well depend on their choice of destination or on a decision to stay at home.
PART TWO
The War of Two Spains
6
The Rising of the Generals
The generals had planned a coup d’état with a rising of garrisons in Spanish Morocco and throughout Spain. The success of such an action depended more on the psychological effect of speed and ruthlessness than on numbers. Although the rebel generals did not achieve an outright coup, the Republic failed to crush the rising in the first 48 hours, the most important period of the whole war, when the possession of whole regions was decided.
The hesitancy of the republican government was fatal in a rapidly developing crisis, because the initial uncertainty enforced a defensive mentality. The prime minister did not dare arm the UGT and CNT. He refused to depart from the legal constitution of the state, even though a state attacked by its own ‘spinal column’ has ceased to exist for all practical purposes. The delay in issuing weapons discouraged pre-emptive or counter-offensive moves against the rebel military. ‘The republican authorities were not prepared to give us arms,’ recalled a carpenter from Seville, ‘because they were more afraid of the working class than they were of the army. We communists did not share the government’s confidence that the rising would be suffocated in twenty-four hours.’1
Republicans made a virtue of necessity. They encouraged the idea that ‘to resist was to win’, as a slogan later put it. Even during the rising the communist deputy La Pasionaria had expressed this dangerously appealing idea with ‘No Pasarán! (They shall not pass!)’, her famous plagiarism of Pétain’s phrase at Verdun.
The military plotters seldom had complete surprise on their side, but doubt and confusion were certainly in their favour. If the workers held back on the advice of a civil governor who was afraid of provoking the local garrison into revolt they were lost. They paid for this hesitation with their lives. But if they demonstrated from the beginning that they were prepared to assault the barracks, then most of the paramilitary forces would join them and the garrison surrender.
The final orders, sent out by General Mola in coded telegrams, provided for the Army of Africa to revolt at 5 a.m. on 18 July and the army in mainland Spain to rise 24 hours later. The difference in timing was to allow the Army of Africa to secure Spanish Morocco before being transported to the Andalucian coast by the navy. The rebel generals could count on this force because the rank and file were not conscripts, but regulars or, more accurately, mercenaries, whose reliability had been proved in the crushing of the Asturias rebellion. There were few officers of liberal sympathies, perhaps because colonials always exaggerate what they believe are national virtues. They despised politicians and had a virulent hatred of ‘reds’, a term including liberals and all those opposed to a right-wing dictatorship. It was an attitude which Mola expressed with all clarity in his instructions for the rising: ‘He who is not with us is against us.’
The elite force, and the most introvert, was the Foreign Legion. Composed in large part of fugitives and criminals, its ranks were indoctrinated with a cult of virility and slaughter. They were taught to be useful suicides with their battle cry of ‘Viva la Muerte!’ (Long live death!)’. The Legion was organized in banderas, compact battalions with their own light artillery. The Moroccan troops, on the other hand, were divided into tabores of some 250 men each. These regulares were Riffian tribesmen commanded by Spanish officers. Their feroci
ous efficiency had been amply proved resisting colonial power during the first quarter of the century. Probably their most important skill was the ability to move across country using the folds in the ground. Such stealth had a decided advantage over the Spanish idea of conspicuous bravery. These Moroccans had been recruited with the offer of higher wages than those which the French colonial authorities paid and also with an engagement bonus of two months’ pay. Widespread unemployment in Spanish Morocco prompted thousands to enlist.2
The rebels could hardly have failed to take Spanish Morocco. With only a handful of officers loyal to the Republic, the legionnaires obeyed the order to join the rising without question and the regulares were told that the Republic wanted to abolish Allah. The Spanish workers, who had virtually no arms and little contact with the indigenous population, found themselves completely isolated.
Towards midday on 17 July the plan for the next morning was discovered in the Moroccan town of Melilla, but General Romerales, a loyal republican described also as ‘the fattest of the 400 Spanish generals and one of the easiest to trick’,3 could not make up his mind whether to arrest the officers concerned. Colonel Seguí moved faster and arrested the general, having decided that it would be dangerous to delay, even though the other conspirators would not be ready. The Assault Guard were persuaded to join the rising and key buildings in the town were rapidly seized. The Foreign Legion and regulares attacked the casa del pueblo, where trade unionists fought to the end. While the remaining pockets were being finished off, Seguí had General Romerales and the mayor arrested.4 He signalled Colonels Sáenz de Buruaga and Yagüe commanding the garrisons at Tetuán and Ceuta. General Franco in Las Palmas was also informed by telegram about this premature action.
At ten past six the following morning, Franco sent his reply. ‘Glory to the heroic Army of Africa. Spain above everything. Accept the enthusiastic greeting of those garrisons which join you and all the other comrades in the Peninsula in these historic moments. Blind faith in victory. Long live Spain with honour!’ The same text was sent to all the divisions on the mainland, the headquarters of the Balearic Islands, to the commander of the cavalry division and the naval bases.5 In Las Palmas, Franco ordered the troops on to the street where, joined by Falangists, they besieged government buildings until they were surrendered. Franco then handed over command of the Canaries to General Orgaz and set off by sea to the aerodrome, which he reached at three in the afternoon of 18 July.6
As dusk fell on 17 July in Spanish Morocco, the commanders of the Legion and the regulares moved their forces into position in the other garrison towns. The Spanish working-class areas were quickly occupied and prominent unionists shot on sight. The declaration of a general strike was no more than a brave gesture as the Moroccan regulares were let loose. In Larache the workers fought desperately with very few weapons through the night, but in Ceuta, Yagüe’s legionnaires crushed the resistance in a little over two hours, killing the mayor. All this time the commander-in-chief in Morocco, General Gómez Morato, was gambling. Having carried out Azaña’s reshuffle, he was hated by the rebel officers. He knew nothing of the rising until a telephone call for him from Madrid from Casares Quiroga was put through to the casino. He immediately took an aeroplane to Melilla where he was arrested as soon as he landed.
The only remaining centres of resistance at dawn in Morocco on the 18th were the high commissioner’s residence and the air force base at Tetuán; both surrendered a few hours later when threatened with artillery. All those who had resisted were executed, including the high commissioner and Major de la Puente Bahamonde, whose fate was approved by his first cousin, General Franco. In a single night the rebels had killed 189 people.7
Colonel Beigbeder, who spoke Arabic, approached the Caliph Muley Hassan to secure his support. He warned him that the republican government could declare Morocco independent in order to undermine the rebel cause. And any encouragement of Moroccan nationalism would put him in danger after his collaboration with the colonial power.
In Madrid the republican government had been aware of the rising since the evening of 17 July. The next morning it issued the following communiqué: ‘The government states that the movement is confined to certain areas in the Protectorate and that no one, absolutely no one, on the mainland has joined this absurd venture.’ At 3 p.m. on 18 July Casares Quiroga firmly rejected offers of aid from the CNT and UGT. He urged everyone to carry on as normal and to ‘trust in the military powers of the state’. He claimed that the rising in Seville had been suppressed, still believing that General Queipo de Llano would secure central Andalucia for the Republic. In fact, Queipo de Llano had already done precisely the opposite. ‘Thanks to preventative measures taken by the government,’ Casares Quiroga proclaimed, ‘it may be said that a vast anti-republican movement has been wiped out.’ He again refused to arm the workers, saying that ‘anybody who hands out weapons without my approval will be shot’.8
That night the CNT and UGT declared a general strike over Unión Radio. It was the nearest they could get to ordering mobilization. The news coming in showed the administration’s statements to be a mixture of contradictions, lies and complacency. The workers began to dig up weapons hidden since the Asturian events of October 1934 and, although Casares Quiroga’s government finally began to understand what it faced, its basic attitude did not change. ‘His ministry is a madhouse,’ an observer remarked, ‘and the maddest inmate is the prime minister. He is neither sleeping nor eating. He shouts and screams as if possessed. He will hear nothing of arming the people and threatens to shoot anybody who does it on his own initiative.’9
When the rising was successful in a town, the pattern of events usually started with the seizing of strategic buildings, such as the town hall. If there was no military garrison, the rebel forces would consist of civil guards, Falangists, and right-wing supporters armed with hunting rifles or shotguns. They would proclaim a state of war in official terms, and in several places confused townsfolk thought that they were carrying out the orders of the Madrid government.
The response of the CNT and UGT was to order a general strike and demand weapons from the civil governor. Arms were either refused them or were unobtainable. Barricades were rapidly constructed, but workers who resisted the rebels were massacred, and potential opponents who survived, from the civil governor down to the lowest union official, were executed. On the other hand, if the troops wavered or delayed in coming out of their barracks, and the workers were ready, the outcome was usually very different. An immediate attack, or an encirclement of the barracks, was enough to ensure the rebels’ surrender.
A very important factor was the decision of the paramilitary forces, who were much better trained and armed than the conscript infantry. But it was wrong to say that their loyalty or disloyalty to the government was the crucial element. Like the general population, they were often unsure in their own minds, and only the most dedicated would fight when the battle was obviously lost from the beginning. They often hung back to see which way things were going before committing themselves. If the workers’ organizations took immediate and firm action, then they usually remained loyal, although the Civil Guard often revealed their true colours later on. Of the two corps, the Assault Guard showed more loyalty to the government than the Civil Guard, but then they tended to be an urban force and the big cities had a better prepared working class.
The city of Seville was of great strategic importance in the plans of the rebels as a base for the advance on Madrid. The intelligent chief of staff there, José Cuesta Monereo, was the true brains behind the coup which enthroned General Queipo de Llano, the commander of the carabinero frontier guards, as the ‘viceroy’ of Andalucia. Queipo was irreverent, cynical, unpredictable and possessed a macabre sense of humour. Early on the morning of 18 July, accompanied by his ADC and three other reliable officers, he marched into the office of the commander of the military region, General José Fernández de Villa-Abrille, who was given no time to recover from the
surprise intrusion. When told to decide immediately whether he was with the rising or against it, Villa-Abrille dithered. Queipo arrested him and had a corporal guard the door with orders to shoot anyone who attempted to leave the room.
Queipo next went to the San Hermenegildo infantry barracks where he found the 6th Regiment drawn up on parade, fully armed. He went straight to the colonel to congratulate him on joining the rising. The colonel replied that he was for the government. Queipo suggested that they should discuss the matter in his office. Once inside, he arrested him too. He then tried other officers to see if they would lead the regiment, but Sanjurjo’s failure was evidently strong in their thoughts. Eventually a young captain, who was a Falangist, volunteered and all the other officers were locked up.
With the infantry on his side, Queipo managed to persuade the artillery regiment to join him as well. Falangists, who arrived to help, were given weapons from the armouries. Nationalist legend claimed that Queipo seized Seville with only a small force, when in fact he had some 4,000 men.10 An artillery salvo ensured the surrender of the civil governor and the Assault Guard. Then, despite Queipo’s promise to save the lives of those inside if they gave in, they were all shot. Just before the chief of police was due to be executed, he was told that his wife would be given his full salary if he handed over the secret files on the workers’ organizations. He explained where they were hidden, but his widow probably received nothing after he was shot.