The Spanish Civil War (2 page)

I returned to Spain for some last-minute topographical observations. I saw Gerald Brenan in Churriana, near Málaga, then went up to Madrid and stayed, thanks to the good offices of a diplomat at the embassy in London, a Sevillano, at the Colegio Mayor Cesar Carlos. Here I met many interesting, chiefly left-wing men of my age, but also answered a telephone call from General Martínez Caro, the Duque de la Torre, a well-known monarchist general. My friends could not understand how I could have such friends!

The Spanish Civil War
was published in April 1961, to almost universally good reviews. Cyril Connolly wrote well of it in the
Sunday Times
, a great accolade, and Dick Crossman called it “a near masterpiece” in the
New Statesman
. Roy Jenkins praised it in
The Spectator
, as did Michael Howard in
The Listener
. Claud Cockburn was enthusiastic in the
Sunday Telegraph
, as was Peter Kemp in the
Daily Telegraph
. Rowland St Oswald was interesting in the
Yorkshire Post
, as was Malcolm Muggeridge in
Time and Tide
. Raymond Carr was friendly in the
Observer
, even though he had planned a history of the Civil War himself. Desmond Williams was excellent in the
Irish
Press
.
The Times Literary Supplement
was very supportive (I learned later that the review, in those anonymous days, had been written by Alun Lord Chalfont). The only serious criticism I received was by Arnold Lunn in
The Catholic Herald
.

In America I also had wonderful reviews in the main newspapers, beginning with the
New York Times
, where Vincent Sheehan, “Jimmy”, praised it enthusiastically; the
New York Times
even had a leader devoted to the book. William Stuart Chamberlain wrote in the
Wall Street Journal
, Salvador de Madariaga in the
Sunday Herald Tribune
. My reputation seemed made.

In Spain the reaction was interesting. There was a splendid review by General Martínez Campos in
ABC
. Otherwise there were just notices that the work had been published. The book itself was prohibited. Some years later I found references to General Franco’s reaction in the interesting work of Franco’s cousin and ADC Franco Salgado,
Mis conversaciones privadas con Franco
(My private conversations with Franco). For example: “El general ha hecho preguntas sobre el libro de Mr Thomas … El general me contesta demintiendo muchas afirmaciones de este escritor inglés” (The general has asked questions about Mr Thomas’s book … The general answers me denying many of the statements of this English writer).

By that time, there was a Spanish edition. I had never thought that a possibility. Before the book was even out in England I had been visited by two members of the Spanish opposition, Nicolás Sánchez Albornoz, son of the historian Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, and a rebellious former member of the Spanish foreign service, Vicente Girbau, who were helping to found a publishing house in Paris which would concentrate on works condemned by the Franco regime. My book seemed a good one with which to start. I agreed and Ruedo Ibérico (as the publishers became known), driven by an anarchist from Valencia, Pépé Martínez, set to work on a translation.

I soon had other publishers: for example Robert Laffont in Paris (still my French publisher, I am glad to say), Ullstein in Germany and the powerful Einaudi in Italy. In the end, the book had seventeen foreign publishers, and was printed in every language of the European Union.

Spanish Civil War historical studies have been transformed since my book was first published in 1961. We have experienced thoughtful lives
of General Franco, of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, of Calvo Sotelo, of Dr Juan Negrín, of Indalecio Prieto and of Manuel Azaña, and the complete diaries of the latter have been published. The international side of the Civil War has been amply covered with historically responsible works. The supply of armaments to both sides has been fully explored. The atrocities behind the two lines have been exhaustively investigated, and many figures have been hazarded. Even the role of the Soviet Union has been authoritatively studied and the Church of Rome analysed in depth. The military side of the conflict has of course not been ignored. Such works as Ian Patterson’s
Guernica
have shown that micro-studies still reveal as much as macro-investigations. But some problems remain. For example, what was the real role of Colonel Martínez Fusset, General Franco’s military adjutant, who turns out to have been an intimate friend early in life of the poet García Lorca?

In the early 2000s during the government of Señor Zapatero, the Spanish Civil War again became a matter of contemporary politics. The problem was that, whereas in the years immediately after the end of the Civil War in 1939, the victors were able to use memories of the atrocious behaviour of many left-wing parties and militia groups as a warning against allowing any truck with Communism, the Left had never been permitted to have a similar revenge for right-wing and governmental injustices. This was especially scandalous, it seemed, because, in the years 1939–45, with the world war raging in much of Europe, the government of General Franco could act more or less without criticism. The Law of Historical Memory was passed to try to put the consequent grievances to rest.

Nothing in historical memory is ever obvious, however. Let us recall what happened with the understandable desire of well-wishers to bury honourably the corpse of the poet Federico García Lorca, who was shot in August 1936 by the organized Right in or outside Granada. His place of interment seemed to have been established by such worthy people as Gerald Brenan and Ian Gibson. A campaign for disinterment began which was initially opposed by the surviving members of the poet’s family. Eventually in 2010 the idea was approved and embarked upon. But despite elaborate digging no body was found.

My solution to the problem of the memory of the Civil War is a simple one. A monument should be erected outside Madrid along the
lines of the Holocaust monument in Israel. On this the names of all who died as a direct consquence of the conflict, either in battle or behind the lines, should be inscribed. There would be José Antonio as well as García Lorca, there would be Mola and also Luis Companys. Cornford, of course, and the famous Sevillano bullfighter El Algabeño
³
who were killed on opposing sides in the winter battle at Lopera in 1937. One was a falangista, the other an English poet and Communist. Both were heroes within their own worlds, who knew absolutely nothing of each other.

H. T., 2012

1. Regions and provinces of Spain

2. Spanish Morocco

3. The revolution in Asturias, 1934

4. Madrid during the Second Republic

5. Spanish military arrangements, 1936

6. Captain Bebb’s flight, July 1936

7. Barcelona, July 1936

8. Division of Spain at the end of July 1936

9. The fighting in the Guadarramas, July-August 1936

10. The Catalan invasion of Aragon, July-August 1936

11. The advance of the Army of Africa, August-October 1936

12. The campaign in Guipúzcoa, August-September 1936

13. The invasion of Majorca, August 1936

14. Division of Spain, August 1936

15. The advance on Madrid, September-November 1936

16. The battle of Madrid, November 1936

17. The battles of Boadilla and the Corunna Road, December 1936

18. The fighting for Malaga, February 1937

19. The battle of the Jarama, February 1937

20. The battle of Guadalajara, March 1937

21. The battles around Madrid, November 1936-March 1937

22. Division of Spain, March 1937

23. The campaign in Vizcaya, March-June 1937

24. Naval Non-Intervention Patrol

25. The battle of Brunete, July 1937

26. The Santander campaign, August 1937

27. The Aragon offensive, August-October 1937

28. The Asturias campaign, September-October 1937

29. Division of Spain, October 1937

30. The battle of Teruel, December 1937-February 1938

31. The campaigns in Aragon and the Levante, March-July 1938

32. Division of Spain, July 1938

33. The battle of the Ebro, July-November 1938

34. The campaign in Catalonia, December 1938-January 1939

35. Division of Spain, February 1939

All maps were drawn from roughs by Douglas London.

with their abbreviations and approximate English equivalents

This work was first published in 1961 and later that year and the next in several languages, including Spanish. The Spanish edition was, however, not published in Madrid because it was banned there by the censors in the Ministry of Information; so it was produced (as its first book, I think) by Ruedo Ibérico, a Spanish émigré publishing house in Paris, and subsequently smuggled into Spain. Revised editions followed in English. The fully revised edition of 1976 was published in English and Spanish. By that time General Franco had died and the new government led by Adolfo Suárez, on the designation of King Juan Carlos, was in process of abolishing the censorship. Thereafter, the book sold in many editions in Spain; there was an illustrated Version sold as a partwork in kiosks at railway stations and street corners.

I think that the censorship in Spain in the 1960s helped the sales in the 1970s. By the time of Franco’s death, the appetite for all books previously prohibited was voracious, especially when they treated such sensitive questions as the war which had brought Franco to power. However, the success of all these publications-not just mine but that of other historians, Spanish as well as English, French as well as American-played a part in the success also of the transition to demcracy alter Franco. The recovery of knowledge of why the previous demcracy in Spain went wrong in the 1930s was a help in the 1970s. The recollection in tranquillity of just how horrible a failure the civil war
had been helped those concerned to make a new Spain to avoid destructive rhetoric. By suggesting that the responsibility for the conflict was not easily decided, and the guilt for the most odious actions widely spread, vengeance was avoided-a fact not wholly to be expected when it is recalled how many people who had played a part in the civil war were still alive. ‘Poetry,’ said Shelley, ‘is capable of saving us.’ Cannot the same claim be made for history?

Perceptions of the Spanish war differ from one period of ten years to the next. It now appears to have been Spain’s contribution to the continent-wide breakdown which occurred between 1914 and 1945: not a specifically Spanish descent into barbarism and certainly not a characteristic one. In past centuries no one thought that nations engaged in war could survive when they ran out of money The events of 1914 showed that to be false. No one supposed in the last Century that civil wars would go on if the two sides ran out of arms: in Spain it was shown, as many conflicts since then have shown, that other countries can furnish the war material to enable the fighting to go on indefinitely. Many were killed in Spain: but since my first edition questioned, I believe for the first time, in a historical work, the reliability of the estimate of ‘a million dead’, and suggested that 500,000 might be a maximum, the estimates for casualties have dropped and dropped. Now it would be perfectly admissible to argue that Spain lost fewer people dead in acts of violence than any other major European nation in this Century.

That is an important reflection. Spain, little understood and often privately disliked by patronizing northern peoples (‘an old Spanish custom’ in London means the habit of being paid for work that is not done), is frequently held to be a more violent nation than it is. Isolated by good fortune and by geography from the ‘world’s game’ of great power rivalry since 1815, it has more lessons to offer other peoples than it has to learn: above all, it has grasped more successfully than other nations the art of combining progress with the persistence of tradition. Its recent achievement of delegating authority to autonomous regions is not universally popular in Spain because the central government continues as expensive as before. But I suspect it is the way that all advanced countries should go if they continue to wish half their economy to be managed by the State. These are grand issues: no doubt their chronicling in future works of history will exert an influ
ence in the future if people are to go on living as happily in Europe as, despite everything, most of us are now.

During the years that I have been interested in the Spanish Civil War, I had interviews with or correspondence with numerous survivors of that time. Those from Spain who assisted me have included:

Don Víctor Alba; Don Julio Alvarez del Vayo; Don Pablo de Azcárate; Don Cayetano Bolívar; Don Juan de Borbón; Professor Bosch Gimpera; Don Beitrán Domecq; Don Manuel Fal Conde; Don Melchor Ferrer; Don Andrés García Lacalle; Don José García Pradas; Don José María Gil Robles; Don Julián Gorkin; Don Juan Grijalbo; Don Vicente Guarner; Cardinal Angel Herrera; General Emilio Herrera; Don Martín de Irujo; Don José María de Leizaola; Don Salvador de Madariaga; Don Ignacio de Mantecón; Don Adolfo Martin Gamero; General Martínez Campos, Duque de la Torre; Doña Federica Montseny; Dr Juan Negrín Junior; Fr Alberto Onaindía; Prince Alvaro de Orleans-Borbón; Don Luis de Ortúzar; Don Luis Portillo; Don Domingo Qj Don Dioniso Ridruejo; Don Ramón Serrano Súñer; Don Manuel Tagueña; Don José María Tarradellas; and, Don Fernado Valera.

Others with whom I had conversations or correspondence of value included: George Aitken; Richard Bennett; Johannes Bernhardt; Gerald Brenan; Henery Buckley; Tom Burns; R. A. Butler (Lord Butler); Claud Cockburn; Fred Copeman; Frances Cornford; Thora Craig; Alec Digges; Malcolm Dunbar; Lord Dunrossil; Captain Noël Fitzpatrick; Desmond Flower; Lord Gladwyn; Humphrey Hare; Margot Heinemann; Francis Hemming; Lord Home; Frank Jellinek; Douglas Jerrold; Peter Kemp; Peter Kerrigan; Arthur Koestler; Arthur Krock; Captain Sir Basil Liddell-Hart; Bernard Malley; André Malraux; Herbert Matthews; Jessica Mitford; Nancy Mitford; Philip Noël-Baker; George Palaczi-Horwarth; Don Octavio Paz; Sir Victor Pritchett; Giles Romilly; Esther Salaman; Miles Sherover; Kenneth Sinclair-Loutitt; Sir Stephen Spender; Sir William Strang; Norman Thomas; Miles Tomalin; Philip Toynbee; Lady Vansittart; Sir Fred Warner; and, Rowland Winn (Lord Saint Oswald).

Among scholars who gave me at one time or another the benefit of their advice, I am grateful to Professor Michael Alpert; Don Angel Bahamonde; Professor Batista i Roca; Sir Raymond Carr; Don Jaime
Cervera; Norman Cooper; Sir William Deakin; Professor Jill Edwards; Ronald Fraser; Professor Eric Hobsbawm; Professor James Joll; Admiral Sir Peter Gretton; Ian Macintyre; Professor Paul Preston; Don Ramón Tamames; and, Don Javier Tusell.

I express my gratitude as ever to Cass Canfield, Jr., and James Macgibbon, who first suggested that I should write this book, and to Cass Canfield and Douglas Jerrold for their support while I was writing it.

H
UGH
T
HOMAS
London
            
1999