The Spanish Civil War (30 page)

Immediately afterwards, hastily-armed militia forces, along with elements of the demoralized civil guard and assault guards as well as what remained of the army, were dispatched in taxis, lorries, or requisitioned private motor-cars southwards towards Toledo and north-east towards Guadalajara. For in both these nearby towns the rising had been temporarily successful. At Toledo, the numerical superiority of General Riquelme’s combined regular troops and militia drove back a group of rebels, led by Colonel José Moscardó, the military governor and director of the central school of gymnastics in the army, into the Alcázar, the half-fortress, half-palace set on a height commanding the city and the river Tagus which had been, since the nineteenth century, the Spanish infantry officers’ school. Moscardó resisted attempts by the war office and the government to persuade him to surrender. Eventually, he was barricaded in, with about 1,300 people, of whom 800 were members of the civil guard, 100 officers, 200 falangists or other right-wing militants, and six cadets of the Academy (which was then on its summer vacation). The colonel also took with him 550 women and 50 children, mostly dependants of the
defenders. Finally, he also took with him Manuel González López, the civil governor, ‘with his entire family, and a number of persons (about 100) of left-wing politics as hostages’.
¹
The garrison was well supplied with ammunition from the neighbouring arms factory, though food was scarce.

As for the militia making for Guadalajara, both that town and Alcalá de Henares on the way were captured quickly, though the officers at Guadalajara put up a valiant resistance under the leadership of Generals Barrera and González de Lara.
²
In all these battles, new leaders appeared, such as the anarchists Cipriano Mera, David Antona, and Teodoro Moro—all builders by trade, street fighters by circumstances; communists such as Enrique Lister, Juan Modesto, and El Campesino; socialist students, such as Manuel Tagüeña; or old soldiers, whose fighting days were really done, such as the flamboyant
littérateur
Colonel Mangada, or Colonel Arturo Mena, another loyal officer in his sixties.

Victory over the rising meant, in Madrid and its surroundings as elsewhere, the start of a revolution. Large portraits of Lenin now appeared beside those of Largo Caballero on the hoardings of the Puerta del Sol. Manuel Azaña might still linger, gloomy and aghast, in the Royal Palace; his friends might still hold the portfolios of government; but, in the streets, the ‘masses’ ruled. The socialist-led UGT was the real executive body in the capital. With the communist-socialist youth as its agents, it maintained such order as existed. Syndicalism had thus come to Madrid as a result of a great anti-syndicalist rising. For the workers, 20 July was a day of triumph. But in the evening, many assassinations were committed by trigger-happy militiamen. Two republican officers, Colonel Mangada and Major Luis Barceló, set up summary courts in the Casa de Campo to try officers captured in rebel
barracks—men whom, in many cases, they had known, and hated, all their careers. During the evening and the night, the first executions began under this inauspicious authority. Other murders followed in every quarter, the houses of the rich burned, while the clubs, hotels and public buildings became thronged with revolutionaries.

In Barcelona, the rising had also been subdued by the evening of 20 July. The San Andrés barracks, the main armoury of Barcelona, surrendered to the anarchists during the night and made available to them some 30,000 rifles (they had only had 200 the previous day). The Atarazanas barracks next surrendered at half past one, after a prolonged battle, to the anarchists. The anarchist Francisco Ascaso was killed in the assault. Mola’s brother, Captain Ramón Mola, killed himself during the night. Over 500 persons, of whom about 200 were ‘antifascists’, had been killed and 3,000 wounded in the two-day battle.
¹
Immediately, President Companys was visited by anarchist leaders, headed by García Oliver, Abad de Santillán, and Durruti. These formidable men of violence sat before Companys with their rifles between their knees, their clothes still dusty from the fight, their hearts heavy at the death of Ascaso.

Companys then spoke as follows:

First of all, I have to admit to you that the CNT and FAI have never been accorded their proper treatment. You have always been harshly persecuted, and I, who was formerly with you,
²
afterwards found myself obliged by political exigencies to oppose you. Today you are masters of the city.

He paused, and then spoke deprecatingly of the part played by his own party in defeating the rising:

If you do not need me [he went on] or do not wish me to remain as President of Catalonia, tell me now, and I shall become one soldier more in the struggle against fascism. If, on the other hand, you believe that, in this position which, only as a dead man, would I have abandoned if the fascists had triumphed, if you believe that I, my party, my
name, my prestige, can be of use, then you can count on me and my loyalty as a man who is convinced that a whole past of shame is dead, and who desires passionately that Catalonia should henceforth stand among the most progressive countries in the world.
¹

Of course, the rebels had risen against the government and the regular security forces had played a part in defeating them in Barcelona.
²
But the civil guard and assault guards perhaps numbered, like the rebels, only 5,000, and the anarchists had now six times that figure of armed men. Nor was the loyalty of the security forces unquestionable. Companys was thus in a difficult position, but his clever oration posed an acute problem in the minds of the anarchists. Should they proceed, as they presumably could in Barcelona at least, to establish ‘libertarian communism’; or should they collaborate with the Catalan government? To choose the first might necessitate further fighting with, or at least the suppression of the view of, many republicans, Catalan nationalists, socialists and communists, and risk anarchist lives in other parts of Spain, where the CNT were weaker. To choose the second was a compromise with the state, forbidden by all their past experience. They chose the second alternative, not without hesitation.
³
The demands of war already threatened the principle of the abolition of government.

But did Companys really have to speak so humbly? Could he not have reestablished the authority of both the Catalan and the Spanish state by the effective deployment of the loyal forces of order under Generals Llano de la Encomienda and Aranguren? Or did he hope to profit from the confusion to ensure once and for all, with anarchist help, the separation of Catalonia from Spain? It seems likely that the second alternative was his plan. In the meantime, to coordinate anarchist power in the city with that wielded by the other organizations, a so-called ‘Anti-Fascist Militias Committee’ of all the parties in Barcelona was set up, Companys introducing the different groups in the
Generalidad
immediately after the conversation just described. This
met nightly, and was composed of three representatives each of the UGT, CNT and Esquerra, two from the FAI, and one each from the Communists (PSUC),
¹
Acción Catalana, the POUM, and the vine-growers (
rabassaires
).
²
This body, dominated at first by its anarchist members, was the real administration of Barcelona after the defeat of the rising.
³
Though there were isolated instances of firing at militia-men by concealed rebel sympathizers, the main work thereafter of the committee was to prepare militia forces to march against Saragossa and to organize the revolution in Barcelona. In all this, Companys did not consult the central government and nor did the Anti-Fascist Militias Committee.

In Granada, the stalemate came to an end on 20 July. General Pozas telephoned from Madrid to urge upon the civil governor ‘desperate and bloody resistance’ against the least manifestation of military rising. This was being brewed by Colonels Muñoz and León. General Campins, unwisely making a further visit to the artillery barracks, was denounced as a traitor by one of his own captains. He heard, to his amazement, that the entire officer corps of the garrison, the civil guards, and the assault guards stood with the rebels. Campins turned to leave, to find his way barred. His ADC suggested that the general should sign the declaration of a state of war. This he did, after a visit to the infantry barracks had proved to him that the officers there also were with the rebels. The troops of the garrison of Granada soon received the order to sally out into the streets of the city. But their commander was not General Campins, who was confined to prison, but Colonel Muñoz. The city was then occupied. The crowds, being un
armed, dispersed at the arrival of the military before the town hall, and the civil governor and his staff were arrested without resistance. Only one nationalist soldier was killed in this conquest of the centre of the town. By night, only the working-class quarter of El Albaicín, directly beneath the Alhambra, held out. This was not reduced for some days. It was accomplished with innumerable casualties suffered by the working classes.
¹

At Valencia, the stalemate continued for some days still, though the balance was tipped firmly on 20 July towards the republic. The local deputy, Carlos Esplá, together with Mariano Gómez, the local chief magistrate, succeeded in persuading General Martínez Monje, commander of the 3rd Division, with its headquarters in the city, to remain loyal to the government. For a day or two, this officer was, however, uncertain what to do, even though he had not been approached by the conspirators. Meantime, the garrisons of the city were besieged by thousands of workers. The putative chief conspirator, General González Carrasco, flitting uneasily from refuge to refuge, gave up all for lost, and sought to escape. This he eventually did, by sea, via North Africa, along with Major Barba. His followers in the garrisons remained beleaguered, while eleven churches were set ablaze and the archbishop’s palace was destroyed.
²
A similar uncertainty was resolved at Alicante, where General García Aldave, the military governor, another vacillator, allowed himself also to be persuaded to remain loyal.
³
(In Alicante prison, meanwhile, José Antonio Primo de Rivera and his brother Miguel continued to languish without hope of release.) In Almería, the colonel of carabineers, Crespo Puerta, rose on 20 July and occupied public buildings but was constrained upon to surrender by the arrival of loyal soldiers from Granada and the threat of bombardment by the loyal destroyer
Lepanto.

In Seville, the victory of Queipo de Llano was confirmed on 20 July. The capture of the airport, then tiny but an important one for southern Spain, was a great help to the rebels. A small number of men of the Legion arrived there in a Fokker from Morocco, under Major
Castejón. This officer led his men into a final assault on Triana, the working-class district on the other side of the River Guadalquivir. All the districts resisted, with practically no arms. In that named San Julián, the slaughter was horrible. The legionaries forced all the men whom they found there into the streets and killed them with knives. The lower part of Triana was then blasted by cannon.
¹

Also on 20 July, fighting began in Galicia. In Corunna, there were two generals, Enrique Salcedo, the general of the 8th Division, and Rogelio Caridad Pita, the military governor and commander of the 5th Infantry Brigade. The former was fat, cautious, old and lethargic, though he had fought in Morocco and even in Cuba. The latter was a supporter of the Popular Front though it had been he who had organized the defeat of the revolution of 1934 in Gijón. The leader of the conspiracy in Corunna was Major Martín Alonso, who had been imprisoned in Villa Cisneros for his part in the rising of 1932, and who had escaped thence in dramatic circumstances. Both generals and the civil authorities hesitated as to whether to arm the trade unions. During the delay, the local CNT held a large meeting of friendship with the UGT, in the bull-ring. A spontaneous orator announced that there were arms hidden in the church of San Pedro de Mezonzo, and a section of the crowd went off to sack that edifice. At last, at midday on 20 July, with the supporters of the Popular Front out in the streets, General Caridad Pita, bringing good news from Barcelona and Madrid, persuaded Salcedo to declare for the government. They arrested Major Martín Alonso. But Colonel Cánovas Lacruz, commander of the local engineers, nevertheless declared a state of war and sent his men to take over the town. The workers tried to resist, but they had no arms. The local Falange were quickly armed and, headed by Manuel Hedilla, the leader of the party in Santander who happened to be there, were most helpful to the army. Within a few hours, the rebels had cleared the centre of the town, and had captured the 27-year-old civil governor, Joaquín Pérez Carballo, who, with his wife Juanita, was shot. The two generals were captured by their chiefs of staff, and shot too, some months after,
with other officers.
¹
The battle continued sporadically for days, the workers being reinforced by a column of tin miners from nearby Noya.
²
Eventually, the fight was decided by the superior weapons of the rebels. The last skirmish here took place in the romantic garden where the grave of Sir John Moore, the Peninsular War hero, is still commemorated.
³
In other places in Galicia, fighting also began: in Vigo, soldiers fell on an unarmed population with brutality, but skirmishing lasted for several days, particularly in the quarter by the port. In the delightful city of Pontevedra, the people of the surrounding villages came in to fight the soldiers as if to a fiesta, with sticks, sickles, knives and clubs—and some dynamite: to no avail. The province fell quickly, murder more than battle marking the victory.

At the naval base at El Ferrol, a battle between the seamen in the warships and the rebels victorious on land also came to a head on 20 July. Hesitation and division of opinion led to the surrender of the cruiser
Almirante Cervera.
This was followed by the raising of a white flag on the battleship
España.
Thereafter, a number of torpedo boats and coastguard sloops, upon which there had also been revolutions, similarly gave in. Thirty officers had been assassinated, about a similar number of revolutionary seamen were shot. Admiral Antonio Azarola, ex-minister of the navy and commander of the base, declared for the government, in time only to be arrested. The nationalist capture of this naval shipyard was to be a serious blow to the government in a long war.
⁴