Jack Ludlow - A Broken Land

As for the war, the Republic was still mostly on the defensive. Franco had again failed to take Madrid in the first months of the year, while the last bastion of Republican resistance in the north-west, the Basque region, was under severe pressure from General Mola, who with the help of the German Condor Legion had ushered in a new phase with the bombing and utter destruction of the small town of Guernica, an act which shocked the world when news of the true number of deaths began to emerge.

For all the international protests it had another effect: it showed the power of aerial bombardment on built-up areas and brought home to many in the democracies what they might face should they engage in another war — in short, it strengthened the hand of the politicians keeping up the pretence of non-intervention, who could now ask those more bellicose if they were prepared to see their own cities reduced to rubble.

Regular Italian troops, in an operation sanctioned personally by Mussolini, with massed tanks, artillery and air support, had sought to capture the Guadalajara mountains which rose to the north of Madrid, their tactical aim to gain the heights and so roll down on the capital in conjunction with the Nationalists. It failed, with the Italians suffering heavy losses, not that the International Brigades fared any better.

Franco was not winning, but neither was he losing, yet when Cal Jardine got back to Barcelona, it was impossible to find a voice of the Republican side that even thought of stopping fighting; the problem was not a desire to go on, it was internal.

It was obvious matters had been seething uncomfortably since the death of Juan Luis Laporta, he being something of a local hero — there had even been a group set up to commemorate his name — with accusations flying about that he had been deliberately killed by his political foes, but that only poured oil onto the fires of endemic disputes that had raged for years.

On a hot day in May it came to a head when open conflict broke out in Barcelona between the anarchists and the communists. The latter, using their well-tried-and-trusted methods, had infiltrated and taken control of the Assault Guards in Barcelona too. This paramilitary body had grown in power, encouraged to do so by the Catalan government as a counter to the workers’ militias who, since the generals’ attempt to seize power, had policed the streets while ignoring not only orders to disperse, but any decree with which they did not agree.

The spark was an attempt, robustly repulsed, to try and take over the vital main telephone exchange, the very same building that Cal Jardine had helped to capture the previous July. Despite their superior weaponry, the Assault Guard found the workers impossible to dislodge.

The tocsin was sounded in the ranks of both the CNT-FAI and the POUM. Their members, with their weapons, poured onto the streets to do battle. It was an indication of how the power of the communists had increased in less than a year — they had been something of a fringe party in Barcelona before — now they had numbers and could contest those streets that had seen the regular army defeated.

Given the turmoil, getting a decision on such a vital matter had to be put on hold; Andreu Nin, Cal’s main contact, was heavily embroiled in the fighting, for the very good reason that his party was still most at risk, while Garcia Oliver, who had been despatched from Valencia to try and bring peace to the city, was weighed down by endless meetings and stormy negotiations.

These attempts were not aided by the rhetoric on both sides; the communists wheeled out their most potent propaganda weapon, Dolores Ibarruri, known as La Pasionaria , the woman who had coined the famous slogan during the battle for Madrid, ?No pasaran! Her views were outre and delivered with bile. They also lacked any grip on the truth, but that mattered less than that there were fools who believed what nonsense she spouted, which was that the internecine conflict was an anarcho-Trotskyist plot engineered on the orders of General Franco.

The counterclaims had more validity and went right to the heart of that in which Cal Jardine was involved, the fact that the Republican government was falling increasingly under communist control, politically, to add to their lock on military action. The workers’ leaders were at pains to ensure their followers were not fooled by the lack of openly communist ministers — that was how the Stalinists operated: in the shadows, like rodents.

What brought matters to a peaceful compromise was not the endless talk, but raw military power, the arrival in the city of ten thousand heavily armed Assault Guards, enough men to drive any other force from the streets and with orders to show no mercy. That allowed Garcia Oliver to knock heads together, though Andreu Nin, when he finally met with Callum Jardine, saw the eventual peace agreement as an outright defeat.

Able to communicate now without the need for an intermediary, Cal found the POUM leader resigned to his fate: Moscow would insist on the banning of his organisation and what would happen to him personally would be, he had no doubt, unpleasant. The notion that he should flee the country, a wise one, was politely declined.

‘That would play into Stalin’s hands, Senor Jardine.’

‘Better that than Stalin’s victim.’

‘They are so skilled at lies, these Bolsheviks, I would be shown as a pawn of Franco, and as for my life, well, Trotsky was not safe from the ice pick that smashed his skull in Mexico.’

It was hard, looking at the scholarly Nin, to see him as heroic, he physically just did not fit the bill, yet he had a stoicism about his possible death that was very Spanish; if he was to be shot, he would face it with equanimity. But when it came to the most important point, he was no longer in a position to act to facilitate matters; his influence was now zero.

‘Use Garcia Oliver.’

‘You trust a man who you believe has just thrown you and your people to the wolves?’

‘I have no choice, senor, and neither do you if you wish to proceed with your plans.’

He did not like Garcia Oliver and it was clear the feeling was mutual; it was not just lack of a spark of geniality, it was the feeling that, if things went wrong, here was a man who would somehow slip out of trouble while leaving Cal Jardine to face the consequences, very much like he had dealt with Nin.

The politician’s instructions were to go to Valencia and wait until he had secured everything in Barcelona. Only then could he make an approach to Caballero, who would need to involve others now — he could not just send millions in gold out of the country on his own signature, though he would still keep it secret from the communists.

No sooner had he arrived than all his plans were thrown into turmoil when Largo Caballero resigned and was replaced by the one-time finance minister, and there was a new minister of war, Indalecio Prieto. Obliged to kick his heels for two weeks in Valencia, he found a room at the Hotel de Los Altos, a famous seaside spa hotel overlooking the Mediterranean, which had once been a favourite haunt of the European rich.

That was where Alverson found him and was able to bring him up to date on the politics, more than he had been able to glean from the newspapers and their screaming headlines that said the communists had got their way: the POUM had been disbanded, the offices and funds seized, their leaders arrested.

‘Then slung,’ Alverson added, gloomily, ‘into a communist-run jail right in the heart of Madrid, and guess who’s running it?’

‘Who?’

‘That Drecker guy you so love.’

‘Is that a move up or down?’

‘Definitely up.’

‘Would you do me a favour, Tyler, and keep tabs on him?’