Paul Preston - Franco

Certain factors made the conspirators’ task much easier than it might otherwise have been. The government failed to act decisively on the repeated warnings that it received of the plot. At the beginning of June, Casares Quiroga, as Minister of War, set out to decapitate the conspiracy in Morocco by removing the officers in charge of the two Legions into which the Tercio was now organized. On 2 June, he sent for Yagüe who was head of the so-called Segunda Legión. On the following day, he removed Yagüe’s fellow-conspirator Lieutenant-Colonel Heli Rolando de Tella from command of the Primera Legión. When Yagüe was received by the Minister on 12 June, Casares Quiroga offered him a transfer either to a desirable post on the Spanish mainland or to a plum position as a military attaché abroad. Yagüe told Casares that he would burn his uniform rather than not be able to serve with the Legion. After giving him forty-eight hours to reconsider, Casares weakly acquiesced in Yagüe’s vehemently expressed desire to return to Morocco. It was a major political error given Yagüe’s key role in the conspiracy. 37 A comparable stroke of luck protected the overall director of the plot. The Director-General of Security, Alonso Mallol, pointed the finger at Mola. On 3 June, Mallol made an unannounced visit to Pamplona with a dozen police-filled trucks and undertook searches allegedly aimed at arms smuggling across the French frontier. Having been warned of the visit by Galarza who in turn had been informed by a rightist police superintendent, Santiago Martín Báguenas, Mola was able to ensure that no evidence of the conspiracy would be found. 38

The ineffective efforts of the Republican authorities to root out the conspirators helps explain one of the mysteries of the period, a curious warning to Casares Quiroga from the pen of General Franco. He wrote to the Prime Minister on 23 June 1936 a letter of labyrinthine ambiguity, both insinuating that the Army was hostile to the Republic and suggesting that it would be loyal if treated properly. The letter focused on two issues. The first was the recently announced reintegration into the Army of the officers tried and sentenced to death in October 1934 for their part in the defence of the Generalitat. The rehabilitation of these officers went directly against one of Franco’s greatest obsessions, military discipline. 39 The second cause of Franco’s outrage was that senior officers were being posted for political reasons. The removal of Heli Rolando de Tella from the Legion and the near loss of Yagüe must have been on his mind. He informed the Minister that these postings of brilliant officers and their replacement by second-rate sycophants were arbitrary, breached the rules of seniority and had caused immense distress within the ranks of the Army. No doubt he regarded his own transfer from the general staff to the Canary Islands as the most flagrant case.

He then wrote something which, although absolutely untrue, was probably written with sincerity. In Franco’s value system, the movement being organized by Mola, and about which he was fully informed, merely constituted legitimate defensive precautions by soldiers who had the right to protect their vision of the nation above and beyond particular political regimes. ‘Those who tell you that the Army is disloyal to the Republic are not telling you the truth. Those who make up plots in terms of their own dark passions are deceiving you. Those who disguise the anxiety, dignity and patriotism of the officer corps as symbols of conspiracy and disloyalty do a poor service to the Patria. ’ The anxieties which he shared with his brother officers about the law and order problem led Franco to urge Casares to seek the advice ‘of those generals and officers who, free of political passions, live in contact with their subordinates and are concerned with their problems and morale’. He did not mention himself by name but the hint was unmistakeable. 40

The letter was a masterpiece of ambiguity. The clear implication was that, if only Casares would put Franco in charge, the plots could be dismantled. At that stage, Franco would certainly have preferred to reimpose order, as he saw it, with the legal sanction of the government rather than risk everything in a coup. In later years, his apologists were to spill many gallons of ink trying to explain away this letter either as a skilful effort by Franco the conspirator to put Casares off the scent and make him halt his efforts to replace subversives with loyal Republicans or else as a prudent warning by Franco the loyal officer which was stupidly ignored by the Minister of War. 41 In fact, the letter had exactly the same purpose as Franco’s appeals to Portela in mid-February. Franco was ready to deal with revolutionary disorder as he had done in Asturias in 1934 and was now, in guarded terms, offering his services. If Casares had accepted his offer, there would have been no need for an uprising.

That was certainly Franco’s retrospective view. 42 The government of the Popular Front did not share his commitment to suppressing the aspirations of the masses. In any case, Casares took no notice of him. If he had, the eventual outcome would certainly have been very different. If Franco was within his rights to send such a letter, Casares should have acknowledged his concern. If he believed that Franco had abused his position then Casares should have taken disciplinary measures against him. The Prime Minister’s failure to reply can only have helped to incline Franco towards rebellion.

Franco’s letter was a typical example of his ineffable self-regard, his conviction that he was entitled to speak for the entire army. At the same time, its convoluted prose reflected his retranca , the impenetrable cunning associated with the peasants of Galicia. At the time of writing, Franco was still distancing himself from the conspirators. His determination to be on the winning side without taking any substantial risks hardly set him apart as a likely charismatic leader although it did prefigure his behaviour towards the Axis in the Second World War. At the same time as he wrote to Casares, Franco also wrote to two Army colleagues. The first letter was to Colonel Miguel Campins, his assistant in the Zaragoza Academy, currently in command of a light infantry battalion in Catalonia. The other was to Colonel Francisco Martín Moreno, chief of the general staff of Spanish forces in Morocco with whom Franco had worked in early 1935 when he had been Commander-in-Chief there. The letters suggest clearly that Franco was not yet a committed conspirator, expressing merely his anxiety that the political situation might worsen to the point at which the Army would have to intervene. He asked if they would collaborate with him if such an occasion were to arise. Martín Moreno wrote back to say that, if Franco appeared in Tetuán, he would place himself at his orders, ‘but at no one else’s’. Campins, in contrast, replied that he was loyal to the government and to the Republic and that he did not favour any intervention by the Army. He had signed his own death warrant. 43

A few days after Franco wrote his letter to Casares, the division of duties among the conspirators was settled. Franco was expected to be in command of the rising in Morocco. Cabanellas would be in charge in Zaragoza, Mola in Navarre and Burgos, Saliquet in Valladolid, Villegas in Madrid, González Carrasco in Burgos, Goded in Valencia. Goded insisted on exchanging cities with González Carrasco. 44 For several reasons, Mola and the other conspirators were loath to proceed without Franco. His influence within the officer corps was enormous, having been both Director of the Military Academy and Chief of the General Staff. He also enjoyed the unquestioning loyalty of the Spanish Moroccan Army. The coup had little chance of succeeding without the Moroccan Army and Franco was the obvious man to lead it. Yet, in the early summer of 1936, Franco still preferred to wait in the wings. Calvo Sotelo frequently cornered Serrano Suñer in the corridors of the Cortes to badger him impatiently ‘what is your brother-in-law thinking about? What is he doing? Doesn’t he realize what is on the cards?’ 45