Paul Preston - Franco

His coy hesitations saw his exasperated comrades bestow upon him the ironic nickname of ‘Miss Canary Islands 1936’. Sanjurjo, still bitter about Franco’s failure to join him in 1932, commented that ‘Franco will do nothing to commit himself; he will always be in the shadows, because he is crafty’ ( cuco ). He was also heard to say that the rising would go ahead ‘with or without Franquito’. 46 There were plenty of other good generals who were in on the conspiracy and many more who were not. Why Franco’s hesitations infuriated Mola and Sanjurjo was not just because of the danger and inconvenience involved in having to plan around a doubtful element. They were anxious to have him aboard because they rightly sensed that his decision would clinch the involvement of many others. He was ‘the traffic light of military politics’, in the words of José María Pemán. * 47

When Franco did eventually commit himself, his role was of the first importance without being the crucial one. The Head of State after the coup triumphed was to be Sanjurjo. As technical master-mind of the plot, Mola was then expected to have a decisive role in the politics of the victorious regime. Then came a number of generals each of whom was assigned a region, among them Franco with Morocco. Several of them were of equal prominence to Franco, especially Fanjul in Madrid and Goded in Barcelona. Moreover, leaving aside the roles allotted to Sanjurjo and Mola, Franco’s future in the post-coup polity could only lie in the shadow of the two charismatic politicians of the extreme Right, José Calvo Sotelo and José Antonio Primo de Rivera. In fact, given his essential caution, Franco seems not to have nurtured high-flying ambitions in the spring and early summer of 1936. When Sanjurjo asked what prizes his fellow-conspirators aspired to, Franco had opted for the job of High Commissioner in Morocco. 48 As the situation changed, Franco would adjust his ambitions with remarkable agility and uninhibited by any self-doubts. The hierarchy of the plotters would in fact soon be altered with astonishing rapidity.

The arrangements for Franco’s part in the coup were first mooted in Mola’s Directive for Morocco. Colonel Yagüe was to head the rebel forces in Morocco until the arrival of ‘a prestigious general’. To ensure that this would be Franco, Yagüe wrote urging him to join in the rising. He also planned with the CEDA deputy Francisco Herrera to present Franco with a fait accompli by sending an aircraft to take him on the 1,200 kilometre journey from the Canary Islands to Morocco. Francisco Herrera, a close friend of Gil Robles, was the liaison between the conspirators in Spain and those in Morocco. Yagüe, for his part, was devoted to Franco. As a consequence of his clashes with General López Ochoa during the Asturian campaign, he had been transferred to the First Infantry Regiment in Madrid. A personal intervention by Franco had got him back to Ceuta. 49 After meeting Yagüe on 29 June in Ceuta, Herrera undertook the lengthy journey to Pamplona where he arrived somewhat the worse for wear on 1 July to make arrangements for an aircraft for Franco. Apart from the financial and technical difficulties of getting an aircraft at short notice, Mola still had grave doubts about whether Franco would join the rising.

However, after consulting with Kindelán, he gave the go-ahead for this plan on 3 July. Herrera proposed going to Biarritz to see if the exiled Spanish monarchists at the resort could resolve the money problem. On 4 July, he spoke to the millionaire businessman Juan March who had got to know Franco in the Balearic Islands in 1933. He agreed to put up the cash. Herrera then got in touch with the Marqués de Luca de Tena, owner of the newspaper ABC , to get his assistance. March gave Luca de Tena a blank cheque and he set off for Paris to make the arrangements. Once there on 5 July, Luca de Tena rang Luis Bolín, the ABC correspondent in England, and instructed him to charter a seaplane capable of flying direct from the Canary Islands to Morocco or else the best possible conventional aircraft. Bolín in turn rang the Spanish aeronautical inventor and rightist, Juan de la Cierva who lived in London. La Cierva flew to Paris and told Luca de Tena that there was no suitable seaplane and recommended instead a De Havilland Dragon Rapide. Knowing the English private aviation world well, La Cierva recommended using Olley Air Services of Croydon. Bolín went to Croydon on 6 July and hired a Dragon Rapide. * 50

La Cierva and Bolín arranged for a set of apparently holidaying passengers to mask the aeroplane’s real purpose. On 8 July, Bolín went to Midhurst in Sussex to speak to Hugh Pollard, a retired army officer and adventurer, and make the arrangements. Pollard, his nineteen year-old daughter Diana and her friend Dorothy Watson would travel as tourists to provide Bolín with a cover for his flight. Leaving Croydon in the early hours of the morning of 11 July, the plane was piloted by Captain William Henry Bebb, ex-RAF. Despite poor weather, it reached Bordeaux at 10.30 a.m. where Luca de Tena and other monarchist plotters awaited Bolín with last-minute instructions. They arrived in Casablanca, via Espinho in Northern Portugal and Lisbon, on the following day, 12 July. 51

Although the date for his journey to Morocco was now imminent, Franco was having ever more serious doubts, obsessed as usual with the experience of 10 August 1932. On 8 July, Alfredo Kindelán managed to speak briefly with Franco by telephone and was appalled to learn that he was still not ready to join. Mola was informed two days later. 52 On the same day that the Dragon Rapide reached Casablanca, 12 July, Franco sent a coded message to Kindelán in Madrid for onward transmission to Mola. It read ‘ geografía poco extensa ’ and meant that he was refusing to join in the rising on the grounds that he thought that the circumstances were insufficiently favourable. Kindelán received the message on 13 July. On the following day, he sent it on to Mola in Pamplona in the hands of a beautiful socialite, Elena Medina Garvey, who acted as messenger for the conspirators. Mola flew into a rage, furiously hurling the paper to the ground. When he had cooled down, he ordered that the pilot Juan Antonio Ansaldo be found and instructed to take Sanjurjo to Morocco to do the job expected of Franco. The conspirators in Madrid were informed by Mola that Franco was not to be counted on. However, two days later, a further message arrived to say that Franco was with them again. 53

The reason for Franco’s sudden change of mind were dramatic events in Madrid. On the afternoon of 12 July, Falangist gunmen had shot and killed a leftist officer of the Republican Assault Guards, Lieutenant José del Castillo. Castillo was number two on a black list of pro-Republican officers allegedly drawn up by the ultra-rightist Unión Militar Española, an association of conspiratorial officers linked to Renovación Española. The first man on the black list, Captain Carlos Faraudo, had already been murdered. Enraged comrades of Castillo responded with an irresponsible reprisal. In the early hours of the following day, they set out to avenge his death by murdering a prominent Right-wing politician. Failing to find Gil Robles who was holidaying in Biarritz, they kidnapped and shot Calvo Sotelo. On the evening of the 13th, Indalecio Prieto led a delegation of Socialists and Communists to demand that Casares distribute arms to the workers before the military rose. The Prime Minister refused, but he could hardly ignore the fact that there was now virtually open war.

The political outrage which followed the discovery of Calvo Sotelo’s body played neatly into the hands of the military plotters. They cited the murder as graphic proof that Spain needed military intervention to save her from disaster. It clinched the commitment of many ditherers, including Franco. When he received the news in the late morning of 13 July, he exclaimed to its bearer, Colonel González Peral, ‘The Patria has another martyr. We can wait no longer. This is the signal!’. 54 Fuming with indignation, he told his cousin that further delay was out of the question since he had lost all hope of the government controlling the situation. Shortly afterwards, Franco sent a telegram to Mola. Later in the afternoon, he also ordered Pacón to buy two tickets for his wife and daughter on the German ship Waldi which was due to leave Las Palmas on 19 July bound for Le Havre and Hamburg. 55 His foresight did not extend to warning other members of his family. His sister-in-law Zita Polo underwent enormous dangers in escaping from Madrid with her children. Pilar Jaraiz, his niece, was imprisoned with her new-born son. 56