Paul Preston - The Last Days of the Spanish Republic

In his determination to see the war end with the least suffering for the Republican population, Negrín was unable to rely on the support of the President Manuel Azaña. At their meeting on 30 January, he had tried to persuade Azaña that, after he had crossed into France, he should return to Madrid immediately, but Azaña refused on the grounds that to do so would constitute support for Negrín’s plans for resistance. The scale of Azaña’s panic was such that Negrín had him placed under surveillance lest he head for France without warning. When it was apparent that he could not be persuaded to stay, Negrín offered to put an aircraft at his disposal to fly to Paris, but Azaña refused for fear that he would be taken back to the centre-south zone in Spain against his will. Martínez Barrio told Álvarez del Vayo that before going into the meeting Azaña had said: ‘Negrín can tie me up, he can gag me and put me on an aeroplane. That’s the only way he’s going to get me to the centre-south zone, but as soon as I get off the plane and they remove the gag, I will scream until they either kill me or let me go.’ 30

In the meeting, he declared that, once he had crossed the frontier into France, he would not return under any circumstances and would devote himself only to seeking a peace treaty. Negrín was finally obliged to accept that the President could not be persuaded to return immediately. When Azaña said that he planned to go to the house of his brother-in-law, Cipriano Rivas Cherif, in Collonges-sous-Salève, Negrín told him that he must take up residence in the Spanish Embassy in Paris. Azaña agreed to go to the Embassy but insisted that he would not return to Spain. Accordingly, Negrín told Azaña that this meant he should therefore withdraw his confidence from his Prime Minister and name a substitute who could negotiate surrender with Franco. Azaña did not respond. This left Negrín with the option only of resignation. And to resign, knowing as he did what could be expected of Franco’s ‘justice’, would have seemed to him a betrayal of the Republican masses. To mitigate the damaging consequences of Azaña’s cowardice, Negrín said that the government would announce that the circumstances obliged the President to take up temporary residence in the Spanish Embassy in Paris. Azaña replied that, if such an announcement was made, he would not contradict it but that he still had no intention of returning. After the meeting, Negrín told Julio Álvarez del Vayo that he was sure that Azaña was reacting emotionally and that he would eventually see that he had to return to Spain. 31In consequence, both Negrín and Azaña would have different recollections of what had been agreed at the meeting. In a letter to his friend Ángel Ossorio y Gallardo, Azaña wrote five months later that he had told Negrín that, irrespective of any such announcement, he would not return to Spain. However, when Negrín reached Paris on 7 March 1939 after the Casado coup, he told Marcelino Pascua, the Spanish Ambassador to France, that the agreement had been for Azaña to reside in France merely provisionally until the government had re-established itself in Madrid. This accounts for the cold tone of Negrín’s subsequent telegrams to Azaña requesting his return to Spain. 32

When Pascua received the news of the President’s imminent arrival, he was appalled. He thought, and told Azaña, that his presence in Paris would cause immense damage to the Republic, effectively announcing to the British and French authorities that he considered the war lost and thereby undermining the basis of Negrín’s policy of using the rhetoric of resistance as a negotiating card. Pascua was soon irritated by what he described as Azaña’s carefree routine of ‘la dolce far niente’. It consisted largely of a daily touristic excursion around Paris in an Embassy car accompanied by his inseparable friend and brother-in-law Cipriano Rivas Cherif followed by an evening gathering (tertulia) with his friends in the French capital. Resentful of what they believed to be a betrayal of the Republic, the domestic staff of the Paris Embassy even refused to serve him. 33In fact, Azaña was more concerned with the preservation of the artistic treasures of the Prado than with the impact of his decision to flee. He had said to Álvarez del Vayo: ‘A hundred years from now, few people will know who Franco or I were but everyone will always know who Velázquez and Goya are.’ 34He was also concerned to go on collecting his salary. 35

The tensions deriving from Azaña’s presence in Paris were exacerbated by the closeness of his relationship with Cipriano Rivas Cherif. Rivas Cherif was regarded as a frivolous lightweight by Pascua, by Álvarez del Vayo and by Negrín. He had made damaging mistakes as Consul in Geneva and, merely to please Azaña, he had been given the virtually meaningless title of Introductor de Embajadores, effectively head of protocol for the President. However, in Paris, he was Azaña’s liaison with the Quai d’Orsay and behaved as if he was at the service of the French government rather than the Spanish Republic. To the French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet he parroted Azaña’s view that the Republic was finished and that the rhetoric of resistance by Negrín and Álvarez del Vayo was merely a device to gain time. His conversations with Bonnet convinced the French that the Spanish government was adrift and in conflict with the exiled head of state who, unlike Negrín and Del Vayo, had the good sense to see that the only answer was an immediate peace settlement. 36

Negrín knew that the war was effectively lost, but he was not prepared simply to walk away. As he told the standing committee of the Cortes on 31 March 1939: ‘The Government, in the first few days after reaching Figueras, after leaving Barcelona, realized that we were facing a real catastrophe, a catastrophe infinitely bigger than the catastrophe that we have suffered with the retreat of the civilian population and the army. It was fully aware that there was very little chance of saving the situation, but the Government knew that it was its duty to look for a way, if there was one.’ 37When Negrín said ‘the Government’, he was referring to himself.

On the morning of Sunday 5 February, Azaña achieved the exile he had longed for. He described the pathetic manner of his entry into France some months later in a letter to his friend Ángel Ossorio y Gallardo. He and his entourage left at dawn in a small convoy of police cars. As a courtesy, Negrín accompanied them across the frontier. The President of the Cortes, Diego Martínez Barrio, travelled ahead in a separate car. This vehicle broke down. Negrín and others in the party tried unsuccessfully to push it out of the way. The party was obliged to cross the hazardously icy border on foot, thereby fulfilling a gloomy prophecy made by Azaña at the beginning of the Civil War. He had said to his wife, Dolores Rivas Cherif: ‘We will end up leaving Spain on foot.’ 38When taking his leave, before walking back into Spain, Negrín kissed the hand of Dolores Rivas and said: ‘Until we meet again soon in Madrid.’ 39

As Julián Zugazagoitia commented, Negrín and Azaña were incompatible, the one energetic, dynamic and fearless; the other sedentary and timorous. By this stage ‘They felt mutual contempt. At that moment, they hated each other.’ On his return to Spain, Negrín remarked to Zugazagoitia: ‘You have to feel sorry for poor Azaña! He is fearfulness incarnate. His fear gives him a greenish-yellow colour and makes him look like a decomposing corpse.’ As he was approaching the frontier, Negrín encountered Lluís Companys, the Catalan President, José Antonio Aguire, the Basque President, and Manuel Irujo, who had been Minister of Justice in his own government. They had proposed accompanying Azaña into France, but he had refused their offer because to have crossed together would have implied that they were on the same level. They now offered to go back into Spain with Negrín, but he politely declined, allegedly muttering to himself, ‘That’s one less thing to worry about.’ 40