Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

This uprising of October 1934, although crushed, served to split the oligarchy. The fact that the government had sent Moors to the most Catholic part of Spain (where they had never penetrated during the Saracen invasions) and the demands of the army, monarchists, and the biggest landlords for a ruthless dictatorship alarmed the leaders of the Church and the president of the republic, Alcalá Zamora. This ultimately blocked Gil Robles’s road to power by parliamentary methods. After March 1935 he controlled the portfolios of Justice, Industry and Commerce, Labor, and Communications, but could not get the Interior (which controlled the police). This was held by Portela Valladares, a moderate close to Zamora. Gil Robles as minister of war encouraged reactionary control of the army and even put General Franco in as his undersecretary for war, but he could not get rid of Portela Valladares. Finally, he demanded that the police be transferred from the Ministry of Interior to his own Ministry of War. When this was refused, he upset the Cabinet, but, instead of getting more from this action, he got less, for Alcala Zamora handed the premier’s seat over to moderates (Joaquin Chapaprieta, a businessman, followed by Portela Valladares) and ordered new elections.

For these elections of February 1936, the parties of the Left formed a coalition, the Popular Front, with a published program and plan of action. The program was of a moderate Left character, promising a full restoration of the constitution, amnesty for political crimes committed after November 1933, civil liberties, an independent judiciary, minimum wages, protection for tenants, reform of taxation, credit, banking, and the police, and public works. It repudiated the Socialist program for nationalization of the land, the banks, and industry.

The plan of action provided that while all the Popular Front parties would support the government by their votes in the Cortes, only the bourgeois parties would hold seats in the Cabinet, while the workers’ parties, such as the Socialists, would remain outside.

The election of February 16, 1936 followed a campaign of violence and terrorism in which the worst offenders were the members of a microscopic new political party calling itself the Falange. Openly Fascist on the Italian model, and consisting largely of a small number of rich and irresponsible youths, this group was led by Primo de Rivera the younger. In the election, the Popular Front captured 266 out of 473 seats, while the Right had 153 and the Center only 54; CEDA had 96, the Socialists 87, Azaña’s Republican Left 81, the Communists 14.

The defeated forces of the Right refused to accept the results of this election. As soon as the results were known, Sotelo tried to persuade Portela Valladares to hand over the government to General Franco. That was rebuffed. The same day the Falange attacked workers who were celebrating. On February 20th the conspirators met and decided their plans were not yet ripe. The new government heard of this meeting and at once transferred General Franco to the Canary Islands, General Manuel Goded to the Balearics, and General Emilio Mola from his command in Morocco to be governor-general of Navarre (the Carlist stronghold). The day before Franco left Madrid, he met the chief conspirators at the home of the monarchist deputy Serrano Delgado. They completed their plans for a military revolt but fixed no date.

In the meantime, provocation, assassination, and retaliation grew steadily, with the verbal encouragement of the Right. Property was seized or destroyed, and churches were burned on all sides. On March 12th the Socialist lawyer who had drafted the constitution of 1931 was fired at from an automobile, and his companion was killed. Five men were brought to trial; the judge was assassinated (April 13th). The next day a bomb exploded beneath a platform from which the new Cabinet was reviewing the troops, and a police lieutenant was killed (April 14th). The mob retaliated by assaults on monarchists and by burning churches. On March 15th there was an attempt to assassinate Largo Caballero. By May the monarchist assassins were beginning to concentrate on the officers of the Assault Guards, the only branch of the police which was completely loyal to the republic. In May the captain of this force, Faraudo, was killed by shots from a speeding automobile; on July 12th Lieutenant Castillo of the same force was killed in the same way. That night a group of men in the uniform of the Assault Guards took Sotelo from his bed, and shot him. The uprising, however, was already beginning in England and in Italy, and broke out in Morocco on July 18th.

One of the chief figures in the conspiracy in England was Douglas Jerrold, a well-known editor, who has revealed some details in his autobiography. At the end of May 1936, he obtained “50 machine guns and a half million rounds of S.A. ammunition” for the cause. In June he persuaded Major Hugh Pollard to fly to the Canary Islands in order to transport General Franco by plane to Morocco. Pollard took off on July nth with his nineteen-year-old daughter Diana and her friend Dorothy Watson. Louis Bolin, who was Jerrold’s chief contact with the conspirators, went at once to Rome. On July 15th orders were issued by the Italian Air Force to certain units to prepare to fly to Spanish Morocco. The Italian insignia on these planes were roughly painted over on July 20th and thereafter, but otherwise they were fully equipped. These planes went into action in support of the revolt as early as July 27th; on July 30th four such planes, still carrying their orders of July 15th, landed in French Algeria, and were interned.

German intervention was less carefully planned. It would appear that Sanjurjo went to Berlin on February 4, 1936, but could get no commitment beyond a promise to provide the necessary transport planes to move the Moroccan forces to Spain if the Spanish fleet made transport by sea dangerous by remaining loyal to the government. As soon as Franco reached Morocco from the Canaries on July 18th, he appealed for these planes through a personal emissary to Hitler and through the German consul at Tetuan. The former met Hitler on July 24th, and was promised assistance. The plans to intervene were drawn up the same night by Hitler, Göring, and General Werner von Blomberg. Thirty planes with German crews were sent to Spain by August 8th, and the first one was captured by the Loyalist government the next day.

In the meantime, the revolt was a failure. The navy remained loyal because the crews overthrew their officers; the air force generally remained loyal; the army revolted, along with much of the police, but, except in isolated areas, these rebellious units were overcome. At the first news of the revolt, the people, led by the labor unions and the militia of the workers’ political parties, demanded arms. The government was reluctant because of fear of revolution from the Left as well as the Right, and delayed for several days. Two Cabinets resigned on July 18th and July 19th rather than arm the Left, but a new Cabinet under Jose Giral was willing to do so. However, because arms were lacking, orders were sent at once to France. The recognized government in Madrid had the right to buy arms abroad and was even bound to do so to some degree by the existing commercial treaty with France.

As a result of the failure of the revolt, the generals found themselves isolated in several different parts of Spain with no mass popular support and with control of none of the three chief industrial areas. The rebels held the extreme northwest (Galicia and Leon), the north (Navarre), and the south (western Andalusia) as well as Morocco and the islands. They had the unlimited support of Italy and Portugal, as well as unlimited sympathy and tentative support from Germany. But the rebel position was desperate by the end of July. On July 25th the German ambassador informed his government that the revolt could not succeed “unless something unforeseen happens.” By August 25th the acting state secretary of foreign affairs in Germany, Hans Dieckhoff, wrote, “it is not to be expected that the Franco Government can hold out for long, even after outward successes, without large-scale support from outside.”