PAUL PRESTON

DEDICATION

For James and Christopher

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue: The Enigma of General Franco

I | The Making of a Hero: 1892–1922
II | The Making of a General: 1922–1931
III | In the Cold: Franco and the Second Republic, 1931–1933
IV | In Command: Franco and the Second Republic, 1934–1936
V | The Making of a Conspirator: Franco and the Popular Front, 1936
VI | The Making of a Generalísimo: July – August 1936
VII | The Making of a Caudillo: August – November 1936
VIII | Franco and the Siege of Madrid: October 1936–February 1937
IX | The Axis Connection: Guadalajara & Guernica, March – April 1937
X | The Making of a Dictator: Franco & the Unificación, April 1937
XI | Franco’s War of Annihilation: May 1937–January 1938
XII | Total Victory: February 1938–April 1939
XIII | Basking in Glory: The Axis Partnership, April – September 1939
XIV | The Man Who Would Be Emperor: The Defeat of France, 1940
XV | The Price of Empire: Franco and Hitler, September – October 1940
XVI | In the Wings: Franco & the Axis November 1940–February 1941
XVII | Towards a New Crusade: February 1941–January 1942
XVIII | Watching the Tide Turn: January – December 1942
XIX | The Hero as Chameleon: January 1943–January 1944
XX | ‘Franco’s Victory’: January 1944–May 1945
XXI | The Hero Besieged: 1945–1946
XXII | A Winning Hand: 1947–1950
XXIII | The Sentinel of the West: 1950–1953
XXIV | Years of Triumph and Crisis: 1953–1956
XXV | Learning to Delegate: Homo Ludens, 1956–1960
XXVI | Intimations of Mortality: 1960–1963
XXVII | Preparing for Immortality: 1964–1969
XXVIII | The Long Goodbye: 1969–1975

Epilogue: ‘No enemies other than the enemies of Spain’

Notes

Sources

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise

Other Works

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE The Enigma of General Franco

DESPITE fifty years of public prominence and a life lived well into the television age, Francisco Franco remains the least known of the great dictators of the twentieth century. That is partly because of the smoke screen created by hagiographers and propagandists. In his lifetime, he was compared with the Archangel Gabriel, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, El Cid, Charles V, Philip II, Napoleon and a host of other real and imaginary heroes.¹ After a lunch with Franco, Salvador Dalí said ‘I have reached the conclusion that he is a saint’.² For others, he was much more. A children’s textbook explained that ‘a Caudillo is a gift that God makes to the nations that deserve it and the nation accepts him as an envoy who has arisen through God’s plan to ensure the nation’s salvation’, in other words, the messiah of the chosen people.³ His closest collaborator and eminence grise, Luis Carrero Blanco, declared in 1957 in the Francoist Cortes: ‘God granted us the immense mercy of an exceptional Caudillo whom we can judge only as one of those gifts which, for some really great purpose, Providence makes to nations every three or four centuries’.⁴

Such adulation may be dismissed as typical of the propaganda machine of a despotic regime. Nonetheless, there were many who spontaneously accepted these comparisons and many others, who by dint of their relentless repetition, failed to question them. This is not an obstacle to knowing Franco. What does render him more enigmatic is the fact that Franco saw himself in the inflated terms of his own propaganda. His inclination to compare himself to the great warrior heroes and empire-builders of Spain’s past, particularly El Cid, Charles V, Philip II, came to be second nature, and only partly as a consequence of reading his own press or listening to the speeches of his supporters. That Franco revelled in the wild exaggerations of his own propaganda seems at odds with the many eyewitness accounts of a man who was shy in private and inhibited and ill-at-ease on public occasions. Similarly, his cruelly repressive politics may seem to be contradicted by the personal timidity which led many who met him to comment just how little he coincided with their image of a dictator. In fact, the hunger for adulation, the icy cruelty and the tongue-tied shyness were all manifestations of a deep sense of inadequacy.⁵

The inflated judgements of the Caudillo and his propagandists are at the other extreme from the left-wing view of Franco as a vicious and unintelligent tyrant, who gained power only through the help of Hitler and Mussolini, and survived for forty years through a combination of savage repression, the strategic necessities of the great powers and luck. This view is nearer the truth than the wild panegyrics of the Falangist press, but it explains equally little. Franco may not have been El Cid but was neither so untalented nor so lucky as his enemies suggest.

How did Franco get to be the youngest general in Europe since Napoleon? How did he win the Spanish Civil War? How did he survive the Second World War? Does he deserve credit for the great Spanish economic growth of the 1960s? These are important questions with a crucial bearing on Spanish and European history in the twentieth century and they can be answered only by close observation of the man. He was a brave and outstandingly able soldier between 1912 and 1926, a calculating careerist between 1927 and 1936, a competent war leader between 1936 and 1939 and a brutal and effective dictator who survived a further thirty-six years in power. Even close observation, however, has to grapple with mysteries such as the contrast between the skills and qualities required to achieve his successes and a startling intellectual mediocrity which led him to believe in the most banal ideas.

The difficulties of explanation are compounded by Franco’s own efforts at obfuscation. In maturity, he cultivated an impenetrability which ensured that his intentions were indecipherable. His chaplain for forty years, Father José María Bulart, made the ingenuously contradictory comment that ‘perhaps he was cold as some have said, but he never showed it. In fact, he never showed anything’.⁶ The key to Franco’s art was an ability to avoid concrete definition. One of the ways in which he did that was by constantly keeping his distance, both politically and physically. Always reserved, at innumerable moments of crisis throughout his years in power, Franco was simply absent, usually uncontactable while hunting in some remote sierra.

The greatest obstacle of all to knowing Franco is that, throughout his life, he regularly rewrote his own life story. In late 1940, when his propagandists would have us believe that he was keeping a lonely and watchful vigil to prevent Hitler pulling Spain into the World War, he found the time and emotional energy to write a novel-cum-filmscript. Raza (Race) was transparently autobiographical. In it, and through its heroic central character, he put right all of the frustrations of his own life.⁷

Raza was merely the most extreme, and self-indulgent, manifestation of Franco’s tireless efforts to create a perfect past. Like his war diary of 1922, it provides invaluable insight into his psychology. In his scattered writings and thousands of pages of speeches, in his fragments of unfinished memoirs and in innumerable interviews, he endlessly polished his role and remarks in certain incidents, consistently putting himself in the best light and providing the raw material to ensure that any biography would be hagiography. The persistence of many favourable myths is a testimony to his success.

The need to tamper with reality which is revealed by Franco’s tinkering with his own past was indicative of considerable insecurity. He dealt with this not just in his writings but also in his life by creating for himself successive public personae. The security provided by these shields permitted Franco almost always to seem contained and composed. Everyone who came into contact with him remarked on his affably courteous, but always distant, manner. Behind the public display, Franco remained intensely private. He was abundantly imbued with the inscrutable pragmatism or retranca of the gallego peasant. Whether that was because of his origins as a native of Galicia, or the fruit of his Moroccan experiences is impossible to say. Whatever its roots in Franco, retranca may be defined as an evasion of commitment and a taste for the imprecise. It is said that if you meet a gallego on a staircase, it is impossible to deduce if he is going up or down. Franco perhaps embodied that characteristic more than most gallegos. When those close to him tried to get hints about forthcoming ministerial changes, they were rebuffed with skill: ‘People are saying that in the next reshuffle of civil governors so-and-so will go to Province X’, tries the friend; ‘Really?’ replies the sinuous Franco, ‘I’ve heard nothing’. ‘It’s being said that Y and Z are going to be ministers’, ventures his sister. ‘Well’, replies her brother, ‘I haven’t met either of them’.⁸

The monarchist aviator Juan Antonio Ansaldo wrote of him ‘Franco is a man who says things and unsays them, who draws near and slips away, he vanishes and trickles away; always vague and never clear or categoric’.⁹ John Whitaker met him during the Civil War: ‘He was effusively flattering, but he did not give a frank answer to any question I put to him. A less straightforward man I never met.’¹⁰

Mussolini’s Ambassador Roberto Cantalupo met him some months later and found Franco to be ‘icy, feminine and elusive [sfuggente]’.¹¹ The day after first meeting Franco in 1930, the poet and noted wit José María Pemán was introduced by a friend as ‘the man who speaks best in all Spain’ and remarked ‘I think I’ve just met the man who keeps quiet best in all Spain’ (‘Tengo la sospecha de baber conocido al bombre que mejor se calla en España’).¹²

In his detailed chronicles of their almost daily contact during more than seventy years of friendship, his devoted cousin and aide-de-camp, Francisco Franco Salgado-Araujo, ‘Pacón’, presents a Franco who issued instructions, recounted his version of events or explained how the world was threatened by freemasonry and Communism. Pacón never saw a Franco open to fruitful dialogue or to creative self-doubt. Another lifelong friend, Admiral Pedro Nieto Antúnez, presented a similar picture. Born, like Franco, in El Ferrol, ‘Pedrolo’ was to be successively ADC to the Caudillo in 1946, Assistant Head of the Casa Civil in 1950, and Minister for the Navy in 1962. He was one of Franco’s constant companions on the frequent and lengthy fishing trips on his yacht, the Azor. When asked what they talked about during the long days together, ‘Pedrolo’ said ‘I have never had a dialogue with the General. I have heard very long monologues from him, but he wasn’t speaking to me but to himself’.¹³

The Caudillo remains an enigma. Because of the distance that Franco so assiduously built around himself through deliberate obfuscations and silences, we can be sure only of his actions, and, provided they are judiciously evaluated, of the opinions and accounts of those who worked with him. This book is an attempt to observe him more accurately and in more detail than ever before. Unlike many books on Franco, it is not a history of twentieth-century Spain nor an analysis of every aspect of the dictatorship, but rather a close study of the man. Through memoirs and interviews, his collaborators have provided ample material and there are copious despatches by foreign diplomats who dealt with him face-to-face and reported on his activities. Franco’s own writings, his speeches – in which he often held a kind of dialogue with himself – and his recently published papers also constitute a rich, if not easy, source for the biographer. They are the instrument of his own obfuscations but they also provide remarkable insight into his own self-perception.

By use of these sources, it is possible to follow Franco closely as he became successively a conspirator, Generalísimo of the military rebels of 1936 and Caudillo of the victorious Nationalists. Several myths do not survive a comprehensive investigation of his survival of the Second World War and the Cold War and of his devious dealings with Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower. Equally striking is the picture which emerges of his passage from the active dictator of the 1950s to the somnolent figurehead of his last days. By following him step by step and day by day, a more accurate and convincing picture can emerge than has hitherto been current. Indeed, only by such an exhaustive examination can the enigma of the elusive Franco begin to be resolved.

I

THE MAKING OF A HERO

1892–1922

FRANCISCO FRANCO BAHAMONDE was born at 12.30 a.m. on 4 December 1892 in the calle Frutos Saavedra 108, known locally as the calle María, in El Ferrol in the remote north-western region of Galicia. He was christened Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo on 17 December in the nearby military parish church of San Francisco.*

At the time, El Ferrol, an inward-looking and still walled town, was a small naval base with a population of twenty thousand. The Franco family had lived there since the early eighteenth century and had a tradition of work in the intendencia naval (pay corps/administration).†¹ Franco’s grandfather, Francisco Franco Vietti, was Intendente Ordenador de la Marina (naval paymaster) with a rank equivalent to brigadier general in the Army. He had married Hermenegilda Salgado-Araujo, with whom he had two children. The first, Nicolás Franco Salgado-Araujo, the father of the future Caudillo, was born on 22 November 1855, his sister Hermenegilda on 1 December 1856.

Nicolás followed his father into the administrative branch of the Spanish navy in which, after fifty years service, he rose to be Intendente-General, a rank also equivalent to brigadier general. As a young man, stationed first in Cuba then in the Philippines, Nicolás acquired a reputation for fast living.‡ On 24 May 1890, when he was nearly thirty-five, Nicolás Franco Salgado-Araujo married the twenty-four year-old María del Pilar Bahamonde y Pardo de Andrade in the Church of San Francisco in El Ferrol. She was the pious daughter of Ladislao Bahamonde Ortega, commissar of naval equipment at the port. The union of this free-thinking bon viveur with the conservative, moralistic Pilar was not a success. Nevertheless, they had five children, of whom Nicolás was the first, Francisco the second, followed by Paz, Pilar and Ramón.*²

Franco’s family had been concerned for over a century with the administration of the naval base in El Ferrol. When Franco was born, the town was remote and isolated, separated from La Coruña by a twelve-mile steamer journey to the south across the bay or by forty miles of poor, and in bad weather, often impassable, road. La Coruña was in turn 375 miles, or two days by bone-shaking railway, from Madrid. El Ferrol was hardly a cosmopolitan place. It was a town of rigid social hierarchies in which the privileged caste consisted of naval officers and their families. Naval administrators or merchant navy officers were considered to be of a lower category. Social barriers cut the lower middle-class Franco family off from ‘proper’ naval officers since the administration corps was regarded as inferior to the sea-going Navy, or Cuerpo General. The idea of a heroic family naval tradition, so carefully nurtured by Franco himself in later life, was an aspiration rather than a reality. That can be perceived in Nicolás Franco Salgado-Araujo’s determination that his sons become ‘real’ naval officers.

Partly because a naval commission was a common ambition among the Ferrolano middle class and because of his father’s job, Francisco developed an interest in things of the sea. As a child he played pirates in the harbour with the gangplanks of the ferries and rowed in the tranquil waters of the virtually enclosed ría (firth or fjord) of El Ferrol.³ As an adolescent, he tried to join the Navy. His two primary schools, the Colegio del Sagrado Corazón and the Colegio de la Marina, both specialised in preparing children for the Navy entrance examinations.⁴ Nicolás Franco Bahamonde did manage to fulfil his father’s expectations, but Francisco’s naval ambitions were to be thwarted. His failure to enter the navy would weigh heavily on him. In Salamanca during the Civil War, it was common knowledge that to please him or deflect his anger it was always worth trying to change the subject to naval matters.⁵ As Caudillo, he spent as much time as he could aboard his yacht Azor, wore an admiral’s uniform at every opportunity and, when visiting coastal cities, liked to arrive from the sea on board a warship.

His childhood was dominated by the efforts of his mother to cope with the overbearing severity and later the constant absences of his father, the shadow of whose infidelities hung over the home. He was brought up by Doña Pilar in an atmosphere of piety and stifling provincial lower middle class gentility. Marriage had only briefly diminished the number and length of Nicolás Franco Salgado-Araujo’s card games and drinking sessions at the officers’ club. After the birth of his daughter Paz, in 1898, Nicolás had returned to his bachelor habits. The distress that this caused his wife was compounded by the death of Paz in 1903, after an undiagnosed illness lasting four months. Pilar Bahamonde was devastated.⁶ Nicolás Franco was, at home, a bad-tempered authoritarian who easily lost control of himself if contradicted. His daughter Pilar described him as running the house like a general, although she also claimed that he beat his sons no more than was the norm at the time, a double-edged claim which leaves it difficult to evaluate the scale and intensity of his violence. The young Nicolás bore the brunt of his anger and Ramón also carried a deep resentment of his father and his uncontrolled violence all through his life. Until Nicolás Franco left home in 1907, his children and his wife were often the victims of his frequent rages.

Francisco was too well-behaved, too much of a ‘little old man’ (niño mayor), in his sister’s phrase, to arouse his father’s anger with any frequency. Nevertheless, Pilar recounts the deep sulk that came over him whenever he was cuffed unjustly by his father.⁷ Unable to win his father’s acceptance and affection, Francisco seems to have turned in on himself. He was a lonely child, withdrawn to the point of icy detachment. A story is told that when he was aged about eight, Pilar heated a long needle until the tip was red-hot and pressed it onto his wrist. Allegedly, gritting his teeth as his flesh burnt, he said only ‘how shocking the way burnt flesh smells’.⁸ Within the family, Francisco was long overshadowed by his two brothers, Nicolás and Ramón, who were extroverts and took after their father. Nicolás, who became a naval engineer, was the father’s favourite. Interviewed in the press in 1926, Franco père dismissed as unremarkable the achievements of his two younger sons, Francisco as commander of the Foreign Legion and Ramón who had become the first man to fly the south Atlantic.⁹ Even in later life, when Francisco was Head of State, his father, when asked about ‘his son’, would perversely talk about Nicolás or sometimes Ramón. Only when pressed would Don Nicolás talk about the person he called ‘my other son’.

In total contrast to her despotic husband, Pilar Bahamonde was a gentle, kindly and serene woman. She responded to the humiliations suffered at the hands of the gambling and philandering Nicolás by presenting to the world a facade of quiet dignity and religious piety that hid her shame and the economic difficulties she had to face. That is not to say that the family suffered privations, since she received financial help from her father, Ladislao Bahamonde Ortega, who lived with her after the death of his wife, and also from her husband. Nevertheless, once her husband established residence in Madrid from 1907, what Pilar Bahamonde received from him must necessarily have been limited. There was always a maid in the house, but some sacrifices were required to keep up appearances. Sending all four children to private schools put a strain on the family economy. It has been suggested, although strenuously denied by the family, that she had to take in lodgers.¹⁰ Despite these difficulties, her kindness extended to her relations and she helped to bring up the seven younger children of her brother-in-law Hermenegildo Franco.¹¹

Pilar Bahamonde tried to imbue her children with a determination to get on in life and to escape from their situation by study and hard work, a philosophy which seems to have taken root principally with her second son and her daughter Pilar. Nevertheless, all four of her surviving children were to be fearless and powerfully ambitious in one way or another. Nicolás Franco Salgado-Araujo was a liberal, sympathetic to freemasonry and critical of the Catholic Church. In contrast, Pilar Bahamonde was politically conservative and a deeply pious Catholic. Given the circumstances of his childhood, and the nature and ideas of his father, it is hardly surprising that an enduring and unsubtle Catholicism, sexual prurience and a hatred for liberalism and freemasonry should be part of the legacy which the young Franco was left by his mother.¹² What is more intriguing is the fact that his brothers followed in the footsteps of Don Nicolás rather than those of Doña Pilar. After her husband left, Doña Pilar always wore black. It seems too that, as Francisco witnessed her introspective piety becoming an effective shield against her misfortunes, he suppressed his own emotional vulnerability at the cost of developing a cold inner emptiness.

Doña Pilar’s unhappiness and stoical attempts to put a good face on her plight made it difficult for her to compensate her children for the behaviour of her husband. Each responded differently: Francisco identified with his mother, denying the need for his father’s approval which he longed for and never achieved. His hedonistic elder brother Nicolás grew up to be as pleasure-loving as his father, free with money and with women. His wild younger brother Ramón would be an irresponsible adventurer, famous for his exploits as an air-ace and notorious for his decadent private life in the 1920s and for a superficial involvement with both anarchism and freemasonry. Francisco was much more deeply attached to his mother than were either of his brothers. He regularly accompanied her to communion and was a pious child. He cried when he made his first communion. When on leave in El Ferrol, the adult Francisco would never fail to fulfil any religious duty for fear of upsetting his mother.*¹³

It is impossible to say with any precision what effect the separation of his parents and the departure of his father had on Francisco, although there is surely some significance in the fact that one of the few remarks that he ever made on the subject of children was: ‘small children should never be separated from their parents. It is not good to let that happen. The child needs to have the security provided by the support of his parents and they should not forget that their children are their personal responsibility.’¹⁴ As Caudillo, Franco denied vehemently that there was anything abnormal in Don Nicolás’s relationship with his wife or his children. On one occasion, however, when given irrefutable evidence of his father’s pecadillos, his reaction was revealing. He snapped ‘Alright but they never diminished his paternal authority’.¹⁵ The difficulties of Franco’s relationship with his father were later reflected in various efforts to reconstruct it in an idealised way. In his diary of his first year in the Spanish Foreign Legion, he told a clearly apocryphal story in which can be discerned his own longings. A young officer in Morocco is crossing the street when a grizzled veteran soldier salutes him. The officer goes to return the salute, their eyes meet, they look at each other and embrace in tears. It is the officer’s long-lost father.¹⁶ It was a trial run for his autobiographical novel, Raza, in which he created the father he would rather have had as a naval hero of total moral rectitude. When his father died, he had the body seized and implicitly reinvented the second part of his life by having him buried with a pomp which, while in accord with military regulations, was hardly appropriate to the bohemianism of Don Nicolás’s final years. Franco’s own lifelong avoidance of drink, gambling and women bore testimony to a determination to create an existence which was the antithesis of his father’s life.

Franco would implacably reject all the things he associated with his father, from the pleasures of the flesh to the ideas of the Left. Franco’s repudiation of his father was matched by a deep identification with his mother, something which might perhaps be seen in many aspects of his personal style, a gentle manner, a soft voice, a propensity to weep, an enduring sense of deprivation. A tone of self-pitying resentment runs through his speeches as Caudillo, a continual echo of the hard-done-by little boy that he must have been, and was one of the motivating forces of his drive to greatness.

Two great political events of Franco’s early youth were to dominate his later development – the loss of Cuba in 1898 and the involvement of Spain in a costly colonial war in Morocco. Imperial disaster provoked civilian distrust of an incompetent Army and intensified military resentment of the political establishment and of civilian hostility to conscription. Throughout his life, Franco would remark on the profound effect that the 1898 ‘disaster’ had on him. In 1941, when he was near to declaring war on the Axis side, he declared ‘when we began our life, … we saw our childhood dominated by the contemptible incompetence of those men who abandoned half of the fatherland’s territory to foreigners’. He would see his greatest achievement as wiping out the shame of 1898.¹⁷

Francisco was five and a half when the great naval defeat at the hands of the United States occurred in Santiago de Cuba on 3 July 1898. Spain lost the remnants of her empire – Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Although it is highly unlikely that, at such an age, he was aware of what was happening, a disaster of that dimension could not but have a profound effect on a small naval garrison town like El Ferrol. Many of his school-friends lost relatives and wore mourning. Mutilated men were seen around the town for many years. More importantly, when he became a cadet in the Army, he went directly into an atmosphere which had festered since 1898. Defeat was attributed to the treachery of politicians who had sent naval and military forces into battle with inadequate resources. That it took the massively superior US forces three months to defeat the ramshackle Spanish fleet left Franco convinced that bravery was worth hundreds of tons of superior equipment.¹⁸

The defeat of 1898 had an immediate impact on Franco because of the consequent budget cuts. The Escuela de Administración Naval, the usual channel for boys of the Franco family into the Navy, was closed in 1901. It was decided that Nicolás and Francisco would prepare instead for the entrance examinations of the Cuerpo General de la Armada. They went to the local middle-class school, the Escuela del Sagrado Corazón. At this time, before his father abandoned the family home, Francisco was, according to contemporaries who saw him outside the family, a meticulous plodder, ‘good at drawing but otherwise quite average, quite ordinary. He was a nice lad, of a happy disposition, thoughtful; he took his time in answering questions but he was a playful lad.’¹⁹ He was of sickly appearance and so thin that his playmates nicknamed him cerillito (little match-stick). Within the family, his sister was struck by the extent to which Francisco emulated his mother’s quiet seriousness. He was an obedient, well-behaved and affectionate child, although timid, rather sad and uncommunicative. Then, as later, he had little spontaneity. He was very particular about his appearance, a trait that would follow him throughout his life. Even then he seemed older than his years and his obstinacy, astuteness and caution were evident. Among his closest childhood friends was his cousin Ricardo de la Puente Bahamonde, who would be executed in Morocco in 1936, with Franco’s acquiescence.²⁰ As an adolescent, Francisco showed a normal interest in girls, favouring slim brunettes, mainly from among his sister’s schoolfriends. He wrote them poems and was mortified when they were shown to his sister.²¹

The loss of Cuba was to have serious domestic consequences. It hastened the rise of a regionalist movement in Catalonia and imbued Army officers with a determination to wipe away the ignominy of defeat through a colonial enterprise in Morocco. Catalan regionalism and the Moroccan adventure were to interract in an explosive manner. The demonstration in 1898 of Spain’s international impotence shook the faith of the Catalan élites in the central government. The Catalan economy had depended on the Cuban market and now the previously latent sense that Madrid was an incompetent and parasitical obstacle to Catalan dynamism found ever more vocal expression, above all in the appearance in early 1901 of the Catalanist party, the Lliga Regionalista.²² In the context of insecurity and humiliation provoked by the loss of Cuba, military anger at what was seen as as political betrayal during the war with the USA was compounded by the emergence of militant Catalanism, which soldiers perceived as an aggressive separatist threat to the unity of the Patria.²³

In November 1905, the Barcelona offices of both the Catalan satirical magazine, Cu-Cut! and of the Lliga Regionalista’s newspaper, La Veu de Catalunya, were ransacked by three hundred fiercely centralist junior officers to the applause of the officer corps throughout Spain. Given widespread military approval of what was happening, the government was unable to impose discipline or to resist military demands for measures to punish offences against the honour of the Army. In 1906, politicians bowed to military readiness to interfere in politics by introducing the Ley de Jurisdicciones which gave the Army jurisdiction over perceived offences against the Patria, the King and the Army itself.²⁴ It was a considerable boost to the Army’s sense of superiority over civilian society.

On reaching the age of twelve, first Nicolás and then Francisco, together with their fourteen year-old cousin, Francisco Franco Salgado Araujo, entered the Naval Preparatory School run by Lieutenant-Commander Saturnino Suanzes. There they became friendly with Camilo Alonso Vega, who was to remain a lifelong comrade. Nicolás, and a friend of the two brothers, Juan Antonio Suanzes, were successful in their efforts to join the Cuerpo General de la Armada. Nicolás chose to go to the Naval Engineering School. Franco and his lanky cousin Pacón* nurtured hopes of going to the Escuela Naval Flotante, the naval cadet ship. Then a decree was published restricting entry which closed the way to them. There was never any question of seeking a career other than a military one and so the now fourteen year-old Franco was sent to the Academia Militar de Infantería in Toledo. Pacón failed the entrance examination for 1907 but was successful the following year.²⁵

When he accepted a post in Madrid in 1907, Nicolás Franco Salgado-Araujo went alone and gradually severed his links with his family. Members of his family have suggested that he was obliged to take the post, but having been able to spend nearly twenty years in El Ferrol without threat of being moved away, it seems more likely that he deliberately sought the posting to the capital in order to escape an unhappy marriage.²⁶ Although there was no divorce from Pilar, he later ‘married’ his lover Agustina Aldana in an informal non-religious ceremony in Madrid and lived with her in the calle Fuencarral in Madrid until his death in 1942. A child who lived with them and to whom they were devoted has been variously described as their illegitimate daughter or Agustina’s niece whom they had informally adopted. The scandalized family referred to Agustina as his ‘housekeeper’ (ama de llaves).²⁷

Accordingly, it was an embittered home in El Ferrol which the young Francisco left in July 1907 to take the entrance examinations for the military academy. He was accompanied on the long journey from La Coruña to Toledo by his father. Despite the fascination of the new landscapes through which he passed, the tension between him and his father made it a less than pleasant experience. Don Nicolás was unbending and rigid in the course of a journey during which his son needed encouragement and affection.²⁸ Despite these inauspicious beginnings, Franco passed his examinations and entered the Academy on 29 August 1907 along with 381 other aspirants, including many future comrades-in-arms such as Juan Yagüe and Emilio Esteban Infantes. The Academy occupied the Alcázar built by Carlos V which dominated the hill around which the town was built. Far from the misty green valleys of Galicia and the placid ría in which he used to sail, dusty Toledo in the arid Castilian plain must have constituted a brutal shock. Although there is no evidence of his being sensitive to the wealth of religious art with which Toledo abounded, it appears that he responded to the sense of the past which pulsates in its streets. In his novel Raza, the character representing Franco (the cadet José Churruca) ‘got more from the stones [of Toledo] than from his books’.²⁹ A growing obsession with the greatness of imperial Spain made him receptive to Toledo as a symbol of that greatness. His later identification with the figure of El Cid may also have had its origins in his adolescent ramblings around the historic streets of the town.

Life as an Army cadet would itself have strengthened his interest in Spanish history. Even by his own restrained account in later life, it is clear that he suffered some considerable agonies. Away from the loving care of his mother for the first time, young Franco had to grit his teeth and find inner reserves of determination to get on. In the austere conditions of the Alcázar, he would also have to deal with the problems arising from his anything but imposing physique (1.64 metres/5′4″ tall, and painfully thin). Already vulnerable because of the desertion of his father, the separation from his mother, his central refuge, must inevitably have forced him to cope with acute insecurity. He seems to have dealt with it in two related ways. First, he threw himself into Army life, fulfilling his tasks with the most thorough sense of duty and making a fetish of heroism, bravery and the military virtues. The rigid structures of military hierarchy and the certainties of orders gave him a framework to which he could relate. At the same time, he began to create another identity. The insecure teenager from Galicia would become the tough desert hero and eventually, as Caudillo, the El Cid-like ‘saviour of Spain’.³⁰

On account of his size and high-pitched voice, he was soon called Franquito (little Franco) by his companions and, during his three years in the Academy subjected to various minor humiliations. He was forced to drill with a rifle which had had fifteen centimetres sawn off the barrel. He worked hard, with a particular interest in topography and the uncritical and idealized military history of Spain served up to the cadets. Having no interest in sexual or alcoholic safaris into the more disreputable parts of the town, he became a target for the cruel initiation ceremonies (novatadas) of his fellow students, against which he reacted with some violence. In his own muted version, recollected nearly seventy years later, he spoke of the ‘sad welcome offered to those of us who came full of illusions to join the great military family’ and described the novatadas as a ‘heavy cross to bear’ (un duro calvario).³¹ Other accounts, seeking traces of the later hero in the young cadet, recount his virile reactions. One oft-repeated story tells how his books were hidden and he was punished for not having them in the correct place. They were hidden again. The cadet officer was about to punish him again when Franco threw a candlestick at his head. When taken before the C.O., he refused to name those who had picked on him.³² Such behaviour helped him to make some friends, including Camilo Alonso Vega, Juan Yagüe and Emilio Esteban Infantes, although he was never to be close to any of them.

In Britain and America, the Army cadet at the turn of the century began his military studies only after completing his civilian education. In Toledo, young, relatively uneducated boys began to absorb Army discipline and the conventions of the military view of the world when they were that much more ignorant and impressionable.³³ In professional terms, Franco can have learned little beyond the practical skills of horsemanship, shooting and fencing. The basic text-book was the Reglamento provisional para la instrucción teórica de las tropas de Infantería which was based on the lessons of the Franco-Prussian war and ignored the sweeping changes which had taken place in German military thinking since 1870. The increasing prominence given in both the German and British armies to the artillery and engineers was not replicated in Spain where the infantry remained dominant. The recent experience in Cuba was not used to draw any military conclusions, although they would have been immensely useful for the colonial adventures in North Africa. The stress was rather on discipline, military history and moral virtues – bravery in the face of the enemy, unquestioning faith in military regulations, absolute obedience and loyalty to superior officers.³⁴ Cadets were also imbued with an acute sense of the Army’s moral responsibilities as guardian of the essence of the nation. No slight or insult to the Army, to the flag, to the monarch, to the nation could ever be tolerated. By extension, when a government brought the nation into disrepute by permitting disorder then it was the duty of the patriotic Army officer to rise up against the government in defence of the nation.

The method of training was usually the rote learning of masses of facts, in particular of the details of the great battles of the Spanish past. However, these battles were examined as exemplars of bravery and resistance to the last rather than analysed for their tactical or strategic lessons. Franco’s own central memory of his time at the Academy was of a major on the teaching staff who had been decorated for heroism with the Cruz Laureada de San Fernando (the Spanish equivalent of the Victoria Cross). He had been given the medal for a hand-to-hand knife fight in Morocco from which, Franco recalled with pleasure, ‘he still had the glorious scars on his head’. The impact on Franco’s way of thinking – and, indeed, on his own methods when Director of the Spanish General Military Academy at Zaragoza twenty years later – was revealed in his remark that ‘this alone taught us more than all the other disciplines’.³⁵ When the cadets eventually went into the field, they had to improvise since they had been taught very little of practical application.

While Francisco was studying in Toledo, the events known as the semana trágica broke out in Barcelona in late July 1909. To military eyes, these disturbances were triply disturbing, with their connotations of anti-militarism, anti-clericalism and Catalan separatism. The government of Antonio Maura was under pressure from both Army officers close to Alfonso XIII and Spanish investors in Moroccan mines. Moreover, attacks by tribesmen on the railway leading to the port of Melilla had given rise to French threats to export their ore through Algeria. Maura also feared that France might use the apparent Spanish inability to keep order in her protectorate as an excuse to absorb it. Accordingly, he took advantage of an attack by tribesmen on the railway at Melilla on 9 July to send an expeditionary force to expand Spanish territory as far as the mineral deposits of the nearby mountains. The Minister of War decided to send a brigade of light infantry garrisoned in Barcelona. The brigade’s reservists, mainly married men with children, were called up and, without adequate preparations, embarked from the port of Barcelona over the next few days. Over the next week, there were anti-war protests in Aragón, Valencia and Catalonia in the home towns of the reservists. In Barcelona, on Sunday 18 July 1909, a spontaneous demonstration broke out against the war. On that same day, Rif tribesmen launched an attack on Spanish supply lines in Morocco. On the following day, news began to reach Spain of new military disasters in Melilla. Untrained, ill-equipped and devoid of basic maps, the appallingly ramshackle state of the Spanish Army was revealed again. Throughout the week, the scale of the defeat and of the casualties was inflamed by rumours. There were anti-war demonstrations in Madrid, Barcelona and cities with railway stations from which conscripts were departing for the war.

During the following weekend, anarchists and socialists in Barcelona agreed to call a general strike. On Monday 26 July, the strike spread quickly, although it was not directed against the employers, some of whom supported its anti-war purpose. The Captain-General of the region, Luis de Santiago, decided to treat it as an insurrection, overruling the civil governor, Angel Ossorio y Gallardo, and declared martial law. Barricades were set up in the streets of outlying working class districts and anti-conscription protests debouched into anti-clerical disturbances and church-burnings. General de Santiago could do no more than defend the principal points of the city because he feared that his conscripts would fraternize with the rioters. Reinforcements were delayed by the fact that the attention of the military high command and of the government was distracted by the battle of Barranco del Lobo in Morocco. By 29 July, however, units had arrived and the movement was put down over the next two days with the use of artillery. There were numerous prisoners taken and 1,725 people were subsequently tried, of whom five were sentenced to death. Among them was Francisco Ferrer Guardia, the free-thinking founder of the libertarian school, the Escuela Moderna.³⁶

Particularly spine-chilling accounts of what was happening were given to the cadets in Toledo by their instructors. There was outrage that pacifists and revolutionaries should be on the loose while part of the Army was fighting for survival in Morocco. The many international demonstrations on behalf of Francisco Ferrer were seen by the young Franco as the work of international freemasonry. The circle of cadets in which Franco moved regarded the events in Barcelona, and the defeat at Barranco del Lobo, as evidence that the political establishment was weak and incompetent.³⁷

The gulf between the military and civil society was widening dramatically at this time. It is impossible to comprehend Franco either personally or politically without understanding the extent to which he first assumed and then expressed the attitudes of the typical Army officer of his day. The milestones along the road to the civil-military divorce – the ‘disaster’ of 1898, the Cu-Cut! incident of 1905, the ‘tragic week’ of 1909 – were reached either shortly before Franco joined the Army or during his early, formative, years in the service. These events and their professional and political implications were inevitably the talk of military academies and officers’ messes. For someone as single-mindedly, not to say obsessively, committed to the military career as the young Franco, it was impossible for the resentments arising from these events not to be burnt deep into his consciousness.

Franco completed his studies at the Academy in June 1910. His ambition, like that of most of those who graduated at that time, was to go and fight in Morocco, where rapid promotion was possible and where he could help wipe out the shame of Cuba. On 13 July 1910, Franco was formally incorporated into the officer corps of the Army as a second lieutenant with the mediocre position of no. 251 of the 312 cadets of his year (of the original 381) who survived to graduate. Despite this mediocre start, Franco would be the first of his class to become a general.

It has been claimed that the young Franco applied immediately for a posting in Morocco, and was refused on the grounds of age, tough competition and his low place in the seniority list.³⁸ In fact, there would have been no point making a formal application for a posting in Morocco since, at the time, only first lieutenants and above could be posted to Africa.³⁹ He was posted to the Regimiento de Zamora no. 8, which was stationed in his home town of El Ferrol. There, from 22 August 1910 until February 1912, he was able to be near his mother and to show off his uniform to his contemporaries. He also had to face the crushing boredom of garrison duty in a small provincial town. Mornings were given over to parades and drills, afternoons to riding. Then there were guard duties. He was often able to eat at home. During this time, the continuing influence of his mother was reflected in the fact that he joined the religious confraternity Adoración Nocturna on 11 June 1911.⁴⁰ He also consolidated his friendship with Camilo Alonso Vega and with his cousin Pacón. At the end of 1911, the order prohibiting second lieutenants from being posted to Morocco was lifted and all three began to make frequent transfer requests.

Perhaps suffocated by the gloomy domestic situation, probably driven by patriotism, certainly aware of a second lieutenant’s poor pay and that opportunities for promotion would come easier in Morocco than in a Peninsular garrison, Franco was anxious to be on his way and to overcome his 251st placing. While he was harkening to the siren calls of Africa, the Left was campaigning vigorously against the colonial war in general and against conscription in particular. Like many young soldiers, Franco developed what would be a lifelong contempt for left-wing pacifism. With the situation of the Spanish Army deteriorating in Morocco, the transfer requests of the three young officers were finally accepted on 6 February 1912. They were posted as reserves to Melilla. Franco and his two companions immediately set off on the long and difficult journey. With the road to the nearest railway station flooded by rain storms, and the port for the normal ferry service to La Coruña closed, they decided to go to the Naval Headquarters in El Ferrol in search of a ride. They were allowed to travel on board the merchant ship Paulina, which involved a hair-raising storm-tossed six hour journey standing in a gangway. From La Coruña, they carried on by rail to Málaga where they arrived after two days travel. They reached Morocco on 17 February 1912.⁴¹

The thin, boy soldier with round staring eyes who arrived in Melilla found a filthy, run-down colonial town.⁴² The nineteen year-old Franco reported for duty at the Fort of Tifasor which was part of the outer defences of Melilla. Tifasor was under the command of Colonel José Villalba Riquelme, who had been Director of the Academia de Infantería when Franco was a cadet. Villalba Riquelme’s first order to him was to cover his sword scabbard in mat leather to stop it glinting and providing a target for snipers. Indeed, in the shortest time possible, Franco had to learn this and all the other practicalities of life in combat that he had not been taught in the Academy in Toledo nor learned on garrison duty in El Ferrol. Like most young officers, he can have had little expectation of the difficulties that faced the Spanish Army in the field.

The most obvious problem was the warlike local population’s bitter hatred of the occupying troops. Given the poor technological level of the Spanish armed forces, the Moroccan adventure would be no pushover. The Army was inefficient, weighed down by bureaucracy and inadequately supplied with obsolete equipment: it had more generals and fewer artillery pieces per thousand men than the armies of such countries as Montenegro, Romania and Portugal. Its eighty thousand men were commanded by more than tweny-four thousand officers of whom 471 were generals.⁴³ In the eyes of Army officers, the most damaging source of difficulty was the inability of the Spanish political establishment to provide either the resources or the decisive policy necessary to give the professional soldiers any chance of success. Indeed, the political élite’s awareness of the growing pacificism of much of public opinion merely confirmed many Army officers in their belief that Spain could not be properly ruled by civilians. Moreover, there was Spain’s subordinate position to France in the area. Spain was burdened with indefensible frontiers in Morocco which simply ignored the realities of tribal boundaries. French dominance also inhibited Madrid’s policy-making.

How this came to be so is almost inextricably complicated. Morocco was ruled by a Sultan who had to impose by terror his authority and his tax-collection system on the other tribal leaders. In the early years of the century, tribal leaders rebelled against the dissolute Sultan Abd el Aziz. In the general upheaval, two major revolts took place. The first was that of Bu Hamara in the lands between Fez and the Algerian border. The more important was that of El Raisuni, a vicious cattle rustler and tribal leader, in the Jibala mountains of the north-west. In the context of the still incomplete scramble for Africa, it was a situation that attracted the great powers.

For many years, Britain had maintained influence in Morocco to guarantee safe passage through the Straits of Gibraltar. However, since the humiliating debacle of the Fashoda incident in 1898 which had blocked their Egyptian ambitions, the French had been seeking to consolidate their empire to the west. They were anxious to find a way to take over the Moroccan Sultanate which was the obvious gap in an imperial chain from Equatorial Africa to Tunisia. By 1903, Britain, weakened by the Boer War, was apprehensive of the rise of Germany and open to a French Alliance. Unable in any case to prevent a French take-over, the British wanted above all to safeguard Gibraltar. In April 1904, in the Anglo-French Agreement, Britain consented to French ambitions in Morocco provided that the area opposite Gibraltar be in weaker, Spanish, hands.⁴⁴

It was left to the French to square things with the Spanish. In October 1904, the French granted northern Morocco to Spain. Tangier was given international status. Using the pretext of tribal disorders, the French then took over Morocco by instalments. By 1912, a formal French Protectorate was established. In November 1912, France signed an entente with Spain giving her a similar protectorate in the north. Subsequent political arrangements meant that the Sultan maintained nominal political control of all of Morocco under French tutelage. However, in the Spanish zone, local authority was vested in the Sultan’s representative, known as the Khalifa, who was selected by the Sultan from a short-list of two names drawn up by Madrid.

It was a situation fraught with difficulties. The Moroccans never accepted the arrangement, which they found deeply humiliating, and they fought it until they regained their independence in 1956. Spain’s long-standing military enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, had to communicate by sea. The recently acquired Protectorate of the interior was a roadless, infertile mountain wilderness. Moreover, because it ignored crucial tribal boundaries, the French gift to Spain was almost impossible to police. Thus, the Spaniards were to be involved in a ruinously expensive and virtually pointless war.⁴⁵ They did not enjoy the technological and logistical superiority which characterised other imperial adventures of the time. Curiously, Spain’s officers in general, and Franco in particular, nurtured two myths. The first was that Moroccans loved them; the second that the French had stood in the way of a Spanish Moroccan empire.

At the time of Franco’s arrival on African soil, the initiative in Spain’s Moroccan war lay with the Berber tribesmen who inhabited the two barren mountain regions of the Jibala to the west and the Rif. Battle-hardened, ruthless in the defence of their lands, familiar with the terrain, they were the opposite of the poorly trained and totally unmotivated Spanish conscripts who faced them. Franco claimed years later that he spent his first night in the field sleepless, with a pistol in his hand, out of distrust of his own men.⁴⁶ The recently arrived Franco was a small part of a series of military operations aimed at building a defensive chain of blockhouses and forts between the larger towns. That this was the Spanish tactic showed that nothing had been learned from the Cuban War where similar procedures had been adopted. Officers felt considerable resentment at the contradictory orders to advance or retreat emanating from the Madrid government.

After the insecurities of his childhood, the great formative experience of Franco’s life was his time as a colonial officer in Africa. The Army provided him with a framework of certainties based on hierarchy and command. He revelled in the discipline and happily lost himself in a military machine built on obedience and a shared rhetoric of patriotism and honour. Having arrived in Morocco in 1912, he spent ten and a half of the next fourteen years there. As he told the journalist Manuel Aznar in 1938, ‘My years in Africa live within me with indescribable force. There was born the possibility of rescuing a great Spain. There was founded the idea which today redeems us. Without Africa, I can scarcely explain myself to myself, nor can I explain myself properly to my comrades in arms.’⁴⁷ In Africa, he acquired the central beliefs of his political life: the Army’s role as the arbiter of Spain’s political destiny and, most importantly of all, his own right to command. He was always to see political authority in terms of military hierarchy, obedience and discipline, referring to it always as el mando.

As a young second lieutenant, Franco immediately threw himself into his duties, soon demonstrating the cold-blooded bravery born of his ambition. On 13 June 1912 he was confirmed as first lieutenant. It was his first and only promotion solely for reasons of seniority. On 28 August, Franco was sent to command the position of Uixan, which protected the mines of Banu Ifrur. The Moroccan war was intensifying but Franco was paying assiduous court to Sofía Subirán, the beautiful niece of the High Commissioner, General Luis Aizpuru. Bored by his elaborate formality and inability to dance, she successfully resisted a determined postal assault which lasted for nearly a year.⁴⁸ In the spring of 1913, stoical about his disappointment in love, he applied for a transfer to the recently formed native police, the Regulares Indígenas, aware that they were always in the vanguard of attacks and presented endless opportunities for displays of courage and rapid promotion. On 15 April 1913, Franco’s posting to the Regulares came through. At this time, El Raisuni began a major mobilization of his men. The Spanish base of Ceuta was reinforced by, among others, Franco and the Regulares. On 21 June 1913, he arrived at the camp of Laucien and was then posted to the garrison of Tetuán. Between 14 August and 27 September, he took part in several operations and began to make a name for himself. On 22 September, with his fierce Moorish mercenaries, he gained a small local victory for which, 12 October 1913, he was rewarded with the Military Merit Cross first class. In their relatively short existence, the Regulares had developed a tradition of exaggerated machismo scorning protection when under enemy fire. When Franco eventually reached the point at which he had the right to lead his men on horseback, he favoured a white horse, out of a mixture of romanticism and bravado.

For a brief period, the situation was stabilized in the Spanish Protectorate: the towns of Ceuta, Larache and Alcazarquivir were under control but communications in the harsh territory in between were threatened by El Raisuni’s guerrillas and snipers. Attempting to hold this area was ruinously expensive in men and money. The lines of communication were dotted with wooden blockhouses, six metres long by four metres wide, protected up to a height of one and a half metres by sandbags and surrounded by barbed wire. Building them under Moorish sniper fire was immensely dangerous. They were garrisoned by platoons of twenty-one men who lived in the most appallingly isolated conditions and had to be provisioned every few days with water, food and firewood. Provisioning required escorts who were vulnerable to sniper fire. Very occasionally, the chains of blockhouses communicated by heliograph and signal lamps.⁴⁹

For his bravery in a battle at Beni Salem on the outskirts of Tetuán on 1 February 1914, the twenty-one year-old Franco was promoted to captain ‘por méritos de guerra’, with effect from that date although it was not announced until 15 April 1915. He was building a reputation as a meticulous and well-prepared field officer, concerned about logistics, provisioning his units, map-making, camp security. Twenty years later, Franco told a journalist that to stave off boredom in Morocco, he had devoured military treatises, memoirs of generals and descriptions of battles.⁵⁰ By 1954, he had inflated this to the point of telling the English journalist S.F.A. Coles rather implausibly that, in his off-duty hours in Morocco, he had studied history, the lives of the great military commanders, the ancient Stoics and philosophers and works of political science.⁵¹ This later reconstruction by Franco contrasted curiously with the assertion of his friend and first biographer that he spent every available moment either at the parapet watching for the enemy through his binoculars or else surveying the terrain on horseback in order to improve his unit’s maps.⁵²

Whatever Franco did in his spare time, it was during this period that anecdotes began to be told about his apparent imperturbability under fire. He was said to be cold and serene in his risk-taking rather than recklessly brave. He was already making good his low position in the pass list of his year at the Academy (promoción). This came near to costing him his life during a large-scale clean-up operation against guerrilla tribesmen who were massing in the hills around Ceuta in June 1916. The guerrillas had their main support point about six miles to the west of the town, in the mountain top village of El Biutz, which dominated the road from Ceuta to Tetuán and was protected by a line of trenches manned by machine-gunners and riflemen. Rigidly constrained by their own field regulations, the Spaniards could be expected to make a frontal assault up the slope. As they were advancing, being decimated by fire from the trenches above, other tribesman planned to pour down the back of the hill, sweep around below the Spaniards and trap them in a cross-fire.

In the early hours of the morning of 29 June 1916, with high losses being recorded, Franco was part of the leading company of the Segundo Tabor (second battalion) of Regulares which was heading the advance. When the company commander was badly wounded, Franco assumed command. With men dropping all around him, he broke through the enemy encirclement and played a significant role in the fall of El Biutz. However, he was shot in the stomach. Normally, in Africa, abdominal wounds were fatal. That night’s report referred to Captain Franco’s ‘incomparable bravery, gift for command and energy deployed in combat’. The tone of the report implied that his death was inevitable. He was carried to a first aid post at a place called Cudia Federico. The medical officer staunched the bleeding and refused for two weeks to send him the six miles by stretcher to the casualty clearing station outside Ceuta. He believed that for the wounded man to be moved would kill him and the delay saved Franco’s life. By 15 July, Franco had recovered sufficiently to be transferred to the military hospital in Ceuta. There an X-ray showed that the bullet had not hit any vital organ. A fraction of an inch in any direction and he would have died.⁵³

In a war which, during his time in Africa, claimed the lives of nearly one thousand officers and sixteen thousand soldiers, it was to be Franco’s only serious wound. His luck gave rise to many later anecdotes about his daring. It also led his Moorish troops to believe that he was blessed with baraka, the mystical quality of divine protection which kept him invulnerable. Their belief seems to have infected him with his lifelong conviction that he had enjoyed the benevolent glance of providence. He later said somewhat portentously ‘I have seen death walk by my side many times, but fortunately, she did not know me’.⁵⁴ The location of the wound was also the basis of speculation about Franco’s apparent lack of interest in sexual matters. What little medical evidence is available does not support any such interpretation. Moreover, long before receiving the wound, Franco had refrained from participating in the sexual adventures of his comrades in his time as a cadet in the Academy and in subsequent postings in both mainland Spain and in Africa.⁵⁵ His distaste for his father’s behaviour is sufficient to account for the extreme propriety of his sex life.

The High Commissioner in Morocco, General Francisco Gómez Jordana, father of the future foreign minister, recommended Franco for promotion to major again ‘por méritos de guerra’ and the procedure also began for him to be awarded Spain’s highest award for bravery, the Gran Cruz Laureada de San Fernando. Both proposals were opposed by the Ministry of War. The military advisers of the Ministry cited the twenty-three year-old Franco’s age for denying the promotion. Franco reacted fiercely and appealed against the decision, seeking the support of the High Commissioner for a petition (recurso reglamentario) to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, King Alfonso XIII. In the face of such determination, the King granted the appeal and on 28 February 1917, Franco was promoted to Major with effect from 29 June 1916. He had taken exactly six years to rise from second lieutenant to major. Along the way, he had gained the reputation at the palace of being the officer who with the greatest cheek asked for help or made complaints about his career.⁵⁶ The nomination for the Laureada was turned down on 15 June 1918. It is a reasonable assumption that, having gained his promotion by going above the heads of the Ministerial advisers, Franco’s case was not reviewed with any great sympathy.⁵⁷

There can be little doubt that, at the time, Franco preferred the promotion to the medal.* The contrast between the natural timidity of the young second lieutenant who had arrived in Africa five years earlier and the determined drive to gain promotion holds an important clue to his psychology. Franco’s petition to Alfonso XIII revealed unfettered ambition. His bravery under fire was a means to the same end. The courage of the young soldier, like the cold authoritarianism of the dictator later on, may be interpreted as different manifestations of public personae which both protected him from any sense of inadequacy and provided ways of fulfilling his ambition. Franco left ample written evidence that he was not satisfied with the reality of his own life, most notably in his novel Raza. It is difficult not to suspect that Franco invented his own persona as the hero of the desert almost as deliberately as he did that of his hero José Churruca in Raza.

Promoted to major, Franco was obliged to return to mainland Spain since there were no vacant positions for officers of that rank in Morocco. He was posted instead to Oviedo in the spring of 1917 in command of a battalion of the Regimiento de Infantería del Príncipe. In Oviedo, he lived in the Hotel Paris where he became friends with a university student, Joaquín Arrarás, who would be his first biographer twenty years later. A year later, he was joined by his two companions Pacón and Camilo Alonso Vega. Despite his rank, his reputation for bravery and his brutal experiences in the Moroccan inferno, Franco’s adolescent appearance and his diminutive size led to him being known locally as ‘el comandantín’ (the little major).⁵⁸ Always reserved and never gregarious, he can hardly have enjoyed the routine of garrison life in Oviedo. The rainy climate and green hills of Asturias may have reminded him of his native Galicia but now the call of Africa was more powerful than that of home. As Arrarás put it, he had ‘the poison of Africa in his veins’.⁵⁹

In the daily colonial skirmishes, Franco had come to be admired and successful yet few of his comrades knew him. He was never to allow himself to become close to anyone, perhaps for fear of revealing his essential insecurity. Nevertheless, he had forged professional and even personal links which would remain a central part of his life. He had become an Africanista, one of those officers who believed that, in their commitment to fighting to conquer Morocco, they alone were concerned with the fate of the Patria. The esprit de corps consequent on shared hardship and daily risk developed into a shared contempt both for professional politicians and the pacifist left-wing masses whom the Africanistas regarded as obstacles to the successful execution of their patriotic duty. Life in a mainland posting also signified a drastic slowing down of the promotion process. Moreover, his high rank relative to his age must have made him the target of some resentment. In Morocco, for all his youth and his lack of social skills, he was recognized as a brave and competent soldier to be trusted under fire. In Oviedo, among officers who were twice his age but still only majors or captains, or generals who saw in him only a dangerous climber, he was not popular and was driven in on himself.⁶⁰

He was put in charge of the instruction of oficiales de complemento (auxiliary officers) which permitted him to establish relations with some important local families in the closed society of Oviedo. In the late summer of 1917, at a village fair (romería), he met an attractive local girl, María del Carmen Polo y Martínez Valdés, the daughter of a rich local family, albeit not as illustrious as it once had been. At the time, the slender dark-eyed Carmen was a fifteen year-old school-girl at the convent of Las Salesas. Franco wanted them ‘to walk out together’ but she refused on the grounds that, being a soldier, he could disappear as quickly as he had appeared. She also thought fifteen was too young for a steady relationship. Nevertheless, when she returned to the convent in the autumn of 1917, he wrote to her, although his letters were intercepted by the nuns and handed over to her family. With the imperturbable optimism and determination which characterized his professional behaviour, he began a dogged siege. Carmen, her school friends, and even the nuns, were thrilled to note that the famous Major now began to be a daily attender at 7 a.m. mass. He could catch a glimpse of her through a wrought-iron grill.⁶¹ The willowy and elegant Carmen Polo carried herself with a certain aristocratic hauteur. The deeply conservative Franco felt a near reverence for the aristocracy and admired his fiancée’s family and their way of life.⁶²

The incipient romance with the young Army officer of modest family, even more modest prospects and a dangerous occupation met with the initial opposition of the bride’s widowed father, Felipe Polo. He declared that to let his daughter marry Franco would be tantamount to letting her marry a bullfighter, a comment which carried with it considerable snobbery as well as a recognition of the risks of service in Africa.⁶³ Even more determined was the opposition of Carmen’s aunt Isabel, Felipe Polo’s sister, who, since the death of his wife had taken responsibility for the upringing of his four children. Like her brother, Isabel Polo hoped for a better match than a soldier for her niece.⁶⁴ However, despite this parental opposition, Franco pursued Carmen Polo tenaciously. He would pass messages to her in the hat-band of a mutual friend or else place them in the pockets of her coat while it hung in a café. They would meet clandestinely.⁶⁵ Ultimately, Carmen’s own determination would overcome the resistance of her family. Thereafter, that determination would be put at the service of her future husband’s career.

The relationship developed in a socially divided city. The inflation and shortages which resulted from the First World War were intensified by the militancy of the local working class. The Socialist Party took the lead in agitation against the deteriorating living standards along with attacks on the ‘criminal war in Morocco’ which deeply offended and infuriated Franco and other soldiers. Outrage that such attacks should be permitted was part of a general disgust with a political system which was blamed for the many disasters faced by the Army. Military discontent now came to the boil because of a simultaneous internal squabble between those who had volunteered to fight in Africa and those who had remained in the Peninsula, Africanistas and peninsulares. For those who had fought in Africa, the risks were enormous but the prizes, in terms of adventure and rapid promotion, high. The mainland signified a more comfortable, but boring, existence and promotion only by strict seniority. When salaries began to be hit, like those of civilians, by inflation, there was resentment among the peninsulares for those like Franco who had gained quick promotion. Some arms, such as the Artillery, had managed to impose a system of totally rigid seniority with an agreement by all members of its officer corps to refuse any promotion by merit. So-called Juntas de Defensa, rather like trade unions, were founded in many garrisons to protect the seniority system and to seek better pay.

What might have been an internal military issue was to contribute to a catastrophic upheaval in national politics. The coming of the First World War had already aroused political passions by giving rise to a bitter debate involving senior generals about whether Spain should intervene. Given the country’s near bankruptcy and the parlous state of the Army, neutrality was inevitable, much to the chagrin of many officers. Massive social upheaval came as a consequence of Spain’s position as a non-belligerent. Her economically privileged position of being able to supply both the Entente and the Central Powers with agricultural and industrial products saw coalmine-owners from Asturias, Basque steel barons and shipbuilders, and Catalan textile magnates experience a spiralling boom which constituted the first dramatic take-off for Spanish industry. The balance of power within the economic elite shifted. Agrarian interests remained pre-eminent but industrialists were no longer prepared to tolerate their subordinate political position. Their dissatisfaction came to a head in June 1916 when the Liberal Minister of Finance, Santiago Alba, attempted to impose a tax on the notorious war profits of northern industry without a corresponding measure to deal with those made by the agrarians. Although the move was blocked, it so underlined the arrogance of the landed elite that it precipitated a bid by the industrial bourgeoisie to carry through political modernisation.

In the kaleidoscopic confusion of rapid economic growth, social dislocation, regionalist agitations and a bourgeois reform movement, the military was to play an active and contradictory role. The discontent of the Basque and Catalan industrialists had already caused them to challenge the Spanish establishment by sponsoring regionalist movements which infuriated the profoundly centralist military mentality. Now the self-interested reforming zeal of industrialists determined to hold on to their war profits coincided with the more desperate bid for change from a proletariat impoverished by the war. Boom industries attracted rural labour to towns where the worst conditions of early capitalism prevailed. This was especially true of Asturias and the Basque Country. At the same time, massive exports created shortages, rocketing inflation and plummeting living standards. The Socialist trade union, the Unión General de Trabajadores (General Union of Workers) and the anarcho-syndicalist Confederation Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Labour) were drawn together in the hope that a joint general strike might bring about free elections and then reform.⁶⁶ While industrialists and workers pushed for change, middle-rank Army officers were protesting at low wages, antiquated promotion structures and political corruption. A bizarre and short-lived alliance was forged in part because of a misunderstanding about the political stance of the Army.

Military complaints were couched in the language of reform which had become fashionable after Spain’s loss of empire in 1898. Known as ‘Regenerationism’, it associated the defeat of 1898 with political corruption. Ultimately, ‘Regenerationism’ was open to exploitation by either the Right or the Left since among its advocates there were those who sought to sweep away the degenerate political system based on the power of local bosses or caciques by democratic reform and those who planned simply to destroy caciquismo by the authoritarian solution of ‘an iron surgeon’. However, in 1917 the officers who mouthed ‘Regenerationist’ cliches were acclaimed as the figureheads of a great national reform movement. For a brief moment, workers, capitalists and the military were united in the name of cleansing Spanish politics of the corruption of caciquismo. As things turned out, the great crisis of 1917 was not resolved by the successful establishment of a political system capable of permitting social adjustment but instead consolidated the power of the entrenched landed oligarchy.

Despite a rhetorical coincidence in their calls for reform, the ultimate interests of workers, industrialists and officers were contradictory and the existing system survived by skilfully exploiting these differences. The Prime Minister, the Conservative Eduardo Dato, conceded the officers’ economic demands. He then provoked a strike of Socialist railway workers in Valencia, forcing the UGT to act before the anarcho-syndicalist CNT was ready. Now at peace with the system, the Army was happy to defend it by crushing with excessive harshness the strike which broke out on 10 August 1917. In Asturias, where the strike was pacific, the military governor General Ricardo Burguete y Lana declared martial law on 13 August. He accused the strike organizers of being the paid agents of foreign powers. Announcing that he would hunt down the strikers ‘like wild beasts’, he sent columns of regular troops and Civil Guards into the mining valleys to cow the population. A curfew was imposed by a campaign of terror. The severity of Burguete’s response, with eighty dead, one hundred and fifty wounded and two thousand arrested of whom many were severely beaten and tortured, guaranteed the failure of the strike.⁶⁷

One of the columns was under the command of the young Major Franco. Consisting of a company of the Regimiento del Rey, a machine-gun section from the Regimiento del Princípe and a detachment of Civil Guards, he played a significant role in re-establishing order after the strike. Indeed, the official historian of the Civil Guard referred to him as ‘the man responsible for restoring order’.⁶⁸ Despite several allegations that his actions at this time established his reliability in the eyes of the local bourgeoisie, Franco himself claimed years later, before a huge audience of Asturian miners, that his column had seen no action.⁶⁹ That seems unlikely but it is impossible to reconstruct now the exact role that he played in the repression. Certainly, his job was to protect the mines from sabotage and, within the terms of martial law, to pass judgement on cases of fighting between individual strikers and Civil Guards since the strike had been declared. Implausibly, in 1963, he told George Hills, then head of the BBC Spanish services, that the appalling conditions which he saw led him to start a huge programme of reading in sociology and economics.⁷⁰ In contrast to Franco’s paternalist recollections, Manuel Llaneza, the moderate leader of the Asturian mineworkers union wrote at the time of the ‘odio africano’ (African hatred) that had been unleashed against the mining villages, in an orgy of rape, looting, beatings and torture.⁷¹

The growing hostility of many Army officers to the existing political system was intensified in the years following 1917 by the major campaign carried out by the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (the Spanish Socialist Workers Party) against the Moroccan war and by the indecision shown by successive governments. Army officers simply wanted to be given the resources and the liberty to elaborate policy without political hindrance. Successive governments, inhibited by ever greater popular hostility to the loss of life in Morocco, reduced material support and imposed an essentially defensive strategy upon the Army. In the eyes of the military high command, the hypocritical politicians were playing a double game, demanding of the soldiers cheap victories while remaining determined not to be seen sinking resources into a colonial war.⁷² Accordingly, instead of proceeding to the full-scale occupation of the Rif which the military regarded as the only proper solution, the Army was obliged to keep to the limited strategy of guarding important towns and the communications between them. Inevitably, the tribal guerrillas were able to attack the supply convoys, involving the military in a seemingly interminable war of attrition which they blamed on the civilian politicians. An effort to change the trend of events was made in August 1919 when, on the death of General Gómez Jordana, the prime minister, the Conde de Romanones, named the forty-six year-old General Dámaso Berenguer as High Commissioner for the Moroccan Protectorate. A brilliant officer with an outstanding record, Berenguer had risen to be Minister of War in November 1918.⁷³

One of the difficulties faced by Berenguer was the ambition and jealousy of the military commander of Ceuta, General Manuel Fernández Silvestre. Although they liked and respected each other, and were both favourites of Alfonso XIII, their working relationship was complicated by the fact that Silvestre was two years older than Berenguer, had once been his commanding officer and outranked him, albeit by only one number, in the seniority list. That seniority, together with Silvestre’s personal friendship with the King, fuelled his tendency towards insubordination. There were major policy differences between them, Silvestre wanting an all-out showdown with the Moroccan tribes; Berenguer inclining towards a peaceful domination of the tribes by the skilful use of indigenous forces.⁷⁴ Berenguer drew up a three year plan for the pacification of the zone. It aimed at the eventual linking of Ceuta and Melilla by land. The first part envisaged the conquest of the tribal territory to the east of Ceuta, known as Anyera, including the town of Alcazarseguir. This was to be followed by the domination of the Jibala with its two major towns, Tazarut and Xauen. With government approval, the plan was initiated with the occupation of Alcazarseguir on 21 March 1919. This led El Raisuni to retaliate with a campaign of attacks on Spanish supply convoys.

At this time, Franco was sufficiently removed from events in Morocco to have joined the Juntas de Defensa despite the fact that they advocated promotion by rigid seniority. It may be supposed that he did so without conviction and in response to the jealousy of junior officers, much older than himself, who had not served in Africa. After all, the Juntas’ policy, if generally applied, would remove the major incentive for officers to volunteer to serve in Morocco. Before Franco could get too involved in the concerns of the Peninsular Army, seeds of dramatic changes in his existence and in his future prospects had been sown on 28 September 1918, when he travelled from his unit in Oviedo to Valdemoro near Madrid. He remained there until 16 November taking part in an obligatory marksmanship course for majors. There he met Major José Millán Astray, a man thirteen years older than himself and about to be promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. Renowned for his manic bravery and consequent serious injuries, Millán explained to Franco his ideas for creating special units of volunteers for Africa along the lines of the French Foreign Legion. Franco was excited by their discussions and impressed Millán Astray as a possible future collaborator.⁷⁵

Franco returned to garrison duty in Oviedo where he remained throughout 1919 and for most of 1920. During that time, Millán Astray had presented his ideas to the then Minister of War, General Tovar. In his turn, Tovar had passed them on to the General Staff and Millán was sent to Algeria to observe the structure and tactics of the French Foreign Legion. After he returned, a royal order was published approving the principle of a foreign volunteer unit. Tovar was then replaced by General Villalba Riquelme who shelved the idea pending the more thorough-going reorganization of the African Army then being contemplated. In May 1920, Villalba was in turn replaced by the Vizconde de Eza who happened to hear Millán Astray lecture on the subject of the new unit at the Círculo Militar in Madrid. Eza was sufficiently convinced to authorize its recruitment.

In June 1920, Millán met Franco again in Madrid to offer him the job of second-in-command of the Spanish Legion. At first, given his now flourishing relationship with Carmen and the fact that Morocco seemed, for the moment at least, to be as quiet as mainland Spain, he was not particularly excited by the offer.⁷⁶ However, after a brief hesitation, and faced with the prospect of kicking his heels interminably in Oviedo, he accepted. It was to be the beginning of a difficult period for Carmen Polo which was to show that she could match her husband in patience and determination. Speaking about the experience eight years later, she said ‘I had always dreamed that love would be an existence lit up by joy and laughter; but it brought me nothing but sadness and tears. The first tears that I shed as a woman were for him. When we were engaged, he had to leave me to go to Africa to organize the first bandera of the Legion. You can imagine my constant anxiety and unease, terribly intensified on the days that the newspapers talked about operations in Morocco or when his letters were delayed more than usual.’⁷⁷

The Legion was formally established on 31 August 1920 under the name Tercio de Extranjeros (Tercio, or third, was the name used in the sixteenth century for regiments in the Army of Flanders which had been composed of three groups, pikemen, crossbowmen and arquebusiers). At its inception, it also had three banderas, (‘colours’ or ‘flags’) or battalions. Millán Astray disliked the name Tercio and always insisted on calling the new force ‘the Legion’, a name Franco also favoured. In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, there had been no problem recruiting volunteers. On 27 September 1920, Franco was named commander of its primera bandera (first battalion). Putting aside his plans for a life with Carmen Polo, he set off on the Algeciras ferry on 10 October 1920, accompanied by the first two hundred mercenaries, a motley band of desperados, misfits and outcasts, some tough and ruthless, others simply pathetic. They were hard cases, ranging from common criminals, via foreign First World War veterans who had been unable to adjust to peacetime, to the gunmen (pistoleros) who fought in the social war then tearing Barcelona apart. This short, slight, pallid twenty-eight year-old major, with his high-pitched voice, seemed poorly fitted to be able to command such a crew.

Millán Astray was obsessed with death and offered his new recruits little more than the chance to fight and die. The romantic notion that the Legion would offer its outcast recruits redemption through sacrifice, discipline, hardship, violence and death was held dear by both Millán and Franco throughout their lives. It underlies Franco’s diary of its first two years, Diario de una bandera, a curious mixture of sentimentalised Beau Geste-style adventure-story romanticism and cold insensitivity in the face of human bestiality. In his speech of welcome to the first recruits, a hysterical Millán told them that, as thieves and murderers, their lives had been at an end before joining the Legion. Inspired by a frenzied and contagious fervour, he offered them a new life but the price to be paid would be their deaths. He called them ‘los novios de la muerte’ (the bridegrooms of death).⁷⁸ They gave the Legion a mentality of brutal ruthlessness which Franco was to share to the full even though he remained outwardly reserved. Discipline was savage. Men could be shot for desertion and for even minor infractions of discipline.⁷⁹ Throughout the time that he was second-in-command to Millán Astray, Franco never wavered in his obedience, discipline and loyalty, although the temptation to contradict his manic commander must have been considerable.⁸⁰

On the night of their arrival in Ceuta, the legionaries terrorised the town. A prostitute and a corporal of the guard were murdered. In the course of chasing the culprits, there were two more deaths.⁸¹ Franco was obliged to take the primera bandera to Dar Riffien, where an old arch was rebuilt with the inscription ‘Legionarios a luchar; legionarios a morir’ (Legionaries onward to fight; Legionaries onward to die’). They had arrived in Africa at a difficult moment. Berenguer had proceeded to the second stage of his grand plan for the occupation of the Spanish zone. On 14 October 1920, El Raisuni’s headquarters, the picturesque mountain town of Xauen, had been occupied by Spanish troops. To the Moors, Xauen was ‘the Sacred City’ or ‘the mysterious’. Tucked into a deep gorge, the historic fortified redoubt of Xauen was theoretically unconquerable. Its capture was an almost bloodless triumph thanks to the military Arabist, Colonel Alberto Castro Girona, who had entered the city disguised as a Moorish charcoal burner and, by a mixture of threats and bribes, persuaded the notables to surrender.⁸² However, since the marauding tribes between Xauen and Tetuán were not subdued, an expensive policing operation had now to be undertaken. Within a week of arriving, Franco’s legionaries were sent to Uad Lau to guard the road to Xauen.

Franco would soon be joined by his eternal cronies, his cousin Pacón, and Camilo Alonso Vega. He charged Alonso Vega with creating a battalion farm to provide funds to permit decent provisioning and the building of better barracks. The farm was a great success, not only providing fresh meat and vegetables for the troops but also making a profit. Similarly, Franco made the arrangements for a permanent fresh water supply from the nearby mountains to Dar-Riffien.⁸³ It was typical of his methodical and thoughtful approach to the practicalities of both camp life and hostilities against the Moors. His concerns were narrowly military. Encased in the shell of his public persona, he apparently shared few of the feelings and appetites of his comrades, becoming known as the man without fear, women or masses, (‘sin miedo, sin mujeres, y sin misa’). With no interests or vices other than his career, his study of terrain, map work and general preparations for action made the units at his command stand out in an Army notorious for indiscipline, inefficiency and low morale.

In addition, in the Legion, Franco was to show a merciless readiness to impose his power over men physically bigger and harder than himself, compensating for his size with an unnerving coldness. Despite fierce discipline in other matters, no limits were put by Millán Astray or by Franco on the atrocities which were committed against the Moorish villages which they attacked. The decapitation of prisoners and the exhibition of severed heads as trophies was not uncommon. The Duquesa de la Victoria, a philanthropist who organized a team of volunteer nurses, would receive in 1922 a tribute from the Legion. She was given a basket of roses in the centre of which lay two severed Moorish heads.⁸⁴ When the Dictator General Primo de Rivera visited Morocco in 1926, he was appalled to find one battalion of the Legion awaiting inspection with heads stuck on their bayonets.⁸⁵ Indeed, Franco and other officers came to feel a fierce pride in the brutal violence of their men, revelling in their grim reputation. That notoriety was itself a useful weapon in keeping down the colonial population and its efficacy taught Franco much about the exemplary function of terror. In his Diario de una bandera, he adopted a tone of benevolent paternalism about the savage antics of his men.⁸⁶ In Africa, as later in the Peninsula during the Civil War, he condoned the killing and mutilation of prisoners. There can be little doubt that the years of early manhood spent amidst the inhuman savagery of the Legion contributed to the dehumanizing of Franco. It is impossible to say whether he arrived in Africa already so cut off from normal emotional responses as to be untouched by the pitiless brutality which surrounded him. When Franco had been in the Regulares, a somewhat older officer, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, was struck with the imperturbability and satisfaction with which he presided over the cruel beatings to which Moorish troops were subjected in punishment for minor misdemeanours.⁸⁷ The ease with which he now became accustomed to the bestiality of his troops certainly suggests a lack of sensitivity bordering on inner emptiness. That would account for the unflinching, indeed insouciant, way he was able to use terror in the Civil War and the subsequent years of repression.

To survive and prosper in the Legion, the officers had to be as hard and ruthless as their men. At one point, preoccupied by a rash of indiscipline and desertions, Franco wrote to Millán Astray requesting permission to resort to the death penalty. Millán consulted with higher authorities and then told Franco that death sentences could be passed only within the strict rules laid down by the code of military justice. A few days later, a legionaire refused to eat his food and then threw it at an officer. Franco quietly ordered the battalion to form ranks, picked a firing squad, had the offending soldier shot, and then made the entire battalion file past the corpse. He informed Millán that he took full responsibility for an action which he regarded as a necessary and exemplary punishment to re-establish discipline.⁸⁸ On another occasion, Franco was informed that two legionaires who had committed a robbery and then deserted had been captured. ‘Shoot them’, he ordered. In reply to a protest from Vicente Guarner, his one-time contemporary at the Toledo military academy who happened to be visiting the unit, Franco snapped ‘Shut up. You don’t realize what kind of people they are. If I didn’t act with an iron hand, this would soon be chaos.’⁸⁹ According to one sergeant of the Legion, both men and officers were frightened of him and of the eery coldness which enabled him to have men shot without batting an eyelid. ‘You can be certain of getting everything that you have a right to, you can be sure that he knows where he’s taking you but as for how he treats you … God help you if there is anything missing from your equipment, or if your rifle is dirty or you are a loafer’.⁹⁰

At the beginning of 1921, General Berenguer’s long-term scheme of slow occupation, fanning out from Ceuta, was prospering. At the same time, General Manuel Fernández Silvestre was engaged in a more ambitious, indeed reckless, campaign to advance from Melilla westwards to the bay of Alhucemas. On 17 February 1921, Silvestre had occupied Monte Arruit and was making plans to cross the Amekran River. Advancing into inaccessible and hostile territory, Silvestre’s success was more apparent than real. Abd-el-Krim, the aggressive new leader who had begun to impose his authority on the Berber tribes of the Rif, warned Silvestre that, if he crossed the Amekran, the tribes would resist in force. Silvestre just laughed.⁹¹ However, Berenguer was satisfied that Silvestre had the situation under control and had decided to squeeze El Raisuni’s territory by capturing the Gomara mountains. The Legion was ordered to join the column of one of the outstanding officers in the Spanish Moroccan Army, Colonel Castro Girona. Their task was to help in the establishment of a continuous defensive line of blockhouses between Xauen and Uad Lau. When that line met the other which joined Xauen to Alcazarquivir, El Raisuni was surrounded. On 29 June 1921, the legionaries were in the vanguard of the force sent to assault El Raisuni’s headquarters.

However, before the attack was mounted, on 22 July 1921, one of the banderas of the Legion was ordered to proceed to Fondak without being given any reason. Lots were drawn and Franco’s bandera was selected. After an exhausting forced march, they arrived to be ordered to carry on to Tetuán and then to Ceuta. When they reached Tetuán, they heard rumours of a military disaster near Melilla. On arrival at Ceuta, the rumours were confirmed and they were put aboard the troop transport Ciudad de Cádiz and sent to Melilla.⁹² What they did not know was the scale of the disaster. General Fernández Silvestre had over-extended his lines across the Amekran towards the Bay of Alhucemas and suffered a monumental defeat at the hands of Abd-el-Krim. Known by the name of the village Annual, where it began, the defeat was in fact a rout which took place over a period of three weeks and rolled back the Spanish occupation to Melilla itself. As the Spanish troops fled, enthusiastic tribesmen joined the revolt. Garrison after garrison was slaughtered. The fragility and artificiality of the Spanish protectorate was brutally exposed. All of the gains of the last decade, five thousand square kilometres of barren scrub, won at the cost of huge sums of money and thousands of lives, disappeared in a matter of hours. There would be horrific massacres at outposts near Melilla, Dar Drius, Monte Arruit and Nador. Within a few weeks, nine thousand Spanish soldiers died. The tribesmen were on the outskirts of a panic-stricken Melilla yet, too preoccupied with looting, they failed to capture it, unaware that the town was virtually undefended.⁹³

At that point, reinforcements arrived, among them Franco and his men who reached Melilla on 23 July 1921 and were given orders to defend the town at all costs.⁹⁴ The Legion was used first to mount an immediate holding operation, then to consolidate the outer defences of Melilla to the south. From their defensive position in the hills outside the town, Franco could observe the siege of the last remnants of the garrison at the village of Nador but his request for permission to take a detachment of volunteers to relieve them was denied. Defeat followed defeat, Nador falling on 2 August and Monte Arruit on 9 August.⁹⁵ The Legion was sent out piecemeal to strengthen other units in the area, to escort supply columns, to hold the most exposed blockhouses. It was an exhausting task, with officers and men on duty round the clock.⁹⁶ Through the press and his published diary, the role played by Franco in the defence of Melilla contributed to his conversion into a national hero. In particular, he enhanced his reputation in the relief of the advanced position at Casabona, by unexpectedly using his escort column to attack the besieging Moroccans.⁹⁷ He had learned from fighting the Moorish tribesmen how, contrary to peninsular field regulations, effective use could be made of ground cover.⁹⁸

By 17 September 1921, Berenguer was able to order a counter-attack to recoup some of the territory lost. The Legion was once more in the vanguard. On the first day of the offensive, near Nador, Millán Astray was seriously wounded in the chest. He fell to the ground shouting ‘they’ve killed me, they’ve killed me’ then sat up to shout ‘¡Viva el Rey! ¡Viva España! ¡Viva la Legión!’. As stretcher-bearers came to carry him away, he handed over command to Franco.

When the young major and his men entered Nador, they found heaps of the unburied, rotting corpses of their comrades killed six weeks earlier. Franco wrote later that Nador, with the bodies lying in the midst of the scattered booty of the attackers, was ‘an enormous cemetery’.⁹⁹ In the following weeks, he and his men were used in many similar operations, taking part in the recapture of Monte Arruit on 23 October. He saw no contradiction in the fact that, although he approved of the atrocities committed by his own men, he was appalled by the mutilation of the hundreds of corpses of Spanish soldiers found at Monte Arruit. He and his men left Monte Arruit ‘feeling in our hearts a desire for revenge, for the most exemplary punishment ever seen down the generations’.¹⁰⁰ Franco himself recounted that, on one occasion during the campaign, a captain ordered his men to cease firing because their targets were women. One old Legionarie muttered ‘but they are factories for baby Moors’. ‘We all laughed’, wrote Franco in his diary, ‘and we remembered that during the disaster [at Melilla], the women were the most cruel, finishing off the wounded and stripping them of their clothes, in this way paying back the welfare that civilization brought them.’¹⁰¹

On 8 January 1922, Dar Drius fell to Berenguer’s column and much of what had been lost at Annual had been recaptured. Franco was indignant about the fate of Spanish soldiers massacred by the Moors at Dar Drius in 1921 and outraged that the Legion was not permitted to enter the village and take its revenge.¹⁰² However, they had their chance a few days later. An incident took place which led the press in Galicia to praise ‘the sang froid, the fearlessness and the contempt for life’ of the ‘beloved Paco Franco’. A blockhouse near Dar Drius was attacked by tribesmen and the defending legionãrios were forced to appeal for help. The Commander of the Spanish forces in the village ordered the entire detachment of the Legion there to go to their aid. Franco said that twelve would be enough and asked for volunteers. When the entire unit stepped forward, he chose twelve and they set off. The attack on the blockhouse was driven off. The next morning Franco and his twelve volunteers returned carrying ‘as trophies the bloody heads of twelve harqueños (tribesmen)’.¹⁰³

When occasional leave permitted, Franco would visit Carmen Polo in Asturias. On these trips to Oviedo, as an ever more celebrated military hero, he was a welcome guest at the dinner parties of the local aristocracy. His presence was entirely compatible with a reverence for the nobility which would remain constant throughout his life.¹⁰⁴ Here, as he socialised, he began to make contacts which would be useful in later life and he also began to make an investment in his public image which suggests the scale of his ambition. The press began to seek him out. In interviews, speeches made at banquets given in his honour and in his publications, he began consciously to project the image of the selfless hero. Shortly after he had taken over command of the Legion from Millán Astray, Franco had received a telegram of congratulations from the Alcalde (mayor) of El Ferrol. In the heat of battle, he found time to make a self-deprecatory reply: ‘The Legion is honoured by your greeting. I merely fulfil my duties as a soldier. An affectionate greeting to the town from the legionarios’.¹⁰⁵ It was typical of Franco’s perception of himself at the time as the brave but self-effacing officer who is interested only in his duty. It was an image in which he believed implicitly and also one which he made some effort to project publicly. On leaving an audience with the King in early 1922, he told reporters that the King had embraced him and congratulated him on his success commanding the Tercio during Millán Astray’s absence: ‘What he has been said about me is a bit exaggerated. I merely fulfil my duty. The rank-and-file soldiers are truly valiant. You could go anywhere with them’.¹⁰⁶ It would be wrong to say that when Franco spoke in such terms he was merely being cynical. There is little doubt that the young major sincerely saw himself in the Beau Geste terms of his own diary. Nonetheless, his behaviour in interviews and the fact that he published the diary in late 1922, freely giving away copies of it, suggest an awareness of the value of a public presence in the longed-for transition from hero to general.

* Francisco in memory of his paternal grandfather, Hermenegilda in memory of his paternal grandmother and in honour of his godmother, Paulino in honour of his godfather and Teódulo because he was christened on the feast of Saint Teódulo.

† There has been much idle speculation that his family was Jewish, on the basis of his appearance and because both Franco and Bahamonde are common Jewish surnames in Spain.

‡ Indeed, after Franco’s death, there were press revelations concerning Nicolás’s relationship in Manila with a fourteen-year-old girl, Concepción Puey, with whom he was said to have had an illegitimate son, Eugenio Franco Puey, who made himself known to Francisco Franco in 1950 – Opinión, 28 February 1977; Interviu, No. 383, 14–20 September 1983.

* Nicolás was born 1 July 1891, Pilar 27 February 1895 and Ramón 2 February 1896.

* Often he would join her in the difficult trek up the Pico Douro to the east of El Ferrol to pray to the Virgen de Chamorro in fulfilment of promises she had made in her prayers for his safe return.

* ‘Pacón’ means ‘big Frank’ which he was always called to distinguish him from Franco, who was known in the family as ‘Paquito’ or ‘little Frank’.

* In retrospect, he nurtured considerable resentment about his failure to receive the Gran Cruz for what happened at El Biutz. Forty-five years later, when he reconstructed the episode, he said that the wound had been to the liver rather than the lower abdomen, which might suggest some sensitivity about its alleged consequences for his masculinity. He claimed that, despite the gravity of the wound, he had heroically continued directing operations from his stretcher. In this fanciful recollection, he had missed the medal only because the doctor who attended him had reported later that he had been on the verge of collapse, in the mistaken belief that this would strengthen his case for the award. As it was, according to Franco, this led the adjudicators to conclude that his state of health would not have permitted him to continue in command. Ramón Soriano, La mano izquierda de Franco (Barcelona, 1981) pp. 141–2.

II

THE MAKING OF A GENERAL

1922–1931

FRANCO WAS beginning to evince signs of cultivating his public image, but he was genuinely popular with his men because of his methodical thoroughness and his insistence on always leading assaults himself. He was a keen advocate of the use of bayonet charges in order to demoralize the enemy. With his exploits well reported in the national press, he was being converted into a national hero, ‘the ace of the Legion’. The rotund and plain-speaking General José Sanjurjo, himself one of the heroes of the African campaign and Franco’s superior officer, said to him ‘you won’t be going to hospital as a result of shot fired by a Moor but because I’m going to knock you down with a stone the next time I see you on horseback in action’.¹

In June 1922, Sanjurjo recommended Franco for promotion to Lieutenant-Colonel for his role in the recapture of Nador. Because enquiries were still being held into the disaster of Annual, the request was turned down. Nevertheless, Millán Astray was promoted to full colonel and Sanjurjo himself to Major-General. Franco merely received the military medal and remained a Major. Outraged by civilian criticisms of the Army and by indications that the government was contemplating withdrawal from Morocco, Millán Astray made a number of injudicious speeches and was removed from command of the Legion on 13 November 1922. To his chagrin, Franco was not invited to take his place since, still a major, he was too junior. Command was given instead to Lieutenant-Colonel Rafael de Valenzuela of the Regulares. Having been passed over for command, Franco then left the Legion. For the man who had built it up from scratch with Millán, the prospect of being second-in-command to a newcomer must have seemed unacceptable.² He requested a mainland posting and was eventually sent back to the Regimiento del Príncipe in Oviedo.

To the dismay of most Army officers, the collapse at Annual reinforced the pacifism of the Left and diminished the public standing of both the Army and the King. Alfonso XIII was widely suspected of having encouraged Silvestre to make his rash advance.³ In August 1921, General José Picasso had been appointed to head an investigation into the defeat. The Picasso report led to the indictment of thirty-nine officers including Berenguer, who was obliged to resign as High Commissioner on 10 July 1922. Throughout the autumn of 1922, the Picasso report was the object of hostile scrutiny by a committe of the Cortes, known as the ‘Responsibilities Commission’, set up to examine political responsibilities for the disaster. The brilliant Socialist orator Indalecio Prieto denounced the corruption which had weakened the colonial Army and so ensured that Silvestre’s temerity would turn into overwhelming defeat. The Socialist deputy called for the closure of the military academies, the dissolution of the quartermasters corps and the expulsion from the Army of the senior officers in Africa. His speech was printed as a pamphlet and one hundred thousand copies were distributed free of charge.⁴

Berenguer had been replaced by General Ricardo Burguete, under whom Franco had served in Oviedo in 1917. Burguete as High Commissioner followed government orders to attempt to pacify the rebels by bribery rather than by military action. On 22 September 1922, he made a deal with the now obese and burnt-out El Raisuni whereby, in return for controlling the Jibala on behalf of Spain, he was given a free hand and a large sum of money. Since he was already under siege in his headquarters at Tazarut in the Jibala, El Raisuni’s power might have been squashed definitively had the Spaniards had the imagination and daring to occupy the centre of the Jibala. The policy of accommodation was a major error. Spanish troops were withdrawn from the territory of a man on the verge of defeat. He was enriched and his reputation and power inflated.

Burguete’s aim was to pacify the tribes in the west in order to have more freedom in his efforts to crush the altogether more dangerous Abd-el-Krim in the east. After first pursuing negotiations with him for the ransom of Spanish prisoners of war, Burguete passed to the offensive in the autumn. Burguete intended to use, as his forward base, the hill-top fortified position of Tizi Azza, to the south of Annual. However, before his attack could get under way, the Rif tribes struck at the beginning of November 1922. Safely ensconced in the slopes above the town, they fired down on the garrison causing two thousand casualties and obliging the Spaniards to dig in for the winter.⁵

The worsening situation in Morocco and the compromises pursued by Burguete may have convinced Franco that he was right to have left the Legion, whatever his reasons might have been. He was showered with honours as he passed through Madrid en route to Asturias. The King bestowed on him the Military Medal on 12 January 1923 and the honour of being named gentilhombre de cámara, one of an élite group of military courtiers.⁶ Franco was also the guest of honour at a dinner given by his admirers.

He was also the subject of an immensely flattering and revealing profile written by the Catalan novelist and journalist Juan Ferragut. It constitutes a portrait of Franco at the point when, with marriage around the corner, heroism was giving way to a more calculated ambition.* In Ferragut’s profile, there can still be heard the tone of the eager man of action which would soon disappear from Franco’s repertoire. Nevertheless, the clichéd patriotism and romanticised heroism of many of his remarks suggest that the persona of the intrepid desert hero was not entirely natural and spontaneous. When asked why he had left Morocco, Franco replied ‘because we aren’t doing anything there anymore. There’s no shooting. The war has become a job like any other, except that it’s more exhausting. Now all we do is vegetate.’ There was a contrived element about Franco’s answers which suggested an intense consciousness of his public image. When Ferragut asked him if he liked action, the thirty year-old Major replied ‘yes … at least up to now. I believe that a soldier has two periods, one of war and one of study. I’ve done the first and now I want to study. War used to be more simple; all you needed was heart. But today it is more complicated; it is, perhaps, the most difficult science of them all’. Ferragut described him as boyish: ‘his sunburnt face, his black, brilliant eyes, his curly hair, a certain timidity in his speech and gestures and his quick and open smile make him seem like a child. When he is praised, Franco blushes like a girl who has been flattered.’ He brushes aside the praise, as befits a hero, ‘but I’ve done nothing really! The dangers are less than people think. It’s all a question of endurance’.

Asked about his most emotional memory of the war, he replied ‘I remember the day at Casabona, perhaps the hardest day of the war. That day we saw what the Legion was made of. The Moors were pressing strongly and we were fighting at twenty paces. We had a company and a half and we suffered one hundred casualties. Handfuls of men were falling, almost all wounded in the head or the stomach, yet our strength never wavered for a second. Even the wounded, dragging themselves along covered in blood, cried ‘¡Viva la Legión! Seeing them, so manly, so brave, I felt an emotion which choked me.’ Asked if he had ever felt fear, he smiled as if puzzled, and shyly replied ‘I don’t know. No one knows what courage and fear are. In a soldier, all this is summed up in something else: the concept of duty, of patriotism.’ The romantic note continued with references to the anxious vigils of his mother and bride-to-be. Ferragut asked him directly, ‘Are you in love, Franco?’ to which the affable interviewee replied ‘¡Hombre!, what do you think? I’m just off to Oviedo to get married.’⁷

On 21 March 1923, Franco arrived in Oviedo where his exploits ensured that he would be feted. At the beginning of June, local society turned out in force for a banquet at which he was presented with a gold key, the symbol of his recently acquired status as Gentilhombre de cámara, purchased for him after a local subscription. The King had still not granted the reglamentary permission for his wedding. Since this was a mere formality, the ceremony was being planned for June. However, while Carmen and Francisco were waiting to hear from the Palace, their plans suffered another reversal. Franco had gone to El Ferrol where he spent most of May with his family. In early June, Abd el Krim launched another attack on Tizi Azza, the key to the outreaches of the Melilla defence lines. If Tizi Azza fell, it would have been relatively easy for other Spanish positions to collapse in a domino effect. On 5 June 1923, the new commander of the Legion, Lieutenant-Colonel Valenzuela, was killed in a successful action aimed at breaking the siege.⁸

An emergency cabinet meeting three days later, on 8 June 1923, decided that the most suitable replacement for Valenzuela was Franco. The Minister of War, General Aizpuru, telegrammed to inform him that he had been promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel with retrospective effect from 31 January 1922 and that the King had bestowed command of the Legion upon him. His marriage would have to be postponed again. The ambitious Carmen may have found consolation for the loss of her bridegroom in his promotion, the signs of royal patronage and the enormous local prestige that he thereby enjoyed, although, interviewed in 1928, she talked of her anxieties while he was away and of his principal defect being his love for Africa.⁹

Prior to leaving Spain, Franco was the guest of honour at banquets in both the Automobile Club in Oviedo and at the Hotel Palace in Madrid. One of the principal Asturian newspapers dedicated an entire front page to his promotion and his prowess, complete with extravagant tributes from General Antonio Losada, the military governor of Oviedo, from the Marqués de la Vega de Anzó and other local dignitaries.¹⁰ Interviewed on arrival at the Automobile Club banquet on the evening of Saturday 9 June, Franco showed himself to be the public’s ideal young hero, dashing, gallant and, above all, modest. He dismissed talk of special bravery and showed himself perplexed by all the fuss that was being made. Clearly conscious of the dash he was cutting, he interrupted the journalist’s attempted eulogy by saying ‘I just did what all the Legionaires did, we fought with a desire to win and we did win’. A discreet reminder of what he was leaving behind brought a delicate glimpse of emotion which Franco quickly put behind him. The journalist remarked sycophantically ‘how the brave Legionaires will rejoice at your appointment!’. Franco replied ‘Rejoice? Why? I’m an officer just like …’, only to be interrupted by a passing ex-Legionaire who said ‘say yes, that they will all rejoice, of course they will rejoice’. Like a hero of romantic fiction, Franco replied with a modest laugh, saying ‘Don’t go overboard. Yes, you’re right, the lads care for me a lot.’

The interview ended with Franco being asked about his plans, at which he gave another hint of the sacrifice he was having to make. He replied with a curious mixture of virile enthusiasm and self-regarding pomposity: ‘Plans? What happens will decide that. I repeat that I am a simple soldier who obeys orders. I will go to Morocco. I will see how things are. We will work hard and as soon as I can get some leave I will come back to Oviedo to … to do what I thought was virtually done, which for the moment duty prevents, taking precedence over any feelings, even those with roots deep in the soul. When the Patria calls, we have only rapid and concise response: ¡Presente!’¹¹ There is no doubt that this, and other interviews from this period, show an altogether more attractive figure than the one that Franco was later to become, in large measure as a consequence of the corrupting influence of constant adulation. The Minister of War and future President of the Second Republic, Niceto Alcalá Zamora, thought Franco’s near contemporary and rival, Manuel Goded, a more promising officer than Franco. However, he liked Franco’s air of modesty, ‘the loss of which when he became a general damaged him significantly’.¹²

Within a week of passing through Madrid, Franco had taken up his new command in Ceuta and was soon in the thick of the action. Shortly after Franco’s arrival in Africa, Abd el Krim followed up his attack on Tizi Azza with another on Tifaruin, a Spanish outpost near the River Kert to the west of Melilla. Nearly nine thousand men besieged Tifaruin and they were dislodged on 22 August by two banderas of the Legion under Franco’s command.¹³

Such was the accumulated military discontent about what was perceived as civilian betrayal of the Army in Morocco that since early in 1923 two groups of senior generals, one in Madrid and the other in Barcelona under Miguel Primo de Rivera, had been toying with the idea of a military coup.¹⁴ The incident which triggered it off took place on 23 August. There were a number of public disturbances in Málaga involving conscripts being embarked for Africa. Civilians were jostled and Army officers assaulted. Some of the recruits were merely drunk, others were Catalan and Basque nationalists making political protests. Order was finally restored by the Civil Guard. An NCO in the Engineering Corps (suboficial de ingenieros), José Ardoz, was killed and the crime was attributed to a gallego, Corporal Sánchez Barroso. Sánchez Barroso was immediately tried and sentenced to death. Since Annual, there had been a widespread public revulsion against the Moroccan enterprise and, in consequence, there was a huge outcry about the death sentence. On 28 August, Sánchez Barroso was given a royal pardon, at the request of the cabinet. The officer corps was outraged by the humiliation of the Málaga incidents, by the subsequent public rejection of their cause in Morocco and by what they saw as the slight involved in the pardon.¹⁵

On 13 September, the Falstaffian eccentric General Miguel Primo de Rivera launched his military coup supported by the garrisons of his own military region of Catalonia and by that of Aragón, under the control of his intimate friend General Sanjurjo. There is considerable debate about the King’s complicity in the coup. What is certain is that he acquiesced in the military demolition of the constitutional monarchy and happily embarked on a course of authoritarian rule. After six years of sporadic bloodshed and instability since 1917, and the fashionable ‘regenerationist’ calls for an ‘iron surgeon’, the Military Directory set up by Primo de Rivera met with only token resistance and, given widespread disillusion with the caciquista system, much benevolent expectation.¹⁶ Despite the mutual admiration which, at this stage of their careers, united Franco and Sanjurjo, neither Franco nor most of the officers of the Legion were particularly enthusiastic about the coup. They regarded most of the officers who supported Primo as primarily members of the Juntas de Defensa and therefore enemies of promotion by merit. In addition, they were fully aware of the belief of Primo himself that Spain should abandon her Moroccan protectorate.¹⁷ It is clear, however, that Franco had no objections in principle to the military taking political power, particularly as royal approval was quickly forthcoming. In any case, his mind was on other things – his new command and his impending marriage, for which royal permission had finally been granted on 2 July.¹⁸

The thirty year-old Francisco Franco was married to the twenty-one year-old María del Carmen Polo in the Church of San Juan el Real in Oviedo at midday on Monday 22 October 1923. His fame and popularity as a hero of the African war ensured that substantial crowds of well-wishers and casual onlookers would gather round the church and on the pavements of the streets traversed by the wedding party. By 10.30 a.m., the Church was full and the crowd had spilled out and packed the surrounding streets. The police had difficulty maintaining the flow of local traffic. As befitted his position as a gentilhombre de cámara, Franco’s padrino (best man) was Alfonso XIII, by the proxy of the military governor of Oviedo. General Losada took Carmen’s arm and they entered the Church under the royal canopy (palio). That honour, combined with Franco’s growing reputation, was reflected in the fact that his marriage was reported in the society pages not only of local newspapers but also of the national press. A bemedalled Franco wore the field uniform of the Legion. The ceremony was carried out by a military chaplain while the organ played Franco’s choice of military marches. On leaving the church, the couple were greeted by wild cheering and applause. The crowd followed the cars back to the Polo house and continued to cheer.¹⁹ The marriage constituted a major social occasion in Oviedo, the centre-piece of which was a spectacular wedding banquet.²⁰ Franco’s father, Nicolás Franco Salgado-Araujo, was not present. As might have been expected, it was to be a solidly enduring, if not a passionate, marriage.* Five years later, Carmen would recall her wedding day, ‘I thought I was dreaming or reading a beautiful novel … about me’.²¹ Among the mountains of telegrams was a collective greeting from the married men of the Legion and another from a Legion battalion which welcomed Carmen as their new mother.²²

The social position of both bride and groom was reflected in the fact that those who signed the marriage certificate as witnesses included two local aristocrats, the Marqués de la Rodriga and the Marqués de la Vega de Anzó. The unctuous tone of local reporting not only gives an indication of the prestige that Franco already enjoyed but it also reflects the kind of adulation with which he was bombarded. ‘Yesterday, Oviedo enjoyed moments of intimate and longed-for satisfaction and of jubilant delight. It was the wedding of Franco, the brave and popular head of the Legion. If the desire of the couple to see their love blessed before the altar was great, the interest of the public was no less immense on seeing them happy with their dream of love come true. In this pure love, all of us who know Franco and Carmina have given something of their own hearts and have suffered with them their worries, their anguish, their justified impatience. From the King down to the last of the hero’s admirers there was a unanimous desire that this love, so beset by ill-luck, should have the divine sanction which would lead them to the supreme happiness.’²³ ‘The pause in the struggle of the brave Spanish warrior has had its triumphant apotheosis. Those polite and gallant phrases whispered by the noble soldier in the ear of his beautiful beloved have had the divine epilogue of their consecration.’²⁴ One journal in Madrid headed its commentary with the headline ‘The Wedding of an heroic Caudillo’ (warrior-leader).²⁵ This was one of the first ever public uses of the term Caudillo with respect to Franco. It can easily be imagined how such adulatory prose moulded Franco’s perception of his own importance.

By tradition, on marrying, a senior officer was required to ‘kiss the hands’ of the King. After a few days honeymoon spent at the Polo summer house, La Piniella near San Cucao de Llanera outside Oviedo, and prior to setting up home in Ceuta, the newly weds travelled to Madrid and called at the royal palace in late October. In 1963, the Queen recalled lunch with a silent and timid young officer.²⁶

In later years, Franco himself twice recounted the interview with the King to his cousin and also to George Hills. Franco alleged in these accounts that the King was anxious to know how the Army in Africa felt about the recent coup and the military situation in Morocco. Franco claimed to have told the King that the Army was doubtful about Primo because of his belief in the need to abandon the protectorate. When the King demonstrated an equally pessimistic inclination to pull out, Franco boldly replied with his opinion that the ‘rebels’ (the local inhabitants) could be defeated and the Spanish protectorate consolidated. He allegedly pointed out that, so far, Spanish operations had been piecemeal, pushing back the Moors from one small piece of ground after another, attempting to hold it, and to retake it after it had been recaptured. Rather than this endless drain on men and materials, Franco suggested an idea long favoured by Africanistas, a major attack on the headquarters of Abd el Krim in the region of the Beni Urriaquel tribe. The most direct route was by sea to the Bay of Alhucemas.

The King arranged for Franco to dine with General Primo de Rivera and tell him of his plan.²⁷ Primo was hardly likely to be sympathetic given both his long-standing conviction that Spain should withdraw from Morocco and his determination, as Dictator, to reduce military expenditure.²⁸ When he met Franco, Primo would almost certainly not have been surprised to hear that the young Lieutenant-Colonel shared the commitment of the Africanistas to remaining in Morocco. Franco had long since published his variant of the view that Spain’s Moroccan problem would be solved at Alhucemas, ‘the heart of anti-Spanish rebellion, the road to Fez, the short exit to the Mediterranean, and there is to be found the key to much propaganda which will end the day that we set foot on that coast.’²⁹ The idea of a landing at Alhucemas had been in the air for some years and the general staff had prepared detailed contingency plans in the event of the politicians giving the go-ahead. According to his own account, by the time Franco managed to put his case for a landing to the Dictator, it was in the early hours of the morning. The anything but abstemious Primo was somewhat merry, and Franco was convinced that he would never remember their conversation. Nevertheless, Primo suggested that he submit his scheme in written form.

In this subsequent version of events, Franco’s narrative is tailored to show that the plan for the Alhucemas landing was his own. That he should remember it as his own brainchild was entirely understandable after years of being told so by sycophants and given the fact that he did play a prominent role in putting the case against withdrawal from Morocco.³⁰ At the beginning of 1924, he had been one of the founders, along with General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, of a journal called Revista de Tropas Coloniales which advocated that Spain maintain its colonial presence in Africa. At the start of 1925, he would become head of its editorial board. Franco was to write more than forty articles for the journal. In one published in April 1924, entitled ‘passivity and inaction’, he argued that the weakness of Spanish policy, ‘the parody of a protectorate’, was encouraging rebellion among the indigenous tribes.³¹ It made a considerable impact.

Shortly after visiting the King, the newly wed Franco and his bride took up residence in Ceuta. The situation in Morocco seemed ominously quiet. In fact, by the spring of 1924, Abd el Krim’s power had grown enormously and he no longer recognized the authority of the Sultan. He was presenting himself as the figurehead of a vaguely nationalistic Berber movement and talking in terms of establishing an independent socialist state. Numerous tribes accepted his leadership and, under his self-bestowed title of ‘Emir of the Rif’, in 1924, he formally requested membership of the League of Nations.³² After the defeat of Annual, the Spanish counter-offensive had recaptured an area around Melilla. Apart from that, the Spanish foothold consisted only of the towns of Ceuta, Tetuán, Larache and Xauen. The local garrisons were confident that they could hold the territory but were seriously disturbed by rumours that they were about to receive orders to withdraw. Anticipating difficulties, the military commander of Ceuta, General Montero, during the fesival of the Pascua Militar on 5 January called upon the officers under his command to give their word that they would obey orders no matter what they were. Franco took the lead in pointing out that they could not be asked to obey orders that were contrary to military regulations.³³

Possibly alerted by these objections, Primo de Rivera finally decided to inspect the situation personally. In the meantime, Sanjurjo was sent to take over as commander of Melilla. Abd el Krim greeted him with an offensive on Sidi Mesaud only to be driven back by the Legion commanded by Franco. When the Dictator arrived in June 1924, he quickly grasped the essential absurdity of the Spanish military predicament. His inclination was to abandon the Protectorate on the grounds that to pacify it fully would be too expensive and to go on holding it on the basis of strings of waterless, indefensible blockhouses was ludicrous. For part of his tour, the Dictator insisted on being accompanied by Franco. At the time, the young Lieutenant-Colonel was deeply concerned about rumours that Primo had come to arrange a Spanish withdrawal. He had just tried to convince the High Commissioner, General Aizpuru, that the publication of orders to abandon the inland towns would provoke a major offensive by the forces of Abd el Krim. Franco had agreed with Lieutenant-Colonel Luis Pareja of the Regulares that, in the event of a withdrawal from Xauen, they would both apply for transfers to the mainland. In a letter to Pareja in July 1924, Franco declared that when the time came the bulk of his officers would do the same.³⁴

At one notorious dinner, in Ben Tieb on 19 July 1924, there was an incident involving the Legion and the Dictator which has become the basis of subsequent myth. This was the dinner at which, legend in the Legion would have it, Franco had arranged for the Dictator to be served a menu consisting entirely of eggs.³⁵ Huevos (eggs) being the Spanish slang for testicles, the machista symbolism was obvious: the visitor needed huevos and the Legion had plenty to spare. However, given Franco’s fanatical respect for discipline and his ambitious concern for his career, it is difficult to believe that he would so blatantly insult a senior officer and head of the government. In 1972, Franco denied that such a menu had been served.

At the dinner, Franco made a harsh but careful speech against abandonismo. What he said revealed his lifelong commitment to Spanish Morocco: ‘where we tread is Spanish soil, because it has been bought at the highest price and with the most precious coin: the Spanish blood shed here. We reject the idea of pulling back because we are convinced that Spain is in a position to dominate her zone.’ Primo responded with an equally strong speech explaining the logic behind plans for a withdrawal and a call for blind obedience. When a Colonel of Primo’s staff said ‘muy bien’ (hear, hear), the irascible and diminutive Major José Enrique Varela, unable to contain himself, shouted ‘muy mal’. Primo’s speech was interrupted by hissing and hostile remarks. Sanjurjo, who accompanied him, later told José Calvo Sotelo, the Dictator’s Minister of Finance, that he had kept his hand on the butt of his pistol throughout the speeches, fearing a tragic incident. When the Dictator finished he was greeted with total silence. Franco, ever careful, hastened to visit Primo immediately after the dinner to clarify his position. He said that if what had happened required punishment, he was prepared to resign. Primo made light of Franco’s part in the affair and permitted him to return later and again put his point of view about a landing in Alhucemas.³⁶ In his own 1972 version, he claimed, implausibly, to have given Primo de Rivera a dressing down. As a consequence, he said, Primo de Rivera promised to do nothing without consulting the ‘key officers’.³⁷

Shortly after the Ben Tieb dinner, the Dictator prepared an operation to fold up 400 positions and block-houses. As Franco and others had warned, the talk of withdrawal encouraged Abd el Krim and stimulated the desertion of large numbers of Moroccan troops from the Spanish ranks. Lieutenant-Colonel Pareja understood that this meant that the conditions agreed with Franco for their joint resignations had arrived. He presented his transfer request and was disgusted to discover that Franco had not kept his word. Franco, always cautious, particularly after his confrontation with Primo de Rivera, remained in his post.³⁸ Shortly after the return of Primo to Madrid, Abd el Krim attacked in force, cutting the Tangier-Tetuan road and threatening Tetuan. A communiqué was issued on 10 September 1924 announcing the evacuation of the zone. Anxiety about the consequences of the proposed withdrawal led a number of officers in Africa to toy with the idea of a coup against Primo. The ring-leader was Queipo de Llano, who claimed in 1930 that Franco had visited him on 21 September 1924 to ask him to lead a coup against the Dictator. In 1972, Franco did not deny that the conversation had taken place. However, as had happened in the case of his pact with Lieutenant-Colonel Pareja, nothing came of an uncharacteristically frank expression of discontent. Where military discipline was concerned, habitual caution always prevailed.³⁹

Franco and the Legion were thrown into service at the head of a column led by General Castro Girona which set off from Tetuan on 23 September in order to relieve the besieged garrison at Xauen, ‘the sacred city’, in the mountains. It took them until 2 October to fight the forty miles there. Over the next month, units from isolated positions drifted in until at the beginning of November there were ten thousand men in Xauen, many of them wounded, most of them exhausted. An evacuation was then undertaken. Primo won over much of the Army of Africa by assuming complete responsibility for whatever might happen, naming himself High Commissioner on 16 October. He returned to Morocco and set up his general staff in Tetuán. The evacuation of the Spanish, Jewish and friendly Arab inhabitants of Xauen was an awesome task. Children, women, and other civilians, the old and the sick, were packed into trucks. The immensely long and vulnerable column set off on 15 November. Moving slowly at night, their rear was covered by the Legion under Franco. Constantly harrassed by raiding tribesmen, and severely slowed down by rain storms which turned the tracks into impassable mud, it took four weeks to return to Tetuan where the survivors arrived on 13 December. It was a remarkable feat of dogged determination though nothing approaching the ‘magisterial military lesson’ perceived by Franco’s hagiographers.⁴⁰

Franco was deeply disappointed to be a party to the abandonment of any fragment of the territory in defence of which much of his life had been spent. He published an article on the tragedy of the withdrawal, based on his diary. Vividly and passionately written, it reflects the resignation and sadness of the day before the retreat.⁴¹ However, he was consoled by being awarded another Military Medal and by being promoted to full colonel on 7 February 1925 with effect from twelve months earlier, 31 January 1924. He was also allowed to keep the command of the Legion, although that post should have been held by a Lieutenant-Colonel. He was further consoled when Primo de Rivera in late 1924 changed his mind about abandoning Morocco. The Dictator decided sometime in late November or early December to pursue the Alhucemas landing and ordered that detailed plans be drawn up. In early 1925, Franco experimented with amphibious landing craft. It was during one of these exercises, on 30 March 1925, on board the Spanish coastal patrol vessel Arcila, that he was offered a plate of breakfast by a young naval lieutenant called Luis Carrero Blanco who would, from 1942 to 1973, be his closest collaborator. Franco refused the offer on the grounds that, since being wounded in El Biutz, he always went into action on an empty stomach.⁴²

In March 1925, on a visit to Morocco, General Primo de Rivera presented Franco with a letter from the King and a gold religious medal. The letter was fulsome: ‘Dear Franco, On visiting the [Virgin of the] Pilar in Zaragoza and hearing a prayer for the dead before the tomb of the leader of the Tercio, Rafael Valenzuela, gloriously killed at the head of his banderas, my prayers and my thoughts were for you all. The beautiful history that you are writing with your lives and your blood is a constant example of what can be done by men who reckon everything in terms of the fulfilment of their duty … you know how much you are loved and appreciated by your most affectionate friend who embraces you – Alfonso XIII.’⁴³

After entering Xauen, the triumphant Abd el Krim had celebrated his hegemony by capturing El Raisuni. He then made a colossal mistake. At precisely the moment that the French were moving into the noman’s-land between the two protectorates, his long-term ambition of creating a more or less socialist republic led him to try to overthrow the Sultan, who was the instrument of French colonial rule. Taking on the French, initially he defeated them. His advance skirmishers came within twenty miles of Fez. This led to an agreement in June 1925 between Primo de Rivera and the French commander in Africa, Philippe Pétain, for a combined operation. The plan was for a substantial French force of one hundred and sixty thousand colonial troops to attack from the south while seventy-five thousand Spanish soldiers moved down from the north. The Spanish contingent was to land at Alhucemas under the overall command of General Sanjurjo. Franco was in command of the first party of troops to go ashore and had responsibility for establishing a bridgehead.

There was no effort at secrecy either in the planning or on the night of 7 September, when Spanish ships arrived in the bay with lights ablaze and the troops singing. As a result of poor reconnaissance, the landing took place on a beach where the landing craft hit shoals and sand-banks too far out for tanks to be disembarked. Moreover, the water was at a depth of over one and a half metres and many of the Legionaires could not swim. Their attack was awaited by rows of entrenched Moors who immediately began to fire. The naval officer in charge of the landing craft radioed the fleet where the High Command awaited news. In view of his signal, the vessels were ordered to withdraw. Franco decided that a retreat at that point would shatter the morale of his men and boost that of the Moorish defenders. Accordingly, he countermanded the order and told his bugler to sound the attack. His Legionaires jumped overboard, waded to the shore and succeeded in establishing the bridgehead. Franco was later called before his superiors to explain himself which he did by reference to military regulations which granted officers a degree of initiative under fire.⁴⁴

The entire operation was a condemnation of the appalling organization of the Spanish Army and poor planning by Sanjurjo. After the bridgehead was established there was insufficient food and ammunition to permit an advance. There was extremely poor ship-to-shore communication and very limited artillery support. Two weeks passed before the order was given to move beyond the bridgehead. Then the advance was subject to the mortar batteries placed by Abd el Krim. In part because of the tenacity of Franco himself, the Spanish attack continued. However, with the French moving up from the south, it was only a matter of time before Abd el Krim surrendered. On 26 May 1926, he gave himself up to the French authorities.⁴⁵ The resistance of the Rif and Jibala tribes collapsed.

Franco produced a vividly, if somewhat romantically, written diary of his participation in the landing, entitled Diario de Albucemas. It was published over four months from September to December 1925 in the Revista de Tropas Coloniales and again in 1970 in a version which he himself censored.⁴⁶ Referring to an attack on a hill which took place in the first hours after the landing, he wrote in 1925 ‘those defenders who are too tenacious are put to the knife’ changing it in 1970 to ‘those defenders who are too tenacious fell beneath our fire’. Even after editing the text in 1970, Franco left in phrases reminiscent of the adventure stories of his youth. Men were not shot but ‘scythed down by enemy lead’. ‘Fate has snatched away from us the flower of our officers. Our time has come. Tomorrow we will avenge them!’⁴⁷ Years later, he told his doctor that, during the Alhucemas campaign, a deserter from the Legion was brought in and, with no hesitation other than the time taken to confirm his identity, he ordered a firing squad to be formed and the man shot.⁴⁸

On 3 February 1926, Franco was promoted to Brigadier General, which made the front page of the newspapers in Galicia.⁴⁹ At the age of 33, he was the youngest general in Europe, and was finally obliged by his seniority to leave the Legion. On being promoted, Franco’s service record had the following added: ‘He is a positive national asset and surely the country and the Army will derive great benefit from making use of his remarkable aptitudes in higher positions’.⁵⁰ He was given command of the most important brigade in the Army, the First Brigade of the First Division in Madrid, composed of two aristocratic regiments, the Regimiento del Rey and the Regimiento de León*.

On returning to Spain, Franco brought with him a political baggage acquired in Africa which he would carry through the rest of his life. In Morocco, Franco had come to associate government and administration with the endless intimidation of the ruled. There was an element too of the patronizing superiority which underlay much colonial government, the idea that the colonised were like children who needed a firm paternal hand. He would effortlessly transfer his colonial attitudes to domestic politics. Since the Spanish Left was pacifist and hostile to the great adventure in Morocco, associated in his mind with social disorder and regional separatism, he considered leftists to be as dire an enemy as rebellious tribesmen.⁵¹ He regarded the poisonous ideas of the Left as acts of mutiny to be eradicated by iron discipline which, when it came to governing an entire population, meant repression and terror. The paternal element would later be central to his own perception of his rule over Spain as a strong and benevolent father figure.

In Africa, Franco had also learned many of the strategems and devices which were to be his political hallmark after 1936. He had observed that political success came from a cunning game of divide and rule among the tribal chiefs. That is what the Sultan did; it was what the better Spanish High Commissioners aspired to do. At a lower level, local garrison commanders had to do something similar. Astute, greedy, envious and resentful chieftains were played off against one another in a shifting game of alliances, betrayals and lightning strikes. His assimilation of such skills would permit him to run rings around his political enemies, rivals and collaborators inside Spain from 1936 until well into the 1960s. Although he acquired such skills, he had never developed any serious interest in the Moroccans. Like most colonial officers, Franco did not learn more than a smattering of the language of those he fought and ruled. Later in life, he would also fail in his attempts to learn English. Absorbed in military matters, he could never muster much interest in other cultures and languages.⁵²

On the day on which his promotion to general was announced, Franco’s success had been somewhat overshadowed by the spectacular national newspaper coverage given to his brother Ramón. Major Ramón Franco was crossing the South Atlantic with Captain Julio Ruiz de Alda, one of the future founders of the Falange, in the Plus Ultra, a Dornier DoJ Wal flying boat.⁵³ The regime and the press was treating Ramón as a modern Christopher Columbus. A committee was set up in El Ferrol to organize various tributes to the two brothers, including the unveiling of a plaque on the wall of the house in which they had been born. It read ‘In this house were born the brothers Francisco and Ramón Franco Baamonde, valiant soldiers who, at the head of the Tercio of Africa and crossing the Atlantic in the seaplane ‘Plus Ultra’, carried out heroic deeds which constitute glorious pages of the nation’s history. The town of El Ferrol is honoured by such brilliant sons to whom it dedicates this tribute of admiration and affection.’⁵⁴

Franco took up his important post in Madrid in time to admire the achievements of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. What the officer corps perceived as regional separatism had been suppressed and labour unrest dramatically diminished. Anarchist and Communist unions had been suppressed while the Socialist union, the Unión General de Trabajadores, was given control of a newly created state arbitration machinery. The UGT became the semi-official trade union organization of the regime. A massive programme of infrastructural investment in roads and railways created a high degree of prosperity and near full employment. For an Army officer, particularly after the disorders of the period 1917 to 1923, it was a good time to be on active service. The constant criticism of the Army which officers associated with the parliamentary monarchy had been silenced. The triumph of Alhucemas had revived military popularity. It is little wonder that, like many Army officers and civilian rightists, Franco would come to look back on the six years of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship as a golden age. He often commented during the 1930s that they were the only period of good government that Spain had enjoyed in modern times. In his view, Primo’s error was to have announced that he would hold power only for a short time until he had solved Spain’s problems. Franco said reprovingly to his Oviedo acquaintance, the monarchist, Pedro Sainz Rodríguez ‘that was a mistake; if you accept a command you have to take it as if it was going to be for the rest of your life’.⁵⁵

The Dictatorship was also a period in which Franco experienced further inflation of his ego. On the evening of 3 February 1926, his fellow cadets of the fourteenth intake (promoción no. 14) at the Academia de Infantería de Toledo met to pay homage to the first of their number to become a general. They presented him with a dress sword and a parchment with the following inscription: ‘When the passage through the world of the present generation is no more than a brief comment in the book of History, there will endure the memory of the sublime epic written by the Spanish Army in the development of the nation. And the glorious names of the most important caudillos will be raised on high, and above them all will be lifted triumphantly that of General Francisco Franco Bahamonde to reach the sublime heights achieved by other illustrious men of war, Leiva, Mondragón, Valdivia and Hernán Cortés. His comrades pay this tribute of admiration and affection to him in recognition of his patriotism, his intelligence and his bravery’.⁵⁶

In the course of the next few days, Franco would receive many telegrams from the local authorities of El Ferrol recounting the acts of homage mounted for his mother. On Sunday 7 February, bands played, firework displays were organized and ships in the bay sounded their horns. The town turned out to acclaim the historic flight by Ramón, who was still in Argentina, although Franco was not forgotten in the endless tributes made to Doña Pilar Bahamonde y Pardo de Andrade. 12 February was declared a holiday in El Ferrol in honour of both brothers. The streets of the town were illuminated and a Te Deum was sung in the Church of San Julián to celebrate their achievements. The plaque was unveiled in the calle María. Messages of congratulation to Doña Pilar for both her sons arrived from the Alcaldes (mayors) of El Ferrol, the four provincial capitals of Galicia and from many towns across Spain.⁵⁷ On 10 February, a massive crowd turned out in the Plaza de Colón (Columbus) in Madrid to acclaim Ramón’s achievement. In part, the media coverage and public enthusiasm were orchestrated by the Primo de Rivera dictatorship in order to profit in propaganda terms from the flight of the Plus Ultra.

The adulation was largely directed at Ramón, but there is no reason to believe that Franco was resentful at seeing the black sheep of the family suddenly converted into a national hero. The adulation of his brother as a twentieth century Christopher Columbus may, however, have inspired Franco’s later efforts to present himself as a modern-day El Cid. Franco always had an intense loyalty to his family and, over the years, was to use his own position to help and protect Ramón from the consequences of his wilder actions. In any case, his own triumphs and popularity were sufficient in frequency and intensity for him not to need to feel envy. At Easter 1926, during the Corpus Christi procession at Madrid’s San Jerónimo Church, he commanded the troops which lined the streets and escorted the host. As the legendary hero of Africa, he was the object of the admiring attention of the upper class Madrileños who made up the congregation.⁵⁸ In the late summer of 1927, Franco accompanied the King and Queen on an official visit to Africa during which new colours were given to the Legion at their headquarters in Dar Riffien.⁵⁹

On 14 September 1926, Franco’s first and only child María del Carmen was born in Oviedo where Carmen had gone to be with her dying father.⁶⁰ The new arrival was to become the focus of his emotional life. Years later, he was to say ‘when Carmen was born, I thought that I would go mad with joy. I would have liked to have had more children but it was not to be’.⁶¹ There have been insistent rumours that Carmen was not really Francisco’s daughter but was adopted, and that the father may have been his promiscuous brother Ramón. There is no evidence to support this theory, which seems to have arisen entirely from the fact that there are no known photographs of Carmen Polo noticeably pregnant and from Ramón’s notorious sexual adventurism.⁶² Franco’s sister, Pilar, went out of her way in her memoirs to make a point of saying that she saw Carmen Polo pregnant although her dates are wrong by two years.⁶³

The posting to Madrid began a period in which Franco had plenty of spare time. Rather than make the lives of his colonels a misery by frequent surprise inspections, he left them to get on with running their own barracks, a pattern that he would later follow with his ministers. He rented an apartment on the elegant Castellana avenue and enjoyed a busy social life. He regularly met military friends from Africa and the Toledo Academy at the regular social gatherings or tertulias of the upper-class club, La Gran Peña, and in the cafés of Alcalá and the Gran Via. He was relatively close to Millán Astray, Emilio Mola, Luis Orgaz, José Enrique Varela and Juan Yagüe.⁶⁴ While living in Madrid, he acquired a passion for cinema and became a member of the tertulia of the politician and writer Natalio Rivas, a member of the Liberal Party.⁶⁵ At Rivas’s invitation, he appeared along with Millán Astray in a film entitled La Malcasada made by the director Gómez Hidalgo in Rivas’s house. Franco’s small part was as an Army officer recently returned from the African wars.⁶⁶

At this stage of his life, as later, Franco had little interest in day-to-day politics. None the less, he began to think that ultimately he might play a political role of some kind. The popular acclaim which he had received after Alhucemas, the rapidity of his promotions, and the company which he now kept in Madrid, all pushed him to take for granted his own importance as a national figure. As he put it in retrospect ‘I was, as a result of my age and my prestige, called to render the highest services to the nation’. The Army’s apparent political success under Primo de Rivera may also have increased his tendency to dream of higher things for himself. He claimed later that, in preparation for his transcendental tasks, and taking advantage of the fact that his command in Madrid left him with very little to do, he began to read books on contemporary Spanish history and political economy.⁶⁷ How much reading he did is impossible to say; his books were lost in Madrid in 1936 when his flat was ransacked by anarchists. Certainly, neither his speeches nor his own writings indicate any significant insight into history or economics.

Given his propensity to chat, he probably talked rather than read about economics. As he claimed later, he started at this time ‘with some frequency to visit the manager of the Banco de Bilbao, where Carmen had a few savings (unos ahorrillos)’. The banker in question was affable and intelligent and stimulated in Franco an interest in economics. Franco also discussed contemporary political issues with his immediate circle of friends and acquaintances. It is likely that such café conversations with friends, the bulk of whom were Africanistas like himself, can only have cemented his prejudices. Nevertheless, in later life he was to place enormous value on these conversations.⁶⁸

His reading and his tertulias boosted Franco’s confidence in his own opinions to an inordinate degree. While on holiday in Gijón in 1929, he bumped into General Primo de Rivera on the beach. The ministers of Primo’s government were spending a few days together away from Madrid and the Dictator invited Franco to lunch with them – a mark of considerable favour by Primo towards the young general. His self-esteem duly inflated, Franco found himself seated next to José Calvo Sotelo, the brilliant Finance Minister, who was in the midst of trying to defend the value of the peseta against the consequences of a massive balance of payments deficit, a bad harvest and the first signs of the great Depression. Franco assured an intensely irritated Calvo Sotelo that there was no point in using Spain’s gold and foreign currency reserves to support the value of the peseta and that the money so used would be better spent on industrial investment. The reasoning by which Franco reached the interpretation he put before the Minister revealed a simple cunning: he based his argument on the belief that there need be no link between the exchange rate of a currency and the nation’s gold and foreign reserves provided their value were kept secret.⁶⁹

The economic difficulties discussed at this lunch were not the only problems besetting the Dictatorship. The military was deeply divided and some sections of the Army were turning against the regime. Franco was paradoxically to be the beneficiary of one of the most serious errors made by the Dictator in this regard. Primo de Rivera was anxious to reform the antiquated structures of the Spanish Army and in particular to slim down the inflated officer corps. His ideal was a small professional Army but, as a result of the reversal of his original policy of abandonismo in Morocco, it had grown significantly in size and cost in the mid-1920s. By 1930, the officer corps would be reduced in size by only about 10 per cent and the Army as a whole by more than 25 per cent, at an inordinately high price in terms of internal military discontent. Large sums were spent on efforts at modernization although the final increase in the number of mechanized units was immensely disappointing.⁷⁰

The relative failure of Primo’s technical reforms was overshadowed by the legacy of one bitterly divisive issue. Most publicity was generated, and most damage caused in terms of morale, by the Dictator’s efforts to eradicate the divisions between the artillery and the infantry over promotions. To a large extent, this was the question which had given birth to the Juntas de Defensa in 1917. Divisions between the infantry, and particularly the Africanistas, on the one hand, and the artillery and the engineers on the other arose from the fact that it was much more difficult for an engineer or the commander of an artillery battery to gain promotion by merit than for an infantry officer leading charges against the Moors. To underline their discontent with a promotion system which favoured the colonial infantry, the Artillery corps had sworn in 1901 to accept no promotions which were not granted on grounds of strict seniority and to seek instead other rewards or decorations.

Although on coming to power Primo de Rivera had been thought within the Army to be more sympathetic to the artillery position, he seems to have changed his mind as a result of his contacts with the infantry officer corps in Morocco before and during the Alhucemas operation.⁷¹ By decrees of 21 October 1925 and 30 January 1926, he introduced greater flexibility into the promotion system. This gave him the freedom to promote brave or capable officers but it was also perceived as opening a Pandora’s box of favouritism. There was already tension when, in a typically precipitate manner, on 9 June 1926, the Dictator issued a decree specifically obliging the artillery to accept the principle of promotions by merit. Those who had accepted medals instead of promotions were now deemed retrospectively to have been promoted. Hostility within the mainland officer corps to a whole range of tactless encroachments on military sensibilities by the Dictator was already leading to contacts between some officers and the liberal opposition to the regime. It came to a head in a feeble attempt at a coup known as the Sanjuanada on 24 June 1926.⁷² In August, the imposition of promotions upon the artillery provoked a near mutiny by artillery officers who confined themselves to their barracks. In Pamplona, shots were fired by infantrymen sent to put an end to one such ‘strike’ of artillerymen. The Director of the Artillery Academy of Segovia was sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted to life imprisonment, for refusing to hand over the Academy.⁷³ Throughout the issue, Franco was careful not to get involved. He, more than anyone in the entire armed forces, had reason to be grateful to the system of promotions by merit.

Primo de Rivera won, but at the cost of dividing the Army and of undermining its loyalty to the King. His policy on promotions was to provide much of the cause for the grievances which lay behind some officers moving in the direction of the Republican movement. Thus, when the time came, some sectors of the Army would be ready to stand aside and permit first Primo’s own demise and then the coming of the Second Republic in April 1931.⁷⁴ Broadly speaking, the Africanistas remained committed to the Dictatorship and thereafter were to be bitterly hostile to the democratic Republic which followed it in 1931.⁷⁵ Indeed, the fault lines of the divisions created in the 1920s would run right through to the Civil War in 1936. Many of those who moved into opposition against Primo would be favoured by the subsequent Republican regime. In contrast, the Africanistas, including Franco, would see their previously privileged position dismantled.

The artillery/infantry, juntero/Africanista, issue had an immediate and direct impact on Franco’s life. In 1926, the Dictator was convinced that part of the promotions problem derived from the fact that there were separate academies for the officers of the four major corps, the infantry in Toledo, the artillery in Segovia, the cavalry in Valladolid and the engineers in Guadalajara. He concluded that Spain needed a single General Military Academy and decided to revive the Academia General Militar which had existed briefly during its so-called ‘first epoch’ between 1882 and 1893.⁷⁶ By this time, and particularly after Alhucemas, Primo had developed a great liking for Franco. He told Calvo Sotelo that Franco was ‘a formidable chap, and he has an enormous future not only because of his purely military abilities but also because of his intellectual ones’.⁷⁷ The Dictator was clearly grooming Franco for an important post. He sent him to the École Militaire de St Cyr, then directed by Philippe Pétain, in order to examine its structure. On 20 February 1927, Alfonso XIII approved a plan for a similar Spanish academy, and on 14 March 1927 Franco was made a member of a commission to prepare the way for it. By Royal Decree of 4 January 1928, he was appointed its first director. He expressed a preference for it to be sited at El Escorial but the Dictator insisted that it be in Zaragoza. Years later, Franco was alleged to have said that, if the Academy had been located at El Escorial instead of 350 kilometres from the capital, the fall of the monarchy in 1931 could have been avoided.⁷⁸

In moving to the Academia General Militar, Franco was leaving behind him the kind of soldiering in which he made his reputation. Never again would he lead units of assault troops in the field. It was a major change, which taken with his marriage in 1923 and the birth of his daughter in 1926, would affect him profoundly. Until 1926, Franco was an heroic field soldier, an outstanding column commander, fearless if not reckless. Henceforth, as befitted his changing sense of his public persona, he would take ever fewer risks. In Morocco, he had been a ruthless disciplinarian, an abstemious and isolated individual with few friends.⁷⁹ After his return to the Peninsula, he seems to have relaxed slightly, although he was always to remain obsessed with the primacy of unquestioning obedience and discipline. He became readier to turn a blind eye to laziness or incompetence in his subordinates, getting the best out of willing collaborators by manipulation and rewards. He became a relatively convivial frequenter of clubs and cafés where he would take an aperitif and give rein to his inclination to chat, recounting anecdotes and reminiscences among a group of military friends.⁸⁰

Until the late 1920s, he showed few signs of being the archetypal gallego, slow, cunning and opaque, of his later years. He was a man of action, obsessed with his military career and little else. His early military writings are relatively straightforward and decently written, with some sensitivity to people and places. He was, of course, reserved, and predisposed by his military experience, and particularly by Africa, to certain political ideas, hostile to the Left and to regional autonomy movements. If he did read about politics, economics and recent history, it was probably more to confirm his prejudices than in search of enlightenment. From this time, a convoluted style and a pomposity of tone begins to be discernible in his speeches. In part, family responsibilities account for a greater caution but the more potent motive for his self-regard was a perception of his potential political importance. He was the object of public adulation in certain circles and had had plenty of indications that he was the general with the most brilliant prospects.⁸¹ He was showered with promotions, honours and plum postings. The talk of his being the youngest general in Europe cannot have failed to have affected him, as must the idea of providence watching over him, an idea particularly dear to his wife. To her influence in this respect must be added that of his near inseparable cousin, Pacón, now a major, who had become his ADC in the late summer of 1926.⁸²

At the end of May 1929 there appeared in the magazine Estampa, in the section called ‘The woman in the home of famous men’, a rare interview with Carmen Polo and her husband. Conducted by Luis Franco de Espés, the Barón de Mora, a fervent admirer of Franco, the interview was as much concerned with ‘the famous man’ as with ‘the woman in the home’. Asked if he was satisfied to be what he was, Franco replied sententiously ‘I am satisfied to have served my fatherland to the full’. The Barón asked him what he would have liked to be if not a soldier to which he replied ‘architect or naval officer. However, aged fourteen I entered the Infantry Academy in Toledo against the will of my father.’ This was the first time that Franco had indicated any paternal opposition to his joining the military academy. There is no reason why his father should have opposed the move and, if he had done, there can be little doubt that he would have imposed his will. Apparently, Franco was trying to put distance between his beloved military career and his hated father.

‘All this’, he said, ‘is only with regard to my profession because my real inclination has always been towards painting’. On lamenting that he had no time to practice any particular genre, Carmen interrupted to point out that he painted rag dolls for their daughter, ‘Nenuca’. Then, the interview turned to the ‘the beautiful companion of the general, hiding the supreme delicacy of her figure behind a subtle dress of black crêpe’. Blushing, she recounted how she and her husband had fallen in love at a romería (country fair) and how he had pursued her doggedly thereafter. Playing the role of the faithful hand-maiden to the great man, she revealed her husband’s major defects to be that ‘he likes Africa too much and he studies books which I don’t understand’. Turning back to Franco, the Barón de Mora asked him about the three greatest moments of his life to which he responded with ‘the day that the Spanish Army landed at Alhucemas, the moment of reading that Ramón had reached Pernambuco and the day we got married’. The fact that the birth of his daughter Carmen did not figure in the list suggests that he was more anxious to project an image of patriotism untrammelled by ‘unmanly’ emotions. He was then asked about his greatest ambition which he revealed as being ‘that Spain should become as great again as she was once before.’ Asked if he was political, Franco replied firmly ‘I am a soldier’ and declared that his most fervent desire was ‘to pass unnoticed. I am very grateful for certain demonstrations of popularity but you can imagine how annoying it is to feel that you’re often being looked at and talked about’. Carmen listed her greatest love as music and her greatest dislike as ‘the Moors’. She had few happy memories of her time as an Army wife in Morocco spent consoling widows.⁸³

Franco had arrived in Zaragoza on 1 December 1927 to supervise the building and installation of the new institution. The first entrance examinations were held in June 1928. On 5 October of that year, with the new buildings still unfinished, the Academy opened for its first intake in a nearby barracks. The new Director’s speech on opening the Academy reflected the philosophy that he had learned from his mother. Its theme was ‘he who suffers overcomes’.⁸⁴ He also instructed the cadets to follow the ‘ten commandments’ or ‘decálogo’ which he had compiled on the basis of a similar ‘decálogo’ elaborated for the Legion by Millán Astray. Expressed in the most sententious terms, the commandments were: 1) Make great love for the Fatherland and fidelity to the King manifest in every act of your life; 2) Let a great military spirit be reflected in your vocation and your discipline; 3) Link to your pure chivalry a constant jealous concern for your reputation; 4) Be faithful in the fulfilment of your duties, being scrupulous in everything that you do; 5) Never grumble, nor tolerate others doing so; 6) Make yourself loved by those of lower rank and highly regarded by your superiors; 7) Volunteer for every sacrifice at times of greatest risk and difficulty; 8) Feel a noble comradeship, sacrificing yourself for your comrades and taking delight in their successes, prizes and progress; 9) Love responsibility and be decisive; 10) Be brave and self-denying.⁸⁵

The generation educated under Franco’s close supervision at the Academia General Militar de Zaragoza, in its so-called second epoch between 1928 and 1931, was to receive significantly more practical training than had hitherto been the practice in the Toledo infantry academy. Franco insisted that no textbooks be used and that all classes be based on the practical experiences of the instructors.⁸⁶ Skill in the use and care of weapons was insisted upon. The horsemanship of the graduates was of a high standard. Franco himself would direct from horseback the toughest manoeuvres. However, the central stress, derived from the decálogo, was on ‘moral’ values: patriotism, loyalty to the King, military discipline, sacrifice, bravery.⁸⁷ The idea that ‘moral’ values could triumph over superior numbers or technology was one of the constant refrains of Franco’s military thought. Reflecting the Director’s own experiences in the primitive Moroccan war, the level of tactical and technological education at Zaragoza was not highly advanced and considerable effort went into denouncing democratic politics.

During the Civil War, officers who had trained at the Academy under Franco remembered him as a martinet who had laid traps for unwary cadets. In the streets of Zaragoza, he would pretend to be looking in shop windows to catch those who tried to get past without saluting their Director. As they went on, they would be called back by Franco’s soft, high, feared, voice. Remembering the nightly activities of his own contemporaries at Toledo, he insisted that all cadets carry at least one condom while walking in the city. Occasionally, he would stop them in the street and demand to see their protective equipment. There were strict penalties for those unable to produce it.⁸⁸ In his farewell speech to the Academy in 1931, he listed among the great patriotic achievements of his time in the post the elimination of venereal disease among the cadets through ‘vigilance and prophylaxis’.⁸⁹ His pride in that achievement was reflected when, in 1936, he boasted to his English teacher that he had ‘put down vice ruthlessly’ among the cadets at Zaragoza.*⁹⁰

Franco’s period at the Academy was viewed in retrospect as a triumph by Africanistas and other right-wing Army officers and a disaster by liberal and left-wing officers. His brother Ramón wrote to him to complain of the ‘troglodytic education’ imparted there. For the distinguished Africanista, General Emilio Mola, in contrast, it was the peak of excellence.⁹¹ The Academy’s regulations demanded that the teaching staff be chosen on the basis of méritos de guerra, irrespective of the subject being taught. Accordingly, the teaching staff was dominated by Africanista friends of Franco, most of whom had been brutalized by their experiences in a pitiless colonial war and were noted more for their ideological rigidity than for their intellectual attainments. Of 79 teachers, 34 were infantrymen and 11 from the Legion. The assistant director of the Academy was Colonel Miguel Campins, a good friend and comrade in arms from Africa who had been with him at the battle of Alhucemas. A highly competent professional, Campins elaborated the training programme at the Academy.⁹² The other senior members of staff included Emilio Esteban-Infantes, later to be involved in the attempted Sanjurjo coup of 1932; Bartolomé Barba-Hernández, who was to be, on the eve of the Civil War, leader of the conspiratorial organization Unión Militar Española; and Franco’s lifelong close friend Camilo Alonso Vega, later to be a dour Minister of the Interior. Virtually without exception, the Academy’s teachers were to play prominent roles in the military uprising of 1936. With such men on the staff, the Academy concentrated on inculcating the ruthless arrogance of the Foreign Legion, the idea that the Army was the supreme arbiter of the nation’s political destiny and a sense of discipline and blind obedience. A high proportion of the officers who passed through the Academy were later to be involved in the Falange. An even higher proportion fought on the Nationalist side during the Civil War.⁹³

During his period at the head of the Military Academy, Franco developed the dejar hacer (turning a blind eye) style of delegation which was to be taken to extremes when he was Head of State. Those of the teaching staff who did not pull their weight were not punished but nor were they favoured. Those who had an enthusiasm or a speciality were allowed full initiative in that area – the instructor who liked football delegated to coach the team, the one who liked gardening given control of the Academy gardens, the amateur photographer put in charge of the dark room. Of the lazy or incompetent, Franco would simply comment ‘A Fulano, no le veo la gracia’ (I don’t see what So-and-So has going for him) but would never reprimand those who did not pull their weight (arrimar el hombro – a favourite phrase of Franco’s).

Franco’s arrival in Zaragoza provoked considerable popular attention. The Academy, the Director and his senior staff became a major focus of local social life and Franco indulged his penchant for socializing and for interminable late-night after-dinner tertulias with military friends and minor aristocrats. Encouraged by Doña Carmen, he began to mix with the dominant families of the local establishment. It perhaps reflected Franco’s own small-town and lower middle class origins that he always preferred provincial social life, in Oviedo, Ceuta or Zaragoza, to that of Madrid.⁹⁴ Even so, contemporary photographs of Franco in evening dress or lounge suit show him significantly less at ease than when in uniform. He was happier hunting. Far from his African exertions, he turned increasingly to hunting for exercise, pleasure and, it may be supposed, as an outlet for his aggression.

It was during his period in Zaragoza that Franco began to intensify his anti-Communist and authoritarian ideas. Shortly before leaving Madrid for Zaragoza, he had been given, along with several other young officers, a subscription to a journal of anti-Comintern affairs from Geneva, the Bulletin de L’Entente Internationale contre la Troisième Internationale. The Entente, founded by the Swiss rightist Théodore Aubert and the White Russian emigré Georges Lodygensky, was vehemently anti-Bolshevik and praised the achievements of fascism and military dictatorships as bulwarks against Communism. An emissary from the Entente, Colonel Odier, visited Madrid and arranged with General Primo de Rivera for several subscriptions to be purchased by the Ministry of War and to be distributed to a few key officers.⁹⁵ It clinched what was to be a lifelong obsession with anti-Communism. It also played its part in the transition of Franco from the adventurous soldier of the 1920s to the suspicious and conservative general of the 1930s. Receiving the bulletin uninterruptedly until 1936, he came to see the Communist threat everywhere and to believe that the entire Spanish Left was wittingly or unwittingly working in the interests of the Comintern. In 1965, Franco revealed to both Brian Crozier and George Hills the influence that the Entente had had over him. He told Hills that the Entente had alerted him to the need to be ready for the flank attack from the invisible (Communist) enemy. Indeed, he left Crozier with the impression that his acquaintance with its work was an event in his life equal in importance in its impact on him to the birth of Nenuca.⁹⁶

Another influence in Franco’s life was initiated as a result of an invitation in the spring of 1929 to the German Army’s General Infantry Academy in Dresden. He was thrilled by the organization and discipline of the German Army. On his return, he made it clear to his cousin Pacón that he had been especially impressed by the Academy’s cult of reverence for the regiments which had achieved the great German military triumphs of the recent past. He was particularly sympathetic to German efforts to break free of the shackles of the Versailles Treaty.⁹⁷ It was the beginning of a love affair which would intensify during the Civil War, reach its peak in 1940, and not begin to die until 1945.

The Dictatorship fell on 30 January 1930. The bluff Primo de Rivera had ruled by a form of personal improvisation which had ensured that he would bear the blame for the regime’s failures. By 1930, there was barely a section of Spanish society which he had not estranged. He had offended Catalan industrialists both by his anti-Catalanism and because of the rise in raw material prices in the wake of the collapse in value of the peseta. He had outraged landowners by trying to introduce paternalist labour legislation for land-workers. The Socialist Unión General Trabajadores had supported him as long as public works projects had kept up levels of employment. With the coming of the slump, many Socialists had allied with the banned anarcho-syndicalist union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, in opposition. Most damagingly, the divisions in the Army provoked by Primo’s promotions policy were instrumental in the Captains-General and the King withdrawing support for the regime. Unlike most twentieth century dictators, Primo withdrew quietly once he had recognised that his support had disappeared. He went into exile in Paris where he died on 16 March 1930. A return to the pre-1923 constitutional system was impossible, not least because the King could no longer count on the loyalty of the old monarchist political élite which he had so irresponsibly abandoned in favour of Primo. Alfonso XIII was forced to seek another general. His choice of General Dámaso Berenguer, irrevocably associated with the disaster of Annual, infuriated the Left. For nearly a year, Berenguer’s mild dictatorship, the so-called Dictablanda, would flounder along in search of formula for a return to the constitutional monarchy. A combination of working class agitation fuelled by the economic depression, military sedition provoked by Primo’s policies, and republican conspiracy ensured Berenguer’s eventual failure.

The fall of the Dictator disappointed Franco but little more: he was oblivious to the implicit threat to the monarchy itself. Among Franco’s staff, the artillerymen and engineers were understandably pleased by Primo’s demise. However, Franco ensured that the demise of Primo would provoke no public clashes in the Academy between junteros and Africanistas by imposing an iron ban on speaking about politics.⁹⁸ By withdrawing his confidence from Primo, the King also lost the loyalty of General Sanjurjo, now Director-General of the Civil Guard. Franco did not blame the King for the fall of the Dictatorship. In any case, he was the object of special attention, not to say flattery, from Alfonso XIII. On 4 June 1929, in a solemn ceremony in the Madrid Retiro, the King had personally presented him with the Medalla Militar which he had won in 1925.⁹⁹ On 5 June 1930, Alfonso XIII visited the Academy and three days later Franco took the entire body of cadets to the capital to take part in the swearing of the flag by the Madrid garrison. Led by Franco on a prancing horse, they headed the parade, to the wild applause of those present. On the following day, the cadets took the guard at the Royal Palace and Franco appeared on the balcony with the King. The crowd on that day included several hundred members of the Juventud Monárquica (monarchist youth), who would soon form the élite of the conservative extreme right during the Republic.¹⁰⁰

Accordingly, it was a cause of the greatest embarrassment to Franco that his brother Ramón had moved into the orbit of the republican opposition to the regime. From the later part of 1929, their relations became very strained. Franco had been annoyed and embarrassed in July 1924 when Ramón had married Carmen Díaz Guisasola without seeking the King’s permission.¹⁰¹ The breach between his brother and the King had been forgotten in the wake of his Atlantic crossing in 1926. However, Ramón’s ever more frantic efforts to repeat that success had ended in disgrace. The reasons for his fall from grace were complex. In the summer of 1929, to boost the domestic aircraft industry, the Spanish government agreed to sponsor an attempt by Ramón to cross the North Atlantic in a Dornier Super Wal flying boat built under licence in Spain. Because of doubts about the reliability of the Spanish aeroplane, Ramón used a German-built one bought in Italy, fraudulently switching the registration markings. The flight was a disaster: the aircraft was blown off course near the Azores, and it and the crew were lost for days and only found at the end of June after a massive and immensely costly search involving the Spanish, British and Italian navies.¹⁰² When he was found, there was widespread rejoicing and a tearful General Franco was publicly embraced by an equally lacrimose General Primo de Rivera.¹⁰³ Franco led a massive demonstration to the British Embassy in Madrid to express thanks for the role of the Royal Navy.¹⁰⁴ It then emerged that the planes had been switched and rumours began to circulate that Ramón had been promised a fabulous sum of money if he broke the world seaplane distance record flying a German aircraft. Colonel Alfredo Kindelán, the head of Military Aviation, was furious and had Ramón expelled from the Air Force on 31 July 1929. Thereafter, he moved rapidly to the left, became a freemason and got involved in anarcho-syndicalist conspiracies aimed at bringing down the monarchy.¹⁰⁵

After this disgrace, Ramón’s relations with his brother were virtually non-existent and were reduced to letters; patronizing, sententious, though ultimately kindly ones from Franco, mischievously disrespectful ones from Ramón. On 8 April 1930, Franco wrote a long letter to Ramón revealing of his loyalty both to his family and to the established order. In an effort to head off his brother’s demise, Franco warned him that his activities within the Army, inciting garrisons and officers to rebel, were known to the authorities. Regarding the Berenguer regime as entirely legal, Franco was worried that his brother was risking the loss of his prestige and his good name. He appealed to him to think of ‘the great sorrow that such things cause Mamá, a sorrow which the rest of us share’ and ended fondly, ‘Your brother loves and embraces you, Paco’.¹⁰⁶

Its tone of tolerant restraint is remarkable given that, in Francisco’s eyes, Ramón’s behaviour would not only bring dishonour on the family but also possibly impede his own chances of advancement. There is also a typical readiness to attribute the lowest motives to Ramón’s revolutionary friends while assuming that Ramón himself is free of such baseness. The letter also revealed a political naïvety in Franco’s suggestion that the dictatorship of General Berenguer was more legal than that of Primo de Rivera. Ramón was not slow to comment on that in his reply on 12 April. Ramón was shocked by what he called his brother’s ‘healthy advice’ and ‘vain bourgeois counsels’ and invited him to step down from his ‘little general’s throne’. He also took the opportunity to comment that the education being given the cadets in Zaragoza would ensure that they would be bad citizens.¹⁰⁷

Engrossed in his work at the Zaragoza military academy, Franco paid little attention to the rising tide of political agitation in 1930 except in so far as it involved his brother. The anti-monarchical movement was growing with labour unrest intensifying by the day. A broad front of Socialists, middle class Republicans, Basque and Catalan regionalists and renegade monarchists who, repelled by the mistakes of the King, had become conservative republicans, joined together in mid-August 1930. United by the so-called Pact of San Sebastián, they established a provisional government-in-waiting which began to plot the downfall of the monarchy.¹⁰⁸ Ramón Franco was an important element in the republican conspiracies. In late 1930, watched by agents of the Dirección General de Seguridad, he was travelling around Spain liaising with other conspirators, trying to buy arms and organizing the making of bombs.¹⁰⁹ General Emilio Mola, now Director-General de Seguridad, had taken the decision to arrest him but, as an admirer of his heroic exploits and as a friend of Franco, he decided to give Ramón a last chance to avoid the consequences of his activities. Mola asked Franco to try to persuade his brother to desist. Although he agreed to try, Franco showed no optimism that he might succeed but he was immensely faithful to the family and still felt a protective loyalty towards his madcap brother. He visited Madrid and they dined together on 10 October but Ramón remained committed to the planned republican rising. Mola then had Ramón brought in for questioning on the evening of 11 October and detained in military prison on the following morning. Mola again called Franco in and informed him of the charges against his brother which included bomb-making, gun-smuggling and involvement in the attempted murder of a monarchist aviator, the Duque de Esmera. Franco and Mola hoped to use these charges to frighten Ramón into abandoning his revolutionary activities: Franco visited his brother in his cell and recited them to him. This merely provoked him into escaping from prison on 25 November. Thereafter, he took part, with General Queipo de Llano, in the revolutionary movement of mid-December 1930. Both Ramón’s escape and his participation in the events of December would cause Franco intense chagrin both as an officer and as a monarchist.¹¹⁰

Having failed in his efforts to make his brother see sense, Francisco returned hastily to Zaragoza where he had to receive the visit of a French delegation led by André Maginot. On 19 October, Maginot presented Franco with the Légion d’Honneur for his part in the Alhucemas landing. On his return to France, he declared that the Zaragoza Academy was the most modern of its kind in the world.¹¹¹ Maginot’s ideas of modernity had yet to be put to the test by the armies of the Third Reich.

In November, Franco was approached by an emissary from the most prominent figure of the San Sebastián coalition, the grand old man of Spanish republicanism, the wily and cynical Alejandro Lerroux. He was invited to join in the Republican conspiracies along with so many other officers including his brother. According to Lerroux, Franco refused point blank but then insinuated, at a later meeting, that he would rebel against the constituted power but only if the Patria were in danger of being overwhelmed by anarchy.¹¹² Despite warnings from his cousin Pacón and the attitude of his brother, Franco was so far distanced from day-to-day politics that he was convinced that the monarchy was in no danger.¹¹³

The revolutionary plot in which Ramón was implicated aimed to bring the San Sebastián provisional government to power. One of its ramifications was to be a rebellion by the garrison of the tiny Pyrenean mountain town of Jaca in the province of Huesca. Anticipating what was supposed to be a nationally co-ordinated action, the Jaca rebellion was precipitated on 12 December. Its leaders, Captains Fermín Galán, Angel García Hernández and Salvador Sediles, hoped to march south from Jaca and spark off a pro-Republican movement in the garrisons of Huesca, Zaragoza and Lérida.¹¹⁴ Along the road to Huesca, Galán’s column was challenged by a small group of soldiers led by the military governor of Huesca, General Manuel Lasheras, who was wounded in the clash. When the news of the actions of the Jaca rebels reached Madrid in the early hours of the morning of 13 December, the government declared martial law in the entire Aragonese military region. A sporadic general strike broke out in Zaragoza. Franco put the Academy in a state of readiness and armed the cadets. The Captain-General of the Aragonese military region, General Fernández de Heredia, put together a large column and sent them to Huesca, half way between Zaragoza and Jaca. In case the rebels should have left Huesca already and headed south, he ordered Franco to use his cadets to hold the Huesca-Zaragoza road. In the event, it was not necessary. Galán’s cold, wet and hungry column was stopped at Cillas, three kilometres from Huesca, and the Jaca revolt was put down.¹¹⁵

Galán and García Hernández were seen as being the two ringleaders and were shot after summary courts martial on 14 December.¹¹⁶ As far as Franco was concerned, their punishment was entirely appropriate since they were mutineers. He was perhaps fortunate that he did not have to make similar considerations about his brother, who was heavily involved in the central action of the plot in the capital. On 15 December, Ramón had flown over the royal Palacio de Oriente in Madrid, planning to bomb it but, in the event, seeing civilians strolling in the gardens, had merely dropped leaflets calling for a general strike. He had then fled to Portugal and then on to Paris.¹¹⁷ Franco did not vacillate in his condemnation of the revolutionary events of mid-December, but his sense of family solidarity prevented him applying the same standards to his brother. Hours after Ramón’s flight over the Palacio Real, another aircraft flew over Madrid and dropped leaflets directed at the city’s inhabitants denouncing Ramón as a ‘bastard apparently drunk on your blood’. Franco was so incensed on behalf of his mother (if not his brother) that he left Zaragoza for Madrid where he demanded explanations from Berenguer, the Head of the Government, General Federico Berenguer, the Captain-General of Madrid and Mola, the Director-General of Security, all of whom assured him that the flight and the pamphlets had no official status.¹¹⁸

On 21 December, Franco sent another letter to Ramón. Not surprisingly, in the light of the scandal that Ramón’s activities had occasioned, the distress of their mother and the fact that he was in danger of being shot, the letter is deeply sorrowful. Despite the gulf between their political views, Francisco showed compassionate concern for ‘My beloved and unfortunate brother’ and enclosed two thousand pesetas. He ended sanctimoniously ‘May you break away from the vice-ridden ambience in which you have lived for the last two years, in which the hatred and the passion of the people who surround you deceive you in your chimeras. May your forced exile from our Patria calm your spirit and lift you above all passions and egoisms. May you rebuild your life far from these sterile struggles which fill Spain with misfortunes. And may you find well-being and peace in your path. These are the wishes of your brother who embraces you.’ The money which accompanied the letter was a substantial sum at the time. Grateful as Ramón was for his brother’s help, he was repelled by his reactionary notions and surprised by his lack of awareness of the tide of popular feeling.¹¹⁹

If Franco had any doubts about the legitimacy of the executions of Galán and García Hernández, they would have been resolved on 26 December when General Lasheras died from an infection and uraemia which may have been related to the wound that he had received when trying to stop Galán. Franco attended his funeral.¹²⁰ The public outcry about the execution of Galán and García Hernández damaged the monarchy in a way that the Jaca revolt itself had failed to do. As the two executed rebels were being turned into martyrs, to the outrage of many senior military figures including Franco, the Liberals in the government withdrew their support and General Berenguer was obliged to resign on 14 February.¹²¹ After an abortive attempt by the Conservative politician José Sánchez Guerra to form a government with the support of the imprisoned Republican leaders, Berenguer was finally replaced as prime minister on 17 February by Admiral Juan Bautista Aznar. He did, however, continue in the cabinet as Minister for the Army.¹²²

Since the Jaca rebellion of Galán and García Hernández had taken place within the military region of Aragón, Franco was appointed a member of the tribunal which was to court martial Captain Salvador Sediles and other officers and men who had been involved. It took place between 13 and 16 March when the campaign for the municipal elections of 12 April had already begun. There was no more potent subject during that campaign than that of the executions of Galán and García Hernández. Admiral Aznar declared in advance of the verdicts in the supplementary court martial that he was of a mind to ask the King for clemency whatever the sentences. Franco, however, declared: ‘it is necessary that military crimes committed by soldiers be judged by soldiers who are accustomed to command’, within which category he clearly included a readiness to punish indiscipline by death. In the event, there was one more death sentence, for Captain Sediles, five life sentences and other lesser sentences, all of which were commuted.¹²³

In the municipal elections of 12 April 1931, Franco voted for the monarchist candidacy in Zaragoza.¹²⁴ The results would go against Alfonso XIII, provoke his withdrawal from Spain and open the way to the establishment of the Second Republic. For Franco, the deeply conservative monarchist and royal favourite, it would be a severe shock. To the ambitious young general, it would seem to be the end of a meteoric rise. That fact, taken with Franco’s prominence in the military uprising of 1936, has led the Caudillo’s hagiographers to portray him as working towards that glorious denouement from the very first. This was far from being the case. Franco had still to undergo many experiences before he became an implacable enemy of the Republic.

Ironically, in early 1931, there was an event in Franco’s personal life which was to reveal its full significance only in 1936. In 1929, the Director of the Military Academy had met a brilliant lawyer, Ramón Serrano Suñer, who was working in Zaragoza as a member of the élite legal corps of Abogados del Estado (State lawyers) and they had become friends. Serrano Suñer often lunched or dined with the Franco family.¹²⁵ As a result, Serrano Suñer came to know Doña Carmen’s beautiful younger sister, Zita. In February 1931, Serrano Suñer married her, then aged nineteen, in Oviedo. The groom’s witness was José Antonio Primo de Rivera, son of the Dictator and future founder of the Falange, the bride’s Francisco Franco.¹²⁶ The marriage clinched the close relationship between Serrano Suñer and Franco out of which would be forged the Caudillo’s National-Syndicalist State. The wedding ceremony also provided the occasion for a historic first meeting for the eventual dictator and fascist leader whose names were to be tied together for forty years after 1936. At the time, none of the three could have had any idea of the imminent political cataclysm which would link their fates.

* Ferragut had written the fictionalised Memorias de un legionario and had been rumoured to have ghost-written Franco’s Diario de una bandera, although the article made a great point of the interview being their first meeting.

* In later life, particularly after Franco gained power, the relationship seemed more formal than spontaneously affectionate. Pacón commented that Franco seemed morose and inhibited in the company of Doña Carmen.

* At the time, each military region of Spain had two divisions, each composed of two brigades. However, given the shortage of recruits, in practice only the first brigade of each Captaincy General was at operational strength. (Suárez Fernández, Franco, I, pp. 187, 191.)

* It would be an abiding obsession. On a visit to the Zaragoza Military Academy in 1942, he told one of the staff that an additional bed should be put in rooms that had two ‘to avoid marriages’ – Baón, La cara humana, p. 117.

III

IN THE COLD

Franco and the Second Republic, 1931–1933

THE MUNICIPAL elections of 12 April 1931 were intended by the government to be the first stage of a controlled return to constitutional normality after the collapse of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. However, on the evening of polling day, as the results began to be known, people started to drift onto the streets of the cities of Spain and, as the crowds grew, Republican slogans were shouted with increasing excitement. In the countryside, the power of the local bosses or caciques was unbroken but in the towns, where the vote was much freer, monarchist candidates had suffered a disaster. With the artillerymen on his staff at the Academy openly rejoicing at the Republican triumph, Franco was deeply worried about the situation.¹ While he mused in his office in Zaragoza, his one-time commanding officer and a man whom he admired, General Sanjurjo, was clinching the fate of the King. Sanjurjo now Director-General of the para-military Civil Guard, the monarchy’s most powerful instrument of repression, had informed several cabinet ministers that he could not guarantee the loyalty of the men under his command in the event of mass demonstrations against the monarchy.² In fact, there was little reason to suspect the loyalty of the Civil Guard, a brutal and conservative force. Sanjurjo’s fear was rather that the defence of the monarchy could be attempted only at the cost of copious bloodshed, given the scale of the popular hostility to the King.

That Sanjurjo was not prepared to risk a bloodbath on behalf of Alfonso XIII reflected the fact that he had personal reasons for feeling resentment towards the King. He felt that he had been snubbed by the King for marrying beneath his rank and he had not forgiven Alfonso XIII for failing to stand by Primo de Rivera in January 1930.³ Sanjurjo’s reluctance to defend his King may also have reflected two conversations that he had with Alejandro Lerroux in February and April 1931, during which the Republican leader had tried to persuade him to ensure the benevolent neutrality of the Civil Guard during a change of regime. Sanjurjo informed the Director-General of Security, General Mola, of the first of these meetings and assured him that he had not agreed to Lerroux’s request.⁴ His subsequent actions during the crisis of 12, 13 and 14 April, together with the favourable treatment which he received afterwards from the new regime, were to lead Franco to suspect that perhaps Sanjurjo had been bought by Lerroux and betrayed the monarchy.

Franco was unaware of what Sanjurjo was saying to the cabinet ministers on 12 April, but he was in telephone contact with Millán Astray and other generals. He considered marching on Madrid with the cadets from the Academia but refrained from doing so after a telephone conversation with Millán Astray at 11.00 a.m. on the morning of 13 April.⁵ Millán Astray asked him if he thought that the King should fight to keep his throne. Franco replied that everything depended on the attitude of the Civil Guard. For the next five and a half years, the stance of the Civil Guard would be Franco’s first concern in thinking about any kind of military intervention in politics. Most of the Spanish Army, apart from its Moroccan contingent, was made up of untried conscripts. Franco was always to be intensely aware of the problems of using them against the hardened professionals of the Civil Guard. Now, Millán Astray told Franco that Sanjurjo had confided in him that the Civil Guard could not be relied upon and that Alfonso XIII therefore had no choice but to leave Spain. Franco commented that, in view of what Sanjurjo said, he too thought that the King should go.⁶

Franco had also been greatly influenced by the telegram that Berenguer sent in the early hours of 13 April to the Captains-General of Spain. The Captains-General in command of the eight military regions into which the country was divided were effectively viceroys. In the telegram, Berenguer instructed them to keep calm, maintain the discipline of the men under their command and ensure that no acts of violence impede ‘the logical course that the supreme national will imposes on the destinies of the Fatherland’.⁷ Berenguer’s attitude derived from his own pessimism about Army morale. He believed that some Army officers were simply blasé about the danger to the monarchy. More seriously, he suspected that many others were indifferent and even hostile to its fate in the wake of the divisions created in the 1920s. Nevertheless, despite his telegram and his own inner misgivings, on the morning of 14 April, out of loyalty to the monarchy, Berenguer told the King that the Army was ready to overturn the result of the elections. Alfonso XIII refused.⁸ Shortly after Berenguer’s interview with the King, Millán Astray told Berenguer about his conversation with the Director of the Zaragoza Academy on the previous day repeating, as ‘an opinion which has to be taken into account’, Franco’s view that the King had no choice but to leave.⁹

The King decided to leave Spain but not to abdicate, in the hope that his followers might be able to engineer a situation in which he would be begged to return. Power was assumed on 14 April 1931 by the Provisional Government whose membership had been agreed in August 1930 by the Republicans and Socialists who had made the Pact of San Sebastián. Although led by Niceto Alcalá Zamora, a conservative Catholic landowner from Córdoba who had once been a Minister under the King, the Provisional Government was dominated by Socialists and centre and left Republicans committed to sweeping reform.

In a number of ways in the first week of the Republic, Franco displayed unmistakably, if guardedly, a repugnance for the new regime and a lingering loyalty to the old. There was nothing unusual in his feeling such loyalty – a majority of Army officers were monarchists and would have been unlikely to change their convictions overnight. Franco was ambitious but took discipline and hierarchy very seriously. On 15 April, he issued an order to the cadets, in which he announced the establishment of the Republic and insisted on rigid discipline: ‘If discipline and total obedience to orders have been the invariable practice in this Centre, they are even more necessary today when the Army is obliged, with serenity and unity, to sacrifice its thoughts and its ideology for the good of the nation and the tranquility of the Patria.’¹⁰ It was not difficult to decipher the hidden meaning: Army officers must grit their teeth and overcome their natural repugnance towards the new regime.

For a week, the red and gold monarchist flag continued to fly over the Academia. The Captain-General of Aragón, Enrique Fernández de Heredia, had been instructed by the Provisional Government to raise the Republican tricolour throughout the region. With the military headquarters in Zaragoza surrounded by hostile crowds demanding that Cacahuete (peanut), as the vegetarian Fernández de Heredia was known, fly the Republican flag, he refused. At midnight on 14 April, the new Minister of War, Manuel Azaña, ordered him to hand over command of the region to the military governor of Zaragoza, Agustín Gómez Morato, who was considered loyal to the Republican cause and who, indeed, was to be imprisoned by the Nationalists in July 1936 for opposing the military rebellion in Morocco. Gómez Morato undertook the substitution and telephoned all units in Aragón to order them to do the same. At the Military Academy, Franco informed his superior that changes of insignia could be ordered only in writing. It was not until after 20 April when the new Captain-General of the region, General Leopoldo Ruiz Trillo, had signed an order to the effect that the Republican flag should be flown, that Franco ordered the monarchist ensign struck.¹¹

In 1962, Franco wrote a partisan and confused interpretation of the fall of the monarchy in his draft memoirs in which he blamed the guardians of the monarchist fortress for opening the gates to the enemy. The enemy consisted of a group of ‘historic republicans, freemasons, separatists and socialists’. The freemasons were ‘atheistic traitors in exile, delinquents, swindlers, men who betrayed their wives’.¹² The narrowness of his interpretation is striking in several ways. Franco’s admiration for the dictatorship is understandable. His assumption that the King had not contravened the constitution in acquiescing in a military coup d’état in 1923 and that the situation in April 1931 was therefore one of constitutional legality was clearly the view of a soldier who never questioned the Army’s right to rule. The clear implication is that the monarchy should, and but for Sanjurjo and the Civil Guard could, have been defended by force in April 1931, which was certainly not his view at the time. Franco conveniently forgot his own ruthless pragmatism. The mistake having been made by others, he had made the best of a bad job and got on with his career.

Nonetheless, the flag incident suggested that Franco was sufficiently affected by the fall of the monarchy to want to establish some distance between himself and the Republic. It was not a question of outright indiscipline nor is it plausible that he was trying well in advance to build up credit with conservative political circles. In keeping the monarchist flag flying, Franco was advertising the fact that, unlike some officers who had been part of, or at least in touch with, the Republican opposition, he could not be considered as in any way tainted by disloyalty to the monarchy. Perhaps even more than from the pro-Republican officers whom he despised anyway, he was marking distance between himself and his brother Ramón who had been one of the most notorious military traitors to the King. Francisco clearly saw his own position as altogether more praiseworthy than that of General Sanjurjo whom he later came to regard, with Berenguer, as responsible for the fall of the monarchy.¹³ However, he would not permit his regret at the fall of the monarchy to stand in the way of his career. As military monarchism went, Franco’s pragmatic stance was a long way from, for instance, that of the founder of the Spanish Air Force, General Kindelán, who went into voluntary exile on 17 April rather than live under the Republic.¹⁴ Nonetheless, Franco felt great repugnance for those officers who had opposed the monarchy and were rewarded by being given important posts under the Republic. On 17 April, General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano became Captain-General of Madrid, General Eduardo López Ochoa of Barcelona and General Miguel Cabanellas of Seville. All three would play crucial roles in Franco’s later career and he never trusted any of them.

It was perhaps with these promotions in mind that, on 18 April, Franco wrote a letter to the Director of ABC, the Marqués de Luca de Tena. The monarchist ABC was the most influential newspaper on the Right in Spain. The issue of that morning had published his photograph alongside a news item that he was about to go to Morocco as High Commissioner, the most coveted post in the Army and one which was, at the time, the peak of Franco’s ambition. The basis of the item was a suggestion by Miguel Maura, the Minister of the Interior, to Manuel Azaña, the Minister of War, that Franco be appointed to the post. It would have been a sensible way of buying his loyalty. In fact, the plum Moroccan job was given to General Sanjurjo, who held it briefly in conjunction with the headship of the Civil Guard – such preferment no doubt feeding Franco’s suspicions that Sanjurjo was being paid off for his treachery. The ostensible objective of Franco’s letter was to request that the newspaper publish a correction but it was another gesture aimed at establishing his distance from Spain’s new rulers. In convoluted and ambiguous language, he denied that he had been offered any appointment and asserted that ‘I could not accept any such post unless I was ordered to do so. To accept such a post might be interpreted in some circles as suggesting that there had been some prior understanding on my part with the regime which has just been installed or else apathy or indifference in the fulfilment of my duties’.¹⁵ That Franco believed that he needed to make his position clear in the leading conservative daily reflects both his ambition and his sense of himself as a public figure. Having clarified his loyalty to the monarchy, he then went on to mend his fences with the Republican authorities by proclaiming his respect for the ‘national sovereignty’, a reflection of his cautious pragmatism and of the flexibility of his ambitions.

The limits of military loyalty were to be severely tried under the Republic. The new Minister of War, Azaña, had studied military politics and was determined to remedy the technical deficiencies of the Spanish Army and to curtail its readiness to intervene in politics. Azaña was an austere and brilliantly penetrating intellectual who, despite laudable intentions, was impatient of Army sensibilities and set about his task without feeling the need to massage the collective military ego. The Army which he found on taking up his post was under-resourced and over-manned, with a grossly disproportionate officer corps. Equipment was obsolete and inadequate and there was neither ammunition nor fuel enough for exercises and manoeuvres. Azaña wished to reduce the Army to a size commensurate with the nation’s economic possibilities to increase its efficiency and to eradicate the threat of militarism from Spanish politics. Even those officers who approved of these aims were uneasy about a decimation of the officer corps. Nevertheless, implemented with discretion, Azaña’s objectives might have found some support within the Army. However, conflict was almost inevitable. Azaña and the government in which he served were determined to eliminate where possible the irregularities of the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. There were those, Franco foremost among them, who admired the Dictatorship and had been promoted by it. They could not view with equanimity any assault on its works. Secondly, Azaña was inclined to be influenced by, and to reward the efforts of, those sections of the Army which were most loyal to the Republic. That necessarily meant military opponents of the Dictatorship, who were junteros and largely artillerymen. That in turn infuriated the Africanistas who had opposed the junteros since 1917.¹⁶

The many measures which Azaña promulgated in the first months of the Republic divided the Army and were seized upon by the rightist press in order to generate the idea that the military, along with the Church, was being singled out for persecution by the new regime. That was a distortion of Azaña’s intentions. By a decree of 22 April 1931, Army officers were required to take an oath of loyalty (promesa de fidelidad) to the Republic just as previously they had to the monarchy. It did not matter what an officer’s inner convictions were and no mechanism was set up to purge or investigate those who were monarchists. According to the decree, to stay in the ranks, an officer simply had to make the promise ‘to serve the Republic well and faithfully, obey its laws and defend it by arms’. In the case of those who refused to give the promise, it was to be assumed that they wished to leave the service. Most officers had no difficulty about making the promise. For many, it was probably a routine formula without special significance and was made by many whose real convictions were anti-Republican.¹⁷ After all, few had felt bound by their oath of loyalty to the monarchy to spring to its defence on 14 April. On the other hand, although a reasonable demand on the part of the new Minister and the new regime, the oath could easily be perceived by the more partisan officers as an outrageous imposition. Adept at manipulating the military mentality, the right-wing press generated the impression that those whose convictions prevented them swearing the oath were being hounded penniless out of the Army.¹⁸ In fact, those who opted not to swear were considered members of the reserve and were to receive their pay accordingly.

A prominent right-wing general, Joaquín Fanjul, retrospectively summed up the feelings of many officers: ‘When the Republic came into being, it placed many officers in a dilemma: respect it and undertake formally to defend it or else leave the service. The formula was rather humiliating, offspring as it was of the person who conceived it. I thought about it for four days, and finally I offered up my humiliation to my Patria and I signed as did most of my comrades.’¹⁹ In so far as Franco was forced to decide between his profession and his convictions in April 1931, he opted, understandably and without any apparent difficulty, for his profession. Franco was a more sinuous and pragmatic individual than Fanjul as was shown by a conversation which he had in 1931 with an artilleryman of his acquaintance, General Reguera, who had retired under the terms of the Azaña law. ‘I believe that you have committed a mistake,’ said Franco. ‘The Army cannot lose its senior officers just for the sake of it at times as difficult as these.’ When Reguera explained the disgust he felt at ‘serving those people and their dishcloth of a flag’, Franco replied ‘It’s a pity that you and others like you are leaving the service precisely when you could be of most use to Spain and are leaving the way clear to those whom we all know who would do anything to climb a few rungs of the ladder. Those of us who have stayed on will have a bad time, but I believe that by staying we can do much more to avoid what neither you nor I want to happen than if we had just packed up and gone home’.²⁰

On 25 April, the announcement was made of the decree which came to be known as the Ley Azaña. It offered voluntary retirement on full pay to all members of the officer corps, a generous and expensive way of trying to reduce its size. However, the decree stated that after thirty days, any officer who was surplus to requirements but had not opted for the scheme would lose his commission without compensation. This caused massive resentment and further encouragement of the belief, again fomented by the rightist press, that the Army was being persecuted by the Republic. Since the threat was never carried out, its announcement was a gratuitously damaging error on the part of Azaña or his ministerial advisers.

As soon as the decree was made public, the most alarmist rumours were spread about unemployment and even exile for officers who were not enthusiastic Republicans.²¹ A large number accepted, rather more than one third of the total, and as many as two thirds among those colonels who had no hope of ever being promoted to general.²² Franco of course did not. He was visited by a group of officers from the Academy who asked his advice on how to respond to the new law. His reply gave a revealing insight into his notion that the Army was the ultimate arbiter of Spain’s political destinies. He said that a soldier served Spain and not a particular regime and that, now more than ever, Spain needed the Army to have officers who were real patriots.²³ At the very least, Franco was keeping his options open.

Like many officers, Franco found his relationship with the new regime subject to constant frictions. Before April was out, he became embroiled in the so-called ‘responsibilities’ issue. General Berenguer had been arrested on 17 April, for alleged offences committed in Africa, as Prime Minister and later as Minister of War during the summary trial and execution of Galán and García Hernández.²⁴ General Mola was arrested on 21 April for his work as Director-General of Security under Berenguer.²⁵ These arrests were part of a symbolic purge of significant figures of the monarchy which did the nascent Republic far more harm than good. The issue of ‘responsibilities’ harked back to the Annual disaster and the role played in it by royal interference, military incompetence and the deference of politicians towards the Army. It was popularly believed that the military coup of 1923 had been carried out in order to protect the King from the findings of the ‘Responsibilities Commission’ set up in 1921. Accordingly, the issue was still festering. To the ‘responsibilities’ contracted by Army officers and monarchist politicians before 1923 the Republican movement had added the acts of political and fiscal abuse and corruption carried out during the Dictatorship and after. The greatest of these was considered to be the execution of Galán and García Hernández. With the Dictator dead and the King in exile, it was inevitable that Berenguer would be an early target of Republican wrath.

The campaign ‘for responsibilities’ helped keep popular Republican fervour at boiling point in the early months of the Regime but at a high price in the long term. In fact, relatively few individuals were imprisoned or fled into exile but the ‘responsibilities’ issue created a myth of a vindictive and implacable Republic, and increased the fears and resentments of powerful figures of the old regime, inducing them to see the threat posed by the Republic as greater than it really was.²⁶ In the eyes of officers like Franco, Berenguer was being tried unjustly for his part in a war to which they had devoted their lives, and for following military regulations in court-martialling Galán and García Hernández. Far from being heroes and martyrs, they were simply mutineers. Mola was a hero of the African war who, as Director-General of Security, had merely been doing his job of controlling subversion. What enraged Franco and many other Africanistas was that officers whom they considered courageous and competent were being persecuted while those who had plotted against the Dictator were being rewarded with the favour of the new regime. The ‘responsibilities’ trials were to provide the Africanistas with a further excuse for their instinctive hostility to the Republic. Franco would move more circumspectly along this road than many others like Luis Orgaz, Manuel Goded, Fanjul and Mola, but he would make the journey all the same. Like them, he came to see the officers who received the preferment of the Republic as lackeys of freemasonry and Communism, weaklings who pandered to the mob.

In this context, Franco had an ambiguous attitude towards Berenguer. Although he approved of his actions in connection with the Jaca rising, he would soon come to question his failure to fight for the monarchy in April 1931. Moreover, he harboured considerable personal resentment towards Berenguer. Having informed Franco in 1930 that he was going to promote him to General de División (Major-General), Berenguer had then realised that his friend General León was about to reach the age at which he should have passed into the reserve. To avoid this, and on the grounds that Franco had plenty of time before him, Berenguer gave the promotion instead to León.²⁷ It is thus slightly surprising that, at the end of April, Franco agreed to act as defender in Berenguer’s court martial. Along with Pacón Franco Salgado-Araujo, his ADC, he visited Madrid on 1 May and interviewed Berenguer in his cell on the following day. On 3 May, Franco was informed that the Minister of War refused authorization for him to act on behalf of Berenguer on the grounds that he was resident outside the military region in which the trial was taking place.²⁸ It was the beginning of the mutual distrust which would characterize the momentous relationship between Franco and Azaña. It was during the trip to Madrid that Franco’s attitude to Sanjurjo began to sour. His friend Natalio Rivas told him about Sanjurjo’s interview with Lerroux on 13 April. Franco concluded that some offer of future preferment had been made which accounted for Sanjurjo’s failure to mobilize the Civil Guard in defence of the King.²⁹

Franco’s latent hostility to the Republic was brought nearer to the surface with Azaña’s military reforms. In particular, he was appalled by the abolition of the eight historic military regions which were no longer to be called Capitanías Generales but were converted into ‘organic divisions’ under the command of a Major-General who would have no legal powers over civilians. The viceregal jurisdictional powers held by the old Captains-General were eliminated and the rank of Lieutenant-General was deemed unnecessary and was also suppressed.³⁰ These measures were a break with historic tradition: they removed the Army’s jurisdiction over public order. They also wiped out the possibility for Franco of reaching the pinnacles of the rank of Lieutenant-General and the post of Captain-General. He would reverse both measures in 1939. However, he was hardly less taken aback by Azaña’s decree of 3 June 1931 for the so-called revisión de ascensos (review of promotions) whereby some of the promotions on merit given during the Moroccan wars were to be re-examined. It reflected the government’s determination to wipe away the legacy of the Dictatorship – in this case to reverse some of the arbitrary promotions made by Primo de Rivera. The announcement raised the spectre that, if all of those promoted during the Dictadura were to be affected, Goded, Orgaz and Franco would go back to being colonels, and many other senior Africanistas would be demoted. Since the commission carrying out the revision would not report for more than eighteen months, it was to be at best an irritation, at worst a gnawing anxiety for those affected. Nearly one thousand officers expected to be involved, although in the event only half that number had their cases examined.³¹

The right-wing press and specialist military newspapers mounted a ferocious campaign alleging that Azaña’s declared intention was to ‘triturar el Ejército’ (crush the Army).³² Azaña never made any such remark, although it has become a commonplace that he did. He made a speech in Valencia on 7 June in which he praised the Army warmly and declared his determination to triturar the power of the corrupt bosses who dominated local politics, the caciques in the same way as he had dismantled ‘other lesser threats to the Republic’. This was twisted into the notorious phrase.³³ To the fury of the Africanistas, it was rumoured that Azaña was being advised by a group of Republican officers known among his rightist opponents as the ‘black cabinet’. The abolition of promotion by merit reflected the commitment of the artillery to promotion only by strict seniority. Azaña’s informal military advisers included artillery officers, such as Majors Juan Hernández Saravia and Arturo Menéndez López, and consisted largely of junteros who had taken part in the movement against the Dictatorship and the Monarchy. Franco regarded these officers as contemptible. There was ill feeling elsewhere in the officer corps that, instead of using the most senior Major-Generals, Azaña should listen to such relatively junior men.³⁴

However, Hernández Saravia complained to a comrade that Azaña was too proud to listen to advice from anyone. Moreover, far from setting out to persecute monarchist officers, Azaña seems rather to have cultivated many of them, such as Sanjurjo or the monarchist General Enrique Ruiz Fornells whom he kept on as his under-secretary. Indeed, there were even some leftist officers who took retirement out of frustration at what they saw as Azaña’s complaisance with the old guard and the offensive and threatening language which Azaña was accused of using against the Army is difficult to find. Azaña, although firm in his dealings with officers, spoke of the Army in public in controlled and respectful terms.³⁵

Franco was well known for his repugnance for day-to-day politics. His daily routine at the Military Academy was a full and absorbing one. Nevertheless, he was soon obliged to think about the changes that had taken place. The conservative newspapers which he read, ABC, La Época, La Correspondencia Militar, presented the Republic as responsible for Spain’s economic problems, mob violence, disrespect for the Army and anticlericalism. The press, and the material which he received and devoured from the Entente Internationale contre la Troisième Internationale, portrayed the regime as a Trojan Horse for Communists and freemasons determined to unleash the Godless hordes of Moscow against Spain and all its great traditions.³⁶ The challenges to military certainties constituted by Azaña’s reforms cannot have failed to provoke, at the very least, nostalgia for the monarchy. Similarly, news of the rash of church burnings which took place in Madrid, Málaga, Seville, Cádiz and Alicante on 11 May did not pass him by. The attacks were carried out largely by anarchists, provoked by the belief that the Church was at the heart of the most reactionary activities in Spain. Franco was probably unaware of accusations that the first fires were started with aviation spirit secured from Cuatro Vientos aerodrome by his brother Ramón. He cannot, however, have failed to learn of his brother’s published statement that ‘I contemplated with joy those magnificent flames as the expression of a people which wanted to free itself from clerical obscurantism’.³⁷ In notes made for his projected memoirs, jotted down nearly thirty years after the event, Franco described the church burnings as the event which defined the Republic.³⁸ That reflects not only his underlying Catholicism, but also the extent to which the Church and the Army were increasingly flung together as the self-perceived victims of Republican persecution.

However, more than for anything else that had happened since 14 April, Franco was to bear Azaña the deepest grudge of all for his order of 30 June 1931 closing the Academia General Militar de Zaragoza. The first news of it reached him while on manoeuvres in the Pyrenees. His initial reaction was disbelief. When it sank in, he was devastated. He had loved his work there and he would never forgive Azaña and the so-called ‘black cabinet’ for snatching it from him. He and other Africanistas believed that the Academy had been condemned to death merely because it was one of Primo de Rivera’s successes. He was also convinced that the ‘black cabinet’ wanted to bring him down because of their envy of his spectacular military career. In fact, Azaña’s decision was based on doubts about the efficacy of the kind of training imparted in the Academy and also on a belief that its cost was disproportionate at a time when he was trying to reduce military expenses. Franco controlled his distress with difficulty.³⁹ He wrote to Sanjurjo hoping that he might be able to intercede with Azaña. Sanjurjo replied that he must resign himself to the closure. A few weeks later, Sanjurjo commented to Azaña that Franco was ‘like a child who has had a toy taken away from him’.⁴⁰

Franco’s anger glimmered through the formalised rhetoric of his farewell speech which he made on the parade-ground at the Academy on 14 July 1931. He opened by commenting with regret that there would be no jura de bandera (swearing on the flag) since the laic Republic had abolished the oath. He then surveyed the achievements of the Academy under his direction, including the elimination of vice. He made much of the loyalty and duty that the cadets owed to the Patria and to the Army. He commented on discipline, saying that it ‘acquires its full value when thought counsels the contrary of what is being ordered, when the heart struggles to rise in inward rebellion against the orders received, when one knows that higher authority is in error and acting out of hand’. He made a rambling and convoluted, but nonetheless manifestly bitter, allusion to those who had been rewarded by the Republic for their disloyalty to the monarchy. He made an oblique reference to the Republican officers who held the key posts in Azaña’s Ministry of War as ‘a pernicious example within the Army of immorality and injustice’. His speech ended with the cry ‘¡Viva España!’.⁴¹ He was to comment proudly more than thirty years later ‘I never once shouted ‘¡Viva la República!’.⁴²

After his speech, Franco returned to his office only to be called out several times to appear on the balcony to receive the frenetic applause of those present. When he said farewell to Pacón, who had worked with him as an instructor in tactics and weaponry and as his ADC, the future Caudillo was crying. He packed his things and travelled to his wife’s country house, La Piniella, at Llanera near Oviedo.⁴³

The speech was published as Franco’s order of the day and reached Azaña. Azaña wrote in his diary two days later, ‘Speech by General Franco to the cadets of the Academia General on the occasion of the end of the course. Completely opposed to the Government, guarded attacks against his superiors; a case for immediate dismissal, if it were not the case that today he ceased to hold that command.’ As it was, Azaña limited himself to a formal reprimand (reprensión) in Franco’s service record for the speech to the cadets.⁴⁴

Acutely jealous of his spotless military record, Franco’s resentment on being informed of this reprimand on 23 July may be imagined. Nevertheless, his concern for his career led him to swallow his pride and to write on the next day an ardent, if less than convincing, self-defence, in the form of a letter to the Chief of the General Staff of the V Military Division within whose jurisdiction the Academy lay. It requested him to pass on to the Minister of War, ‘my respectful complaint and my regret for the erroneous interpretation given to the ideas contained in the speech … which I endeavoured to limit to the purest military principles and essences which have been the norm of my entire military career; and equally my regret at his apparent assumption that there is something lukewarm or reserved about the loyal commitment that I have always given, without officious ostentation which is against my character, to the regime which the country has proclaimed, whose ensign hoisted in the central parade ground of the Academy flew over the military solemnities and whose national anthem closed the proceedings.’⁴⁵

Azaña did not regard the obligatory flying of the Republican flag and the playing of the new national anthem as special merits and was not convinced. He seems to have believed that the once favourite soldier of the monarchy needed bringing down a peg or two. His contacts with Franco, in this letter and at a meeting in August, convinced him that he was sufficiently ambitious and time-serving to be easily bent to his purposes. In his basic assessment, Azaña was probably correct, but he seriously misjudged how easy it would be to act on it. If Azaña had given Franco the degree of preferment to which he had become accustomed under the monarchy, it was entirely possible that he might have become the darling of the Republic. As it was, Azaña’s policy towards Franco was to be altogether more restrained although, from the point of view of the Republican Minister of War, it was indeed generous. After losing the Academy, Franco was kept without a posting for nearly eight months which gave him time to devote to his reading of anti-Communist and anti-masonic literature but left him with only 80 per cent of his salary. Without a personal fortune, living in his wife’s house, his career apparently curtailed, Franco harboured considerable rancour for the Republican regime. Doña Carmen encouraged his bitterness.⁴⁶

Throughout the summer of 1931, Army officers fumed at both the military reforms and at what they saw as the anarchy and disorder constituted by a number of strikes involving the anarchosyndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo in Seville and Barcelona.⁴⁷ Given the discontent occasioned by Azaña’s reforms and the monarchist quest for praetorian champions to overthrow the Republic, there were well-founded rumours of possible military conspiracy. The names of Generals Emilio Barrera and Luis Orgaz were the most often cited and they were both briefly put under house arrest in mid-June. Eventually, in September, after evidence of further monarchist plots, Azaña would have Orgaz exiled to the Canary Islands. Azaña was convinced by reports reaching the Ministry that Franco was conspiring with Orgaz and regarded him as the more fearsome of the two (‘el más temible’).⁴⁸ As the summer wore on, Azaña continued to believe that he was on the fringe of some kind of plot. In reports on contacts between Franco’s friend, the militantly right-wing Colonel José Enrique Varela, and the powerful hard-line monarchist boss of Cádiz, Ramón de Carranza, the names of Franco and Orgaz had been mentioned. The Minister wrote in his diary ‘Franco is the only one to be feared’, a tribute to his reputation for seriousness and efficiency. Azaña gave instructions that Franco’s activities be monitored. In consequence, when he visited Madrid in mid-August, the Director-General of Security, Angel Galarza, had him under the surveillance of three policemen.⁴⁹

On 20 August, during his stay in Madrid, Franco visited the Ministry of War and spoke with the under-secretary who reminded him that he was obliged to call on the Minister. He returned on the following day. Azaña criticized his farewell speech to the Academy in Zaragoza. Franco had to swallow the criticism but Azaña was not fooled, writing later in his diary ‘he tries to seem frank but all rather hypocritically’. Azaña warned him, somewhat patronizingly, not to be carried away by his friends and admirers. Franco made protests of his loyalty, although he admitted that monarchist enemies of the Republic had been seeking him out, and seized the opportunity to inform the Minister that the closure of the Academy had been a grave error. When Azaña hinted that he would like to make use of Franco’s services, the young general commented with an ironic smile ‘and to use my services, they have me followed everywhere by a police car! They will have seen that I don’t go anywhere.’ An embarrassed Azaña had the surveillance lifted.⁵⁰

The hypocritical Franco of Azaña’s account is entirely consistent with the document which he had submitted in defence of his speech at the closure of the Academy.* Azaña was rather condescending towards Franco, confident that he could bring him to heel.⁵¹ It is likely that his miscalculations about Franco derived in part from an assumption that he was as manipulable as his brother Ramón for whom Azaña, who knew him well, felt only impatience and contempt.

At the beginning of May, Franco had been refused permission to act as defender of Berenguer. In fact, the Consejo Supremo del Ejército had annulled the warrant against Berenguer soon afterwards and the Tribunal Supremo ordered the release of Mola on 3 July. However, the issue of ‘responsibilities’ remained deeply divisive, with moderate members of the government, including Azaña, keen to play it down. After a venomous debate, on 26 August, the Cortes empowered the ‘Responsibilities Commission’ to investigate political and adminstrative offences in Morocco, the repression in Catalonia between 1919 and 1923, Primo de Rivera’s 1923 coup, the Dictatorships of Primo and Berenguer and the Jaca court martial.⁵² To the fury of Azaña, who rightly believed that the Commission was dangerously damaging to the Republic, a number of aged generals who had participated in Primo’s Military Directory were arrested at the beginning of September.⁵³

The hostility of some officers and the doubts of the many about the direction the Republic was taking were intensified by the bitter debate over the proposed new constitution which took place between mid-August and the end of the year. Its laic clauses, particularly those which aimed to break the clerical stranglehold on education, provoked hysterical press reaction on the Right. The determination of the Republican and Socialist majority in the Cortes to push these clauses through provoked the resignation of the two most prominent deeply Catholic members of the government, the conservative prime minister Niceto Alcalá Zamora and his Minister of the Interior, Miguel Maura Gamazo. Azaña became prime minister. The right-wing press screamed that ‘the very existence of Spain is threatened’.⁵⁴

Apocalyptic accounts in the right-wing press of anarchy and the implications of the constitutional proposals, together with the continuing determination of the Republican Left to press ahead with the ‘responsibilities’ issue, intensified the fears of Army officers. In the eyes of most of them, some senior generals were being accused of rebellion when all they had done was to put a stop to anarchy in 1923 while others, Berenguer and Fernández de Heredia, were being tried for dealing with the mutiny of Jaca. As the then Captain-General of Aragón, Fernández de Heredia was the man who had signed the death sentences. Posters, books and even a play by Rafael Alberti, Fermín Galán, glorified ‘the martyrs of the Repúblic’. Ramón Franco dedicated his book Madrid bajo las bombas (Madrid beneath the bombs) to ‘the martyrs for freedom, Captains Galán and García Hernández, assassinated on Sunday 14 December 1930 by Spanish reaction incarnated in the monarchy of Alfonso XIII and his government, presided by General Dámaso Berenguer’. The beatification of Galán and García Hernández was something which infuriated all but committed Republicans in the officer corps. Franco was especially outraged that the Republic appeared to be applying double standards in trying to eradicate unsound promotions granted during the 1920s at the same time as pursuing favouritism towards those who had collaborated in its establishment. Ironically, Ramón Franco had been appointed Director-General de Aeronáutica. Franco’s brother abused his position to participate in anarchist conspiracies against the Republic, lost his post and was only saved from a prison sentence by his election as a parliamentary deputy for Barcelona and by the solidarity of his masonic colleagues.⁵⁵

When the Responsibilities Commission began to gather evidence for the forthcoming trial of those involved in the executions after the Jaca uprising, Franco appeared as a witness. In the course of his cross-examination on 17 December 1931, Franco’s answers were dry and to the point. He reminded the court that the code of military justice permitted summary executions to take place without the prior approval of the civilian authorities. However, when asked if he wished to add anything to his statement, he revealingly went on to defend military justice as ‘a juridical and a military necessity, by which military offences, of a purely military nature, and committed by soldiers, are judged by persons militarily prepared for the task’. Accordingly, he declared that, since the members of the Commission had no military experience, they were not competent to judge what had happened at the Jaca court martial.

When proceedings recommenced on the following day, Franco effectively lined himself against one of the cherished myths of the Republic by stating that Galán and García Hernández had committed a military offence, dismissing the central premiss of the Commission that they had carried out a political rebellion against an illegitimate regime. Franco declared ‘receiving in sacred trust the arms of the nation and the lives of its citizens, it would be criminal in any age and in any situation for those who wear a uniform to use those arms against the nation or against the state which gave us them. The discipline of the Army, its very existence and the health of the state demand of us soldiers the bitter disappointments of having to apply a rigid law’.⁵⁶ Although carefully ringed around by declarations of respect for parliamentary sovereignty, it was implicitly a statement that he regarded the defence of the monarchy by the Army in December 1930 to have been legitimate, a view contrary to those held by many in authority in the Republic. His views on the canonization of the Jaca rebels could also easily be deduced from the statement. However, in its implications about a disciplined acceptance of the Republic, his statement was entirely consistent with both his order of the day on 15 April and his farewell speech at the Academy. It may therefore be taken as further evidence that, unlike hotheads such as Orgaz, he was still far from turning his discontent into active rebellion. After a protracted ordeal, both Berenguer and Fernández de Heredia were found innocent by the Tribunal Supremo in 1935.⁵⁷

Franco’s obscure declarations of disciplined loyalty were some distance from the enthusiastic commitment which might have gained him official favour. After the loss of the Academy, the questioning of his promotions, and the working class unrest highlighted by the right-wing press, Franco’s attitude to the Republic could hardly be other than one of suspicion and hostility. It is not surprising that he had to wait some considerable time before he got a posting, but it was an indication both of his professional merits and of Azaña’s recognition of them that, on 5 February 1932, he was posted to La Coruña as Commander of the XV Brigada de Infantería de Galicia, where he arrived at the end of the month. The local press greeted his arrival with the headline ‘A Caudillo of the Tercio’ and praised not only his bravery and military skill but also ‘his noble gifts as a correct and dignified gentleman’. He again took Pacón with him as his ADC. He was delighted to be in La Coruña, near to his mother, whom he visited every weekend.⁵⁸

That Azaña believed that he was treating Franco well may be deduced from the fact that the posting saved the young general from the consequences of a decree published in March 1932 establishing the obligatory retirement of those who had spent more than six months without a posting. The appointment came only a few days before the end of the period after which Franco would have had to go into the reserve and he must have suffered considerable anxiety during the months of waiting. Azaña had deliberately kept him in a state of limbo as a punishment for the farewell speech to the Military Academy and to tame the arrogance of the soldier seen as the golden boy of the monarchy.⁵⁹ In fact, by the point at which he posted Franco to La Coruña, Azaña seems to have decided that he had learned his lesson and might now be recruited to the new regime. Knowing Ramón Franco well, Azaña seemed again to be judging his older brother in the same terms. If that was so, it reflected an under-estimate of Franco’s capacity for resentment. Rather than reacting with gratitude and loyalty as Azaña had hoped, Franco harboured a grudge against him for the rest of his life.

Before their next meeting seven months later, a major crisis in civilian-military relations had occurred, and been resolved. It took the form of a military uprising in August 1932, the origins of which went back to the end of 1931. At that time, in the course of an otherwise peaceful general strike of landworkers in the province of Badajoz in Extremadura, there was bloodshed involving the Civil Guard in Castilblanco, a remote village in the heart of the arid zone known as the Siberia extremeña. Like most of the area, Castilblanco suffered high unemployment. On 30 and 31 December, the workers of the village held peaceful demonstrations. As they were dispersing to their homes, the alcalde (mayor) panicked and instructed the local four-man Civil Guard unit to intervene to break up the crowd. After some scuffling, a Civil Guard opened fire killing one man and wounding two others. In response, the villagers set upon the four guards, beating them to death with stones and knives.⁶⁰ There was an outcry in the right-wing press and the Republican-Socialist government headed by Azaña was accused of inciting the landless labourers against the Civil Guard. Sanjurjo visited Castilblanco, in his capacity as Director-General of the Civil Guard, and blamed the outrage on the extreme leftist Socialist deputy for Badajoz, Margarita Nelken. In a revealing association of the working class and the Moors, he declared that during the collapse of Melilla, even at Monte Arruit, he had not seen similar atrocities. He also demanded justice for the Civil Guard.⁶¹ It was part of a process whereby the military was being convinced that the Republic signified disorder and anarchy. No issue was more indicative of the social abyss which divided Spain. For the Right, the Civil Guard was the beloved benemérita, the guardian of the social order; for the Left, it was a brutal and irresponsible Army of occupation at the service of the rich.

While the country was still reeling from the horror of Castilblanco, there occurred another tragedy. In the village of Arnedo in the province of Logroño in northern Castile, some of the employees of the local shoe factory had been sacked for belonging to the socialist trade union, the Unión General de Trabajadores. During a protest meeting, the Civil Guard, with no apparent provocation, opened fire killing four women, a child and a worker as well as wounding thirty other by-standers, some of whom died in the course of the next few days. In the light of the remarks made by General Sanjurjo after Castilblanco, it was difficult for the incident not to be seen as an act of revenge.⁶² Azaña reluctantly bowed to pressure in the left-wing press and by left-wing deputies in the Cortes to remove Sanjurjo from the command of the Civil Guard and transfer him to the less important post of head of the Carabineros, the frontier and customs police.⁶³ On 5 February 1932, in the batch of postings which sent Franco to Galicia, Sanjurjo was replaced as Director of the Civil Guard by General Miguel Cabanellas.⁶⁴

Under any circumstances, Sanjurjo would have objected to losing the post of Director-General of the Civil Guard. In the context of the leftist campaign against him, his removal was interpreted by the right-wing press, and by himself, as an outrage and a further blow in favour of anarchy. Many on the Right began to see Sanjurjo as a possible saviour and encouraged him to think about overthrowing the Republic. The Castilblanco and Arnedo incidents had wiped away Sanjurjo’s original sin in the eyes of the extreme Right, his failure to act on behalf of the monarchy in April 1931. Now he was seen as the most likely guarantor of law and order, something which was transmuted in rightist propaganda into the defence of ‘the eternal essences of Spain’. Throughout 1932, as the agrarian reform statute and the Catalan autonomy statute painfully passed through the Cortes, the Right would grow ever more furious at what it perceived as assaults on property rights and national unity. Across Spain, petitions in favour of Sanjurjo were signed by many Army officers, although not by Franco. Several efforts were made to push Sanjurjo towards a coup d’état and he began to plot against the Republic.

General Emilio Barrera informed the Italian Ambassador Ercole Durini di Monzo in February that a movement to ‘oppose bolshevism and restore order’ could count on widespread military support including that of Generals Goded and Sanjurjo.⁶⁵ Lerroux, who was determined to see Azaña’s Left Republican-Socialist coalition evicted from power, was in contact with Sanjurjo. They were united in resenting the presence of the Socialists in the government and talked about a possible coup.⁶⁶ Any military conspiracy would have benefited enormously from the participation of Franco. However, he kept his distance out of innate caution when faced with an ill-prepared and highly questionable coup attempt. He distrusted Sanjurjo and had no reason to risk everything when he could continue to exercise his chosen profession within the Republic.

Franco was anxious not to jeopardize his new found comforts. Despite his proven capacity to put up with physical discomfort and to work hard in the most difficult conditions, Franco always enjoyed physical comfort when it was available. In the interval between leaving Morocco and taking on the task of building up the Zaragoza Academy, he had enjoyed a light work load and a full social life. Now, in La Coruña, he was effectively military governor, and had a splendid life-style, with a large house and white-gloved servants. La Coruña was then a beautiful and peaceful seaport and not the bustling and anonymous town that it was to become during the later years of his dictatorship. Franco’s minimal duties as military commander permitted him to be a frequent visitor to the yacht club (Club Náutico) where he was able to indulge, on a small scale, his love of sailing. It was there that he made the acquaintance of Máximo Rodríguez Borrell, who after the war would become his regular fishing and hunting companion. Max Borrell was to be one of his very few close civilian friends and to remain so until his final illness.⁶⁷

The fact that Franco was not prepared to take risks for Sanjurjo does not mean that he was enthusiastic about the political situation. However, he was altogether more cautious than many of his peers and he carefully distanced himself from the coup attempt of 10 August 1932. Nonetheless, as might have been expected given his long African association with Sanjurjo, he knew about its preparation. On 13 July, Sanjurjo visited La Coruña to inspect the local carabineros and had dinner with Franco, discussing with him the forthcoming uprising. According to his cousin, Franco told Sanjurjo at this meeting that he was not prepared to take part in any kind of coup.⁶⁸ The monarchist plotter Pedro Sainz Rodríguez organized a further, and elaborately clandestine, meeting in a restaurant on the outskirts of Madrid. Franco expressed considerable doubts about the outcome of the coup and said he was still undecided about what his own position would be when the moment arrived, promising Sanjurjo that, whatever he decided, he would not take part in any action launched by the government against him.⁶⁹

Franco was sufficiently vague for Sanjurjo to assume that he would support the rising. According to Major Juan Antonio Ansaldo, an impetuous monarchist aviator, conspirator and devoted follower of Sanjurjo, Franco’s ‘participation in the 10 August coup was considered certain’, but ‘shortly before it took place, he freed himself of any undertaking and advised several officers to follow his example’.⁷⁰ It is probably going too far to suggest that Franco first supported Sanjurjo’s plot and then changed his mind. However, given Franco’s labyrinthine ambiguity, it would have been easy for Sanjurjo and his fellow-plotters to allow themselves to take his participation for granted. His hesitations and vagueness while he waited for the outcome to become clear would have permitted such an assumption. It is certainly the case that Franco did nothing to report what was going on to his superiors.

Franco’s final refusal to become part of the conspiracy was based largely on his view that it was inadequately prepared, as he indicated to the right-wing politician, José María Gil Robles, at a dinner in the home of their mutual friend, the Marqués de la Vega de Anzó.⁷¹ He was afraid that a failed coup would ‘open the doors to Communism’.⁷² He was, however, also highly suspicious of the links between Sanjurjo and Lerroux whose involvement in what was being prepared could be perceived in a speech which he made in Zaragoza on 10 July. Aligning himself with the cause of the plotters, Lerroux was trying to push the government to adopt a more conservative line, tacitly threatening the military intervention which would follow if it did not. As ever the outrageous cynic and flatterer of the military, Lerroux declared that, when he came to power, he would reopen the Academia General Militar and reinstall Franco as Director.⁷³

Franco himself visited Madrid at the end of July in order ‘to choose a horse’.⁷⁴ It was rumoured, to his annoyance, that he had come to join the plot. When asked by other officers, as he was repeatedly, if he were part of the conspiracy, he replied that he did not believe that the time had yet come for a rising but that he respected those who thought that it had. He was outraged to discover that some senior officers were openly stating that he was involved. He told them that, if they continued to ‘spread these calumnies’, he would ‘take energetic measures’. By chance, he met Sanjurjo, Goded, Varela and Millán Astray at the Ministry of War. Varela told him that Sanjurjo wanted to sound him out about the forthcoming coup. Sanjurjo at first denied this but agreed to meet Franco and Varela together. Over lunch, Franco told them categorically that they should not count on his participation in any kind of military uprising. In a barely veiled rebuke to Sanjurjo for his behaviour in April 1931, Franco justified his refusal to join the plot on the grounds that, since the Republic had come about because of the military defection from the cause of the monarchy, the Army should not now try to change things.⁷⁵ This meeting could account for the caustic remark made by Sanjurjo in the summer of 1933 during his imprisonment after the coup’s failure: ‘Franquito es un cuquito que va a lo suyito’ (‘little Franco is a crafty so-and-so who looks after himself’).⁷⁶

The Sanjurjo coup was poorly organized and, in Madrid, easily dismantled. It was briefly successful in Seville but, with a column of troops loyal to the government marching on the city, Sanjurjo fled.⁷⁷ The humiliation of part of the Army and the reawakening of the mood of popular fiesta which had initially greeted the establishment of the Republic occasioned by Sanjurjo’s defeat cannot have failed to convince Franco of the wisdom of his prognostications about the rising.⁷⁸ The fact that the armed urban police, the Guardias de Asalto and the Civil Guard had played no part in the rising had underlined their importance. Franco was more convinced than ever that any attempted coup d’état needed to count on their support.

Azaña had long been worried that Franco might be involved in a plot against the regime and in the course of the Sanjurjada had feared that he might be part of the coup. However, when he telephoned La Coruña on 10 August, he was relieved to find that Franco was at his post. Curiously, he very nearly was not. Franco had requested permission for a brief spell of leave in order to take his wife and daughter on a trip around the beautiful fjord-like bays of Galicia, the rías bajas, but it had been refused since his immediate superior, Major-General Félix de Vera, had also been about to go away. Accordingly, when the coup took place, Franco had been in acting command of military forces in Galicia.⁷⁹

The conspiratorial Right, both civilian and military, reached the more general conclusion which Franco had drawn in advance – that they must never again make the mistake of inadequate preparation. A monarchist ‘conspiratorial committee’ was set up by members of the extreme rightist group Acción Española and Captain Jorge Vigón of the General Staff in late September 1932 to begin preparations for a future military rising. The theological, moral and political legitimacy of a rising against the Republic was argued in the group’s journal Acción Española, of which Franco had been a subscriber since its first number in December 1931.⁸⁰ The group operated from Ansaldo’s house in Biarritz. Substantial sums of money were collected from rightist sympathizers to buy arms and to finance political destabilization. One of the earliest operations was to set up subversive cells within the Army itself, and the responsibility for this task was given to Lieutenant-Colonel Valentín Galarza of the General Staff.⁸¹ Galarza had been involved in the Sanjurjada but nothing could be proved against him. Azaña wrote in his diary, ‘I have left without a posting another Lieutenant-Colonel of the General Staff, Galarza, an intimate of Sanjurjo and Goded, who before the Republic was one of the great mangoneadores (meddlers) of the Ministry. Galarza is intelligent, capable and obliging, slippery and obedient. But he is definitely on the other side. There is nothing against him in the prosecution case. Nevertheless, he is one of the most dangerous’.⁸² All that Azaña could do was to leave Galarza without an active service posting. Galarza aimed to recruit key generals and Franco, already a friend, was one of his prime targets.⁸³

Azaña seems to have assumed that Franco’s presence at his post during the Sanjurjada meant that they were now totally reconciled. When the Prime Minister visited La Coruña from 17 to 22 September 1932, however, Franco made slight efforts to disabuse him of the idea. Franco, according to his own account, was no more than stiffly polite to the Prime Minister. In the course of a stay in Galicia during which he was received enthusiastically, Azaña made an effort to be friendly but Franco did not respond with any warmth.⁸⁴ If indeed Franco set out to put distance between himself and the Prime Minister, Azaña seems not to have noticed.*

Franco’s account probably reflects his desire to wipe away the disagreeable memory of the time when he was Azaña’s subordinate. In fact, at this time, Franco was immensely careful.⁸⁵ When Sanjurjo requested that he appear as his defender in his trial, he refused. His glacial coldness was revealed when he said to his one-time commander, ‘I could, in fact, defend you, but without hope of success. I think in justice that by rebelling and failing, you have earned the right to die’.⁸⁶ Nor did he join the conspiratorial efforts which led eventually to the creation of the Unión Militar Española, the clandestine organization of monarchist officers founded by Lieutenant-Colonel Emilio Rodríguez Tarduchy, a close friend of Sanjurjo, and Captain Bartolomé Barba Hernández, like Galarza an officer of the general staff. The UME emerged finally in late 1933 and was linked, through Galarza, to the activities of Ansaldo and Vigón.⁸⁷

On 28 January 1933, the results of the revisión de ascensos were announced. Franco’s promotion to colonel was impugned, that to general validated. Goded’s promotions to brigadier and major-general were both annulled. However, they were not demoted but rather frozen in their present position in the seniority scale until a combination of vacancies arising and seniority permitted them to catch up with their accelerated promotions. So Franco kept his rank with effect from the date of his promotion in 1926. He nevertheless dropped from number one in the escalafón (list) of brigadier generals to 24, out of 36. Like most of his comrades, Franco smouldered with resentment at what was perceived as a gratuitous humiliation and nearly two years of unnecessary anxiety.⁸⁸ Years later, he still wrote of promotions being ‘pillaged’ (despojo de ascensos) and of the injustice of the entire process.⁸⁹

In February 1933, Azaña had him posted to the Balearic Islands as comandante general, ‘where he will be far from any temptations’.⁹⁰ It was a post which would normally have gone to a Major-General and may well have formed part of Azaña’s efforts to attract Franco into the Republican orbit, rewarding him for his passivity during the Sanjurjada. After the preferments with which he had been showered by the King and Primo de Rivera, Franco did not perceive command of the Balearic Islands as a reward. In his draft memoirs, he wrote that it was less than his seniority merited (postergación).⁹¹ More than two weeks after the appointment, he had still not made the reglamentary visit to the Ministry of War to report on his impending move. The Socialist leader, Francisco Largo Caballero, told Azaña that Franco had been heard to boast that he would not go.⁹² Finally on 1 March, having been in Madrid for two days, he came to say his farewells to Azaña, in his capacity as Minister of War. The delay was a carefully calculated act of disrespect. Azaña perceived that Franco was still furious about the annulment of promotions but the subject did not arise, and they spoke merely of the situation in the Balearic Islands.⁹³ The new military commander arrived at Palma de Mallorca on 16 March 1933, and with Mussolini’s ambitions heightening tension in the Mediterranean, dedicated himself to the job of improving the defences of the islands.

Throughout 1933, the fortunes of the Azaña government declined. By the beginning of September, the Republican-Socialist coalition was in tatters. Right-wing success in blocking reform had undermined the faith of the Socialists in Azaña’s Left Republicans. On 10 September, the increasingly conservative and power-hungry Lerroux began to put together an all-Republican cabinet. It was reported in ABC that he had offered Franco the job of Minister or undersecretary of War. Although he came from the Balearic Islands to Madrid for discussions with the Radical leader, Franco finally declined the offer.⁹⁴ The post was one of those to which he aspired, but the Lerroux cabinet of 12 September was expected to last for no more than a couple of months since it could not command a parliamentary majority. Convinced that the only way to implement reform was to form a government on their own, the Socialists refused to rejoin a coalition with Azaña and it was widely assumed that President Alcalá Zamora would soon be forced to call general elections. In such conditions, taking over a ministry would have given Franco no opportunity to introduce the changes which he regarded as essential.

During the campaign for the November 1933 elections, with the possibility that the Socialists might win and establish a government bent on sweeping reform, Franco, although busy and fulfilled in the Balearics, was pessimistic about the prospects for the armed forces. He talked to friends of leaving the Army and going into politics. According to Arrarás, rumours to this effect reached rightist circles in Madrid and he was visited in Palma by a messenger from the increasingly powerful Catholic authoritarian party, the Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-Wing Groups). The envoy allegedly offered Franco inclusion as a candidate in both the CEDA’s Madrid list and in another provincial list in order to guarantee his election. He refused outright.⁹⁵ He did, however, vote for the CEDA in the elections.⁹⁶ With the Left divided and the anarchists abstaining, a series of local alliances between the Radicals and the CEDA ensured their victory. The Radicals got 104 deputies and the CEDA 115 to the Socialists’ 58 and the Left Republicans’ 38. The subsequent period of government by a coalition of the ever-more corrupt Radicals and the CEDA would see Franco come in from the cold, as he perceived his comfortable exile in the Balearics, and much nearer to the centre of political preferment.

* This differs from the version given by Franco to his friend and biographer, Joaquín Arrarás. According to this version, Azaña said ‘I have re-read your extraordinary order to the cadets and I would like to believe that you did not think through what you wrote’, to which Franco claims to have replied, ‘Señor Ministro, I never write anything that I haven’t thought through beforehand’. Azaña’s version, written on the day, is altogether more plausible than that recounted by Franco six years later in the heat of the civil war. Joaquin Arrarás, Franco (Valladolid, 1937) p. 166.

* He later claimed that he had gone to great lengths not to be photographed with the Prime Minister, pointing out that his superior, Major General Vera, took priority. Franco also said that, by using the pretext that Doña Carmen was unwell, he had avoided being present at a morning reception given on Sunday 19 September by the La Coruña Sporting Club for Azaña and his friend and host, Santiago Casares Quiroga, the Minister of the Interior, and a prominent gallego. There exist photographs of them together during the visit to the city, next to each other and certainly with Franco nearer to Azaña than was General Vera. Similarly, the local press of the time reported Franco’s presence at Azaña’s table at a much more lavish occasion than the morning function, a dinner given that same evening at the Hotel Atlántida, in La Coruña and again at another lunch on Wednesday 21 September. See the photograph in Xosé Ramón Barreiro Fernández, Historia contemporánea de Galicia 4 vols (La Coruña, 1982) II, p. 241.

IV

IN COMMAND

Franco and the Second Republic, 1934–1936

AFTER THE vexations of the previous two years, the period of Centre-Right government, which came to be known by the Spanish Left as the bienio negro (two black years), moved Franco back into the sunlight. After what he perceived as the harsh persecution to which he and like-minded officers had been subjected by Azaña, the forty-two year-old general found himself lionized by politicians as he had not been since the Dictatorship. The reasons were obvious. He was the Army’s most celebrated young general of rightist views, and was untainted by collaboration with the Republic. His renewed celebrity and favour coincided with, and indeed to an extent fed upon, the bitter polarization of Spanish politics in this period.

The Right saw its success in the November 1933 elections as an opportunity to put the clock back on the attempted reforms of the previous nineteen months of Republican-Socialist coalition government. In a context of deepening economic crisis, with one in eight of the workforce unemployed nationally and one in five in the south, a series of governments bent on reversing reform could provoke only desperation and violence among the urban and rural working classes. Employers and landowners celebrated victory by slashing wages, cutting their work forces, in particular sacking union members, evicting tenants and raising rents. The labour legislation of the previous governments was simply ignored.

Within the Socialist movement, rank-and-file bitterness at losing the elections and outrage at the vicious offensive of the employers soon pushed the leadership into a tactic of revolutionary rhetoric in the vain hope of frightening the Right into restraining its aggression and pressuring the President of the Republic, Niceto Alcalá Zamora, into calling new elections. In the long term, this tactic was to contribute to the feeling on the Right, and particularly within the high command of the Army, that strong authoritarian solutions were required to meet the threat from the Left.

Alcalá Zamora had not invited the sleek and pudgy CEDA leader, José María Gil Robles, to form a government despite the fact that the Catholic CEDA was the biggest party in the Cortes. The President suspected the immensely clever and energetic Gil Robles of planning to establish an authoritarian, corporative state and so turned instead to the cynical and corrupt Alejandro Lerroux, leader of the increasingly conservative Radicals, the second largest party. But Lerroux’s power-hungry Radicals were dependent on CEDA votes and became the puppets of Gil Robles. In return for introducing the harsh social policies sought by the CEDA’s wealthy backers, the Radicals were allowed to enjoy the spoils of office. The Socialists were angered by the corruption of the Radicals but the first working class protest came from the anarchists. With irresponsible naivety, a violent uprising was called for 8 December 1933. However, the government had been forewarned of the anarcho-syndicalists’ plans and quickly declared a state of emergency (Estado de alarma). Leaders of the CNT and the FAI were arrested, press censorship was imposed, and union buildings were closed down.

In traditionally anarchist areas – Aragón, the Rioja, Catalonia, the Levante, parts of Andalusia and Galicia – there were sporadic strikes, some trains were derailed and Civil Guard posts were attacked. After desultory skirmishes with the Civil Guard and the Assault Guards, the revolutionary movement was soon suppressed in Madrid, Barcelona and the provincial capitals of Andalusia, Alicante and Valencia. Throughout Aragón and in the regional capital, Zaragoza, however, the rising enjoyed a degree of success. Anarchist workers raised barricades, attacked public buildings, and engaged in armed combat with the forces of order. The government sent in several companies of the Army which, with the aid of tanks, took four days to crush the insurrection.¹ The movement reinforced the conviction of many of the more right-wing officers that, even with a conservative government in power, the Republic had to be overthrown.²

The difficulties experienced in the suppression of the revolt led, on 23 January 1933 to the resignation of the Minister of the Interior, Manuel Rico Avello, who was packed off to Morocco as High Commissioner. He was replaced by Diego Martínez Barrio, the Minister of War, who was replaced in turn by the conservative Radical deputy for Badajoz and crony of Lerroux, Diego Hidalgo who knew more about the agrarian problem than about military questions.* However, with engaging humility, he admitted his lack of military knowledge and his need for professional advice.³ He also set out to cultivate military sympathies for his party by softening the impact of some of the measures introduced by Azaña and reversing others.⁴ When the new Minister of War had been in post barely a week, at the beginning of February, Franco made his acquaintance in Madrid. Clearly impressed by the young general, at the end of March 1934, Hidalgo successfully placed before the cabinet a proposal for his promotion from Brigadier to Major-General (General de División), in which rank he was again the youngest in Spain.⁵ Hidalgo, expecting an effusive response, was dismayed by the cold and impersonal telegram which Franco sent him on receiving the news of his promotion. Reflecting on it later, Hidalgo commented, ‘I never ever saw him either joyful or depressed’.⁶

The relationship between Franco and Hidalgo was consolidated in June during a four-day visit made by the Minister to the Balearic Islands where Franco was Comandante General. Hidalgo was much taken by the general’s considerable capacity for work, his obsession with detail, his cool deliberation in resolving problems. One incident stuck in his mind. It was the Minister’s custom on visiting garrisons to request that the commanding officer celebrate his visit by releasing any soldier currently under arrest. Although there was only one prisoner, a captain, in Menorca, Franco refused, saying ‘if the Minister orders me I will do it; if he merely makes a request, no.’ When Hidalgo asked what crime could be so heinous, Franco replied that it was the worst that any officer could commit: he had slapped a soldier. It was a surprising remark from the officer who had had a soldier shot for refusing to eat his rations. Both incidents in fact showed his obsession with military discipline. Hidalgo was so impressed by Franco that, before leaving Palma de Mallorca, and contrary to military protocol, he invited him to join him as an adviser that September during military manoeuvres in the hills (montes) of León.⁷

As 1934 progressed, Franco became the favourite general of the Radicals just as, when the political atmosphere grew more conflictive after October, he was to become the general of the more aggressively right-wing CEDA. The favour of Hidalgo contrasted strongly with the treatment Franco perceived himself to have suffered at the hands of Azaña. Moreover, with the Radical government, backed in the Cortes by the CEDA, pursuing socially conservative policies and breaking the power of one union after another, the Republic began to seem altogether more acceptable to Franco. For many conservatives, ‘catastrophist’ solutions to Spain’s problems seemed for the moment less urgent. The extreme Right, however, remained unconvinced and so continued to prepare for violence. The most militant group on the ultra Right were the Carlists of the Traditionalist Communion, break-away royalists who had rejected the liberal heresy of the constitutional monarchists and advocated an earthly theocracy under the guidance of warrior priests. The Carlists were collecting arms and drilling in the north and the spring of 1934 saw Fal Conde, the movement’s secretary, recruiting volunteers in Andalusia. The Carlists, together with the fascist Falange Española, and the influential and wealthy ‘Alfonsists’, the conventional supporters of Alfonso XIII and General Primo de Rivera, constituted the self-styled ‘catastrophist’ Right. They were so-called because of their determination to destroy the Republic by means of a cataclysm rather than by the more gradual legalist tactic favoured by the CEDA. Their plans for an uprising would eventually come to fruition in the summer of 1936.

On 31 March 1934, two Carlist representatives accompanied by the leader of the Alfonsist monarchist party, Renovación Española, Antonio Goicoechea, and General Barrera saw Mussolini in Rome. They signed a pact which promised money and arms for a rising.⁸ In May 1934, the monarchists’ most dynamic and charismatic leader, José Calvo Sotelo, was granted amnesty and returned to Spain after the three years’ exile suffered as he fled the ‘responsibilities’ campaign. Henceforth, the extreme rightist press, in addition to criticizing Gil Robles for alleged weakness, began to talk of the need to ‘conquer the State’ – a euphemism for the violent seizure of its apparatus, as the only certain way to guarantee a permanent authoritarian, corporative regime.

Although Franco was careful to distance himself from the generals who were part of monarchist conspiracies, he certainly shared some of their preoccupations. His ideas on political, social and economic issues were still influenced by the regular bulletins which had been receiving since 1928 from the Entente Internationale contre la Troisième Internationale of Geneva. In the spring of 1934, he took out a new subscription at his own expense, writing to Geneva on 16 May expressing his admiration for ‘the great work which you carry out for the defence of nations from Communism’ and his ‘wish to co-operate, in our country, in your great effort’.⁹ An ultra-right-wing organization which now had contacts with Dr Goebbels’ Antikomintern, the Entente skilfully targeted and linked up influential people convinced of the need to prepare for the struggle against Communism, and supplied subscribers with reports which purported to expose plans for forthcoming Communist offensives. The many strikes which took place during 1934, when seen through the prism of the Entente’s publications, helped convince Franco that a major Communist assault on Spain was under way.¹⁰

If Franco was circumspect with regard to extreme Right monarchist conspirators, he had even less to do with the nascent fascist groups which were beginning to appear on the scene. Gil Robles’ youth movement, the Juventud de Acción Popular (JAP) held great fascist-style rallies were held at which Gil Robles was hailed with the cry ‘¡Jefe! ¡Jefe! ¡Jefe!’ (the Spanish equivalent of Duce) in the hope that he might start a ‘March on Madrid’ to seize power. However, the JAP was not taken seriously by the ‘catastrophist’ Right. Monarchist hopes focused rather more on the openly fascist group of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the Falange, as a potential source of shock troops against the Left. As a southern landowner, an aristocrat and eligible socialite, and above all as the son of the late dictator, José Antonio Primo de Rivera was a guarantee to the upper classes that Spanish fascism would not get out of their control in the way of its German and Italian equivalents. The Falange remained insignificant until 1936, important until then only for the role played by its political vandalism in screwing up the tension which would eventually erupt into the Civil War. José Antonio was a close friend of Ramón Serrano Suñer, Franco’s brother-in-law, but despite Serrano’s efforts to bring them together, the cautious, hard-working general and the flamboyant playboy would never hit it off.

Indeed, during the first half of 1934, Franco’s interest in politics was minimal. In late February, his mother Pilar Bahamonde de Franco had decided to go on pilgrimage to Rome. Franco travelled to Madrid in order to escort her to Valencia to catch a boat to Italy. While in the capital, staying at the home of her daughter Pilar, she caught pneumonia. After an illness lasting about ten days, she died on 28 February, aged sixty-six. It is the unanimous affirmation of those close to him that the loss affected Francisco profoundly despite the fact that he had not lived with his mother for twenty-seven years. He had adored her.¹¹ Outside the family, he showed no signs of his bereavement. After her death, Franco rented a large apartment in Madrid where he and his wife regularly received the visits of other generals, prominent right-wing politicians, aristocrats and the elite of Oviedo when they passed through the capital. The most frequent recreations of Francisco and Carmen were visits to the cinema and to the flea-market (Rastro) in search of antiques, often accompanied by their favourite niece Pilar Jaraiz Franco.¹²

While Franco concerned himself with family and professional matters, the political temperature was rising throughout Spain. The Left was deeply sensitive to the development of fascism and was determined to avoid the fate of their Italian, German and Austrian counterparts. Encouraged by Gil Robles, the Radical Minister of the Interior Rafael Salazar Alonso was pursuing a policy of breaking the power of the Socialists in local administration and provoking the unions into suicidal strikes. The gradual demolition of the meagre Republican-Socialist achievements of 1931–1933 reached its culmination on 23 April with the amnesty of those accused of responsibilities for the crimes of the Dictatorship, like Calvo Sotelo, and those implicated in the coup of 10 August 1932, most notably Sanjurjo himself. Lerroux resigned in protest after Alcalá Zamora had hesitated before signing the amnesty bill. While Lerroux ran the government from the wings, one of his lieutenants, Ricardo Samper, took over as prime minister. Socialists and Republicans alike felt that the entire operation was a signal from the Radicals to the Army that officers could rise whenever they disliked the political situation.¹³ The Left was already suspicious of the government’s dependence on CEDA votes, because the monarchist Gil Robles refused to affirm his loyalty to the Republic.

Political tension grew throughout 1934. Successive Radical cabinets were incapable of allaying the suspicion that they were merely Gil Robles’ Trojan Horse. By repeatedly threatening to withdraw his support, Gil Robles provoked a series of cabinet crises as a result of which the Radical government took on an ever more rightist colouring. On each occasion, some of the remaining liberal elements of Lerroux’s party would be pushed into leaving it and its rump became progressively more dependent on CEDA whims. With Salazar Alonso provoking strikes throughout the spring and summer of 1934 and thereby picking off the most powerful unions one by one, the government widened its attacks on the Republic’s most loyal supporters and also began to mount an assault against the Basques and, even more so, the Catalans.

In Catalonia, the regional government or Generalitat was governed by a left Republican party, the Esquerra, under Luis Companys. In April, Companys had passed an agrarian reform, the Ley de Cultivos, to protect tenants from eviction by landowners. Although Madrid declared the reform unconstitutional, Companys went ahead and ratified it. Meanwhile, the government began to infringe the Basques’ tax privileges and, in an attempt to silence protest, forbade their municipal elections. Such high-handed centralism could only confirm the Left’s fears of the Republic’s rapid drift to the right. That anxiety was intensified by Salazar Alonso’s provocation and crushing defeat of a major national strike by the Socialist landworkers’ union during the summer. There were hundreds of arrests of trade union leaders and thousands of internal deportations, with peasants herded onto trucks and driven hundreds of miles from their homes to be left to make their way back without food or money. In the meantime, Army conscripts brought in the harvest. Workers’ societies were closed down and leftists on town councils forcibly replaced by government nominees. In the Spanish countryside, the clock was being put back to the 1920s.¹⁴

The vengeful policies pursued by the Radical governments and encouraged by the CEDA divided Spain. The Left saw fascism in every action of the Right; the Right, and many Army officers, smelt Communist-inspired revolution in every demonstration or strike. In the streets, there was sporadic shooting by Socialist and Falangist youths. The Government’s attacks on regional autonomy and the increasingly threatening attitude of the CEDA were driving sections of the Socialist movement to place their hopes in a revolutionary rising to forestall the inexorable destruction of the Republic. On the Right, there was a belief that, if the Socialists could be provoked into an insurrection, an excuse would be provided to crush them definitively. Gil Robles’ youth movement, the JAP, held a rally on 9 September at Covadonga in Asturias, the site of a battle in 732 considered to be the starting point for the long reconquest of Spain from the Moors. The symbolic association of the right-wing cause with the values of traditional Spain and the identification of the working class with the Moorish invaders was a skilful device that would help secure military sympathy. It foreshadowed the Francoist choreography of the Reconquista developed after 1936 with Franco himself cast as the medieval warrior king.

At the rally, Gil Robles spoke belligerently of the need to crush the ‘separatist rebellion’ of the Catalans and the Basque Nationalists.¹⁵ The wily Gil Robles – the politician on the Right with the greatest strategic vision – knew that the Left considered him a fascist and was determined to prevent the CEDA coming to power. He therefore pushed for the CEDA to join the government precisely in order to provoke a Socialist reaction. This is in fact what happened. CEDA ministers entered the cabinet; there was an uprising in Asturias and it was smashed by the Army.¹⁶ Gil Robles said later: ‘I asked myself this question: “I can give Spain three months of tranquillity if I do not enter the government. If we enter, will the revolution break out? Better that it do so before it is well prepared, before it defeats us.” This is what we did, we precipitated the movement, met it and implacably smashed it from within the government’.¹⁷

In September, Franco left the Balearics and travelled to the mainland to take up Diego Hidalgo’s invitation to join him as his personal technical adviser during the Army manoeuvres taking place in León at the end of the month under the direction of General Eduardo López Ochoa. Since López Ochoa had been part of the opposition against Primo de Rivera and was implicated in the December 1930 military rebellion, Franco regarded him with some hostility. It is possible that the large-scale military manoeuvres, planned in the late spring, were part of a wider project by Salazar Alonso, Hidalgo and Gil Robles to crush the Left. The manoeuvres were held in an area contiguous, and of nearly identical terrain, to Asturias where the final left-wing bid to block the CEDA’s passage to power was likely to come.¹⁸ In retrospect, it seems more than a coincidence that the Minister of War should have arranged for Franco to accompany him as his personal adviser on those manouevres and should then put him in charge of the repression of the revolutionary strike.

It is not clear why the Minister needed a ‘personal technical adviser’ when López Ochoa and other senior officers, including the Chief of the General Staff, were there under his orders. On the other hand, if the central concern was the ability of the Army to crush a left-wing action, Franco was more likely to give firm advice than López Ochoa or General Carlos Masquelet, the Chief of Staff. Franco’s first biographer, Joaquin Arrarás, claimed that when Hidalgo invited Franco to leave the Balearics and come to the mainland, ‘his real intention was to ensure that the general would be in Madrid at the Minister’s side during the hazardous days which were expected’.¹⁹ There can be no doubt that Hidalgo was aware of a possible left-wing insurrection. At the end of August, he had named General Fanjul to head an investigation into the loss of weapons from the state small-arms factories.²⁰ Then, in early September, when some members of the cabinet had been in favour of cancelling the manoeuvres, Hidalgo insisted that they go ahead precisely because of imminent left-wing threats. Three days before the manoeuvres began, Hidalgo ordered the Regiment no.3 from Oviedo which was to have taken part not to leave the Asturian capital again because he expected a revolutionary outbreak.²¹ Moreover, the astonishing speed with which Franco was later able to get the Spanish Legion from Africa to Asturias suggests some prior consideration of the problem.

On the Right, the readiness of the Army to deal with a likely leftist initiative was an issue of frequent discussion. Salazar Alonso raised it at cabinet meetings and in press interviews. At this time, secret contacts between the CEDA and senior military figures had provided assurances that the Army was confident of being able to crush any leftist uprising provoked by CEDA entry into the cabinet.²² Curiously, during the manoeuvres, José Antonio Primo de Rivera made an effort to cultivate a relationship with Franco. On the fringe of events, but clearly impressed by indications of Franco’s likely influence on what was about to happen, the Falange leader wrote him a frantic letter* claiming that Socialist victory was imminent and equivalent to ‘a foreign invasion’ since France would seize the opportunity to annex Catalonia. It is indicative of Franco’s confidence in Diego Hidalgo at this time that he read José Antonio’s letter without interest and did not bother to reply.²³

Nevertheless, the political crisis was soon to absorb Franco totally. On 26 September, Gil Robles made his move and announced that the CEDA could no longer support a minority government. In dutiful response, Lerroux formed a new cabinet including three CEDA ministers. There was outrage among even conservative Republicans. The UGT called a general strike. In most parts of Spain, the prompt action of the government in declaring martial law and arresting the hesitant Socialist leaders guaranteed its failure.²⁴ In Barcelona events were more dramatic. Pushed by extreme Catalan nationalists, and alarmed by developments in Madrid, Companys proclaimed an independent state of Catalonia ‘within the Federal Republic of Spain’ in protest against what was seen as the betrayal of the Republic. It was a largely rhetorical gesture since the rebellion of the Generalitat was doomed when Companys refused to arm the workers. The futile defence of the short-lived Catalan Republic was undertaken by a small group of officers from the local security services. They were soon overwhelmed.²⁵ The only place where the Left’s protest was not easily brushed aside was in Asturias. There, the emergence of spontaneous rank-and-file revolutionary committees impelled the local Socialist leaders to go along with a movement organized jointly by the UGT, the CNT and, belatedly, the Communists, united in the Alianza Obrera (workers’ alliance).²⁶

During the September manoeuvres, Franco had asked the Minister for permission to visit Oviedo on family business before returning to the Balearics – Franco planned to sell some land belonging to his wife. However, before he could set off from Madrid, the Asturian revolutionary strike broke out. Diego Hidalgo decided that Franco should stay on at the Ministry as his personal adviser.²⁷ The situation worsened and, on 5 October, the Civil Governor of Asturias handed over control of the region to the military commander of Oviedo, Colonel Alfredo Navarro, who immediately declared martial law. At a tense cabinet meeting on 6 October, chaired by the President of the Republic Alcalá Zamora, it was decided to name General López Ochoa to command the troops sent to fight the revolutionary miners. The choice of López Ochoa for this difficult task reflected both his position as Inspector General del Ejército in the region and his reputation as a loyal republican and a freemason. López Ochoa later confided to the Socialist lawyer Juan-Simeón Vidarte that Alcalá Zamora had asked him to undertake the task precisely because he thereby hoped to keep bloodshed to a minimum. This created serious friction with Hidalgo, Salazar Alonso and the three new CEDA ministers who, urged on by Gil Robles, had been in favour of sending General Franco. They then tried unsuccessfully to have Franco named Chief of the General Staff instead of the more liberal incumbent, Masquelet, a friend of Azaña.²⁸

Although the proposal to put Franco formally in command of troops in Asturias was rejected by Alcalá Zamora, Diego Hidalgo informally put him in overall charge of operations. Franco thus received an intoxicating taste of unprecedented politico-military power. The Minister used his ‘adviser’ as an unofficial Chief of the General Staff, marginalising his own staff and slavishly signing the orders which Franco drew up.²⁹ In fact, the powers informally exercised by Franco went even further than might have been apparent at the time. The declaration by decree of martial law (estado de guerra) effectively transferred to the Ministry of War the responsibilities for law and order normally under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior. Diego Hidalgo’s total reliance on Franco effectively gave him control of the functions of both Ministries.³⁰ The Minister’s desire to have Franco by his side in Madrid is comprehensible. He admired him and Franco had specific knowledge of Asturias, its geography, communications and military organization. He had been stationed there, had taken part in the suppression of the general strike of 1917 and had been a regular visitor since marrying Carmen. Nevertheless, the particularly harsh manner in which Franco directed the repression from Madrid gave a stamp to the events in Asturias which they might not have had if control had been left to the permanent staff of the Ministry.

The idea that a soldier should exercise such responsibilities came naturally to Franco. It harked back to the central ideas on the role of the military in politics which he had absorbed during his years as a cadet in the Toledo Academy. It was a step back in the direction of the golden years of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. He took for granted the implicit recognition of his personal capacity and standing. All in all, it was to be a profoundly formative experience for him, deepening his messianic conviction that he was born to rule. He would try unsuccessfully to repeat it after the Popular Front election victory in February 1936 before doing so definitively in the course of the Civil War.

Hidalgo’s decision to use Franco derived also from his distrust, fuelled by Gil Robles, of both General Masquelet and other liberal officers in the Ministry of War who had been close to Azaña.³¹ At the time, the unusual appointment provoked criticisms from the under-secretary of the Ministry of War, General Luis Castelló.³² Franco’s approach to the events of Asturias was coloured by his conviction, fed by the material he received from the Entente Anticomuniste of Geneva, that the workers’ uprising had been ‘deliberately prepared by the agents of Moscow’ and that the Socialists ‘with technical instructions from the Communists, thought they were going to be able to install a dictatorship’.³³ That belief no doubt made it easier to use troops against Spanish civilians as if they were a foreign enemy.

In the telegraph room of the Ministry of War, Franco set up a small command unit consisting of himself, his cousin Pacón and two naval officers, Captain Francisco Moreno Fernández and Lieutenant-Commander Pablo Ruiz Marset. Having no official status, they worked in civilian clothes. For two weeks, they controlled the movement of the troops, ships and trains to be used in the operation of crushing the revolution. Franco even directed the naval artillery bombardments of the coast, using his telephone in Madrid as a link between the cruiser Libertad and the land forces in Gijón.³⁴ Uninhibited by the humanitarian considerations which made some of the more liberal senior officers hesitate to use the full weight of the armed forces against civilians, Franco regarded the problem before him with icy ruthlessness.

The rightist values to which he was devoted had as their central symbol the reconquest of Spain from the Moors. Yet, doubting the readiness of working class conscripts to fire on Spanish workers, and anxious not to encourage the spread of revolution by weakening garrisons elsewhere in the mainland, Franco had no qualms about shipping Moorish mercenaries to fight in Asturias, the only part of Spain where the crescent had never flown. There was no contradiction for him in using the Moors in the simple sense that he regarded left-wing workers with the same racialist contempt with which he had the tribesmen of the Rif. ‘This is a frontier war’, he commented to a journalist, ‘against socialism, Communism and whatever attacks civilization in order to replace it with barbarism’.³⁵ Two banderas of the Legion and two tabores of Regulares were sent to Asturias with unusual speed and efficiency.

When it became known that one of the officers in charge of the troops coming from Africa, Lieutenant-Colonel López Bravo, had expressed doubts as to whether they would fire on civilians, Franco recommended his immediate replacement. He placed his Academy contemporary and close friend Colonel Juan Yagüe in overall charge of the African troops. He also ordered the removal of the commander of the León Air Force base, his cousin and childhood friend, Major Ricardo de la Puente Bahamonde, because he suspected that he sympathized with the miners and was ordering his pilots not to fire on the strikers in Oviedo. Almost immediately, Franco ordered the bombing and shelling of the working class districts of the mining towns. Some of the more liberal generals regarded such orders as excessively brutal.³⁶

The losses among women and children, along with the atrocities committed by Yagüe’s Moroccan units, contributed to the demoralization of the virtually unarmed revolutionaries. Yagüe sent an emissary to Madrid to complain to both Franco and Gil Robles about the humanitarian treatment given by López Ochoa to the miners. López Ochoa’s pact with the miners’ leader Belarmino Tomás permitted an orderly and bloodless surrender and so provoked Franco’s suspicions.³⁷ In contrast, Franco showed total confidence in Yagüe during the active hostilities, in the course of which a savage repression was carried out by the African troops. When Gijón and Oviedo were recaptured by government troops, summary executions of workers were carried out.³⁸

Thereafter, Franco also put his stamp on the political mopping up. After the miners surrendered, Hidalgo and Franco regarded their task as unfinished until all those involved had been arrested and punished. After Hidalgo ‘took advice’, presumably Franco’s, the police operations were entrusted to the notoriously violent Civil Guard Major Lisardo Doval who was appointed on 1 November ‘delegate of the Ministry of War for public order in the provinces of Asturias and León’. Doval was widely considered an expert on left-wing subversion in Asturias. His fame as a crusader against the Left had made him immensely popular among the upper and middle classes of the region. He was given special powers to by-pass any judicial control or other legal obstacles to his activities. As Franco knew he would, Doval carried out his task with a relish for brutality which provoked horror in the international press. It has been suggested that Franco was unaware of either Doval’s methods or his reputation as a torturer.³⁹ This is unlikely given that they had coincided as boys in El Ferrol, in the Infantry Academy at Toledo and in Asturias in 1917.

The right-wing press presented Franco, rather than López Ochoa, as the real victor over the revolutionaries and as the mastermind behind such a rapid success. Diego Hidalgo was unstinting in his praise for Franco’s value, military expertise and loyalty to the Republic and the rightist press began to refer to him as the ‘Saviour of the Republic’.⁴⁰ In fact, Franco’s handling of the crisis had been decisive and efficient but hardly brilliant. His tactics, however, were interesting in that they prefigured his methods during the Civil War. They had consisted essentially of building up local superiority to suffocate the enemy and, as the use of Yagüe and Doval indicated, sowing terror within the enemy ranks.⁴¹

After the victory over the Asturian rebels, Lerroux and Gil Robles agonized over the issue of death penalties for the revolutionaries in Asturias and the officers who had defended the short-lived Catalan Republic. The trials which would make most impact on Franco were those involving charges of military rebellion. On 12 October 1934, the officers who had supported the rebellion in Catalonia had been tried and sentenced to death. Sergeant Diego Vázquez, who had deserted to join the strikers in Asturias, was tried and sentenced to death on 3 January 1935.⁴² The bulk of the Right howled for vengeance but Alcalá Zamora favoured clemency and Lerroux was inclined to agree. Many on the Right wanted Gil Robles to withdraw CEDA support for the government if the death sentences were not carried out. He refused for fear of Alcalá Zamora giving power to a more liberal cabinet.

Franco, always rigidly in favour of the severest penalties for mutiny and of the strictest application of military justice, believed that Gil Robles was totally mistaken. He told the Italian Chargé d’Affaires, Geisser Celesia, ‘The victory is ours and not to apply exemplary punishments to the rebels, not to castigate energetically those who have encouraged the revolution and have caused so many casualties among the troops, would signify trampling on the just rights of the military class and encourage an early extremist response.’⁴³ The fact that pardons were eventually granted would contribute in 1936 to Franco’s decision to take part in the military uprising which opened the Civil War.

In 1934, however, Franco was hostile to any military intervention in politics. His part in suppressing the Asturian insurrection had left him satisfied that a conservative Republic ready to use his services could keep the Left at bay. Not all his comrades-in-arms shared his complacency. Fanjul and Goded were discussing with senior CEDA figures the possibility of a military coup to forestall the commutation of the death sentences. Gil Robles told them through an intermediary that the CEDA would not oppose a coup. It was agreed that they would consult other generals and the commanders of key garrisons to see if it might be possible ‘to put Alcalá Zamora over the frontier’. After checking with Franco and others, they concluded that they did not have the support necessary for a coup.⁴⁴

Franco exercised a similarly restraining influence over other would-be rebels. In late October, Jorge Vigón and Colonel Valentín Galarza believed that the moment had come to launch the military rising which they had been preparing since the autumn of 1932. Their plan was for the monarchist aviator, Juan Antonio Ansaldo, to fly to Portugal, pick up Sanjurjo and take him to the outskirts of Oviedo where he would link up with Yagüe. It was assumed that together Sanjurjo and Yagüe would easily persuade the bulk of the Army to join them in rebellion against the Republic. While the conspirators waited in the home of Pedro Saínz Rodríguez for the order to proceed, the journalist Juan Pujol arrived to say that he had spoken with Franco at the Ministry of War and Franco believed that it was not the right moment.⁴⁵ Enjoying considerable power and confident of his ability to use it decisively against the Left, he had no reason to want to risk his career in an ill-prepared coup. The fact that other prominent officers now deferred to his views, as they had not in 1932, was a measure of the dramatic increase in prestige bestowed upon him by the events in Asturias.

Although delighted with the repression of the Asturian rising, Gil Robles sought to strengthen his own political position and so he joined Calvo Sotelo in deriding the Radical government for weakness. Diego Hidalgo was one of the sacrificial victims.⁴⁶ Accordingly, from 16 November 1934 to 3 April 1935, the Prime Minister, Alejandro Lerroux, himself took over the Ministry of War. He awarded Franco the Gran Cruz de Mérito Militar and kept him in his extraordinary post of ministerial adviser until February 1935. Lerroux had intended to reward Franco by making him High Commissioner in Morocco but was prevented from doing so by the opposition of Alcalá Zamora.⁴⁷ Instead, he kept on the existing civilian High Commissioner, the conservative Republican Manuel Rico Avello, and made Franco Commander-in-Chief of the Spanish Armed Forces in Morocco.

Despite any disappointment that he might have felt at not being made High Commissioner, being an Africanista, Franco perceived the post of head of the African Army as a substantial reward for his work in repressing the revolution. As he put it himself, ‘the Moroccan Army constituted the most important military command’.⁴⁸ On arrival, he hastened to inform the Entente Internationale contre la Troisième Internationale of his change of address.⁴⁹ Although he was to be there barely three months, it was a period which he enjoyed immensely. As Commander-in-Chief, he consolidated his existing influence within the armed forces in Morocco and established new and important contacts which were to facilitate his intervention at the beginning of the Civil War. His relationship with Rico Avello was similar in many respects to that which he had enjoyed with Diego Hidalgo. The High Commissioner, recognizing his own ignorance of Moroccan affairs, relied on Franco for advice of all kinds. Franco also established an excellent working relationship with the Chief of the General Staff of the Spanish forces in Morocco, Colonel Francisco Martín Moreno. This was to be crucial in 1936.⁵⁰

On the road to civil war, there could be no going back from the events of October 1934. The Asturian rising had frightened the middle and upper classes. Equally, the vengeful repression urged by the Right and carried out by the Radical-CEDA coalition convinced many on the Left that electoral disunity must never be risked again. The publicity given to Franco’s role in the military repression of the uprising ensured that thereafter he would be regarded as a potential saviour by the Right and as an enemy by the Left. Franco himself was to draw certain conclusions from the Asturian uprising. Convinced by the material received from Geneva that a Communist assault on Spain was being planned, he saw the events of October 1934 in those terms. He was determined that the Left should never be allowed to enjoy power even if won democratically.⁵¹

Nothing was done by successive conservative governments in the fifteen months after October 1934 to eliminate the hatreds aroused by the revolution itself or by its brutal repression. The CEDA claimed that it would remove the need for revolution by a programme of moderate land and tax reforms. Even if this claim was sincere in the mouths of the party’s few convinced social Catholics, the limited reforms proposed were blocked by right-wing intransigence from the majority. Thousands of political prisoners remained in jail; the Catalan autonomy statute was suspended and a vicious smear campaign was waged against Azaña in a vain effort to prove him guilty of preparing the Catalan revolution. Azaña was thereby converted into a symbol for all those who suffered from the repression.⁵²

The CEDA made a significant advance towards its goal of the legal introduction of an authoritarian corporative state on 6 May 1935 when five Cedistas, including the Jefe himself as Minister of War, entered a new cabinet under Lerroux. Gil Robles appointed known opponents of the regime to high positions – Franco was recalled from Morocco to become Chief of the General Staff; Goded became Inspector General and Director of the Air Force, and Fanjul became Under-Secretary of War. The President, Alcalá Zamora, was hostile to the appointment of Franco, regularly remarking that ‘young generals aspire to be fascist caudillos’. Eventually, threats of resignation from both Lerroux and Gil Robles overcame the President’s opposition.⁵³ There was a fierce rivalry and mutual dislike between Franco and Goded. Goded had wanted the job of Chief of the General Staff and was heard to comment bitterly that he awaited the failure of Franco.⁵⁴

Franco in mid-1935 was still some way from thinking in terms of military intervention against the Republic. Indeed, it would be wrong to assume that he spent much time thinking about overthrowing the Republic. As long as he had a posting which he considered to be appropriate to his merits, he was usually content to get on with his job in a professional manner. He had been extremely happy during his three months in Morocco and, while sad to leave an interesting job, he was thrilled by this even more important posting. In his new post, able to carry on the job which he had done in October, he can have felt little urge or need to rebel at this time. In any case, he remained deeply influenced by the failure of Sanjurjo’s coup of 10 August 1932. Moreover, given the ease of his relationship with Gil Robles, his day-to-day work gave him enormous satisfaction.⁵⁵

As Chief of Staff, Franco worked long hours to fulfil his central task which he saw as being to ‘correct the reforms of Azaña and return to the components of the armed forces the internal satisfaction which had been lost with the coming of the Republic’. He neglected his family, obsessively working until late at night, at weekends and on holidays.⁵⁶ Azaña’s revisions of promotions by merit were set aside. Many loyal Republican officers were purged and removed from their posts, because of their ‘undesirable ideology’. Others, of known hostility to the Republic, were reinstated and promoted. Emilio Mola was made General in command of Melilla and shortly afterwards head of military forces in Morocco. José Enrique Varela was promoted to general. Medals and promotions were distributed to those who had excelled in the repression of the October uprising.⁵⁷ Gil Robles and Franco had secretly brought Mola to Madrid to prepare detailed plans for the use of the colonial Army in mainland Spain in the event of further left-wing unrest.⁵⁸

Alcalá Zamora remained deeply suspicious of Gil Robles’ political motives in fostering the careers of anti-Republican officers and in trying to transfer control of the Civil Guard and the police from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of War. In some ways – regimental reorganization, motorization, equipment procurement – Gil Robles continued the reforms of Azaña.⁵⁹ The CEDA-Radical government was anxious for the Army to re-equip to ensure its efficacy in the event of having to face another left-wing rising. As Chief of Staff, Franco was involved in establishing contacts with arms manufacturers in Germany as part of the projected rearmament.⁶⁰ There can be little doubt that he enjoyed his new job as much as he had liked being Director of the Military Academy in Zaragoza. Despite the later deterioration of their relationship after 1936, he and Gil Robles worked well together in a spirit of co-operation and mutual admiration. Like Diego Hidalgo and Manuel Rico Avello, Gil Robles recognized his own ignorance in military affairs and was happy to leave Franco to get on with things. Franco looked back on his period as Chief of the General Staff with great satisfaction because his achievements facilitated the later Nationalist war effort.⁶¹

After earlier doubts, in the late summer of 1935, Franco made contact, through Colonel Valentín Galarza, with the Unión Militar Española, the extreme rightist conspiratorial organization run by his one-time subordinate Captain Bartolomé Barba Hernández. Galarza, who organized UME liaison between the various garrisons across the country, kept Franco informed about the morale and readiness of the organization’s members. In retrospect, Franco saw his approach to the UME as being to prevent it ‘organizing a premature coup along the lines of a nineteenth century pronunciamiento’.⁶² It is entirely in character that he would want any military action in which he might be involved to be fully prepared.

On 12 October 1935, Don Juan de Borbón, the son of Alfonso XIII, married in Rome. It was to be an excuse for monarchists, among them the plotters of Acción Española, such as José Calvo Sotelo, Jorge Vigón, Eugenio Vegas Latapie, Juan Antonio Ansaldo, to travel en masse to Italy. Franco was not among their number. Nevertheless, he did contribute to the wedding present given by the officers who had once been gentilhombres of Alfonso XIII.⁶³

Franco’s readiness to make contact with the UME reflected his concern at the fact that, despite the strength of the repression, the organized Left was growing in strength, unity and belligerence. The economic misery of large numbers of peasants and workers, the savage persecution of the October rebels and the attacks on Manuel Azaña combined to produce an atmosphere of solidarity among all sections of the Left. A series of gigantic mass meetings were addressed by Azaña in the second half of 1935 and the enthusiasm for unity shown by the hundreds of thousands who attended them helped clinch mass enthusiasm for what became the Popular Front.

The tiny Spanish Communist Party joined the Popular Front, an electoral coalition which, contrary to rightist propaganda and the material sent to Franco by the Entente contre la Troisième Internationale of Geneva, was not a Comintern creation but the revival of the 1931 Republican-Socialist coalition. The Left and centre Left joined together on the basis of a programme of amnesty for prisoners, of basic social and educational reform and trade union freedom. However, Comintern approval of the Popular Front strategy, ratified at its VII Congress on 2 August 1935, was used by the Entente to convince its subscribers, including Franco, that Moscow planned a revolution in Spain.⁶⁴

Gil Robles’ tactic of gradually breaking up successive Radical cabinets was overtaken in the autumn by the revelation of two massive financial scandals involving followers of Lerroux. In mid-September, Alcalá Zamora invited the dour conservative Republican, Joaquin Chapaprieta, to form a government. With the Radical Party on the verge of disintegration, Gil Robles provoked the resignation of Chapaprieta on 9 December in the belief that he would be asked to form a government. Alcalá Zamora, however, had no faith in Gil Robles’s commitment to the Republic. Instead, when he spoke with the President on 11 December, Gil Robles learned with rage that he was not being asked to be prime minister. Alcalá Zamora pointed out that the degree of government instability demonstrated the need for new elections. Gil Robles could hardly argue that it would now stop since he had provoked that instability in order to pave the way to firm government by himself. He had overplayed his hand. The President was so suspicious of Gil Robles that, throughout the subsequent political crisis, he had the Ministry of War surrounded by Civil Guards and the principal garrisons and airports placed under special vigilance.⁶⁵

The only choice now open to Gil Robles was to patch together some compromise which would enable the CEDA to avoid elections and thus carry on in the government or else arrange a coup d’état. He tried both options simultaneously. On the same evening a messenger was sent to Cambó, head of the Catalan Lliga, to ask him to join the CEDA and the Radicals in a coalition government. Cambó refused. Meanwhile, in the Ministry of War, Gil Robles was discussing the situation with Fanjul. Fanjul claimed enthusiastically that he and General Varela were prepared to bring the troops of the Madrid garrison onto the streets that very night to prevent the President from going through with his plans to dissolve the Cortes. There were plenty of officers only too willing to join them, especially if a coup had the blessing of the Minister of War and could therefore be seen as an order. However, Gil Robles was worried that such an action might fail, since it would certainly face the resistance of the Socialist and anarchist masses. Nevertheless, he told Fanjul that, if the Army felt that its duty lay in a coup, he would not stand in its way and, indeed, would do all that he could to maintain the continuity of government while it took place. Only practical doubts held him back and so he suggested that Fanjul check the opinion of Franco and other generals before making a definite decision. He then passed a sleepless night while Fanjul, Varela, Goded and Franco weighed up the chances of success. All were aware of the problem presented by the fact that there was every likelihood that the Civil Guard and the police would oppose a coup.⁶⁶

Calvo Sotelo, confined to bed with a fierce attack of sciatica, also sent Juan Antonio Ansaldo to see Franco, Goded and Fanjul to urge them to make a coup against the plans of Alcalá Zamora. Franco, however, convinced his comrades that, in the light of the strength of working class resistance during the Asturian events, the Army was not yet ready for a coup.⁶⁷ When the young monarchist plotter, the Conde de los Andes, telephoned Madrid from Biarritz to hear the details of the expected coup, Ansaldo replied ‘The usual generals, and especially the gallego, say that they cannot answer for their people and that the moment has not yet arrived’.⁶⁸ The government of Joaquin Chapaprieta was replaced by the interim cabinet of Manuel Portela Valladares. Thus, on 12 December, Gil Robles was obliged to abandon the Ministry of War with ‘infinite bitterness’. When the staff of the Ministry said goodbye to Gil Robles on 14 December, a tearful Franco made a short speech in which he declared ‘the Army has never felt itself better led than in this period.⁶⁹

In response to the move towards a more liberal cabinet, José Antonio Primo de Rivera sent his lieutenant Raimundo Fernández Cuesta to Toledo on 27 December with a wild proposal to Colonel José Moscardó, military governor and Director of the Escuela Central de Gimnasia (Central School of Physical Education) there. The suggestion was that several hundred Falangist militants would join the cadets in the Alcázar of Toledo to launch a coup. Common sense should have told Moscardó that it was a ridiculous idea. However, he felt that he could not make a decision without discussing it first with Franco. Leaving Fernández Cuesta waiting in Toledo, he drove to Madrid and consulted with the Chief of the General Staff who, as could have been foreseen, told him that the scheme was impracticable and badly timed.⁷⁰

Franco made it clear that he resented these initiatives from civilians as attempts to take advantage of the ‘most distinguished officers’ for their own partisan purposes. Moscardó was one of a number of officers, to whom he referred as ‘simplistic comrades’, who brought such proposals to him. He told them all that to precipitate matters was to guarantee failure. The job of the Army was to maintain its unity and discipline to be ready to intervene if and when the Republic proved itself totally unviable. What the Army could not do was to try to destroy the Republic before the population was ready.⁷¹ After Gil Robles was replaced as Minister of War by General Nicolás Molero, Franco was left as Chief of the General Staff. Like his predecessor, Molero was happy for Franco to get on with a job which he did well. Franco wrote to a friend on 14 January 1936, ‘I am still here in my post and I don’t think they’ll move me’. His contentment, along with his natural caution, may well have contributed to his inclination against conspiratorial adventures.⁷²

The elections were scheduled for 16 February 1936. Throughout January, rumours of a military coup involving Franco were so insistent that, late one night, the interim prime minister Manuel Portela Valladares sent the Director-General de Seguridad, Vicente Santiago, to the Ministry of War to see Franco and clarify the situation. The Chief of the General Staff was clearly still in the same cautious mood in which he had greeted Moscardó a few days earlier. Nevertheless, there was a double-edge in his reply. ‘The rumours are completely false; I am not conspiring and I will not conspire as long as there is no danger of Communism in Spain; and to put your mind at rest even more, I give you my word of honour, with all the guarantees that this carries between comrades in arms. While you are in the Dirección General de Seguridad, I have complete confidence that law and order, which is of such importance to all Spaniards and above all to the Army, will not be overthrown. Our job is to co-operate.’ The Director-General de Seguridad then said something which was uncannily prophetic: ‘If you and your comrades at any time feel that the circumstances which you mention come about and you are pushed to a rising, I dare say that if you don’t win in forty-eight hours there will follow misfortunes the like of which were never seen in Spain or in any revolution.’ Franco replied ‘We will not make the same mistake as Primo de Rivera in putting the Army in charge of the government’.⁷³ That Franco should discount the possibility of military government after a coup reflected his recent discussions with Goded and Fanjul about the plan to put Gil Robles in power, a plan rejected as unsafe.

Inevitably, the election campaign was fought in an atmosphere of violent struggle. In propaganda terms, the Right enjoyed an enormous advantage. Rightist electoral funds dramatically exceeded those of the poverty-stricken Left, although Franco was to remain convinced that the reverse was the case. He believed that the Left was awash with gold sent from Moscow and money stolen by the revolutionaries in October 1934.⁷⁴ Ten thousand posters and 50 million leaflets were printed for the CEDA. They presented the elections in terms of a life-or-death struggle between good and evil, survival and destruction. The Popular Front based its campaign on the threat of fascism and the need for an amnesty for the prisoners of October.

In fact, Franco was absent from Spain during part of the election campaign, attending the funeral of George V in London. He was chosen to attend because he was Chief of Staff and because he had once served in the Eighth Infantry Regiment of which the King of England was Honorary Colonel. He attended the funeral service at Westminster Abbey on Wednesday 28 January and, along with other foreign dignitaries, accompanied the coffin to its final resting place in St George’s Chapel, Windsor.⁷⁵ On the return journey by cross-channel ferry, Franco made some significant remarks to Major Antonio Barroso, the Spanish military attaché in Paris, who had accompanied him on the trip. He told Barroso that the Popular Front was the direct creation of the Comintern and was intended as a Trojan Horse to introduce Communism into Spain. He said that Mola and Goded were equally worried and everything now hinged on what the Popular Front did if it won the elections. The Army had to be ready to intervene if necessary.⁷⁶

The Chief of the General Staff returned to Madrid on 5 February. Franco’s instinctive caution was to the fore during a meeting that he held with José Antonio Primo de Rivera, at the home of Ramón Serrano Suñer’s father and brothers, just before the elections in mid-February. The leader of the Falange was obsessed with the need for a military intervention of surgical precision as a prelude to the creation of a national government to stop the slide into revolution. In fact, despite a seductive charm which made him the darling of Spanish high society, the young fascist leader had never attracted or impressed Franco, who, at this meeting, was evasive, rambling and cautious. Almost certainly, at the back of his mind was the madcap scheme which José Antonio Primo de Rivera had recently put to Colonel Moscardó. Franco was not about to become the accomplice in conspiracy of a young Falangist leader whom he did not respect and who had little popular support. Rather than get to the point of the meeting, he chatted aimlessly. José Antonio was deeply disillusioned and irritated, saying ‘my father for all his defects, for all his political disorientation, was something else altogether. He had humanity, decisiveness and nobility. But these people …’.⁷⁷

The elections held on 16 February resulted in a narrow victory for the Popular Front in terms of votes, but a massive triumph in terms of seats in the Cortes.⁷⁸ In the early hours of the morning of 17 February, as the first results were coming in, the popular enthusiasm of the masses was sending panic through right-wing circles. Franco and Gil Robles, in a co-ordinated fashion, worked tirelessly to hold back the decision of the ballot boxes. The main target of their efforts was the Prime Minister (who was also Minister of the Interior). Gil Robles and Franco both saw clearly that it was crucial to persuade him to stay on in order to ensure that the Civil Guard and the crack police units (the Guardias de Asalto) would not oppose the Army’s measures to reimpose ‘order’.

At about 3.15 a.m. on 17 February, Gil Robles presented himself at the Ministerio de la Gobernación and asked to see Portela. The CEDA leader was outraged to discover that Portela had gone to his rooms at the Hotel Palace. Portela was woken to be told that Gil Robles was waiting to see him. Three quarters of an hour later, the Prime Minister arrived. Gil Robles, claiming to speak in the name of all the forces of the right, told him that the Popular Front successes meant violence and anarchy and asked him to declare martial law. Portela replied that his job had been to preside over the elections and no more. He was, nevertheless, sufficiently convinced by Gil Robles to agree to declare a State of Alert (a stage prior to martial law) and to telephone Alcalá Zamora and ask him to authorize decrees suspending constitutional guarantees and imposing martial law.⁷⁹

At the same time, Gil Robles sent his private secretary, the Conde de Peña Castillo, to instruct his one-time aide Major Manuel Carrasco Verde to contact Franco. Carrasco was to inform Franco of what was happening and urge him to add his weight to Gil Robles’ pleas urging Portela not to resign and to bring in the Army. Carrasco woke the Chief of the General Staff at home with the message. Franco leapt to the unjustified conclusion that the election results were the first victory of the Comintern plan to take over Spain. Accordingly, he sent Carrasco to warn Colonel Galarza and instruct him to have key UME officers alerted in provincial garrisons. Franco then telephoned General Pozas, Director-General of the Civil Guard, an old Africanista who was nonetheless loyal to the Republic. He told Pozas that the results meant disorder and revolution. Franco proposed, in terms so guarded as to be almost incomprehensible, that Pozas join in an action to impose order. Pozas dismissed his fears and told him calmly that the crowds in the street were merely ‘the legitimate expression of republican joy’.

Disappointed by Pozas’s cool reception, Franco was driven by further news of crowds in the streets and sightings of clenched fist salutes to put pressure on the Minister of War, General Nicolás Molero. He visited him in his rooms and tried unsuccessfully to get him to seize the initiative and declare martial law. Finally convinced by Franco’s arguments about the Communist danger, Molero agreed to force Portela to call a cabinet meeting to discuss the declaration of martial law. Primed by Franco as to what to say, Molero rang Portela and a cabinet meeting was arranged for later that morning. Franco was convinced that the session was called because of his pressure on Molero although it is likely that a meeting would have been held anyway.⁸⁰

Franco decided that it was essential to get Portela to use his authority and order Pozas to use the Civil Guard against the populace. He approached their mutual friend, Natalio Rivas, to see if he could arrange a meeting. By mid-morning, Franco had managed to get an appointment to see Portela, but not until 7 p.m. In the meanwhile, at mid-day, the cabinet met, under the chairmanship of Alcalá Zamora, and declared, as Portela had promised Gil Robles, a State of Alert for eight days. It also approved, and the President signed, a decree of martial law to be kept in reserve and used as and when Portela judged necessary.⁸¹ Franco had gone to his office and been further alarmed by reports of minor incidents of disorder which arrived in the course of the morning. So he sent an emissary to General Pozas, asking him, rather more directly than some hours earlier, to use his men ‘to hold back the forces of the revolution’. Pozas again refused. General Molero was totally ineffective and Franco was virtually running the Ministry. He spoke to Generals Goded and Rodríguez del Barrio to see if the units under their command could be relied upon if necessary. Shortly after the cabinet meeting ended, Franco took it upon himself to try to put into action the blank decree of martial law, which Portela had been granted by the cabinet. Franco had learned of the existence of the decree from Molero who had been at the cabinet meeting.⁸²

Within minutes of being telephoned by Molero, Franco used the existence of the decree as a threadbare cloak of legality behind which to try to get local commanders to declare martial law. Franco was effectively trying to revert to the role that he had played during the Asturian crisis, assuming the de facto powers of both Minister of War and Minister of the Interior. In fact, the particular circumstances of October 1934 – a workers’ uprising, the formal declaration of martial law and the total confidence placed in him by the then Minister of War, Diego Hidalgo, – did not now exist. The Chief of the General Staff had no business usurping the job of the Head of the Civil Guard. However, Franco followed his instincts and, in response to orders emanating from his office in the Ministry of War, martial law (estado de guerra) was actually declared in Zaragoza, Valencia, Oviedo and Alicante. Similar declarations were about to made in Huesca, Córdoba and Granada.⁸³ Too few local commanders responded, the majority replying that their officers would not support a movement if it had to be against the Civil Guard and the Assault Guards. When local Civil Guard commanders rang Madrid to check if it were true that martial law had been declared, Pozas assured them that it had not.⁸⁴ Franco’s initiative came to naught.

So, when Franco finally saw the Prime Minister in the evening, he was careful to play it both ways. In the most courteous terms, Franco told Portela that, in view of the dangers constituted by a possible Popular Front government, he offered him his support and that of the Army if he would stay in power. He made it clear that Portela’s agreement would remove the obstacle to an Army take-over most feared by the officer corps, the opposition of the police and the Civil Guard to military action. ‘The Army does not have the moral unity at this moment to undertake the task of saving Spain. Your intervention is necessary because you have authority over Pozas and can draw on the unlimited resources of the State, with the police at your orders.’ However, Franco spent much of the short interview shoring up his own personal position by trying to convince the Prime Minister that he personally was not involved in any kind of conspiracy. Franco told Portela’s political secretary, his nephew José Martí de Veses, that he was completely indifferent to politics and was concerned only with his military duties.⁸⁵

Despite Portela’s outright refusal to take up the offers of support from both Gil Robles and Franco, efforts to organise military intervention continued. The key issue remained the attitude of the Civil Guard. In the evening of 17 February, in an attempt to build on Franco’s efforts earlier in the day, General Goded tried to bring out the troops of the Montaña barracks in Madrid. However, the officers of that and other garrisons refused to rebel without a guarantee that the Civil Guard would not oppose them. It was believed in government circles that Franco was deeply involved in Goded’s initiative. Pozas, backed up by General Miguel Núñez de Prado, head of the police, was convinced that Franco was conspiring. However, they reassured Portela on the 18th with the words ‘the Civil Guard will oppose any coup attempt (militarada)’, and Pozas surrounded all suspect garrisons with detachments of the Civil Guard.⁸⁶ Just before midnight on the 18th, José Calvo Sotelo and the militant Carlist Joaquín Bau went to see Portela in the Hotel Palace and urged him to call on Franco, the officers of the Madrid military garrison and the Civil Guard to impose order.⁸⁷ All this activity around Portela and the failure of Goded justified Franco’s instinctive suspicions that the Army was not yet ready for a coup.

A last despairing effort was made by Gil Robles who secretly met Portela under some pine trees at the side of the road from Chamartín to Alcobendas on the outskirts of the capital at 8.30 a.m. on the morning of 19 February.⁸⁸ It was to no avail and the efforts of Gil Robles, Calvo Sotelo and Franco did not divert Portela and the rest of the cabinet from their determination to resign and, in all probability, frightened them into doing so with greater alacrity. At 10.30 a.m. on the morning of 19 February, they agreed to hand over power to Azaña immediately, instead of waiting for the opening of the Cortes. Before Portela could inform Alcalá Zamora of this decision, he was told that General Franco had been waiting for him for an hour since 2.30 p.m. at the Ministerio de la Gobernación. During that hour, Franco told Portela’s secretary that he was apolitical but that the threats to public order meant that the decree of martial law which Portela had in his pocket should be put into effect. Marti de Veses said that this would divide the Army. Franco replied confidently that the use of the Legion and the Regulares would hold the Army together. That remark confirmed again not only his readiness to use the colonial Army on mainland Spain, but also his conviction that it was essential to do so if the Left was to be decisively defeated. When he was admitted to the Prime Minister’s office, Franco did a repeat performance of his double game of the previous evening. He insisted on his own innocence of conspiracy but, aware of his failure with Pozas, again begged Portela not to resign. Portela could not be swayed from his decision which he communicated shortly afterwards to Alcalá Zamora.⁸⁹

To the chagrin of the Right and, indeed, to his own annoyance, Azaña was forced to accept power prematurely, in the late afternoon of 19 February. Franco may have covered his back effectively, but there can be little doubt that he had come nearer during the crisis of 17–19 February to engaging in a military coup than ever before. In the last resort, he had been prevented only by the determined attitude of Generals Pozas and Núñez de Prado. It was scarcely surprising under those circumstances that, when Azaña became prime minister again, Franco should be removed from his position at the head of the general staff. It was to be a major step in turning Franco’s latent resentments into outright aggression against the Republic.

* Family responsibilities had obliged him to avoid military service in 1907 by the device of buying himself out. This, together with the fact that he was the author of a book on the Russian revolution, ensured that his appointment was greeted with trepidation on the Right.

* Once more Ramón Serrano Suñer served as the intermediary between them, entrusting delivery of the letter to his brother José.

V

THE MAKING OF A CONSPIRATOR

Franco and the Popular Front, 1936

THE IMPACT on Franco of the left-wing election victory was almost immediate. On 21 February, the new Minister of War, General Carlos Masquelet, put a number of proposed postings before the cabinet. Amongst them was that of Franco to be Comandante General of the Canary Islands, of Goded to be Comandante General of the Balearic Islands and of Mola to be military governor of Pamplona. Franco was not remotely pleased with what was, in absolute terms, an important post. He sincerely believed that, as Chief of the General Staff, he could play a crucial role in holding back the threat of the Left. As his activities in the wake of the elections showed, his experience in October 1934 had given him a taste for power. That was one reason why the new government wanted him far from the capital.

The Military Region of the Canary Islands, like that of the Balearics, was not traditionally, even prior to Azaña’s abolition of the post, a Captaincy-General. Nevertheless, in importance, both jobs counted only marginally below the eight peninsular Military Regions and were held by a Major-General. After all, Franco was only number 23 in the list of 24 Major-Generals on active service. General Mola, four points lower at number three on the list of Brigadier Generals, was made military commander of Pamplona and so subordinate to the regional commander in Zaragoza.¹ Franco was fortunate to get such a senior posting from the new Minister of War but he perceived it as a demotion and another slight at the hands of Azaña. Years later, he spoke of the posting as a ‘banishment’ (destierro). Above all, he was worried that his work in removing liberal officers would be reversed.²

Before leaving Madrid, Franco made the obligatory visits to the new Prime Minister Azaña and to the President of the Republic, Alcalá Zamora. The only accounts of these two meetings derive from Franco’s own testimony to his cousin Pacón and to his biographer Joaquín Arrarás. Even from his partial accounts, it is clear that his motives were complex. Ostensibly, he was trying to convince them to do something about the danger of Communism. It is clear that he thought their best course would have been to keep him on as Chief of the General Staff. In large part, as with his efforts in 1931 to hold onto the Military Academy, this was because he wanted to keep a post in which he felt fulfilled and for which he thought that he was the best man. It is impossible to discern whether he also hoped by staying in Madrid to be able to take part in military conspiracy.

In Franco’s jaundiced eyes, Alcalá Zamora was dangerously sanguine about the situation. Franco told him that there were insufficient means available to oppose the revolution. The President replied that the revolution had been defeated in Asturias. Franco said ‘Remember, Mr President, what it cost to hold back the revolution in Asturias. If the assault is repeated right across the country, it will be really difficult to contain it. The Army lacks the basic means to do so and there are generals who have been put back into key positions who do not want the revolution to be defeated.’ Alcalá did not take the hint and merely shook his head. When Franco rose to leave, the President said ‘You can leave without worrying, general. There will be no Communism in Spain’, to which Franco claimed, with hindsight, to have replied ‘Of one thing I am certain, and I can guarantee, that, whatever circumstances may arise, wherever I am, there will be no Communism’.

Again by his own account, Franco appears to have got short shrift from Azaña. His gloomy predictions that the replacement of ‘capable’ officers by Republicans would open the gates to anarchy were greeted with a sardonic smile. Franco said ‘you are making a mistake in sending me away because in Madrid I could be more useful to the Army and for the tranquillity of Spain’. Azaña ignored the offer: ‘I don’t fear uprisings. I knew about Sanjurjo’s plot and I could have avoided it but I preferred to see it defeated’.³ Neither Azaña’s diaries nor Alcalá Zamora’s memoirs contain references to these interviews. However, even if Franco’s versions of the conversations are apocryphal, they reflect a vivid recollection of his embittered state of mind at the time and of his disgust at what he saw as Azaña’s frivolous and malicious insouciance in the face of the Communist menace.

Removed once more from a job he loved, Franco was more than ever a general to be feared. He was not the only one. The narrowness of the left-wing electoral victory reflected the polarization of Spanish society. The savage repression of the previous period ensured that there would be little spirit of conciliation on either side of the political divide. After the failure of the various efforts by Gil Robles and Franco to persuade Portela Valladares to stay in power with Army backing, the Right abandoned all pretence of legalism. The hour of the ‘catastrophists’ had struck. Gil Robles’s efforts to use democracy against itself had failed. Henceforth, the Right would be concerned only with destroying the Republic rather than with taking it over. Military plotting began in earnest.

While waiting to leave for the Canary Islands, Franco spent time talking about the situation with General José Enrique Varela, Colonel Antonio Aranda and other like-minded officers. Everywhere he went, he was followed by agents of the Dirección General de Seguridad.⁴ On 8 March, the day before setting out for Cádiz on the first stage of his journey, Franco met a number of dissident officers at the home of José Delgado, a prominent stockbroker and crony of Gil Robles. Among those present were Mola, Varela, Fanjul and Orgaz, as well as Colonel Valentín Galarza. They discussed the need for a coup. They were all agreed that the exiled General Sanjurjo should head the rising.

The impetuous Varela favoured an audacious coup in Madrid; the more thoughtful Mola proposed a co-ordinated civilian/military uprising in the provinces. Mola believed that the movement should not be overtly monarchist. Franco said little other than to suggest shrewdly that any rising should have no specific party label. He made no firm commitments. They departed, having agreed to begin preparations with Mola as overall director and Galarza, as liaison chief. They undertook to act if the Popular Front dismantled the Civil Guard or reduced the size of the officer corps, if revolution broke out or if Largo Caballero was asked to form a government.⁵

After leaving the meeting, Franco collected his family and the inevitable Pacón and headed for the Atocha station to catch the train to Cádiz where they would embark for Las Palmas. At Atocha, a group of generals, including Fanjul and Goded came to wish him farewell. On arrival at Cádiz, Franco was shocked by the scale of disorder which greeted his party, churches having been attacked by anarchists. When the military governor of Cádiz informed him that ‘Communists’ had set fire to a convent near his barracks, Franco was furious: ‘Is it possible that the troops of a barracks saw a sacrilegious crime being committed and that you just stood by with your arms folded?’ The colonel replied that he had been ordered by the civilian authorities not to intervene. Franco barked ‘Such orders, since they are unworthy, should never be obeyed by an officer of our Army’ and he refused to shake hands with the colonel.

Franco’s anger reflected his own deep-seated attachment to Catholicism inherited from his mother. It was inextricably entangled with his military-hierarchical view of society. From revulsion at the Left’s disrespect for God and the Church it was but a short step to thinking that the use of military force to defend the social order was both necessary and justified. He was even more dismayed when a crowd on the quay which had arrived complete with a band to see off the new civil governor of Las Palmas sang the Internationale with their fists raised in the Communist salute. The constant reminders of popular enthusiasm for the Republic led Franco to comment to his cousin that his comrades were wrong to imagine that a swift coup was possible. ‘It’s going to be difficult, bloody and it’ll last a long time – yet there seems to be no other way, if we’re going to be one step ahead of the Communists’.⁶

The boat, Dómine, reached the Canary Islands at 7 p.m. on the evening 11 March 1936. On arriving at Las Palmas, Franco was greeted by the military governor of the island, General Amado Balmes. After a short tour, he set off again with his family in the Dómine for Tenerife where they docked on 12 March at 11.00 a.m. On the dockside, they were awaited by a mass of Popular Front supporters. The local Left had decreed a one-day strike for workers to go to the port in order to boo and whistle the man who had put down the miners’ rising in Asturias. Ignoring the banners which denounced ‘the butcher of Asturias’, Franco remained calm, said goodbye to the ship’s captain, descended the steps and inspected the company of troops which awaited him. According to his cousin, his display of cool indifference impressed the crowd whose derision turned to applause.⁷

Franco immediately set to work on a defence plan for the islands and especially on the measures to be taken to put down political disturbances. He also took advantage of the opportunities offered by the Canary Islands and began to learn golf and English. According to his English teacher, Dora Lennard, he took lessons three times a week from 9.30 to 10.30 and was an assiduous student. He wrote two exercises for homework three times a week and only once failed to do so because of pressure of work. Five out of six of his exercises were about golf for which he had quickly become an obsessive enthusiast. He acquired a reading knowledge but could not follow spoken English. His favourite subjects in their conversation classes were the Popular Front’s enslavement to the agents of Moscow and his love for his time at the Academia General Militar in Zaragoza.⁸ Franco’s own later efforts to wipe away his hesitations during the spring of 1936 led him to imply, in numerous interviews, that he had been anxiously overseeing the conspiracy. As so often in his life, he remoulded reality. It is a telling comment on this particular case of remembered glory that, in fact, in early July 1936, he was planning a golfing holiday in Scotland to improve his game.⁹

Golf and English lessons aside, Franco and Carmen led a full social life. Their guides to the society of the Canaries were Major Lorenzo Martínez Fuset and his wife. Martínez Fuset, a military lawyer, and an amiable and accommodating character, became Franco’s local confidant.¹⁰ Otherwise, Franco’s activities were slightly inhibited by the scale of surveillance to which he was subject. His correspondence was tampered with, his telephone tapped, and he was being watched both by the police and by members of the Popular Front parties. This reflected the fear that he inspired in both the central government and in the local Left in the Canary Islands. There were rumours inside his headquarters that an assassination attempt was likely. Pacón and Colonel Teódulo González Peral, the head of the divisional general staff, organized the officers under Franco’s command into a round-the-clock bodyguard. Franco was reported to have declared proudly ‘Moscow sentenced me to death two years ago’.¹¹ If indeed he made the remark, it reflected the heady propaganda that he was receiving from the Entente in Geneva rather than any interest in his activities on the part of the Kremlin.

Despite the air of clandestinity which seems to have surrounded Franco’s activities in the Canary Islands, he was openly being talked about as the leader of a forthcoming coup.¹² Pro-fascist and anti-Republican remarks made by him, some in public, suggest that he was not as totally cautious as is usually assumed. On the occasion of the military parade to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the foundation of the Second Republic, Franco spoke with the Italian consul in the Canary Islands and loudly (ad alta voce) expressed to him his enthusiasm for Mussolini’s Italy. He was particularly fulsome in his congratulations for Italy’s role in the Abyssinian war and said how anxiously he awaited news of the fall of Addis Ababa. He appears to have made a point of ensuring that he was overheard by the British Consul. On the next day, the Italian Consul visited Franco to thank him and was delighted when the general’s anti-British sentiments led him to speak of his sympathy for Italy as a ‘new, young, strong power which is imposing itself on the Mediterranean which has hitherto been kept as a lake under British control’. Franco also talked of his belief that Gibraltar could easily be dominated by modern artillery placed in Spanish territory and talked enticingly, for his listener, of the ease with which a fleet anchored in Gibraltar harbour could be destroyed by air attack.¹³

On 27 April, Ramón Serrano Suñer made a journey to the Canary Islands with the difficult task of persuading his brother-in-law to withdraw his candidacy for the re-run elections about to take place in Cuenca. In the wake of the so-called Popular Front elections of 16 February 1936, the parliamentary committee entrusted with examining the validity of the outcome, the comisión de actas, had declared the results null and void in certain provinces. One of these was Cuenca, where there had been falsification of votes. Moreover, once the defective votes were discounted, no list of candidates reached the 40 per cent of votes necessary to win the majority block of seats.¹⁴ In the re-run elections scheduled for the beginning of May 1936, the right-wing slate included both José Antonio Primo de Rivera and General Franco. The Falange leader was included in the hope of securing for him the parliamentary immunity which would ensure his release from jail where he had been since 17 March.¹⁵

Serrano Suñer was behind Franco’s late inclusion in the right-wing list announced on 23 April.¹⁶ On 20 April, a letter from Franco to the secretary of the CEDA expressed his interest in being a candidate in one of the forthcoming re-run elections, preferably Cuenca. Gil Robles discussed the matter with Serrano Suñer. When he approved Franco’s candidacy, Serrano Suñer set off immediately for the Canary Islands to inform his brother-in-law. The monarchist leader Antonio Goicoechea offered to give up his place in the right-wing list but Gil Robles simply instructed the CEDA provincial chief in Cuenca, Manuel Casanova, to stand down. The support for Franco manifested by the CEDA and Renovación Española was not replicated by the third political party involved in Cuenca, the Falange. When the revised list of right-wing candidates was published, Gil Robles received a visit from Miguel Primo de Rivera who came to inform him that his brother was firmly opposed to the list, regarding the inclusion of Franco as a ‘crass error’.

Since Varela was also standing in the simultaneous rerun at Granada, José Antonio Primo de Rivera shrewdly wished to avoid his chances of election being diminished if the rightist eagerness for military candidates were too transparent. He also, in the wake of his unfortunate meeting with Franco before the February elections, regarded the general as likely to be a disaster in the Cortes. He threatened to withdraw from the Cuenca list if Franco’s name was not removed, something which Gil Robles felt unable to do. Efforts by various right-wing leaders including Serrano Suñer failed to persuade the Falange leader to withdraw his opposition to Franco. José Antonio said to Serrano Suñer: ‘This is not what he’s good at and, given that what is brewing is something more conclusive than a parliamentary offensive, let him stay in his territory and leave me where I have already proved myself’. Serrano was then obliged to inform Franco. He managed to persuade his brother-in-law that he would not take well to the cut-and-thrust of parliamentary debate. The argument that Franco would be risking public humiliation did the trick. On 27 April, Franco withdrew and Manuel Casanova returned to the list.¹⁷ Franco was aware of the Falangist leader’s hostility to his candidacy and subsequent events would show that he neither forgave nor forgot.

The Left, and Prieto in particular, were concerned that Franco planned to use his parliamentary seat as a base from which to engage in military plotting. This was a reasonable interpretation and was indeed adopted by Francoist propaganda once the Civil War was under way. However, it is not clear whether Franco’s quest for a parliamentary seat was motivated by the need to effect his transfer from the Canary Islands to the mainland in order to play a key role in the conspiracy or by more selfish motives. Gil Robles suggested that the desire to go into politics reflected Franco’s doubts about the success of a military rising. As yet undeclared vis-à-vis the conspiracy, he wanted a safe position in civilian life from which to await events.¹⁸ Fanjul confided a similar opinion to Basilio Alvarez, who had been a Radical deputy for Orense in 1931 and 1933: ‘perhaps Franco wants to protect himself from any governmental or disciplinary inconvenience by means of parliamentary immunity.’¹⁹

Certainly, the versions of the Cuenca episode produced by Franco and his propagandists make it clear that it was to be an abiding source of embarrassment. Within a year, Franco was to be found rewriting it, through his official biographer Joaquín Arrarás. In his 1937 version, the parties of the Right offered Franco a place in the list for Cuenca, because he was a persecuted man and to allow him the freedom ‘to organize the defence of Spain’. Franco ‘publicly rejected’ the offer because he neither believed in the honesty of the election process nor expected anything from the Republican parliament.²⁰ This ludicrously inaccurate version of the events surrounding the Cuenca elections implied that, if the electoral system had been honest, Franco would have stood. Subsequently in 1940, Arrarás eliminated this inadvertent proclamation of faith in democracy and claimed that Franco had withdrawn his candidacy because of ‘the twisted interpretations’ to which it was subject.²¹ A decade after the events, Franco himself claimed in a speech to the Falangist Youth in Cuenca that his desire to be a parliamentary deputy was occasioned by ‘dangers for the Patria’.²²

By the early 1960s, Franco was eschewing any hint that he might have been seeking a bolt-hole. Writing in the third person, he claimed rather that ‘General Franco was looking for a way of legally leaving the archipelago which would permit him to establish a more direct contact with the garrisons in order to have a more direct link with those places where there was a danger of the Movement being a failure’. There is an outrageous re-casting of history in this account. Franco attributes to himself the credit for securing a place for José Antonio Primo de Rivera in the right-wing candidacy, which is simply untrue. With equal inaccuracy, he claims that General Fanjul had stood down as a candidate to make way for Franco himself when he had done so for José Antonio. He then fudges the reasons for the eventual withdrawal of his own candidacy with the vague and incorrect statement that, on the morning that candidates were to be announced, he received a telegram from those concerned (los afectados) to the effect that ‘it was impossible to maintain his candidacy because his name had been ‘burned’ (quemado).²³

That Franco should omit to mention the rift with the leader of the Falange was entirely understandable. After all, after 1937, the Nationalist propaganda machine would work frenetically to convert Franco into the heir to José Antonio in the eyes of the Falangist masses. Similarly, in writing that his intention was to be able to oversee the preparations for a coup, Franco inadvertently revealed his desire to diminish Mola’s posthumous glory as the sole director of the rising. In his third and most plausible attempt to rewrite the Cuenca episode, Arrarás wrote that Franco withdrew ‘because he preferred to attend to his military duties, by which means he believed he could better serve the national interest’. The suggestion of any friction between Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera remained taboo.²⁴

Left-wing suspicions of Franco’s motives were expressed by Indalecio Prieto shortly after Franco’s candidacy was dropped, in a celebrated speech in Cuenca. He commented that ‘General Franco, with his youth, with his gifts, with his network of friends in the Army, is a man who could at a given moment be the caudillo of a movement with the maximum chances of success’. Accordingly, without attributing such intentions to Franco, Prieto claimed that other right-wing plotters were seeking to get parliamentary immunity for him in order to facilitate his conversion into ‘the caudillo of a military subversion’.²⁵ In any case, the Cuenca election was declared at the last minute to be technically a re-run. Since the electoral law required that candidates in a re-run should have secured 8 per cent of the vote in the first round, new candidates could not be admitted by the provincial Junta del Censo. Accordingly, although José Antonio Primo de Rivera gained sufficient votes to win a seat, his election was not recognized.²⁶

Helpless before the rising numbers of strikes and deaf to the background hum of military conspiracy stood the minority government. Only Republicans sat in the Cabinet, because Largo Caballero refused to let Socialists join a coalition. He pinned his hopes on two naive scenarios: either the Republicans would quickly find themselves incapable of implementing their own reform programme and have to make way for an exclusively Socialist cabinet or else there would be a fascist coup which would be crushed by popular revolution. In May, Largo used his immense influence inside the Socialist leadership to prevent the formation of a government by the more realistic Prieto. As long as Azaña was prime minister, authority could be maintained. However, in order to put together an even stronger team, Azaña and Prieto plotted to remove the more conservative Alcalá Zamora from the presidency. Azaña would become president and Prieto take over as prime minister. The first part of the plan worked but not the second as a result of Largo Caballero’s opposition and Prieto’s failure to fight it. The consequences were catastrophic. The last chance of avoiding civil war was missed. Spain lost a shrewd and strong prime minister, and, to make matters worse, on assuming the presidency, Azaña increasingly withdrew from active politics. The new Prime Minister, Santiago Casares Quiroga, suffering from tuberculosis, was incapable of generating the determination and energy required in the circumstances.

Unemployment was rocketing and the election results had dramatically raised the expectations of workers in both town and countryside. To the outrage of employers, trade unionists sacked in the aftermath of the Asturian events were forcibly reinstated. There were sporadic land seizures as frustrated peasants took into their own hands the implementation of the new government’s commitment to rapid reform. What most alarmed the landlords was that labourers whom they expected to be servile were assertively determined not to be cheated out of reform as they had between 1931 and 1933. Many landowners withdrew to Seville or Madrid, or even to Biarritz or Paris, where they enthusiastically joined, financed, or merely awaited news of, ultra-rightist plots against the Republic.

Under the energetic leadership of General Mola, the plot was developing fast. It was more thoroughly prepared than any previous effort, taking full account of the lesson of the Sanjurjada of 10 August 1932 that casual pronunciamientos could not work where the Civil Guard was in opposition and where the proletariat was ready to use the weapon of the general strike. The tall bespectacled Mola, as ‘El Director’, having learnt plenty of police procedure during his time as Director-General of Security in 1930–1931, took to conspiracy with gusto. Brave and of adventurous spirit, he enjoyed the danger.²⁷ Pamplona was an excellent place from which to direct the conspiracy, being the headquarters of the most militant group of the ultra-Right, the Carlists.²⁸ Mola had plenty of willing and competent assistants. Through Valentín Galarza, known among the plotters as ‘the technician’ (el técnico), the right-wing conspiratorial organization, Unión Militar Española, was at his disposal. He drew up his first directive in April, ‘The objective, the methods and the itineraries’. In it, aware of the deficiencies of the preparations of Sanjurjada, he specified in detail the need for a complex civilian support network and above all for political terror: ‘the action must be violent in the extreme in order to crush the strong and well-organized enemy as soon as possible. All leaders of political parties, societies or unions not committed to the Movement will be imprisoned and exemplary punishments administered to such individuals in order to strangle movements of rebellion or strikes’.²⁹

In the middle of May, Mola was visited secretly by a Lieutenant-Colonel Seguí of the general staff of the African Army, who informed him that the garrisons of Morocco were ready to rise. Among the Africanista officers, Mola relied on Yagüe as the most tireless in the preparation of the rising in Morocco. In May too, Mola was in contact with a group of generals who would each play a crucial role in the Civil War: the brutal Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, head of the Carabineros (the Spanish frontier guards), the austere monarchist Alfredo Kindelán, the key link with conspirators in the Air Force and the easy-going Miguel Cabanellas, head of the Zaragoza military division.³⁰ Franco was fully informed through Galarza. As part of the post-1939 propaganda effort to wipe away the memory of Franco’s minimal participation in the preparations, it was claimed that he carried on a twice-weekly correspondence with Galarza. These thirty coded letters have never been traced.³¹ In fact, Franco was anything but enthusiastic, commenting to the optimistically headstrong Orgaz, who had been banished to the Canary Islands in the early spring, ‘You are really mistaken. It’s going to be immensely difficult and very bloody. We haven’t got much of an army, the intervention of the Civil Guard is looking doubtful and many officers will side with the constituted power, some because it’s easier, others because of their convictions. Nobody should forget that the soldier who rebels against the constituted power can never turn back, never surrender, for he will be shot without a second thought’.³² At the end of May, Gil Robles complained to the American journalist H. Edward Knoblaugh that Franco had refused to head the coup, allegedly saying ‘not all the water in the Manzanares could wash out the stain of such a move’. Discounting the choice of a less than torrential river, this and other remarks suggest that the experience of the Sanjurjada of 1932 was on his mind.³³ Not to be able to turn around or change his mind must have been Franco’s idea of hell.

With the conspiracy developing rapidly, Franco’s caution was stoking up the impatience of his Africanista friends. On 25 May, Mola had drawn up his second directive to the plotters, a broad strategic plan of regional risings to be followed by concerted attacks on Madrid from the provinces.³⁴ Clearly, it would be an enormous advantage to have Franco as part of the team. Captain Bartolomé Barba was sent by Goded to the Canary Islands on 30 May to tell Franco to make his mind up and abandon ‘so much prudence’. Colonel Yagüe told Serrano Suñer that he was in despair at Franco’s mean-minded carefulness and his refusal to take risks.³⁵ Serrano Suñer himself was baffled when Franco told him that what he really would have liked was to tranfer his residence to the south of France and direct the conspiracy from there. Given Mola’s position, there was no question of Franco organizing the rising. The clear implication was that he was more concerned with covering his personal retreat in the event of failure.³⁶ This inevitably suggests that selfless commitment to the rising had not been his main reason for trying to stand for election in Cuenca.

The rationale for the conspiracy was the fear of the middle and upper classes that an inexorable wave of Godless, Communist-inspired violence was about to inundate society and the Church. Their panic was generated assiduously by the rightist press and by the widely reported parliamentary speeches of the insidious Gil Robles and the belligerent monarchist leader José Calvo Sotelo. Their denunciations of disorder found a spurious justification in the street violence provoked by the Falange’s terror squads. In their turn, the activities of Falangist gangs were financed by the same monarchists who were behind the military coup. The startling rise of the Falange was a measure of the changing political climate. Cashing in on middle class disillusionment with the CEDA’s legalism, the Falange expanded rapidly. Moreover, attracted by its code of violence, the bulk of the CEDA’s youth movement, the JAP, went over en masse. The rise of the Falange was matched by the ascendancy within the Socialist movement of Largo Caballero. Intoxicated by Communist flattery – Pravda had called him “the Spanish Lenin” – he undermined Prieto’s efforts at a peaceful solution. Largo toured Spain, prophesying the triumph of the coming revolution to crowds of cheering workers. The May Day marches, the clenched fist salutes, the revolutionary rhetoric and the violent attacks on Prieto were used by the rightist press to generate an atmosphere of terror among the middle classes and to convince them that only a military coup could save Spain from chaos.

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

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

Franco’s English teacher wrote later that ‘the morning after the news of Calvo Sotelo’s murder had reached us, I had found him a changed man, when he came for his lessons. He looked ten years older, and had obviously not slept all night. For the first time, he came near to something like losing his iron self-control and unalterable serenity … It was with visible effort that he attended to his lesson.’⁵⁷ The heady decisiveness with which Franco responded to the news is not incompatible with Dora Lennard’s comment on his sleepless night.* The decision was of sufficient enormity to provoke agonizing doubts, as his precautions for the safety of his wife and daughter demonstrated.

Later, the assassination of Calvo Sotelo was used to obscure the fact that the coup of 17–18 July had been long in the making. It also deprived the conspirators of a powerful and charismatic leader. As a cosmopolitan rightist of wide political experience, Calvo Sotelo would have been the senior civilian after the coup and unlike many of the ciphers that were to be used by Franco. It is difficult not to imagine that he would have imposed his personality on the post-war state. His death, even if no one could have judged it in such terms at the time, removed an important political rival to Franco.

In the short term, Calvo Sotelo’s assassination gave a new urgency to plans for the uprising. The Dragón Rapide had left Bolín in Casablanca and was still en route for the Canary Islands. It arrived at 14.40 on 14 July at the airport of Gando near Las Palmas on the island of Gran Canaria. Hugh Pollard and the two girls took a ferry to Tenerife where he was to make known his arrival by presenting himself at the Clínica Costa with the password ‘Galicia saluda a Francia’. Bebb was left with the aircraft on Gran Canaria to await instructions from an unknown emissary who would make himself known with the password ‘Mutt and Jeff’. Meanwhile, at 2 a.m. on the morning of 15 July, the sleek diplomat José Antonio Sangróniz appeared at Pacón’s hotel room in Santa Cruz de Tenerife with news of the latest developments and the date scheduled for the rising. At 7.30 a.m. on the same morning, Pollard went to the clinic where he contacted Doctor Luis Gabarda, a major of the military medical service, who was acting on behalf of Franco. He was told to return to his hotel and await an emissary from Franco with his instructions.⁵⁸

Franco had acute immediate problems which took precedence over any long-term ambitions. As military commander of the Canary Islands, his headquarters were in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The Dragon Rapide from Croydon had been instructed to land at the airport of Gando on Gran Canaria in part because it was nearer to mainland Africa, also because it was known that Franco was being watched by the police but, above all, because of the low cloud and thick fog which afflicts Tenerife. In order to travel from Santa Cruz to Gran Canaria, Franco needed the authorization of the Ministry of War. His request for permission to make an inspection tour of Gran Canaria was likely to be turned down, not least because it was barely a fortnight since his last one. The rising was scheduled to start on 18 July, so Franco would have to leave for Morocco on that day at the latest. In the event he did so, yet none of his biographers seem to regard it as odd that the Dragon Rapide should have been directed to Gran Canaria with confidence in Franco’s ability to get there too. That he got there at all was the result of either a remarkable coincidence or foul play.

On the morning of 16 July, Franco failed to appear for his scheduled English lesson.⁵⁹ On the same morning, General Amado Balmes, military commander in Gran Canaria, and an excellent marksman, was shot in the stomach while trying out various pistols in a shooting range. Francoist historiography has played down the incident as a tragic, but fortunately timed, accident. Allegedly, a pistol blocked and in trying to free it, holding it against his stomach, it went off.⁶⁰ To counter suggestions that Balmes was assassinated, Franco’s official biographers have claimed that Balmes was himself an important figure in the plot. His cousin has portrayed Balmes as an intimate friend of Franco. Balmes was allegedly to organize the coup in Las Palmas and thus had to be replaced by Orgaz who was conveniently exiled there.⁶¹ Strangely, however, Balmes never figured in the subsequent Pantheon of heroes of the ‘Crusade’. Moreover, it is extraordinary that, despite the fact that Madrid did indeed refuse permission for Franco to travel to Gran Canaria to make an inspection, he and his immediate circle never doubted that they would find a way of getting to Las Palmas. Other sources suggest that Balmes was a loyal Republican officer and member of the Unión Militar Republicana Antifascista who had withstood intense pressure to join the rising.⁶² If that was true, he had, like many other Republican officers, put his life in mortal danger. It is virtually impossible now to say if his death was accidental, suicide or murder.

What is certain is that he died at the exact moment urgently needed by Franco. The duty of presiding at the funeral gave Franco the perfect excuse to travel to Gran Canaria on the overnight boat. Franco was determined to go without seeking permission for fear that it might be denied. His cousin persuaded him that it would be altogether less suspicious for him to ring the Ministry and inform the under-secretary, General De la Cruz Boullosa. Franco agreed with what turned out to be good advice. The under-secretary expressed surprise that Franco had not been in touch earlier to report on the death of Balmes. He gave the excuse that he had been seeking fuller information on what had happened and was granted permission to preside over the burial. Franco left Tenerife for Las Palmas in the mail-boat Viera y Clavijo shortly after midnight on 16 July. He was accompanied by his wife and daughter, Lieutenant-Colonel Franco Salgado-Araujo, Major Lorenzo Martínez Fuset and an escort consisting of five other officers. They arrived at Las Palmas at 8.30 a.m. on Friday 17 July. Pollard had returned to Las Palmas on the same ferry. Before leaving Tenerife, Franco had collected Sangróniz’s diplomatic passport and gave Colonel González Peral the proclamation of the military rebellion to be used on the following morning. Bebb and Pollard made the final arrangements with General Orgaz. The funeral ceremony for Balmes occupied most of the morning. Franco then took his wife and daughter for a drive around the town. Later, they dined with Pacón and Orgaz.⁶³

Coordinated risings were planned to take place all over Spain on the following morning. However, indications that the conspirators in Morocco were about to be arrested led to the action being brought forward there to the early evening of 17 July. The garrisons rose in Melilla, Tetuan and Ceuta in Morocco. At 4 a.m. in the morning of 18 July, Franco was woken in his hotel room to be given the news. Colonel Luis Solans, Lieutenant-Colonel Seguí and Colonel Darío Gazapo had seized Melilla ‘in Franco’s name’ and arrested the overall military commander in Morocco, the Republican General Gómez Morato. Yagüe had taken charge in Ceuta and Colonels Eduardo Saénz de Buruaga, Juan Beigbeder and Carlos Asensio Cabanillas had taken Tetuán. Franco was to have reason to be grateful for the role of Beigbeder, an accomplished Arabist, in taking over the Spanish High Commission and subsequently securing Moroccan acquiescence in the rising.⁶⁴

On hearing of their successes, Franco set out for military headquarters in Las Palmas accompanied by his cousin and Major Martínez Fuset and sent for Orgaz to join them there. Franco then sent a telegram to the eight divisional headquarters and the other main military centres of the peninsula. The news that Franco and the Army of Africa were on the side of the rebels was meant as a rallying cry to the conspirators in other areas: ‘Glory to the Army of Africa. Spain above all. Receive the enthusiastic greeting of these garrisons which join you and other comrades in the peninsula in these historic moments. Blind faith in our triumph. Long live Spain with honour. General Franco.’ The sending of such a telegram was an unequivocal indication that Franco attributed to himself a central national role in the rising. At 5.00 a.m. on 18 July, he signed a declaration of martial law. It was to be announced in Las Palmas by an infantry company complete with bugles and drums. At about the same time, a desperate telephone call for Franco came from the undersecretary of the Ministry of War in Madrid, General De la Cruz Boullosa. Martínez Fuset answered and claimed that Franco was out inspecting barracks.⁶⁵

At 5.15 a.m. in the morning of 18 July, Inter-Radio of Las Palmas began to broadcast Franco’s manifesto. The rather confused text was later attributed to Lorenzo Martínez Fuset.⁶⁶ The typed copy sent to the radio station had a post-script in Franco’s handwriting, ‘accursed be those who, instead of doing their duty, betray Spain. General Franco’. It avoided commitment to either the Republic or the Monarchy justifying the rising entirely in terms of defending the Patria by putting an end to anarchy. The text also claimed that Franco’s action was necessary because of a power vacuum in Madrid. Some of it was entirely fanciful: the Constitution, it alleged, was in tatters; the government was blamed for failing to defend Spain’s frontiers ‘when in the heart of Spain, foreign radio stations can be heard calling for the destruction and division of our soil’. It threatened ‘war without quarter against the exploiters of politics’ and ‘energy in the maintenance of order in proportion to the magnitude of the demands that arise’ which was an obscure way of saying all resistance would be crushed.⁶⁷

Franco himself made contact with trusted officers on the island and, on his orders, they seized the post office, the telegraph and telephone centres, the radio stations, power generators, and water reservoirs. He had rather more difficulty persuading the head of the local Civil Guard, Colonel Baraibar, to join the rising.⁶⁸ While Baraibar wavered, Franco, his family and his group of fellow rebels were in serious danger. Crowds were gathering outside the Gobierno Civil and groups of workers from the port were heading into Las Palmas. Pacón managed to keep the two groups from uniting by use of small artillery pieces and before 7 a.m. had dispersed the crowds. The beleagured group was then joined by retired officers, Falangists and right-wingers who were given arms. The situation remained tense and Franco was anxious to be on his way to Africa. Accordingly, he handed over command to Orgaz. Carmen Polo and Carmencita Franco were taken by Franco’s escort to the port and hidden on board the naval vessel Uad Arcila until the arrival of the German liner Waldi which was to take them to Le Havre.*⁶⁹

With fighting still going on, Franco himself set off at 11 a.m. on a naval tugboat for Gando airport where Bebb’s Dragon Rapide awaited him. It would have been virtually impossible to reach Gando by a road journey through villages controlled by the Popular Front. The tug went in as near to shore as possible and Franco and his party were then carried to the beach by sailors.⁷⁰ At 14.05 hours on 18 July, the aircraft took off for Morocco. It has been suggested that, for fear of his plane being intercepted, Franco carried a letter to the Prime Minister announcing his decision to go to Madrid to fight for the Republic.⁷¹ This seems to be contradicted by the fact that, armed with Sangróniz’s passport, Franco was passing himself off as a Spanish diplomat. He thus changed from his uniform into a dark grey suit, Pacón into a white one and both threw their military identification papers out of the aircraft.⁷² Franco put on a pair of glasses and, at some point on the journey, shaved off his moustache.

There is considerable dispute about the details of the journey. Arrarás and Bolín have a dark grey suit for Franco, Franco Salgado-Araujo white summer suits for both. All three are more plausible than Hills who claims that Franco changed into Arab dress and Crozier who adds, bizarrely, a turban. Arab dress would have been an odd choice of disguise for someone travelling on Sangróniz’s Spanish diplomatic passport. Franco Salgado-Araujo claims that they put their uniforms in a suitcase and threw it out of the aircraft. Given the difficulty of throwing a suitcase out of an aircraft in flight and the fact that they emerged from the aircraft in uniform at the end of their journey, it appears that Pacón’s memory failed him. There is also contention about the when and where of the demise of the moustache. The issue is whether he shaved on board the aircraft or later, during the stop-over at Casablanca. Pacón and Arrarás place the event on the aircraft but it is unlikely that Franco had a dry shave in a bumpy aircraft in the early stages of his journey. Luis Bolín, who shared a hotel room with Franco in Casablanca, claims that he shaved there. The emergency pilot also claimed the credit for removing the moustache.⁷³ Whenever the momentous shave took place, it gave rise to Queipo de Llano’s later jibe that the only thing that Franco ever sacrificed for Spain was his moustache.⁷⁴

They made a stop at Agadir in the late afternoon where they had some difficulty in getting petrol. The Dragon Rapide then flew onto Casablanca, where, arriving late at night, they were surprised by the sudden disappearance of the landing lights. With fuel running out, there were moments of intense anxiety. The airport was officially closed but Bolín had bribed an official to open up. The light fault was only a blown fuse. When they had landed safely and were eating a sandwich, they decided on the advice of Bebb not to continue the journey north until morning. They then spent a few hours in a hotel. At first light, on 19 July, the aircraft took off for Tetuán. Franco, who had barely slept for three days, was full of vitality at 5.00 a.m. On crossing the frontier into Spanish Morocco, Franco and Pacón changed back into uniform. Unsure as to the situation that awaited them, they circled the aerodrome at Tetuán until they saw Lieutenant-Colonel Eduardo Saenz de Buruaga, an old Africanista crony of Franco. Totally reassured, Franco cried ‘podemos aterrizar, he visto al rubito’ (‘we can land, I’ve just seen blondy’), and they landed to receive the enthusiastic welcome of the waiting insurgents.⁷⁵

Quickly made aware of the dramatic shortage of aircraft available to the rebels, Franco decided that Bolín should accompany Bebb in the Dragon Rapide as far as Lisbon to report to Sanjurjo and then go on to Rome to seek help. Two hours after depositing its passengers, the Dragon Rapide set off for Lisbon at 9.00 a.m. carrying Bolín with a piece of paper from General Franco which read ‘I authorize Don Luis Antonio Bolín to negotiate urgently in England, Germany or Italy the purchase of aircraft and supplies for the Spanish non-Marxist Army’. When Bolín asked for more details, Franco scribbled in pencil on the bottom of the paper ‘12 bombers, 3 fighters with bombs (and bombing equipment) of from 50 to 100 kilos. One thousand 50-kilo bombs and 100 more weighing about 500 kilos.’ In Lisbon, Bolín was to get the further authorization of Sanjurjo for his mission. On 20 July, the aircraft went from Lisbon to Biarritz. On 21 July, Bebb* took Bolín to Marseille whence he travelled on to Rome in order to seek military assistance from Mussolini.⁷⁶

The fact that Franco should so quickly have decided to do something about the rebels’ need for foreign help is immensely revealing both of his self-confidence and his ambition. Sanjurjo was convinced that Franco aspired to nothing more than to be Alto Comisario in Morocco. However, his experience during the repression of the Asturian rising had given Franco a rather greater sense of his abilities and a significantly higher aspiration. How far-reaching those ambitions were to be was as yet something even Franco did not know. The situation would change rapidly as rivals were suddenly eliminated, as relationships were forged with the Germans and Italians and as the politics of the rebel zone fluctuated. Ever flexible, Franco would adjust his ambitions as, in the dramatic events ahead, more enticing possibilities arose.

* Pemán, a sardonically witty poet and playwright, was member of the extreme right-wing monarchist group, Acción Española.

* The necessary funds to hire Dragon Rapide G-ACYR – £2000 – were supplied by Juan March through the Fenchurch Street branch of Kleinwort’s Bank.

* On other occasions, Franco would show a similar determination to move on, apparently indifferent to the tragedy just recounted to him. The demise of Alfonso XIII in 1931, the death of Mola in April 1937 and Mussolini’s fall from power in 1943 all produced nearly identical responses.

* There they were met by Franco’s friend, the Spanish military attaché in Paris, Major Antonio Barroso who escorted them to Bayonne. They were to remain for the first three months of the Civil War in the home of the Polo family’s old governess Madame Claverie, under the protection of Lorenzo Martínez Fuset.

* After the civil war, Bebb and Pollard were decorated with the Falangist decoration the Knight’s Cross of the Imperial Order of the Yoke and the Arrows. Dorothy Watson and Diana Pollard were given the medal of the same order.

VI

THE MAKING OF A GENERALÍSIMO

July – August 1936

THERE CAN be no doubt that the unlikely figure of Franco, short and with a premature paunch, had a remarkable power to lift the morale of those around him. It was a quality which would play a crucial role in the Nationalist victory and would single him out as leader of the rebel war effort. Having finally shaken himself out of his spring-time hesitations, he once again temporarily resumed the adventurous persona which had served him so well in his rise to the rank of general. It could not have been better suited to the early days of the rising and would see him victoriously through the first months of the Civil War and take him to the doors of absolute power. At that point, caution would reassert itself.

When he drove into Tetuán from the aerodrome at 7.30 a.m. on the morning of Sunday 19 July, the streets were already lined with people shouting ‘¡Viva España!’ and ‘¡Viva Franco!’. He was greeted at the offices of the Spanish High Commission by military bands and gushingly enthusiastic officers. One of his first acts in his new headquarters was to draw up an address to his fellow military rebels throughout Morocco and in Spain. The text throbbed with self-confidence. Declaring that ‘Spain is saved’, it ended with words which summed up Franco’s unquestioning confidence, ‘Blind faith, no doubts, firm energy without vacillations, because the Patria demands it. The Movimiento sweeps all before it and there is no human force that can stop it’. Broadcast repeatedly by local radio stations, it had the instant effect of raising rebel spirits. When he reached Ceuta in the early afternoon, the scenes which he encountered were more consistent with the beginning of a great adventure than of a bloody civil war. Later in the day, he drove to the headquarters of the Legion in Dar Riffien. Nearly sixteen years earlier, he had arrived there for the first time to become second-in-command of the newly created force. His sense of destiny cannot fail to have been excited by the fact that now he was met by wildly euphoric soldiers chanting ‘Franco! Franco! Franco!’. Yagüe made a short and emotional speech: ‘Here they are, just as you left them … Magnificent and ready for anything. You, Franco, who so many times led them to victory, lead them again for the honour of Spain’. The newly arrived leader, on the verge of tears, embraced Yagüe and spoke to the Legionarios. He recognized that they were hungry for combat and raised their pay, already double that of the regular Army, by one peseta per day.¹

That practical gesture was evidence that, behind the rhetoric, he was aware of the need to consolidate the support of those on whom he would have to rely in the next crucial weeks. Immediately on arriving at the High Commission, he had spent time in conclave with Colonels Saenz de Buruaga, Beigbeder and Martín Moreno discussing ways of recruiting Moorish volunteers.² Now, on his return to Tetuán from Dar-Riffien, he took a further measure to secure Moroccan goodwill. He awarded the Gran Visir Sidi Ahmed el Gamnia Spain’s highest medal for bravery, the Gran Cruz Laureada de San Fernando, for his efforts in containing single-handed an anti-Spanish riot in Tetuán.³ It was a gesture which was to facilitate the subsequent recruiting of Moroccan mercenaries to fight in peninsular Spain.⁴

The readiness of Franco to use Moroccan troops in Spain had already been demonstrated in October 1934. The gruesome practices of the Legion and the Regulares were to be repeated with terrible efficacy during the bloodthirsty advance of the Army of Africa towards Madrid in 1936. At a conscious level, it was no doubt for him a simple military decision. The Legion and the Regulares were the most effective soldiers in the Spanish armed forces and it was natural that he would use them without agonizing over the moral implications. The central epic of Spanish history, deeply embedded in the national culture and especially so in right-wing culture, was the struggle against the Moors from 711 to 1492. In more recent times, the conquest of the Moroccan protectorate had cost tens of thousands of Spanish lives. Accordingly, the use of Moorish mercenaries against Spanish civilians was fraught with significance. It showed just how partial and partisan in class terms was the Nationalists’ interpretation of patriotism and their determination to win whatever the price in blood.

Franco believed that he was rebelling to save the Patria, or rather his version of it, from Communist infiltration, and any means to do so were licit. He did not view liberal and working class voters for the Popular Front as part of the Patria. In that sense, as the Asturian campaign of 1934 had suggested, Franco would regard the working class militiamen who were about to oppose his advance on Madrid in the same way as he had regarded the Moorish tribesmen whom it had been his job to pacify between 1912 and 1925. He would conduct the early stages of his war effort as if it were a colonial war against a racially contemptible enemy. The Moors would spread terror wherever they went, loot the villages they captured, rape the women they found, kill their prisoners and sexually mutilate the corpses.⁵ Franco knew that such would be the case and had written a book in which his approval of such methods was clear.⁶ If he had any qualms, they were no doubt dispelled by an awareness of the enormity of the task facing himself and his fellow rebels. Franco knew that, if they failed, they would be shot. In such a context, the Army of Africa was a priceless asset, a force of shock troops capable of absorbing losses without there being political repercussions.⁷ The use of terror, both immediate and as a long-term investment, was something which Franco understood instinctively. During, and long after the Civil War, those of his enemies not physically eliminated would be broken by fear, terrorised out of opposition and forced to seek survival in apathy.

Because of his cool resolve and his infectious optimism, the decision of Franco to join the rising and to take over the Spanish forces in Morocco was a considerable boost to the morale of the rebels everywhere. Described as ‘brother of the well-known airman’ and ‘a turncoat general’ by The Times, he was stripped of his rank by the Republic on 19 July.⁸ He was one of only four of the twenty-one Major-Generals on active service to declare against the government, the others being Goded, Queipo and Cabanellas.⁹ There were officers whose decision to join the rising was clinched by hearing about Franco.¹⁰ More than one rebel officer in mainland Spain reacted to the news with a spontaneous shout of ‘¡Franquito está con nosotros! ¡Hemos ganado!’ (Franco’s with us. We’ve won).¹¹ They were wrong in the sense that the plotters, with the partial exception of Franco, who expected the struggle to last a couple of months, had not foreseen that the attempted coup would turn into a long civil war. Their plans had been for a rapid alzamiento, or rising, to be followed by a military directory like that established by Primo de Rivera in 1923, and they had not counted on the strength of working class resistance.

Nevertheless, the plotters were fortunate that their two most able generals, Franco and Mola, had been successful in the early hours of the coup. While Franco to the far south of Spanish territory could rely on the brutal military forces of the Moroccan protectorate, Mola, in the north enjoyed the almost uniformly committed support of the local civilian Carlists of Navarre. In Pamplona, the Carlist population had turned the coup into a popular festival, thronging the streets and shouting ¡Viva Cristo Rey! (long live Christ the King). These two successes permitted the implementation of the rebel plan of simultaneous marches on Madrid.

On 18 July, that broad strategy was still in the future. The rising had been successful only in the north and north-west of Spain, and in isolated pockets of the south. With a few exceptions, rebel triumphs followed the electoral geography of the Republic. In Galicia and the deeply Catholic rural regions of Old Castile and León, where the Right had enjoyed mass support, the coup met little opposition. The conservative ecclesiastical market towns – Burgos, Salamanca, Zamora, Segovia and Avila, fell almost without struggle. In contrast, in Valladolid, after Generals Andrés Saliquet and Miguel Ponte had arrested the head of the VII Military Region, General Nicolás Molero, it took their men, aided by local Falangist militia, nearly twenty-four hours to crush the Socialist railway workers of Valladolid.¹² Elsewhere, in most of the Andalusian countryside, where the landless labourers formed the mass of the population, the left took power. In the southern cities, it was a different story. A general strike in Cádiz seemed to have won the town for the workers but after the arrival of reinforcements from Morocco, the rebels under Generals José López Pinto and José Enrique Varela, gained control. Córdoba, Huelva, Seville and Granada all fell after the savage liquidation of working class resistance. Seville, the Andalusian capital and the most revolutionary southern city, fell to the lanky eccentric Queipo de Llano and a handful of fellow-conspirators who seized the divisional military headquarters by bluff and bravado. Related to Alcalá Zamora by marriage, Queipo had been considered a republican until the demise of the President inspired a seething hatred of the regime. Perhaps in expiation of his republican past, he would soon be notorious for the implacable ferocity first demonstrated by the bloody repression of working class districts during his take-over of Seville.¹³

In most major urban and industrial centres – Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao – the popular forces by-passed the dithering Republican government and seized power, defeating the military rebels in the process. In Madrid, the general in charge of the rising, Rafael Villegas, was in hiding and sent his second-in-command, General Fanjul, to take command of the one post they held, the Montaña barracks. Besieged by local working class forces, Fanjul was captured and subsequently tried and executed.¹⁴ After defeating the rebels at the Montaña barracks, left-wing militiamen from the capital headed south to reverse the success of the rising in Toledo. With loyal regular troops, they captured the town. However, the rebels under Colonel José Moscardó, the town’s military commander, retreated into the Alcázar, the impregnable fortress which dominates both Toledo and the river Tagus which curls around it on the southern, eastern and western sides.

The defeat of the rising in Barcelona deprived the conspirators of one of their most able generals, Manuel Goded, a potential rival to Franco both militarily and politically. In Barcelona, Companys refused to issue arms but depots were seized by the CNT. In the early hours of 19 July, rebel troops began to march on the city centre. They were met by anarchists and the local Civil Guard which, decisively, had stayed loyal. The CNT stormed the Atarazanas barracks, where the rebels had set up headquarters. When Goded arrived by seaplane from the Balearic Islands to join them, the rising was already defeated. Captured, he was forced to broadcast an appeal to his followers to lay down their arms. The defeat of the rebellion in Barcelona was vital for the government, since it ensured that all of Catalonia would remain loyal.¹⁵

In the Basque Country, divided between its Catholic peasantry and its urban Socialists, the Republic’s support for local national regionalist aspirations tipped the balance against the rebels. As Franco had foreseen, the role of the Civil Guard and the Assault Guards was to be crucial. Where the two police forces remained loyal to the government, as they did in most large cities, the conspirators were defeated. In Zaragoza, the stronghold of the CNT, where they did not, the decisive united action of the police and the military garrison had taken over the city before the anarcho-syndicalist masses could react. In Oviedo, the audacious military commander, Colonel Antonio Aranda, seized power by trickery and bravery. He persuaded both Madrid and the local Asturian left-wing forces that he was true to the Republic. Several thousand miners confidently left the city to assist in the defence of Madrid only for many of them to be massacred in a Civil Guard ambush in Ponferrada. Aranda, after speaking with Mola on the telephone, declared for the rebels. By the following day, Oviedo was under siege from enraged miners.¹⁶ The insurgent triumphs in Oviedo, Zaragoza and the provincial capitals of Andalusia had faced sufficient popular hostility to suggest that a full-scale war of conquest would have to be fought before the rebels would control of all of Spain.

After three days, the conspirators held about one third of Spain in a huge block including Galicia, León, Old Castile, Aragón and part of Extremadura, together with isolated enclaves like Oviedo, Seville and Córdoba. Galicia was crucial for its ports, agricultural products and as a base for attacks on Asturias. The rebels also had the great wheat-growing areas, but the main centres of both heavy and light industry in Spain remained in Republican hands. They faced the legitimate government and much of the Army, although its loyalty was sufficiently questionable for the Republican authorities to make less than full use of it. The government was unstable and indecisive. Indeed, the rebels received a promising indication of the real balance of power when Casares Quiroga resigned to be replaced briefly by a cabinet bent on some form of compromise with the rebels. When Casares withdrew, President Azaña held consultations with the moderate Republican, Diego Martínez Barrio, with the Socialists Largo Caballero and Prieto and with his friend, the conservative Republican, Felipe Sánchez Román. As the basis of a compromise, Sánchez Román suggested a package of measures including the prohibition of strikes and a total crack-down on left-wing militias. The outcome was a cabinet of the centre under Martínez Barrio. Convinced that this was a cabinet ready to capitulate to military demands, the rebels were in no mood for compromise.¹⁷

It was now too late. Neither Mola nor the Republican forces to the left of Martínez Barrio were prepared to accept any deal. When Martínez Barrio made his fateful telephone call to Mola at 2 a.m. on 19 July, the conversation was polite but sterile. Offered a post in the government, Mola refused on the grounds that it was too late and an accommodation would mean the betrayal of the rank-and-file of both sides.¹⁸ On the following day, Martínez Barrio was replaced by José Giral, a follower of Azaña. After his Minister of War, General José Miaja, also tried unsuccessfully to negotiate Mola’s surrender, Giral quickly grasped the nature of the situation and took the crucial step of authorizing the arming of the workers. Thereafter, the defence of the Republic fell to the left-wing militias. In consequence, the revolution which Franco believed himself to have been forestalling was itself precipitated by the military rebellion. In taking up arms to fight the rebels, the Left picked up the power abandoned by the bourgeois political establishment which had crumbled. The middle class Republican Left, the moderate Socialists and the Communist Party then combined to play down the revolution and restore power to the bourgeois Republic. By May 1937, they would be successful, suffocating the revolutionary élan of the working class along the way.

In the interim, a beleagured state, under attack from part of its Army and unable to trust most of those who declared themselves loyal, with its judiciary and police force at best divided, saw much day-to-day power pass to ad hoc revolutionary bodies. Under such circumstances, the Republican authorities were unable, in the early weeks and months, to prevent extremist elements committing atrocities against rightists in the Republican zone. This gave a retrospective justification for a military rising which had no prior agreed objectives. The fact that it would be the Communists who eventually took the lead in the restoration of order and the crushing of the revolution was simply ignored by officers like Franco who believed that they had risen to defeat the Communist menace. That generalised objective was the nearest that the conspirators had to a political plan. Franco’s own bizarre declaration in the Canary Islands before setting off for Africa ended ‘Fraternity, Liberty and Equality’. Many of the declarations by other officers ended with the cry ‘¡Viva la República!’. At most, they knew that they planned to set up a military dictatorship, in the specific form of a military directory.¹⁹

Equally vague were the military prognostications. There were those, like General Orgaz, who believed that the rising would have achieved its objectives within a matter of hours or at most days.²⁰ Mola, realizing the crucial importance of Madrid, and anticipating a possible failure in the capital, expected that a dual advance from Navarre and the south would be necessary and therefore require a short civil war lasting two or three weeks. The reverses of the first few days sowed doubts in the minds of the early optimists. Almost alone among the conspirators, Franco, with his obsessions about the importance of the Civil Guard, had taken a more realistic view. Not even he had anticipated a war which would have gone on much beyond mid-September. However, he took the disappointments of the first few days phlegmatically, resourcefully seeking new solutions and insisting to all around him that they must have ‘blind faith’ in victory. There can be little doubt that his ‘blind faith’ was sincere. It reflected both his temperament and his long-held conviction that superior morale won battles, something learned in Africa. From his first days with the Legion, he retained the belief that morale had to be backed up by iron discipline. The categorical optimism of his first radio broadcasts in Tetuán was complemented with dire warnings about what would happen to those who opposed the rebels. On 21 July, he promised that the disorders (‘hechos vandálicos’) of the Popular Front would receive ‘exemplary punishment’. On 22 July, he said ‘for those who persist in opposing us or hope to surrender at the last minute, there will be no pardon’.²¹

Unaware as yet of the fate of the rising on the mainland, Franco had set up headquarters in the officers of the Spanish High Commission in Tetuán. One of the first issues with which he had to deal provided an opportunity to demonstrate precisely the kind of iron discipline from which he believed the will to win would grow. On arrival at Tetuán, he was informed that his first cousin Major Ricardo de la Puente Bahamonde had been arrested and was about to undergo a summary court martial for having tried to hold the Sania Ramel airport of Tetuán for the Republic and then, when that was no longer possible, disabling the aircraft there. According to Franco’s niece, he and Ricardo de la Puente were more like brothers than cousins. As adults, their ideological differences became acute. Franco had had him removed from his post during the Asturian rising. In one of their many arguments, Franco once exclaimed ‘one day I’m going to have you shot’. De la Puente was now condemned to death and Franco did nothing to save him. Franco believed that a pardon would have been taken as a sign of weakness, something he was not prepared to risk. Rather than have to decide between approving the death sentence or ordering a pardon, he briefly handed over command to Orgaz and left the final decision to him.²²

While Franco consolidated his hold on Morocco, things were not going well for the Nationalists on the other side of the Straits. The losses of Fanjul in Madrid and Goded in Barcelona were substantial blows.²³ Now, as Mola and other successful conspirators awaited Sanjurjo’s arrival from his Portuguese exile to lead a triumphal march on Madrid, at dawn on 21 July, they received more bad news.²⁴ Sanjurjo had been killed in bizarre circumstances. On 19 July, Mola’s envoy, Juan Antonio Ansaldo, the monarchist air-ace and playboy who had once organized Falangist terror squads, had arrived in Estoril at the summer house where General Sanjurjo was staying.²⁵ His tiny Puss Moth bi-plane seemed an odd choice for the mission the more so as the far more suitable Dragon Rapide used by Franco had just landed in Lisbon almost certainly with a view to picking up Sanjurjo. The journey could also have been made by road. However, when Ansaldo arrived, he announced dramatically to an enthusiastic group of Sanjurjo’s hangers-on that he was placing himself at the orders of the Spanish Chief of State. Overcome with emotion at this theatrical display of public respect, Sanjurjo agreed to travel with him.²⁶

To add to the problems posed by the minuscule scale of Ansaldo’s aeroplane, the Portuguese authorities now intervened. Although Sanjurjo was legally in the country as a tourist, the Portuguese government did not want trouble with Madrid. Accordingly, Ansaldo was obliged to clear customs and depart alone from the airport of Santa Cruz. He was then to return towards Estoril and collect Sanjurjo on 20 July at a disused race-track called La Marinha at Boca do Inferno (the mouth of hell) near Cascaes. In addition to his own rather portly self, Sanjurjo had, according to Ansaldo, a large suitcase containing uniforms and medals for his ceremonial entry into Madrid. The wind forced Ansaldo to take off in the direction of some trees. The overweight aircraft had insufficient lift to prevent the propeller clipping the tree tops. It crashed and burst into flames. Sanjurjo died although his pilot survived.²⁷ Contrary to Ansaldo’s version, it was later claimed in Portugal that the crash was the result of an anarchist bomb.²⁸

Whatever the cause, the death of Sanjurjo was to have a profound impact on the course of the war and on the career of General Franco. He was the conspirator’s unanimous choice as leader. Now, with Fanjul and Goded eliminated, his death left Mola as the only general to be a future challenger to Franco. Mola’s position as ‘Director’ of the rising was in any case more than matched by Franco’s control of the Moroccan Army which would soon emerge as the cornerstone of Nationalist success. When war broke out, the military forces in the Peninsula, approximately one hundred and thirty thousand men in the Army and thirty-three thousand Civil Guards, were divided almost equally between rebels and loyalists. However, that broad stalemate was dramatically altered by the fact that the entire Army of Africa was with the rebels. Against the battle-hardened colonial Army, the improvised militiamen and raw conscripts, with neither logistical support nor overall commanders, had little chance.²⁹ Apart from Mola, the only other potential challenger to Franco’s pre-eminence was the Falangist leader, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, but he was in a Republican prison in Alicante.

In these early days of the rising, it is unlikely that even the quietly ambitious Franco would have been thinking of anything but winning the war. The death of Sanjurjo was a harsh demonstration to the conspirators that the alzamiento was far from the instant success for which they had hoped. The collapse of the revolt in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Málaga and Bilbao obliged the insurgents to evolve a plan of attack to conquer the rest of Spain. Since Madrid was seen as the hub of Republican resistance, their strategy was to take the form of drives on the Spanish capital by Mola’s northern Army and Franco’s African forces. The rebels, however, confronted unexpected problems. Mola’s efforts were to be dissipated by the need to send troops to San Sebastián and to Aragón. Moreover, the mixed columns of soldiers, Carlist Requetés and Falangists sent by Mola against Madrid were surprisingly halted at the Somosierra pass in the Sierra to the north and at the Alto del León to the north-west by the improvised workers’ militias from the capital. Threatened from the Republican-held provinces of Santander, Asturias and the Basque Country, the northern Army was also impeded by lack of arms and ammunition.

Franco’s Army was paralysed by the problem of transport to the mainland. The conspirators had taken for granted that the fleet would be with them but their hopes had been dashed by a below-decks mutiny. In facing the daunting problem of being blockaded in Morocco, Franco displayed a glacial sang froid. His apparent lack of nerves prevented his being dismayed by the numerous reverses that the rebels had encountered in the first forty-eight hours. Even the worst news never disturbed his sleep.³⁰ Franco’s optimism and his determination to win was the dominant theme of an interview which he gave to the American reporter Jay Allen in Tetuán on 27 July. When Allen asked him how long the killing would continue now that the coup had failed, Franco replied ‘there can be no compromise, no truce. I shall go on preparing my advance to Madrid. I shall advance. I shall take the capital. I shall save Spain from Marxism at whatever cost.’ Denying that there was a stalemate, Franco declared ‘I have had setbacks, the defection of the Fleet was a blow, but I shall continue to advance. Shortly, very shortly, my troops will have pacified the country and all of this will soon seem like a nightmare.’ Allen responded ‘that means that you will have to shoot half Spain?’, at which a smiling Franco said ‘I repeat, at whatever cost.’³¹

Before Franco had arrived in Tetuán, on 18 July, the destroyer Churruca and two merchant steamers, the Cabo Espartel and the Lázaro and a ferry boat had managed to get 220 men to Cádiz. However, within a matter of hours the crew of the Churruca, like those of many other Spanish naval vessels, mutinied against their rebel officers. On 19 July, the gunboat Dato and another ferry got a further 170 to Algeciras. In the following days, only a few more troops were able to cross in Moroccan lateen-rigged feluccas (faluchos).³² These men were to have a crucial impact on the success of the rising in Cádiz, Algeciras and La Línea. Within hours of arriving in Tetuán, Franco had discussed with his cousin Pacón and Colonel Yagüe the urgent problem of getting the Legion across the Straits of Gibraltar. The Moroccan Army was effectively immobilized. However, Franco did have two major strokes of luck in this regard. The first was the sympathy for his cause of the authorities on the Rock who refused facilities for the Republican fleet. The second was that the tall, incorruptible General Alfredo Kindelán, the founder of the Spanish Air Force and a prominent monarchist conspirator, happened to be in Cádiz as Mola’s liaison with senior naval officers. In the confusion, and with his contact with Mola broken, Kindelán linked up with the troops recently arrived from Morocco. From Algeciras, he spoke by telephone with Franco who made him head of his Air Force.³³ Kindelán was to be a useful asset in organizing the crossing of the Straits.

Cut off by sea from mainland Spain, Franco, advised by Kindelán, began to toy with the then revolutionary idea of getting his Army across the Straits by air and to seek a way of breaking through the blockade by sea.³⁴ The few aircraft available at Tetuán had been damaged by the sabotage efforts of Major de la Puente Bahamonde. Those units and others at Seville were soon repaired and in service. A few Legionarios able to cross the Straits by air landed at Tablada Aerodrome at Seville and helped consolidate Queipo de Llano’s hold on the city.³⁵ Thereafter, from dawn to late in the evening each day, a constant shuttle was maintained by three Fokker F.VIIb3m trimotor transports and one Dornier DoJ Wal flying boat. Each aircraft did four trips per day; the Fokkers carrying sixteen to twenty soldiers and equipment every time, the Dornier able to carry only twelve and having to land in Algeciras Bay. From 25 July, the original four aircraft were joined by a Douglas DC-2 capable of carrying twenty-five men and, from the end of the month, by another Dornier DoJ Wal flying boat.³⁶

The airlift was as yet far too slow. Ironically, the main worry of Franco and his cousin was that Mola might get to Madrid before them. At one point, Franco commented ‘in September, I’ll be back in the Canary Islands, happy and contented, after obtaining a rapid triumph over Communism’.³⁷ Even before German and Italian assistance arrived, Franco was fortunate that Kindelán, the energetic Major Julio García de Cáceres and the Air Force pilots who had joined the uprising worked miracles, both repairing the flying boats which had been out of action and putting eight aged Breguet XIX biplane light bombers and two Nieuport 52 fighters at his disposal. These would provide the escorts whose harassment of the Republican navy would sow panic among the inexperienced left-wing crews when Franco decided to risk sea crossings.³⁸ Franco recognized the importance of the contribution that was being made by Kindelán, by naming him on 18 August, General Jefe del Aire.³⁹

Even before the early limited airlift was properly under way, Franco was seeking a way of breaking through the sea blockade. On the evening of 20 July, he called a meeting of his staff, attended by Yagüe, Beigbeder, Saenz de Buruaga and Kindelán, as well as naval and Air Force officers. Assured by Kindelán that the aircraft available could deal with any hostile vessels, Franco decided to send a troop convoy by sea from Ceuta at the earliest opportunity. He overruled strong expressions of doubt, particularly from Yagüe and the naval officers present, who were concerned at the threat posed by the Republican navy. Franco, however, convinced as always of the importance of moral factors in deciding battles, believed that the Republican crews, without trained officers to navigate, oversee the engine rooms or direct the guns, would present little danger. He acknowledged the validity of the objections, but simply brushed them aside. ‘I have to get across and I will get across’. It would be one of the few times that Franco the cautious and meticulous planner would take an audacious risk. He decided against a night crossing because his one major advantage, the Republican naval crews’ fear of air attack would be neutralized. The precise date of the convoy would be left until the Nationalists had better air cover and more intelligence of Republican fleet movements.⁴⁰ It would eventually take place on 5 August.

Ultimately, the conversion of the rising into a long drawn-out war of attrition was to favour Franco’s political position and the establishment of a personal dictatorship. At first, however, Franco’s isolation in Africa left the political leadership of the coup in the hands of Mola. Nevertheless, although Franco’s every thought may have been on winning the war, he still took for granted that he was the leading rebel once Sanjurjo was dead, informing both the Germans and the Italians of this. His ambitions were, however, pre-empted by events in the north.

On 19 July, having made his declaration of martial law in Pamplona, Mola had sketched out an amplified version of his earlier document on the military directory and its corporative policies.⁴¹ On 23 July, he set up a seven-man Junta de Defensa Nacional in Burgos under the nominal presidency of General Cabanellas, the most senior Major-General in the Nationalist camp after the death of Sanjurjo. It consisted of Generals Mola, Miguel Ponte, Fidel Dávila and Andrés Saliquet and two colonels from the general staff, Federico Montaner and Fernando Moreno Calderón. Mola also sought some civilian input from the Renovación Española group.⁴² Having been a deputy for Jaén in Lerroux’s Radical Party between 1933 and 1935, Cabanellas was regarded by his fellow members as dangerously liberal. His elevation to preside the Junta reflected not simply his seniority but Mola’s anxiety to get him away from active command in Zaragoza. Mola himself had visited Zaragoza on 21 July and had been appalled to find Cabanellas exercising restraint in crushing opposition to the rising and contemplating using ex-members of the Radical Party to create a municipal government.⁴³ On 24 July, the Junta named Franco head of its forces on the southern front. On 1 August, Captain Francisco Moreno Fernández, was named Admiral in command of the section of the navy which had not remained loyal to the Republic, and was added to the Junta.⁴⁴

Only on 3 August, after his first units had crossed the Straits would Franco be added to the Junta de Burgos along with Queipo de Llano and Orgaz. The functions of the Junta were extremely vague. Indeed, the powers of Cabanellas were no more than symbolic. Queipo quickly established de facto a kind of vice-royal fief in Seville from which he would eventually govern most of the south.⁴⁵ There was potential friction between Queipo and Franco. Queipo loathed Franco personally and Franco distrusted Queipo as one of the generals who had betrayed the monarchy in 1931. In addition, there was a more immediate source of tension. Queipo wanted to use the troops being sent from Africa for a major campaign to spread out from the Seville-Huelva-Cádiz triangle which he controlled. He was eager to conquer all of Andalusia, the central and eastern hinterland of which was experiencing a process of revolutionary collectivisation.⁴⁶ Franco simply ignored Queipo’s aspirations.

In order to resolve the immediate difficulties over transporting the Moroccan Army across the Straits, Franco had turned to fellow rightists abroad for help. On 19 July, the Dragon Rapide had set off for Lisbon and then Marseille, en route back to London. Aboard the aircraft, Luis Bolín carried the paper scribbled by Franco authorizing him to negotiate the purchase of aircraft and other supplies. Bolín left the Dragon Rapide at Marseille and continued on to Rome by train.⁴⁷ Franco’s early efforts to gain foreign assistance were ultimately successful but they involved several days of frantic effort and frustration. Moreover, it was to be his own efforts, rather than those of Bolín or the monarchist emissaries sent by Mola, which would secure Italian aid since Mussolini was highly suspicious of Spanish rightists eternally announcing that their revolution was about to start.⁴⁸

While Bolín was still travelling, Franco spoke on 20 July to the Italian military attaché in Tangier, Major Giuseppe Luccardi and asked for his help in obtaining transport aircraft. Luccardi telegraphed military intelligence in Rome, where there was grave doubt about the wisdom of helping the Spanish rebels, doubts shared to the full by Mussolini.⁴⁹ On 21 July, Franco spoke again to Major Luccardi, stressing the desperate difficulties that he faced in getting his troops across the Straits. Luccardi was sufficiently impressed to put Franco in touch with the Italian Minister Plenipotentiary in Tangier, Pier Filippo de Rossi del Lion Nero. Franco convinced him on 22 July to send a telegram to Rome requesting twelve bombers or civilian transport aircraft. Mussolini simply scribbled ‘NO’ in blue pencil at the bottom of the telegram. On a desperate follow-up telegram, the Duce wrote only ‘FILE’.⁵⁰ Meanwhile, Bolín had arrived in Rome on 21 July. At first, he and the Marqués de Viana, armed with a letter of presentation from the exiled Alfonso XIII, were received enthusiastically by the new Italian foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano. Fresh from his long conversation with Franco in Casablanca in the early hours of 19 July, Bolín assured Ciano that, with Sanjurjo dead, Franco would be undisputed leader of the rising. Despite Ciano’s initial sympathy, after consulting Mussolini, he turned Bolín away.⁵¹ However, Ciano had been sufficiently intrigued by De Rossi’s telegram to request further assessments from Tangier of the seriousness of Franco’s bid for power.⁵²

While he was still evaluating the information coming in from Tangier, Ciano received on 25 July a more prestigious delegation sent by General Mola. Unaware of Franco’s efforts to secure Italian assistance, Mola had called a meeting in Burgos on 22 July with six important monarchists.* Mola outlined the need for foreign help and it was decided that José Ignacio Escobar, the aristocratic owner of La Época, would go to Berlin and Antonio Goicoechea, who had signed a pact with Mussolini in March 1934, would lead a delegation to Rome. When Goicoechea’s group spoke to Ciano they revealed that Mola was more concerned with rifle cartridges than with aeroplanes.⁵³ Mola’s plea for ammunition seemed small-scale in comparison with Franco’s ambitious appeal. Mussolini was by this time beginning to get interested in the Spanish situation as a consequence of the news that the French were about to aid the Republic.⁵⁴ Accordingly, in response more to Franco’s personal efforts with the Italian authorities in Tangier than to the efforts of monarchists in Rome, Ciano finally responded to Franco’s request for aircraft on 28 July with twelve Savoia-Marchetti S.81 Pipistrello bombers.⁵⁵

The bombers were despatched from the Sardinian capital Cagliari in the early hours of the morning of 30 July. As a result of unexpectedly strong headwinds, three ran out of fuel, one crashing into the sea, one crashing while attempting an emergency landing at Oujda near the Algerian border and a third landing safely in the French zone of Morocco where it was impounded.⁵⁶ On 30 July, Franco was informed that the remaining nine had landed at the aerodrome of Nador. However, they were grounded for the next five days until a tanker of high-octane fuel for their Alfa Romeo engines was sent from Cagliari. Since there were insufficient Spaniards able to fly them, the Italian pilots enrolled in the Spanish Foreign Legion.⁵⁷ German aircraft also soon began to arrive and the operation for getting the troops of the Moroccan Army across the Straits intensified.

The history of the negotiations for Italian aid shows Franco seizing the initiative and pursuing it with dogged determination. It also shows that Mussolini and Ciano unequivocally placed their bets on Franco rather than on Mola. The exchange of telegrams between Ciano and De Rossi refers to the ‘Francoist’ rebellion and to ‘Franco’s movement’.⁵⁸ In Germany too, Franco’s contacts prospered more. In fact, Mola had substantial prior connections but his various emissaries got entangled in the web of low level bureaucracy in Berlin. In contrast, Franco had the good fortune to secure the backing of energetic Nazis resident in Morocco who had good party contacts through the Auslandorganisation. Moreover, as it had with the Italians, his command of the most powerful section of the Spanish Army weighed heavily with the Germans.⁵⁹

Franco’s first efforts to get German help were unambitious. Among his staff in Tetuán, the person with the best German contacts was Beigbeder. Accordingly, on 22 July, Franco and Beigbeder asked the German consulate at Tetuán to send a telegram to General Erich Kühlental, the German military attaché to both France and Spain, an admirer of Franco who was based in Paris. The telegram requested that he arrange for ten troop-transport planes with German crews to be sent to Spanish Morocco and ended ‘The contract will be signed afterwards. Very urgent! On the word of General Franco and Spain’. This modest telegram was incapable of instigating the sort of official help that Franco needed. It received a cool reception when it reached Berlin in the early hours of the morning of 23 July.⁶⁰ However, almost immediately after its despatch, Franco had decided to make a direct appeal to Hitler.

On 21 July, the day before sending the telegram to Kühlental, Franco had been approached by a German businessman resident in Morocco, Johannes Eberhard Franz Bernhardt, who was an active Nazi Party member and friend of Mola, Yagüe, Beigbeder and other Africanistas. Bernhardt was to be the key to decisive German assistance. Uneasy about the telegram to Kühlental, Franco decided later in the day on 22 July to use Bernhardt to make a formal approach to the Third Reich for transport aircraft. Bernhardt informed the Ortsgruppenleiter of the Nazi Party in Morocco, another resident Nazi businessman, Adolf Langenheim.⁶¹ Langenheim reluctantly agreed to go to Germany with Bernhardt, and Captain Francisco Arranz, staff chief of Franco’s minuscule Air Forces.⁶² The plan was facilitated by the arrival in Tetuán on 23 July of a Lufthansa Junkers Ju-52/3m mail plane which, on Franco’s orders, Orgaz had requisitioned in Las Palmas on 20 July. The Bernhardt mission was a bold initiative by Franco which would make him the beneficiary of German assistance and constitute a giant step on his path to absolute power.

When the party arrived in Germany on 24 July, Hitler was staying at Villa Wahnfried, the Wagner residence, while attending the annual Wagnerian festival in Bayreuth. The delegation was rebuffed by Foreign Ministry officials in Berlin fearful of the international repercussions of granting aid to the Spanish military rebels. However, they were welcomed by Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, the head of the Auslandorganisation who enabled them to travel on to Bavaria and provided a link with Rudolf Hess which in turn gained them access to the Führer.⁶³ Hitler received Franco’s emissaries on the evening of 25 July on his return from a performance of Siegfried conducted by Wilhelm Fürtwängler. They brought a terse letter from Franco requesting rifles, fighter and transport planes and anti-aircraft guns. Hitler’s initial reaction to the letter was doubtful but in the course of a two hour monologue he worked himself into a frenzy of enthusiasm, although noting the Spanish insurgents’ lack of funds, he exclaimed, ‘That’s no way to start a war’. However, after an interminable harangue about the Bolshevik threat, he made his decision. He immediately called his Ministers of War and Aviation, Werner von Blomberg and Hermann Göring, and informed them of his readiness to launch what was to be called Unternehmen Feuerzauber (Operation Magic Fire) and to give Franco twenty aircraft rather than the ten requested. The choice of name for the operation suggests that the Führer was still under the influence of the ‘Magic Fire’ music which accompanies Siegfried’s heroic passage through the flames to liberate Brünnhilde. Göring, after initially expressing doubts about the risks, became an enthusiastic supporter of the idea.⁶⁴

Ribbentrop’s immediate thought was that the Reich should keep out of Spanish affairs for fear of complications with Britain. Hitler, however, stuck to his decision because of his opposition to Communism.⁶⁵ The Führer was determined that the operation would remain totally secret and suggested that a private company be set up to organize the aid and the subsequent Spanish payments. This was to be implemented in the form of a barter system based on two companies, HISMA and ROWAK.* Although not the motivating factor, the contribution of Spanish minerals to Germany’s rearmament programme was soon a crucial element in relations between Franco and Germany.⁶⁶

It has been suggested that Hitler also consulted Admiral Canaris, the enigmatic head of the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence. The dapper Canaris knew Spain well, having spent time there as a secret agent during the First World War, and spoke fluent Spanish. It is unlikely that he was at Bayreuth during the Bernhardt visit, but it is certainly true that once Hitler decided to aid Franco, Canaris would be the link between them, much to the irritation of Göring. He was regularly sent to Spain to resolve problems and in the process established a relationship with Franco.⁶⁷ Canaris quickly began to oversee German aid to Spain, from 4 August liaising with the recently promoted General Mario Roatta, the flamboyant head of Italian military intelligence. They agreed at the end of the month that Italian and German assistance would be channelled exclusively to Franco.⁶⁸

Despite Mola’s endeavours, Franco had emerged as the man with international backing.⁶⁹ The differences between their approaches to the Germans were significant. Franco’s emissaries had direct links with the Nazi Party, arrived with credible documentation and relatively ambitious requests. Mola’s envoy, José Ignacio Escobar, had neither papers nor specific demands other than for rifle cartridges. He had to seek out old contacts within the conservative German diplomatic corps which was hostile to any adventurism in Spain. On the basis of the information before the German authorities, Franco was clearly the leading rebel general, confident and ambitious, while Mola seemed unprofessional and lacking vision.⁷⁰ Franco’s own aspirations glimmered through his mendacious statement to Langenheim that he presided over a directorate consisting of himself, Mola and Queipo de Llano.⁷¹

Hitler’s decision to send twenty bombers to Franco helped turn a coup d’état going wrong into a bloody and prolonged civil war, although it is clear that Franco would eventually have got his men across the Straits without German aid. Ten of the Junkers Ju-52/3m, together with the armaments and military fittings of all twenty, embarked by sea from Hamburg for Cádiz on 31 July and arrived on 11 August. The other ten, disguised as civilian transport aircraft, flew directly to Spanish Morocco between 29 July and 9 August. All were accompanied by spare parts and technicians.⁷² On 29 July, a delighted Franco telegrammed Mola ‘today the first transport aircraft arrives. They will go on arriving at the rate of two per day until we have twenty. I am also expecting six fighters and twenty machine guns.’ The telegram ended on a triumphant note, ‘We have the upper hand (Somos los amos). ¡Viva España!’. All arrived but one, which blew off course and landed in Republican territory.⁷³

Despite the consequent intensification of the Nationalist air-lift, there was considerable exaggeration in Hitler’s much-quoted remark of 1942 that ‘Franco ought to erect a monument to the glory of the Junkers Ju-52. It is this aircraft that the Spanish revolution has to thank for its victory.’⁷⁴ The Ju-52 was only one part, albeit a crucial one, of the airlift. What is equally remarkable at this stage of the military rebellion is Franco’s unquenchable optimism which not only kept up morale among his own men but also consolidated his authority with his fellow rebels elsewhere in Spain. In Burgos, Mola was in despair at the delay in getting the Army of Africa to the mainland. He telegrammed Franco on 25 July that he was contemplating a retreat behind the line of the river Duero after his initial attack on Madrid had been repulsed. With characteristic firmness and optimism, Franco replied: ‘Stand firm, victory certain’.⁷⁵

On 1 August, Franco again telegrammed Mola: ‘we will ensure the successful passage of the convoy, crucial to the advance’.⁷⁶ On 2 August, accompanied by Pacón, Franco flew to Seville to galvanize the preparations being made by Colonel Martín Moreno for the march on Madrid which was to begin that day.⁷⁷ He could see that, even with the Italian and German transport aircraft, the airlift was far too slow. His plan for a convoy to break the blockade had been scheduled for 2 and then 3 August but cancelled. So, on returning to Morocco on 3 August, Franco held a meeting of his staff to fix a new date for the flotilla to make its dash across the Straits. Franco insisted that the troop convoy go by sea from Ceuta at dawn on 5 August despite concerns about the risks expressed by Yagüe and the naval officers. Convinced that the Republican crews were ineffective, Franco side-stepped the objections.⁷⁸ He knew too that the Republican navy would be inhibited by the presence of German warships which were patrolling the Moroccan coasts.⁷⁹ Accordingly, he sent another reassuring telegram to Mola on 4 August.⁸⁰

On the morning of 5 August, air attacks were launched on the Republican ships in the Straits and the convoy set out but was forced back by thick fog. Meanwhile, Franco telephoned Kindelán in Algeciras and asked him to request the British authorities at Gibraltar to refuse access to the port to the Republican destroyer, Lepanto. This request was met and the Republican ship was allowed only to let off its dead and wounded before being obliged to leave Gibraltar. The convoy of ferry boats and naval vessels with three thousand men again set forth in the late afternoon, watched by Franco from the nearby hill of El Hacho. Air cover was provided by the two Dornier flying boats, the Savoia-81 bombers and the six Breguet fighters. The Republican vessels in the vicinity, incapable of manoeuvring to avoid air attack, made little effort to impede their passage. The success of the so-called ‘victory convoy’ brought the number of soldiers transported across the Straits to eight thousand together with large quantities of equipment and ammunition.⁸¹

The convoy’s success was a devastating propaganda blow to the Republic. The news that the ruthless Army of Africa was on the way depressed Republican spirits as much as it boosted those in the Nationalist zone. By 6 August, there were troop-ships regularly crossing the Straits under Italian air cover. The Germans also sent six Heinkel He-51 fighters and ninety-five volunteer pilots and mechanics from the Luftwaffe. Within a week, the rebels were receiving regular supplies of ammunition and armaments from both Hitler and Mussolini. The airlift was the first such operation of its kind on such a scale and constituted a strategic innovation which redounded to the prestige of General Franco. Between July and October 1936, 868 flights were to carry nearly fourteen thousand men, 44 artillery pieces and 500 tons of equipment.⁸²

At this time, Mola made a significant error in the internal power stakes. On 1 August, heir to the Spanish throne, the tall and good-natured Don Juan de Borbón, the third son of Alfonso XIII, arrived in Burgos in a chauffeur-driven Bentley.* Anxious to fight on the Nationalist side, he had left his home in Cannes on 31 July, despite the fact that on that day his wife Doña María de Mercedes was giving birth to a daughter. Mola ordered the Civil Guard to ensure that he left Spain immediately. The fact that he did so abruptly and without consultation with his fellow generals revealed both Mola’s lack of subtlety and his anti-monarchist sentiments. The incident contributed to deeply monarchist officers transferring their long-term political loyalty to Franco.⁸³ In contrast, when Franco later took a similar step, preventing Don Juan volunteering to serve on the battleship Baleares, he was careful to pass off his action as an effort to guarantee that the heir to the throne should be ‘King of all Spaniards’ and not be compromised by having fought on one side in the war.⁸⁴

Two days after the successful ‘victory convoy’, Franco flew to Seville and established his headquarters in the magnificent palace of the Marquesa de Yanduri.⁸⁵ Marking a clear distinction with Queipo’s more modest premises, the palace’s grandeur revealed more about Franco’s political ambitions than his military necessities. He began to use a Douglas DC-2 to visit the front or travel to meet Mola for consultations.⁸⁶ In Seville, he began to gather around him the basis of a general staff. Apart from two ADCs, Pacón and an artillery Major Carlos Diaz Varela, there were Colonel Martín Moreno, General Kindelán and, a recent arrival, General Millán Astray.⁸⁷ This reflected the fact that finally he had an army on the move.

Even before the ‘victory convoy’, Franco had already, on 1 August, ordered a column under the command of the tough Lieutenant-Colonel Carlos Asensio Cabanillas to occupy Mérida and deliver seven million cartridges to the forces of General Mola. The column had set out on Sunday 2 August in trucks provided by Queipo de Llano and advanced eighty kilometres in the first two days. Facing fierce resistance from untrained and poorly armed Republican militiamen, they took another four days to reach Almendralejo in the province of Badajoz. Asensio’s column had been followed on 3 August by another column led by Major Antonio Castejón which had advanced somewhat to the east and on 7 August by a third under Lieutenant-Colonel Heli Rolando de Tella. Franco telegrammed Mola on 3 August to make it clear that the ultimate goal of these columns was Madrid. After the frenetic efforts of the previous two weeks to secure international support and get his troops across the Straits, Franco’s mood was euphoric.

Franco placed Yagüe in overall field command of the three columns. He ordered them to make a three-pronged attack on Mérida, an old Roman town near Cáceres, and an important communications centre between Seville and Portugal. The columns advanced with the Legionaires on the roads and the Moorish Regulares fanning out on either side to outflank any Republican opposition. With the advantage of local air superiority provided by Savoia-81 flown by Italian Air Force pilots and Junkers Ju-52 flown by Luftwaffe pilots, they easily took villages and towns in the provinces of Seville and Badajoz, El Real de la Jara, Monesterio, Llerena, Zafra, Los Santos de Maimona, annihilating any leftists or supposed Popular Front sympathisers found and leaving a horrific trail of slaughter in their wake. The execution of captured peasant militiamen was jokingly referred to as ‘giving them agrarian reform’. After the capture of Almendralejo, one thousand prisoners were shot including one hundred women. Mérida fell on 10 August. In a little over a week, Franco’s forces had advanced 200 kilometres. Shortly afterwards, initial contact was made with the forces of General Mola.⁸⁸ Thus, the two halves of rebel Spain were joined into what came to be called the Nationalist zone.

The terror which surrounded the advance of the Moors and the Legionaries was one of the Nationalists’ greatest weapons in the drive on Madrid. After each town or village was taken by the African columns, there would be a massacre of prisoners and women would be raped.⁸⁹ The accumulated terror generated after each minor victory, together with the skill of the African Army in open scrub, explains why Franco’s troops were initially so much more successful than those of Mola. The scratch Republican militia would fight desperately as long as they enjoyed the cover of buildings or trees. However, they were not trained in elementary ground movements nor even in the care and reloading of their weapons. Thus, even the rumoured threat of being outflanked by the Moors would send them fleeing, abandoning their equipment as they ran.⁹⁰ Franco was fully aware of the Nationalists’ superiority over untrained and poorly armed militias and he and his Chief of Staff, Colonel Francisco Martín Moreno, planned their operations accordingly. Intimidation and the use of terror, euphemistically described as castigo (punishment), were specified in written orders.⁹¹

Given the iron discipline with which Franco ran military operations, there is little possibility that the use of terror was merely a spontaneous or inadvertent side effect. There was little that was spontaneous in Franco’s way of running a war. On being informed of the bravery of a group of Falangist militiamen in capturing some Republican fortifications, Franco ordered them to be shot if they ever again contravened the day’s orders, ‘even though I have to go and place the highest decorations on their coffins’.⁹² In late August, Franco boasted to a German emissary of the measures taken by his men ‘to suppress any Communist movement’.⁹³ The massacres were useful from several points of view. They indulged the blood-lust of the African columns, eliminated large numbers of potential opponents – anarchists, Socialists and Communists whom Franco despised as rabble – and, above all, they generated a paralysing terror.

He wrote Mola on 11 August an extraordinarily significant letter, revealing his expectations of a quick end to the war, his strategic vision and the colonial mentality behind his views on the conquest of territory. He agreed that the priority should be the occupation of Madrid but stressed the need to annihilate all resistance in the ‘occupied zones’, especially in Andalusia. Franco mistakenly assumed that the early capture of Madrid would precede attacks on the Levante, Aragón, the north and Catalonia. He suggested that Madrid be squeezed into submission by ‘tightening a circle, depriving it of water supplies and aerodromes, cutting off communications’. Crucially, in the light of his later remarkable diversion of troops away from Madrid, he ended with the words: ‘I did not know that [the Alcázar of] Toledo was still being defended. The advance of our troops will take the pressure off and relieve Toledo without diverting forces which might be needed’.⁹⁴

At the time that Franco’s letter was being written, Mola was complaining about the difficulties of liaison.⁹⁵ Telephone contact between Seville and Burgos was established immediately after the capture of Mérida. The two generals spoke on 11 August. Apparently oblivious to any eventual political implications, Mola agreed with Franco that there was no point duplicating his successful international contacts and therefore ceded to him the control of supplies. Mola’s political allies were appalled at his naïvety. José Ignacio Escobar asked him if he had therefore agreed on the telephone that the head of the movement be Franco. Mola replied guilelessly, ‘It is an issue which will be resolved when the time comes. Between Franco and I there are neither conflicts nor personal ambitions. We see entirely eye-to-eye and to leave in his hands this business of the procurement of arms abroad is just a way of avoiding a harmful duplication of effort.’ When Escobar insisted that this made Mola the second-in-command as far as the Germans were concerned, he brushed aside his remarks. The control of arms supplies guaranteed that Franco and not Mola, with all the attendant political implications, would dominate the assault on the capital.⁹⁶

After the occupation of Mérida, Yagüe’s troops turned back south-west towards Portugal to capture Badajoz, the principal town of Extremadura, on the banks of the River Guadiana near the Portuguese frontier. Although encircled, the walled city was still in the hands of numerous but ill-armed left-wing militiamen who had flocked there before the advancing Nationalist columns. Many were armed only with scythes and hunting shotguns. Most of the regular troops garrisoned there had been called away to reinforce the Madrid front.⁹⁷ If Yagüe had pressed on to Madrid, the Badajoz garrison could not seriously have threatened his column from the rear. It has been suggested that Franco’s decision to turn back to Badajoz was a strategic error, contributing to the delay which allowed the government to organize its defences. Accordingly, Nationalist historians have blamed Yagüe but the decision smacks of Franco’s caution rather than Yagüe’s frenetic impetuousness. Franco made all the major daily decisions merely leaving their implementation to Yagüe. He had personally supervised the operation against Mérida and, on the evening of 10 August, received Yagüe in his headquarters to discuss the capture of Badajoz and the next objectives.⁹⁸ He wanted to knock out Badajoz to clinch the unification of the two sections of the Nationalist zone and to cover completely the left flank of the advancing columns.

On 14 August, after heavy artillery and bombing attacks, the walls of Badajoz were breached by suicidal attacks from Yagüe’s Legionarios. Then a savage and indiscriminate slaughter began during which nearly two thousand people were shot, including many innocent civilians who were not political militants. According to Yagüe’s biographer, in ‘the paroxysm of war’, it was impossible to distinguish pacific citizens from leftist militiamen, the implication being that it was perfectly acceptable to shoot prisoners.⁹⁹ The Legionarios and Regulares unleashed an orgy of looting and the carnage left streets strewn with corpses, a scene of what one eyewitness called ‘desolation and dread’. After the heat of battle had cooled, two thousand prisoners were rounded up and herded to the bull-ring, and any with the bruise of a rifle recoil on their shoulders were shot. The shootings went on for weeks thereafter. Yagüe told the American journalist John T. Whitaker, who accompanied him for most of the march on Madrid, ‘Of course, we shot them. What do you expect? Was I supposed to take four thousand Reds with me as my column advanced racing against time? Was I expected to turn them loose in my rear and let them make Badajoz Red again?’.¹⁰⁰ In fact, the savagery unleashed on Badajoz reflected both the traditions of the Spanish Moroccan Army and the outrage of the African columns at encountering a solid resistance and, for the first time, suffering serious casualties. In retrospect, it can be seen that the events of Badajoz might have been taken to anticipate what would happen when the columns reached Madrid. The clear lesson was that the easy victories of the Legionarios and Regulares in open country were not replicated in built-up cities. This was not widely perceived in the Nationalist camp but the stiffening of Republican resistance does seem to have dented Franco’s earlier optimism.

The distant cloud of potential difficulties at Madrid could hardly dim Franco’s appreciation of the benefits won at Badajoz. Now, crucially, there was unrestricted access to the frontier of Portugal, the Nationalists’ first international ally. From the beginning, Oliveira Salazar had permitted the rebels to use Portuguese territory to link their northern and southern territories.¹⁰¹ It was access to Portuguese help which, as much as any other factor, had decided Franco to swing his columns westwards through the province of Badajoz rather than the more direct route along the main road from Seville to Madrid, across the Sierra Morena via Córdoba.*¹⁰²

On 14 August, General Miguel Campins, Franco’s one-time friend and second-in-command at the Academia General Militar de Zaragoza, was tried in Seville for the crime of ‘rebellion’. The court martial was presided over by General José López Pinto. Campins was sentenced to death and shot on 16 August.¹⁰³ His crime was to have refused to obey Queipo’s demand on 18 July that he declare martial law in Granada and to have delayed two days before joining the rising. Franco was unable to overcome the determination of Queipo de Llano to have Campins shot. According to Franco’s cousin, despite refusing Queipo’s order, Campins had in fact telegraphed Franco putting himself under his orders. Franco wrote a number of letters to Queipo requesting that mercy be shown to Campins. Queipo simply tore them up but Franco did not push the matter further for fear of undermining the unity of the Nationalist camp.¹⁰⁴ According to his sister Pilar, Franco was upset by the death of his friend.¹⁰⁵ Queipo’s determination to execute Campins despite pleas for mercy reflected both his brutal character and his long-standing loathing of Franco. Franco took his revenge in 1937 by ignoring Queipo’s own pleas for mercy for his friend General Domingo Batet, who was condemned to death for opposing the rising in Burgos.¹⁰⁶

While Campins was being tried and shot, Franco made a cunning move which boosted his stock in the eyes of Spanish rightists at the expense of his rivals in the Junta. In Seville on 15 August, flanked by Queipo, he announced the decision to adopt the monarchist red-yellowred flag. Queipo acquiesced cynically, reluctant to draw attention to his own republicanism. Mola, who barely two weeks before had expelled the heir to the throne, was not consulted. Only with acute misgivings did General Cabanellas sign a decree of the Junta de Defensa Nacional two weeks later ratifying the use of the flag.¹⁰⁷ Franco had managed to present himself to conservatives and monarchists as the one certain element among the leading rebel generals. It was a clear indication that while the others thought largely of eventual victory, Franco kept a sharp eye on his own long-term political advantage.

In fact, Mola and Franco were worlds apart in both political preferences and in temperament. In the words of Mola’s secretary José María Iribarren, Mola ‘was neither cold, imperturbable nor hermetic. He was a man whose face transmitted the impressions of each moment, whose stretched nerves reflected disappointments’.¹⁰⁸ Mola himself seemed totally oblivious to security, strolling around Burgos alone and in civilian clothes. His headquarters were chaotic with visitors wandering in at all times.¹⁰⁹ Queipo de Llano was equally casual about visitors. In contrast, Franco had a bodyguard and the tightest security arrangements at his headquarters. Visitors were searched thoroughly and during interviews with Franco, the door was kept ajar and one of the guards kept watch via a strategically placed mirror.¹¹⁰

Those who did get in to see him did not find a daunting war lord. Many aspects of Franco’s demeanour, his eyes, his soft voice, the apparent outer calm struck many commentators as somehow feminine. John Whitaker, the distinguished American journalist, described him thus: ‘A small man, his hand is like a woman’s and always damp with perspiration. Excessively shy, as he fences to understand a caller, his voice is shrill and pitched on a high note which is slightly disconcerting since he speaks very softly – almost in a whisper.’¹¹¹ The femininity of Franco’s appearance was frequently, and inadvertently, underlined by his admirers. ‘His eyes are the most remarkable part of his physiognomy. They are typically Spanish, large and luminous with long lashes. Usually they are smiling and somewhat reflective, but I have seen them flash with decision and, though I have never witnessed it, I am told that when roused to anger they can become as cold and hard and steel.’¹¹²

Franco certainly had heated arguments in Seville with Queipo de Llano who had difficulty concealing his contempt for the man who was below him in the seniority scale. In contrast, Mola remained on good terms with Franco.¹¹³ A German agent reported to Admiral Canaris in mid-August on the view from Franco’s headquarters. The report showed the wily gallego subtly consolidating his position and confirming the fears of Mola’s supporters that he had sold the pass to Franco on 11 August. The agent’s report stated that German aid must be channelled through Franco.¹¹⁴ Mola continued to recognize Franco’s superior position in terms of foreign supplies and battle-hardened troops. Their correspondence in August shows Franco as the distributor of largesse in terms of financial backing and military hardware. Franco could boast of the fact that foreign suppliers made few if any demands upon him in terms of early payment. He could offer to send Mola aircraft.¹¹⁵

On 16 August, Franco, accompanied by Kindelán, flew to Burgos where Mola could not have failed to notice the manic fervour with which his comrade was received by the local population. A solemn high mass was said in the Cathedral by the Archbishop.¹¹⁶ At dinner that night, Franco’s optimism about the progress of the war was as unshakeable as ever. The only glimmer of anxiety came in a comment to Mola that he was worried that he had had no news of his wife Carmen and his daughter Nenuca.¹¹⁷ After dinner, Franco and Mola spent several hours locked in secret conclave. Although no decision was taken, it was obvious to both of them that the efficient prosecution of the war required a single overall military command.¹¹⁸ It was obvious too that some kind of centralised diplomatic and political apparatus was necessary. Franco and his small staff were working ceaselessly to maintain foreign logistical support. The Junta de Burgos which used to meet late at night was also finding itself overwhelmed with work.¹¹⁹ Given Franco’s near monopoly of contacts with the Germans and Italians and the apparently unstoppable progress of his African columns, Mola must have realized that the choice of Franco to assume the necessary authority would be virtually inevitable. Franco’s staff had already loaded the dice by convincing German Military Intelligence that the victory in Extremadura had indisputably established him as ‘Commander-in-Chief’. Portuguese newspapers and other sections of the international press described him as ‘Commander-in-Chief’ presumably on the basis of information supplied by his headquarters. The Portuguese consul in Seville referred to him as ‘the supreme commander of the Spanish Army’ as early as mid-August.¹²⁰

Mola was gradually being forced towards the same view. On 20 August, he sent a message to Franco pointing out his own troops were having difficulties on the Madrid front and asking to be informed of Franco’s plans for his advance on the capital. In the event of Franco’s advance being delayed Mola would make arrangements to concentrate his activities on another front.¹²¹ The text of his telegram suggested less a deferential subordination to Franco’s greater authority than a rational desire to co-ordinate their efforts in the interests of the war effort. Mola was not thinking in terms of a power struggle but three days later he was brutally made aware of the extent to which Franco was consolidating his own position. On 21 August, Mola received a visit from Johannes Bernhardt in Valladolid. Bernhardt came with the good news that an anxiously awaited German shipment of machine-guns and ammunition was on its way by train from Lisbon. Mola’s delight was severely diminished when Bernhardt said to him ‘I have received orders to tell you that you are receiving all these arms not from Germany but from the hands of General Franco’. Mola went white but quickly accepted the inevitable. It had already been agreed with General Helmuth Wilberg, head of the inter-service commission sent by Hitler to co-ordinate Unternehmen Feuerzauber, that German supplies would be sent only on Franco’s request and to the ports indicated by him.¹²²

After the capture of Badajoz, Yagüe’s three columns had begun to advance rapidly up the roads to the north-east in the direction of the capital. Tella’s column had moved to Trujillo on the road towards Madrid while Castejón’s column had raced towards Guadalupe on Tella’s southern flank. By 17 August, Tella had reached the bridge across the Tagus at Almaraz and shortly afterwards arrived at Navalmoral de la Mata on the borders of the province of Toledo. Castejón’s column would capture Guadalupe on 21 August. Castejón, Tella and Asensio would join together on 27 August before the last town of importance on the way to Madrid, Talavera de la Reina. In two weeks, they had advanced three hundred kilometres.¹²³

Despite these heady successes, Franco’s telegram in reply to Mola suggested that his unflappable optimism was beginning to be eroded by Republican resistance. He made it clear that, on the advance to Talavera de la Reina, he feared strong Republican flank attacks at Villanueva de la Serena and Oropesa. ‘A well-defended town can hold up the advance. I’m down to six thousand men and have to guard long lines of communication. Flank attacks limit my capacity for movement.’ He outlined to Mola the next stages of the push, on to the important road junction at Maqueda in Toledo, then from Maqueda diagonally north-east to Navalcarnero on the road to Madrid.*¹²⁴ Within a month, the bold and direct strategy outlined to Mola would be abandoned in the interests of ensuring that Franco would be the undisputed Generalísimo.

* Antonio Goicoechea, the head of Renovación Española, the intellectual Pedro Sáinz Rodríguez, the Conde de Vallellano, José Ignacio Escobar, owner of the monarchist newspaper La Época, the lawyer José María de Yanguas y Messía and Luis María Zunzunegui.

* German equipment would be imported to Spain by the Compañía Hispano-Marroquí de Transportes (HISMA) set up on 31 July by Franco and Berhardt and Spanish raw materials imported into Germany by the Rohstoffe-und-Waren-Einkaufsgesellschaft (ROWAK) created on 7 October 1936 at the initiative of Marshal Göring.

* Alfonso XIII’s eldest son, Alfonso, was afflicted by haemophilia and had formally accepted the loss of his right to the throne in June 1933 when he contracted a morganatic marriage with Edelmira Sampedro, the daughter of a rich Cuban landowner. The King’s second son, Jaime, immediately renounced his own rights on the grounds of a disablement (he was deaf and dumb). Jaime would, in any case, have lost his rights when, in 1935, he also married morganatically an Italian, Emmanuela Dampierre Ruspoli, who although an aristocrat was not of royal blood. Alfonso died in September 1938 after a car crash in Miami.

* Assuming that Franco would attack through Cordoba, and believing the Yagüe columns to be engaged only in local operations, the Republican General Miaja had concentrated his exiguous defensive forces on the Córdoba-Madrid line.

* The Francoist military historian, Colonel José Manuel Martínez Bande, has seen this message as the first sign of Franco’s decision to relieve the Alcázar de Toledo. His view is based entirely on the presence in the message of the words: ‘Maqueda-Toledo’, which he arbitrarily takes to mean ‘relief of the Alcázar’. However, the rest of Franco’s text shows rather that after Maqueda the column would make a continued thrust to Madrid in a direct line to Navalcarnero rather than make any diversion to Toledo.

VII

THE MAKING OF A CAUDILLO

August – November 1936

THE SUCCESSES of the African columns and the imminent attack on Talavera led, on 26 August, to Franco transferring his headquarters from Seville to the elegant sixteenth century Palacio de los Golfines de Arriba in Cáceres. He was anxious to move on from Seville in order to establish his total autonomy, free from the interference or disdain of Queipo de Llano in whose presence he always felt uncomfortable.¹ Like his earlier choice of the Palacio de Yanduri in Seville, it indicated a jealous concern for his public status. Franco was beginning to build a political apparatus capable of daily dealings with the Germans and Italians. Already he had a diplomatic office, headed by José Antonio de Sangróniz. Lieutenant-Colonel Lorenzo Martínez Fuset acted as legal adviser and political secretary. Franco was also accompanied from time to time by his brother Nicolás, who travelled between Cáceres and Lisbón where he was working for the Nationalist cause. Nicolás would soon be acting as a kind of political factotum. Millán Astray was in charge of propaganda. Even at this early stage, the tone of Franco’s entourage was sycophantic.²

The sheer volume of work facing Franco, effectively co-ordinating Nationalist ‘foreign policy’ and logistical organization, as well as maintaining close overall supervision of the advance of the African columns, obliged him to work immensely long hours. His resistance to discomfort and the powers of endurance which he had displayed as a young officer in Africa were undiminished but he began to age noticeably. The manic Millán Astray boasted to Ciano that ‘our Caudillo spends fourteen hours at his desk and doesn’t get up even to piss’.³ When his wife and daughter returned to Spain after their two-month exile in France – on 23 September – he responded to the announcement of their arrival by sending them a message that he had important visitors waiting. They were obliged to wait for more than an hour. He had little time for family life.⁴ Such concentration and strain perhaps contributed to the quenching of his early optimism but the re-emergence of a cautious Franco after the brief reincarnation of the impetuous African hero denoted both the prospect of power and the growing strength of Republican resistance.

The difficulties that were now slowing down the advance of the African columns impelled Franco’s Italian and German allies to step up their assistance. On 27 August, accompanied by Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Warlimont of the War Ministry staff, Canaris met Roatta in Rome to co-ordinate their views on the scale and nature of future assistance from Italy and Germany to the Nationalists. At a further meeting on the following day, they were joined by Ciano. Canaris again insisted that assistance be provided ‘only to General Franco, because he holds the supreme command of operations’. Joint Italo-German planning required a recognizable overall Nationalist commander with whom to communicate.⁵

Talavera was encircled by the three columns. The propaganda value for the Nationalists of the massacre at Badajoz was revealed when large numbers of militiamen fled in buses ‘like a crowd after a football match’. The town fell on 3 September. Another savage and systematic massacre ensued.⁶ While Franco’s forces had been moving through Extremadura and into New Castile, Mola had begun an attack on the Basque province of Guipúzcoa to cut the province off from France. Irún and San Sebastián were attacked daily by Italian bombers and bombarded by the Nationalist fleet. Irún’s poorly armed and untrained militia defenders fought bravely but were overwhelmed on 3 September. San Sebastián fell on 12 September. It was a key victory for the Nationalists. Guipúzcoa was a rich agrarian province which also contained important heavy industries. The Nationalist zone was now united in a single block from the Pyrenees through Castille and western Spain to the far south. The Republican provinces of Vizcaya, Santander and Asturias were isolated, able to communicate with the rest of the Republic only by sea or air.⁷

The losses of Talavera and Irún provoked the fall of the government of José Giral. A cabinet which more clearly reflected the working class bases of the Republic was introduced under the leadership of Francisco Largo Caballero. The clearer definition of the Republic and its move towards a stronger central authority was the corollary of the ever fiercer resistance being mounted against Franco’s advancing columns. The reduction of political indecision on the Republican side intensified the feeling among the senior Nationalist commanders that a unified command was an urgent necessity. Franco’s ambitions could be deduced from a statement to the Germans in Morocco that he wished ‘to be looked upon not only as the saviour of Spain but also as the saviour of Europe from the spread of Communism’.⁸ Now, the issue of a single command opened an opportunity for him. Mola flew to Cáceres on 29 August and discussed the matter with him.⁹

In the meanwhile, the bulk of Nationalist success was being chalked up by Franco’s Army of Africa. Protected to the south by the Tagus, Yagüe’s troops secured their northern flank by linking up with Mola’s forces. With the road to Madrid now open, for the next two weeks desperate Republican counter-attacks sought to recapture Talavera, but Franco showed a dogged resolve not to give up an inch of captured ground. Stiffening resistance and Franco’s determination to purge territory of leftists as it was captured account for the slowing down of his advance. In fact, he was on the verge of slowing it down even further by a momentous decision.

Among the issues crowding in on him, Franco gave some thought to the besieged garrisons of Toledo and Santa María de la Cabeza in Jaén. He regularly released his own Douglas DC-2 aircraft and his pilot Captain Haya for missions to both fortresses. On 22 August, he had sent a message to the Alcázar de Toledo promising to bring relief.¹⁰ The fortress was still unsuccessfully besieged by Republican militiamen who had wasted time, energy and ammunition in trying to capture this strategically unimportant stronghold. The one thousand Civil Guards and Falangists who had retreated into the Alcázar in the early days of the rising, had taken with them as hostages many women and children, the families of known leftists.¹¹ However, the resistance of the Alcázar was being turned into the great symbol of Nationalist heroism. Subsequently, the reality of the siege would be embroidered beyond recognition, in particular through the famous, and almost certainly apocryphal, story that Moscardó was telephoned and told that, unless he surrendered, his son would be shot.* Naturally, the existence, and subsequent fate, of the hostages was entirely forgotten.¹²

Franco’s troops took more than two weeks to cover the ground from Talavera to the town of Santa Olalla in the province of Toledo on the road to Madrid.¹³ On 20 September, Yagüe’s forces captured Santa Olalla and imposed another ‘exemplary punishment’ on the militiamen they captured.¹⁴ Maqueda, at the cross-roads where the road divided to go either north to Madrid or east to Toledo, also fell to Yagüe on 21 September. At this point, that is to say after the fall of Maqueda, Franco had to make the decision whether to let the African columns race onto Madrid or else turn eastwards to relieve Toledo. It was a complex decision with political as well as military implications. While Yagüe was capturing Santa Olalla and Maqueda, Franco had been engaged in meetings with the other generals of the Junta de Defensa Nacional to discuss the need for a single Commander-in-Chief for the Nationalist forces. It is immensely difficult to reconstruct in precise detail the where, when, why and how of Franco’s decision but a key is to be found in the role of Yagüe.

On the day after Maqueda fell, an ‘officially’ sick and exhausted Yagüe handed over command to Asensio.¹⁵ It has been suggested that Franco’s decision to relieve Yagüe of his command was influenced by Mola’s intense hostility to him.¹⁶ It is possible, but highly unlikely, that Franco would have relieved the highly successful Yagüe at the insistence of Mola.* It has also been suggested that Yagüe’s replacement had less to do with his illness than with his opposition to Franco’s decision to interrupt the march on Madrid to relieve the Alcázar de Toledo.¹⁷ Either of these possibilities would make sense if, in replacing Yagüe, Franco was punishing him for indiscipline. However, it seems unlikely that Yagüe was in disgrace of any kind since his withdrawal from the front was accompanied by promotion to full colonel and his immediate incorporation into Franco’s close entourage.¹⁸ By 22 September, Yagüe was already installed in the Palacio de los Golfines de Arriba, a curious resting place for a man in disgrace.¹⁹

There is, however, a third and altogether more likely possibility which fits the facts of Yagüe’s health, his promotion and his activities over the next few weeks. Yagüe’s substitution was made necessary because he had a weak heart consequent on problems with his aorta: he was genuinely exhausted and not really fit for further uninterrupted campaigning. Recognizing Yagüe’s priceless contribution at the head of the African columns, Franco was happy to give him a respite, promote him and use his immense prestige within the Legion for another task, as part of the orchestration of his bid to become Generalísimo. The ever faithful Yagüe, despite his obvious need for rest, threw himself into the job with a gusto which makes it difficult to imagine that there was serious friction between him and Franco.

Franco was fully aware of the possible military consequences of diverting his troops to Toledo. He would lose an unrepeatable chance to sweep onto the Spanish capital before its defences were ready. Both Kindelán and his Chief of Operations, Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Barroso, warned him that opting to go to Toledo might cost him Madrid. Yagüe’s opposition seems to have been the most outspoken. He reiterated the point made by Franco to Mola in his message of 11 August that the mere proximity of his columns to Madrid would have sent the besieging militiamen racing back to the capital. However, as had happened with Yagüe’s doubts over the crossing of the Straits in early August, his unquestioning faith in Franco brought him round. Franco disagreed with his staff that the delay of a week would undermine his chances of capturing Madrid. Nevertheless, he openly stated that, even if he knew for certain that going to Toledo would lose him the capital, he would still fulfil his promise to liberate the besieged garrison.²⁰ He was more interested in the political benefits of the relief of the Alcázar and to maximise those benefits he needed Yagüe at his side rather than in the field.

As a result of Franco’s decision, there would be a delay from 21 September to 6 October before the march on Madrid could continue. The two weeks were lost by Franco while he took Toledo and was involved in the process of his own political elevation. That delay would constitute the difference between an excellent chance to pluck Madrid easily and having to engage in a lengthy siege as a result of the reorganization of the capital’s defences and the arrival of foreign aid. At precisely this time, the Germans began to voice their impatience with ‘extraordinary’ and ‘incomprehensible’ delays which were permitting the Republican government to receive help from abroad.²¹ Given that Franco never ceased to complain to his allies about Soviet assistance to the Republic, it is ironic that he should so dramatically have underestimated its impact on the defence of Madrid. In moving his forces to Toledo, Franco gave a higher priority to the inflation of his own political position by means of an emotional victory and a great propagandistic coup than to the early defeat of the Republic. After all, had he moved onto Madrid immediately, he would have done so before his own political position had been irrevocably consolidated. The entire process of choosing a Caudillo would have been delayed. Then the triumph, and therefore the future, would have had to be shared with the other generals of the Junta.

Convinced of Franco’s monarchist good faith, Kindelán had long been urging Franco to raise the question of the need for a single command. Ostensibly at least, Franco showed little interest.²² Since his arrival in Tetuán on 19 July, Franco had been swamped every day by pressing problems. However, in the course of solving them, his self-confidence and ambitions had grown. In addition to organizing a combat Army without the normal logistical and financial support of the State to feed, arm and pay his troops, he had extended his activities into the international arena, acquiring a monopoly of arms and ammunitions deliveries. However, it was only in September as co-ordination with Mola’s forces for the final push on Madrid became likely that a formally recognized Commander-in-Chief became an urgent necessity.

There is no reason to doubt that Franco’s faith in his own abilities had already convinced him that, if there was to be a single command, then he should exercise it. He had long since presented himself to the agents of Berlin and Rome as the effective leader of the Nationalist cause. In early September, the Italian military mission under General Mario Roatta presented its credentials to Franco and thereby conveyed Mussolini’s de facto recognition of his leadership.²³ Any scruples which he expressed to Kindelán and Pacón reflected slow-moving prudence rather than modesty. Instinctive caution inclined him to avoid possible failure and humiliation by taking care not to be seen to have sought the post of Commander-in-Chief. A show of hesitation would disarm the jealousy of his rivals.

From the earliest moments of the uprising, Franco had been concerned about political unity within the Nationalist zone. Shocked by the Aladdin’s cave of uniforms and militias which he had encountered on arrival at Seville, he had commented to José María Pemán in mid-August 1936, ‘everyone will have to sacrifice things in the interests of a rigid discipline which should not lend itself to divisions or splinter groups’.²⁴ His interest in establishing overall authority over both the military and political spheres, however, quickened as a result of pressures from the Third Reich.

Herr Messerschmidt, the representative in Spain of the German War Matériel Export Cartel met Franco at the end of August. Messerschmidt’s report concluded ‘It goes without saying that everything must remain concentrated in Franco’s hands so that there may be a leader who can hold everything together’.²⁵ In mid-September, Johannes Bernhardt informed Franco that Berlin was anxious to see him installed as Chief of State. Franco replied cautiously that he had no desire to get mixed up in politics. Bernhardt made it clear that further arms shipments were in doubt unless Berlin had a sovereign chief with whom to negotiate and who could take responsibility for future commitments. Characteristically, Franco did not respond and left Bernhardt to fill the ensuing silence. Bernhardt informed him that he would shortly be travelling to Berlin with Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Warlimont, the head of Hitler’s unofficial military mission, in order to report to the Führer and Göring about the progress of the war. One of the issues that Warlimont would be discussing was the political leadership of Nationalist Spain. The clear implication was that Franco’s favoured position as the exclusive channel for German aid could be endangered unless he could show that his grip on power was unshakeable. Disappointed by the general’s non-committal response, Bernhardt approached Nicolás Franco who undertook to work on his brother. Since Franco was not easily manipulable, Nicolás’s efforts may be supposed to have been confined to underlining that now was an ideal moment to make a bid for power.²⁶

In the meanwhile, Kindelán, Nicolás Franco, Orgaz, Yagüe and Millán Astray formed a kind of political campaign staff committed to ensuring that Franco became first Commander-in-Chief and then Chief of State. It is clear from Kindelán’s own account that this was done with Franco’s knowledge and approval. Not surprisingly, Franco maintained sufficient reserve to enable him to disown their efforts should they have proved unsuccessful. It thus appeared that they were taking the lead although Franco was anything but a passive shuttlecock in their game. Kindelán suggested that a gathering of the Junta de Defensa Nacional together with other senior Nationalist generals be called to resolve the issue. The meeting was convoked at Franco’s request, an initiative which clearly indicated his interest in the single command and his availability as a candidate. The choice of additional generals who were invited was also deeply significant. They were Orgaz, Gil Yuste and Kindelán, all totally committed to Franco and all monarchists. In the wake of Mola’s expulsion of Don Juan, they looked to Franco to hold the fort until victory over the Republic permitted the restoration of the monarchy.

The historic gathering was held on 21 September at the same time as the African columns were taking Maqueda. The meeting took place in a wooden cabin (barracón) at a recently improvised airfield near Salamanca. General Cabanellas was in the chair and the others present were the members of the Junta, Franco, Mola, Queipo de Llano, Dávila, Saliquet, and Colonels Montaner and Moreno Calderón and the three additional generals. During the morning session, three and a half hours went by without Kindelán and Orgaz managing to get a discussion started on the question of a Commander-in-Chief, despite three attempts. There exist no minutes of the meeting, and the only record is constituted by Kindelán’s notes. In those notes, there is no indication that there was any discussion of the decision to interrupt the attack on Madrid in order to relieve the Alcázar at Toledo. At lunch on the estate of Antonio Pérez Tabernero, a bull-breeder, Kindelán and Orgaz decided to overcome the reluctance of their comrades and insisted that the subject be discussed in the afternoon session. Mola surprisingly supported them, saying ‘I believe the single command to be of such interest that if we haven’t named a Generalísimo within a week, I am not going on’. When the discussion was resumed, all showed themselves to be in favour, except Cabanellas, who advocated leadership by a junta or directory.²⁷

The choice was effectively limited to the cuatro generales of the Republican song. The most senior, Cabanellas was not possible. He had rebelled against the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, had been Radical parliamentary deputy for Jaén between 1933 and 1935, and was thought to be a freemason. His role in the 18 July rising was unclear and he had no special standing as a combat general. The next in seniority, Queipo de Llano, had betrayed Alfonso XIII in 1930 and, for that reason and because of his family links with Alcalá Zamora, was considered to have been the beneficiary of favouritism under the Republic. He was also privately despised for the obscene radio broadcasts which he delivered nightly from Seville against the Republic. Mola, the most junior, was somewhat discredited by the initial failures of the rising and by the difficulties faced by his northern forces relative to the spectacular successes of Franco’s Army of Africa. He also knew that he could not match Franco’s contacts with the Germans and Italians.²⁸

When it came to the vote on who should be Generalísimo, the two colonels abstained because of their inferior rank. Kindelán voted first, proposing that the single command be entrusted to Franco. He was followed by Mola, then Orgaz and the others, except Cabanellas who said that he could not take part in an election for a post which he considered unnecessary.²⁹ Although he cannot but have reflected wryly on Franco’s hesitations about joining the rising in June and the first half of July, Mola took his rival’s elevation with good grace. On leaving the meeting, Mola told his adjutants that it had been decided to create the job of Generalísimo. When they asked him if he had been nominated, he replied ‘Me? Why? Franco.’ Mola later told his adjutants that he had proposed the name of Franco as Generalísimo, ‘he is younger than me, has higher rank, is immensely well-liked and is famous abroad’.³⁰ Shortly afterwards, Mola told the monarchist politician Pedro Sainz Rodríguez that he had supported Franco in the power stakes because of his military abilities and the fact that he was likely to get the most votes. However, he made it clear that he regarded Franco’s leadership as transitory and was assuming that he himself would play a major role in moulding the political future after the war.³¹ Many years later, Queipo de Llano, on criticizing Franco, was asked by the monarchist Eugenio Vegas Latapié why he had voted for him. ‘And who else could we appoint?’, he replied. ‘It couldn’t be Cabanellas. He was a convinced Republican and everyone knew that he was a freemason. Nor could we name Mola because we would have lost the war. And my prestige was seriously impaired.’³² Nonetheless, Queipo made no secret of his dissatisfaction with the decision that had been taken.³³

The half-heartedness shown by some of Franco’s peers about his elevation was to have an immediate impact on his conduct of the war. It is impossible to say with total certainty when exactly Franco took the decision to direct his troops towards Toledo. The timing is crucial to any assessment of his motives. His official biographer has claimed, without any proof, that it was before the airfield meeting at which he was elected as Generalísimo. Such a timing would conveniently diminish any suspicion of self-serving about the decision.³⁴ However, the decision became a matter of urgency only after the capture of Maqueda and that did not take place until the early evening of 21 September. The Salamanca meeting started in the morning and Franco and his staff had to make an early start to travel there from Cáceres. In fact, there is little doubt that the decision was taken sometime after the fall of Maqueda and therefore after the meeting of the generals at the airfield.³⁵ Whether taken in the evening of 21 September or later, it was after Franco had been elected Generalísimo. He did not draw up specific orders until three days later.³⁶ Whenever Franco made his decision, which Mola’s secretary described as ‘completely personal’, he did so in a context of knowledge of the events of 21 September.³⁷

The meeting on that day had left him with gnawing doubts about his election as Generalísimo. Behind the near unanimous vote and the expressions of support for Franco could be discerned coolness and hesitations on the part of the other generals. The simple election to the status of primus inter pares was merely a step on the road to absolute power and there was still some distance to go. At the time, it was assumed, even by those involved in his election, that what they were doing was merely guaranteeing the unity of command necessary for victory and putting it temporarily in the hands of the most successful general amongst them.³⁸ The agreement to keep the decision secret until it was formally approved and published by the Junta de Burgos reflected their doubts. It would have been entirely characteristic of Franco to seek to tip the balance by the propaganda coup of the relief of the Alcázar. If that is so, the soundness of his judgement that further efforts were required was confirmed when several days went by and nothing happened about his election being announced formally.

The silence was rightly interpreted by Kindelán as a symptom of the lack of conviction of some of the generals at the meeting. Cabanellas was procrastinating precisely because he feared the implications of dictatorial powers being granted to Franco. In the meanwhile, Nicolás Franco, who had recently arrived in Cáceres from Lisbon, brought the news that the German and Italian envoys to Portugal had told him that their governments wanted to see a single command and preferably in the hands of Franco. Nicolás also used his own recent encounter with Johannes Bernhardt to overcome his brother’s apparent qualms about taking on political responsibilities. The lure of being Head of State, the interlocutor of Hitler and Mussolini, must have been seductive, as Nicolás seems to have perceived. However, even more than with the single command, it could be dangerous to be seen to be bidding for such power. With his customary caution, Franco preferred to let others make the running and wait for the new honour to be thrust upon him.

Accordingly, Kindelán, Nicolás Franco, Yagüe and Millán Astray proposed a further meeting at which the powers of the new Generalísimo would be clearly laid out and a proposal made that the post carried with it the Headship of State. Worried about his brother’s hesitations, Nicolás asked Yagüe to put pressure on him. On 27 September, Yagüe told Franco that if he refused to seek the single command, the Legion would seek another candidate, a prospect which decisively guaranteed that he would seek full powers for himself.³⁹ By the time that such a meeting could take place, Franco would have chalked up the great propaganda victory of the relief of the Alcázar at Toledo.

It has been suggested that Franco’s attitude to the garrison at Toledo was affected by bitter memories of his own inability to help the soldiers trapped at Nador in July 1921 after the disaster of Annual.⁴⁰ The fact that he had been a cadet at Toledo may also have influenced him but would scarcely have justified the decision to make a strategically secondary objective into the first priority. There is little doubt that the relief of the siege would have appealed to the romantic side of a soldier deeply imbued with the ethos of Beau Geste, all the more so as it could be made into a tale which might have come straight out of the legends of El Cid. However, when so much was at stake, the ruthlessly pragmatic Franco would not have let himself be swayed by such considerations unless there were other advantages to be gained.

In December 1936, he revealed more of the truth than perhaps he intended when he told a Portuguese journalist that ‘we committed a military error and we committed it deliberately. Taking Toledo required diverting our forces from Madrid. For the Spanish Nationalists, Toledo represented a political issue that had to be resolved’.⁴¹ Whatever Franco’s motives, his decision did his personal ambitions no harm although it was to have serious consequences for the Nationalist cause. By permitting Madrid to organize its defences, the diversion was to swing the advantage back to the Republic almost as starkly as the crossing of the Straits had given it to the military rebels.

In fact, the pace of the Army of Africa had already been slowed considerably. It took as long to get the 80 km from Talavera to Toledo as it had to travel the nearly 400 km from Seville to Talavera, a reflection of the fact that the Republic was gradually beginning to get some trained men into the field.⁴² This was reason enough to hasten the attack on the capital. Nevertheless, on 25 September, three columns of the Moroccan Army, since 24 September under the overall command of the African veteran and Carlist sympathizer, General Varela, swept to the north of Toledo. Under the individual commands of Colonel Asensio, Major Castejón and Colonel Fernando Barrón, they cut off the road to Madrid and then moved south against the city on the following day. After fierce fighting, the militia began to retreat. On 27 September, the world’s war correspondents, ‘who previously had been permitted to “participate” in the bloodiest battles of the war’, were prevented from accompanying the attacking Legionaires and Regulares as they unleashed another massacre. No prisoners were taken. The streets were strewn with corpses and literally ran with rivulets of blood which gathered in puddles. The American journalist Webb Miller told the US Ambassador that he had seen the beheaded corpses of militiamen. Hand grenades were tossed in among the helpless wounded Republicans in the San Juan Bautista hospital. On the next day, 28 September, General Varela entered the Alcázar to be greeted with Moscardó’s laconic report ‘Sin novedad en el Alcázar, mi general’ (all quiet in the Alcázar, general).⁴³

On the evening of Sunday 27 September, in the flush of the victory at Toledo, Franco, Yagüe and Millán Astray addressed a frenetically cheering crowd from the balcony of the Palacio de los Golfines in Cáceres. Franco spoke hesitantly, his fluting voice anything but inspirational. Yagüe, recalling the threatening conversation which he had had with Franco earlier in the day, was carried away with enthusiasm. He declared vehemently ‘tomorrow we will have in him our Generalísimo, the Head of State’. Millán Astray said ‘Our people, our Army, guided by Franco, are on the way to victory’. There were parades by the Falange and the Legion while the band played the anthem of the Legion Los Novios de la Muerte (bridegrooms of death) and the Falangist song Cara al sol (face to the sun). The crowd chanted ‘Franco! Franco! Franco!’. The scenes of popular acclamation for Franco were described lavishly in the press of the entire Nationalist zone.⁴⁴

As the crowd melted away, Nicolás Franco and Kindelán were drawing up a draft project to be put to the following day’s meeting of the Junta that was to decide the powers of the new Generalísimo. Yagüe had already played a key role by announcing in his speech that the Legion wanted Franco as single commander. Nicolás Franco and Kindelán continued to play their part, arranging that, on arrival at the airfield at Salamanca for the proposed meeting, Franco would be met by a guard of honour, consisting not only of a number of airmen, but also of a detachment of Carlist Requetés and another of Falangists. Thus, the somewhat intimidating symbolism of his political, as well as his military, leadership would be established before the meeting.⁴⁵ On the morning of Monday 28 September, Franco, Orgaz, Kindelán and Yagüe flew to Salamanca, ‘determined’, in Kindelán’s words, ‘to achieve their patriotic purpose whatever the cost’.*

At the morning session of the meeting, the other generals showed some disinclination to discuss the question of the powers to be exercised by the single commander and some were in favour of putting off the decision for some weeks. After all, a week previously when, with more or less goodwill, they had agreed to make Franco military Commander-in-Chief, there had been no hint that he might also have political powers. With the fall of Madrid and the end of the war assumed to be imminent, the generals were reluctant to bestow wide-ranging authority on Franco since they suspected how difficult it would be to persuade him to relinquish it. However, Kindelán insisted and read out the draft decree. In article 1, it proposed the subordination of the Army, Navy and Air Force to a single command, in article 2 that the single commander be called Generalísimo, and in article 3 that the rank of Generalísimo carry with it the function of Chief of State, ‘as long as the war lasts’, a phrase which guaranteed Franco the support of the monarchist generals. The proposal, which implied the demise of the Junta de Defensa Nacional, was received with hostility, particularly by Mola. He recognized that Franco was the superior general but that did not mean that he wanted to give him absolute political power. Even Orgaz wavered in his support for Kindelán.

Over lunch, Kindelán and Yagüe worked on their comrades, describing the scenes of popular rejoicing in Cáceres on the previous evening. No doubt Yagüe stressed the will of the Legion and Nicolás Franco emphasized the German pressures to which he had been subjected. Before the afternoon session began, Queipo and Mola returned to their respective headquarters. On the basis of Kindelán’s proposal, a reluctant agreement was reached to the effect that Franco would be head of the government as well as Generalísimo. Cabanellas undertook to put it into practice within two days.⁴⁶ On leaving the meeting, an exultant Franco said to his host, Antonio Pérez Tabernero, ‘this is the most important moment of my life’.⁴⁷ In fact, Cabanellas still harboured doubts and decided to sign the decree only late in the night of 28 September after lengthy telephone consultations with Mola and Queipo. According to Cabanellas’s son, Queipo said ‘Franco is a swine.* I have never liked him and never will. However, we’ve got to go along with his game until we can block it’. A more cautious Mola made it clear that he saw no alternative to the reluctant acceptance of Franco’s nomination.⁴⁸

Cabanellas entrusted to a professor of international law, José Yanguas Messía, the wording of the Junta’s decree formally recording the decision. Its first article stated that ‘in fulfilment of the agreement made by the Junta de Defensa Nacional, the Head of the Government of the Spanish State will be Excelentísimo Sr. General Don Francisco Bahamonde, who will assume all the powers of the new State’. There have been claims that, before being printed, the decree was tampered with either by Franco or his brother. Ramón Garriga, who was later to be part of Franco’s press service in Burgos, alleged that the reference in the draft to Franco being head of government of the Spanish State only provisionally ‘while the war lasted’ was read by Franco and crossed out before it was submitted to Cabanellas for signature. Tampering was not necessary. Made Head of the Government of the Spanish State, Franco simply referred to himself as, and arrogated to himself the full powers of, Head of State. The hopes of monarchists like Kindelán, Orgaz and Yanguas were totally misplaced. Having reached the peak of his power, Franco had no intention of handing over in his lifetime to a King, although he would always skilfully keep alive the hopes of the monarchists.⁴⁹ The bulk of the Nationalist press announced that Franco had been named Jefe del Estado Español (Head of the Spanish State). Only the Carlist Diario de Navarra committed the sin of referring to Franco as Jefe del Gobierno del Estado Español (Head of the Government of the Spanish State).⁵⁰

Cabanellas commented ‘You don’t know what you’ve just done, because you don’t know him like I do since I had him under my command in the African Army as officer in charge of one of the units in my column. If, as you wish, you give him Spain, he is going to believe that it is his and he won’t let anyone replace him either during the war or after until he is dead.’⁵¹ Cabanellas’s comment was uncannily similar to one made some years later by Colonel Segismundo Casado, also a one-time Africanista, ‘Franco incarnates the mentality of a Captain of the Tercio. That is all there is to it. We are told, “Take so many men, occupy such-and-such a position and do not move from there until you get further orders”. The position occupied by Franco is the nation and since he has no superior officer, he will not move from there.’⁵²

Franco derived incalculable political capital from his decision to divert his forces from Madrid. The liberation of the Alcázar was re-staged two days later and cinema audiences across the world saw Franco touring the rubble with a haggard Moscardó. In front of reporters, Moscardó repeated his famous phrase, sin novedad (all quiet), to Franco.⁵³ Overnight Generalísimo Franco became an international name, a name which symbolized the Nationalist war effort. In Nationalist Spain, he became the saviour of the besieged heroes. Not the least of his pleasure must have derived from emulating the great warrior heroes of medieval Spain.

The analogy was given the sanction of the Church on 30 September by the long pastoral letter, entitled ‘The Two Cities’, issued by the Bishop of Salamanca Dr Enrique Plá y Deniel. The Church had long since come out in favour of the military rebels but not hitherto as explicitly as Plá y Deniel. His pastoral built on the blessing given by Pius XI to exiled Spaniards at Castelgandolfo on 14 September in which the Pope had distinguished between the Christian heroism of the Nationalists and the savage barbarism of the Republic. Plá y Deniel’s text quoted St Augustine to distinguish between the earthly city (the Republican zone) where hatred, anarchy and Communism prevailed, and the celestial city (the Nationalist zone) where the love of God, heroism and martyrdom were the rule. For the first time, the word ‘crusade’ was used to describe the Civil War.⁵⁴

The text was submitted to Franco before being published. He not only approved it but adjusted his own rhetoric subsequently to derive from it the maximum political advantage. By latching onto the idea of a religious crusade, Franco could project himself not just as the defender of his Spain but also as the defender of the universal faith. Leaving aside the gratifying boost to his own ego, such a propaganda ploy could bring only massive benefit in terms of international support for the rebel cause.⁵⁵ Many British Conservative MPs, for instance, intensified their support for Franco after he began to stress Christian rather than fascist credentials. Sir Henry Page Croft (Bournemouth) declared him to be ‘a gallant Christian gentleman’ and Captain A.H.M. Ramsay (Peebles) believed Franco to be ‘fighting the cause of Christianity against anti-Christ’. They and many others used their influence with banks and government to incline British policy towards the Nationalists’ interests.⁵⁶

On 1 October 1936, the investiture of the new Chief of State took place. The pomp and the ceremony that were mounted were a long way from the improvisation of Franco’s first days as a military rebel barely ten weeks ago. A large guard of honour consisting of soldiers as well as Falangist and Carlist militias awaited his arrival in front of the Capitanía General of Burgos. An enormous and delirious crowd erupted into applause and cheers when his motor car entered the square in front of military headquarters. In the throne room, in the presence of the diplomats of Italy, Germany and Portugal, Cabanellas formally handed over the powers of the Junta de Defensa to a visibly delighted Franco. An anything but impressive figure, short, balding and now with an incipient double chin and paunch, Franco stood apart on a raised dais. Cabanellas said ‘Head of the Government of the Spanish State: in the name of the Junta de Defensa Nacional, I hand over to you the absolute powers of the State.’

Franco’s reply was shot through with hauteur, regal self-confidence and easily assumed authority: ‘General, Generals and Officers of the Junta, You can be proud, you received a broken Spain and you now deliver up to me a Spain united in a unanimous and grandiose ideal. Victory is on our side. You give me Spain and I assure you that the steadiness of my hand will not waver and will always be firm.’ After the ceremony, he appeared on the balcony and made a speech to the sea of arms raised in the fascist salute. The grandiloquent tone of his words in the throne room was replaced by a rhetorical commitment to social reform which can only have reflected a desire to be in tune with his Nazi and Fascist sponsors. Its cynical promises were to remain long unfulfilled: ‘Our work requires sacrifices from everyone, principally from those who have more in the interests of those who have nothing. We will ensure that there is no home without light or a Spaniard without bread.’ Altogether more credible was his declaration that night on Radio Castilla to the effect that he planned a totalitarian State for Spain.⁵⁷

Thereafter, from his very first decree, Franco simply referred to himself as Jefe del Estado. At that stage, of course, there was not much in the way of a State for Franco to be Head of. The task of constructing it began immediately, although with little immediate success. The Junta de Burgos was dissolved and replaced by a Junta Técnica del Estado, presided over by General Fidel Dávila.* General Orgaz was made High Commissioner in Morocco with the job of maintaining the flow of Moorish mercenaries. The Junta Técnica remained in Burgos while Franco set up his headquarters in Salamanca, near the Madrid battle front without being too near and merely one hour’s drive from Portugal should things turn out badly. Mola was given command of the Army of the North, newly formed by merging his troops with the Army of Africa. Queipo de Llano was given command of the Army of the South, consisting of the scattered forces operating in Andalusia, Badajoz and Morocco. Cabanellas was marginalised in punishment for his lukewarm response to Franco’s elevation, being given the purely symbolic title of Inspector of the Army. Franco could rarely find time to receive him in Salamanca. No doubt he resented the fact that Cabanellas had once been his superior and usually referred to him, like Sanjurjo had done, as ‘Franquito’ (little Franco).⁵⁸ He was equally unforgiving with other one-time superiors, like Gil Robles, who found himself cold-shouldered.†

One of the first things that Franco did after being elected as Nationalist leader was to send fulsome telegrams to Hitler and Rudolf Hess. Hitler responded with a verbal, rather than a written, message via the aristocratic German diplomat, the Count Du Moulin-Eckart, who was received by Franco on 6 October. Hitler claimed that he could better help Franco by not appearing to have recognized the Nationalist Government until after the capture of Madrid. On the eve of renewing the assault on Madrid, Franco responded in terms of with ‘heartfelt thanks for the Führer’s gesture and complete admiration for him and the new Germany.’ Du Moulin was impressed by the conviction of his enthusiasm for Nazi Germany, reporting that ‘the cordiality with which Franco expressed his veneration for the Führer and Chancellor and his sympathy for Germany, and the decided friendliness of my reception, permitted not even a moment of doubt as to the sincerity of his attitude toward us’.⁵⁹

In tune with the warmth of such sentiments, there began a massive propaganda campaign in fascist style to elevate Franco into a national figure. An equivalent title to Führer and Duce was adopted in the form of Caudillo – a term linking Franco to the warrior leaders of Spain’s medieval past. Franco considered himself, like them, to be a warrior of God against the infidels who would destroy the nation’s faith and culture.*⁶⁰ All newspapers in the Nationalist zone had to carry under their masthead the slogan ‘Una Patria, Un Estado, Un Caudillo’ (a deliberate echo of Hitler’s Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer). The ritual chants of ‘Franco! Franco! Franco!’ were heard with insistent frequency. The sayings and speeches of Franco were reproduced everywhere.

Almost immediately, Nicolás Franco made tentative plans for the creation of a Francoist political party along the lines of General Primo de Rivera’s Unión Patriótica. It would have consisted of conservative elements, largely from the CEDA, and therefore encountered the hostility of the Falange. Realizing how ill-advised it was to work against the ever larger Falange, the brothers dropped the idea.⁶¹ There was an element of irony about what was happening. The new powers that had been granted to Franco were given in the belief that a single command would hasten an already imminent victory. In fact, the Nationalist triumph was soon to become a distant long-term prospect. In part that was for reasons beyond the Caudillo’s control, such as the arrival of the International Brigades and Russian tanks and aircraft, and the creation of the Popular Army. However, that such things were able to have the effect that they did was largely Franco’s responsibility, attributable to the delay of nearly two weeks in the march on Madrid as a result of the diversion to Toledo and then of the time devoted to the orchestration of his elevation to supreme power. Increasingly thereafter, it would begin to seem that Franco had an interest in the prolongation of the war in order to have time both to annihilate his political enemies on the Left and his rivals on the Right and to consolidate the mechanisms of his power.

Once established as Head of State, and with the eyes of Nationalist Spain now upon him, Franco’s propagandists built him up as a great Catholic crusader and his public religiosity intensified. From 4 October 1936 until his death, he had a personal chaplain, Father José María Bulart.⁶² He now began each day by hearing mass, a reflection of both political necessity and the influence of Doña Carmen. In order to please his wife, when he was available he would join in her regular evening rosary, although, at this stage of his career at least, without any great piety.⁶³ No one can say with total certainty what part Carmen Polo played in encouraging her husband’s ambition nor how much he had been affected by Bishop Plá y Deniel’s declaration of a crusade. Doña Carmen believed in his divine mission and such fulsome ecclesiastical support made it easier for her to convince him of it.⁶⁴

As Franco came to believe in his own special relationship with divine providence, and as he became more isolated and weighed down with power and responsibility, his religiosity became more pronounced.* Apart from any spiritual consolation it may have given him, his new found religiosity also reflected a realistic awareness of the immeasurable assistance which the endorsement of the Catholic Church could give him in terms of clinching foreign and domestic support. In the Generalísimo’s elevated concept of his own importance, the official approbation and blessing of the Church was essential. It was not just a question of broad Catholic support for the Nationalist cause but rather of specific recognition by the universal Church of his personal status as its champion. The speed with which Franco sought such recognition mirrored the speed with which he began to manifest monarchical pretensions. Religious ritual had traditionally played a crucial part in elevating the figure of the King in the great age of early modern Spain. Believing that he represented continuity with the glories of the Golden Age, he took it for granted that the Church would validate his rule. Accordingly, he arrogated the royal-prerogative of entering and leaving churches under a canopy (bajo palio).

On 1 October, the Primate of Spain Cardinal Isidro Gomá y Tomás sent a telegram congratulating him on the relief of the Alcázar and on his elevation to the Headship of State. Franco replied on 2 October with one of his grandiloquent messages, beginning ‘on assuming the powers of the Headship of the Spanish State with all their responsibilities I could receive no better help than the blessing of Your Eminence.’⁶⁵ It was the beginning of a close relationship with Gomá.

Franco’s fellow generals were somewhat taken aback by the ease with which the new Generalísimo adopted a distant and elevated style. He set up his headquarters in the Episcopal Palace in Salamanca which was graciously ceded to him by Bishop Plá y Deniel. Within two weeks of his investiture, visitors to the Palace, often known as the cuartel general, were being required to attend audiences in morning suit.⁶⁶ He was already surrounded by the Guardia Mora, the Moorish Guard, which would accompany him everywhere until the late 1950s. In resplendent uniforms, they stood like statues throughout the palace, a graphic indication of the Asiatic despotism in the making. German specialists arrived and built a special air-raid shelter.⁶⁷ Franco’s picture appeared everywhere, on cinema screens, on the walls of shops, offices and schools. Along with his portrait, slogans were stencilled on walls, ‘the Caesars were undefeated generals. Franco!’ An entire propaganda apparatus was erected and then devoted to the inflation of the myth of the all-seeing political and military genius Franco. The scale of adulation to which he was subjected inevitably took its toll on his personality.⁶⁸

In the process of moving from the improvised bureaucracy appropriate to a military campaign to the erection of a State apparatus, Franco made several errors in his choice of collaborators until the entire enterprise was taken over by his brother-in-law Ramón Serrano Suñer. His brother Nicolás may have been an excellent kingmaker but he was less successful as a chancellor. By dint of his relationship with the new Generalísimo, and operating out of an office next to that of his brother, he quickly accumulated enormous power. Nicolás, who resembled his father in his tastes and appetites much more than he did his brother, was an amusing and popular bon viveur whose bohemian and chaotic life-style was the despair of all who had to deal with him. He would rise at 1 p.m. and receive visitors until 3 p.m. when he would disappear for lunch until 7 p.m. followed by an evening’s socializing. Reappearing around midnight, he would then work until 4 or 5 a.m., often keeping those who had come to see him waiting for seven or eight hours at a time. Given his relationship to the Generalísimo, few complained, although his practices especially infuriated the Germans.⁶⁹ Yet despite the power and the favour that he enjoyed, Nicolás did little or nothing to begin the task of creating a State infrastructure.

However, the most disastrous of Franco’s appointments was that of Millán Astray as Head of Press and Propaganda. It is possible that Franco enjoyed Millán’s adulation but most of his activities were counter-productive. Within days of Franco’s elevation, Millán was proclaiming that Franco was ‘the man sent by God to lead Spain to liberation and greatness’, ‘the man who saved the situation during the Jaca rising’ and the ‘greatest strategist of the century’.⁷⁰ He ran the Nationalist press office like a barracks, summoning the journalists in his team with a whistle and then haranguing them much as he had the Legion prior to an action. Franco seems to have seen him as a kind of mascot, but his antics ended up bringing the Nationalist cause into disrepute.⁷¹ Millán’s own choice of collaborators was especially unfortunate. Because of the link established between Franco and Luis Bolín during the flight of the Dragon Rapide, Millán named Bolín chief of press in the south and gave him the honorific title of Captain in the Legion.⁷² Bolín started to use the uniform and throw his weight about accordingly, attempting to control the flow of news about Nationalist Spain by intimidating foreign journalists. Millán Astray encouraged his subordinates to threaten foreign journalists with execution. Bolín followed the order with gusto, most notoriously in the case of Arthur Koestler, the mistreatment of whom provoked an international scandal which led to his release from prison. As a result of the subsequent publication of Koestler’s book Spanish Testament, Bolín fell into disgrace.⁷³

Press liaison in the north was put in the hands of the notorious Captain Gonzalo de Aguilera, Conde de Alba y Yeltes, a polo-playing excavalryman, mainly on the grounds of his manic bigotry and the fact that he could speak excellent English, German and French. Captain Aguilera did more harm than good by outrageous and eminently quotable remarks to journalists. Much of what he said merely reflected the common beliefs of many officers on the Nationalist side. On the grounds that the Spanish masses were ‘like animals’, he told the foreign newspapermen that ‘We’ve got to kill and kill and kill’. He boasted to them of shooting six of his labourers on the day the Civil War broke out ‘Pour encourager les autres’. He regularly explained to any who would listen that the fundamental cause of the Civil War was ‘the introduction of modern drainage: prior to this, the riff-raff had been killed by various useful diseases; now they survived and, of course, were above themselves.’ ‘Had we no sewers in Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao, all these Red leaders would have died in their infancy instead of exciting the rabble and causing good Spanish blood to flow. When the war is over, we should destroy the sewers. The perfect birth control for Spain is the birth control God intended us to have. Sewers are a luxury to be reserved for those who deserve them, the leaders of Spain, not the slave stock.’⁷⁴ He believed that husbands had the right to shoot their unfaithful wives. When accompanying the influential journalist Virginia Cowles, Aguilera maintained a constant flow of sexist remarks which he occasionally interrupted to say things like ‘Nice chaps, the Germans, but a bit too serious; they never seem to have any women around, but I suppose they didn’t come for that. If they kill enough Reds, we can forgive them anything’.⁷⁵

That Millán was hardly the best man to present the cause of Franco’s New State to the outside world was made starkly clear on 12 October 1936, during the celebrations in Salamanca of the Day of the Race, the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s ‘discovery’ of America. The magnificent and regal choreography stressed the permanence of the New State. A tribune was erected in the Cathedral for the distinguished guests. Franco was not present but was represented by General Varela and by Doña Carmen. A sermon by the Dominican priest Father Fraile praised Franco’s recuperation of the ‘the spirit of a united, great and imperial Spain’. The political, military and ecclesiastical dignitaries then transferred to the University for a further ceremony under the presidency of the Rector Perpétuo, the seventy-two year-old philosopher and novelist Miguel de Unamuno. He announced that he was taking the chair in place of General Franco who could not attend because of his many pressing commitments.

A series of speeches stressed the importance of Spain’s imperialist past and future. One in particular, by Francisco Maldonado de Guevara, who described the Civil War in terms of the struggle of Spain, traditional values and eternal values against the anti-Spain of the reds and the Basques and Catalans, seems to have outraged Unamuno, who was already devastated by the ‘logic of terror’ and the arrest and assassination of friends and acquaintances. (A week earlier Unamuno had visited Franco in the Bishop’s Palace to plead vainly on behalf of several imprisoned friends.)⁷⁶ The vehemence of Maldonado’s speech stimulated a Legionaire to shout ‘¡Viva la muerte!’ (long live death), the battle cry of the Legion. Millán Astray then intervened to begin the triple Nationalist chant of ‘¡España!’ and back came the three ritual replies of ‘¡Una!’, ‘¡Grande!’ and ‘¡Libre!’ (United! Great! Free!). When Unamuno spoke, it was to counter the frenzied glorification of the war and the repression. He said that the civil war was an uncivil war, that to win was not the same as to convince (vencer no es convencer), that the Catalans and Basques were no more anti-Spanish than those present. ‘I am a Basque and I have spent my life teaching you the Spanish language which you do not know’. At this point he was interrupted by a near apoplectic Millán Astray who stood up to justify the military uprising. As Millán worked himself into a homicidal delirium, Unamuno stood his ground pointing out the necrophiliac inanity of the slogan ‘Long live death’. Millán shouted ‘Death to intellectuals’ to which Unamuno replied that they were in the temple of intelligence and that such words were a profanity.

With shouting and booing rising to a crescendo and Unamuno being threatened by Millán Astray’s armed bodyguards, Doña Carmen intervened. With great presence of mind and no little courage, she took the venerable philosopher by the arm, led him out and took him home in her official car. It has been suggested by two eyewitnesses that Millán Astray himself ordered Unamuno to take the arm of the wife of the Head of State and leave.⁷⁷ Such was the ambience of fear in Salamanca at the time that Unamuno was shunned by his acquaintances and removed at the behest of his colleagues from his position in the University.⁷⁸ Under virtual house arrest, Unamuno died at the end of December 1936 appalled at the repression, the ‘collective madness’ and ‘the moral suicide of Spain’.⁷⁹ Nevertheless, he was hailed at his funeral as a Falangist hero.⁸⁰ Nearly thirty years later, Franco commented to his cousin on what he saw as Unamuno’s ‘annoying attitude, unjustifiable in a patriotic ceremony, on such an important day and in a Nationalist Spain which was fighting a battle with a ferocious enemy and encountering the greatest difficulties in achieving victory’. In retrospect, he regarded Millán Astray’s intervention as an entirely justified response to a provocation. Nevertheless, at the time, it was thought prudent to have Millán Astray replaced.⁸¹

The incident with Unamuno was a minor embarrassment in the process of consolidation of Franco as undisputed leader. In political terms, everything was going his way. In the course of the attack on Madrid, Franco was fortunate to see, indeed to an extent to facilitate, the removal from the scene of one of his last remaining potential rivals. The panic provoked by the advance on the capital and the broadcast of boasts by Mola about the imminent capture of Madrid by his ‘Fifth Column’ of secret Nationalist sympathisers had seen violent reprisals taken among rightists, either against individual saboteurs who were caught or against the large groups of prisoners taken from Madrid jails and massacred at Paracuellos de Jarama.⁸² The conservatives and other middle class victims of atrocities in Madrid were not the only Nationalist civilians to lose their lives. The most celebrated was José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Although the Falangist leader had been in a Republican jail in Alicante since his arrest on 14 March 1936, an escape bid or a prisoner exchange was not inconceivable.* Obviously, given the pre-eminence of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, his release or escape would not be easy. In the event, however, lack of co-operation by Franco ensured that it would not happen.

This was entirely understandable. Franco needed the Falange both as a mechanism for the political mobilization of the civilian population and as a way of creating an identification with the ideals of his German and Italian allies. However, if the charismatic José Antonio Primo de Rivera were to have turned up at Salamanca, Franco could never have dominated and manipulated the Falange as he was later to do. After all, since before the war, José Antonio had been wary about too great a co-operation with the Army for fear that the Falange would simply be used as cannon fodder and fashionable ideological decoration for the defence of the old order. In his last ever interview, with Jay Allen, on 3 October, published in the Chicago Daily Tribune on 9 October and in the News Chronicle on 24 October 1936, the Falangist leader had expressed his dismay that the defence of traditional interests was being given precedence over his party’s rhetorical ambitions for sweeping social change.⁸³ Even taking into account the possibility that José Antonio was exaggerating his revolutionary aims to curry favour with his jailers, the implied clash with the political plans of Franco was clear. In fact, Allen told the American Ambassador, Claude G. Bowers, that José Antonio’s attitude was defiant and contemptuous rather than conciliatory and that he had been obliged to cut short the interview ‘because of the astounding indiscretions of Primo’.⁸⁴

Franco, as something of a social climber, might have been expected to admire the dashing and charismatic socialite José Antonio who was after all son of the dictator General Primo de Rivera. However, despite the efforts of Ramón Serrano Suñer over the previous six years, their relationship had never prospered. José Antonio had come to regard Franco as pompous, self-obsessed and possessed of a caution verging on cowardice. Their relationship had definitively foundered in the spring of 1936, during the re-run elections in Cuenca when José Antonio had vehemently opposed the general’s inclusion in the right-wing list of candidates. Franco had never forgiven him.

For some time before his elevation to the overall leadership of the Nationalist side, Franco had been considering plans to subordinate the various political strands of the Nationalist coalition to a single authority. In late August, he had told Messerschmidt that the CEDA would have to disappear. In his conversation on 6 October with Count Du Moulin-Eckart, the new Head of State had informed his first diplomatic visitor that his main preoccupation was the ‘unification of ideas’ and the establishment of a ‘common ideology’ among the Army, the Falange, the monarchists and the CEDA. He confided in his visitor his cautious belief that ‘it would be necessary to proceed with kid gloves’. Given his own essential conservatism and the links of the elite of the Nationalist coalition with the old order, such delicacy would indeed be required. Unification could only be carried out at the cost of the political disarmament of the ever more numerous and vociferous Falange. Such an operation would be easier to perform if the Falangist leader were not present.

Early attempts to liberate José Antonio were initially approved by Franco. His grudging consent was given for the obvious reason that to withhold it would be to risk losing the goodwill of the Falange which was providing useful para-military and political assistance throughout the rebel zone. The first rescue attempt had been the work of isolated groups of Falangists in Alicante. Then in early September, when the Germans had come to see the Falange as the Spanish component of a future world political order, more serious efforts were made. German aid came from the highest levels on the understanding that the operation was approved by General Franco something for which there were precedents.

Franco had already intervened personally with the Germans to get help for the rescue of the family of Isabel Pascual de Pobil, the wife of his brother Nicolás. Thanks to the efforts of Hans Joachim von Knobloch, the German consul in Alicante, eighteen members of the Pasqual de Pobil family were disguised as German sailors and taken aboard a ship of the German Navy. The efforts to free the Falangist leader hinged largely on the co-operation of German naval vessels anchored at Alicante and of von Knobloch. Knobloch co-operated with the rash and excitable Falangist Agustín Aznar in an ill-advised scheme to get Primo de Rivera out by bribery which fell through when Aznar was caught and only narrowly escaped. An attempt was made on von Knobloch’s life and shortly after he was expelled from Alicante by the Republic on 4 October.⁸⁵

On arriving at Seville on 6 October, von Knobloch and Aznar renewed their efforts to liberate José Antonio. Von Knobloch elaborated a scheme to bribe the Republican Civil Governor of Alicante while Aznar prepared a violent prison break-out. They were received in Salamanca by Franco who, after thanking von Knobloch for securing the escape from Alicante of the family of his brother Nicolás, gave his permission for them to continue their efforts. However, that verbal permission obscured the fact that his backing was less than enthusiastic. While von Knobloch returned to Alicante to implement his scheme, Franco informed the German authorities that he insisted on a number of conditions for the continuation of the operation. These were that efforts be made to rescue José Antonio without handing over any money, that if it was necessary to give money then the amount should be haggled over, and that von Knobloch should not take part in the operation. These strange conditions considerably diminished the chances of success but the Germans in Alicante decided to go ahead. Franco then issued even more curious instructions. In the event of the operation being a success, total secrecy was to be maintained about José Antonio being liberated. He was to be kept apart from von Knobloch, who was the main link with the Falangist leadership. He was to be interrogated by someone sent by Franco. He was not to be landed in the Nationalist zone without the permission of Franco. He informed the Germans that there existed doubts about the mental health of Primo de Rivera. The operation was aborted.⁸⁶

A further possibility for Primo de Rivera’s release arose from a suggestion by Ramón Cazañas, Falangist Jefe (chief) in Morocco. He proposed that an exchange be arranged for General Miaja’s wife and daughters who were imprisoned in Melilla. Franco apparently refused safe-conducts for the negotiators although he later agreed to the family of General Miaja being exchanged for the family of the Carlist, Joaquín Bau. The Caudillo also refused permission for another Falangist, Maximiano García Venero, to drum up an international campaign to save José Antonio’s life.⁸⁷ Similarly, Franco sabotaged the efforts of José Finat, Conde de Mayalde, a friend of José Antonio. Mayalde was married to a granddaughter of the Conde de Romanones and he persuaded the venerable politician to use his excellent contacts in the French government to get Blum to intercede with Madrid on behalf of Primo de Rivera. Franco delayed permission for Romanones to go to France until after the death sentence was announced.⁸⁸

José Antonio Primo de Rivera was shot in Alicante prison on 20 November 1936. Franco made full use of the propaganda opportunities thereby provided, happy to exploit the eternal absence of the hero while privately rejoicing that he now could not be inconveniently present. The news of the execution reached Franco’s headquarters shortly after it took place.⁸⁹ It was in any case published in the Republican and the French press on 21 November. Until 16 November 1938, Franco chose publicly to refuse to believe that José Antonio was dead. The Falangist leader was more use ‘alive’ while Franco made his political arrangements. An announcement of his death would have opened a process whereby the Falange leadership could have been settled at a time when Franco’s own position was only just in the process of being consolidated. The provisional leader of the Falange, the violent but unsophisticated Manuel Hedilla, made the tactical error of acquiescing in Franco’s manoeuvre. The first news of the execution coincided with the Third Consejo Nacional of the Falange Española y de las JONS in Salamanca on 21 November but Hedilla failed to make an announcement, out of a vain hope, built on a hundred rumours, that by some subterfuge or other, his leader had survived. Thereafter, Franco would have to deal only with a decapitated Falange.⁹⁰

Franco’s attitude to José Antonio Primo de Rivera’s ‘absence’ was enormously revealing of his peculiarly repressed way of thinking. ‘Probably’, he told Serrano Suñer in 1937, ‘they’ve handed him over to the Russians and it is possible that they’ve castrated him’.⁹¹ Franco used the cult of el ausente (the absent one) to take over the Falange. All its external symbols and paraphernalia were used to mask its real ideological disarmament. Some of Primo de Rivera’s writings were suppressed and his designated successor, Hedilla, would be imprisoned under sentence of death in April 1937. While the public cult was manipulated to build up Franco as the heir to José Antonio, the Caudillo in private expressed his contempt for the Falangist leader. Serrano Suñer was always aware that praise for José Antonio was guaranteed to irritate Franco. On one occasion, the Generalísimo exploded ‘Lo ves, siempre a vueltas con la figura de ese mucbacho como cosa extraordinaria’ (‘see, always going on about that lad as if he was something out of the ordinary’). On another, Franco claimed delightedly to have proof that Primo de Rivera had died a coward’s death.⁹²

It is possible that José Antonio might have worked to bring an early end to the carnage although whether, in the hysterical atmosphere of the times, he would have had any success is entirely a different matter. He was certainly open to the idea of national reconciliation in a way never approached by Franco either during the war or in the thirty-five years that followed. In his last days in prison, José Antonio was sketching out the possible membership and policies of a government of ‘national concord’ whose first act was to have been a general amnesty. His attitude to Franco was revealed clearly in his comments on the implications of a military victory which he feared would merely consolidate the past. He saw such a victory as the triumph of ‘a group of generals of depressing political mediocrity, committed to a series of political clichés, supported by old-style intransigent Carlism, the lazy and short-sighted conservative classes with their vested interests and agrarian and finance capitalism’.

The papers in which he put these thoughts down were sent to Prieto by the military commander of Alicante, Colonel Sicardo. Eventually, the Socialist leader forwarded copies to his two executors, Ramón Serrano Suñer and Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, in the hope of provoking dissent among the Falangist purists. This was a political error on Prieto’s part. With José Antonio dead, the validation of Serrano Suñer and Fernández Cuesta as his executors gave them his authority to carry out Franco’s policy.⁹³ Had José Antonio Primo de Rivera reached Salamanca, he would have been a certain, and influential, critic of Franco. Franco’s exploitation of the Falange as a ready-made political base would have been made significantly more difficult.⁹⁴ However, to assume that Franco would not have seen off Primo de Rivera in the same way as he disposed of so many rivals is to take too much for granted.

In contrast to the ruthlessness with which Franco disposed of his rivals was the alacrity with which he bent rules in the interests of his family. The examples of this during the Civil War presaged the protection under which the so-called ‘Franco clan’ would prosper in the post-war years. His intervention on behalf of Nicolás’s in-laws was an example of his readiness to do things for his family. Even more striking was the rehabilitation of his left-wing extremist brother Ramón despite the vehement opposition of many important military figures. In September 1936, Ramón Franco who was in Washington as Spanish air attaché, wrote to a friend in Barcelona to ascertain how he would be received in the Republican zone. Azaña allegedly said to the mutual friend ‘he shouldn’t come, he’d have a really hard time’. In the wildly precipitate way that had always characterized his behaviour, Ramón decided to go instead to the Nationalist zone shortly after hearing of his brother’s elevation to the Headship of State.⁹⁵

Despite his past as an anarchist agitator and as a freemason and his involvement in various revolutionary activities, all ‘crimes’ for which others paid with their lives, Ramón was welcomed by his brother. In Seville, Queipo de Llano had already executed Blas Infante, the Andalusian Nationalist lawyer who had stood with Ramón in the revolutionary candidacy in the 1931 elections. The exquisite care for appearances which had allegedly prevented Franco opposing the execution of his cousin Ricardo de la Puente Bahamonde at the beginning of the military uprising did not apply in the case of his brother. Ramón was sent to Mallorca to take over as head of the Nationalist forces there and given the acting rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. This caused very considerable ill feeling within the Nationalist Air Force and planted the seeds of a rift between Franco and his kingmaker, Alfredo Kindelán. On 26 November, Kindelán wrote the Generalísimo a fierce protest against his high-handed action. Couched in formally respectful terms, it accepted Franco’s right to command as he felt best but spoke of the ‘personal mortification’ felt by Kindelán at not even having been consulted and of the ill feeling which had been provoked among Nationalist airmen whose reaction ranged ‘from those who accept that he be allowed to work in aeronautical matters outside Spain to those who demand that he be shot’.⁹⁶ Franco simply ignored the letter and took his revenge against Kindelán by dropping him at the end of the war. Franco had taken to the prerogatives of his power with the skill and arbitrariness of a Borgia: they were attributes he was to need and to use to the full in the months ahead.

* Before the myth-makers began to work, ABC, Seville, 3 October 1936 claimed that ‘communications with the outside were totally cut throughout the siege’.

* At some point on either 20 or 21 September, Yagüe and Mola met to discuss the co-ordination of operations between their forces which had recently made contact over a long front. Their disagreements became increasingly heated. Mola told Yagüe that his behaviour constituted mutiny for which he could have him shot. Turning to his column commanders, Asensio, Castejón and Tella, Yagüe said ‘We don’t think so’ (¡Verdad que no!) at which Mola was forced to make a joke of his original remark and back down. (Letter to the author from General Ramón Salas Larrazabal, 9 May 1991, recounting the testimony of one of the column chiefs present at the meeting, probably Asensio Cabanillas.)

* The myth propagated by Franco’s hagiographers (Luis Galinsoga & Francisco Franco-Salgado, Centinela de occidente (Barcelona, 1956) p. 21) that he did not attend the meeting has no basis other than a determination to give the impression that the Generalísimo had power thrust upon him. Brian Crozier, Franco: A Biographical History (London, 1967) p. 212, mistakenly places the meeting on 29 September and so assumes Franco’s absence on the grounds that, on that day, he was in Toledo congratulating Moscardó.

* What Queipo called Franco is deemed by Cabanellas to be ‘unprintable’ and so ‘swine’ is merely a guess.

* It had a Secretaría General del Jefe del Estado, a Secretaría General of Foreign Relations and a Gobierno General. There were also seven ministerial departments or ‘commissions’, Finance; Justice; Industry, Commerce and Supply; Agriculture; Labour, Culture and Education; Public Works and Communications.

† Gil Robles told the author in Madrid in 1970 of his belief that Franco could not tolerate having around anyone who had been his superior.

* The seed had been first planted in Franco’s mind in the late 1920s. At that period, he spent time at a small Asturian estate owned by his wife known as La Piniella, situated near San Cucao de Llanera, thirteen kilometres from Oviedo. A particularly sycophantic local priest who fancied himself as the chaplain to the house was constantly telling both Doña Carmen and Franco himself that he would repeat the epic achievements of El Cid and the great medieval Caudillo Kings of Asturias. Franco’s wife had often reminded him of the priest’s comments.

* It was said that religious ceremonial bored Franco almost more than anything else and, in power, he suffered agonies when he had to receive religious delegations, commenting ‘we’re doing saints today’ (‘boy estamos de santos’).

* Several prominent Nationalists crossed the lines in these ways. The exchanges (canjes) included important Falangists like Raimundo Fernández Cuesta who was officially exchanged for a minor Republican figure, Justino de Azcárate, and Miguel Primo de Rivera who was exchanged for the son of General Miaja. Among the more significant escapees was Ramón Serrano Suñer.

VIII

FRANCO AND THE SIEGE OF MADRID

October 1936–February 1937

IRONICALLY, Franco had hoped, by the day on which the disagreeable incident between Millán and Unamuno had taken place, to have been celebrating the capture of Madrid. There had been a significant slowing down of the rhythm of operations during the two weeks in which he was otherwise occupied clinching his elevation to power. The war could not be delayed indefinitely and, on 6 October, Franco announced to journalists that his offensive against the capital was about to begin. Under the overall direction of Mola, the Nationalist forces began a co-ordinated push against Madrid on the following day. An extremely tired Army of Africa resumed its northward march under the command of General Varela, assisted by Colonel Yagüe as his second-in-command.¹ The ten thousand-strong force was organized in five columns under Asensio, Barrón, Castejón, Colonel Francisco Delgado Serrano and Tella. Supplies of arms had been collected and they were augmented by the arrival of substantial quantities of Italian artillery and light tanks. Italian instructors quickly trained Spaniards in their use and, on 18 October, Franco, accompanied by the Italian military mission, was able to inspect the first Italo-Spanish motorised armoured units.²

After frequent consultations with Franco, Mola developed a two-part final strategy to take Madrid which was already surrounded on the west from due north to due south. The idea was first for the Nationalist forces to march on Madrid, simultaneously reducing the length of the front and tightening their grip on the capital, and then for Varela’s Army of Africa to make a frontal assault through the northern suburbs. The push which began on 7 October saw an advance from Navalperal in the north, near El Escorial, Cebreros to the west and Toledo in the south. The forward defences of the city were demoralised by Nationalist bombing and then brushed aside by motorised columns armed with fast Italian whippet tanks. Desperate counter-attacks from the capital were easily repelled, thereby intensifying the optimism of the attacking forces.³

However, a different kind of war was about to begin. From 18 July until 7 October, the brunt of the Nationalist effort had been borne by the Army of Africa, on a forced march, frontally attacking towns and villages and opposed only by untrained amateur militiamen. It was little different from the kind of colonial war in which Franco and the other Africanistas had received their early military experiences. In this type of warfare, the advantage was entirely with the Legion and the Regulares. Henceforth, there was to be a move towards a war of fronts. Paradoxically, as the Germans, Italians and Russians poured in material assistance in the form of the latest weaponry, in part at least by way of experiment for the next war, Franco would remain fixed in the strategic world of the Great War.

More than with the attack on Madrid, the Generalísimo was occupied with the operation to break the siege of Oviedo and the city’s liberation on 17 October gave him enormous pleasure. He seems to have taken less direct interest in the campaign for Madrid. It was not until 20 October, considerably after the diversion of the Army of Africa to Toledo, that he seemed to wake up to the extent to which the capital was being strengthened and issued the order to ‘concentrate maximum attention and available combat forces on the fronts around Madrid’.⁴ Indeed, his absence from the operations to take Madrid, and from the subsequent Nationalist chronicles thereof, was quite remarkable. Perhaps Franco suspected that there was little easy glory to be won and thus slyly left Mola to take responsibility.

Mola himself was happy to seize the opportunity to make good his failure to capture Madrid at the beginning of the war.⁵ His optimism was widely shared: a Nationalist alcalde (mayor) and city councillors had already been named.⁶ Nationalist radio stations broadcast the news that Mola was preparing to enter the Puerta del Sol in the centre of Madrid on a white horse. He even offered to meet the Daily Express correspondent there for a coffee and Republican wags set up a table to await him.⁷ Nationalist aircraft showered Madrid with leaflets containing an ultimatum for the evacuation of the civilian population and total surrender. The situation was deteriorating so rapidly that there seemed little hope.⁸ Then on 15 October, the first arms and equipment from the Soviet Union began to be unloaded at Cartagena. Once the fifty tanks, twenty armoured cars and 108 fighter aircraft were assembled and transported to the Madrid front, giving the Republic a brief parity of force, there would be no quick victory for the Nationalists.⁹

By the end of the month, Mola’s forces had taken a ring of small towns and villages near the capital, including Brunete, Móstoles, Fuenlabrada, Villaviciosa de Odón, Alcorcón and Getafe. Madrid was inundated with refugees from the surrounding villages along with their sheep and other farm animals.¹⁰ There were major problems of food and water distribution. Harassed by Nationalist aircraft, the militia columns were also falling back along the roads to Madrid in considerable disarray. On 31 October, with twenty-five thousand Nationalist troops under Varela about to reach the western and southern suburbs of Madrid, Mola issued a warning about the dangers of further delay.¹¹

However, from 1 to 6 November, there was a serious slowing-down of the advance, usually attributed to the Nationalists’ need to rest their troops and their confidence that they had time to do so. However, it has been alleged that the hesitation was in part caused by Franco making long consultations with his German and Italian advisers.¹² It would also appear that between 4 and 6 November, an acrimonious debate took place within the Nationalist camp as to how to go about seizing the capital. Yagüe and Varela proposed daring blitzkrieg attacks through the suburbs, while Mola called for a broad frontal assault in the belief that Madrid would offer no more resistance than Toledo.* A cautious Franco rejected the plans of Yagüe and Varela for fear of losing the crack African columns.¹³

Franco thus left Mola free to push his own over-optimistic strategy of a full-scale assault from the west across the River Manzanares and through the University City and the Casa del Campo, the old royal hunting ground of sparsely wooded scrub. By 7 November, the Nationalists were ready to begin what they assumed would be their final frontal assault.¹⁴ On 28 October, the Falange and the Carlists drew up lists of the buildings, hotels, cinemas, theatres, radio stations and newspapers that they planned to occupy after the victory.¹⁵ Civilian rightists who followed in the wake of the Army of Africa had packed their suitcases in anticipation of an early return to their homes in Madrid’s better neighbourhoods. It was believed in the Francoist camp that, within hours, Legionarios would be in the Puerta del Sol.¹⁶

However, the news of the arrival of Russian weaponry and technicians along with the first 1,900 men of the International Brigades diminished the optimism at the Generalísimo’s headquarters. Heavy Russian tanks were put into action from the end of October to blunt the advance of the fast-moving Nationalist columns, although the lack of skilled drivers and gunners dramatically diminished their efficacy. Soviet I-15 and I-16 fighter aircraft piloted by Russian airmen went into action for the first time on 4 November and would, for about six months at least, reverse the easy air superiority enjoyed by the Nationalists during the drive on Madrid.¹⁷ Without knowing fully the scale of the Russian aid to the Republic, the Germans were already becoming frustrated with the slowness of Franco’s progress towards Madrid.

The German Foreign Minister Constantin von Neurath complained to Ciano on 21 October about Franco’s inactivity on the Madrid front.¹⁸ Shared concern about the fate of the Nationalist cause was one of the many factors pushing Italy and Germany together. Indeed, Mussolini was soon to start talking of the Rome-Berlin Axis. Both Ciano and von Neurath expected Madrid to fall by the end of the month or in the first week of November at which point they planned to extend formal recognition to Franco.¹⁹ At the end of October, however, the German Minister of War, General von Blomberg, sent Admiral Canaris and General Hugo Sperrle to Salamanca to investigate the reasons for Franco’s failure to take Madrid. Von Blomberg had instructed both Canaris and Sperrle to inform Franco ‘most emphatically’ that the German government did not consider his ground and air combat tactics ‘promising of success’ and that ‘continued adherence to this hesitant and routine procedure (failure to exploit the present favourable ground and air situation, scattered employment of the Air Force) is even endangering what has been gained so far.’

Canaris and Sperrle were to inform Franco of the conditions under which he would receive future reinforcements. The German units would be under the command of a German officer, who would be Franco’s sole adviser on their use and responsible only to him. Franco’s command would be maintained only ‘outwardly’. The consolidation of German forces was conditional on the ‘more systematic and active conduct of the war’ and the Generalísimo’s acceptance of these demands ‘without reservation’.²⁰ Once the Generalísimo had agreed, a complete battle group under General Sperrle, known as the Condor Legion, was assembled and despatched with astonishing speed. Within a matter of days, a force of specialised units, equipped with the latest developments in German bomber and fighter aircraft and tanks and other motorised weapons was en route to Seville. Five thousand Germans landed in Cádiz on 16 November and a further seven thousand on 26 November along with artillery, aircraft and armoured transport.²¹

So sure was the Republican government that Madrid would fall that, after acrimonious discussions, it left for Valencia on 6 November. With Nationalist artillery shells falling on the suburbs, it seemed to be the beginning of the end.²² The organization of the city’s defence was placed in the hands of a Defence Junta presided over by the recently appointed Captain-General of New Castile, José Miaja.²³ The portly, balding fifty-eight year-old Miaja was despised by Franco as incompetent and scruffy and regarded by Queipo de Llano as inept, stupid and cowardly.²⁴ Known largely for the abortive counter-attacks which had failed to stop Franco’s advance through Extremadura, Miaja was assumed by many, including himself, to have been chosen as the scapegoat to take the blame for the fall of the capital.²⁵

The bluff and good-humoured Miaja quickly surrounded himself with a staff of highly competent assistants, of whom the most outstanding was to be his Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-Colonel Vicente Rojo. While Rojo planned the defence, Miaja worked on raising the morale of the defenders. Unaware that Miaja was anything more than a sacrificial victim, Franco announced on 7 November that he would attend mass in Madrid on the next day. On the morning of 8 November, congratulatory telegrams to Generalísimo Franco from the governments of Austria and Guatemala were delivered at the Ministry of War in the capital.²⁶ Lisbon Radio also jumped the gun by describing in detail the frenetic welcome that he received from the people of Madrid. The American Hearst Press’s sensationalist correspondent, H.R. Knickerbocker, wrote a detailed description of the victory parade, ‘from the steps of the Telefónica’, which even included the customary barking dog following behind.²⁷ The British journalist Henry Buckley was told by a news editor in London that his story of fighting in the outskirts must be wrong because it was known that Franco’s forces were in the centre of the city.²⁸

Miaja and Rojo faced a frightening situation. They had little or no idea of the scale, disposition or readiness of the forces at their disposal. There was a shortage of rifles and ammunition, no anti-aircraft cover and little or no radio liaison between the random collection of arbitrarily armed irregulars whose only asset was their determination to defend the city to the death. Miaja and Rojo were fully aware of the skill and aggression of the Legionarios and Regulares about to hit them. They also knew of the numerous and well-organized fifth column of Nationalist supporters carrying out sabotage and ready to rise in the city.²⁹

Varela, understandably confident that Madrid would fall easily in the light of the government’s desertion, delayed in launching the attack in order to allow his troops to rest. He had faced virtually no resistance on 5 November. Had he attacked on 6 November when demoralization still gripped the population, he might have had an easy victory.³⁰ As it was, Rojo and Miaja were able to spend the night of 6 November and the entire day and night of the seventh organizing the disparate forces at their disposal. Rojo was blessed even more by the fact that on the night of 7 November Varela’s detailed battle plan was found in a captured Nationalist tank.³¹ Curiously, the departure of the indecisive government of Largo Caballero seemed to take with it the blanket of pessimism and the proximity of Franco’s forces wiped away internecine political squabbles.³²

In the silent streets of the capital on the night of 7 November, the defenders were united by tormenting thoughts of what had happened after the Army of Africa had entered Badajoz and Toledo. Nevertheless, there was a popular determination to fight to the last.³³ Along with the Communist Party’s Fifth Regiment, the most highly organised and disciplined force in the central zone, the 1,900 men of the Eleventh International Brigade helped Miaja to lead the entire population of Madrid in a desperate and remarkable defence. Inspired by Miaja’s jocular bluster and guided by Rojo’s brilliant use of Varela’s battle plan, the ordinary citizens of Madrid, with aged rifles and insufficient cartridges, dressed only in their civilian clothes, halted the Nationalist forces.³⁴ In the course of the attack – launched in brilliant autumn sunshine on 8 November – the Army of Africa suffered casualties on a scale hitherto unknown as it battled to cross the Manzanares, which is dominated from above by the terrace-like avenue known as the Paseo de Rosales. Major Antonio Castejón, the most fiercely energetic of Franco’s column commanders, was seriously wounded. With his hip shattered, Castejón, depressed by the high casualties among his Moors, told the American journalist John Whitaker, ‘We made this revolt and now we are beaten.’³⁵

Varela’s attack through the Casa de Campo had faltered by 10 November at the cost of the lives of one third of the men of the International Brigades. When the Manzanares was finally crossed on 15 November, there was hand-to-hand fighting between them and the Moors in the University buildings.³⁶ Defending their city, with their backs to its walls, the working-class militia were much more of a match for the Moors than they had been in open scrub land. However, after the arrival on 12 November of the Condor Legion, working-class districts were shelled and bombed more systematically than before, although the Generalísimo was careful to try to spare the plush Barrio de Salamanca, the residential district where many of his fifth columnists lived and other important rightists with his forces had their homes. The Germans were anxious to experiment with terror bombing. The damage was massive, the military impact negligible.³⁷ In deciding to try to terrorize Madrid into submission, and permitting the incendiary bombing of a city bulging with Spain’s art treasures, Franco had cast aside the pretence that he was not prepared to damage the capital. He had told Portuguese journalists that he would destroy Madrid rather than leave it to the Marxists.³⁸ The American Ambassador wrote to Washington: ‘it is currently reported that the former King, Alfonso, has protested against this policy to Franco. If he is responsible it can only come from the fact that in his humiliation over his failure to take Madrid in a few days, he has permitted his resentment to get the better of his judgement.’³⁹

By 22 November, the Nationalist attack was repulsed.⁴⁰ On the following day, Franco and his Chief of Staff, Colonel Martín Moreno, travelled from Salamanca to Leganés on the outskirts of Madrid. The Generalísimo addressed a meeting of Mola, Saliquet, Varela and their respective general staffs. Without massive reinforcements which he simply did not have, there was no choice but to abandon the attack. The Generalísimo ordered an end to frontal assaults on the grounds of the weakness of his forces, the foreign assistance received by the Republic and the difficult tactical situation of the Nationalist Army, given its reliance on long exposed lines of supply and communication.⁴¹ Orgaz would take over the forces on the Madrid front, Mola those in the north. Franco’s forces had suffered their first major reverse.⁴² However, instead of taking the militarily sensible decision of withdrawing to easily defended lines four or five kilometres from the city, Franco revealed his obstinate determination never to give up an inch of conquered ground. He thus ordered Asensio to fortify the positions taken in the University City in order, as he perceived it, to maintain a psychological and moral advantage, irrespective of the cost which, in the next three months, would be considerable.⁴³

Franco was immensely fortunate that the Republican forces in Madrid were too depleted to mount a serious counter-offensive. If they had, the tide might well have turned decisively in their favour. Totally disconcerted by the losses suffered by their men, Varela and Yagüe had told Captain Roland von Strunk, a German military observer in Spain, in the presence of John Whitaker, ‘We are finished. We cannot stand at any point if the Reds are capable of undertaking counter-attacks.’ Captain von Strunk was in total agreement, convinced that only German reinforcements could save Franco from defeat. He commented bitterly to the US Consul in Seville that ‘Franco could have captured Madrid on the first day’ and added that he had informed Franco that he must accept German direction of the campaign or else Germany would withdraw its material and Franco had accepted.⁴⁴ In Paris, in Rome, in Morocco, as well as in the Nationalist tents around Madrid, it was believed that if Franco did not get more help from Germany and Italy, his movement would collapse.⁴⁵

Before the Republic could test the new confidence forged in the flames of Madrid, Franco’s battered columns would receive massive reinforcements from Fascist Italy. It is ironic that only four days before Franco’s tacit acknowledgement – in his change of strategy – that he had been defeated, he had secured the co-ordinated recognition of Germany and Italy. In near-identical terms, Berlin and Rome justified their action on the grounds that Franco controlled ‘the greater part of Spanish territory’.⁴⁶ On 18 November in Salamanca, a visibly emotional Franco appeared before crowds wildly cheering for Hitler and Mussolini. He told them that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were ‘the bulwarks of culture, civilization and Christianity in Europe’.⁴⁷ On the same day, Hitler instructed the new German Chargé d’Affaires in Spain about his duties. The man selected was the retired General Wilhelm Faupel, one-time organizer of the Freikorps, adviser to the Argentinian and Peruvian Armies, and Director of the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut. A staunch Nazi, he was told not to interfere in military affairs.⁴⁸ Faupel presented his credentials to Franco on 30 November.⁴⁹

Franco’s delight with the signs of co-ordinated fascist help would no doubt have been tarnished had he known of the contempt with which the Italians viewed his military achievements. On 25 November, Mussolini told the German Ambassador to Rome, Ulrich von Hassell, that the Nationalists were lacking in offensive spirit and personal bravery. After negotiating with Franco the Italo-Spanish agreement on military and economic co-operation, Filippo Anfuso, Ciano’s representative, reported on 3 December that the Nationalists acted as if they were taking part in a colonial war, concerned with tiny tactical actions rather than with striking great strategic blows. He concluded that Franco needed Italian generals, an Italian column under the orders of Roatta and a sense of urgency.⁵⁰ It was only because Mussolini wanted a fascist Spain to put pressure on France and was hopeful that Franco could be coached in the ways of fascism that the Duce contemplated sending further aid to the Caudillo. But, like the Germans, he insisted on certain conditions. The most important was an undertaking ‘to conduct future Spanish policy in the Mediterranean in harmony with that of Italy’.⁵¹

That Franco, conventionally considered to be fiercely proud, should have been happy to accept German and Italian aid on humiliating conditions was not at all puzzling. In the first place, he was desperate. Moreover, he still felt a certain deference towards both Hitler and Mussolini. It was to be his good fortune that, as the American Ambassador in Berlin, William E. Dodd, observed, ‘having recognized Franco as conqueror when this has yet to be proved, Mussolini and Hitler must see to it that he is successful or be associated with a failure’.⁵² Italy was already racing down the slippery slope to total commitment. In a matter of four months, Mussolini had gone almost imperceptibly from his initial reluctant decision to supply twelve transport aircraft, via the shipping of substantial quantities of aircraft and armoured vehicles in August, September and October, to formal recognition. That gesture would soon involve Mussolini in an irrevocable commitment to Franco’s cause which was now facing possible defeat and needed massive assistance.

Faupel telegrammed the Wilhelmstrasse on 5 December with the stark message ‘We are now faced with the decision either to leave Spain to herself or to throw in additional forces.’ In the German Foreign Office, State-Secretary Weizsäcker feared that to comply would require sending a sea convoy which would attract the hostile attention of England. He believed that Italy should bear the brunt of helping Franco.⁵³ Immediately after signing his secret agreement with Franco on 28 November, Mussolini called a staff conference to examine the possibility of stepping up Italian military aid to Franco and asked Hitler to send a representative. On 6 December, the Duce, Ciano and Roatta met a pessimistic Admiral Canaris at the Palazzo Venezia. Mussolini suggested that Germany and Italy each prepare a division for Spain, that German and Italian instructors be sent to train Franco’s troops and that a joint Italo-German general staff direct and co-ordinate operations alongside Franco’s staff. Canaris agreed to co-ordination of the continued delivery of military aircraft and naval and submarine support for Franco in the Mediterranean but repeated the views of Hitler, of von Blomberg, of other senior Wehrmacht officers and of State-Secretary Weizsäcker that Germany could not be seen to send large numbers of troops to Franco without risking international repercussions which might undermine her rearmament plans. Nevertheless, Mussolini decided to go ahead with Italy’s commitment of substantial ground forces. It was also agreed that a joint Italo-German general staff be set up to galvanize Franco’s operations despite the fears of Canaris that Franco would narrow-mindedly resist.⁵⁴

It is clear from the minutes of this meeting on 6 December that Mussolini, in a spirit of disdain towards Franco, had decided to take the outcome of the Spanish Civil War into his own hands. Although, for obvious reasons, Franco was not informed about what had been said at the meeting, he could in general terms be confident that the Italians could now withdraw their support for him only with the greatest difficulty. On the following day, Mussolini wrote to General Roatta giving him command of all Italian land and air forces already in Spain and soon to be sent. The Duce instructed Roatta to liaise with Franco and the newly arrived German Chargé d’Affaires, General Faupel, over the creation of a joint headquarters staff. Two days after the 6 December conference, Mussolini set up a special office, the Ufficio Spagna, to co-ordinate the various ministerial contributions to Italian aid for Franco.*⁵⁵

The clinching of external assistance was paralleled inside Spain by the consolidation of the Generalísimo’s undisputed authority. Franco had already sabotaged what limited chances there had been of rescuing José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Now, in December 1936, the Generalísimo provided another stark illustration of the speed and skill with which he could act when he felt himself threatened. As the numbers of casualties suffered by the Moroccan Army grew, Franco had to reconcile himself to relying more and more on the recruitment of militia whose first loyalty was to a political group. Inevitably, that increased the political weight of the two parties which made the most substantial contribution, the Falange and the Carlist Comunión Tradicionalista. There was no immediate difficulty or doubt about their commitment to the Nationalist cause but, in the long run, their political ambitions differed considerably. Having gone to some trouble to start building his own absolute power, Franco was sensitive to potential threats both to the efficacy of the Nationalist war effort and to his own hegemony. The absence of José Antonio left the Falange disorientated. The veil of secrecy about his death maintained that situation. The Carlists were then, in the short term, more of a threat to Franco’s hegemony within the Nationalist zone. The President of their National War Junta, Manuel Fal Conde, had been asserting the autonomy of Carlism since late October.⁵⁶ The Carlists saw a chance to make a more overt bid to consolidate their independence within the Nationalist camp when a decision was announced giving regular army rank to militia officers, and creating short-term training courses to turn them into alféreces provisionales (provisional second lieutenants).

On 8 December, with the permission of Mola, they set up a separate Real Academia Militar de Requetés for the technical and ideological training of Carlist officers. They claimed that their purpose was no more than to ensure the replacement of casualties and those Requeté officers who had gone into the regular forces. The Falangists had two such academies, but had taken the precaution of securing Franco’s approval. The Generalísimo was quietly furious and took the opportunity to flex his muscles. After carefully consulting, cultivating and neutralizing Fal Conde’s more malleable rival, the languid Conde de Rodezno, Franco moved. Fal Conde was informed through General Dávila, the administrative head of the Junta Técnica del Estado, that Franco considered the establishment of a Carlist Academy to be tantamount to a coup d’état. Fal Conde was given forty-eight hours either to leave the Nationalist zone or else to face a court martial. Franco gave serious thought to executing the Carlist leader. As it was, since he was loath to risk undermining the morale of the Requetés fighting at the front, the Caudillo contented himself with his exile to Portugal.⁵⁷ To clinch his control over the autonomous militias, Franco issued a decree militarizing all three militia groups, those of the Falange, of the Carlists and of the CEDA, and placing them under the command of Colonel Monasterio.

By a curious coincidence, just as Franco was dealing with the threat to his authority posed by the Carlists, another hazard placed itself uninvited on his agenda. Don Juan de Borbón, the heir to the throne of Alfonso XIII, remained anxious to take part in the Nationalist war effort. He wrote to the Generalísimo on 7 December 1936, reminded him that he had served in the Royal Navy on HMS Enterprise and HMS Iron Duke and respectfully requested permission to join the crew of the battlecruiser Baleares which was then nearing completion. Although the young prince promised to remain inconspicuous, not go ashore at any Spanish port and to abstain from any political contacts, Franco was quick to perceive the dangers both immediate and distant.⁵⁸ If Don Juan were to fight on the Nationalist side, intentionally or otherwise, he would soon become a figurehead for the large numbers of Alfonsine monarchists, especially in the Army, who, for the moment, were content to leave Franco in charge while waiting for victory and an eventual restoration. There was the danger that the Alfonsists would become a distinct group alongside the Falangists and the Carlists, adding their voice to the political diversity which was beginning to come to the surface in the Nationalist zone. Having just been liberated from the problem of José Antonio Primo de Rivera and in the process of cutting down Fal Conde, Franco was hardly likely to welcome Don Juan de Borbón with open arms.

His response was a masterpiece of duplicity. He delayed some weeks before replying to Don Juan. ‘It would have given me great pleasure to accede to your request, so Spanish and so legitimate, to fight in our navy for the cause of Spain. However, the need to keep you safe would not permit you to live as a simple officer since the enthusiasm of some and the officiousness of others would stand in the way of such noble intentions. Moreover, we have to take into account the fact that the place which you occupy in the dynastic order and the obligations which arise from that impose upon us all, and demand of you, the sacrifice of desires which are as patriotic as they are noble and deeply felt, in the interests of the Patria … It is not possible for me to follow the dictates of my soldier’s heart and to accept your offer.’⁵⁹ Not only did he thus gracefully refuse a dangerous offer, and so dissipate the threat, but he also squeezed considerable political capital out of so doing. He let it be known ‘secretly’ among Falangists that he had prevented the heir to the throne from entering Spain because of his own commitment to the future Falangist revolution. He also gave publicity to what he had done and gave reasons which consolidated his own position among the monarchists. ‘My responsibilities are great and among them is the duty not to put his life in danger, since one day it may be precious to us … If one day a King returns to rule over the State, he will have to come as a peace-maker and should not be found among the victors.’⁶⁰ The cynicism of such sentiments could only be appreciated after nearly four decades had elapsed during which Franco had dedicated his efforts to institutionalizing the division of Spain into victors and vanquished and omitting to restore the monarchy.

For the moment, however, Don Juan was a minor problem compared with the military task facing the Generalísimo. At the end of November, Varela had launched an operation to relieve the Nationalist troops tied down to the north-west of Madrid in the Casa de Campo and the Ciudad Universitaria. Little was achieved and the casualties were enormous on both sides. A further effort was made on 15 and 16 December, also at the cost of heavy losses.⁶¹ Both sides had dug in to regroup, and for more than three weeks, the Madrid front saw only partial, albeit bitterly contested, actions. The daring and decisiveness with which Franco had confronted the problems of crossing the Straits and the first precipitate dash northwards of the African columns were now consigned to the past.

General Faupel was shocked when Franco boasted to him in early December ‘I will take Madrid; then all of Spain, including Catalonia, will fall into my hands more or less without a fight’. Faupel regarded this as a frivolous assessment since Franco was now faced with a complex war of manoeuvre. The retired German general concluded that Franco’s ‘military training and experience do not fit him for the direction of operations on their present scale’. In fact, despite the bravado of his words, Franco faced the task with a plodding, indeed hesitant, prudence. He also accepted with deference the overbearing advice of Faupel who, despite Hitler’s admonition to keep out of military affairs, was profligate with his opinions. The Generalísimo, who regarded himself as the most meticulous officer in the Spanish army, exercised iron self-control and swallowed Faupel’s peremptory and patronizing instruction to issue ‘sharp orders for the better care of equipment, rifles and machines guns in particular.’ He was playing for higher stakes and on 9 December asked Faupel ‘that one German and one Italian division be placed at his disposal as soon as possible’.⁶²

Subsequently the Caudillo claimed that he had requested German and Italian arms not troops.⁶³ However, that became true only much later in 1937 after a massive conscription and recruiting operation. In December 1936, with his armies exhausted and decimated at Madrid, he was desperate for reinforcements.* The Generalísimo was immensely lucky that, within two weeks of the offensive against Madrid breaking down because of his own shortage of reliable troops, the Duce should have decided to send massive aid. On 9 December 1936, Franco received the formal offer of Italian help in the form of officers, NCOs, specialist tank crews, radio operators, artillerymen and engineers, to be incorporated into mixed brigades of Spanish and Italian troops. Rome offered uniforms, armaments and equipment for these brigades and asked Franco how many brigades could be organized. Franco was delighted and arrangements for the creation of two such mixed brigades were made in mid-December. The necessary regular Italian army officers, specialists and ordinary ground troops would begin to arrive in mid-January.⁶⁴

In the meanwhile, Hitler held a conference in the German Chancellery on 21 December with Göring, von Blomberg, Faupel, Warlimont, Friedrich Hossbach, the Wehrmacht liaison officer to the Führer and Werner von Fritsch, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army. They discussed further assistance to Franco. Faupel asked for three divisions to be sent to Spain but was vehemently opposed by the others for fear of prematurely risking a general war. The Führer therefore decided not to send large numbers of German troops because his wider diplomatic game would derive more benefit from a prolongation of the Spanish Civil War than from a quick victory for Franco. It had been thought in Berlin since late November that the longer the war went on, the more likely Italy was to be drawn into the German orbit. Nevertheless, it was decided that Germany would send sufficient help in the form of aircraft, arms and equipment to ensure that Franco was not defeated.⁶⁵ The Generalísimo was thus immensely fortunate to be able to count on support from Hitler and Mussolini which would be greater and more consistent than anything that the Republic could hope for from the Soviet Union.

In addition to the specialist regular troops necessary for the creation of the mixed Spanish-Italian brigades, Mussolini decided ‘in view of the unsatisfactory situation’ to send, two contingents of three thousand Black Shirts each, in self-contained units with their own officers, artillery and transport. On 14 December Roatta’s assistant, Lieutenant-Colonel Emilio Faldella, gave Franco a note to the effect that the Italian government wished the volunteers to be organized in autonomous Italian companies with Italian officers. It was made clear that these contingents would be additional to the proposed mixed brigades.⁶⁶ Franco wanted troops but not in autonomous units under Italian command. His annoyance was revealed when he asked Faldella ‘Who requested them?’ and snapped ‘When one sends troops to a friendly country, one at least asks permission’.⁶⁷

It is clear that Franco was glad to have the Black Shirts but had hoped simply to incorporate them into his own units as foreign legionaries. His suspicions of the efficacy of Falangist militias were not replicated with regard to the Italian Fascist volunteers since he had been told that they had been battle-hardened in Abyssinia. He was, of course, deeply irritated by the lack of consideration of his position implicit in the blunt and unexpected terms in which their arrival was announced. The strength of the Italian contingents that arrived in late December and early January was, according to a report by Faupel, based presumably on information from Roatta, ‘determined not by previous agreement with Franco but according to independent Italian estimates’.⁶⁸ Nevertheless, he hastened to use them as soon as they disembarked and, on 12 January, he would request another nine thousand Black Shirts.⁶⁹

Such external assistance was necessary to enable Franco to go forward from the deadlock in Madrid. On 28 November, General Saliquet had written to the Generalísimo with a proposal for an encircling operation, against the Madrid-La Coruña road to the north-west and a dual thrust from the south-west of Madrid and from Soria in the north-east towards Alcalá de Henares.⁷⁰ Franco mused over this proposal for three weeks and it was not until 19 December that he issued orders which would break the stalemate prevailing since he had called off the frontal assault on Madrid at the Leganés meeting on 23 November. They envisaged a refinement of Saliquet’s plan, implementing it closer to Madrid by three thrusts outwards from the exposed wedge which the Nationalists had driven into the capital’s defences.⁷¹

In heavy rain and fog, across muddy terrain, costly and sterile battles were fought for villages like Boadilla del Monte which was virtually destroyed. Varela was wounded on Christmas Day and field command was assumed by Orgaz. After crippling losses in the fighting, the attack was briefly called off. Roatta telegrammed the Ufficio Spagna on 27 December complaining of apathy at Franco’s headquarters and reporting that the Generalísimo’s staff was incapable of mounting an operation appropriate to a large-scale war.⁷² On 3 January, the assault was renewed with increased ferocity and reached the important crossroads at Las Rozas on the road to El Escorial and La Coruña. On 7 January, Pozuelo and Húmera fell. In six days, scarcely ten kilometres of road had been taken by the Nationalists. They had eased the pressure on their troops in the Casa de Campo and the Ciudad Universitaria but at enormous cost. When the fronts had stabilized by 15 January, each side had lost in the region of fifteen thousand men.⁷³ The various efforts to take Madrid had severely depleted Franco’s forces. The Republicans were now solidly dug in and Franco was fortunate that they were unable to seize the unique opportunity to launch a counter-attack to break through his severely overstretched lines.

In the midst of the reverses around Madrid, Franco was relieved to discover that his cultivation of the Church was bearing fruit. On 22 December, Cardinal Gomá returned from Rome where he had been frantically working for Vatican recognition of Franco. The cautious Curia held back but, in order to demonstrate the Church’s sympathy for Franco’s cause, Gomá was appointed the Vatican’s confidential Chargé d’Affaires in Nationalist Spain. It was the crucial first step towards full diplomatic recognition.⁷⁴ Gomá and the Generalísimo met on 29 December and agreed on a joint statement to the Vatican, in which it was made clear that, in the interests of eventual recognition, Franco was ready to do everything possible to favour the Church’s position in Spain.⁷⁵

The clinching of relations with the Vatican was of immense long-term political importance to Franco. In immediate terms, even more welcome was the military help promised by Mussolini. With the attacks around Madrid stalling, Franco had been relieved by the fact that in mid-December, the Duce had begun sending the first of what, by mid-February 1937, would be nearly fifty thousand fascist militiamen and regular troops masquerading as volunteers.⁷⁶ Whatever gloss Franco would put on it later, the arrival of Italian reinforcements was of crucial importance to his military survival. Inevitably, once the Duce had committed his own prestige to a Nationalist victory in Spain, the stalemate around Madrid quickly intensified his impatience with Franco. At the end of the year, he requested Hitler to send to a meeting in Rome in mid-January someone ‘with full powers’ to discuss Italo-German co-operation to bring about ‘a real decision in Spain’.⁷⁷ In fact, it was becoming ever more apparent that the Italians were going to be left by Hitler to make the decisive contribution to Franco’s success. Roatta reported to Rome on 12 January that Canaris had told him that Sperrle was pessimistic about both the initial efficacy of the Condor Legion and the state of the Nationalist forces. Sperrle, in turn, told Roatta that the real problem was German fear of provoking a premature war with France.⁷⁸

At the meeting held at the Palazzo Venezia on the evening of 14 January 1937, Hitler’s representative was Hermann Göring.* Mussolini was irritated that Italo-German aid, rather than spurring Franco on to greater efforts, merely permitted him to indulge his natural inclination to wear down the Republic by a slow campaign of attrition. Göring agreed that, if Franco had known how to use it properly, the Italo-German material and technical assistance was enough to have permitted him to win already. The Air Minister declared bitterly that the recognition of Franco before the capture of Madrid had been a major error to remedy which it was agreed that he would have to be subjected to ‘energetic pressure’ to accelerate his operations and make full use of the lavish means put at his disposal.

Despite his expressions of solidarity with Mussolini, fear of international complications impelled Göring to say that Germany could not send a division to Spain. This left the immediate task of preventing Franco being defeated to the Duce who was disappointed but not unhappy to be the senior partner in Spain. Declaring that Franco must win, he said that there were no longer any restraints on his actions in Spain. To ensure that Franco adopt a more energetic policy, it was decided to oblige him to accept the joint Italo-German general staff. Mussolini and Göring agreed that to ensure Franco’s victory before, as they wrongly imagined would happen, the British erected an effective blockade to stop foreign intervention,* substantial additional aid would have to be sent to Spain by the end of January. Mussolini suggested telling Franco that thereafter there would be no more help.⁷⁹

On the day after the meeting in the Palazzo Venezia, the chiefs of staff of the Italian military ministries met at the Palazzo Chigi with the staff of the Ufficio Spagna and Ciano’s representative Anfuso to discuss the minimum programme of aid to Franco. Partly out of contempt for Franco’s generalship and partly out of a desire to monopolize the anticipated triumph for Fascism, it was agreed that the Italian contingent must be used as an independent force under an Italian general only nominally responsible to Franco’s overall command. Three possibilities were outlined for the decisive action by which Italian forces would win the war for Franco. Mussolini favoured a massive assault from Teruel to Valencia to cut off Catalonia from the rest of Spain. This was to be preceded by the terror bombing of Valencia. However, it was acknowledged that such an operation required the full co-operation of Franco. A second option was a march from Sigüenza to Guadalajara to tighten irrevocably the Nationalist grip on Madrid. The third more limited possibility was the capture of Málaga to provide a seaport nearer to Italy and a launching pad for an attack on Valencia from the south-west.⁸⁰

After his failures around Madrid, Franco had little choice but to grit his teeth and acquiesce in the demeaning Italo-German suggestions which were communicated to him by Anfuso on 23 January. The document presented by Anfuso made it clear that international circumstances prevented aid being continued indefinitely.⁸¹ At first, the Generalísimo seemed perplexed.⁸² However, on the following day, he gave Anfuso a note expressing his thanks for Italo-German help and a desperate plea for it to continue for at least another three months.⁸³ The prospect of the British imposing an effective blockade galvanized him into giving serious consideration to the three strategic proposals made by the Italians. In effusively thanking Mussolini for his assistance, Franco told Anfuso that he would now accelerate the end of the war by undertaking a great decisive action. On 26 January, he accepted Roatta’s suggestion that, henceforth, the regular high-level advice of Faupel and Roatta on major strategic issues would be implemented by Franco’s own staff, in which were to be included ten senior German and Italian officers.⁸⁴ Mussolini considered that he could send instructions to Franco as to a subordinate.⁸⁵

Sensitive to any slur or slight, Franco cannot fail to have resented the clear insinuation of German and Italian disdain for his military prowess. Nevertheless, he showed no sign of it and accepted, along with the imposition of foreign staff officers, Mussolini’s strategic suggestions. According to Kindelán, anxious to play down Franco’s deference to the Duce, the Generalísimo was unsure of the military value of the new arrivals, despite the fact that they were well-equipped by comparison with his own troops and many had had experience in the Abyssinian war. He thus decided to test them in a relatively easy campaign in the south.⁸⁶

It is indeed the case that, to offset the failure in Madrid, the Generalísimo had already accepted a proposal from Queipo for a piecemeal advance towards Málaga. A sporadic campaign to mop up the rest of Andalusia, as savage and bloodthirsty as the march on Madrid, had been intensified in mid-December with considerable success.⁸⁷ However, after the arrival of Italian troops, the nature of the campaign changed dramatically. Rather than Franco skilfully blooding them in a campaign of his choice, they were engaged in an operation chosen by Mussolini. As the Black Shirts were setting out, Mussolini had reminded Roatta on 18 December 1936 of his own long-held conviction that a major attack should be launched against Málaga. Roatta immediately informed Franco of the Duce’s preference and found him grudgingly amenable (sufficientemente propenso) to it. Thereafter, the Duce followed the progress of the attack with an enthusiasm commensurate with it having been his own brainchild.⁸⁸

Franco wanted to incorporate the newly arrived Italians into mixed units on the Madrid front but had to acquiesce in Mussolini’s desire to see them operate autonomously in Andalusia.⁸⁹ In the light of the thin and scattered defences of Málaga, Roatta wanted a guerra celere (rapid strike) attack by his own motorised columns whereas Franco favoured Queipo’s original proposal for a gradual but thorough conquest of Republican territory. Franco was not much interested in a lightning victory for which Mussolini could take the credit and which might end the war before his leadership was consolidated. On 27 December, Roatta effectively overruled the Generalísimo’s preference for a slow advance backed up by political purges. They reached a compromise in which both types of assault would take place simultaneously. Franco had to bite his tongue when his request for two Italian motorised companies for the Madrid front was rejected by Roatta on the grounds of his own greater needs in preparing the attack on Málaga. On 9 January 1937, an optimistic Roatta and a sceptical Queipo agreed a division of responsibilities which reflected Franco’s concessions.⁹⁰ Under the direction of Queipo de Llano who was installed on the battlecruiser Canarias, and of Roatta on land, two columns began to advance in mid-January. By the end of the month after the capture of Alhama on the Málaga-Granada road, they were ready for the final push.

Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, Chief of Staff of the Condor Legion, wrote in his diary on 3 February ‘nothing is known about the Italians, their whereabouts and their intentions. Franco knows nothing either. He really ought to go to Seville to put himself in the picture and hope for a share of the Málaga victory laurels.’⁹¹ To make good his ignorance and to give the impression of overall control of events, Franco was already travelling from Salamanca to Seville on 3 February, the same day on which, in torrential rain, the Italo-Spanish forces moved on Málaga. The advance took the form of troops distributed in a large concentric circle, the Spanish units moving eastwards from Marbella and the Italian motorized columns racing south west from Alhama without concern for their flanks.⁹² The Generalísimo visited the front and on 5 February at Antequera discussed the progress of the campaign with Queipo and Roatta. Convinced that the operation was going to be succesful, he did not wait for the fall of Málaga but returned to Seville on 6 February and to Salamanca on the following day to oversee a new push on the Madrid front.⁹³

On 7 February, after a rapid march, Nationalists and Italians reached Málaga. Its military command had been changed with alarming frequency in the preceding days, morale was abysmally low, and after bombing raids by Italian aircraft and bombardment by Nationalist warships, the city collapsed easily. Italian troops were first to enter Málaga and briefly ruled the city before ostentatiously handing it over to the Spaniards. Roatta claimed the victory for Mussolini and sent a triumphant, and implicitly wounding, telegram to Franco: ‘Troops under my command have the honour to hand over the city of Málaga to Your Excellency’.⁹⁴ In fact, given the massive numerical and logistical superiority of the attackers, the triumph was less of an achievement than it seemed at the time. Neglected by the Valencia government, the defending forces were in more or less the same state of readiness as the improvised militiamen who had faced Franco’s Army of Africa six months earlier.⁹⁵ Neither the Nationalists nor the Italians showed much mercy. The international outcry was less than that provoked by the massacre of Badajoz, because Franco had ordered all war correspondents to be kept out of Málaga.⁹⁶ After the battle, Queipo and Roatta sent a motorised column to pursue refugees escaping along the coast road. Within the city itself nearly four thousand Republicans were shot in the first week alone and the killings continued on a large scale for months. The refugees who blocked the road out of Málaga were shelled from the sea and bombed and machine-gunned from the air.⁹⁷

When Roatta’s news of the victory at Málaga reached Salamanca, Franco unsurprisingly showed little interest. His humiliating subordination to Mussolini had been starkly underlined. Millán Astray, who came to congratulate the Generalísimo and found him absorbed gazing at a huge wall map, exclaimed: ‘I expected to find you celebrating the victory in Málaga not here on your own looking at a map.’ Franco diminished the Italian achievement by pointing at the map and saying ‘Just look what remains to be conquered! I can’t afford the luxury of taking time off.’⁹⁸ This gloomy and contrived effect of unceasing military dedication was out of tune with Franco’s normally irrepressible faith in victory. He was certainly preoccupied by the progress of the battle in the Jarama valley which he had launched just as Málaga was about to fall but he could hardly have been immune to the fact that the loss of Málaga was a fierce blow to the Republic in terms of captured territory, prisoners and weaponry. He had gained the food-producing province of Málaga and most of Granada, deprived his enemies of a strategically crucial sea port with a population of one hundred and fifty thousand people and shortened the southern front. The feigned lack of interest revealed his resentment of the disdainful Roatta and the fact that he could take no pleasure in a triumph attributed by the world’s press to Mussolini.⁹⁹

The fall of Málaga provoked a major internecine crisis within the Republic. The Communists began to reveal their impatience with Largo Caballero and obliged him to accept the resignation of General Asensio, his under-secretary of war.¹⁰⁰ Ironically, the one negative consequence for Franco of such an easy victory was the totally erroneous notion that both he and Mussolini derived of the efficacy of the Italian contingent.¹⁰¹ Mussolini was so delighted that he promoted Roatta to Major-General. The Duce and his Chief of Staff at the Ministry of the Army, Alberto Pariani, immediately produced ambitious plans for the Italian troops to sweep on to Almería and then through Murcia and Alicante to Valencia.¹⁰² However, Roatta’s reports to Rome on the eve of the attack on Málaga had presented a bleak picture of Italian disorganization, indiscipline and lack of technical preparation. Now he had to restrain Mussolini’s enthusiasm and persuade him that a long haul along the south coast exposed to constant flank attack would be less decisive than operations envisaged by Franco in the centre.¹⁰³

Franco was happy to get Italian help on the Madrid front and quick to deflate the euphoric Queipo who was anxious to use the triumph at Málaga as the basis for a triumphal march through Eastern Andalusia towards Almería. Franco remained obsessed with Madrid and had no reason to want to give away triumphs to Queipo de Llano. Accordingly, he prohibited further advance in Andalusia, to the bitter chagrin of Queipo.¹⁰⁴ It was, however, with some trepidation that Franco viewed the prospect of what seemed at the time like a fearsome Italian army, directed from Rome, allowing Mussolini graciously to hand him victories on a plate. It was a perception which would have disastrous consequences during the battle of Guadalajara.

At this time the nationalist press began to circulate a story which linked Franco’s destiny with the intercession of the saints. Allegedly, in the chaos of defeat, the military commander of Málaga, Colonel José Villalba Rubio, left various items of luggage behind him when he fled. In a suitcase left in his hotel was found the holy relic of the hand of St Teresa of Avila which had been stolen from the Carmelite Convent at Ronda.¹⁰⁵ In fact, the relic was found in police custody. It was sent to Franco who kept it with him for the rest of his life. The recovery of the relic was the excuse for the exaltation of St Teresa as ‘the Saint of the Race’, the champion of Spain and her religion in the Reconquista, during the conquest of America and in the battles of the Counter-Reformation. Catholic and political propagandists alike stressed the Saint’s association with the Caudillo in similar exaltation of his providential role.¹⁰⁶ Franco himself seems to have believed in his special relationship with St Teresa. Cardinal Gomá reported Franco’s reluctance to part with the arm as proof of his intense Catholic faith and his belief that he was leading a religious crusade. The Bishop of Málaga granted permission for the relic to remain in Franco’s possession and never left his side on any trip which obliged him to sleep away from home.*¹⁰⁷

Encouraged by the easy success which he anticipated in the south and by the availability of the Condor Legion, Franco had simultaneously renewed his efforts to take Madrid. On 6 February 1937, an army of nearly sixty thousand well-equipped men, under the direction of General Orgaz, had launched a huge attack through the Jarama valley towards the Madrid-Valencia highway to the east of the capital. Still convinced that he could capture the capital, Franco took a special interest in the campaign.¹⁰⁸ Two days later, his determination to win would be intensified by a desire for a victory to overshadow the Italian triumph at Málaga.

Almost simultaneously, Mussolini had sent a new Ambassador to Nationalist Spain, the emollient Roberto Cantalupo, who arrived shortly after the battle for Málaga.¹⁰⁹ It was a reflection of Franco’s seething resentment at the behaviour of Roatta and Mussolini over the conquest of Málaga that he kept Cantalupo waiting for days before receiving him. Cantalupo got a sense that, although everyone knew that Málaga had been captured by the Italians, no one said so. ‘Here’, he reported to Ciano on 17 February, ‘the coin of gratitude circulates hardly at all.’ When he finally met the Caudillo for an informal meeting, Cantalupo got the impression that Franco believed in ultimate victory but was no longer certain that it was anything other than a long way off. If anything, the Caudillo seemed to prefer the prospect of a long war although he put off explaining why for a future meeting. He did make it clear that he would not contemplate a negotiated peace.¹¹⁰

The implicit conflict between Mussolini’s urge for the rapid and spectacular defeat of the Republic and Franco’s gradual approach quickly came into the open. Four days after the fall of Málaga, Roatta being wounded, he sent his Chief of Staff, Colonel Emilio Faldella, to visit the Generalísimo in Salamanca and discuss the next operation in which the Corpo di Truppe Volontarie (CTV), as the Italian forces now came to be known, might be used. On the afternoon of 12 February, Faldella found Franco’s staff jubilant about their forces’ early thrust over the Jarama river and what they assumed to be an imminent and decisive victory. Faldella was told by Franco’s chief of operations, Colonel Antonio Barroso, that Alcalá de Henares would be occupied within five days and Madrid cut off from Valencia. Faldella told Barroso that he was going to propose that the next operation for the CTV should be an offensive against both Sagunto, to the north of Valencia, and Valencia itself, one of the options favoured by Mussolini since mid-January and communicated to the Generalísimo by Anfuso on 22 January. Barroso advised him against even mentioning it on the grounds that Franco would never allow the Italians to carry out an autonomous assault on a politically sensitive target like the Republican capital, given his central concern with his own prestige. Accordingly, after consulting Roatta by telephone, Faldella altered the note which he had brought for Franco to suggest instead the remaining option of those contemplated by Mussolini after the meeting with Göring, a major push from Sigüenza to Guadalajara to close the circle around Madrid.¹¹¹

When Faldella was received by Franco at 8 p.m. on 13 February, the usually polite Generalísimo ostentatiously failed to thank him for the Italian action at Málaga and said ‘the note has surprised me, because it is a real imposition’. The expected success in the Jarama gave the Caudillo the confidence to speak in stronger terms than previously to Faldella, who was after all the acting military representative of Mussolini. ‘When all is said and done’, Franco told Faldella, ‘Italian troops have been sent here without requesting my authorization. First I was told that companies of volunteers were coming to be incorporated into Spanish battalions. Then I was asked for them to be formed into independent battalions on their own and I agreed. Next senior officers and generals arrived to command them, and finally already-formed units began to arrive. Now you want to oblige me to allow these troops to fight together under General Roatta’s orders, when my plans were altogether different.’ Faldella replied that the reasoning behind all this was simply that Mussolini was trying to make good the failure of the Germans to supply troops to which Franco responded: ‘This is a war of a special kind, that has to be fought with exceptional methods so that such a numerous mass cannot be used all at once, but spread out over several fronts it would be more useful.’¹¹² These remarks revealed not just Franco’s resentments about Italian aid, but also the limitations of his strategic vision. His preference for piecemeal actions over a wide area reflected both his own practical military experiences in a small-scale colonial war and his desire to conquer Spain slowly and so consolidate his political supremacy.¹¹³

Faldella tried to make him see the opportunity for a decisive victory offered by the determined use of the Italian CTV. Franco would not be shaken from his preference for the gradual and systematic occupation of Republican territory: ‘In a civil war, a systematic occupation of territory accompanied by the necessary purge (limpieza) is preferable to a rapid rout of the enemy armies which leaves the country still infested with enemies.’ Faldella pointed out that a rapid defeat of the Republic at Valencia would make it easier for him to root out the Left in Spain. At this point, Barroso interrupted and, as his master’s voice, said ‘you must take into account that the Generalísimo’s prestige is the most important thing in this war, and that it is absolutely unacceptable that Valencia, the seat of the Republican government, should be occupied by foreign troops.’¹¹⁴

On the following day, Franco sent a written reply to Faldella, in which he grudgingly accepted his offer of an attack from Sigüenza to Guadalajara. He claimed that he had never wanted Italian troops used en masse for fear of international complications and because it was damaging for ‘decisive actions against objectives of the highest political importance to be carried out other than by the joint action of Spanish and Italian units’.¹¹⁵ Cantalupo believed that the Caudillo had been had brought around by an Italian promise to ensure that Spanish troops entered Madrid as the victors.¹¹⁶ In fact, he was responding to sticks as well as carrots. The potential conflict between Franco and the commanders of the CTV was such that Roatta flew to Rome to discuss the problem with Mussolini. The Duce reacted firmly in support of Roatta, threatening to withdraw his forces if Franco continued to respond as he had to Faldella. To show that he meant business, twenty fighter aircraft promised to Franco were redirected to the Italian command in Spain which was given control over the Air Force units which had previously flown under the Generalísimo’s orders.¹¹⁷

Mussolini’s threat drew additional effect because it came as the Nationalist attack in the Jarama ground to a halt. The Jarama valley was defended fiercely by Republican troops reinforced by the International Brigades and the battle saw the most vicious fighting of the entire Civil War. As in the battle for the La Coruña road, the Nationalist front advanced a few miles, but no major strategic gain was made. Once again Madrid was saved, albeit at a high cost in blood. The Republicans lost more than ten thousand including some of the best British and American members of the Brigades, and the Nationalists about seven thousand.¹¹⁸

Franco’s earlier defiance turned to desperation. Now, only six days after his churlish treatment of Faldella on 13 February, he sent Barroso to beg him to begin the offensive as soon as possible. Faldella refused, on the grounds that his planned initiative could not be rushed and so, on the following day, Millán Astray asked Faldella to see him. They dined together at CTV headquarters on 21 February and Millán spoke in ‘pathetic terms’ about the Nationalists’ difficulties around Madrid and begged for a rapid Italian intervention. Faldella was convinced that Millán Astray had come at Franco’s behest. In the event, Franco had to wait until Faldella and Roatta were ready. After all, moving the Italian Army from Málaga to central Spain was no easy task.

The Generalísimo’s desire to use the Italians as reinforcements within his Jarama campaign was coldly brushed aside. A seething Franco was having to bend to what the Italians wanted. The general plan of operations which he sent to Mola on 23 February exactly followed the strategy outlined in Faldella’s note of 13 February. One week later, the Italians were still not ready and, on 1 March, Barroso again pleaded with Faldella to persuade Roatta to begin an immediate action.¹¹⁹ Although Orgaz and Varela had managed to hold the line at the Jarama, the Generalísimo was desperate for a diversion to relieve his exhausted forces. For Franco, an Italian attack on Guadalajara, forty miles north-east of Madrid, would be an ideal distraction. That was not what the Italians had in mind at all. A major disaster was in the making.

* Yagüe wanted to penetrate along a line through the poorly defended north-eastern suburbs of Puerta de Hierro, Dehesa de la Villa and Cuatro Caminos while Varela favoured a similar thrust through the south-eastern suburbs of Vallecas and Vicálvaro.

* Formally directed by Conte Luca Pietromarchi, the Ufficio Spagna was under the authority of Ciano, and enjoyed virtual autonomy in military decisions.

* The only explicit evidence of a request by Franco is Faupel’s telegram to the Baron von Neurath, which was reported in the French press at the time and not denied. Moreover, the alleged request closely coincides with the decision by Mussolini on 6 December to send substantial reinforcements. Mussolini’s appreciation of Franco’s needs was made on the basis of reports from various agents in Spain including Anfuso and General Roatta. Given the close contact between Franco and Roatta since September, it is improbable that Roatta would have made recommendations likely to be disowned by the Generalísimo.

* Göring’s visit to Rome was a symbolic affirmation of the growing warmth between the Nazi and Fascist regimes. During a packed programme, he visited the Fencing Academy at the Forum where he challenged Mussolini to a sabre duel. To the delight of the senior Nazis and Fascists present, they slugged it out for twenty minutes, showing remarkable agility given their respective sizes – with Mussolini the eventual victor (Ramón Garriga, Guadalajara y sus consecuencias (Madrid, 1974) pp. 42–3).

* The Anglo-French policy of Non-Intervention, adopted in August 1936, was a farce which favoured the Nationalists at the expense of the Republic and appeased the fascist dictators. It was described by a Foreign Office official as ‘an extremely useful piece of humbug’. It is clear that a more resolute attitude by London would have inhibited the Germans and Italians in their assistance to Franco. (Enrique Moradiellos, Neutralidad benévola: el Gobierno británico y la insurrección militar española de 1936 (Oviedo, 1990) pp. 117–88; Douglas Little, Malevolent Neutrality: The United States, Great Britain, and the Origins of the Spanish Civil War (Ithaca, 1985) pp. 221–65.)

* An aide was appointed specifically to to carry it and to guard it against loss or theft. Occasionally, over the years, the nuns wrote to Franco requesting that he return the hand if only for a period of loan of a month, three weeks or a fortnight. Franco, fearful that he would not get it back, never complied, arranging instead for his faithful cousin Pacón to send a charitable donation to pacify them.

IX

THE AXIS CONNECTION

Guadalajara & Guernica, March – April 1937

ALTHOUGH THINGS were taking a turn for the worse militarily, Franco dismissed out of hand any suggestions of a compromise peace with the Republicans or even with the profoundly Catholic Basques. Proposals to this end made by the Vatican were discussed by the Generalísimo and Cardinal Gomá in mid-February. Although respectful with the Primate, Franco had rejected anything less than outright surrender, refusing to negotiate with, and therefore recognize the authority of, those whom he held responsible for the present situation in the Basque Country. Gomá reported to Rome that Franco saw any mediation as merely putting off the necessary solution of a political and historical problem, by which he meant the eradication of Basque nationalism. Negotiations meant concessions and concessions meant ‘rewarding rebellion’ and would raise the expectations of other regions.¹ Franco’s negative attitude to mediation of any kind reflected his perception of the war as an all-or-nothing, life-or-death struggle which had to end with the total annihilation of the Republic and its supporters.

This was certainly the impression given to the Italians. When Cantalupo’s credentials arrived from Rome, he was received officially on 1 March with a scale of splendour which not only underlined the value that Franco placed on Italian assistance but also reflected his own taste for pomp. Any hopes harboured by his fellow generals that Franco considered his headship of the State to be at all provisional must by now have started to wither. The imposing ostentation and grandeur with which the Caudillo surrounded his public appearances resounded with permanence. Cantalupo was treated to eight military bands. The colourful ranks of Falangist, Carlist and other militias, Spanish, Italian and Moorish troops formed up in a solemn procession through Salamanca’s enormous but elegantly proportioned Plaza Mayor to the Palacio del Ayuntamiento. The Generalísimo arrived in the square escorted by his Moorish Guard, resplendent in their blue cloaks and shining breastplates. It recalled the entry of Alfonso XIII into Melilla in 1927, an occasion on which he was accompanied by Franco, who was increasingly indulging his own taste for royal ceremony. His arrival was greeted with the chant of ‘Franco! Franco! Franco!’. He received Cantalupo in a salon magnificently adorned for the occasion with sixteenth-century Spanish tapestries and seventeenth-century porcelain. During the ceremony, Franco was accompanied by Mola, Kindelán, Cabanellas, Dávila and Queipo de Llano as well as a veritable court of other army officers and functionaries in full dress uniform. Yet, Franco himself did not match the regal show and an unimpressed Cantalupo wrote to Rome ‘He stepped out with me on the balcony that offered an incredible spectacle of the immense square but was incapable of saying anything to the people that applauded and waited to be harangued; he had become cold, glassy and feminine again’.²

Away from the pomp of Salamanca, Roatta, Faldella and other senior Italian officers were shocked by the relentless repression behind the lines.³ Cantalupo requested instructions from Rome and on 2 March Ciano told him to inform Franco of the Italian Government’s view that some moderation in the reprisals would be prudent because unrestrained brutality could only increase the duration of the war. When Cantalupo saw Franco on 3 March, the Caudillo was fully prepared for the meeting. Cantalupo appealled to him to slow down the mass executions in Málaga in order to limit the international outcry. Denying all personal responsibility and lamenting the difficulties of controlling the situation at a distance, Franco claimed that the massacres were over ‘except for those carried out by uncontrollable elements’. In fact, the slaughter hardly diminished but its judicial basis was changed. Random killings were now replaced by summary executions under the responsibility of the local military authorities. Franco claimed to have sent instructions for greater clemency to be shown to the rabble (masse incolte) and continued severity against ‘leaders and criminals’ as a result of which only one in every five of those tried was now being shot.

Nevertheless, Rome continued to receive horrifying accounts from the Italian Consul in Málaga, Bianchi.* On 7 March, Cantalupo was instructed to go to Málaga but Franco persuaded him that the situation was too dangerous for a visit. Nevertheless, the Generalísimo did undertake to have two military judges removed.⁴ Franco’s proclaimed difficulties about curtailing the killings in Málaga contrasted starkly with his response to a complaint by Cardinal Gomá about the shooting of Basque Nationalist priests in late October 1936. Valuing the good opinion of the Church more than that of the Italians, he replied instantaneously: ‘Your Eminence can rest assured that this stops immediately’. Shortly thereafter, Sangróniz confirmed to Gomá that ‘energetic measures had been taken’.⁵

At this time, Franco himself was sufficiently concerned by the unfavourable publicity provoked by the blanket repression to give a brilliantly ambiguous interview on the subject to Randolph Churchill. It was clear that in describing his policy as one of ‘humane and equitable clemency’, Franco’s meaning differed considerably from the way in which his words were understood by Churchill and his readers. Franco declared that ‘ringleaders and those guilty of murder’ would receive the death penalty, ‘just retribution’, but claimed mendaciously that all would be given fair trials, with defence counsel and ‘the fullest opportunity to state his case and call witnesses’. He omitted to mention that the defence counsel would be named by the court and would often outdo the prosecutors in demanding fierce sentences. Similarly, when Franco said that ‘when we have won, we shall have to consolidate our victory, pacify the discontented elements and unite the country’, Churchill could have no idea of the scale of the blood that would be shed or of the terror which would be deployed to realize those ends.⁶

For most of the Civil War, those Republican prisoners not summarily executed as they were captured or murdered behind the lines by Falangist terror squads were subjected to cursory courts martial. Often large numbers of defendants would be tried together, accused of generalised crimes and given little opportunity to defend themselves. The death sentences passed merely needed the signature (enterado) of the general commanding the province. As a result of the Italian protests, from March 1937 death sentences had to be sent to the Generalísimo’s headquarters for confirmation or pardon. The last word on death sentences lay with Franco, not as Head of State, but as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. In this area, his close confidant was Lieutenant-Colonel Lorenzo Martínez Fuset of the military juridical corps, who was auditor del Cuartel General del Generalísimo (legal adviser to headquarters). Franco insisted on seeing the death sentences personally, although he spent little time on reaching a decision. Martínez Fuset would bring folders of death sentences to Franco. Despite the regime myth of a tireless and merciful Caudillo agonizing late into the night over death sentences, the reality was much starker. In fact, in Salamanca or in Burgos, after lunch or over coffee, or even in a car speeding to the battle front, the Caudillo would flick through and then sign sheafs of them, often without reading the details but nonetheless specifying the most savage form of execution, strangulation by garrote. Occasionally, he would make a point of decreeing garrote y prensa (garrote reported in the press).⁷

Specifying press coverage was not just a way of intensifying the pain of the families of the condemned men but also had the wider objective of demoralizing the enemy with evidence of inexorable might and implacable terror. That was one of the lessons of war learnt by Franco in Morocco. At one lunch in the winter of 1936–37, the case of four captured Republican militiawomen was discussed. Johannes Bernhardt who was present was taken aback by the casual way Franco, in the same tone that he would use to discuss the weather, passed judgement, ‘There is nothing else to be done. Shoot them.’⁸ He could be gratuitously vindictive. On one occasion, having discovered that General Miaja’s son had been tried and absolved by a Nationalist tribunal in Seville, Franco intervened personally to have him rearrested and retried in Burgos. There was some doubt as to whether Captain Miaja had voluntarily come over to the Nationalists or been captured. Accordingly, the Burgos court issued a light sentence so Franco had the unfortunate young Miaja tried again in Valladolid. In Valladolid, the military tribunal found him not guilty and set him free. At this point, Franco intervened again and quite arbitrarily had him sent to a concentration camp at Miranda del Ebro where he remained until he was freed in a prisoner exchange for Miguel Primo de Rivera.⁹

Throughout 1937 and 1938, his brother-in-law and close political adviser, Ramón Serrano Suñer often tried to persuade him to adopt more juridically sound procedures and Franco consistently refused, saying ‘keep out of this. Soldiers don’t like civilians intervening in affairs connected with the application of their code of justice.’¹⁰ At one point, Serrano Suñer tried to arrange a reprieve for a Republican army officer. After first telling him that it was none of his business, Franco finally yielded to his brother-in-law’s pressure and undertook to do something. If Franco had wanted to help, he could have done so. As it was, four days later, he told Serrano Suñer that ‘the Army won’t put up with it, because this man was head of Azaña’s guard.’¹¹ Serrano Suñer and Dionisio Ridruejo both alleged that the Caudillo arranged for reprieves for death sentences to arrive only after the execution had already been carried out.¹²

Like Hitler, Franco had plenty of collaborators willing to undertake the detailed work of repression and, also like the Führer, he was able to distance himself from the process. Nonetheless, since he was the supreme authority within the system of military justice, there is no dispute as to where ultimate responsibility lay. Franco was aware that some of his subordinates enjoyed the bloodthirsty work of the repression. His Director-General of Prisons, Joaquin del Moral, was notorious for the prurient delight he derived from executions. General Cabanellas protested to Franco about the distasteful dawn excursions organized in Burgos by Del Moral in order to enjoy the day’s shootings. Franco did nothing. He was fully conscious of the extent to which the repression not only terrified the enemy but also inextricably tied those involved in its implementation to his own survival. Their complicity ensured that they would cling to him as the only bulwark against the possible revenge of their victims.¹³

In early March, to the chagrin of Cantalupo, Mussolini sent Roberto Farinacci, the powerful Fascist boss of Cremona, as his personal envoy to inform Franco of his ‘ideas about the future’ which involved placing a Prince of Savoy on the throne of Spain. That idea was politely but firmly rejected by Franco. However, the Caudillo was more amenable when Farinacci tried to convince him to create a fascist-style ‘Spanish National Party’ in order to control every aspect of political life. Delighted to be discussing ‘his’ future State, and clearly unencumbered by any inhibitions about the provisional nature of his mandate, Franco said that he was not planning to rely on either the Falangist or the Carlists in his post-war reconstruction. In rejecting the idea of an Italian prince, he made it clear that the restoration of the monarchy was anything but an immediate prospect, saying ‘First, I have to create the nation: then we will decide whether it is a good idea to name a king.’ It encapsulated the political philosophy which was to keep him in power until his death in 1975. Farinacci was not impressed with Franco, describing him in a letter to Mussolini as ‘a rather timid man whose face is certainly not that of a condottiere’. He was overheard by agents of the Spanish secret police declaring that Mussolini would have to take over Spain and appoint him as pro-consul. In particular, he thought, like Himmler later, that the slaughter of prisoners taking place behind the Nationalist lines was politically senseless and he protested in vain to Franco. He also made contact with the Falangist leader Manuel Hedilla as well as with Nicolás Franco in the hope of accelerating the fusion of Falangists and Carlists.¹⁴

The creation of a single party was clearly on Franco’s agenda but he was for the moment totally absorbed by events at the Madrid front. With his forces depleted in the Jarama and in desperate need of a diversion, Franco was anxious for Faldella to implement the proposal made on 13 February for an attack on Guadalajara. Negotiations between the two sides revealed differences over the scope of the enterprise. Roatta and his staff quickly came to suspect that Franco did not want the Italian troops to secure a decisive victory but only to alleviate the pressure on Orgaz’s forces after the bloody stalemate over the Jarama. The Italians regarded the Corpo di Truppe Volontarie as a force of elite shock troops and were determined not to see it worn down in the kind of piecemeal attrition favoured by Franco.¹⁵ Anxious to get the Italians into action, on 1 March, Franco effectively agreed to the Italian plan to close the circle around Madrid, with a joint attack south-west from Sigüenza towards Guadalajara backed up by a north-eastern push by Orgaz towards Alcalá de Henares. He assured Roatta that his forces in the Jarama would operate at the same time as the Italian assault provided that they could be reinforced by one of the newly formed Italo-Spanish mixed brigades. Aware of the weakness of Orgaz’s depleted troops, and fearing that they might not be ready for some days, on 4 March Roatta sent the second mixed brigade to strengthen them.¹⁶

On 5 March, Roatta wrote to Franco, confirming what had been agreed four days earlier and informing him that the Italian forces would start their advance on 8 March. On the same day, Roatta received a reply from Franco couched in guarded and ambiguous terms which revealed a lack of optimism about the Italian hopes of a decisive break-through. Although accepting that Orgaz’s forces would move to link up with the CTV at Pozuelo del Rey to the south-east of Alcalá de Henares, the Generalísimo implied that the extent of their advance would depend entirely on how much resistance they might meet along the way. Since Franco’s letter made no mention of the date of the attack, Roatta took this to signify that he had accepted 8 March.¹⁷ This seemed to be confirmed when, on 6 March, one of Orgaz’s commanders, General Saliquet, ordered an advance in the Jarama towards Pozuelo del Rey for 8 March. On 7 March, the eve of the battle, Roatta telegrammed Rome to say that he was still expecting the supporting action promised by the Spanish forces.¹⁸

Despite different immediate expectations of what would come of the attack, both sides certainly went into the operation talking in similar terms of closing the circle around Madrid.¹⁹ Deceived by the ease of his triumph at Málaga, Roatta was convinced that he could reach Guadalajara before the Republicans could mount any serious counter-attack. Nearly forty-five thousand troops were gathered in three groups for the main attack. 31,218 Italians in three divisions were to be flanked by two smaller Spanish brigades consisting of Legionnaires, Moors and Requetés, jointly under the command of General Moscardó, the hero of the Alcázar. Amply equipped with tanks, pieces of heavy artillery, planes and trucks, it was the most heavily armed motorised force yet to go into action in the war.²⁰ However, its advantages were diminished by technical deficiencies in the equipment and inadequate preparation of the troops. Mussolini wanted the three Italian divisions to act as a unit because he hoped that they would score up another victory which, like Málaga, would be attributed by the world to Fascism. The mood in the Nationalist headquarters was notably more pessimistic than that of Roatta and his staff. There was considerable resentment among the Nationalist officer corps of sarcastic remarks made by the Italians about why it had taken so long to capture a defenceless city like Madrid.²¹

On 8 March, the Black Flames division under the Italian General Amerigo Coppi broke through the thin Republican defences using the guerra celere tactics that had brought Roatta such success at Málaga. However, the Republic was better organized around Madrid than at Málaga. Moreover, as it became apparent by the evening of that first day that the Jarama front was quiet, the Republicans were able to strip that area unhindered and concentrate their forces against the Italians. As Coppi moved rapidly towards Madrid, dangerously exposing his left flank and over-extending his lines of communication, Republican reinforcements moved up unmolested by Orgaz’s troops. The Italian position was further endangered by the slowness of the Spanish columns on their right.

In general, the Black Shirts were surprised by the strength of Republican resistance and by the weather. Inadequately clothed, many dressed in colonial uniforms, they were caught in heavy snow and sleet. Their aeroplanes stranded on muddy improvised airfields, they made excellent targets for the Republican Air Force flying from permanent runways. Light Italian tanks with fixed machine guns were shown to be vulnerable to the Republic’s Russian T-26 with their revolving turret-mounted cannon.²² Now desperate for the Spanish supporting attack from the south, Roatta sent violent protests to Franco who feigned powerlessness, informing him that he had had to exert all his authority to oblige Orgaz to make a token action on 9 March which would be followed by a full-scale attack on the following day. It was extremely implausible that Orgaz would oppose an order from Franco. Moreover, the attack which began on 9 March was on the tiniest scale and it was not followed up on either 10 or 11 March. On 11 March, Orgaz was replaced as overall commander of the armies around Madrid by Saliquet. On 12 March, Varela was replaced by General Fernando Barrón. On the same day, Roatta sent a message to Franco to say that, without the guarantee of some diversionary activity in the Jarama, he could not move since his advance was being blocked by Republican units taken from the Jarama front.²³

The Italians later discovered that, until well into the battle, Franco had refused to give the order for Orgaz and Varela to advance in the Jarama, despite the fact that Barroso pleaded with him to do so. Franco tried to obscure this by having Roatta and Cantalupo informed that he had relieved Orgaz and Varela of their immediate commands specifically as a reprimand for the inaction of the Nationalist troops on the Jarama front. A slightly placated Mussolini telegrammed Roatta ‘I hope that Saliquet will not imitate the immorality of his predecessor’.²⁴ However, there was no question of Orgaz and Varela being in disgrace. Varela was promoted to Major-General on 15 March and posted to take command of the Avila division and Orgaz was given the crucial job of cresting the new mass army which Franco needed.²⁵ The fact that Franco felt able to move them suggests that he did not view the promised attack from the Jarama as a major priority.* Having removed Varela and Orgaz, Franco and Saliquet promised Roatta an attack in the Jarama valley for 12 March. This also failed to materialize. On that day, Republican troops counter-attacked and the Italian advance was halted with heavy losses just south-east of the village of Brihuega. Finally, there were attacks on 13, 14 and 15 March but on a very small scale.²⁶

With the lines more or less stabilised, a much chastened Roatta accepted that the advance would get no further. Aware that his troops were at their best moving forward but easily demoralised when under attack, he was anxious to avoid a total debacle. Franco, however, avoided Roatta’s frantic requests for a meeting in Salamanca. Finally, during the afternoon of 15 March, the Italian general caught up with Franco, Mola and Kindelán at Arcos de Medinaceli near the front. Roatta requested permission to withdraw his troops from the attack. His hope was that the small advance made could now be defended by Spanish troops. He recognized the poor defensive qualities of his own men and suggested that perhaps they could continue to advance further outside the capital, from north to south. The Generalísimo refused outright.

Franco was either culpably deficient in hard information or else maliciously determined to use the Italians as pawns in his preferred tactic of attrition. Contrary to all the evidence, he insisted that the Republic was ‘militarily and politically on the verge of defeat’ and that ‘the complete solution be sought in the region of Madrid, with the continuation pure and simple of the operations in course’. Roatta argued that further operations on the immediate Madrid front were doomed to failure given the apparent paralysis of the Nationalist forces in the Jarama, the sheer scale of Republican resistance and the exhaustion of the CTV. Franco simply refused to budge. He had had to accept the imposition of a joint general staff, the deployment of autonomous Italian units, the humiliating insinuation that Mussolini could run his war better than he could and the possibility that the victory would be won by the Italians to the detriment of his own political ambitions. His reluctance to help Roatta, either by fulfilling his promise for the attack from the Jarama or by relieving his troops in the line, smacked of revenge. He was rubbing the Italians’ noses in their earlier arrogant confidence that they could take Madrid alone and that the advance on Guadalajara would be a walk-over. He certainly seemed to be determined not to make any sacrifices of his own troops and happy to let the Italians exhaust themselves in a bloodbath with the Republicans.

At loggerheads, Franco and Roatta reached an uncomfortable and ambiguous compromise by which the Generalísimo agreed to the Italians resting until 19 March but not deciding firmly what would happen thereafter. On returning to his headquarters, a still seriously concerned Roatta wrote to Franco that to persist with the original plan would simply consume their best troops to little avail. He proposed instead the abandonment of the present operations and a regrouping for a future decisive operation. Franco began a series of consultations with his own generals.²⁷ During the lull, the Republicans counter-attacked again in force on 18 March. Unaware that disaster was imminent, Roatta again visited the Generalísimo in Salamanca. They rehearsed the arguments of three days earlier, with Roatta insisting that the Italian contingent should be replaced while Franco, ever obstinate in terms of giving up territory or admitting any kind of reverse, remained adamant that the Italians should renew the attack on Guadalajara.

While Roatta banged the table and complained violently about the missing offensive in the Jarama, Franco continued to maintain, either misguidedly or malevolently, that the Italians were massively superior in men and materials to the Republicans. As Franco was explaining why the assault on Guadalajara must be continued in some form or other, news arrived of a massive Republican assault.²⁸ The Italians had not used the lull to strengthen their defences which was a culpable negligence on the part of Roatta. Nevertheless, the ease with which they were overrun proves Roatta to have been correct in his contention to Franco about the relative weakness of his troops. The Republicans recaptured Brihuega and routed the Italians. Roatta returned to see Franco again on 19 March requesting that his ‘shock troops’ not be kept in a defensive function but be allowed to regroup and be used elsewhere. The Generalísimo refused. After further attacks, a personal appeal from Cantalupo finally persuaded Franco to substitute the CTV with Spanish units.²⁹

Mussolini was outraged, declaring to Ulrich von Hassell, the German Ambassador in Rome, that he had informed the Italian command in Spain that no one could return alive until a victory over the Republic had wiped out the shame of this defeat. On the basis of Roatta’s reports, he also blamed the Spaniards for failing to fire a shot to back up his forces and, in a telegram to Ciano, denounced the deplorable passivity of Franco’s forces.³⁰ The reaction of Franco and his staff was a mixture of disappointment at the defeat and Schadenfreude at the Italians’ humiliation. Italian fascist songs were sung in the Nationalist trenches with their words changed to ridicule the retreat. Nationalist officers at the headquarters of General Monasterio’s cavalry in Valdemoro, including Monasterio himself and Franco’s friend, the artillery officer Luis Alarcón de la Lastra, had toasted ‘Spanish heroism of whatever colour it might be’. Yagüe made no secret of the fact that he was delighted to see the arrogant Italians brought down a peg or two.³¹ Cantalupo advised Farinacci, who was still in Spain, that he ought not to risk returning to Salamanca.³²

Roatta maintained thereafter that the ultimate defeat was fundamentally the consequence of Franco’s failure to keep his word.³³ That view underestimates the ferocity of Republican resistance, the role played by the weather, the poor fitness, discipline, training and morale of the Italian troops and his own mistakes. Nonetheless, if the promised attack had materialised, the Republic would have been hard pressed to mount a defence and the outcome might have been very different. Significantly, Franco was anything but abashed by the defeat. On 23 March, talking to Colonel Fernando Gelich Conte, one of the Italian staff officers attached to his headquarters, he brushed it off as militarily irrelevant.³⁴ In fact, there is every reason to suppose that he was not displeased by the huge cost to the Republic of its victory in such a crippling confrontation in which the corresponding cost to the Nationalists had been borne by the Italians.

It has been suggested that Franco connived at the humiliation of the Italians.³⁵ That is an over-simplification since he was too cautious to risk a defeat whose consequences could not be foreseen. It is more likely that, in his desire to let the CTV confront and wear down the Republican forces around Madrid, he miscalculated the risks of not throwing his promised forces into battle. He had little desire to see the Italians win a sweeping and rapid victory when his own plans focused on a war sufficiently slow to permit thorough-going political purges.³⁶ It is significant that, a month before the defeat, Cantalupo reported to Rome that Mola and Queipo had insinuated to Franco that his prestige diminished in inverse proportion to the success of Italian arms.³⁷

Franco clearly felt that he was obliged to justify himself to the Duce. Accordingly, he wrote to Mussolini on 19 March a letter of self-exoneration containing a number of feeble and contradictory arguments. These ranged from alleging confusion over the dates for the launching of the Guadalajara offensive to an effort to diminish the gravity of the missing Jarama push by claiming that the Republican forces which had faced the CTV were dramatically smaller than, in reality, they had been.³⁸ He also sent a messenger to Cantalupo with an equally mendacious claim that, in fulfilment of the agreement reached with Roatta, he had ordered advances by Orgaz on 25 February and 1 March. According to this emissary, by the time of the 8 March advance on Guadalara, Orgaz had allegedly lost more than one third of his men and was unable to attack further. That had indeed been true two weeks earlier which is why Franco had importuned Faldella on 21 February to begin the Guadalajara offensive prematurely. If Orgaz’s troops were so depleted, it would imply at best an irresponsible lack of co-ordination between Franco and Roatta and at worst culpable military incompetence on Franco’s part in permitting the Guadalajara advance to take place in such circumstances. To make matters worse, in an interview with Cantalupo on 23 March, in an even more crass exercise of self-justification, Franco blamed everything on Orgaz for not speaking up about the weakness of his forces. But it was precisely because Franco had told Roatta about that weakness that the Italian commander had sent the second mixed brigade to reinforce Orgaz’s troops on 4 March.³⁹

The inescapable conclusion is that Franco sought to let the Italians bear the brunt of the fighting at Guadalajara while Orgaz’s forces regrouped after the battering they had received during the battle of Jarama. The only possible mitigation is that he did so in the post-Málaga misapprehension that the Black Shirts were near-invincible. Whatever Franco’s thoughts, Mussolini could see that he had been used but he had little choice but to continue supporting Franco. Guadalajara had smashed the myth of fascist invincibility and Mussolini found himself committed to Franco until the myth was rebuilt. Equally, however galling, it was now clear that it made more sense to work with Franco for a Nationalist victory than independently.⁴⁰ Shortly after his letter of exculpation, Franco had requested help for a huge assault on Bilbao. Ignoring remarks made by Roatta about the miraculous appearance of the necessary forces for Bilbao which had never materialized during the battle of Guadalajara, Mussolini ordered his commander henceforth to obey the instructions and directives of Franco. Italian forces would henceforth be distributed in Spanish units and subject to the command of Franco’s generals. When Cantalupo informed him of this on 28 March, Franco was delighted. The Italian Ambassador found him as if ‘freed of a nightmare’. Franco asked him to inform the Duce of his ‘joy at being understood and appreciated’.*

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