July 2009 Print

PART 1

Scott Quinn William f. Quinn

The murderers rang the doorbell and waited. It was nearly three o’clock in the morning on the 13^th of July, 1936, but their victim most likely was not asleep. Few residents of Madrid slept much during the heat of the summer of 1936. Political and social tensions had reached a breaking point and rumors of an armed revolt from the Right or the Left had all of Spain on edge.

 

To state that Spain was in the throes of anarchy is not an exaggeration. The Leftist Popular Front government, which ruled Spain after February 1936, looked the other way as priests were murdered and Catholic churches and schools were ransacked and set afire. Government inspectors closed schools run by religious congregations. Conservative judges were accused of dereliction of duty and dismissed from the bench. Strike after strike paralyzed Spain’s economy. Meanwhile, the government began its campaign to eliminate the leaders of the rightist parties.¹

The murderers—Leftist members of police and military who were loyal to the anti-Catholic Popular Front government—waited for their victim, Jose Maria Calvo y Sotelo, to answer the door of his apartment.² Calvo was no ordinary victim: He was a prominent member of parliament and a leader of the main Catholic party (CEDA).³ Erudite and articulate, Calvo earned the ire of the Popular Front government for insisting that an authoritarian, Catholic state was the answer to Spain’s problems. Calvo presented a difficulty for the government since he spoke for millions of Spaniards who counted on him to fight for the rights of Catholics in Madrid. Something needed to be done, and there were plenty of volunteers. Captain Fernando Condes, the leader of the squad sent to murder Calvo, presented his papers and persuaded Calvo to come to police headquarters for an emergency meeting. Although suspicious (the phone line to Calvo’s flat had been cut, restricting his access to outside counsel), he trusted that his status as the leader of the opposition would protect him from any harm. After kissing his wife and sleeping children, Calvo followed his kidnappers and walked silently to the waiting truck. A few minutes later the back of his head was blown away by one of the gunmen and his body dumped, like a piece of trash, at Madrid’s main cemetery.⁴

The discovery of Calvo’s body the next morning confirmed the fears of many on the Right that the Socialist government was unable or unwilling to maintain order, let alone obey the law. As the noted historian Stanley Payne has observed, “never before had a government’s own security forces, in collaboration with revolutionary gunmen, sequestered and murdered in cold blood the leader of the opposition.”⁵ Amidst the social and political chaos of the months following the disputed and close elections in February, concerned generals had begun to make plans to restore order if the situation deteriorated further. Calvo’s murder was the event which prompted the defenders of the Faith to issue a call to arms and put their plan into action. The Spanish Civil War had begun.

The Background

What could cause a country like Spain, whose cultural and historical identity was so intertwined with the Church, to reach the point where priests and religious were murdered simply for being Catholic? Though there were several causes of the Spanish Civil War that stretched back decades prior to the conflict, readers of Archbishop Lefebvre’s writings will not be surprised to learn that the genesis of the political, cultural and religious conflict was none other than the French Revolution, which began in 1789. The French Revolution, the world’s first international political revolution, affected the Church and Crown in Spain. The insidious ideas of the Enlightenment had already taken root in Spain during the last half of the 18^th century.⁶ Spanish reformers and “enlightened” clergy mimicked the ideas of an influential group of philosophers and intellectuals known as the Philosophes, who called for a diminished role for—and even destruction of—the Church and the elimination of the monarchy. Religious skepticism and revolutionary political ideas that preached the denial of authority were spread principally through a network of Masonic lodges across Europe.

Liberty, equality, and fraternity were the terrible words that inspired the French Revolution. The king and queen were executed and the new government confiscated all Church property. The revolutionary elements in France wanted nothing less than to create a new society free from religion and aristocracy, and were generous in imposing the death penalty on anyone who opposed their scheme. Man’s reason, not God’s wisdom, was the guiding principle for the creators of the new order. France remained in a state of murderous anarchy until 1795, when Napoleon Bonaparte ended the worst phase of the Revolution, becoming in the process one of the most powerful men in France. Napoleon then embarked on a series of successful military campaigns across Europe. In the process, he converted much of Europe into what was, essentially, an organized crime syndicate, installing family members as kings throughout the continent. The disaster that befell France caused many of the same Spaniards who dabbled in liberalism to return to traditional beliefs and practices.⁷ For the time being, Spain was safe.

A clash of fundamental principles—between those who believed in the divine right of the monarchy, whose legitimacy and authority come from God, and those who were seduced by revolutionary republicanism, a political theory that claims that authority comes from men, and which the French revolutionaries had let loose throughout Europe—took center stage in Spain during the 19^th century. Napoleon led the way. Although Spain had been somewhat isolated from the effects of the French Revolution, the situation changed in 1808 when Napoleon crossed the Pyrenees and deposed the Spanish Bourbon king Ferdinand VII and installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as king. The Spanish people rose up against Joseph and fought the French for the next six years until, in 1814, Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne. While he was in exile, a small group of middle-class liberals proclaimed a new constitution known as the Constitution of Cadiz.⁸ This anticlerical liberal constitution, which traced its origins to Enlightenment theories of government, represented an unprecedented assault on the Spanish Church: The Inquisition⁹ was abolished, popular sovereignty proclaimed, and a form of universal suffrage introduced. When Ferdinand VII returned to Spain, he abrogated some of the liberal provisions of the Constitution and returned the Church to her rightful status: The Inquisition was restored and Masonry condemned.¹⁰ Still, Spain and the Church would not recover from the damage inflicted by the introduction of these liberal political and social ideas.¹¹

The Carlists Revolt

With the death of Ferdinand VII in 1833, a political situation occurred that would have repercussions over 100 years later. By law and custom, his brother, Don Carlos, was the rightful heir to the throne, as Ferdinand VII had no son. However, Charles IV, the father of Ferdinand VII, secretly changed the law of succession shortly before his death, making it possible for Ferdinand’s daughter, Isabella II (with her mother Maria Cristina acting as regent), to become Queen. Maria Cristina added insult to injury and appointed a liberal government, which led to the supporters of Don Carlos—known as Carlists—to take up arms in the countryside and wage a long guerilla war. The Carlists were fervent Catholics from northern Spain who defended fiercely their ancient local rights and religion against the centralizing and anticlerical force of the modern state.¹² The anticlerical riots that occurred in other parts of Spain in the 1830s, along with the attacks on the Church by a series of liberal governments, including the mass confiscation and sale of Church property, reinforced the Carlists’ opposition to modern political and social ideas. A poster that appeared in the Basque region of Guipuzcoa in the early 1830s warned that a group of French-inspired usurpers threatened to “submerge us in an abyss of atheism and heresy.”¹³ The Carlists revolted three times between 1833 and 1876 in defense of the Church, and though they suffered military defeat, their attachment to the legitimate branch of the Bourbon monarchy and the Church never waned. Their participation in the Spanish Civil War would prove crucial to the success of the Nationalists.¹⁴

Political Turmoil, Unrest and Disaster

For Spain, much of the rest of the 19^th century can be characterized as a constant struggle between the Church against the Crown and the Army over the scope and nature of liberal constitutions. The Army used its influence to intervene in Spanish politics, generally in support of liberalism, in order to increase its prestige at the expense of the Church. The great statesman and Catholic visionary, Juan Donoso Cortes, in a famous speech on dictatorship delivered to the Spanish Parliament in 1849, warned of the coming tyranny of Socialism, which falsely promised that men will be like the rich, nobles, kings and—ultimately—gods.¹⁵ Donoso prophesied the destruction of civil society as religious control waned. His prophecies were accurate indeed.¹⁶ Spain even experimented with a republic in 1873-74, known as the First Republic. As a result, a more direct denunciation of political liberalism was made by Fr. Jaime Balmes, who declared: “Catholics know only one thing on this subject [forms of government] and that is that good social conditions cannot be formed out of bad men. They know that immoral men are bad, and that where there is no religion, morality cannot take root.”¹⁷ Later, toward the end of the 19^th Century, Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany published his enormously popular Liberalism Is a Sin in response to the liberal attitudes in Spain. Clearly, Catholics in Spain were fighting back.

A truce of sorts took hold as the 19^th century came to a close. A Catholic revival in literature, the arts and religious fervor flowered and lasted until the second decade of the 20^th century.¹⁸ Turn-of-the-century Spain had some reason for optimism. She survived more or less intact after nearly a century of civil war, and the political situation at home had stabilized. But an explosion in Havana Harbor in 1898 led to a humiliating defeat by the United States of America, which threw Spain into a military and political crisis that would not be resolved for more than three decades.

Rising Tensions

Like many countries at the beginning of the 20^th century, Spain struggled with the social effects of industrialization. Sadly, workers were treated poorly, and their resentment led many otherwise faithful Catholics to embrace a Socialist agenda. The long rule of King Alfonso XIII (1902-31) appeared to give the Church a key ally in her attempts to combat the effects of Socialism in Spain. The Catholic King’s close association with the Church gave the impression that Spain remained fundamentally committed to her Catholic identity. In reality, the social teachings of the Church, so eloquently made by Pope Leo XIII, did not find fertile ground in Spain, making it easy for Marxist and union agitators to create an atmosphere of intense and violent anticlericalism as they linked the Church with the economic problems in Spain. Anticlerical riots, inspired by union strikes, broke out in all parts of Spain in the first three decades of the 20^th century, with the region of Catalonia (Barcelona) suffering the most by far at the hands of the radicals. For example, during the “Tragic Week” in July 1909, one-third of religious buildings in Barcelona were damaged or destroyed. Churches and convents remained frequent targets of Leftist arsonists, even escalating to the point where the Cardinal of Tarragona was assassinated by anarchists in 1922.¹⁹ Moreover, Spain was in a protracted war in Morocco, often with disastrous results, which further soured the mood of the country. Politically, the country was racked by instability: From 1902 to 1923 there were 33 governments. Alfonso XIII, though a good Catholic, was a terrible politician.²⁰

Alfonso’s missteps eventually led to the emergence of a dictatorship under General Primo de Rivera. With the King’s backing, the regime, which lasted from 1923 to 1930, was in large part good to the Church, but as Primo’s popularity waned, so did the Church’s standing in the eyes of the working classes, who identified the Church with authoritarianism and repression. Alfonso dismissed an ailing Primo in 1930, and in 1931 the government, under immense pressure, held regional and local elections. The result was a crushing defeat for the King and the parties that supported the monarchy: The pro-republican parties won huge majorities in the cities, which effectively ended the monarchy in Spain. Alfonso left Spain for France on April 14, 1931, choosing exile rather than risking a civil war.

The Left Takes Charge

The men who made up the Second Republic (the First Republic lasted from 1873-1874) were not of such high character as Alfonso. From the beginning, the Second Republic “decided to launch a frontal assault on the Church” that “often seems difficult to comprehend.”²¹ It is important to note that the Church reached a diplomatic understanding with the Second Republic and issued no formal denunciation of the new regime.²² Sadly, there was no such graciousness from the leaders of the Republic towards the Church: Separation of Church and State was declared, public religious processions were prohibited, and Catholic teaching orders were forbidden, with the obvious goal of destroying Catholic education. Catholic churches and convents were burned as the police, acting on orders from the government, looked the other way.²³ Bishops critical of the new regime were exiled.²⁴

All of this was too much for Spaniards to accept, and in 1933 the Rightist,Catholic party CEDA swept the national elections. Yet because of an unusual electoral technicality, aided by an anti-Catholic President who single-handedly blocked the political will of the Spanish people, CEDA was not allowed to form a government for more than a year. The government that did form managed to roll back some of the Left’s more hostile legislation regarding the Church, but the campaign promises of CEDA were by no means fully implemented. When three CEDA deputies merely entered the government in 1934 (as was their right), the reaction of the Left was swift and violent: Revolution.²⁵ The revolt was successful at first and lasted for several weeks in some areas of Spain, and a young general named Francisco Franco was instrumental in quashing the uprising. Franco’s actions were never forgotten or forgiven by the Left. By now it was clear that Spain’s attempts at democracy had failed and that the Left was unwilling to engage in sensible, moderate legislation with respect to the Church. Indeed, the Left’s hatred of the Church was matched only by its disdain for working within the democratic process. As G. K. Chesterton so aptly put it, “Having lost the game by the rules of democracy, they [the Left] tried to win it after all entirely by the rules of war; in this case of Civil War.”²⁶

The Elections of 1936

The dysfunctional and acrimonious nature of government under the Second Republic could not continue, and elections were called for February 1936, in the hope that more moderate parties would prevail and calm the nerves of Spaniards who were drawn increasingly towards extremist parties on the Right and the Left. Unfortunately, the Left’s alliance with Communist parties precluded any sort of compromise, and when Spaniards went to the polls in February, the choices were between an intolerant Left and the Rightist parties who, more than ever, and with good reason, feared a victory of the Left. The general elections of 1936 were contested under a cloud of turmoil. The principal group on the right was an alliance of parties under the umbrella of CEDA. The Catholic Church, land owners and large companies gave both financial and political support to CEDA, which had won the election of 1933. Contesting from the left was the Popular Front, which was made up of various left-wing parties. The manifesto drafted by this coalition called for agrarian reform, which turned out to be nationalization of the land, and the dissolution of the army, civil guard, and religious orders in the Church. In addition, the Popular Front had previously called for the confiscation and nationalization of all the major industries in Spain. Class division and class warfare were the major themes of their campaign, and, inspired by the Soviets, they put the Catholic Church squarely in the midst of the “elite” classes and so demanded that the Church be destroyed and its property redistributed throughout Spain.

The campaign was a dangerous affair, particularly for the candidates and supporters of the Right. Political rallies were attacked repeatedly by government forces and, as the opening paragraph of this article demonstrates, even murder—both state-sanctioned and politics-driven—became all too familiar to the Spanish voter. It was dangerous even for an unlucky Spaniard to be caught hanging posters for the Right or attending Mass or other religious services, and political rallies were a continuous flash point for left-wing thugs. A typical example is given by Luis Bolin, former Director-General of the Spanish National Tourist Department after the Civil War, in his insightful and riveting book, Spain: The Vital Years. Bolin describes a political meeting in Antequera:

When the right-wing speakers began to denounce communist or “Red” violence, a police official put an end to the proceedings and a band of hooligans forced an entry into the hall and smashed all the furniture. Only the speakers were arrested.²⁷

With voter intimidation so rampant throughout the country and with much of the Right’s voice silenced or, at the very least, heavily censored, the Left claimed victory in the 1936 election. Even that victory was clouded by doubts as reports circulated about the honesty of the vote counting, intimidation at the polls, and the reckless recording of votes.²⁸ The election had been held on February 16, but the final results were not announced until March 1. The Popular Front demonstrated that they would tear apart Spain by violence if that were what it took to move into power immediately. Their campaign of violence and destruction had not been enough to secure unchallenged power in Spain, and they were anxious to assume a majority in parliament. People like CEDA leader Calvo represented an ongoing threat to that majority and so had to be dealt with in Soviet fashion. Murder at the highest levels in politics was still not a reach too far.

The Left had reason to be nervous. When the official results were announced, even with their massaging of the votes in the two weeks since the polls closed, the results were not a mandate for either side. The Right garnered 4,570,000 votes while the Left tallied 4,356,000. 340,000 voted for the Center, but the Left was able to form a Popular Front Government to initiate its own program.²⁹

State of Affairs in Spain on the Eve of the Spanish Civil War

The Popular Front realized that their majority was in danger of evaporating under the light of electoral scrutiny. Their response—again, predictable due to the influence of their Soviet advisers—was to create more chaos. The Church was even more targeted as a scapegoat for all things deemed inequitable and elitist in Spanish society.³⁰ Despite this stepped-up campaign, it was becoming clear that centuries of faithfulness to the Catholic Church throughout Spain was minimizing the effect of the lies lodged against the hierarchy, the ordinary clergy, and the worshippers, who only wished to continue to exercise their religion in all its truth and inspiration.³¹ To the Popular Front, inspiration from anywhere but the Spanish Communist principles was both dangerous (to the Left) and empowering (to the individual). Neither one was a desirable outcome.

The class struggle initiated by the Left and its Soviet advisers continued unabated at every level of Spanish society. Private cars were frequently stoned or even shot at, and in a move that backfired on the international stage, tourists were harassed to donate to something called the Red Relief Fund—oftentimes more than once. Since there were also frequent hotel and railroad strikes, these tourists had trouble leaving the country and did not feel welcome in it. When they returned home they told quite a different story from the government’s version of the Spanish state of affairs.³² Right under the noses of the Popular Front and its advisers from Moscow, the first stirrings of truth began to emerge from Spain as it hurtled towards civil war.

As the country continued its spiral toward anarchy, provocations from the Popular Front government intensified and became more overt. As a result, the government lost confidence in its ability to cling to power democratically. Of course, their whipping-boy of choice would be the Catholic Church. The old vices reappeared: From February to June, 1936, 170 churches were burned.³³ Mob rule replaced the rule of law. Catholic politicians were rounded up and imprisoned. Factory and land owners were murdered, and those who weren’t were forced to accede to the preposterous demands of strikers. The Catholic convert and poet Roy Campbell recounted his experiences in Toledo in the months before the Civil War. His eerie account confirms the worst about the motives and practices of the enemies of the Church.³⁴ People who were formerly his friends now openly taunted and threatened him and his family because of their allegiance to the Church. Catholics were effectively branded as criminals: Assisting at Mass was evidence that one was an enemy of the new State that the Left promised to create. Street battles between supporters of the Right and Left were common in cities and towns all across Spain. The Left’s murderous campaign provoked the Right to fight back, and the Left responded by targeting higher-profile victims, including politicians and businessmen. The breaking point had been reached. On edge, Spaniards braced for all-out civil war.

 

Scott Quinn assists at St. Vincent de Paul in Kansas City with his wife Jane and daughter Elizabeth. He holds an M.A. in History from Creighton University, where he studied modern European and U.S. colonial history. William Quinn is a long-time friend of the Society of St. Pius X. Both men have a love for Spain: Her people, her culture and her history. The authors wish to thank David Nuffer, Stephen E. Page, and Pat Quinn for their comments and suggestions.

 

 

(Endnotes)

¹ Joaquin Arraras, Francisco Franco: The Times and the Man (The Bruce Publishing Company, 1938), describes the terror in Spain in the spring of 1936, pp.140-153.

² Spanish surnames use the father’s surname first, then the mother’s. It is typical, however, to refer to an individual by his father’s surname only.

³ CEDA is an acronym for Confederacion Espanola de Derechas Autonomas which translates as Confederation of Autonomous Rightist Parties. CEDA comprised several Catholic parties with clerical affiliation.

⁴ Stanley G. Payne, Collapse of the Spanish Republic, 1933-1936: Origins of the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2006), pp.319-330.

⁵ Stanley G. Payne, The Franco Regime: 1936-1975 (Phoenix Press, 1987), p.97. See also pp.46-50.

⁶ For a detailed examination of the first principles of Liberalism, see Fr. Felix Sarda Y Salvany, What Is Liberalism? (Tan Books, 1979), pp.9-15. See also Stanley G. Payne, Spanish Catholicism: An Historical Overview (University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), chapters 2-3, for an overview of the Church in Spain during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

⁷ Payne, Spanish Catholicism, pp.69-70. Indeed, by the close of the 18th century, much of Europe was alarmed by the Revolution and France’s transformation–perfected under Napoleon–to a revolutionary empire. See W. Gene Shiels, S.J., History of Europe (Roman Catholic Books, originally published in 1941), pp.288-292, and Carlton J.H. Hayes and Parker Thomas Moon, Modern History (The Macmillan Company, 1928), pp.295-368, for excellent summaries of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s regime. Michael Oakeshott’s classic essay, “Rationalism in Politics” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Liberty Press, 1991), pp.5-42, dissects the self-indulgent rationalist perspective that has dominated Western political philosophy since the “Enlightenment.”

⁸ According to Payne, Spanish Catholicism, p.73, the new constitution was drawn up and approved by the “self-selected elite of middle- and upper-class liberals.”

⁹ The Inquisition was responsible for handling offenses against the Church.

¹⁰ Payne, Spanish Catholicism, p.75, and Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2001), p.41. Thomas links the Masonic lodges from Napoleonic France to the infusion of liberal ideas in Spain in the 19th century, aptly characterizing the lodges as “anti-religious.”

¹¹ William T. Walsh covers this episode in Spain’s history in his Characters of the Inquisition (P.J. Kennedy & Sons, 1940), pp.263-277.

¹² Payne, Spanish Catholicism, pp.81-82.

¹³ Jon Cowans, ed., Modern Spain: A Documentary History (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), pp.39-40.

¹⁴ Stanley G. Payne, Falange (Stanford University Press, 1961), p.115. The Carlists were instrumental in the success of the early stage of the revolt against the criminals of the Second Republic. See also Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1936-1939 (Princeton University Press, 1965), pp.225-226. In fact, General Emilio Mola, one of the chief conspirators of the rebellion, was forced to delay the uprising because the Carlists would not participate in the revolt unless they received assurances “that the new State would be anti-democratic,” in Brian Crozier, Franco (Little, Brown & Company, 1967), p.180.

¹⁵ Juan Donoso Cortes, “The Church, the State, and Revolution” in Bela Menczer, ed., Catholic Political Thought: 1789-1848 (University of Notre Dame Press, 1962), pp.160-176.

¹⁶ Ibid. Donoso also traces the roots of the problem not only to the French Revolution but to the Protestant Revolution. His argument is a compelling one which posits that political control (tyranny) ascends whenever religious control disappears and, of course, vice versa. The cases of the Soviet Union, Communist China, North Korea, and even contemporary politics in the USA confirm Donoso’s observation.

¹⁷ Fr. Jaime Balmes, “Faith and Liberty” in Menczer, ed., Catholic Political Thought, p.190. In other words, a morally healthy society has the necessary conditions to enable a free society. Fr. Balmes contrasts the American and French revolutions, and points out that in the American Revolution, multiple public invocations to ask God’s help were a key component of revolutionary meetings and proclamations, and that the American Revolution was “essentially democratic and the French was essentially impious,” p.187. The savagery that accompanied the French Revolution was meted out by men who blasphemed God. While we may smile at Fr. Balmes’s quaint description of the American Revolution, there is no denying the accuracy of his description of the French Revolution.

¹⁸ See Payne, Spanish Catholicism, pp.97-121. For an in-depth discussion of 19th century Spain, see Stanley G. Payne, A History of Spain and Portugal (The University of Wisconsin Press, 1973), chapters 19-21. Geoffrey Jensen, in his Irrational Triumph: Cultural Despair, Military Nationalism, and the Ideological Origins of Franco’s Spain (University of Nevada Press, 2002), has an excellent study on the revival of Catholic traditionalism within the military in chapter 5.

¹⁹ See Payne, Spanish Catholicism, Ch. 5. Payne provides several examples of the vicious and obscene anti-Catholic propaganda introduced in Spain by socialists and other anti-Catholic groups.

²⁰ Crozier, Franco, pp.69-74.

²¹ Payne, Spanish Catholicism, p.149. See also Payne, A History of Spain and Portugal, pp.630-632.

²² Ibid., pp.152-153. Ronald Fraser, in his outstanding oral history, Blood of Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War (Random House, 1986), p.526, quotes Fr. Alejandro Martinez, a priest in Madrid, regarding the early days of the Second Republic: “Here was a regime which, unbelievable as it may sound, had come in with clerical support, and in less than a month was condoning the burning of convents and churches. It was from that day–11 May, 1931–that I realized nothing would be achieved by legal means; sooner or later, to save ourselves, we should have to rise.…” G. K. Chesterton notes in an essay titled “The Return of Caesar” in The Well and the Shallows (Ignatius Press, 2006), pp.180-183, “that the Church generally had a Concordat with her enemies rather than her friends.”

²³ Crozier, Franco, p.115. Hugh Thomas writes that the government went so far as to ban the displaying of religious articles in classrooms on the absurd grounds that they posed a risk to good hygiene. See Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, p.71. See also Jensen, Franco, pp.57-60.

²⁴ E. Allison Peers, The Spanish Tragedy, 1930-1936: Dictatorship, Republic, Chaos (Oxford University Press, 1936), p.59.

²⁵ Payne, The Franco Regime: 1936-1975, p.79.

²⁶ Chesterton, The Well and the Shallows, “My Six Conversions,” Part VI, “The Case of Spain,” p.55.

²⁷ Luis Bolin, Spain: The Vital Years (J. B. Lippincott Company, 1967), p.146.

²⁸ Ibid., p.146. Roy Campbell, Light on a Dark Horse (Henry Regnery Company, 1952), p.300, recounts how he was marched at gunpoint to “vote Red.” Campbell was not a citizen of Spain and had no privileges to vote. Arthur F. Loveday, Spain, 1923-1948: Civil War and World War (The Boswell Publishing Co. Ltd.), pp.44-45. Arraras, Francisco Franco, pp.140-141. Arraras translates a statement published in Journal de Geneve by Niceto Alcala Zamora, former President of the Spanish Republic, in which he alleges illegalities and deception on the part of the Popular Front. This is verified by the government’s handling of the candidacy of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, the late dictator’s son. See Payne, Falange, pp.105-107.

²⁹ Payne, The Franco Regime, p.44.

³⁰ Alfred Mendizabal, in The Martyrdom of Spain: Origins of a Civil War (Geoffrey Bles: The Centenary Press, 1938), isolates the main problem: “And, alas, it was the innocent who paid–by churches in ashes, by poor nuns sacrificed to violent or veiled sectarianism, by children without a Christian school, by invalids and orphans with no aid from charity,” p.266.

³¹ The Left’s fanatical obsession with attacking the Church left the Right with a significant base of supporters. See Fraser, Blood of Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War, p.84. His interviews with ordinary Spaniards of all political stripes provide a unique perspective for the modern reader.

³² Not surprisingly, Bolin especially took note of this. See Bolin, Spain: The Vital Years, p.149 and pp.302-306.

³³ Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (Penguin Books, 2006), p.48.

³⁴ Roy Campbell, Light on a Dark Horse, pp.291-312.

The Siege of the Alcazar

The siege of the Alcazar occurred in the first days of the war and played out in an almost isolated manner vis-à-vis the war in general. Due to the relative positions of the Nationalist and Republican armies at the beginning of hostilities, the Alcazar, located in Toledo, was not considered vital to either army’s immediate success. Indeed, Toledo was ringed for 50 miles by provinces and towns under Republican control and, except for the potential of tying up Republican war assets, could not have offered any value to Franco at the beginning of the war. What it could—and did—offer was an opportunity of a most extraordinary morale boost to the Nationalists as they scrambled to consolidate positions and defend vulnerable areas they had won early in the fighting in other parts of Spain. The defense of the Alcazar was also being watched by the foreign governments Franco was trying to woo in hopes of the Nationalists receiving men and materiel from them. A successful defense of the Alcazar, given its historical significance, would send a strong signal of a winning horse in the race. The Alcazar had been diminishing as a vital cog in the Spanish military. Though it contained two academies, the Academies of Infantry and Cavalry, the Republican government had been lowering the number of cadets that both academies trained. Communists and Socialists within the government demanded that army officers be promoted from within the ranks and thus saw no need to train an “elite” officers corps at the Alcazar. As a result the enrollment of cadets had dropped to a historical low of 130 or so as opposed to over a thousand cadets in years past. Even many of the cadets who were actually enrolled at the academies were away on vacation in July of 1936 and so were not available for its defense.¹ It is no wonder, then, that the Republicans thought they would only have to make a perfunctory demand for surrender of the fortress from the Nationalist commanding officer, Colonel Moscardo, and have the small detachment of Nationalist officers and cadets as their prisoners. What they got was a quite different response. Almost immediately Colonel Moscardo rallied the few cadets available to him along with the Guardia Civil, some retired military officers, citizens of Toledo who were properly disposed to Nationalist Spain, as many military members who were in the area and could reach the Alcazar as he could find, and some of the town’s civilian population, including Sisters from a local convent, who wished to come into the Alcazar for security purposes. All told though, Colonel Moscardo still had fewer than 800 capable military defenders inside the Alcazar and at the Arms factory, some two or three miles away. In addition, he had almost 700 noncombatant civilians, including women and children, to care for inside the walls. Moscardo brought all the weapons and ammunition he could retrieve from the Arms Factory into the fortress. The morning of July 21 brought the first sightings of government troops making their way towards the Alcazar and moving on the Arms Factory. One last contingent of trucks was sent to the Arms Factory and, while the commanding officer of the Republican troops was trying to negotiate the surrender of the Arms Factory, these trucks made a hurried trip to the Alcazar with their ammunition and weapons. This trip turned out to be fortuitous because when the siege was finally relieved on September 27, 1936, ammunition was the only thing not in short supply or exhausted. Geoffrey McNeill-Moss, in his wonderfully detailed book, The Epic of the Alcazar, estimates that the defenders of the Alcazar had more than 1.5 million rounds at their disposal thanks to Colonel Moscardo’s quick action. The siege was one of the most horrendous and brutal episodes in modern warfare. The Alcazar was completely isolated from the rest of Franco’s army and had absolutely no hope of a quick relief operation. The defenders were outgunned, facing aerial bombardments and heavy artillery shelling, and had no way of replenishing any supplies including medical supplies and food. Throughout the 70 days, they continued to resist and inflicted enough damage on the attacking Republican forces to keep them at bay. By the end of the siege the defenders were starved, exhausted and barely mobile but they had held. They had been reduced to drinking stagnant water and had eaten all the meat available to them including horse meat. They had started eating mule meat and barley paste substituted for bread. The grand walls of the Alcazar were reduced to rubble which the defenders continued to use as protection for their snipers. McNeill-Moss reports that during the siege the defenders endured 30 aerial bombardments, 35 flame-thrower attacks, and three powerful mines exploded in tunnels dug under the Alcazar’s walls by Republican miners. For 70 long days the Alcazar had held, inspiring the Nationalist army and showing the world that, in defense of freedom and the Catholic Church, they would face all odds and offer their all for Spain. For the extraordinary gains in morale on the Nationalist side, the Republicans suffered severe losses of morale as well as materiel and men. For 70 days they had been unable to take a completely isolated, under-manned fortress. They had employed 15,000 men in the attempt–men who were sorely needed by the Republicans on other fronts. In attacking, they had lost some 3,000 men and upwards of a million dollars’ worth of ammunition, and had resorted to executing their own commanders for failure to take the Alcazar.² After the Alcazar was relieved Colonel Moscardo, the “hero of the Alcazar,” asked for no special ceremony or honors for himself. He only requested that he be given command of a combat unit and continue to fight the war, a request that was honored.

¹ G. McNeill-Moss, The Epic of the Alcazar, 1937, p38

² H. Edward Knoblaugh, Correspondent in Spain, 1937, pp.50-52.

Guernica

One of the most famous paintings of the 20th Century is Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, a grotesque, fragmented work that Picasso painted to commemorate the bombing by the Nationalists of a Basque town in Spain by the same name. Picasso intended the viewer of the painting to sympathize with the victims of supposed Nationalist terror bombings of innocent civilians. Guernica is certainly the most easily recognizable piece of pacifist propaganda in the world, and is singularly responsible for creating and sustaining the myth Guernica. The myth posits that Guernica was an “open town” with no military purpose whatsoever. According to pro-Communist propaganda, Guernica was bombed in broad daylight on market day, the busiest day of the week, in order to inflict the most casualties and terrorize the most people. Leftist historians like Paul Preston make this claim in spite of evidence to the contrary.¹ One key motive for the Left to fabricate evidence goes to the heart of why the civil war was being fought: Religion. As Douglas Jerrold points out in Arnold Lunn’s Spanish Rehearsal, governments like Great Britain and the United States of America wanted to support the Republican government, but Catholic attitudes in those countries in support of Franco kept them from making a move that would have been damaging politically.² Guernica is in the Basque region, home of fervent Catholics who supported the Republic. Having “proof” that Franco’s forces deliberately targeted Catholics for murder would have destroyed Franco’s reputation in the eyes of Catholics, thus giving Great Britain and the USA the excuse they needed to become involved in the war on the side of the Republic.³ So what really happened? Was Guernica a legitimate military target? Guernica was indeed bombed, and Guernica was indeed a legitimate military target: It was home to an arms production facility, a district military command center, a communications hub, and occupied by Republican troops. Moreover, the bombing was not a strategic “rain of bombs.”⁴ Jerrold observed a lack of pockmarked streets and other tell-tale signs that are visible in the aftermath of a town that has been heavily bombed. In fact, the likeliest explanation for the vast destruction of Guernica was that the Republican troops set fire to the town as they were retreating, a tactic they committed in other cities during the war, no doubt inspired by their Soviet (Russian) advisors.⁵ Bolin also notes that neither Nationalists nor the “Reds” bombed towns “wantonly,” a comment which makes sense when looked at from the perspective of a senior military combatant-leader. The victor in a civil war obviously remains in his country. It makes no sense to destroy infrastructure and alienate his fellow citizens by indiscriminately bombing them. What should have been mourned as another tragic episode in a tragic war proved to be invaluable PR for the Republic, and it is this myth, rather than the truth, which most people believe.⁶

¹ See Paul Preston, Franco (Basic Books, 1994), pp.244-247 for his thundering denunciation of the bombing.

² Lunn, Spanish Rehearsal, pp.204-206, and Tierney, FDR and the Spanish Civil War, p. 70.

³ Bolin, Spain: The Vital Years, pp.274-282 and pp.355-360. Stanley Payne, in his Basque Nationalism (University of Nevada Press, 1975), p.194 also points out that Franco “normally tried to avoid the destruction of civilians and of economic resources.” See n.58 in Payne’s Basque Nationalism for his critique of both sides’ arguments.

⁴ Stanley Payne, Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany and World War II (Yale University Press, 2008), pp.36-37.

⁵ The Russians are famous for their scorched-earth tactic to defeat an invading army.

⁶ Bolin laments the lack of PR sophistication on the part of the Nationalists, Spain: The Vital Years, p.282.