Chapter 12: Franco’s Slow War of Annihilation
Basque Country
"In Galicia, Castile, León and Navarre, the areas of the north where there had been virtually no resistance to the coup, the elimination of leftists, trade unionists and supposed supporters of the Republic was immediate and thorough. In the meantime, Franco’s African forces and the columns organized by army officers and landowners were bloodily purging the southern countryside. That still left the Basque Country, Santander, Asturias, much of Aragon and all the eastern seaboard in Republican hands. The military coup had failed in most of Guipúzcoa, and the Popular Front parties had created a Defence Junta in San Sebastián. It and the smaller juntas in other towns were largely dominated by the Socialists and Communists. Basque nationalists participated in the hope of maintaining public order. Their priority was to prevent executions of rightists being carried out by the Communists.1"
"While the rest of the Basque Country remained under Republican control, anti-clerical violence was relatively limited, significantly less than in many other provinces. Sixty-nine priests died at the hands of leftists, the majority in Vizcaya, while in Guipúzcoa, four clergy were killed. This was the consequence of the lesser influence of the CNT and the committed efforts of Basque nationalists, Republicans and moderate Socialists to prevent bloodshed. Churches were not attacked and religious practices continued without interruption. Nevertheless, right-wingers were in danger. In the industrial town of Rentería, near the provincial capital San Sebastián, the local Carlist leader was arrested and shot. The total number of deaths in Rentería was three. In Tolosa, in the south of the province, right-wingers involved in the military plot were shot and thirteen Carlists were taken to San Sebastián and executed. As in most places, revolutionary committees were established which arrested wealthy holidaymakers along with members of the local bourgeoisie. Moderate Socialists and Basque nationalists tried hard to ensure their safety. The starkest exception was the provincial capital, where 183 people were executed, more than half of the total of 343 people killed in Guipúzcoa while it was under Republican control.3"
"Already on 23 July, Carlist troops from Navarre had entered the southern part of Guipúzcoa. Although they encountered no resistance, in Cegama and Segura they sacked the headquarters of Republican parties and the Batzoki (centres) of the PNV (Basque Nationalist Party), whose militants were detained and mistreated. Some were shot and many more subjected to arbitrary fines.5 In early August, General Mola began a campaign to cut off the Basque Country from the French border. Thus under the Carlists Colonel José Solchaga Zala and Colonel Alfonso Beorleguí y Canet, commander of the Civil Guard in Navarre, large numbers of Requetés set off from Navarre towards Irún and San Sebastián. Beorleguí was a fearless but rather childlike giant. When his column was bombed, he simply opened his umbrella.6 Irún and Fuenterrabía were being shelled from the sea and attacked daily by German and Italian bombers. They dropped rebel pamphlets threatening to repeat what had been done in Badajoz. San Sebastián was also heavily shelled from the sea and eight civilian right-wingers and five army officers were executed in reprisal.7 Irún’s poorly armed and untrained militia defenders fought bravely but were overwhelmed on 3 September. Thousands of panic-stricken refugees fled across the international bridge from Irún across the River Bidasoa to France. The last defenders, largely anarchists enraged by their lack of ammunition, shot some rightist prisoners in Fuenterrabía and set parts of Irún on fire.8"
"In total, the rebels murdered sixteen priests in the entire Basque region and imprisoned and tortured many more. One of those killed, Celestino Onaindía Zuloaga, was selected because his younger brother Alberto, a canon of the Cathedral of Valladolid, was a friend of the Basque President José Antonio Aguirre, for whom he was a kind of roving ambassador. Another, Father Joaquín Iturricastillo, was shot on 8 November, after being denounced as a dangerous nationalist for criticizing cheek-to-cheek waltzing as contrary to Basque customs. In general, the names of those to be executed appeared in blacklists brought by the Carlists from Pamplona. Executions of priests led to protests to Franco by Cardinal Gomá, who nonetheless justified them to the Vatican as the result of priests engaging in political activity. When Father Alberto Onaindía heard the news of the murder of his brother, he said: ‘if this was how the army behaved with the Basque clergy, what would it be like for civilians!’12"
"While the attack on Madrid was the principal rebel preoccupation, the Basque front remained static until late March 1937. Even before the fall of San Sebastián, Mola had initiated secret negotiations with the Basque Nationalist Party. He hoped for a peaceful surrender of Vizcaya in return for a promise not to destroy Bilbao and a guarantee of no subsequent repression. Given what had happened after the captures of Irún and San Sebastián, the PNV leadership was not inclined to believe him. Alberto Onaindía was the principal PNV interlocutor with Mola’s representative. He appealed for Mola not to bomb Bilbao on the grounds that to do so would provoke reprisals against the 2,500 imprisoned rightists in the city.15 On 25 and 26 September 1936, major bombing raids on Bilbao caused dozens of deaths and mutilations of women and children."
"As had been predicted, this provoked an outburst of rage from the starving population. Despite the intervention of the local forces of order, anarchists assaulted two prison ships and murdered sixty rightist detainees, including two priests. Greater efforts to prevent similar atrocities were made in the wake of the formation of a Basque government on 7 October, after the Republic had granted regional autonomy the day before. Sporadic bombing raids continued, but nothing had prepared the city for the scale of a sustained attack on 4 January 1937. In response, there was an even more ferocious incursion into the city’s four prisons, when 224 right-wingers were killed, mostly Carlists, but also several priests and some Basque nationalists. The main culprits were anarchists, but UGT militiamen sent to put a stop to the killing joined in at one of the prisons. At considerable risk, members of the Basque government went to the prisons and managed to control the carnage before it reached all the prisoners.16 In contrast with the repression in Madrid and even more so with that throughout the rebel zone, the Basque government accepted responsibility for the atrocities and permitted the families of the victims to hold public funerals. Proceedings to bring the culprits to justice were initiated but had not been completed when Bilbao fell. The remaining prisoners were well treated and released safe and sound before the rebel occupation of Vizcaya. The Tribunal Popular in Bilbao, which had begun to function in October 1936, held 457 trials and issued 156 death sentences, of which nineteen were carried out.17"
"By the end of March 1937, Mola had gathered nearly 40,000 troops for a final assault on Vizcaya. He opened his campaign with a widely publicized threat broadcast on radio and printed in thousands of leaflets dropped on the main towns: ‘If your submission is not immediate, I will raze Vizcaya to the ground, beginning with the industries of war. I have ample means to do so.’18 On 31 March, he arrived in Vitoria to put the final touches to the offensive that was to be launched the following day. To crush enemy morale, he ordered the execution of sixteen prisoners, including several popular local figures, one of whom was the Mayor. This led to protests from the local right.19 This act of gratuitous violence was followed by a massive four-day artillery and aircraft bombardment of eastern Vizcaya, in which the small picturesque country town of Durango was destroyed: 127 civilians died during the bombing and a further 131 died shortly afterwards as a consequence of their wounds. Among the dead were fourteen nuns and two priests.20 Four days after the bombing of Durango, Franco met the Italian Ambassador, Roberto Cantalupo, and explained the reasons for such savagery: ‘Others might think that when my aircraft bomb red cities I am making a war like any other, but that is not so.’ He declared ominously that ‘in the cities and the countryside which I have already occupied but still not redeemed, we must carry out the necessarily slow task of redemption and pacification, without which the military occupation will be largely useless’. He went on: ‘I am interested not in territory but in inhabitants. The reconquest of the territory is the means, the redemption of the inhabitants the end.’21"
"Increasingly, Mola relied on the air support of the German Condor Legion, whose Chief of Staff and later leader was Lieutenant Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, who was to mastermind the German Blitzkrieg invasion of Poland. Durango saw the beginning of Richthofen’s experiments in terror bombing designed to break the morale of the civilian population and also to destroy road communications where they passed through population centres. On the night of 25 April, presumably on Mola’s instructions, the rebel radio at Salamanca broadcast the following warning to the Basque people: ‘Franco is about to deliver a mighty blow against which all resistance is useless. Basques! Surrender now and your lives will be spared.’22 The mighty blow was the obliteration of Guernica in one afternoon of relentless bomb attacks. On the day after the bombing, an eyewitness, Father Alberto Onaindía, wrote a passionate letter to Cardinal Gomá: ‘I have just arrived from Bilbao with my soul destroyed after having witnessed the horrific crime that has been perpetrated against the peaceful town of Guernica.’ He told the Cardinal of ‘Three hours of terror and Dantesque scenes. Children and mothers collapsed on the roadside, mothers screaming in prayer, a population of believers murdered by criminals who have not the slightest claim to humanity. Señor Cardinal, for dignity, for the honour of the gospel, for Christ’s infinite pity, such a horrendous, unprecedented, apocalyptic, Dantesque crime cannot be committed.’ Describing scenes of the sick burned alive, the wounded buried in mounds of ashes, Onaindía appealed to Gomá to intercede, reminding him of international law and ‘an eternal law, God’s law, that forbids the killing and murder of the innocent. This was trampled underfoot on Monday in Guernica. Which cruel personage coldly planned this horrific crime of burning and killing an entire peaceful town?
Onaindía’s letter ended with a plea to Gomá to prevent the implementation of the rebel threats that Bilbao would be next. Gomá’s dismissive reply with its repetition of Mola’s threat was a spine-chilling affirmation of the Church’s official support for Franco’s war of annihilation: ‘I regret, as anyone would, what is happening in Vizcaya. I have suffered for months, God is my witness. I particularly regret the destruction of your towns, where the purest faith and patriotism once dwelt. But it was not necessary to be a prophet to foresee what is now happening.’ In an angry reference to Basque loyalty to the Madrid government, Gomá fulminated, ‘Peoples pay for their pacts with evil and for their perverse wickedness in sticking to them.’ He then casually endorsed Mola’s threats: ‘I take the liberty of replying to your anguished letter with a simple piece of advice. Bilbao must surrender, it has no other choice. It can do so with honour, as it could have done two months ago. Whichever side is responsible for the destruction of Guernica, it is a terrible warning for the great city.’23’
When the insurgents reached the burned-out remnants of Guernica on 29 April, the Carlist Jaime del Burgo asked a lieutenant colonel of Mola’s staff: ‘was it necessary to do this?’ The officer barked: ‘This has to be done with all of Vizcaya and with all of Catalonia.’24 Although the Caudillo’s propaganda service went to great lengths to deny that Guernica had been bombed, there is no doubt that Mola and Franco shared the ultimate responsibility and were pleased with the outcome.25"
"The terror provoked by artillery and aerial bombardment and political divisions within the Republican ranks ensured the gradual collapse of Basque resistance. The death of Mola in an aircraft accident on 3 June made no difference. The Army of the North, under the command of General Fidel Dávila, continued its march on Bilbao. When the city fell on 19 June, 200,000 people were evacuated westwards into Santander, first on trawlers. Then, when the Francoists had taken the port of Bilbao, the refugees fled in cars, lorries, horse carts or on foot. They were bombed and strafed by the Condor Legion along the way.27 Fifteen women were shot, their deaths announced as suicides.28 Shops were looted and Falangists from Valladolid were given free rein. The subsequent repression was implemented on the pseudo-legal basis of the ‘emergency summary courts martial’ which had replaced the application of the edict of martial law since the conquest of Málaga in February. Nearly eight thousand were imprisoned in punishment for their nationalist ambitions, many of whom were forced into work battalions. When executions began, in December following the first trials, there would be several hundred victims of firing squads and at least thirty executed by garrotte vil.29 Nevertheless, the repression in the Basque Country was, according to the senior military prosecutor Felipe Acedo Colunga, of notably less severity than elsewhere. Two possible reasons for this were the rebels’ need for skilled labour to run Basque industries and the fact that the Catholic Church had less need to pursue a vengeful policy in a largely Catholic province.30 There have been wildly different claims of the number of executions in Vizcaya but the most reliable estimate to date is 916.31
Despite these deaths, the Carlist press in Navarre demanded the extermination of Basque nationalists. The newly imposed Falangist Mayor, José María de Areilza, himself a Basque, gloated in victory, declaring on 8 July: ‘The revolting, sinister, heinous nightmare called Euskadi has been smashed for ever … You have fallen for ever, self-seeking, wretched, twisted Basque nationalist toady Aguirre, you who pretended to be someone during eleven months of crime and robbery while the poor Basque soldiers were being hunted down in the villages with lassos like four-legged animals, leaving their pelts scattered over the mountains of Vizcaya.’32 Areilza was active in the repression, denouncing many individuals who were then imprisoned."
"In addition to the executions, a significant element of the repression in the Basque Country was constituted by fines and confiscations. Many doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers had their licences to practise withdrawn. As elsewhere, schoolteachers were a prime target. The Basque President or Lehendakari, José Antonio Aguirre, was fined 20 million pesetas and his property seized. Many businesses and properties were handed over to rebel supporters and bank deposits confiscated. In 1939, the rebels imposed a fine of 100 million pesetas on the shipping magnate Sir Ramón de la Sota, who had died three years earlier. His family was stripped of all of his businesses and his entire property, including forty ships that had been used in the evacuation of Bilbao. A typical case was that of the Abando family. The seventy-seven-year-old businessman Julián de Abando y Oxinaga was arrested, although seriously ill, and hit with a fine of over 1 million pesetas. Two of his sons were arrested with him and condemned to long prison sentences. One of them, the distinguished gynaecologist Dr Juan Blas de Abando y Urrexola, had his clinic confiscated.41
Another element of the repression was directed against the Basque language. In his notorious speech when he took over as Mayor of Bilbao, José María de Areilza declared: ‘the great shame of the separatist clergy is finished for ever’. The close relationship between the Basque clergy and the people was targeted by the prohibition of the use of Basque language Euskera in all religious activities, whether collective prayer, sermons or the teaching of the catechism. Instructions from the ecclesiastical authorities permitting the use of Euskera were overruled by General Severino Martínez Anido, Franco’s head of public order. Priests who spoke to their Euskera-speaking flocks in their native languages were given huge fines.42"
"Among the prisoners taken at Santoña were eighty-one priests from the Corps of Chaplains of the Basque Army, a unique body among the Republican forces, dedicated to providing Mass and the sacraments at the front. Three were condemned to death (although their sentences were later commuted). The others were given sentences ranging from six to thirty years in prison. One of these priests, Victoriano Gondra y Muruaga, was known as ‘Aita Patxi’ (Father Frank), having taken the name Francisco de la Pasión on joining the Passionist Order. Imprisoned, along with the other Gudaris (Basque soldiers), in the concentration camp at San Pedro de Cardeña near Burgos, he was sentenced with them to forced labour. Learning that an Asturian Communist sentenced to death for trying to escape was married with five children, Aita Patxi offered himself to be shot instead. He was told mendaciously that his request had been accepted and the Asturian pardoned, and subjected to a pretence of execution by firing squad. He learned the next day that the Asturian had been shot at dawn.43"
Santander
"Tension was simmering in the city already when the arrival of almost 170,000 refugees caused massive social dislocation. Deep resentment was generated among the local population by dramatic food shortages and the sight of thousands of Basques, including wounded and mutilated soldiers, sleeping in the streets. A number of Basques were murdered by Neila’s own checa. Revenge attacks were carried out by Basque soldiers. A group of nearly forty Basque priests were rescued from being murdered by anarchists only after payment of a large ransom. The defence of the province was undermined not only by these divisions but also by the fact that neither the Basque nor the Asturian forces felt commitment to the task. Moreover, the second-in-command of these disparate forces, Colonel Adolfo Prada Vaquero, told Azaña that 85 per cent of those from Santander were conscripts of dubious loyalty. On 14 August 1937, an army of 60,000 troops, amply supplied with Italian arms and equipment and backed by the Condor Legion and the Corpo di Truppe Volontarie, began to encircle Santander. In brilliant sunshine, massive air and artillery support as well as numerical superiority ensured a virtual walk-over as they easily brushed aside the disorganized Republican forces and the remnants of the Basque Army. Prada claimed that the lack of resistance was manifested in the fact that the rebel forces advanced faster than on manoeuvres. Santander itself fell on 26 August. The commander of the northern forces, General Mariano Gámir Ulibarri, delayed ordering an evacuation, and so relatively few were able to escape. The Mayor, who remained to surrender the city, was immediately shot.37
The consequent repression was notably harsher than in the Basque Country. One of the most striking executions was that of Colonel José Pérez y García Argüelles. He had been Military Governor of Santander on 18 July 1936. Because of his involvement in the coup, he had been condemned to death by a Tribunal Popular, but his sentence had been commuted to imprisonment. When the rebels arrived, he was arrested because his indecision between 18 and 20 July was regarded as contributing to the failure of the coup. He was tried and sentenced to death on 25 October 1937 and executed on 18 November. More than 13,000 people were tried, of whom 1,267 were sentenced to death. A further 739 were murdered in extra-judicial paseos and at least 389 died of maltreatment in prison.38"
"In the meantime, the Basque forces, having dropped out of the fight altogether, had gathered at Santoña to the east of Santander. They believed that they would be evacuated to France on the basis of the so-called ‘Pact of Santoña’ negotiated with the Italians by the Basque Nationalist Party. This belief was based on an offer made on 23 July by Franco’s brother, Nicolás, of no reprisals and facilities for the evacuation of prominent figures if the Basques surrendered. After long delays, during which they might have been able to organize an earlier evacuation, the Basques finally agreed to surrender to the Italians at Santoña on 26 August. In accordance with the agreement made, 473 Basque political and military leaders embarked on two British ships, the SS Seven Seas Spray and the SS Bobie, under Italian protection. The next day, rebel warships blockaded the port on Franco’s orders and Dávila told the Italians to disembark the refugees. They refused and held the prisoners for four days until, on 31 August, Franco personally ordered the Italians to hand them over.39 After assurances that the surrender conditions would be respected, the Italians relinquished the captives on 4 September. To their horror, summary trials began at once and hundreds of death sentences were passed. Among the victims were the entire General Staff of the Basque Army. The prisoners tried in Santoña were taken to Bilbao for execution in December 1937.40"
Asturias
"In Asturias, the legacy of the repression after October 1934 ensured that the struggle would be extremely bitter. On 18 July 1936, the coup had failed except for the two rebel outposts of the Simancas barracks in Gijón and the city of Oviedo which was taken as a result of the duplicity of Colonel Antonio Aranda. Declaring his loyalty to the Republic, he convinced the local authorities that he approved of arms being distributed to the workers. However, claiming not to have enough weapons and ammunition in Oviedo for them all, he assured the local left-wing forces that he had arranged for supplies in León. On Sunday 19 July, about 3,500 unarmed miners and steelworkers confidently left the city for León, some by train, others in a convoy of trucks. About three hundred were given obsolete weapons with inappropriate ammunition and the entire group continued south, reaching Benavente in Zamora. Meanwhile in Oviedo, Aranda declared for the rebels and other workers awaiting arms were massacred. In Benavente, on 20 July, news reached the militia expedition of Aranda’s treachery and they decided to return to Oviedo. Those who had come by train had to return via Ponferrada, a town already in the hands of the Civil Guard. The poorly armed militia fought bravely there but suffered many casualties and retreated back to Asturias, many on foot. By 21 July, the miners travelling by truck from Benavente had returned and besieged Oviedo. The Asturian Popular Front Committee established its headquarters in Sama de Langreo under the presidency of Belarmino Tomás.44"
"In Gijón, the coup had failed in large part because of the indecision of the commander of the Simancas barracks, Colonel Antonio Pinilla Barceló. Besieged by the anarchists who dominated the local committee, Pinilla had overseen by radio the fierce bombardment of the city by the rebel battlecruiser Almirante Cervera. On 14 August alone, air attacks and naval artillery made direct hits on the railway station and a hospital leaving fifty-four dead and seventy-eight seriously wounded. Under the umbrella of the consequent popular outrage, a group of FAI militants, accompanied by some Communists, headed to the Church of San José where two hundred right-wing prisoners were being held. They selected the most prominent and murdered them. A second group of militiamen arrived in the evening and took away another batch, including twenty-six priests and religious. Other individuals were shot in the course of the night. In total, 106 right-wing prisoners were killed.45 The barracks was stormed from 19 to 21 August by the local militia. Facing defeat, Pinilla rejected offers that the lives of the defenders would be respected if he surrendered and requested that the rebel warship fire on the building. Assuming the message to be a trick, the commander of the Almirante Cervera did not fire. The barracks was overrun and Pinilla and his men were executed in the ruins.46
The siege of Oviedo lasted another two months. Inside the city, Aranda waged war on what he considered to be the internal enemy. He himself claimed that Republican supporters made up half of the city and one of his supporters put the figure at 75 per cent of the population.47 Aranda also told Webb Miller of the United Press that seven hundred prisoners were held as hostages.48 Republican sources put the figure at more than one thousand, including the wives of working-class leaders and parliamentary deputies for Asturias. Of many, nothing was ever heard again. Shortly after Aranda had taken over the city, he launched an attack on the loyal Santa Clara barracks of the Assault Guards. In the aftermath, twenty-five militiamen and two Assault Guards were shot. It has been suggested that the repression was limited by the rebels’ fears of reprisals if the city fell to the besieging miners. Certainly, Aranda himself kept at some distance from the repression, but an atmosphere of terror was nevertheless maintained by his Delegate for Public Order, Mayor Gerardo Caballero, who had been prominent in the repression after October 1934. Under his orders, Falangist squads hunted down leftists at night. Corpses were often found in the streets and more than sixty unidentified bodies, including twelve women, were deposited in local cemeteries. During the siege, prisoners were used as human shields.49
There could be little doubt that the relative restraint of the repression would change if the relief column from Galicia were to liberate the city. The column had nearly 19,000 men, having been reinforced at the end of September with a bandera of the Legion (five hundred men) and eight tabores of Regulares (two thousand men). Along the way, any militiamen captured were shot. Moreover, as the column had taken small towns along the way, there were numerous executions without trial of schoolteachers, including women, and others assumed to be Republican supporters. After the columns had moved on, squads of Falangists began the bloody task of what was euphemistically called ‘cleansing’. One group which operated in small towns like Luarca, Boal, Castropol and Navia murdered many including several young women. The gang was notorious for the ‘cangrejo’ (crab), the green truck in which they transported their victims to the remote areas where they were murdered. In addition to many extra-judicial murders, many people were subjected to the briefest summary trials in which they were sentenced to death for ‘military rebellion’.50"
"After the arrival of the relief column, Republican forces tried to recapture Oviedo. Although remaining dominant in the south and east of the province, their efforts were in vain. Once Santander had fallen, Asturias was in Franco’s sights and, to delay his expected onslaught, General Vicente Rojo now launched a ferocious assault aimed at capturing Zaragoza. Republican forces attacked the small town of Belchite. This time Franco did not take the bait as he had at Brunete but began a great three-pronged assault on a now encircled Asturias on 2 September 1937. Under the overall command of General Dávila and led in the field by Generals Antonio Aranda and José Solchaga, troops quickly moved through the rain-swept mountains. Anxious to finish the campaign before the winter, Franco imbued his staff with a greater urgency than was normally the case. Their efforts were greatly facilitated by the fact that the Republicans had virtually no air cover. Although Asturias was geographically a strong defensive redoubt, it was tightly blockaded by sea and remorselessly bombarded from the air. The defenders’ morale was shattered as the Germans perfected their ground-attack techniques with forays along the mountain valleys, using a combination of incendiary bombs and gasoline to create an early form of napalm.53
After the fall of Santander, the Asturians set up an independent government, sacked the Republican commander, General Gamir, and made Colonel Prada commander of military forces. In Gijón, the repression of the local right had been profound and often gratuitously vindictive, with small businesses and shops confiscated and children and adolescents imprisoned because their parents had been denounced as fascists. Prisoners were transferred to a prison ship docked in the port of El Musel to the west of Gijón. As the war effort disintegrated, the sacas increased. Many prisoners were shot, notably near Oviedo and, as the rebels advanced from Santander, in the east of the region, at Cangas de Onís.54 In the course of the war in Asturias, around two thousand rightist prisoners were murdered. The rebels’ revenge when Asturias was occupied saw them kill nearly six thousand Republicans.55"
"Back in Gijón, Father Alejandro Martínez was deeply shocked by the ferocity of the repression, which he described as of an ‘inopportune rigour, as though a certain species of human being had to be liquidated … The troops sacked and looted Gijón as though it were a foreign city.’ The Regulares and Legionarios had the usual licence to pillage and rape and, given the lingering hatred from 1934, did so with especial vehemence. The fifth columnists who had been in hiding during the period of Republican dominance came out hungry for revenge. Colonel José Franco Mussió, a rebel sympathizer, had remained in Asturias in the hope of saving right-wing prisoners and had stayed behind in Gijón rather than flee to the Republican zone. He was tried immediately along with seven other Republican officers and shot on 14 November 1937. At least twenty schoolteachers were shot and many more were imprisoned. In the mining valleys, villagers were subjected to assassinations and beatings. Haystacks were burned at farms to force out those hiding. Paseos and the sexual abuse and even mutilation of women were frequent.57 Of the many atrocities committed, one of the most notorious took place at the Monastery of Valdediós near Villaviciosa. The building had been requisitioned when the Psychiatric Hospital of Oviedo was evacuated there in October 1936. On 27 October 1937, troops of the Brigadas de Navarra arrived. Without motive, they shot six men and eleven women of the staff. They were buried in a large unmarked grave, one of sixty fosas in Asturias.58"
"One guerrillero who was caught was Pascual López from Sobrado dos Monxes in A Coruña, whose wife and six children had had no news of him since he fled at the beginning of the war. In June 1939, a man who had served in Franco’s forces returned to the village and said that he had seen Pascual in a concentration camp near Oviedo. Pascual’s wife packed some food and clothes and sent her thirteen-year-old son Pascualín to find him. It took him two weeks to walk to Oviedo and another to locate the correct camp among those in the area. Although his father told him to go home, Pascualín stayed, stealing food during the day and sneaking into the camp at night to sleep, in the open air, alongside Pascual. In early October, a group of Falangists arrived and selected the Galician prisoners to take for execution in Gijón. The Falangists were on horse-back, the prisoners walking. Against his father’s orders, Pascualín followed for twelve days, keeping out of sight. Along the way, the oldest who were too weak to keep up were murdered. When they reached El Musel, the remaining prisoners were lined up and shot on a row of rocks used as a sea defence. The youngest of the Falangists, seeing that several were still alive, asked why they had been ordered to aim at the prisoners’ legs. Their veteran leader, calling him a novice, explained: ‘Because that way they take longer to bleed to death.’ Pascual was not dead and his son managed to pull him out of the water and get him into the hills where a bullet was prised out of his leg with a knife. When he had recovered, he sent Pascualín home to Galicia while he rejoined the guerrillas and was killed shortly afterwards.60"
North conquered
"On 1 October 1937, after the conquest of the north, all over Spain there was a celebration of the anniversary of Franco’s elevation to the headship of state, now consecrated as ‘el Día del Caudillo’. In San Leonardo in Soria, Yagüe, dressed in the blue shirt of the Falange, made a speech that provoked wild applause when he spoke of the working class in the following terms: ‘They are not bad. The really evil ones are their leaders who deceive them with gilded promises. They are the ones that we must attack until we have entirely exterminated them.’ He then described the Falangist new order and prompted laughter and applause when he declared:
and for those of you who resist, you know what will happen, prison or the firing squad, either will do. We have decided to redeem you and we will redeem you whether you want to be redeemed or not. Do we need you for anything? No, there will never again be any elections, so why would we need your vote? The first thing to do is to redeem the enemy. We are going to impose our civilization on them and if they don’t accept it willingly, we will impose it by force, defeating them as we defeated the Moors when they didn’t want our roads, our doctors, and our vaccinations, in a word, our civilization.63"
"In many cases, the arrests and assassinations were carried out on the recommendation of the parish priest. In the case of a young woman of nineteen who was pregnant with twins, the village doctor argued that she should be spared, and the Civil Guard accepted his reasoning. With reluctance, the local Falange also agreed, but a priest who was present exclaimed, ‘with the animal dead, there is no more rabies’, and she was shot.67 The most prominent victim was the Mayor, Antonio Plano Aznárez. It will be recalled that he was hated by the landowners of the area for his success in improving the working conditions of the day-labourers. He was also held responsible, unjustly, for the revolutionary events of 5–6 October 1935. At first held in Zaragoza, at the beginning of October 1936, Antonio Plano was brought to Uncastillo and imprisoned with his wife Benita and his children Antonio and María in the Civil Guard barracks.
The plan was for him to be assassinated on the second anniversary of the events of October 1934. It was an act not only of revenge for the past but also a warning for the future. Plano represented in the area everything that the Republic offered in terms of social justice and education. He was not only killed but made the object of the most brutal humiliation both before and after his death. As a result of his beatings, he was brought out of the Civil Guard barracks covered in blood. The Civil Guard and Falangists obliged the remaining villagers to come to the square to watch. Plano had been forced to drink a bottle of castor oil. Bloodied and besmirched, he had to be carried on a wooden board. In front of the church, he was shot, to the delight and applause of the right-wingers present. His corpse was then kicked and abused before it was mutilated by one of the Falangists with an axe. A year after his death, he was fined the colossal sum of 25,000 pesetas and his wife a further 1,000. In order for these fines to be paid, the family home and contents were confiscated. There were many similar cases which provided an excuse for the theft of the property of those who had been assassinated. Altogether, 140 leftists were murdered in Uncastillo. Of the 110 who had been tried for the events of 1934, many had fled, but of those who remained, forty-four were executed.68"
Teruel
"In Teruel in July 1936, the least populated of Spanish provinces, the western part fell immediately to a tiny rebel garrison. Despite the fact that there had been little social conflict in the area, detentions began immediately. The first victims were, as elsewhere, trade union and Republican political leaders and officials. A second wave of violence began in March 1938, with the entry of rebel troops into towns and villages that had been under Republican control. One of the worst incidents in this second wave took place in the small town of Calanda, where around fifty people were killed, including a pregnant woman beaten to death, and numerous others raped. At the end of the war, those who had fled from the province of Teruel when it had been taken by the Francoists faced the choice of either going into exile or returning home. Hoping that the fact that they were guilty of no crimes meant that they would face no problems, many returned home. In Calanda, as they descended from a bus, they were set upon. Tortures, beatings, murders and sexual attacks were organized by the local chief of the Falange and the secretary of the town council. So scandalous were these events that the Civil Governor of the province reported them to the military authorities. In consequence, the perpetrators were tried and imprisoned for eight years.69 In none of these explosions of repression were all the deaths formally registered. Nevertheless, the names are known of 1,030 people who were executed in Teruel, 889 in the course of the war and 141 afterwards. To these have to be added a further 258 who were taken to Zaragoza for execution. There were many more whose names were not recorded in the civil register or buried in cemeteries. It was not in the interests of their assassins for too much to be known and subsequently the Francoist authorities made a concerted effort to hide the magnitude of the violence in Teruel.70
The scale of the repression in Teruel reflects a combination of the basic exterminatory plan of the insurgents and consciousness that the province was vulnerable to Republican attack. Among the first to be arrested from 20 July 1936 were the Mayor, the secretary of the provincial branch of the Socialist Party and the directors of the local secondary school and of the teachers’ training college. The wives and families of men who had fled to the Republican zone were detained. For instance, the wife and seventeen-year-old daughter of a Socialist town councillor were arrested and eventually shot. All the detainees were herded into the local seminary where they were kept in appalling conditions of acute overcrowding before being killed. Until 13 August, when the executions began, men and women were used as forced labour, mending roads. They were taken out at dawn in a truck known variously as the ‘dawn truck’, the ‘death truck’ or the ‘one-way truck’.71"
"Whatever Polanco’s private feelings, they did not restrain his public enthusiasm for the rebel cause. Among the more than one thousand killings by the right in Teruel during the war, two of the most notorious incidents took place in the central square, the Plaza del Torico. The first was on 27 August 1936. Falangists drove two trucks into the square. From the first, a group of musicians descended and began to play. When a large crowd gathered to listen to the band, Falangists closed the exits to the square and took thirteen prisoners from the second lorry. They included a twenty-year-old girl and the director of the local teacher training college. They were paraded around the square, insulted and ridiculed and then shot. The corpses were removed and the musicians played while the spectators danced in pools of blood – a not uncommon combination of fiesta and horror.77 It seems that the Bishop was present since he protested to the authorities about the subsequent dance.78"
"When Polanco himself was captured after the fall of Teruel, the then Minister of Defence, Indalecio Prieto, intervened to prevent his being shot by militiamen. Prieto gave Father Alberto Onaindía an account of the Bishop’s interrogation. The principal charge against him was that he had signed the Episcopate’s Collective Letter of 1 July 1937 in support of Franco, which was deemed to constitute incitement to, and justification of, military rebellion. Asked if he was aware of the Collective Letter, Polanco replied that, having signed it, he could hardly deny that he was. Asked if he would change anything, he said: ‘Just the date. We should have written it earlier.’ At this, the officer brought the interrogation to a close, saying, ‘You, Bishop, are an exemplary Spaniard. Your words imply character and courage. We are all Spaniards here and the sad thing is that you are on one side and we are on the other.’ With permission from Prieto, Onaindía visited Polanco in prison, finding him in good spirits, treated with respect and generally well looked after. When Onaindía told him of the rebel repression in the Basque Country, including the execution of priests, Polanco listened coldly but clearly did not want to hear.83 After all, two parish priests in his own dioceses had been shot by the rebels, presumably with his permission. After some months, thanks to the intervention of both Julián Zugazagoitia and Manuel Irujo, he was given permission to celebrate daily Mass, although he chose to do so only on Sundays and feast days.84"
Huesca
"In the provincial capital, arrests, the later sacas from the prison and the subsequent murders were carried out by the so-called ‘Death Squad’. The selection of victims had as much to do with personal resentments or envy as with politics. Perhaps the most celebrated victim was the artist and teacher Ramón Acín Aquilué, a member of the CNT renowned for his pacifist views. He was a friend of Federico García Lorca and of Luis Buñuel, whom he had helped make the film Tierra sin pan. He was shot on 6 August 1936, his death in Huesca being the local equivalent of the murder of Lorca. Acín’s wife, Concha Monrás, was shot on 23 August along with ninety-four other Republicans, including a pregnant woman. No thought was given to the young children of those executed. The best these orphans could expect was to be taken in by relatives or friends of their parents who, in doing so, ran the risk of themselves being denounced.86 The purging of the left in the smaller towns was carried out by groups of recently recruited Falangists whose victims were often selected by local landowners."
"The repression was particularly brutal in Jaca under the direction of Major Dionisio Pareja Arenilla, who received orders from Zaragoza ‘to purge once and for all the undesirable elements’. The portly Bishop of Jaca, Juan Villar Sanz, was a cipher who gave free rein to a small clique of reactionary priests. Blacklists were assembled with the help of local bosses both in Jaca itself and in surrounding pueblos like Sabiñánigo, Ansó, Canfranc and Biescas. There were no trials. Army columns aided by Falangists detained hundreds of people and the shootings began on 27 July and ran right through the autumn and the following months. One of the most notorious crimes took place on 6 August 1936. An army captain, two Falangists and a Capuchin monk, Father Hermenegildo de Fustiñana, seized two women from Jaca prison, took them out into the countryside and shot them. One, Pilar Vizcarra, aged twenty-eight and pregnant, was the wife of a man shot exactly one week previously; the other, Desideria Giménez of the Socialist Youth, was aged sixteen. The event was presided over by the tall and bony Father de Fustiñana. Chaplain to the local Requetés, he went about the streets ostentatiously carrying a gun. His visits to the prison were dreaded by the detainees, who regarded him as a ‘bird of ill omen’. He delighted in the executions and was present at most of them. He offered confession and the last rites to those about to be shot. Then, his shoes caked with blood, he would visit the families of the few that accepted. He kept a list of all those executed, with a note if they had made their confession. More than four hundred people from Jaca and the surrounding villages were shot.87"
Lleida
"On 26 March, fifty people were killed in the small town of Fraga. The next day, it was the turn of Lleida, which was packed with refugees from Aragon. Lleida had already suffered numerous bombardments, of which the most terrible took place on 2 November 1937. On that day, nearly three hundred had been killed. The event is commemorated in one of the war’s most famous photographs, taken by Agustí Centelles, of the mother of the journalist Josep Pernau weeping over the corpse of her husband. When the Liceu Escolar was hit, of one class of sixty-three children, only two survived. Astonishingly, there were no reprisals, thanks to the swift intervention of the military authorities, including a radio broadcast by Major Sebastián Zamora Medina, one of whose daughters had been killed in the raid and another badly wounded. Throughout late March, the Condor Legion continued its campaign of Blitzkrieg attacks, aimed at provoking the flight of the civilian population and facilitating the advance of Yagüe’s columns. On Sunday 27 March, a two-hour bombardment by Heinkel 51s left four hundred people dead. Many bodies could not be recovered, given the dangerous state of the buildings. The consequent stench left the city centre uninhabitable for months.91
There were further bombing raids in the last three days of March and the first two of April. There were also artillery barrages directed by Luis Alarcón de la Lastra, who now commanded the artillery of the Moroccan Army Corps. Despite a courageous defence by the division led by Valentín González ‘El Campesino’, Lleida was occupied the following day. Franco’s forces found a ghost town. In a city normally of 40,000 inhabitants, barely two thousand were there to greet their conquerors. The Generalitat had organized a massive evacuation of refugees and the bulk of the local population. A Francoist newspaper crowed, ‘A few reds who could not flee have take refuge in some houses but they will soon be annihilated.’ Shops and houses were looted. One of the first acts of the occupying forces was to remove the records of the deaths from the bombing raids. In Lleida, Gandesa and the towns along the right bank of the Ebro, Corbera, Mora d’Ebre and many others, summary trials and executions began. In Lleida, one of those to be sentenced to death and executed was the director of one of the city’s hospitals. His crime was to have organized the evacuation of the hospital despite having been ordered by the fifth column to hand it over complete with all wounded soldiers to the rebels. The director of another hospital, who did obey such orders, was nevertheless dismissed simply because his post made him an employee of the Generalitat de Catalunya.92"
"The depth of anti-Catalan sentiment that had been generated in the rebel zone was inevitably reflected in the repression unleashed there. The entry of the occupiers into any town or village was immediately followed by the prohibition of the Catalan language, despite the fact that many of the inhabitants knew no other. The ban on use of the regional language was extended, as it had been in Euskadi, to all the public activities of the clergy.93 The extent of a near-racist hatred is illustrated by the fate of Manuel Carrasco i Formiguera, a deeply pious Catholic who was a senior member of the Christian Democrat party, Unió Democràtica de Catalunya. Denounced in Barcelona by the FAI for his conservative and Catholic views, Carrasco was forced to flee his beloved Catalonia because the Generalitat could not guarantee his safety. He went to work on behalf of the Generalitat in the Basque Country. After an initial visit to Bilbao, where he was received as if he were an ambassador, he returned to Barcelona to collect his family. On 2 March 1937, he set off with his wife and six of his eight children through France. The final part of the journey to Bilbao was from Bayonne by sea. The steamer Galdames on which they were travelling was captured by the rebel battlecruiser, Canarias. His wife and children were held in four separate prisons.
After five months in jail, Carrasco i Formiguera was tried on 28 August 1937 accused of military rebellion. Prominent Catalans in Franco’s circle, men whose lives and fortunes had been saved in Barcelona by Carrasco’s intervention, were too frightened by the prevailing anti-Catalanism to speak up on his behalf. In a vengeful atmosphere, charged with anti-Catalan prejudice, no account was taken of his humanitarian efforts or of the fact that Carrasco had defended the Church during the 1931 constitutional debates. The future Mayor of Barcelona, Mateu i Pla, whose fortune had been secured by Carrasco, did nothing to help his defence despite the fact that he was part of Franco’s secretariat in Burgos.
Given the military court’s insistence on speed, there was little time for Carrasco’s defence. In any case, his official advocate, a captain of the medical corps with no juridical training, had already been told that the death sentence had been decided upon before the trial started. Then, for nearly seven and a half months, suffering acute cardiac problems, Carrasco was kept in a freezing cell. Despite energetic efforts to secure a prisoner exchange by José Giral and Manuel Irujo and prominent clergymen, including the Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris, Franco was immovable. One of the Caudillo’s senior collaborators commented: ‘I know all about Carrasco being an exemplary Christian but his politics are criminal. He has to die!’ Carrasco i Formiguera was executed by firing squad on Easter Saturday, 9 April 1938 because he was a Republican and a Catalan nationalist. Franco had chosen the moment that his forces were occupying Catalonia to send a message to the population.94
In the days following the occupation of Lleida, the press in the rebel zone gave vent to an ecstatic imperialist rhetoric, rejoicing in the crushing of the ‘separatist hydra’ by Yagüe’s African troops. Republican prisoners who were identified as Catalans were shot without trial. Anyone overheard speaking Catalan was likely to be arrested. The arbitrary brutality of the anti-Catalan repression reached such a scale that Franco himself felt obliged to issue an order that errors must be avoided which might cause regret in the future.95 The many executions that followed immediately on the occupation of the eastern part of Lleida were not registered. Accordingly, the task for local historians of quantification of those who ‘disappeared’ between 5 April and 31 May 1938 has been rendered almost impossible. Those who have been identified include eighteen women, of whom two were pregnant and at least two were raped. Seventeen men and five women were shot in Almacelles, north-east of Lleida, on 20 April. In the tiny village of Santa Linya, halfway between Lleida and Tremp, all men of military age were arrested, twenty in all. They were interrogated with questions like: ‘How many priests have you murdered?’ Nine considered to be Catalan nationalists were taken away and never seen again. The rest were transported to a concentration camp in Valladolid, where three died almost immediately. A high proportion of the executions took place during ‘evacuations’ or when prisoners were ostensibly being transferred to prison in Barbastro.96"
"Although he had Catalonia at his mercy, Franco ordered Yagüe to dig in along the River Segre, much to the frustration and incomprehension of his staff. An offensive against Catalonia, where the Republic’s remaining war industry lay, would have brought the war to a speedier conclusion, but Franco had no interest in a quick victory that would still have left hundreds of thousands of armed Republicans in central and southern Spain. Nor did he want to turn to Madrid, since a swift debacle there would have left numerous Republican forces in Catalonia and in the south-east. Either option would have meant an armistice by which some consideration would have to be given to the defeated. As he had made clear to the Italians, Franco’s aim remained the gradual but total annihilation of the Republic and its supporters.100"
Negrin's final stand
"As defeat became inevitable, the Republican Prime Minister Juan Negrín became ever more determined to fight on, believing that capitulation would simply open the floodgates to mass slaughter. When a senior Republican figure, almost certainly Azaña, suggested that an agreement with the rebels was an inevitable necessity, he responded: ‘Make a pact? And what about the poor soldier of Medellín?’ At the time, Medellín, near Don Benito, was the furthermost point on the Extremadura front. Since Franco demanded total surrender, Negrín knew that, at best, a mediated peace might secure the escape of several hundred, maybe some thousands, of political figures. However, the great majority of ordinary Republican soldiers and citizens would be at the mercy of the Francoists, who would be pitiless.102 On 25 July 1938, Medellín and the entire area of La Serena in the province of Badajoz fell to the insurgents. In the following weeks, large numbers of people from the surrounding villages were taken to Medellín and shot and many more transferred to the concentration camp at Castuera. Under the command of the notorious Major Ernesto Navarrete Alcal, it was ruled with his characteristic brutality. The prisoners experienced starvation, overcrowding, slave labour, beatings and frequent sacas.103
With the insurgents less than twenty-five miles away from Valencia, on the same day that La Serena fell, the Republic mounted a spectacular diversion. In an attempt to restore contact between Catalonia and the rest of Republican Spain, a huge army of 80,000 men crossed the River Ebro. The advance through an immense curve in the Ebro from Flix in the north to Miravet in the south surprised the thinly held rebel lines. Negrín hoped that, if the Republic could fight on for another year, it would find salvation in the general war which he believed to be inevitable. Within a week, the Republicans had advanced twenty-five miles and reached Gandesa, but there they were bogged down as Franco rushed in reinforcements. Knowing that Franco would not consider an armistice, Negrín refused to contemplate unconditional surrender. On 7 August, he said to his friend Juan-Simeón Vidarte: ‘I will not hand over hundreds of defenceless Spaniards who fight heroically for the Republic so that Franco can have the pleasure of shooting them like he did in his own Galicia, in Andalusia, in the Basque country and wherever the hooves of Attila’s horse have left their mark.’104
Franco could have contained the Republican advance across the Ebro and advanced on a near helpless Barcelona. Instead, he seized the opportunity to catch the Republicans in a trap, encircle and destroy them, turning the fertile Terra Alta into their graveyard. With nearly one million men now under arms, he could afford to be careless of their lives. As the battle was moving in his favour, on 7 November, he announced to the vice-president of the United Press, James Miller, ‘there will be no mediation because the criminals and their victims cannot live together’. He went on threateningly: ‘We have on file more than two million names along with proof of their crimes.’105 He was referring to the political files and documentation captured as each town had fallen. This information, archived in Salamanca, provided the basis for a massive card index of members of political parties, trade unions and Masonic lodges which in turn would be the database for a policy of institutionalized terror.106
By mid-November 1938, at a cost of nearly 15,000 dead and 110,000 wounded or mutilated, the Francoists had pushed the Republicans out of the territory captured in July. The Republic had lost its army. The Francoists would soon sweep further into Catalonia. The war had been prolonged in accordance with Negrín’s hope of seeing the democracies wake up to the Axis’s aggressive ambitions, but the betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich turned the Ebro into a useless sacrifice. After a brief lull for his forces to rest and regroup, in late November Franco began to gather a massive army along a line surrounding the remainder of Republican Catalonia from the Mediterranean to the Ebro and to the Pyrenees. After delays caused by torrential rain, and despite the pleas of the Papal Nuncio for a Christmas truce, the final offensive was launched on 23 December.107 The Caudillo had new German equipment in abundance, total air superiority and sufficient Spanish and Italian reserves to be able to relieve his troops every two days. The attacking force consisted of five Spanish army corps together with four Italian divisions. A heavy artillery barrage preceded the attack. The shattered Republicans could put up only token resistance.108
In the course of the advance, many Republican prisoners were shot as soon as they were captured. There were also many atrocities committed against the civilian population. There were examples of peasants being murdered for no apparent reason other than the fact that they spoke Catalan. On Christmas Eve 1938, when Maials in the far south of Lleida was captured by Regulares, at least four women were raped. In one case, a woman was raped while her husband and seven-year-old son were forced at gunpoint to watch. In another, a woman’s father was shot for protesting at her violation. In an isolated country house, a young woman was raped and died when she was stabbed in the stomach with a bayonet. Fifteen minutes later, her mother was raped then shot. In Vilella Baixa in the Priorat, a man was shot for trying to prevent a woman being raped. At another farm outside Callús, in the province of Barcelona, a man who lived with his wife, his daughter and her cousin was shot by some Regulares who raped the three women and then killed them at bayonet point. In the tiny nearby village of Marganell, two women were raped by Regulares who then killed them by placing hand grenades between their legs.109
As fear of the Moors saw the roads to Barcelona blocked with terrified refugees, Franco announced his plans for the defeated in an interview given to Manuel Aznar on 31 December 1938. He divided them into hardened criminals beyond redemption and those who had been deceived by their leaders and were capable of repentance. There would be no amnesty or reconciliation for the defeated Republicans, only punishment and repentance to open the way to their ‘redemption’. Prisons and labour camps were the necessary purgatory for those who had committed minor ‘crimes’. Others could expect no better fate than death or exile.110 A good example of what redemption by Franco really meant could be found in the experience of Catalonia after the occupation of Tarragona on 15 January 1939. The city was deserted and thousands of refugees were trudging north. An elaborate ceremony was held in the Cathedral involving a company of infantry. The officiating priest, a canon of the Cathedral of Salamanca, José Artero, got so carried away that, during his sermon, he shouted: ‘Catalan dogs! You are not worthy of the sun that shines on you!’111"
Evacuation of Barcelona
"When news reached Barcelona, on 23 January 1939, that the Francoists were at the River Llobregat to the south of the city, a colossal exodus began. On the night of 25 January, the Republican government fled northwards to Girona. The President of the Generalitat, Lluís Companys, drove one last time through the centre of a deserted city, as leaflets calling for resistance blew through the streets along with ripped-up party and trade union membership cards.114 The next morning, the streets were full of smoke from the burning papers of ministries, parties and unions. The young Communist Teresa Pàmies witnessed, on 26 January, horrendous scenes of the fear provoked by the advancing rebels:
There is one thing I will never forget: the wounded who crawled out of the Vallcarca hospital, mutilated and bandaged, almost naked, despite the cold, they went down to the street, shrieking and pleading with us not to leave them behind to the mercies of the victors. All other details of that unforgettable day were wiped out by the sight of those defenceless soldiers … The certainty that we left them to their fate will shame us for ever. Those with no legs dragged themselves along the ground, those who had lost an arm raised the other with a clenched fist, the youngest cried in their fear, the older ones went mad with rage. They grabbed the sides of lorries loaded with furniture, with bird cages, with mattresses, with silent women, with indifferent old people, with terrified children. They screamed, they ululated, they blasphemed and cursed those who were fleeing and were abandoning them.
There were around 20,000 wounded Republican soldiers in Barcelona. Their wounds and missing limbs were proof that they had fought and would guarantee that they would be the victims of reprisals.115
Four hundred and fifty thousand terrified women, children, old men and defeated soldiers trekked towards France. In numbers and in human suffering, the exodus far exceeded even the horrors seen by Norman Bethune on the road from Málaga to Almería. Those who could squeezed into every kind of transport imaginable. Through bitterly cold sleet and snow, on roads bombed and strafed by rebel aircraft, many others walked, wrapped in blankets and clutching a few possessions, some carrying infants. Women gave birth at the roadsides. Babies died of the cold, children were trampled to death. A witness summed up the horror of that dreadful exodus: ‘At the side of the road, a man had hung himself from a tree. One foot had a rope sandal, the other was bare. At the foot of the tree was an open suitcase in which lay a small child that had died of cold during the night.’ It is not known how many people died on the roads to France.116"
"Those who fled faced the bleakest future, but it was one that they chose in preference to being ‘liberated’ by Franco’s forces. From 28 January, a reluctant French government allowed the first refugees across the border. At first, they had to sleep in the streets of Figueras, the last town on the Spanish side of the border. Many died in sustained rebel bombing raids.117 The defeated Republicans, many sick or wounded, were received by the French Garde Mobile as if they were criminals. The women, children and the old were shepherded into transit camps. The soldiers were disarmed and escorted to insanitary camps on the coast, rapidly improvised by marking out sections of beach with barbed wire. Under the empty gaze of Senegalese guards, the refugees improvised shelters by burrowing into the wet sand of the camp at Saint-Cyprien a few miles to the south-east of Perpignan.
Meanwhile, the formal parade into an eerily empty Barcelona was headed by the Army Corps of Navarre, led by General Andrés Solchaga. They were accorded this honour, according to a British officer attached to Franco’s headquarters, ‘not because they have fought better, but because they hate better – that is to say, when the object of this hate is Catalonia or a Catalan’.118 A close friend of Franco, Víctor Ruiz Albeniz (‘El Tebib Arrumi’), published an article asserting that Catalonia needed ‘a biblical punishment (Sodom, Gomorrah) to purify the red city, seat of anarchism and separatism as the only remedy to extirpate these two cancers by implacable thermo-cauterization’. None of the conquering generals or Falangists referred to the crushing of Marxism or anarchism. Their entire discourse was about the conquest of Catalonia by Spain. One officer told a Portuguese journalist that the only solution to the ‘Catalan problem’ was ‘kill the Catalans. It’s just a question of time.’119
One of the first acts of the occupying forces was to ban the use of Catalan in public. For Ramón Serrano Suñer, Franco’s brother-in-law and Minister of the Interior, Catalan nationalism was a sickness that had to be eradicated. He told the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter that the Catalan population was ‘morally and politically sick’. The man he appointed as Civil Governor of Barcelona, Wenceslao González Oliveros, announced, in a reversal of Unamuno’s famous dictum that the rebels might win (vencer) but never convince (convencer), that Franco’s forces had come ‘to save the good Spaniards and to defeat, but not convince, the enemies of Spain’. For González Oliveros, that meant the Catalans. He stated that ‘Spain opposed the divisive autonomy statutes with greater ferocity than communism’ and that any toleration of any kind of regionalism would lead once more to ‘the putrefaction represented by Marxism and separatism that we have just surgically eradicated’.120
Within a week, the military secret police was functioning. Newspaper advertisements called for recruits, preference being given to ex-prisoners of the Republican SIM. Large queues of people with denunciations gathered outside the offices of the Occupation Services. In consequence, 22,700 people were arrested in the first eight months.121 Precisely because so many of those of political or military significance had fled, those killed by the rebels in Catalonia were perhaps fewer than might have been expected. Between those murdered by the occupying troops and those tried and executed, more than 1,700 were killed in Barcelona, 750 in Lleida, 703 in Tarragona and five hundred in Girona. Many more died from mistreatment in prison.122
In Catalonia, as in other parts of Spain occupied by the rebels, the repression took many forms and merely to stay alive was a major achievement for many Republicans. Those who had not been executed, imprisoned or exiled lived in an atmosphere of terror. Daily life for the defeated was a question of combating hunger, illness and fear of arrest or of denunciation by a neighbour or by a priest. Rural parish priests were particularly active in denouncing their parishioners. Their contribution to the exacerbation of social divisions suggested a quest for vengeance rather than a Christian commitment to forgiveness or reconciliation. The sheer misery of life for the defeated explains a notable rise in the suicide rate. Considerable cruelty was visited upon women under the rhetorical umbrella of ‘redemption’. As well as confiscation of goods and imprisonment as retribution for the behaviour of a son or husband, the widows and the wives of prisoners were raped. Many were forced to live in total poverty and often, out of desperation, to sell themselves on the streets. The increase in prostitution both benefited Francoist men who thereby slaked their lust and reassured them that ‘red’ women were a fount of dirt and corruption. Soldiers billeted on poor families often abused the unprotected women of the household. Many priests defended the honour of male parishioners and denounced their female victims as ‘reds’.123
After Catalonia fell, a huge area amounting to about 30 per cent of Spain remained in the hands of the Republic. Negrín still cherished hope of fighting on until a European war started and the democracies at last realized that the anti-fascist battle of the Republic had been theirs too. Franco was in no hurry to go into battle since the repression was a higher priority. In any case, he had reason to believe that the Republic was about to face major divisions that might save him the trouble of fighting in central Spain. His confidence was such that, on 9 February 1939, he published the Law of Political Responsibilities and dashed the hopes of non-Communist Republicans who were prepared to betray Negrín in the hope of a negotiated peace. Retroactive to October 1934, the law declared Republicans guilty of the crime of military rebellion, and was essentially a device to justify the expropriation of the defeated.124
On 4 March, Colonel Segismundo Casado, commander of the Republican Army of the Centre, formed an anti-Negrín National Defence Junta, in the hope of negotiating with Franco. He thereby sparked off what was effectively a second civil war within the Republican zone. Although he defeated pro-Communist forces, there was no prospect of a deal with Franco. Troops all along the line were surrendering or just going home. On 26 March, a gigantic and virtually unopposed advance was launched along a wide front. The next day, Franco’s forces simply occupied deserted positions and entered an eerily silent Madrid. Tens of thousands of Republicans headed for the Mediterranean coast in the vain hope of evacuation. The war was over, but there would be no reconciliation. Instead, in the areas that had just fallen under Franco’s control, Valencia, Alicante, Murcia and Albacete, Almería and eastern Andalusia, and the eastern part of New Castile, a massive wave of political arrests, trials, executions and imprisonment was about to begin."