Chapter 6: The Rebellion of the Eighteenth of July
"The emergence of the only major violent twentieth-century revolution in a west European country was due first of all to the convergence of a remarkable and unique complex of conflictive factors. By the early 1930s Spain had become a free, open, and democratic country—something which up to that date had never existed in eastern or parts of central Europe—permitting maximal expression and mobilization in a society that at the same time remained backward and undeveloped economically compared with northwestern Europe."
"Though. all major revolutions have responded opportunistically to uniquely favorable opportunities, the Spanish revolution was also unusual in that it finally exploded directly only in response to the counterrevolution attempted by the preemptive strike of the military. One of its most important characteristics was that the Spanish revolution was the only pluralistic, genuinely multiparty and multiideological violent revolution among the significant conflicts of the century, for the revolutionary left reflected the extreme diversity of Spanish society itself. "
"lotting against the government was simultaneously being carried on by (a) the Junta Central and local groups of the UME; (b) the nominal Generals’ Junta in Madrid; (c) various individual commanders and officers in the provinces; (d) the almost acephalous Falangists; (e) the Carlists; and (f) various other provincial rightist groups. Coordination developed only slowly, incompletely, and with considerable difficulty. "
The plotters: Hesitancy and disunity
"A national network of conspiracy began to take shape a month later, for the response of the military was cumulative. Only as incidents and tensions spread and became more intense was a broad reaction mounted. Moreover, the question of authority and legitimacy proved difficult to re- solve. Since none of the senior active generals wanted to lead, the only central figure was General José Sanjurjo, Lion of the Riff, another hero of the Moroccan campaigns and former director of the Civil Guard, who had led the very small, abortive attempt of 1932. He had first been approached in his Lisbon exile by the Carlists, who wanted to use his name to provoke an armed rebellion of their own. Sanjurjo was willing to transmit his personal authority as coordinator of a revolt to Mola, since Mola indicated in correspondence that he was planning a broad national reaction and wished to install Sanjurjo as head of an interim junta once the coup was effected. These arrangements were not worked out until the end of May. By that time Mola had begun to draw up detailed sketches and timetables for the convergence of rebel forces to seize power in Madrid.
Relations with civilian groups remained vague or nonexistent. Mola was disgusted with Republican politics of both the conservative and leftist variety. He sketched a plan for an interim military directory that would completely replace the existing authorities, derogate the 1931 Constitution, suppress all revolutionary groups, and strengthen the armed forces as basis of the new state. The social reforms of the Republic, as well as separation of church and state, were to be maintained. The question of restoring the monarchy was scarcely considered, for monarchism had little support in Spain. There was some suggestion that power would eventually be handed over to a reformed parliamentary regime, probably organized along corporative lines with a more restricted or indirect suffrage.2 No commitments of that sort were actually made, however, for Mola was determined that the revolt be an Army movement, not obligated to any special interests. The only precise plan was for an all-military directory, even if temporary, that would seize full power over the state apparatus. Mola was authoritarian but not fascist. Like most officers, he was basically uninterested in political parties and doctrines. His sketch for the new junta was based on simple predicates of unity, authority, and order."
"Gil Robles and the main CEDA leaders finally changed their policy. Faced with the failure of their gradualist, constitutionalist approach, they eventually released their followers from responsibility to the party, advising them to act according to their consciences but not to compromise the party itself in illegal activities.
In this situation it was the leader of the radical right, Calvo Sotelo, who became head of the parliamentary opposition, rather than the moderate Gil Robles. He eventually received vague information about Mola's plans and offered full support. Financiers associated with both the monarchists and the CEDA provided financial backing."
"The only political organization actively involved in plans for revolt was the Falange, which had vainly attempted to win military backing for an antigovernment coup during the preceding year....The Falange was too weak and fragmented to act on its own, and by May 29 José Antonio was able to establish direct contact with Mola, whose seriousness and organizational ability he respected."
"The chief problem in organizing the conspiracy was the Army itself. The officer corps was also a bureaucratic class, and the great majority of its members were not eager to involve themselves in a desperate undertaking that might easily lead to their ruin. They had to be concerned about their families and pensions. The Republican government still existed, and the Constitution was still nominally the law of the land, even though less and less enforced. The revolutionaries had not yet tried to take over the government directly; after a few more months they might begin to settle down, and then the crisis would ease. Military activism had been a disaster in Spanish politics between 1917 and 1931; most officers were aware of this and all the less eager to throw themselves into the fray. Furthermore, the ferocious propaganda of the left made it clear that in any radical confrontation, defeated military dissidents would not be treated as leniently as in an earlier generation.
Given these doubts and hesitations, some of the leading would-be rebels apparently committed themselves fully to the conspiracy only after reaching the negative conclusion that it would be more dangerous for them if they did not. The best example is that of Franco himself. As earlier indicated, Franco had been involved in one form or another of plotting against the Popular Front government from the beginning, yet he was most reluctant to pledge himself to any specific proposal for armed revolt. The spring of 1936 was a time of supreme tension for Franco. On his arrival in Tenerife he had been greeted by chalked signs on walls from leftists pledging his death, and faithful military subordinates eventually mounted a twenty-four-hour guard around both the commander and his family to avert personal attack."
"One of the leading leftist chroniclers of the period has reported that between February 17 and July 17 in Spain there were 213 attempted assassinations, 113 local general strikes, and 228 partial shutdowns, with total casualties of 269 killed and 1,287 wounded.' "
"A leading Spanish scholar of a subsequent generation has observed:
What strikes the reader of the political literature of the time—the news- papers and the speeches, even in Parliament—is the constant reference to the willingness to announce or encourage the use of force to achieve goals, the assertion of readiness to die for a cause, the frequent description as one of latent civil war. This atmosphere became intolerable and led participants to believe that the solution lay only in defeating and outlawing their opponents and establishing their own order. "
"Maura called for a multiparty “national Republican dictatorship” to save the country, but added, “I do not harbor the slightest hope that my reasoning could convince those who currently bear responsibility for government.”
Up to that point the government nonetheless seemed justified in treat- ing any danger from the right with contempt, for Mola continued to encounter so much difficulty in gaining full commitment to an armed revolt that by the first of July he was on the verge of abandoning the whole enterprise and retiring from the Army. Encouraging reports came in during the next few days, and the first concrete date considered for the revolt was July 10, but this had to be given up when one of the leading Falangists involved was arrested. '*"
"The secretary-general of the Carlist Communion, Manuel Fal Conde, insisted upon political guarantees and at least two out of three seats in the new junta for the Carlists. Mola refused such terms; he knew that both orthodox monarchism and Carlism were weak in the country and that the pronunciamiento would succeed only if it could be presented as a patriotic national reaction led by the Army alone without being tied to special parties."
"Elsewhere the situation remained confused and problematic; as late as July 12 Franco is said to have sent an urgent message to Mola expressing further reluctance to go through with the armed revolt.'® Most officers would act only on regular orders from above, which were not likely to be forthcoming. "
"The final blow in the storm of strikes, riots, arson, property confiscations, street disorders, and murders was struck in Madrid on the night of July 12-13. Leftist police officers, some of them recently reappointed by the Left Republican minister of the interior, in collaboration with a group of Socialist gunmen murdered one of the two leaders of the parliamentary opposition, Calvo Sotelo, after arresting him in the middle of the night. This was a crime unprecedented in the annals of west European parliamentary government, for 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.” To many it indicated that revolutionary radicalism was out of control and the constitutional system at an end. For the next thirty years the supporters of the military revolt would refer to fake documents alleging that the murder of Calvo Sotelo was but the prelude to a Communist plot to seize power by the end of July."
"Gil Robles had warned earlier in a speech to the Cortes that “half a nation will not resign itself to die”? at the hands of the left, and the dra- matic killing of Calvo Sotelo finally decided thousands of waverers. It apparently was also the final element in Franco’s own decision. Elaborate plans were already being implemented to fly him to Morocco in a chartered British plane, and his last hesitations were overcome by this stark demonstration that no one would be safe from the Popular Front."
Republican miscalculation
"There was subsequently much speculation as to why the left Republican government did not take more stringent measures both before and during the crisis to avert a major revolt. The conspiracy was not exactly a secret, for though the details were not known to the government, rumors had flown for months, certain civilian contacts had been arrested, and most of the active plotters were known to be hostile to the government. The government had, in fact, taken more than a few measures to keep the Army under control. Nearly all the top command assignments had been changed, and most of the new senior commanders were, as events proved, loyal to the existing regime. Many civilian activists, mainly Falangist, had been arrested, and some of the top conspirators had been placed under surveillance."
"Azana, since May the impotent president of the Republic, and his prime minister, Casares Quiroga, doubted the ability of military conspirators to generate an effective pronunciamiento. There had scarcely been a well-organized revolt in the history of the Spanish Army. Successful pronunciamientos had won their goals in the past not so much because of their strength as because of the weakness or unpopularity of the governments whom they overthrew. The 1932 affair had been grotesquely arranged. Government authorities calculated that they could count on the support of more than half the population, including most of the best-organized and most active political groups. In such circumstances, a confused and weakly organized revolt could be easily isolated and stamped out.
This calculation was reinforced by a negative concern of the Left Re- publican leaders. Having unbalanced the political system to gain power, they had tied themselves to the revolutionary left and found it impossible to enforce many of the norms of the Constitution. But they were not themselves revolutionaries and did not want to establish a new revolutionary government. Their ideal was the status quo of March or April 1936, and they hesitated to play the Kerensky role assigned to them by the revolutionaries. Premature efforts to crack down on the Army might remove the last counterbalance to the extreme left and make the Republican government a prisoner of the revolutionaries (as indeed occurred after July 18 once the revolt removed the military from the political equation of the Republican zone).
The most serious miscalculation by government leaders resulted from their relative ignorance of the exact capacity and temper of the armed forces. They did not appreciate the dedication and determination of the hardcore rebels, who were totally committed to the proposition that the last opportunity had come to save their country from revolutionary destruction and bolshevization. Moreover, they overestimated the loyalty of the police forces to the leftist regime and they did not fully appreciate the importance of the units in Morocco. The government relied too much on the senior progovernment generals but did not gauge the weakness of these aging, sometimes inept bureaucrats in the military structure. In Morocco and a number of other key garrisons the elderly commanders were simply swept aside. The Eighteenth of July was not a generals’ re- volt in the strict sense; it was joined by only 7 of the 27 major generals (including 3 of 12 divisional commanders and 4 of 21 major generals with active commands) and 20 of the 35 brigade commanders.” Most generals were either loyal to the government or sat on their hands and did nothing."
Strength of the coup
"When all is said and done, the Spanish military revolt of 1936 stands as an audacious coup by a comparatively small number of determined military conspirators. Probably no more than 1,000 officers—not all of them on active duty—served as the nucleus, and they came mostly from the activist middle and junior strata of the officer corps. Their resolution served to stiffen reluctant colleagues, overthrow senior commanders, and in a minority of cases bring whole garrisons out in revolt. In some cases it was managed by sheer bravado, courage, and personal example."
"But in most regions the garrison forces were neither strong nor united. Civilian support was often uncertain at best, and at worst the rebels were likely to meet concerted resistance either from loyal armed police or the organized worker groups, or both. Because of low budgeting and summer leaves, the available manpower of the Army was only slightly more than 50 percent of its strength on paper. Materiel was scanty and obsolescent and supplies low. Save among a rightist minority, there was little enthusi- asm in Spanish society for a military dictatorship. Moderate and conser- vative elements of the middle classes, while full of hate for and fear of the left and grave concern over the Azaña regime, were not necessarily eager for a military coup and in the first two or three days of the revolt showed considerable disorientation."
"In the three largest cities, Madrid,” Barcelona,” and Valencia,” the re- volt never had much chance of success. The organized revolutionary groups were so large compared to the military, and the support of the police so uncertain, that only in Valencia might a positive result have been expected. In Madrid and Valencia the revolt was uncoordinated in the extreme. Though UME elements and various cliques of retired officers had been conspiring in both garrisons for several years, recent reassignments had broken up whatever unity existed earlier. Confusion among the military was almost total. There was never any rebellion at all in Valencia, where the main troops were confined to barracks for nearly two weeks and finally overwhelmed by the left.
The two main demands by reluctant officers were that the order to rebel must come through proper channels from senior commanders and that the armed police must support the Army. This last point was indeed important, for the forces of the Civil Guard and Assault Guard were nearly as numerous as the Army in the peninsula. They were more care- fully trained and selected, in most cases more professionalized, and al- most as well equipped. Though many of the police were antileftist, they tended to follow the general trend of each province. In most large cities they accepted the bent of the population and fought valiantly for the left- ist authorities. In many rural provinces, however, they went over to the rebels, and the support of the police was sometimes a decisive factor"
"Martínez Barrio apparently offered an across-the- board compromise, bringing one of the rebels into the cabinet, promising an abrupt about-face on internal policy, a national coalition government, and the disarming of the leftist militia. At an earlier date, such a compromise might well have succeeded and preserved constitutional government in Spain, but it came too late. Lines were too sharply drawn, and the chief conspirators had made solemn pledges which Mola refused to break. Moreover, it is not clear that the compromise could have been enforced on the left, for virulent opposition from the Socialists removed the Martínez Barrio government before it had actually been fully invested with powers. In less than ten hours, the Left Republican government veered sharply from an across-the-board compromise in favor of the insurgent right to an almost complete capitulation to the revolutionary left. This wild careening in itself reveals the confusion and irresolution of Azaña and his colleagues of the middle-class left. The result was not so much a compromise with the revolutionary left as the transfer of effective power to them. The key decision here—the “arming of the people” (meaning not of course “the people” but the organized revolutionary groups)...The irony of this situation was that the military revolt thus created in the part of Spain that it failed to occupy exactly the situation that it was designed to avoid. A preemptive counterrevolutionary coup set off the revolution."
"The main responsibility was borne by those on whose shoulders government authority rested—the middle-class Republican Left of Azaña, which was in control of executive power from February 19, 1936, to the outbreak of the Civil War. The standard apology for the Azaña administration has been that it did nothing to contribute to the prevailing polarization but was merely the victim of it, attacked by extremes of right and left. This contention will not withstand examination. Save for a few hours on the morning of July 19 when a belated effort was made to draw back from the precipice, the Azaña administration was more the accomplice than the victim of the revolutionary left."
Leanings of the branches of the armed forces
"The proportion of naval officers committed to the revolt was at least as high as in the Army, yet naval forces were dominated by the left all along the eastern and southern coasts of Spain. A key factor here was the initiative of a junior leftist radio- telegraph officer who at a crucial moment almost single-handedly seized control of the main radio naval transmitter on the southern coast, blocking rebel communications and rallying naval units to the left.”"
"anarchosyndicalism flourished in most of the port towns. When naval commanders tried to swing their vessels behind the revolt on July 19, mutineers seized control of most ships, precipitating mass slaugh- ter of officers. In contrast, there was little mutiny from the ranks in Army units that attempted rebellion. Army life was more open, with better relations between officers and men and less intense class consciousness among the lower ranks."
"The Air Force had the largest minority of proleftist officers of any part of the military, and the majority opposed the revolt. Only about 25 percent of its units and planes lined up on the insurgent side, placing the latter under a distinct handicap until this was removed by German and Italian aid.
The original revolt of July 17-20 was carried out as a nominally Republican rising, not a monarchist, fascist, or even completely militarist rebellion. Save for the compulsory “Viva España!” the most common slogan in the first military proclamations was “Viva la República!” Some pronouncements went even further. Francos first official statement on July 19 ended with the invocation of “Fraternity, Liberty, and Equality” [sic]. Nearly all insurgent forces fought under the Republican flag during the first weeks of the Civil War. Mola and other leaders had been careful throughout to hold monarchists at some distance (save in Navarre), realizing that to tie the movement to monarchism would isolate it even within the Army, and much more within the country as a whole. Thus in some ways the revolt began, or seemed to begin, in the tradition of the nineteenth-century liberal pronunciamientos. It does not appear that there was any clear understanding or agreement concerning exact goals in the minds of most officers supporting the revolt other than the overthrow of Azañas administration, throttling of the revolutionaries, and establish- ment of more moderate and nationalistic government. Mola and most of the key leaders, however, planned from the start to replace the whole Republican regime, as it was constituted, with a mili- tary directory, at least for the moment."