Chapter 9: Franco's Wartime Government
"All leftist and liberal parties were outlawed soon after the beginning of the war. "
"With moderate conservatism discredited by the terms of Civil War, the key political movement in the Nationalist zone was the burgeoning Falange. It mobilized the great majority of militia volunteers, and the political membership of the party, which had already multiplied during the spring of 1936, doubled twice over during the first months of the Civil War. "
"The Falangists had the numbers and the propaganda but suffered from two profound weaknesses. The party had developed into a mass movement only under conditions of civil war that were totally dominated by Francos new military government through martial law. Secondly, its leadership was very weak. All the top figures in the party had been in
Republican jails since March 1936. The only one to be liberated, Onésimo Redondo, was killed while leading a militia column in the first days of fighting northwest of Madrid. With the fate of José Antonio Primo de Rivera still undecided in the Republican zone, the remaining second- level leaders of the party, on September 4, 1936, ratified the governance of a seven-member Junta de Mando (Command or Governance Committee) under Manuel Hedilla.
Hedilla was the former Falangist provincial chief of Santander, and had played a key role in the party during the conspiracy as a clandestine inspector nacional trying to reorganize various of its sections. A former ships mechanic and small businessman, he had little formal education but considerable practical sense and a reputation for honesty. During the fall and winter of 1936—37, Hedilla struggled to give a new structure to what was suddenly a mass organization. He tried with very limited success to coordinate far-flung militia activities and began to form a new party treasury to pay volunteers three pesetas a day (compared with ten pesetas daily paid Republican milicianos, a good example of the disparity in demagogy and discipline in the two zones). The skeleton of a new administrative system of party services was intended to serve as the beginning of a parallel state structure, while the Sección Femenina quickly blossomed into the largest and by far the most effective womens auxiliary service organization in either zone. The Falange’s Auxilio Social soon became the leading secular welfare organization in Nationalist territory, helping to care for victims of the war and the orphans created by the Nationalists’ own bloody repression.
Aside from the militia recruitment, however, the main Falangist achievement during Hedilla's brief period of leadership lay in the development of its press and propaganda. Daily or weekly newspapers were established in almost every province of the Nationalist zone, and in some, the most important local organ more or less voluntarily agreed to become the district Falangist mouthpiece."
"José Antonio nonetheless distrusted the latter profoundly and had always been painfully aware that his young Falangist militants lacked the maturity and political ability to assume power. He considered the Civil War the national disaster that it was, and proposed an armistice on the basis of a compromise “national pacification’ government of moderate liberals and middle-class centrists.?"
"The movement's most important function during the first months of the Civil War was the organization of many tens of thousands of military volunteers. Cooperating fully with the military command, Falangists were also allowed to organize two small military training schools for their own cadres, at Seville and Salamanca.® Yet a Carlist announcement on December 8 of a plan to form a separate Carlist military school quickly led to Francos first political crackdown among the Nationalists. The Generalissimo viewed the publicity and air of independence that attended the project as a clear violation of the prerogative of military command. The project was canceled and the Carlist leader Manuel Fal Conde exiled from Nationalist territory a few days later.’
Unification
Franco increasingly recognized the need to create some distinctly new form of political organization in order to avoid Primo de Rivera's mistake of failing to proceed to the direct institutionalization of a new system. "
"Throughout the winter months, the German ambassador Faupel urged Franco to create a dynamic new state party on the German model * while lesser NSDAP representatives urged Falangist leaders to copy German ways. Italian pressure was less overt, though in March 1937 the Fascisgerarca Robert Farinacci was sent to Spain on a fact-finding mission, and
also in the vain hope of persuading the Falangists to support a monarchist restoration in the person of a prince from the House of Savoy. He found the Falangists much too radical and antimonarchist for this, and his report describing them as a sort of “leftist” group caused “great scandal” in Rome." Later Serrano would recall that “the Italians particularly urged a political unification, though they did so with tact and discretion.”
Franco had begun to work on vague plans for unification by the beginning of 1937. According to Serrano, “he was already developing the idea of reducing the various parties and ideologies of the [Nationalist] movement to a common denominator...Yet the Falange was filled “even with masses coming from the Re- public and from syndicalism. . . . Its leaders were old provincial chiefs, usually little known, and extremely young squad leaders, in many cases merely improvised.”** Carlist and other rightists sometimes made jokes about the Falangists as the “FAllange” (referring to the acronym of the Iberian Anarchist Federation) or as being “our Reds.” Such a party would need firm control, subordination, and combination with contrasting conservative elements."
"The prospect of some form of political unification excited considerable rivalry and infighting among Falangist leaders...In March they began a direct intra- party conspiracy aimed at ousting Hedilla.
By early April Hedilla was consulting with certain of the Carlist leadership and monarchist politicians with the aim of creating a broader political fusion that would cooperate with the politically unorganized Franco regime. The CEDA youth movement, JAP, had held an assembly of its own on March 19 which affirmed its willingness to cooperate in the political development of the new state. What Franco did not want, however, was a broad new political movement created independently of his government.
...After Hedilla somewhat languidly called a meeting of the Falange's National Council for April 25 to deal with the issues of leadership and unification, the “legitimist” conspirators seized the initiative on April 16, meeting in Falangist national headquarters with part of the Junta de Mando to declare Hedilla deposed. He was replaced with a triumvirate— the original Falangist executive structure—composed of Dávila, Aznar, and José Moreno (a provincial boss), with Rafael Garcerán, a former legal aide to José Antonio who had not even been a member of the party before the war, as secretary. The self-appointed triumvirs then scheduled a separate meeting of their own for the National Council, confronted Hedilla with a series of faits accomplis—reading off a list of his real and imagined deficiencies as head of the Junta de Mando—and ended by calling on Franco at his headquarters to inform him of developments.
Hedilla apparently also made direct contact with the Generalissimo, who in all this was taken by surprise. After dark a group of hedillistas then descended on the residences of Dávila and Garcerán. The former was taken prisoner at the cost of one Falangist killed on each side, while the latter held off assailants with pistol fire, after which all concerned were arrested by forces of the Civil Guard. Dávila and Carcerán—at that point the only triumvirs in Salamanca—were charged with armed rebellion for trying to undercut Hedilla at the very moment he was clumsily attempting to promote some sort of political unification.
On the following day, April 19, while the National Council was holding its concluding session, Franco and Serrano Súñer added the finishing touches to their own arrangements, announcing the fusion of Falangists and Carlists into a new organization called the Falange Espanola Tradicionalista y de las J.O.N.S. Francos unification decree emphasized the need for an organized political basis for the new state and declared that “as in other countries of totalitarian regime,’ traditional and newer forces must be combined. The Falange’s Twenty-six Points (minus the last article that rejected fusions) were announced as the “programmatic norm’ of the new state, though making it clear that since “the movement that we lead is precisely this—a movement—more than a program, it will not be rigid or static, but subject, in each case, to the work of revision and improvement that reality may counsel,” a point that Franco made even more forcefully in his radio address that night. Monarchist restoration was not rejected by the new political structure, for Franco specified that “when we have put an end to the great task of spiritual and material reconstruction, should patriotic need and the wishes of the country support it, we do not close the horizon to the possibility of installing in the nation the secular regime that forged its unity and historical greatness,” carefully employing the Acción Española term for the instauración of a more authoritarian monarchy rather than the restauración of the old parliamentary regime. All other parties were dissolved, but the FET was theoretically open to all followers of the Nationalist movement, though regular membership would subsequently be made subject to certain restrictions."
"Franco made himself jefe nacional of the new FET, with a secretary, Junta Politica and National Council to be named subsequently by himself. Five days later (April 24) the raised-arm Fascist salute of the Falange was made the official salute of the Nationalist regime."
"Though most Falangists had been willing to accept some form of unification, Francos seizure of power was too much for a number of them, including Hedilla, who at first refused to cooperate.
The resulting “Hedilla affair” climaxed on April 25, when Hedilla was arrested. On the preceding day, the Secretariat of War in Franco’s Junta Técnica had ordered the incorporation of the Falangist militia by the regular Army, bringing immediate dissolution of the separate Falangist officer- training school near Salamanca. When its members were moved to other facilities in Avila, some resisted. Government authorities subsequently produced a telegram from Hedilla, dated April 22, urging Falangists not to collaborate in the new FET, and a number of Falangist public demonstrations against the unification took place in several cities in the interim.”
Though Hedilla had refused his new position in the FET Junta de Mando, he denied all charges of rebellion, but to authorities his actions were profoundly subversive of the new political structure. Hedilla and a number of other recalcitrant Falangists were tried for rebellion by court- martial early in June and sentenced to death. The sentence was reduced first to life imprisonment and then to a twenty-year prison term in the Canary Islands, where Hedilla was kept for four years, part of the time in rigorous solitary confinement, before being paroled to the Balearics and allowed to reconstruct his life working in private industry.” A score or more of other Falangist diehards (none of them of the top rank) were also prosecuted and sentenced to shorter terms.
The Carlists accepted the unification with skepticism but better grace than did many of the Falangists, and the other political forces in the Nationalist zone made haste to cooperate. From Lisbon, Gil Robles wrote on April 25 with directions for the dissolution of Acción Popular, the largest nucleus of the old CEDA.” There was no serious challenge to Francos leadership from any source.
The aim was a semi-fascist partido único, though one not slavishly based on foreign imitation. In an interview published in a pamphlet called Ideario del Generalísimo, released just before the unification, Franco declared, “Our system will be based on a Portuguese or Italian model, though we shall conserve our historic institutions.” Later in an ABC (Seville) interview on July 19, Franco would reiterate that the goal was a “totalitarian state,” yet the context in which he always placed this term, invoking the institutional structure of the Catholic Monarchs of the fifteenth century, indicated that what Franco had in mind was not any system of total institutional control such as that of the Soviet Union or of radical fascists—a true functional totalitarianism—but simply a unitary and authoritarian state that permitted varying degrees of traditional pluralism."
"Work on the new organization proceeded through the summer, and the first party statutes, released on August 4, 1937, preserved much of the original structure but made the system even more hierarchical and authoritarian. The role of Franco was defined in the following terms in articles 47 and 48:
The Jefe Nacional of F.E.T. y de las J.O.N.S., supreme Caudillo of the Movement, personifies all its values and honors. As author of the historical era in which Spain acquires the means to carry out its destiny and with that the goals of the Movement, the Jefe, in the plenitude of his powers, assumes the most absolute authority. The Jefe is responsible [only] before God and history.. . . It is up to the Caudillo to designate his successor, who will receive from him the same authority and obligations."
"The FET effectively fulfilled its function as an official political and doctrinal organization for the remainder of the war. Its membership eventually soared to more than 900,000 by 1942—by far the largest political group in Spanish history—and yet membership soon came to have a relatively limited significance. All Army officers became ipso facto affiliates of the FET, and a law of October 1, 1938, gave anyone jailed in Republican territory for nominally political reasons automatic membership. "
"Only Serrano Súñer enjoyed the full confidence of the Generalissimo. He was dapper, alert, and sensitive, always dressed in a well-tailored dark business suit, the only important person in Salamanca or Burgos who felt no compulsion to sport a uniform. Serrano would later declare that his goals were “to help establish effectively the political jefatura of Franco, to save and realize the political thought of José Antonio, and to contribute to establishing the National Movement in a régimen jurídico, that is, to institute a state of law.”* By the beginning of 1938 he had helped establish a central state administration, prepared new legislation defining the powers of Franco and the state, and played a key role in the organization of ministerial departments to form Franco’s first formal cabinet. "
"The roster of the first National Council of the FET was not complete until October 19, 1937. Of its fifty members, a maximum of twenty could be considered genuine Falangists "
Franco's First Regular Government
"Had it been possible, Franco would also have preferred to postpone the organization of a regular government system and council of ministers until after the end of the conflict, but its duration made that impossible. In what was evidently intended as a symbolic gesture, Franco chose January 30, 1938, eighth anniversary of the downfall of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, to announce a new administrative law establishing the structure of his government, with the names of his first regular cabinet ministers appearing on the following day. Article 16 of the new decree on government and administrative structure officially stated the powers of dictatorship, stipulating, “The Chief of State possesses the supreme power to dictate juridical norms of a general character.”** This law also stated that the office of President of Government (prime minister) was “attached to that of Chief of State,” permanently reserving the position for Franco."
"Of eleven positions, three thus went to veteran generals who had collaborated with Primo de Rivera, two to right-wing monarchists, one to a Carlist, two to relatively apolitical technicians, and three to Falangists (including Serrano Súñer), only one of whom was a camisa vieja.
Though the new government promised to begin construction of the “national syndicalist state,” it represented primarily the military and the old right, not the erstwhile national syndicalists of the new partido único"
"That administrative apparatus was widely scattered, for the Nationalist government never acquired a full-fledged capital during the war. None of the provincial capitals of northern Spain possessed adequate facilities and housing for a national government. The nearest thing to a civil administrative center was Burgos, which was the site of several ministries, but two were located in Vitoria, two in Santander and one each in Bilbao and Valladolid. The Ministry of Defense was to be found in Salamanca, Francos military headquarters.
The principal function of the FET was social and propagandistic. Strict control of the press was juridically defined by a tough new press and censorship law introduced on April 22, 1938, "
Social Policy
"Demogogy was a feature of more than Falangist rhetoric, for tough talk about “capitalism” had also been characteristic of the military leadership, particularly during the early phase of the Civil War. Nationalist commanders had threatened stiff sanctions against employers who failed to honor the existing social legislation of the Republic,* and Franco had promised “all possible reforms within the capacity of the nations economy. We balk at nothing that the country's economy can stand. No use in giving poor land to poor peasants. It is not land alone that counts, but money to work it. Another twenty-five years will see the break-up of the big estates into small properties and the creation of a bourgeois peasan- try.” In a subsequent interview he emphasized that the goal of the Nationalist movement was not to “defend capitalism’ but to save the national interest of Spain. “We came,” he said, “for the middle class and the humble class,” not the wealthy. Franco promised state regulation of large concentrations of wealth and an agricultural development program featuring easier credit, the cultivation of unused land, reforestation, stimulation of the cattle industry, and special encouragement for succash crops as tobacco, cotton, and flax.* Queipo de Llano, for his part, had declared, “We realize that the problem of class hatred can only be solved by the removal of extreme class distinctions. We realize, also, that the wealthy, by means of taxation, have to contribute toward a more equitable distribution of money.”* Mola had early plumped for a “representative kind of corporatism.* During the first months of the Civil War especially, the Nationalist press carried dire warnings addressed to “capitalists” demanding their conformity and financial contribution before it was too late."
"After the organization of the first regular government in 1938 it became necessary to give social policy a sharper focus. The new Council of Ministers approved a proposal that a fuero del trabajo—a “labor charter’ —be prepared to fulfill the same function as the Carta del Lavoro in Fascist Italy. Two draft projects were commissioned, one by González Bueno, the minister of syndical organization, and his associates; the second by two of the more radical neo-Falangists with academic backgrounds, Joaquín Garrigues and Francisco Javier Conde, with the collaboration of Dionisio Ridruejo. The latter draft was originally entitled “Carta del Trabajo,” reflecting Italian inspiration, but turned out to be quite radical, placing the national economy under the control of the proposed state syndical system, with its entire program based on an explicitly anticapitalist concept of property. "
"The resulting Fuero del Trabajo, approved on March 9, 1938, differed from the Fascist Carta del Lavoro primarily in its reflection of some of the principles of social Catholicism. It proclaimed an economic middle way equidistant from “liberal capitalism” and “Marxist materialism,” leadin its defenders later to claim that the Fuero was not merely a statement of labor relations but of a new structure of economy. It declared labor both a duty and a right and defined capital as “an instrument of production.” State protection was promised in limiting the work day and in guaranteeing Sunday rest, holidays, annual vacations, and the development of recreational facilities. The principle of a minimum wage was endorsed, together with family assistance and the goal of a “gradual but inflexible” increase in the standard of living. Point 10 promised basic social securities such as sickness, unemployment, and retirement insurance, while strikes and lockouts were both proscribed as “crimes against the supreme interest of the nation.” Special labor courts were planned to adjudicate between capital and labor. Social justice within large industrial enterprises was made the special responsibility of an ambiguously defined jefe de empresa. The most radical provision was that which obligated the state to “endeavor to endow each peasant family with a small parcel of land,” while protecting long-term rent leases and working toward the ultimate goal that the land “eventually belongs to those who work on it.”
At the same time, it was made clear that the economy would continue to rest on the basis of private property, whose protection was guaranteed. The state was envisioned as undertaking direct economic initiatives only when private enterprise failed or “the interests of the nation required it.” The Fuero promised protection to artisans, as well as guaranteeing enough income to entrepreneurs to make it possible for them to increase wages. Point 9 promised regulation of credit to make it available for large and small loans."
"The first step began late in April with the beginning of the formation of a Central Nacional-Sindicalista for each province, to be headed by a provincial delegate of syndicates who was both a provincial FET leader and a state official. The Centrals did not so much organize syndicates as begin to create “syndical services” that dealt with particular economic problems such as agricultural credit, fertilizers, rural cooperatives, and fishing and construction materials—branches of economic administration and assistance more than syndical organization. This was followed in July by creation of “commissions to regulate production” for major economic sectors. Their function was to arrange allocation of imports and organization of exports and to otherwise serve mainly an informational role.* Little was done to actually organize syndicates while the war lasted, and the first formal plan of syndical organization, drawn up late in 1938, was officially canceled in January 1939.*
In agriculture even less was accomplished. Though Fernández Cuesta might repeat in some detail variations of José Antonio's proposals for agrarian reform,* there was no intention of introducing even minor reform as long as the war lasted. The Nationalist zone benefitted from the fact that it included the greater share of Spain's farmland and concentrated on obtaining steady, normal production from the existing structure of agricultural exploitation. It never faced the severe food shortages, some- times bordering on starvation, that afflicted the larger Republican cities in 1938-39."
"The most effective social activity of the FET during the Civil War was not that of the syndicates but was the work of the Sección Femenina, whose membership expanded to approximately 580,000 by the end of the conflict. The Sección Femenina created a conservative social and moral framework for female activism that took hundreds of thousands of women out of their accustomed routine to a greater extent than anything existing on the Republican side. It provided practical assistance on a large scale in the form of nursing and support for the Nationalist army.”
Significant political divergence also developed within the female auxiliary leadership, however. After the political unification, Carlist women’s auxiliaries led by Maria Rosa Urraca Pastor were given direction of the Service of Fronts and Hospitals and did not cooperate fully with the national leadersip headed by Pilar Primo de Rivera. More serious was the autonomous development of Auxilio en Invierno (Winter Aid), created in Valladolid by the local Falangist leader Javier Martinez de Bedoya and Mercedes Sanz Bachiller, widow of the top early Falangist chief Redondo (and who later married Bedoya). Their organization was patterned on the Nazi Winterhilfe and received some limited technical assistance from Ger- many. In late 1937, after a long visit of Sanz Bachiller to the Third Reich, the organization was renamed Auxilio Social and officially made the national social assistance agency of the regime. Womanpower was provided by a decree of October 7, 1937, which established the obligation of six months “social service” for all unmarried women between seventeen and thirty-five. Though not absolutely compulsory, this was an almost indispensable requirement of all young women who sought any form of employment or professional qualification.” A severe personality conflict and power struggle developed between Pilar Primo de Rivera and Mercedes Sanz, and it was not fully resolved by a subsequent decree of December 28, 1939, that subordinated the social welfare agency to the Sección Femenina.” Though the FET's womens auxiliary never achieved its goal of the political education and indoctrination of Spanish women as a whole, its far-flung programs had a significant impact on the well-being of the less fortunate in the Nationalist zone, produced much more tangible results than did the work of its male counterparts, and contributed more than a little to the good morale and relative social cohesion of the zone."
Internal Politics in 1938
"Though political figures from various backgrounds might occasionally be disciplined for stepping out of line, the only ones to draw Francos special ire were a handful of Falangist zealots. "
"Despite their aversion to radical Falangism, the Carlists presented few problems, concentrating above all on military responsibilities...t the lower levels of common FET membership, ordinary Carlists withdrew more and more, and in some districts never really participated directly in the new state party. "
"Only two of the Nationalist generals created any political difficulties during the second half of the war: Queipo de Llano, and, what may seem surprising at first, Juan Yagiie, who had played a key role in Francos rise to leadership. "
"The only more or less genuine Falangist among the Army commanders was Yagiúe, who by 1938 commanded an entire corps on the main active front in the northeast. He evidently became disillusioned with Franco only a few months after he had helped push him through as Caudillo, turning to grumbling and dissident conversations from early 1937 on. He was infuriated by Francos decision to halt the spring offensive of 1938 on the border of Catalonia and drive south against Valencia instead. On the first anniversary of the political unification in April 1938, he gave a speech in Zaragoza (the principal city to the rear of his corps) in which he acknowledged the courage of the Republicans, spoke on behalf of the political prisoners on both sides who were defending their ideals, and attacked the administration of justice in the Nationalist zone for its partiality.! For this Franco relieved him of command of his corps for several months, a comparatively mild measure, and then reinstated him."
"The status of Caudillo, though never well worked out in theory,’ was implicitly based upon a charismatic, supranormal legitimacy. The aspects of Francos career and leadership that contributed to this were various: (1) his remarkable personal history and reputation stemming from combat days in Africa, where he seemed always to triumph, while other officers fell dead, wounded, or in defeat; (2) the dramatic circumstances of Spain and the military movement in 1936, which created a broad popular movement out of nothing, and recognized the personal eminence of Franco over all the other Nationalist leaders—a veritable raising of the leader on the shields of the military elite, as in ancient Visigothic times; (3) the un- deniable effect of what had become the Nationalist propaganda machine; (4) the development of a personal style in Franco, not flashy, or glamorous, or even eloquent, but one that was self-assured, comfortable, convincing in command, and able to communicate basic principles and concerns to his followers; (5) the affirmation of the new Nationalist culture, which recognized authority and continuity based on a kind of historical-cultural legitimacy that Franco incarnated; (6) on that basis, the appeal to traditionalism and the combination of the higher Spanish tradition with effective new apsects of modernization; above all else (7) Franco's sure and steady victorious leadership in the Civil War, ever confident and seemingly well-organized, which never took a step back and scarcely lost a battle; climaxed by (8) the development of a new state system which rep- resented the synthesis of these achievements, of the historic national culture and tradition and the requirements of twentieth-century government, and supposedly marking the beginning of a new historical era.
By the close of the Civil War the regime was not only militarily victorious but economically successful as well. Throughout the conflict it had maintained a stable paper currency and exchange rate without any gold reserve or central banking system, while the Republican peseta had collapsed well before the end of the war. This was a notable achievement, and seemed to indicate a capacity for economic as well as military leadership (and provided little warning of the dark days that would ensue soon after the fighting was concluded.)"