The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

The Málaga campaign, the Italian CTV’s first action in Spain, took place while the opposing armies in the Madrid region were preparing for the next round. The southern extremity of the republican zone was no more than a long strip between sea and mountain, stretching from Motril to Estepona within 50 kilometres of Gibraltar. Only the overriding priority given to the assault on Madrid had delayed the nationalists from attacking it earlier. Quiepo de Llano had grown particularly impatient at what he regarded as a continuing insult to his control of Andalucia. The nationalist field command was given to a Borbón prince, Colonel the Duke of Seville. Franco asked Roatta to join this offensive with his 10,000 fascist militiamen and the Legionary Air Force in close support. It was a clever move, since victory was certain, and Mussolini would therefore be encouraged to continue his aid at a time when he had suddenly become worried about international opinion.

If any campaign was fated to be lost by the Republic it was this one. The terrain and the elongated sector meant that the nationalists could cut it almost wherever and whenever they wanted. The state of the defence was pitiful, for Málaga had led a revolutionary existence cut off from the reality of the war. Within the town there was strong antagonism between the communists and the CNT, while in the countryside the predominantly anarchist peasants were immersed in their collectives. The mountain range provided a most dangerous sense of security.

The republican forces consisted of no more than 12,000 militiamen, a third of whom had no rifles. There was little ammunition even for those who were armed. This state of affairs was largely the result of the deliberate neglect of the government, which disliked the continuing independence of the province. Largo Caballero is reputed to have said ‘not a round more for Málaga’. The performance of Colonel Villalba, the commander, moreover, was more than just unimpressive. There are strong grounds for believing that he sabotaged the defence deliberately, since he was treated so well by the nationalists after the defeat of the Republic.¹⁴

The Duke of Seville’s offensive began slowly in mid January with the capture of small pieces of territory. The first major section to be seized was the extreme south-west, including Marbella. Then a small force from Granada occupied a chunk of territory to the north-east of Málaga, endangering its communication with Motril, which lay at the exit of the bottleneck. Yet the attack on Málaga itself in the first week of February still came as a surprise. The Duke of Seville’s force advanced up the coast, rolling back the militia detachments with ease; the blackshirt militia under Roatta cut down to the sea; and the Granada force pushed further towards the coast road, although they left this escape route open so as not to provoke resistance. Within three days the nationalist and Italian forces had entered the outskirts of Málaga, after a naval bombardment by units of the nationalist fleet, backed by the Admiral Graf Spee. The republican warships at Cartagena never even left port.

The weather hampered operations and the Condor Legion could do little to help until almost the end. ‘At last the fighter squadrons can get off the ground,’ wrote Richthofen on 6 February. ‘Italians advancing with difficulty. One He 51 shot down. Italians are standing still four kilometres short of Málaga. Spaniards want fighters here there and everywhere. And today again in Saragossa because a red [aircraft] was there. That’s not how it should be. Today the Legion Condor had its fourteenth casualty.’ But just two days later, on 8 February, he was able to write: ‘Málaga taken! Great victory fiesta in white Spain.’¹⁵

Descriptions of the fleeing civilians and exhausted militiamen along the coast are harrowing.¹⁶ Crazed mothers nursed dead babies and the old and weak died by the roadside. It seemed to the writer Arthur Koestler and his host Sir Peter Chalmers-Mitchell who had a house in Málaga, as if only a few solitary figures were left in the abandoned landscape of the city. Smoke drifted upwards from houses ruined in the shelling. In the shock of defeat odd militiamen waited apathetically to be put up against a wall. The nationalist revenge in Málaga was perhaps the most horrific of the war, judging by the British consul’s report of 20,000 executions between 1937 and 1944. The nationalist prosecutor in Málaga, Carlos Arias Navarro, eventually became the last prime minister under Franco and the man inherited by King Juan Carlos in 1975.