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

There had been two major areas of action on the northern front during the winter. The fierce siege of Oviedo continued and a Basque offensive was mounted against Villarreal on 30 November 1936, when General Llano de la Encomienda secretly assembled nineteen infantry battalions, six batteries of artillery and some armoured vehicles. A breakthrough to capture Vitoria might have been achieved if they had not been spotted by a nationalist reconnaissance aircraft from Burgos. The nationalist counter-attack prevented the capture of Villarreal, but the Basques were left in control of the three mountains, Maroto, Albertia and Jarinto, whose peaks they proceeded to fortify. Establishing uncamouflaged defensive positions on peaks was to be one of their most serious mistakes. The Basques did not appreciate the ground-attack capabilities of fighters or the effects of bombing.

By the spring of 1937 the Basque nationalists and their left-wing allies had raised some 46 battalions, of which about half were Basque militia, the Euzko-Gudaroztea. The rest were UGT, CNT, communist or republican units. (Many Basques were shocked by the idea of women fighting in some of the left-wing ranks.) These formations were reinforced by ten battalions from Asturias and Santander who did not get on well with the local population. The general staff under Llano de la Encomienda consisted of professional officers, none of whom seem to have been either energetic or efficient. The greatest liability, however, was the shortage of weapons.

At the beginning of the war Telesforo Monzón’s trip to Barcelona had produced only limited supplies. Other means had to be used. The gold reserves in the Bank of Spain were seized. Weapons were purchased abroad, or even stolen, and smuggled back by fishing vessels through the nationalist blockade or brought in aboard English ships. In the late autumn, even though the republican battleship Jaime I had left the area, some larger ships still managed to get through. One of these was the Russian A. Andreev, which brought the Basques two squadrons of Chatos, 30 tanks (T-26 and Renaults) and fourteen Russian armoured cars with 37mm cannon, 40 mortars, 300 machine-guns and 15,000 rifles.³ Food was also a major worry, with seldom more than two weeks’ supply. The monotonous and sparse diet of chickpeas from Mexico was all that separated the Basques from starvation. There were few cats left alive in the Basque country and ingenious methods of catching seagulls were tried.

The nationalist naval force off the Cantabrian coast consisted of the battleship España, the cruiser Almirante Cervera and the destroyer Velasco. The Basques had only an ancient destroyer and two scarcely serviceable submarines. They therefore improvised by mounting 101mm guns from the battleship Jaime I on four deep-sea fishing vessels.

The problem for the republican forces, wrote a Soviet adviser, was the naval leadership, especially Captain Enrique Navarro. ‘According to the local people and sailors, Navarro was not paying serious attention to the operations of the flotilla. He has avoided visiting the ships, as he is afraid of the sailors. He wears civilian clothes while in town and at his headquarters on the shore. During our first meeting, Navarro complained about the lack of discipline among the sailors, about the threats from committees of ships, and said that a plot existed to attempt to assassinate him…There was not a single socialist, to say nothing of communists, among the personnel of the headquarters.’ Warships of the flotilla were staying passively in Bilbao, following, apparently, a silent agreement between officers at the headquarters and on the ships. Repairs lasted for indefinite periods of time under different pretexts. The republican flotilla was given the scornful nickname of the ‘Non-Interference Committee’.⁴

On 5 March the nationalist cruiser Canarias was spotted off the mouth of the River Nervión with a small vessel, the Yorkbrook, which she had captured. Basque 105mm and 155mm shore batteries opened fire immediately to drive her off; they knew that armed trawlers, escorting a boat from Bayonne, were due. When they appeared out of the mist, the Canarias left her prize to engage them. One of the trawlers, the Bizkaya, nipped round the Canarias and made off with her prize, while the other two replied to her 8-inch guns with their much smaller armament. One of them, the Guipuzkoa, caught fire and had to make for the shelter of the shore batteries, but the crew of the other one, the Nabarra, continued the attack and fought on into the night until all ammunition was used and the trawler sunk.⁵ This incident, reminiscent of Tennyson’s ‘The Revenge’, was commemorated in an epic poem by Cecil Day-Lewis.