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

At the League of Nations that autumn, Eden tried to justify the non-intervention policy by claiming, untruthfully, that it had reduced the inflow of foreign forces. The British government also tried to prevent the Spanish Republic from publishing details of Italian intervention. Eden admitted that ‘it would be idle to deny that there have been wide breaches of the agreement’, but he went on to recommend the maintenance of the non-intervention agreement because ‘a leaky dam may yet serve its purpose’.¹¹ For the nationalists it proved no barrier at all. Eventually, the League decided that if it ‘cannot be made to work in the near future, the members of the League will consider ending the policy of non-intervention’. The Spanish republican representative asked for a more precise definition of ‘the near future’. The French foreign minister, Delbos, hoped it meant not more than ten days and the British representative replied ‘probably an earlier date than the Spanish delegate thinks’. The near future had still not arrived eighteen months later when the Spanish Republic ceased to exist.

British Conservative politicians may have started to see the republican government in a more positive light, but they had no idea of the power struggle going on behind the scenes in Valencia. Senior communists and Soviet advisers were in a state of anger and alarm as they found former political allies turning against them.

On 30 July Dimitrov passed to Voroshilov a report from a senior Soviet official in Valencia about the state of relations within the Negrín government. This document reveals the determination of the communists to seize total power in Spain. ‘The honeymoon is over…The government family is far from what might characterize it: friendship, love and peace…It is true that with this government our party has more opportunities for work, for exerting pressure on government policy, than it had with the preceding government. But we are still far from the desirable minimum.’ Again a bitter attack was launched against Prieto for having freed Rovira, the POUM commander, from prison. Prieto even ordered that the POUM’s 29th Division be rearmed, but the communists had already managed through their members in the army to disband it entirely.

Prieto, the report continued, ‘is afraid that the Popular Army, headed by commanders who come from among the people [i.e. loyal communists], hardened in battle, represents a huge revolutionary force and, as a result of this, will play a decisive role in determining the economic and social life, the political system of a future Spain’. Prieto therefore was trying to prevent political activity, ‘especially communist activity, and in this the professional military, including Rojo, supports him. He at least wants the command staff not to consist of active revolutionaries. This policy of Prieto is fundamentally linked to his overall political conception, which does not allow the development of the Spanish revolution to step beyond the limits of a classical bourgeois-democratic republic…I must add that Prieto’s conception about the army is completely supported by Martínez Barrio and the Republicans…The Republicans are beginning more and more to change their relationship with the Communist Party. Not long ago they regarded the Communist Party with great respect. In June this began to change.’ This was presumably influenced by the disappearance of Andreu Nin.

The report then described Zugazagoitia, the socialist minister of the interior, as ‘a disguised Trotskyist’: ‘It was he who sabotaged the pursuit of the POUMists. What is more: he himself organized and supported a number of campaigns of a blackmailing nature, provocations whose goal is to turn the Trotskyist spy affair against the party. He forbade and prevented the publication of materials exposing the connection between Nin and the POUMists and Franco’s general staff. It was he who removed Ortega, the communist, from his post as the director general of public security.’ The attacks continued against other ministers. Irujo, the Basque minister of justice, ‘acts like a real fascist…Together with Zugazagoitia, Irujo does everything possible and impossible to save the Trotskyists and to sabotage trials against them. And he will do everything possible to acquit them.’