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

In Barcelona the SIM had two main prisons, one in the Calle Zaragoza, the second in the Seminario Conciliar, although it also used other locations, such as the Portal de l’A

´ ngel, which held 300 people in the summer of 1937, the so-called ‘Nestlé dairy’, the Hotel Colón, one in the Calle Vallmajor and others. Interrogators worked ruthlessly to extract confessions which matched their conspiracy theories. In September 1937 the security organs in Barcelona reported that they had exposed ‘an espionage organization even larger than the one in Madrid. This organization, too, was set up by Catalonian Trotskyists. Its identifying sign was the letter TS and each one of its agents had a personal identification number. Documents that were found in the mattress of one of its members show that this gang had committed a number of sabotage acts and that it was preparing assassination attempts against some top leaders of the People’s Front and the Republican Army.’ It then went on to give a list of the republican leaders targeted for assassination, perhaps in the hope of encouraging non-communist ministers to support them.¹⁹

Under NKVD direction, the SIM performed inhuman atrocities. The nationalists exploited and exaggerated this, creating a black legend. Yet although all documents were destroyed, there can be no doubt from oral testimony, and from the continual denunciations of Manuel de Irujo and Pere Bosch Gimpera, that the Soviets were applying their ‘scientific’ methods of interrogation. The SIM’s interrogation methods had evolved beyond beatings with rubber piping, hot and cold water treatment and mock executions which had been carried out in the early days. Cell floors were specially constructed with the sharp corners of bricks pointing upwards so that the naked prisoners were in constant pain. Strange metallic sounds, colours, lights and sloping floors were used as disorientation and sensory-deprivation techniques. If these failed, or if the interrogators were in a hurry, there was always the ‘electric chair’ and the ‘noise box’ but they risked sending prisoners mad too quickly.

There are no reliable estimates of the total number of SIM prisoners, nor of the proportions, though it seems fairly certain that there were more republicans than nationalists. It was alleged that any critics of Soviet military incompetence, such as foreign volunteer pilots, were as likely to find themselves accused of treason as a person who opposed the communists on ideological grounds. The minister of Justice, Manuel de Irujo, resigned on 10 August 1938 in protest, although he remained in government as a minister without portfolio. Many other leading republicans were appalled by such judicial practices and above all by the SIM. Negrín simply dismissed critical accounts of SIM activity as enemy propaganda. Only in 1949 did he admit that he had been wrong to the American journalist Henry Buckley.²⁰

The communists had been remarkably successful in creating a large degree of control over the government, the bureaucracy and the machinery of public order, while retaining a token presence of only two minor ministries in the cabinet–a requirement of Soviet foreign policy. They had made themselves indispensable to the centrist politicians who had wanted to restore state power and who were now too involved in the process to protest. Nevertheless, a reaction against communist power was starting to develop, especially within the army.

In the autumn of 1937 communist propaganda was making great claims about the progress of the People’s Army. It is true that there had been improvements at unit level. But few commanders or staff officers had displayed competence or tactical sense, and the supply organization was still corrupt and inefficient. Above all, damage to morale had been increased by events behind the lines. Communist preferment and proselytizing at the front had reached such levels that former communist supporters among the regular officers were horrified. Prieto was shaken when he heard that non-communist wounded were often refused medical aid. Battalion commanders who rejected invitations to join the Party found weapon replacements, rations or even their men’s pay cut off. Those who succumbed were given priority over non-communists. They were promoted and their reputations were boosted in despatches and press accounts.