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

On the night of 16 March the Savoia-Marchetti squadrons from Majorca started an around-the-clock bombing relay to Barcelona. There were no anti-aircraft guns and republican fighters were not scrambled from airfields in the region until the afternoon of 17 March. The casualties were about 1,000 dead and 2,000 wounded.²² One bomb appears to have struck an explosives truck in the Gran Vía, causing a huge explosion. This gave rise to false rumours that the Italians were experimenting with giant bombs. Mussolini was greatly encouraged by the international reaction. ‘[He] was pleased by the fact’, noted Ciano, ‘that the Italians have managed to provoke horror by their aggression instead of complacency with their mandolins. This will send up our stock in Germany, where they love total and ruthless war.’²³

War weariness had set in on the republican side, exacerbated by cynicism at the behaviour of their leaders. More people came to persuade themselves that it was time to reach some sort of compromise with the nationalists, either directly or through international mediation. Already in October 1936, Azaña had entrusted Bosch Gimpera to make peace overtures via London, but this had been stopped by the ambassador there, Azcárate. The suggestion finally reached the Foreign Office via the French government. In May 1937 Azaña tried again when Julián Besteiro, went to London as the representative of the Republic for the coronation of King George VI.

Few soldiers thought of the end of the war except in the despair and panic of retreat, because the Republic’s propaganda diet fed their hunger to believe in ultimate victory. Middle-class liberals and social democrats, on the other hand, were more aware of the implications of an extended war. Some like Martínez Barrio convinced themselves that they would suffer far more than the workers from Franco’s victory.

By 1938 demoralization was particularly strong among Catalan nationalists, whose support for the Republic in 1936 had been more solid than that of the Basques. The unity of the Catalan left, Esquerra, had been severely stretched in 1937 and once the central government moved to Barcelona, Companys was ignored. The majority of the Esquerra had gravitated towards the communist insistence on discipline and respect for private property, but they had felt betrayed when Negrín’s government rapidly dismantled the Generalitat’s independence in the wake of the May events. They were also angry at the failure of their old trading partners, France and especially Great Britain, to help them. They became defeatist and swelled the silent Catalan centre, which had disliked both the nationalists and the revolutionary left. Most of them now longed for the end of the war, persuading themselves that the initial harshness of Franco’s regime would not affect them for long.

The main antagonisms, however, broke out within the government, first between Prieto and the communists. His last venture with them in the re-establishment of state power had been Líster’s destruction of the collectives in Aragón; but from then on the tempo of minor and major quarrels built up rapidly. There was a dispute over whether a Messerschmitt 109 captured intact should be handed to the French or to the Soviet Union. But the greatest struggle was over the Communist Party’s infiltration of army commands.

Prieto attempted to limit communist power in the army by first tightening up on the commissar network. He forbade proselytizing to hamper the communists and he replaced the philo-communist, Álvarez del Vayo, with one of his own colleagues, Crescenciano Bilbao. He also sacked many communist officers, including Antonio Cordón from the post of chief of staff of the Army of the East. He even ordered Francisco Anton, the young commissar-general of the Army of the Centre who was thought to be La Pasionaria’s lover, to transfer to a front-line position. Many of his instructions, including this one, were ignored because all communists were told by the Party that only its instructions should be obeyed. Prieto was also hated by the communists for revealing that the Party made money for itself out of the Republic’s merchant navy, which had been reorganized through British holding companies so as to beat the blockade.

Prieto attacked the communists’ control of his own SIM when he realized what a terrifying machine it had become, but he was too late. His measures against individuals within this state-spawned state enraged the communists and the Russian NKVD ‘advisers’, without lessening the secret executions and torture. The rare occasions on which the SIM was effectively challenged occurred at the front, when SIM agents seeking out dissidents were sometimes killed by ‘stray bullets’.