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

Negrín, meanwhile, was attempting to impose an even more authoritarian stamp on his government. On 5 August he called a meeting of the council of ministers. He demanded their agreement to the confirmation of 58 death sentences; he presented a draft decree militarizing the war industries of Catalonia under the orders of the under-secretary of armaments; he set before them another decree planned to set up a special court to try those accused of smuggling and exporting capital; and he produced one more to militarize the emergency tribunals. But these measures provoked strong protests from five ministers, including Manuel de Irujo and Jaime Aiguader (the brother of the Artemi Aiguader involved in the events of May 1937). Irujo roundly attacked the activities of the SIM and the drift towards dictatorship, while Aiguader protested that Negrín’s decree violated the Catalan statute of autonomy. Negrín, however, won the vote in the cabinet despite the protests. The censorship department tried to keep the affair quiet. Even Azaña was not informed of the confirmation of the death sentences. But when news of the clash leaked out, the communists hastened to attack the Basque Irujo and the Catalan Aiguader for being involved in ‘a separatist plot’.

On 11 August Irujo and Aiguader resigned. The death sentences were carried out and two days later a shaken Azaña wrote in his diary, ‘Tarradellas told me that yesterday they shot 58 people. Irujo sent me details. It’s horrible. I feel indignation about the whole affair. Eight days after [I gave a speech] on pity and forgiveness, they kill 58. Without telling me anything nor seeking my opinion. I only found out from the press after the deed was done.’¹ Negrín, without turning a hair, left that night to visit the Ebro front.

Everyone began discussing the government crisis. La Vanguardia (perhaps at Negrín’s own suggestion) published an article warning that a coup d’état might remove him and bring in a defeatist government to seek peace with the nationalists. Troops in communist formations were asked to send telegrams of support for the head of the government. On 16 August, in a meeting with Azaña which the president described as ‘unforgettable’, Negrín, in a scarcely veiled threat, brandished the claim that the leaders of the army were behind him. Certainly, the communists were. Two days before, Frente Rojo had proclaimed, ‘Faced with all this manoeuvring, the workers, the soldiers, the whole people are firmly on the side of the government and its leader, Negrín.’

It can hardly have been a coincidence that on the day of Negrín’s meeting with Azaña a military parade through the streets of Barcelona, with tanks and aircraft flying low overhead, was mounted by XVIII Army Corps, commanded by the communist José del Barrio. This blatant show of strength in the rear was especially provocative at a time when the republicans were fighting for their lives beyond the Ebro. Negrín’s former liberal and social-democrat allies were outraged. Prieto condemned the prime minister for ‘imposing his will over the composition of the government with a military show of strength through Barcelona streets’. Their protests were too late. In any case, Negrín’s action was overshadowed by graver events. The appalling sacrifice on the Ebro was virtually ignored by Europe as it moved to the brink of war over Czechoslovakia in the late summer of 1938.

Negrín’s next move represented a curious form of brinkmanship. He went to the residence of the president of Catalonia for a meeting. Apart from Companys, there were also present Tarradellas, Sbert, Bosch Gimpera and Pi Sunyer. Negrín announced that he was exhausted and intended to resign. He suggested that Companys should replace him. Negrín, a man of voracious appetites in women and food, apparently claimed to Companys (who related it to Azaña) that he was ‘an animal and needed his hands free for his desires. Every ten days, a new woman.’²

Companys, although having fiercely attacked Negrín, said that he should continue to lead the government of the Republic, yet maintain a dialogue with the Generalitat to sort out their differences. In fact, there was no possible alternative to Negrín. His close alliance with the communists remained the only way to prevent the military machine, then involved in the most desperate battle of the whole war, from becoming totally paralysed. Yet there was little chance of agreement over Catalan autonomy. Negrín was almost as much of a centralist as Franco. ‘I am not fighting Franco’, he had said in July, ‘so that a stupid and childish separatism resurfaces. I am fighting the war for Spain and on behalf of Spain…There is only one nation: Spain!’³