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

34 Jackson, La República española y la guerra civil, Barcelona, 1976, p. 141.

35 The Spanish Foreign Legion (Tercio de Estranjeros) contained fewer foreigners than its French counterpart. Its basic unit was the bandera of several hundred men with their own light artillery. Its counterpart for Moroccan colonial troops serving as regulares was the tabor, which had only 250 men.

36 Quoted Bartolomé Bennassar, La guerre d’Espagne et ses lendemains, p. 51.

37 General Goded was made head of the air force and General Mola was given command of the army in Morocco.

38 Two Dutch businessmen, Strauss and Perl (whose two names created the new word ‘estra-perlo’) patented a game of roulette which they wanted to introduce to Spain. Since games of chance had been prohibited since the dictatorship of Primo Rivera, they tried to obtain authorization through bribery. The affair involved corrupt members of the Radical Party such as Sigfrido Blasco Ibáñez (son of the writer) and also Lerroux’s adopted son Aurelio.

39 This scandal involved payments by the entrepreneur Antonio Tayá who obtained a government contract which was not respected.

Chapter 4: The Popular Front

1 Quoted Bennassar p. 51.

2 José María Gil Robles, No fue posible la paz, Barcelona, 1968, p. 404. In Catalonia the alliance was represented by the Front Català d’Ordre which included the Lliga, Acció Popular de Catalunya, Renovación Española, Carlists, and Radicals.

3 ‘Armamento de la canalla, incendio de bancos y casas particulares, reparto de bienes y tierras, saqueos en forma, reparto de vuestras mujeres’ (Paul Preston, La destrucción de la democracia en España, Madrid, 1978, p. 279).

4 William J. Callahan, La Iglesia católica en España(1875–2002), Barcelona, 2002, pp. 262ff.

5 Ibid., pp. 263–4.

6 The Frente Popular included Izquierda Republicana, Unión Republicana, Partido Socialista Obrero Español, Juventudes Socialistas, Partido Comunista de España, Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, the Partido Sindicalista and the Unión General de Trabajadores. In Catalonia, the Esquerra Republicana, Acció Catalana Republicana, Partit Nacionalista Republicà Català, Unió Socialista de Catalunya, Unió de Rabassaires and the small communist groups made up the Front d’Esquerres. The PNV also applied, despite pressure from the Vatican to join the Bloque Nacional. In Galicia the Partido Galeguista joined the Popular Front without suffering a split with its right wing.

7 The figures vary bewilderingly. The left in Spain has always convinced itself that there were 30,000, but Stanley Payne has calculated that it was closer to 15,000. See La primera democracia española, p. 305, n. 21.

8 Diego Martínez Barrio, Páginas para la historia del Frente Popular, Madrid, 1937, p. 12.

9 See Payne, The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union and Communism, New Haven, 2004, pp. 67–8.

10 Ibid., p. 81.

11 Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern, New York, 1997, p. 132.

12 ‘Decisión sobre la cuestión española’, RTsKhIDNI 495/18/ quoted in Daniel Kowalsky, La Unión Soviética y la guerra civil española, Barcelona, 2004, p. 23.

13 Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, 23 July 1936, RGASPI 495/18/1101, pp. 21–2.

14 Quoted Radosh and Habeck, Españatraicionada p. 8.

15 14 October 1936, RGASPI 495/74/199, p. 63.

16 Estimates of union membership figures vary considerably. Some historians put the UGT at 1.5 million and the CNT at 1.8 million, but others attribute much lower numbers to CNT and much higher to the UGT, for example Ramo ´ña, vol. vii, Madrid, 1973, p. 29.

17 The results were as follows based on a total number of voters of 9,864,783, which represented 72 per cent of the electoral register:

Popular Front: 4,654,116

Nacionalistas vascos: 125,714

Centre: 400,901

Right: 4,503,524

Of the more important parties, the PSOE won 99 seats; Izquierda Republicana (an amalgam of Acción Republicana, Partido Republicano Galeguista and the radical-socialists of Marcelino Domingo) 87 seats; Unión Republicana of Martínez Barrio (an offshoot from Lerroux’s Radical Party) 38; the Spanish Communist Party, 17; and Esquerra Republicana of Catalonia, 21. On the right, the CEDA kept 88 seats, the monarchists of the Bloque Nacional won 12; the Carlist Traditionalists, 10; the Catalan Lliga, 12; and the Radical Party, 5. In the middle, the Centrist Party of Portela Valladares won 16 seats and the Basque Nationalist Party, 10 (Javier Tusell, Las elecciónes del Frente Popular, Madrid, 1972, ii, pp. 190 and 243).