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

On 25 May Mola, a myopic and meticulous commander who could infuriate colleagues with his caution, sent off his ‘Instrucción reservada no. 1’. This indicated that the coup needed to unite the armed forces and non-military groups who supported their cause. They were counting, of course, on the Falangists, the requetés and the other right-wing parties. The figurehead of the rising would be General José Sanjurjo, known as ‘the lion of the Rif’, because he had won fame in the Alhucemas landing of 1925 which led to the defeat of Abd-el-Krim. A large, rather vain man, he was the descendant of Carlist officers who had fought the liberals in the nineteenth century.

Under his command came the man who was undoubtedly the most competent of the colonial officers known as africanistas, Francisco Franco Bahamonde. Franco, the son of a naval paymaster in El Ferrol, had joined the army because of a lack of openings in the navy. He was a hardworking cadet, but not brilliant at the Academy of Infantry–he passed out number 251 out of 312 candidates. In North Africa, however, he received rapid promotion in the Foreign Legion. This corps was modelled on its French equivalent. Unlike his robust soldiers, Franco lacked a military appearance. He was short, had a pot belly and a high-pitched voice, which provoked jokes among his fellow officers. They called him by the diminutives ‘comandantín’ and ‘Franquito’.¹⁵ The young general, although undoubtedly brave, was extremely cautious in his planning. In fact his reticence during the spring of 1936 led many colleagues to think that he might not join the rising because the left hated him so much after repressing the Asturias revolution. He was certainly not an expansive man and rarely gave away his thinking. He was also, at that time, not known for his religious beliefs and in the Legion he stood out for showing little interest in chasing women. He did have one passion, however. He was viscerally anti-communist and devoted himself to reading journals on the subject of the bolshevik threat.¹⁶

The triumvirate of Sanjurjo, Mola and Franco could hardly have offered greater contrasts. They were then joined most surprisingly by a very eccentric character, General Queipo de Liano. He was assumed to have been a convinced Freemason and republican because he had taken part in a failed plot against the monarchy in 1930.

The left, in the meantime, was seeking allies within the army. They used their own secret society within the armed forces, the Unión Militar Republicana Antifascista (UMRA), but this was concentrated above all in the Assault Guard and the presidential guard.¹⁷ Its members were mostly connected to the socialist PSOE, but the communists, in the form of Vicente Uribe and Enrique Líster, tried to infiltrate it. At the beginning of July 1936 a group of 200 members of UMRA were preparing what they called ‘Operation Romerales’. This was a plan to kidnap or assassinate coup leaders in Morocco, but on 8 July the project was discovered and halted immediately by Casares Quiroga. The UMRA leaders met the head of government to warn him of the military plot, which was being prepared for 16 July. They gave him the names of Goded, Mola, Fanjul, Varela, Franco, Aranda, Alonso Vega, Yagüe and García Valiño. Casares Quiroga replied that there was not the slightest danger of a rising.¹⁸

The political involvement of young military officers on the left would lead to the most important incident before the rising. On 12 July Falangist gunmen murdered Lieutenant José Castillo Sería of the Assault Guard and a known member of the UMRA. He was the second socialist officer to be killed. Several of his comrades, including Captain Fernando Condés of the Civil Guard and the socialist Victoriano Cuenca, decided to take revenge. They first went to the home of Antonio Goicoechea, the head of the monarchist Renovación Española. He was away, so they tried the house of Gil Robles, but he was in Biarritz. Finally they drove in the middle of the night to the apartment of Calvo Sotelo, in the calle de Velázquez. They ordered him to dress and to accompany them. He was shot dead in their automobile and the body was dumped outside the entrance to the city’s eastern cemetry.