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

Nevertheless, Martínez Barrio’s peace overture to General Mola by telephone was firmly rejected. ‘It is not possible, señor Martínez Barrio,’ said Mola. ‘You have your people and I have mine. If you and I should reach agreement, both of us will have betrayed our ideals and our followers.’¹³ It was perhaps ironic that a rebel general should remind the prime minister that he was the representative of those voters to whom he owed his appointment. The workers were furious with what they regarded as an utterly fainéant, if not treacherous, government. ‘Large demonstrations are formed simultaneously,’ an eyewitness wrote. ‘They move towards the interior and war ministries like avalanches. The people shout “Traitors! Cowards!”’ Militants shouted, ‘We’ve been sold down the river! We’d better start taking them out and shooting them!’¹⁴

Martínez Barrio’s government collapsed instantly. He described the event himself: ‘Within a few minutes the political demonstration had brought about the ruin of my government. It was senseless to ask me to combat the military rebellion with mere shadows, stripped of authority and ludicrously retaining the name of ministers.’¹⁵ His ministry had lasted just a few hours.

Azaña asked yet another personal friend to form a government. José Giral, a university professor, was the only liberal politician who realized that the politicians of the Republic could not refuse to face reality any longer. During the morning of 19 July he dissolved the army by decree and ordered that arms should be given to the workers’ organizations. Julian Marías, who went to mass with his fiancée Lolita in the Church of the Carboneras near the Puerta del Sol, did not imagine that it would be the last one held there until April 1939. When they emerged on to the street afterwards, it seemed as if the city had changed hands during the church service. Requisitioned motorcars decorated with red or red and black flags careered around with rifles pointing out of the windows. The weapons had been handed out from the Assault Guard barracks in the Calle del Correo nearby.¹⁶

Even so, there were governors and officials who refused to carry out this instruction. In Madrid the government had to order General Miaja point-blank to comply with the order. More than 60,000 rifles were then delivered in lorries to UGT and CNT headquarters, where the heavy grease was cleaned off with party newspapers. Only 5,000 of them had bolts; the remainder were stored in the Montaña barracks where Colonel Serra, who was one of the conspirators, refused to hand them over.

David Antona described the scene inside CNT headquarters, which the government had closed only a few weeks earlier: ‘A narrow dark room. We could hardly move. A jabber of voices, shouts, rifles–many rifles. The telephone never stopped ringing. It was impossible to hear yourself speak. There was only the noise of rifle bolts from comrades who wanted to learn quickly how to handle them.’¹⁷

The loyalists were lucky that there was also confusion among the conspirators in Madrid. Nobody seemed certain who was to take command, until eventually General Fanjul assumed this ill-fated responsibility. The rebel generals had known how hard it would be to seize Madrid at once. But considering that their strategy was based on a holding action until reinforcements arrived from Pamplona, Saragossa and Barcelona, astonishingly little preparation had been made for a siege.

Late in the afternoon of 19 July Fanjul went to the Montaña barracks, where he addressed the officers and those Falangists who had come to help. But when they attempted to march out, they found that they were hemmed in by crowds of madrileños who had been directed there by the UGT and CNT. Fire was exchanged and the troops withdrew into the barracks. The rebels’ action had more the air of a ritual than a military operation. Outside, La Pasionaria’s speech on the radio calling for resistance was relayed over loudspeakers, then the besiegers settled down to wait for the morning.

While the fighting on the mainland intensified during the afternoon of 18 July, the Dragon Rapide aeroplane, organized by Luis Bolínin London, collected General Franco in civilian clothes. The English pilot was supposed to match half a torn playing card with its counterpart in his passenger’s possession. Franco dispensed with such a trivial touch of amateur conspiracy; perhaps he felt it beneath the dignity of a man of destiny. Sanjurjo may have been accepted as the figurehead, but Franco had an unshakeable belief that his own abilities were indispensable to the success of the rebels’ great undertaking.