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

The military rising elsewhere in Galicia had begun, after a delay, early on 20 July. In Corunna the civil governor, Francisco Pérez Carballo, a personal friend of Casares Quiroga, refused arms to the UGT and CNT. He assured them that the military governor had received a solemn promise from his officers that they would not rebel. But General Pita Romero was then arrested and shot. The divisional commander, General Enrique Salcedo, was shot later, as was Pérez Carballo. The fate of his pregnant wife, Juana Capdevielle, was terrible. She was imprisoned, then miscarried when she heard that her husband had been murdered. She was let out of prison, but in August some Falangists raped and killed her.⁷

Groups of workers with very few weapons held out against the troops and a large detachment of the Falange under Manuel Hedilla. They were finally crushed in a last stand near Sir John Moore’s grave, just as reinforcements were arriving in the form of dinamiteros and miners from Noya armed with rifles. Finding they were too late and coming up against strong counterattacks, the relief column fell back into the hills. Some broke up into guerrilla forces, others made their way eastwards towards Bilbao.

In Vigo, which also fell to the nationalists, the soldiers of the Mérida Regiment were given a great deal of alcohol, so the column marched to the centre of the town half-drunk. In the Puerta del Sol the officer in command proclaimed a state of war and, when unarmed civilians shouted protests, gave the order to fire. The soldiers started shooting in every direction.

Early in the morning of 20 July the sparsely armed citizens of Madrid around the Montaña barracks were joined by many others, including women. Two 75mm Schneider guns were towed into place. A retired captain of artillery, Orad de la Torre, sited them in the calle Bailén some 500 metres from the barracks. Later, a 155mm gun, commanded by Lieutenant Vidal, was brought to within 200 metres of their target.⁸

Thousands of people surrounded the barracks along the Paseo de Rosales and from the North Station. It was a mass which advanced and retreated without order. A lawyer who was with them described the scene: ‘Rifle shots were cracking from the direction of the barracks. At the corner of the Plaza de España and the Calle de Ferraz a group of assault guards were loading their rifles in the shelter of a wall. A multitude of people were crouching and lying between the trees and benches of the gardens.’ Some loyalist planes arrived from the nearby airfield of Cuatro Vientos where the rising had been suppressed the day before. At first, they dropped leaflets calling on the soldiers to surrender. Later, when they dropped bombs on the barracks the thousands of civilians cheered and jumped for joy, but the machine-guns in the barracks opened up again, killing some of them. The young British poet Jack Lindsay wrote a poem about that day:

We found an odd gun,

We brought it up on a truck from a beer-factory.

We rushed the Montaña barracks

With some old pistols and our bare hands through the swivelling machine-gun fire.

I was there.

I saw the officers cowering, their faces chalked with fear.⁹

Not surprisingly, emotions were often stronger than common sense. Old revolvers were fired at the thick stone walls by those privileged few who had weapons. The assault on the Montaña barracks was to prove what horrors can result from confusion. Many of the soldiers wanted to surrender and waved white flags from their windows. The crowds ran joyfully forward but the machine-guns commanded by officers opened up again, killing many in the open. This happened several times so the mass of people were utterly enraged by the time the barracks were stormed. This was achieved only because a republican sapper sergeant within managed to throw open the gate before being shot down by an officer. The slaughter which followed was terrible.¹⁰

In Granada, General Miguel Campins stayed loyal to the Republic and assured the civil governor that his officers could be trusted.¹¹ But Colonels Muñoz and Leon Maestre set the rising in motion. Campins was arrested on 20 July and shot later on the orders of General Queipo de Llano for having opposed the ‘movimiento salvador de España’. The workers, who had believed that the garrison and the Assault Guard would not revolt, realized too late what was happening that day. The military rebels had seized the centre of the city by nightfall. Their opponents withdrew to the district known as the Albaicín, which they barricaded and defended for three days, but artillery was brought up and scores of families were buried in the rubble of their houses.