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

The killing of the clergy was far from universal and with the exception of the Basque country, where the Church was untouched, there was no marked regional pattern. In depressed rural areas the priests were often as poverty-stricken and ill-educated as their parishioners. Those who had taken as much trouble over burying the poor as the rich were often spared. The same was usually true of the killing of shopkeepers and members of the professional class. A lawyer or shopkeeper who had not taken advantage of the poor or showed arrogance was usually left alone. Factory owners and managers with a reputation for dealing fairly with their workforce were nearly always spared and in many cases kept on in the new co-operative. On the other hand, any ‘known exploiter’ had little chance of survival if caught in the early days. Obviously there were exceptions to this pattern, but the rumours of people being shot merely for wearing hats and ties were the product of an inevitable middle-class persecution complex.

Left-wing parties and unions requisitioned buildings and set up their own ‘commissions of investigation’, usually known by the Russian names of checas.⁵ Supporters of the rising were dragged in front of these revolutionary tribunals when they were not shot out of hand. The names and addresses of those belonging to groups involved in the rising were taken from official departments or the respective party headquarters, if their records had not been destroyed in time. Evidently some victims were denounced by servants, debtors and enemies. With the intense atmosphere of suspicion and the speed of events, many mistakes were undoubtedly made.

This pretence of justice happened mainly in cities and large towns where the socialists and communists were dominant. Fake Falange membership cards, said to belong to the defendant, were often produced so as to ensure that the proceedings were rapid. When declared guilty, prisoners were taken away to be shot. Their bodies were then often left in prominent positions with placards stating that the victims were fascists.⁶ Anarchists tended to despise this farce of legality and simply got on with the shooting. Believing in the individual’s responsibility for his actions, they rejected any form of corporate ‘statism’ for officials to hide behind. The other reason for immediate execution was their genuine horror of putting anyone in a prison, the most symbolic of all state institutions.

The establishment of the checas was unsurprising, considering the spy mania and the frustration caused by the government’s lack of resistance to the military rising. Some of them became gangs ruled by opportunist leaders. One checa set up in the palace of Count del Rincón in Madrid was run by García Altadell, a former secretary-general of the Communist Youth, who set off for Argentina with his loot, but was captured by the nationalists en route and later garrotted.

Exploiting the fear and turmoil, a great number of criminals found it easy to act under political flags of convenience. Many of those who took real and imagined fascists for rides (in the movie jargon used at the time) were teenage workers or shop assistants who were not political fanatics, but young men excited by their sudden power. The actress Maria Casares (daughter of the ex-prime minister), who worked at a Madrid hospital with her mother, described what happened when they found blood in their car one morning. Their young driver, Paco, gave ‘an imperceptible shrug. Then he said, “We took a guy for a ride at dawn, and I’m sorry I haven’t had time to clean up the car.” And in the rear-view mirror I saw his indefinable little smile; a smile of bragging and shame at the same time, and also a sort of atrocious innocence. The expression of a child caught red-handed.’⁷

In spite of the wave of political killings in Madrid during the first few weeks, there remained a very large population of nationalists, judging by the numbers to emerge two and a half years later when Franco’s troops approached. Those of the upper and middle classes who knew they were in danger usually tried to go into hiding, disguise themselves as workers to flee Madrid, or seek refuge in overcrowded embassies. Foreign legations were estimated to have held a total of 8,500 people at the beginning of February 1937.⁸ Some embassies, representing governments sympathetic to the nationalists, acted as espionage centres, using both radio and diplomatic bag to pass information to the other side. One checa opened a fake embassy some months later and killed all those who came there for shelter. The indiscriminate killing began to decline only when control was exercised over the criminals released from prison and military action began in the Madrid area.