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

In fact, the battle was lost partly because six ammunition trucks failed to reach the defenders after the French border was closed on 8 August. Telesforo Monzón, one of the Basque ministers, had travelled to Barcelona in search of weapons and ammunition. Unfortunately, he did not obtain more than a thousand rifles and six pieces of artillery. A few days later Miguel González Inestal, the head of the CNT fisherman’s union, had a meeting with García Oliver, Abad de Santillán and President Companys. They helped him with weapons and a train, which would be sent via France and Hendaye, but it was intercepted by the French authorities.³ Irún itself was left a burning ruin when the last of the workers withdrew, some of them having to swim to safety to reach French territory. A parting burst of machine-gun fire hit Major Beorleguí in the calf. The tough old soldier refused treatment and later died of gangrene.

The anarchists in San Sebastián were angry at the lack of support from the Basque nationalists, especially when they heard that the governor was negotiating the surrender of the city with the enemy. They were extremely suspicious after the betrayals which had occurred in the first few weeks of the war, but despite its conservatism the Basque nationalist PNV had not the slightest intention of changing sides. Nevertheless, it was totally opposed to the anarchists’ scorched-earth policy, which had led to the burning of Irún during the withdrawal and now meant defending San Sebastián to the last. The PNV prevailed, once their militia shot several anarchists. The nationalists occupied the city on 14 September, which meant that they now surrounded the northern republican zone.⁴

Without any doubt, the most important military development of the summer was the ruthlessly effective campaign of the Army of Africa. Its early arrival on the mainland was mainly due to the help of German and Italian aircraft. Not surprisingly, republican propaganda made much of this foreign intervention at such a vital stage of the war, but the vehement protests tended to obscure two uncomfortable truths. First, republican warships run by sailors’ committees seemed to lack the ability or desire for offensive action, especially with the German battleships Deutschland and Admiral Scheer screening the nationalist convoys across the straits. But they clearly had orders to avoid open conflict and in any case, as the senior Soviet naval adviser later stated, ‘The republican ships did not carry out their duty.’⁵

On land, the republican medley of indolent regular officers, urban worker militias and peasants intent on staying close to their pueblo proved incapable of launching any effective counter-attack in the vital south-western sector before the colonial troops arrived in strength. The military importance of the airlift by the Savoias and the Junkers 52s must, therefore, not be exaggerated, even though the arrival of 1,500 men between 28 July and 5 August had an enormous influence both on the nationalists’ morale and on the international assessment of their chances of victory. Altogether, some 12,000 troops were transported in this way during the first two months of the war, before the nationalists had won absolute control of the straits.

The airlift of legionnaires and Moroccan regulares from the Army of Africa was well under way during the first week of August. On 6 August Franco himself crossed to the mainland, leaving General Orgaz in command of the Protectorate. He established his headquarters in Seville, where he decided to split his forces so as to be able to secure Andalucia as well as advance rapidly on the capital.

The main force under Colonel Yagüe was to drive north, parallel to the Portuguese frontier, then swing north-eastwards on Madrid. Yagüe was to prove the most aggressive of all the Nationalist field commanders. In many ways these qualities underlined the contrast between the Army of Africa and the apathetic metropolitan army. Colonial officers have always tended to be less fashionable and more professional, but in Spain this difference was even more pronounced than in either the British or French services. Nevertheless Franco, the supposedly archetypal africanista, was extremely conventional in contrast to his impetuous subordinate.