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

As many had remarked, Franco was both ambitious and politically clear-sighted. The defence of the Alcázar had become the most potent source of nationalist propaganda. Its resistance was raised to an almost mystical level.¹² Franco was still, at this stage, little more than primus inter pares. To be the ‘saviour of the Alcázar’ would make his leadership of the nationalist movement unchallengeable. It has, of course, been argued that Franco would have achieved the same pre-eminence by capturing Madrid. But that represented a far more difficult undertaking. To outflank and bomb untrained militiamen in the countryside was one thing. Clearing a major city required a totally different operation. Franco was too wily to take an unnecessary risk before his leadership was officially confirmed. Then, too, while foreign backers and financiers might grumble if the war took a long time, only a very serious reverse would induce them to cut their losses. Franco did not believe that the fighting qualities of the Madrid militia, or their weaponry, would improve in the immediate future. He therefore felt that he could afford to wait a couple of weeks for reinforcements to arrive. It was Mola who was to make a fatuous boast about drinking coffee on the Gran Vía in a matter of days, but even Franco never expected Madrid to resist as it did. Another theory is that Franco wanted the advance to be slow so that there was sufficient time to purge the rear areas of potential opponents. The Italian general Mario Roatta recounted much later that Queipo de Llano had told him that military operations were conducted slowly as a sort of ‘olive oil press, in order to occupy and pacify, village by village, the whole zone’.¹³

During August the militia troops besieging the Alcázar underestimated both the speed of Yagüe’s advance and the resilience of the fortress’s defenders. There was a relaxed atmosphere on the barricades surrounding the military academy. Enormous quantities of small-arms ammunition were wasted against its thick walls. It was some time before artillery was brought up and even the 175mm piece which eventually arrived brought down only the superstructure. The Alcázar was like an iceberg. Its strength lay within the submerged rock. There was something Buñuelesque about the scene: militiamen, wearing straw hats against the sun, lay on mattresses behind their barricades and exchanged insults with the Civil Guard defenders. Twice a day there was a tacitly agreed ceasefire as a blind beggar tapped his way along the calle de Carmen between the firing lines.

The most serious psychological mistake made by the republican besiegers was the attempt to use Colonel Moscardó’s son, Luis, as a hostage. On 23 July a local lawyer called Cándido Cabello rang the Alcázar, saying that they would shoot him unless the defenders surrendered. Moscardó refused and, according to the nationalist version, told his son, who was put on the telephone, to die bravely. In fact, Luis was not shot until a month later in reprisal for an air raid.¹⁴ The dramatic appeal of the story also camouflaged the fact that the 100 left-wing hostages, including women and children, whom the defenders had taken into the Alcázar at the beginning of the siege were never heard of again.¹⁵

None of this stopped the creation of the most emotive symbolism for the nationalist movement. The defenders, believing that Luis had been shot immediately, could not consider surrendering after such a sacrifice. The story was used as a moral lesson for everyone in nationalist territory. In addition, since the old city of Toledo was the centre of Spanish Catholicism and 107 priests were reputed to have been killed there by the left, the incident was projected with all the fervour of the ‘anti-atheist crusade’. It was enrobed with mystical implications of Abraham and Isaac, even of God and Christ, by those carried away with the parallel. Dramatic resemblances were also drawn with episodes from Spanish history–Philip II handing over his son to be executed by the Inquisition and Alonzo Guzmán leaving the Moors to crucify his son outside the besieged walls of Tarifa in the thirteenth century. The young cadets of the Alcázar were extolled by the nationalist press and their supporters abroad. In reality, there was only a handful of cadets there, since the rising took place during the Academy’s summer holiday. The courageous defence which tied down so many republicans was conducted by members of the less glamorous Civil Guard.

The rapid approach of the Army of Africa during September made the besiegers appreciate the gravity of their situation. Mines were dug into the rock under the fortress and, in a great show witnessed by the world’s press, one corner of the Alcázar was blown up. The presence of women and children inside, however, made the propaganda exercise counterproductive, while the rubble left a formidable barrier enabling the defenders to beat off the assault.