The rebel general had promised a swift coup, but the workers of Barcelona had other plans. When the army rose up on July 18th, 1936, they stormed the artillery depot and took the guns for themselves. The people armed themselves for the first time in the city’s history, and the rebellion was crushed within days. In the village of Lora del Rio, the news arrived as a rumor.
The train from Seville never came. On the morning of the 19th, the workers gathered in the streets, some with shotguns slung over their shoulders. My brother found me in the harvest fields and shouted, “The revolution has broken out! ”
We all left the harvest and went to town.
The revolution had begun. The uprising had divided Spain in two. In the cities, the workers and loyal police defeated the rebels. In the conservative countryside, the army coup succeeded.
The pattern was set within days. The coup became a civil war, and the resistance became a revolution. In Lora del Rio, the revolutionary committee took over the town hall. They requisitioned everything from the shops and shared it out equally.
Everyone got the same quantities per person. We took the fighting bulls for meat because we needed the cattle for working the land. Some people had never seen cooked meat before in their lives, and soon they were tired of eating it. But the revolution had its darker side.
The right-wingers and landlords were locked up in the village jail, accused of rebellion. Some of them were good people who had given work to everybody, and others were very bad. They all ended up the same way. A lot of hatred had been accumulated over generations of struggle between workers and masters.
The same was happening everywhere. In Barcelona, the anarchists had taken over the factories and collectivized the entire wood industry. The small workshops were closed because they had unsafe machinery and poor lighting. Big production units were created instead.
Women were liberated, and abortion was legalized. But the revolution also found its enemies within. The church was the symbol of authority, and 13 bishops and nearly 6,000 priests, nuns, and monks died in the revolution. The general coup had let loose an orgy of reciprocal vengeance, and neither side was innocent.
General Mola, the plot’s organizer, had set the tone from the beginning: “It is necessary to spread an atmosphere of terror. We have to create an impression of mastery. Anyone who is overtly or secretly a supporter of the Popular Front must be shot. ”
The war was barely four months old when the columns of Franco’s Army of Africa marched north from Seville, leaving a trail of blood.
In Badajoz, the frontier town with a loyal garrison, they won a bloody victory. More than 2,000 people were summarily shot in the bull ring. An American reporter asked Colonel Yagüe about the killings. “Do you think I was going to take 4,000 red prisoners while my column marched against the clock?
” Yagüe replied. “Of course we shot them. Should I have left them free behind me to let Badajoz become a red town again? ”
The terror did not end with the battle.
A month later, prisoners were still being executed. The wife of the town photographer watched helplessly as her husband was taken away. When she and his father saw him in the bull ring, his face was like yellow wax. He stretched out his hand and she kissed it.
He said, “Father, these are the worst moments of my life. Do what you can because they’ll kill me. ” They were turned away, and the next day, she went to the cemetery. In Madrid, the news of the massacres coincided with the first air raids on the capital.
A wave of vengeance swept through the city. A crowd gathered at the Modelo jail and began pulling out the right-wing political prisoners. They set up a tribunal with candles stuck in bottles, and the shootings began. They grabbed a former speaker of the Parliament.
He turned around and said, “To spend all my life defending the people to end up in this way, to finish like this. ” Then he said goodbye. A short while later, we heard the shots. The atrocity was so outrageous that even some European ambassadors threatened to recognize the rebel government.
The revolution had swept away the formal courts, and the Modelo tragedy made some system of justice imperative. New popular tribunals were set up. Meanwhile, the war at the front was going badly for the Republic. The militias were not effective because they didn’t obey the general staff.
They took their lead from the unions and the political parties. When they received an order, they had to hold a general assembly to decide whether to obey it. Franco’s regular army, disciplined and organized, was defeating them. The prime minister resigned, and the socialist Largo Caballero took over, bringing the communists into the government for the first time.
Outside Europe, the great powers watched and maneuvered. Britain and France were terrified of another world war. They devised a policy of non-intervention, which meant they refused to supply arms to the legitimate Spanish Republic. Meanwhile, Hitler and Mussolini rushed to support Franco.
The German Condor Legion brought modern aircraft to Spain, and the Italian Fascists sent volunteers. The war in Spain became a testing ground for the weapons that would be used in the Second World War. Then the Soviets began to send help. The first shipment arrived in Barcelona, and the people were thrilled.
But the thrill turned to disappointment when the crates were opened to reveal canned milk, not guns. The guns came later. The first Russian plane flights over Madrid brought a different kind of hope. The cry went up all through the city: “Son nuestros!
Son nuestros! They’re ours! They’re ours! ” People started hugging each other.
The international volunteers began to arrive as the war approached Madrid. There were 40,000 of them in the end, from France, Greece, Poland, Italy, America, Canada, Britain. Two thousand came from Britain, and 500 of them died. They came straight to the front and fought beside the Spanish.
George Orwell came too. He had gone enthusiastically to fight for the Republic, but he joined the anti-Stalinist party, the POUM. The persecution of the POUM by the communists disillusioned many who thought the Republic was a democracy. But for most Catalans and most Spaniards, the Russian support seemed like salvation.
The nationalists tried to encircle Madrid twice. They were thrown back with heavy losses both times. Then their Italian allies persuaded Franco to let them take the town of Guadalajara alone. The Italians from the Garibaldi Battalion of the International Brigades took up position against their fellow countrymen.
When they stopped a couple of cars near the woods, the men inside said, “But we are Italians! ”
“We’re Italians, too,” came the answer. The fascists started to cry, “Don’t shoot us! It’s not our fault that Mussolini sent us here!
” They were taken prisoner and led away. The Republicans routed the Italian army at Guadalajara, and Mussolini was furious. Stalemated at Madrid, the nationalists switched their offensive to the north. The Basque country was still Republican, and it was a valuable prize because of its heavy industry and mineral wealth.
It was also the most devout Catholic region in the country. Here, conservatives fought side by side with anarchists and socialists. The Basques gave the lie to Franco’s claim that his campaign was a Christian crusade. They prayed for victory against the nationalists, and their opposition came from the traditional Basque yearning for home rule.
The nationalist general threatened to raise the region to the ground. He nearly succeeded. On April 26th, 1937, the small market town of Gernika held its market as usual. The town had a population of 7,000 and was the historic center of Basque nationalism.
In the afternoon, the planes came. That day we were in the industrial zone, and over the hills I saw the planes arriving. First just one. It circled twice.
We were used to seeing that, and we thought it would fly away again. But scarcely 15 minutes later, more arrived. There were eight, all in a line, black. I remember them as very black and ugly.
I’ll never forget the noise the bombs made. A kind of fizz, followed by cries, then a tremendous crash over and over again. I can still hear the noises, and we could feel everything tremble. Smoke and heat came in.
Forty-three aircraft, mainly German, from the Condor Legion, dropped 100,000 pounds of incendiary and high-explosive bombs on the town for three hours. The Germans said their instructions were to bomb the bridge and crossroads at the edge of the town to block the Republican retreat. But they did not use their accurate Stuka dive bombers, and they machine-gunned the fleeing population. Little remained standing except the arms factory and the bridge, the Germans’ main target.
I was just nine years old, and I can still remember the force of the blast of heat in my face as I came out. All the buildings next to the factories were burning, and the sky was red with reflections. Two days later, the rebel army entered Gernika and immediately began a propaganda offensive. They made a show of guarding the famous Tree of Liberty, and they even tried to put the blame on the Basques for destroying their own town.
Some people were prepared to believe it. The Basque country fell. Bilbao’s ring of iron defenses could not protect the city from intensive bombing. As the city was about to fall, the Western democracies finally felt free to help.
They cataloged the children of Republican Spain, gave them medical inspections, labeled them, and transported them to England, France, Belgium, America, and the Soviet Union. Franco soon broke through and seized the region’s industries and mines intact. Within months, he was exporting iron ore, and his clients included Germany and Britain, both of whom were using the captured resources of the Republic for their own rearmament programs. Non-intervention didn’t interfere much with business.
Half a million people would die in the war, and the fighting would continue for another two and a half years. But the seeds of the larger conflict were already sown. Spain had been the arena where the ideologies of the 20th century clashed, and the world would reap the harvest.
