Franco

At the same time, Gil Robles sent his private secretary, the Conde de Peña Castillo, to instruct his one-time aide Major Manuel Carrasco Verde to contact Franco. Carrasco was to inform Franco of what was happening and urge him to add his weight to Gil Robles’ pleas urging Portela not to resign and to bring in the Army. Carrasco woke the Chief of the General Staff at home with the message. Franco leapt to the unjustified conclusion that the election results were the first victory of the Comintern plan to take over Spain. Accordingly, he sent Carrasco to warn Colonel Galarza and instruct him to have key UME officers alerted in provincial garrisons. Franco then telephoned General Pozas, Director-General of the Civil Guard, an old Africanista who was nonetheless loyal to the Republic. He told Pozas that the results meant disorder and revolution. Franco proposed, in terms so guarded as to be almost incomprehensible, that Pozas join in an action to impose order. Pozas dismissed his fears and told him calmly that the crowds in the street were merely ‘the legitimate expression of republican joy’.

Disappointed by Pozas’s cool reception, Franco was driven by further news of crowds in the streets and sightings of clenched fist salutes to put pressure on the Minister of War, General Nicolás Molero. He visited him in his rooms and tried unsuccessfully to get him to seize the initiative and declare martial law. Finally convinced by Franco’s arguments about the Communist danger, Molero agreed to force Portela to call a cabinet meeting to discuss the declaration of martial law. Primed by Franco as to what to say, Molero rang Portela and a cabinet meeting was arranged for later that morning. Franco was convinced that the session was called because of his pressure on Molero although it is likely that a meeting would have been held anyway.80

Franco decided that it was essential to get Portela to use his authority and order Pozas to use the Civil Guard against the populace. He approached their mutual friend, Natalio Rivas, to see if he could arrange a meeting. By mid-morning, Franco had managed to get an appointment to see Portela, but not until 7 p.m. In the meanwhile, at mid-day, the cabinet met, under the chairmanship of Alcalá Zamora, and declared, as Portela had promised Gil Robles, a State of Alert for eight days. It also approved, and the President signed, a decree of martial law to be kept in reserve and used as and when Portela judged necessary.81 Franco had gone to his office and been further alarmed by reports of minor incidents of disorder which arrived in the course of the morning. So he sent an emissary to General Pozas, asking him, rather more directly than some hours earlier, to use his men ‘to hold back the forces of the revolution’. Pozas again refused. General Molero was totally ineffective and Franco was virtually running the Ministry. He spoke to Generals Goded and Rodríguez del Barrio to see if the units under their command could be relied upon if necessary. Shortly after the cabinet meeting ended, Franco took it upon himself to try to put into action the blank decree of martial law, which Portela had been granted by the cabinet. Franco had learned of the existence of the decree from Molero who had been at the cabinet meeting.82

Within minutes of being telephoned by Molero, Franco used the existence of the decree as a threadbare cloak of legality behind which to try to get local commanders to declare martial law. Franco was effectively trying to revert to the role that he had played during the Asturian crisis, assuming the de facto powers of both Minister of War and Minister of the Interior. In fact, the particular circumstances of October 1934 – a workers’ uprising, the formal declaration of martial law and the total confidence placed in him by the then Minister of War, Diego Hidalgo, – did not now exist. The Chief of the General Staff had no business usurping the job of the Head of the Civil Guard. However, Franco followed his instincts and, in response to orders emanating from his office in the Ministry of War, martial law (estado de guerra) was actually declared in Zaragoza, Valencia, Oviedo and Alicante. Similar declarations were about to made in Huesca, Córdoba and Granada.83 Too few local commanders responded, the majority replying that their officers would not support a movement if it had to be against the Civil Guard and the Assault Guards. When local Civil Guard commanders rang Madrid to check if it were true that martial law had been declared, Pozas assured them that it had not.84 Franco’s initiative came to naught.

So, when Franco finally saw the Prime Minister in the evening, he was careful to play it both ways. In the most courteous terms, Franco told Portela that, in view of the dangers constituted by a possible Popular Front government, he offered him his support and that of the Army if he would stay in power. He made it clear that Portela’s agreement would remove the obstacle to an Army take-over most feared by the officer corps, the opposition of the police and the Civil Guard to military action. ‘The Army does not have the moral unity at this moment to undertake the task of saving Spain. Your intervention is necessary because you have authority over Pozas and can draw on the unlimited resources of the State, with the police at your orders.’ However, Franco spent much of the short interview shoring up his own personal position by trying to convince the Prime Minister that he personally was not involved in any kind of conspiracy. Franco told Portela’s political secretary, his nephew José Martí de Veses, that he was completely indifferent to politics and was concerned only with his military duties.85

Despite Portela’s outright refusal to take up the offers of support from both Gil Robles and Franco, efforts to organise military intervention continued. The key issue remained the attitude of the Civil Guard. In the evening of 17 February, in an attempt to build on Franco’s efforts earlier in the day, General Goded tried to bring out the troops of the Montaña barracks in Madrid. However, the officers of that and other garrisons refused to rebel without a guarantee that the Civil Guard would not oppose them. It was believed in government circles that Franco was deeply involved in Goded’s initiative. Pozas, backed up by General Miguel Núñez de Prado, head of the police, was convinced that Franco was conspiring. However, they reassured Portela on the 18th with the words ‘the Civil Guard will oppose any coup attempt (militarada)’, and Pozas surrounded all suspect garrisons with detachments of the Civil Guard.86 Just before midnight on the 18th, José Calvo Sotelo and the militant Carlist Joaquín Bau went to see Portela in the Hotel Palace and urged him to call on Franco, the officers of the Madrid military garrison and the Civil Guard to impose order.87 All this activity around Portela and the failure of Goded justified Franco’s instinctive suspicions that the Army was not yet ready for a coup.

A last despairing effort was made by Gil Robles who secretly met Portela under some pine trees at the side of the road from Chamartín to Alcobendas on the outskirts of the capital at 8.30 a.m. on the morning of 19 February.88 It was to no avail and the efforts of Gil Robles, Calvo Sotelo and Franco did not divert Portela and the rest of the cabinet from their determination to resign and, in all probability, frightened them into doing so with greater alacrity. At 10.30 a.m. on the morning of 19 February, they agreed to hand over power to Azaña immediately, instead of waiting for the opening of the Cortes. Before Portela could inform Alcalá Zamora of this decision, he was told that General Franco had been waiting for him for an hour since 2.30 p.m. at the Ministerio de la Gobernación. During that hour, Franco told Portela’s secretary that he was apolitical but that the threats to public order meant that the decree of martial law which Portela had in his pocket should be put into effect. Marti de Veses said that this would divide the Army. Franco replied confidently that the use of the Legion and the Regulares would hold the Army together. That remark confirmed again not only his readiness to use the colonial Army on mainland Spain, but also his conviction that it was essential to do so if the Left was to be decisively defeated. When he was admitted to the Prime Minister’s office, Franco did a repeat performance of his double game of the previous evening. He insisted on his own innocence of conspiracy but, aware of his failure with Pozas, again begged Portela not to resign. Portela could not be swayed from his decision which he communicated shortly afterwards to Alcalá Zamora.89

To the chagrin of the Right and, indeed, to his own annoyance, Azaña was forced to accept power prematurely, in the late afternoon of 19 February. Franco may have covered his back effectively, but there can be little doubt that he had come nearer during the crisis of 17–19 February to engaging in a military coup than ever before. In the last resort, he had been prevented only by the determined attitude of Generals Pozas and Núñez de Prado. It was scarcely surprising under those circumstances that, when Azaña became prime minister again, Franco should be removed from his position at the head of the general staff. It was to be a major step in turning Franco’s latent resentments into outright aggression against the Republic.

* Family responsibilities had obliged him to avoid military service in 1907 by the device of buying himself out. This, together with the fact that he was the author of a book on the Russian revolution, ensured that his appointment was greeted with trepidation on the Right.

* Once more Ramón Serrano Suñer served as the intermediary between them, entrusting delivery of the letter to his brother José.

V

THE MAKING OF A CONSPIRATOR

Franco and the Popular Front, 1936

THE IMPACT on Franco of the left-wing election victory was almost immediate. On 21 February, the new Minister of War, General Carlos Masquelet, put a number of proposed postings before the cabinet. Amongst them was that of Franco to be Comandante General of the Canary Islands, of Goded to be Comandante General of the Balearic Islands and of Mola to be military governor of Pamplona. Franco was not remotely pleased with what was, in absolute terms, an important post. He sincerely believed that, as Chief of the General Staff, he could play a crucial role in holding back the threat of the Left. As his activities in the wake of the elections showed, his experience in October 1934 had given him a taste for power. That was one reason why the new government wanted him far from the capital.

The Military Region of the Canary Islands, like that of the Balearics, was not traditionally, even prior to Azaña’s abolition of the post, a Captaincy-General. Nevertheless, in importance, both jobs counted only marginally below the eight peninsular Military Regions and were held by a Major-General. After all, Franco was only number 23 in the list of 24 Major-Generals on active service. General Mola, four points lower at number three on the list of Brigadier Generals, was made military commander of Pamplona and so subordinate to the regional commander in Zaragoza.1 Franco was fortunate to get such a senior posting from the new Minister of War but he perceived it as a demotion and another slight at the hands of Azaña. Years later, he spoke of the posting as a ‘banishment’ (destierro). Above all, he was worried that his work in removing liberal officers would be reversed.2

Before leaving Madrid, Franco made the obligatory visits to the new Prime Minister Azaña and to the President of the Republic, Alcalá Zamora. The only accounts of these two meetings derive from Franco’s own testimony to his cousin Pacón and to his biographer Joaquín Arrarás. Even from his partial accounts, it is clear that his motives were complex. Ostensibly, he was trying to convince them to do something about the danger of Communism. It is clear that he thought their best course would have been to keep him on as Chief of the General Staff. In large part, as with his efforts in 1931 to hold onto the Military Academy, this was because he wanted to keep a post in which he felt fulfilled and for which he thought that he was the best man. It is impossible to discern whether he also hoped by staying in Madrid to be able to take part in military conspiracy.

In Franco’s jaundiced eyes, Alcalá Zamora was dangerously sanguine about the situation. Franco told him that there were insufficient means available to oppose the revolution. The President replied that the revolution had been defeated in Asturias. Franco said ‘Remember, Mr President, what it cost to hold back the revolution in Asturias. If the assault is repeated right across the country, it will be really difficult to contain it. The Army lacks the basic means to do so and there are generals who have been put back into key positions who do not want the revolution to be defeated.’ Alcalá did not take the hint and merely shook his head. When Franco rose to leave, the President said ‘You can leave without worrying, general. There will be no Communism in Spain’, to which Franco claimed, with hindsight, to have replied ‘Of one thing I am certain, and I can guarantee, that, whatever circumstances may arise, wherever I am, there will be no Communism’.

Again by his own account, Franco appears to have got short shrift from Azaña. His gloomy predictions that the replacement of ‘capable’ officers by Republicans would open the gates to anarchy were greeted with a sardonic smile. Franco said ‘you are making a mistake in sending me away because in Madrid I could be more useful to the Army and for the tranquillity of Spain’. Azaña ignored the offer: ‘I don’t fear uprisings. I knew about Sanjurjo’s plot and I could have avoided it but I preferred to see it defeated’.3 Neither Azaña’s diaries nor Alcalá Zamora’s memoirs contain references to these interviews. However, even if Franco’s versions of the conversations are apocryphal, they reflect a vivid recollection of his embittered state of mind at the time and of his disgust at what he saw as Azaña’s frivolous and malicious insouciance in the face of the Communist menace.

Removed once more from a job he loved, Franco was more than ever a general to be feared. He was not the only one. The narrowness of the left-wing electoral victory reflected the polarization of Spanish society. The savage repression of the previous period ensured that there would be little spirit of conciliation on either side of the political divide. After the failure of the various efforts by Gil Robles and Franco to persuade Portela Valladares to stay in power with Army backing, the Right abandoned all pretence of legalism. The hour of the ‘catastrophists’ had struck. Gil Robles’s efforts to use democracy against itself had failed. Henceforth, the Right would be concerned only with destroying the Republic rather than with taking it over. Military plotting began in earnest.

While waiting to leave for the Canary Islands, Franco spent time talking about the situation with General José Enrique Varela, Colonel Antonio Aranda and other like-minded officers. Everywhere he went, he was followed by agents of the Dirección General de Seguridad.4 On 8 March, the day before setting out for Cádiz on the first stage of his journey, Franco met a number of dissident officers at the home of José Delgado, a prominent stockbroker and crony of Gil Robles. Among those present were Mola, Varela, Fanjul and Orgaz, as well as Colonel Valentín Galarza. They discussed the need for a coup. They were all agreed that the exiled General Sanjurjo should head the rising.

The impetuous Varela favoured an audacious coup in Madrid; the more thoughtful Mola proposed a co-ordinated civilian/military uprising in the provinces. Mola believed that the movement should not be overtly monarchist. Franco said little other than to suggest shrewdly that any rising should have no specific party label. He made no firm commitments. They departed, having agreed to begin preparations with Mola as overall director and Galarza, as liaison chief. They undertook to act if the Popular Front dismantled the Civil Guard or reduced the size of the officer corps, if revolution broke out or if Largo Caballero was asked to form a government.5

After leaving the meeting, Franco collected his family and the inevitable Pacón and headed for the Atocha station to catch the train to Cádiz where they would embark for Las Palmas. At Atocha, a group of generals, including Fanjul and Goded came to wish him farewell. On arrival at Cádiz, Franco was shocked by the scale of disorder which greeted his party, churches having been attacked by anarchists. When the military governor of Cádiz informed him that ‘Communists’ had set fire to a convent near his barracks, Franco was furious: ‘Is it possible that the troops of a barracks saw a sacrilegious crime being committed and that you just stood by with your arms folded?’ The colonel replied that he had been ordered by the civilian authorities not to intervene. Franco barked ‘Such orders, since they are unworthy, should never be obeyed by an officer of our Army’ and he refused to shake hands with the colonel.

Franco’s anger reflected his own deep-seated attachment to Catholicism inherited from his mother. It was inextricably entangled with his military-hierarchical view of society. From revulsion at the Left’s disrespect for God and the Church it was but a short step to thinking that the use of military force to defend the social order was both necessary and justified. He was even more dismayed when a crowd on the quay which had arrived complete with a band to see off the new civil governor of Las Palmas sang the Internationale with their fists raised in the Communist salute. The constant reminders of popular enthusiasm for the Republic led Franco to comment to his cousin that his comrades were wrong to imagine that a swift coup was possible. ‘It’s going to be difficult, bloody and it’ll last a long time – yet there seems to be no other way, if we’re going to be one step ahead of the Communists’.6

The boat, Dómine, reached the Canary Islands at 7 p.m. on the evening 11 March 1936. On arriving at Las Palmas, Franco was greeted by the military governor of the island, General Amado Balmes. After a short tour, he set off again with his family in the Dómine for Tenerife where they docked on 12 March at 11.00 a.m. On the dockside, they were awaited by a mass of Popular Front supporters. The local Left had decreed a one-day strike for workers to go to the port in order to boo and whistle the man who had put down the miners’ rising in Asturias. Ignoring the banners which denounced ‘the butcher of Asturias’, Franco remained calm, said goodbye to the ship’s captain, descended the steps and inspected the company of troops which awaited him. According to his cousin, his display of cool indifference impressed the crowd whose derision turned to applause.7

Franco immediately set to work on a defence plan for the islands and especially on the measures to be taken to put down political disturbances. He also took advantage of the opportunities offered by the Canary Islands and began to learn golf and English. According to his English teacher, Dora Lennard, he took lessons three times a week from 9.30 to 10.30 and was an assiduous student. He wrote two exercises for homework three times a week and only once failed to do so because of pressure of work. Five out of six of his exercises were about golf for which he had quickly become an obsessive enthusiast. He acquired a reading knowledge but could not follow spoken English. His favourite subjects in their conversation classes were the Popular Front’s enslavement to the agents of Moscow and his love for his time at the Academia General Militar in Zaragoza.8 Franco’s own later efforts to wipe away his hesitations during the spring of 1936 led him to imply, in numerous interviews, that he had been anxiously overseeing the conspiracy. As so often in his life, he remoulded reality. It is a telling comment on this particular case of remembered glory that, in fact, in early July 1936, he was planning a golfing holiday in Scotland to improve his game.9

Golf and English lessons aside, Franco and Carmen led a full social life. Their guides to the society of the Canaries were Major Lorenzo Martínez Fuset and his wife. Martínez Fuset, a military lawyer, and an amiable and accommodating character, became Franco’s local confidant.10 Otherwise, Franco’s activities were slightly inhibited by the scale of surveillance to which he was subject. His correspondence was tampered with, his telephone tapped, and he was being watched both by the police and by members of the Popular Front parties. This reflected the fear that he inspired in both the central government and in the local Left in the Canary Islands. There were rumours inside his headquarters that an assassination attempt was likely. Pacón and Colonel Teódulo González Peral, the head of the divisional general staff, organized the officers under Franco’s command into a round-the-clock bodyguard. Franco was reported to have declared proudly ‘Moscow sentenced me to death two years ago’.11 If indeed he made the remark, it reflected the heady propaganda that he was receiving from the Entente in Geneva rather than any interest in his activities on the part of the Kremlin.

Despite the air of clandestinity which seems to have surrounded Franco’s activities in the Canary Islands, he was openly being talked about as the leader of a forthcoming coup.12 Pro-fascist and anti-Republican remarks made by him, some in public, suggest that he was not as totally cautious as is usually assumed. On the occasion of the military parade to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the foundation of the Second Republic, Franco spoke with the Italian consul in the Canary Islands and loudly (ad alta voce) expressed to him his enthusiasm for Mussolini’s Italy. He was particularly fulsome in his congratulations for Italy’s role in the Abyssinian war and said how anxiously he awaited news of the fall of Addis Ababa. He appears to have made a point of ensuring that he was overheard by the British Consul. On the next day, the Italian Consul visited Franco to thank him and was delighted when the general’s anti-British sentiments led him to speak of his sympathy for Italy as a ‘new, young, strong power which is imposing itself on the Mediterranean which has hitherto been kept as a lake under British control’. Franco also talked of his belief that Gibraltar could easily be dominated by modern artillery placed in Spanish territory and talked enticingly, for his listener, of the ease with which a fleet anchored in Gibraltar harbour could be destroyed by air attack.13

On 27 April, Ramón Serrano Suñer made a journey to the Canary Islands with the difficult task of persuading his brother-in-law to withdraw his candidacy for the re-run elections about to take place in Cuenca. In the wake of the so-called Popular Front elections of 16 February 1936, the parliamentary committee entrusted with examining the validity of the outcome, the comisión de actas, had declared the results null and void in certain provinces. One of these was Cuenca, where there had been falsification of votes. Moreover, once the defective votes were discounted, no list of candidates reached the 40 per cent of votes necessary to win the majority block of seats.14 In the re-run elections scheduled for the beginning of May 1936, the right-wing slate included both José Antonio Primo de Rivera and General Franco. The Falange leader was included in the hope of securing for him the parliamentary immunity which would ensure his release from jail where he had been since 17 March.15

Serrano Suñer was behind Franco’s late inclusion in the right-wing list announced on 23 April.16 On 20 April, a letter from Franco to the secretary of the CEDA expressed his interest in being a candidate in one of the forthcoming re-run elections, preferably Cuenca. Gil Robles discussed the matter with Serrano Suñer. When he approved Franco’s candidacy, Serrano Suñer set off immediately for the Canary Islands to inform his brother-in-law. The monarchist leader Antonio Goicoechea offered to give up his place in the right-wing list but Gil Robles simply instructed the CEDA provincial chief in Cuenca, Manuel Casanova, to stand down. The support for Franco manifested by the CEDA and Renovación Española was not replicated by the third political party involved in Cuenca, the Falange. When the revised list of right-wing candidates was published, Gil Robles received a visit from Miguel Primo de Rivera who came to inform him that his brother was firmly opposed to the list, regarding the inclusion of Franco as a ‘crass error’.