The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain. Paul Preston
was already provocative enough. A week later, he took the title of alcalde (mayor).1 In Málaga, the man chosen to lead the management committee that replaced the elected council was Benito Ortega Muñoz, a liberal member of the Radical Party. As a city councillor, he had successfully opposed the attempts of more left-wing Republicans to remove crosses from the municipal cemetery. That, together with his acceptance of the position of unelected Mayor in October 1934, would lead to his murder in 1936.2
The repression in Asturias after October 1934 was a major steppingstone from the terror of Morocco to the wartime terror exercised against the civilian population of the Republic. With Franco in overall command, the brutal Juan Yagüe leading the African forces and the sadistic Doval in charge of ‘public order’, Asturias saw the elaboration of the model that would be applied in southern Spain in the summer of 1936. The right applauded the actions of Franco against what was perceived as the ‘passions of the beast’, ‘the pillaging hordes’ and ‘the rabble unleashed’. As well as the 111 Civil Guards killed, thirty-three clergy, including seven seminary students, lost their lives.3 It was not surprising then that spine-chilling exaggerations of the revolutionaries’ crimes abounded. One of the leaders of Acción Española, Honorio Maura, described the miners as ‘putrefaction, scum, the dregs of humanity’, ‘repugnant jackals unfit to be Spaniards or even humans’. They were portrayed as murderers, thieves and rapists, with female accomplices described as ‘brazen women who incited their cruelties. Some were young and beautiful but their faces reflected moral perversion, a mixture of shamelessness and cruelty.’4
For the right, the use of the African Army against ‘inhuman’ leftists was entirely justified. Inevitably, within Spain and abroad, there was loud criticism of the use of Moorish troops in Asturias, the cradle of the Christian reconquest of Spain. José María Cid y Ruiz-Zorrilla, parliamentary deputy for the right-wing Agrarian Party for Zamora and Minister of Public Works, responded with a declaration of double-edged racism: ‘For those who committed so many acts of savagery, Moors were the least they deserved, because they deserved Moors and a lot else.’5 A book published by the Oviedo branch of Ángel Herrera Oria’s Asociación Católica Nacional de Propagandistas (ACNP) suggested in similar terms that the crimes committed against clerics by the revolutionaries were Moorish in character and deserved to be punished by exposure to Moorish atrocities.6 In the majority of Catholic writing about the events of October 1934, it was a commonplace that the revolution was an attack on Catholicism and that the suffering of religious personnel was analogous to the suffering of Christ at the hands of the Jews.7
In contrast to Asturias, the October rebellion in Catalonia was put down without savagery, thanks to the moderation and professionalism of Domingo Batet Mestres, the general commanding the Catalan Military Region. The Catalan government, the Generalitat, had found itself caught between extreme nationalists pushing for a separate Catalonia and a right-wing government in Madrid determined to curtail regional autonomy. The President, Lluís Companys, rashly declared independence on 6 October, in an attempt to forestall revolution. General Batet responded with patience and good sense to restore the authority of the central government and thereby prevented a potential bloodbath. Specifically, he bypassed Franco, who was advising the Minister of War Diego Hidalgo on the repression in Catalonia as well as Asturias. To Franco’s fury, Batet would deal only with Hidalgo and the Prime Minister, Lerroux. As the senior officer, he ignored Franco’s recommendation that he use the Foreign Legion to impose punishment on Catalonia like that inflicted by Yagüe on Asturias. Instead, he used a small number of troops to secure the surrender of the Generalitat with a minimum of casualties. Batet also prevented the bombardment of Barcelona by warships sent by Franco.8
When Batet explained in a radio broadcast how he had conducted operations, he did so in a regretful and conciliatory tone that was far from the vengeful spirit of the right. In parliament, José Antonio Primo de Rivera fulminated that Batet was ‘a general that didn’t believe in Spain’ and that his broadcast had ‘made us blush with shame’.9 Two years later, Franco would take his revenge for Batet’s moderation. In June 1936, Batet was to be given command of the VI Military Region, whose headquarters were in Burgos, one of the nerve centres of the uprising of 18 July. Faced with the virtually unanimous decision of his officers to join the rising, Batet would bravely refuse to join them. His commitment to his oath of loyalty to the Republic would guarantee his trial and execution. Franco maliciously intervened in the judicial process to ensure that Batet would be executed.10
Now, despite the triumph of the government, there were numerous civilians and army officers preparing to destroy the Republic. Onésimo Redondo was trying to build up an arsenal of small arms. He hired a sports ground on the banks of the Río Pisuerga where he would drill and train the local Falange militia. On Sundays, he led parades through Valladolid itself or other towns of the province. During October 1934, there had been bloody clashes in Valladolid between Falangists and picketing railway workers. In the aftermath, Onésimo Redondo distributed a pamphlet in which he advocated that Azaña, Largo Caballero, Prieto and Companys be hanged.11
The activities of Onésimo Redondo and others on the extreme right showed that they were oblivious to the successes of a firmly right-wing government. Pushed by them or genuinely alarmed at what he perceived to be the moderate scale of the post-October repression, José Antonio Primo de Rivera committed the Falange to armed struggle to overthrow the democratic regime.12 In early 1935, he had several meetings with Bartolomé Barba Hernández of the Unión Militar Española and an agreement was reached which also established links with the Carlists through Colonel Ricardo de Rada, who was training the militias of both groups. There was a surge in UME membership among junior officers after October 1934.13
In mid-June 1935, at a meeting of the Falange executive committee, the Junta Política, at the Parador in the Sierra de Gredos north of Madrid, the ‘official and binding decision was taken to proceed to holy civil war to rescue the Fatherland’. José Antonio reported on his contacts with the UME. He then put forward a plan for an uprising to take place near the Portuguese frontier at Fuentes de Oñoro in the province of Salamanca. An unnamed general, possibly Sanjurjo, would acquire 10,000 rifles in Portugal which would then be handed over to Falangist militants who would proceed to a ‘march on Madrid’.14 With the left already cowed by the repression and the most right-wing elements of the military in positions of power, there was no backing from senior military figures. Probably to José Antonio’s relief, the idea was dropped.15 The only practical consequence of the decision to move to armed struggle was the bid by José Antonio to get weapons from Barba Hernández’s UME.16
In fact, the successive defeats of both the June harvest strike and the October rising had left political and social tension at an all-time high. This was especially true in the south. The new Minister of Agriculture, the CEDA deputy for Badajoz, Manuel Giménez Fernández, hoped to alleviate the situation by implementing his social Catholic beliefs. Outraged landowners ensured that his aspirations came to naught. The rural population of Extremadura had suffered a long process of pauperization. While large landowners had been able to ride out crises of poor harvests and drought, the smaller owners had ended up in the hands of usurers (often the richer landowners). They had been forced to mortgage, and then lost, their farms. The problem was particularly acute for the yunteros or ploughmen who owned a yunta (yoke) of mules and rented land to farm.
A long-simmering hostility came to a head in November 1934. It had started in 1932, when the local landlords had systematically refused to grant leases to the yunteros, instead turning their land over to pasture for cattle. Their objective had been to force the yunteros to sell their oxen and tools and reduce them to the status of day-labourers. In desperation, in the autumn of 1932, the yunteros launched a series of invasions of the estates of the most recalcitrant landlords. With some ceremony, flags, bands and families, they would enter the estates at dawn and begin to plough the land. There was little violence and, when confronted by armed retainers or the Civil Guard, the yunteros would usually withdraw peacefully. Finally, on 1 November 1932, the Republican–Socialist coalition temporarily legalized the occupations for one year for 15,500 peasants in Cáceres and 18,500 in Badajoz, a measure renewed in 1933 for a further year. Big landowners in Badajoz, Cáceres and Salamanca,