Friend or Foe?: Occupation, Collaboration and Selective Violence in the Spanish Civil War (LSE Studies in Spanish History) - Hardcover

Anderson, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1845197941 ISBN 13: 9781845197940

Verlag: Liverpool University Press, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

'Today with the Red Army captive and disarmed, the Nationalist [nacionales] troops have achieved their final military objectives. The war is over.' With these two sentences, on 1 April 1939, General Franco announced that his writ ran across the whole of Spain. His words marked a high point for those who had flocked to Franco's side and since the start of the Civil War in July 1936 had carried out what they regarded as the steady occupation of the country. The history of this occupation remains conspicuous by its absence and the term occupation lies discredited for many historians. The danger of leaving the history of the occupation unexplored, however, is that a major process designed to control the conquered population remains in the shadows and, unlike many other European countries, the view of occupation as an imposition by outsiders remains unchallenged. Friend or Foe? explores how Francoist occupation saw members of the state and society collaborate to win control of Spanish society. At the heart of the process lay the challenging task in civil war of distinguishing between supporter and opponent. Occupation also witnessed a move from arbitrary violence towards selecting opponents for carefully graded punishment. Such selection depended upon fine-grained information about vast swathes of the population. The massive scale of the surveillance meant that regime officials depended on collaborators within the community to furnish them with the information needed to write huge numbers of biographies. Accordingly, knowledge as a form of power became as crucial as naked force as neighbours of the defeated helped define who would gain reward as a friend and who would suffer punishment as a foe.

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Peter Anderson is Lecturer in Twentieth-Century European History in the School of History at the University of Leeds. He is the author of The Francoist Military Trials: Terror and Complicity, 1939-1945 (New York: Routledge, 2010). With Miguel Ángel Del Arco Blanco he is co-editor of Mass Killings and Violence in Spain, 1936-1952: Grappling with the Past (New York: Routledge, 2015).

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Friend or Foe?

Occupation, Collaboration and Selective Violence in the Spanish Civil War

By Peter Anderson

Sussex Academic Press

Copyright © 2016 Peter Anderson
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84519-794-0

Contents

The Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, 
Series Editor's Preface, 
Acknowledgements, 
Introduction: From the Bullet to the Dossier, 
Part One The Collapse of Security: Málaga, 
1 The Collapse of Security, 
2 Looking for Friends: Occupation and the Construction of the State, 
3 Classification and the Construction of Civil Society, 
Part Two Enemies Made by War: Bilbao, 
4 Foes Forged by War, 
5 Selective Violence: The Classification of Prisoners of War, 
6 Exchange and Commutation, 
7 Priests as Enemies of God and the Fatherland, 
Part Three The Logic of Violence: Barcelona, 
8 Revolution, Violence, Humiliation and Moral Outrage, 
9 The Search for Fine-Grained Information, 
10 Defining the Enemy, 
Conclusion: Civil War and Classification, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 

CHAPTER 1

The Collapse of Security

"The mission of our glorious national army will not be fulfilled if behind the lines people whose political background renders them highly dangerous and who helped bring about the destruction of villages, towns and peoples under the yoke of barbarous Marxism through the murder of respectable and law abiding citizens ... those who sign below, all victims of the Red beasts, have the honour to denounce the people detailed below and plead that justice be done."

Denunciation by ordinary citizens to a Francoist military tribunal after the occupation of Málaga in February 1937

On July 22 1936, a squad of armed anarchist militiamen in the city of Málaga tracked down a Madrid lawyer in his late twenties hiding out in the Hotel Vasconia. Three days earlier an attempted military revolt had unleashed a struggle for control of the city in which government forces relying upon the support of armed workers had won the day. In large parts of northern and western Spain, however, the rebels had gained the upper hand. This created a precarious situation and in Málaga armed activists had set about capturing potential foes they regarded as likely to support the revolt. Those who fell into the clasp of the rough-and-ready militia groups faced an uncertain future. For with the city's police forces in disarray and the militiamen wielding ever-greater influence, emboldened revolutionary elements had set about murdering political enemies across the city. These circumstances augured ill for the Madrid lawyer, but to his good fortune the hotel's security guards, in an illustration of the uncertain situation, interceded on his behalf and persuaded the militiamen to escort their prey to the nearby Civil Governor's headquarters. More than likely, their intervention saved the man from being 'taken for a ride'. The gritty parlance stood for a journey to a discrete location where victims were done to death and their bodies dumped in unmarked graves or in a roadside ditch.

Once the Franco regime became established, the lawyer, Carlos Arias Navarro, would rise through the political ranks and became Franco's last prime minister. Arias Navarro would cling onto office even after his benefactor's death in November 1975. Before prospering so fulsomely, however, the dictator's future right-hand man had to endure months of further terror in Málaga.

For fifteen days, he remained under lock and key at the customs building by the port which the civil governor had converted into a jail for suspected fifth columnists. On being released, Arias Navarro headed back to his hotel, but once again militiamen pounced on him and marched him to the Civil Governor's building where the ground floor area had been turned into a make-shift jail. Short of both warders and police officers, the civil government had mobilised the services of anarchist militiamen to watch over the prisoners. Arias Navarro, however, managed to wheedle his way upstairs where the offices of the governor's administrative machine were housed. Knowing the layout well, he stowed himself away in an out-of-the-way room for three days. One of Arias' colleagues then managed to prise him out of the building and spirited him to the Bolivian consulate in the city. Here the future prime minister enjoyed refuge for a few hours until the Consul asked him to leave for fear that his presence threatened the safety of the other rightist refugees to whom he had offered sanctuary. Another of Arias' colleagues, Felipe Varea, then came to his rescue and hid him for two months in a small hotel.

In October 1936, further misfortune befell Arias Navarro when a militiaman spotted him. Pelayo Varea, a lawyer, son of Felipe Varea and member of the centre party Izquierda Republicana, came to Arias' aid and smuggled him to the nearby village of Pizzara. The village offered the glimmer of a chance for Arias because Pelayo Varea worked as the chief executive of the local municipal council. Despite Varea's protection, militiamen soon picked up Arias's trail and a few days later rolled into the village at 3.00am with every intention of carting off the Madrid lawyer to what seemed a probable and ignoble death by the roadside. Although Pelayo Vela pleaded with the militiamen, he could not prevent the arrest. He did, nevertheless, manage to head off Arias's murder by insisting on accompanying the detained man and the militia patrol group to Málaga. Arias now found himself in the city's Trinidad Barracks and under the custody of militia forces. Forced into a cell, his captors kept him short of food and beat him with a pistol at a very rough interrogation session. During this time, he witnessed people being taken out 'for a ride' and was told he too would be executed unless he revealed which of his fellow lawyers was a 'fascist'.

In the meantime, Pelayo Varea, who also worked as the official solicitor for the anarcho-syndicalist organisation the CNT, and therefore commanded a certain respect and exercised some influence with some of the militia groups, eventually secured the release of his fellow lawyer. Varela now protected Arias Navarro as much as he could by offering him shelter in his own home. Although the historian can go no further than speculate, the odds are that Pelayo Varea's actions saved the life of Arias Navarro. Certainly, the future prime minister was alive and well when Franco's forces arrived in Málaga in early February 1937. Arias immediately enrolled in Franco's judicial corps and became a vigorous member of the prosecution team conducting trials against thousands of people from the defeated side.

Arias Navarro's new colleagues, meanwhile, had arrested Pelayo Varea, whose political affiliation marked him out for the occupiers. Despite this, and in a sign of the varied reactions of those who suffered behind government lines, eleven rightists from Pizzara testified on behalf of Varela by providing moving and copious accounts of how he had left no stone unturned in his efforts to save their lives. In his deposition, the more brutalised Arias Navarro, on the other hand, limited himself to stating that Varea's account of rescuing him was "rigorously accurate". In a later statement, Arias Navarro chose not to mention that Varea had plucked him from the barracks where he had suffered such rough treatment and had from then onwards protected the Madrid man in his own home.

Gaining little meaningful support from Arias Navarro, Varea found himself condemned as early as the 23 February 1937 when five military judges handed down a death sentence on him for his work on behalf of the 'Red' authorities. Three days later, at ten o'clock at night, Varea received notification of his death sentence and was subsequently shot. We know something of Arias Navarro's attitude towards such executions from the testimony of the Mexican consul in Málaga who went to plead with the Madrid lawyer for the life of the former mayor of Málaga. Despite the mayor having helped save lives in the early months of the war, Arias Navarro coldly replied that "the mayor of Málaga is a person liable for execution simply for having held his post".

Carlos Arias Navarro stands out because uniquely among his fellow victims from Málaga, he rose to become prime minister under Franco. Occupying this post at the dictator's death in November 1975 he gained a singular reputation after he wept on national television as he mourned the loss of the man who for him represented his own personal liberation and subsequent prosperity. He is also unique in gaining the epithet 'the butcher of Málaga' because of his role as military prosecutor in the mass prosecutions that followed the Francoist occupation of the city.

Although not all Francoists reacted so brutally, Arias Navarro's experiences in other ways reflect those of many of the people who swung behind Franco in the Civil War. Indeed, he was far from the only civilian victim in Málaga who passed from prey to embittered hunter on the state pay roll; nor was he unusual in reaping the benefits from his co-operation with the Franco regime. His deeply personal and emotional attachment to the Francoist cause that paved the way for his collaboration with the regime is also not at all uncommon among those of his generation and background.

Nevertheless, in recent years academic historians have expended increasingly less ink on analysing the suffering of Francoists like Arias Navarro. They have avoided doing so, as we saw in the introduction, to escape some of the myths of the Franco regime. For years, historians favouring the Francoist view interpreted suffering behind government lines as acts of martyrdom in which the Godless, Soviet hordes controlling the Popular Front government picked out those set on defending the faith and subjected them to hideous and cruel martyrdoms. This interpretation still exerts a strong hold over sections of Spanish society and many defenders of the Catholic Church in particular do not waver from its central principles. A significant number of university-based historians, however, have wanted to correct the inaccuracies behind these perspectives. They have approached the challenge in such ways as pointing out that the government authorities did not direct the repression. They have also shown that victims were not just singled out for their faith but also for their political affiliation and that the killing had mostly drawn to a close by late 1936. A growing number of studies have further sought to find out which groups committed the violence and so the focus on victims has shifted from the victims to the perpetrators.

Less studied is the effect on rightists of the collapse of security that came with a debilitated state. Defined as enemies and unable to assume they could count on state protection, many like Carlos Arias Navarro found themselves hounded from pillar to post and on the run. Deprived of property, family, employment, and in many cases resources, they lay at the mercy either of those they might persuade to afford them protection or embittered people seeking to settle scores. Their tribulations, as we shall see, left a profound legacy of personal bitterness that the Francoists channelled into their repression and mobilised to gain control and sovereignty in areas they occupied.

The July Revolt

In many ways, the history of conflict in Málaga begins with the arrival of the Second Republic on 14 April 1931 which ushered in a new period of unrest. Successive waves of strikes sometimes brought in their train violence between activists and policemen. In March 1932, for instance, a general strike in Antequera area, inland from Málaga city, led to exchanges of shots between armed farm workers and the forces of law and order which caused the death of one of the strikers. By the spring and summer of 1936, alarm had grown in some circles. The renowned British Hispanist Gerald Brenan, living at the time in Churiana, just along the coast from Málaga city, reflected the panic in right-wing groups when he described an "orgy of strikes" afflicting the Málalga area. Against this background, sections of the army with considerable civilian backing launched their coup against the elected centre-left coalition Popular Front government of the Second Republic.

In the provincial capital of Málaga, the army commander, General Patxot, and one of his right-hand men, Captain Huelin, both supported the revolt when it broke out on 18 July 1936. They faced the problem, however, that their colleague Lieutenant Colonel De Heras feared the revolt had failed in other parts of Spain. The Civil Guard under Colonel Gómez Carrión, also remained wary of joining the revolt. The head of the customs police in the city, Lieutenant Colonel Florián, would similarly not commit himself to the uprising. Meanwhile, Paxtot made matters more difficult for the rebels by insisting that any revolt would be a strictly military operation and that civilian members of the Falange could not take part. In the meantime, the socialist civil governor of the city, José Antonio Fernández Vega, had got wind of the military plot and had reinforced his loyal police forces with militia men drawn from trade unions. Workers across the city were also armed.

In the afternoon of the 18 July, Captain Huelin led a detachment of troops that tried to capture the headquarters of the civil governor and from there aimed to declare military law. Alerted to the danger, union and party leaders appealed over the radio for workers to flood into the city and suffocate the rising. Fighting took place all that afternoon in the centre of the city and the rebels were pushed back to the Customs House. Two sections of the Civil Guard had now joined them in the revolt. One of these took over the building housing telephonic communications equipment for the city. With the civil governor refusing to surrender, Patoxt ordered another push on the governor's offices. At four o'clock in the morning on 19 July Patoxt desisted after being falsely told that the revolt had failed across Spain. Assault Guards loyal to the Republic then arrested the coup leaders and Lieutant Colonel De Herras took over command of the army in the city.

With some police having defected to the rebels and others regarded as suspect, the Civil Governor struggled to find the men to keep order. The splintering of the state gave way to a form of dual power. As we have seen, the civil governor found himself having to call on the help of armed members of unions and political organisations. In turn, the state authorities had little choice to compromise with a host of political committees set up by numerous parties and unions and which claimed for themselves the right to govern. On the 18 July, for instance, the Revolutionary Anti-Fascist Executive Committee under the Communist Cayetano Bolívar Escribano first surfaced. A short time later, other committees sprouted up such as the Investigation and Surveillance Committee and the much-feared Committee of Public Health.

Over the course of the 19 July, the situation grew increasingly chaotic. A group of activists swarmed around the headquarters of the Civil Guard and threatened to blow it up with a lorry load of explosives if the besieged did not hoist the white flag. At this point, the head of the Civil Guard in the city, Sr. Gómez Carrión, along with his leading officials were arrested. The commander of the customs police, Don Carlos Florán Casasola, and some of his senior officers also found themselves detained in the city's Customs House. The vulnerability of rightists only grew with the further clipping of the wings of the police. In the wake of the revolt, militiamen had begun rounding up a number of his Civil Guard officers and held them in the Customs House. Ten members of the police investigation service were also imprisoned here. Police officers who had fallen under suspicion of the Republican authorities or the committees now had much to fear as investigations began into their political backgrounds. On 9 and 10 August 1936, the government authorities dismissed twenty-six officers belonging to the Investigation and Security Brigade of the Málaga police service after classifying them as "enemies of the regime". On the 12 August, the twenty-six officers and twelve more who had sought protection from the authorities were transferred to Málaga prison and locked up in waterlogged and rubbish-strewn cells.

In the ascendant, worker groups began to target their political enemies. As early as 18 July, groups of union and political activists armed themselves and charged around the city in lorries sporting red flags and pulling up outside the houses and property of carefully selected rightists. In some of the earliest examples of the violence, they burned a number of these buildings to the ground. British writer Gerald Brenan reported that a fellow ex-pat had told him that she had witnessed one such arson attack. She recounted how the fire brigade had stood by to prevent the flames spreading to the homes of people not under suspicion. When she retreated to a nearby hotel, the arsonists asked her politely to leave as they were about to set ablaze a print works belonging to conservatives. Brenan himself, living in the nearby village of Churriana, tells of a lorry load of men who arrived outside his house wanting to burn down the house of his neighbour, a known rightist. Brenan managed to shake them from their plan by telling them that they would risk destroying his own house and that they could content themselves with burning some of his neighbour's furniture. Brenan also observed that arsonists had burnt down a shop whose owner was notorious for hounding out beggars from his store.

Notable in eyewitness accounts from the time is both the selective and controlled nature of the arson attacks. Historians currently place the number of properties reduced to ashes at fifty-seven. The horror of the experience, however, comes across in the words of right-wing survivors often spoke in the most lurid and horrified terms. Edward Norton a US businessman with sympathies towards the rebels, for instance, spoke of a mob out of control. A right-wing lawyer also complained of dirty and wild beasts at work in the city centre.

(Continues...)

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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Liverpool University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1845197941
• ISBN 13: 9781845197940
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar