MY room, on the fifth floor of the Hotel Florida, stamped me as an amateur: knowledgeable people lived as close to the ground as possible as a precaution against aerial bombs. The hotel was crowded, however, so the best the manager could do was to switch me to a large outside room on the fourth floor; but this, too, had its disadvantages. It faced a broad square and overlooked a jumble of grey roof-tops that dwindled into a distant landscape of rolling green hills. And these hills belonged to the enemy. Although this placed me in the direct line of shell-fire, the desk clerk refused to let me move. He said the inside rooms were dark and stuffy, and, besides, the hotel was not a military objective, so if a shell went through my room it would only be a mistake.
Madrid, dark and gloomy at night, was transformed into a new world with the daylight. The sun was shining and the air resounded with the clatter of humdrum business. I leaned out of the window to find the square thronged with people. Khaki-clad militiamen with red ties around their necks threaded their way into a café across the street, while black-shawled housewives with children tagging after them hurried off to do the day’s marketing. A trio of peroxide blondes swayed along the rough pavement on high-heeled shoes to the intense interest of a group of young men in dark blue berets who stood in the sun prodding their teeth with toothpicks. Donkey-carts rumbled across the cobble-stones, newspaper-sellers shouted their wares, and from a movie house half a block away came a lively melody from Al Jolson’s Casino de Paris. For a city subjected to daily bombardments Madrid seemed as unreal as a huge movie set swarming with extras ready to play a part.
The telephone rang with a message from Sefton (Tom) Delmer of the London Daily Express, who offered to show me the sights of Madrid. I had often heard of Tom, who was noted for his quick wit and had the reputation of being one of the shrewdest journalists in Europe. He was a large bulk of a man with a smiling face. He greeted me by asking hopefully if I had brought any food from France. The fact that I hadn’t I soon realized was an unforgivable oversight.
We strolled down the streets and Tom told me he had covered the war on the Nationalist side until he made the mistake of writing the story of Knickerbocker’s trip to Burgos. The latter’s plane had been mistaken for an enemy machine and fired upon by anti-aircraft guns. Tom pointed out in his story that Knickerbocker had been unaware of the episode until he was informed of it by the aerodrome authorities. The Nationalists claimed this was an attempt to cast reflection on their anti-aircraft defences and Tom was thereby expelled. Since then he had been covering the news from Madrid: “All Spaniards are mad,” he said, “but the people over here are less dangerous to England.”
We walked along the main streets and passed dozens of holes blasted out of the pavements where shells had fallen; many buildings bore jagged wounds, and on the Castellana a huge stone lion stared gloomily into space as though it knew its nose had been chipped off by shrapnel.
There was a good deal of traffic on the streets. Ministry of War cars, evacuation lorries, bicycles and ambulances all raced past us, and once a despatch rider on a motor-cycle roared by headed for the front. Parked on a side street we saw a brown and green camouflaged truck bearing proud white letters that said: “Captured from the enemy at Guadalajara.”
At many of the corners stone barricades were erected across the streets—barricades that had been built in November when Franco boasted that his generals would soon be drinking in the Puerta del Sol. “If Franco takes Madrid,” said the people, “he’ll have to fight for it inch by inch.”
And yet the atmosphere of the city was not one of war. Although it had become transformed into a village behind the front, bombs and shells had been unable to erase the daily routine of life. It was this that lent the city its curious air of theatre. Bright yellow tram-cars rattled peacefully down the avenues; shop windows displayed Schiaparelli perfume, silver fox furs, jewellery, gloves and ladies’ hand-made shoes; movie houses advertised Greta Garbo in “Anna Karenina” and the Marx Brothers in “A Night at the Opera”. A store on the Gran Via held a gala exhibition of war posters; they were ultra-modern posters, screaming out in reds, oranges and blues for the people of Spain to defend the Republic against Fascism. There was a small jagged hole in the ceiling where a shell had come through; beside it a card had been tacked: “Art as practised by General Franco.”
The shell-holes, the camouflaged trucks and the stone barricades seemed as unreal as stage props; the sun was too warm, the people too nonchalant for war. Only the queue lines carried a sense of tragedy. On a side street a procession of women and children were lined up before a grocery store, with empty baskets over their arms. Some leaned wearily against the building, others sat on the curb staring into space with a strange Oriental impassiveness. All over Madrid these queue lines were formed. The city’s main diet was beans, bread and rice, but food was so scarce that only a limited number could be served. Tom said that often the lines waited from midnight till noon the next day.
We crossed the Puerta del Sol and Tom stopped at a small shop to look at some cavalry cloaks which he was thinking of taking back to England as presents. We had to step over an old peddler woman who was selling red and black anarchist ties and small tin ornaments made in the shapes of tanks and aeroplanes which she had carefully spread over the pavement.
The proprietor welcomed Tom warmly and brought out an assortment of capes of different lengths and cuts with a variety of brightly-coloured linings. They discussed them for some time and Tom decided to come back again. When we said good-bye he asked the proprietor how his business was going and the man sighed and shook his head: “It is very difficult, Señor. There are so few gentlemen left in Madrid.” Outside, Tom said: “It is obvious where his sympathies lie.”
As we were walking down the Gran Via on the way back to the hotel I asked Tom how often the city was shelled, and he stopped and looked meditatively at his watch. “It’s past noon now. They usually drop a few before lunch.” Scarcely a moment later I heard a noise like the sound of cloth ripping. It was gentle at first, then it grew into a hiss; there was a split second of silence, followed by a bang as a shell hurtled into the white stone telephone building at the end of the street. Bricks and timber crashed to the ground and dust rose up in a billow. A second shell plunged into the pavement thirty yards away and a third hit a wooden block of flats on a corner. Everyone started running, scattering into vestibules and doorways, like pieces of paper blown by a sudden gust of wind.
Tom and I took cover in a perfume shop and the explosions continued one every minute. My heart pounded uncertainly; the crash of falling bricks and breaking glass and the thick dust that rose up to blot out the sunshine seemed like some fearful Bible plague tuned up and mechanized for the twentieth-century appetite. The proprietress of the shop, however, appeared to be far more concerned with the preservation of property than possible death. She hastily began removing the perfume bottles from the window and laid them in neat rows on the floor. With each explosion she broke into a fresh flow of expletives. Tom explained she was afraid the windows would break. And glass, she said, was very dear.
The bombardment lasted about half an hour. When it was over we walked down the street: the pavements were strewn with bricks and shrapnel and a telephone pole leaned drunkenly across one of the buildings, the wires hanging down like streamers. The second floor of a hat-shop had a gaping hole and at the corner an automobile was a twisted mass of steel. Nearby, the pavement was spattered with blood where two women had been killed.
Desolation hung over the thoroughfare, but the loud-speaker was still screaming a tune from the Casino de Paris. Trucks rolled up and men got out and began to clear up the débris, the music ringing in their ears as they worked. Groups of people gathered on the corners and little boys ran out to collect pieces of shrapnel as souvenirs, and newspaper-sellers drifted back to their boxes, the bootblacks called for customers and the shopkeepers rearranged their wares. Two hours later the rubble was in neat piles along the curb. Automobiles hooted their way over the cobble-stones, and once again people sauntered arm-in-arm in the sunshine. That, I learned, was Madrid. Mr. Hyde had vanished and Dr. Jekyll once more had control of the city.
I had never before felt the sort of fear that sends the blood racing through your veins. As intense an emotion as it was, I was surprised to find that with the passing of danger it disappeared so completely it was difficult even to recall the sensation. More curious still, it left no hang-over of apprehension. In between bombardments you literally forgot about them. Why this was I don’t know; Nature, I suppose, taking its course. At any rate, the whine of a shell never failed to come as an utter surprise, and, to my way of thinking, a very nasty one at that. I greatly admired the indifference, often bordering on nonchalance, with which the Spaniards accepted these bombardments.
Strategically, Madrid was a third-line trench and the population had received their training. Civilian ears had become so acute that the ordinary man or woman could judge the proximity of a shell by the sound of the whistle. When shells fell at four-or five-minute intervals it indicated that only one battery was firing and there was always “a safe side” of the street. But if the explosions came fast it meant a cross fire—then there was nothing to do but take cover and trust to luck. During innumerable shellings I never once saw a sign of panic. People conducted themselves as coolly as trained soldiers; narrow escapes became so much a part of daily life they were not even major topics of conversation.
I soon discovered that food was much more of a preoccupation than danger. Occasionally, when a donkey-cart, filled with lettuces or bread, moved through the streets, a crowd gathered and tagged it breathlessly to its destination. In spite of this terrible shortage of essentials, the cognac and gin supplies had held up well and every afternoon the cafés were crowded. One of the most popular cafés was on the Puerta del Sol. A bomb had gone through the top of the building and you could see chunks of sky through the roof, but the ground floor did a thriving business.
The two gayest meeting-places, however, were the once fashionable Chicote’s and Molinero’s. Although these cafés were on the Gran Via, the most frequently-bombarded street in Madrid, every afternoon they were crowded with soldiers with guns dangling from their hips and platinum blondes whose hair was growing out very black due to the fact that all the peroxide had been confiscated by the hospitals.
At Molinero’s you found a last lingering badge of class-conscious Spain. The waiters were the same waiters who used to serve the wealthy Madrileños, and they were dressed in the conventional uniform of black suit and white shirt. Some pushed their way through the noisy, singing throngs with obvious disdain; others took advantage of the camarada spirit and served you with unshaven faces and cigarettes hanging from their mouths.
The owners of Chicote’s and Molinero’s and most of the big shops and hotels had either been shot, were in gaol, or had fled from the city. Their concerns had been taken over by the Trades Unions and many were run collectively by the employees. Palaces and country villas were used as ministries and headquarters. Often journalists went to get their permits from officials in sweaters and leather jackets, reclining in sixteenth-century chairs in rooms with carved walls and priceless tapestries. More than once interviews were brought to a halt while the ‘comrade’ proudly insisted upon your making an inspection of the books and paintings, and even the statues in the garden.
During those first few days in Madrid, it all seemed like a strange carnival to me. It was only at night when the capital was swallowed up in a suffocating darkness that the atmosphere took on a note of grim reality. The buildings jutted up so blackly the sky looked almost white, and as you threaded your way along the pavement, guards moved noiselessly out of the doorways and asked to examine your credentials.
Everything was deserted and still. The only noise was a distant one: the noise of fighting on the Casa del Campo, a mile and a half away. You could hear the dull thud of trench mortars like far-off thunder, and the thin crack of rifles like sheets snapping in the wind. And as you walked through the night, stumbling over shell-holes, you wondered whether this was just the beginning and how long it would be before the lights went out somewhere else.