SALAMANCA

OVER the porter’s desk, on the wall of the Gran Hotel, in Salamanca, was a faded travel poster that said: “Visit Madrid.” It was strange no one had torn it down, for “Red” atrocity stories were on everyone’s lips and hatred for the Madrileños approached fanaticism. Word spread quickly that I had “visited Madrid” and I was often accosted in the lobby by strangers eager for news of relatives believed to be prisoners on the other side.

Each had his own version of conditions in Red Spain and I found it dangerous to make contradictions. One woman, the wife of an official in the Foreign Office, asked me how I dared walk along the streets of Madrid. She had heard there was so much sniping from the windows that bodies were piled up by the curbs and left to rot in the gutters. When I denied this her tone became hostile, and I later learned she had denounced me as suspect. Another man asked if I had seen the Reds feeding prisoners to the animals in the Zoo. I told him the Zoo had been empty for months, and his manner froze. Still another, Pablo Merry del Val, the head of the Foreign Press, admired a gold bracelet I was wearing: “I don’t imagine you took that to Madrid with you,” he said, smiling. When I replied I had bought it in Madrid he was greatly affronted and from then on bowed coldly from a distance.

If I had been a Spaniard these remarks, innocent as they were, would have landed me in gaol. Objectivity was not tolerated. During the weeks I spent in Salamanca, the vilification of the enemy, even by responsible officials, was so extreme that it was almost a mental disease. I could understand and sympathize with Spaniards who had become embittered by tragic experiences. Many had escaped from Republican territory only after weeks of terror and misery, and many more were in mourning. But what I couldn’t understand was that everyone seemed to have forgotten that General Franco had launched the war. They argued Franco had been forced to rebel in order to forestall a Bolshevik uprising scheduled for a week or two later. Considering that the Communist Party had numbered only a few thousand at the outbreak of the war, and that the arms and equipment on the Republican side were still pathetically inadequate, this scarcely seemed logical. They also claimed that if the elections of 1936 had not been corrupt, the Right Wing parties would have swept the country; but, in view of the fact that it was taking General Franco nearer two years than two weeks to accomplish his rebellion, it was difficult to believe Republican resistance was entirely forced.

The Nationalist war propaganda was concentrated exclusively on the fight against Bolshevism. Just as on the Republican side the people were called upon to resist a foreign invasion, the Nationalists rallied the peasants against the domination of Moscow. I found, however, that Bolshevism was an elastic word, for it included democrats as well as Communists; in fact, everyone who did not support a totalitarian régime was lumped together as Red.

This detestation of free government gave me an understanding of the difficulties that the Republic had had to deal with. In many instances the claim that the Republic had failed to maintain discipline was true. But, on the other hand, it was equally true that ever since the Republic had first been established in 1931, Right Wing groups had plotted its downfall. Many of the terrorist acts in Spain were instigated by these groups and at no time did the legitimate Government receive their support. Proof of this lay in the fact that officials who had failed to resign when the Republic was established, and maintained friendly relations even for a limited period, were regarded as suspect. Count Florida, a prominent official in Salamanca, summed up the situation to me in a single sentence: “In Spain,” he said, “no gentleman would ever dream of supporting a Republic.”

Franco propaganda had drawn much attention to the strange companions who were fighting side by side under the Republican flag. Although the incompatibility of Republicans, Anarchists, Communists and Socialists banded together in a Popular Front was emphasized repeatedly, I found in Salamanca that the discords in the Franco ranks were just as deep and bitter.

From one end of Nationalist territory to the other there were two predominating uniforms: one was the Carlists (or Requetes) with their khaki shirts and bright red berets, and the other, the Fascists (or Falangistas) in navy blue with crimson tassels swinging from their caps. These two groups, although united into a single party to win the war and bound together by a common detestation of parliamentary government, held views stubbornly and bitterly opposed.

The Carlist Party, organized in 1830 and supporting Don Carlos, Pretender to the Spanish throne, had now, with the backing of clergy and aristocracy, grown into a strong political force, advocating what in Spain was known as “Traditionalism”, but what in reality was nothing less than a return to the feudal system. With these reactionary views they considered the Fascists a dangerous and radical organization. This feeling was not hard to understand, for the Fascist programme threatened the power of bishops and grandees. It favoured a supreme centralized Government, stood for land reform and the separation of Church from State.

I heard Carlists argue that the peasant should stay on the clod of land on which he was born; that his happiness did not lie in education but in the security that the great landowner could give him. A Fascist leader commenting on these remarks, shook his head emphatically. “That is the way they talk,” he said. “But when the war is over, there won’t be any great landowners.”

The Carlists were uncompromising in their attitude towards Republican prisoners, demanding that they be placed into road-building gangs and forced to restore the bridges and towns which they had destroyed. The Fascists, on the other hand, insisted that efforts be made to convert the enemy to their way of thinking. I remembered how the Fascist food-trucks had rolled up to feed the prisoners on the road to Santander, and later learned that thousands of these men had been given uniforms and drafted into the ranks. In spite of the humanitarian appeal, it was part of a determined programme to expand the Fascist power. When I discussed this subject with Count Florida, he replied vehemently that half the Fascists were nothing but Reds. In indignation, he added that in the north many of them were giving the Popular Front salute and talking about their brothers in Barcelona.

Although Franco had made persistent efforts to bring the two parties together, each continued to maintain its own flag and its own national anthem, and at times hostilities became so bitter that street fighting broke out in Saragossa and San Sebastian. It was apparent even then, however, that the Fascists held the upper hand. Already they numbered about three million as compared with the Traditionalists’ eight hundred thousand.

Needless to say, the internal affairs of Spain were being carefully manipulated by the Nazis, by tactics that now have become familiar the world over. Although the Italians were playing a more prominent part on the battlefield, there were over ten thousand Germans in Spain, innocuously described as “technicians”. Their object, under the cloak of anti-Bolshevism, was to build up a Fascist party which would one day fit into Hitler’s grandiose scheme for world conquest. Many of these Germans were trained as air pilots, artillery officers and engineers; others directed the railroads, operated the radio and telegraphs and undertook the organization of newly-conquered territory. Most important of all, however, was the German infiltration into almost all departments of State administration. Through their influence they were able to see that Fascist sympathizers secured important bureaucratic jobs, thus establishing key-men throughout the fabric of the Government.

They carried on a violent and intensive propaganda campaign against the democracies. In fact, this campaign was often a great deal more bitter against Great Britain and France than Republican Spain. The British plan of non-intervention had been condemned by the Communists in Madrid as a Fascist attempt to prevent arms from reaching Republican Spain: here in Salamanca it was attacked as a Communist plot to weaken Franco by excluding foreign aid. The fact that Great Britain was the only great Power actively interested in the humanitarian aspect of the war received no thanks. Although the British Navy had evacuated over a hundred thousand refugees from both sides in Spain, and the Embassy had worked untiringly to effect the exchange of prisoners, they had only succeeded in arousing the hatred of both, who considered that those not for were against. On the soap-boxes of Salamanca and Burgos Fascist orators denounced the democracies as decadent and corrupt and boasted that the Axis Powers would establish a new order throughout the world. It was made clear even then that Fascism was not a philosophy for internal consumption alone. I heard one orator at Salamanca proclaim that under Fascism Spain would rise to retrieve all her ancient glories. Gibraltar, North Africa, would mark a humble beginning; South America was to be the glittering prize.

As for internal conditions, it was difficult to make a fair comparison between the two sides. I took a good many trips throughout Nationalist territory: to Avila, Talavera, Toledo, and to the outskirts of Madrid, where I stood on a hill and saw with a start how large and white the Telephone Building looked and what easy targets the streets were we had wandered about so freely. Many of the villages outside the military zone had undergone little change and in some it seemed doubtful if the people even knew that a war was going on. There was plenty of food, the market squares were crowded, and black-robed priests threading their way along narrow streets crowded with donkey-carts, as though unaware that their fate was being sealed on the battlefields. The food situation was understandable, as the richest agricultural districts lay within Franco’s control and he had no cities of any great size to feed. The lack of dislocation was also understandable, for the people had little to fear from aerial bombardments by a Republican air force that was almost negligible. Franco’s chief headquarters, Burgos, was never bombed during the entire war. Salamanca, Valladolid, Seville and other Nationalist cities only suffered a few attacks.