Читать книгу The Last Days of the Spanish Republic - Paul Preston - Страница 9

As has already been noted, there have been claims that the Communists were plotting to end the war long before the fall of Catalonia.1 In fact, as late as 26 January 1939, the Comintern was urging the Communist leadership in Britain, France and the USA to organize demonstrations to push their respective governments into lifting the blockade on arms for Spain and to make arrangements for the accommodation of refugees. The French party was told to recruit volunteers for Spain and to send a delegation to Catalonia to counteract capitulationism in the Republican and Socialist parties. A message was sent via the French urging the Spanish Communists to hold on. Even after news had reached Moscow of the fall of Barcelona, the head of the Communist International, Georgi Dimitrov, stood by his instructions to the Spanish Communists to fight on. On 7 February, Dimitrov sent a further message to the PCE: ‘the course of resistance must be maintained … the front in Levante must be activated; capitulation by the Spanish government must be prevented, through replacing adherents of capitulation in the government with staunch adherents of resistance’. On the same day, he ordered Maurice Thorez, leader of the Parti Communiste Français (PCF), to organize demonstrations to pressurize the French government into permitting the dispatch of the Army of Catalonia back to the central zone. The PCF was instructed to organize the supply of arms and food to Valencia and to look after the welfare and morale of the Spanish refugees in France.2

Meanwhile, in Madrid, all these efforts were undermined by the activities of an ever more active rebel Fifth Column. Its success derived from the ease with which it was able to feed on the growing anti-communism. This was a reflection of the fact that the PCE was totally identified with government policy and therefore held responsible for the widespread hardship in the beleaguered city. The Fifth Column was also able to exploit the bitter resentment of the victims of PCE security policy since late 1936. In their efforts to impose a centralized war effort, the Communists had been ruthless in their suppression of anarchists and Trotskyists who had wanted to pursue a revolutionary line.3 Defeatism was rife. The intense anti-Communist hostility from the leadership of the CNT was matched within much of the Socialist Party. Relations between career officers and the Communist hierarchy had cooled. In an effort to improve the situation, at some point in October the leader of the Communist youth movement (Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas, or JSU), Santiago Carrillo, had lunch at Casado’s headquarters. Casado had a reputation as a thoroughly humourless and sour individual, his constant irritability the consequence of the acute stomach pains he suffered as a result of ulcers. Knowing this and fully apprised of the rumours about Casado’s conspiratorial activities, Carrillo was surprised at the lunch by the effusiveness of Casado’s assertion that he shared Negrín’s determination to maintain resistance. Carrillo had been informed that his father, Wenceslao, a life-long friend of Largo Caballero, was actively engaged in seeking support within the PSOE for an anti-Negrín peace initiative. Shortly afterwards, in an acrimonious meeting, Santiago tried in vain to convince his father that such an action would leave tens of thousands of Republicans at the mercy of Francoist terror.4

The isolation of the central zone signified a logistical nightmare. There was no fuel for domestic heating or cooking, and no hot water. Medicines and surgical dressings were in dangerously short supply. The exiguous scale of rations in Madrid was insufficient, according to a report by the Quaker International Commission for the Assistance of Child Refugees, to sustain life for more than two or three months. The standard ration consisted of 2 ounces (55 grams) of lentils, beans or rice with occasional additions of sugar or salted cod. It was said that more than 400 people died of inanition each week in Madrid. A growing food crisis intensified a popular sense that Negrín’s government, located in Barcelona, had simply abandoned the centre to its fate. This was unfair, since the food situation in the Catalan capital was little better. In the central zone, Negrín’s rhetoric of resistance was increasingly out of tune with popular feeling.5 In November, when the Francoists bombed Madrid with loaves of fresh white bread, JSU militants denounced this as an insulting gesture and burned the loaves in street bonfires. Álvaro Delgado, a student at the time, told the British historian Ronald Fraser: ‘It came down in sacks with propaganda wrapped round it saying: “This bread is being sent you by your nationalist brothers.” It was beautiful, fine white bread. Some came through a broken skylight at the Fine Arts school, and when no one was around I and other students ate so much we felt sick.’ On the streets, others trampled the bread in a fury. Despite their hunger, people were shouting: ‘Don’t pick it up.’ Even Casado recalled later that women with children launched themselves on to some men who were seen picking up the bread. They then collected the loaves and took them to the Dirección General de Seguridad, the national police headquarters, whence it was transported to the battlefront and handed back to the Francoists.6

Discontent was stoked up by the Fifth Column which talked of the plentiful food in the Francoist-held areas and also of the likely mercy of Franco for those who were not Communists. War-weariness boosted the growth of the Fifth Column. David Jato, a significant Falangist militia leader, told Ronald Fraser: ‘I wouldn’t say we had people inside Casado’s general staff; I’d say the majority of the staff was willing to help us. So many doctors joined that Madrid’s health services were virtually in our hands. The recruiting centres were infiltrated by our men. Even some Communist organizations like Socorro Rojo ended up in fifth column hands.’7 The Socorro Rojo Internacional (International Red Aid) was a social welfare body.

In the wake of the Francoist advance through Aragon, dissident elements of the PSOE and the UGT had met with members of the CNT to discuss their discontent with Communist policy as early as April 1938. In mid-November 1938, anti-Negrinista Socialist officials in Alicante, Elche and Novelda and CNT elements in Madrid and Guadalajara had participated in a rehearsal of their efforts to oust Negrín. These initiatives were nipped in the bud by the SIM.8 The JSU organizations of Valencia, Alicante, Albacete, Murcia, Jaen and Ciudad Real were in favour of breaking Communist domination of the organization and re-establishing the Socialist Youth Federation (Federación de Juventudes Socialistas, or FJS) as it was before the unification with the Communist youth movement in 1936. The knee-jerk, and futile, response of the JSU secretary general, Santiago Carrillo, was to denounce the dissidents as Trotskyists. His alarm was understandable since JSU members made up a high proportion of the Republican armed forces.9

A combination of the Republic’s worsening situation, the consequent divisions within the Socialist Party and his conversations with Luna García convinced Besteiro that he was far from alone in his anti-communism. Aware of his own popularity, he had reached the conclusion that the time had come to emerge from his self-imposed obscurity in Madrid. At the PSOE executive committee meeting held in Barcelona on 15 November, Besteiro’s speech, which at time strayed into rhetoric indistinguishable from that emanating from the Franco zone, discussed the likely consequences of the Communists being removed from power.

The war has been inspired, directed and fomented by the Communists. If they ceased to intervene, it would be virtually impossible to continue the war. The enemy, having other international support, would find itself in a situation of superiority … I see the situation as follows: if the war were to be won, Spain would be Communist. The rest of the democracies would be against us and we would have only Russia with us. And if we are defeated, the future will be terrible.10

It was a virtuoso performance of pessimism, defeatism and irresponsibility. He had recognized the inevitability of cooperation with the Communists yet had remained aloof, determined to keep his hands clean. Now, he denounced collaboration without offering any alternative other than division, defeat and the tender mercies of General Franco.

The underlying naivety of Besteiro’s words reflected his belief that the PCE, ‘the party of war’, was the only obstacle to peace and reconciliation. Indeed Besteiro would seemingly be coming to believe the Francoist propaganda line that, by handing over the PCE, the Republicans could ‘purify’ themselves and establish a basis for post-war reconciliation ‘between Spaniards’ (although obviously not Spaniards who were Communists). In the course of his speech, Besteiro returned to what had become an obsessional theme, declaring that Negrín was a Communist who had entered the Socialist Party as a Trojan horse. The next day, he reported to Negrín himself what he had said: ‘Before they tell you anything, I want you to hear from me what I said in the executive committee. I regard you as an agent of the Communists.’ He told Azaña and others that Negrín was a ‘Karamazov’, ‘a crazed visionary’ – presumably a reference to the violent sensualist Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. He later gave the British Chargé d’Affaires a bitter account of his meetings with Azaña and Negrín.11

Accordingly, while in Barcelona, Besteiro discussed with Azaña the formation of a government whose principal task would be to seek peace. He told Julián Zugazagoitia, the editor of El Socialista, that ‘we Spaniards are murdering one another in a stupid way, for even more stupid and criminal reasons’.12 Deeply concerned about the consequences for the bulk of the population of inevitable Republican defeat, he was ever more hostile to Negrín because he believed him to be unnecessarily prolonging the war. Misplaced rumours about a peace cabinet saw Besteiro subjected to virulent attack by the Communist press.13

Before going to Barcelona, Besteiro had confided his anxieties to Ángel Pedrero García, the head of the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar in the Army of the Centre, and a close collaborator of Colonel Casado. Apparently, Casado had already intimated to Pedrero that he would like to get in touch with Besteiro. Accordingly, in October 1938, when Besteiro had expressed a similar wish, Pedrero arranged a meeting in his own house. Besteiro shared with Casado his conviction that an early peace treaty was necessary and that the military high command should pressure Negrín’s government to negotiate. From this time, there were regular contacts between Casado and General Manuel Matallana Gómez, of the general staff, and Casado’s close collaborator Colonel José López Otero, a general staff officer with anarchist sympathies. They also made tentative efforts to bring Miaja aboard. Their caution was related to Miaja’s membership, formally at least, of the Communist Party. In December, Casado had a meeting with Ralph Stevenson, the British Chargé d’Affaires, in the hope of ascertaining if he could rely on support from London. Casado was also in touch with the diplomats of France and several Latin American countries. Stevenson followed up the meeting by seeking out Besteiro to find out more about the peace plans.14

On his return to Madrid, a deeply disillusioned Besteiro reported his conversations in Barcelona to his acquaintances in the Fifth Column. He was resigned to the fact that Azaña would not be commissioning him to form a peace government and that, even if the President did so, he would be unable to find sufficient political support. However, Antonio Luna García set about persuading him that, if he was unable to fulfil his hopes of forming a peace government with wide political support, he should consider doing so with military backing.

It is astonishing that Besteiro could have been unaware of Franco’s determination to maintain the hatreds of the war long after the end of hostilities. If he was left in doubt after the savage repression unleashed in each of the provinces as they fell, an interview that the Caudillo gave on 7 November 1938 to the vice-president of the United Press, James Miller, should surely have made it clear. Franco declared unequivocally: ‘There will be no mediation. There will be no mediation because the delinquents and their victims cannot live side by side.’ He went on threateningly, ‘We have in our archive more than two million names catalogued with the proofs of their crimes.’15 Having dismissed any possibility of an amnesty for the Republicans, he confirmed his commitment to a policy of institutionalized revenge. The mass of political files and documentation captured as each town had fallen to the Nationalists was being gathered in Salamanca. Carefully sifted, it provided the basis for a massive card index of members of political parties, trade unions and masonic lodges which in turn would provide information for a policy of sweeping reprisals.16

That Besteiro had preoccupations other than the fate of defeated Republicans was revealed to Tomás Bilbao Hospitalet, Minister without Portfolio in Negrín’s government. A member of the minor Basque party Acción Nacionalista Vasca, Tomás Bilbao had joined the cabinet in August 1938 to replace Manuel Irujo, who had resigned in solidarity with Artemi Aiguader i Miró of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, who had himself resigned in protest at the limits imposed on the powers of the Catalan regional government, the Generalitat. Contrary to expectations, Bilbao had shown himself to be a shrewd and loyal member of Negrín’s team.17 In late 1938, he visited first Casado and then Besteiro, whom he found irritated and harshly critical of the government for not having pursued the peace policies that he had recommended. Bilbao informed Negrín of his fear that Besteiro, in conjunction with Casado, might do something dangerous. Negrín was sufficiently confident about Casado not to take the warnings seriously.18

However, as things got worse for the Republican cause, both Casado and Besteiro were readying themselves for action. With the knowledge of Luna García’s group, the two met on 25 January 1939, just as Franco’s forces were on the point of entering Barcelona. The next day, Lieutenant Colonel Centaño sent a message to Burgos: ‘Besteiro is beginning to work with Casado and everything is under our control.’ At the end of January, Ungría’s SIPM had instructed Julio Palacios of the Organización Antonio to inform Casado of the guarantees offered by the Caudillo to those professional army officers who laid down their arms and did not have common crimes on their conscience. The text had been transmitted orally to Palacios and then written up to be passed on to Casado. The wording contrasted starkly with many of Franco’s public declarations, but the concessions seemingly offered to senior officers would have been attractive to Casado personally since he would soon reveal his intention of leaving Spain after the war.

For senior and other officers who voluntarily lay down their arms, without having been responsible for the deaths of comrades or guilty of other crimes, in addition to their lives being spared, there will be greater benevolence according to how important or effective are the services that they render to the Cause of Spain in these last moments or how insignificant and without malice has been their role in the war. Those who surrender their weapons and thereby prevent pointless sacrifices and are not guilty of murders or other serious crimes will be able to obtain a safe-conduct that will enable them to leave our territory and, in the meanwhile, enjoy total personal safety. Simply having served on the red side or having been active in political groups opposed to the National Movement will not be considered reason for criminal charges.

The message was passed from Palacios to Ricardo Bertoloty, who in turn passed it to Casado’s personal physician and close friend, Diego Medina. When Casado expressed doubts that these ‘guarantees’ really came from Franco, it was arranged that Radio Nacional would broadcast a coded message drafted by Casado himself. Not entirely convinced, Casado replied on 1 February, ‘Understood, agreed and the sooner it is broadcast the better.’ He demanded a further guarantee in the form of a letter from his friend Fernando Barrón y Ortiz, one of Franco’s most trusted generals. Casado also told Medina that it was his fervent hope ‘to end the war with a magnificent deed that would astound the world, without the loss of a single life or the firing of a single bullet’. The requested letter from Barrón would eventually reach Casado on 15 February.19

Unaware of the extent of Casado’s contacts with Burgos, on 2 February, encouraged by the clandestine organization of the Falange, Besteiro had again used his acquaintance with Ángel Pedrero to request an urgent interview with Casado. When they met at Besteiro’s house, Casado told him about his by now much more advanced plans for peace which were moving towards the idea of a coup d’état. According to reports received in Burgos from the Fifth Column, the two remained in close contact throughout February.20

An inadvertent but crucial step towards the Casado coup had been Negrín’s declaration of martial law on 23 January 1939 as Franco’s forces approached Barcelona. No previous Republican government had wished to take this step both because it would put an end to democratic liberties and because of lingering suspicion of military loyalties.21 It was a desperate, perhaps inevitable and certainly fatal initiative, aimed at forcibly uniting all forces within the centre-south zone under military authority. The decree handed power to the military – and specifically to General Miaja, chief of the centre-south army group, and to General Matallana, chief of his general staff, both of whom hoped for an early end to the war. It downgraded the authority of civil governors, handing their authority over censorship and the holding of public meetings to the military governors in each province.

According to Vicente Uribe, ‘the majority of [the military governors] were real fossils who had demonstrated their inability to command and to make war. The upshot was that a measure introduced to strengthen the fight against the enemy and reinforce discipline among civilians was used by these fossils against the Communists in particular, by putting obstacles in the way of our activities and our work.’22 It thus facilitated Casado’s conspiracy. There were many other features of the situation which encouraged Casado. After the fall of Barcelona, the Republic’s senior authorities had joined the exodus to the French frontier. Neither President Azaña nor General Vicente Rojo, chief of staff and effectively commander-in-chief of the Republican armed forces, returned to Spanish territory. Indeed, after the fall of Barcelona, the Communists had noted a change in the attitude of General Rojo. In a manuscript written as a contribution to the official Communist Party history of the war, Vicente Uribe asserted: ‘in the last days of the campaign in Catalonia, he no longer showed any confidence in the cause of the Republic nor any desire to continue the fight’.23 Negrín, on the other hand, would do both.

In the wake of the Francoist promises, Casado had lunch in Valencia with Generals Matallana, Miaja and Leopoldo Menéndez (commander of the Army of the Levante). The exact date is not known but it was probably on 2 or 3 February, certainly before Negrín returned from France. Nor is it known if it was before or after Casado’s meeting with Besteiro. In his later account, Casado claimed that he and the three generals had agreed that, in the event of Negrín returning to the central zone, they would create a National Defence Junta (Consejo Nacional de Defensa) to overthrow the Prime Minister. ‘The three generals, without argument, regarded themselves as committed to this course of action, with all its consequences.’ However, Miaja’s secretary, his nephew Lieutenant Fernando Rodríguez Miaja, who was present at the lunch at his uncle’s residence, gives a very different account. The four main protagonists were accompanied by their adjutants and there were twelve people around the table.

What became obvious during the meal was Colonel Casado’s profound discontent with Dr Negrín, against whom he let loose a stream of insults. He ate nothing and drank only milk because the gastric ulcer which exacerbated his evil temper, already bitter and disagreeable by nature, had worsened in recent weeks. Obviously, in front of that audience, even though it was quite small, he did not reveal any intention of organizing a coup against the government … The other guests also expressed their dissatisfaction with the way the war was being run but not in the extremely violent terms used by Casado.24

In Negrín’s continued absence at the French–Catalan border, Casado was increasingly indiscreet about his determination to bring an end to the war. This was revealed at a meeting held in the afternoon and evening of either 7 or 8 February at Los Llanos in Albacete, the headquarters of the air force in the centre-south zone. The property of the Marqués de Larios, Los Llanos was a country house previously used as a hunting lodge but converted into a hospital for wounded airmen. The estate surrounding the house was used as an aerodrome.25 The proceedings of this gathering can be reconstructed thanks to a memoir by José Manuel Vidal Zapater, at the time a young airman who was charged with taking the minutes. The meeting was convened by Jesús Hernández in his capacity as commissar general of the Group of Armies of the Centre and was an attempt to get the top brass in the central zone to commit to continued resistance. Among the approximately ten senior officers present were Casado, Matallana, Miaja, Colonels Domingo Moriones Larraga and Antonio Escobar Huertas (respectively commanders of the armies of Andalusia and of Extremadura), Colonel Antonio Camacho Benítez, commander of the air force in the centre-south zone, and the commander of the fleet, Admiral Buiza.

With the Army of Catalonia in the process of crossing into France, Hernández was effectively the senior civilian authority in the army (after Negrín as Minister of Defence and Prime Minister). The officers present (mainly career officers whose service pre-dated 1936) intensely resented commissars in general and Hernández in particular. The first item of business was the launch by Hernández of a dramatic manifesto to the nation, calling for last-ditch resistance and the mobilization of the remaining drafts of conscripts. His presentation was repeatedly and rudely interrupted by Casado, whose hostile reaction effectively revealed what he was up to. Rather more politely, the other officers present supported Casado’s remarks about the impossibility of continuing the war. Buiza stressed the precarious situation of the Republican navy and Colonel Camacho spoke in deeply pessimistic terms of the massive superiority of the Francoist air force, with nearly 1,500 aircraft opposed to the Republic’s barely 100 usable machines. The only officer who did not oppose Hernández was Miaja who, after a heavy lunch, gave the impression of being asleep. He woke once, pointing at Vidal Zapater and asking Matallana who he was. When Matallana replied that he was a stenographer, Miaja, being rather deaf, asked again, and Matallana shouted, ‘A stenographer!’ Miaja then returned to his siesta. Vidal Zapater suspected that this was a pantomime on Miaja’s part to save him from having to take sides openly. In contrast, Casado’s recklessness may well have been part of his efforts to secure allies within the high command.26

That Casado should have proceeded with his anti-Negrín plans after the ratification a few days later, on 9 February, of Franco’s Law of Political Responsibilities was a measure of the vehement anti-communism that he shared with the Caudillo. Retroactive to October 1934 and published on 13 February, the law aimed to ‘punish the guilt of those who contributed by acts or omissions to foment red subversion, to keep it alive for more than two years and thereby undermine the providential and historically inevitable triumph of the National Movement’. The law deemed all Republicans to be guilty of the crime of military rebellion.27 The arrogance and egoism that underlay Casado’s actions persuaded him that the law could not possibly be applied to him. Even before he got the requested letter from Barrón, on 10 February, Colonel Ungría had received a message from one of his agents which read: ‘Casado in agreement with Besteiro, he requests that the lives of decent officers be respected.’ This extremely limited, not to say selfish, request suggests that Casado and his closest collaborators believed that some sort of esprit de corps united professional officers on both sides of the lines and exempted them from Franco’s vengeful plans. It is clear that he was happy to pay for Franco’s mercy in Communist blood. As he later revealed to his contacts in the Fifth Column, Casado’s intention was to escape. At the same time, his rhetoric was about astounding the world with an historic achievement, the bloodless end to the Civil War. Presumably, he could have escaped at any time but to have done so would have covered him in shame, whereas, he believed, his plan would allow him to escape covered in glory.

Whether he realized it or not, Casado was about to sacrifice thousands of civilian lives. Even if Franco’s promises of immunity for professional soldiers were to be believed, his entire conduct of the war, his recent declarations and the publication of the Law of Political Responsibilities should have shown Casado that the surrender that he was contemplating would have bloody consequences for the Republican population. Franco had turned away from several opportunities to end the conflict quickly, preferring instead a slow war of attrition aimed at annihilating the Republic’s mass support. As his declarations to the United Press in early November 1938 had made clear, there would be no amnesty for the Republicans.

Negrín, in contrast, had long since been tortured by a sense of responsibility towards the Republican population. In July 1938, when a senior Republican figure, almost certainly Azaña, suggested that an agreement with the rebels was an inevitable necessity, he responded: ‘Make a pact? And what about the poor soldier of Medellín?’ At the time, Medellín, near Don Benito, was the furthermost point on the Extremadura front and about to fall. Since Franco demanded total surrender, Negrín knew that, at best, a mediated peace might secure the escape of several hundred, maybe some thousands, of political figures but that the army and the great majority of ordinary Republicans would be at the mercy of the Francoists, who would be pitiless.28 Knowing that Franco would not consider an armistice, Negrín refused to contemplate unconditional surrender. On 7 August, he had said to his friend Juan Simeón Vidarte: ‘I will not hand over hundreds of defenceless Spaniards who are fighting heroically for the Republic so that Franco can have the pleasure of shooting them as he has done in his own Galicia, in Andalusia, in the Basque country and all those places where the hoofs of Attila’s horse have left their mark.’29

In his determination to see the war end with the least suffering for the Republican population, Negrín was unable to rely on the support of the President Manuel Azaña. At their meeting on 30 January, he had tried to persuade Azaña that, after he had crossed into France, he should return to Madrid immediately, but Azaña refused on the grounds that to do so would constitute support for Negrín’s plans for resistance. The scale of Azaña’s panic was such that Negrín had him placed under surveillance lest he head for France without warning. When it was apparent that he could not be persuaded to stay, Negrín offered to put an aircraft at his disposal to fly to Paris, but Azaña refused for fear that he would be taken back to the centre-south zone in Spain against his will. Martínez Barrio told Álvarez del Vayo that before going into the meeting Azaña had said: ‘Negrín can tie me up, he can gag me and put me on an aeroplane. That’s the only way he’s going to get me to the centre-south zone, but as soon as I get off the plane and they remove the gag, I will scream until they either kill me or let me go.’30

In the meeting, he declared that, once he had crossed the frontier into France, he would not return under any circumstances and would devote himself only to seeking a peace treaty. Negrín was finally obliged to accept that the President could not be persuaded to return immediately. When Azaña said that he planned to go to the house of his brother-in-law, Cipriano Rivas Cherif, in Collonges-sous-Salève, Negrín told him that he must take up residence in the Spanish Embassy in Paris. Azaña agreed to go to the Embassy but insisted that he would not return to Spain. Accordingly, Negrín told Azaña that this meant he should therefore withdraw his confidence from his Prime Minister and name a substitute who could negotiate surrender with Franco. Azaña did not respond. This left Negrín with the option only of resignation. And to resign, knowing as he did what could be expected of Franco’s ‘justice’, would have seemed to him a betrayal of the Republican masses. To mitigate the damaging consequences of Azaña’s cowardice, Negrín said that the government would announce that the circumstances obliged the President to take up temporary residence in the Spanish Embassy in Paris. Azaña replied that, if such an announcement was made, he would not contradict it but that he still had no intention of returning. After the meeting, Negrín told Julio Álvarez del Vayo that he was sure that Azaña was reacting emotionally and that he would eventually see that he had to return to Spain.31 In consequence, both Negrín and Azaña would have different recollections of what had been agreed at the meeting. In a letter to his friend Ángel Ossorio y Gallardo, Azaña wrote five months later that he had told Negrín that, irrespective of any such announcement, he would not return to Spain. However, when Negrín reached Paris on 7 March 1939 after the Casado coup, he told Marcelino Pascua, the Spanish Ambassador to France, that the agreement had been for Azaña to reside in France merely provisionally until the government had re-established itself in Madrid. This accounts for the cold tone of Negrín’s subsequent telegrams to Azaña requesting his return to Spain.32

When Pascua received the news of the President’s imminent arrival, he was appalled. He thought, and told Azaña, that his presence in Paris would cause immense damage to the Republic, effectively announcing to the British and French authorities that he considered the war lost and thereby undermining the basis of Negrín’s policy of using the rhetoric of resistance as a negotiating card. Pascua was soon irritated by what he described as Azaña’s carefree routine of ‘la dolce far niente’. It consisted largely of a daily touristic excursion around Paris in an Embassy car accompanied by his inseparable friend and brother-in-law Cipriano Rivas Cherif followed by an evening gathering (tertulia) with his friends in the French capital. Resentful of what they believed to be a betrayal of the Republic, the domestic staff of the Paris Embassy even refused to serve him.33 In fact, Azaña was more concerned with the preservation of the artistic treasures of the Prado than with the impact of his decision to flee. He had said to Álvarez del Vayo: ‘A hundred years from now, few people will know who Franco or I were but everyone will always know who Velázquez and Goya are.’34 He was also concerned to go on collecting his salary.35

The tensions deriving from Azaña’s presence in Paris were exacerbated by the closeness of his relationship with Cipriano Rivas Cherif. Rivas Cherif was regarded as a frivolous lightweight by Pascua, by Álvarez del Vayo and by Negrín. He had made damaging mistakes as Consul in Geneva and, merely to please Azaña, he had been given the virtually meaningless title of Introductor de Embajadores, effectively head of protocol for the President. However, in Paris, he was Azaña’s liaison with the Quai d’Orsay and behaved as if he was at the service of the French government rather than the Spanish Republic. To the French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet he parroted Azaña’s view that the Republic was finished and that the rhetoric of resistance by Negrín and Álvarez del Vayo was merely a device to gain time. His conversations with Bonnet convinced the French that the Spanish government was adrift and in conflict with the exiled head of state who, unlike Negrín and Del Vayo, had the good sense to see that the only answer was an immediate peace settlement.36

Negrín knew that the war was effectively lost, but he was not prepared simply to walk away. As he told the standing committee of the Cortes on 31 March 1939: ‘The Government, in the first few days after reaching Figueras, after leaving Barcelona, realized that we were facing a real catastrophe, a catastrophe infinitely bigger than the catastrophe that we have suffered with the retreat of the civilian population and the army. It was fully aware that there was very little chance of saving the situation, but the Government knew that it was its duty to look for a way, if there was one.’37 When Negrín said ‘the Government’, he was referring to himself.

On the morning of Sunday 5 February, Azaña achieved the exile he had longed for. He described the pathetic manner of his entry into France some months later in a letter to his friend Ángel Ossorio y Gallardo. He and his entourage left at dawn in a small convoy of police cars. As a courtesy, Negrín accompanied them across the frontier. The President of the Cortes, Diego Martínez Barrio, travelled ahead in a separate car. This vehicle broke down. Negrín and others in the party tried unsuccessfully to push it out of the way. The party was obliged to cross the hazardously icy border on foot, thereby fulfilling a gloomy prophecy made by Azaña at the beginning of the Civil War. He had said to his wife, Dolores Rivas Cherif: ‘We will end up leaving Spain on foot.’38 When taking his leave, before walking back into Spain, Negrín kissed the hand of Dolores Rivas and said: ‘Until we meet again soon in Madrid.’39

As Julián Zugazagoitia commented, Negrín and Azaña were incompatible, the one energetic, dynamic and fearless; the other sedentary and timorous. By this stage ‘They felt mutual contempt. At that moment, they hated each other.’ On his return to Spain, Negrín remarked to Zugazagoitia: ‘You have to feel sorry for poor Azaña! He is fearfulness incarnate. His fear gives him a greenish-yellow colour and makes him look like a decomposing corpse.’ As he was approaching the frontier, Negrín encountered Lluís Companys, the Catalan President, José Antonio Aguire, the Basque President, and Manuel Irujo, who had been Minister of Justice in his own government. They had proposed accompanying Azaña into France, but he had refused their offer because to have crossed together would have implied that they were on the same level. They now offered to go back into Spain with Negrín, but he politely declined, allegedly muttering to himself, ‘That’s one less thing to worry about.’40

The cabinet had been installed in the castle of Figueras on a hill overlooking the town. With a drawbridge, thick outer and inner walls, it seemed impregnable but was an entirely inappropriate location for a government. According to the British Chargé d’Affaires, Ralph Stevenson, it was:

a large fortress-like barracks on the outskirts of the town. At the best of times, it must have been an uncomfortable place, cold, dank and dirty. But with the débris of the Spanish Government heaped into it pell-mell it was an unforgettable sight. Luckily the weather was bad and there was no great likelihood of aerial bombardment for the place was a veritable death-trap, with only one narrow road, serving for both ingress and egress, along certain stretches of which only one vehicle could pass at a time.41

When the weather permitted, the town was subject to frequent rebel bombing raids. Around the courtyard, various ministries were installed in rooms with the words ‘foreign ministry’, ‘ministry of the interior’, ‘cabinet office’ and so on roughly chalked on the wall next to the door. The town square, where the office of press and propaganda had been installed in a requisitioned house, was heaving with refugees. There was little by way of furniture and even less food for the staff. In the words of Herbert Matthews, ‘It was a madhouse of bewildered officials and soldiers, struggling desperately, not only with their own work, but with those thousands of swarming refugees who filled every house and doorway and covered almost every inch of the streets where men, women and children slept through the bitterly cold nights with almost no food and certainly no place to go.’42 Negrín worked ceaselessly to try to limit the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the defeat in Catalonia and to keep alive the idea of resistance as the best way to achieve a peace settlement that would prevent a vengeful mass slaughter at the hands of the Francoists. To this end, he maintained ‘the mask of resistance come what may’. With a colossal weight on his shoulders, he tried to conceal his exhaustion and despair from his ministerial colleagues. Zugazagoitia related that ‘one evening, he appeared in the castle, exhausted, almost unable to breathe. He asked if we had anything to eat, sat down at the table and, on the verge of tears, was plunged into a crisis of melancholy.’43

Negrín spoke to the last meeting of the Republican Cortes held in the stables of the castle at midnight on 1 February. It was so cold that many of the deputies sat in overcoats. According to the correspondent of the London Daily Herald who was present:

Empty chairs were stacked along the walls. Over 106 failed to answer the toll call: many of them were in France, others were holding the dispirited troops together, others had already fallen into Franco’s hands. Four times during the session the unshaded swaying lights registered the bombardment which was hitting the town. Negrín, immaculate in a brown suit, was so calm he might have been addressing his students in the quiet prewar days of Madrid.

In his exhaustion, he had to pause frequently to gather breath.44

In the dark, echoing stone chamber, the proceedings appeared to Zugazagoitia like ‘an intimate religious ceremony celebrated by a persecuted sect’. Negrín was, in many senses, virtually alone, deserted by many, supported by a small group of faithful friends. Yet he assumed the responsibility of fighting on, of doing the best for the Republican population that faced defeat and the ‘mercy’ of Franco. Bone-tired, he delivered his speech with what Zugazagoitia termed ‘unutterable anguish’. The main burden of his words was the need for international mediation to secure guarantees that there would be no reprisals at the end of the war. He presented a plan to bring the war to an end in return for Franco observing certain conditions, the principal one being that there should be no bloodbath. He suggested that the exodus of 450,000 refugees after the fall of Barcelona constituted a plebiscite against the Francoist invaders.45 The assembled deputies gave Negrín a unanimous vote of confidence, although, as they left, there were embittered mutterings against the Communists. All the deputies went into France, some to seek ways of returning to the central zone, others to stay and secure their own safety. Among those who stayed in France, especially the anarchists and the Socialist supporters of Largo Caballero, there were absurd accusations that Negrín and the Communists were responsible for the defeat of the Republic. As Zugazagoitia commented, they reflected a desire to avoid recognizing the real causes of Republican defeat.46

According to Herbert Matthews, ‘No one could call it an oratorical masterpiece: it was disjointed, and badly delivered, by a man so exhausted that he could hardly stand, yet it should take its place with the great documents of Spanish history.’47 In contrast, for Stevenson, Negrín’s speech ‘did not carry as much conviction as was usual with his pronouncements. He spoke valiantly about continued resistance and ultimate triumph, but his words came from his lips and not from his heart.’ The following day, Stevenson and his military attaché had an hour-long meeting with Negrín and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Julio Álvarez del Vayo, ‘in a dark, meagrely furnished room’. Stevenson reported to London that ‘Dr Negrín appeared to be as combative as ever. He showed at times flashes of humour, when his face would light up. At other times, it would set in savage determination. He was obviously very tired. He reiterated to me his fixed intention to resist as long as possible in Catalonia and thereafter, if necessary.’ Negrín stated that a victory for Franco would be disastrous for the democratic powers, which Stevenson countered by saying this had been duly considered in both London and Paris. They then moved on to discussion of the three points that Negrín regarded as the sine qua non of any peace treaty – that Spain would be independent, that the Spanish people would be free to choose their own form of government and that there would be no reprisals. Negrín said that if these were guaranteed the Republican forces would lay down their arms. In his view, the request for these guarantees had to come jointly from the British, French and United States governments, since to request them himself would be disastrous for the Republic. Stevenson merely asked permission to forward this point to London.48

On the same morning, the French Ambassador, Jules Henry, had also gone to Figueras and urged surrender on Negrín, who refused categorically. Henry described the encounter in Figueras to Georges Bonnet: ‘it is there that Negrín hides like a tiger trapped in the last refuge of the jungle, and it is from there that he hopes to direct what could be the last act of the Spanish tragedy … Negrín with a smile on his lips has assured me once more of his confidence in the final success of the cause that he defends … This time I am not convinced.’49 In fact, with Franco about to gain control of the entire frontier between Spain and France, it was absolutely essential for Paris to have some sort of diplomatic relations with him. To this end, the government had already sent the Senator Léon Bérard to Burgos to negotiate arrangements for the return to Spain of the refugees already on French territory and of those expected to arrive, as well as for formal representation at Franco’s headquarters. Although the French government was anxious to send an ambassador to Franco, it could not do so as long as Negrín remained in power since it could not have two Spanish ambassadors in Paris. In the meantime, until formal diplomatic relations were established, Paris hoped to establish some sort of representation at Franco’s headquarters similar to that constituted by the British diplomatic agent Sir Robert Hodgson. The fear was that Franco under Italian pressure would refuse and insist on having a fully fledged ambassador.50 This being the case, it was hardly likely that Negrín could expect much support from Paris. Indeed, when Bérard met Franco’s Foreign Minister, the Conde de Jordana, he broached the subject of a guarantee of no reprisals as a prerequisite of recognition of Franco’s government. Jordana told him brusquely: ‘The Generalísimo has amply demonstrated his humanitarian feelings but at this moment the only possibility is the unconditional surrender of the enemy which must trust in his generosity and that of his Government.’51

Two days after his meeting with Negrín, Ralph Stevenson received ‘a secret and personal message’ from President Azaña stating that ‘he was at complete variance with Dr Negrín’s policy of continued resistance. He claimed that his efforts to contact the French Ambassador had been blocked by Negrín. Stevenson immediately informed Jules Henry, who visited Azaña later the same afternoon. The President’s message to both diplomats was that their two countries should press Negrín’s government to seek an immediate cessation of hostilities. If Negrín did not accede to pressure from the two governments, Azaña told both ambassadors, it was his intention to resign as President.52

The British and French governments meanwhile decided to press Negrín to agree to the cessation of hostilities ‘on the understanding that General Franco would guarantee the peaceful occupation of the remainder of the country with no political reprisals and the removal of foreign troops from Spain’. In the afternoon of 6 February, Stevenson and Henry met Álvarez del Vayo at Le Perthus. They informed him that the British and French governments were seeking guarantees from Franco and asked if the Republican government would agree to a cessation of hostilities if they were forthcoming. Since there was no response from Franco, Álvarez del Vayo could undertake only to discuss the matter with Negrín. The next day, Negrín received the British and French representatives at the house in the village of La Vajol where he was staying. He conceded that defeat in Catalonia could not be avoided but expressed his view that a European war was inevitable and that resistance could be sustained in the centre-south zone of the Republic. In this regard, he hoped that the equipment being taken into France by the retreating Republican forces could be repatriated. In fact, Georges Bonnet had already informed Franco’s envoy in Paris, José María Quiñones de León, that his government would not permit the return of Spanish Republican troops and equipment to the centre-south zone.53 Unaware of this, Negrín repeated to the British and French diplomats that he would agree to a cessation of hostilities if Franco made a declaration accepting his three conditions of Spanish independence, free elections and no reprisals. To this third point, he added that he wanted an undertaking that at-risk Republican political and military leaders could be evacuated from the centre-south zone under international supervision. It was agreed that this message would be passed on to London and Paris.

After the meeting, Stevenson met with the US Counsellor, Walter Thurston, who commented that Franco would almost certainly reject the demand for Spaniards to be able to choose their own destiny and probably the other two conditions as well. Stevenson replied that the key point was that Negrín had offered capitulation and since the offer had been made, ‘the working out of terms will be a mere formality’. This suggested that the British, like the French, were not likely to be overly concerned about ensuring that Franco would not carry out reprisals. The American Ambassador Claude Bowers believed that ‘Negrin’s purpose is to force a formal official rejection of the terms for the sake of the record or their acceptance’. Bonnet discussed Henry’s report with the US Ambassador in Paris, William Bullitt, on 8 February and said that the British were transmitting Negrín’s terms to Franco, adding that he thought Franco would reject them and propose unconditional surrender.54

The British and French response, Negrín reported later, was that ‘it was impossible to reach a satisfactory agreement with the so-called Burgos government because totalitarian governments do not understand humanitarian sentiments nor are they interested in pacification or magnanimity and, what is more, the rebels had claimed that they would only punish common crimes’. To this, Negrín’s understandable reaction was: ‘In a war like ours, a pitiless and savage civil war, either all crimes are common crimes or none are.’ Accordingly, he offered himself as an expiatory victim, letting it be known through the British and French representatives that he would hand himself over if Franco would accept his symbolic execution in exchange for the lives of the mass of innocent Republican civilians. He did not reveal this offer to the majority of his own cabinet. Zugazagoitia knew about it, but Negrín did not make it public until after the Second World War.55

Negrín commented to Vidarte after the session: ‘People want peace! Me too. But wanting peace is not the same as facilitating defeat. As long as I am prime minister, I will not accept the unconditional surrender of our glorious army, nor a deal that might save several hundred of the most at-risk individuals but allow them to shoot half a million Spaniards. Rather than that, I would shoot myself.’56 Negrín’s offer to hand himself over as the sacrificial scapegoat was ignored by Franco. The government remained in Spain at the Castillo de Figueras until the last units of the Republican army had crossed the frontier on 9 February.

The situation was summed up succinctly by the correspondent of The Times of London, Lawrence Fernsworth. A conservative and Roman Catholic, he sympathized with the plight of the defeated Republicans. He wrote: ‘At all points where the Pyrenees here slanted away toward the sea, fleeing hordes of Spaniards, each one the embodiment of an individual tragedy, spilled over the mountainous borders, immense avalanches of human debris.’ Negrín planned to hold out, as Fernsworth put it, to ‘protect the escape from Madrid of thousands who would otherwise fall victims of Franco’s reprisals’. Casado opposed Negrín by launching the falsehood that resistance was merely a cover for the establishment of a Communist dictatorship.57 This notion obviously was already axiomatic for the Francoists, but it also appealed to the anarchists and Socialists who had resented the arrogance and harshness of Communist policies during the war. Assuming, as Casado and the anarchists did, that the PCE was a puppet of the Kremlin, a Communist dictatorship in Spain would have made little sense. Nothing could have been less in accord with the USSR’s needs throughout both 1938 and 1939. In 1938, Soviet priorities were for collective security via alliance with France and Britain against Nazi Germany. After the Munich Agreement, the USSR – now moving towards the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 – was not prepared to alienate Hitler.58

On the night of 8 February, one of the few colleagues who remained in Spain with Negrín, his friend Dr Rafael Méndez, said to Álvarez del Vayo: ‘I have no idea what we are doing here. I rather fear that tonight we’ll be awakened by the rifle-butts of the Carlist requetés [militia].’ Hearing this, Negrín called Méndez aside and said: ‘We won’t leave here until the last soldier has crossed the frontier.’59 Yet again at the forefront of his mind was the determination to see these Republicans safe from the reprisals of Franco. The Carlists, an extreme right-wing monarchist faction, had shown elsewhere that they were all too ready to carry out mass executions. As Negrín wrote later to Prieto: ‘From the last house on the Spanish side of the frontier which the rebels occupied an hour later, I stood for eighteen hours watching the file of the last forces that were retreating into France. I managed not to lose my head, and simply by dint of doing my duty, it was possible to save those half a million Spaniards who are now awaiting our help.’60

Only after General Rojo had arrived to announce that the final Republican troops in Catalonia had crossed the frontier on the morning of 9 February did Negrín enter France. His most loyal ministers wept. At the Spanish Consulate in Perpignan, an improvised cabinet meeting was held. Negrín announced that he would travel on to Toulouse and from there fly to Spain. Some ministers thought that he was mad, but as he himself later explained: ‘If I hadn’t done that then, today I would die of shame; I probably would not have been able to survive my disgust with myself. Was the Government going to leave those still fighting in the Central zone without leadership or support? Was it the Government of Resistance that would flee and surrender them?’61

Shortly after Negrín had reached Perpignan on Thursday 9 February, an emissary from General Miaja reached the Spanish Consulate. Captain Antonio López Fernández, Miaja’s fiercely anti-Communist secretary, came with the mission of persuading Negrín to remain in France and for President Azaña to grant Miaja permission to negotiate peace with the rebels. Prior to leaving Alicante on the plane for Toulouse, he had telephoned General Rojo, who had asked him to come to the Spanish Embassy in Paris to meet both himself and Azaña on 10 February. On reaching the Consulate in Perpignan late on Thursday evening, Captain López was received by Negrín, Álvarez del Vayo and the Minister of Finance, Francisco Méndez Aspe. He gave them a detailed report on the situation in the central zone, the thrust of which was that there was no possibility of further resistance and that the only possible solution was to entrust Miaja with the task of negotiating surrender on the best terms possible. Negrín listened in silence until López concluded with the words: ‘Prime Minister, at this moment, the Centre-South zone is like an aircraft in flight whose engines have stopped. The salvation of those on board depends on the skill of the pilot. In the view of all the senior officers in the zone, that pilot is General Miaja.’ When Negrín asked what was needed for resistance to continue, López replied: ‘There is no possibility of resisting; there are no weapons, no food, no fuel and our armament is so worn out, with no possibility of replacement or repair, that to oblige the Army to resist is self-evidently senseless and criminal.’ When Álvarez del Vayo pressed him further, López replied that resistance would be possible only if huge deliveries of arms and aircraft could arrive immediately. Negrín told López that he would consider his report and that, the next morning, he and Vayo would go to the central zone and discuss future prospects with Miaja.62

López then went to Paris and had a meeting with Azaña and Generals Rojo and Hernández Saravia and Lieutenant Colonel Enrique Jurado. There he found a more receptive audience for his pessimistic report. He asked Azaña to return to the central zone to oblige Negrín to resign and to give constitutional legitimacy to negotiations with the Francoists. López’s message from Miaja was as hopelessly naive as the beliefs of Casado. It echoed the conclusions of the lunch shared by Miaja a week before with Casado, Matallana and Menéndez in Valencia. He told the President that it was necessary to form a government of professional soldiers who would be able to secure a reasonable peace treaty with Franco. Azaña allegedly replied: ‘I have decided to wash my hands of the problems of Spain. Whisper to General Miaja that he should do whatever he thinks best and what he considers to be his duty as a soldier and a Spaniard.’ Rojo then gave López letters for Miaja, Matallana and Negrín. López later claimed implausibly that the letter to Negrín urged him to resign and leave Spain while those to Miaja and Matalla instructed them to execute Negrín if he refused to leave. No such letters have been found subsequently.63

According to Vicente Uribe, ‘The majority of the Ministers had no desire to go to Madrid, morale was extremely low. No one dared say no and preparations to leave were made in accordance with Negrín’s orders.’ Negrín issued instructions to the soldiers and civilians who had accompanied him, some to return to the centre-south zone and others to remain in France to deal with the refugees and other issues regarding the evacuation. From Toulouse, he flew that night to Alicante, arriving on the morning of the next day. He was accompanied by Julio Álvarez del Vayo, his Foreign Minister, and Santiago Garcés Arroyo, the head of the Republic’s security apparatus, the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar. They flew under assumed names, paying their passage on a scheduled Air France flight.64

Before leaving, Negrín and Méndez Aspe had a meeting with Trifón Gómez, the quartermaster general of the Republican army. Gómez claimed later that they had discussed the question of food supplies for the centre zone. Negrín allegedly told him to continue sending food but to be careful not to build up stocks. Méndez Aspe allegedly went even further, saying that the war would probably last only another couple of weeks, and that, if there were enough supplies for that time, he was opposed to Gómez sending more. General Rojo made a similar point in his memoir of the period: ‘The supply services in the other zone were being dismantled: nothing could be sent, neither men, nor arms, nor matériel, nor munitions, nor raw materials; on the other hand, the political authorities were concentrating on bringing things to an end.’65

Assuming this to be true, it shows two things: first, that Negrín was returning to make peace and thus using the rhetoric of resistance as a bargaining chip and, second, that he and Méndez Aspe wanted to conserve resources for the inevitable exodus and subsequent exile. After overseeing the passage of the last Republican troops over the French frontier, Zugazagoitia remembered Negrín saying: ‘Let’s see if we can do the second part. That’s going to be more difficult.’ Zugazagoitia went on: ‘We were bringing things to an end and when he contemplated returning to the Centre-South zone, Negrín had only one thing on his mind, the end, with as little damage as possible, of a war that was lost.’ This coincides with the testimony of Negrín’s secretary Benigno Rodríguez, to whom he said that he was returning to Spain ‘to save as much as we can’.66