Читать книгу Franco - Paul Preston - Страница 10

THE IMPACT on Franco of the left-wing election victory was almost immediate. On 21 February, the new Minister of War, General Carlos Masquelet, put a number of proposed postings before the cabinet. Amongst them was that of Franco to be Comandante General of the Canary Islands, of Goded to be Comandante General of the Balearic Islands and of Mola to be military governor of Pamplona. Franco was not remotely pleased with what was, in absolute terms, an important post. He sincerely believed that, as Chief of the General Staff, he could play a crucial role in holding back the threat of the Left. As his activities in the wake of the elections showed, his experience in October 1934 had given him a taste for power. That was one reason why the new government wanted him far from the capital.

The Military Region of the Canary Islands, like that of the Balearics, was not traditionally, even prior to Azaña’s abolition of the post, a Captaincy-General. Nevertheless, in importance, both jobs counted only marginally below the eight peninsular Military Regions and were held by a Major-General. After all, Franco was only number 23 in the list of 24 Major-Generals on active service. General Mola, four points lower at number three on the list of Brigadier Generals, was made military commander of Pamplona and so subordinate to the regional commander in Zaragoza.¹ Franco was fortunate to get such a senior posting from the new Minister of War but he perceived it as a demotion and another slight at the hands of Azaña. Years later, he spoke of the posting as a ‘banishment’ (destierro). Above all, he was worried that his work in removing liberal officers would be reversed.²

Before leaving Madrid, Franco made the obligatory visits to the new Prime Minister Azaña and to the President of the Republic, Alcalá Zamora. The only accounts of these two meetings derive from Franco’s own testimony to his cousin Pacón and to his biographer Joaquín Arrarás. Even from his partial accounts, it is clear that his motives were complex. Ostensibly, he was trying to convince them to do something about the danger of Communism. It is clear that he thought their best course would have been to keep him on as Chief of the General Staff. In large part, as with his efforts in 1931 to hold onto the Military Academy, this was because he wanted to keep a post in which he felt fulfilled and for which he thought that he was the best man. It is impossible to discern whether he also hoped by staying in Madrid to be able to take part in military conspiracy.

In Franco’s jaundiced eyes, Alcalá Zamora was dangerously sanguine about the situation. Franco told him that there were insufficient means available to oppose the revolution. The President replied that the revolution had been defeated in Asturias. Franco said ‘Remember, Mr President, what it cost to hold back the revolution in Asturias. If the assault is repeated right across the country, it will be really difficult to contain it. The Army lacks the basic means to do so and there are generals who have been put back into key positions who do not want the revolution to be defeated.’ Alcalá did not take the hint and merely shook his head. When Franco rose to leave, the President said ‘You can leave without worrying, general. There will be no Communism in Spain’, to which Franco claimed, with hindsight, to have replied ‘Of one thing I am certain, and I can guarantee, that, whatever circumstances may arise, wherever I am, there will be no Communism’.

Again by his own account, Franco appears to have got short shrift from Azaña. His gloomy predictions that the replacement of ‘capable’ officers by Republicans would open the gates to anarchy were greeted with a sardonic smile. Franco said ‘you are making a mistake in sending me away because in Madrid I could be more useful to the Army and for the tranquillity of Spain’. Azaña ignored the offer: ‘I don’t fear uprisings. I knew about Sanjurjo’s plot and I could have avoided it but I preferred to see it defeated’.³ Neither Azaña’s diaries nor Alcalá Zamora’s memoirs contain references to these interviews. However, even if Franco’s versions of the conversations are apocryphal, they reflect a vivid recollection of his embittered state of mind at the time and of his disgust at what he saw as Azaña’s frivolous and malicious insouciance in the face of the Communist menace.

Removed once more from a job he loved, Franco was more than ever a general to be feared. He was not the only one. The narrowness of the left-wing electoral victory reflected the polarization of Spanish society. The savage repression of the previous period ensured that there would be little spirit of conciliation on either side of the political divide. After the failure of the various efforts by Gil Robles and Franco to persuade Portela Valladares to stay in power with Army backing, the Right abandoned all pretence of legalism. The hour of the ‘catastrophists’ had struck. Gil Robles’s efforts to use democracy against itself had failed. Henceforth, the Right would be concerned only with destroying the Republic rather than with taking it over. Military plotting began in earnest.

While waiting to leave for the Canary Islands, Franco spent time talking about the situation with General José Enrique Varela, Colonel Antonio Aranda and other like-minded officers. Everywhere he went, he was followed by agents of the Dirección General de Seguridad.⁴ On 8 March, the day before setting out for Cádiz on the first stage of his journey, Franco met a number of dissident officers at the home of José Delgado, a prominent stockbroker and crony of Gil Robles. Among those present were Mola, Varela, Fanjul and Orgaz, as well as Colonel Valentín Galarza. They discussed the need for a coup. They were all agreed that the exiled General Sanjurjo should head the rising.

The impetuous Varela favoured an audacious coup in Madrid; the more thoughtful Mola proposed a co-ordinated civilian/military uprising in the provinces. Mola believed that the movement should not be overtly monarchist. Franco said little other than to suggest shrewdly that any rising should have no specific party label. He made no firm commitments. They departed, having agreed to begin preparations with Mola as overall director and Galarza, as liaison chief. They undertook to act if the Popular Front dismantled the Civil Guard or reduced the size of the officer corps, if revolution broke out or if Largo Caballero was asked to form a government.⁵

After leaving the meeting, Franco collected his family and the inevitable Pacón and headed for the Atocha station to catch the train to Cádiz where they would embark for Las Palmas. At Atocha, a group of generals, including Fanjul and Goded came to wish him farewell. On arrival at Cádiz, Franco was shocked by the scale of disorder which greeted his party, churches having been attacked by anarchists. When the military governor of Cádiz informed him that ‘Communists’ had set fire to a convent near his barracks, Franco was furious: ‘Is it possible that the troops of a barracks saw a sacrilegious crime being committed and that you just stood by with your arms folded?’ The colonel replied that he had been ordered by the civilian authorities not to intervene. Franco barked ‘Such orders, since they are unworthy, should never be obeyed by an officer of our Army’ and he refused to shake hands with the colonel.

Franco’s anger reflected his own deep-seated attachment to Catholicism inherited from his mother. It was inextricably entangled with his military-hierarchical view of society. From revulsion at the Left’s disrespect for God and the Church it was but a short step to thinking that the use of military force to defend the social order was both necessary and justified. He was even more dismayed when a crowd on the quay which had arrived complete with a band to see off the new civil governor of Las Palmas sang the Internationale with their fists raised in the Communist salute. The constant reminders of popular enthusiasm for the Republic led Franco to comment to his cousin that his comrades were wrong to imagine that a swift coup was possible. ‘It’s going to be difficult, bloody and it’ll last a long time – yet there seems to be no other way, if we’re going to be one step ahead of the Communists’.⁶

The boat, Dómine, reached the Canary Islands at 7 p.m. on the evening 11 March 1936. On arriving at Las Palmas, Franco was greeted by the military governor of the island, General Amado Balmes. After a short tour, he set off again with his family in the Dómine for Tenerife where they docked on 12 March at 11.00 a.m. On the dockside, they were awaited by a mass of Popular Front supporters. The local Left had decreed a one-day strike for workers to go to the port in order to boo and whistle the man who had put down the miners’ rising in Asturias. Ignoring the banners which denounced ‘the butcher of Asturias’, Franco remained calm, said goodbye to the ship’s captain, descended the steps and inspected the company of troops which awaited him. According to his cousin, his display of cool indifference impressed the crowd whose derision turned to applause.⁷

Franco immediately set to work on a defence plan for the islands and especially on the measures to be taken to put down political disturbances. He also took advantage of the opportunities offered by the Canary Islands and began to learn golf and English. According to his English teacher, Dora Lennard, he took lessons three times a week from 9.30 to 10.30 and was an assiduous student. He wrote two exercises for homework three times a week and only once failed to do so because of pressure of work. Five out of six of his exercises were about golf for which he had quickly become an obsessive enthusiast. He acquired a reading knowledge but could not follow spoken English. His favourite subjects in their conversation classes were the Popular Front’s enslavement to the agents of Moscow and his love for his time at the Academia General Militar in Zaragoza.⁸ Franco’s own later efforts to wipe away his hesitations during the spring of 1936 led him to imply, in numerous interviews, that he had been anxiously overseeing the conspiracy. As so often in his life, he remoulded reality. It is a telling comment on this particular case of remembered glory that, in fact, in early July 1936, he was planning a golfing holiday in Scotland to improve his game.⁹

Golf and English lessons aside, Franco and Carmen led a full social life. Their guides to the society of the Canaries were Major Lorenzo Martínez Fuset and his wife. Martínez Fuset, a military lawyer, and an amiable and accommodating character, became Franco’s local confidant.¹⁰ Otherwise, Franco’s activities were slightly inhibited by the scale of surveillance to which he was subject. His correspondence was tampered with, his telephone tapped, and he was being watched both by the police and by members of the Popular Front parties. This reflected the fear that he inspired in both the central government and in the local Left in the Canary Islands. There were rumours inside his headquarters that an assassination attempt was likely. Pacón and Colonel Teódulo González Peral, the head of the divisional general staff, organized the officers under Franco’s command into a round-the-clock bodyguard. Franco was reported to have declared proudly ‘Moscow sentenced me to death two years ago’.¹¹ If indeed he made the remark, it reflected the heady propaganda that he was receiving from the Entente in Geneva rather than any interest in his activities on the part of the Kremlin.

Despite the air of clandestinity which seems to have surrounded Franco’s activities in the Canary Islands, he was openly being talked about as the leader of a forthcoming coup.¹² Pro-fascist and anti-Republican remarks made by him, some in public, suggest that he was not as totally cautious as is usually assumed. On the occasion of the military parade to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the foundation of the Second Republic, Franco spoke with the Italian consul in the Canary Islands and loudly (ad alta voce) expressed to him his enthusiasm for Mussolini’s Italy. He was particularly fulsome in his congratulations for Italy’s role in the Abyssinian war and said how anxiously he awaited news of the fall of Addis Ababa. He appears to have made a point of ensuring that he was overheard by the British Consul. On the next day, the Italian Consul visited Franco to thank him and was delighted when the general’s anti-British sentiments led him to speak of his sympathy for Italy as a ‘new, young, strong power which is imposing itself on the Mediterranean which has hitherto been kept as a lake under British control’. Franco also talked of his belief that Gibraltar could easily be dominated by modern artillery placed in Spanish territory and talked enticingly, for his listener, of the ease with which a fleet anchored in Gibraltar harbour could be destroyed by air attack.¹³

On 27 April, Ramón Serrano Suñer made a journey to the Canary Islands with the difficult task of persuading his brother-in-law to withdraw his candidacy for the re-run elections about to take place in Cuenca. In the wake of the so-called Popular Front elections of 16 February 1936, the parliamentary committee entrusted with examining the validity of the outcome, the comisión de actas, had declared the results null and void in certain provinces. One of these was Cuenca, where there had been falsification of votes. Moreover, once the defective votes were discounted, no list of candidates reached the 40 per cent of votes necessary to win the majority block of seats.¹⁴ In the re-run elections scheduled for the beginning of May 1936, the right-wing slate included both José Antonio Primo de Rivera and General Franco. The Falange leader was included in the hope of securing for him the parliamentary immunity which would ensure his release from jail where he had been since 17 March.¹⁵

Serrano Suñer was behind Franco’s late inclusion in the right-wing list announced on 23 April.¹⁶ On 20 April, a letter from Franco to the secretary of the CEDA expressed his interest in being a candidate in one of the forthcoming re-run elections, preferably Cuenca. Gil Robles discussed the matter with Serrano Suñer. When he approved Franco’s candidacy, Serrano Suñer set off immediately for the Canary Islands to inform his brother-in-law. The monarchist leader Antonio Goicoechea offered to give up his place in the right-wing list but Gil Robles simply instructed the CEDA provincial chief in Cuenca, Manuel Casanova, to stand down. The support for Franco manifested by the CEDA and Renovación Española was not replicated by the third political party involved in Cuenca, the Falange. When the revised list of right-wing candidates was published, Gil Robles received a visit from Miguel Primo de Rivera who came to inform him that his brother was firmly opposed to the list, regarding the inclusion of Franco as a ‘crass error’.

Since Varela was also standing in the simultaneous rerun at Granada, José Antonio Primo de Rivera shrewdly wished to avoid his chances of election being diminished if the rightist eagerness for military candidates were too transparent. He also, in the wake of his unfortunate meeting with Franco before the February elections, regarded the general as likely to be a disaster in the Cortes. He threatened to withdraw from the Cuenca list if Franco’s name was not removed, something which Gil Robles felt unable to do. Efforts by various right-wing leaders including Serrano Suñer failed to persuade the Falange leader to withdraw his opposition to Franco. José Antonio said to Serrano Suñer: ‘This is not what he’s good at and, given that what is brewing is something more conclusive than a parliamentary offensive, let him stay in his territory and leave me where I have already proved myself’. Serrano was then obliged to inform Franco. He managed to persuade his brother-in-law that he would not take well to the cut-and-thrust of parliamentary debate. The argument that Franco would be risking public humiliation did the trick. On 27 April, Franco withdrew and Manuel Casanova returned to the list.¹⁷ Franco was aware of the Falangist leader’s hostility to his candidacy and subsequent events would show that he neither forgave nor forgot.

The Left, and Prieto in particular, were concerned that Franco planned to use his parliamentary seat as a base from which to engage in military plotting. This was a reasonable interpretation and was indeed adopted by Francoist propaganda once the Civil War was under way. However, it is not clear whether Franco’s quest for a parliamentary seat was motivated by the need to effect his transfer from the Canary Islands to the mainland in order to play a key role in the conspiracy or by more selfish motives. Gil Robles suggested that the desire to go into politics reflected Franco’s doubts about the success of a military rising. As yet undeclared vis-à-vis the conspiracy, he wanted a safe position in civilian life from which to await events.¹⁸ Fanjul confided a similar opinion to Basilio Alvarez, who had been a Radical deputy for Orense in 1931 and 1933: ‘perhaps Franco wants to protect himself from any governmental or disciplinary inconvenience by means of parliamentary immunity.’¹⁹

Certainly, the versions of the Cuenca episode produced by Franco and his propagandists make it clear that it was to be an abiding source of embarrassment. Within a year, Franco was to be found rewriting it, through his official biographer Joaquín Arrarás. In his 1937 version, the parties of the Right offered Franco a place in the list for Cuenca, because he was a persecuted man and to allow him the freedom ‘to organize the defence of Spain’. Franco ‘publicly rejected’ the offer because he neither believed in the honesty of the election process nor expected anything from the Republican parliament.²⁰ This ludicrously inaccurate version of the events surrounding the Cuenca elections implied that, if the electoral system had been honest, Franco would have stood. Subsequently in 1940, Arrarás eliminated this inadvertent proclamation of faith in democracy and claimed that Franco had withdrawn his candidacy because of ‘the twisted interpretations’ to which it was subject.²¹ A decade after the events, Franco himself claimed in a speech to the Falangist Youth in Cuenca that his desire to be a parliamentary deputy was occasioned by ‘dangers for the Patria’.²²

By the early 1960s, Franco was eschewing any hint that he might have been seeking a bolt-hole. Writing in the third person, he claimed rather that ‘General Franco was looking for a way of legally leaving the archipelago which would permit him to establish a more direct contact with the garrisons in order to have a more direct link with those places where there was a danger of the Movement being a failure’. There is an outrageous re-casting of history in this account. Franco attributes to himself the credit for securing a place for José Antonio Primo de Rivera in the right-wing candidacy, which is simply untrue. With equal inaccuracy, he claims that General Fanjul had stood down as a candidate to make way for Franco himself when he had done so for José Antonio. He then fudges the reasons for the eventual withdrawal of his own candidacy with the vague and incorrect statement that, on the morning that candidates were to be announced, he received a telegram from those concerned (los afectados) to the effect that ‘it was impossible to maintain his candidacy because his name had been ‘burned’ (quemado).²³

That Franco should omit to mention the rift with the leader of the Falange was entirely understandable. After all, after 1937, the Nationalist propaganda machine would work frenetically to convert Franco into the heir to José Antonio in the eyes of the Falangist masses. Similarly, in writing that his intention was to be able to oversee the preparations for a coup, Franco inadvertently revealed his desire to diminish Mola’s posthumous glory as the sole director of the rising. In his third and most plausible attempt to rewrite the Cuenca episode, Arrarás wrote that Franco withdrew ‘because he preferred to attend to his military duties, by which means he believed he could better serve the national interest’. The suggestion of any friction between Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera remained taboo.²⁴

Left-wing suspicions of Franco’s motives were expressed by Indalecio Prieto shortly after Franco’s candidacy was dropped, in a celebrated speech in Cuenca. He commented that ‘General Franco, with his youth, with his gifts, with his network of friends in the Army, is a man who could at a given moment be the caudillo of a movement with the maximum chances of success’. Accordingly, without attributing such intentions to Franco, Prieto claimed that other right-wing plotters were seeking to get parliamentary immunity for him in order to facilitate his conversion into ‘the caudillo of a military subversion’.²⁵ In any case, the Cuenca election was declared at the last minute to be technically a re-run. Since the electoral law required that candidates in a re-run should have secured 8 per cent of the vote in the first round, new candidates could not be admitted by the provincial Junta del Censo. Accordingly, although José Antonio Primo de Rivera gained sufficient votes to win a seat, his election was not recognized.²⁶

Helpless before the rising numbers of strikes and deaf to the background hum of military conspiracy stood the minority government. Only Republicans sat in the Cabinet, because Largo Caballero refused to let Socialists join a coalition. He pinned his hopes on two naive scenarios: either the Republicans would quickly find themselves incapable of implementing their own reform programme and have to make way for an exclusively Socialist cabinet or else there would be a fascist coup which would be crushed by popular revolution. In May, Largo used his immense influence inside the Socialist leadership to prevent the formation of a government by the more realistic Prieto. As long as Azaña was prime minister, authority could be maintained. However, in order to put together an even stronger team, Azaña and Prieto plotted to remove the more conservative Alcalá Zamora from the presidency. Azaña would become president and Prieto take over as prime minister. The first part of the plan worked but not the second as a result of Largo Caballero’s opposition and Prieto’s failure to fight it. The consequences were catastrophic. The last chance of avoiding civil war was missed. Spain lost a shrewd and strong prime minister, and, to make matters worse, on assuming the presidency, Azaña increasingly withdrew from active politics. The new Prime Minister, Santiago Casares Quiroga, suffering from tuberculosis, was incapable of generating the determination and energy required in the circumstances.

Unemployment was rocketing and the election results had dramatically raised the expectations of workers in both town and countryside. To the outrage of employers, trade unionists sacked in the aftermath of the Asturian events were forcibly reinstated. There were sporadic land seizures as frustrated peasants took into their own hands the implementation of the new government’s commitment to rapid reform. What most alarmed the landlords was that labourers whom they expected to be servile were assertively determined not to be cheated out of reform as they had between 1931 and 1933. Many landowners withdrew to Seville or Madrid, or even to Biarritz or Paris, where they enthusiastically joined, financed, or merely awaited news of, ultra-rightist plots against the Republic.

Under the energetic leadership of General Mola, the plot was developing fast. It was more thoroughly prepared than any previous effort, taking full account of the lesson of the Sanjurjada of 10 August 1932 that casual pronunciamientos could not work where the Civil Guard was in opposition and where the proletariat was ready to use the weapon of the general strike. The tall bespectacled Mola, as ‘El Director’, having learnt plenty of police procedure during his time as Director-General of Security in 1930–1931, took to conspiracy with gusto. Brave and of adventurous spirit, he enjoyed the danger.²⁷ Pamplona was an excellent place from which to direct the conspiracy, being the headquarters of the most militant group of the ultra-Right, the Carlists.²⁸ Mola had plenty of willing and competent assistants. Through Valentín Galarza, known among the plotters as ‘the technician’ (el técnico), the right-wing conspiratorial organization, Unión Militar Española, was at his disposal. He drew up his first directive in April, ‘The objective, the methods and the itineraries’. In it, aware of the deficiencies of the preparations of Sanjurjada, he specified in detail the need for a complex civilian support network and above all for political terror: ‘the action must be violent in the extreme in order to crush the strong and well-organized enemy as soon as possible. All leaders of political parties, societies or unions not committed to the Movement will be imprisoned and exemplary punishments administered to such individuals in order to strangle movements of rebellion or strikes’.²⁹

In the middle of May, Mola was visited secretly by a Lieutenant-Colonel Seguí of the general staff of the African Army, who informed him that the garrisons of Morocco were ready to rise. Among the Africanista officers, Mola relied on Yagüe as the most tireless in the preparation of the rising in Morocco. In May too, Mola was in contact with a group of generals who would each play a crucial role in the Civil War: the brutal Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, head of the Carabineros (the Spanish frontier guards), the austere monarchist Alfredo Kindelán, the key link with conspirators in the Air Force and the easy-going Miguel Cabanellas, head of the Zaragoza military division.³⁰ Franco was fully informed through Galarza. As part of the post-1939 propaganda effort to wipe away the memory of Franco’s minimal participation in the preparations, it was claimed that he carried on a twice-weekly correspondence with Galarza. These thirty coded letters have never been traced.³¹ In fact, Franco was anything but enthusiastic, commenting to the optimistically headstrong Orgaz, who had been banished to the Canary Islands in the early spring, ‘You are really mistaken. It’s going to be immensely difficult and very bloody. We haven’t got much of an army, the intervention of the Civil Guard is looking doubtful and many officers will side with the constituted power, some because it’s easier, others because of their convictions. Nobody should forget that the soldier who rebels against the constituted power can never turn back, never surrender, for he will be shot without a second thought’.³² At the end of May, Gil Robles complained to the American journalist H. Edward Knoblaugh that Franco had refused to head the coup, allegedly saying ‘not all the water in the Manzanares could wash out the stain of such a move’. Discounting the choice of a less than torrential river, this and other remarks suggest that the experience of the Sanjurjada of 1932 was on his mind.³³ Not to be able to turn around or change his mind must have been Franco’s idea of hell.

With the conspiracy developing rapidly, Franco’s caution was stoking up the impatience of his Africanista friends. On 25 May, Mola had drawn up his second directive to the plotters, a broad strategic plan of regional risings to be followed by concerted attacks on Madrid from the provinces.³⁴ Clearly, it would be an enormous advantage to have Franco as part of the team. Captain Bartolomé Barba was sent by Goded to the Canary Islands on 30 May to tell Franco to make his mind up and abandon ‘so much prudence’. Colonel Yagüe told Serrano Suñer that he was in despair at Franco’s mean-minded carefulness and his refusal to take risks.³⁵ Serrano Suñer himself was baffled when Franco told him that what he really would have liked was to tranfer his residence to the south of France and direct the conspiracy from there. Given Mola’s position, there was no question of Franco organizing the rising. The clear implication was that he was more concerned with covering his personal retreat in the event of failure.³⁶ This inevitably suggests that selfless commitment to the rising had not been his main reason for trying to stand for election in Cuenca.

The rationale for the conspiracy was the fear of the middle and upper classes that an inexorable wave of Godless, Communist-inspired violence was about to inundate society and the Church. Their panic was generated assiduously by the rightist press and by the widely reported parliamentary speeches of the insidious Gil Robles and the belligerent monarchist leader José Calvo Sotelo. Their denunciations of disorder found a spurious justification in the street violence provoked by the Falange’s terror squads. In their turn, the activities of Falangist gangs were financed by the same monarchists who were behind the military coup. The startling rise of the Falange was a measure of the changing political climate. Cashing in on middle class disillusionment with the CEDA’s legalism, the Falange expanded rapidly. Moreover, attracted by its code of violence, the bulk of the CEDA’s youth movement, the JAP, went over en masse. The rise of the Falange was matched by the ascendancy within the Socialist movement of Largo Caballero. Intoxicated by Communist flattery – Pravda had called him “the Spanish Lenin” – he undermined Prieto’s efforts at a peaceful solution. Largo toured Spain, prophesying the triumph of the coming revolution to crowds of cheering workers. The May Day marches, the clenched fist salutes, the revolutionary rhetoric and the violent attacks on Prieto were used by the rightist press to generate an atmosphere of terror among the middle classes and to convince them that only a military coup could save Spain from chaos.

Certain factors made the conspirators’ task much easier than it might otherwise have been. The government failed to act decisively on the repeated warnings that it received of the plot. At the beginning of June, Casares Quiroga, as Minister of War, set out to decapitate the conspiracy in Morocco by removing the officers in charge of the two Legions into which the Tercio was now organized. On 2 June, he sent for Yagüe who was head of the so-called Segunda Legión. On the following day, he removed Yagüe’s fellow-conspirator Lieutenant-Colonel Heli Rolando de Tella from command of the Primera Legión. When Yagüe was received by the Minister on 12 June, Casares Quiroga offered him a transfer either to a desirable post on the Spanish mainland or to a plum position as a military attaché abroad. Yagüe told Casares that he would burn his uniform rather than not be able to serve with the Legion. After giving him forty-eight hours to reconsider, Casares weakly acquiesced in Yagüe’s vehemently expressed desire to return to Morocco. It was a major political error given Yagüe’s key role in the conspiracy.³⁷ A comparable stroke of luck protected the overall director of the plot. The Director-General of Security, Alonso Mallol, pointed the finger at Mola. On 3 June, Mallol made an unannounced visit to Pamplona with a dozen police-filled trucks and undertook searches allegedly aimed at arms smuggling across the French frontier. Having been warned of the visit by Galarza who in turn had been informed by a rightist police superintendent, Santiago Martín Báguenas, Mola was able to ensure that no evidence of the conspiracy would be found.³⁸

The ineffective efforts of the Republican authorities to root out the conspirators helps explain one of the mysteries of the period, a curious warning to Casares Quiroga from the pen of General Franco. He wrote to the Prime Minister on 23 June 1936 a letter of labyrinthine ambiguity, both insinuating that the Army was hostile to the Republic and suggesting that it would be loyal if treated properly. The letter focused on two issues. The first was the recently announced reintegration into the Army of the officers tried and sentenced to death in October 1934 for their part in the defence of the Generalitat. The rehabilitation of these officers went directly against one of Franco’s greatest obsessions, military discipline.³⁹ The second cause of Franco’s outrage was that senior officers were being posted for political reasons. The removal of Heli Rolando de Tella from the Legion and the near loss of Yagüe must have been on his mind. He informed the Minister that these postings of brilliant officers and their replacement by second-rate sycophants were arbitrary, breached the rules of seniority and had caused immense distress within the ranks of the Army. No doubt he regarded his own transfer from the general staff to the Canary Islands as the most flagrant case.

He then wrote something which, although absolutely untrue, was probably written with sincerity. In Franco’s value system, the movement being organized by Mola, and about which he was fully informed, merely constituted legitimate defensive precautions by soldiers who had the right to protect their vision of the nation above and beyond particular political regimes. ‘Those who tell you that the Army is disloyal to the Republic are not telling you the truth. Those who make up plots in terms of their own dark passions are deceiving you. Those who disguise the anxiety, dignity and patriotism of the officer corps as symbols of conspiracy and disloyalty do a poor service to the Patria.’ The anxieties which he shared with his brother officers about the law and order problem led Franco to urge Casares to seek the advice ‘of those generals and officers who, free of political passions, live in contact with their subordinates and are concerned with their problems and morale’. He did not mention himself by name but the hint was unmistakeable.⁴⁰

The letter was a masterpiece of ambiguity. The clear implication was that, if only Casares would put Franco in charge, the plots could be dismantled. At that stage, Franco would certainly have preferred to reimpose order, as he saw it, with the legal sanction of the government rather than risk everything in a coup. In later years, his apologists were to spill many gallons of ink trying to explain away this letter either as a skilful effort by Franco the conspirator to put Casares off the scent and make him halt his efforts to replace subversives with loyal Republicans or else as a prudent warning by Franco the loyal officer which was stupidly ignored by the Minister of War.⁴¹ In fact, the letter had exactly the same purpose as Franco’s appeals to Portela in mid-February. Franco was ready to deal with revolutionary disorder as he had done in Asturias in 1934 and was now, in guarded terms, offering his services. If Casares had accepted his offer, there would have been no need for an uprising.

That was certainly Franco’s retrospective view.⁴² The government of the Popular Front did not share his commitment to suppressing the aspirations of the masses. In any case, Casares took no notice of him. If he had, the eventual outcome would certainly have been very different. If Franco was within his rights to send such a letter, Casares should have acknowledged his concern. If he believed that Franco had abused his position then Casares should have taken disciplinary measures against him. The Prime Minister’s failure to reply can only have helped to incline Franco towards rebellion.

Franco’s letter was a typical example of his ineffable self-regard, his conviction that he was entitled to speak for the entire army. At the same time, its convoluted prose reflected his retranca, the impenetrable cunning associated with the peasants of Galicia. At the time of writing, Franco was still distancing himself from the conspirators. His determination to be on the winning side without taking any substantial risks hardly set him apart as a likely charismatic leader although it did prefigure his behaviour towards the Axis in the Second World War. At the same time as he wrote to Casares, Franco also wrote to two Army colleagues. The first letter was to Colonel Miguel Campins, his assistant in the Zaragoza Academy, currently in command of a light infantry battalion in Catalonia. The other was to Colonel Francisco Martín Moreno, chief of the general staff of Spanish forces in Morocco with whom Franco had worked in early 1935 when he had been Commander-in-Chief there. The letters suggest clearly that Franco was not yet a committed conspirator, expressing merely his anxiety that the political situation might worsen to the point at which the Army would have to intervene. He asked if they would collaborate with him if such an occasion were to arise. Martín Moreno wrote back to say that, if Franco appeared in Tetuán, he would place himself at his orders, ‘but at no one else’s’. Campins, in contrast, replied that he was loyal to the government and to the Republic and that he did not favour any intervention by the Army. He had signed his own death warrant.⁴³

A few days after Franco wrote his letter to Casares, the division of duties among the conspirators was settled. Franco was expected to be in command of the rising in Morocco. Cabanellas would be in charge in Zaragoza, Mola in Navarre and Burgos, Saliquet in Valladolid, Villegas in Madrid, González Carrasco in Burgos, Goded in Valencia. Goded insisted on exchanging cities with González Carrasco.⁴⁴ For several reasons, Mola and the other conspirators were loath to proceed without Franco. His influence within the officer corps was enormous, having been both Director of the Military Academy and Chief of the General Staff. He also enjoyed the unquestioning loyalty of the Spanish Moroccan Army. The coup had little chance of succeeding without the Moroccan Army and Franco was the obvious man to lead it. Yet, in the early summer of 1936, Franco still preferred to wait in the wings. Calvo Sotelo frequently cornered Serrano Suñer in the corridors of the Cortes to badger him impatiently ‘what is your brother-in-law thinking about? What is he doing? Doesn’t he realize what is on the cards?’⁴⁵

His coy hesitations saw his exasperated comrades bestow upon him the ironic nickname of ‘Miss Canary Islands 1936’. Sanjurjo, still bitter about Franco’s failure to join him in 1932, commented that ‘Franco will do nothing to commit himself; he will always be in the shadows, because he is crafty’ (cuco). He was also heard to say that the rising would go ahead ‘with or without Franquito’.⁴⁶ There were plenty of other good generals who were in on the conspiracy and many more who were not. Why Franco’s hesitations infuriated Mola and Sanjurjo was not just because of the danger and inconvenience involved in having to plan around a doubtful element. They were anxious to have him aboard because they rightly sensed that his decision would clinch the involvement of many others. He was ‘the traffic light of military politics’, in the words of José María Pemán.^*47

When Franco did eventually commit himself, his role was of the first importance without being the crucial one. The Head of State after the coup triumphed was to be Sanjurjo. As technical master-mind of the plot, Mola was then expected to have a decisive role in the politics of the victorious regime. Then came a number of generals each of whom was assigned a region, among them Franco with Morocco. Several of them were of equal prominence to Franco, especially Fanjul in Madrid and Goded in Barcelona. Moreover, leaving aside the roles allotted to Sanjurjo and Mola, Franco’s future in the post-coup polity could only lie in the shadow of the two charismatic politicians of the extreme Right, José Calvo Sotelo and José Antonio Primo de Rivera. In fact, given his essential caution, Franco seems not to have nurtured high-flying ambitions in the spring and early summer of 1936. When Sanjurjo asked what prizes his fellow-conspirators aspired to, Franco had opted for the job of High Commissioner in Morocco.⁴⁸ As the situation changed, Franco would adjust his ambitions with remarkable agility and uninhibited by any self-doubts. The hierarchy of the plotters would in fact soon be altered with astonishing rapidity.

The arrangements for Franco’s part in the coup were first mooted in Mola’s Directive for Morocco. Colonel Yagüe was to head the rebel forces in Morocco until the arrival of ‘a prestigious general’. To ensure that this would be Franco, Yagüe wrote urging him to join in the rising. He also planned with the CEDA deputy Francisco Herrera to present Franco with a fait accompli by sending an aircraft to take him on the 1,200 kilometre journey from the Canary Islands to Morocco. Francisco Herrera, a close friend of Gil Robles, was the liaison between the conspirators in Spain and those in Morocco. Yagüe, for his part, was devoted to Franco. As a consequence of his clashes with General López Ochoa during the Asturian campaign, he had been transferred to the First Infantry Regiment in Madrid. A personal intervention by Franco had got him back to Ceuta.⁴⁹ After meeting Yagüe on 29 June in Ceuta, Herrera undertook the lengthy journey to Pamplona where he arrived somewhat the worse for wear on 1 July to make arrangements for an aircraft for Franco. Apart from the financial and technical difficulties of getting an aircraft at short notice, Mola still had grave doubts about whether Franco would join the rising.

However, after consulting with Kindelán, he gave the go-ahead for this plan on 3 July. Herrera proposed going to Biarritz to see if the exiled Spanish monarchists at the resort could resolve the money problem. On 4 July, he spoke to the millionaire businessman Juan March who had got to know Franco in the Balearic Islands in 1933. He agreed to put up the cash. Herrera then got in touch with the Marqués de Luca de Tena, owner of the newspaper ABC, to get his assistance. March gave Luca de Tena a blank cheque and he set off for Paris to make the arrangements. Once there on 5 July, Luca de Tena rang Luis Bolín, the ABC correspondent in England, and instructed him to charter a seaplane capable of flying direct from the Canary Islands to Morocco or else the best possible conventional aircraft. Bolín in turn rang the Spanish aeronautical inventor and rightist, Juan de la Cierva who lived in London. La Cierva flew to Paris and told Luca de Tena that there was no suitable seaplane and recommended instead a De Havilland Dragon Rapide. Knowing the English private aviation world well, La Cierva recommended using Olley Air Services of Croydon. Bolín went to Croydon on 6 July and hired a Dragon Rapide.^*50

La Cierva and Bolín arranged for a set of apparently holidaying passengers to mask the aeroplane’s real purpose. On 8 July, Bolín went to Midhurst in Sussex to speak to Hugh Pollard, a retired army officer and adventurer, and make the arrangements. Pollard, his nineteen year-old daughter Diana and her friend Dorothy Watson would travel as tourists to provide Bolín with a cover for his flight. Leaving Croydon in the early hours of the morning of 11 July, the plane was piloted by Captain William Henry Bebb, ex-RAF. Despite poor weather, it reached Bordeaux at 10.30 a.m. where Luca de Tena and other monarchist plotters awaited Bolín with last-minute instructions. They arrived in Casablanca, via Espinho in Northern Portugal and Lisbon, on the following day, 12 July.⁵¹

Although the date for his journey to Morocco was now imminent, Franco was having ever more serious doubts, obsessed as usual with the experience of 10 August 1932. On 8 July, Alfredo Kindelán managed to speak briefly with Franco by telephone and was appalled to learn that he was still not ready to join. Mola was informed two days later.⁵² On the same day that the Dragon Rapide reached Casablanca, 12 July, Franco sent a coded message to Kindelán in Madrid for onward transmission to Mola. It read ‘geografía poco extensa’ and meant that he was refusing to join in the rising on the grounds that he thought that the circumstances were insufficiently favourable. Kindelán received the message on 13 July. On the following day, he sent it on to Mola in Pamplona in the hands of a beautiful socialite, Elena Medina Garvey, who acted as messenger for the conspirators. Mola flew into a rage, furiously hurling the paper to the ground. When he had cooled down, he ordered that the pilot Juan Antonio Ansaldo be found and instructed to take Sanjurjo to Morocco to do the job expected of Franco. The conspirators in Madrid were informed by Mola that Franco was not to be counted on. However, two days later, a further message arrived to say that Franco was with them again.⁵³

The reason for Franco’s sudden change of mind were dramatic events in Madrid. On the afternoon of 12 July, Falangist gunmen had shot and killed a leftist officer of the Republican Assault Guards, Lieutenant José del Castillo. Castillo was number two on a black list of pro-Republican officers allegedly drawn up by the ultra-rightist Unión Militar Española, an association of conspiratorial officers linked to Renovación Española. The first man on the black list, Captain Carlos Faraudo, had already been murdered. Enraged comrades of Castillo responded with an irresponsible reprisal. In the early hours of the following day, they set out to avenge his death by murdering a prominent Right-wing politician. Failing to find Gil Robles who was holidaying in Biarritz, they kidnapped and shot Calvo Sotelo. On the evening of the 13th, Indalecio Prieto led a delegation of Socialists and Communists to demand that Casares distribute arms to the workers before the military rose. The Prime Minister refused, but he could hardly ignore the fact that there was now virtually open war.

The political outrage which followed the discovery of Calvo Sotelo’s body played neatly into the hands of the military plotters. They cited the murder as graphic proof that Spain needed military intervention to save her from disaster. It clinched the commitment of many ditherers, including Franco. When he received the news in the late morning of 13 July, he exclaimed to its bearer, Colonel González Peral, ‘The Patria has another martyr. We can wait no longer. This is the signal!’.⁵⁴ Fuming with indignation, he told his cousin that further delay was out of the question since he had lost all hope of the government controlling the situation. Shortly afterwards, Franco sent a telegram to Mola. Later in the afternoon, he also ordered Pacón to buy two tickets for his wife and daughter on the German ship Waldi which was due to leave Las Palmas on 19 July bound for Le Havre and Hamburg.⁵⁵ His foresight did not extend to warning other members of his family. His sister-in-law Zita Polo underwent enormous dangers in escaping from Madrid with her children. Pilar Jaraiz, his niece, was imprisoned with her new-born son.⁵⁶

Franco’s English teacher wrote later that ‘the morning after the news of Calvo Sotelo’s murder had reached us, I had found him a changed man, when he came for his lessons. He looked ten years older, and had obviously not slept all night. For the first time, he came near to something like losing his iron self-control and unalterable serenity … It was with visible effort that he attended to his lesson.’⁵⁷ The heady decisiveness with which Franco responded to the news is not incompatible with Dora Lennard’s comment on his sleepless night.^* The decision was of sufficient enormity to provoke agonizing doubts, as his precautions for the safety of his wife and daughter demonstrated.

Later, the assassination of Calvo Sotelo was used to obscure the fact that the coup of 17–18 July had been long in the making. It also deprived the conspirators of a powerful and charismatic leader. As a cosmopolitan rightist of wide political experience, Calvo Sotelo would have been the senior civilian after the coup and unlike many of the ciphers that were to be used by Franco. It is difficult not to imagine that he would have imposed his personality on the post-war state. His death, even if no one could have judged it in such terms at the time, removed an important political rival to Franco.

In the short term, Calvo Sotelo’s assassination gave a new urgency to plans for the uprising. The Dragón Rapide had left Bolín in Casablanca and was still en route for the Canary Islands. It arrived at 14.40 on 14 July at the airport of Gando near Las Palmas on the island of Gran Canaria. Hugh Pollard and the two girls took a ferry to Tenerife where he was to make known his arrival by presenting himself at the Clínica Costa with the password ‘Galicia saluda a Francia’. Bebb was left with the aircraft on Gran Canaria to await instructions from an unknown emissary who would make himself known with the password ‘Mutt and Jeff’. Meanwhile, at 2 a.m. on the morning of 15 July, the sleek diplomat José Antonio Sangróniz appeared at Pacón’s hotel room in Santa Cruz de Tenerife with news of the latest developments and the date scheduled for the rising. At 7.30 a.m. on the same morning, Pollard went to the clinic where he contacted Doctor Luis Gabarda, a major of the military medical service, who was acting on behalf of Franco. He was told to return to his hotel and await an emissary from Franco with his instructions.⁵⁸

Franco had acute immediate problems which took precedence over any long-term ambitions. As military commander of the Canary Islands, his headquarters were in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The Dragon Rapide from Croydon had been instructed to land at the airport of Gando on Gran Canaria in part because it was nearer to mainland Africa, also because it was known that Franco was being watched by the police but, above all, because of the low cloud and thick fog which afflicts Tenerife. In order to travel from Santa Cruz to Gran Canaria, Franco needed the authorization of the Ministry of War. His request for permission to make an inspection tour of Gran Canaria was likely to be turned down, not least because it was barely a fortnight since his last one. The rising was scheduled to start on 18 July, so Franco would have to leave for Morocco on that day at the latest. In the event he did so, yet none of his biographers seem to regard it as odd that the Dragon Rapide should have been directed to Gran Canaria with confidence in Franco’s ability to get there too. That he got there at all was the result of either a remarkable coincidence or foul play.

On the morning of 16 July, Franco failed to appear for his scheduled English lesson.⁵⁹ On the same morning, General Amado Balmes, military commander in Gran Canaria, and an excellent marksman, was shot in the stomach while trying out various pistols in a shooting range. Francoist historiography has played down the incident as a tragic, but fortunately timed, accident. Allegedly, a pistol blocked and in trying to free it, holding it against his stomach, it went off.⁶⁰ To counter suggestions that Balmes was assassinated, Franco’s official biographers have claimed that Balmes was himself an important figure in the plot. His cousin has portrayed Balmes as an intimate friend of Franco. Balmes was allegedly to organize the coup in Las Palmas and thus had to be replaced by Orgaz who was conveniently exiled there.⁶¹ Strangely, however, Balmes never figured in the subsequent Pantheon of heroes of the ‘Crusade’. Moreover, it is extraordinary that, despite the fact that Madrid did indeed refuse permission for Franco to travel to Gran Canaria to make an inspection, he and his immediate circle never doubted that they would find a way of getting to Las Palmas. Other sources suggest that Balmes was a loyal Republican officer and member of the Unión Militar Republicana Antifascista who had withstood intense pressure to join the rising.⁶² If that was true, he had, like many other Republican officers, put his life in mortal danger. It is virtually impossible now to say if his death was accidental, suicide or murder.

What is certain is that he died at the exact moment urgently needed by Franco. The duty of presiding at the funeral gave Franco the perfect excuse to travel to Gran Canaria on the overnight boat. Franco was determined to go without seeking permission for fear that it might be denied. His cousin persuaded him that it would be altogether less suspicious for him to ring the Ministry and inform the under-secretary, General De la Cruz Boullosa. Franco agreed with what turned out to be good advice. The under-secretary expressed surprise that Franco had not been in touch earlier to report on the death of Balmes. He gave the excuse that he had been seeking fuller information on what had happened and was granted permission to preside over the burial. Franco left Tenerife for Las Palmas in the mail-boat Viera y Clavijo shortly after midnight on 16 July. He was accompanied by his wife and daughter, Lieutenant-Colonel Franco Salgado-Araujo, Major Lorenzo Martínez Fuset and an escort consisting of five other officers. They arrived at Las Palmas at 8.30 a.m. on Friday 17 July. Pollard had returned to Las Palmas on the same ferry. Before leaving Tenerife, Franco had collected Sangróniz’s diplomatic passport and gave Colonel González Peral the proclamation of the military rebellion to be used on the following morning. Bebb and Pollard made the final arrangements with General Orgaz. The funeral ceremony for Balmes occupied most of the morning. Franco then took his wife and daughter for a drive around the town. Later, they dined with Pacón and Orgaz.⁶³

Coordinated risings were planned to take place all over Spain on the following morning. However, indications that the conspirators in Morocco were about to be arrested led to the action being brought forward there to the early evening of 17 July. The garrisons rose in Melilla, Tetuan and Ceuta in Morocco. At 4 a.m. in the morning of 18 July, Franco was woken in his hotel room to be given the news. Colonel Luis Solans, Lieutenant-Colonel Seguí and Colonel Darío Gazapo had seized Melilla ‘in Franco’s name’ and arrested the overall military commander in Morocco, the Republican General Gómez Morato. Yagüe had taken charge in Ceuta and Colonels Eduardo Saénz de Buruaga, Juan Beigbeder and Carlos Asensio Cabanillas had taken Tetuán. Franco was to have reason to be grateful for the role of Beigbeder, an accomplished Arabist, in taking over the Spanish High Commission and subsequently securing Moroccan acquiescence in the rising.⁶⁴

On hearing of their successes, Franco set out for military headquarters in Las Palmas accompanied by his cousin and Major Martínez Fuset and sent for Orgaz to join them there. Franco then sent a telegram to the eight divisional headquarters and the other main military centres of the peninsula. The news that Franco and the Army of Africa were on the side of the rebels was meant as a rallying cry to the conspirators in other areas: ‘Glory to the Army of Africa. Spain above all. Receive the enthusiastic greeting of these garrisons which join you and other comrades in the peninsula in these historic moments. Blind faith in our triumph. Long live Spain with honour. General Franco.’ The sending of such a telegram was an unequivocal indication that Franco attributed to himself a central national role in the rising. At 5.00 a.m. on 18 July, he signed a declaration of martial law. It was to be announced in Las Palmas by an infantry company complete with bugles and drums. At about the same time, a desperate telephone call for Franco came from the undersecretary of the Ministry of War in Madrid, General De la Cruz Boullosa. Martínez Fuset answered and claimed that Franco was out inspecting barracks.⁶⁵

At 5.15 a.m. in the morning of 18 July, Inter-Radio of Las Palmas began to broadcast Franco’s manifesto. The rather confused text was later attributed to Lorenzo Martínez Fuset.⁶⁶ The typed copy sent to the radio station had a post-script in Franco’s handwriting, ‘accursed be those who, instead of doing their duty, betray Spain. General Franco’. It avoided commitment to either the Republic or the Monarchy justifying the rising entirely in terms of defending the Patria by putting an end to anarchy. The text also claimed that Franco’s action was necessary because of a power vacuum in Madrid. Some of it was entirely fanciful: the Constitution, it alleged, was in tatters; the government was blamed for failing to defend Spain’s frontiers ‘when in the heart of Spain, foreign radio stations can be heard calling for the destruction and division of our soil’. It threatened ‘war without quarter against the exploiters of politics’ and ‘energy in the maintenance of order in proportion to the magnitude of the demands that arise’ which was an obscure way of saying all resistance would be crushed.⁶⁷

Franco himself made contact with trusted officers on the island and, on his orders, they seized the post office, the telegraph and telephone centres, the radio stations, power generators, and water reservoirs. He had rather more difficulty persuading the head of the local Civil Guard, Colonel Baraibar, to join the rising.⁶⁸ While Baraibar wavered, Franco, his family and his group of fellow rebels were in serious danger. Crowds were gathering outside the Gobierno Civil and groups of workers from the port were heading into Las Palmas. Pacón managed to keep the two groups from uniting by use of small artillery pieces and before 7 a.m. had dispersed the crowds. The beleagured group was then joined by retired officers, Falangists and right-wingers who were given arms. The situation remained tense and Franco was anxious to be on his way to Africa. Accordingly, he handed over command to Orgaz. Carmen Polo and Carmencita Franco were taken by Franco’s escort to the port and hidden on board the naval vessel Uad Arcila until the arrival of the German liner Waldi which was to take them to Le Havre.^*69

With fighting still going on, Franco himself set off at 11 a.m. on a naval tugboat for Gando airport where Bebb’s Dragon Rapide awaited him. It would have been virtually impossible to reach Gando by a road journey through villages controlled by the Popular Front. The tug went in as near to shore as possible and Franco and his party were then carried to the beach by sailors.⁷⁰ At 14.05 hours on 18 July, the aircraft took off for Morocco. It has been suggested that, for fear of his plane being intercepted, Franco carried a letter to the Prime Minister announcing his decision to go to Madrid to fight for the Republic.⁷¹ This seems to be contradicted by the fact that, armed with Sangróniz’s passport, Franco was passing himself off as a Spanish diplomat. He thus changed from his uniform into a dark grey suit, Pacón into a white one and both threw their military identification papers out of the aircraft.⁷² Franco put on a pair of glasses and, at some point on the journey, shaved off his moustache.

There is considerable dispute about the details of the journey. Arrarás and Bolín have a dark grey suit for Franco, Franco Salgado-Araujo white summer suits for both. All three are more plausible than Hills who claims that Franco changed into Arab dress and Crozier who adds, bizarrely, a turban. Arab dress would have been an odd choice of disguise for someone travelling on Sangróniz’s Spanish diplomatic passport. Franco Salgado-Araujo claims that they put their uniforms in a suitcase and threw it out of the aircraft. Given the difficulty of throwing a suitcase out of an aircraft in flight and the fact that they emerged from the aircraft in uniform at the end of their journey, it appears that Pacón’s memory failed him. There is also contention about the when and where of the demise of the moustache. The issue is whether he shaved on board the aircraft or later, during the stop-over at Casablanca. Pacón and Arrarás place the event on the aircraft but it is unlikely that Franco had a dry shave in a bumpy aircraft in the early stages of his journey. Luis Bolín, who shared a hotel room with Franco in Casablanca, claims that he shaved there. The emergency pilot also claimed the credit for removing the moustache.⁷³ Whenever the momentous shave took place, it gave rise to Queipo de Llano’s later jibe that the only thing that Franco ever sacrificed for Spain was his moustache.⁷⁴

They made a stop at Agadir in the late afternoon where they had some difficulty in getting petrol. The Dragon Rapide then flew onto Casablanca, where, arriving late at night, they were surprised by the sudden disappearance of the landing lights. With fuel running out, there were moments of intense anxiety. The airport was officially closed but Bolín had bribed an official to open up. The light fault was only a blown fuse. When they had landed safely and were eating a sandwich, they decided on the advice of Bebb not to continue the journey north until morning. They then spent a few hours in a hotel. At first light, on 19 July, the aircraft took off for Tetuán. Franco, who had barely slept for three days, was full of vitality at 5.00 a.m. On crossing the frontier into Spanish Morocco, Franco and Pacón changed back into uniform. Unsure as to the situation that awaited them, they circled the aerodrome at Tetuán until they saw Lieutenant-Colonel Eduardo Saenz de Buruaga, an old Africanista crony of Franco. Totally reassured, Franco cried ‘podemos aterrizar, he visto al rubito’ (‘we can land, I’ve just seen blondy’), and they landed to receive the enthusiastic welcome of the waiting insurgents.⁷⁵

Quickly made aware of the dramatic shortage of aircraft available to the rebels, Franco decided that Bolín should accompany Bebb in the Dragon Rapide as far as Lisbon to report to Sanjurjo and then go on to Rome to seek help. Two hours after depositing its passengers, the Dragon Rapide set off for Lisbon at 9.00 a.m. carrying Bolín with a piece of paper from General Franco which read ‘I authorize Don Luis Antonio Bolín to negotiate urgently in England, Germany or Italy the purchase of aircraft and supplies for the Spanish non-Marxist Army’. When Bolín asked for more details, Franco scribbled in pencil on the bottom of the paper ‘12 bombers, 3 fighters with bombs (and bombing equipment) of from 50 to 100 kilos. One thousand 50-kilo bombs and 100 more weighing about 500 kilos.’ In Lisbon, Bolín was to get the further authorization of Sanjurjo for his mission. On 20 July, the aircraft went from Lisbon to Biarritz. On 21 July, Bebb^* took Bolín to Marseille whence he travelled on to Rome in order to seek military assistance from Mussolini.⁷⁶

The fact that Franco should so quickly have decided to do something about the rebels’ need for foreign help is immensely revealing both of his self-confidence and his ambition. Sanjurjo was convinced that Franco aspired to nothing more than to be Alto Comisario in Morocco. However, his experience during the repression of the Asturian rising had given Franco a rather greater sense of his abilities and a significantly higher aspiration. How far-reaching those ambitions were to be was as yet something even Franco did not know. The situation would change rapidly as rivals were suddenly eliminated, as relationships were forged with the Germans and Italians and as the politics of the rebel zone fluctuated. Ever flexible, Franco would adjust his ambitions as, in the dramatic events ahead, more enticing possibilities arose.

^* Pemán, a sardonically witty poet and playwright, was member of the extreme right-wing monarchist group, Acción Española.

^* The necessary funds to hire Dragon Rapide G-ACYR – £2000 – were supplied by Juan March through the Fenchurch Street branch of Kleinwort’s Bank.

^* On other occasions, Franco would show a similar determination to move on, apparently indifferent to the tragedy just recounted to him. The demise of Alfonso XIII in 1931, the death of Mola in April 1937 and Mussolini’s fall from power in 1943 all produced nearly identical responses.

^* There they were met by Franco’s friend, the Spanish military attaché in Paris, Major Antonio Barroso who escorted them to Bayonne. They were to remain for the first three months of the Civil War in the home of the Polo family’s old governess Madame Claverie, under the protection of Lorenzo Martínez Fuset.

^* After the civil war, Bebb and Pollard were decorated with the Falangist decoration the Knight’s Cross of the Imperial Order of the Yoke and the Arrows. Dorothy Watson and Diana Pollard were given the medal of the same order.