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THE SUCCESSES of the African columns and the imminent attack on Talavera led, on 26 August, to Franco transferring his headquarters from Seville to the elegant sixteenth century Palacio de los Golfines de Arriba in Cáceres. He was anxious to move on from Seville in order to establish his total autonomy, free from the interference or disdain of Queipo de Llano in whose presence he always felt uncomfortable.¹ Like his earlier choice of the Palacio de Yanduri in Seville, it indicated a jealous concern for his public status. Franco was beginning to build a political apparatus capable of daily dealings with the Germans and Italians. Already he had a diplomatic office, headed by José Antonio de Sangróniz. Lieutenant-Colonel Lorenzo Martínez Fuset acted as legal adviser and political secretary. Franco was also accompanied from time to time by his brother Nicolás, who travelled between Cáceres and Lisbón where he was working for the Nationalist cause. Nicolás would soon be acting as a kind of political factotum. Millán Astray was in charge of propaganda. Even at this early stage, the tone of Franco’s entourage was sycophantic.²

The sheer volume of work facing Franco, effectively co-ordinating Nationalist ‘foreign policy’ and logistical organization, as well as maintaining close overall supervision of the advance of the African columns, obliged him to work immensely long hours. His resistance to discomfort and the powers of endurance which he had displayed as a young officer in Africa were undiminished but he began to age noticeably. The manic Millán Astray boasted to Ciano that ‘our Caudillo spends fourteen hours at his desk and doesn’t get up even to piss’.³ When his wife and daughter returned to Spain after their two-month exile in France – on 23 September – he responded to the announcement of their arrival by sending them a message that he had important visitors waiting. They were obliged to wait for more than an hour. He had little time for family life.⁴ Such concentration and strain perhaps contributed to the quenching of his early optimism but the re-emergence of a cautious Franco after the brief reincarnation of the impetuous African hero denoted both the prospect of power and the growing strength of Republican resistance.

The difficulties that were now slowing down the advance of the African columns impelled Franco’s Italian and German allies to step up their assistance. On 27 August, accompanied by Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Warlimont of the War Ministry staff, Canaris met Roatta in Rome to co-ordinate their views on the scale and nature of future assistance from Italy and Germany to the Nationalists. At a further meeting on the following day, they were joined by Ciano. Canaris again insisted that assistance be provided ‘only to General Franco, because he holds the supreme command of operations’. Joint Italo-German planning required a recognizable overall Nationalist commander with whom to communicate.⁵

Talavera was encircled by the three columns. The propaganda value for the Nationalists of the massacre at Badajoz was revealed when large numbers of militiamen fled in buses ‘like a crowd after a football match’. The town fell on 3 September. Another savage and systematic massacre ensued.⁶ While Franco’s forces had been moving through Extremadura and into New Castile, Mola had begun an attack on the Basque province of Guipúzcoa to cut the province off from France. Irún and San Sebastián were attacked daily by Italian bombers and bombarded by the Nationalist fleet. Irún’s poorly armed and untrained militia defenders fought bravely but were overwhelmed on 3 September. San Sebastián fell on 12 September. It was a key victory for the Nationalists. Guipúzcoa was a rich agrarian province which also contained important heavy industries. The Nationalist zone was now united in a single block from the Pyrenees through Castille and western Spain to the far south. The Republican provinces of Vizcaya, Santander and Asturias were isolated, able to communicate with the rest of the Republic only by sea or air.⁷

The losses of Talavera and Irún provoked the fall of the government of José Giral. A cabinet which more clearly reflected the working class bases of the Republic was introduced under the leadership of Francisco Largo Caballero. The clearer definition of the Republic and its move towards a stronger central authority was the corollary of the ever fiercer resistance being mounted against Franco’s advancing columns. The reduction of political indecision on the Republican side intensified the feeling among the senior Nationalist commanders that a unified command was an urgent necessity. Franco’s ambitions could be deduced from a statement to the Germans in Morocco that he wished ‘to be looked upon not only as the saviour of Spain but also as the saviour of Europe from the spread of Communism’.⁸ Now, the issue of a single command opened an opportunity for him. Mola flew to Cáceres on 29 August and discussed the matter with him.⁹

In the meanwhile, the bulk of Nationalist success was being chalked up by Franco’s Army of Africa. Protected to the south by the Tagus, Yagüe’s troops secured their northern flank by linking up with Mola’s forces. With the road to Madrid now open, for the next two weeks desperate Republican counter-attacks sought to recapture Talavera, but Franco showed a dogged resolve not to give up an inch of captured ground. Stiffening resistance and Franco’s determination to purge territory of leftists as it was captured account for the slowing down of his advance. In fact, he was on the verge of slowing it down even further by a momentous decision.

Among the issues crowding in on him, Franco gave some thought to the besieged garrisons of Toledo and Santa María de la Cabeza in Jaén. He regularly released his own Douglas DC-2 aircraft and his pilot Captain Haya for missions to both fortresses. On 22 August, he had sent a message to the Alcázar de Toledo promising to bring relief.¹⁰ The fortress was still unsuccessfully besieged by Republican militiamen who had wasted time, energy and ammunition in trying to capture this strategically unimportant stronghold. The one thousand Civil Guards and Falangists who had retreated into the Alcázar in the early days of the rising, had taken with them as hostages many women and children, the families of known leftists.¹¹ However, the resistance of the Alcázar was being turned into the great symbol of Nationalist heroism. Subsequently, the reality of the siege would be embroidered beyond recognition, in particular through the famous, and almost certainly apocryphal, story that Moscardó was telephoned and told that, unless he surrendered, his son would be shot.^* Naturally, the existence, and subsequent fate, of the hostages was entirely forgotten.¹²

Franco’s troops took more than two weeks to cover the ground from Talavera to the town of Santa Olalla in the province of Toledo on the road to Madrid.¹³ On 20 September, Yagüe’s forces captured Santa Olalla and imposed another ‘exemplary punishment’ on the militiamen they captured.¹⁴ Maqueda, at the cross-roads where the road divided to go either north to Madrid or east to Toledo, also fell to Yagüe on 21 September. At this point, that is to say after the fall of Maqueda, Franco had to make the decision whether to let the African columns race onto Madrid or else turn eastwards to relieve Toledo. It was a complex decision with political as well as military implications. While Yagüe was capturing Santa Olalla and Maqueda, Franco had been engaged in meetings with the other generals of the Junta de Defensa Nacional to discuss the need for a single Commander-in-Chief for the Nationalist forces. It is immensely difficult to reconstruct in precise detail the where, when, why and how of Franco’s decision but a key is to be found in the role of Yagüe.

On the day after Maqueda fell, an ‘officially’ sick and exhausted Yagüe handed over command to Asensio.¹⁵ It has been suggested that Franco’s decision to relieve Yagüe of his command was influenced by Mola’s intense hostility to him.¹⁶ It is possible, but highly unlikely, that Franco would have relieved the highly successful Yagüe at the insistence of Mola.^* It has also been suggested that Yagüe’s replacement had less to do with his illness than with his opposition to Franco’s decision to interrupt the march on Madrid to relieve the Alcázar de Toledo.¹⁷ Either of these possibilities would make sense if, in replacing Yagüe, Franco was punishing him for indiscipline. However, it seems unlikely that Yagüe was in disgrace of any kind since his withdrawal from the front was accompanied by promotion to full colonel and his immediate incorporation into Franco’s close entourage.¹⁸ By 22 September, Yagüe was already installed in the Palacio de los Golfines de Arriba, a curious resting place for a man in disgrace.¹⁹

There is, however, a third and altogether more likely possibility which fits the facts of Yagüe’s health, his promotion and his activities over the next few weeks. Yagüe’s substitution was made necessary because he had a weak heart consequent on problems with his aorta: he was genuinely exhausted and not really fit for further uninterrupted campaigning. Recognizing Yagüe’s priceless contribution at the head of the African columns, Franco was happy to give him a respite, promote him and use his immense prestige within the Legion for another task, as part of the orchestration of his bid to become Generalísimo. The ever faithful Yagüe, despite his obvious need for rest, threw himself into the job with a gusto which makes it difficult to imagine that there was serious friction between him and Franco.

Franco was fully aware of the possible military consequences of diverting his troops to Toledo. He would lose an unrepeatable chance to sweep onto the Spanish capital before its defences were ready. Both Kindelán and his Chief of Operations, Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Barroso, warned him that opting to go to Toledo might cost him Madrid. Yagüe’s opposition seems to have been the most outspoken. He reiterated the point made by Franco to Mola in his message of 11 August that the mere proximity of his columns to Madrid would have sent the besieging militiamen racing back to the capital. However, as had happened with Yagüe’s doubts over the crossing of the Straits in early August, his unquestioning faith in Franco brought him round. Franco disagreed with his staff that the delay of a week would undermine his chances of capturing Madrid. Nevertheless, he openly stated that, even if he knew for certain that going to Toledo would lose him the capital, he would still fulfil his promise to liberate the besieged garrison.²⁰ He was more interested in the political benefits of the relief of the Alcázar and to maximise those benefits he needed Yagüe at his side rather than in the field.

As a result of Franco’s decision, there would be a delay from 21 September to 6 October before the march on Madrid could continue. The two weeks were lost by Franco while he took Toledo and was involved in the process of his own political elevation. That delay would constitute the difference between an excellent chance to pluck Madrid easily and having to engage in a lengthy siege as a result of the reorganization of the capital’s defences and the arrival of foreign aid. At precisely this time, the Germans began to voice their impatience with ‘extraordinary’ and ‘incomprehensible’ delays which were permitting the Republican government to receive help from abroad.²¹ Given that Franco never ceased to complain to his allies about Soviet assistance to the Republic, it is ironic that he should so dramatically have underestimated its impact on the defence of Madrid. In moving his forces to Toledo, Franco gave a higher priority to the inflation of his own political position by means of an emotional victory and a great propagandistic coup than to the early defeat of the Republic. After all, had he moved onto Madrid immediately, he would have done so before his own political position had been irrevocably consolidated. The entire process of choosing a Caudillo would have been delayed. Then the triumph, and therefore the future, would have had to be shared with the other generals of the Junta.

Convinced of Franco’s monarchist good faith, Kindelán had long been urging Franco to raise the question of the need for a single command. Ostensibly at least, Franco showed little interest.²² Since his arrival in Tetuán on 19 July, Franco had been swamped every day by pressing problems. However, in the course of solving them, his self-confidence and ambitions had grown. In addition to organizing a combat Army without the normal logistical and financial support of the State to feed, arm and pay his troops, he had extended his activities into the international arena, acquiring a monopoly of arms and ammunitions deliveries. However, it was only in September as co-ordination with Mola’s forces for the final push on Madrid became likely that a formally recognized Commander-in-Chief became an urgent necessity.

There is no reason to doubt that Franco’s faith in his own abilities had already convinced him that, if there was to be a single command, then he should exercise it. He had long since presented himself to the agents of Berlin and Rome as the effective leader of the Nationalist cause. In early September, the Italian military mission under General Mario Roatta presented its credentials to Franco and thereby conveyed Mussolini’s de facto recognition of his leadership.²³ Any scruples which he expressed to Kindelán and Pacón reflected slow-moving prudence rather than modesty. Instinctive caution inclined him to avoid possible failure and humiliation by taking care not to be seen to have sought the post of Commander-in-Chief. A show of hesitation would disarm the jealousy of his rivals.

From the earliest moments of the uprising, Franco had been concerned about political unity within the Nationalist zone. Shocked by the Aladdin’s cave of uniforms and militias which he had encountered on arrival at Seville, he had commented to José María Pemán in mid-August 1936, ‘everyone will have to sacrifice things in the interests of a rigid discipline which should not lend itself to divisions or splinter groups’.²⁴ His interest in establishing overall authority over both the military and political spheres, however, quickened as a result of pressures from the Third Reich.

Herr Messerschmidt, the representative in Spain of the German War Matériel Export Cartel met Franco at the end of August. Messerschmidt’s report concluded ‘It goes without saying that everything must remain concentrated in Franco’s hands so that there may be a leader who can hold everything together’.²⁵ In mid-September, Johannes Bernhardt informed Franco that Berlin was anxious to see him installed as Chief of State. Franco replied cautiously that he had no desire to get mixed up in politics. Bernhardt made it clear that further arms shipments were in doubt unless Berlin had a sovereign chief with whom to negotiate and who could take responsibility for future commitments. Characteristically, Franco did not respond and left Bernhardt to fill the ensuing silence. Bernhardt informed him that he would shortly be travelling to Berlin with Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Warlimont, the head of Hitler’s unofficial military mission, in order to report to the Führer and Göring about the progress of the war. One of the issues that Warlimont would be discussing was the political leadership of Nationalist Spain. The clear implication was that Franco’s favoured position as the exclusive channel for German aid could be endangered unless he could show that his grip on power was unshakeable. Disappointed by the general’s non-committal response, Bernhardt approached Nicolás Franco who undertook to work on his brother. Since Franco was not easily manipulable, Nicolás’s efforts may be supposed to have been confined to underlining that now was an ideal moment to make a bid for power.²⁶

In the meanwhile, Kindelán, Nicolás Franco, Orgaz, Yagüe and Millán Astray formed a kind of political campaign staff committed to ensuring that Franco became first Commander-in-Chief and then Chief of State. It is clear from Kindelán’s own account that this was done with Franco’s knowledge and approval. Not surprisingly, Franco maintained sufficient reserve to enable him to disown their efforts should they have proved unsuccessful. It thus appeared that they were taking the lead although Franco was anything but a passive shuttlecock in their game. Kindelán suggested that a gathering of the Junta de Defensa Nacional together with other senior Nationalist generals be called to resolve the issue. The meeting was convoked at Franco’s request, an initiative which clearly indicated his interest in the single command and his availability as a candidate. The choice of additional generals who were invited was also deeply significant. They were Orgaz, Gil Yuste and Kindelán, all totally committed to Franco and all monarchists. In the wake of Mola’s expulsion of Don Juan, they looked to Franco to hold the fort until victory over the Republic permitted the restoration of the monarchy.

The historic gathering was held on 21 September at the same time as the African columns were taking Maqueda. The meeting took place in a wooden cabin (barracón) at a recently improvised airfield near Salamanca. General Cabanellas was in the chair and the others present were the members of the Junta, Franco, Mola, Queipo de Llano, Dávila, Saliquet, and Colonels Montaner and Moreno Calderón and the three additional generals. During the morning session, three and a half hours went by without Kindelán and Orgaz managing to get a discussion started on the question of a Commander-in-Chief, despite three attempts. There exist no minutes of the meeting, and the only record is constituted by Kindelán’s notes. In those notes, there is no indication that there was any discussion of the decision to interrupt the attack on Madrid in order to relieve the Alcázar at Toledo. At lunch on the estate of Antonio Pérez Tabernero, a bull-breeder, Kindelán and Orgaz decided to overcome the reluctance of their comrades and insisted that the subject be discussed in the afternoon session. Mola surprisingly supported them, saying ‘I believe the single command to be of such interest that if we haven’t named a Generalísimo within a week, I am not going on’. When the discussion was resumed, all showed themselves to be in favour, except Cabanellas, who advocated leadership by a junta or directory.²⁷

The choice was effectively limited to the cuatro generales of the Republican song. The most senior, Cabanellas was not possible. He had rebelled against the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, had been Radical parliamentary deputy for Jaén between 1933 and 1935, and was thought to be a freemason. His role in the 18 July rising was unclear and he had no special standing as a combat general. The next in seniority, Queipo de Llano, had betrayed Alfonso XIII in 1930 and, for that reason and because of his family links with Alcalá Zamora, was considered to have been the beneficiary of favouritism under the Republic. He was also privately despised for the obscene radio broadcasts which he delivered nightly from Seville against the Republic. Mola, the most junior, was somewhat discredited by the initial failures of the rising and by the difficulties faced by his northern forces relative to the spectacular successes of Franco’s Army of Africa. He also knew that he could not match Franco’s contacts with the Germans and Italians.²⁸

When it came to the vote on who should be Generalísimo, the two colonels abstained because of their inferior rank. Kindelán voted first, proposing that the single command be entrusted to Franco. He was followed by Mola, then Orgaz and the others, except Cabanellas who said that he could not take part in an election for a post which he considered unnecessary.²⁹ Although he cannot but have reflected wryly on Franco’s hesitations about joining the rising in June and the first half of July, Mola took his rival’s elevation with good grace. On leaving the meeting, Mola told his adjutants that it had been decided to create the job of Generalísimo. When they asked him if he had been nominated, he replied ‘Me? Why? Franco.’ Mola later told his adjutants that he had proposed the name of Franco as Generalísimo, ‘he is younger than me, has higher rank, is immensely well-liked and is famous abroad’.³⁰ Shortly afterwards, Mola told the monarchist politician Pedro Sainz Rodríguez that he had supported Franco in the power stakes because of his military abilities and the fact that he was likely to get the most votes. However, he made it clear that he regarded Franco’s leadership as transitory and was assuming that he himself would play a major role in moulding the political future after the war.³¹ Many years later, Queipo de Llano, on criticizing Franco, was asked by the monarchist Eugenio Vegas Latapié why he had voted for him. ‘And who else could we appoint?’, he replied. ‘It couldn’t be Cabanellas. He was a convinced Republican and everyone knew that he was a freemason. Nor could we name Mola because we would have lost the war. And my prestige was seriously impaired.’³² Nonetheless, Queipo made no secret of his dissatisfaction with the decision that had been taken.³³

The half-heartedness shown by some of Franco’s peers about his elevation was to have an immediate impact on his conduct of the war. It is impossible to say with total certainty when exactly Franco took the decision to direct his troops towards Toledo. The timing is crucial to any assessment of his motives. His official biographer has claimed, without any proof, that it was before the airfield meeting at which he was elected as Generalísimo. Such a timing would conveniently diminish any suspicion of self-serving about the decision.³⁴ However, the decision became a matter of urgency only after the capture of Maqueda and that did not take place until the early evening of 21 September. The Salamanca meeting started in the morning and Franco and his staff had to make an early start to travel there from Cáceres. In fact, there is little doubt that the decision was taken sometime after the fall of Maqueda and therefore after the meeting of the generals at the airfield.³⁵ Whether taken in the evening of 21 September or later, it was after Franco had been elected Generalísimo. He did not draw up specific orders until three days later.³⁶ Whenever Franco made his decision, which Mola’s secretary described as ‘completely personal’, he did so in a context of knowledge of the events of 21 September.³⁷

The meeting on that day had left him with gnawing doubts about his election as Generalísimo. Behind the near unanimous vote and the expressions of support for Franco could be discerned coolness and hesitations on the part of the other generals. The simple election to the status of primus inter pares was merely a step on the road to absolute power and there was still some distance to go. At the time, it was assumed, even by those involved in his election, that what they were doing was merely guaranteeing the unity of command necessary for victory and putting it temporarily in the hands of the most successful general amongst them.³⁸ The agreement to keep the decision secret until it was formally approved and published by the Junta de Burgos reflected their doubts. It would have been entirely characteristic of Franco to seek to tip the balance by the propaganda coup of the relief of the Alcázar. If that is so, the soundness of his judgement that further efforts were required was confirmed when several days went by and nothing happened about his election being announced formally.

The silence was rightly interpreted by Kindelán as a symptom of the lack of conviction of some of the generals at the meeting. Cabanellas was procrastinating precisely because he feared the implications of dictatorial powers being granted to Franco. In the meanwhile, Nicolás Franco, who had recently arrived in Cáceres from Lisbon, brought the news that the German and Italian envoys to Portugal had told him that their governments wanted to see a single command and preferably in the hands of Franco. Nicolás also used his own recent encounter with Johannes Bernhardt to overcome his brother’s apparent qualms about taking on political responsibilities. The lure of being Head of State, the interlocutor of Hitler and Mussolini, must have been seductive, as Nicolás seems to have perceived. However, even more than with the single command, it could be dangerous to be seen to be bidding for such power. With his customary caution, Franco preferred to let others make the running and wait for the new honour to be thrust upon him.

Accordingly, Kindelán, Nicolás Franco, Yagüe and Millán Astray proposed a further meeting at which the powers of the new Generalísimo would be clearly laid out and a proposal made that the post carried with it the Headship of State. Worried about his brother’s hesitations, Nicolás asked Yagüe to put pressure on him. On 27 September, Yagüe told Franco that if he refused to seek the single command, the Legion would seek another candidate, a prospect which decisively guaranteed that he would seek full powers for himself.³⁹ By the time that such a meeting could take place, Franco would have chalked up the great propaganda victory of the relief of the Alcázar at Toledo.

It has been suggested that Franco’s attitude to the garrison at Toledo was affected by bitter memories of his own inability to help the soldiers trapped at Nador in July 1921 after the disaster of Annual.⁴⁰ The fact that he had been a cadet at Toledo may also have influenced him but would scarcely have justified the decision to make a strategically secondary objective into the first priority. There is little doubt that the relief of the siege would have appealed to the romantic side of a soldier deeply imbued with the ethos of Beau Geste, all the more so as it could be made into a tale which might have come straight out of the legends of El Cid. However, when so much was at stake, the ruthlessly pragmatic Franco would not have let himself be swayed by such considerations unless there were other advantages to be gained.

In December 1936, he revealed more of the truth than perhaps he intended when he told a Portuguese journalist that ‘we committed a military error and we committed it deliberately. Taking Toledo required diverting our forces from Madrid. For the Spanish Nationalists, Toledo represented a political issue that had to be resolved’.⁴¹ Whatever Franco’s motives, his decision did his personal ambitions no harm although it was to have serious consequences for the Nationalist cause. By permitting Madrid to organize its defences, the diversion was to swing the advantage back to the Republic almost as starkly as the crossing of the Straits had given it to the military rebels.

In fact, the pace of the Army of Africa had already been slowed considerably. It took as long to get the 80 km from Talavera to Toledo as it had to travel the nearly 400 km from Seville to Talavera, a reflection of the fact that the Republic was gradually beginning to get some trained men into the field.⁴² This was reason enough to hasten the attack on the capital. Nevertheless, on 25 September, three columns of the Moroccan Army, since 24 September under the overall command of the African veteran and Carlist sympathizer, General Varela, swept to the north of Toledo. Under the individual commands of Colonel Asensio, Major Castejón and Colonel Fernando Barrón, they cut off the road to Madrid and then moved south against the city on the following day. After fierce fighting, the militia began to retreat. On 27 September, the world’s war correspondents, ‘who previously had been permitted to “participate” in the bloodiest battles of the war’, were prevented from accompanying the attacking Legionaires and Regulares as they unleashed another massacre. No prisoners were taken. The streets were strewn with corpses and literally ran with rivulets of blood which gathered in puddles. The American journalist Webb Miller told the US Ambassador that he had seen the beheaded corpses of militiamen. Hand grenades were tossed in among the helpless wounded Republicans in the San Juan Bautista hospital. On the next day, 28 September, General Varela entered the Alcázar to be greeted with Moscardó’s laconic report ‘Sin novedad en el Alcázar, mi general’ (all quiet in the Alcázar, general).⁴³

On the evening of Sunday 27 September, in the flush of the victory at Toledo, Franco, Yagüe and Millán Astray addressed a frenetically cheering crowd from the balcony of the Palacio de los Golfines in Cáceres. Franco spoke hesitantly, his fluting voice anything but inspirational. Yagüe, recalling the threatening conversation which he had had with Franco earlier in the day, was carried away with enthusiasm. He declared vehemently ‘tomorrow we will have in him our Generalísimo, the Head of State’. Millán Astray said ‘Our people, our Army, guided by Franco, are on the way to victory’. There were parades by the Falange and the Legion while the band played the anthem of the Legion Los Novios de la Muerte (bridegrooms of death) and the Falangist song Cara al sol (face to the sun). The crowd chanted ‘Franco! Franco! Franco!’. The scenes of popular acclamation for Franco were described lavishly in the press of the entire Nationalist zone.⁴⁴

As the crowd melted away, Nicolás Franco and Kindelán were drawing up a draft project to be put to the following day’s meeting of the Junta that was to decide the powers of the new Generalísimo. Yagüe had already played a key role by announcing in his speech that the Legion wanted Franco as single commander. Nicolás Franco and Kindelán continued to play their part, arranging that, on arrival at the airfield at Salamanca for the proposed meeting, Franco would be met by a guard of honour, consisting not only of a number of airmen, but also of a detachment of Carlist Requetés and another of Falangists. Thus, the somewhat intimidating symbolism of his political, as well as his military, leadership would be established before the meeting.⁴⁵ On the morning of Monday 28 September, Franco, Orgaz, Kindelán and Yagüe flew to Salamanca, ‘determined’, in Kindelán’s words, ‘to achieve their patriotic purpose whatever the cost’.^*

At the morning session of the meeting, the other generals showed some disinclination to discuss the question of the powers to be exercised by the single commander and some were in favour of putting off the decision for some weeks. After all, a week previously when, with more or less goodwill, they had agreed to make Franco military Commander-in-Chief, there had been no hint that he might also have political powers. With the fall of Madrid and the end of the war assumed to be imminent, the generals were reluctant to bestow wide-ranging authority on Franco since they suspected how difficult it would be to persuade him to relinquish it. However, Kindelán insisted and read out the draft decree. In article 1, it proposed the subordination of the Army, Navy and Air Force to a single command, in article 2 that the single commander be called Generalísimo, and in article 3 that the rank of Generalísimo carry with it the function of Chief of State, ‘as long as the war lasts’, a phrase which guaranteed Franco the support of the monarchist generals. The proposal, which implied the demise of the Junta de Defensa Nacional, was received with hostility, particularly by Mola. He recognized that Franco was the superior general but that did not mean that he wanted to give him absolute political power. Even Orgaz wavered in his support for Kindelán.

Over lunch, Kindelán and Yagüe worked on their comrades, describing the scenes of popular rejoicing in Cáceres on the previous evening. No doubt Yagüe stressed the will of the Legion and Nicolás Franco emphasized the German pressures to which he had been subjected. Before the afternoon session began, Queipo and Mola returned to their respective headquarters. On the basis of Kindelán’s proposal, a reluctant agreement was reached to the effect that Franco would be head of the government as well as Generalísimo. Cabanellas undertook to put it into practice within two days.⁴⁶ On leaving the meeting, an exultant Franco said to his host, Antonio Pérez Tabernero, ‘this is the most important moment of my life’.⁴⁷ In fact, Cabanellas still harboured doubts and decided to sign the decree only late in the night of 28 September after lengthy telephone consultations with Mola and Queipo. According to Cabanellas’s son, Queipo said ‘Franco is a swine.^* I have never liked him and never will. However, we’ve got to go along with his game until we can block it’. A more cautious Mola made it clear that he saw no alternative to the reluctant acceptance of Franco’s nomination.⁴⁸

Cabanellas entrusted to a professor of international law, José Yanguas Messía, the wording of the Junta’s decree formally recording the decision. Its first article stated that ‘in fulfilment of the agreement made by the Junta de Defensa Nacional, the Head of the Government of the Spanish State will be Excelentísimo Sr. General Don Francisco Bahamonde, who will assume all the powers of the new State’. There have been claims that, before being printed, the decree was tampered with either by Franco or his brother. Ramón Garriga, who was later to be part of Franco’s press service in Burgos, alleged that the reference in the draft to Franco being head of government of the Spanish State only provisionally ‘while the war lasted’ was read by Franco and crossed out before it was submitted to Cabanellas for signature. Tampering was not necessary. Made Head of the Government of the Spanish State, Franco simply referred to himself as, and arrogated to himself the full powers of, Head of State. The hopes of monarchists like Kindelán, Orgaz and Yanguas were totally misplaced. Having reached the peak of his power, Franco had no intention of handing over in his lifetime to a King, although he would always skilfully keep alive the hopes of the monarchists.⁴⁹ The bulk of the Nationalist press announced that Franco had been named Jefe del Estado Español (Head of the Spanish State). Only the Carlist Diario de Navarra committed the sin of referring to Franco as Jefe del Gobierno del Estado Español (Head of the Government of the Spanish State).⁵⁰

Cabanellas commented ‘You don’t know what you’ve just done, because you don’t know him like I do since I had him under my command in the African Army as officer in charge of one of the units in my column. If, as you wish, you give him Spain, he is going to believe that it is his and he won’t let anyone replace him either during the war or after until he is dead.’⁵¹ Cabanellas’s comment was uncannily similar to one made some years later by Colonel Segismundo Casado, also a one-time Africanista, ‘Franco incarnates the mentality of a Captain of the Tercio. That is all there is to it. We are told, “Take so many men, occupy such-and-such a position and do not move from there until you get further orders”. The position occupied by Franco is the nation and since he has no superior officer, he will not move from there.’⁵²

Franco derived incalculable political capital from his decision to divert his forces from Madrid. The liberation of the Alcázar was re-staged two days later and cinema audiences across the world saw Franco touring the rubble with a haggard Moscardó. In front of reporters, Moscardó repeated his famous phrase, sin novedad (all quiet), to Franco.⁵³ Overnight Generalísimo Franco became an international name, a name which symbolized the Nationalist war effort. In Nationalist Spain, he became the saviour of the besieged heroes. Not the least of his pleasure must have derived from emulating the great warrior heroes of medieval Spain.

The analogy was given the sanction of the Church on 30 September by the long pastoral letter, entitled ‘The Two Cities’, issued by the Bishop of Salamanca Dr Enrique Plá y Deniel. The Church had long since come out in favour of the military rebels but not hitherto as explicitly as Plá y Deniel. His pastoral built on the blessing given by Pius XI to exiled Spaniards at Castelgandolfo on 14 September in which the Pope had distinguished between the Christian heroism of the Nationalists and the savage barbarism of the Republic. Plá y Deniel’s text quoted St Augustine to distinguish between the earthly city (the Republican zone) where hatred, anarchy and Communism prevailed, and the celestial city (the Nationalist zone) where the love of God, heroism and martyrdom were the rule. For the first time, the word ‘crusade’ was used to describe the Civil War.⁵⁴

The text was submitted to Franco before being published. He not only approved it but adjusted his own rhetoric subsequently to derive from it the maximum political advantage. By latching onto the idea of a religious crusade, Franco could project himself not just as the defender of his Spain but also as the defender of the universal faith. Leaving aside the gratifying boost to his own ego, such a propaganda ploy could bring only massive benefit in terms of international support for the rebel cause.⁵⁵ Many British Conservative MPs, for instance, intensified their support for Franco after he began to stress Christian rather than fascist credentials. Sir Henry Page Croft (Bournemouth) declared him to be ‘a gallant Christian gentleman’ and Captain A.H.M. Ramsay (Peebles) believed Franco to be ‘fighting the cause of Christianity against anti-Christ’. They and many others used their influence with banks and government to incline British policy towards the Nationalists’ interests.⁵⁶

On 1 October 1936, the investiture of the new Chief of State took place. The pomp and the ceremony that were mounted were a long way from the improvisation of Franco’s first days as a military rebel barely ten weeks ago. A large guard of honour consisting of soldiers as well as Falangist and Carlist militias awaited his arrival in front of the Capitanía General of Burgos. An enormous and delirious crowd erupted into applause and cheers when his motor car entered the square in front of military headquarters. In the throne room, in the presence of the diplomats of Italy, Germany and Portugal, Cabanellas formally handed over the powers of the Junta de Defensa to a visibly delighted Franco. An anything but impressive figure, short, balding and now with an incipient double chin and paunch, Franco stood apart on a raised dais. Cabanellas said ‘Head of the Government of the Spanish State: in the name of the Junta de Defensa Nacional, I hand over to you the absolute powers of the State.’

Franco’s reply was shot through with hauteur, regal self-confidence and easily assumed authority: ‘General, Generals and Officers of the Junta, You can be proud, you received a broken Spain and you now deliver up to me a Spain united in a unanimous and grandiose ideal. Victory is on our side. You give me Spain and I assure you that the steadiness of my hand will not waver and will always be firm.’ After the ceremony, he appeared on the balcony and made a speech to the sea of arms raised in the fascist salute. The grandiloquent tone of his words in the throne room was replaced by a rhetorical commitment to social reform which can only have reflected a desire to be in tune with his Nazi and Fascist sponsors. Its cynical promises were to remain long unfulfilled: ‘Our work requires sacrifices from everyone, principally from those who have more in the interests of those who have nothing. We will ensure that there is no home without light or a Spaniard without bread.’ Altogether more credible was his declaration that night on Radio Castilla to the effect that he planned a totalitarian State for Spain.⁵⁷

Thereafter, from his very first decree, Franco simply referred to himself as Jefe del Estado. At that stage, of course, there was not much in the way of a State for Franco to be Head of. The task of constructing it began immediately, although with little immediate success. The Junta de Burgos was dissolved and replaced by a Junta Técnica del Estado, presided over by General Fidel Dávila.^* General Orgaz was made High Commissioner in Morocco with the job of maintaining the flow of Moorish mercenaries. The Junta Técnica remained in Burgos while Franco set up his headquarters in Salamanca, near the Madrid battle front without being too near and merely one hour’s drive from Portugal should things turn out badly. Mola was given command of the Army of the North, newly formed by merging his troops with the Army of Africa. Queipo de Llano was given command of the Army of the South, consisting of the scattered forces operating in Andalusia, Badajoz and Morocco. Cabanellas was marginalised in punishment for his lukewarm response to Franco’s elevation, being given the purely symbolic title of Inspector of the Army. Franco could rarely find time to receive him in Salamanca. No doubt he resented the fact that Cabanellas had once been his superior and usually referred to him, like Sanjurjo had done, as ‘Franquito’ (little Franco).⁵⁸ He was equally unforgiving with other one-time superiors, like Gil Robles, who found himself cold-shouldered.^†

One of the first things that Franco did after being elected as Nationalist leader was to send fulsome telegrams to Hitler and Rudolf Hess. Hitler responded with a verbal, rather than a written, message via the aristocratic German diplomat, the Count Du Moulin-Eckart, who was received by Franco on 6 October. Hitler claimed that he could better help Franco by not appearing to have recognized the Nationalist Government until after the capture of Madrid. On the eve of renewing the assault on Madrid, Franco responded in terms of with ‘heartfelt thanks for the Führer’s gesture and complete admiration for him and the new Germany.’ Du Moulin was impressed by the conviction of his enthusiasm for Nazi Germany, reporting that ‘the cordiality with which Franco expressed his veneration for the Führer and Chancellor and his sympathy for Germany, and the decided friendliness of my reception, permitted not even a moment of doubt as to the sincerity of his attitude toward us’.⁵⁹

In tune with the warmth of such sentiments, there began a massive propaganda campaign in fascist style to elevate Franco into a national figure. An equivalent title to Führer and Duce was adopted in the form of Caudillo – a term linking Franco to the warrior leaders of Spain’s medieval past. Franco considered himself, like them, to be a warrior of God against the infidels who would destroy the nation’s faith and culture.^*60 All newspapers in the Nationalist zone had to carry under their masthead the slogan ‘Una Patria, Un Estado, Un Caudillo’ (a deliberate echo of Hitler’s Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer). The ritual chants of ‘Franco! Franco! Franco!’ were heard with insistent frequency. The sayings and speeches of Franco were reproduced everywhere.

Almost immediately, Nicolás Franco made tentative plans for the creation of a Francoist political party along the lines of General Primo de Rivera’s Unión Patriótica. It would have consisted of conservative elements, largely from the CEDA, and therefore encountered the hostility of the Falange. Realizing how ill-advised it was to work against the ever larger Falange, the brothers dropped the idea.⁶¹ There was an element of irony about what was happening. The new powers that had been granted to Franco were given in the belief that a single command would hasten an already imminent victory. In fact, the Nationalist triumph was soon to become a distant long-term prospect. In part that was for reasons beyond the Caudillo’s control, such as the arrival of the International Brigades and Russian tanks and aircraft, and the creation of the Popular Army. However, that such things were able to have the effect that they did was largely Franco’s responsibility, attributable to the delay of nearly two weeks in the march on Madrid as a result of the diversion to Toledo and then of the time devoted to the orchestration of his elevation to supreme power. Increasingly thereafter, it would begin to seem that Franco had an interest in the prolongation of the war in order to have time both to annihilate his political enemies on the Left and his rivals on the Right and to consolidate the mechanisms of his power.

Once established as Head of State, and with the eyes of Nationalist Spain now upon him, Franco’s propagandists built him up as a great Catholic crusader and his public religiosity intensified. From 4 October 1936 until his death, he had a personal chaplain, Father José María Bulart.⁶² He now began each day by hearing mass, a reflection of both political necessity and the influence of Doña Carmen. In order to please his wife, when he was available he would join in her regular evening rosary, although, at this stage of his career at least, without any great piety.⁶³ No one can say with total certainty what part Carmen Polo played in encouraging her husband’s ambition nor how much he had been affected by Bishop Plá y Deniel’s declaration of a crusade. Doña Carmen believed in his divine mission and such fulsome ecclesiastical support made it easier for her to convince him of it.⁶⁴

As Franco came to believe in his own special relationship with divine providence, and as he became more isolated and weighed down with power and responsibility, his religiosity became more pronounced.^* Apart from any spiritual consolation it may have given him, his new found religiosity also reflected a realistic awareness of the immeasurable assistance which the endorsement of the Catholic Church could give him in terms of clinching foreign and domestic support. In the Generalísimo’s elevated concept of his own importance, the official approbation and blessing of the Church was essential. It was not just a question of broad Catholic support for the Nationalist cause but rather of specific recognition by the universal Church of his personal status as its champion. The speed with which Franco sought such recognition mirrored the speed with which he began to manifest monarchical pretensions. Religious ritual had traditionally played a crucial part in elevating the figure of the King in the great age of early modern Spain. Believing that he represented continuity with the glories of the Golden Age, he took it for granted that the Church would validate his rule. Accordingly, he arrogated the royal-prerogative of entering and leaving churches under a canopy (bajo palio).

On 1 October, the Primate of Spain Cardinal Isidro Gomá y Tomás sent a telegram congratulating him on the relief of the Alcázar and on his elevation to the Headship of State. Franco replied on 2 October with one of his grandiloquent messages, beginning ‘on assuming the powers of the Headship of the Spanish State with all their responsibilities I could receive no better help than the blessing of Your Eminence.’⁶⁵ It was the beginning of a close relationship with Gomá.

Franco’s fellow generals were somewhat taken aback by the ease with which the new Generalísimo adopted a distant and elevated style. He set up his headquarters in the Episcopal Palace in Salamanca which was graciously ceded to him by Bishop Plá y Deniel. Within two weeks of his investiture, visitors to the Palace, often known as the cuartel general, were being required to attend audiences in morning suit.⁶⁶ He was already surrounded by the Guardia Mora, the Moorish Guard, which would accompany him everywhere until the late 1950s. In resplendent uniforms, they stood like statues throughout the palace, a graphic indication of the Asiatic despotism in the making. German specialists arrived and built a special air-raid shelter.⁶⁷ Franco’s picture appeared everywhere, on cinema screens, on the walls of shops, offices and schools. Along with his portrait, slogans were stencilled on walls, ‘the Caesars were undefeated generals. Franco!’ An entire propaganda apparatus was erected and then devoted to the inflation of the myth of the all-seeing political and military genius Franco. The scale of adulation to which he was subjected inevitably took its toll on his personality.⁶⁸

In the process of moving from the improvised bureaucracy appropriate to a military campaign to the erection of a State apparatus, Franco made several errors in his choice of collaborators until the entire enterprise was taken over by his brother-in-law Ramón Serrano Suñer. His brother Nicolás may have been an excellent kingmaker but he was less successful as a chancellor. By dint of his relationship with the new Generalísimo, and operating out of an office next to that of his brother, he quickly accumulated enormous power. Nicolás, who resembled his father in his tastes and appetites much more than he did his brother, was an amusing and popular bon viveur whose bohemian and chaotic life-style was the despair of all who had to deal with him. He would rise at 1 p.m. and receive visitors until 3 p.m. when he would disappear for lunch until 7 p.m. followed by an evening’s socializing. Reappearing around midnight, he would then work until 4 or 5 a.m., often keeping those who had come to see him waiting for seven or eight hours at a time. Given his relationship to the Generalísimo, few complained, although his practices especially infuriated the Germans.⁶⁹ Yet despite the power and the favour that he enjoyed, Nicolás did little or nothing to begin the task of creating a State infrastructure.

However, the most disastrous of Franco’s appointments was that of Millán Astray as Head of Press and Propaganda. It is possible that Franco enjoyed Millán’s adulation but most of his activities were counter-productive. Within days of Franco’s elevation, Millán was proclaiming that Franco was ‘the man sent by God to lead Spain to liberation and greatness’, ‘the man who saved the situation during the Jaca rising’ and the ‘greatest strategist of the century’.⁷⁰ He ran the Nationalist press office like a barracks, summoning the journalists in his team with a whistle and then haranguing them much as he had the Legion prior to an action. Franco seems to have seen him as a kind of mascot, but his antics ended up bringing the Nationalist cause into disrepute.⁷¹ Millán’s own choice of collaborators was especially unfortunate. Because of the link established between Franco and Luis Bolín during the flight of the Dragon Rapide, Millán named Bolín chief of press in the south and gave him the honorific title of Captain in the Legion.⁷² Bolín started to use the uniform and throw his weight about accordingly, attempting to control the flow of news about Nationalist Spain by intimidating foreign journalists. Millán Astray encouraged his subordinates to threaten foreign journalists with execution. Bolín followed the order with gusto, most notoriously in the case of Arthur Koestler, the mistreatment of whom provoked an international scandal which led to his release from prison. As a result of the subsequent publication of Koestler’s book Spanish Testament, Bolín fell into disgrace.⁷³

Press liaison in the north was put in the hands of the notorious Captain Gonzalo de Aguilera, Conde de Alba y Yeltes, a polo-playing excavalryman, mainly on the grounds of his manic bigotry and the fact that he could speak excellent English, German and French. Captain Aguilera did more harm than good by outrageous and eminently quotable remarks to journalists. Much of what he said merely reflected the common beliefs of many officers on the Nationalist side. On the grounds that the Spanish masses were ‘like animals’, he told the foreign newspapermen that ‘We’ve got to kill and kill and kill’. He boasted to them of shooting six of his labourers on the day the Civil War broke out ‘Pour encourager les autres’. He regularly explained to any who would listen that the fundamental cause of the Civil War was ‘the introduction of modern drainage: prior to this, the riff-raff had been killed by various useful diseases; now they survived and, of course, were above themselves.’ ‘Had we no sewers in Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao, all these Red leaders would have died in their infancy instead of exciting the rabble and causing good Spanish blood to flow. When the war is over, we should destroy the sewers. The perfect birth control for Spain is the birth control God intended us to have. Sewers are a luxury to be reserved for those who deserve them, the leaders of Spain, not the slave stock.’⁷⁴ He believed that husbands had the right to shoot their unfaithful wives. When accompanying the influential journalist Virginia Cowles, Aguilera maintained a constant flow of sexist remarks which he occasionally interrupted to say things like ‘Nice chaps, the Germans, but a bit too serious; they never seem to have any women around, but I suppose they didn’t come for that. If they kill enough Reds, we can forgive them anything’.⁷⁵

That Millán was hardly the best man to present the cause of Franco’s New State to the outside world was made starkly clear on 12 October 1936, during the celebrations in Salamanca of the Day of the Race, the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s ‘discovery’ of America. The magnificent and regal choreography stressed the permanence of the New State. A tribune was erected in the Cathedral for the distinguished guests. Franco was not present but was represented by General Varela and by Doña Carmen. A sermon by the Dominican priest Father Fraile praised Franco’s recuperation of the ‘the spirit of a united, great and imperial Spain’. The political, military and ecclesiastical dignitaries then transferred to the University for a further ceremony under the presidency of the Rector Perpétuo, the seventy-two year-old philosopher and novelist Miguel de Unamuno. He announced that he was taking the chair in place of General Franco who could not attend because of his many pressing commitments.

A series of speeches stressed the importance of Spain’s imperialist past and future. One in particular, by Francisco Maldonado de Guevara, who described the Civil War in terms of the struggle of Spain, traditional values and eternal values against the anti-Spain of the reds and the Basques and Catalans, seems to have outraged Unamuno, who was already devastated by the ‘logic of terror’ and the arrest and assassination of friends and acquaintances. (A week earlier Unamuno had visited Franco in the Bishop’s Palace to plead vainly on behalf of several imprisoned friends.)⁷⁶ The vehemence of Maldonado’s speech stimulated a Legionaire to shout ‘¡Viva la muerte!’ (long live death), the battle cry of the Legion. Millán Astray then intervened to begin the triple Nationalist chant of ‘¡España!’ and back came the three ritual replies of ‘¡Una!’, ‘¡Grande!’ and ‘¡Libre!’ (United! Great! Free!). When Unamuno spoke, it was to counter the frenzied glorification of the war and the repression. He said that the civil war was an uncivil war, that to win was not the same as to convince (vencer no es convencer), that the Catalans and Basques were no more anti-Spanish than those present. ‘I am a Basque and I have spent my life teaching you the Spanish language which you do not know’. At this point he was interrupted by a near apoplectic Millán Astray who stood up to justify the military uprising. As Millán worked himself into a homicidal delirium, Unamuno stood his ground pointing out the necrophiliac inanity of the slogan ‘Long live death’. Millán shouted ‘Death to intellectuals’ to which Unamuno replied that they were in the temple of intelligence and that such words were a profanity.

With shouting and booing rising to a crescendo and Unamuno being threatened by Millán Astray’s armed bodyguards, Doña Carmen intervened. With great presence of mind and no little courage, she took the venerable philosopher by the arm, led him out and took him home in her official car. It has been suggested by two eyewitnesses that Millán Astray himself ordered Unamuno to take the arm of the wife of the Head of State and leave.⁷⁷ Such was the ambience of fear in Salamanca at the time that Unamuno was shunned by his acquaintances and removed at the behest of his colleagues from his position in the University.⁷⁸ Under virtual house arrest, Unamuno died at the end of December 1936 appalled at the repression, the ‘collective madness’ and ‘the moral suicide of Spain’.⁷⁹ Nevertheless, he was hailed at his funeral as a Falangist hero.⁸⁰ Nearly thirty years later, Franco commented to his cousin on what he saw as Unamuno’s ‘annoying attitude, unjustifiable in a patriotic ceremony, on such an important day and in a Nationalist Spain which was fighting a battle with a ferocious enemy and encountering the greatest difficulties in achieving victory’. In retrospect, he regarded Millán Astray’s intervention as an entirely justified response to a provocation. Nevertheless, at the time, it was thought prudent to have Millán Astray replaced.⁸¹

The incident with Unamuno was a minor embarrassment in the process of consolidation of Franco as undisputed leader. In political terms, everything was going his way. In the course of the attack on Madrid, Franco was fortunate to see, indeed to an extent to facilitate, the removal from the scene of one of his last remaining potential rivals. The panic provoked by the advance on the capital and the broadcast of boasts by Mola about the imminent capture of Madrid by his ‘Fifth Column’ of secret Nationalist sympathisers had seen violent reprisals taken among rightists, either against individual saboteurs who were caught or against the large groups of prisoners taken from Madrid jails and massacred at Paracuellos de Jarama.⁸² The conservatives and other middle class victims of atrocities in Madrid were not the only Nationalist civilians to lose their lives. The most celebrated was José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Although the Falangist leader had been in a Republican jail in Alicante since his arrest on 14 March 1936, an escape bid or a prisoner exchange was not inconceivable.^* Obviously, given the pre-eminence of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, his release or escape would not be easy. In the event, however, lack of co-operation by Franco ensured that it would not happen.

This was entirely understandable. Franco needed the Falange both as a mechanism for the political mobilization of the civilian population and as a way of creating an identification with the ideals of his German and Italian allies. However, if the charismatic José Antonio Primo de Rivera were to have turned up at Salamanca, Franco could never have dominated and manipulated the Falange as he was later to do. After all, since before the war, José Antonio had been wary about too great a co-operation with the Army for fear that the Falange would simply be used as cannon fodder and fashionable ideological decoration for the defence of the old order. In his last ever interview, with Jay Allen, on 3 October, published in the Chicago Daily Tribune on 9 October and in the News Chronicle on 24 October 1936, the Falangist leader had expressed his dismay that the defence of traditional interests was being given precedence over his party’s rhetorical ambitions for sweeping social change.⁸³ Even taking into account the possibility that José Antonio was exaggerating his revolutionary aims to curry favour with his jailers, the implied clash with the political plans of Franco was clear. In fact, Allen told the American Ambassador, Claude G. Bowers, that José Antonio’s attitude was defiant and contemptuous rather than conciliatory and that he had been obliged to cut short the interview ‘because of the astounding indiscretions of Primo’.⁸⁴

Franco, as something of a social climber, might have been expected to admire the dashing and charismatic socialite José Antonio who was after all son of the dictator General Primo de Rivera. However, despite the efforts of Ramón Serrano Suñer over the previous six years, their relationship had never prospered. José Antonio had come to regard Franco as pompous, self-obsessed and possessed of a caution verging on cowardice. Their relationship had definitively foundered in the spring of 1936, during the re-run elections in Cuenca when José Antonio had vehemently opposed the general’s inclusion in the right-wing list of candidates. Franco had never forgiven him.

For some time before his elevation to the overall leadership of the Nationalist side, Franco had been considering plans to subordinate the various political strands of the Nationalist coalition to a single authority. In late August, he had told Messerschmidt that the CEDA would have to disappear. In his conversation on 6 October with Count Du Moulin-Eckart, the new Head of State had informed his first diplomatic visitor that his main preoccupation was the ‘unification of ideas’ and the establishment of a ‘common ideology’ among the Army, the Falange, the monarchists and the CEDA. He confided in his visitor his cautious belief that ‘it would be necessary to proceed with kid gloves’. Given his own essential conservatism and the links of the elite of the Nationalist coalition with the old order, such delicacy would indeed be required. Unification could only be carried out at the cost of the political disarmament of the ever more numerous and vociferous Falange. Such an operation would be easier to perform if the Falangist leader were not present.

Early attempts to liberate José Antonio were initially approved by Franco. His grudging consent was given for the obvious reason that to withhold it would be to risk losing the goodwill of the Falange which was providing useful para-military and political assistance throughout the rebel zone. The first rescue attempt had been the work of isolated groups of Falangists in Alicante. Then in early September, when the Germans had come to see the Falange as the Spanish component of a future world political order, more serious efforts were made. German aid came from the highest levels on the understanding that the operation was approved by General Franco something for which there were precedents.

Franco had already intervened personally with the Germans to get help for the rescue of the family of Isabel Pascual de Pobil, the wife of his brother Nicolás. Thanks to the efforts of Hans Joachim von Knobloch, the German consul in Alicante, eighteen members of the Pasqual de Pobil family were disguised as German sailors and taken aboard a ship of the German Navy. The efforts to free the Falangist leader hinged largely on the co-operation of German naval vessels anchored at Alicante and of von Knobloch. Knobloch co-operated with the rash and excitable Falangist Agustín Aznar in an ill-advised scheme to get Primo de Rivera out by bribery which fell through when Aznar was caught and only narrowly escaped. An attempt was made on von Knobloch’s life and shortly after he was expelled from Alicante by the Republic on 4 October.⁸⁵

On arriving at Seville on 6 October, von Knobloch and Aznar renewed their efforts to liberate José Antonio. Von Knobloch elaborated a scheme to bribe the Republican Civil Governor of Alicante while Aznar prepared a violent prison break-out. They were received in Salamanca by Franco who, after thanking von Knobloch for securing the escape from Alicante of the family of his brother Nicolás, gave his permission for them to continue their efforts. However, that verbal permission obscured the fact that his backing was less than enthusiastic. While von Knobloch returned to Alicante to implement his scheme, Franco informed the German authorities that he insisted on a number of conditions for the continuation of the operation. These were that efforts be made to rescue José Antonio without handing over any money, that if it was necessary to give money then the amount should be haggled over, and that von Knobloch should not take part in the operation. These strange conditions considerably diminished the chances of success but the Germans in Alicante decided to go ahead. Franco then issued even more curious instructions. In the event of the operation being a success, total secrecy was to be maintained about José Antonio being liberated. He was to be kept apart from von Knobloch, who was the main link with the Falangist leadership. He was to be interrogated by someone sent by Franco. He was not to be landed in the Nationalist zone without the permission of Franco. He informed the Germans that there existed doubts about the mental health of Primo de Rivera. The operation was aborted.⁸⁶

A further possibility for Primo de Rivera’s release arose from a suggestion by Ramón Cazañas, Falangist Jefe (chief) in Morocco. He proposed that an exchange be arranged for General Miaja’s wife and daughters who were imprisoned in Melilla. Franco apparently refused safe-conducts for the negotiators although he later agreed to the family of General Miaja being exchanged for the family of the Carlist, Joaquín Bau. The Caudillo also refused permission for another Falangist, Maximiano García Venero, to drum up an international campaign to save José Antonio’s life.⁸⁷ Similarly, Franco sabotaged the efforts of José Finat, Conde de Mayalde, a friend of José Antonio. Mayalde was married to a granddaughter of the Conde de Romanones and he persuaded the venerable politician to use his excellent contacts in the French government to get Blum to intercede with Madrid on behalf of Primo de Rivera. Franco delayed permission for Romanones to go to France until after the death sentence was announced.⁸⁸

José Antonio Primo de Rivera was shot in Alicante prison on 20 November 1936. Franco made full use of the propaganda opportunities thereby provided, happy to exploit the eternal absence of the hero while privately rejoicing that he now could not be inconveniently present. The news of the execution reached Franco’s headquarters shortly after it took place.⁸⁹ It was in any case published in the Republican and the French press on 21 November. Until 16 November 1938, Franco chose publicly to refuse to believe that José Antonio was dead. The Falangist leader was more use ‘alive’ while Franco made his political arrangements. An announcement of his death would have opened a process whereby the Falange leadership could have been settled at a time when Franco’s own position was only just in the process of being consolidated. The provisional leader of the Falange, the violent but unsophisticated Manuel Hedilla, made the tactical error of acquiescing in Franco’s manoeuvre. The first news of the execution coincided with the Third Consejo Nacional of the Falange Española y de las JONS in Salamanca on 21 November but Hedilla failed to make an announcement, out of a vain hope, built on a hundred rumours, that by some subterfuge or other, his leader had survived. Thereafter, Franco would have to deal only with a decapitated Falange.⁹⁰

Franco’s attitude to José Antonio Primo de Rivera’s ‘absence’ was enormously revealing of his peculiarly repressed way of thinking. ‘Probably’, he told Serrano Suñer in 1937, ‘they’ve handed him over to the Russians and it is possible that they’ve castrated him’.⁹¹ Franco used the cult of el ausente (the absent one) to take over the Falange. All its external symbols and paraphernalia were used to mask its real ideological disarmament. Some of Primo de Rivera’s writings were suppressed and his designated successor, Hedilla, would be imprisoned under sentence of death in April 1937. While the public cult was manipulated to build up Franco as the heir to José Antonio, the Caudillo in private expressed his contempt for the Falangist leader. Serrano Suñer was always aware that praise for José Antonio was guaranteed to irritate Franco. On one occasion, the Generalísimo exploded ‘Lo ves, siempre a vueltas con la figura de ese mucbacho como cosa extraordinaria’ (‘see, always going on about that lad as if he was something out of the ordinary’). On another, Franco claimed delightedly to have proof that Primo de Rivera had died a coward’s death.⁹²

It is possible that José Antonio might have worked to bring an early end to the carnage although whether, in the hysterical atmosphere of the times, he would have had any success is entirely a different matter. He was certainly open to the idea of national reconciliation in a way never approached by Franco either during the war or in the thirty-five years that followed. In his last days in prison, José Antonio was sketching out the possible membership and policies of a government of ‘national concord’ whose first act was to have been a general amnesty. His attitude to Franco was revealed clearly in his comments on the implications of a military victory which he feared would merely consolidate the past. He saw such a victory as the triumph of ‘a group of generals of depressing political mediocrity, committed to a series of political clichés, supported by old-style intransigent Carlism, the lazy and short-sighted conservative classes with their vested interests and agrarian and finance capitalism’.

The papers in which he put these thoughts down were sent to Prieto by the military commander of Alicante, Colonel Sicardo. Eventually, the Socialist leader forwarded copies to his two executors, Ramón Serrano Suñer and Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, in the hope of provoking dissent among the Falangist purists. This was a political error on Prieto’s part. With José Antonio dead, the validation of Serrano Suñer and Fernández Cuesta as his executors gave them his authority to carry out Franco’s policy.⁹³ Had José Antonio Primo de Rivera reached Salamanca, he would have been a certain, and influential, critic of Franco. Franco’s exploitation of the Falange as a ready-made political base would have been made significantly more difficult.⁹⁴ However, to assume that Franco would not have seen off Primo de Rivera in the same way as he disposed of so many rivals is to take too much for granted.

In contrast to the ruthlessness with which Franco disposed of his rivals was the alacrity with which he bent rules in the interests of his family. The examples of this during the Civil War presaged the protection under which the so-called ‘Franco clan’ would prosper in the post-war years. His intervention on behalf of Nicolás’s in-laws was an example of his readiness to do things for his family. Even more striking was the rehabilitation of his left-wing extremist brother Ramón despite the vehement opposition of many important military figures. In September 1936, Ramón Franco who was in Washington as Spanish air attaché, wrote to a friend in Barcelona to ascertain how he would be received in the Republican zone. Azaña allegedly said to the mutual friend ‘he shouldn’t come, he’d have a really hard time’. In the wildly precipitate way that had always characterized his behaviour, Ramón decided to go instead to the Nationalist zone shortly after hearing of his brother’s elevation to the Headship of State.⁹⁵

Despite his past as an anarchist agitator and as a freemason and his involvement in various revolutionary activities, all ‘crimes’ for which others paid with their lives, Ramón was welcomed by his brother. In Seville, Queipo de Llano had already executed Blas Infante, the Andalusian Nationalist lawyer who had stood with Ramón in the revolutionary candidacy in the 1931 elections. The exquisite care for appearances which had allegedly prevented Franco opposing the execution of his cousin Ricardo de la Puente Bahamonde at the beginning of the military uprising did not apply in the case of his brother. Ramón was sent to Mallorca to take over as head of the Nationalist forces there and given the acting rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. This caused very considerable ill feeling within the Nationalist Air Force and planted the seeds of a rift between Franco and his kingmaker, Alfredo Kindelán. On 26 November, Kindelán wrote the Generalísimo a fierce protest against his high-handed action. Couched in formally respectful terms, it accepted Franco’s right to command as he felt best but spoke of the ‘personal mortification’ felt by Kindelán at not even having been consulted and of the ill feeling which had been provoked among Nationalist airmen whose reaction ranged ‘from those who accept that he be allowed to work in aeronautical matters outside Spain to those who demand that he be shot’.⁹⁶ Franco simply ignored the letter and took his revenge against Kindelán by dropping him at the end of the war. Franco had taken to the prerogatives of his power with the skill and arbitrariness of a Borgia: they were attributes he was to need and to use to the full in the months ahead.

^* Before the myth-makers began to work, ABC, Seville, 3 October 1936 claimed that ‘communications with the outside were totally cut throughout the siege’.

^* At some point on either 20 or 21 September, Yagüe and Mola met to discuss the co-ordination of operations between their forces which had recently made contact over a long front. Their disagreements became increasingly heated. Mola told Yagüe that his behaviour constituted mutiny for which he could have him shot. Turning to his column commanders, Asensio, Castejón and Tella, Yagüe said ‘We don’t think so’ (¡Verdad que no!) at which Mola was forced to make a joke of his original remark and back down. (Letter to the author from General Ramón Salas Larrazabal, 9 May 1991, recounting the testimony of one of the column chiefs present at the meeting, probably Asensio Cabanillas.)

^* The myth propagated by Franco’s hagiographers (Luis Galinsoga & Francisco Franco-Salgado, Centinela de occidente (Barcelona, 1956) p. 21) that he did not attend the meeting has no basis other than a determination to give the impression that the Generalísimo had power thrust upon him. Brian Crozier, Franco: A Biographical History (London, 1967) p. 212, mistakenly places the meeting on 29 September and so assumes Franco’s absence on the grounds that, on that day, he was in Toledo congratulating Moscardó.

^* What Queipo called Franco is deemed by Cabanellas to be ‘unprintable’ and so ‘swine’ is merely a guess.

^* It had a Secretaría General del Jefe del Estado, a Secretaría General of Foreign Relations and a Gobierno General. There were also seven ministerial departments or ‘commissions’, Finance; Justice; Industry, Commerce and Supply; Agriculture; Labour, Culture and Education; Public Works and Communications.

^† Gil Robles told the author in Madrid in 1970 of his belief that Franco could not tolerate having around anyone who had been his superior.

^* The seed had been first planted in Franco’s mind in the late 1920s. At that period, he spent time at a small Asturian estate owned by his wife known as La Piniella, situated near San Cucao de Llanera, thirteen kilometres from Oviedo. A particularly sycophantic local priest who fancied himself as the chaplain to the house was constantly telling both Doña Carmen and Franco himself that he would repeat the epic achievements of El Cid and the great medieval Caudillo Kings of Asturias. Franco’s wife had often reminded him of the priest’s comments.

^* It was said that religious ceremonial bored Franco almost more than anything else and, in power, he suffered agonies when he had to receive religious delegations, commenting ‘we’re doing saints today’ (‘boy estamos de santos’).

^* Several prominent Nationalists crossed the lines in these ways. The exchanges (canjes) included important Falangists like Raimundo Fernández Cuesta who was officially exchanged for a minor Republican figure, Justino de Azcárate, and Miguel Primo de Rivera who was exchanged for the son of General Miaja. Among the more significant escapees was Ramón Serrano Suñer.